I shoved one of my guns back into my coat and said “Well, sure. These bloody idiots don’t make choices quickly. I think we’d like to know more about this rumored civil war. No guarantees we will help you though.”

Johnathan smiled softly, which I found unsettling given the circumstances, and turned and walked away, as if he was ordering us to follow him. I got a death stare from Livvy, who walked back closer to the car and leaned against it.

Mattie and Amber followed Johnathan, already bickering. “Fuck, I don’t think we can leave them alone. They fight like a drunk married couple.” I said, “Who’s staying here? I’m assuming Livvy.”

“Well, that does make the most sense given the circumstances. She can stay here and still listen in.” Mattie said, poking his head around a corner, and threw something to Livvy. “Walkie Talkie. Use it to ask questions or whatever.” As soon as he appeared, he was gone.

“Drunk married couple indeed.” Livvy muttered, and shooed Alric and I along. I followed the path that the love birds took, and turned the corner into a long hallway. It had a steel sheet on all the surfaces except the floor, which was a granite-like tile. It looked interesting to say the least.

“I’m curious, why’d you agree to his terms so quickly?” Alric asked as he walked beside me. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna demote you or something, I just want to know.”

“Well,” I began, “you guys always use logic, or Rose, to solve your problems. You never trust your gut. I get it, trusting logic will increase your likelihood of coming out on top. But sometimes you’ve just gotta trust your gut. I wouldn’t have made it this far without trusting the butterflies down there. You guys all have super powerful abilities, I don’t. I don’t get the luxury of having time to think. I need every second I can get in a fight.”

“I also think that he has no intention of hurting us. His speech about not killing kids, while convincing, wasn’t what sold me on that. On his wrist, I saw two names, with two dates afterwards, one said ‘Melissa Smith Williams, 01/29/1981-4/01/2013’ and ‘Samuel Williams 2/12/2002-4/01/2013’. I think maybe that’s his family. The second dates are the same. I think his family died on that day. A sick april fools joke, or an unavoidable tragedy, I don’t know.

“I think he really does love his family, and to honor their memory, or something sappy like that, he doesn’t kill kids. Or whoever he deems a kid.”

“Damn,” Alric said, “you figured all of that out from two names and three dates. I’m fucking impressed.”

I felt a presence behind me and twirl around, ready to shoot. It was Johnathan. He looked like he had a huge weight on his shoulders.

“So, you figured it out.” He said, “I’ll explain more later. But for right now, come with me, I’ve gotta show you to the meeting room. And hi Livvy, want me to bring you some coffee or something?” He laughed, and lowered my gun. He walked in front of me and Alric, and continued down the hallway. He motioned for us to follow, and he disappeared into a doorway.

“Motherfuck!” Alric exclaimed as he looked on in shock at the room. Half the room was ablaze, and the other half was drenched in snow. Mattie was throwing snowballs, likely mixed with ice at Amber, who was covered in something wet. Probably oil or something.

“Oh hi,” Mattie said, without even looking at us, “Johnny my boy, I was told by a superior officer to tell you, and I quote ‘I don’t want any coffee you snarky bastard’. I bet Livvy wants tea, get her some very, very bland green tea.”

A static voice filled the room and screamed “Mattie, shut the fuck up, I do not want coffee, or tea, or tequiila either for that matter. Amber, stop burning the place down. Sophie, don’t leave their side, and don’t let them fight, or I’ll kill all three of you. I am usually a very calm person, not very confident in my abilities, but you two have totally ass fisted that for me. Now shut up. I have a splitting headache, and I don’t need your sreaming over all the other shit I can hear, it’s fucking annoying.”

“Damn Livvy, didn’t know you were a total badass.” Mattie remarked.

“I'm the baddest of asses bitch.” Livvy replied.

“Wow, you’ve got some feisty kids here, dontcha, White Rose.” Johnathan laughed. “Now down to business.”

