After a moment, though, he impacted hard with the cold ground, enough to rattle every bone in his body. When he looked up, he was slapped in the face with frigid gravel, and had to squint at the bright, glaring light.

No, wait.

He was apparently laying flat out on an arctic tundra, the hard packed snow under him so cold it felt like it was burning his skin even as it melted, and the snow seemed to be blowing in almost vertically, making it hard to open his eyes and see. The sun was up there somewhere beneath a layer of clouds like steel wool, and enough of it got through to bounce off the all encompassing whiteness and create an awful glare that made his eyes water.

He pushed himself up to his knees, and looked around as best he could. He realized he was all alone on a featureless expanse of ice and snow, although he had the definite impression he was being watched. He stood up, fighting the wind, and couldn’t believe how cold he felt. As a vampire - or, in other terms, a dead person - he usually didn’t notice temperatures, unless it was at some terrible extreme. The fact that the cold struck him as so biting and painful meant it probably would have been instantly fatal to a Human being, and many other demons. Since he was already dead, he wasn’t going to freeze to death, nor was frostbite going to be a problem, but he could be a vamp Popsicle if he was here long enough. “I get it, you don’t want me here,” he shouted, his voice torn by the howling wind. “But I need your help.”

For nearly a minute there was no reply, just the wind screaming past him, snow being thrown into his face like shrapnel. Then a voice responded, a single one made up of a dozen different components, one that seemed to sound like it was both in front of him and behind him simultaneously. “You disturb us. We don’t like it.”

“An enemy of yours is trying to break into your territory. Don’t you care?”

The ensuing silence seemed almost hostile. He waited, feeling all his extremities slowly go numb, before the voice/voices said, “Enemies is a Human concept.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “Call them what you want, but Bob doesn’t like it, the Senior Partners don’t like it, and yet no one knows what’s going on. You can’t tell me you have no idea what’s going on. Someone’s trying to breach the dimension, open a Hellmouth. Are you going to tell me you don‘t give a shit?”

More silence, save for the howling winds, and his lips felt like they’d already turned to ice. He moved his fingers, hoping they wouldn’t freeze next, as he waited for a response that seemed eons in the making. “There is a balance. If there is an imbalance, we will know.”

“What the hell does that mean?” That was essentially no answer at all, and they all knew it.

The wind came up harder than before, and hit him like a tractor trailer to the chest. He went flying through the air, suddenly hit wood, and went slamming through the door, coming to a sudden stop against the wall of the hallway. A vertebrae hurt, and he wondered if he cracked it as he slid down to the floor.

Bob was standing over him, looking down with a slight grimace. “So, I take it things didn’t go well?”

He glared hot, screaming death up at him. “Gee, what gave it away?”

In spite of his general dislike of all things PTB, he let Bob help him back up to his feet. Angel noticed, with a bit of a start, that there was no longer any door across from them - it was now a solid wall with a couple of torn band posters on it. Where the fuck had the door gone, and better yet, where had it come from?

“So they won’t help,” Bob sighed. It wasn’t a question.

“All they said was “if there’s an imbalance, we will know”. “

That made Bob frown, his brow furrowing in consternation. “Bollocks.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means they won’t do anything unless the portal’s open, and even then they’ll only do their usual passive-aggressive bullshit of maneuvering people and other things into place to rectify it.” He threw up his hands in disgust. “They’ve washed their hands of it.”

“Great.” So all that pain and trouble was for nothing. He worked his neck from side to side, trying to work out the kinks in his neck and back from impact, and wondered what his next step should be.

If there was a next step. Frankly, at this point, he didn’t think there was. Maybe they were just going to have to wait for the shit to hit the fan, and then try and deal with the aftermath.

Damn it - this was seriously fucked up.

2

He and Faith spent the last two nights she had in Vancouver dusting vampires, which seemed to make her ecstatically happy, and also made her forget to continue quizzing him on what was up with him. He was still sorry to see her go, and told her to take care of herself quite sincerely - being a Slayer meant she was tougher than most, but it didn’t make her indestructible.

He had a key to her apartment, and she was fine with him staying there on his own, but he didn’t really want to do that. It was her space, and he wasn’t going to loiter. He went back to it to get his stuff - such as it was - and maybe catch a nap before heading to Toronto. Faith always said slaying made her horny and hungry, so it was partially his fault. Speaking of which, he was pretty sure he needed to get rid of all those pizza boxes before he left, otherwise they might rot and make a hellacious stink by the time she got back.

