THE CASE OF THE SAVAGE PAST

I'd been called to the morgue. It really wasn't my favorite way to spend an afternoon.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Miss Domino," the coroner said to me. He really didn't sound particularly sincere, but I suppose for him it was just another day at the office.

Then he glanced at his clipboard. The coroner was a skinny and sallow-skinned man, with round-lensed spectacles and short-cropped hair. He was a political appointee, but at least he had a medical degree. The last coroner was the son of a bookie who had an important city councilman deep in his pocket. The closest the old coroner ever came to medical school was when he was treated for gonorrhea.

The body was covered by a sheet, but I was pretty sure I knew who was underneath. The dead man was mountainously big - easily five hundred pounds. He wasn't on the usual morgue table, since the standard equipment couldn't handle a corpse his size. Instead, a slab consisting of concrete blocks and heavy lumber had been stacked together to create a much stronger make-shift table.

"According to this," the coroner continued after making a casual gesture with his clipboard, "the detectives found some mail in the deceased's apartment. The name of your company was on an envelope. Since most of the deceased's known contacts are on the wrong side of the law, we either can't locate them or they're not cooperating. Also, the deceased's fingers were chewed off, so fingerprints aren't a possibility. So we're hoping you could provide us with a formal identification."

Not too long ago, my outfit did a job for the dead man. He paid us in cash as soon as the job was done, but my secretary is the conscientious type, so she sent him a receipt. That must have been what the cops found.

"Let's take a look," I replied grimly. I've seen more than my share of dead people, but I still hate morgues. I wanted to get this over with.

Then the coroner flipped back the sheet that was covering the dead man's face.

There wasn't much of a face left. I'd seen something like that before. Back when I worked for the government, I ran into a rich and completely crazy Californian who kept a private zoo on his estate. He liked to feed anyone who crossed him to his lion.

"For all I know, this could be Franklin Roosevelt," I growled at the coroner, "but the body is definitely right... can I see his right arm?"

The coroner frowned and covered the dead man's face, than he pulled the sheet back from the right side of the body.

The muscles of the arm - the meaty parts - were mostly stripped away. I could see human-sized and spaced teeth-marks, but with impressive and definitely inhuman fangs. However, I could make out the remains of a tattoo on the forearm. It was a fairly fanciful image of a Polynesian dancing girl. She was topless and had really big boobs.

I knew that tattoo.

I let out a long sigh. Yeah, there had been no real chance that the body was someone else, but sometimes you let yourself hope right up until the very last second.

"It's him," I told the coroner. "It's Fred Dukes."

The day before, if you'd asked me if Fred and I were friends, I wouldn't have been sure how to answer the question. But after seeing Fred's body, I walked down the street to a speakeasy usually frequented by courthouse workers, ordered a stiff drink of a better grade of rotgut, and sat down in a dark and quiet corner. Then I shed a few tears.

I suppose if you cry for a man after he's died, than he was a friend.

Fred Dukes didn't exactly win the lottery of life. He wasn't too bright and he was so monstrously fat that people called him the 'Blob' behind his back. However, he was one of the powered - what more and more people are calling 'mutants' - and that made him durable, tough, and really strong. The list of things that could kill Fred wasn't terrible long.

Once upon a time, Fred and I were a part of the same gang. It's an embarrassing story for me. The guy running things was named Pietro Maximoff. Pietro was, is, and will always be, a small timer, but at the time I thought he was more than that. I also thought we would be doing a lot of good for people like us - people with powers. I was dead wrong. It turned out the Pietro was just using big talk to convince people to steal for him.

It's lucky that I didn't end up dead or in jail. Of course, luck is my speciality.

My time with Pietro ended when a job in Mexico went really wrong and I staggered across the border with multiple bullet-holes in me courtesy of the Mexican Army. While that job was in the process of falling apart, Pietro decided that I was expendable and abandoned me to die.

After Fred Dukes found out what was happening, he had some pretty harsh words with Pietro. Then Fred found me, smuggled me into a small border town, and set me up with a local doctor who had some flexible ideas about medical legality.

I'm a fast healer and went from being almost dead to back on my feet in just a week. Then I tracked Pietro down and beat the crap out of him. Fred was in the area, but he didn't get in the way. On the other hand, even after that, Fred stayed with Pietro. At the time, that pissed me off. But looking back at it, I could see why Fred stayed. In fact, a while back my office caught a case that let me know why Fred felt he owed Pietro.

And besides, where else could Fred go? He was a guy without many options in life.

Still lost in thought, I didn't notice when an old acquaintance walked in the door. However, I definitely noticed when he sat next to me.

"Hank," I said quietly, acknowledging his presence.

"Neena," he greeted me in return. He's one of the very few who knows my real name and actually uses it.

Hank McCoy is the right hand man of the guy who runs the biggest gang in town. His boss's name is Logan - nothing else, just Logan. Hank is wicked smart, no slouch in a fight, and is good at taking care of details. Hank and Logan have been together for a long time. I've known both of them since they were just another pair of dock-side hoodlums, but I was there when they toppled the mob who used to run the local rackets. In fact, I helped them do that.

"You heard about Fred?" I said as I stared into my drink, turning the shot-glass around and around in my hands.

"Yeah," Hank replied shortly.

"Got any idea who - or what - did it?"

Hank hesitated for just a second. "I don't," he finally said. It seemed to me that there was some emphasis on how he said "I".

Oh.

"Logan wants to talk?" I asked warily.

This time, Hank just nodded.

"I don't work for Logan," I said slowly.

"This isn't about you and Logan. It's about Fred," Hand replied with a shrug.

Dammit. Hank's always been pretty good at finding the right buttons to push.

"You bastard," I told him as I finished my drink.

Hank was smiling as I got to my feet.

We got into Hank's roadster and he gave me a ride to Logan's torture chamber.

There's this old building down by the docks. I suppose it was once a warehouse, but now nobody officially owns it. However, everyone avoids the building and everyone knows why. It's the place where Logan does terrible things to the people who've crossed him. Sometimes, if the wind is blowing just right, you can hear the screams from all the way on the other side of the bay.

Sometimes the screams end with a shot. The cops never check it out.

There are bent and crippled men wandering the streets of this town who were intact until they took a ride to that warehouse. Technically, they're the lucky ones since they survived the experience. But if you ever see the look in their eyes when the wind is blowing across the bay, and you can hear shrieks off in the distance...

I suppose there's more than one way to die. Sometimes, your body is still breathing, but you're left dead inside.

I've been in that warehouse, but I've never been one of its special guests. A lot of people are surprised by that. Hell, I'm surprised by that. I guess I've just never pissed Logan off in a really final way.

Getting out of Hank's car, I stood in front of the warehouse and took a deep breath of saltwater-laced evening air. Then I took another one. Sometimes, I have nightmares about that place.

"Dom, it's okay," Hank told me quietly.

I nodded my head. Then we walked inside.

Pietro was in big trouble.

I don't like Pietro Maximoff. In fact, I hate his guts so much that it's kind of a surprise that he's still alive. If I had to explain why he isn't occupying a plot of ground, I'd say it's because every now and then I'm able squeeze some useful information out of him.

Even then, I didn't want to see Pietro like that. Hell, I didn't want to see anyone like that.

Pietro was naked and hanging by his wrists from a roof beam. His feet were manacled together and were about a foot off the floor. He was covered with blood and bruises. Two bad-guys were standing next to him. One was wearing a pair of sap-gloves. The other had a length of rubber hose. They were both sweating.

Tied to a nearby chair was Pietro's boyfriend - a guy named Mortimer Toynbee. He was also naked, but they hadn't started working on him. Mort was crying.

"Christ, Hank," I said in disgust. I was sick to my gut. I've done interrogation. I've done it hard and ugly, but right then and there I'd say that Pietro was going to die if they didn't stop.

"Hey, Hank, what's up?" Pietro said through bloodied lips. I had to give him credit. Pietro was showing a lot more nerve than I would have given him credit for.

"Hey, Pietro," Hank responded mildly as sat down in a creaky-looking chair. Then he looked up at the cruelly -elevated Pietro.

"How's it hanging?" Hank added.

The gangsters in the warehouse chuckled at Hank's show of wit. I didn't, but then again Hank wasn't my boss.

"Hank!" Mortimer frantically burst out. "Hank, please! Please stop! I swear to you, Pietro hasn't done anything wrong!"

Small-timers like Pietro are more-or-less independent. But both Logan and Lensherr - the two big bosses in this town - have a set of rules that others break at their peril.

"Please stop. Please just stop," Mort begged, his voice breaking down into a sob.

"Okay, Mort, you've convinced me," Hank replied with an agreeable nod. Then he looked at the two torturers. "You guys, take a load off. Let's give Pietro a break."

The two guys who'd been beating Pietro wandered off. There was a big bottle of beer on an old table near the back of the building. They both sat down and took turns handing the bottle back-and-forth.

"Don't beg these bastards," Pietro snarled at Mortimer as best he could - which wasn't much at the moment.

Mortimer just hung his head and went back openly sobbing.

Outside, another car pulled to a stop. Then there was the sound of car doors opening and closing.

Everyone went silent.

Then Logan walked in the door.

If Logan is the king of the city, then at the moment he was a king visiting his dungeon.

Just inside the doorway, he paused and took a long look at the scene before him. Behind Logan, his favorite pair of crazy bitches were pacing after him like a pair of well-trained dogs. Raven and Yuriko are his bodyguards, assassins, and lovers. There are some who say that I should be with them. There was a time when I might have been okay with that. Maybe if things had worked out different...

Logan glanced at me, then turned his attention back to Pietro.

Pietro didn't say anything, but his veneer of courage had acquired a big crack. I can't really say I blamed him for that.

"You're no longer an independent," Logan said in an almost conversational tone. "Do you understand?"

Pietro just stared sullenly at Logan.

One of the torturers - the one with the sap gloves - shook his head, got to his feet, walked over to Pietro, and slammed a fist into one of Pietro's kidneys. Pietro's scream released a fine mist of blood.

"Answer the man," Hank ordered quietly.

"I'm... I'm... not an independent anymore," Pietro half-gasped and half-sobbed. There was something liquid in his voice. I found myself hoping there wasn't something fatally broken inside of his body. I may not have liked Pietro, but that's a slow and painful way to go.

Logan nodded. "I'm glad that's cleared up. Okay, it's like this - you'll run your current territory, but all receipts go to me. Then I decide what you get back. You'll have access to my rackets, but you're done with robbery and the strong-arm stuff. Any out-of-the-ordinary jobs, especially killing, you check with Hank first. You're done with being a street thug, Pietro. It's time to start thinking like a businessman."

Pietro, his eyes bleak and angry, shakily nodded his head.

Hank sighed. Yuriko and Raven shot each other a quick look of amazed disgust. And then the guy with the sap-gloves hit Pietro again. This time, Pietro didn't scream, but his entire body curved into a writhing arc of breathless agony. It hurt just to watch.

Mortimer started screaming. I stepped forward and put my hand over his mouth. The last thing I wanted was for him to attract attention.

Mortimer stopped trying to scream and leaned his head against my stomach. He was shaking in terror.

"Whaddya say to da boss?" the guy with the gloves said to Pietro. His tone was almost conversational. For a second, I was reminded of the coroner. It was just another day at the office.

"I get it!" Pietro snarled.

Another blow slammed into Pietro. Much more of that and he'd die.

It took Pietro some time to recover, but he finally did.

"Yes, boss," Pietro finally managed to whisper. "I understand, boss. I work for you, boss."

Logan nodded. Then he looked at the guy with the sap-gloves. "Take 'em home. Don't hurt 'em any more."

I took my hand off of Mortimer's mouth. He'd bit me and my hand was bleeding. I didn't hold that against Mort - it was more out of panic than anything else.

"Thank you, Mr. Logan. Thank you," Mortimer babbled over and over again as he helped the two thugs drag Pietro out of the warehouse.

Off hand, I figured that Pietro would live, but he was going to be peeing blood for days.

That left Logan, Hank, Raven, Yuriko, and yours truly in the warehouse.

I swallowed my fear as best I could. Logan was pissed off and in a vicious mood and I had no idea why. He and I used to be lovers, but I ended that myself, so I wasn't sure if our old relationship was a mark in my favor.

In my head, I'd long ago mapped out a plan for getting out of the warehouse. On one side of the building was a boarded-over window that overlooked a boat-dock. If I hit it at full speed I might just get lucky enough to smash through. Once I got out onto the dock, I'd jump into the harbor and swim for it. After that, I'd grab Marie and we'd sneak out of town on foot. Then we'd buy a boat-ride out of the country from some people I'd met during my time with a top-secret part of the State Department.

It wasn't a bad plan, but it would quite likely go tits-up if any of Logan's fliers - like Ororo or Warren or Sam - were patrolling the sky above the warehouse. I'd rather not test that.

"What the hell is going on?" I asked Logan, doing my best to keep my voice level.

Logan tossed me something. I snagged it in midair. It was a moneyclip with a fat wad of bills. I'd caught it with the hand that Mortimer had bit, and my blood immediately stained the bills.

The cash had only been in my hand for a second, and it was already blood-money.

"You're hired," Logan told me.

That was when I'd usually hand Logan a lot of smart-mouth remarks. But something told me that this time it wouldn't be a good idea.

"Find the guy who killed Fred Dukes," Logan added.

I cocked my head at Logan. "What can I do that your people can't?" I asked.

Logan's gang is filled with powered people and they were good at their jobs. Over the last year or so, I'd got a few glimpses of Logan's intelligence operation. It was a lot bigger than you might think.

Logan shrugged. "Maybe nothing. Maybe something. But this needs to be checked out and I want it kept quiet. Look, I know you, Dom. You're going to look into what happened to Fred. Now you're getting paid to do what you'll do anyway. It's a good deal, so shut up and take it."

Most people don't think of Logan as a guy who's good at sizing people up. They just see how dangerous he can be. However, over the years I've more than once seen the side of Logan that's eerily good at figuring people out. Once, back in the day when he and I were bed-partners, he told me he could tell a lot about people just by their scent.

At the moment, there was obviously no arguing with Logan - I'd just seen the consequences of that. So I tucked his money away in my jacket pocket.

"Why do you care?" I asked. "Fred wasn't one of your guys."

"Yes, he was," Hank answered for Logan. "Fred was our inside man with Pietro. He made sure that Pietro didn't cross any lines, and warned us if Pietro was about to do something stupid."

I opened my mouth to object - Fred Dukes simply wouldn't betray Pietro - but then I shut my trap. Actually, Fred would do just that if he thought it would keep Pietro from making his final, lethal, mistake. And Pietro was a guy who made a lot of mistakes.

