by D. Levesque
“Oh, I never said that,” she says, her grin getting bigger. We approach the limo and the man holding the door nods to Carmen.
“Welcome to Miami, Ms. Carmen. It’s nice to be of service once more,” he says in a deep voice. Looking at him closer, I notice that he is tall with pale skin. His eyes, though, are off some. Vampire? He looks at me and I feel something, but I somehow push back on it. A surprised look appears on his face.
Just before Carmen gets into the back seat, she looks at the man and says, “Be polite, Marvus. Don’t scan people you don’t know. You are lucky he did not get offended.”
“Yes, madam. My apologies, young sir,” he says, bowing to me.
“No worries,” I tell him, not sure what just happened.
I get into the back seat with Carmen and once Marvus closes the door, I look at her and ask, “What just happened? I felt something, but I pushed back on it.”
Nodding, Carmen explains. “He is a Vampire. They have the ability to test humans to see how vulnerable their minds are. Vampires feed not only on blood but also on emotions. He thought you were a simple human. He learned a valuable lesson, though.”
“Oh?”
“Never judge a book by its cover,” she says, putting a hand on my leg and squeezing it.
She removes her hand before things get awkward, and presses a button which makes the partition between the back and the driver’s area comes down.
“Where to madam?” Marvus asks.
“Club 58,” Carmen says.
“Right away, madam.” The partition closes once more.
“Club 58?” I ask her.
“The local Vampire nightclub. Since I got Marvus to drive us, they will be expecting us.”
“They?” I ask her worriedly.
“The Miami chapter of the Vampire family. Sir William Tonlia might not be from Earth, but his family is powerful. I need intel, and that is where I will get it.”
“Is that safe?” I ask her.
“For us, yes. For them? Maybe not. You need to remember. You are now a M.A.G.I. Bounty Hunter. You are powerful. It would be best if you acted it,” Carmen says forcefully, looking at me. “I might not be your trainer, but know this. We are a power for a reason. If a Bounty Hunter is talking to you, you are talking to the law. As time goes on, you will see that this job is dangerous in a different way. It’s not the external people who you will be fighting that make it dangerous. It’s your own inner demons. There have been some who have held this job that abused their power. We do not take kindly to that. We have had to go after our own Bounty Hunters in those cases. Kevin, you need to always show you are strong but at the same time, show some humility.”
Nodding to her, I have to wonder just how powerful a M.A.G.I. Bounty Hunter is compared to a normal Magus? From what I am hearing, only the best make it to a position within M.A.G.I. Just how powerful are Marrisa and Carmen to get in? Hell, how powerful is Bower? The man seems slow and strong in terms of physical strength. But when I was told that he gets sent in when strength is needed, I never thought of asking if that was physical strength or Magic. And those types of assumptions can get me killed.
After a quiet drive through downtown, we end up in the more upscale part of Miami, passing large houses and shops that I am sure I can’t even afford to walk into. Eventually, we drive up the driveway of a large home. I look at Carmen.
“This is Club 58?” I ask her skeptically.
“Yes. Trust me, we are at the right place,” she says with a laugh at my look.
Once we get to the front door another man comes out, who is just as pasty white as Marvus, and just as tall. He is dressed in a uniform of some kind, all black with a white shirt. He opens the door and bows as Carmen gets out.
“Madam, Sir Tallen would be honored to have you as a guest at Club 58.”
“Thank you, Parker. Can you tell Tallen that I would be honored to be his guest, as would my colleague Kevin.”
I can tell Parker is not happy that Carmen used this Tallen fellow’s name without including the sir beforehand. At the mention of my name, he looks over at me and I feel that same pressure I did with Marvus. Having combed through my knowledge for this, I know what I need to do. With a bit of a push, I make Magic flow between me and the connection he is trying to establish. Suddenly, he winces in pain.
Deciding to play up the role, I tell him with a growl, “Try that again, and next time it will be a more powerful jolt.”