He laid on their bed, staring up at the ceiling and watching the patterns sunlight made on it, and wondered what was wrong with him. Part of him just wanted to go to Lafayette’s office and kick him out his fucking window for lying to him, and yet another part of him was weary, and almost didn’t care. He kind of knew all along that the Organization was setting him up to take on Black Fire, didn’t he? It seemed too coincidental that the leader was Keogh, and they sent him after him, one of the few mutants who could survive his ability to blow parts of people up. But he also knew that Keogh was a great enough threat that he had to take care of him, no matter if the Canadian government or the Organization sent him on the mission.

He wondered if he was depressed, or was simply becoming realistic. Maybe he should just stop trying to find out about his past, simply because he never liked a damn thing he found out. He was an assassin, the Organization’s bitch; he was really good at his job. Freaky good; like maybe they only had to mindfuck him up to a certain point. Like maybe some people were simply born to destroy, born to kill. When he had a life - those rare times - it always seemed to devolve to violence. He had two wives that he knew of, and both had been murdered - one presumably by Stryker, the other by her own family. He had a kid too, as hard as that was to believe, and he was also murdered.

Maybe it was karma. Maybe he’d caused so much pain in his life that it had to boomerang, and he would feel it until he paid in full. He had no idea when that would be.

Could he be so chickenshit to Marc though? Could he tell him point blank that he was simply done finding out about his past because he wasn’t sure he could take much more? He thought Marc might understand, but Logan wasn’t perfectly sure he understood.

Lafayette was a liar. He could make him pay for that much, for using and manipulating him. But beyond that, he didn’t know if he wanted anything else from him.

****

Colonel Peter Lafayette was getting ready to leave, tidying up his desk and shrugging on his coat, when his telephone rang. He had no intention of picking it up - it had been a long day, and he just wanted to get home and have a glass of wine, throw a steak on the grill - until he saw the line it was coming in on. It was the special line, one little used, and when used it was only by the highest ranking people. He had to answer it, no matter what time it was.

With some reluctance, he picked up the receiver, his stomach knotting in anxiety. No news from this line was ever good. “Lafayette.”

“Take a leave of absence,” the voice said. It was male, somewhat deep, and he recognized it enough that identification wasn’t necessary. “Do it now. Leave tonight.”

“What?”

“A mercenary named Marcus Drury has been spotted near the building. He’s known for his anti-Organization activities, and his connection to Logan. We believe this is a bad sign, and you may be in danger.”

He felt like he’d been in punched in the gut, and sat down in his chair before he collapsed. “Me? Why -” But he knew why, didn’t he? He knew more than he’d let on to Logan, and Logan seemed to suspect that. He’d probably just gotten his friend to try and prove it. He groaned and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not guilty here. I didn’t do anything -”

“You know how irrational Wolverine is. That you know something is enough.”

No one understood the whole “need to know” thing better than him; there were just some things people were better off not knowing. It was bad enough that he knew it and had to find a way to sleep at night. But the things blocked out of Wolverine’s record puzzled him to no end; there were many things that couldn’t be considered a national security threat by any means, things that had long ago lost their importance if they ever had any, and yet the Organization made it clear that he learned nothing except what they allowed him to learn. He didn’t understand why, and beyond “security concerns”, they wouldn’t tell him. It didn’t make any sense to him; it seemed just like a bit of needless cruelty.

“Why don’t you just give him something?” Lafayette wondered. “Something minor. Maybe if you gave him something to hold on to it’d back him off -”

“We do not negotiate with his kind. Take a leave, Colonel. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to return.” Then there was nothing but dial tone.

He sighed and dropped the receiver in its cradle. He knew that wasn’t so much a suggestion as an order, but he felt too old for this bullshit, too tired.

He had no choice but to take a leave of absence, he knew that, and he certainly had the time banked up - he hadn’t taken a vacation in two years, nor a sick day in a year and a half. He had loads of personal time he could use.

But what he did after that was up to him, and he wasn’t going to let them dictate that. He’d paid his dues, and he wasn’t going to be ordered around like a grunt.

If he had to die, at least he could do it with a modicum of dignity.

****

He had been waiting so long in the trees that he almost didn’t feel his body anymore.

