The Vilkacis came rampaging towards them, in forms that were already mixed, but continued to transform as they moved. There were four, but more than enough to kill them. He didn’t have any Bob energy that he knew how to use defensively against physical beings, and they were of the blood, offspring of the divine. They were dead - the only question would be how long they lasted before they were torn to pieces.

The four had different shapes … at least in theory, but all four had taken what was indeed the basic body of a bear; thick, large, and rippling with muscle, but tentacles sprouted from the bodies at odd angles, muscular snakes flailing out from beneath muscular flesh, and the muzzles were not ursine at all, but reptilian, like crocodiles and raptors. Shape shifters of a higher order still, they could be several different beings at once, and customize their built in weaponry. “I thought we had a deal!” He shouted at them, a last resort. “I helped you kill Kali, remember?!” Hadn’t the few that survived returned to Kazakhstan?

A bear like being with seven lashing tentacles and a raptor’s mouth came lunging at him, toothy jaws open wide, and he sprung his claws and lunged right back, hoping to throw it off its own attack. He saw the tentacles coming for him in mid-air, too fast for him to do much about it, so he felt the things grab him, tendrils as cold and sharp as a shark’s scales, but he twisted and slashed out as the thing attempted to swing him back around towards the trees. He sliced through several of the tentacles, making it scream, but sadly, he also went flying through the air, as he was in mid arc of its swing, and he crashed straight into another Vilkacis. But it hadn’t seen him and wasn’t ready, and they both hit the ground hard, a tangle of limbs and tentacles.

Although his head was ringing, black spots dancing before his eyes like the negatives of moths, he rolled away and back up to his feet, prepared to fight, hoping he could stand up long enough to do it; the impact was about the same as hitting a brick wall while doing at least sixty.

But it was for the Vilkacis he’d hit too, or so it seemed, as only a couple of its tentacles moved listlessly on the ground, drunken snakes, and he realized belatedly that of the two of them, he was made of the much harder substance at the moment. It must have been like being beaned with a Volkswagon. It wouldn’t keep it dazed and down for long - they were made of much stronger stuff - but  it would keep it down for a bit at least, maybe give them some breathing room.

He heard growling and saw a bear-like, reptilian Vilkacis trying to shake a large, hairy animal off its throat. Looking around for Ruby, he saw the amulet of Mharaka gleaming in the pale moonlight, just inches away from the banks of the water, and knew she had taken it off and given it a shot - and her wolfen half responded to the overwhelming sense of evil. Good for her; she might live longer as a wolf, and have more to fight back with. Although she didn’t look like a wolf, exactly; she was much bigger than a standard wolf, for example, you could almost get a hint of the Human beneath the thick silver-grey fur and crinkled, leathery muzzle full of jagged teeth.

Tentacles lashed out from the dark and ripped his legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground, and before he could slash them away, more tentacles looped around his wrists, avoiding the claws, pulling his arms back. He bucked to try and squirm free, being pulled in two separate directions like it was trying to draw and quarter him, and found the strength of the thing both impressive and overwhelming. Could it tear through adamantium though?

There was an animalistic snarl from the trees, and something came leaping out of it, holding a large branch in front of it like a spear. The Vilkacis hardly had time to shift its focus before the vampire stabbed the thing straight through its heavy body with the tree limb. He then used his gathered momentum and the pained twitch of the Vilkacis to literally pole vault over it, hitting the ground closer to Ruby and her monster. One smart vampire, that one; he was trying to keep clear of the tentacles. Was he one of the group that helped put down Kali in the first place?

In its throes of pain, and need to remove the coffee table sized splinter in its hide, the tentacles slacked, and he was able to yank himself free and slash out at the vine thin appendages before they could fully retract. He got splattered with blood like oil, hot enough to burn and sour enough to sting his nostrils.  An intact tentacle manifested a razor sharp tip and slashed open his face as it  whipped by, filling his mouth with blood.

He staggered back, lashing out blindly at a shadow in the corner of his eye and hitting something that tore like steel plating, and another razor sliced open his back. He ran for the still dazed Vilkacis, intending to use its bulk to put some distance between him and the others, and a razor sharp tentacle wrapped around his throat and attempted to rip his head off.

Logan felt it sink in, slicing open at least one artery, before he managed to cut off its tendril.  He dropped to his knees, the sudden gush of warm blood down his chest making him feel paradoxically cold and weak, and he had trouble getting oxygen for a moment, making him wonder if it had nicked his windpipe.

