6

Giles was in a room at the end of the hall, laying flat out on the bed. Logan had no idea who used to be in here, but he smelled a lingering trace of someone who was definitely not Giles. Probably a student, but he didn’t recognize the scent. “You didn’t want to get carted down to sick bay, huh?” Logan guessed.

Giles nodded faintly. His head was propped up on pillows almost as pale as he currently was. “I do have some dignity. Best to deploy it when I can.”

“Use it or lose it,” Logan agreed, and ran a hand over his bristly head. “Luckily I lost mine a long time ago.”

“Dignity’s terribly overrated.”

“What am I doin’ for you, Rupert?”

He reached blindly for the nightstand and groped along until he felt and grabbed a piece of paper. It was a note from Storm’s desk - it had an X-Men logo on it and everything. Logan had no idea they had a logo, but why not? They had swoopy leather/Kevlar suits too. Why not a logo? Maybe they even had their own font. He never got the memos on these things. “I need you to visit this woman, and tell her Ripper is calling in his favor. Tell her an unknown group has opened up a Hell portal in the Canal Street Subway, and I need all the firepower she can muster.”

A glance at the paper showed an address written in surprisingly neat handwriting for a guy who kept passing out. “Who is this woman? And, uh, Ripper?”

He winced in embarrassment. “You’re not the only one who has a past he’d rather not discuss. I met her at a rather dark period in my life, and I bent some rules for her. And the last time I knew, she was going by the name Allyson Temple.”

“Sounds like a place.”

“I told her that, but she made a rather rude suggestion in return. I had to inform her Human spines didn’t bend that way.”

“Ah, so this is why you’re sending me to do it. She’s not Human.”

He fixed him with a very serious look. With his glasses off, he looked strangely tired and fragile. “It’s more than that. I’m hoping she picks up on the residual traces of Bob energy in you and won’t try and fuck with you in any respect. She really does like fucking with men, and I don’t mean it as a verb.”

Logan understood that if the Bob energy in him was a warning, this chick was super bad news. “What is she?”

“She used to be the goddess Ate. Do you know her story?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“Supposedly she was in the discord and mischief category, and pissed off Zeus enough that he condemned her to Earth. The real story - as far as you can get real stories from gods, which is almost never - is that she took the wrong side in a god war and got exiled to a lesser dimension. She was depowered enough that she couldn’t get out, but when some stupid kids dabbling in black magic went looking for a demon to control, they accidentally opened up her dimension and let her out. Since she wasn’t a demon at all, they had no power over her, but they were lucky that she retained so little of her god power that she couldn’t make their heads explode.”

“But she ain’t normal?” Logan wondered if Giles had known the stupid kids who done it, or was maybe a part of them. Was that possible? Just because he seemed proper now didn’t mean he’d always been that way.

“Hardly. She’s still inhuman. She eventually went into witchcraft, possibly to help her regain some of her god powers, but last I heard she’s simply a powerful witch.” Giles gave him a curious look. “You don’t know how Bob regained his powers, do you?”

“Not really. I mean, I don’t know the specifics, but the general gist is Aborigines helped him.”

“How?”

Logan shrugged. “He said they knew he was a god the first time they encountered him. But how and what that had to do with him getting’ his mojo back I have no idea.”

Giles nodded, seemingly accepting this. “I guess we should be glad that Ate’s first exposure to humanity was amongst drunken teenage spellcasters. It might have been infinitely worse if she ended up amongst people who actually knew what they were doing.”

“So she runs this coven you were talking about?”

“She’s the head of it. But as far as I know, she knows a lot of the New York supernatural underground not aligned with the demon mob. If I’m right about her territorial instinct, she’ll be pissed off that someone opened up a rift in her city.”

He nodded. Logan knew Bob wouldn’t be happy about it, but presumably not all fallen gods were the same, and the fact that she still didn’t have any of her original powers back and Bob did was proof of that. Now he wasn’t about to claim an overwhelming knowledge of gods, but from those he had encountered, he had figured out that most were weird and pretty unpleasant. For every Degei - who was friendly, in spite of being made of snakes and being a death god - there was an Ares, an arrogant prick who had no idea why they were bothering with these bags of meat. Which was in all honesty a good question, just not right now. “Is she likely to kill me?”

“No, you’re Bob’s avatar. She’ll know better than to do that.” He paused briefly. “She’ll aim to wound.”

Wonderful. But honestly, he wasn’t surprised.

Before he tracked down another bike in the garage, Doctor Khoury found him and gave him a shot of something that was powerful enough to make him feel a little woozy for a second, but then quickly passed as his system adapted to the drugs. But god, that was a nice minute there.

