Summer lay on the city of Corvus Bay like a wet towel. A heat haze hung across the city, mingling with the smell of hot asphalt, and the emissions of thousands of cars. Only intermittently did relief arrive in the form of the clammy breath of the Atlantic Ocean, telling tales of the far away polar wastes in the barest whisper. This did nothing to stop the frenetic activity of the city: cargo arrived in the port in a ceaseless stream, vanishing onto rail cars or semi trailers or into a hundred other capillaries of commerce. Nor did it stop the relentless grind of the citizens of the City of Crows, lives measured in hourly rates, rent payments, car repairs and, if they were lucky, the occasional moments of joy. And of course nothing stopped the masters of the city, mortal and mundane alike, from enjoying their place at the top of the pyramid.

The Tem Gala was the high point of this order. The bright and beautiful of the mortal and supernatural communities alike. Of course, only the beautiful and photogenic of the supernatural community were invited, only those that could wear a pleasing form were invited, but that did include wizards, fae, vampires, even a few of the more well to do demons. It was a pageant for the haves that the have nots could only watch in flickering LCD.

“And the word is we have a wedding to look forward to!” a reporter in an expensive suit with more expensive cosmetic surgeries gushed. The TV screen showed a red carpet with gold plated posts and red ropes where celebrities were stopped and asked the essential question of ‘who are you wearing’ followed by rather more proforma inquiry of which charities, the ostensible purpose of the night, they were supporting. The woman being asked about her matrimonial plans was declared: “Sophia Tattersol, Philanthropist” by the tape below the interview. She was beautiful in the way that many wealthy people were, though there was a brightness and intelligence to her eyes that animated and elevated her looks. Her dark hair was cut with simplicity that all but screamed money. To the mortals of the city she was merely one of the social elite, to the aware crowd she was sorceress royalty, the daughter and presumptive heir of Edmund Tattersol, the Old Monster himself whose grip on city politics and arcane lore were equally ironclad.

“We are hoping for a fall wedding, here in the city of course,” Sophia gushed to the evident delight of the reporter. A handsome man in an expensive tux stepped into the shot and the camera lit with the frenzy of flash photography as husband and wife-to-be were immortalized in film. Well wife was immortalized, the husband being Mateo Cassalaro, the eldest son of Duke Vitorio Cassalaro, the eldest and most powerful vampire in the city, and thus having already passed beyond the bounds of simple mortality. A union between the two most powerful blocs in the city was a coup that seemed almost impossible after decades of hot and cold conflict in the streets and in the boardroom.

“Well, many happy returns and…” the feed went dead, flickering to static for a second and then to a sterile ‘signal lost’. A few seconds later the shockwave arrived. The top of the Tem tower mushroomed out in a red and orange streaked fireball that rained shattered glass over three city blocks. Car alarms across half the city began to wail and power outages rippled outwards in irregular patterns. Dogs howled and sirens screamed. Not long after that, the phones began to ring…

Behind the glass, the television flickered, the excess power from the unleashed energy slowly peeling away the cords as Rupert idly watched the explosions cut off the feed. They coincided with a muted, blunted noise far away. The ground gave the faintest tremor, but what little civilians went about their lives around him stumbled as if the earth shook like a wet hound. He glanced behind him as men and women and children began to murmur with discontent, some cautiously moving toward the direction of the explosions, and others hurriedly walking away to keep to their own business. Rupert was curious, but not enough to attach himself to the migration of people that scuttled like mice to and fro to beg for the news of what had just transpired.

Under his wide brimmed hat, he gave a feral grin. The life or death of Mateo Cassalaro and his bride-to-be Sophia Tattersol was inconsequential to him, but it made things interest. Big events shook old hinges loose, one that should have fallen long ago. He might have no stake in terrorist attacks, but the inevitable fallout would flush some quarry out of hiding, potentially. It was a scavenger's life, but it was a role he played well. Maybe tonight's unexpected festivities would bring out some game.

Rupert turned on a dime and stepped into the street, confident there was no chance of a mishap, all of the cars on the road having stopped so the drivers could get out and ask one another redundant questions on what had just happened. South street turned into Wallhaven, with its closed shops and abandoned basketball court. Next was Riverward where the men of stone made their work, and he turned into a small alleyway to find a nice nook to stop and light a cigarette. Maybe it would help him calm his nerves so he could better see.

Rupert produced a pewter lighter with bronze filigree, a latin inscription reading "And God Said" on the broadside. A cigarette fell out of his sleeve and into his waiting hand, and the knave thumbed the lighter once, producing a flame to light the stick in his lips. Breathing in deeply, he took a moment to himself. The old man had been quiet of late. He wondered why that was. It was not unwelcome, but it only made him feel trepidation at what he was cooking. His thoughts fled when a cough drew his attention, and he turned indifferently down the alleyway. The light of the moon cut the darkness like a knife, and a figure stumbled towards him, half concealed by the sharp shadow. Briefly, Rupert felt he might need to keep on edge, but lo and behind, his eyes did not deceive him when the bloody Winter Knight almost fell at his feet.

She staggered into the wall, a gaping wound in her side she was desperately trying to hold with her hands. Her fair face ragged with stress and sweat, she coughed wetly and slid down the wall, her ass hitting the grime-laden pavement. He had seen her a couple of times before, albeit distantly. She was more likeable than her predecessors. Her hair was incredibly thick, blonde with a tinge of forest green that beglamored the senses. Her eyes were molten bronze, and she was a statuesque woman, taller than most men. Her fashionable cargo pants tucked into her black combat boots, she wore a crimson croptop with suspenders. He'd heard a human familiar describe her as 'a fit worth a thousand ships.... a retro style as deadly as her claymore." Rupert was only half confident he knew the terms, but he understood the spirit of it.

"Not a good night for a walk," He remarked with a menace to his voice. Rupert took a slow drag from his cigarette. "Parties don't seem ideal, either."

"I didn't do it..." She replied, breathing heavily. It gave a sense of desperation to her.

"I'll pretend like I know what you mean, but what you did or did not do doesn't matter. I haven't done many things. It's never what's at stake. The only thing you need to worry about is people's expectations." Rupert remarked sibilantly.

To his surprise, the Winter Knight gave a soft chuckle and a devil-may-care grin. "I'll pretend like you don't know what I mean. There was a bombing at the gala. They think I did it. I swear on the Queen that's not true."

"Then how'd you get the wound? You just stumbled and swooned. Your blood and sweat festooned. Don't lie." Rupert said.

"I know who you are." She said with an ironic smile of victory on her blood-flecked lips, her eyes drooping. "The man out of time who rhymes. Lucky me, I guess."

It was the last thing she said before she lost consciousness, sliding onto the floor as the grip on her side loosened. She hit the alley street softly as blood began to bubble on her side, and Rupert was left with a choice. Do something about it, or not. He took another slow drag from his cigarette, before flicking it into a puddle. The knave reached into his pocket and produced a silver rupee, twirling it across his fingers to flick up with his thumb. He caught the rupee mid-air, and checked the results.