“This civil war,” He sighed, and looked down, and pulled up a table and some chairs while speaking, “it started some time ago now. On the first of April in 2013. If only it was just some sick April Fool’s joke. Too many have died to deem it as such. Sophie, I think your name was, you noticed that my family died on that day. That’s what started it all.” He sat down, and put his hands on the table. He sighed and looked down, slamming a fist into the table, which shook violently.

“The vampires attacked very early in the morning, about 1 AM. They killed everyone in my neighborhood. I was living in Atlanta at the time. My family were also werewolves, but they didn’t know, since they were only half a werewolf, meaning that they had full control over it. I’m not half so I don’t. Well, I didn't, I do now.

“They broke into my bedroom, and killed my wife first. They ate her without concern for whether I was awake or not. When I finally attacked them, they threw my wife’s dead body out the window. They pinned me against the wall, and restrained me there by my throat until I black out. By the time I woke up, they had eaten my sons limbs. He, he was still alive. They were going to try and turn him. But he was a werewolf, so he would die, several times over, trying to turn. Werewolves don’t have any regenerative abilities, so he would've bleed out.

“I, slit h-, I s-s-s, I killed him. I couldn’t bear to see him suffer. He would’ve died anyway. I took his body, and ran. I ran until I couldn’t. I eventually made my way to my summer home in the Tennessee mountains and buried him there.

“I then tried to find the local pack, who took me in and taught me how to fight. There I learned that what happened at my home wasn’t the first nor last time they did this. They were trying to make more vampires, so they can take over the underworld.

“In other words, they were trying to become the strongest magical race.”

“What? What are those. Like Vampires, and Werewolves?” Amber asked?

“Ah, I assume you don’t know then. Interesting. I thought you would.” John said.

“Well, as I call them magic races their officially called Noctervus. It combined the Latin words for night, or nocte, and slave, or servus. It essiantly translates too Slaves to the night or night slave. We can’t show who we really are in the day, but when the moon comes out, we are no longer bound by humanity, but bound by the night itself. It’s one big, convoluted metaphor.

“There are the Werewolves, other werebeasts, Vampires, and spirits at the very bottom, since they’re the closest to humans. However, the Noctervus as a whole are very wary of the vampires and spirits. Most want to live a normal life, and some will go to great lengths to achieve that. Vampires can’t see the sun ever again, so they can’t live with humans. Spirit’s can’t be seen by humans unless you know they exist, and believe that they exist. So they cannot even speak to the people in their old life. Both are very jealous of werewolves because they want to be able to fit in like us. But they can’t.

“Next there are demons, all the stories you’ve heard about demons are true. They are hideous creatures, grotesque and smelly. I can barely last a minute in the presence of one, at least a pure one, without vomiting. They hate humans the most.

“There are also fairies. They’re greedy bastards. Some have magic to make what they want, others can manipulate you to do it for them, some just want to kill you, others are just harmless jack-asses. The more powerful a fairie, the more beautiful a human, or anything with any amount of human blood will find it.

“Probably the most mystical of all Noctervus, are the angels. Really, they’re just cops, but when they do have to fight, they drop their hopelessly pure and beautiful act. They’re uglier than even demons.

“They’re humanoid creatures, their intestines are splattered everywhere, and sort of stick to their stomach, their heart beats out of their chest. Literally. Their flesh is burnt to a crisp, it doesn’t help the smell. Their spinal cord rips through their back, and when they move blood gets everywhere. It's gross. Their ACL is permanently torn or something, so they limp everywhere. Their wings are leathery and full of burns, like they just pulled themselves out of the fiery pits of hell.”

We all listened carefully as Johnathan explained the details of this underground society. Eventually, it all ended up contradicting itself. “It’s come to the point where the rules just don’t apply.” Jonathan commented on the matter. “If one law says something, two more will say the opposite. It’s utterly ridiculous.”

It was almost 6 hours later when it was finally starting to make sense.

