Old Ways, New Ways
The slender blonde shouldered her bag and stepped out onto the platform. Her heart raced. She took a few steps to get out of the welling push of people exiting the train, then she started walking. She passed some long benches, taking in the roar of sound, the mass of endless echoes. Then she saw him, walking straight for her, a short man moving with purpose against the crowd.
She didn't realize she was holding her breath. He strode up to her, hair exploding from his jowls, a cowboy hat jammed down on the free sweeping tufts of hair that fanned around his head. He wore flannel, jeans, cowboy boots, and a canvas windbreaker. He was not handsome, or particularly ugly.
"Hello, darlin," he said with a cockeyed grin that always showed off one of his ferocious canines. "How's my Lisa." He opened his arms, and she gave him a quick squeeze of a hug. He was always startlingly hard and hot; his body was one wiry muscle. She let go and put her arms on his shoulders; just slightly taller than he was, she looked into his eyes with a smile. He sniffed her, nose to one side of her face. Simple habit.
"Hello, dad," she said affectionately. "It's been too long."
He shrugged. "Your call. You have a good Thanksgiving?"
"Sure," she sighed. She glanced around. "Let's get out of here."
He nodded, took her hand, and started threading through the crowd. His hand was solid; the bones immobile, the muscle compacted, the flesh above it hard.
They left the train station and crunched through the light snow, strolling towards the parking lot. He tugged a cigar out, tore the tip off with his teeth, and snapped his lighter open. His features looked cavernous in the faint red glow of the flickering lighter. A strange, contemplative indecision lurked in his expression as he puffed on the cigar once, then the lighter snapped shut.
Lisa smiled at him, almost too cheerful as he looked her over. Then they reached his truck.
He opened the rusted door to his ancient green pickup; it groaned in protest. He hopped in. She waited for him to unlock it, then saw it was not locked. She clambered in beside him. "Aren't you the trusting sort," she said.
He barked a laugh. "Anybody wants to steal my truck can. If they just vandalize it, no two bit metal bar in the door'll stop that." He fired up the truck, and they drove through the freshly plowed streets towards his apartment.
xXx
Snow.
When he was a kid, Peter had thought snow was the most beautiful thing in the world. Now he knew it for certain. He held perfectly still, clinging to the side of the skyscraper. His senses soaked in his surroundings; he felt the flakes stacked against the web mesh of his body suit. He tasted and examined the sifting ice from the sky, he felt the drafts from the street flare up through the sifting snowfall as gravity gently drew the flakes down. His painfully sharp senses tracked the movement above, below, and against him. He felt vertigo, as though he was drifting up through the snow.
Magnificent.
He checked the time. His subconscious was much more helpful than it used to be; it counted his heartbeats, did the mathematics accounting for how his pulse sped up or slowed down, and cross referenced with the objective length of a second. He had once spent a full hour internalizing the rhythmic tick of a second hand. He had been at a lecture, and it seemed there was nothing better to do.
Rapid flurries of calculations beneath his thoughts, and he knew he'd been hanging there for about an hour. He smiled. He let his temperature rise to the slight fever his body preferred. Enough snow. Time to take a look around.
A disturbingly lithe gargoyle, he sprang clear of the snow that had gathered on him, falling spreadeagled towards the street a hundred feet below. At thirty feet, he snapped into action. He thought of swinging down the corridor of buildings, and his body moved and hissed webbing out; it sliced through the night like a thing alive, warmed by his body, and snapped into high-rise steel. His arc changed, and he was moving through the night, gravity simply pressing him against his speed. Discarded webbing dissolved like a thin snowdrift in afternoon sun.
xXx
Logan shook out another bedspread for the battered old bed. Lisa smiled. She moved to the window and looked out across the street.
"Hey, Lisa, did you get anything to eat on the train?" Logan asked.
"Train food," she said with a shrug.
"I knew it," he said, a grin threatening to show all of his feral teeth. He rubbed his hands together warmly. "You up for some sausage potato mash for supper?"
"Only if you've got some beer to put in it," she smiled.
"You kiddin? I knew this was gonna be a special occasion," he said, and he stepped around the corner into the kitchen. "Mash, comin right up, darlin. You just sit tight."
