2006, 29th January

Paris, France

Lucia had judged it unsafe to simply stay back at Lucien’s place or the place her father had lent her, especially when he seemed to be hunting the both of them presently.

So she had dipped into her own funds and rented a room at a hotel.

“Luxurious,” Magnus observed as he examined the rooms.

Lucia had also specified the rooms should be amply shielded from sunlight.

The staff had complied; even gone above and beyond.

The expensive places tended to do that.

Lucia flipped on the lights, blinking to adjust to the sudden transition from pitch darkness.

They took a moment to simply analyse one another, having not seen each other in so long.

Magnus could easily spot Lucia’s resemblance to her father, not only in appearance but in posture as well, her hunched, predatory stance, as if she was parked on spring-loaded joints, ready to burst with violence at the slightest provocation.

Magnus himself was as disproportionately large as Lucia had remembered him, easily at least 7 feet tall.

He moved with a very conscious and practiced delicacy, his muscles straining to hold back some overwhelming force, to not break something around him.

“It’s… been a long time, Magnus.” Lucia finally broke the silence.

“It has.”

“Tell me… What brought you here?”

“I was sent here on assignment by Apotheosis. At first, I thought it was a trap. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was sent to see your father. But the instant he mentioned his name, I drew a connection to you. And he forced his way into my mind, before attacking me.”

“You managed to escape him?” Lucia was genuinely surprised.

“I did. If he hadn’t taken the time to invade my mind, it might have been a different matter. At first, I thought Apotheosis had sent me into some kind of ambush, but that made very little sense. If they wanted me dead, why go to such obtuse lengths? The only other explanation that makes sense-”

“-Is the fact that you knew me from half a decade ago was far too large a coincidence for my father to swallow, and he sensed some kind of trap.”

Lucia paused, frowning.

“It is too large a coincidence to accept at face value. Even for me.”

Magnus returned a frown of his own.

“If you have something to say, say it clearly.”

Lucia shook her head.

“I’d like to tell you I trust you, but truthfully, I don’t even know you. And the same goes for you. We may have known each other all those years ago, but neither of us is the same person.”

“Perhaps we should fix that, then.”

“First things first, this Apotheosis you keep mentioning. What is it?”

Magnus frowned once more, this time more surprised than anything else.

“You do not know about them? Your father never told you?”

“My father and I do not speak a lot.”

“Hmm. Well, the short version of it is, Apotheosis is an organisation of mages.”

“Mages.” Lucia still remembered that blonde man, striding so brazenly among predators.

Hans.

“And what is the long version?”

“Hmm. Well, these are all just second hand stories from a long time ago. I like to think the gist of it is mostly accurate, but I may get a few things wrong.”

Lucia inclined her head, encouraging him to go on.

“Well, you must have heard some stories, even if they were just fairy tales. Witches living in forests turning people to frogs. Ancient rituals to sacrifice people to their gods by tossing them into volcanoes. I guess they had some roots in reality. But Apotheosis was when the mages first appeared as an organisation. I suppose this was…”

Magnus scrunched up his eyes in concentration.

“...Some 300 years BC? I think that’s a fair estimate. They claimed Alexander the Great as the first of their kind. I don’t know if that’s true, but they claim it anyway. Then they spread their influence very rapidly. And they assimilated all mages around the globe under their umbrella. It didn’t matter to them what you did in your spare time, as long as you adhered to their rule of no interference, and were willing to share their knowledge with the organisation as a whole.”

“And if they did not want to?”

“Ah… Judging from what I know of the modern organisation, they probably did not have a lot of choice in the matter.”

“And what is it like today?”

“My people may be allied with them, but we don’t actually know all their inner workings. But these two things remain mostly the same. Any mages around the globe are taken in their wing, and their non interference policy stands strong. In fact, they’ve even enforced it on supernatural creatures that aren’t magi.”

“And they’re allowed to do that?”

Lucia was surprised, thinking of the amount of power and influence someone like her father held.

“Oh, they have more than enough power to enforce it,” Magnus assured her offhandedly, “It’s just… I don’t know how long it’ll be before they leave the planet behind altogether.”

“And would that be a good thing or a bad thing?”

Magnus simply shrugged.

“I don’t know. I haven’t lived in a world that existed outside their supervision. It’s impossible for me to tell.”

“And you said something about your people. What-”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. I believe I am entitled to a few questions of my own.”

Lucia gradually lowered herself down in a chair opposite of Magnus.

“Fair enough. What do you want to know?”

“Was it really a coincidence? The fact that we knew each other from all that time.”

“Hmph. What, 15 year old me cosied up to you to pull a con for some reason?”