"Interesting..."

Balthazar was a man of fire, one who just loved seeing things go up in flames and whose lungs had inhaled quite a lot of normally not so healthy smoke. Yet the sheer level at which this 'modern society' expended precious fuel for nothing but some time to smoke those disgusting cigarettes while sitting idle in a traffic jam every day was... a mentally challenging concept. The driver of the white sedan in front of him had just tossed out one of those petty tobacco pipelets halfway finished and the demon turned his head to see how far he could back up his motorcycle just to escape the smell.

He had stopped the engine over a minute ago already as no end to the queue of vehicles in front of him was in sight. Security measures for that overpriced wedding gala dinner shit everybody was trash talking about perhaps ? Great! And while high society was happy in the tower, he was stuck here down in the streets with bored and annoyed people staring at the huge man with sunglasses and his somewhat rusty, yet no less trusty bike. Hopefully some of those who caused them here to endure as this would end up in h...

The explosion was bright enough to make Balthazar squint even through the sunglasses. He could hear some car radios around him suddenly emitting nothing but static through the open windows and people pushed their heads forward to see upwards through the front window of their vehicles.

Maybe the buffet had been a little too spicy, causing the crowd of guests to fart all over the place until somebody felt the urge to smoke before air conditioning and ventilation had had a chance to intervene ?

Balthazar's hand rushed towards the ignition key as it dawned upon him that now was the time to think about something else. Power went out in a lot of buildings around him, but there was still enough light in the air high above to see the myriad of glass shards and the many bits of shattered aluminum framework on their ballistic ways to the ground deep below. Hidden for the lack of reflectivity were probably a lot of heavy concrete blocks and that was one hell of a reason for concern.

"Sorry!" the demon apologized very unceremoneously as he happened to ram and shear off the right side mirror of a passenger car. Others started to grasp the same issue he had figured out as well and, without having the same amount of maneuverability as he had on just two wheels, rushed out of their vehicles to find shelter quickly. It was a mess developing in mere seconds and Balthazar's own escape was a breaking move through the boom gate of an underground parking lot. The sound of shattering and solid impacts gave all the positive feedback he needed to think this had been perfectly justified. Wasn't that even some bloody torso that just happened to smash onto the hot asphalt ?

Among all the debris and screaming people, something else found its way to the entrance of the lot. It bounded of the ground, then rolled down the gentle slope until it stopped almost in front of Balthazar's feet. A small metal sphere with carvings on it he couldn't identify. It somehow didn't look like any ordinary piece of decoration, but in any case fancy enough for the demon to just pick it up and stuff into his jacket. Maybe that could be sold somewhere ?

Anyway, he needed to get out before the entire city block would be bristling with police and other emergency services.

Failed. Again.

The silence that followed was broken only by the familiar voice in his mind, dry, smug, and maddening.

“Have you tried doing it correctly?”

Quill, perched high atop the bookshelf like some faded gargoyle, tilted his smoky green eyes toward him. Emrys didn’t answer. He just turned and glared, exhausted. It wasn’t the first time he’d failed, and it wouldn’t be the last, but that didn’t make it any less infuriating. He had tried. Again and again. And again. It just wasn’t working.

“Your circles were very round,” Quill offered. “I’ll give you that.”

Emrys muttered a curse under his breath and dropped back to his knees, pressing the damp cloth into the chalk lines until they smeared into pale ghosts on the floor.

Master Elandros had insisted the Ward of Threshold was a perfect exercise for him, simple, reliable, and harmless if it failed. “Wards are foundational,” he’d said, like a man reciting a proverb from memory, not even glancing up from his book. Emrys had nodded dutifully, masking the sting of being left behind.

He wasn’t ready, apparently. Not polished enough. Not confident enough. Not worthy of brushing shoulders with the brilliant and the immortal. So while his master donned robes and command, Emrys was left in the quiet apartment with a stick of chalk, a stern book, and an incorrigible familiar who had no off-switch.

The television played in the background, volume turned low. Gowns shimmered across the screen, sequins catching the light like bits of starlight trapped in silk. The Tem Gala. Every beautiful mask in the city was there. They walked the red carpet like it was a ritual of their own, names and houses whispered with reverence, the occasional flash of something inhuman behind the eyes.

Emrys stayed behind. Practicing.

His circles were precise, his incantation steady. He had followed the book word for word, gesture for gesture. And still the ward refused him. He could feel the moment it faltered, like a breath held too long collapsing in on itself. The power simply slipped. Slid out of reach. Gone.

He scrubbed the floor in tight, angry circles.

’Maybe I’m not ready. Maybe he’s right.’

Then the television stuttered. A flicker. A soundless beat. He looked up.

The static came first.

Then the light.

It drew his gaze to the window, where the skyline fractured in silence. The top of the Tem Tower bloomed, gold, then red, then white-hot orange. It swallowed the horizon with awful beauty. For a second it looked like a sunrise had torn open the world in the wrong direction.

Then came the sound.

A deep, bone-deep thrum that cracked against the windows like a god pounding on the door. The television went blank. The lights buzzed and died. The apartment froze.

Emrys stood motionless, cloth still clutched in his hand, forgotten.

The fire burned on the skyline. Ash drifted from the distant wound in the city. Somewhere, alarms began to howl. He couldn’t look away.

“Quill…” he whispered. “What was that..?”

No reply.

For once, the bird had nothing. No smug remark. No muttered rhyme. No scathing insight.

He was staring too.

And that silence, that, was what finally made Emrys afraid.

@POOHEAD189
Kelly Ashler, Winter Knight and mortal champion of the Wicked Fae, had a very pedestrian gunshot wound to the lower abdomen. Blood trickled out, slower than seemed proper and the edges of the wound were pale and chill, the power of Winter working hard to slow the blood flow. There was no exit wound, the bullet evidently still lodged inside of her. Crows began to flutter above, landing in their dozens on the lips of the buildings lining the alleyways. The birds were oddly silent, forgoing their usual incessant cawing. At about the same instant a car turned into the end of the alley, powerful headlights burning into Rupert’s eyes like the glare of some ancient demon. The poetic effect was spoiled when the pulsing blue lights of police lit up, bathing the scene in an epileptic spray of azure light. Metal dumpsters narrowed the alley and prevented the cruiser from advancing. The doors opened and two hulking men in khaki uniform of Highway Patrolmen got out, boots crunching on the loose asphalt. One had a pistol drawn, a mag light rather unnecessarily gripped beneath it, the other held a shotgun at waist height, the cavernous barrel leveled at the Knave Knight’s chest.

