5

It was an odd thing to contemplate: would the chewing or the digestion hurt more? Logan wished he never had to seriously think about these kinds of questions, but he just didn’t lead that kind of life.

The demon’s big head darted down at him with a speed he wouldn’t have credited to such a large being, and while he yanked the tips of his claws out of its chest, he still slashed at it, as that was really all he had. It didn’t matter - the mouth closed around him, blocking the sun, filling his nostrils with the rank scent of freshly burned rubber, as he felt teeth sink through his stomach and back, meeting in the middle of him, tearing up organs and tissues like they were nothing. He felt the teeth grate upon his bones, but they didn’t break them - the bones or the teeth.

Logan felt the blood leaving him in a liquid rush as he was hauled into the air, heat and darkness all around him, and had time to ponder that this was what it was really like to be eaten by something. Well, gross.

As the blood coursed out of him, he felt the energy surge within him, his vision turning neon blue, lighting up the interior of this big dark mouth. Which he didn’t really need to see, honestly - there was nothing new here. He drove his claws upward, into the soft palate, assuming that it was both different than the rest of the body, and the fact that Bob’s energy was coming out, giving his claws an aura of energy, would help immensely. Something did, because they plunged right through, making the creature shake its head, jostling him needlessly, and making its clear, thick blood cascade down on him. Shit, it was just like slime.

It was the energy it didn’t like, though, and if it was some kind of god or connected to god energy, that made sense. Usually the only way to kill a god was to get another god to do it. He concentrated on the energy within him, imagining it growing around him like he was a star, radiating energy outward. It filled his veins, compensating for the blood he was losing, making him even more dangerous, as hot as a flame. Then he thought Nova. The energy thrust out of him in a huge wave, like he was a bomb going off, and reverberations seem to echo through the dragon demon, followed by a massive thud, like it was trying to shake him out of its mouth. But then all was quiet; he just laid there bleeding, feeling the energy roil in him like choppy water. When he felt like he could move, he kicked out some of its teeth and slashed out those that were still stuck in his torso, and started slashing a hole in its jaw so he could get out. Once he saw daylight again, he saw that he was on ground level, and he was glad about that, as it would save him some time.

Once he sliced a big enough hole in its head, he climbed out, only to see Helga and Giles standing there waiting for him, Rags half way behind them, Thrak still up in the shade. “We could have helped,” Giles said.

Logan shrugged. “And do what exactly? Do we even know what this fucking thing is?”

“But tha’ was kinda dramatic,” Rags said.

He had no idea what he was talking about, so he looked back at the thing, glad that the smell was starting to dissipate a little. Besides the big hole in the jaw, it had another hole in it that he hadn’t expected - namely, the top of its head had blown off. There was nothing but a ragged gap of flesh where the top of its head must have been before … what? Even its eyes were missing, or at least part of the exploded muck splattered all over the field. “Huh.” He almost asked if he had done that, but yeah, he must have. Who else would have? “I don’t suppose it was telepathic? Bob always said he couldn’t get too close to telepaths or he’d make their heads explode.”

“Did you feel any contact?” Hel asked.

Logan shrugged and shook his head. “All I felt was being chewed.”

“Well, the entrée bit back this time,” she noted with some pride.

The best way he’d found to deal with Bob’s power was by imagining it as something tangible. He’d just imagined it - and himself - and as a star exploding, going nova. Had that caused the demon’s head to explode? He had to make a mental note of that for future reference because, while it was overkill, it was actually pretty cool. He had enough power to blow things up - nice to know.

Logan looked down and saw he was still glowing blue, while the big holes in his midsection were still closing up, but rather quickly now. He didn’t know if he was surrounded by an actual blue aura or just had blue energy leaking out his eyes, making him see everything in blue. Maybe it didn’t matter.

Logan kicked a bit of the demon, just to see if he got a response. He didn’t. “Think it’s dead?”

Thrak gargled loudly, and Rags interpreted for him. “You blew its fuckin’ ‘ead up! I fink its done for, and if it ain’t, we really don’t wanna be ‘ere when it wakes up.”

That was true. So they decided go back to the office, get Logan a change of clothes, and wait for the next crisis, which shouldn’t be too long in coming. As they were walking back up the hill, Hel put a hand on his back, and asked, “You all right? You look like you lost a lot of blood.”

