It wasn't just people watching him from the beach - that had a different feel. No, this was intense scrutiny, far from friendly.

It was a bright, warm day, and Bondi Beach was crowded; the fact that the Promenade had been recently reopened also added to the amount of people milling about. There were some killer waves too, but they were so large and erratic, only the brave, the pros, and the stupid were out in the water. That was fine with Bob, as he didn't have much competition for the good breakers, but he supposed it helped make him stand out too. He let all those watching and surfing think he wiped out, go head first into the sapphire ocean, while in truth he went down belly first on his board, grabbing the sides before porting onto the beach, right in front of the man watching him. It was always difficult to 'port yourself into a different position, but hey, if he could figure out the dimension thing, he could do that.

He managed to pop back into the world standing up, board standing on end beside him,and for a second the man didn't even register him. When he finally did see him, his jaw went slack, and Bob felt a surge of power, which he quickly squelched. "So you're a teleporter too, huh?" He didn't have to make it a question - he had the man - but he liked to keep up appearances.  Of course, they were visible to no one else on the beach, not even the woman twelve feet away, sunbathing and blasting Coldplay on her CD player ( a hard group to blast, them ).

"Yes." He was an Aussie mutant at least - sounded like he came from Melbourne. To be fair, Ben - his name was Ben Chen, poor guy ( he bet his rhyming name got him made fun of in school ) - had tried to dress to fit in. He was wearing a bright blue Hawaiian shirt, open at the neck, white walking shorts and flip flops, with a straw hat to shade his eyes. There was nothing about him that screamed "mutant", much like Rogue and Jean ( he figured Logan's hair had a superhuman quality that gave him away ) - he was just a reasonably handsome Chinese man who could have been a tourist, or an Ozzie out enjoying the weather.

But then again, Bob knew he looked like nothing more than a surfie with a strange board and really loud shorts, and what a lie that was.

"The Organization is stalking me?"

"We have you under covert surveillance."

"I see. Why? Do you think I'm a mutant?"

"Yes."

"What sort?"

"A reality warper, possibly with some kind of telepathic abilities."

Bob laughed. "A reality warper? Mate, I'm offended - I'm better than that!" But how could they know that? He'd been surely caught with the "X Men" and they just assumed. He couldn't blame them. "So what's the deal? Are you gonna try and grab me?"

"No - we are just to gather intelligence; we are not to make any hostile moves towards you, since your abilities appear to be overwhelming."

"Like you wouldn't believe," he agreed. "So does the Org have a base of operations around here?"

Before he could answer, Bob felt an overwhelming power wash over him, and everything froze - the people, the sea birds, even the ocean, the waves coming crashing to the shore freezing in mid curl. Bob willed the music from the woman's stereo to continue because it was a pretty good CD - reminded him of Radiohead - before turning to face the woman standing up the beach, about twenty five feet from him. "Hey Eris, how's it hanging?"

Eris was trying to fit in too, despite the lack of audience - in the form of a lovely woman with cocoa brown skin and long, curly black hair that spilled down her back. She was wearing a red tank top and a red and orange sarong wrapped around her waist, but nothing else. If people could see her, they would have stopped and gawked at just how lovely she was, possibly never noticing that where her eyes should have been were black spaces full of stars. "Playing with the Humans again?"

He shrugged. "It's something to do. What brings you around these parts, love? I thought you swore off the Humans with everyone else."

"I did. I'm here about something else."

"Oh?" He brushed the wet hair out of his eyes, and let his hair dry so it wouldn't keep dripping into his face. It was hard to have a conversation half blind, with water running down into your eye. He knew exactly what she was here about, but far be it from him to interrupt the so called "goddess of discord".

"Loki's missing."

"Is he?"

"He was last in your vicinity."

"What a co-inky dink."

Her blind, star filled eyes narrowed, and her brown lips curved down in a savage frown. "Bob." Amazing how much disdain she could pack into one word.

"He came to find out what happened to his son."

"Fenrir?"

"Does he have another? I mean, still living."

"He's alive too, is he?"

"Abso-tively. If I killed a god, you guys would know, wouldn't ya?"

She glanced at the frozen tableau of humanity around her, and sighed as dramatically as she could. "You are a troublemaker, Bob."

"I didn't start any of this. If I killed either of them - which I didn't - it would have been self-defense."

"Except Loki was never a match for you. You should have been the lord of tricksters, Bob; you were always far more clever than he was."

"I'll take that as a compliment. But you know my bullshit's always been less malicious than his."

"You have your moments."

He gave her a lopsided grin. "Don't we all?"

