3

 
It started like so many dreams: in complete and absolute darkness.

He had a sense of others, of being very far from alone while still being isolated somehow, and his vision didn’t so much focus as come in slowly, like light from distant stars. It was gray and watery, like looking through a badly scratched and distorted funhouse mirror, rendering the shapes above him little more than suggestions of fleshy blobs. There were voices, but he couldn’t understand what they were saying. One voice was male, and familiar enough that it triggered something like an itch in the back of his mind, far from pleasant. There was a woman’s voice too, one that made his heart hurt, but the words of both were stretched out, the syllables chopped up and distorted even more than the visuals. His body felt numb and cold, a thing more than a living object.

Then he understood several things simultaneously. One, he was looking up through water; two, the female voice belonged to Xia; third, there was some feeling creeping into him, slowly but surely - the burn of healing, all over his body, so overwhelming it seemed equally painful and pleasurable, overloading his neurons.

And he didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to know this.

Logan woke up with the slightest jolt, briefly unsure where he was. But the smell of Yasha brought it all back to him, and his heart rate started to inch downward, from panicked to just disoriented. He was warmer than before, and he had to take a piss so badly his kidneys hurt. He could see a sliver of light bleeding between the drawn curtains, as pink as blood diluted water. He got up just in time for a sunrise?

He stumbled off to the bathroom to have a piss, and noticed Yasha had a new shower curtain up; it was clear plastic, covered with a repeating pattern of red rubber ducks with devil horns. Well. At least some vampires had a sense of humor.

He also looked in her medicine cabinet for a razor (did vampires need to shave? Now there was something he should have asked…) and maybe some mouthwash to get this awful coffee aftertaste, and was surprised to find several prescription bottles. None were in her name (unless they were aliases), but they were all various kinds of painkillers: vicodin, darvocet, codeine, demerol. Why would she have these? Did they even work on vampires? Maybe these were her poisons of choice; not booze, pills.

But he would smell the chemical changes in her blood … if the changes were the same in a vampire. Great - all he had were questions without answers. Maybe she only used them when he wasn’t around, or maybe if she got hurt. But, again, that would depend on them working on her, and her being in pain long enough to need relief. He wondered if he called Angel and asked him these things, he’d think he was insane. Well, insane-r.

After wondering if any of these things would work on him, he closed the cabinet and decided to forget about a shave. If she had a beer in the fridge, that would take care of the bad taste in his mouth.

Even though he knew damn well vampires didn’t really eat (well, not solid food), she had some food in the cupboards: a box of cranberry almond cereal, a can of pepper steak soup (was there a joke in having steak up in the cupboard?), a bag of organic cheese puffs, some instant miso and cellophane noodles in a Styrofoam bowl. He had some of the cereal dry, and looked in the refrigerator, which was empty save for a couple of beers, a bottle of wine, a thermos full of blood (smelled like cow), and a lone can of pineapple soda (he had no idea such a thing existed). As he took a beer and went into the living room, it reminded him of his early days, scrounging for food in other people’s homes. It seemed like another life, and in a way, he supposed it was. He was so insane back then he could barely remember it anymore; it was like the shards of someone else’s memory.

For a change of pace, he opened the curtains, exposing her great view of the harbor. The crimson sun made the shimmering water look like a vast pool of blood. How often did you get a red sky in the morning? He hadn’t smelled a storm.

To confirm his suspicion, he picked the remote off the coffee table and turned on the set - yep, it wasn’t morning, it was night. And not Monday night, but Tuesday night. He’d slept almost two days. No wonder he had to pee.

He muted the set and left it on a weather channel (woo! He knew the exact temperature in Medicine Hat! Thank god for cable !), while he opened the newspaper and scanned it while he washed the dry cereal down with beer. It really didn’t taste that bad, separately or together.

This wasn’t today’s - er, two day’s ago’s - paper, but the Thursday before that. Nothing on the end of the world - funny that. The news still struck him as déjà vu, but he didn’t worry about it, because the news was traditionally the same damn thing over and over again; only the names and places changed.

Hey, B.C. finally had a serial killer - they must have felt so proud; finally competing on American turf. That was the thing - people themselves never changed. That’s why he felt Xavier’s dream was nice, but slightly unrealistic; people weren’t just going to accept living peacefully with things different from them. The races could barely co-exist, and you could never bring religion or lack thereof into it. It was a nightmare of difficulties, one after another, and he wondered if Chuck had actually sat down and looked at all of the potentialities. Not that fruitcake Magneto was right; the truth was probably right in the middle, which is where it usually was.