“It severed an artery or two, but I got Bob’s energy backing up my healing factor. I’m good.” Okay, maybe good was overstating the matter, but he was on his feet and walking, which is probably more than most people who’d been nearly chomped in half could say.

She glanced back at the demon, which was still laying there like the world’s largest road kill, and said under her breath, “I bet that’s why most gods don’t give their powers to assassins.”

He wanted to object - he’d never been a willing assassin, really, and he hadn’t been one since he blew up the Alkali Lake base - but, to be honest, she had a point, and it was kinda redundant making a moral objection to her;  she’d been an assassin too.  And maybe that’s what had really happened, whether he was consciously aware of it or not:  Bob’s power teaming up with his unconscious ability to instantly size up anyone and anything.

It was a weird thought, disturbing, but maybe he was more dangerous with Bob’s powers than Bob was all by himself.

****

Once they got to the office and he got the introductions out of the way, Bren told Marc and company all about Pyro and Sid taking off after him. Marc listened patiently, nodding in comprehension, and after he was done, he said, “We can’t do anything until Sid checks in with us.”

Bren gaped at him. Was he serious? “What d’ya mean we can’t do anything? We need to find him -”

“How?” Marc interrupted, not impatient but genuinely curious. “Logan ain’t here to sniff him out. Do you know exactly where he was headed? What part of the city?”

Bren scowled at him. Since when was Marc so reasonable? This was so unfair. “Okay, no. But he might be walking into a trap.”

Marc shook his head tersely. “Sid’s smarter than that. He was raised to have a sixth sense about set ups. He’ll hold back if he thinks anything is the slightest bit unkosher. That kid has great instincts; I’ve learned not to worry about him too much.”

Rogue, who was standing next to the desk, huffed a sigh and crossed her arms over her chest impatiently. “I can’t believe you of all people are being chickenshit, Marc.”

He grinned at her, flashing his bright white teeth, but the smile was anything but friendly. “You better watch that pretty mouth of yours, Rogue. I’m not runnin’ off after a ghost. We wait ‘til Logan gets back so he can pick up a scent trail, or we wait ‘til Sid calls us. It makes zero sense to run around like chicken with our heads cut off … although you’re free to, if you really wanna.”

She wasn’t crazy about his answer, but she had no choice but to accept it. She was probably lucky that he didn’t paralyze her.

“What we need is a plan to handle Pyro,” Bren interrupted, pretty sure he was saving Rogue’s bacon. “Considering he can make fire dance to his tune, we can’t run in without one.”

“I have one,” Marc said confidently. “Just like rock beats scissors, water beats fire. Can you keep him doused, hon?”

It took Matt a moment to realize that Marc was talking to him. “Huh? Oh … yeah. There’s a lotta pools in L.A., and I could always bring some water with me.”

“Great. We have a plan.”

Rogue fixed Marc with a skeptical look. “That’s it? He gets him wet?”

“Yeah. Matt suppresses his fire throwing ability, and I shoot the fucker in the kneecaps. He’s out of play.”

Okay, Bren had to admit that was a very good plan. John could hardly be prepared for bullets in the legs, could he?

The office door opened, but it was Angel who came in, and stopped short, surprised to see Rogue. “Oh hey. You come to help?”

Bren shook his head and silently signaled that he shouldn’t say that, but it was too late. When Rogue looked over her shoulder to see what he was doing, Bren pretended to be scratching his neck. “Naw, it was kinda coincidence,” she admitted, turning back to Angel. “But I guess I’m not the only one.”

By the time they caught Angel up on where Logan and Giles were, and who Pyro was and why he might be a threat, Logan and company returned. Everybody else looked okay, but Logan’s clothes were torn and bloody, and he seemed to be covered in a clear slime that looked honestly disgusting, and he smelled faintly of burnt rubber. It was Logan’s turn to tell them a story, of a big demon dragon thing, and of being briefly chewed before going Scanners on its ass. Which Marc said qualified as a happy ending, and in a twisted way, it kind of did. Between that and the thing Angel killed in the sewers, it had already been a fairly productive morning. Bringing Pyro into the mix seemed like a downer, but at least Marc and Matt already had a plan to take him down.