The Vampire, Parker, looks at me and swallows and nods. “Sir Tallen would be honored to have you as a guest as well, Kevin, sir. Please follow me,” he says and turns around and heads to the entrance.
“Good job,” Carmen says with a whisper. “They won’t try that shit with you again. But keep your wits about you. We might have guest rights, but shit can still hit the fan.”
Guest rights. I think about it, and get the information that as long as both parties are non-aggressive, nothing will happen. Also, the first party to break the peace is at fault and you can ask for restitution. Damn. That’s kind of, well, barbaric. But I’m not about to start shit.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Once we get inside the house, or Club 58 as it’s called, I look around. The place is what I would expect a wealthy person’s home to look like. Opulent. The floor is white marble. The doors are red oak, and the trim of the wood is the same as the door. There is a large mirror hanging in the hall and I look in it curiously to see if I can see Parker’s reflection. I am disappointed. I can see him. He sees me looking, and he smirks.
“This way,” he says, walking forward. He walks until we reach the back of the house, but he doesn’t head outside, where I can see a large pool surrounded by naked people, some sun-kissed and some who are pasty white like Parker, although those one are under umbrellas. Instead he opens a door leading to the basement and heads down the stairs without a pause.
I look at Carmen worriedly, but she smiles at me and says, “All good. Club 58 is in the basement.”
“Ah,” I tell her, somewhat relieved, but not much.
As we are walking down, I feel something cover me, almost like cobwebs. Without thinking about it, I cast a spell. It’s sort of a viewing spell. It shows me anything around us that is using Magic. Once I’m done casting, I see some kind of haze in the hallway. I look around to see where it’s coming from, and I see it. In the middle of the steps, on the ceiling, is a sigil that seems to glow. As I pass it, I press my hand against it and dispel it without thinking.
“What the bloody fuck!” I hear Parker exclaim in anger from in front of me. I look down, and he is looking up at me with a glare.
“Sorry,” I tell him with a shrug. “It was getting on my nerves.”
He keeps glaring at me but says nothing.
“Parker, just keep going down. You don’t want to piss him off,” Carmen says with a laugh.
She presses against me after Parker gives me one more glare before heading back down.
“Good catch. I missed that one,” Carmen whispers.
“What was it? Confusion?” I whisper back.
“Yep, a confusion spell. If we had tried to leave, we would have kept turning ourselves around. It’s a mind Magic trick. I missed it,” she says, and she sounds angry, but I think it’s directed at herself.
I look for the knowledge and see that a powerful mind could break free of the spell eventually, but the spell would have kept us here unless the person who cast it, which was probably Parker based on his reaction, The spell’s purpose is to keep someone in a specific area. It was used ages ago by Fairies and Magic folks to keep humans trapped or away from their homes. Interesting use of it now, though.
The other way to get out of it was to kill the caster, but that is extreme. What I ended up doing without thinking about it was placing my hand on the spell and breaking the seal on it, or the seal on the sigil, which dispersed it. Though how I was able to see it is beyond me. This new Magic seems to work subconsciously, which might be outstanding,
but damn, I need to learn stuff. I know it’s supposed to come to me easier over time, but right now, it comes in spurts. Almost like I get insight into something once I look at it.
Once we get to the bottom of the stairs, there is another door, but there are two very large humans in front of it. Not Vampires. From the bulk of them, I would say they are either bodybuilders or genetic freaks. Each one of them has bulge on their left side, under the armpit. Firearms? Probably. Parker nods to them, and one of the big guys looks at Carmen and me.
“I need to check for weapons,” he says in a deep, monotone, bored sounding voice.
“Sure, honey,” Carmen says, lifting her arms. “Be my guest.”
“She’s M.A.G.I.,” Parker tells the brute. He looks at Parker as if processing what he said, and then the big guy nods and waves her through.
That makes sense. Since we can use Foci to bring up weapons, there is nothing they can take away. I have yet to bring mine out. Everyone’s Foci is different. Marrisa’s looks like a 357 Magnum. Carmen’s looks like a sniper rifle. I know that the staff that Marrisa’s dad had was really his Foci. Or I do now. And there is my dagger.