Her expression remained stony and unforgiving. "Do I assume you displaced them?"

"Fenrir is in a pocket universe where he cannot escape, thanks to Balder's Gate. And Loki's in a place where his power over entropy might actually do some good.They weren't harmed. Well, okay, I smacked Fenrir's ass a bit, but he deserved worse."

"From a certain standpoint, killing them would have been easier."

"Perhaps. Surely you're not here to make that request of me, are you?"

She didn't answer for the longest time, and he suddenly realized that yes, that was exactly why she was here.He stared at her,feeling sea water run down his legs from his sodden shorts and make a mucky pool on the sand beneath his bare feet. "You can't be serious."

"Fenrir is a menace."

"Then you kill him."

"We don't have access to Balder's Gate."

"I can't access it either."

"Yes, you can. It is within your abilities to - "

"And you say it's not within the abilities of all you elites?" He interrupted angrily. "Come on, Eris! Don't give me that shit!"

But her face was an impassive obsidian mask,lit from within by the light of a thousand different stars. "We don't do things that way."

"No, of course not. That would be too honest, wouldn't it?"

She arched a single dark eyebrow at him, as close to an emotion as she had really come so far. "You have stones, Bob. You've always had stones."

"You say it like it's a bad thing."

"I thought the whole point of exile was becoming humble."

"I ain't got nothin' to be humble about."

"This was supposed to drive you crazy. Perhaps it has, although not in the way intended. You were never supposed to get your powers back."

"Strange things happen."

"Especially around you."

He could only shrug - it was a fair cop. Tired of the feeling of wet sand squishing between his toes, he sat down, instantly assuming a lotus position out of habit. Eris made no move to sit, but he didn't expect her to; she probably enjoyed being looked up at. "You know, there are other hit men. Shiva's probably chompin' at the bit to finish off Fenrir, not to mention Thoth. Get them on it."

"Bastet has offered."

"Has she? Aw, bless." She was a hell of a dame, part feline or not. "So there's no need of me, is there?" An ironic bit of song lyric filled the eerie silence that followed - "- because I'm gonna buy this place and see it burn, do back the things it did to you in return - " and Bob realized that, as usual, one of the elites was being less than up front. "Unless this is a test," he said, scowling up at her.

Her expression had slid back to stone. "Why would we test you?"

"Indeed. Cut the bullshit - what's the deal? Come on, Er, I know you have to keep up appearances, but it's just us in a frozen bubble of time. The other elites aren't eavesdropping, as far as I can tell. So spill."

She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to sigh again, but that was difficult because she never really got a hang of the breathing thing. "We have a proposition."

"We? Specify. Not those flamin' Powers, I hope."

"No - they still have no wish to deal with you. This offer is from the elites - we believe you have served your time."

That made him raise an eyebrow at her, and a snatch of an old Sisters Of Mercy song suddenly floated through his mind:"In the land of the blind, be king." "Are you saying you want me back in the higher dimensions? In spite of the Powers objection?"

"Standing against Fenrir by yourself was a brave thing."

"I had help."

"Camaxtli only in spirit does not count."

"I had more help than that."

She managed a derisive snort okay. "Humans wouldn't be here still if it wasn't for your intervention. They do not count either. Fenrir could have destroyed you."

"Could have, but he didn't. I never go into a fight expecting to lose."

"This is not an offer made lightly, or to be taken lightly. It may never be offered again."

"I get that. But what the hell makes you think I want to join you power drunk loons?"

She quirked one eyebrow up at him. "Stones, Bob; many stones. Consider it well - we will return." And with that, she winked out of existence and time resumed, a roaring wave of sound and sense that was almost disorienting. The albatross and gulls wheeled and screeched again as the ocean crashed against the shore, and the murmurs of people and the droning hum of distant cars filled in all the decibels on the scale in between.

The sunbathing woman glanced at him speculatively, as he was sitting only a few feet from her, and by her perception of time, he had just appeared out of nowhere, as if dropping out of a rip in time. ( Which was more or less true.)"Maam," he said politely, unfolding his legs and standing up. Teleporter Ben Chen was still standing near by, and instantly started answering his previous question, the one he asked before Eris stopped time cold. "There is a satellite base near Broken Hill."

"Way out there, huh? Good place for it." Bob scrubbed a hand through his hair, trying to focus on the task at hand. He loved how circumstances always threw spanners in the works.