“I didn’t say you did. But still…”

“Maybe someone did place us together for some reason. But that isn’t the reason we got to know each other.”

Magnus smiled, a melancholy look entering his eyes.

“Yeah. Michael.”

“I suppose neither of us was really human, even back then. But a human brought us together. No bigger conspiracy around that.”

“Hmm. Did I ever tell you about how Michael and I knew each other in the first place?”

“No. When I was admitted to the school, you two were already pretty much inseparable.”

“I asked him out, once.”

“Oh.”

“I suppose it was a risky thing to do, but it turned out alright. He turned me down of course, but he wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. He was very… how should I say this.”

“Understanding but also arrogant?”

Magnus laughed.

“Exactly! You knew the guy.”

“Mmh. Was it something to the tune of, ‘Of course you like me, everyone likes me’.”

Magnus laughed even more freely at this.

“That was pretty much it. But, you know, after that day, he’d never leave me alone. I didn’t know why at first. I may even have resented him a little. But I don’t regret any of it.”

“He couldn’t leave you alone, just like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, imagine how it must have been for him; a brown skinned kid in America in the middle of children who don’t know any better. Kids are sociopaths anyway. So he develops the skill to stand head and shoulders with them, or even above them, just out of necessity. Then you come along, another kid who stands out. In a way that might make you a target.”

“You think that’s why he was so good with… people? To fill a need?”

Lucia shrugged.

“Maybe. I can’t read minds… Or at least, I couldn’t back then. It’s just a guess.”

“It’s as good a guess as any. You always knew him the best. Even though I’d known him longer.”

“Hey, at least you get the heartwarming origin story. I actually had to fucking save his ass.”

“Hah! Oh yeah, I remember that.”

“Yeah- What the hell were you guys thinking anyway? That path was way too steep and way too crowded with shrubs or whatever to run down with a mountain bike. You could have broken your necks.”

“That didn’t stop you though; You rushed right into that dirt path with the very bike he’d fallen off of and you caught him before he broke his neck.”

“I just had better balance than most people, even as a kid. And I could see what path to take, to avoid wiping out.”

“Hmm.”

Magnus seemed to have latched onto a thought.

“That was too well done- for a human, I think.”

“Maybe. But humans are capable of exceptional things too.”

“Yes. That’s what I supposed about you way back then. But in hindsight, I suppose that now makes a lot more sense.”

Lucia leaned forward, studying Magnus intently, who returned a bemused look of his own.

“Do you think we can do it? Learn to trust each other?”

“We’ll see, Magnus. Even when we were at school, we weren’t really as close as we were to Michael, you know? We were-”

“Friends of friends hanging out with each other. And now we find ourselves in quite the… unique predicament. But I suppose we can fix that now. We can learn to trust each other.”

“Yeah. My father is dangerous, but you already knew that. What specifically brought you here in the first place?”

Magnus expanded on the events he had been through recently, detailing the events of the last few days that had led to his departure from his company, the resulting slaughter, and his visit with Anders to Dubai.

Along with the information, Lucia also gleaned the fact that Magnus was not lacking in trust, freely supplying information that was not obviously relevant to their current circumstances.

Lucia agreed with the sentiment that the girl he assisted in Iraq was likely dead, but she saw no reason to reinforce it in his mind.

She did not offer false hope either.

And Victor-

“I met a Victor. In Reykjavik.”

Magnus leaned forward in his seat, attentive.

“What can you tell me about him?”

She returned the trust he had extended, by supplying him with the details of her visit to the Draugr in Iceland.

She did keep her personal thoughts mostly out of the narration, keeping her words clinical and detached from the events, but if Magnus noticed, he made no comment.

“You’ve been through a lot,” was his final observation.

Lucia regarded him with a wry expression.

“I came out fine, which is more than I can say for Hilda.”

“Do you feel guilty? For what you did to her?”

“No. But that idea she had, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.”

Magnus spoke after a long pause.

“About a world with us taking our so-called rightful place above humanity?”

“We’re already doing it, Magnus. My father sells people like one would cattle. I opposed the idea at the time, without giving it much thought. But could I stop my father? If I took such a position of power, would I be able to oppose him in a meaningful way?”

“I don’t think the mages would allow any such thing.”

“I told you about Hans, didn’t I? I think he may be allied with Victor.”

“That may be true. But even then… The rest of Apotheosis-”

“-Is angling for an alliance with my father, which is why they sent you here.”

“Lucia, what are you thinking?”

“There’s something happening behind the scenes here. I intend to find out what, and use it to my advantage.”

Magnus reclined a bit, nodding.

“Then where do you want to begin?”

“Well, certainly not with my father. Even with you at my side, he’s still too powerful and well protected to-”

She stopped abruptly.

