Twenty Seven
1 October, 2001, Los Angeles
Alexius stiffened. His prey was near. He could taste it in the air. Both finely tuned instinct and divine revelation pointed to this place. But his prey was cleverer than Alex had anticipated. Cloaked now in the guise of someone who was untouchable, the demon soul-trader had found the perfect place to hide. A place Alex knew he could not bring himself to enter. Logan, the ungodly, would have to either go in and drive the demon out, or else do the actual killing himself.
Alexius V crossed himself as he moved away from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. He pulled the bill of his cap lower on his forehead to conceal the mark, then stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets.
The knight incognito gave less than a glance to the demon who passed him as he trudged away. There was no cause to give more than a glance: this demon was neither the soul-trader of interest, nor even recognizable as a demon at all. The second demon merely touched the brim of his fedora as the knight passed him by.
Angel nodded distantly. “If you have to go, you have to go.” Honestly, the vampire wasn’t too sorry to see the conjurer leave. In the past few months he’d become unstable, not to mention unreliable. Though, the vampire had to admit, the help he did give was certainly useful.
“It may be for as long as a few months,” Logan advised. He had asked himself why he’d bothered to come here many times. Why not just leave? “I’ll try to get in contact with you as soon as I reach Tibet.” The answer was simple. He didn’t just leave because as screwed up as his social life was, he actually valued his friends. Granted, there weren’t many. They all seemed to be held in varying degrees of disdain in his mind.
His ‘friend’ from Central Park, with whom he’d felt some kind of bond for the first time in a long while... well, as it turned out, Logan had hated him more than life itself. More even than Spike, he now realized. And now the Werlech demon was dead.
Whistler, his other ‘friend,’ was something to be avoided, like taking a foul medicine for something you were positive you didn’t have. He felt no love for the simple, wisdom-peddling demon.
Alexius, the lunatic knight from a clan of lunatic knights, held back ten centuries in the name of some holy quest. This ‘friend’ with whom he’d formed an alliance of sorts, well... once he’d rid them of the soul-trader, he’d quickly find himself on the wrong end of a transmogrification spell, especially with his less than chivalrous attitude towards the Key.
Only Angel, his fair-weather friend, had been anything like respectful to him. Anything like a real friend might be. Not even Haargan, considering all his buried contempt for the conjurer, was closer to Logan than Angel had become. Could it be that only once you’ve experienced soullessness a bond could form? Is that what he felt for this vampire?
Perish the thought, he told himself sardonically, you care for nothing and for no one but yourself. You’re a cynical, sadistic son of a bitch.
“Look, Angel,” Logan said with still a trace of the sarcasm, “I don’t know anything about you and I don’t as what you do with the spells I give you. You don’t know me or ask me where I go when I leave. That’s a working relationship I would call efficient, and if I may say so—” he offered a hand, “it’s been a pleasure working with you.”
Angel made a small smile, tainted, slightly with both uncertainty and amusement. “Uh... yeah, sure. Delight.” He took the conjurer’s hand and at first expected a trick of some kind, but there was only much-unused sincerity in the specter’s eyes.
Logan made a small nod. “I’ll call you when I get to Tibet.” And he turned to go, throwing his duffle bag over his shoulder.
“Bring me back some enlightenment,” Angel called after him.
3 October, 2001, Chamdo, Tibet
Loki wasn’t sure how he knew —he hadn’t consulted the Now Sphere in his duffle bag,— but somehow he knew where to find him.
The conjurer tossed his duffle bag into the sand and sat down next to it. Next to the demon. Somehow, the demon had managed to secure a corn-dog in this little city. Whistler munched on it now without saying a word. They both looked out into the muddy Mekong.
“Did you find what you were looking for in the New World?” the demon asked at last, crumpling up his napkin, as he always did, and stuffing it into his pocket. When Loki said nothing, Whistler continued. “You know, they say you can tell a lot about a man by where he takes his vacations.”
Logan looked down from the river to gaze carelessly at his hands. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. See, some guys’ll take the crew to Hawaii. Others— take `em to Paris or Rome. Some guys’ll find a nice big river —right close to where they live— and just kayak the hell out of it.”
Logan nodded thoughtfully. “Somehow, I can’t picture you in a kayak.” He shook his head once, never looking at the man beside him.
Whistler took a breath and slowly let it out. “I’m the fourth kind of guy,” he said easily. To Logan’s inquiring look he elaborated. “I’m too busy to take a vacation. Maybe next year.”
“So which kind am I?” Logan drove the conversation to its logical conclusion. He has nothing riding on the answer; he gave very little heed anymore to this demon’s advice.
Whistler thought about this carefully, appearing to consider the clouds at the horizon. “You’re the guy,” he began thoughtfully, “who wastes all his vacation time trying to hunt down regretfully useful vampires, then complains that he’s never seen a sunrise; never gotten a tan; never had ice cream.”
“I’ve had ice cream,” Logan answered evenly. “Back in the summer of eighty seven.” The image was vague, he knew it, somehow, he needed to prove it to himself. “It was butterscotch ripple... and it dripped.” That part of him— that person, was slipping away, the memories feeling distinctly borrowed; as if they belonged to someone else altogether.
“That wasn’t you, Loki,” Whistler confirmed, “that was Logan Kilpatrick, husband and father, son and brother, friend of a slayer.”
“Stranger to demons,” Loki said calmly, his implication clear.
“True, true,” Whistler agreed with a small nod.
“And then I met you—” Loki raised an eyebrow, leaned back in the sand and supported himself on his elbows, “—and it all went down hill from there.”
“There is no downhill,” Whistler replied casually, “there is no uphill.” He sighed and went on. “There is no top of the hill or bottom of the hill. In fact, the hill itself is strangely absent. There’s just what happens to you and what you make of it. And sometimes— there’s just you.”
“And you’re denying that there’s anything bigger going on?” Loki demanded, rising from his elbows to glare at his ‘friend.’ “You’d deny that the Powers That Be have designed all of this —planned my every loss, my every kill— to suit their own ends?”
“To suit the end,” Whistler said softly. “And it’s not a plan you or I could even try to comprehend in its completeness and still remain sane.” He paused and relaxed his tone again. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you’re somewhat more familiar, now, with Destiny.”
“You mean, Destiny: the ultimate choice among so many possible futures, or Destiny: that thing which finds newer and better ways to fuck me over, every second Tuesday of the month?”
“I was thinking,” Whistler answered amicably, “Destiny: the only one among us who doesn’t blink.”
“Yeah. I know her,” Loki answered sinking back onto his elbows.
“Well, she has this old highschool sweetheart,” Whistler began, catching Loki off guard, “called Prophecy.”
The conjurer was at first shaken, wondering what else there might be that had been working against him. Then he softened. “I’m not in prophecies,” he answered mildly. “One of the perks of being a specter.”
Whistler almost bit his lip. There was again a moment when he would have spoken — should have spoken, but didn’t. “Oh course,” was all he said.
They sat for a long while, the Mekong ambling past, carrying away things that entered their minds; letting possible futures dissolve.
Finally, as the wind picked up and Whistler noticed Loki hugging his jacket tighter, he stood. “Well, kid,” he said easily, as if their perpetual argument was done, “what do you say we take a stroll down memory lane?”
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