He looked between the t.v. and the paper, eyes scudding over both as if they were water, eating handfuls of cereal between gulps of beer, and suddenly that sense of déjà vu hit him like a lightning bolt between the eyes. He caught a familiar name in the paper. It felt like a cold metal claw gripped his gut, and he temporarily abandoned his breakfast.

Looking back, he found it in an article about the two month old search for a cop killer. The main suspect was found several days later, dead from an apparent drug overdose, and considered the condition of the corpse, he had been dead for at least two days before the murder. The cops still thought it was tied to the suspect, somehow, but were “pursuing some leads”, which Logan knew was code for saying “Fuck if we know”.

And he knew these names. They weren’t that common, and he recognized the small mugshot of the prime suspect. Shit.

The article mentioned a cemetery, and he knew he had to go. He didn’t want to, but he had to.

He owed it to someone.

***

He finally decided to simply cover the mirrors.

At first, he broke them. The very first time he saw one, he thought it was another person; he didn’t recognize the wild eyed savage staring back at him, so he followed his instinct - the only thing functioning properly - and punched him. The mirror didn’t break more than it exploded, shredding his hand. But it healed fast; he watched the skin knit itself back together with vaguely horrified fascination. He was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to do that, but he wasn’t sure why.

He was not sure of a lot, actually. He was roughly certain his name was Logan, and that he had been hurt, and there were people after him, people who wanted to hurt him even more … but that was it. Everything else was a jumble of instinct and need, fear and rage. He had feelings he couldn’t explain: for instance, he was pretty sure there was something fundamentally wrong with him. Not only because his skin seemed to move, but also because his brain … well, it was broken. He didn’t know how, or why, but he knew it didn’t work right. He should know more than he did; he should be able to think coherently. But he wasn’t even sure he knew how to speak. It eventually occurred to him to try, but he didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t think about it.

He thought he was better than he had been, but wasn’t sure how he came to that conclusion. When he first broke into a cabin, it was because he was, quite literally, without anything. The truck he’d taken from the scene of the explosion (was it an explosion?) eventually died as the snow started to pile up, and he was forced to abandoned it. Being naked and injured - well, he assumed he was injured; there was blood - he had to get inside, and when he found a cabin that had been abandoned for some time, it seemed like an omen. None of the clothes he found fit, exactly, but he made do; he made do with the dried food he found in the larder as well. He felt like he was starting to get better in some way, but not enough.

At least he finally stopped himself from sleeping under the beds. At first he did; he felt he needed to hide, so he took blankets from the closet and crawled under the bed like a dog. It wasn’t all that comfortable, but he felt better. Eventually he took to covering mirrors instead of breaking them, and started sleeping on couches, or, at the very least, on a nice carpet. Maybe one of these days, he’ll be able to glance at himself without getting freaked out by what he saw. He wasn’t sure what the problem was, except he couldn’t recognize himself; and sometimes he would swear his eyes changed color.

He avoided using the electricity, as he knew that could identify the cabin in use, if it was even still connected - he never tried anything to see. He avoided what he knew to be computers, because he had a feeling they could track him that way, whoever “they” were. Sometimes it occurred to him there might not be a “they”.

Although he avoided windows (no one could see him), when it was daylight he would read. It seemed to take him a little bit before all the words made sense, but he learned he was somewhere called Alberta thanks to a “newspaper” he found in one cabin, and he learned that a lot of people didn’t get along very well. That was no surprise.

He knew he eventually needed to find some mode of transport and get farther away than slogging through snow could ever get him. But all he could think in was vague terms; far, away, out. He had at least adapted to his senses, but that was here. What if they flared up wherever he went, where there were more people?

At first, sounds and smells were so sharp they were painful, and the glare of moonlight off snow was blinding, like salt rubbed in his eyes. He somehow adjusted, but what if it happened again, what if it always happened whenever his environment changed?

How could he live like that?

He decided it was another thing he couldn’t worry about. He had too much on his plate, too much shit he didn’t understand, and he knew he had to prioritize his problems. He didn’t know exactly how to do that, but it sounded good.

He had been reading a collection of Raymond Chandler mysteries - he found he liked mysteries a lot more than other things - when he dozed off for a bit. He wasn’t eating enough, he knew that, and he felt dehydrated, but he didn’t think it was serious; he didn’t think anything with him was very serious. He could get hurt, but it didn’t stick. It was just another thing that was wrong with him.

Something woke him up, something that caused adrenaline to dump into his system by the truckload. Heart thudding desperately, he sat up slowly, putting the book down on the floor, and realized the hum of a distant engine, too faint to be a car or a truck; more like a snowmobile. He couldn’t hear it anymore, but his acute hearing allowed him to hear the crunching of footsteps through snow. Oh shit.

