It was the bloodied, pale face of Wesley, canted slightly to the right. His skin was ashen, so dead the blood was already pooling in his major cavities, making the stubble on his face extra black, the blood on his face extra red, so slack in death he looked years younger than he actually must have been. She lifted the sheet further, and saw that he had indeed taken a fatal blow to the gut - stabbed, not shot, and by the look of the wound, someone twisted the blade to make sure it was a mortal wound. Obviously it had been.

She had never really thought much about Wesley. He seemed to be an okay guy - for an ex-Watcher - and he certainly was gifted with the whole “magical arts” thing, and he’d been a plucky Human, as Humans went. But she never really thought much about him. So why did she feel a sudden lump in her throat?

“Who?” She asked quietly, covering him up once more. Only then did she notice a slight glimmer on his palm, a circle of flesh that wasn’t quite burnt, but pinker than the rest in his palm. He had died using magik - she wondered if it had been enough to kill his killer. “Who did this? Is it dead?”

“I’d hope so. I don’t know many sorcerers who can live without a head.”

She almost asked Lorne if that was the man he had killed, but didn’t. It wouldn’t matter anyways, and besides, she didn’t think Lorne would feel too bad about blowing the head off of Wes’s murderer. Maybe Wes had made it explode, his last act on Earth. “Good. I hope it hurt like fuck.”

“Yeah, I know. I hope so too.” He sniffed, and she turned back to face him, sure her composure was intact.

Lorne looked okay too, just sad. No, not sad - totally, utterly beaten. When he stood up, he still seemed half finished rising; his shoulders were slumped, his head was down, he looked several inches shorter than he actually was. “I’m sorry to bother you, green jeans, but I have a teleport out of town that I have to catch. Can you make sure he isn’t …”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll make sure he gets home.”

“Thank you. If I never see this city again, it will be too soon.” He wiped the remaining tears from his eyes, and hugged her, which was a surprise, but she supposed he needed it right now. She hugged him back, and still smelled cordite on him. She would always wonder who the hell he shot, and why. “How’s Bob? Bob good?”

She decided to lie. He seemed to need some hope right now. “Bob’s good.”

“Well, you tell that hunky Aussie god of yours to save everyone he can, and take care of himself, okay?”

“Will do.” She held him at arm’s length, and gave him a small, forced smile. “Do you think the others … are they dead?”

Something dark flashed through his ruby red eyes, and it was probably answer enough. “Angel seemed to think it was a suicide mission. I think, from looking around here, he was probably right.”

She nodded, and tried to grasp the fact that Angel most likely wouldn’t be causing trouble at The Way Station anymore. As much as he annoyed the shit out of her, it was a truly odd thought - as odd as seeing the unflappable and yet constant Wesley dead on a slab. Hell had come, and hell had left, leaving only bodies to tell the tale. “Take care of yourself, Lorne. Send a postcard.”

“I’ll try.” He kissed her on the cheek, and turned to go, his shoulders still rounded, head still down. Even his loud suit was not enough; he looked dimmed, diminished, like it wasn’t just his friends who had died, but every single dream he had ever had. It was a possibility, which made it all the more sad. If someone as naturally ebullient as Lorne could be dragged down into the abyss, what hope was there for the rest of them?

Oh shit, what kind of nightmare was this? Bob was crippled; Wesley was dead; every other person on Angel’s team was missing and presumed dead; and demon chaos ruled in the streets. Great - bloody fucking great.

How much of this could she pin on Bob’s fucking ex?

She caught the arm of an orderly passing by, and pointed at the gurney where’s Wesley’s body laid nestled under the bloody sheet. “This is a relative of Maximum Bob’s. He is family of Bob‘s. Do you understand?”

The orderly, a one eyed Sklar demon, stiffened in shock, his rust red scales rippling as if disturbed by a soft breeze. “Maximum Bob? You mean “The” Bob?”

“Yes, and I don’t want him drained to feed the vamps in the convalescent ward. Hear me?”

He nodded, sufficiently cowed, looking at the bloody sheet as if about to genuflect. “I’ll have the body consecrated and moved to the holding chamber.”

“You’d better.”

He grabbed the end of the gurney carefully, as if the edges might be sharp enough to cut, and asked hesitantly, “What name do I put on the tag … er, chart?”

“Wesley Wyndham-Price. Species Human - mostly.” She had to add that, or they’d never believe he was related to Bob, and that was the only way she could guarantee his body wouldn’t end up someone’s demon chow.