So Fred had been one of Logan's guys. And Logan always takes care of his own. Of course, the price-tag is that Logan also considers you to be his property. That's part of the reason I left Logan.

"That's why you just conscripted Pietro," I said slowly. "You don't have an angle on him any more. You had to make sure that he's under control."

Logan nodded. "I've got a couple of conditions for you," he told me.

I immediately went tense. I don't like 'conditions'. Especially when they come from Logan.

"I don't want Marie involved."

My eyes narrowed, but I still didn't say anything.

"And Raven's your partner for this job. She knows things that can help you."

I cocked my head and examined Logan's face for a few seconds. Neither one of those conditions made any sense. And that made me curious.

"Okay," I told Logan.

Logan didn't look surprised, but Raven sure did.

Hank gave me and Raven a ride back downtown. I got into my car and Raven slid in beside me. She was wearing a new form - a small, but athletic, woman with dark hair and eyes. Her clothes were prim and proper - a modest brown dress and coat, practical low-heeled shoes, and an unremarkable hat. She looked like a secretary on her lunch break.

"Who's that?" I asked as I started up the car. The ride back to town had been a silent one, but I was eventually going to have to actually talk to Raven.

"Rose Goshen," Raven replied. "She was on the U.S. Olympic swim team a few years ago. She died young."

That didn't ring any bells, but swimming is not exactly a sport I follow. "How'd you happen to meet her?"

"She did some smuggling for the Meyers gang. Mostly she brought diamonds into the country. I got wind of it and posed as a customs agent. I was the gal who strip-searched lady suspects."

Raven smiled sadly. "It turned out the little Rose liked being searched. I got the diamonds and I got her. We were together for a few months. Then the Meyers gang became a problem. They thought Rose had crossed them - which I suppose she did - so Rose went on the lam. She was on her way to Mexico when a bounty-hunter got her."

It struck me that you could make an argument that Rose's death had been at least partly Raven's fault. However, I didn't see any reason to bring that up.

"Logan said you know things about this case. Care to tell me what they are?"

Raven was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded her head. "We think we know who did it."

Then she clammed up. And she didn't bother to explain who 'we' were.

I gave Raven a long look. She didn't say anything.

"Care to share?" I asked in exasperation.

Raven just shook her head. "Not right now. Not until I know for sure."

"Look - what the hell is going with you and Logan?" I snapped. "You're both acting weirder than usual."

Raven didn't smile. In fact, there was something in Raven I'd never seen before.

She was scared.

"Let's just get on with this," Raven told me. She was staring straight ahead, out at the traffic. It was early dusk and half of the drivers had their lights on.

"Logan stuck me with you and told me you know things," I said irritably - trying not to actually snarl. "Can you give me something to work with? You know, anything that actually justifies you being here?"

Yeah, I was pissed off. I've been a P.I. for years now. Before that, I worked (briefly) for Pietro. Before that, I worked for Logan. Before that, I worked for a part of the U.S. government that most people don't even know exists. I like to think I've got a good handle on the underbelly of this world. But something nasty was going on. Something was out there that worried both Logan and Raven and I didn't have a clue what it was.

"You know how Logan and Kitty met?" Raven said. It wasn't really a question. Raven spends her days and nights by Logan's side. She knows more about Logan than almost anyone alive. And she knows how Kitty's association with Logan ended, and what Marie learned about Logan and Kitty in the process.

I frowned as I passed a dawdling produce truck. "Kitty told Marie a story once. It was half-crazy - just like you'd expect. Something about her being a prisoner in some sort of prison up in Canada. Logan broke her out."

"It wasn't just a prison," Raven said quietly. "It was a place where they experimented on people. People like us."

"Mutants?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Who was behind that?"

Raven shrugged. "That's a good question. The G-Men? The Brits? The Canadians? AIM? Hydra? Some completely different player? We don't know."

I had no clue what Hydra was, but I kept that to myself. "So what's that got to do with Fred's death?" I asked.

A bitter smile swept over Raven's face, and then vanished. "Kitty and Logan weren't the only people in that place. I was there. There were others. Logan got us all out, but he has regrets. There was somebody he should have left in his cage."

I considered that. Then I nodded my head and shifted the subject of conversation.

"Why doesn't Logan want Marie in on this?" I asked.

Raven gave me an amused glance. "Deep down inside, he still loves her. He doesn't want her to get hurt."

We parked in front of Fred's apartment building.

If I hadn't known precisely where Fred's apartment was located, we could have found it from the stench. You could tell that something had died recently.

There was an official-looking piece of paper on the door to Fred's apartment, notifying the world that it was a crime scene and everyone should stay out. Raven was my lookout as I, with a fine disregard for the majesty of the law, picked the door's lock and opened the door. A disgusting reek - much worse than what we could smell outside - rolled over us. The inside of Fred's apartment was like a slaughterhouse. Blood had soaked into the floors and walls and was rotting in the summer heat. If the building manager didn't take care of that soon, he'd start losing tenants.

Raven and I stepped inside. The first thing we did was open all of the windows.

The apartment had been furnished with crudely solid furniture made out of concrete blocks, railroad ties, and lengths of heavily reinforced four by fours. For a moment, I was reminded of Fred's slab at the morgue. However, Fred had fought hard for his life and most of his improvised furniture was torn apart, broken, and scattered across the apartment.

Where the most blood had been spilled, I could make out claw marks on the wall and floor. Raven crouched down and put her hand - fingers spread wide - against one set of claw marks. That made it clear what we were looking at. There were a set of five marks, with one slightly offset from the others. The claws weren't like Logan and Laura's. Instead, these were on the fingertips of the killer's hands.

And the hand that had made them was pretty big. Raven's hand looked like a child's in comparison.

"The killer was wearing some sort of gloves?" I asked Raven, but I was already sure that wasn't the answer.

She shook her head as she got to her feet.

"It's him," she said quietly. "I wasn't sure until now."

"Who?"

"A guy - a monster - named Victor Creed."

That name meant nothing to me. However, by then it was obvious that the case had a lot of pieces that were new and strange.

Something cold was slithering down my spine. Whoever this 'Victor Creed' guy was, he had Raven spooked. And Raven wasn't the kind of person who spooked easily.

"Got a description?" I asked as I opened and closed kitchen drawers, looking for anything that might help.

Raven was rummaging through a pile of pulps and comicbooks. She paused and gave me a bleak look. "Six feet four or five and about three hundred pounds - all of it muscle. Long blond hair and orange eyes. Claws on his fingers and toes. Big canine teeth. Not really into bathing, but he can clean up when necessary. Despite all of that, he's hard to find if he decides to stay out of sight. He's like Logan that way... give him a patch of darkness and you'll never see him until it's too late."

I didn't like the sound of that. "Anything else?" I asked evenly.

"He heals really fast - like Logan and Laura. Oh, and his sight, hearing, and sense of smell are also really good. Just assume he'll spot you before you spot him."

I gave Raven a long and hard look. "He sounds like Logan's bigger, meaner, brother."

Raven nodded. "It might be that they're related. They're both from the same part of the world and have a lot in common, but that's something Logan doesn't like to talk about."

"Why would Creed kill Fred?"

Raven shook her head. "No clue. I'm pretty sure they didn't know each other."

"What's Creed been doing since Logan broke him loose?"

The laugh Raven let out was cold and harsh. "If I had to guess, he's been raping, torturing, and killing. Those are his hobbies. The last we heard, he was wandering the wilder parts of Canada. He would only go into town long enough to hurt people."

Fred's apartment was a dead end. Except for confirming Raven's suspicion that Creed was the guy who'd killed Fred, we found nothing.

Just up the street from Fred's apartment was a hot-dog shop called "Big Willies". Fred used to really like that place - and it had a pay-phone. Raven used the phone to report to Logan as I grabbed a quick and less-than-healthy dinner.

"How can you eat that?" Raven said as she sat next to me. The dinner special was a cup of coffee and a footlong dog for a quarter. I had my dog with sauerkraut, onions, and mustard.

I swallowed the last of my dog and gave Raven a jaundiced look. "You've put worse things in your mouth."

A very tiny smile appeared on Raven's face. "So have you."

I didn't respond. I suppose we were both thinking about Logan.

"So Creed has a lot of really ugly vices?" I asked. Actually, I wasn't just thinking out loud. Violent and nasty tastes can be traced.

Raven nodded. "I know what you're thinking... and we've already put out the word that Logan wants to know if anything like that is going on. So far, we've got nothing, but if Creed's in town, it's just a matter of time."

I considered that. "How good is Creed at restraining himself?"

A bitter look flickered across Raven's face. "Not very. In fact, there's only one time he's under any kind of control. That's when he's hunting."

I didn't bother to ask, "hunting what?".

"Do you think Fred wasn't the last of it? Could Creed be after someone else?"

"I'm not sure," Raven said with a shrug, "but if he stays in town, he'll kill more people. That's just what he is."

Dammit.

The only clue we had was Fred. For some reason, Creed had murdered him. If we could just figure out Creed's motive, then we might have something to work with.

I got up and walked over to the counter. The guy behind it was a scrawny kid in a sweat-stained shirt and a dirty white cap. It was near the end of the day and he looked exhausted.

"Where's Edna?" I asked.

I was just enough of a regular in the place that the kid didn't hesitate to answer. "She left just after the lunch rush. She didn't say why."

I nodded my thanks and tossed a couple of dollar bills into the tip jar. For the kids who worked at Big Willies, that was a lot of cash.

"Who's Edna?" Raven asked as we stepped out onto the sidewalk.

"A friend of Fred's," I said as I scanned the street. "She's a waitress."

One of Raven's eyebrows - actually, I guess I should say the eyebrow of the late Rose Goshen - rose slightly.

"A girlfriend?" Raven asked. I felt a flash of resentment at the suggestion that Fred Dukes wasn't likely to have a girlfriend. But then I pushed it away. It was understandable.

I shrugged. "They were friends. I don't know if I'd say it was a boyfriend-girlfriend sort of thing."

Raven pursed her lips. "If she left just after lunch..."

"Fred's body was found this morning, so that would be about the time word of his death got out," I finished.

Edna was still in her work-clothes when she answered the door. She'd obviously had been crying.

"Who is it?" an older woman's voice called from inside the apartment. In the background, a radio was playing the ballgame - it was the Yankees versus the Cubs. A Yankee was on third base and the current hitter had full count.

Edna glanced over her shoulder. "It's someone I know from work, Ma," she called back.

Then Edna stepped out into the hallway and firmly closed the door behind her. I'd guess I'd never know if the Yankee who was on third base actually made it home.

Edna was a pretty young lady - a sky-eyed blonde with a short and shapely body. Most folks considered it surprising that she wasn't married. She'd certainly never lacked for suitors.

"I'm sorry about Fred," I told Edna softly.

Edna nodded her head miserably.

"I'm checking on what happened to him," I added.

Edna nodded again. She knew what I did for a living.

"Do you know anything, Edna?" I asked. "Anything at all?"

She gave me a hopeless look. "I may know who killed Freddie."

Beside me, Raven stirred. Edna gave her a brief glance, then looked back at me.

"It was a really big guy," Edna continued. "Blond and mean-looking. I didn't like the way he looked at me. Heck, I didn't like the way he looked at anyone. He came into the shop with Freddie. They talked, but it turned into some kind of argument. The blond guy left, but he looked really pissed. Fred look angry, too."

"Did you hear what they were talking about?" Raven butted in.

Edna gave Raven a long look. I glared at Raven - hopefully she would get the idea that Edna was talking to me, not her.

Then Edna looked back at me. I gave her an encouraging nod

Edna took a deep breath and went on. "It was about Mr. Logan and Mr. Lensherr. The blond guy wanted to know things about them - I couldn't tell what."

It took me a second to absorb that. "After that, did you talk to Fred?" I asked.

Edna nodded her head. "He said I shouldn't worry. But he was scared - I could tell."

Her voice broke towards the end. Then she put a hand over her mouth and began to cry.

We asked a few more questions, but Edna was tapped out. She didn't know anything else.

I expected Raven would scurry to the nearest pay-phone to file another report with Logan, but she didn't. And that was something to think about.

"So what would Creed want to know about Erik and Logan?" I asked Raven as we got back in my car. "It's not like they aren't the biggest subjects of conversation in this town. If Creed has a beef with either one of them, finding them wouldn't exactly be hard. And why the hell would Creed go to Fred for information? It's not likely that he'd know any deep, dark, secrets."

"I'm not sure," Raven told me. "Maybe Creed was trying to get the lay of the land. This isn't his territory. I suppose Fred would be a decent source."

That thought seemed to really bother Raven.

The sun was down by the time I dropped Raven off at the old hotel that's Logan's headquarters. "I'll pick you up tomorrow morning - around eight," I told her.

She nodded and got out of my car. I watched the form of Rose Goshen sashay into the front door. As Sam Guthrie held the door for Raven, he looked at me and nodded.

I nodded back. Sam is a good kid, tough and dependable. I just wish he'd find another line of work. For a second, I wondered if he'd ever supervised a session in the warehouse. That was an ugly image and I drove it out of my head. He probably hadn't, because the day you do something like that, it changes you forever. Sam wouldn't be Sam anymore.

Killing the engine, I sat in my car and considered what I knew so far. Sometimes it helps if you ignore the details and focus on the people.

Fred was apparently killed by a damn dangerous mook named Victor Creed - who I'd never heard of before.

It turns out that Fred was working for Logan. He'd kept an eye on Pietro and provided information. Fred wouldn't do that unless he had damn good reason. Supposedly, he'd seen it as a way of protecting Pietro from his own arrogance and stupidity. Actually, that sort of made sense.

There was a connection between Creed and Logan. And also between Creed and Raven. It went back to some Canadian prison-camp in which the three of them had been held against their will.

Creed and Fred - who apparently didn't know each other - had a talk just before Creed murdered Fred.

Nothing fell into place. With a shake of my head, I started the car and headed home.

"Where were you?" Marie asked. It was an honest question, asked without any anger. We're a team, but sometimes I get pulled away from the office. So does she. That just goes with the job.

Marie is my girlfriend, and she's a knockout. She's tall for a woman, has a body that dreams are made of, a face that haunts memories, and a full head of auburn hair with a sexy white streak the sweeps back from the center of her forehead. I've seen men lose track of everything else and walk into a lamp-post when she passed them on the street.

We share an apartment that was a hell of a lot better than where we lived just a few years ago. Our business was flourishing, but I had to admit that the flourishing began when Marie stopped being my secretary and became my partner.