“Better step away citizen,” the officer with the mag light cautioned in an official cop voice, dripping with sanctimonious authority. They advanced slowly, gradually occluding the light of their patrol car until they were visible as silhouettes. Both men had little enameled pins in the shape of P on their pocket flash, indicating they were members of the Precinct, a fraternity within the police who thought they knew something about the paranormal. The group didn’t have a good reputation even among the muggle cops. Rumor had it you had to have shot a man on the job to be invited, and they were none to particularly on who or why you did the shooting. Most of the members were city cops though, not highway patrol who, now that Rupert thought about it, were way off their beat to begin with.

“Last chance to beat it before you are shot resisting arrest, leave the frosty bitch and go,” Mag-light said, disengaging the safety on his weapon with a very audible and very ominous click.



________________
@Fetzen

People were pouring out of the building now, the stately doors literally ripped open as screaming men and women, winded from twenty stories of stairs and damp with blood and the reeking stale water of fire suppression sprinklers. Some were wounded, though as many had probably been hurt in the mad crush in the stairwells as in the bombing itself. As the bow wave of humanity passed the seriously wounded began to stagger free, and not just humans. Balthazar could see a lord of the Summer Fae, screaming and tearing at his chest where splinters of steel, the bane of the faery, had been driven into his body by the blast. Then a pair of vampires came out of the doors. They were of the vampiric nobility, among the most powerful of their kind. But they were young, they were wounded, and there was blood everywhere. They went berserk. The nearest of them, a woman with stylish curls and a shiny black evening gown, marred by a piece or rebar through her stomach. Snatched the nearest human and ripped his throat out in a spray of arterial blood. A long dark tongue slathered and licked as she pounced onto the back of another man and started ripping at the back of his throat like a dog on a downed game animal. The male, his tuxedo half blown off by the bomb and with a section of his skull exposed by shrapnel, caught a maintenance worker by the hair and ripped into his neck. Blood sprayed up over his face as he drank the man down like a juice box then tossed him aside, the horrible damage to his face beginning to knit. The fingernails on his left hand extended into talons six inches long and razor sharp and he disemboweled another man with a blow so powerful it lifted him off his feet and tossed him halfway across the street, entrails unwinding like streamers. His eyes were huge and completely black, the predator completely in control, driven only to kill and feed and in that order. The terrible black eyes locked on Balthazar and the vamp leaped for the demon, claws extended and murder on his twisted bestial face.



____________________________________
@Ducksworth

The TV came back on. Breaking news. Some of what you see in the footage that follows might not reflect our station’s views. Explosion at the Tem, cause unknown, casualties unknown, be afraid. Eye witnesses, some covered in dust, provided reports that boiled down to ‘there was an explosion’. Wide angled shots showed police and fire fighters screaming into the parking lot. It was a news bonanza. Almost every network had crews covering the Tem, entertainment reporters who were suddenly getting their first taste of real news. The big names had been on the top floor, but the stringers and the also-rans had been kept outside and their cameras were rolling. 9-11 via TMZ.

The reports were starting to recycle themselves as police forced reporters away from the scene. Talking heads were just getting around to blaming whatever political party they didn’t like when Emyrs’ door smashed open with a cacophony of splintering wood. Burly men in biker leathers crashed into the room, filling the space with the smell of cigarettes, wet fur, and testosterone. Some of them had bats, others had chains, one of them, ominously, had a net. One of the batsmen smashed the tv from its wall mount, apparently out of sheer love of destruction. The patches they wore on their jackets, and the gratuitous tattoos proclaimed them members of ‘The Street Wolves’ a powerful if unoriginal pack of werewolves.
SpongeBob Werewolf netted Quill with surprising dexterity. His hand closed around the neck of the net to seal the familiar inside before vanishing behind the wall of advancing muscle and running out into the hall.

“Nothing personal Harry Potter, but you get more with a kind word and a baseball bat than just a kind word,” the leader of the pack, a massively built man with a wild beard and a truly alarming hawaiian shirt declared, slapping the baseball bat into a meaty palm as he advanced.

“We need you to do us a favor….”

What an undignified desaster! Couldn't these dipshitting blood pumps who already had the privilege at living over the top of society at least develop some priorities like escaping first and then feeding outside of the public ? As if there wasn't already more than enough to clean up. Balthazar did not exactly deem himself to be the most sociable person himself, but this was...

... an attack run coming for him!

Being in the middle of the parking lot, the demon's mind ran through his options: He could try the kickstart thing and speed away on the bike before this vampire could reach him, but that was more a faint probability of success than any real hope. He could alternatively release an incendiary blast, but as this as this was his secret favorite, it would likely added more people to the casualty list and maybe set his own escape route on fire. There was no lack of gasoline in the cars parked here.

Balthazar took a leap which was not exactly super impressive, but for somebody of the demon's sheer size surprisingly maneuverable still. A forward sumersault later and the vampire's momentum would hopefully carry him over Balthazar's now crouched position and onto a patch of empty concrete floor instead. No time to take a lot of aim himself really though, instead he just stretched his right arm upwards and released a plume of something shimmering in green and blue-ish color without even looking. The demon mentally prepared for the smell of burnt flesh.

First of all however, the brief burst of fire spread across the ceiling and made two of the adjacent strip lights pop. Mercury vapor mixed with finely grained glass ? Just the thing he needed to inhale for this rapidly deteriorating misery of a day!

The door shattered inward with a deafening crack, wood splintering and hinges screeching in protest as a wall of bodies surged through. Emrys jerked back in fright, heart lurching into his throat. The air changed, thickened with the sudden stink of wet fur, iron, and something older and animal beneath it all, a musk that bypassed language and went straight to instinct.

One of the intruders peeled off without breaking stride. He was thick-necked and feral-eyed. With a howl of motion, he slammed his bat into the television. The screen burst, shower of sparks, broken glass, and static squealing before it collapsed in ruin across the floorboards. The violence was casual, almost gleeful. The sound made Emrys flinch again, his head whipping toward it.

And that was when they took Quill. He barely registered the net, just a blur of motion, a shout, the sudden void where the bird had been. The net snapped shut, cinched tight by thick fingers. Quill’s screech split the air, furious and frightened, before vanishing behind a wall of leather and motion.

“Quill!” Emrys shouted, instinct yanking him forward. His hand reached, half-lifted, but it was like grabbing smoke. The weight of his own uselessness struck hard. No fire, no strength, not even a ward to hold the line. The apartment that had been his safe space now felt like a cage, and he was the one locked inside it. The thief was already gone, retreating through the crowd with practiced ease.

“Let him go,” Emrys said, voice sharp and dry in his throat. It wasn’t a demand. It wasn’t a plea either. It was the only thing he could say that didn’t feel like crumbling.

He froze as the rest of them closed in. Heavy boots scuffed across wood. Chains clinked, one dragging across the floor with an ugly, dull scrape. Eyes gleamed, some smiled, and some licked their lips. Emrys couldn’t tell if it was for show, or if they simply didn’t know how not to look like predators anymore.

The stink was overpowering now. Sweat, breath, leather soaked in blood and rain. One of them sniffed at him, actually sniffed, with a sound too wet, too canine to be mistaken for anything else.

