9

Logan didn’t actually remember impact.

Well, in retrospect there was a rather jarring hit, but after that it was all blissful darkness. It didn’t last long enough, though. He woke up in what could have been a few seconds later or as much as a couple of minutes, to feel a sharp pain in his wrist. Opening his eyes, he found a vampire had bitten his wrist and was currently drinking his blood The guy seemed to notice he’d come to and was looking at him with almost comical wariness, as if he knew he was going to pay for this but was hoping for a last second reprieve.

No such luck. Logan popped his claws and sliced his head off, and jumped to his feet before he even dusted. A good thing, as he was swarmed then, the demons rushing in as he made his presence known. A lot of these demons he didn’t know by appearance or smell; one looked like a cockroach inflated to Human proportions, while another looked like Golum with a toupee, and yet another looked like a bizarre cross between a hedgehog and a football player. He was cut, bit, hit, and many of them tried to eat him with no attempt to kill him beforehand. There was no room to move; he was hemmed in from all sides, no matter how he slashed through the mess, and it was really beginning to piss him off.

He knew what he had to do, but the decision was pretty much made without him. Going into automatic, letting him do what he was trained to do, was one thing. Letting out whatever remnant of the Weapon X program he had inside him was another. One was reaction without emotion, robotic; the other was pure psychosis. But as tentacles encircled his legs and big stone demon things tried to weigh down his arms, he knew that was the only thing appropriate to the situation. This was a Hell dimension - it was all insanity.

So it was just fighting fire with fire. Demon against monster. Sounded fair to him.

****

“I know it sounds cowardly, but maybe we should just take off,” Pyro said, as he and Giles watched the fight in the demon pit below. “You know Logan’s good at this shit. He’ll clear a path, grab Jo-Jo the Dog Boy, and we’ll meet him at the door.”

He reminded him of Xander, in a fashion. A younger, even more annoying Xander, which he hadn’t thought imaginable until this point in time. Giles shook his head and grimaced. “It won’t be that easy. Logan’s gone.”

“Whaddya mean?  He’s right there.”

“Yes, but that’s not exactly Logan. It’s his body, but his mind has ..checked out.”

Pyro stared at him out of the corner of his eye. “What the fucker’re you talking about? You sayin’ he’s nuts? Well, yeah, sure, but that ain’t exactly new.”

“You don’t really know him at all, do you?” Logan, physically, was hard to miss. The demons smelled a Human and went after him, moths to flame, and as he started to disappear beneath the sheer mass of them, limbs started flying, blood misting the air in sprays of odd colors, and there was a noise half way between a scream and a roar. Logan surfaced in the demonic bodies, metal flashing as his arms swung in powerful, deadly arcs. There was no finesse to what he was doing, though; it wasn’t the measured attack of a man who was used to hand to hand combat, but the wild, animalistic surges of an angry beast. Even when Logan had been fighting all those demons in the arena and all the survivors were turned on him, he didn’t show this level of … Giles didn’t want to call it brutality, because Logan was always brutal.  Savagery, perhaps. Technically a synonym, but fitting in this case. He was reacting like a demon; in fact, Oz in his werewolf form, still gnawing all comers, was reacting in a similar manner. They both had the empty eyes of someone whose mind had gone out for an after dinner stroll and had yet to come back.

The rest of the demons down there seemed to be finally realizing the Human that stumbled into their world wasn’t a small midnight snack but a force to be reckoned with. He’d carved himself out an opening, and the demons filling the gap became less frequent as they began to pull back. Given enough time, the demons could probably beat Logan, but they were going to pay dearly in the time he had, and most weren’t that dedicated to the fight. Opening a dimensional rift might be easier than dealing with a crazy Human with machete hands and a refusal to be scared or give up. A Human who came here was supposed to be an easy meal. Which begged the question if there were any Humans down here, where were they, and how were they surviving?  Yes, Ate and her coven were fine, but they had magic to protect them. They wouldn’t be able to hold the same level of magic for days on end, though.  So, if there were Humans in this, they had to be working with a demon lord, or someone higher up in the food chain. Someone who could control or overpower all these demons. Although a helpful revelation, it wasn’t a positive one. What was the American term for it?  He wasn’t sure, but “deep shit” would have to suffice.

Pyro, reacting to Giles' earlier, rhetorical question, scoffed. “What d’ya mean?  I know him pretty well. His brain was used as a fucktowel by the government, and he’s an assassin.  Magneto always said he was highly overrated -- just your average two-bit thug with a badass reputation. Although, I dunno, looking at him now … I’d be pissing my pants if I was on the other end of those claws.”

Logan had had a good sized chunk ripped out of his face, his left cheek was gone and replaced by a raw wound, exposing his adamantium coated jaw. But he didn’t seem to notice; he wasn’t slowing down as his hands flashed through the air and he decapitated two demons who were standing right next to each other. Tentacles snaked around him from behind and he stabbed himself in the stomach cutting it off, but he didn’t seem to notice that either. Now some of the demons were getting scared and running the other way - crazy Human was one thing; crazy Human who didn’t care about injuries wasn’t something they were used to, and as demons weren’t always the best at adapting to change, they weren’t sure how to deal with it. Gaps were beginning to show in the bottom of the canyon; between Oz and Logan, the demons were being thinned out in great numbers.  Giles sighed. “That wasn’t what I meant, but it really doesn’t matter. We have to get down there.”