"You aren't going to like this," I warned her. Marie's eyes narrowed and a slightly stormy expression appeared on her face.

"What the hell have you got yourself into?" she growled.

I told her everything. If I lied and she found out later on... well, there would be hell to pay. It was better to just get it out of the way all at once.

Oddly, Marie didn't get angry. Instead, she was sad.

"I'd heard about Fred," she told me quietly, "but I didn't know the details. I should have realized that you'd get involved."

I took Marie in my arms. She did that trick where her body seems to melt right into mine.

"That poor bastard," she whispered in my ear. "It was just a matter of time until he got himself into something that would kill him."

I said something meaninglessly encouraging, then kissed her.

I waited for her to demand to be a part of the case, but she didn't do that. Since there was zero chance she gave a damn about Logan's wishes, there had to be another reason she was playing ball with me, and I was pretty sure that reason was Raven.

For maybe the hundredth time, it was on the tip of my tongue to ask Marie what the deal was between her and Raven. Old lovers? Old rivals? Neither of those seemed to fit, but there was something there that nobody except the two of them understood. They avoided each other whenever possible, but when events forced them into the same room, you could almost see the tension crackling between them. I'd long ago decided that Marie would tell me when she wanted to, but until then, I should back off.

Marie and I went to bed after that. We talked quietly for a long time, mostly reminiscing about Fred.

Fred Dukes was a decent guy, but he had a lot of strikes against him. When you get down to it, he was ugly, dumb, and too damn strong for his own good. And ultimately, Fred died alone because nobody was willing to take a man like him into their lives. Nobody was to blame for that - making that sort of decision is how we're put together, and we can't take in every stray that we meet. So instead, we make judgement calls and get on with our lives. That's sad, but it's also life.

Then Marie and I made love. In fact, we made love for much of the night. People do that for a lot of reasons: that they're affectionate, horny, drunk, lonely, and sad are all on the list, but sometimes we make love because we just don't want to give up on ourselves.

"Are you going to call Jean?" Marie asked me the next morning.

We were just out of the shower. I was in our tiny living room, wearing nothing but a bra and panties. Marie was still in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel as she applied makeup. She'd apparently caught a glimpse of me as I contemplated the phone.

It used to be that whenever I needed to find someone, I wore out shoe-leather and talked to people until I found who I was looking for. But the last few years had shown me other options. There's a lady named Jean Grey who's on retainer for our firm. She's a powerful psychic. Her girlfriend, a lady named Emma Frost, is much the same. In the past, both of them had used their talents to help us track people down.

I shook my head. "I'm not sure I want to drag Jean into Logan's world," I told Marie.

"They've met," Marie reminded me.

I smiled wryly. Not only had Jean and Logan met, but I was pretty sure that I'd seen sparks flicker between them. What the hell is it with Logan? Marie and I had both been his girlfriends at different points in our lives and even we couldn't figure it out.

"Jean has limits," I reminded Marie.

Marie came out of the bathroom. She'd ditched her towel into the hamper and there was a hairbrush in her hand. She was also butt-naked. Marie sat down in the easy chair as she considered what I'd just said. High on the list of reasons why I love Marie is her tendency towards casual nudity. It's right next to her enthusiasm for spontaneous oral sex and an appreciation for ruggedly reliable revolvers.

"You figure this Creed guy is going to end up dead?" Marie said - which really wasn't a question.

I nodded. "If he's as much like Logan as I've been told, it might not be as easy as that. But you're right, I'm sure Jean won't track someone down so he could be killed."

"Emma might not mind," Marie pointed out.

"Emma almost certainly wouldn't mind," I said in something like exasperation, "but what do you think her fee would be?"

A smile flickered over Marie's face. "I imagine it would be something fairly perverted."

"No kidding," I replied sourly, "but maybe we're overestimating Emma and Jean. They usually need to know someone, or have some other connection with them, before they can psychically track them down. That would explain why Betsy hasn't found Creed. She's probably never met him."

"There's another person we could call," Marie pointed.

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah, whatever Professor Xavier has that boosts his psychic powers helped us track down Sooraya and Laura - and he was off somewhere in New York state at the time. But we'd have the same problem with Xavier as we'd have with Jean. He's a bit too moral for his own good."

Then there was a knock on the door.

Marie and I exchanged glances. She vanished in the bedroom and came back with a pair of robes. Meanwhile, I grabbed my M1911. After I chambered a round, I put on the robe.

I peeked through a peephole I had installed in our door. Rose Goshen was standing outside. This time, she was neatly dressed in a dark blue dress. She still had the prim look of a secretary away from her desk, but I was willing to bet that she had some serious firepower in the purse she was toting.

"It's Raven," I told Marie. Marie seemed to stiffen slightly.

Then I opened the door and let Raven in.

After Raven stepped inside, she and Marie seemed to make a point of not quite looking at each other.

"Get dressed," Raven told me. "We've got a lead."

With an irritated growl of assent, I tossed my robe onto the couch and stalked into the bedroom. It took me a while to get some actual clothes on, but when I finally got back into the living room things were... strange.

Raven had Marie's hairbrush in her hand. She put it down just as I entered the room. Marie was back in the easy chair and her hair was neatly brushed back in the style she'd worn when I first met her. As crazy as it sounded, it looked like Raven had brushed Marie's hair.

For the split second, the old suspicion that Marie and Raven had once been an item came over me, but then it quickly vanished. Everything about those two - the expressions on their faces, the way they held themselves - just didn't seem right for that.

"Ready?" Raven said seriously. She seemed to be deliberately ignoring Marie. Marie was returning the favor.

I nodded. "What's this lead you have?"

"A girl who works for Lensherr. Her name is Stacey. I understand you know her."

Stacey works late nights, so she was still in bed when we got to her apartment. It took some pounding to get her to answer the door.

"What the hell do you... oh..." she said blearily after she opened the door. Her strange eyes eventually focused on me. After all, from her point of view, Raven was nobody.

Stacey is a mutant, but in her case you can tell with a glance. She's pretty in her way, but she has light orange skin and scales. The scales run up her neck and around the sides of her face. You can't see them unless the light hits her just right. She's also got this dark ridge over her eyes and framing the sides of her face. And her eyes are weird - green, but the pupils are slits. At the moment, her dark red hair was a mess and she was wearing what looked like a long t-shirt over a body that had a decent set of curves. I guess the t-shirt was what she wore to bed.

That was the least amount of clothes I'd ever seen Stacey wear. I could see scales running down her legs, but they tapered off at her calves. Her feet were long and narrow, but her toenails were dark and unusually thick.

A while back, Stacey popped up in a case that Marie and I were working. It was a case that, oddly enough, involved Fred Dukes, although as near as I could tell Stacey and Fred had never met. Stacey used to be a hooker, but then got out of that and went to work in the dirty movie business. However, her job wasn't in front of the camera. Instead, she used her talent for making people incredibly horny to make sure that the performers put in extra-enthusiastic performances.

After that fell apart, Stacey got into blackmail, and that led to the series of events in which we finally met each other.

Eventually, Stacey ended up working for Erik Lensherr in his most expensive brothel. She used her powers to rev up the more elderly customers. It made a lot of sense that she'd know what was going on in the world of high-dollar working-girls.

I had to give Raven credit. Checking in with Stacey was a good idea. I wish I'd thought of it.

Stacey smiled at me and leaned against the doorframe. Suddenly, she went from being just attractive to being sexy as all hell...

I hit her. Hard. And that was enough to interrupt the power she was trying to use on us. Stacey staggered back a step. Long ago, I'd learned the hard way just how Stacey's power worked. She was working me, trying to make me hot for her so I'd be easy to manipulate. She did that to me once before and the results were... extreme. She wasn't going to get a second chance.

Stacey's eyes went hard and a snarl appeared on her face. Believe me when I say that she's no slouch in a fight. I prepared myself for a brawl. I'd have to put her down quickly before her power could get under my skin. Suddenly, I realized we'd been fools to brace her without taking precautions.

Raven interrupted the upcoming festivities by reaching past me and putting the muzzle of a long-barreled .38 right on the bridge of Stacey's nose. She grabbed the collar of Stacey's t-shirt in her other hand.

Stacey froze. She was a couple of ounces of trigger pressure away from joining Fred in residency at the local morgue. And Stacey had just seen how scary-fast Raven could be.

For her part, Raven just looked bored.

Keeping the gun in Stacey's face, Raven pushed her back into the apartment. I followed and closed the door after us. I quickly scanned the apartment. Stacey had a companion - maybe a friend, maybe a lover - named Wanda, but there was no sight of her. With any luck, Wanda was still in bed and soundly asleep.

"Get on your knees," Raven ordered with casual disdain, "and look up at me."

Stacey hesitated for a second, but then did as she'd been told. In the process, Raven shifted her non-gun hand so she now had good grip on a fistful of Stacey's hair.

Raven slid the .38 down Stacey's face until it was pressed against her lips.

"Dom, give the lady a nickel," Raven told me.

This was now Raven's show. I pulled a coin out of my pocket and flicked it onto the carpeted floor at Stacey's knees.

"Well?" Raven said to Stacey. Her voice was a cold as an iceberg.

Stacey took the barrel of the .38 into her mouth and began sucking it.

"Dr. Freud would have a field day with you," I told Raven disgustedly.

Raven ignored me. Meanwhile, Stacey's head was bobbing back and forth. Normally I would have intervened, but Stacey hadn't done herself any favors when the first thing she did when she saw us was to try and turn us into her puppets.

"And she can't answer any questions while she's doing that," I pointed out.

That actually made Raven smile. "Stacey, I want you blink once for yes and twice for no. And if you ever blink twice, I'm going to pull the trigger. Do you understand?"

Stacey, still fellating Raven's gun while looking up into Raven's eyes, blinked once very carefully.

"That's good," Raven continued. "Now, let's clear something up. No matter how much you've pretended for the last few years, your still nothing but a nickel whore, aren't you?"

Stacey blinked.

"Well, you've been paid and now I get to use you. Isn't that right?"

Blink.

"And, by the way, you give lousy head. If it wasn't for your powers, you would have been a flop even as a nickel whore."

Blink.

"So tell you what, Stacey. I'm going take my gun out of your mouth. Then we'll talk, but there will be rules. Understand?"

Blink.

"You won't try and pull any of your powered bullshit on us."

Blink.

"And you'll politely and truthfully answer every question we ask."

Blink.

Raven pulled the gun out of Stacey's mouth.

"Okay, you can talk now," Raven said. The .38 was now down by her side, but she still had Stacey by the hair. Stacey's was still being forced to look up at Raven. And somehow, the fact that Stacey couldn't look down or away was the cruelest thing that Raven was doing to her.

Stacey licked her lips, trying to clear away the taste of metal and gun-oil. "What do you want?" she asked, actually doing a creditable job of keeping her voice level. Stacey was back to being a street-girl. That meant, 'do whatever it takes to survive'.

"Be polite," Raven reminded Stacey. Raven tapped her revolver against Stacey's forehead to emphasize her point.

"What do want, ma'am?" Stacey hastily tried again.

Raven smiled again. "That's better. There's a guy in town. Big, blond, and he likes to hurt women. He may be going by the name of Victor Creed. He does things to girls that make your last minute look like a quickie with a pretty girl. What have you heard about him?"

"Ma'am, I haven't heard the name," Stacey said quietly, "but word's out that the working girls should be careful about a big guy with long yellow hair. All of the girls are scared."

"Do you have any names?"

"A girl named Cynthia - Cynthia Worth. She got hurt bad. There are others, but I don't know the details."

"You have an address?" I asked as I pulled out my notebook.

Stacey was still kneeling in the middle of her living room when we left.

"Interesting interrogation technique," I said to Raven after we got back in the car. "Firm, crazy, savage, perverted..."

Raven just shrugged. "And it worked. We got what we wanted."

I couldn't argue with that.

"Aren't you worried that Lensherr will take offense with us rousting one of his earners?" I asked as I started the engine and glanced in the rearview mirror.

"Maybe his earner shouldn't have tried to use her powers on us," Raven shot back. "Logan and Erik have a truce and they both try to abide by it. Stacey is the one who messed with that truce when she used her powers on us. Besides, this Cynthia girl that Creed beat up is also an earner. Maybe Lensherr should thank us once we find Creed."

Raven had made some good points. Putting the car in gear, I pulled away from the curb.

Cynthia Worth had been beaten to a pulp. I was amazed that she could get up and answer the door.

"We're looking for the guy who did this to you," I told her quietly, "but we're not cops."

One of Cynthia's eyes was so badly blackened that she probably couldn't see out of it. Her swollen and broken nose meant she had to tilt her head so she could get a clear view of us with her good eye. It was impossible to read the expression on her face, but she seemed dazed.

"Who are you from?" she slurred through split lips. She also had broken teeth if I had to make a guess. Cynthia was lucky her jaw wasn't broken, but judging from the size and placement of the bruising on her lower face there might be hairline fractures.

That had to hurt like hell. I still couldn't see how she was actually able to function.

"We're with Logan," Raven answered without hesitating. I gritted my teeth, but didn't say anything. Normally a good P.I. doesn't bring up the client's name. But then again, Raven wasn't a shamus and I could understand why she'd mentioned Logan. In the world Raven and Cynthia lived in, Logan's name was more powerful than a G-Man's badge.

"I'm with Lensherr's outfit," Cynthia said uncertainly - and maybe scared. "I've already talked to his people. What does Mr. Logan want with me? I don't want any more trouble!"

"Everyone wants the creep who hurt you off the street," I told her. "And, no disrespect to your boss, we have a better chance of doing that."

Actually, that was true. Logan has attracted a large number of powered hard-cases into his gang. For whatever reason, Lensherr had more common thugs than heavy-hitters in his mob. When you got down to it, that's why Lensherr is number two in this town and is going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Of course, Lensherr did have some powered cronies, and he himself is a pretty dangerous customer. Nobody was looking forward to the day when Logan and Lensherr finally went to war.

Cynthia let us into her tiny home. It was a modest place, but decorated with a sense of non-extravagant taste. Cynthia gestured to the couch and then used a cane to limp over to a nearby chair. On a stand next to Cynthia's chair was a picture of a young girl and an older, graying, woman. Both were smiling. If I had to make a guess, that was Cynthia and her mom. There was a pill bottle and a half-full glass of water next to the picture. The bottle didn't have a pharmacist's label, but I figured out what it was. There were some hard painkillers in the bottle - maybe even an opiate. Cynthia would know people who could supply her with that sort of thing. That explained a lot. Cynthia was flying high.

