The Guardian was still on his back, and now had both arms wrapped around his head, obscuring his face. He whimpered something, but his right arm was covering his mouth so that whatever he said was too muffled for Lita to hear.

"Could you repeat that?" she asked, feeling lost.

He removed his arm from his mouth, but left the other over his eyes. "Kill the fucking light!" His voice carried a twinge of pain and desperation to it.

Lita guessed that he must have a bad a headache, and, having suffered enough hangovers to sympathize, she quickly complied.

After closing all the tent flaps (and causing it to become uncomfortable once more), she turned back to her guest and said, "It's dark now." She took a seat back in her chair and watched to see what he would do.

The Guardian lowered his arms, breathing hard from the exertion of lifting them. Cautiously he opened one eye, then the other. His eyes were dark, wide, and slightly crazed looking, but otherwise perfectly normal. He stared unblinkingly, first at Lita, and then at the other details of the tiny, shabby space they shared as though he could see through them into the world outside.

Lita took that as her cue. "I suppose you'll want to know who I am, and where we are?"

"Lita Halford," he answered immediately. He then closed his eyes and tilted his head as though listening to something faint and far away. "And this is... Bladehenge. Love what you've done with the place, by the way." He reopened his eyes to smirk at her before tiredly resting his head.

She tried to hide her shock. After all, Eddie did tell her about his strange powers, and the Kill Master kept insisting that he was something more than human, so she really couldn't say this was unexpected.

She thought he might have fallen back to sleep, but after a moment of labored breathing, the Guardian swallowed and said, "I forgot how fucking loud it gets up here... Eddie's behind this, right?" He looked at her, and waited for her to nod in confirmation. "Bastard can't follow simple instructions."

Though he didn't seem to say it with any malice, Lita took offense to that. "He saved your life," she clipped, "and he got you free. So-"

"Free?" he cut her off with a bitter chuckle. "Darling, just because I'm out of that... hole, does not mean I'm free. The Gods will never..." He trailed off as he noticed the pile of things on the table, specifically the silvery bracelets.

Slowly he inspected his wrists where they used to be, even rubbing one as though it ached. He lay there unmoving for a long time, his eyes wide and glazed, until suddenly he forced himself into a siting position despite the fact that he lacked all energy to do so. "On my back, is something there? A mark maybe?"

She had to lean a little to one side to see it at that angle and the dimness of the room made it hard to make out, but there was something printed on the grey fabric. "There's a cross," she said. It was the same one that was on his robe, downsized to fit the smaller shirt.

"What color are the lines?" he asked urgently.

"White." And she suspected that they may also be reflective.

He let out the breath he was holding and lay back down, covering his face as he muttered, "Holy shit... holy shit... holy shit..." over and over. He was breathing too fast and hard; almost hyperventilating.

"Are you alright?" Lita asked.

"I... shit. Maybe. I don't know." When he finally removed his hands, his eyes were glassy as though he was close to tears. "Where's my robe?" he asked weakly.

Lita raised an eyebrow at the sudden change of subject, but answered, "It's in the laundry pile."

"Oh... why?"

"Because it smelt like you rolled in a fire-pit that was put out with rotten eggs," she said as she crossed her arms.

He laughed. "It's called 'brimstone,' and I'd love to see you live in a fucking magma chamber for an eon or two and not come out smelling like that." He smiled at her, and his voice was good natured, probably trying to put her at ease... and failing.

She looked him up and down the way a cook might inspect a cut of meat they suspected had gone bad. "An eon?" He must be exaggerating... "How long were you down there?"

With a tired smirk he said, "For longer than humanity has existed." The last of his stamina was beginning to wane, so he closed his eyes and allowed his body to relax.

Lita wasn't done, however. "Than what does that make you, some sort of demon we've never seen before?"

"Do I look like a fucking demon?" He mustered up enough strength to shoot her an offended glare, but quickly gave up. "You can't get much more opposite to a demon then what I am."

"And what is that?" Lita sat forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.

The Guardian stared vacantly at the ceiling of stretched hide, thinking hard about his answer. Finally he sighed and said, "Fucking tired."

He rolled over to face the wall the wall so that all Lita could see of him was his back.

As she watched his breathing even out, the young leader heaved a sigh of her own.

"Will you hold still already!" said Ophelia as she tried to patch up the Thunderhog's driver.

"It's just a flesh-wound, damn it!" he countered with all persuasion of a petulant child. "I've gotta tend to the rest of the injured."

Ophelia put her hands on his shoulders and forced him to sit back down in the back of his bike. "No one's about to drop dead except for you if you try to play in this condition."

