I wasn’t too surprised by the information my mother gave me, one of my grandmothers was head of the mage council in Chicago. It wouldn’t have been hard to get my visit approved. While shifters and vampires wouldn’t be welcome in other cities, the mages were a little more cosmopolitan about it, visits and even moving from one city to another was possible with mages, but only with council approval. It was still closely regulated, and they still didn’t accept rogue mages, a council would need a good reference from the mage council in the mage’s starting city before approving the transfer.
In this case, that was kind of being bypassed using my family’s connections.
I cast the spells that would completely occlude my connection to the infernal, and make my elemental magic aura much dimmer, giving me the appearance of being a mage of average power. The spells would only last as long as I held them in my mind and fed them magic, which was easy enough to do. I also had several protection spells on at all times, and what made it all possible was the partitioning spell, which spawned extra copies of my mind and will making multi-tasking a large number of things quite simple.
My wings were already concealed, they came and went at my will, and weren’t entirely physical anyway, more organized energy. For instance, bringing my wings out wouldn’t tear my shirt, they could pass through whatever I willed them to pass through.
My mother nodded in approval, “That works. Go pack, it’s still early enough that you can make it by tomorrow evening if you go now.”
I thought about arguing again, but it would probably be a bad idea, as well as pointless. I needed to do it.
“Alright,” I moved to walk away, but she stopped me.
She smiled, “Once you’re there, you can always teleport back and forth for lessons.”
I nodded, “Thanks,” and headed to my room to pack a bag. Technically, I could use magic to conjure my clothes, but I needed to pack my other stuff as well, the magical book and personal hygiene stuff.
Also, being able to travel back and forth meant I might not have to curtail my personal life as much as I’d thought…
Chapter Two – Portia
The FBI headquarters office in D.C. was huge. A large off white colored building, with recessed windows. There was a reason I came to this office to do my thing, it was because so many people worked here. I’d gotten an ID over thirty years ago, and was listed as an analyst. Every few years I got the dates on my I.D. updated with a spell, and some helpful people on staff to update the obvious fat finger error on my digital record. The few times a person had asked me who I was, or who I worked for, a little more magic had taken care of that. But generally, all I needed to do was wear a professional skirt and blouse, and nice shoes, with my badge on my lapel, and I was ignored. I even had my own cubicle, about the largest threat in the building to me was the flirting human men.
The nineteen hundreds had seen such a rise in human technology, communications, and data mining, that this was one of my preferred methods for finding rogues nowadays. It was far more certain than chasing rumors, and communications that took weeks and sometimes months to make it from the west back out east to a paper, or more often than not, a tabloid paper, happened in seconds now.
My duties on this mortal plane as an angel, were to keep mankind in the dark about their supernatural cousins. Mostly that was easy, the shifter, vampire, and mage governments took care of that for me, for the majority of the population. No one wanted a visit from an angel to ask why they were risking exposure, that threat kept them all in line. So, the only real work I participated in was tracking down rogues.
My responsibilities included the continental United States, another angel took care of Canada and Alaska, and another angel took care of south of the US in Mexico. Generally, we didn’t deal with each other very often, the US was big enough for me to deal with, and being able to mine all criminal databases across the US was extremely useful. Also, a bit ironic, using the humans to help hide the truth from them.
It always amazed me, that the humans had all the data they needed to divine the supernatural presence among them, yet they didn’t put it together, often discounting the data, and even making jokes about it. How may wild animal attacks occurred inside people’s homes every year, or how many corpses show up with a pint or two blood unaccounted for, and strange markings on their neck. Really, it was a bit fantastic, they’d just make vampire jokes, and make fun of any agent stupid enough to suggest it might all be real.
Humans weren’t stupid, I never believed that or made that mistake, but they were prone to delude themselves when the unexplained happened. I didn’t mind, it made my job easier.
The last twenty years or so I’d seen a steady rise in rogue incidents, I was fairly sure it was the rising human population and growing cities, which naturally supported an equal percentage bump in supernatural populations around those cities. Numbers didn’t change, which meant the rogue numbers went up as well, both the harmless ones, and the ones that decided to get into trouble. Those latter ones were my only concern.
As an analyst, I’d been able to build custom searches to search for keywords. Those searches were inaccessible by other analysts, and really could only be viewed by my supervisor. Of course, I didn’t have a supervisor, so it worked out. I usually came in two to five times a week, depending on how busy I was chasing down rogues.
“Agent?” A deep male voice asked.
I looked up and smiled, “Malaika, Analyst Portia Malaika.”
I’ll admit, I picked that last name on a whim, it was Swahili for Angel. In reality, my name was Portia, just Portia, it was the name given to me when I was created over a billion years ago, angels don’t have last names. Of course, the FBI doesn’t like people without last names.
He nodded, “Ahh, Miss Malaika, may I call you Portia?”
I raised an eyebrow, “Who’s asking?”
He said, “Special Agent Jonathan Murray.”
“What can I do for you, special agent?”
Maybe he wanted me to look something up?