"You should be in a hospital," I told her.

If there was some expression on Cynthia's face, I couldn't decipher it from underneath all of the damage. "I spent a night in St. Gertrude's," she told me. "After that, I told the doctors that I was done with them and got out."

"Can you tell us what happened?" Raven asked abruptly. Apparently my approach was too slow.

Cynthia took a pill out of the bottle and swallowed it dry. I hoped she was keeping track of how many she'd taken. Otherwise, she'd end up as a pain-free corpse.

"I picked up a bad John," she told us dismissively. "He hurt me. It happens."

Raven actually chuckled. "Darling, if something like this happens to you again, you'll probably end up in a pine box. Hell, you didn't miss it by much this time."

"We need anything you can give us on your bad John," I quickly put in.

Cynthia shrugged. "A really big guy, blond hair, with mutton-chops. He said his name was Vic. His eyes were funny - kind of yellow or orange. I just figured that meant he was powered."

She look at me, trying to judge if I was offended by her mentioning the fact he was powered. I just nodded encouragingly.

Cynthia licked her lips before continuing. "He was wearing a good suit - white and blue seersucker. Given his size, it had to be tailored. His shoes were expensive-looking. When he talked, it was deep and low. Almost like a growl. If he had a car, I never saw it. I met him in Cantrell's - that's a fancy speakeasy on 20th street."

Then Cynthia paused. The memory of what had happened was pushing her into silence. She didn't want to talk about it.

"Well?" Raven pushed. She looked and sounded bored again.

Cynthia gave Raven a longish look before continuing.

"He wanted a half-and-half and we did it in a hotel called the Monarch. It's on Vine and 24th. After we were done, I guess I said something that set him off."

"What did you say?" I asked.

Cynthia let out a long breath. "He was a tough guy, he was powered, and I didn't know him. So I asked him if he worked for Mr. Logan. He didn't say anything. Instead, he slapped me halfway across the room. It all went to hell after that."

Both Cantrell's and the Monarch Hotel were within walking distance of where Cynthia lived. That probably wasn't a coincidence. Cantrell's wasn't open yet - the doors were locked and nobody seemed to be home. That probably didn't matter, since it was one of Lensherr's joints and the guys running the place would have been disinclined to talk to us anyway.

The desk-clerk at the Monarch was more helpful. He was an elderly and skinny fellow with a frizz of white hair surrounding a shiny bald spot. A five dollar bill bought his enthusiastic cooperation.

"Yeah, that business with Cynthia was bad," he said with a regretful shake of his head. "Her... fellow... came downstairs and there was some blood on his jacket and shirt. He was the type you just don't shoot questions at, but once he was gone I went upstairs to see if Cynthia was okay. The door was unlocked and she was on the floor. For a second, I thought she was dead. but she asked for help. I had one of my people get her to the hospital."

"Do you have any kind of line on the guy who beat up Cynthia?" I asked.

The old man gave us the same kind of description we'd already heard.

"He hangs around the local clubs," the old fellow finished.

"Well... he's not doing that anymore," I said with a shake of my head.

"Yeah, he is," the old fellow contradicted me. "Last night, I heard he was in the Kitty Club. They have a pretty good band this week."

Raven and I looked at each other. That didn't make any sense.

"He's still walking around the neighborhood?" Raven eventually asked. There was open disbelief in her voice.

"He's an out-of-towner," the old man said in the same way you might say 'complete idiot'. "I figure he doesn't know the rules. He doesn't know who owns what. He doesn't know who owns who."

Then he smiled with the viciousness of a much younger man. "But he'll learn pretty soon."

The nearest high-end speakeasy was just down the street. The front was a modest-looking Italian restaurant known as the Sicilian's. The basement featured booze and gambling tables. Actually, the food was pretty good and was just as much a draw as the liquor. A typical night saw waiters delivering more meals to the basement than to the tables upstairs. In fact, the Sicilian's was on the short-list of places where Marie and I go when we were in the mood for Italian food.

Splurging on expensive clubs, good food, and beautiful women is a typical pattern for a rootless man who'd just come into some serious money. And the money-part was particularly interesting.

Had Creed been paid to kill Fred?

It also struck me that Creed might be developing a traceable pattern: dinner at a place with booze, then a nightclub with music and more booze, and after that he would pick up a pretty working girl. And then maybe he'd beat the girl senseless if she somehow said the wrong thing.

The entire neighborhood was Lensherr territory. The nightspots didn't just operate by paying rent to Lensherr - instead, he flat-out owned them. Lensherr is a lot more controlling that Logan, and that might be yet another reason why Lensherr has a smaller operation than Logan. On the other hand, it was maybe more efficient.

However, that meant Raven and I had to be careful. The guys and gals running Lensherr's clubs weren't going to cooperate with two people who just wandered in the door and started asking questions. To them, I was just a gumshoe with a connection to Lensherr's biggest rival. Raven - as Rose Goshen - was nobody at all. They owed us nothing.

Raven and I dawdled over pasta and salad as we waited for the basement to open. We spent the time mapping out a list of places to hit as we searched for Creed. It was a depressingly long list.

"Ladies," our waiter eventually told us. He was a handsome, dark-haired, kid with a strong Italian accent, "your downstairs table is ready."

Then the waiter and a companion held our chairs - which always struck me as a stupid and useless custom - as Raven and I got to our feet.

There was a plate glass window in front of our table. Through the glass, I caught a glimpse of someone I knew. He was walking out of a Greek coffeeshop that was across the street from the Sicilian's.

It was a guy named Mac. He ran a news-stand right next to the building where Marie and I have our office. Mac normally wears the simple, bland, and rumpled clothes of an ordinary working stiff. But right then, he had on a decent-looking suit. Mac's a fairly cute guy with brown hair and eyes. His face is a little on the long side and he has a strong, yet slender, build. Actually, Mac simply doesn't really stand out in a crowd, but I suppose that's been useful to him over the years. He's a man with a lot of interesting talents that taken together suggest he's spent some time on the wrong side of the law. More than once, he's helped Marie and I out by renting us his expertise. I've paid him to be an extra pair of eyes, a shadow, and even backup muscle.

Mac didn't seem to notice me. Every move he made was casual and reasonable... just a normal Joe out on the town. However, there was something about the way he looked at everything except me. And he was being just a little too casual.

It really looked like Mac was staking us out.

"Something wrong?" Raven asked me.

I shook my head.

The Sicilian's basement is a cavernous room made of brick and lit by soft lights and candles. On the far end of the room, blackjack was being dealt and we could hear the rattle of a roulette wheel. Thankfully, the customers were upscale enough that they weren't screeching with every turn of a card or spin of the wheel.

There were more than a few dark corners and Raven vanished into one of them as soon as we stepped off the stairs. When she reappeared, she wasn't Rose Goshen anymore. She was a woman who was about Rose's size, but older and more hard-bitten. I recognized the new form immediately. Her name was Myra Goldberg and she was one of Lensherr's money-handlers.

As we sat down at a table, the downstairs manager rushed over to us. "Mrs. Goldberg! I didn't see you come in! Your usual wine?"

Raven/Myra nodded graciously. "Thank you, Emiliano. That would be fine."

Even Raven's voice was perfect. It occurred to me that she'd imitated Mrs. Goldberg before.

The manager waved the hired help away, extracted the cork from a quickly delivered bottle of wine, and let Raven have a taste. Raven nodded in approval, and the manager poured the wine into a pair of expensive-looking stemmed glasses.

"If you need anything else, just let me know," he said politely and then left us in peace. Just before he left, he gave me a speculative look. He was wondering why I was talking to one of Lensherr's accountants.

"That dress really doesn't work for who you're supposed to be," I told Raven once we were alone.

Raven actually smiled. I noticed that her teeth were now slightly crooked. Her attention to detail is impressive. "I didn't have time to change."

Then she turned serious. "Did you notice the tough guys?"

I nodded. Not too far from us was a table filled with four hard-eyed mobsters in expensive suits. They were talking, eating, drinking, and laughing it up. And they were keeping their eyes on the entrance.

"Some of Lorenzo's boys," I said quietly. Lorenzo was an old-time Italian mobster - the kind of guy the younger guys call a 'Moustache Pete'. After the Santini family fell, he refused to submit to Logan's rule. Fortunately for Lorenzo, he found a place with Lensherr as a sub-boss. He survived by obeying orders and having absolutely no larger ambitions.

"Almost like they're waiting for someone," Raven said after taking a sip from her glass. From the approving look on her face, she agreed with Mrs. Goldberg's taste in wine.

"Yep," I agreed, "so you tell me - can they take Victor?"

Raven shook her head. "Not a chance. If Creed shows, and they try something, they're all dead men."

"Which raises a question. What do we do if Vic puts in an appearance?"

"Avoid getting splattered with blood. Then we follow Creed back to wherever he's staying. After that, we report to Logan."

"It's a plan," I told Raven, "and we better get ready to carry it out."

Victor Creed had just entered the room.

Creed more than fit his various descriptions - big, blond, and feral. Oddly, despite how big he was, his most striking features were his eyes and his teeth. For a second, as he paused in the dim entrance, his eyes reflected an animal yellow-orange light. The flash of his teeth as he either smiled or snarled at the room were huge and strikingly white. Like Logan and Laura, he had prominent canine teeth, but his were definitely larger.

The first thought that crossed my mind was that Cynthia must have been out of her freaking mind to spread her legs for Creed - no matter how much money he offered. The man reeked of crazy violence. Maybe she didn't think she had a choice.

"Easy," Raven whispered to me, her voice not completely steady, as she put a hand on my arm. It was then I realized that the fingers of my right hand were in my jacket, brushing against my shoulder rig. Without realizing what I was doing, I'd almost drawn my weapon.

Creed was having quite an effect on me.

Creed entered the room, moving with an easy grace despite his size. For an unnerving second, his gaze swept over us. Creed's eyes stripped Raven and I naked, put slave collars around our necks, placed us up on an auction block, and then decided that we weren't worth the trouble of making a bid.

I suddenly found myself thanking Logan for not wanting Marie involved in the case. Men are inevitably interested in her, and the thought of Creed taking a fancy to Marie made me both angry and ill.

Creed sidled up to the bar and ordered something. Lorenzo's wiseguys had stopped talking and were staring at him. Creed seemed to completely ignore them, but I saw a slightly warped smile suddenly appear on his lips. It was a smile the promised more than just violence.

Moving as one, the wiseguys got to their feet and approached Creed. One got on each side of him. Two were behind Creed's back. The bartender realized what was happening, finished pouring whatever Creed was drinking, and hastily moved as far down the bar as he could go. A middle-aged couple who'd been heading towards the bar suddenly decided to go somewhere else.

Raven grabbed my shoulder and pulled. "Let's go," she hissed into my ear.

We hastily got up and began walking away just as Creed finally seemed to notice the mobsters surrounding him. He was grinning as he lazily turned, shotglass in hand, and leaned his back against the bar.

"Hello, boys," I heard him growl. His deep voice seemed more amused than anything else.

Raven and I were halfway up the stairs - she still had me by the shoulder and was dragging me along with her - when a sudden animal howl erupted behind us. There was the horrifying sound of what I can only describe as tearing flesh. Then the scent of fresh-spilt blood smell filled the air. After a shocked split-second, the screaming began.

I yanked my M1911 out of my holster and pushed Raven the rest of the way up the stairs. Once we got upstairs, she finally let go of me and sprinted for the door. The dozen-or-so patrons in the actual restaurant were staring in our direction, paralyzed by the terrifying racket howling up from the basement.

"Dammit, Dom! Come on!" Raven yelled at me as she held the door open. I backed towards her, still keeping my .45 pointed towards the basement stairs. I was torn between fleeing and doing something to help the normal folk. Around us, the most frightened - or the smartest - of the restaurant-goers abandoned their meals and also headed for the door. About the same time, the first of the customers fleeing from the basement began flooding up the stairs. I hastily pointed my handgun upwards and away from them.

"Dom!" Raven screamed. This time I could hear the panic in her voice. I'd never known Raven to actually be scared of anything.

The customers were fleeing past me. I dodged a few who weren't looking where they were going.

Then Creed appeared on top of the stairs. He looked like... like... something straight out of hell. He was covered in blood from hair to shoes. And that smile - now a grin - was still on his face. The way he moved reminded me of a big cat, all predator grace and menace.

I put two bullets into him. One hit him in the shoulder and all it did was jerk him to the side. The other hit him in the head and his face distorted into broken bones, twisted flesh, exposed teeth, and a dangling eyeball. He let out a gurgling laugh and took a slow step towards me as his face started to knit back together.

Dear God, it was what Raven had told me. Creed was like Logan - just like Logan.

That was enough for me. The customers were piled up at the door, but Raven was grabbing people and more-or-less throwing them out onto the street. Firing steadily with my right hand, I backed up and picked up a chair with my other hand. Then I bashed the chair against the nearest window. My hold on the chair was awkward because I refused to drop my gun, and all I accomplished was to crack the glass. I tried again and the glass just starred a little more.

I lowered my aim and my last shot hit Creed in the knee. He actually slowed to a stop, but my .45 was out of ammo and I didn't have time to reload. The look on Creed's half-ruined face promised me a long and slow death as he forced himself to stagger another step closer. I turned away from Creed, hoping that I could charge through the cracked window.

That was when Mac appeared on the other side of the glass. Our eyes met. With a strong kick, Mac shattered the window open in a spray of shards. I dropped the chair and hopped outside, crunching through the broken glass. Raven grabbed me and pulled me after her. She began firing her .38 into the restaurant. A sawed-off shotgun appeared in Mac's hands - God knows how he'd been hiding it - and he pumped two shells in Creed's direction. Creed was knocked to the floor, but immediately began to struggle to his feet.

As near as I could tell, all they were doing was slowing Creed down.

There was another howl from inside the restaurant. It sounded frustrated and angry.

"See ya!" Mac called to me. Then he took off without a word.

Raven and I ran like hell in the other direction.

"Logan, you can just kiss my ass for getting me involved in this," I snarled tiredly.

Logan's only reaction was to pour me another drink. We were in the bar of the old hotel that's his headquarters. When Raven and I showed up, he took one look at the two of us, walked us into the bar, and began pouring hefty measures of high-end bourbon.

I downed my drink - it was maybe my fourth or fifth - as Logan glanced at Raven. She was sitting at the same table as the two of us. Raven still had her first drink sitting on the table in front of her. She hadn't touched it yet.

If you looked close, you could she that Raven was trembling. I'd never seen her do that before.

"Why don't you call it a night?" Logan told her softly.