A spider and possibly an ant had discovered this, and he could feel them crawling on his skin - one up his pant leg, the other across his back - but he ignored them as he ignored the tree limbs hanging down, brushing his face and his hair. His world had narrowed down to a single point, a view of the world through a high-powered rifle sight, and his view was simply a stretch of plain, grey road. He could see the edges crumbling where the cheap construction materials, weather, and time had eaten away at it, and he could see the drainage ditch on the side of the road, overgrown with weeds and nearly hidden from view. A bit of water sparkled in the bottom, and he caught movements of frogs and dragonflies. Life went on here, went on in this small forest, where the hum of insects and chirrups of birds had resumed its cacophony after becoming used to his presence, assuming him now to be just another part on the canopy.

Which is why he liked to stake out targets early, especially in a location like this. An aware man might notice that the birds had gone strangely silent, that there was no scurry rustle in the underbrush, and realize someone was there, someone who had already scared the animals away. It was rare people really paid that much attention, but he knew when the animals were silent that there were men, or had been men - either way, an obvious warning. He didn’t give his targets that kind of signal.

He had no idea how long he’d been in the tree, stretched out across the length of a branch just barely wide enough for the width of his body, and with a perfect view of the road. He was about twenty feet up, which wasn’t that high, but was high enough that it was doubtful anyone would look, and even then, the way he made the lower branch drape down, he wasn’t visible. The only things sticking out of the leaves was the sight and the barrel of the gun, and as black as they were, with the sun behind the clouds, they weren’t visible.

He had no idea how much time had passed. He entered what he liked to call his “Zen zone”, the one where he had no thoughts, did not allow himself the luxury of it, and decided simply that he did not exist; time did not exist; this war did not exist. He was in this state a lot because he swore he could sometimes taste death on the wind, dead people, the taste of them clinging to the back of his throat, and no one ever seemed to know what he was talking about. They were like ghosts only he could see, ones only he knew were there. He wished he didn’t know; he wished he didn’t taste them on the wind.

It made him angry, and anger was no good for a sniper. So back to his Zen zone, where he was the wind whistling through the trees, where he was the branch the insects crawled upon, where the world ceased to exist beyond the small circle of the rifle sight.

He heard the whine of the motorcycle; and it was a bit more of a whine, not quite a rumble, and it was far away, but growing closer every second. There was little traffic on this road ever; the only other one today had been a German military truck, which combed the area earlier, the soldiers going through the forest on foot, as quiet as rabid water buffalos. They walked right beneath him several times, one paused to light a cigarette right beneath his branch. But he was the wind, he was the sky, and they never noticed him.

It occurred to him that, had he not had a mission, he could have killed them all quite easily. Fuck their numbers, their guns, their grenades. He would have torn most of them to pieces before they realized they were under attack, and he would have taken a grim pleasure in adding their number to the dead on the wind. No, it wouldn’t make up for anything, it probably wasn’t even close to justice, but sometimes revenge was the closest thing you could get, and he could be the vessels for those ghosts, if only because he was the only one who knew they were there.

The soldiers had been advance scouts for this man on the motorcycle, this man who liked to get away from his detachment and ride the back roads at tremendous speeds, free of his compliment of bodyguards. He had a little bit in the countryside, a mistress who was someone else’s wife, and her location was too exposed for a hit. But here, on this road, speeding to his assignation, he was a perfect target, with the sole hitch - he never slowed down. He’d be going by at almost sixty miles per hour, and no matter what he tipped in the road, he’d simply drive off road around it.

It was a hard target, a hard hit, and the American who heard about it just stared at him. “You’re saying you’re good enough to make that shot? If you miss …”

“I won’t miss,” he replied, glaring back at him.

And he knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t him now; he was nothing, he didn’t exist. He was all vision and reflex, so when the bike verged on entering his limited circle of sight, he waited a beat before squeezing the trigger.

The driver was almost out of the circle of vision when he saw his head snap around like he’d been hit by an invisible fist, and something flew out the side of his head as he fell off the bike, the motorcycle slewing around and turning end over end until it splashed in the ditch, the rear wheel up and still spinning. The man was splayed out on the side of the road, not moving, liquid dark as oil spilling out of his broken head, and he felt no need to go check - clearly, he had hit the target, and that wound was not survivable; he was relatively sure that would have killed him as well.

He moved, sliding out of the tree, startling the things that hadn’t been shocked into movement and silence by the gunshot. As he began to move quickly and quietly through the forest, he started to disassemble the German military rifle he’d used in the hit. There was nothing like planting seeds of doubt, fostering paranoia - even allies could easily be put at each other’s throat.