“What’s wrong?”

Lucia drummed her fingers rhythmically against the handrest before replying.

“You know how I insisted on this one room.”

“Yeah.”

“There was a reason.”

“Obviously.”

“The windows open to the side of the building instead of facing the street. And I can still see the traffic at an angle, if only for a split second.”

“And what did you see?”

“That we have company. Two black SUVs pulling in. Obviously armed men”

“Your father’s men?”

“We’ll soon find out. There’s another window facing this side down at the first floor. It’s the 4rth floor laundry room.”

“This is the 22nd floor.”

“They should have taken the two lifts- right now.”

Magnus looked at her index finger, keeping rhythm.

“Not just one?”

“Too many for that. You take the ones on the left when they get up here.”

And saying so, she flung herself out of the window.

Lucia let the blood spark within her circulatory system, letting her limbs fill with unnatural strength and endurance.

Already falling at terminal velocity, her descent concealed from prying eyes by shadows wrapped around her-

She carved furrows in the brick walls with her fingers, slowing herself down, then pulling the window open, latch snapping with no resistance-

And she walked out to intercept the rising elevator.

The right lift of the two passenger lifts was currently occupied by three burly men in heavy overcoats, and an older woman, a tourist, who did not speak French, and had found navigating the city rather inconveniencing for her.

Then the elevator stopped at the fourth floor, and a young woman walked in.

The older lady might have been tempted to at least click her tongue disapprovingly at the amount of skin her shirt, three buttons undone, seemed to reveal, but years of social conditioning seemed to have been washed away under a rush of primeval instinct screaming at her to press herself against the wall and curl in on herself, presenting as small a target as possible.

The men around her, each seemingly twice both the women’s mass put together, seemed to be doing no better, frozen in place by her eyes, that seemed to catch the very light around them in an odd fashion.

They did not stop at the next floor, or the one after that, each frozen, straining to keep as much distance as they could from the newcomer.

The tourist would have thought the situation comical, perhaps, if she weren’t in the middle of it.

With a single clear note, the elevator arrived at the tenth floor.

The older woman’s destination.

But the other one climbed out after her as well.

Suppressing an oath she did not dare utter, she took off at a slight jog, emboldened by the presence of people behind her.

The gates of the elevator closed behind them.

Then one, two, three loud shots split the air.

The sound was unmistakable.

People panicked their way through the corridors, even as the authorities were called.

Lucia casually made her way downstairs, even the panicked guest rushing around her unconsciously giving her a wide berth.

It had been a simple enough matter to project her will at one of the three men confined in the elevator.

And he had disposed of the other two for her, before putting a bullet through his own skull for good measure.

When Magnus faced down the assassins sent on his end, the self defense narrative would be easier to spin, in case they did manage to bring the attention of the authorities on them.

Not that they would be sticking around for that long.

But for now, there was someone waiting down below, probably awaiting the men back in the transportation they had arrived in, that deserved a visit from her.

So it was that she found herself in the parking, concealed in the shadows.

She knew the creature that awaited her; she had encountered it before.

The immortal stuck in the body of a child, carried around by the aged man she could only assume was a retainer.

She would tear the specifics of why she had attacked them later, once she had her where she wanted her.

She felt the blood burn within her, depleting, and hunger clawed at her gut.

The parking lot was fairly packed; filled with panicking guests that had stormed their way out.

The lights died.

None would believe the people gathered there, attributing it to an understandable case of mass hysteria, but when the people opened their mouths to speak, or even scream, but no sound would escape them, even though they could feel their breath forcibly expelled from their lungs.

And under the cloak of complete sensory deprivation, Lucia, able to sense all within the shadow as clearly as she once would in broad daylight, struck with her enhanced speed.

She hit the reinforced door of the armoured vehicle at speeds that surpassed a hundred kilometers per hour for one short burst, and it burst open like an overripe fruit.

With her arm snapping forward and instantly striking the hapless retainer unconscious, Lucia snatched the vampire child from the vehicle in a blur, retreating and taking the shadows with her.

She retreated to an abandoned corner, keeping the shadows around her in preparation for any move the not-child might make to scream.

She felt a vice grip around her wrist and felt her radius begin to bend under the pressure.

She lashed out with a kick and the not-child was flung away.

“Who sent you here?"

The not-child got to her feet with a grimace, dusting off the front of her clothing.

“Was it Lionel?”

“Lionel,” she growled, her voice and her tone out of place, unnatural on a child. “I’ve had my fill of Lionel and his family. And you will know not to touch me again!”

She unleashed a psychic attack which drowned Lucia in sensory feedback, hundreds of years gone by in an instant.