Raven didn't respond. Then Yuriko - who was standing right behind Logan - put a hand on Raven's shoulder. That snapped Raven out of wherever she was.

Raven nodded at Logan, got to her feet, and left. Her drink was still on the table. Without the slightest trace of conscience, I slid it towards me and downed half of it.

I'd had a lot of booze. Things were beginning to get a little fuzzy.

"Kiss my ass, Logan," I said again. To my ears, I didn't really sound angry. Just tired and fed up.

A thin smile appeared on Logan's face. "I've done that, Dom. In fact, there's not much of you I haven't had my mouth on at one time or another."

That was true. And I suddenly had to fight down a powerful urge to drag both Logan and Yuriko to the nearest bed and screw their brains out. That was a reaction to finding myself alive and in one piece after a bad situation. But take it from me, while the sex may be good, the price of getting yourself into that state of mind is mighty steep.

"So give me a summary," Logan said as he took a gentlemanly sip from his glass. I hated him for that. I was frazzled, shaky, and gulping down any alcohol that he happened to put in front of me, but Logan was cold as ice.

I sighed and tried to put on my professional P.I. hat. Then I issued a half-drunken and half-professional report.

"Victor Creed killed Fred Dukes, but I don't know why. Maybe Creed was hired to kill Fred - he's sure acting like a rookie hitman who's made his first big score. Creed doesn't seem to know the local streets, but he's dangerous and kind of crazy, and that's what's keeping him alive so far. Lensherr's boys are trying to deal with Creed because he hurt one of Lensherr's working girls, but that's already cost Erik at least four men and maybe some customers."

Logan leaned forward, his eyes intent. "No idea where Creed is holed up?"

I shook my head. "We doubled back later with the idea of tailing him, but it didn't work. We followed a blood trail for about a block or two, but then it just vanished. Raven said that Creed is a good climber. She figured he went up onto the rooftops. That might explain why your people and Erik's people are having so much trouble finding him. Creed's not playing by the usual rules."

Logan nodded, but didn't say anything.

Then I rubbed my eyes. They were tired and felt gritty. "My suggestion is to let Erik waste men and resources dealing with Creed. Unless Creed blows town, they'll get him eventually. If that won't work for you, then make a fast deal with Erik so you can go into his territory without starting a war. Then gather up every hard-hitter you've got and land on Creed like a ton of bricks. Take no chances and don't bother with talking or asking questions. Just kill him, chop the body up, burn the pieces, and maybe have a priest do an exorcism on the ashes."

Logan nodded again, still irritatingly calm. "Not bad advice," he said almost amiably. He was being strangely distant.

I finished the second half of Raven's drink. "So, Logan, you wanna tell me what's going on? Raven said that you, her, and Creed go way back. You were in the same lockup."

Actually, I already knew some of the story, but every time I hear it from someone, I seemed to learn a little more. Even half-crocked out of my mind, I'm still a P.I.

Logan looked me in the eyes. For a scary and unreasonable moment, I saw something of Creed in him.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's true," he told me, his voice becoming contemplative. "We were all caged up together. And there were others. Kitty was one of us, but I suppose you've heard about that."

I blinked and looked away from Logan. Kitty Pryde was supposedly dead, but Logan and I were among the very few who knew that she wasn't. That was a mess that Marie had sorted out.

"What do you know about the place where they had us locked up?" Logan said. There was something deeply bleak in his words.

I hesitated before answering. "It wasn't really a prison. The guys running the place were doing experiments on people who were powered or mutants or whatever you want to call them - people like you and me. Sort of like that problem we had with AIM a while back."

Logan nodded. "Y'know, I'm still not sure what the guys up north were looking for. Sometimes I think they were just curious about us and how our powers worked. Sometimes I think they wanted to figure out how to duplicate our powers - and maybe give them to their own soldiers and agents. Sometimes I think they just wanted an excuse to hurt us. I dunno... maybe it was some combination of all that."

Then Logan paused long enough to pour himself a drink. "The things they did to Kitty were so bad that they drove her crazy. There was a kid named Doug Ramsey - they almost wiped out his mind trying to figure out how he could understand any language. And there was another kid named Miguel, who could make things lighter. He died. So did a girl named Trish. And Finn. And Samantha. There were others - a lot of others. I don't know all their names."

Logan hesitated. "Creed, Raven, and me. We were survivors. Creed and me because of how fast we heal. Raven... well, she found her own way to keep the people running that place happy."

"But eventually, the guys in charge made a mistake. They did something to me that they thought they could control, but they were wrong."

With a metallic 'snikt!', three claws jumped out between the knuckles of Logan's right hand. Some blood oozed out of the channels he'd just cut into himself. Even though I'd seen him do that many times before, I suddenly had to fight down the urge to vomit.

"I broke loose," Logan continued in a crazy-calm voice. "I killed just about everybody who was running that place. Then I got the other prisoners out, but I made a big mistake. I let Creed loose. And other people have been paying for that mistake ever since."

"I should have killed Creed instead," Logan said as he finished his whiskey.

Then he paused. Like Raven, just before she left us, Logan seemed to looking at another time and place. It was something that neither of them wanted to remember, but they didn't have any choice.

"I should have killed him," Logan repeated very slowly.

I didn't go straight home - I wasn't in any shape to drive. Instead, I got some sleep on an upholstered bench in the bar.

Maybe I only dreamed that Logan kissed me goodnight.

Around three in the morning, I woke up. I was mostly sober by then. There was some aspirin behind the bar. I took some, washing the pills down with a mouthful of vodka. Then I drove back to the apartment.

Raven had gone to my place instead of going to bed in Logan's hotel. She was asleep on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, with her clothes neatly folded on a low table. Marie was dozing in the big chair. They both woke when I entered, but I didn't ask any questions. Raven's yellow eyes examined me and then closed again. Marie yawned as she stood up, took me by the hand, and led me to our bedroom.

Marie helped me take off my jacket, shoulder-holster, ankle-holster, pants, and shoes. Then we tumbled into bed and instantly fell asleep.

I woke to the smell of coffee and frying bacon. Stumbling out of the bedroom, I was greeted by the sight of Raven and Marie in the kitchen, working together with practiced ease as they made breakfast. Marie was wearing her gray silk robe. Raven was in surprisingly delicate and expensive-looking underwear. I tried not to stare at Raven, but my distraction wasn't because of the fancy lace. Normally, Raven modifies her skin color to something fairly nondescript. But that morning she didn't seem to be worried about that - she looked like a walking blueberry.

Marie put a cup of coffee in my hand.

"You will be rewarded for this in heaven," I told her as I took a sip. Marie smiled impishly at me. Meanwhile, Raven was cracking two more eggs for me.

After a silent breakfast, we cleaned up and washed the dishes.

"Raven's my mom," Marie casually told me as she dried the silverware with a brightly colored cloth.

Raven didn't say anything. She just carefully stacked the plates into the drying rack.

I honestly didn't have a clue what to say. I just rinsed soap-suds from my hands and waited for Marie to go on.

"She took me in after my parents left me," Rogue continued.

Giving Raven a skeptical look, I asked the first question that came into my head.

"What kind of a mom was she?" I heard myself ask. It was all but impossible for me to see Raven as a mother.

Raven gave me a slightly offended look. Marie actually grinned. "She fed me, put clothes on my back, paddled me when I deserved it, and warned me about boys. Sometimes she had to leave me with someone else because of work. I always missed her."

I looked at Raven. "What about when you were locked up with Logan and Creed in that place up north?"

Raven shrugged. "By then, Marie wasn't a kid anymore. A local woman took care of her until Marie was old enough to live on her own. After Logan broke me out, I spent some time by myself. When I got here, Logan had started his gang and Marie had hooked up with him."

Nodding thoughtfully, I drained the last of my coffee. This was a conversation with more than a few elephants in the room. One of them was the fact that Marie had never told me about Raven until just then. Another was that I routinely made Raven's adopted daughter take the Lord's name in vain as she spasmed in our bed. A third was that all three of us had screwed Logan at one time or another.

We live in a world that prefers women who aren't wanton, but that didn't really describe any of us.

I rinsed out my coffee cup and put it upside down in the drying rack. "You're older than you look," I told Raven. I wasn't trying to be insulting. I was just trying to sort out a weird situation. Up until then, I would have said that Raven was about my age.

"Well... I did once sleep with Ulysses S. Grant," Raven told me. I couldn't tell if she was kidding. Considering that Logan once casually told me that he'd fought in the Civil War, that wasn't as crazy as it sounded.

Marie rolled her eyes. "Mom!" she hissed in urgent embarrassment.

"What was he like in bed?" I asked curiously.

Raven considered her words before answering. "Methodical and relentless. You could tell he was the kind of man who always got the job done."

That sounded about right.

An hour-or-so later, we were cleaned up and ready to go. Marie had loaned Raven some clothes. Raven was now a tall and busty honey-blonde, with freckles and a slightly upturned nose.

"What's the story on this one?" I asked idly as I gestured towards Raven's new body.

"Lacey Ringer," Raven replied. "A girl from New Orleans who was a nurse in the local hospital. She helped patch me up after I got into a shootout with some of Huey Long's goons."

"Another girlfriend?" Marie asked in - I swear to God - a mildly disapproving tone.

Raven actually smiled. "What can I say? Lacey had a talent for plugging holes."

Marie let out a long sigh. "I swear, Mom..." she began.

"We have to go," I hastily interrupted.

Marie gave both Raven and me the stinkeye. "I'm going with you," she said.

"Forget it," I told Marie.

"Hell, no," Raven said flatly.

"What if Creed figures out who's checking on him and shows up here or at the office?" Marie asked us patiently.

"So now what?" Marie asked. She was sitting next to me in the car. Raven was in the backseat and had a newspaper open. The headline was about a multiple murder in a local speakeasy. The reporters and the cops had it figured as some sort of clash between Logan and Lensherr's outfits.

"Why Creed killed Fred is still a question," I said. "And Logan never got around to telling me last night that we're off the clock. So I figure we still have a job to do."

"All we have right now is that Creed met up Fred, they talked - and maybe argued, and then Creed killed Fred later on," Marie said thoughtfully.

"And the conversation was supposedly about Erik and Logan," Raven added from the back.

"There were a few hours between the meetup and Fred's murder," Marie pointed out. "Maybe Fred had a chance to talk to someone about what was going on?"

"Fred wasn't a guy with a lot of friends," Raven said from behind her newspaper.

"Not many friends," I agreed, "but..."

"But he had a gang," Marie finished for me.

I nodded. "And that's who we're going to talk to."

Pietro looked like hell. Mortimer didn't look much better.

"What do you want?" Pietro asked. He was wrapped up in a blanket and painfully sitting in an easy chair. Just about every visible part of his body was covered by purpling bruises. On a stand next to him was a half-empty bowl of soup and a sandwich with a single bite taken out of it.

We were in the apartment that Pietro and Mort shared. It wasn't much. For a guy in charge of a gang, Pietro really didn't have much of a talent for making money. That's the problem with Pietro, he was only almost... almost... the big time player he thought he was.

Mort had let us into the apartment without any argument. He looked worried as he hovered in the background.

"I want to talk about Fred," I told Pietro.

"There's not a lot to say," Pietro tried to snarl. However, he was in too much pain to even snarl effectively. Logan's people had done a real job on him.

"We know who killed him," I said.

That caught Pietro's attention. "Who?" he asked.

"A guy named Creed. He's bad news," Marie provided. "Fred apparently talked to him just before Fred was killed. We were wondering if you had any information on him."

Pietro hesitated for a moment - there was something about what Marie had just told him that he hadn't liked. Then he shook his head, his eyes glued on me. "Creed's a hitman, but he's not local. I hear he only works north of the border."

"C'mon, Pietro," I said. "One of your men is dead and that's all you know about his killer? Nothing else?"

"That's it," Pietro declared flatly.

"Creed sometime works in Montreal," Mort suddenly said.

Pietro's eyes went wild and he let out a long and aggravated hiss. For a second, I thought he was going to explode. It was one hell of a transformation - from a half-crippled invalid to utterly pissed-off in just a split-second.

"Get the fuck out of here, you little shit-stain!" he yelled at Mort. "From now on, the only thing you do with your mouth is wrap it around my cock!"

Looking like a whipped dog, Mort vanished without a word.

"Keep that up and you're going to run out of friends," Raven told Pietro. Her voice was coldly even.

Pietro gave her a long and furious look. Of course, he didn't know who Raven was. She was still in the form of Lacey Ringer.

"Who's this bitch?" Pietro asked me as he stared at Raven.

Marie put a hand on Raven's arm, but she didn't need to do that. Raven looked more disgusted than angry.

"Maybe she's someone who it's not smart to call a bitch," I warned Pietro.

Pietro, with no clue how close he was to disaster, just smiled thinly at me.

"About Creed," I prompted.

Pietro leaned back carefully and let out a long sigh. "Like I said: he's a hitter from up north. He's powered. From what I hear, he's an animal - just like Logan."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Raven smile slightly.

"How do you know about him?" I asked. "Creed's not too well known around here."

Pietro shrugged. "Remember Allerdyce? He was in the old gang?"

I nodded. The 'old gang' Pietro was talking about had included me. Back in the day, we were quite the merry band of misfits. Allerdyce was a human flame-thrower who quit around the same time I did, but for different reasons. I hadn't heard anything about him for the last few years.

"Allerdyce was in town a while back," Pietro continued. "We had a drink together for old time's sake. He mentioned a powered hitter who works the Canadian side of the border. That's how I heard about Creed."

"Where's Allerdyce?" Raven asked.

"In Buffalo," Pietro said dismissively. "He's part of a border outfit that smuggles booze in from Canada. The money's good, but he doesn't like the hassle he's getting from his boss and the other guys in the gang. Most of them don't like mutants. He was thinking of moving back to town and he wanted to talk to me about the situation here."

I nodded. Our strange city has a reputation for being unusually accommodating to people with powers. Logan is a big part of that. He seems to think that conflict between powered and normal folks is bad for business, and he has enough muscle to make tolerance the semi-official policy around here. Some go so far as to say that the powered actually run this town, and I can't honestly say that they're completely wrong.

Our conversation was interrupted when the door to Pietro's apartment was yanked off the hinges. It flew up and away. Judging from the sound, it landed somewhere down the block.

Erik Lensherr entered the room. Just behind him was a guy who was not quite the size of a house. His name is Cain Marko, but his nickname is Juggernaut.

"Hi, dad," Pietro said quietly.