As I pass by the two security men, they look me up and down but say nothing. I’m not a short guy, but next to these guys, I feel small.
I walk through the door and then stop in my tracks at what’s in front of me. Loud music with throngs of people. It’s a fucking nightclub. I didn’t hear the music until I passed through the door. I look back and over the door, I see another sigil. This one is for sound. Or the suppression of sound. No wonder. The door itself, and the walls most likely, would be soundproof in a place like this. But sound would still escape when the door opened, if not for the sigil. I am sure the neighbors are very happy, albeit unknowingly, about that.
I look forward again and see that the place is packed with bodies dancing to typical club music. But as Parker walks through, everyone makes room for him, as if he is parting the seas. We follow him to the back of the club until eventually we are brought to a table where a man is sitting down with two women on either side of him, almost an exact replica of what I had seen Sir William Tonlia doing in another club. Although the two women this time are pasty white like the man himself, so that tells me they are both Vampires. This must be Sir Tallen.
He nods to the two women, who kiss him and walk away at our approach, leaving just me, Carmen, and Parker. He waves Parker away and he bows to him, gives us one last glare, and leaves.
The man waves us forward, but just before I move, I stop Carmen without thinking again. She looks at me questioningly and I point to the sigil above us. She looks up, sees it, and then looks back down and glares at the man. He sighs and waves his hand, and the sigil slowly disappears, its energy dispersing. This sigil was one for a trap. Not a mind trap, but a true trap where the unwary would be wrapped in magical ropes.
Carmen looks around once more, warily, and then when she seems satisfied she walks over to the table. I follow her and suddenly all the sound from the club disappears as if I walked into another room and shut the door. Turning back, I see the same sigil for sound suppression just above us.
The man looks at me. “I have never met you before,” he says. He sniffs, and then his eyes widen in shock. “You’re a human!”
“Sure,” I tell him with a shrug. “But I’m also a Magic-user now, and part of the M.A.G.I. Bounty Hunters. Carmen has some questions to ask you,” I finish, trying to play the good cop bad cop routine and see if that will work.
When I look at her, Carmen winks, smiles at me, and nods without Sir Tallen noticing. “I am sure he would love to answer my questions,” she says, almost purring.
Sir Tallen looks at her with no expression. “Truce?” he blurts out.
“I don’t know, Tallen,” Carmen says with a grin. “I don’t feel generous after our last meeting.”
“Listen,” he says angrily, but stops himself and begins anew. “Listen, Carmen. That was a misunderstanding.”
She arches an eyebrow at him. “Nine Vampires and eight of your goon human squad is a misunderstanding? You are so close to breaking Article 1,” she says, but Sir Tallen slams his hand down on the table, hard.
“You know we do not follow the laws of the Council. Article 1 does not relate to us since we stayed on Earth.”
“You know better than that, Tallen. The fact that you stayed on Earth doesn’t matter. Your King and Queen signed an agreement to abide by the rules with the Council before they moved on.”
“And you know that was under duress. But that is ancient history and we shall have to agree to disagree. What I am curious about now is how does a human have Magic?”
“Easy enough,” Carmen says with a shrug. “He drank a vial.”
“Wait,” Sir Tallen says, his face showing disbelief. “He,” and he points to me, “drank the last vial of the elixir?”
“Hey,” I say defensively. “It was an accident. It came crashing out of a window and hit me in the face.”
“I challenge you to a duel!” Sir Tallen says suddenly, standing up straight.
I look at him strangely. Duel? Then my mind supplies the information. It’s a magical contest that all Magic folk can demand. Though in this case, there is no reason to.
“You have no grounds,” Carmen growls at him.
“He is human. That’s grounds enough,” Sir Tallen barks.
Carmen looks at me, then shrugs her shoulders. “Sure, if you feel the need to die against a level 10 Magus, or more likely closer to 13 since he has not been thoroughly tested and Magus Targun thinks he might be higher.”