He was healing fast, but the Vilkacis were smart, and had already figured out how to get at him: avoid the bones, cut the body. They would probably try to flay him alive sooner rather than later, and he had no idea when his healing factor would simply give up. At some point, it surely would.

It was coming for him again, claws like daggers sinking into the soft meat of his gut and digging in, trying to disembowel him, and he pulled out the drug gun Ruby gave him. She didn’t trust him to hit her on the first shot, so she loaded it with at least four cartridges. Would ketamine work on a Vilkacis? No time like the present to find out.

He aimed and fired, the dart sinking deep into its now rubbery hide, as the claws continued to rip through his midsection. But they suddenly weakened, went slack, and its tentacles grew flaccid as it keeled over on its side, not quite unconscious, but not alert enough to do much of anything. As long as he didn’t miss, he could save a dart for Ruby.

Pulling himself up to his feet, an arm around his gut, he shot the next Vilkacis he saw, and started working his way towards the last one.  His stomach burned, but the healing was slow and, to be quite honest, he really wasn't feeling all that well.

With a pained howl, Ruby went flying into the trees, and the vampire was slapped back into the water, giving him a clear shot at the Vilkacis still on its feet/pod/paw/tentacles. He shot it in the eye as one of its tentacles blindsided him, cutting deep into his bicep and trying to rip his arm clean off, but it slackened as the drugs took effect, and slid off his arm, only taking a couple of layers of skin with it.

More blood gushed down his arm, and he was too dizzy to care much about pain. Logan really needed to sit down for a moment, take a minute to let his fluids build back up again, but he heard deep, throaty growling behind him, in stereo.

He looked over his shoulder, and saw the stunned Vilkacis was struggling back up to its appendages, and a bloody Ruby/werewolf had come out of the woods and was now snarling at him like dinner. And he had one dart left.

Oh shit, why did this always happen to him?

He saw lights in the forest, bobbing blobs of flame, and he wondered what fresh hell was coming for him now. He didn’t want to die this way, for some stupid reason that was currently beyond his reasoning. (Unless the Vilkacis were somehow killing the children and dismembering the vampires of London - but to what end? They were isolationists who felt they were above the rabble, so why were they in the middle of it? And since when did they suck time away? He could see them doing the dismembering, though - very easily.)

Ruby turned her nose up to the air and sniffed, surely smelling the same thing he did: burning wood, dead bodies. Vampires were coming towards them, ironically armed with torches, and he wondered who they were here to burn. “Shoot the bleedin’ Vilkie!” The vampire in the water yelled, climbing back onto shore. He had a thick Cockney burr, and while he totally forgot his name, yeah, he was one of Hashim’s men who survived the battle with the Vilkacis. He would recognize that Rags-esque voice anywhere.

“No!” Shouted a female voice from the woods. It sounded like Ghita. “We need one for questioning!”

Ruby turned towards the approaching murder of vampires and snarled, haunches gathering beneath her as she prepared to charge them. This convinced him it couldn’t be Ruby who approached Hashim and Ghita the other night, as she was far too forward, even as a werewolf, to have walked away from a fight.

He shot the last dart into her hindquarters, startling a pained yelp from her before she simply collapsed, falling onto her side like a dead dog. The Vilkacis moved then, a tentacle shooting out and slapping him across the face, razor tips slicing open both his eyes. “Fuck!”  Lashing out at the tentacles he knew were coming back for him, he could feel them in the shift of the wind, the noise they made as they cut through the air, but as he moved back he hit something - probably the tentacle of one of the drugged Vilkacis - and fell to the ground on his ass. The initial tentacles missed him, slicing the air over his head. “I can’t see!  It got my eyes!” He couldn’t see a damned thing, not for the moment; all he could feel was the blood running down his face.

There were solid, dull thuds, something slamming into flesh, and the Vilkacis roared in rage, sounding like it was turning its attention towards the vampires. He heard noise behind him, and a Cockney voice said warily, “No claws, no claws, I’m just gonna pull ya clear.”

Should he trust him? Well, didn’t matter if  he did or didn’t; vampires were easy to kill, even blind.  Just aim for the head.

Logan retracted his claws and the Cockney vampire grabbed him under the arms and dragged him back, closer to the water. The guy was dripping all over him, which just added to the general humiliation and unpleasantness. A wet vampire didn’t smell any better than a wet dog. “Can ya ‘eal from that?” he wondered. “It even cut yer eyelids …”

“I should, yeah.” He didn’t add ‘Given time’, as he felt that was implied. There were more thumps, thuds, and angry noises from the Vilkacis, and somebody started shouting strange syllables in a rhythmic form. “What the fuck is goin’ on?”