Logan shook his head, attempting to towel the slime off his hair and failing, and scowled in annoyance. “Marc, if your finger slips on the trigger, no one will care.”

Marc nodded. “Pyro’s expendable, got it.”

“Logan, he’s just a kid,” Angel said, giving him a stern glance. “You can’t give up on him yet.”

“Says who? He picked a side, and tried to kill some of the kids who used to be his friends. If he wants to play for life and death, I ain’t got no problem with that.”

Angel hardly looked convinced. His eyes narrowed, and he studied Logan mercilessly. “Of everyone in this room, I think you and I know what it’s like to make a big stupid mistake and regret it later on. Doesn’t he deserve a chance to regret what he’s done?”

The look Logan gave him could have melted coal, but Angel and Logan apparently had the type of friendship where they could give each other shit and be okay with it. “I think the circumstances were a bit different.”

“Maybe, but you can’t give up on someone after giving them one chance.”

“The hell you can’t,” Marc interjected with malicious cheerfulness.

Angel frowned at him, but Marc only met it with one of his big, sarcastic smiles. Marc generally did his own thing, but his loyalty to Logan was beyond question - if Logan asked him to make sure John was gone permanently, John was so fucking gone it was amazing he didn’t know it yet. He almost felt sorry for Pyro, and Bren was pretty sure that was never going to happen. "Guys, come on," Angel said. "He's a kid."

"He's twenty," Rogue replied sharply. "He ain't a kid no more."

So she was coming down on the "death" side? He wasn't really surprised - she really felt betrayed when he abandoned them at Alkali Lake.

Before anyone else could take up the argument, Marc's cell phone went off. "It's Sid," he said, even before finding his phone. So it must have been the ringtone that gave it away. The ringtone he had assigned to Sid? "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath. Very cute. Did Sid know that? "Yeah kid, where are you?"

Marc listened for a moment, then repeated, "Apartment building downtown, on Wexler and Alvedo, called the Merton Arms."

Bren sat down behind his desk, and input the address into his computer. An address shortly came up - with pictures, thanks to Google Earth. "East side, bad neighborhood. Figures. Not far from here."

"Were you spotted kid? Good, good. Fall back to wherever you feel comfortable; I'll get back to you shortly." Marc disconnected, although he still held the phone in his hand. "What're we doin' here? Shall Matt and I go take care of him or what?"

Angel said, "No," at almost the same moment Logan said, "Yes." They exchanged evil scowls.

"Here's an idea," Giles said dryly. "Why doesn't someone talk to him first? Determine if he's here about Brendan or not."

"Without getting burned to a crisp?" Bren snorted. "Uh, how?"

"I'll go," Matt said, surprisingly. It was surprising because he really didn't volunteer for anything - he just followed Marc. Far be it from him to criticize a fellow member of the lavender mob, but Matt was basically just Marc‘s pretty boy toy. If he had any independent thoughts or opinions, Bren wasn‘t aware of them. “I’m not scared of him."

Rogue rolled her eyes. "No offense, you're cute an' all, but he doesn't know you, and I think you're underestimatin' him. He went full blown psycho on us."

"You know him," Angel said to Rogue. "Would he talk to you?"

"No way," Logan snapped. He lobbed the slimy towel into the wastebasket by his desk. Was it the slime that smelled of burned rubber? "She's depowered. If he flips out on her, she's got nothin'. I'll go talk to him."

During this discussion, Matt spilled a half filled Styrofoam cup of water on the coffee table.

Rogue now glared at Logan. "Nothin'? Gee, thanks. What about all those self-defense classes you taught?"

"I didn't teach you anything about fighting fire," he replied sharply.

“As soon as he sees you, he’ll assume you’re there to kick his ass,” she shot right back. “He might burn the whole goddamn building down, ‘cause he’s gotta know he can’t burn you enough to keep you down for long.”

Matt held his hand over the small puddle of water, which was creeping towards the edge of the table, and it suddenly rose up, and formed a perfect globe of water in the air. Now everybody was looking at him as the perfect sphere of water continued to rise, and hovered two inches over his extended hand, constantly turning like a miniature Earth, never losing a single drop, and Matt didn't even look like he was concentrating that hard. He had been working on his powers.