The traffic was kind of bad - hey, it was New York City; he should have known it was faster to walk - but he eventually found the address, which led to a brownstone in a reasonably decent neighborhood. The steps were clean, swept, and as he went up to the door, he saw that there were no buzzers. This was a single dwelling, a home? Either she made good money, or was a powerful witch. Possibly both. Hopefully not an ex of Trump’s.

There was a doorbell, and as he hit it and waited, he got the unmistakable feeling he was being watched. He looked up to where a video camera would be in a normal alcove, and even though he saw nothing, he was pretty sure he heard a faint mechanical buzz. Hidden by magic? Cute. Probably kept vandals from screwing with it. Logan looked square at where he presumed the camera was, and said, “Listen lady, I ain’t goin’ away just ‘cause you won’t answer the door.”

Maybe it was just coincidence - but probably not - that after a moment he heard the click of a speaker. “Who the hell are you?” She had both a commanding voice and a very slight upper crust British accent.

“A friend of Ripper’s. He’s callin’ in his favor.”

“Where is he?”

“Laid up. He got shagged out fighting a chimera in the subway.”

He heard a scoff as a burst of static. “There are no chimeras in the subway.”

“There was. You can probably go see its corpse if you hurry.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then he heard the locks disengage on the door. It opened slightly and stopped, and while he expected someone on the other side, he realized he smelled no one and shoved the door open and walked inside.

It was a wide foyer, with lovingly polished hardwood floors and a wrought iron staircase sweeping off to the left, and he was alone in it, but as soon as he looked around and looked back, she was standing right in front of him. “He couldn’t have killed a chimera all by himself.” She was about six feet tall, broad shouldered but not fat, just big, a hearty woman you might call “farm stock” if you didn’t mind getting your balls kicked up into your stomach. Her hair was shoulder length and reddish brown, framing a face that was round yet angular, imposing and stark, like a face carved from marble. Her eyes were chips of flint, hard and unexpressive, as if whoever created her current form forgot to add eyes and just slapped on a purely cosmetic pair as an afterthought. This was a woman unbothered by a conscience. She was wearing a dark green silk shirt and black Armani pants, along with a scarf of midnight blue silk that was so wide it was virtually a shawl. Who the hell wore a scarf indoors? What the hellwas she - Auntie Mame?

“He didn’t. I killed it.”

“You did not.”

“I did. I let it swallow me, and cut my way out of its stomach from the inside.”

Her dark eyes narrowed, and she almost seemed to sniff him. “Who has touched you?”

He knew what she meant, but he couldn’t resist the joke. “You really wanna list? We’re gonna be here a while.”

“Don’t be a smart ass, mortal. Who’s bitch are you?”

“No one’s. I’m Bob’s avatar.”

She made a noise of derision. “You can’t be an avatar, Human. And whoever heard of a god named Bob?”

“I’m a mutant, I can be. And I guess he used to be known as Kama, the Hindu god. Of Kama Sutra fame? Or so he claimed. He also claimed to be some Maori storm god, although I don’t recall -”

“Oh, him,” she interrupted, her voice dripping with venom. “I should have guessed. He’s always causing trouble.”

“Yeah, he and I have that in common.”

“How does he have his powers back? I thought he was stripped.”

Logan just shrugged. He wasn’t giving her any hints. “I dunno. He’s had powers as long as I’ve known him.” Not a lie.

She studied him for a long, hard minute. “So why doesn’t Ripper call on him for help?”

“He doesn’t owe him.”

“I don’t owe him anything,” she said haughtily, crossing her arms over her chest. But she knew she was lying even as she said it. “So who brought a chimera here?”

“We’re not sure. We just know that someone’s opened up a hell portal in the Canal Street Station.”

“Bullshit. No one’s opened a Hellmouth here.”

Logan shrugged again. “Giles picked it up, and we fought the goddamn chimera. You give me another explanation for it.”

She gave him a caustic stare, like she knew he was lying just to annoy and harass her, but after a moment she disappeared. Just like that; there was no transition, just a blink and she was gone. He stood in the foyer, and wondered if he should do a bit of exploring while she was gone. Hell, why not? If she wanted to stop him, she could cast a spell on the house or something.

He wandered into the living room, which was appointed much like a Victorian drawing room, with cherry wood and velvet furniture in abundance, the television the only thing breaking the illusion. He saw little signs that she was into questionable things - mummified raven’s feet tied in a bundle on the mantel, beeswax candles that smelled rather strongly of wolf’s bane, a small mirrored bowl on the coffee table with an odd combination of small animal bones and foxglove blooms in the center. He hoped that wasn’t supposed to be a salad.

Did he smell blood? He traced it to a simple shelf of books, many of which also smelled like old, cured flesh. The blood scent was mainly animal; the skin was not. The books were old enough that the dust made him sneeze.

“What are you doing in here?” she snapped.