The largest of them stepped forward. The leader, most likely. A titan in a threadbare Hawaiian shirt stretched tight over a barrel chest. His beard looked like it had been grown for war. Eyes like dull coals locked on Emrys with dispassionate focus. He didn’t bare his teeth, didn’t growl. He didn’t have to. He slapped the bat into his palm with a hollow thud.

“We need you to do us a favour…”

Emrys didn’t speak. He stood there, fists weakly clenched, staring at the spot where Quill had been. The chalk dust still clung to his palms. All his effort, his circles, his trying… Nothing, now.

If this was the only way forward, if it meant getting Quill back, then fine. He wouldn’t run. He wouldn’t beg. All he could do was try.

Rupert regarded them curiously, seemingly unconcerned with the weapons aimed his way. Though he evidently had the good sense to raise his hands to show he was unarmed and complying. The Beak's Men were always a nuisance, two hundred years ago up to the new millennium. These ones thought they knew something others didn't, even beyond the norm. Blood useless, Rupert thought.

"Thanks for giving me a chance. Guess I'll dance." He replied, inclining his head and stepping back to indicate he was leaving. Of course, he meant the other colloquial meaning for dance, and as the two Precinct officers began to relax, a light beamed down from the heavens, hitting Rupert as if the illumination had a physical weight to it. The police cursed and open fired. Kelley Ashler winced, shielding her eyes from the light and bullets.

Out of the fading maelstrom of light erupted an armored form, charging the officers like a bullet train. The figure, clad in mythic steel, weathered the two shots that rang out before he reached their position with no sign of injury. He punched the leading officer in the face, crushing his skull, blood and bone pouring from ruined visage. He yanked his fist out, placed his bloodied hand on the barrel of the other man's gun, and when he fired, the round ripped through his pistol and cut into his arm. The policeman screamed in pain and horror, but the armored figure shoved his hand through the man's chest, his scream turning into a quiet gurgle. Teetering, it took a few moments of panic before his body finally shut down, and he fell into a heap on the asphalt.

"They died without a fight. A dirty business, but it had to be done." A voice said, sonorous and ancient. It echoed, as if from a great distance. The night was now quiet, again, the wind the only sound to carry over the streets.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever old man. Get back to your ghostly realm." Rupert's voice remarked with a bored inflection. The armor began to dissipate into nothingness, as if some immense heat had turned it to mist, and Rupert turned around, slapping his notched hat with his hand to get a small collection of particles out of it. He cleared his throat and placed it back on his head, but his telltale grin was gone. More trouble than he intended, and with a target he was not after.

He looked at the Winter Knight speculatively. "I guess we're caught in your mess. I hope it's worth more than less." He said. "So where do we take you?"

@POOHEAD189
The bodies lay cooling on the warm asphalt of the alley, crimson lakes of blood spreading out around them in irregular ripples on the rough ground. The radios of the two dead precinct men squawked querulously with demands for updates and suggestions of back up. Asher was pulling herself to her feet, leaving bloody fingerprints on the red brick walls with her right hand, the left stuck the tacky bullet torn shirt.

“I am in your debt Sir Knight,” she announced with a gravitas that contrasted with her manic pixie dream girl image. There was a slight chill in the air, as though someone nearby had opened a walk in freezer, when a member of the fae acknowledged a debt, it was more than just idle words. She bent down and picked up the fallen shotgun, safing it and using it as an improvised crutch.

“I could use a doctor, because… you know… I got shot,” she said with an indifference that the slight grimace in her face did not wholly convey.

“But it can’t be a hospital, there will be reporters and cops everywhere, with the whole who wore whose entrails best thing going on.”

“Can’t be my people either, they might hand me over just to avoid an incident.” Physically powerful and imposing the mortal champions of the Fae might be, but they were barely pawns in the arcane calculus of the Fairy Courts.



__________

@Fetzen
The vampire landed behind Balthazar. In two separate pieces. He had passed through the Demon’s arcane attack and had been neatly bisected by it. Already the corpse was beginning to smoulder, breaking up into black ash that seemed to scatter on the wind of the screaming survivor’s passage. The tide of humanity was beginning to thin, here and there a reporter was taking photos, and the first responders, beat cops and EMTs who had happened to be in the area were pressing in, trying in vain to find somewhere to start in this whole mess.

The female vampire, covered from mouth to feet in the blood she had gouged herself on, and having managed to lose the piece of rebar that had transfixed her body, drew a high powered automatic pistol from her ruined dress, though where she had been concealing such a thing was a mystery. She glared at Balthazar for a long moment, cut her eyes to the approaching cops, then bounded away into the panicked crowd.

“Sir, Sir, are you ok?” an approaching policeman asked, unhelpfully shining his flashlight into Balthazar’s eyes. As he looked down he felt a signet ring that had been rolling across the concrete hit his shoe. The kind of signet that only the highest ranking vampire nobility wore. The vampire he had cut in half was, almost certainly, a favorite son or nephew of Duke Vitorrio Cassalaro, the most powerful vampire in Corvus Bay. The orb inside Balthazar’s jackets seemed to vibrate, almost as though it were chuckling…



_______________

@Ducksworth

“No spells? No ‘You are meddling with powers you couldn’t possibly comprehend’? Nothing?” Jack asked. He thrust a finger into his ear and scratched for a moment before flicking the resulting wax away to impact the refrigerator with a soft splat.

“Bit of a disappointment," Jack continued drawing chuckles from his remaining goons. He sighed and evidently decided he would get no more drama out of the situation. He stood up, looming over the apprentice wizard.

“Well down to business Harry, seems your master… Ellen something? Had himself a vault for all his wizardly secrets and such. Everybody is all in a tizzy to get something that is inside, and I says to myself, Jack I says: I bet you if anyone can get inside it is his poor bereaved butt boy!” Jack’s mouth split into a wide grin that displayed his more than human dentition in grotesque detail.

“That is all we want, get us into the vault, and you and your little pet get to go back to arts and crafts or whatever it was you was doing before we got here. What’d’ya say?”

Emrys stared up at Jack, jaw clenched, the press of fur, sweat, and testosterone thick around him like the walls had collapsed too and he had to spend all he was to hold them up. The werewolf’s grin stretched wide and stupid, like he’d just delivered some clever zinger and was waiting for a laugh track. But all Emrys heard was ignorance. For all their posturing and menace, it was clear as glass: they didn’t understand magic. Not really. Jack’s, as he called himself, talk of “vaults” and “wizardly secrets” made it sound like he thought spellcraft came with a combination lock and a user manual. They had no idea what they were actually asking for. They just knew it was powerful, possibly valuable, and they wanted it.

He let that realization settle. It was the first advantage he’d had since the door blew open. If they didn’t know what they were doing, he could use that. He had to. He let the moment breathe, long enough to look like he was weighing something important, when really he was just catching up to the speed of his own heartbeat.