The knock on the kitchen door sounded explosively loud, and he had to bite his own tongue to keep from crying out. “Hello?” A woman’s voice called out. “I know someone’s here - I can still see your footprints.”

The fact that it was a woman made him breathe a little easier, although it did occur to him “they” could be women too. In fact, it was really the women he had to look out for, because he had another groundless feeling that they were always the ones to get to him.

She had to be bluffing about the footsteps; it snowed pretty heavily last night. He considered just laying back down on the couch, out of sight of the window, and just letting her stay out there until she decided no one was here and left. But he heard her stamping her feet, as if trying to keep warm, and she said, “Come on, give me a break, I’m freezing my ass off here.”

It then occurred to him: what if she was in some kind of trouble? Could he, in good conscience, leave her out to freeze?

Yes. No. He didn’t know. He was afraid to encounter anyone; he didn’t think he was prepared. But as scared as he was, some impulse made him get him and go out to the kitchen, even though he paused with his hand on the ice cold knob. If he concentrated, he could hear her breathing out there, hear her heartbeat, smell her skin, and he felt like he was having a heart attack. He couldn’t do this; he was not a person, not like them, and he couldn’t be among them. He was not like them; they would hurt him.

But somehow he opened the door, and wished he hadn’t.

He let in a blast of cold air, sharp with the promise of soon to fall snow, and the warm, comforting scent of clean female flesh. She looked in at him with bright eyes, snow making the wide brim of her hat look like it was frosted. “Hi there. Sorry to disturb you. Mind if I come in? We gotta big blast of Yukon air comin’ in.” She didn’t wait for his answer; she pushed open the door, gently but firmly, and he stepped back, stomach knotting in fear, anxiety, and rage.

As she stepped into the kitchen, shaking the snow off her hat before closing the door, he recognized her outfit. Dark blue parka with patches; dark blue pants with a red stripe down the side; the strangely masculine wide brimmed hat. She was a cop. He had let in a fucking cop.

“I’m Sergeant Lily Whitewolf, with the B.C.P.D.,” she said, with a sort of lightness that belied the doom of her statement. “Don’t worry, hon, I’m not here for you.”

“Huh?” It was almost a word, and it startled him that it came out of his mouth. He didn’t back up, but he did make sure that the flimsy kitchen table was between them.

She was a fine boned woman with skin the color of tanned hide, and sleek black hair held back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. In spite of her dark coloring, she had greenish-gold eyes that were surprisingly pale, and he found himself thinking that she was one of those European-Indian descendants, probably of Huron descent on one side of her family tree. But he didn’t know why he thought that - and what was a Huron anyways? “I come in peace, I promise you. But aren’t you cold? You don’t have the heater on in here.”

“ ‘m okay,” he said, surprised to find he could in fact talk. His voice sounded weird to his own ears, and way too loud, but she leaned forward slightly, as if straining to hear him.

“Well, yeah. How many layers of clothes are you wearing there? Three, four?”

“B.C.?” He was pretty sure “PD” meant police department, but he didn’t get the first part.

She rolled her Indo-European eyes, and said, “Bear Creek. Our area is pretty much from this section of the Alberta border to Banft, which means all twenty three people.” She grinned at her own joke, revealing white teeth. “But it sounds better when I say B.C. , doesn’t it?”

He continued to stare blankly at her, not sure what she wanted. Her posture wasn’t hostile, and her tone of voice was calm and almost insanely cheerful, as if he was a scared animal she was trying to keep from running away. Was he? Was the fear showing on his face?

She must have figured out what he was thinking by the look on his face, or by the drawn out silence, because she sobered, and quickly said, “Look, someone’s been busting into cabins all along the range, and I heard about it from some of my counterparts over the border, and decided to look into it.”

“Border?” He wasn’t following her, but he thought it was because his mind was broken. Maybe if it worked properly, he would have known what was going on.

“Alberta border.” Her eyes were steady, and not unkind, but he still felt like her eyes were boring straight into his. “Do you know where you are?”

It was a trick question, whether she knew it or not. Mentally, he was flailing, and had no idea what he should do.

He could take her; she wasn’t big, and even if she was … what could take him? She had a gun, he could smell the gun oil, but he couldn’t see where it was. Her parka was zipped up, puffing out her torso like a marshmallow - if her gun was beneath her coat, she could never reach it in time. Even if she could, he didn’t think it could hurt him.

