by Jack Knight
Gen gave a short laugh. “Please,” she scoffed. “Give me something difficult to do.”
She pushed herself across the room again, this time ending up at the monitor right beside where I was standing. In the time that it took me to turn to see what she was doing, she was already typing away and new windows were popping up. After about a minute, not just the monitor she was sitting at, but the three on either side of her were covered in new windows. Each one had a picture and what looked like a police report.
“This is every death that I’ve marked as ‘probably supe related’ in the last month,” Gen explained. “And, here,” she did some quick typing and a new window popped up on the monitor in front of me, “is a list of the names.”
“How did you already have these marked?” I asked absently as I started reading down the list of names, looking for any that sounded familiar.
“Oh, you know, police departments don’t exactly keep their systems locked down very tight. I worm my way in and then set up an algorithm to send the police report to me, in case Ezra wants to see it.”
“Gen, what’s this!” Asher shouted.
I glanced up from the list of names to see that Asher had moved over to one of the screens. His face was barely inches away and he was staring at a police report that was half covered. I couldn’t see most of the picture that he was looking at, but I could tell that it bothered him.
“Why?” I asked.
Asher didn’t answer, but Gen tapped a few keys and the window moved up to the front so we could see it clearly. Even I recognized that picture. It was Torn.
“Torn was killed, last night...” Asher said in a whisper. He had no expression on his face, but the fact that he was gripping the desk in front of him so hard that his knuckles were turning white told me that he wasn’t taking it well.
There was a second of silence and Asher hurried from the room, practically running as he disappeared through the doorway.
Obviously, that was a big deal to him, but my thing was more pressing. If Torn was already dead, there was nothing we could do for him. I continued looking down the list I had been reading through. Something white flashed across my screen and I was momentarily distracted, until I realized Gen had just dragged the police report about Torn from the monitor Asher had been looking at to the one in front of her.
“Torn was drained of blood,” Gen said quietly a few seconds later.
That wasn’t a big surprise, especially since I had finally found a name that I knew.
“Gen, where is the file for Arcturus Gilbert?”
Gen looked over at me with a tear in her eye. “A Reaper was killed last night!” she said in a huff. “You don’t even care?”
“I do, sort of,” I said with a shrug. “I didn’t really know him, but yeah, it sucks. If I’m right, though, we have a much bigger problem.”
Gen glared at me, hit a few keys, and the police report I was looking for popped up on my screen. Not only did I recognize the face, the police had noticed his tattoo, it was part of the report as well.
Careful not to touch the screen, because I didn’t want to upset Gen any more than she already was, I pointed at the picture of the tattoo as I told her, “Look at that. This isn’t a coincidence. Vampires are being made in a way that attracts Hunters. They’re flocking toward the new vamps to snuff them out, not knowing what’s going on.”
Gen pushed herself back a little from the desk so she could see the screen that I was pointing at, realization spread across her face almost immediately.
“That’s a Hunter’s Mark...”
I nodded. “The vampires are being created to kill Hunters. Torn may have been an accident, because the tattoos are so similar, or maybe they’re after Reapers, too.”
Chapter 19
MY LEG WOULDN’T STOP bouncing up and down, I tried to stop it, but I was too agitated.
I was sitting in a chair in Ezra’s office, facing his desk. He had sent Magnus to tell me that he needed to speak to me and that he would be with me in a moment, but that was almost twenty minutes ago. Sitting still for that long was not my forte.
It was particularly annoying because Gen and I had been in the middle of something much more important than a chat. After I recognized one name, I knew that most of the Hunters would probably never allow their actual names to get out. If a Hunter died, they were given false records, “Arcturus Gilbert” had died at least a dozen times over the years, I was sure there were more, but I didn’t know all the false names.
Gen had started searching police reports for people with the Hunter’s Mark. “Arcturus” wasn’t the only dead Hunter. We had found twenty other Hunters dead under false names before Magnus gave me the message that dragged me away.
Someone was creating vampires. New, more powerful vampires, to kill Hunters. And, I was sitting in an empty office doing nothing.
Finally, I heard the door behind me open and I spun around in my chair.
“I was busy,” I snapped.
Ezra had to raise his eyes to look at me, he had been staring at the floor when he walked in. His face was not in its usual, confident, put together state. It was lined, and he looked exhausted.
“Yes, I thought you might be,” Ezra answered wearily as he strode across the office and took his seat at his desk. “I was as well, but something came up.”
“The vampires that are popping up, they’re killing Hunters. We aren’t sure if they’re going after Reapers, too, but Torn was killed by a vampire, right?”
Ezra’s eyes narrowed as I spoke, like he was trying to figure something out while I was talking.
“That would explain a few things,” he said quietly. “I’ll look into it,” he said a little louder. “In the meantime, I have another job for you.”
My leg finally stopped shaking and I glared at Ezra. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I demanded. “I just told you I’m onto something that’s going around killing Hunters! They might be coming for the Reapers next! You’re just going to send me off on an errand?”