Then he exhaled, slow and steady, just enough to steady his voice, and met Jack’s gaze without flinching. “You want to get into the vault,” he said, calm but deliberate, “you’re going to need me and my familiar.”

He raised one hand slightly, palm turned upward, like he was explaining math to a slow student. “It’s not complicated.” He began pacing back and forth, just enough to not cause Jack to immediately annihilate him. “My Master’s protections won’t respond to brute force. They’re layered, alive, even, in a way. And everything he taught me, every ritual, every sequence, every thread of spellwork I’ve learned since, they’re part of the same weave.” His tone flattened, just slightly, as if even bothering to explain it was beneath him. “Take my familiar out of the equation, and I’m just someone standing in front of a locked door, about as useful as anyone else you could have dragged in off of the street.”

It was a bluff. All of it. Complete fabrication. But he delivered it like gospel, the way Elandros always had when explaining some principle Emrys couldn’t yet grasp. And that was the trick, wasn’t it? Magic didn’t come with blueprints. As long as the rules sounded arcane enough, most people would believe them. Especially if they were desperate.

The part that scared him most was that it wasn’t even unbelievable. He didn’t know where the vault was. He didn’t know what it looked like. His master had been secretive to the point of obsession, even with him. If it existed, and he was only kinda sure it did, it could be hidden behind illusion, woven into a wall, tucked inside a ritual phrase he’d heard a dozen times but never understood. The closest thing to a clue might’ve been in Elandros’s study, assuming it hadn’t been buried under six layers of wards he’d never been taught to dispel.

But none of that mattered right now. Not the truth. Not his doubt. Only the image he projected. And right now, that image was this: he was essential. He, and he alone, was the only path forward. And if they hurt or took Quill away, if they broke that link, the whole thing would be lost to them forever.

He didn’t know what the next step was. But as long as they believed he mattered, he still had a piece on the board. And with that, he could play.

It took the policeman one or two more attempts to actually obtain Balthazar's attention. At least the sunglasses were still on, otherwise that flashlight might have revealed something rather discomforting perhaps. Still, the demon's eyes hurt from all that light. Damn those modern, high-powered flashlights!

"Yes, yes... I am fine." Balthazar replied more absent-mindedly than he intended as his focus had already shifted towards the circular metal thing that had just bumped against his foot. The policeman did not appear to have noticed it yet, but the way it glistened in the light of fire and sun coming into the parking lot automatically gave it a touch of preciousness in Balthazar's dark eyes.

The officer turned away, his attention drawn to countless other things in the area that, luckily, no longer included a bloodsucker divided into two parts. The demon picked up the ring, then pulled out his cellphone, accepted the call with a single touch he didn't even look at, raised the device up to his ear and could only listen to silence. It was only an odd "Hello ?" later that he realized that there was no call. Confusedly, Balthazar then pulled the mysterious orb out of his jacket next and put the phone back in.

"You dirty little thing!" he murmured to himself while staring at the object. The second object that was as the ring had already found its way into another pocket. Was it even clever to pick up all that trash ? Could have just dumped them into the next bin...

A less then gentle nudge on the kickstarter later and Balthazar's motorcycle hummed away under its sole occupant. The demon bent a few traffic rules on the way out of the city quarter as he figured that nobody cared while inside a disaster zone. He also turned his head more often than usual for a quick look behind: Was there anybody with a full auto weapon following ?

"It would be my honor to aid you, warrior maiden."

Rupert sighed. It had not been his voice, but it had come out of his mouth. He was not necessarily going to leave her to her fate, but having the knight answer without granting him time to think was not his idea of agency, and it only made him wish to abandon her all the more. Still, one look at her and he knew his efforts killing the men of the Precinct would be for naught.

"Very well," he acquiesced, but the Winter Knight had already passed out.

Hours later...

The rhythm of the wheels juttering over the tracks above shook the meager wood and too-thin stone. Water dripped ubiquitously across the breadth of the hideout, dropping into half filled buckets from the recent rain. Rupert opened the wound gently, carefully sliding the oversized medical tweezers (his own name for them) to grip the bullet gently. Once the hold was firm, he pulled it out. Kelly Asher must have been fading in and out of consciousness. She moaned woefully, but was as silent as a corpse after that. Rupert had to double check and confirm she was still breathing.

He stemmed the flow of blood and sutured her up, before wrapping her wound in clean cloth. Rupert was not a doctor, but he had experience with gunshot wounds and could perform minor magics. He set a dwemor upon her, which would dispel any minor curses or negative effects a bullet might be enchanted with. With that, he carefully picked her up and laid her on a cot, her trousers staying on throughout the small procedure. Afterwards, he went and heated up some ramen and sausages on a pan over a fire in the corner. After he ate a bit, he would check on her again.

Then he would want answers.
@Penny

@Ducksworth
The werewolf alpha gave Emrys a skeptical look, clearly primed to expect some trick from a wizard who, let's face it, were famous for their magic tricks.

“You expect me to believe that a great and powerful wizard built a vault you can't open without the help of your pet duck or whatever?” he asked, his voice hovering somewhere between disbelief and contempt. It hung there for a second and the werewolf sighed, the sound more like the huff of an irritated dog than that of a man. He opened his mouth to heap further contempt on the young wizard but there was a distant howl from out in the darkness. All of the werewolves tensed and the atmosphere seemed to almost crackle with suppressed violence. Jack stood up abruptly, his eyes shifting towards the window.

“Fine we will bring the bird with us, keep it real safe until we get where we are going,” he declared. With what seemed like undue haste Emrys was bundled out of the room and down to the street where a half dozen Harley Davidsons, lovingly painted with various wolf themes growled and revered. Somewhere off in the distance another wolf howl came but this was not a cry of warning, it sounded like pain. Sirens were screaming in the distance as more firetrucks and emergency services rolled to the bombing, or responded to disturbances it engendered.

Quill was on the side of one of the bikes, in what looked to be a small bird cage stuffed into one of the saddle bags, it’s bars wrapped with thin filaments of copper wire in a basic ward against magical interference. The work was inexpert and crude, the sort of thing a talented layman might throw together. Thunder cracked in the distance and a smattering of rain, warm and pleasant began to fall. Jack grunted with irritation and climbed onto his bike, beckoning to Emrys to join him.

“Where to Harry Potter?” Jack asked as a crackling bolt of lightning lit up the horizon.



_______________________________________
@POOHEAD189

The favors of the Winter Court were considerable, though like all bargains of the kind, were more expensive than they first seemed. Faster and stronger than mortals she might be, but even Kelly Asher could not quickly shed the effect of a 9mm to the stomach. As the rain lashed down she lay on her cot, shivering and feverish. Her body temperature rapidly plunged far below human norms, her skin growing an almost ghostly white and her lips turning an alarming shade of blue. Despite this they continued to move, muttering and mouthing words that might have been incantations, curses, or something in between, mostly directed at Mab the Queen of Winter. Frost formed and dissolved on the window like a monochrome kaleidoscope, strangely reminiscent of an audiograph to the nonsensical conversation. Through it all her pulse remained steady and eventually she subsided, returning to something more like normal human unconsciousness.