The demon nodded, quietly repeating the name to himself so he wouldn’t forget it, and went off with the gurney towards the basement holding area.

Now that she was standing all alone in the lobby, she wondered what to do. Was there anything she could do that would matter now?

It seemed like she had missed everything. There was nothing to do but the clean up. And there was nothing she hated more than cleaning up.

7

Marcus didn’t want to eavesdrop on Logan’s conversation with Tony, but curiosity was getting the best of him. He almost expected yelling, but there wasn’t any - still, weren’t these cabins sound proof? He could be killing him, and he’d never know. But considering how stoned he still was, killing was probably the last thing on his mind. He probably just had the munchies, and was barely paying attention to what Tony was saying while he ate every single packet of peanuts he could sniff out of the galley.

Not that he knew anything about the munchies.

Finally, after an interminable time (really about twenty minutes - but it seemed longer), he heard the cabin door opening, and quickly threw himself in the nearest chair, picking up the paperback he had been pretending to read earlier.

Logan walked out, still slightly unsteady on his feet … munching on bits from a small potato chip bag. How did he know? “How much did you hear?” Logan asked, still crunching, as he sat down. He managed not to fall down, which indicated he was recovering even more.

“Nothin’. Place is soundproofed. You didn’t kill him, did you?”

He shook his head, still eating chips. “He really didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already figured out for myself. And those pics in the parking garage are the same ones Bob showed me.”

“You ain’t angry?”

He shrugged. “He shoulda been honest with me, but naw, I’m not mad. God, these chips are terrible. How can people eat these things?” He tipped the small foil bag into his mouth, so he got all the crumbs, then crumpled the small foil bag into a ball, and shoved it in the crevice between the chair’s arm and cushion before wiping his slightly greasy hands on his thighs. “Those were awful. Think there’s anything more to eat around here?”

“You’re a very complicated man.”

“No, I’m a very hungry man.”

“You’d even eat sushi.”

“Hey, I like sushi.”

“You would,” Marcus sighed, standing up. “C’mon, the galley’s this way.” What a weird day this had been. Or night. Whatever the fuck it was. But he knew, if they had any sense at all, they should be worrying about the Yakuza.

The next few moves were bound to be doozies.

***

Marc nuked him a shelf stable vegetarian pad thai entrée, and it was as appetizing as it sounded, but he was so hungry he wolfed it down anyways.

He was sobering up, though, so that was a plus. If anodyne could do this to him, for hours, what would it do to normal people? It was a frightening thought, and it felt like a clue, but he was still too drugged to properly pursue it right now. But it was clear that people who took anodyne wouldn’t know what they were getting into until the stuff had already subsumed them. At least, as evil plots went, he could see this one actually working without too much fuss. But what was the end goal? Helpless people? In the face of most demons, people were helpless anyways.

Tony tapped on the door before entering the small “galley”, where he sat at a table finishing off his pad thai bowl, and Marc leaned against the far counter, guzzling tiny bottles of vodka. Tony held up the phone, and said, “Logan, it’s for you. Helga?”

He nodded and stood up - at the same time! And he didn’t fall over! The drugs were pretty much done with him now, and he was grateful. “Thanks.” As soon as he took the phone from him, Tony disappeared, and he figured he was still ashamed. He didn’t know why; he really didn’t really blame him. But if he wanted to get consumed by guilt, he wasn’t going to stop him.

“Hey Hel,” he said, as the connection crackled slightly. He had enough of his senses back to know the plane was in slow descent - they’d be landing soon. Then he wondered what he was going to do. Going after the Yakuza seemed like the sensible thing to do, but he wasn’t sure he felt like being sensible. “How’s Bob?”

“No change,” she sighed. She sounded tired. “They’re not sure they can help him at all - the magik’s too strong.”

“Shit. Have you hit Bob’s address book? Could Amaranth help?”

“I’m going to look into that, as soon as I have a moment to think.”

“What about Wes? He’s good with that magic shit.”

She sighed heavily, a slight scoff, followed by a small, “Oh man.”

That set off all kinds of alarm bells. “What?”

There was a brief pause before she answered. “He’s dead, Logan.”

He felt like his legs had been kicked out from under him, and he sat down heavily, sure he hadn’t heard her right. “What? Who’s dead?” He saw Marc’s head snap around towards him out of the corner of his eye, felt his intense stare.