“And I thought we lived on the dregs of society, god damn.” I remarked, followed by a laugh of one of Jonathan's subordinates. “You did. You lived on the edge of human society. We live on the edge of the Noctervus society. If you could even consider a society. It’s barely civil enough to call it a civilization.”

“So, after six hours of being here, can you tell us about this civil war?” Livvy’s voice crackled over the radio. Johnathan nodded, and sent one of his subordinates to get food and drink.

He took a breath and said, “While the Noctervus have never really gotten along, regardless of race or anything else, for the most part it wasn’t anything that threatened people that weren’t involved. Most of the fighting was taken into a nearby forest or something, cuase no one wanted the angels called on them. But recently, no angel has been seen. Not one in the last 6 months. Due to this, the vampires got around to attacking more humans than ever before. They wanted more vampires.

“Eventually, they got the support of the demons, and the spirits as well. With the three of them rampaging around the world killing people, the UN has been trying to deal with these things, but can’t.

“The UN has done everything they can to cover it up. And yes, they do know about the Noctervi. They just don’t want the public to know because they think it would cause chaos. And I’m pretty sure they're right. But if we aren’t doing anything to endanger humans they usually don’t care.

“So, naturally, when the vampires, demons, and spirits started killing humans all over Europe and northern Egypt, they did everything they could to stop it. But with demons making contracts with the humans to make more demons, the successful vampire transformations, and all the spirits that were made from all the death, they’ve got an army ten times as large as it was when they started this wanton murder. And that doesn’t include the ones that didn’t join them.

“They just started their rampage across the middle east. If they get past their, they’ll get to India, China, and Russia. The most largely populated countries in the world. If they get past Asia, there’ll be no stopping them.

“That’s were the werewolves come in. Since we can still live in human society, we want to keep humans around. So we fight. But we can’t do it alone. Most of us don’t have abilities, and the ones that do usually don’t have very powerful ones. Once you become a Noctervus, you can’t gain an ability. And to make it worse, if you already have one, it can’t get any stronger, even if it isn’t fully developed or matured.

“So, we don’t have many advantages. Our only advantages are that we can still bless things to fight the spirits, demons, and vampires, because they’re all hurt a lot more by a blessed object. Also, we’re physically stronger than vampires and spirits. Not demons though, but there are a lot less of them than the other two.

“And that is why we want you to help us fight them. You are some of, if not the most powerful people in the world. You guys could probably do anything if you wanted to. If we could get your support, we might be able to win.

“Will you do it?”

I looked at Johnathan. The others were obviously considering it, except Amber, who’s too nice to have to think about it. But I think they were missing something. With deadly calm, I spoke.

“Johnathan, did you organize the attack on our base of operations?”

He looked surprised, but quickly gained composure and said, “Yes, our goal was to get close so we could talk to Rose, but since they’re currently out of action, their commanders will do.” When he said that, Amber’s flame ignited in her hand, Mattie and Alric had guns in hand pointed at Jonathan. I did nothing, if he wanted us dead, we would be by now.

“So, it’s your fault Rose almost died! You little bitch, I’ll kill you.” Amber yelled, and walked closer, and once behind Johnathan, put the fire in her hand mere inches from his face. Jonathans subordinates raised their guns, and Amber said “Make one wrong move, say one thing incorrectly, or if I just feel like it, I’ll burn that mouth right off of you, tongue, jaw, and everything else. So be wise with your next words.”

Jonathan sighed, and ordered his men to stand down. “Like I said before, I have no intention of killing kids. That rock guy wasn’t one of my men. He smelled like an angel, but he definitely wasn’t an angel. I’m pretty sure he was human, but angel’s have a stronger scent than humans, so if it was a human, he was probably in league with an angel. Those angels have plenty of reasons to want Rose dead.”

Amber removed the flame from her hand, but punched Johnathan. “That’s for being a jerk and trying to kidnap me.” She turned around and walked out of the room, saying “We’ll help you, on the condition that you help Rose or someone Rose picks to lead a union of Noctervi when this is all over.”

“Sure, you’ve got yourself a deal.”