That's right. Pietro Maximoff - about as small-time as it gets for a powered crook in this town - was the son of the second-biggest of our gangster-chieftains. However, he and his father don't particularly get along. Pietro had long since distanced himself from Erik's operation and both men seemed to prefer it that way.

As always, Erik was perfectly dressed in a slightly old-fashioned suit. Believe or not, the material was a dark shade of purple. I have no clue why a conservative soul like Erik would do that, but it's a look that he somehow manages to pull off.

"Erik," I said with a polite nod of my head. I had my arms folded over my chest, which had the effect of making sure that nobody thought I was reaching for a weapon.

"Hello, Erik," Marie said with a startlingly warm smile. Erik happens to like her, and she honestly returns the sentiment. They got to know each other back when Marie worked for Logan. She was sort of a diplomatic messenger from Logan to Erik.

"Domino. Marie. I need to speak with you," Erik said in an even voice that didn't bode well. I'd hoped that he wanted to talk to Pietro.

I took a deep breath. "What's up?"

Erik's eyes focused on me. That's always an unnerving experience.

"Where is Victor Creed?" he asked.

Marie immediately took the lead. "We don't know where he is," she said gently.

Gentle. Polite. Demure. Perhaps even submissive. Erik comes from a time and place when that was a woman's place. I don't do that sort of thing very well. I'm sure Raven could fake it, but like almost everything else about her, it was an act. And Erik was preternaturally good at sensing acts.

But Marie actually knew how to be a lady. And we desperately needed that right then.

Erik's gunmetal gray eyes were locked on Marie.

"Why is Logan involving himself in this affair?" he asked.

Of course Erik knew we were working for Logan. Even if he simply didn't know that via of his own resources, Raven had admitted it when she told Sarah who we were working for.

Speaking of Raven, she was keeping to the background. It took some effort not to glare at her.

But on the other hand, maybe Raven hadn't made a mistake. Maybe part of her job was to indirectly let Erik know that Logan was involved. The more I saw of it, relations between Erik and Logan were more delicate than I would have thought.

"Logan wants to know what happened to Fred Dukes," I told Erik. "It turns out that a new powered hitter killed Fred, but he doesn't know why. Logan wants to know about the new guy. We're just trying to sort out the details."

Marie took the ball again. "Any brush-up against you is accidental, Erik. It looks like the new hitter is hanging out in your part of town. Logan hired us because his own people couldn't get too obviously involved. I know how Logan thinks, Erik - he means no disrespect by any of this. He's trying to keep it quiet."

Erik examined us one at a time, looking for any sign of a lie in our faces. It was going to get ugly if he thought he saw one.

Was it my imagination, or did Erik linger for a moment on Raven? She was in her Lacey Ringer form and looked nothing like herself, but still...

"Leave," Erik said with a jerk of his head towards the now-missing door. Now Erik was looking at Pietro. He obviously planned on having words with his son.

The look on Pietro's face was a strange mix of fear and hate. Father and son have never gotten along.

We carefully filed out of the apartment. Out on the street, there was a half-dozen gangsters loitering around a couple of cars. A few wolf whistles broke out when we appeared. We ignored that as we left.

A block away, Mort was standing next to my car. He was waiting for us.

Mortimer Toynbee is small, skinny, and one of those guys who's a born victim. He has some limited powers - he's stronger than he looks, can climb freakishly well, and jump remarkable distances. He's actually a pretty good second-story man, but he's not the kind of guy who can think up a plan on his own. His primary role in Pietro's gang seems to be as Pietro's gofer and sex-toy.

He obviously wanted to talk. We took him into a nearby diner.

We had coffee. Mort had a bowl of chicken noodle soup. He gulped it down frantically, his eyes darting over us as if he expected it to be taken away from him. It suddenly occurred to that Pietro didn't let Mort eat when he wanted to. I knew Pietro and Mort had an odd relationship, but suddenly I found myself wondering just how odd it really was.

"What do you want, Mort?" I asked.

Mort slurped down another spoonful of soup and gave me a fearful look.

"I need to get out of town! Ya gotta help me!"

Marie frowned. Raven looked disgusted. I think I blinked in surprise.

"So buy a railroad ticket and get out of town," I told him.

Mort shook his head. "You don't understand! Pietro won't let me go! And he knows people! People who read minds and... and can do other things! I can't just leave him!"

I tried not to smile. "Mort, one of the things Marie and I do is track people. Powers - even psychic powers - aren't as big a deal as you think. Get on a bus to Newark. From there hitch a ride to New York City. From there, stage your way across country, going from big city to big city and using the crowds for cover. Go a hundred miles at a time and keep a low profile. Use different bus lines and railroads. Hitch rides or even just walk if the distance isn't too much. Use different names and change clothes. Maybe even double back a couple of times. The idea is to leave a messy and confusing trail. Then pick a medium-sized town and settle down. Change your name, hide that fact you've got powers, get a simple job, and never, ever, contact anyone who knew you back in the old days. It's not hard to disappear. The hard part is to not make a mistake that gives your location away. That almost always happens when a guy on the run decides he wants to talk to a relative or a friend."

For some reason, the flare of hope that appeared in Mort's eyes was actually painful to see.

"Do you have any money?" Marie asked.

"A little," Mort said. "Maybe twenty bucks."

That made me pause. That was a lot of money to carry around in your wallet, but it wasn't much for a guy who'd been part of a gang for over a decade. Unless he had some kind of a bad habit, any mook can come up with a few hundred bucks in a hurry. Of course, maybe Mort was just lying.

To my surprise, Raven spoke up. "If you do it Dom's way, that'll maybe get you to Chicago or Kansas City, but not much further. Omaha might be a good town - it's out of the way, the mobs are all local small-fry, and it has stockyards. Stockyards are a good place to find work if you don't mind killing."

Then Raven took a sip of coffee before going on. "Or you could stay here in town. Logan would find something for you to do. And the money would be okay."

Mort shook his head. "It's not about money," he declared. "I just gotta get away from Pietro."

"Why?" I asked. I mean... I could think of more than a few reasons, but Mort had been with Pietro as long as I'd known them both. And Pietro had always been a mean boyfriend. Why was Mort suddenly in such a hurry to get away from Pietro?

I guess I just wanted to hear Mort's side of the story.

Mort was silent for a few seconds. Then, God help us, he began to cry.

"H-he's going crazy," Mort blubbered. "B-business stinks. People are leaving him. His rackets aren't producing and his turf is shrinking. It's making him mean and this business with Mr. Logan taking over didn't help. He keeps hurting me... and I don't mean the fun stuff. He really hurts me."

Some folks in the booth across the way from us were obviously mortified and trying to ignore Mort. Raven still looked disgusted. Marie...

Marie looked very interested in what Mort was saying. And I suddenly realized what she'd seen. I felt a flare of pride. Marie had become a damn fine detective. And maybe she was even becoming better than me.

"Mort," Marie said softly. "How many people does Pietro still have in his outfit?"

Mort looked at Marie. There were tears and snot smeared all over his face. "Seven guys who don't have powers. None of them amount to much and I'm not sure how long they'll stay. Besides Pietro, we had two guys with powers - Fred and me - but now Fred's gone. Fred was the muscle, the guy who really made our gang work."

Marie was still looking intently at Mort, focusing his concentration on her. Raven and I exchanged glances.

"The guy from Detroit - Allerdyce - that Pietro was talking to," Marie said slowly. "Was Pietro trying to recruit him?"

"Yeah," Mort said miserably. He began wiping his face with a napkin. From the look on the face of a nearby waitress, they would probably burn the napkin after we left.

Raven broke in. "Did Pietro know that Fred was working for Logan?"

Mort froze and didn't respond.

"Mort, we have to know the details," I said quietly.

Mort still didn't say anything.

Raven opened her purse, pulled out a ten dollar bill, and put it on the table. Her hand was covering half of the bill. Mort stared at the money. I suppose from his point of view, that much money would strongly increase his chances of getting out of town alive.

"Yeah, Pietro knew about Fred," Mort finally said. His hand moved towards the bill, but Raven was still covering it.

"How'd he find out?" I asked.

Mort shook his head. "I'm not sure, but one night he came back to the apartment madder than hell. He had a few drinks and then told me what Fred was doing - keeping an eye on us for Mr. Logan. He said he was going to kill Fred for that, but I figured he couldn't do it. Fred was the muscle of our gang. We just couldn't get rid of him unless..."

Mort paused again.

"...unless Pietro had a replacement for Fred," Marie said coldly. "Is that what Allerdyce is supposed to be? Fred's replacement?"

This time, Mort just nodded.

"And Allerdyce knew about Creed?" Marie asked. That really wasn't much of a question. Pietro had said that himself. Marie was just reeling Mort in, getting him to admit more and more until the moment she asked the last question.

Mort nodded again.

"Mort, did Pietro hire Creed to kill Fred?" Marie asked.

There was a long pause. Then Mort nodded his head one more time. It was a motion so small it was almost imperceptible.

Raven slid the ten-spot in Mort's direction. He snatched it up as soon as she let it go. Then Mort bolted from our booth. The last we saw of him, he was vanishing out the door.

There was a pay-phone on the far side of the diner. Raven marched right towards it and put her hand on the receiver. I firmly covered her hand with my own. Raven gave me a furious look. We were just a second away from a fist-fight. Or maybe a gun-fight.

"Just give me a minute," I told Raven. "One minute and then you can call Logan."

Raven considered that. As she did, I noticed a tiny splotch of gray in one of Lacey Rider's blue eyes. I wondered if that was a mistake on Raven's part, or if Raven was so good that she'd caught a detail that minor.

Raven eventually nodded.

"Pietro isn't an independent any more," I reminded her. "Logan made him a part of his mob."

"So Logan has to know what Pietro's done," Raven told me stonily.

"And then what'll he do, Raven?" I countered. "What will he do to the guy who had Fred killed? After all, Fred really worked for Logan. Even worse, what will he do to the guy who brought Victor Creed to town?"

Raven's eyes narrowed.

I had Raven's attention, so I kept talking. "So let's say Logan kills Pietro - who has it coming as far as I'm concerned - but then there's a problem. Pietro is still Erik's son. So what will Erik think when Pietro is dead while a hired killer from Logan's old stomping grounds is running around Erik's turf, tearing things up, always somehow dodging away, and making Erik look bad? It's damn good odds that Erik will decide that Logan is making some kind of move. That this whole mess is some kind of setup."

I took a deep breath before going on. "You're loyal to Logan, Raven. I get that. But what does loyalty mean right now?"

Then I took my hand off of Raven's hand. "If you call Logan right now, the end result might be a war that nobody wants. Give me a chance to settle this without taking that chance. All I need is a little time."

Raven considered my words. Then she let go of the phone.

Everyone knows that the city isn't big enough for Logan and Lensherr. One day, they'll go to war. Turf fights are bad in any case since lots of innocent people inevitably get killed in the crossfire. Toss in the fact that we have so many powered people working for both of our big mobs, and suddenly the idea of a gang war is just plain terrifying. I have a better idea how powers work than most, and I'm pretty sure that when that war finally comes, we'll see some - or all - of the city in flames.

My basic plan of what to do if Logan and Lensherr ever decided to settle things has expanded over the years. It used to boil down to, 'grab Marie and run far, far, away'. But now there are more people that I care about. I'll need to take care of Sooraya, her husband, and their son. I'll have to convince Jean and Emma to run before they were taken out by somebody because they were a dangerous pair of wild cards who might tilt the war in one direction of the other - and God knows what will happen if someone tries to hurt Jean. Then there's a long list of people that I've met over the last few years that I don't want to see killed: the Banners, Remy and his people, Maria, Wanda, and the Murdocks were all on that list. Others included a working girl named Olivia, a stripper named Lucy, Edna the waitress, a bartender at the Hellfire club named Cindy, and even Mac - the guy who helped me get out of the Sicilian's. They all deserved at least a tip-off when the time came to get the hell out of town.

My list was big and getting bigger. I'd let myself care for too many people.

So instead of running, the best thing I could do was prevent the war.

"What's the plan?" Raven asked me.

"We have to get Pietro and Creed out of the way as soon as possible," I told Raven.

She nodded.

We headed back to our booth. Marie was sitting there alone.

"Now what?" she asked.

"We're going to be heroic," I told Marie.

Marie gave me a surprised look. A smile flickered over Raven's face.

"You two ask questions. See if you can find someone who has a clue where Creed hides out during the day. See if you can put together a list of Creed sightings. Don't take any chances. If you hear something, keep your distance."

Marie nodded while Raven gave me a skeptical look.

"What'll you be doing?" Marie asked me.

"I've gotta talk to somebody."

"Hey, Mac," I said as I dropped a nickel into his jar and picked up an afternoon copy of the 'Herald'. The headline and the area above the fold was still about the dead mobsters at the Sicilian's. The lower half of the front-page was about Germany and its crazy Chancellor - the guy with the bad mustache. He was making demands again.

"How ya doin', Dom?" Mac said as his eyes took a slow and appreciative walk all over me. Yeah, Mac has the hots for me, but he gets that Marie and I are an item and doesn't take it any further than window-shopping.

"Thanks for the hand last night," I said as I folded up the paper and tucked it under my arm.

Mac gave me his usual easy-going smile. It hurt when I realized that I'd probably never quite trust that smile again.

"You looked like you wanted out of that restaurant pretty bad," Wade told me. "What was the problem? Didn't have enough to pay the tab?"

"It turned out the floor-show wasn't to my taste," I said dryly. "So what were you doing in the area?"

Mac shrugged. "Just a night on the town. There's a lot going on in that neighborhood. Bowling, for instance. And then there's a good burlesque house just around the corner. And the local coffee-shop has a pretty good trivia contest. I was wandering past when I saw one of my favorite damsels, and it sure looked like she was in distress."

I laughed. "Mac, nobody I know goes bowling with a sawed-off shotgun under their jacket."

He shook his head. "You really don't understand how seriously sine people take their bowling. Okay, then how about this: you can't talk about your clients, and I can't talk about mine."

"That seems fair," I replied slowly, "but there's one thing we have to settle. Are we going to end up in each other's way?"

That made Mac hesitate. "I don't think so," he told me. "I hope not."

"Let's do our best to keep it that way," I suggested.

Mac nodded his head, but he wasn't quite done with me.

"By the way," he said, "here's something you might need to know. Mort Toynbee has left Pietro. And just an hour or two ago, Pietro's last few normies just told him that they're done with him. Pietro doesn't a gang anymore."

I gave Mac a long look. I suddenly knew who he was working for.

"There's word that Allerdyce is coming back to town," I told Mac. "He's supposed to go to work for Pietro. With his help, Pietro could rebuild."