He looked away from the demon slaughter and at Pyro, who was staring at him in open disbelief. “Yeah, well, I didn’t bring my mountain climbing gear, so - “

“I’m teleporting us down. Once we get there it is imperative that you don’t leave the circle. Is that clear?”

“What circle?”

“Is that clear?”

Pyro rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I got it, don’t leave. It’s not like I’d want to …”

“Good.” Giles activated the spell and teleported them as close as he could manage to the coven. Their circle was too strong for him to penetrate on his own. As soon as they appeared, he looked at Ate, and shouted, “Let us in!  I can help!”

She looked at him, but like he’d just farted at the dinner table. The demons who were tired of trying to deal with Logan turned and started charging towards them, but Pyro flicked his lighter and sent flames rushing towards them. “Back off, uglies,” he said, although undoubtedly they couldn’t hear him. Still, most weren’t fond of fire, and backed off.

Ate seemed extremely reluctant, but as soon as the demon tide had turned towards them at a rate too great for even Pyro to deal with, she cast a spell that teleported them inside the protective circle that her coven had made for her. Pyro turned off the fireworks just before he accidentally cooked one of the witches. “How can you possibly help?” Ate asked him, crossing her arms over her chest and narrowing her eyes at him.

It was nice to know the years hadn’t mellowed her or beat her to a bloody pulp. “We need to find Paloma. She may be the only one who can tell us who rules this dimension.”

She glared at him. “Who gives a shit who runs this dimension?”

Giles gestured around them, indicating the landscape. “Someone can control these demons. Do you really think it’s Human black magic practitioners alone?”

That got through to her, as she couldn’t refute it - at least not without admitting Humans were actually capable of such power.  Never mind that a bunch of drunken Watcher wannabes had managed to free her from her dimension; that was just a fluke, in her opinion. She didn’t roll her eyes, just glanced to the side with a huff of breath through her nose. “Of course not. I suppose you have a point.” She then dipped her head in Logan’s direction as he took out something that looked like a squid with rhino legs and disemboweled a Ressik demon while a Sturvik demon attempted to wrestle him down.  The Sturvik was physically stronger, but Logan was slick, covered in as much blood and ichors as he was. “Can you control that?”

“He’s a person, not a thing. He can control himself...” Logan slipped out of the Sturvik’s tree trunk grasp, landing on his back on the rocky floor, and as the Sturvik reached down to grab him, Logan lunged up and thrust both his claws through its midsection and ripped through it in opposite directions. It had an almost comically surprised look on its face as its upper body fell one way and the lower half fell another way. Logan didn’t notice; he’d already hopped to his feet and engaged two Rengle demons and a vampire. “..Occasionally.  Don’t worry about Logan, he’s just clearing out a path.”

“Clearing a path? Funny; I was thinking it looked a lot like mass murder.”

“Ain’t murder if it’s self-defense, lady,” Pyro pointed out.

She turned a nasty look on him. “Don’t call me lady, boy.”

Pyro shrugged, not actually caring about what she liked to be called. The irony was, he had no idea he was playing with fire. Giles got the subject back on track before she could turn him inside out. “Do you have any idea who might be controlling this dimension?”

“How would I know?” She replied, looking and sounding offended.

The ground beneath them shuddered violently, as if a huge hammer had been brought down on a fault line. This was soon followed by another thud just like it, and another, coming in regular rhythm. The witches looked at Ate in concern, although didn’t break the circle; Pyro looked at him, curious and annoyed, as if this was somehow his doing. The demons, for their part, were unconcerned, which made Giles suddenly suspicious.  Oz had the sense to pause his dismembering and look around, sniffing the air, but Logan continued disemboweling all comers, in this mode, he was only willing to deal with problems as they were presented to him.  Considering where they were, that was probably a good idea.

“What the fuck’s that noise?” Pyro finally asked. “Somebody firing mortars?”

Oz looked towards the entrance of the canyon and snarled, crouching low as fur raised along his back. That wasn’t a good sign.

Rocks started crumbling on the left hand side, the canyon walls cracking and falling away like burnt skin, some of the rocky detritus collapsing on demons who weren’t quick or smart enough to get out of the way. They weren’t in danger of getting crushed, but small bits of flying rubble bounced off the magical forcefield that the coven had erected.

Finally, a foot came crashing through the canyon opening. It was a huge foot, about the size of your average car, and following the line up, it seemed to be attached to a leg, and the leg to a body. All in all, they were looking at a giant demon, well over ten meters tall. He had skin like concrete, grey and hard, and a roughly humanoid body, although its head was somewhat pointy; it was the ears mainly, which looked as big as parasails. Safe to say, it wasn’t about to win an underworld beauty contest. It opened its large, fish like mouth, baring lots of small pointed teeth, and boomed, “I’m trying to sleep! Would you keep it down?”

The giant looked down at the snarling Oz and the blood soaked Logan, who was too busy fighting off six Yrisian demons to notice the giant yet. “Who are you with?” The giant asked, but neither Oz nor Logan realized they were being addressed.

Ate gasped slightly. “Is that who I think it is?”

Giles nodded glumly. “I believe so.”

“Who is it?” Pyro asked.

But before he could answer, the giant turned his head and looked down at the coven.  His eyes were all black pupils; they looked like huge gaping holes in his misshapen skull. “Giles, is that you?”

Giles sighed wearily. He was hoping the creature wouldn’t recognize him after all this time. “Hello, Arba.”

He really wasn’t looking forward to this.