“Wesley. His body was here, Lorne brought it in. He got stabbed by some evil fuck, but he was D.O.A. - they could do as much for him as they could do for Bob.”

Logan felt a creeping cold rage, slowly overtaking the dregs of the drugs, and he lost the ability to speak for a moment. When he found his voice again, he managed to spit out, “Who did it? Give me a name.”

“Doesn’t matter, big guy - he’s already dead. Lorne said he lost his head, literally.”

Although that was satisfying, it didn’t make him feel any better. “What’s Angel doing about this?”

“I have no idea. He’s missing.”

Logan felt like he had slept through the second reel of a film, and was now coming to while the third reel played. “What? Helga, what the fuck’s going on?”

“From what I’ve been able to piece together, Angel and everyone else - Spike, Gunn, whatever the hell Fred is now - is missing. They were last seen fighting a whole bunch of evil minions a couple of blocks away from the Hyperion, but since then, no one’s seen them.”

“Fuck.” Marc had now come over to the table, and was looking down at him expectantly. He held up a hand to let him know he knew he was there, but he was still going to have to wait for it.

“Maybe it’s because I’ve been up for the last twenty six hours, but I can’t help but feel paranoid,” she said, and he heard her voice start to fracture, along with her composure. “This was all planned. They took out Bob, they took out Angel … who’s next?”

“Who’s they exactly?”

“Fuck if I know. But something bad is going to happen - I mean, something worse. Watch your back.”

“I’m okay. But how are you?”

“Me?” She laughed humorlessly. “Oh, I’m fuckin’ peachy, Logan.” It sounded like she swallowed a cough, but then she couldn’t quite hold back anymore, and started crying. “Oh fuck. I am not a crier, damn it!”

“I know,” he reassured her, closing his eyes and feeling bad for her. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay! Nothing is. It’s all bullshit.” She kept trying to stop crying, and couldn’t quite do it.

“Should I come down? I’ll come.”

“No, no, I don’t …” She paused to sniff, and then said, “Yeah, okay, could you come? Safety in numbers, right?”

“We’re gonna be okay, Hel, I promise you,” he swore, aware that it could be a very empty promise. Who was strong enough to kill Wesley and take out Angel, not to mention Bob? This had to be some big league, heavy duty shit.

“No, I’ll be fine,” she sniffed. “If I’m right, you won’t be. They’ll have to kill you before they can finish Bob off. If he dies before you do, his power will be transferred to you, like what happened with Camaxtli and Jean. You’re the vessel, and if they want to guarantee Bob won’t be a threat on this plane for some time, you have to die.”

“What did I say about calling me a vessel?” He sighed, rubbing his eyes. But she had a good, valid point, and he knew it. If this was part of some overwhelming, big evil scheme, and they wanted to make a clean sweep of this, he would have to be next. He wasn’t a particular force for “good” - in fact, he was honestly kind of bad - but he was Bob’s avatar, so that dragged him kicking and screaming into this bloody mess. “Besides, whoever they are, they’ll have to get in line. I think the Yakuza have first dibs on me.”

“You think the Yakuza will even make them blink?”

Okay, she had another point. Hel was just scoring all over the place tonight. “No. But then again, they’re hardly making me blink either.”

“Get here as soon as you can. And for fuck’s sake, be careful.”

“I will. Just … hang in there.” It was a stupid thing to say, but what else was there to say? Luckily, the static got so heavy on the phone he was forced to hang up before the signal was lost.

Marc sat on the corner of the table, and asked, “How fucking bad is this? Who’s dead?”

“Wes,” he sighed. “And Angel’s missing.”

He exhaled as if punched. “You gotta be shitting me.”

“I’m not, and Hel seems to think it might be some kind of plot - and she may be right.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. Wesley dead? For some reason, he couldn’t believe it - it just wasn’t sinking in. He’d gotten the shit smacked out of him by a thousand nasty things and survived, how could he be dead?

“Want me to come with you?” He offered. “We’ll go kick some demon ass.”

Logan glanced up at him and smiled faintly. He knew he meant it , and he might have to take him up on it, but right now, if Hel’s theory was right, he was a walking target, and anybody with him was likely to get caught in the crossfire. He couldn’t risk that. “Thanks, but I think Tony still needs some protecting, and besides, I’m not sure Hel would welcome too much company at the moment.”

“Bob’s still out?”

“Yeah, and she sounds exhausted.”