Ezra rubbed his eyebrow, looking even more exhausted than he had before.
“Listen,” he said in resignation, “I hear what you’re saying, and yes, it’s bad. But, there’s someone out there right now killing innocent people. Hunters, and us Shadow Reapers, can hold our own against these things. Our immediate priority is stopping the people who can’t protect themselves from being slaughtered by a rogue wizard.”
The sigh that I gave sounded a little more like a growl, but I had to admit he was right. The vampire that Asher and I caught wasn’t killing anyone that didn’t deserve it, the rest might be the same way. Hell, there was no way the Hunters didn’t deserve it.
I sat in silence, trying to calm myself down before giving a response. Apparently, it lasted long enough that Ezra felt he should continue.
“Based on the fact that you let your last target go, even helped him learn to control himself, I’m assuming the innocent would be your priority as well?”
I turned away from him and crossed my arms over my chest. “You talked to Asher?”
“Yes, he gave me a full report. Now,” I heard something fall onto the desk and looked at Ezra again to see that there was a file in front of him, identical to the last one, “this time you will be going with Genevieve. Her unique talent will be needed this time.”
I leaned forward to snatch the file off the desk. “What?” I asked, “Are we hacking into a wizard’s computer.”
Ezra’s lips twitched into the shadow of a smile. “Genevieve has many talents.”
For a second, I almost got up and left without another word. Then, a thought occurred to me that I just couldn’t ignore.
“Just so that I know, do you even care that someone is going around killing Hunters?”
Ezra leaned back in his chair and sighed. “It is a major problem. They may be a corrupt organization hellbent on killing, exploiting, and spreading fear through all supernatural creatures, but they are still people, and they do hel
p to keep the supernatural a secret. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot to go on at the moment, as you have brought back more information than I, or anyone else, has been able to thus far.”
Something about the answer felt off to me, but maybe it was because I just didn’t trust Ezra. Whatever the reason, I doubted I was going to get any more information.
I stood up and walked out of the room, annoyed that I couldn’t focus on gathering more information on the vampires. At least I was going to be able to kill something evil. Maybe this time the person I was supposed to kill might actually be doing something wrong.
I walked back through the church to the computer room. To my surprise, Gen wasn’t in there, which left me in a bit of a bind. I had no clue where else to look. I just stood in the doorway, feeling awkward, for a few seconds until a nearby door opened and Asher walked out.
“Hey!” I shouted as I jogged over to him.
Asher looked up and I saw that his eyes were puffy and bloodshot, like he had been crying. I was not emotionally equipped to deal with that, so I ignored it.
“Where’s Gen’s room?” I asked.
“She’s there,” Asher said, pointing at the door directly across the hall from the one he had just walked out of.
“Knock, though,” Asher said with a chuckle. “If she’s in her room, she won’t want to be surprised.”
“Um?” I hummed. “Is she masturbating or something?”
Asher gave a short laugh, which seemed odd for someone who had clearly just finished crying, and shook his head.
“I doubt it. No, she’s probably reading or something. She likes to escape into books whenever she feels... well, anything.”
I shrugged, walked over to Gen’s door and rapped it a few times with my knuckles.
“No, go away,” Gen called from inside.
“Mission from Ezra,” I said as I rolled my eyes.
I heard an annoyed groan, a couple of thumps, and then the door flew open.
“Let me guess, you’re killing a wizard and I’m coming along?”
Okay, I got that she was smart, but that was a little freaky.
I held out the file and said, “Yeah, kind of.”
She snatched the file out of my hand and turned back into her room. “A little advice, never interrupt someone in the middle of Sirius’ death. It usually doesn’t end well.”
I took a few steps into Gen’s room and looked around. It was decorated a lot differently than the one I had been given.
First, she had posters of cartoon characters all over her walls. At least, I assumed they were cartoon characters, it might have been video game characters, I wasn’t sure. There were also movie posters, one of them was definitely Sam and Dean from Supernatural, there was a cloth tapestry colored blue with a bird on it, and there was a map, framed and hung on the wall, that I was certain wasn’t of anywhere on Earth.
“Fan girl, huh?” I asked as Gen started darting around the room.
She could barely fit her bed and two desks into the room, but apparently the computer room a few doors away didn’t offer her enough, so she had another computer in her bedroom, set up with three monitors. As if that wasn’t enough clutter for her, most of the open space that was left was filled with books. Not even just grimoires, although she had plenty of those. There were piles all over the room of fiction books.
“Don’t judge me,” Gen said as she grabbed a knife off the top of one stack of books and then darted past me.
“Not judging,” I lied.
Gen grabbed a backpack, though I’m not sure where exactly it had come from, or how she could find anything in a room so messy, but she threw it over one shoulder and turned to me.
“Your car or mine?”
“I don’t have a car,” I answered.
“How old are you?”
I glared at her as I backed out of the room. “Can we just go?”
Gen shrugged and snatched what I assumed were car keys off of one of her desks and hurried out of her room, past me, and down the hall.