Lightning rent the sky outside and the rain grew steadily worse. Occasionally the purplish crackle of energy illuminated the red eyes of crows as they fluttered damply about. One lightning strike crashed so close to Rupert’s hide out that the hair on his arms prickled. Abruptly a television, an old cathode ray set that had long been nonfunctional, sputtered to life in a series of sputtering clicks. Paying no attention to the fact that it wasn’t plugged in, the snowy static congealed into a black and white image of a man in a 1950s style suit standing in front of what looked like a TV weather barometric chart.

“...weather will degenerate over the next several hours, if the cold front breaks we could be in for very serious weather by the early hours of tomorrow..” Bursts of static intercut the apparent weather report with momentary flashes of the Tem tower exploding outwards, flinging bodies into the void. The figure in the weather report seemed to reach up and slap the inside of the television, an act that seemed to clear the picture.

“Of course it is too early to tell but we are advising everyone take precautions and…” the weatherman’s eyes opened wide with horror and the static closed in from all directions. Just for a moment it seemed to make a pattern. The leering, fanged visage of a dragon. The television clicked off, a puff of smoke escaping from the side of it, several pops crackling inside of it, filling the hide out with the faint smell of burning plastic.

At almost the same instant, there was a thunderous knock on the door.



____________________________________________
@Fetzen

No vampire gunmen emerged from the night in pursuit but for a moment it seemed that dozens and dozens of fireflies glittered from the surrounding buildings, giving the uncomfortable impression they were watching. The sparks seemed to alight on the air like embers from a wild fire. They rushed after the fleeing Balthazar, coiling and swirling in the night sky. The metal orb vibrated more urgently and seemed to grow hot. The sparks recoiled away as though striking some kind of barrier or meeting an attack. Abruptly they vanished and, in their place, rain began to fall.

Two police cruisers came around a corner, their lights refracting off the raindrops. These weren’t city cops, but rather the tan of state troopers. Both cars went past and the eyes of the police inside scanning over Balthazar. Abruptly, the breaks went on and the light bars began to flash, one of the cars squealing on the asphalt as it turned in pursuit.

The preternatural and the occult often caused strange occurrences. Rupert actually liked it when it popped up now and again. It broke through the monotony of the day, even if he would fervently deny any enjoyment of it. It would be a small acknowledgement of enjoyment out of the life the old bastard had made him live. Not as if he did not already live in his head, after all. There was one point where he grabbed a bottle of alcohol, even as he reached he wasn't sure if he would pour it on the wound or take a swig, and his fingers stuck to the glass. Kelly Asher still had a bit of kick to her, which he supposed was a good sign. He had only met the Winter Knight on a handful of occasions, and they had always been brief, and never this latest version. The soft clink of metal as he utilized the tools and removed the bullet was punctuated by cracking ice. Luckily, it dissipated soon enough.

He worked his jaw and shook his hands, getting the feeling back in them so he didn't feel pins and needles in his extremities. He reminded himself the Knight owed him. He was not accustomed to garnering charity nor giving it. When she awoke he would demand payment, his only question was what.

Rupert's thoughts were interrupted when the TV began to sputter and come to life without a power source. That happened very rarely, he thought. The room's want light was monopolized in the corner, shadows dancing as the image faded in and out, until Rupert saw the following news. He was curious, despite himself. Whatever power was showing this to him, he didn't like the anonymity. Then his eyes widened, and the word came to his mind before he could even conceptualize it. As if the heavens themselves had planted it there, lurking in the depths of his mind, bursting forth just as he realized what it was.

Dragon.

Immediately he felt a pressure on the left side of his head, a stabbing pain and his body contorting. His right hand clutched his left arm, and he grit his teeth as he violently shuddered. His vision was filled with white fire, and he blinked it away as he crashed into the wall deliberately. Sir Aldus Grey had seized him, demanding to be let loose like a lion. The words rang in his mind. DRACA! WURM! SATAN! SERPENT OF FIRE! Rupert groaned in defiance, bloodshot eyes opening to find focus. "I'm in control... tonight...old man..." He whispered acidly, too preoccupied to rhyme. He jerked his body against the wall again, and like a bubble of gas in one's stomach, eventually the pain and force subsided, and Rupert placed his hand against the wall to keep himself upright, gasping for air.

The knocking came just there.

Brilliant, he thought. He was disheveled at the best of times, but at the moment, if one passed him on the street they would think a stabbing from him was not a possibility, but an inevitability. He sucked in a mighty breathe, and pushed himself upright, stumbling to his bedside and sliding his hand under his mattress. He fished out the large, runic dagger he kept hidden under there. He had already decided to answer it. There were too many open questions tonight for him to not solve the great 'mystery visitor' he thought sardonically. He unlocked the door slowly, and gingerly twisted the door handle, looking at the newcomer like a starving wolf.

"Hello?"

The demon took one hand of the steering handle to press it against his jacket around the breast region, just where he had put his phone and the other items. Had the damn battery decided to develop an issue and was in the processes of bulging, then exploding ? Yet as the contents of his inner pockets were pressed against his chest, Balthazar realized that the feeling of heat was not rectangular, but round. That sphere...

Only when the police cruisers rushed by, he felt the urge to pay attention to the rear view mirror and saw the remainders of the fireflies dissipate behind him... into rainwater ? That wasn't normal! The idea of tossing the orb into the ditch crossed his mind once more, but again he hesitated as it appeared to stabilize again. That thing had a knack for making itself more remarkable by the minute after all, hadn't it ?

Then the tire squal reached his ears. He would not even try to make a run for it on a somewhat clapped out bike that had to carry that much weight. Balthazar let go of the throttle and turned on the indiciator that he was going to stop on the roadside. He knew he had learned something from his last encounter with the cops and mentally prepared for retrieving all the stupid standard papers an officer could possibly expect from a driver during a routine check.

"Hello officer. Is there a problem ? Can I see your badge, please ?"

Stay cool, Balthazar thought. He was not responsible for the attack, the cop he had met before had not complained about any wrongdoing either. Maybe these state troopers would just do a routine inspection on anybody who was looking as if trying to get out quickly and did stick out of the crowd ? Also cars had tires, tires were made of rubber and rubber didn't like very high temperatures.

@POOHEAD189
“Did you intend to leave me standing out here all night?” a woman asked in a thick indian accent. Her face was round and her large almond shaped eyes were dark and lined with kohl. She wore a sarai and skirt and several gold bangles glittered at her wrist. A flash of lightning lit the night sky, painting her rich brown skin an odd shade of blue gray. Without waiting for a response she pushed past the knight and into the safehouse.

