Seth sat alone in his room, Jessica and Claire dropped at their respective houses. He couldn’t have them around when he called Hunter-33, not with the NDA, not with them being such an unknown quantity in regards to the ‘real world’. The business card rested on his desk and his finger hovered over the call button. He shook his head. “Here goes.”

Seth held the phone to his ear and waited.

One ring. Two.

“Zulu Company duty. This is Staff Sergeant Campbell speaking.”

“Uh… My name is Seth Blackwell. I need help.”

There was a pause. “I think you might have the wrong number.”

“I don’t. I’m looking for Hunter-33 headquarters.”

“This is it, kid. But we’re US Army, not a police station, who is this? How do you have this number?”

“I-” What was the name of the sergeant in charge of the squad that had come in when he was fighting Nicole? What was his name? Abrams. “Is Sergeant Abrams there?”

“Kid, it’s zero-two-hundred. Why do you need to speak to Abrams?”

Seth took a deep breath. “My friend has been kidnapped by fucking werebears.”

Staff Sergeant Campbell’s tone completely changed. “Oh. I see. Wait one.”

Seth heard digital noises on the line for a moment.

“Alright, we’re secure, going to need your name, address, phone number. Go.”

Seth spat the information out.

“Lycanthropes or shifters?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did they change because of the moon?”

“No.”

“Shifters. Fucking outstanding. How many?”

“I don’t know. There were easily a dozen.”

“Got it. Are they acting alone, or are there other extranormal influences?”

“There’s a coven of witches, too.”

“Numbers?”

“I’ve only seen six. I killed one.”

“You-” Campbell hesitated. “Who are you?”

“California. Nicole Bauer. The lich? I’m the kid who was with her.”

“Oh, fuck. Hold on.” Seth heard the phone set down, and could faintly hear boots on a hard surface. Campbell picked the phone back up a moment later. “You at a secure location?”

“I have no idea.”

“Right. You’re on Pacific Time?”

“Yes.”

“I need you to stay up for another hour. You’re going to get a call back. I just have to make some calls myself. Don’t go anywhere, don’t contact anyone else. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I’m not a sir. I work for a living.” The line went dead.

Seth set his phone down on the desk and stared at it. Minutes stretched onwards, an inescapable slow march stealing precious time from him. He had no clue how long Andrew had, if the bears had meant it when they said they weren’t going to hurt him—any more than they already had, at least. Seth stood up and paced back and forth in his room.

The phone rang. Local area code. Seth hesitated and picked it up.

“Seth, this is Principal Dean. Are you alright?”

“…yeah.”

“Good. Just doing a headcount. A lot of people scattered.”

“Is anyone hurt?”

“Not that we know of yet, but some hundred students were already gone when the cops showed up. I have to make more calls. Goodnight.”

Principal Dean hung up and Seth let out a slow breath, setting his phone on the desk. At least no one else had suffered because of him. He hoped. No, he had a strong feeling the bears hadn’t gone after anyone else. He was their target. Him and, apparently, Andrew. Seth thought to the last few seconds before he had fled—the feeling of being watched, followed by the ice-wall appearing as if by—

Seth sat down and put his head in his hands. No. Not as if. By magic. Magic was very, very real, and whoever was watching him had used it to prevent him from trying to rescue his best friend. Why? And what had been that feeling in his temple, and then suddenly seeing a third eye on all the bears and a glow in their chest? Where had that come from?

Seth’s phone rang and he snatched it to his ear without even looking at the number.

“Hello?”

“Good morning. Is this Seth Blackwell?”

“This is.”

“Good. I’m Chief Warrant Officer Birks, I’m the case officer who has oversight on your file. What’s going on? And, don’t worry. One, this line is secure, and two, we understand there have been security compromises… You’re not in trouble, we just need to know every detail. If your friend knows things, once we handle the situation, he will be read in and NDA’d, same as you.”

Seth gripped his phone tight and spilled the whole story, from their encounter in the woods to homecoming night. Birks didn’t interject once, but Seth could hear typing in the background. When he wrapped up, Birks paused for a long second before speaking.

