James

The Past

I stepped out of first-class cabin and onto the tarmac at Miami International Airport. The humidity hit me like a brick wall. My aviator shades fogged up immediately.

All I wanted to do was get on with the mission. The only thing I wanted was to kill the Blood Lamia Holstein, but I still had a few more things to take care of. The foe was enough of a threat that I wanted to have my whole gameplan setup before announcing that I was in town.

All I had was my carry-on, so it didn’t take me long to get to the driver the family sent to take me to the hotel. The airport was crowded, but it was still easy enough for me to spot the tuxedoed man holding a big sign that read “Brando”. Brandon was the alias I’d be taking for this particular mission.

“That’s about conspicuous, no?” I asked the man.

“No… no sir…” He just smiled and nodded his head. I couldn’t get a good look at him, he was a bit shorter than me and his face was hidden behind his hat. I assumed he just didn’t know enough English and followed him to the town car.

We made it out of the airport traffic and got on to the highway.

“Hey, you’re going to the Four Seasons on Miami Beach, at the Surf Club, aren’t you? You just missed the exit.” I said to him through the open partition. I’d been to Miami a few times. One of the Lando satellite families owned a few hotels on the strip.

I didn’t know if this guy thought he was taking some sort of short cut, but there weren’t that many ways onto the beach.

“Yessir… Yessir.. I’ll take you!” The driver said. He then raised the partition. That gave me a bad feeling.

“Hey… Stop the car. I can take it from here.” I banged on the partition a few times. When he didn’t immediately answer, I tried to unlock the car doors. They were locked tightly. That was when I could sense the presence of an odorless gas filling the backseat.

The car was probably traveling at about 60 miles an hour at that point, but that didn’t stop me from kicking out the one of the doors in the backseat. I went crashing out of the car feet first, right behind door.

The door landed on the ground, I jumped on top of it and immediately applied a gravitational spell to door. This essentially turned the door into a floating surfboard I could power with my Astral Light.

The car went speeding away, desperately trying to escape. The driver must’ve just then identified that I was an advanced user of magic. But as I took flight, riding the car door after him, I already knew it was too late.

I didn’t want to kill this driver. Certainly I’d rather at least get information about who sent him first. This meant there was a good chance I’d already been made by the local Lamia Clan. So much for that alias.

I was easily able to catch up with the car. As I rounded a corner, chasing after the vehicle, I jumped off of the door onto a nearby hill. I sent the car door after the town car at an even faster speed than when I was on it.

Then I turned it sideways and added some spin, making it look like a horizontal buzzsaw. I sent it all the way up through the car, splitting it in half as the driver tried to bail from the soon to be wreck.

The man just managed to get out of the car as it was split in half.

I sped up to the man quickly. He’d managed to escape, but lost one of his legs to the wreck. It looked to be severed pretty severely right below the knee.

The man was screaming and writhing in agony.

“Are you Lamia? I’m not sensing that. Servant of the Night, then? Holstein sent you?” I asked him.

The man wasn’t paying attention. He was babbling some prayer to himself.

“I can save you, you know. Not that leg, but your life. If you gave me a reason to.” I said to the man.

“Don’t save me, you fool! Just kill me! That’s not as bad as what they’ll do! But oh, I can never run from them. They will find me in the next life, even if I reincarnation as the worm that I truly am.” The man wailed.

It was obvious he was far too deranged to tell me anything useful.

I didn’t have much time to waste so I broke his neck quickly. He didn’t have much in the way of high quality Life Forces to absorb. I found my way back to the highway and got a car that actually took me to my hotel.

***

I got a couple hours of sleep at my hotel until my cellphone woke me up.

I’d been contacted by some Lando associates that had been monitoring the Lamia clan down in Miami. Apparently there was something they wanted me to see at a crime scene.

“James? This can’t be him, can it Bert?” A beautiful woman with an Irish accent asked her older associate.

I arrived there in the middle of the night. I walked up to the dark alleyway where they’d set the map pin.

“They… they sent a kid…. I swear to God… One of these days, Branson’s going to regret not taking us seriously.” Bert said back to the one.