Sir Tallen looks at her in astonishment, but then his face clouds over in anger. “Lies. I still challenge him.”
Carmen looks at him and grins. “I hope you have your affairs in order?”
Sir Tallen nods at her angrily. “Come, I have a room where we can do it.”
“No, here is fine,” she says.
“Here?” I ask her, and I hear Sir Tallen say the same thing.
“Of course. I don’t want to go to any room. And here we have witnesses.”
He looks at Carmen with a piercing gaze. After a good ten seconds, he finally nods. “Very well.” He gets up and stands next to the table, facing us.
Without warning, he throws a spell at me. It’s a spike of water and I bring up a shield, which breaks the spike when it hits it. He follows that up with a flame dagger, which my shield stops again, but I know that he is trying to wear me down. A shield uses a surprising amount of power. An idea pops into my head based on what Carmen had done with the gold. Bending down, I place my hand on the floor and call up an Earth element, and then I push power into it, asking it to create an iron spike.
Suddenly I hear a yelp of pain, and looking up over the shield, I see Sir Tallen rolling on the ground and holding his foot. Not wasting time, I cast the spell for Bind, and out of the ground come thin vines, which start to wrap around him. Suddenly Sir Tallen’s body glows and the vines begin to burn away, turning to ash as fast as they come out of the floor and re-wrap around him. Since I still have the Earth element up, I have it bring more iron out of the ground and make it into thin wire, which I tell it to wrap around Sir Tallen. As the bindings get tighter and tighter, Sir Tallen slowly stops struggling.
Suddenly, he yells, “Yield! I yield!” I can hear the pain in his voice.
I tell the element to take the iron back, and after that, I dispel it. I also make sure it takes the spike with him.
“And the winner is the human, Magus Kevin,” Carmen says unnecessarily.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sir Tallen gets up off the floor slowly, giving his injured foot some care. He is glaring at me. “How the fuck did I just lose a damn human,” he says with a growl.
“I wonder about that too,” Carmen says, looking at me inquisitively.
“Wait, you expected me to lose?” I say in disbelief.
“Of course,” she says with a shrug. “You are a human and
new to Magic. Honestly,” she continues with another shrug, “the fact that you were able to keep your shield up for two of his spells was incredible. I expected you to get hit with the second, maybe get injured, and I would have called a yield on your part. How were you able to keep that shield up?”
“Wait, you don’t know?” I ask her. Carmen shakes her head. “I just thought it was normal. I felt I had enough to stop another four or five spells like that.”
“What was that thing you did at the end there, human?”
“He has a name. His name is Kevin,” Carmen snaps at him before I can answer.
Sir Tallen’s mouth shapes into a thin line and I can almost see his teeth grinding. He takes a deep breath and says, “What was that thing you did at the end there?”
“The Earth element? I had it bring up some iron from the ground and create a spike, or did you mean the iron wire?”
“Both,” he says with a scowl. “Interesting use. Where did you learn that?”
“Not sure,” I say. “I saw Carmen do the same for gold, and so I thought why can’t I control the Earth element to bring up iron? I thought of copper at first, but it’s softer. So I changed it to iron. Though I wasn’t one hundred percent sure on that one since iron is not naturally in the earth, usually it’s in the form of raw ore, with a mixture of ore proper and loose earth. I kind of took a chance there. I didn’t want to call up silver, though,” I tell him.
“Well.” Sir Tallen bows. “I thank you for not using silver.”
“You’re welcome,” I tell him with a smile.
“You seem to have knowledge that is not normal for a M.A.G.I. recruit,” he says, looking at me keenly.
“Yeah, not sure what that’s about,” I tell him.
But in a way, I think I do know. Luitta tried to break me by giving me a lot of knowledge in a brief space of time. She said I took a lot more in than a typical recruit. But what does that mean exactly?
“Well, he is a new recruit, and that is part of the reason we are here. We are trying to find his partner.”