Mac shook his head. "Allerdyce is dead. He got to town a few hours ago, but he was picked off with a rifle as he left the train station. The news should be on the radio by now."

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

Mac shrugged. "Professional courtesy, Dom. You're in the middle of this mess and I don't want you to get killed. I just hope you feel the same way about me."

I was about to get in my car when Sooraya dashed up to me. She's a pretty girl from somewhere north of India, who also happens to be our secretary. And right then, she looked really worried. She must have been keeping an eye on me while I was talking to Mac. After all, you can see his stand from one of our office windows.

"I thought I told you to lie low," I told her irritably. Sooraya is a lot more dangerous than she looks, but I didn't like the idea of her getting caught up in the current case. I'd told her to take some time off.

Sooraya ignored my growl.

"Miss Marie called," she told me urgently. "She says something has happened."

Logan has a big betting parlor not too far from the nineteenth century mansion that's Erik's home. The parlor takes up most of a three-story brownstone. I think Logan liked the idea of Erik seeing a sign of his wealth and power every time Erik takes a step outside of his front door.

Yeah, things are really that petty between them. They both have a problem called 'a penis' and they both liked to measure.

About a dozen uniformed cops were blocking the streets and sidewalks around the brownstone. I parked my car just outside the police-line and got out. I could smell gunpowder and blood in the air. There were a dense crowd of curious rubber-neckers watching the scene, but the cops were keeping them back.

Marie and Raven were circulating through the crowd of onlookers, quietly asking questions. Marie waved at me and pointed towards the restricted area.

I flashed my license to a patrol cop. He gave me a second look, and then stepped out of the way and waved me inside the police-line without even a question. Some people think I'm still associated with Logan - and I guess I actually was in that case. And then I have my own reputation for being somebody you might not want to mess with. Or maybe he just thought my P.I. license actually meant something. I honestly didn't know which one of those the cop was reacting to.

There were a pair of bodies on the sidewalk. They were covered with police tarps, but pools of blood were spreading out from the bodies and running into the gutters. Blood splatter covered the nearby walls of the building, and the lumps under the tarps were scattered in a disturbing way suggesting that the bodies were in more than one piece.

Some homicide detectives were all up and down the street, nervously doing their jobs. The reason they were nervous was standing nearby, listening to a report from a rattled-looking thug.

It was Scott. Scott Summers. He's a tall, tough, handsome guy, but the red sunglasses perched on his face are his truly distinctive feature. Nobody else in town wears anything like that. Scott was pretty high up in Logan's organization. Off hand, I only think Hank and Ororo have more authority than him. However, I didn't know him too well.

Of course the cops were deferring to Scott. If you want a snapshot of how this town works, that was it - one of the town's biggest mobsters was casually standing in the middle of a major police investigation and the cops weren't so much as saying 'boo' to him.

Because of the glasses, you can't really see Scott's eyes, but his face zeroed in on me as I walked towards him. He dismissed the goon he was talking to with a wave of his hand.

"What do you want, Dom?" Scott asked tensely. He was definitely not happy.

"You know I'm doing a job for Logan?" I asked. It was important to get that established.

Scott nodded. He didn't bother to ask what the job was. Either he already knew or he didn't care.

"What happened here, Scott?"

"We got hit," Scott said very flatly. "Five dead - three of our guys and two joes who were just trying to lay a bet. We lost maybe seven g's worth of receipts."

I glanced over my shoulder, towards Erik's mansion. A trio of Lensherr flunkies were standing on the sidewalk, near the front gate, watching the show around the betting parlor. They definitely looked amused - which was pretty stupid on their part. Scott is not a guy you want to piss off.

Scott followed my eyes. "They didn't have anything to do with it," he said brusquely.

I was already pretty sure I knew who was responsible, but...

"Who did you think did it?" I asked.

Then Scott actually gave me a thin smile. "That guy Logan has been thinking about for so long. That bastard Creed."

"Creed also killed four of Lorenzo's boys last night," I said.

Scott nodded. "So I hear."

"What's Creed's angle?" I asked.

Scott glanced at the closest, tarp-covered body. There was real regret in his face.

"Off hand, I'd said he's trying to start a war between Logan and Erik," Scott told me.

Scott can be scary-smart sometimes.

"Is it going to work?" I asked quietly.

Scott shook his head. "Not if I can help it."

Suddenly, I felt better. At least I wasn't the only one who was trying to keep the peace. And if Scott talked to Logan, then Logan would listen.

"Okay if I look around?" I asked. Because, hey, when you're in an active crime scene of course you ask a mobster if it's okay to take a look.

Scott turned his head. "Marie!" he called out.

Out beyond the line of cops, Marie looked at us.

"Your girlfriend wants to look around!" Scott yelled.

"It's okay!" Marie shot back.

Scott looked back at me and gave me a shrug that said, "go ahead". Marie used to be a part of Logan's gang, and a lot of the gang's current members still have fond memories of her. More than a few seem to think she's just on vacation and that someday she'll come back to them.

I talked to some of the sharper detectives and then gave the crime scene a personal once over. After that, I rejoined Marie and Raven. They didn't have anything new.

"How about you?" Raven asked me. One of her eyebrows were raised.

"You're right about Creed being a climber," I told Raven. "Creed leaves a surprisingly light blood trail, but if you look close at the alley behind the building, you can see where Creed entered it, and then went up a wall. Then, as near as I can tell, he jumped the roof of the next building."

Marie frowned. "You think he's spending his nights up on the rooftops? That would be a problem for a lot of reasons. You said he was clean and well-dressed when you saw him at the Sicilian's - where does he keep his clothes and take a shower?"

Raven was looking up at the brownstone's roof. "He's using the rooftops to move about undetected, but I wouldn't be surprised if he still has a hideout somewhere. It could be something as simple as an unrented room on the top floor of a building. But it explains why everyone is having a problem finding him."

I nodded in agreement. Creed was squatting somewhere, but for a guy who stuck out in a crowed, he was doing a phenomenal job of hiding his trail.

"Maybe we should talk to somebody who knows the rooftops," I said thoughtfully.

Marie's eyes suddenly went wide. Raven just looked puzzled.

I was putting a lot of miles on my car. Meanwhile, Raven and Marie were back to pounding the pavement, looking for a lead. It was strange to see how well they worked together. But now that I knew their actual relationship, it really wasn't too surprising.

It had been a long day, and it was after business hours. I braced myself and knocked on a door.

The door opened and a man wearing nothing but trousers looked out at me. He was medium-height, with brown hair and eyes. For a split-second something about him reminded me of Mac. They were both nondescript, but there was something about them that made you take a second glance and decide that you shouldn't mess with them.

"Hello, Mr. Parker," I said carefully. "My name is Domino. We have mutual acquaintances, but we've never talked,"

Peter Parker gave me a long, silent, look. Then he stepped away from the door and said, "Come on in."

...said the spider to the fly, I finished the line in my head.

Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson, and Gwen Stacey are a threesome. And, yes, I meant what I'd just implied. I didn't have a problem with that. My real problem is that the three of them are...

Are...

It's hard to explain. I suppose 'not human' is too much - after all, there are those who'd say that about me. 'Were-Spiders' is closer, but I feel crazy for even thinking that, no matter how true it was.

I'd seen Peter and Gwen at a distance, but the only one of the three that I'd actually talked to was Mary Jane. However, Mary Jane was filming on location out-of-town, while Gwen was singing in a nightclub further down the coast. That made Peter the only wall-crawler who was available.

Peter's apartment was something of a male-oriented mess. Dirty clothes were scattered about, books and scientific magazines were piled on a desk and the kitchen table, plates and glasses were scattered here and there, and the walls were covered with scientific charts and diagrams. Peter works for Stark Industries as a chemist. From what I've heard, he's pretty good at his job.

There was a lacy pink bra sticking out from under one corner of the desk. I wondered if it belonged to Mary Jane or Gwen - or perhaps someone else.

Peter moved some books and clothes from a chair and made a polite gesture towards it.

I shook my head. "No thanks. I was hoping I could ask you some questions."

"Sure," Peter replied. He was half-sitting on the edge of his desk and he had his nicely muscular arms crossed over his nicely muscular chest. Peter looked fairly ordinary when he's dressed, but when he showed some skin it was quite the sight.

"How can I help you?" he added. The more he spoke, the more obvious it was that he had a stronger Queens accent than his two ladies.

I took a deep breath and began. "There's a powered killer in town named Victor Creed. Creed's a big guy with long blond hair. Among other things, he's a pretty good climber, and we think he's using the rooftops to get around. He's dangerous and someone has to deal with him. Have you seen anything like that?"

Honestly, I didn't know if Peter and his girls actually cruised the city's skyline on a regular basis. They certainly could do that sort of thing - I've seen that myself - but they also seemed to be trying to keep a low profile.

Peter nodded his head slowly. "Yeah, just the other night. There was a big guy on the roofs just south of downtown. He seemed to be interested in a working-girl who was walking the street down below. It sure looked like he was following her."

"What happened?" I asked.

"I circled around, got down to street level, changed my form, and asked the girl how much she wanted. I talked to her until I was sure the big guy was gone."

I tried not to react to the phrase 'changed my form'. Peter's other 'form' was the stuff of nightmares.

"Any idea where he went afterwards?" I asked.

Peter nodded again. "I followed him. He went into an older five-story building near the corner of 15th and Grant. He entered through the roof door. The dentil said it was the Cooper building."

"'Dentil'?" I repeated in surprise. I wasn't familiar with the word.

"It's the part of a building facade that's just below the cornice," Peter explained. "Buildings sometime have a name carved there."

I decided to steer away from the architectural lesson. Meanwhile, I was trying to sit on a sudden surge of excitement. The address Peter had mentioned sounded good - it was in an awkward area right between Logan and Erik's territory, but close to where Creed was doing all of his killings.

However...

"I hear Creed's pretty tough to follow," I pointed out, trying not to sound challenging. It seemed possible that Creed had let Peter see him enter a building that wasn't where Creed was actually hiding.

Peter just smiled. "Creed never had me follow him. I figured out early on that he has a really good sense of smell. I kept upwind of him after that."

Back at the office, Marie and Raven had a map of the city open on a desk. They were drawing circles on the map. I was pleased to see that Sooraya wasn't around.

"We're trying to pin down a location for Creed by comparing his known activities and reasonable travel times," Raven told me. Meanwhile, Marie looked at her notebook, put a dot on the map, and sketched a circle around the dot. Then she outlined a roughly rectangular region that was located roughly between and overlapping all of the circles.

Then Marie looked up at me and tapped the oblong rectangle on the map with the eraser-end of her pencil.

"He's in here," she said.

I took a long look at the map. The region in question was roughly five by seven blocks in size. The corner of 15th and Grant wasn't dead-center, but it was close.

Then I looked at Raven. "Give me until nine tonight and then call Logan and tell him whatever you want."

Raven nodded her head.

The sun was down when I entered the building where Pietro lived. Obviously, Mortimer didn't answer when I knocked on the door. Instead, Pietro yelled out, "Come in!"

I carefully opened the door - it was only loosely tucked into the doorframe thanks to Erik's earlier entrance - and cautiously looked inside. Pietro was still in his chair, but he was mobile enough to point a gun at me. The barrel didn't waver after he saw it was me.

"You might want to put the gun away," I told him. "I'm here to save your life. Shooting me would make that difficult."

Pietro gave me a long look, then tucked the gun away under the blanket that was wrapped around his legs and midsection.

How mighty are the fallen. I looked at the ragged ruin of Pietro and tried to remember the days when I thought so much more of him. When I thought he was a good man, a leader, and somebody who was trying to create a better world.

What a fool I'd been.

Taking a chair from the kitchen table, I put it across from Pietro and sat down facing him.

"What's going on?" he asked. There was maybe something frightened in his voice, although you had to know him to tell. He tends to use belligerence to cover that sort of thing.

"Can you get up?" I asked. "Can you run if you have to?"

Pietro nodded slowly.

I let out a sigh. "Then you better start. In a couple of hours, Raven Darkholme is going to tell Logan that you hired Victor Creed to kill Fred Dukes."

Pietro suddenly couldn't meet my eyes. It was almost a relief to see that he could still feel shame.

"What happens then is anyone's guess," I went on. "You didn't just kill one of Logan's people - you brought a nightmare from Logan's past to town. And, guess what? For whatever reason, it looks like Creed is now deliberately trying to start a fight between Logan and your father. He's killed people on both sides. Your dad is going to love that when he figures it out."

As I watched, the blood had drained from Pietro's face. But I could almost see his mind whirling as he began searching for some sort of angle that would save his ass.

"In a crazy way, you're lucky," I said as I got to my feet. "There's too great a chance that killing you would start a war between Logan and your dad. Otherwise, I'd shoot you myself for what you did to Fred, but instead I'm giving you a head start. You'd better use it."

At the door, for just a crazy second, I almost paused to wish Pietro good luck.

But I didn't.

I went back to my apartment. Raven was hanging out there. She and Marie were on the couch and - my hand to God - they were painting each other's toes.

Tossing my hat onto the rack, I ditched my jacket across the back of the easy chair. Finally getting to kick my shoes off was an experience just this side of heaven.

"Did you call Logan?" I asked Raven. She nodded as she carefully touched up the color on one of Marie's toenails.

"Logan said thanks," Raven said distractedly. "Your part in this is done. If the location you gave us on Creed works out, there'll be a bonus in it for you."

"What's Logan going to do?" I couldn't help but ask, even though there was no way in hell Raven should answer that question.

Then Raven surprised me. "He's going after Creed. Do yourself a favor and don't get involved."

I nodded. As long as Creed ended up dead, I was fine.

Then something occurred to me. "Shouldn't you be with Logan?" After all, she was one of Logan's bodyguards.

Raven shook her head. "Logan's doing this by himself. He told the rest of us to stay out."

Wow.

"Can he take Creed?" I asked. And there's a question I never thought I'd ask about Logan.

Raven stopped what she was doing and looked up at me. "I don't know, but if Logan dies, then the rest of us will kill Creed."

Raven left sometime around midnight. She and Marie even kissed each other goodbye. As I watched that, I wondered if Raven would become a regular visitor to our humble home. I hoped not. I mean, where would that go? Raven telling us about her latest murder? Dinner-time conversations about who'd been tortured lately? More discussions concerning Raven's long list of former girlfriends? A three-way girlish exchange of tips on how best to suck Logan's cock?

The next day passed without anything else of note happening. I called Sooraya and she came back to the office. The first thing she did was put a list of possible clients on my desk - she'd been fielding phone calls until I'd ordered her to lie low. I spent much of the day on the phone, following up on them.