She wandered out of the small bedroom as he got busy, opening and shutting the fridge, cabinets, drawers. She looked around the tiny apartment; living room, bathroom, kitchenette, closet. And that was all. She shook her head gently, trying to lose the memories of this place. The memories that made this trip difficult, more difficult than it should be.
She leaned on the doorframe, knowing better than to offer to help him with his culinary masterpiece. He had the knife out, its impact on the cutting board a staccato rapping. In less than a minute he had cut up a disturbing amount of meat and potatoes. He tossed it all in a pan and started cooking. He had taken off his hat, and his hair swept up in all its glory. She smiled and shook her head.
"Laughin at my do, aintcha," he said out of the side of his mouth. He grinned. "Barber's Despair, that's me." He looked at her. "So how's Boston been treating my girl?"
"Good," she said firmly, nodding. "It's good. I'm learning a lot."
"Just want you to know," he said, looking down at the mess that was starting to sizzle, "I'm awful proud of you, darlin."
She smiled, but there was nothing she could say.
xXx
Peter sighed. Getting late. Time to finish his workout and go home. Strip off the mesh, go to sleep, become half-alive, bow to gravity, shrink.
He shook his head. Fine. So get a workout first. He looked down at the interstate. Lots of trucks tonight. He sprang, landing on a semi moving almost eighty. Wind battered him, trying to fling him off. Calculations whirred through his blood as his body made decisions for him, and he let the wind tear him loose. He hissed through the air and trailed his fingers along the top of a semi ten yards back, slowing to a sticky clamp on its trailer. Wind screamed around him like a thing alive and made of fury.
Another spring. Thwap, on a gasoline tanker truck. He sighed, his heart not in it. Enough fun for one evening. A quick bound carried him over the median and onto the side of a cattle car, and from there web carried him up under the overpass. His black mesh made him a shadow among shadows, and he made no more sound than the snow. Carried through the night on thin web, he felt the ever-present voice in the back of his mind.
Being a spider host instead of a gifted human would mean less dating and more mating. You don't HAVE to lead a double life. He grinned as his thoughts strayed towards a certain red-head. Distracted, he let his webs carry him home.
xXx
Lisa pushed the plate back. "Wow. You haven't lost that certain special something you have with mash making," Lisa said. He smiled.
They looked at each other for a minute, and he sighed and took a swig of his beer. "Go ahead," he said.
"You said that when I graduated from college you'd tell me who my biological parents are," she said.
His voice was low and unpleasant. "I said I'd tell you what I know about where you come from. Not who your parents are, I don't know that."
"But you can guess," she said softly. "I'm months away from graduating. I just wanted to make sure you remembered our deal."
"Never forgot a deal in my life, darlin," he said slowly. "You askin me ta break my word? Jump the gun? There some reason I won't be around in a couple months?" He slowly raised his eyes to meet hers, and there was a steadyness in them that was unnerving. An elevated train roared by outside, so they sat speechless, looking at each other. Something of sadness was in his eyes, and she found it difficult to meet his gaze. It went too deep, much too deep. As though he knew more than he was supposed to about why she came. Her blood ran cold.
"Never mind," she said, standing up and fumbling with her napkin. "I'm exhausted. See you tomorrow, Logan."
"Night darlin," he said softly as she closed the door to the bedroom.
xXx
Peter lay under the covers, hands laced behind his head, trying to go to sleep. He noticed things. He noticed the phase and pace of the moon. He noticed there were one hundred and forty six twigs on the branch outside his window. He noticed that about thirty yards away an owl prowled above the dumpsters looking for dinner-seekers to make into dinner. He noticed that his aunt had laundered his bedspread, and used starch. He noticed the tiny humps and imperfections in his mirror. He noticed that he wasn't going to get more than his four hours of sleep unless he got a REAL workout, not just some truck hopping. Damn. If he stayed in bed much longer his brain would be telling him what the thread count of his sheets was. He rolled out of bed and unzipped his backpack.
"Okay, brain," he said as he tugged his calculus book out, "notice the answers to these." Because he knew it would. He was really, really good at seeing patterns and mapping webs of interconnected variables.