Her look softened, and she said, “The guy busting into the cabins … he’s not a thief. There were computers, DVDs, electronic equipment - hell, there was a cashbox in one of the cabins, holding three thousand dollars U.S. - and the guy didn’t touch any of it. For unclear reasons, some mirrors got broken, but otherwise the guy just seemed to take food and clothes, that’s it. No one in ‘Berta is hot to press charges, and certainly I’m not gonna. I mean, it’s pretty clear the guy is homeless, just tryin’ to survive one of the worst late season cold snaps we’ve had in a dog’s age. No one begrudges a man tryin’ to get by.”

Did he believe her? Could he believe her? She was a cop, and the thought seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth.

As if she knew he was on the fence, she added, “There’s a distinction between thievery and survival.”

Surprising himself, he muttered, “Cops don’t make that distinction.” Was that true? Why did he believe that?

“I do,” she replied simply, and he didn’t think she was lying; she saw no signs of it. (What signs?) She gestured to the door, and the sudden movement made him jump back a step, tensing, ready to fight. His hands itched, but he tried to ignore it -

(- hands, hands, there was something wrong with his hands. He didn’t know what, but sometimes when he looked at them, his stomach turned; he almost choked on the fear, revulsion, hatred. He could see them covered with blood too … not his blood, and a smell … like chemicals; burned flesh and slagged metal. He couldn’t think about it; he didn’t want to think about it, ever. There was something hideously wrong with his damned hands - )

She froze, and the look in her eyes seemed to say “Okay, you’re crazy and dangerous,” but to her credit he didn’t smell fear. Maybe she knew you couldn’t show a dog fear or he’d attack. “I was just gonna suggest we go down to the overpass and get some coffee. Dana’s got a nice set up there, and some pretty good food for someone who waits for people to get snowed in. So why don’t we go, huh? I ain’t gonna arrest you or throw you out on a night like this. And it’s so bloody in cold in here you might like some warmth for a change. Your lips are starting to go bluish.”

Were they? They couldn’t be - he was much warmer than he had been. But then again, he’d been out in the snow with wet clothes; just about anything would be better. And not too long ago - was it? - he woke up naked in a snow bank, and just about everything was warmer than that.

(Metal froze to his skin, and there was blood all around him. He should have been dead; he should have had lost his limbs to frostbite. Why wasn’t he dead? What was so fucking wrong with him that they could bleed him and break his mind and freeze him like a fucking side of beef, and he wouldn’t die?)

He was waiting for her scent to change, for her to move, to flinch, to go for her radio or her gun. But even in his schizophrenic state of reserved panic, a little voice in the back of his mind was spewing out facts: she was alone; he smelled no one outside. She came up on a modified Sno-Cat, which was in no way a vehicle meant for hostile restraint and transport; she knocked on the door and announced herself. If she really wanted to drop him she could have come in with her gun drawn - he hadn’t locked the door. Why would he lock the door of a home he had broken into? (It wasn’t like any lock would hold them back.) All evidence pointed to her being truthful - she meant him no harm. And even if there was an armed squadron waiting down at the base of the mountain, he couldn’t believe they were capable of harming him.

(Was anything capable of harming him?)

Her expression remained guileless, and she slowly lowered her hand to her side. “C’mon, let’s have a truce before that Arctic front hits and buries us in the white stuff.”

He continued to stare at her, sure she meant him no harm, and yet it made no sense to him. His fractured mind couldn’t quite wrap around it. “Why?” he asked, unaware he had said it aloud until he heard a man speak.

Her eyes remained kind, and he knew then she had a lot of experience working with crazies like him, but had yet to get jaded by it; she still had some sympathy for the addle brained losers that crossed her path. “’Cause I wanna hear your story.”

He wanted to hear his story too. He wondered what it was.

4

He knew it wasn’t necessarily wise to enter a cemetery near nightfall, but if any vamps were stupid enough to decide he was a meal on the hoof, they deserved their brutal dusting.

It was a humble and almost homely little place, with gently sloping hills of green leading to a rather large and ornate style chapel/funeral home, shaded by huge lodge pole pines and elegant weeping willows that leant a somber air of dignity to it all.

But since it was after hours, Logan had to jump the fence.

No problem at all, as the fence - while high - was wrought iron and more ornamental than anything, and it was just entering twilight, when the last of the red faded from the sky, only to be replaced by a dark purple that shaded to complete black, and held that way long before the stars bothered to start showing their light. The vampires probably wouldn’t be out for another thirty five minutes or so, so if he wanted a fight, he’d have to loiter. Right now, all he could smell was leaf mold and fertilizer.

There was nothing ostentatious about this cemetery; most of the headstones and plaques were low and granite, with the occasional small plastic vase holding flowers (real or plastic as well) or teddy bear on a child’s grave. Save for the chapel, this place was tasteful and low key, and he thought it was perfect.