“Whoa,” Xander said, doing his best Keanu Reeves impersonation. They were all staring at Matt, save for Marc, who simply smirked smugly, which said “That’s my boy” better than words ever could. It was no mystery who’d been helping his work on developing his powers.

Looking at them all placidly with his Pacific blue eyes, Matt said once more, "I'm not afraid of him. Rogue and I will go talk to him. If he causes trouble, he won't for long." Matt then reached under his shirt with his other hand, and pulled out an HK handgun, something small, black, and snub nosed that still looked wickedly powerful. "One way or another."

It was weird who'd turn bad ass on you when you weren't looking.

****

The firefighters noticed him almost immediately.

They were trying to make a firebreak in a stretch of an overgrown weedy lot that had become tinder dry and a major fire hazard within the last two weeks of drought and heat. A nearly solid wall of grey-black smoke was coming from the burn that was a half a mile away and gaining fast. Luckily, the wildfire was in an unpopulated area, but it was encroaching on a populated area fast, as this was Los Angeles, and there simply weren't a lot of unpopulated areas. You would have also thought there was too much pavement for a really good wildfire like this, but you'd have been wrong.

It was Miyazawa who saw him first. “Isn’t this area closed off?” he asked Torres, leaving his shovel in the dirt.

When Torres looked up at him, Miyazawa pointed off into the smoke, and Torres scowled and looked in that direction, squinting his eyes against the glare of the sun and the acrid smoke, shoving his helmet up high on his forehead. It took a moment, but he thought he saw a shadow darker than the smoke, in a roughly Human form. The closer it got, the more it looked like a person, and the more alarming the prospect was. He was somehow walking out of a wall of pure smoke.

“Pierson, get the paramedics,” Torres shouted, dropping his shovel and looking around for the nearest oxygen tank. He honestly wished this was a rare occurrence, but between thrill seekers, the homeless, and people who thought they could just “dart in and get their stuff”, this kind of shit happened more than it should have. People should have learned - why didn’t they?

Pierson and Hammond got there first, meeting the man as he came out beyond the worst of the smoke, approaching him with a spare breathing unit. Torres moved to help them, but something made him pause. It took him a moment, but there was something wrong with the guy, he just couldn’t place what.

Until he could, of course. He was six feet tall, two hundred pounds, a stunningly average figure … except his black clothes occasionally seemed to shift on his strangely skeletal frame, like they were something alive, a living cloak of shadow. His skin was white, but nearly bone white; true alabaster, something you’d never see on any living Human. Or hell, even a corpse that had been bled out for that matter. It was a fish belly color, the hue of something that had never seen the sun. And his eyes … they were blood red, like gouged out holes in his head. Torres was not a New Ager or a Buddhist or whatever the hell passed for the trendy religion nowadays, but he would swear that thing was giving off an aura of … something. He had no words to describe the feeling at all, except it made him feel dizzy, and he could taste something like bile and honey in his mouth.

“Get away from him!” he shouted, but too late, as Pierson already grabbed him by the arm and started bringing the oxygen mask to his stark, bony face.

He never made it. Where Pierson had grabbed him, something like a black fungus swallowed his hand and raced up his arm, rotting flesh and muscle along with protective clothing alike. Pierson had time to scream before the fungus raced up the side of his neck and covered his face, rotting away the flesh in an instant. The fungus was still eating away the rest of him as he hit the ground.

Hammond swung his hatchet at the man, but the small axe disappeared in the darkness of the man’s frame, like he was some kind of walking void, and then the fungus raced up Hammond’s arms as well, digesting him before he’d even taken a full breath to scream. “Chief,” Miyazawa said, making it a question.

They all stood staring at the man, who really didn’t look like that much of a man at all. He looked like a hellish ghoul, maybe Nosferatu, but those things didn’t exist, right? So what the fuck was he?

Torres then noticed that with every step he took, the ground died under his feet in large swatches. Dirt turned to sand, grass turned black and instantly rotted to slime. This thing, whatever it was, was toxic - it was death incarnate.

It looked at all of them with what could only be described as total disdain. And when it spoke, it had a voice like an earthquake, something deep and violent and primal that your mind instinctively tried to shy away from, like something in your reptile brain knew you shouldn’t be in this thing’s presence. “Don’t just stand there like the food you are, you stupid chattel - run.”

They didn’t have to be told twice.