"Maybe I should just sleep on the wall," he muttered. He started in on the calculus, but his mind was wandering.
HER planner had a note. Tomorrow, the park, choir concert. We should go. Support her. His spider mind sprang free of calculations and started working through some less helpful ideas. He sighed.
"Spider sense, indeed. Spider id, more like," he muttered. "Need a real workout next time." His silk glands weren't even itching.
Not much later, Peter discovered that the best pillow is an open book.
xXx
Dawn was bright and clear, and Lisa was in the shower vigorously scrubbing. She had been through every de-scenter and deodorizer she could find. She had even scraped her skin and bought new clothes before coming to meet Logan. She wondered if he could still tell. She wondered if her caution alone had told him too much.
When she was in high school, it had been a game they played. She would come home from school, and he would tell her about her day. Happiness and sorrow, fury and amusement were all writ in her scent. He knew what her classrooms smelled like, what she had for lunch. She wondered if it ever drove him to the edge of madness to be so sensitive to smell. She wondered how he lived in a building full of people.
Nothing for it now. She didn't put on perfume because she knew he disliked it. She still worried about scent, though. He was so sharp, too sharp.
She completed her brief makeup ritual and stepped out. Logan was wearing an undershirt and heavy canvas pants. Barefoot, he hunched on the couch over a bowl of Marshmallow Maties. He watched the Fishing Channel.
She poured herself some cereal. "Morning, dad," she said.
"Mornin," he grunted. "I was gonna make some bacon and eggs, but I realized you'd be watchin yer girlish figure." He grinned.
"Some of us have to worry about cholesterol," she sniffed.
He chuckled. "So what are we doin today?"
"Well, it's Saturday," she said. "I was thinking about going to the park."
"Then the park it is," he said. He hopped up and padded noiselessly into the kitchen, rinsing his bowl. He was always fastidious about food leftovers. She imagined she would be too if her sniffer told her exactly what they were doing as they sat there unwashed. She watched him tug his socks and boots on, then a shirt, then the windbreaker.
"You know, it is winter out there," she said dryly.
"Yep." He barked a laugh. "Sure is."
He regarded her for a long moment as she pulled her coat on. "I know why we're goin to the park," he said suddenly. She froze.
"Really?" she said in a very casual voice.
"Yep." He fired up a cigar. "You think you can outmatch yer dad in a snowball fight. Ain't happnen, darlin."
"You haven't seen my new packing technique up close yet, Mister Logan," she said, and something unclenched inside her. She realized deep in her bones how dangerous this game really was.
Then they left. As an afterthought, he locked the door. "I like that tv," he said with a shrug. She laughed.
They hit the street, walking towards the park. Lisa saw a Starbucks across the street. "Hey dad?"
"Yes darlin?"
"Could you get me a triple mocha?" She smiled and batted her eyelashes in her most disarming manner.
He slapped his forehead. "Coffee! Damn, how could I forget coffee? Yer a college girl now," he grinned. He loped across the street, hair in full glory. She watched him go until he was across five lanes of traffic on a busy Saturday morning. She stepped out of sight around the corner and dug her cell phone out of her purse. She swiftly autodialed a number.
"Bryant. This is Lisa. We're headed for the park. We'll go to the gazebo on the east end." She snapped the phone shut and stepped around the corner as Logan trotted back across the street with a steaming cup.
"Service with a smile," she said, taking the cup.
"Warm yer blood while you can," Logan growled. He ruffled her hair, and they headed off down the street. She kept one eye on him, and he seemed a bit distracted; he sniffed, now and then, as though he smelled something he didn't like. She looked at the cars and their exhaust, the dumpsters, the cologne on the people on the street, her own coffee. Impossible. He couldn't guess.
He looked at her sideways, then paid attention to the sidewalk, thrusting his hands into his pockets. Neither of them spoke.
xXx
Peter snapped a shot of an old woman feeding pigeons. Then he strolled down the path, most certainly not heading for the gazebo. He felt stupid. It was a good three hours before the rehearsal started, and then another hour before the performance. And he was out here snapping shots of pigeons.