He fixed his gaze on the unseeing eyes of Chen, and said, "Okay, mate. I spent all day surfing, and I was never aware of you. I left in the company of a purple skinned girl with green dreadlocks." It would be funny if they actually looked for her - like a saltwater hating Skrjet demon would actually be anywhere near the coast of Australia - and he wondered if they'd ever grok she wasn't a mutant. "Now go on home - we never spoke."

"Yes," he agreed, and seemed to blink of existence. Bob made sure no one else noticed.

As he grabbed his abandoned surfboard, he couldn't help but chuckle to himself. The elites wanted him? How bad were things for them? Unless it was a trap.

Or they were afraid of something. What could the elites be afraid of?

He left the beach pondering that troubling question.

5

Beyond that, he was at a loss.

He felt like he was floating inside his own skin, and wondered if he was drunk. Drugged? It was a pleasantly light sensation, although his arm - burning, aching - seemed to keep him tethered to his body, and he didn't appreciate it. He was wondering if there was some way to remove it so he could float away.

There was a woman in the car, and she kept talking to him, her voice a low murmur that only periodically made sense. But then again, his own thoughts only made periodic sense. Well, as far as he could tell.

His mind felt like it was buzzing like a bee in the confines of his skull. It was so hard to think, to concentrate on one thing and follow it through. His body wanted to sleep, but his mind was fighting it all the way, and he didn't know which of them was right.

There was suddenly a new noise about the high pitched drone of the car's laboring engine  - a sound of shattering glass ( was that what just hit him? ) and the woman letting out a startled yelp as he smelled metal and gunpowder in the stuffy car, and it jolted suddenly, as if it hit a big pothole, and it sent a sharp new pain knifing through his aching arm. Fuck, that hurt! But at the same time, it brought him back to himself a little more; it was a bit easier to concentrate.

"They have guns? Since when do vampires have guns?!" The woman exclaimed. "Isn't that cheating?!"

"All's fair in love and war," he muttered, opening his eyes. His vision was blurry, and he didn't think that was normal.

She slewed the wheel hard to right, and from the severe jolting of the car and the slapping of branches against the frame, he guessed she'd just taken them off road. But from the odd flapping noise and the extra violent bouncing on the rear left side, a tire had already been shot out. That wasn't good.

"But what the fuck is the war about?!" She snapped, fighting to keep control of the steering column. "And I dumped Steve. Not soon enough, it seems."

"Who's Steve?" The car was shaking so badly the pain in his arm was nearly constant now. He decided to try and sit up, but in stages; his head still felt lighter than air.

"My dead ex-boyfriend, who is no longer dead. Is he a vampire? Do you think he's a vampire?"

"I dunno. Does he got fangs?"

"Not last time I saw him, but who knows?" She then exclaimed, "Shit!"

"What now?"

"Dead end."

He shoved himself up into a sitting position, and glanced out the broken window. Behind them was the distant glow of headlights through trees, and in front of them, beyond a dirt track that dead ended in a thick stand of trees, was the dark shape of a building deep inside the woods. "See that?" He said, gesturing towards the shape.

She leaned forward, and seemed to squint hard as she braked the car a foot or so before a thick tree trunk. He was pretty sure they'd crash into the tree, but the soft ground helped bring them up an inch or two short, although he was thrown forward and hit the back of her seat with his bad arm. The pain that stabbed through him was so explosively bad a small, strangled cry escaped him before he could completely swallow it back.

"Oh shit." She looked back at him, face twisted in an expression of sympathetic pain. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, 'm fine," he mumbled, grabbing his right arm. It was sticky with blood, and while the gash was still deep, he could no longer see bone. That was good, right? "We need to go," he added, letting his right arm hang limp as he opened the door and got out.

The wind came up and nearly blew the door off its hinges. The wind was howling like a vengeful demon, and he suddenly wondered if this part of the States had tornados. If he was in the States ... fuck, why couldn't he remember?

His mind was like the aftermath of a hurricane: things were scattered everywhere, random, any linearity completely gone. What had happened to him? The only thing that came to mind was being attacked by some old guy in a purple cape.

Okay, now he knew he was high.

He was so dizzy when he got to his feet he almost fell right over, but he held on to the car door until the worst of it passed. The woman got out - she had said her name, hadn't she? Mad ... Mad something - and she looked past him, her hazel eyes bright with fear. ( He could smell it - did people smell fear? ) "What the fuck do they want?" She shouted over the roar of the wind. Even though she was barely a foot away, it was hard to hear her. "They don't actually drink blood, do they?"

"Everybody in the car? I don't know. But vamps? Yeah." He vaguely recalled being bit once, but he'd swear he'd let that happen on purpose. Why?