“As soon as I saw the Vilkies were back, I called for ‘elp on me cell phone,” he said.  Gotta love a twenty first century vampire. “Ghita brought Meldane.”

“Meldane?”

“Meldane the Magnifishent,” he said. Or at least that’s how it sounded. “’e’s a stage magician who actually knows real magic, but only uses it in his spare time. ‘E took a vow never to use real magic on stage.”

“Ahh. Why’s he with you then?”

“The boss is blackmailin’ ‘im,”

Well, that was reassuring. He almost asked why, but he decided he really didn’t want to know right now. What he wanted was for Michael Caine Junior to stop dripping on him and for his eyes to heal up, but his healing factor was so taxed his eyes were taking their own sweet time. Damn it!

Meldane stopped his chanting, but the dull thuds kept going on, and the Vilkacis did not sound pleased about it. “Are you the one doin’ it then?” Ghita shouted, presumably at the Vilkacis. “Why? Why have you been killin’ are people, arseface?” He didn’t hear any thuds, but an odd noise - fire flaring? - and the Vilkacis didn’t like that judging from the roar. “We’ll stop as soon as you start talkin’!”

“She’s ours, damn it!” A raspy, inhuman voice said angrily. Must have been the Vilkacis. “You can’t have her!”

“Who the hell are you talking about?” Ghita snapped, speaking for them all.

“You won’t use what’s rightfully ours!” It growled, still not making any sense.

“Are you talking about Kali?” Logan shouted back. It was the only thing that made sense.

“Of course I am, you grave robbers,” it snarled, with a voice like steel spikes grating against stone. “Her energy belongs to us. You can’t have it!”

“What? What the fuck are you on about?” Ghita replied sharply. “Nobody’s stealing her energy. How could they? And why the bloody fuck would they want to?”

His eyes were burning, and he thought he was starting to see things, slight gradations in the darkness, almost resolving into lumpy shadows. He still felt weak and cold, though, and he desperately wanted to take a nap, but now was not the time. “Somebody might be stealing her energy, but it ain’t us,” Logan snapped. “There’s a lot of weird shit goin’ on, and we’re tryin’ to figure out who’s responsible. If we had her energy, couldn’t we have fought you off better? Shit, man - woman, whatever the fuck you are - use your brain, or whatever passes for one!”

There was a long, thick pause of silence, during which the only sound was the rumbling of a garbage disposal … or, was that the Vilkacis still growling?  Probably.

“You’re all liars,” the Vilkacis finally grumbled. “Meat bags and dead things, full of lies.”

He was so tired of being referred to as a “meat bag”.

“Hardly,” Ghita replied, her tone caustic. “We’re not the fuckwit dismemberin’ vampires ‘cause you think they’re sippin’ your dead mam’s juices.”

“What? What are you talking about?” The Vilkacis replied, its rage tempered with confusion.

“Somebody’s been tearing our people apart limb from limb. It’s you, isn’t it? You motherfucking bastard.”

But Logan knew, just from the Vilkacis’ obvious befuddlement, that it hadn’t been tearing anyone up - or at least not vampires. “No. Why would I waste my time on dead things? You stink of rot.”

“Great. So this has been one of those misunderstanding fights?” Logan complained. “What the hell? Would it have killed you to ask what the fuck we were doing here?”

“You were desecrating her site,” the Vilkacis snarled back.

“The fuck we were! We were just standin’ here, and you attacked us like a pack o’ wild dogs!”

“Tha’s true,” the Cockney vampire agreed. “I saw the ‘ole thing.”

“Why don’t you help us as opposed to fight us?” Logan demanded. “Shit.  How could anyone steal her energy anyway? How do you even know someone’s doin’ it?  I thought it dispersed.”

The Vilkacis growled again, but its voice was starting to sound slightly more humanoid, and he heard the truly strange noise of broken bones knitting themselves back together again, sinews and skin shrinking and tightening, as the Vilkacis took on another - presumably less threatening - form. To hear it without seeing it seemed worse somehow, made his imagine go wild with what could have been happening, even though he knew from past experience it was bad, but not as bad as his mind wanted to make it. “We saw it was happening, and we responded. The energy is ours; she is ours by blood. No one else can have it.”

“You haven’t answered a single fecking one of his questions,” Ghita helpfully pointed out.

The Vilkacis sighed, sounding almost Human; the gender was still indeterminate. “The energy was dispersed when she died. But our oracles said it was being gathered again - gathered and siphoned off to some place or person we have yet to locate. The energy is ours by right and no one else can have it.”