“Powerful scrying magics are being used to find this one,” the newcomer said with an off handed gesture to the unconscious Winter Knight. Kelly moaned in her sleep as though the gesture were a gentle slap.

“Your fates are intertwined, a great calamity will come upon the city if the real perpetrators are not brought to justice. Worse, your ancient adversary will take advantage,” the newcomer continued, opening the fridge and beginning to pick through the contents.

“Do you not have any milk?”

____________________________________
@Fetzen

Two officers emerged from the police cruiser, both wearing sunglasses despite the late hour. The enameled Precinct pins were displayed on their breast pockets but no badges or other identification. Neither man had yet drawn a weapon but their hands were close to their holsters.

“Put your hands up,” the nearest officer responded, a sneer on his face at the request for identification. He reached out and grabbed Balthazar, wrenching him around and shoving him against the wall. Rough hands began to pat him down, pausing as they found the orb.

“What have we here…” the cop crooned as he pulled the metallic sphere out of the pocket.

“It is the Contract!” the second officer called, pulling his weapon free of its holster and shouting for his partner to step clear of Balthazar.

They didn’t give him a chance to breathe. One minute Emrys was frozen in the stale, musk-heavy air of his apartment, and the next he was being shoved bodily out the door, his shoulder clipping the shattered frame on the way through. The hallway was a blur, wet concrete and flickering fluorescents rushing past as heavy hands guided, dragged, and manhandled him down the stairs like a stolen suitcase. He barely had time to grab his satchel, the strap slung over his shoulder at the last second, the canvas thudding against his hip with every jarring step.

Outside, the world was soaked in the aftermath of the blast. Sirens howled in the distance, their pitch rising and falling through the rain-slicked streets. The stink of smoke still hung in the air, mingling with ozone and oil and fur. Parked in a rough semicircle outside the building, a pack of Harley Davidsons growled like beasts held on too-short chains, each one painted in some gaudy wolf motif. Flames, snarls, silver eyes. One of them had actual teeth embedded into the fuel tank.

They shoved him toward the bikes, and that was when he saw it. Quill. The familiar's cage was stuffed into a saddlebag, mesh reinforced with hasty copper wards, sloppy ones, twisted too tight and uneven. They wouldn’t hold forever, but they didn’t have to. Just long enough. The little bird was fluffed up in alarm, feathers tight against the bars, watching Emrys with sharp, frantic eyes. Still alive. Still here. Relief hit so hard it almost staggered him.

Jack mounted his bike with a grunt and jerked his head for Emrys to follow. The young mage climbed on with all the grace of a man trying not to throw up, fingers gripping the worn leather behind the werewolf’s back like it might keep him tethered to something solid.

Jack turned slightly, shouting over the idling engines. "Where to, Harry Potter?"

Emrys didn’t answer right away. The rain hit his face, warm and sudden. It plastered his hair to his forehead, streamed down the back of his neck, soaked through the threadbare collar of his shirt. But it was the question that froze him.

Where were they going?

His mind scrambled. Elandros never mentioned a vault. No diagrams, no maps. Not even a whispered hint. For all Emrys knew, the man had kept his secrets buried in a coffee tin behind a diner. And they wanted him to take them there now. Not later. Not after research or prep or divination. Now.

Panic climbed up his spine, clawing for his throat. But he couldn't show it. Not here. Not in front of them. He forced his breathing steady, shoved the fear down deep. Let them see calm. Let them see control. Even if it was a lie.

Then, a flicker of memory. Years ago, Elandros had taken him north of the city. It had been raining then, too. The road had been narrow, trees leaning in from both sides, and they'd stopped by a rusted gate tucked into a hillside. Beyond it stood a decrepit old observatory, half-eaten by ivy and time. Elandros hadn’t explained. He’d just left up to the building leaving Emrys standing with his hand resting on the gate, before they turned around and left. Emrys never thought to ask why. But now? It was the only thread he had.

He swallowed hard and raised his voice, keeping it firm. "Old observatory," he said. "North of the tracks, rusted gate off the tree line. You’ll miss it if you’re not looking." No hesitation. No qualifiers. Make it clean. Make it sound like gospel. "If he kept anything important, it’ll be there."

Emrys stared at the cage one more time, jaw set, heart hammering. He had no idea what waited at that ruin. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But it was a start, and he’d take that over nothing.

@Penny

"I intend to-..." His witty reply was sundered when she ignored him and walked right in, and Rupert was a bit too tired and off-put by the entirety of the nights affairs to react violently, or even just protest. Not to mention his insatiable curiosity, and so instead he just swung the door shut as the woman strode deeper into his makeshift abode and herself comfortable with her unasked for explanation. Not that the exposition was unwelcome, he was in need of some illumination on the nights events. If only she wasn't so cryptic.

"I figured someone would be trying to find her," He said, and then raised an eyebrow and looked the woman up and down. She was attractive, but that wasn't his interest. He was wondering just why someone would find him, and then walk in, saying others were trying to find him. Clearly the wards he had were not the best.

He listened to her words, albeit with barely suppressed impatience. He was not in the mood for this woman's sudden appearance, and what's more, he felt a small surge of revitalized energy from within when she mentioned the ancient adversary. Rupert clutched his chest for a moment, gritting his teeth until his willpower shoved the old man back within the dark recesses of his consciousness. He collected himself, albeit barely.

"This is all fascinating," he remarked dryly. "But do not mention wyrms again, and before we get acquainted, who the hell are you and why the hell should I trust or even care about what you have to say." His words were spoken acidly, and he continued: "Are you a seer with vague notions or someone who is more informed? I pray you're the latter or I'll become somewhat unpleasant."

It was only then he realized he still wasn't rhyming, but that was the least of his concerns. "And yeah, I have a small glass of milk in the fridge. Answer my questions and you can help your merry self." He nodded to the old, 50's box fridge in the corner. It was small, albeit not necessarily a mini-fridge. He raised an eyebrow expectantly, the lower half of his face obscured by the collar of his coat.
@Penny

"Contract ?" Balthazar snapped at the one obviously either fake or now sort of 'off-duty' officer who'd been shouted at to get away. "Do I look like a shitty piece of paper or a PDF with a digital signature ?" The demon almost had to smirk about his own words. "It's said that paper ignites at 374 degrees or so, but I wonder about cop gear!"

Balthazar didn't bother to turn around, that would have cost too much time and given an opportunity for the other individual to use that firearm already pointed at him. He released a stream of fire against the wall, hoping that I'd bounce off and engulf the entire situation in flames. That, of course, inevitably included himself. Good thing his hair grew back very, very quickly. The smell of it sizzling away still was no less horrible to his own nostrils than it was to anybody else's.