He cast bits of it around as he fled, flinging it far from his path, and he paused at a small stream to wash his hands before following the water to throw off any dogs they might bring around (a long shot at best, but you could never be too careful). Rinsing his hands in the cold, clear water, Logan saw his reflection staring back at him, broken by ripples and drops. His eyes were hollow, staring at himself like he was still nothing, like he still didn’t exist, and he wondered if that was actually true.

Logan woke up, and stared at the streaks of yellowed, later afternoon light painted across the ceiling.

Was that a memory, a dream, or both? What happened when you didn’t know?

He didn’t know if he should be fearful or relieved.

3

It was a sign of how desperate they were that when Bob admitted that “Watching L.A. Confidential last night gave me an idea”, Angel still didn’t dismiss it out of hand.

Rather than teleport them where he wanted to go, they walked in the sewer, so Bob could explain his plan. He started off with facts he already knew: no Hellmouth could be opened from the Earth side subtly. There was lots of blood, lots of pain, lots of ritual - it was hard to miss. But opening a Hellmouth from the other side, from another dimension, would be different.

If the being doing it could have opened it all at once, he would have already done so, so Bob figured he was opening it slowly, and as such, there should be some effects they could trace. “Think of it as living in a deep underground cavern,” Bob said, making lots of pointless gestures with his hands. “If someone starts drilling from above, you probably won’t notice it right away, but then maybe you’ll start feeling vibrations, and dirt will start saltin’ down on you, and you’ll get the sense something’s wonky, even if you don’t know what or why until the drill bit bursts through your ceiling and impales you.”

That was a colorful analogy. But once he sifted through it, it almost made a kind of sense. “What you’re saying is that even if we can’t detect the rift, we should be able to find it by … some odd effect around it.”

“Bingo. I’d give you a stuffed koala, but you wouldn’t appreciate it.”

Angel glared at his back, and briefly considered smacking him in the back of the head. “God you’re weird.”

Bob shrugged, and looked over his shoulder at him, flashing him his shit eating grin. “Even the weird need a god, Angel.”

He couldn’t argue with that - okay, maybe he could, but it seemed like a waste of time - so he stuck to the topic at hand. “What effects are we looking for?”

Bob rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, see …I’m not sure.”

Why couldn’t he have guessed that? Angel threw up his hands. “Wonderful. And what the hell does L.A. Confidential have to do with any of this?”

“Oh, see, there I have an explanation. We’re going to the cops.”

Angel grabbed his arm and stopped him, swinging Bob around to face him. “We’re what? Why?”

Bob eased his arm out of his grip, his expression unchanging. Angel was convinced that Bob could be up to his neck in lava, and he’d still look annoyingly nonchalant. “I’m not sure what the weird effects will be - it could range from dogs suddenly meowing and water going down the drain in the opposite direction to a full blown murder spree by a guy wearing a dance belt and a snorkel, but no matter what it is, people will probably call the cops to complain about it, ‘cause that’s what normal people do. Something weird happens, they bitch to the coppers, even if they can’t do anything about it; they just want their complaints noted.”

Oddly enough, that made a certain kind of sense. Any time Bob made sense, it was a scary thing. “This is L.A., home of Wolfram and Hart and one of the largest demon populations outside of the former Sunnydale. Their reports of weirdness are probably voluminous, Bob, you must know that.”

“Yeah, but we’re looking for a large volume of recent reports in a single area. That should narrow things down a bit.”

That made him scoff. “That’s still going to take hours.”

“No, it won’t.” Bob smiled in a very unsettling way. “What I ask for I get. You keep forgetting that.”

Angel stared at him in disbelief. “You can’t seriously think you’ll enthrall the entire LAPD.”

That disturbing, sly smile remained firmly affixed to his face. “Can, will. You should know better than that by now, Angel.”

He managed to force out a very realistic sigh. “So why the hell am I here?”

“Because there’s lots of ground to cover, you have good instincts, and I’m not sure you’d believe that I didn’t hurt anyone if you didn’t witness it for yourself.”

Although he scowled at him, certain Bob was blowing sunshine up his skirt, he decided to accept it. After all, what else could he do?

There was a manhole cover in an alley just beyond the police station, which is where they came up to the surface, and luckily the sun had gone down, so Angel could join him.