As he walked, his senses unreeled feelers and tendrils to be carried in the wind every which direction. One of them grasped something; his consciousness didn't know what he sensed, but he didn't like it. Alertness snapped awake in him, subtly changing his face. A woman steered her child away as he stood, rigid, testing the air.
"Like I have anything better to do," his consciousness said as he reeled himself towards the thread.
He moved to the edge of the park and found himself looking at a UPS truck.
"This is it?" he muttered to himself. He focused on it. What was wrong with the UPS truck?
Like knitting needles, his consciousness and his senses worked to build a net of answer to the question. For one, it had doors. For another, it had run flat tires. And judging by the weight on them, it was armored. Peter narrowed his eyes. No banks or businesses near the armored truck. So what gives? He cast his senses, waiting quietly. It didn't take long to pick up the homeless man standing by the trash can with an expensive headset under his stocking cap and the cold metal of a submachine gun under his coat.
He hesitated, torn. Something was obviously about to go down here. But was it his problem?
Even if it wasn't, he could be prepared to watch someone else's problem. He was, after all, a hero. And Mary Jane wasn't scheduled to arrive for a couple hours yet. Damn four hours a night.
He slipped off into an alley and squatted behind a dumpster. In seconds he had slipped out of his clothes. His mesh was a black mat adhered to the skin of his lower back. As he shucked his clothes and slipped the mesh free, he felt himself waking up, unfolding; his body temperature started to rise, his muscles tensed, his sinews loosened. Oh yeah.
He bagged his clothes in web, rolling them with unnatural speed and stowing them behind the dumpster. Then he was skimming up to the roof, wondering if all this was really just an excuse to crawl the wall once again.
xXx
They did not speak to each other as they walked towards the gazebo. He looked at her once. She did not look at him. They stopped in front of the gazebo, and faced each other.
"This aint about snowballs, is it, darlin," he said softly.
"No, Mister Logan, it isn't,' she said.
"Whatever it is you brought me for, it's got you tied in knots," he said.
"More than you know," she agreed, her voice distant. She stepped away.
"What is this all about then?" he asked. "I came here with you because I figure you're in some kind of trouble."
"No trouble," she said clearly. "No trouble at all."
"Talk to me," he said. This was as close to begging as he got.
"I haven't been in Boston, Logan," she murmured.
"So where you been?"
"Saskatchewan," she said softly. She took another step back. "Bryant! Creed!"
Logan's eyes snapped wide open as a shadow loomed from downwind. He spun low, sniffing, to see a vast mountain of muscle rise up out of the snow. From behind him stepped a man in a suit, tie, trench coat, and gloves, his red hair cropped close.
"Hello, Logan," he said. "The Project needs you back."
Logan's eyes locked on Creed; well over six feet, maned in golden curls, solid with hard flesh and muscle and tough hide, wearing a combat jumpsuit. The towering brute stood up straight; still no fat on him. Right. Logan's eyes narrowed, every sense sharpened painfully, and he prepared himself to fight for his life.
"Don't know what you had to do with this, darlin," he growled to Lisa, "but you don't wanna be here when we tussle. Get lost."
"You don't understand," she said.
"No," he agreed, not taking his eyes off of Creed, who stood glistening with snow. "No I don't."
He popped his claws.
With the slithering hiss of unsheathing metal, gleaming blades slid out of the backs of his hands; they steamed with his body heat when exposed to the chill air.
"It doesn't have to be this way, Logan," Bryant said, his Canadian accent heavy. "You can come peacefully and no one will get hurt."
"Until I get back to yer stinkin lab," Logan growled. "No, let's do the hurtin here."
"I'm sorry," Bryant said. Creed grinned.
They were growling; a subaudial ferocity that radiated almost from the bones of the two men that faced off; Creed towered over Logan, confident as a lion facing a wolf. Then, the growl was no longer subaudial. It swelled to a roar. Logan met him halfway.
Creed's first slash went wide, and Logan ducked under it. Twisting in the snow, he drove his claws up through the monster's forearm, missing bone. Not missing tendon. With a tearing swallowing sound, Creed's muscles rolled away from his wrist as Logan cut the flesh ropes that held them in place. Quick, Logan slid his claws free, rolling through the snow as Creed's scream of fury silenced the park. Police sirens started in the near distance.