Jonathan cleared his throat, “This might be a little forward, but will you have lunch with me today?”
I suppose I should have seen that coming. I could have, but I preferred not to skim human minds unless I had to.
I shook my head regretfully, “I have a previous engagement, and I don’t mix business and pleasure.”
He coughed, “Right, see you around then.”
I heard several men laughing as Jonathan walked away, and shook my head. It was just a thing I had to deal with, angels were rather attractive as a rule, and I was no exception.
I brought up my searches, and looked through them. There were a number of hits, but I was able to disqualify many of them quickly, until I ran into a string of murders that looked like the work of a rogue vampire. Four different cases of partially exsanguinated female bodies, strange injection marks on the neck, yes, they said injection marks. I imagined any Coroner that entered the words vampire teeth marks into an official report would find themselves being retired forcibly and labeled a kook. There was also evidence of crushed bones, which would take immense strength, and the murders were quite violent, including sexual intercourse, rape. Sex during blood sharing wasn’t common to all vampires, but common enough to be included in my search parameters, it was especially prevalent in rogues, though only the worst of the rogues killed their victims afterwards. I was going to enjoy putting the prick down when I caught up with him.
Based on the reports, they were all exactly one week apart, which is how often a vampire had to feed, and further circumstantial proof that it was a vampire serial rapist and killer. They were about three hundred miles apart as well, moving west across the country up in the north, just outside of major cities along Interstate-90.
The next one should be tonight, and if he stuck to the same distance, which most predators did, stick to a pattern I mean. I brought up a map, he should be right around the Gillette area, in Wyoming…
; Chapter Three – Jason
The sky was bright blue, just a few puffy clouds in sight, as I drove down the interstate at about ninety. It felt good with the music blasting, and the window cracked open. It was warm out, but not too hot, and I felt a sense of freedom being on the road. I’d never been away from home before, at least, not outside of Seattle and on my own. Going to finish my sword training with another Nephilim wasn’t exactly a vacation, but I was also looking forward to visiting with family.
I’d had a few aunts visit over the years, and met some cousins, but I knew the Chicago side of the Moore family was even larger than mine. They’d had a twenty year head start and an extra generation though.
Of course, after the first couple of hours of freedom and excitement, it became mind-numbingly boring. It was a long drive from Seattle to Chicago, and I’d have to go fast and far if I was to make the trip in two days. The trip duration was right at thirty hours by the speed limit, at my current speed and figuring in stops for gas and food, I thought I’d be driving at least fourteen hours a day.
Gillette, Wyoming was my goal for the first day, which was right at the halfway point between Seattle and Chicago. If I was right, I should get in right around eleven at night.
I was about four hours along at one in the afternoon, and I started looking for a place to stop. I needed gas, food, and a restroom, not necessarily in that order. I was somewhere in Montana, I’d be somewhere in Montana for most of the day. I saw a sign for gas and food, and pulled off the road a bit dubiously. There were no signs of human civilization for almost a half mile, and then I saw a sign for Sanctuary city limits, population seventy-eight.
I laughed. Now that’s a small town.
There was a gas station with a diner attached, but it wasn’t one of those chains, it said Carla’s Diner on the sign. Across the street from that there was a dirt driveway, with a sign that said Sanctuary animal rescue, and about another two hundred feet up there was a large general or convenience store. As far as I could tell, that was it for stores in the town. I took note of the houses down a side road, other than that it was all countryside.
I pulled into the gas station, got out, and pumped my gas. My eyes narrowed slightly, and I looked closer at the building. There were six mages, ten shifters, and of all things, a Fae in the diner and gas station. There were also about seven cars, and a few families of humans inside, eating. At first, I was confused while I filled the gas tank, since supernatural races lived around cities, except for the Fae, and this was most definitely, not a city.
They had to be rogues. I smirked, leave it to me to find a pocket of rogues out in the middle of nowhere, but since they weren’t eating the humans, I figured I was safe. Plus, I really had to use the restroom, and I was starving. I sighed with relief when the pump stopped, and put the nozzle back, closed the gas tank, and quickly hopped in to pull up in a spot in front of the diner.
The diner looked clean, white tiles, booths with red cushions and dark brown wooden tables, and a white flecked black stone counter with red cushioned steel bar stools that were bolted down. The diner was full of the clinks of silverware on plates, and the low murmur of conversations. I also couldn’t help but notice an attractive redheaded mage giving me stink eye as I moved straight to the restroom.
No doubt every supernatural in the diner would be told I was a mage before I got back out.
The place was also heavily warded, and from what I could tell would swat anyone with the intention to commit violence. It wasn’t a simple thing either, my home in Seattle had an extremely complicated ward structure, this tiny diner in the middle of nowhere put it to shame. There were protective wards, trap wards, enough concealment wards to make it impossible to fully unravel without a week to study it, and containment wards.
Containment wards were similar to protective wards, they would stop fire, earth, air, water, and general magic attacks such as sleep or paralysis, but they didn’t just deflect the attacks like a protective ward did, they absorbed the magic in the attack, which made the wards stronger. Of course, containment wards had limits, and could be overloaded, which is why there were both. Just an extra layer of protection.