He turned, and she was standing in the entryway. “You left me alone. I figured that meant go ahead and wander.”

Her scowl could have stripped paint off the walls. “Just because your Kama’s little bolt hole doesn’t give you the right to treat me like I’m nothing less than your superior, meat.”

He wanted to point out she wasn’t, that being an ex-god - roughly immortal or not - didn’t actually make you special, but she was a witch, and it was possible she could turn him into a toad. So he stuck to the reason why he was here. “You know I’m not lyin’ now, right?”

“It’s not a Hellmouth,” she sniffed. “I’d have known that immediately.” She paused briefly. “It is some kind of irregularity, though.”

“Ripper wants to hit it with everything we have. You know some powerhouses?”

Her dark eyes burned like stoked coals.” I am a powerhouse, bitch. What the hell are you?”

He held up a fist and popped his claws. “Kamikaze pilot. Are we done with the pissing contest now? I can call in Degei if I need to.”

She took a step back when his claws sprung, but her expression didn’t change. He smelled no fear here, but then again, he was just a meat bag - gods had no fear of them. She just didn’t expect things to come out of his hands. “Can you? You should. He might help. Speaking of which, where is Kama?”

“Bob? Australia, I think. Or another dimension. He’s all over the place. Kind of hard to keep track of him.”

She snorted derisively. “That’s him, all right. He likes to spread his troublesome nature all over. When the Powers go rogue, they make a mess of it.”

“So what’s your story, Ate? Who’d you piss off?”

For that, he got the evilest glare to date, and actually felt his skin start to crawl a little. Was she going to whip out the big ass mojo now? But she just disappeared again, and he called after her, “Oh sure, run from a fight, just ‘cause you know Bob wouldn’t like it if you killed me.” He knew he shouldn’t be pissing off a former god, especially if they were very sensitive about it, but he just couldn’t help it. If he was a believer type - which he never had been, not to his recollection - he’d have been monstrously disappointed that the gods were so like people in their pettiness and vanities and appetites. They were essentially people, but with more power than should have been allowed. Mutants, but worse.

Left alone, he tried to remember how to summon Degei. Talking to snakes, right? Right. He had to find a snake and talk to it as soon as possible. Didn’t one of the kids at school have a snake for a pet? He was pretty sure he scented it in the halls. So great, when he got back, he’d ask Storm who had the snake for a pet and go talk to it.

Wow - if he didn’t know he was talking to a god, he’d think he was fucking nuts.

He was reading one of Ate’s spell books when the first visitor arrived. A pretty young woman popped up just outside the entryway, dressed in a blue velvet dress and matching fingerless elbow length gloves that could have come from Goths’R’Us, her curly black hair a rat’s nest that seemed to rise and fall in a variation of a fauxhawk that he’d never seen before. While she had the thick black eyeliner and the candy apple red slash of a mouth he expected, her skin was not porcelain but coffee tinted with cream. She looked at him with bright hazel eyes. “Oh, are you the avatar?”

“Name’s Logan. You?”

“Midnight.” She paused, grimacing slightly. “Okay, well, that’s my ‘casting name. Veronique sounds like a lingerie store.”

“It sounds elegantly French.”

She smiled and glanced down at the floor as her cheeks darkened slightly, and he guessed he’d made her blush. Well, score one for him. At least one of Ate’s protégé’s didn’t outright loathe him.

“Hey, you flirtin’ with my girl?” A guy said, suddenly walking up behind her. He stepped around her and whipped off his sunglasses, tucking them so they hung off the front of his Dropkick Murphys tour t-shirt, and gaped at Logan in wide eyed astonishment. “Holy shit, you’re Wolverine, aren’t you? That X-Men! Jesus, dude, what’d you do to your hair?”

Logan was both surprised at being recognized, and surprised that any sartorial criticism was coming from this guy. His hair was forest green and just a landing strip on his shaved scalp; it was a flattened Mohawk, one that hadn’t been spiked. Three silver earrings dangled from his right ear, and colorful tattoos adorned both of his bared arms. He had a silver stud in his bottom lip and a matching one on his left eyebrow. He was a bit on the short side and looked young, and … didn’t smell Human. He smelled quasi-Human. “Never play with Bunsen burners and sterno, kid,” he replied dryly. “Or should I say werewolf?”

He did a slight double take. “Wow, did Giles tell you about me?”

Now it was Logan’s turn to be nonplussed. “You know Giles?”

“Hell yeah, he was my school librarian. “ He wiped his hand on the back of his jeans as he stepped forward, hand extended in greeting. Logan guessed he was metrosexual or bi, because for a straight guy he was wearing a lot of jewelry: he had two bracelets on each wrists, at least two necklaces jingling at his neck, and rings on almost every finger. “My name’s Dan Osborne, but everybody in Sunnydale just called me Oz.”