Balthazar leapt away from the wall backwards for he expected both of them to open fire for as long as they could, even with their vision being potentially impaired a lot if not burnt away. Bullets hurt, he had no intent of catching a lot of them. His hands kept aiming at the duo to continue blasting them with a green-blue inferno. He realized that, even if he could manage to dispose of these guys quickly, he was also already doing a disturbingly good job at attracting more attention. Yet now he had already started that way, switching to his own pistol in the middle of it would be stupid.

@POOHEAD189

Lightning crashed outside and the lights flickered, momentarily plunging the room into a darkness illuminated only by the whites of the newcomers' eyes. Power surged back on and the old cathode ray sputtered to life. It painted a grainy vision of Tolkien’s bag end with Sir Ian Mcellan’s face darkening.

“BILBO BAGGINS DO NOT TAKE ME FOR SOME CONJURER OF CHEAP TRICKS!”

The temperature dropped ten degrees and the smell of packed snow was suddenly heavy on the air. There was another deafening crash with no time at all between the report and the flash. Painful blue light etched the interior of the room with radiance so pure it made the mundane surroundings seem tawdry and washed out. The woman’s skin seemed to shine a dark blue and for a fleeting moment the maternal eyes were gone, replaced by something wild and feral. A long pointed tongue protruded from jet black lips and quested from side to side like a serpent. Almost like an x-ray exposure her form seemed revealed through her clothes and somehow she seemed to have four arms, one of them seemed to be clutching something but before it could be identified the electrical light faded. The strange woman smiled as the tv fizzled into static and died with a pop.

From outside there came a squealing of tires and a roar of engines. Powerful headlights flickered through the windows casting a yellow light that seemed ugly compared to the purity of the lightning. A trio of expensive sport cars in gold and white pulled up. Doors slid open and hatched up as tall figures stepped out. They were beautiful beings, fair skinned with piercing feline eyes. Their limbs were long and graceful and they moved with an unearthly grace. Each wore a suit of half plate, exquisitely wrought and inlaid with gold and glittering jewels. Scabbarded swords hung at their belts but were somewhat undercut by desert pattern H&K automatics they lifted from their cars. The six fae lords arranged themselves in a line and lifted their weapons.

“Oh dear,” the Indian woman said in the same tone she might have used if she spilled her tea. She lifted a cup of milk to her mouth and sipped from it. There was an oddly queasy feeling as the cup touched her lips. Somehow it seemed that the milk drank her form rather than the other way round and within a second she had vanished, the empty cup falling to the ground and bouncing on the carpet.



_________
@Ducksworth

The rain stung like a shower of BB pellets as the muscular bikes raced through the rain. Towards the center of town the sky glowed with a combination of fires and the reflected light of hundreds of emergency vehicles. It was a good thing that the police were otherwise occupied because the score of roaring bikes obeyed no speed limit nor traffic rule. Several of the werewolves had produced sawed off shot guns which they fired at street lights, more or less for the joy of seeing them shatter. The bikers were howling, almost as loud as their metal steeds and the smell of hormones and wet dog was detectable even over the stink of exhaust. The passing of the iron processing caused several fender benders as they ran red lights and ignored stop signs. A few drivers leaped out of their vehicles but any objections or threats died on their lips as they observed the cause of increase in their insurance premiums.

Within minutes they reached the rusted gate, which already hung open, swinging in the storm driven winds to bang against its jam and rebound. The bikes slowed, not due to any sense of caution but by the similar necessity of following the spiraling road up the hillside towards the lowering form of the observatory dome, a black semicircle against the storm wracked sky. Oaks and ash trees lined the road, though the scrub beyond was more like a wild forest than a manicured park, long overgrown and neglected.

Jack slowed further as the reached the top where a gravel parkinglot spread out before the observatory. The structure itself was half ruined, its windows shattered and its lower story marked with graffiti. Trash blew in the wind as the storm scoured chip packets and candy wrappers abandoned by teens who had invaded the space for their innocent indulgences in drugs or sexuality. Three vans were parked before the door, noses pointed out like a phalanx. The words Corvus Bay Natural History Museum were stenciled on their side along with a logo that combined a crow with a knapped arrowhead. The bikers slowed and came to a stop and the werewolves leaped from their metal steeds, boots crunching in the gravel.

“Who is this?” O’kane demanded, glowing at the young wizard. “If this is some trick…” Further speculation was interrupted as a figure emerged from between the vans. It was a portly woman in early middle age dressed in a heavy yellow raincoat, the kind used by sailors rather than something domestic, she carried a powerful flashlight which she played across them without apparent concern.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” she asked in a clear musical voice.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jack demanded, gripping Emrys and hauling him before him.

“My name is Rebecca,” the woman said with a pleasant white smile. She opened her coat to reveal a name tag that read: Hello, My Name is Rebe-ka. It was marked with the insignia of the natural history museum.
“What are you doing here?” Jack demanded, clearly non-plused by the lack of concern the woman was showing at being confronted by twenty thuggish looking males, several of whom were obviously armed.

“Working,” the woman replied sunnily. “I’m afraid we aren’t open to the public, perhaps in a few months we will be ready for visitors?”



_________
@Fetzen

Fire flared out from Balthazar, hotter and fiercer than anything he had conjured before. It seemed wild somehow, hungry, infused with malice and hatred. Both policemen erupted in fire. The shotgun went off with a twitch and buckshot ripped bloody streaks across his left arm, the dark blood sizzling as the flames touched it. The second officer didn’t manage even that, the magazine of his pistol bursting open as the ammunition gangfired, filling the air with a crazed spray of bullet fragments that shattered several windows. The tires of the police car and the scooter burst in stinking clouds of burning rubber a moment before the metal in the body panels caught, paint curling away in smoke before the metal itself ignited and burned in gorgeous greens and reds. There was a dull whump as the fuel tanks caught in low order combustions which belched fireballs skyward and the windshield blasted outwards spraying glittering prisms of shattered glass in all directions. As abruptly as it kindled the fire flickered and vanished, leaving the vehicles blazing wrecks. The two policemen were little more than charred bones, one of the skulls crumbling to shed teeth like the petals of a dying flower. The asphalt itself glistened and ran in a sticky river into which the bones and detritus partially submerged. The road itself seemed to shudder as if wounded, a ripple passing up and down the street, cracking concrete for several hundred meters.

A stillness descended as the fire died away leaving the burned out frame of the scooter and the police cruiser guttering as the fire lost the temperature needed to burn the metals. The result were metal skeletons that shared more than was comfortable with the ruined human corpses, shimmering and twisted with heat. The air was rank with the smell of burned pork, burning asphalt, and the greasy reek of sublimated metal. Car alarms and anti burglary systems from the shop fronts wailed in protest. A few passers by stood in abject shock, not yet marshalling the willpower to produce phones and start recording or calling the overwhelmed emergency services.

There was a chuckle in the back of Balthazar’s mind, alien and other. It seemed to emanate from the orb he had so casually taken from the scene of the bombing. It was still in Balthazar’s coat, a coat which miraculously remained unburned by the flames that had just made steel body plates run like wax under a blow torch.