He followed Bob into the police station, a drab and somewhat intimidating industrial looking building, and it was clear the joint was jumping, with a whole section of perps in chairs and benches (some handcuffed), awaiting fingerprinting, interviews with a detective, or some other police procedure. An obviously drunk man was having a conversation with the floor, and another man who appeared to be a classic skinhead was shouting racial epithets at everyone in his range of vision, while the desk sergeant shouted at him to “shut his piehole”. “Freeze,” Bob announced, and everyone stopped what they were doing; even the skinhead had his mouth frozen in a half open position that could have been a curse or a scream. Bob leaned down to look at him, and said, “You’re an idiot, you know? Grow up.”

He then straightened and went to the desk sergeant, who was frozen with one foot raised as he walked between his desk and the coffee maker. “Okay, talk to me. You’ve been getting reports of several weird incidents. Where from, and for how long?”

The cop unfroze, blinked as if confused, and then became totally enrapt in Bob’s gaze. He was a stocky Hispanic man with thinning hair and a pencil thin mustache that would have made John Waters envious. “We’ve had a lot of strange incident reports come in. From Sunset, Resida, West Hollywood, Brentwood, Sepulveda -”

Bob cocked his head to the side. “Brentwood? Now that doesn’t belong on the list. What’s been happening in Brentwood?”

What did he mean it didn’t belong on the list? Did Bob have a list of where weird shit was supposed to be? Actually, it wouldn’t surprise him if he did.

The cop, whose name was apparently Sanchez, just shrugged. “Lots of missing persons reports came in, but it turned out almost everyone reported missing was still there, just not answerin’ their phone or going out. We’ve also had a lot of pets reported missing, some people complaining about people or animals going through their garbage, car alarms going off for no reason, muddy water coming out of the taps -”

“Where?”

“Well, it’s all within a couple of miles -”

“Narrow it down. Does there seem to be a focal point? One place where most of the strange incidents are concentrated in or around?”

The cop clearly thought about it, scratching his head even as he remained in Bob’s unwavering psychic grip. Now the utter silence of the place was starting to get to Angel, making his flesh crawl. Even the phones weren’t ringing - how had Bob managed that? “Maybe the Sun Plaza Apartments - that’s where most of the people falsely reported missing live.”

“How long has this been going on with Sun Plaza?”

He shrugged. “About a week.”

Bob nodded, and got him to tell him the address. He then stared Sanchez in the eyes, and said, “I’m not here. We never had this conversation.” He then announced to the room at large, “Back to normal.”

It was like a bubble of silence popped, and noise flooded in, an aggressive aural flood of angry detainees, ringing phones, talking cops, muttering drunks. Only the skinhead seemed to pause, brow furrowing, and he said to himself, “What the fuck am I doin’?”

So Bob must have made that “grow up” statement an order. Interesting.

Bob grabbed his arm and started pulling him after him out of the precinct house, as Sanchez blinked rapidly and looked around in confusion, as if he’d forgotten what he’d been doing. Angel almost felt bad for him.

“Did you freeze time?” Angel asked, as that was the only way that he could have stopped the phones.

“Just a little,” Bob replied.

Angel yanked his arm free as soon as they were outside, and Bob turned to face him. “Wait a minute. Do you really think this place in Brentwood is the location of our Hellmouth?”

“I think it’s our best bet. See, whoever’s doing it, he’s gotta know he’ll need a bite to eat as soon as he’s through. Dimensional travel is a good way to build an appetite - believe me, I know. It’s the only time I’d even consider eating vegemite.”

Suddenly Angel was longing for the surreal sense of time freezing around him. “A bite to eat? You mean …”

He nodded. “The people are food. I don’t know if he’ll actually snack on them physically, or just suck their souls out through their ears, but it’s safe to say their being groomed for their eventual status as entrees. Actually, cross your fingers that’s groomin’s all that’s been done. Depending on how powerful this guy is, they could already have started becoming snacks.”

Oh shit. He hated fighting demons lords for just this very reason.

“We should really get the others before we check the place out,” Bob continued, his voice deceptively casual. “Maybe I should go get Hel too, you know, just in case we need the extra muscle.”

“You’re expecting a fight.” Not a question.

Bob grimaced, nodding almost imperceptibly. “He’s been working on this for a week our time, maybe more. We have to assume the building’s been infiltrated, the people compromised. And they’re not going to look favorably on a god waltzing in to their area.”

“Maybe you should stay back.”

“Maybe I should. But if he does have proxies in the building, I may be your only shot against them.”

Which was sad but true. Son of a bitch, what was it about Bob and no win situations?

Angel really began to wonder if he should relocate to another city, somewhere where Bob wasn’t.

He suddenly wondered if he’d ever been to Albuquerque.