“Let me assure you, I’m plenty capable of killing both of you right now. Don’t underestimate me.” I told them.

I’d dealt with that attitude before. Older, less accomplished agents trying to act like I was unworthy of high-level missions because I was young.

The ironic thing was, if either of them had even the capability of perceiving magical ability, it wouldn’t have been a question. Either way, it was their turf so I decided just to let it go there.

“Hmm. Charming... Though I guess we were the rude ones. We did invite ya out here. My name’s Bert, this is Mara.” The man said. He and the woman both shook their hands out and I shook them in exchange.

“This is what we wanted to show you.” Mara said as she pointed a flashlight.

She was showing me a dead body. The victim of an obviously grizzly murder.

“You see here, obviously it looks like all the blood has been removed. But not just blood, it was like the life had been sucked from this mans body. His skin is hard and flat like a piece of cardboard.” She said, describing the scene coldly.

“And if that’s not weird enough, there’s this.” Bert took out a laser pointer and shined it right at the two thick brown dots on neck of the victim.

“You think that’s…”

“Listen, kid…. Erhm... excuse me.. Don’t feel like you’re talking to some Cowan here with me. I’ve seen those bloodsuckers. I’ve been following the Caribbean Exchange for over a decade. I know that they stalk the night. Call’m what you want. Vampires, Lamia or what have you… Don’t think I don’t know.” Bert said.

Lamia had a way of bringing out hatred in everyone they encountered. It was part of my family’s sworn duty to protect humanity from wayward Lamia, it was part of why the Speculators gave us so much leeway.

“You’ve been embedded in Miami PD this whole time?” I asked.

“We’ve jumped around a few agencies. Your family’s office can get us stationed where ever we think it’s needed.”

“So why do you need me. Is Holstein that much worse?” I asked. They looked at each other knowingly.

“We… don’t know yet. It’s a possibility. We’re concerned he may have considerable skill around the power of Recruitment.” Mara said.

Recruitment was the basic ability of a Lamia to convert a human into one of their minions. The human would become both a Lamia, and a temporary slave of the person who successfully recruited him.

“I mean, every Lamia has that, don’t they? Even if he, perhaps he can Recruit with a higher success rate. He’s still just one guy.” I said.

“That’s the thing… We believe Caribbean Exchange already has been working on some sort of mass hypnosis mechanism. That’s why we needed an Adept with Astral Light.” She said.

“What? You look like you just realized something.” She said.

“I could tell something was subtly off about the Free Astral Light floating around in the Aether. I does seem like something artificial is being directed.” I said.

Mara and Bert looked at each other.

“See, I told you.” Bert said.

***

At that point, we determined that time was probably of the essence. They gave me the address of a popular underground Lamia meetup. I figured it was about time to announce that I was in Miami.

This place was down in the Art Deco district and was brimming with neon signs. I walked past several clubs that seemed to be busy with patrons. I wondered if they knew that entire groups of vampires walked the street at night.

I came up to the nondescript building. The vibe in the district was such that a vampire lair didn’t seem out of place amongst the myriad of glitzy bars and clubs.

I walked up to the door and was stopped by the bouncer.

“Private party tonight. It’s a school night anyway, better head back.” The bouncer said to me. He tried grabbing me on the shoulder as I walked past him to the door.

I grabbed his arm off my shoulder, twisted his arm around and rammed by knee into his stomach hard enough to make him pass out.

“Wow, did you see that? That kid just totally beat up that bouncer with some kung-fu moves! Did you record that? Put it up on World Star.” One party goer exclaimed as a walked into the building.

Immediately the attention of everyone in the bar was turned to me.

“That driver you sent was… inadequate.” I announced.

There was about 6 people in the small room, and I could tell they were all Lamia.

Lamia were not only Adept magical Clients, they also super human skill and ability with Astral Light.

I was confident I’d be able to win, but this many on one in such small quarters would be challenging.

“So, I don’t suppose you’d just tell me, where Holstein is?” I asked them. As I summoned my Runi.

Slowly, I saw each of them inching towards me. I started mentally drilling my plan of attack, when suddenly the floor gave out from below me.

I fell, along with several of the Lamia, into an abyss below.