“What the fuck would we do with Kali energy?” Logan snapped. “Bake muffins?”

They ignored him. “Who could gather the energy together? And who could keep it secret from you?” Ghita wondered.

There was enough of a pause before the Vilkacis answered that he assumed it shook its head, or whatever was currently approximating a head. “There is much black magic being used, and you have a mage with you.”

“I am not a mage!” A man with a hint of a French accent exclaimed. Meldane? “I’m just a magician. Er, uh, not a black magician either. Mostly white, y’know, stuff that won’t bite me on the ass so hard. And I’m not with them! I just came tonight ‘cause … er …”

“You can shut up now,” Ghita suggested.

“Yeah, fine.” He sounded relieved.

“There's a lot of weird shit goin’ on,” Logan interjected for the second time. “And right now we’d prob’ly be better off working together than ripping each other to shreds, don’t you think?” He wished Ruby was conscious - and Human - because she might have some theories on who could be draining god energy and using black magic to block demi-gods, but right now it probably didn’t matter, because he was on the verge of passing out. “Maybe, if we put our heads together, we can find the real punk-ass bitch doing this, and make them wish they had never even considered the possibility of fucking with us. We got an agreement?”

There were wet slithering noises, sounds of movement in muck, and he understood that the other Vilkacis were starting to regain consciousness. Ruby was still out, and probably would be until next year, but she was just a werewolf, and not a demi-god.

There was some general snarling, and Ghita warned, “Make them stand down.”

The humanoid Vilkacis sighed, and said something in a clipped, harsh language that sounded like an amalgam of Urdu and Russian; he thought he could make out the word “assholes”. But the growling subsided, and the humanoid Vilkacis said, “We must consult our Queen.”

He knew Soriya was dead. They must have coronated someone else. Was there a Vilkacis princess?

“Fine. But none of this attacking bullshit, or I’ll sic a real sorcerer on you,” Ghita warned.

“Hey,” Meldane protested weakly.

“I’ll let the Powers know what happened here,” Logan said, keeping his voice low. A threat like this was better delivered quietly. “I’ll let them know you almost killed one of their avatars. Think how they’ll feel about that.”

Stone silence; not even the noise of slithering filled the gap. They might have been demi-gods, and more powerful than all of them, but against full gods they were outmatched and they knew it, especially with so few of their numbers left. “You wanna buy my silence, you knock this shit off now,” he concluded, spitting out the final words like bullets.

Things remained quiet for a full minute, before the Vilkacis finally broke the silence by repeating, “We will consult our Queen.”

“You do that,” Ghita said impatiently. “You wanna get going now?”

Logan could smell the resentment, taste it like a heavy acridness in the air, but he also knew they would play ball at least for now, mainly because there was nothing else they could do. Maybe after they consulted their Queen, they’d have more tricks up their sleeves. If they had sleeves … man, he didn’t want to think about it right now. Staying conscious was hard enough.

The darkness hadn’t let up much, even though his eyes continued to burn.  And his throat was still burning a little, as was his arm, back, and abdomen.  He had some serious healing left to do, and he needed some down time. And maybe a keg of beer.

He heard the Vilkacis pull themselves together, into something more inconspicuous, and walk - well, stagger (the drugs weren’t totally gone from their systems yet) - off, and he attempted to shift position in preparation for getting to his feet as well, but every sudden movement felt like it was shifting the blood around in his head, an unsteady sea that was threatening to pull him down.

“Wanna get up?” The Cockney vampire asked.

“No, I like sitting in mud. Yes, I wanna get up.”

“Geeze, geezer, I was only bein’ polite,” the vampire replied, grabbing him under the arms and helping him up to his feet.  Logan knew not to take 'geezer' personally, it was just British slang, but he did want to point out he wasn’t old.  Except that he really didn’t know how old he was, so he didn’t say anything, scowling instead.

His head swam at the shift in altitude, and he staggered slightly, the vampire having to steady him before he crashed into him. “Y’know, yer still bleedin’ a lot,” the vamp pointed out helpfully.

“No shit.” He hated to have to depend on this guy, he had no idea who the fuck he was, but he ended up leaning on him heavily as they stumbled forward, and by smell alone he knew he was getting close to Ruby. “We need to bring her with us.”

Ghita was close; he could smell her too. “We could just kill her.”

“No. She’s a friend … well, okay, no she’s not. But she’s a former Watcher, and unlike Camilla, she can venture out in daylight. We need her, so she isn’t hurt, got it?  Oh, and she lost her necklace by the shore; I need it.”

“You need a necklace?” Ghita asked in disbelief.