Logan popped up, spinning, but he had forgotten Creed's speed. The monster dropped by him and crushed a blow into the side of his head; Creed's fist was the size of a concrete block and three times as solid, and it was backed by the power of a piledriver. Bone rang off metal, for Logan's skull was not so easily crushed. The small man flew through the air and smashed through the gazebo, ending up somewhere under it.
Threads of tendon trailed from the brutalized muscles in Creed's arm; they gathered strength, and he howled as his muscles began to pull themselves back into place.
Bloody, Logan rose from the wreckage.
Just getting warmed up.
xXx
First he heard a howl unlike anything he'd ever heard before. Then a clang echoed through the park, sounding like a car wreck. Peter sprang across the rooftops until he got a vantage where he could see the blood in the snow.
He saw a monstrous man, slathered with blood and snow, and the crushed gazebo, and the man dragging himself out of it. He saw a blonde and a guy in a trench coat just standing there watching. Every sensible civilian had fled, so he had to assume these two were involved. His whole body tingled in anticipation.
"Hold your horses," he muttered. "Who says we're getting involved?"
Then he saw the three men working their way around the back of the gazebo, out of sight behind the hill. They were toting what his senses immediately identified as plasma weapons.
"Not nice," he muttered, shaking his head. "That's just not very nice."
He dropped from the roof like the shadow of a bird.
xXx
Logan's face was a mass of blood; his windbreaker hung from him in shreds, and his foot pushed out of one of his split boots. He waited, and Creed circled him like a lion trying to eat a porcupine.
"I've forgotten what your skeleton looks like," Creed said slowly, his deep voice welling out of somewhere below his chest. "I want to see it again." He flexed, and claws slid out of his fingertips; thick, black, vicious blades made entirely by his body.
"What," Logan said, "a peep at my skull aint doin it for you?"
Creed sprang, and Logan rolled under him, lashing out at his knee. The blades slid through hide and dragged along the meat of his muscle, scoring his calf. Creed spun to land, facing Logan as the shorter man popped up.
"Yer close to the edge, bub," Logan rasped. "Don't find it. Not here in front of the lady."
"Just don't get it, do ya," grunted Creed. "Show me what you got, shrimp."
"Help me out," Logan rasped. "Hit me again."
Creed slid up to him, and Logan hopped to the side. Creed spun, and Logan darted in to stick his back. There was a whole lot of back, though, and Creed's spin gave extra force to the claws that crushed into Logan's side, effortlessly slicing skin, flesh, muscle, and ringing off his steely ribs. Logan skidded across the snow, then leaped up, gore trailing from his wounds. Creed bared his teeth, and sucked the gob of Logan's flesh off his glittering claws.
"Let's dance," Logan managed, and that was the last his consciousness could manage.
Now. Now it was time to drop the hammer.
Everything went red.
He skimmed across the snow, dancing low. Creed grinned, because now they were a match. His only hope was that Logan would do for him what he just did for Logan. He hadn't been pushed over the edge in far, far too long, and he chafed at the order to bring Logan in alive. Pure foolishness. He would end it here.
Logan sprang, and Creed's speed failed him. Claws punched into his ribs, and the momentum shoved him backward; he had forgotten how heavy Logan was. The claws came out through bone, and in spite of the bursting pain Creed was more worried about his skeleton holding his strength together than he was about dying. Blood slopped into his lungs, coughed out his face to spatter Logan. Then those claws took the tendons on the left side of his throat. He half roared, half sprayed, and hurled Logan from him. Yes. Yes. Now he was close. Something in the back of his mind tried to tell him something. He ignored it.
Creed lashed out at Logan, who caught his wrist in those damned claws, tugging him off balance. The other claws rammed into his face; he felt his left eye go, felt the claw slide through the cartilage of his nose and ring against the back of his skull. The claws slid back out, and Logan spun, taking the flesh and some bone from the top of his head in a furious slash. Logan was frantic and vicious, unstoppable, an elemental thing of fury.