He shouldn't have said that. She smelled as much of shock as fear ( he could smell that too?! ), and he got the sense a thousand yard stare was about to come on. "What part of now don't you understand?" He groused, grabbing her arm and pulling her deeper into the trees, away from the car and towards the mysterious structure.

It was hard to move; his legs were like rubber, and all he wanted to do was collapse, but he knew he couldn't, not until he got them someplace relatively safe. When he thought his legs would buckle, he moved his right arm. The searing pain gave him the concentration and adrenaline he needed to keep going.

The branches slapped viciously at their faces, as if trying to decapitate them, but they managed to keep their heads intact until they stumbled into the clearing, nearly tripping on the gnarled root of a tree that rose up out of the dirt like a booby trap.

In the clearing was a residence larger than your average cabin, but smaller than your average home. Even before the rain started sheeting down from the sky, as warm as blood and as hard as stone, he could smell the dry rot in the wood of the place -  if it wasn't abandoned, it should have been. As the wind gusted, its beams creaked with a noise not unlike screeching cats.

"Oh holy fuck," the woman said. ( He decided he was calling her Maddie until he remembered her name. ) "Is that an actual haunted house?"

"No - most likely a crazed loner's shack."

"And that's better?" She complained, as he pulled her towards the house of Usher. Well, it did cut a rather sinister silhouette; perhaps it would have been less ominous if there had been any sort of light at all.

There was no guarantee it wouldn't fall apart - a few shingles flew off the roof as they approached the door - but he knew inside was better than out right now, even in a dilapidated shack like this. "It's abandoned," he said, as the animal presence smelled a lot sharper and more recent than any human scents.

She looked around, and if she wanted to ask how he knew that, she decided not to. But there was an obvious rusty lock box on the door. "Think there's some way we can break in?"

He stood back, and kicked the door with the flat of his foot as hard as he could muster. The wood cracked with a sound like a rifle shot, making Maddie jump, and he was so suddenly dizzy that he grabbed his own right arm to keep on his feet. The pain was so bright and savage it turned his vision red, and he almost bit his tongue to keep from screaming, but it gave him the extra adrenaline he need to not only stay upright, but also completely kick in the door. The wood gave way around the knob and lock box, and pieces of it blew inside the dark and musty smelling hovel as he grabbed Maddie by the arm and shoved her in ahead of them. He knew they were close; he could feel their eyes as well as smell them on the raging winds.

But even as he got inside, she gave him an evil frown, and said, "The door's open! They can just charge in - "

"Vamps can't come in unless they're invited." He didn't even realize he knew that until it fell out of his mouth. Really? How the hell did he know that?

The surprise on her face mimicked what he felt inside. "What are you, Van Helsing?" She snapped.

It was then the vampires outside opened fire.

She screamed in fear as he tackled her and drove her to the floor, bullets punching holes in the rotting wooden walls, and he jostled his right arm enough that he couldn't quite swallow back the snarl of pain as bullets ripped the air just over their heads. She had struggled, trying to get out from under him, but she stopped as soon as she heard him growl. Did she think that was for her?

And why was he trying to protect her anyways? Did he know this woman? How could he - he didn't even know her name! But he wasn't too sure about his either, so maybe that was a bad example.

He was sure about one thing: bullets couldn't kill him. He seemed to have a bedrock belief in that, although he wasn't sure why. Certainly his arm still hurt like motherfucking hell - he obviously could be hurt, and badly. But not killed?

Although it felt incredibly good to be off his feet, he knew he had to get them both away from the door - they couldn't enter, but they could sure as shit shoot inside from an open vantage point - so as soon as there was a pause to reload and move closer to the house, he got up and hauled Maddie to her feet. She stank of fear, and he knew it wasn't only the bullets - he had scared her in some way, but he wasn't sure how, and right now he didn't care. "Come on," he said, pulling her into another room, away from the front door.

It had been someone's bedroom at some point - there was still a mattress in the far corner, now mildewing, with the base scents of urine, semen, and voles all over it - but it had most recently been a home for rodents, judging by the scent and the chewed wood. Mattress fluff stuck out of gnawed holes in the mattress, and the springs that jutted out were so rusty he was sure they'd shatter like glass if anything touched it. "Stay down," he told her, shutting the door and crouching down in the corner beside it, in case he was wrong about them all being vampires.

Maddie retreated to a far corner, eyeing him warily. "What are you?"

"I told you, a mutant." Was he sure about that? Why was he sure about that?