Marc raised an eyebrow at that, and Logan knew he was thinking that Helga had called him in a “boyfriend” capacity. Not true, but if he wanted to think that, fine, it would make it easier to strike out on his own. “Yeah, okay. But you guys give me a call if you need back up.”

He nodded, and stared at his hands, noticing there was still a little blood beneath his fingernails. He felt useless, and he was tired of feeling fucking useless.

“You think Angel actually got his fool ass dusted?”

“Anything’s possible. But I don’t think I’ll believe it until I see it. How old was he? Two hundred something? Nearly three hundred? You’d think he’d be smarter than that by now.”

“Yeah, well, no matter how old we are, we all have our grand moments of stupidity.”

“True.” And Logan felt he was a master of that particular art.

Which was why he now feared Wesley wasn’t the only one who was dead, just the only one who could be confirmed killed, the only body left behind.

8

Tony must have still felt guilty about lying to him, because as soon as he overheard that he needed to get to Los Angeles as quickly as possible, he used his influence and money to get him a private jet flight out of Canada, minutes after they put down at Burnaby.

The strip at Burnaby was so small it looked like it had been deserted for a while, so it was really an ideal spot. He bet there were some frustrated Yakuza waiting for them to land in Vancouver, wondering what was taking them so fucking long.

The only other plane available was a tiny Cessna, a puddle jumper that could barely seat ten people, but as soon as Tony waved a little cash in the bored pilot’s face, Logan was on his way to L.A. through the accommodating if not precisely friendly skies.

He felt stone cold sober now, and kind of wished he didn’t. He also wished this was just a nightmare and he was going to wake up screaming and shredding his pillow any second now … but wasn’t this bound to happen? He knew how powerful and evil things could be - he still couldn’t forget the leering, bloodthirsty gaze of Camaxtli, as dead though he was now, and the overwhelming, crippling power of his aura, like he could shred planets with a single wave of his fingers - and he knew sometimes you just hit a wall. Sometimes you just came up against something so much stronger than you it wasn’t even funny. He knew from experience that there was always someone stronger than you, faster, meaner, smarter, better - but when it came to gods and demons, the playing field could alter in different ways entirely. Stronger, faster, meaner didn’t even come into it - they were the elephant, and you were the ant, a life form so meaningless and insignificant, you never even showed up on the! ir radar. They’d simply kill you on their way to something more meaningful; it was your fault you got in their way and got crushed, and they wouldn’t give you a first thought, never mind a second.

The pilot landed the plane at a small airfield outside of Los Angeles, closer to Santa Monica, which was fine with him. He had no problem getting into L.A. proper, and even though he knew he should go straight to the hospital Hel told him about, he wasn’t ready to do that just yet. There was something else he needed to check out first.

The sun was just starting its slow climb up from the horizon, but it wouldn’t be a proper sunrise for an hour now: the sky was a deep contusion blue, the street lights (where they existed) still on, and he made sure the cab dropped him off several blocks from the old Hyperion hotel, so he could do a reconnaissance on foot.

The funny thing was, he smelled it and felt it exactly at the same time. It had rained heavily before, judging from the puddles of dirty water gathering in potholes and sidewalk cracks, although now it had cleared off. It should have left a clean smell in its wake, but it didn’t; there was a thick, rank scent in the air, of blood and corrupted flesh, sulfur and that smell of fresh entrails spilled, like a butcher shop. But, in this case, a butcher shop in a sewer, where body parts of about two dozen unnatural, rotting things were flushed straight down the toilet. And while the rank smell made him instinctively cringe, a sense of evil so potent and heavy made his skin crawl like it was trying to rip itself off his body and slink away. Every instinct he had was telling him to go, to flee in the opposite direction, but he forged ahead, ignoring the screaming instinct in his mind. It wasn’t the first time.

Traffic was non-existent here, which qualified as a supernatural event in itself for Los Angeles. But it wasn’t until he reached the top of the block, where the old Hyperion hotel stood as a monument to crumbling opulence, yesteryear’s version of class reduced to a slowly moldering architectural corpse, that he saw the exact amount of damage done.

No wonder Wesley had died. It was a wonder it hadn’t been a wholesale, city wide massacre; it was a small miracle the city was still standing.

Three buildings that had existed on the left hand side of the street the last time he was here were blasted ruins; it looked like their foundations were the only things not reduced to fractured beams and concrete and plaster dust. Broken glass glittered on the fissured, cracked street like crushed diamonds, and perhaps that could explain the lack of cars here … but he didn’t think so. The death smell got worse the farther he walked on, but he was starting to get used to it. His skin was still trying to rip itself free, though.