“Alright. Quite the situation. It’s barely three AM here, so you’re gonna have to wait another few hours again. But. You’re going to get help, it’s just a matter of how much. We’re very short-manned right now, there was just a big rotation. I’m going to brief a few other officers and we’ll go from there. You can expect a team by Monday. For now, I need you to lie low and not seek out the shifters. You’re an unknown. It was made very clear during the Washington and California incidents that you sit somewhere on the scale of extranormal entities, but we don’t know where you sit on that scale, and you’re outnumbered. Lie. Low. Got it?”

“Yeah, got it.”

“I’m serious. Your friend is going to be fine, but only if you cooperate and help us here. And right now, that help is you not doing anything until we have resources and personnel mobilized. Get some rest. And lastly, don’t deal with the witches, either. How much do you know about magic-users?”

“Not a lot.”

“Okay, listen. The magic-users you were running with in Washington are neutral-aligned. They worked with Nicole out of misinformation, not malice, and the misunderstanding between us and them is sorted. They belong to large, multinational organizations that are responsible for a great deal of order in the world. Witches aren’t like that. A witch is classified as such by two things. One: witches only have local or semi-local organization. Their loyalty is to their coven and no one else. What they want is what they want. Two: the source of their abilities. The magic-users you encountered have innate magic, a tie to supernatural forces organic to who they are. Witches aren’t like that. Witches acquire their powers one of two ways. The first is pact-magic. Sell your soul to the devil, basically. The second is far more insidious, and according to current intelligence, the most common kind near the Sierra Nevada mountains. Quite simply, we call it blood-magic. They feed off other life forces and sources of magic, often killing it in the process. They are dangerous, and they are evil. Don’t go near them. Tracking?”

Seth nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

“Good. Get your rest and keep your phone on. We’ll be in contact. Goodbye.” Birks hung up.

Seth leaned back in his chair rubbing his face, exhausted as the last tinges of adrenaline faded from his body. Sleep closed on him in a matter of seconds and he passed out in his chair, his phone slipping out of his grasp and dropping to the floor, the rubber corners of the Otterbox bouncing it away from him. The full moon hung in the sky for the last few hours as Seth’s dreams turned to nightmares. There would be no true rest tonight.

***

Seth stood in a long, empty hallway of white marble. Light was ahead, but not directly—he couldn’t see the actual source of it. At the end of the hallway he faced, stood a wide, black dais, adorned by three bowls. The bowls were large, and as Seth approached, he saw they were carved of some type of wood.

He peered over their sides, seeing that they were empty within. Perplexed, Seth glanced back down the hallway and swallowed, the hairs on the back of his neck raising at what he saw.

Darkness was closing in. An inky void cinched off the hallway about a hundred feet away, and inched closer by the second. It moved at a snail’s pace, but would reach him soon because of the short distance. Seth looked back to the bowls and saw they were full, each of a different substance.

The first bowl, on the left, was filled with jet-black liquid, sloshing and bubbling of its own volition and giving off little motes of the same color. The middle was filled with knucklebones, blanched white like they’d spent a thousand years in the sun. The third bowl simply brimmed with blood, unmoving in contrast to the first. Seth glanced back at the void behind him. It was closer now.

Turning back to the bowls again, Seth saw they were gone, and in their place were three objects. The first, an uncut ruby, pulsing with crimson light within. The second, a silver cross, no bigger than his thumb. It had two bars, and a circle beneath it. It looked familiar to him, but he couldn’t remember where he’d seen it before. The third item was a skull. Human. Empty sockets stared back at him as it grinned.

Seth felt cold against his back. He took a breath in and turned to face a wall of darkness given form, like looking into a pitch-black room. Seth felt intense fear welling up within him, bubbling out of his void. And then, as he stared, he began to see the outline of something within. A figure. Humanoid in shape, and staring at him—Seth could see the light of the hallway reflected in its eyes, and then its teeth as it bared them in a fierce, unsettling smile.

The darkness surged forward and consumed him. The last thing Seth thought was that the darkness was very, very warm.