But how fucking presumptuous of him. Like he knew anything about her. He just thought he did, and from what? Half formed memories of a brief moment from another life; fragments of reminiscence from a madman. And that’s what he was - he didn’t kid himself. He wasn’t even sure he was sane now, just not as completely bugfuck as he was before. He supposed he would always be a little nuts, if only because a nickname like Wolverine pretty much demanded it of you. And then there was all that telepathic cluster fucking; he wondered if he’d ever get beyond that, at least on a physical level. Maybe someday most of his brain would heal up - but never all. He tried very hard not to kid himself about that. He would always have holes in the walls of his mind, things, ideas, memories, people and places gone for good. Perhaps it was for the best.

Even in the half light of encroaching night, he was able to easily skim for names, and found hers near the northeast corner, in the shade of a large black walnut tree. Its lower branches sagged down, as if trying to hide the area, and he supposed that was right. It looked well tended, and there were no hints of weeds like some of the older plots had, but then again, she was under a black walnut; their roots released a toxin that had a tendency to kill other plants that tried to compete with them for food.

Fuck, he knew that off the top of his head? Shit, maybe he was an actual mountain man at some point. Might explain quite a bit, especially the lingering insanity.

He knelt down, and wondered if he should have brought something, just out of respect. But what? He knew, if she were here right now, she probably wouldn’t even remember him - he was just one of the many nut jobs she must have encountered in her life.

Unless she mentioned … oh, what the hell was the name of that guy? It was in the paper: Lee Stoff. What a fucking silly name too. You’d think a little psycho bitch like that would have a more macho name.

He wondered about finding out who killed her, if indeed he could, but why would he think he could do a better job than the cops? It was two months ago, the scenes were cold, and his first thought was Stoff, who had to go and do a fucking pampered rock star heroin o.d. on them right before it went down. Quite a coincidence, wasn’t it?

(He hadn’t been alone that night. They thought they got them all, and only Stoff slipped the noose. What if they had both been wrong? What if someone else survived?)

He heard the crunch of dead leaves, and the wind shifted enough that he could smell the man on the wind. Logan wasn’t all that surprised, and didn’t bother to shift position. Let the man think he had him by surprise. Maybe he deserved that much.

“I knew if I staked this area out long enough, you’d show up,” he said coldly.

“You’re doin’ this on your own time,” Logan said, slowly getting to his feet. He brushed dirt and wet leaves off the knees of his jeans. “No police outfit would okay the stakeout of an officer’s grave for two months.”

“Oh, so you’ve gotten to know police procedures over the years, huh? Do you know your own name now too?”

He turned to face the police detective - was he still a detective? - and glared at him, any pity for him cut away by that sarcastic remark. The cop was still tall and long limbed, but had put on a couple of extra pounds over the years, making his sharp face fill out a bit. His hair had only thinned a little, but was now mostly a color best described as “Magneto silver”. Upon seeing him, the cop’s mud brown eyes widened, and his Dudley Do-Right jaw slackened a tad. “My god,” he gasped. “You haven’t aged a single fucking day.”

Logan scowled and looked away. He knew most people would be flattered to hear that, but it was just another reminder of how inhuman he was. Why didn’t they just point and shriek to alert the others, like in ‘Invasion of The Body Snatchers‘ ? “What happened to her?” He asked, taking in a subtle glance of the cemetery. Alone; it was just him and the cop. And he had a feeling none of this was police sanctioned in the least; this was personal business, not professional.

The cop scoffed. “What happened? What always happened to her. She tried to help some fucking lowlife scumbag, and it blew back in her face. But this time it killed her.”

Logan met his hard stare with one of his own. While he knew he probably was a lowlife scumbag, he didn’t like being called one.

“Two months ago I was in New York. But you know damn well I didn’t do this.”

“Do I?” He took a threatening step forward, his London Fog overcoat slapping at his ankles, but Logan stood his ground and waited. He didn’t like the guy, but he didn’t blame him. Logan barely knew her at all, but it was more than possible this Dudley Do-Right had loved her. “Physically, no, I don’t think you murdered her with your bare hands. But you know as well as I do you are in some way responsible - that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Guilt?” He let the cop grab him by the collar of his leather jacket, but only because he felt kind of sorry for him. His patience and pity was quickly running out, especially seeing close up the hatred in his eyes. “You know this is connected to Stoff, and what happened. So, mystery man, why don’t you tell me what the fuck happened that night, and who the fuck you work for, before I crack your fucking skull open and dump you in the first open grave I see?”