The papers and the radio had nothing to say about Logan and Creed. I didn't have a clue what that meant. It was weird to think that Logan might be dead. I have to admit that both Marie and I were worried. I've said this before, once you've had Logan in your system, you never really get him out.

Just before we called it a day, Mac walked in.

Sooraya and Marie greeted him with smiles - Marie's was maybe a little wan. I hadn't told them anything about Mac. For that matter, I wasn't sure what to tell them.

"Sooraya, you can go home," I said. "Marie, I need to talk to Mac alone,"

Obviously surprised, the two of them left the office. Marie gave me a worried look just before the door closed behind her.

Mac sat down in the client's chair - the one that faces my desk. There was no particular expression on his face. He just looked like a guy with a job to do.

"Pietro didn't make it out of town," Mac told me. "He got tommy-gunned while he was on his way to the docks."

I couldn't quite bring myself to congratulate Mac on a job well done. Honestly, I just wasn't sure how I felt about Pietro's death.

"My client needs somebody who knows Logan to pass a message to him," Mac continued. "It's sort of a back-door thing."

Mac wiggled his eyebrows suggestively at me after he said 'back-door'. Talk about wishful thinking.

I leaned back in my chair and shook my head. "Mac, I'm not sure if Logan is even alive right now. But I'll give a message to whoever's in charge."

"Logan's alive," Mac told me. "I'm not sure about Creed."

"Thank God," I was surprised to hear myself mutter. "What's the message?" I asked in a louder voice.

Mac took a deep breath before replying. "My client understands what's happened. He doesn't blame Logan and his outfit for anything. And he took care of the guy who created this mess in the first place."

I let out a long breath as the full implication of what I'd just heard hit me.

"So, Mac, did you ever want to be a king?" I asked thoughtfully.

Clearly puzzled by what I'd said, Mac just cocked his head at me.

"A king does things that the rest of us can't imagine," I told Mac. "Like killing his own son."

Just after sundown, Marie and I showed up at Logan's hotel. I figured I should deliver Erik's message in person.

A pretty young lady named Kristy Nord was watching the door. She immediately let us in.

"Is Logan okay?" Marie asked immediately. I'd told her what Mac had said about Logan, but she'd been fretting all day long. I should have been jealous, but I have to admit that I was also worried.

Her face a little wan, Kristy nodded her head. I didn't know the details, but Kristy is crazy-loyal to Logan. The word is that Logan once saved her and her father from some sort of trouble. Kristy's a country-gal who went from working on a ranch to being a mobster in one not-so-easy step.

"We have to talk to him," I added.

Kristy gave me a look. "He's not seeing anyone," she told us.

"How about Hank?" Marie asked immediately.

"That I can manage," Kristy told us with a nod.

As we walked across the lobby, Marie suddenly let out an amused noise. I glanced at her and she inclined her head in the direction of the bar that was located right next to the lobby. Sam and Dani were leaning against the far wall, necking like a pair of teenagers. Sam had a hand inside Dani's blouse and another on her ass. One of Dani's hands was tangled in Sam's hair, while the other was suggestively not visible. Dani's head was thrown back and her eyes closed as Sam nuzzled her neck.

Actually, it was good to see something that reminded me of life. The last few days had seen a lot of death.

Kristy made a call on the house phone. Hank quickly appeared. He looked tired.

"I've got a message for Logan," I told Hank. "It's from Erik and it's important."

"Give it to me," Hank ordered.

I didn't hesitate. "Erik knows that Creed wasn't working for Logan. And he took care of Pietro."

Hank's wildly-bushy eyebrows went up. "Erik told you this himself?" he asked.

I shook my head. "A go-between did, but I'm sure it's legit."

"Hank!" a woman's voice called. All three of us looked up at the top of the massive and ornate lobby stairs.

It was Raven. She was leaning against a railing. "The boss wants to see them," she told Hank.

Hank shook his head and waved us towards the stairs. "That hearing of his.." Hank muttered mostly to himself.

Marie and I trudged upstairs. Raven and Marie didn't react to each other's presence as Raven walked us towards Logan's office. They'd been hiding their relationship for years and I guess that wasn't going to change anytime soon.

Raven knocked once on the door to Logan's office. Yuriko opened the door and glanced at us, then she stepped to one side, out of the way.

We entered the room. Logan was at his desk. He looked terrible.

Logan heals inhumanly fast. I've seen him chewed up pretty bad in fights - including being shot and stabbed multiple times - but he was always okay the next time I saw him. This time he looked pale and weak, somehow almost shrunken in upon himself. It was a strange and almost frightening sight. It reminded me of that moment when you're a kid and you first see one of your parents sick or hurt.

"Oh, sugar," Marie said softly to Logan.

A ghostly smile quirked across Logan's face. "I'll be okay," he said.

"Creed?" I asked.

"We have him," Logan replied laconically.

I didn't like the sound of that. I'd rather that Creed be dead.

"We had a talk with somebody who works for Erik," I told Logan. "Erik knows Creed wasn't one of yours. He knows Pietro brought Creed to town. And he had Pietro taken down."

Then I waited tensely for Logan's reaction. Whatever else he'd been, Pietro had been one of Logan's underbosses - I'd seen Pietro's brutal recruitment with my own eyes. However, Pietro had also been Erik's son. A lot was going to rest on how Logan chose to balance those two facts.

"Who's the go-between who gave you the word?" Logan asked expressionlessly.

"Is that really important?" I hedged.

Something amused appeared in Logan's eyes. "So you finally know about that guy who runs the news-stand outside of your building?"

I didn't respond. Conversations with Logan sometimes go that way. He knows things.

Then Logan slowly and painfully got to his feet. Yuriko fetched Logan's hat and coat.

"There's something you should see," Logan told us, but he seemed to be looking at me.

I took a deep breath and then let it out slowly.

Logan was fairly blunt that Marie wasn't supposed to come along. Marie argued about that, but Logan wouldn't budge. I finally took her aside and asked her to play ball. She wasn't happy about it, but she agreed.

Logan took me to a nearby funeral home. It wasn't the sort of place you want to visit with a mob-boss. The ambience is way too suggestive.

The clearly terrified owner of the funeral home walked us into a crematoria facility in the back of the building. Then he gave Logan an old-world bow and left us without a word.

The room was filled with an oppressive industrial heat. We all immediately broke out in a sweat.

Then Hank, Scott, and Bobby wheeled Victor Creed into the room on a gurney. Creed's entire body was wrapped in a thick canvas bag, with only his head and face exposed. He'd been gagged and a thick layer of chains were wrapped from neck to foot around the bag. Creed was struggling ineffectually, his wild yellow-orange eyes glaring at us. He had the same sickly and pale look as Logan, but there was still some fight in him.

With easy expertise, Scott opened the crematorium door. The heat went from bad to worse as the roaring noise of the gas-fed fire filled the room. Hank, Bobby, and Yuriko picked up Creed's struggling form and dropped him onto the sliding platform that fed into the fire.

Bobby made a gesture with his hands and the heat in the room finally dropped to reasonable levels.

Creed tilted his head back and stared at us. He tried to say something - snarl something, more likely - but he couldn't get anything intelligible past the gag in his mouth.

Logan nodded to Raven. Her face an expressionless mask, Raven walked over to Creed. The look she and Creed exchanged was beyond words. I made an oath right then and there to never ask for any of details about whatever had passed between the two of them. I knew it had been bad for Raven, and I knew that Creed was more animal than man. That was all I needed to know.

Then Raven braced a foot on the edge of the platform and shoved. The loading platform slid neatly into the fire. Creed couldn't actually scream, but a shrill noise was coming from him just before Scott closed the crematorium door.

We could actually hear Creed struggling inside the crematorium. He was crashing about, his body refusing to die as it burned and healed, burned and healed, and burned and healed.

I never wanted to be out of somewhere as badly as I wanted to be out of there. It seemed to take forever for the sounds of Creed's desperate last struggle to finally died away. Scott looked in Logan's direction, obviously waiting for orders.

"Keep it burning," Logan told him. "Run it for the rest of the day. Then take the ashes, seal them in a concrete block, and drop it twenty miles out in the ocean."

Scott nodded.

As we left, Logan looked at me and said, "Tell Wade about this. After that, you're done with the case."

"Wade?" I asked in confusion.

Logan nodded. "You call him Mac. His real name is Wade."

"Holy shit," Mac - Wade actually - whispered in what sounded like awe.

"They burned him alive?" he went on. "You're not kidding? You saw them barbecue Creed?"

I nodded my head. I was standing in front of Mac's news-stand with the latest copy of the 'Herald' in my hands.

"Holy shit," Mac repeated with a slow shake of his head.

The reason Logan showed me Creed's death was so that word of it could be sent back to Erik. I was playing my part by telling Mac. I didn't particularly like being an errand boy, but if it helped keep the peace, it was fine by me.

"I'm just glad this is over," I said after a long sigh.

Mac laughed, but it sounded more than a little bitter. "Sorry, Dom, but it ain't over. It'll never be over."

I gave Mac a worried look. "What do you mean?"

"The guys who built that place up north - the place where they locked up people like us - are still out there," Mac said slowly. "Yeah, Logan killed almost everyone in his big, bad, breakout, but they were just flunkies. The guys with the deep pockets, the ones who gave the orders, are still alive. They've got plans and we're a part of their plans. And even the things that went wrong for them keep doubling back on the rest of us."

It took me a second to absorb the fact that Mac knew about that prison-lab up north. Just who - and what - was Mac?

"The past is always right behind us, Dom," Mac finished as he irritably tore opened up another bundle of newspapers. "It never really goes away."

He was right, of course. I paid for my paper and walked back to my office.

Early the next morning, I got a call from the Coroner's office. Yeah, they wanted me to identify another stiff. I was tempted to tell them to go to hell, but I took a deep breath and agreed.

Marie shook her head and glanced at the office clock after I told her what I was going to do. We had an appointment to keep, and stopping at the morgue might interfere with that.

"I should be done soon," I told her. "And the graveyard is just a couple of miles away. You can meet me at the garage on Old Main street. Bring my good suit, and I'll change in the lady's room."

Marie agreed.

The coroner was apologetic.

"We have a fingerprint identification, but state law also requires a personal confirmation if possible," he told me helplessly. I considered telling him that the dead man had family in town, but after thinking it over, I decided that wouldn't be wise. And it definitely wouldn't be fair to the coroner. In fact, it just might be a lethal mistake for him if he brought in the family.

The coroner pulled back the sheet. A .45 slug had taken away part of the dead man's skull, but the face was still mostly intact.

"That's him," I told the coroner. "That's Pietro Maximoff."

The coroner looked pleased as he made a check mark on the paper attached to his clipboard.

I stared at Pietro's face. If you ignored the massive skull damage, and the bruises from the beating that Logan's people gave him, he looked almost peaceful. I saw no trace of a terrified and friendless man, trying desperately to escape the hell he'd created for himself. I just saw a man who'd died quickly.

In the end, that was really all Pietro could have hoped for.

Staring into Pietro's face forced me to reconsider my most recent case. I'd managed to keep the peace, but not much more than that. I tried to give Pietro a chance, and I was looking at the result. I gave Creed to Logan, and Creed died more horribly than I could have ever imagined. Maybe Creed's death had been more terrible than even he deserved.

Or maybe not. After all, Creed killed at least ten people in just a few days.

All of that was the price of avoiding a war that was probably inevitable anyway.

"Goodbye, Pietro," I said softly.

As we'd arranged, Marie met me at the garage with my best suit. She even helped me put it on in the lady's room.

Then we went to Fred Dukes' funeral. The logistics of transporting Fred back to his home state made it more reasonable to bury him here. Actually, since Fred had lived most of his life in the city, that struck me as fair.

It turned out that Fred's father was dead and his mother was far too elderly to travel. However, Fred had an older sister who managed to attend. She was a short and painfully skinny woman who looked like she'd lived a hard life. Her face was a knot of misery as she watched her baby brother put into the ground.

Edna was also there and she still looked red-eyed and tired. I still didn't know the details of the relationship between her and Fred, but if nothing else, she'd been his friend. And that was good.

A woman in a dark veil stood silently off to the side. Don't ask me how I knew, but I could tell it was Raven. I'm not sure why she'd shown up, but it struck me as possible that Logan had asked her to deliver a final farewell. Logan has his own set of rules, and something like that fit into them.

There were also some rough-looking guys in crappy suits who I vaguely recognized as former members of Pietro's gang. They'd pitched in for a wreath of flowers. That's a gang-land tradition that I don't quite get, but it seemed to have originated with the Italian families. It was a sign of respect. I wondered if they would do the same for Pietro.

Marie leaned her head against my shoulder as the preacher gave a short and simple sermon. After the preacher said his last - his sermon seemed to really emphasize God's infinite mercy for even the worst sinners - the grave-diggers went to work. As dirt piled up on Fred's huge coffin, the mourners began walking away.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw Edna and Fred's sister still standing by the side of Fred's grave.

In the end, Fred wasn't alone.

Back at the office, I sat behind my desk as Sooraya put a cup of joe next to me. Then she gave my shoulder a comforting squeeze. I unfolded the newspaper I'd bought from Mac the evening before, put it in front of me, and examined the front page. Creed's last murders were the big news, but the latest problems with Germany were still grabbing a lot of space.

That was more of the past that wasn't going away. The Great War hadn't settled anything - it had just created an angry and resentful Germany. Only now, Germany was being run by a man who was certainly a fanatic and maybe a kook. Thanks to the Great War, there were a lot of people in the United States who didn't want to get involved in the upcoming mess. I could understand that, but I didn't think we were going to be allowed that particular luxury.

I put away the newspaper and looked around the office. Marie was talking to a client on the phone - she smiled at me when she noticed that I was looking at her. Sooraya was typing something. It was a peaceful scene.

But somewhere else, the monsters who gave the orders to kidnap, torture, and kill a bunch of people who were like Marie, Sooraya, and me, were still out there. Still considering their options and still making their plans.

Suddenly, Logan's decision to create a gang of people with powers and no great respect for the law made a lot of sense. Then using that gang to dominate a city and 'coincidentally' make it a mutant-friendly haven made even more sense.

Until then, I'd always considered Logan to be motivated merely by human greed and a lust for power. Suddenly, I wasn't so sure. After all, Logan - and Raven - have been around for a long time. Maybe they had a better grasp on how history works than everyone else. Maybe they, better than anyone, knew that the past can be a savage thing.

And that someday it'll become the savage present.