She led me out of the church and around the building to where Asher’s car had been parked. I was not the least bit surprised when she started climbing into one that was hot pink and had a symbol that sort of looked like a feather on the hood.
I climbed into the passenger seat and she immediately dropped the file into my lap.
“Figure out this guy’s address,” she commanded as she pulled out her phone.
“That from a cartoon?” I asked, pointing at the symbol on the hood.
Gen glanced at me and then back at her phone. “Anime.”
She started the car, and something loud and in a language I didn’t understand immediately started blaring from the speakers. Gen turned it down a little, so I didn’t feel my eardrums bursting, and I figured out what language it was. The clue about anime helped.
“Are we listening to Japanese music?” I asked, trying not to laugh, as Gen drove around the church and into the street.
“Address please,” Gen repeated.
I flipped through the file until I found the address for the wizard’s home. It was weird that they already knew where he lived and the Reapers waited to send me and Gen. I read the address out loud to Gen, who changed direction immediately and started driving back the way we had come.
“What are you doing?” I asked when Gen turned around.
“Going to the wizard’s place,” Gen answered casually.
I looked around, not understanding how she knew where to go.
“How?...”
“I have the entire city memorized,” Gen answered my question before I could get it out. “It’s not like it’s hard.”
Yeah, that was too much for me. I didn’t think I could ever do anything like that. Good news was, Gen drove us to the guy’s house within minutes.
I was a little impressed. The guy that was going around killing people lived in a pretty nice neighborhood. Boring, but nice. All the two story houses looked exactly the same, all had manicured lawns, and looked almost exactly like the neighborhoods you’d see on TV.
Gen parked right in front of the house, which didn’t seem like a very good plan.
“You should probably park literally anywhere else,” I told her as she shifted the car into park and turned it off.
“Nope,” Gen answered as she got out of the car.
I jumped out just as she was pulling out the two backpacks from the backseat.
“You want him to know someone’s at his place?” I demanded. “I’ve hunted a lot of mages, alerting them isn’t usually a great idea.”
Gen started sauntering toward the wizard’s front door, and I followed. Her confidence was interesting, considering she seemed to spend most of her time behind a computer.
Gen hurried up to the door and waved her hand, “Recludo.”
The door swung inward, like she had opened it normally.
I was a step behind her, I would have seen her cut herself.
“How’d you do that without a sacrifice?” I demanded as we crossed the threshold into the wizard’s home.
Gen walked into the living room, which didn’t look nearly as normal as the outside of the house. Books were piled everywhere, much worse than in Gen’s room. Bookshelves lined the walls, and there was no furniture, just a long table that took up most of the room and had plants, animal parts, bottles, vials, and a bunch of things I couldn’t identify. It looked like this dude was trying to choose between being a book hoarder and home chemist.
“If you can do it without magic, you don’t always need a sacrifice,” Gen answered absently as she started looking through the bookshelves.
“What’s the plan here?” I demanded.
“Clearly, she’s looking for my grimoire.”
I drew my knife as I spun around.
Standing in the doorway was a thin man with a balding head, and a dad-bod. He looked completely normal, like he fit in perfectly in the cookie cutter house in the good neighborhood. In fact, if I saw hi
m on the street, I never would’ve suspected that he was a supe.
“Maddi, do the killing thing!”
Before I could respond, the wizard’s hands started to glow and lightning started crawling across his skin, reaching half way up his arms.
“I’m not gonna let that happen.”
Chapter 20
MURDEROUS DUDE, LIGHTNING running all over his hands, doing nothing wasn’t an option.
I ran forward, ready to stab the guy right in the chest. He threw out his hand and lightning shot straight out of it.
When it hit me, I blacked out for a second. My mouth tasted like burned rubber, I was flying through the air, and then I woke up. Right in time for my back to slam into the table that was sitting in the wizard’s living room.
“Solis tenebris videtis!”
The table cracked behind me. All the crushed up plants and animal pieces covered me as the table collapsed and I slammed into the floor. I knew the shout had come from Gen, but I had no idea what she had said. The red hot pain that ran up my back was distracting enough that, even if I knew those words, I never would’ve been able to figure out the meaning.
I struggled to sit up and saw that the guy was standing perfectly still in the middle of the room, mouthing something to himself. Gen was frantically pulling books off of the wizard’s shelves and shoving them into her backpack, not even trying to fight the guy who was currently doing his best to kill us.
Gen might be okay wasting the opportunity, but I wasn’t.
With my hair still feeling like it was standing on end, I forced my aching body to stand up and I charged at the wizard again.
Right before I reached him, he started blinking furiously, like his eyes were adjusting to the light, and he threw his hand, which was still sparkling with electricity, toward me.
Fool me once.
I dodged to the side and the lightning hit his carpet. The sizzling sound behind me told me that we would have a fire in a few minutes, but I didn’t care.
The pain in my back had to be enough, because I wasn’t getting another shot. Hopefully, there was at least some blood. Unlike Gen, I needed to pay the sacrifice for all my magic.