Creed finally crested. All the pain became his friend. He no longer needed to think.
He managed a wet coughing grunt as he loomed over Logan; so quick. He crashed, bearing down with all his strength and weight, and Logan did not get free, or even try. They locked on the ground; Creed groped for joints or neck, Logan squirming to get his claws into Creed's muscle groups.
Lisa stood by Bryant. "Why did I have to be here for this?" she asked, her voice cold.
"You needed to see it," Bryant replied, fascinated by the fight. "We needed to see you see it." He looked over at her, and his eyes were not kind. "You want to be cured, right?"
He looked back at the fight, where Creed's arm went suddenly loose and he popped up as though he was doing a pushup; they saw the glinting tips of the claws punch through the back of his shoulders.
"It isn't over yet," Bryant said.
Creed drove down on the claws and they heard a wet crack as he rammed his wounded head into Logan. The small man tore his claws out, and managed to free himself. He stood, panting, badly torn. Creed, his head sealing but his eyes full of blood, managed to stagger to his feet, arms hanging limp, claw holes squirting as his body desperately tried to seal them. Neither knew any words.
Lisa looked down, startled, as Bryant handed her a peculiar silvered pistol. "Shoot Logan," Bryant said, his voice unemotional. He turned his cold eyes on her. "Take him alive."
"He'll be killed by Creed!" she said
"He won't," Bryant snapped. "Prove yourself."
She steeled herself and raised the pistol. It was warm, and it thrummed in her hand. She looked at Logan, and for a moment he looked over at her; she wasn't sure what level of understanding he had at that moment. She couldn't bear to wonder.
She pulled the trigger.
A hot line of living flame leaped from the gun and lashed into Logan. Pierced, he flew back as the gazebo behind him burst into flame. He collapsed, smoking. Creed threw back his head and howled.
"Wells! Now!" Bryant shouted. Police cars were streaming into the park, headed towards the battle. "NOW!" Bryant repeated loudly.
"Don't think they heard you," came a chipper voice from behind him. He spun to see a shadow, lithe and stringy, with huge pale eyes. Over his shoulder was a webbed bundle with three plasma rifles peeking out. "Your heavily armed friends are taking a nap."
"Who are you?" Bryant said, at a loss.
"I'm with the NRA, and we were wondering if we could get some sweet deals on your merchandise," the shadow pattered. "You know, less Charleton Heston and more Brad Pitt."
Bryant whipped out a pistol, but before he could level it at the shadowman it had left his hand and entered the web bag. "Let me guess," the shadow said as it pushed him, not gently, sending him sailing across the snow: "somebody told you yew wuz fast."
There was a peculiar unzipping sound, and Lisa's gun whipped free of her hand and was in the bag. Then the bag hit the ground, and the shadow figure leaped towards where Creed bent over Logan.
"Bad dog no biskit," the shadowed man prattled as he came in low. "No chewy snack."
Creed, even in his excited state, had no difficulty adjusting. With a throaty snarl he lashed out. The shadow man slid to his side in the snow, less than an inch below the hissing swipe. "Whoah, Cujo," he said.
He sprang as his mouth kept running, his foot touching Creed's elbow on the way up. Then he was on top of the hulking shoulders.
"Holy joints!" he said as he squatted, slamming a fist down on the top of each shoulder. There was a shifting crunch, and blood sprayed out of Creed's punctured arms. The shadowy figure hopped free, landing twenty feet away as Creed dropped to one knee, screaming.
Police cars pulled up, and cops started running for the flaming gazebo. The shadowy man patted out the fire on Logan, then scooped him up, scuttling up the side of a nearby building with the crippled man over his shoulder.
Bryant snarled with rage. "Come on," he said to Lisa, and they turned and ran.
By the time the police arrived, all that was left at the site was a lot of blood, a flaming gazebo, and a net bag full of plasma weapons.
A trail of blood led into the city, then thinned to nothing.
xXx
He was moving fast, building to building. Finally he crouched on First Bank and Trust. Mercy Hospital was below. He adjusted his passenger, and prepared to drop. There might still be time to save his life.