"I'm fine!"

Of course, he wasn't. There were numerous injuries from the battle amongst the patrol, but few were as bad as the many deep cuts the biker got from his bout with the Soul Kissers. Under his direction Ophelia had managed to stop most of the bleeding. However, more serious problems were going to develop very fast.

Not far away, Eddie was holding an informal debriefing with some of the uninjured soldiers. One of the Headbangers was just finishing his account. "...and it's weird, you know? Like they were more interested in catching Mike over there," he gestured towards the biker, "than fighting the rest of us."

"Yeah I noticed," said Eddie. "They didn't mention anything about that by any chance?" When the troops all either shrugged or shook their heads he muttered, "Of course not. That'd be too convenient."

Making a quick decision he raised his voice over the general chatter of the area. "Alright men... and ladies," the Razor Girls gave him a thumbs up, "Start packing up your shit and get ready to move out in ten. We're going back to Bladehenge. You," he pointed at the lone bouncer of the group. "You're with me."

Ophelia met him by the Deuce as he started to rummage through the trunk. "Eddie, are you planning to have us all walk back?"

"Yep," he answered. "I know I had rope in here somewhere..."

"Eddie," frowned Ophelia, "You know that demons coat their weapons in festering sludge right?"

"Uh-huh." He continued to search for the elusive rope.

She whispered the next part. "If we don't get the injured to a doctor soon, we're going to have to start chopping of limbs, and our medic is officially out of commission."

"Gotcha!" Eddie stood up, triumphantly brandishing the rope. He then looked at his girlfriend and said, "We'd better hurry then."

She nodded. "I thought maybe you could go on ahead. You could get to Bladehenge and get back with more Thunderhog's in a quarter of the time it'll take the rest of us to walk back on foot."

"Great idea, but no can do." He gestured for her and the Bouncer to follow him as he headed to the Thunderhog. "That Warfather was too clever to just give up like this. I'm willing to bet he's watching us right now, waiting to attack the moment I leave."

"Really?" the Bouncer asked nervously.

Eddie nodded and continued, "I'm not about to take that chance. So, we all walk back together."

"Hey! What do ya think you're doing?" protested the biker when Eddie started tying his rope onto the handlebars.

"Relax," countered the roadie. "You can't drive in that condition and anyone else around here would run this thing off the road. That's why 'tiny' here gets to play chariot."

The Bouncer gave a hopeful smile and said, "Chariot? That sounds like fun!"

An hour later he was grumbling, "This is totally not fun!" as he trudged forward, the rope tied around his waist so that he could drag a Thunderhog laden with several people who were too injured to walk. "Why can't you pull this thing with your car, Eddie?"

"Because," said Eddie from the driver's seat of the Deuce, "If the demons attack again, I'll need the Druid Plow to... you know... plow me some druids." He had a passenger of his own - a Headbanger with a broken leg - and the overexcited young man made a face at the Bouncer and his cargo that earned several dirty looks.

It was nightfall by the time they made it back to Bladehenge, but finally they came into sight of the back entrance. As the hot, tired group breathed a collective sigh of relief and picked up their pace, Eddie slowed his car to a halt, killed the engines, and stared up at the night sky. "Do you hear that?"

Ophelia, who was walking next to the car, said, "Hear what?"

"I don't know. It's deep. Kinda sounds like a whale."

His girlfriend gave him a funny look. "Like a scream?"

"No," said Eddie. "The sea mammal."

Eddie's passenger wrinkled up his nose in confusion. "What's a sea mammal?"

"Never mind." Eddie started up the car once more, and headed into town with a renewed sense of urgency.

He got out amidst a scene of fuss and confusion as the wounded were scattered about to be cared for and countless versions of the same story were being relayed to concerned friends. Still, he didn't notice the chaos.

"It's getting louder," Eddie told Ophelia.

Starting to get concerned, she said, "I don't hear anything."

He noticed Mangus excitedly approaching, and before the engineer could even reach them, Eddie said, "Go get Lita, and tell her to meet me in the center of town. I think something's wrong."

As he got closer to the middle of Bladehenge, the sound got louder and a sudden, irrational sense of dread clutched at his heart. In response, his demonic blood began to boil, and with a thrilling rush of power his skin flushed to a deep red and his great, leathery wings unfurled.

"Eddie?" Ophelia cried out in alarm.

But he wasn't paying attention to her. Instead he zeroed in on the large, dark mass that was crouched on the cross-guard of the town's titular giant blade.