It was then that he felt the eyes.

There was a noise like steam venting from a grate, a deep, smooth hiss, and a noise like dry leaves scraping against dry asphalt. But since there was no such thing as dried leaves in downtown L.A., he knew that couldn’t be it. It also helped that a new hiss arose, and it made a noise that sounded very much like a pneumatic press whispering, “Hhhh-uuuu-mmm-aaa-nnn.”

Logan tried to place by sound as he continued walking down the broken street, letting his muscles get loose, yet tensing his hands, claws aching to spring free. This was exactly what he was looking for - well, one of them.

When it came, it came fast and hard, and even Logan was not prepared for how big it was.

It exploded out of an alley, shattering an entire wall of a neighboring building as it darted out towards him at fifty miles an hour. To Logan it was nothing but a fifteen foot high blurb, something as gray as decayed flesh that smelled even worse, with glowing yellow embers for eyes and knitting needle sized teeth. He barely had time to pop his claws and lash out as he tried to spin aside and cut it at the same time.

It ripped a huge chunk of flesh off his thigh - he could feel the meat tear away in a moment that was so painful it actually seemed to overload his nerves, and therefore didn’t feel like much of anything at all for one wonderful second - but Logan felt his own claws dig into steel hard, rhino thick hide, and he tore in himself, letting the thing’s momentum drag his claws through its long, long body. (It was like a moray eel - a fifteen foot, dry land moray eel, with prehistoric piranha teeth and a jet engine for a propulsion system.) It screeched like Minnie Mouse on helium, and as Logan winced from the sudden pressure on his eardrums, he realized how all this glass had broken.

It flicked its tail and sent him flying into the wrought iron fence that concealed the rear courtyard of the Hyperion. Logan felt himself hit it, and then felt the bars shatter under both his weight and velocity, and he landed so hard on the marble tiles of the interior plaza they cracked like glass, and shards drove themselves into his skin. But that was okay, because the pain was keeping him conscious.

“You kill them, fucker?!” He shouted, spitting out a gob of blood (he bit the inside of his cheek when he hit the fence - how fucking embarrassing). “C’mon, make me a dessert, you super-sized dildo!”

It most likely didn’t understand English, but it came for him, a gray streak like a runaway freight train, and he ignored the pain and jumped to his feet before it hit, the pain in his leg where the thing had bit him making him scream. Since he could see nothing of it but its glowing, jaundiced eyes, he quickly focused on those, and as it screamed through the rest of the fence and lunged straight for him, he lunged right back - and rammed his claws deep into its eyes.

Hot blood that smelled like landfill mud spurted up his arms, and it screamed and flailed, trying to throw him off, but Logan ignored how disgusting and painful this all was and used his upper body strength to thrust his claws in deeper, tearing through muscles that felt like steel cables, trapping his upper arms in the almost unbearable hot prison of its body.

In its thrashing desperation to be rid of him, it rammed them both straight into the lobby of the Hyperion, sending wood and plaster flying, but Logan was barely clipped on the head - he was so deeply buried in this thing’s head, he was almost a part of it now. And he kept digging for fucking China.

Elbows deep, the thing finally went limp. It just stopped, like a car whose battery just suddenly died, and it was actually so slack that Logan actually fell off the thing, and hit his back and head on the remaining stairs in the Hyperion’s lobby. Its own muscular contractions as it tried to fling him off were actually helping to keep him on the thing? How cruelly ironic. See, if it only had hands, it could have just plucked him off.

Although he was hurting like hell, smelled worse than a McDonald’s dumpster left for three weeks in the hot sands of the Sahara, he felt strangely elated. One fucker down.

He limped outside, waiting for his healing factor to finish with his leg and counting on adrenaline to get him through until then, and looked around the supposedly deserted streets of this thoroughly trashed block. But they weren’t deserted. He could smell them on the polluted wind, feel their eyes like pinpricks, and when he clamored clumsily over the broken fence and reached the center of the fissured street, he raised his arms over his head, and flicked the clotted, dark brains and dangling optic nerves of the demon eel thing off his claws. “Who else wants some?!” He roared angrily, aware this was probably one of those grand moments of stupidity Marc had mentioned, but he honestly didn’t care. He was angry enough to slice up the whole world right now if he had to.

Perhaps not surprisingly, volunteers were not immediately forthcoming.