The concealment wards blurred all the others, hiding some of them outright, and blurring the others to make sure an enemy can’t easily discern and disassemble their protections. Trap wards were obvious enough, if I sneezed wrong they’d go off and attack me. Fortunately, I had no intention of doing the rogues here harm. It was certainly an oddity, most rogues ran on their own, and weren’t the cream of supernatural society. There were seventeen supernatural beings in this building, beside myself, and I had to guess that wasn’t all of them, just those in the diner right now getting lunch. I recalled the sign, could there be seventy-eight rogues here? The only humans here seemed to be visitors going through from the interstate. It would be a good way to support a small community I supposed.
I’d just never heard of a rogue small town community before, most rogues were assholes, but not all. I wondered how the town got started, how they possibly found each other, but I supposed asking a bunch of questions would be asking for trouble as well. I was curious, but not stupid. They were hidden too, out in the middle of nowhere Montana, which meant they’d be wary of a mage they didn’t know. I imagined secrecy was a thing for them, would they kill to ensure it?
Well, I planned to eat and leave, if things went sideways I’d just teleport out before the wards could get through my protections. I doubted even a Nephilim could overpower these wards, but I’d last the second or two that it took to teleport out easily enough. I felt better having a plan just in case. I finished my business, and walked back out to the main room. I sat down on one of the tall stools at the counter.
I was curious, but I resisted the idea of trying to read even just their public minds. Some people even broadcast loudly enough to pick it up without me trying, unless I was blocking, but all the minds here were closed, I could only pick up a few scraps from the unwary human occupants. All it took to close a mind from actively broadcasting was a little discipline, even normal humans could stop Angels and Nephilim from picking up random thoughts, though blocking the intrusive ability to reach into minds took magic. Point was, I was surprised all the supernatural beings in the diner all had that kind of discipline. Everyone in my family did, but that’s because my mother was a fallen angel, and I was there as well, which had been a good reason for them to learn not to leak, and I’d been taught at an early age to not snoop, at least not on family.
It was a power Nephilim and Angels shared, but there were several ways to block it and detect it, and I didn’t want to start a fight I couldn’t, or at least wouldn’t want to finish. This was their town, I was just passing through. As long as they kept the secret, it wasn’t anyone’s business. Though I could see why it would upset some, the different supernatural races seemed completely integrated here, which didn’t even happen in the most peaceful of cities. Most cities had skirmishes, and full out battles between supernatural races, Seattle had been that way until my father had gotten there. Similarly, my grandfather’s power ensured the peace in Chicago.
Point was, it was extremely odd to see this level of cooperation among the races.
A woman that appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties walked over. She was still attractive, looked very athletically fit, and had jet black hair and friendly green eyes. She was also a wolf shifter, I could read it in her magic aura, which meant she was probably really over a hundred and forty. The gold-metal nametag pinned to her apron said Tammy.
“What can I get you?” she smiled, and it looked genuine enough. The redhead was still giving me stink eye, as were two other mages, but the rest of them were ignoring me. That was a good sign, I could deal with cautious. I swallowed my curiosity, the supernatural world could be a violent and suspicious place, better not to rock the boat in this place.
“Reuben and fries, with a coke.”
She wrote it down, nodded, and said, �
�Good choice, Carla makes the best,” and then she walked off.
It wasn’t the most comfortable lunch, by the end of it I had five out of six of the mages watching me warily, and the Fae woman as well, who strangely gave off no magic at all, just one more question I wouldn’t get answered. Still, the Reuben was excellent, and the fries crispy. I didn’t dawdle either, I still had another nine to ten hours to go before I could stop for the day…
Chapter Four – Portia
I took the morning to review some facts, and to rule out other cases that my searches had flagged. At the time, it looked like the only rogue I had to chase down was this vampire. That could change at any time, but for now, I’d be happy to take it.
The vampire had avoided going into all the cities he’d passed through, taking his victims from the edges. He also checked into a motel each time using cash and a fake I.D. The officers on the cases had been unable to find any witnesses, or anyone that even heard screams, not even the people that had rented the rooms adjacent to where the vampire had tortured, raped, and killed his victim had heard a thing.
That told me he was using compulsion to prevent his victims from crying out. It was also strange, most sick and disturbed predators enjoyed the screams of their prey. Maybe he enjoyed doing it right under the nose of others? Or the helplessness it caused in his victim? I shook my head, I didn’t truly want to understand that part of things. I just wanted to catch and end the sick bastard.
It was hard to establish a timeline, except the victims were torn apart while still alive, the coroner was sure about that, if I had to guess he was feeding from them during sex, and then for some reason only known to him, he chose to murder them violently, instead of using compulsion to make them forget. It was… disturbing. It also wasn’t because he was a vampire, he was a sick human minded serial killer, with too much power, but it wasn’t what he was that drove him to those extremes. Regardless, whoever turned this asshole was a terrible judge of character.
Nephilim's Journey Page 2