"Put me down," came a hard, muffled voice. Peter slung his passenger to the ground and took a step back. And gasped.
The man laying there had unbroken skin on his head, and his wounds were much less grievous in this light than they had been in the park.
"Who the hell are you?" growled the wounded man.
"A good Samaritan who happened to see you turned into a wet sack of lasagna by Furs R Us in the park. I thought you could use some professional help. Medical, I mean."
The wounded man gave him a long look. "You don't really ever shut up, do you," he said.
The shadow shrugged. "You gotta get hit to let go. I just keep talking, and my instinct takes care of the rest. Nothing more dangerous than stopping to think. Gotta keep the mind busy."
"I guess I can see yer point," the wounded man said. "My name's Logan."
The shadow hesitated. "Good to meet you, Logan."
"Whaddya want me ta call you? Tinkerbell?"
"Has a nice ring to it, but let's stick with Peter."
"Peter, right. Uh, I don't remember so good what happened at the end there at the park. Where's the blonde girl? And where's Creed?"
"The blonde ran off with the guy in the trench coat. Is Creed the big guy?" Logan nodded. "So they call it Creed. I half expected they'd have a monogrammed collar for him, and a little pet sweater. He managed to drag himself off, but I don't think he'll get far."
"He heals faster than I do, Peter," Logan said, shifting position. "He'll be fine. Dammit. Guess I just didn't hit him hard enough."
"How's your burn?" Peter asked.
"Hurts," Logan said softly.
They were quiet for a while. The sun reached the middle of the sky.
"You got a family?" Logan asked.
"Let's not get too personal, okay?" Peter said. "I know this is really a dashing outfit, and you have no idea how comfortable it is, but—"
"You're a college student, you live in a house with an old woman, prob'ly around Second and Bleeker. White male, five foot ten, no drinking, no smoking, not too much meat, really likes potato chips and root beer. Relax. I'm just making conversation."
Peter had nothing to say to that.
Logan gestured uncomfortably at his face. "It's my sniffer. Tells me more'n I want to know sometimes. You've seen me at my worst, and saved my bacon from a fate worse than death. I guess it's hard not to know who you are, that's all."
"Are you going to be okay?" Peter asked, suddenly moved.
Logan looked up at him, a gleam in his eye. "Yeah. I'll be okay. I just got some questions I need answers to."
"You're going to tangle with Creed again?"
"And then some. That joker with him is Bryant, And the blonde is Lisa. We used to be friends, Lisa and me. But Bryant, he was always bad news. Hails from Canada. He holds Creed's leash."
"You think they'll stay in town?"
"Kid, I spent almost twenty years runnin away from them. They've found me. They aint gonna just let me go. I can either start runnin again, or I can get the answers I'm after and settle up between us what aint right."
Peter hesitated again, caught in conflicting emotions. The spider lost. "Need some help?"
Logan looked up at him quickly, squinting against the sun. "You offerin to help me?"
"Well, as fixated as my age group is on scan tron and Gallup polls, in this case I mean to help you if you need it."
"You're a regular hero," Logan said with a grin. Peter was unsettled to see two teeth already knifing back through the gums where they'd been knocked out less than an hour before.
"Let's not get all mushy," Peter said. "If Creed's sniffer is as good as yours, it's in my best interests."
Logan smiled. "Sure, kid."
"Why'd I even bother telling you my name?" Peter wondered aloud.
"Cause yer such a hero," Logan grinned. "Help me up. I got a bolthole in case of emergency, which this is. You go on home, and stay sharp. Creed likes to hit the people you care about. If Bryant gets control of him again, he'll be coming after me. Otherwise, he'll look for either of us. He'll figure if he finds you he can squeeze my wherebouts out of you, and you won't like it." He stopped, and looked hard at Peter.
"Thank you. I mean it. I'll pay you back someday."
Peter just nodded; there was nothing to say to that. Then, he hopped off the roof and was gone.
Logan dragged himself to his feet and looked up at the sky. Then he nodded. No need for vows. There was only one thing to be done, one mystery to unravel. Then, he would know what to do.
The city swallowed them up, and the helicopters that crisscrossed its skies saw nothing.