“It’s hers, she needs it.  I’d get it, but my eyes haven’t exactly healed up yet.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” She sighed, and said, “Craig, go get it. And Alex, grab the wolf.”

“Aww fuck, why do I always get the shit jobs?” Alex complained, picking up Ruby.

If the guy wasn’t already holding Ruby, Logan would have kicked the asshole for that remark.

They got out of the park, and then some negotiations went on.  Logan wasn’t ready to reveal Ruby’s address to them, and in the end it wouldn’t have mattered, because Ruby wasn’t conscious enough to invite a vampire into her home. (No one was sure if that rule applied to werewolves or not, as not a single vamp present ever tried it at a werewolves’ home.) So he ended up with Meldane’s Jaguar, although Ruby ended up in the trunk as he didn’t really have a back seat to speak of, and he was nervous about riding with a werewolf up front, even though Logan assured him she’d probably be out ‘til the turn of the century. Well, Ruby was out cold, and still a wolf, so she wasn’t going to care either way.

Meldane got them to her house in one piece, which seemed like a minor miracle considering how he drove, and because Logan’s eyesight still hadn’t come back to him, Meldane had to help him get in the house. (And Logan had to carry Ruby, as he remained afraid to touch her.)

But the mage was useful for some things. Once he put Ruby in the back bedroom, Meldane cast a spell over the room, effectively “locking” it until she was Human again (only a human could walk through the spell - how that worked Logan had no idea), so everyone would be safe from a werewolf attack, even if she woke up early and he fell asleep.

Once that was done, Meldane couldn’t leave fast enough, and Logan was glad, as that allowed him to feel his way to the couch and collapse, finally letting himself slip into an almost blissful unconsciousness. He just hoped he’d be able to see when he finally woke up.

****

There was blood smeared all over the halls.

Logan had just walked through the double doors of Xavier’s, wondering why it was so quiet, and the reek of blood was an answer he really hadn’t wanted.  He strained to hear anything in the school, anything that might travel down these long and empty corridors, but the silence was absolute.  It was like being in a tomb.

“Professor,” he shouted, hoping trouble would come rushing toward the noise.  He itched to spring his claws, but didn’t dare, as he didn’t want to give his opponent any advance warning.

Finally he caught a sound, so sudden it was like plugs had been ripped out of his ears. Up ahead, around the turn of the corridor, was the unmistakable sound of flesh upon flesh, someone getting beaten. He gave up silence for speed, racing around the corner, nearly skidding in the blood, and found himself suddenly in a large, open room he’d never been in before.

Scott was on the floor, laying in an ever widening pool of blood, while a figure completely shrouded in darkness sat on his chest and pounded on his face, which was already partially unidentifiable and as bloody as a pound of ground chuck.  His visor was long since broken, but since his eyes were swollen shut, it didn’t matter. “Hey!” Logan shouted, tackling his assailant.

It wasn’t a person in black clothing; it was a void shaped like a person, something that felt physical but couldn’t truly be seen. Logan rammed his claws straight through it, only to feel something like claws stab him right through the gut in return.  They burned like they’d been heated over flames.

He growled in pain - he didn’t have the breath to scream - and said under his breath, “Fuck this shit.” He guessed what was the head and ripped through it, severing it cleanly from the neck, with enough force that the head rolled across the floor, even though the body simply dissolved, disappearing as if it had never even been here.

He hit the floor on his knees, splashing in Scott’s blood, and wrapped his arms around his gut, which was still burning like it was on fire.  Damn, it hurt.  It felt like things were eating him, little bugs feeding on his flesh and burrowing in deep. “Can’t die on me, Boy Scout,” he said, although he had the feeling he was probably already dead, he just didn’t smell like it yet. “I need to know what the fuck happened here.”

“You made a choice,” a voice said, and while it didn’t sound familiar at first, it seemed to morph with each syllable, becoming clearer and more familiar.

He looked toward the fallen head, and as he watched, the shadows melted away, falling off like a poorly made shroud, and he found himself looking at Jean’s head, still alive even though she no longer had a body.

Alive and grinning, a leering smile of pure malevolence that made him want to run from the room screaming, flames dancing in her eyes as if barely contained by the sockets. “I just can’t believe you chose him over me.”

Okay, now he knew this was a nightmare.  His mouth was dry, tasting of stale bile, and he didn’t know what to say.  But Jean wasn’t finished. “You can only save one,” she said, almost laughing. “Make your choice.”

When he jolted awake on Ruby’s couch, it was with the sick feeling that he had just been given a warning.