"No, I mean ... isn't it convenient you know about this shit? All this demon and vampire crap? And that I just happened to run into you." She paused as she sank into her own low crouch against the far wall. Fear was making her angry and paranoid, but he supposed he couldn't blame her. Well, no, he could if it made her do something stupid. "Okay, literally, but that's not what I mean."

"Are you asking if I with them?"

"Yes. Or one of them."

That made him scoff; he was still in too much pain to laugh. "You think I'm a fuckin' demon?"

"You just growled like a fucking wolf! That wasn't a Human noise!"

"I'm a mutant!"

"So fucking what?! A mutant is still a Human being!"

"Not to most people!" He was surprised by the amount of anger and pain in that statement. It felt like a sore subject, but really, he had no idea why. Did people hate mutants? Why?

She looked guilty, and glanced away just as the shooting started again."Hit the floor!" He shouted, and did so, as they seemed to have realized where they were. He was pretty sure vamps could hear and smell better than the average person, but not as good as him. He had them there, for all the good it would do them.

She hit the floor too, covering her head with her arms, and he shouted, "What do they want?"

"Why the fuck are you askin' me?" She snapped.

"Because that guy back at the car seemed to think you had something. What did he think you had?"

"An eye or something, I don't know!"

"An eye?" Okay, that made no sense at all.

No, maybe it did. Mystical shit always had weird ass names, didn't it? How did he know that? And why did he have a desire to call a guy named Bob? "Did you take anything from this Steve?" He asked, as there was a pause in the fusillade.

"Fuck you!" She replied angrily. "I didn't take anything from that prick!"

"But he's made them think you have. Why?"

"Because he's a bitter prick? How the fuck should I know?!"

Outside, he could hear the vampires talking as they reloaded and shifted positions. "Who's the guy?" A male one asked.

"I don' know," a guy with a flat Midwestern accent replied. He thought of him as the leader, whether that was warranted or not. "But his blood stinks of Rhedoc - I don' think we gotta worry about him much longer."

Rhedoc? What the hell was that? And what did that mean?

"What is it?" She asked, staring across the dusty wooden floor at him. She must have noticed he was listening to what was going on outside.

"Is Steve from the Midwest?"

She stared at him like he was absolutely nuts, but admitted, "He's from Kansas."

Close enough. "He's out there."

That made her look up, towards the outside wall, as if she could see through it. "That fucking bastard," she snarled, as the shooting started anew. But they could only tell from the holes that occasionally popped up in the wall - the wall was screaming so loudly, and the rotting house groaning so violently under the strain, that the gunshots were swallowed in the general din. You knew it was a bad storm when automatic gunfire couldn't be heard.

She started to crawl on her elbows towards the door, but as soon as she got close he grabbed her arm. "What do you think you're doing?" He hissed.

"I'm gonna kick that fuckin' asshole in the balls."

"He's a vampire with a gun who wants to kill you. How far do you think you'll get before you're ripped to pieces?"

She glared at him, lips thinning to a hard line, but all she did was pull her arm away and try and hug the floor as bullets zinged over their head.

The gunfire paused, and he could hear rain pattering on the floor from leaks in the roof. He also heard the dry clicks of empty guns, and told her, "They're out of ammo."

Maddie sighed heavily. "Thank god. Now I can go kick him in the nads."

"He's still a vampire."

She glanced around. "There's a lot of wood here."

"This is your last chance, Maddie," Steve shouted from outside. He was straining hard to be heard over the wind. "Give me the Dragon's Eye and I'll let you walk away!"

"Fuck you, jack off!" She screamed back angrily. "Even if I had the fucking thing, I wouldn't give it to you in a billion years, you stupid son-of-a-bitch!"

Logan sighed, and rolled his eyes. If vampires alone weren't bad enough, he had to be smack in the middle of a domestic dispute. And his right arm continued to throb and pound like an open wound, which it partially was.

Dragon's Eye - what the hell could that be? Obviously it was not in her car - if it was, they'd have found it by now. They still might kill her - he was under the impression vampires were vicious - but Steve wouldn't be out there demanding it if they had it in their cold little hands. So it was something small, something she could carry on her person ... a piece of jewelry maybe? But why would that be so important to a group of vampires?

"What's your problem," Maddie said derisively, addressing his sigh. "You said they couldn't get inside, right?"

He heard a distant crack, somewhere near the back of the house. That was followed by the sharp scent of gasoline. "No, but they can burn us outta here," he told her, as he could smell/hear the flames ripping through the rotted wood, being fanned by the hard gusting wind.

Oh fuck. When the shit hit the fan, it hit it by the shovelful, didn't it?