“I have watched entire lifetimes like yours go by in the blink of an eye, child. I have seen civilizations rise and fall. Your insignificance will break you.”

Lucia shook her head, as if to rid herself of a persistent mosquito.

“Is that all?”

The not-child stepped backwards in alarm.

Lucia’s brain currently had the capacity to go through ten thousand processing cycles in a single second- for now.

The psychic feedback had simply been swallowed whole.

That told her this not-child had not known more than one pureblood her entire life, or she would know this mode of attack was ineffective.

The only one she had known was Lionel, a man she did not dare attack, especially in this manner.

And her response to her earlier question suggested she had not come under his orders.

The only other possible explanation was that she had meant to take Lucia hostage in some kind of step against her father.

She could see the not-child preparing to take another action.

She blurred through the air, faster than the eye could follow, and nipped any further hostility in the bud with her enlarged incisors buried the not-child’s jugular.

And she drank once more, feeling powerful lifeblood pulsing through her veins.

Beneath her lips she felt the pulse of the not-child flutter and die.

And then she was left with the corpse of a child in her hands.

Before she could decide how best to dispose of it, a massive silver wolf approached around the corner.

She assumed Magnus had tracked her by scent.

She held the cold corpse of the child out to it, her meaning clear.

They needed to dispose of the evidence.

The wolf stared at her with as much distaste as could possibly be held in its canine facial features before leaning in to sniff the corpse, then promptly swallowing the thing whole, all evidence of the crime having disappeared down its massive gullet.

“Turn back. Can’t have a horse sized wolf running around at my heels.”

Magnus huffed a gust of air.

“No time for false modesty. We’ll get you some clothes later. For now, we need to get to my car and leave.”

The wolf’s skin rippled and shifted, and Magnus was a man once more.

Lucia wondered where exactly she would acquire clothing for a man of his proportions at this hour, but it was hardly their most pressing concern.

They needed to make themselves scarce before the authorities could blockade them.

They quickly made for Lucia’s sedan she had retrieved and parked nearby, with Magnus pushing the seat a bit further and down and sinking into it to preserve his modesty.

“Who was that vampire?”

“You could tell it was a vampire just by looking, eh?”

“Well, I hardly think you’d have murdered some random child with no reason. Besides, I could smell the blood. The blood of a vampire feels… different. To taste, to smell.”

Lucia had already figured that out- some organic compound that did not require the presence of oxygen to draw its power, and was capable of providing far more fuel to the metabolism than any normal nutrition, even in exceedingly disproportionate amounts-

It wasn’t blood precisely; a vampire must transmute the substance to something else within her system.

But what mattered currently was the fact that Lucia had imbibed another vampire’s lifeblood whole, and felt it empower her even further- perhaps not as potent as Hilda’s, but filled with power thanks to the not-child’s age nonetheless.

Still not nearly as potent as her father.

She was playing a game of catch-up with a man that had a head start of centuries; it would take far more than her current rate of growth to do so.

She looked askance at Magnus.

Perhaps it would also take more players opposing him on the field.

“What did you do with the men that came up on the other elevator?” Lucia asked.

“They’re still alive if that’s what you’re asking. No doubt, the authorities will have plenty of questions for them as they wake up.”

Lucia was quiet for a time, before speaking up.

“You’re a good man, Magnus.”

“Hmm. You said it yourself; you don’t know what kind of man I am.”

“I heard enough. From your own story. Men like you shouldn’t mix with men like Lionel. He sells people like cattle. Even if he hadn’t attacked you outright on your first meeting, you would never have seen eye to eye.”

“If this is a recruitment pitch, Lucia, I don’t need one. I am with you already.”

“I know. I just needed you to know what kind of man my father is. We need to stop him.”

“And we will. But we can’t right now.”

“Do you have a plan? Moving forward?”

“I need to get back to Anders. Then, we’ll see.”

“I can’t imagine these mages of yours being too happy about this wrench in the assignment they gave you.”

“The mutated people? I was supposed to investigate that, get to the source of that matter.”

“Yes, the mutants- wait! Of course! The mutants! That wasn’t a globe at all, it was a brain!”

“What are you talking about?”

“The carved sphere Azhar brought with him that day! I assumed it was a globe of some sort, but it wasn’t! I should have known those wrinkles were too uneven to be artificial.”

“Why did you assume that it was a globe anyway?”

“Besides the perfectly spherical shape? It wasn’t even divided into hemispheres. I guess it degenerated somehow.”

“The one I saw with Abas- do you think it was the same one you saw?”

“Not necessarily. If someone’s been experimenting on mutating humans, it stands to reason they’d have more than one test sample.”

“Alright. But where does that leave us?”

“I’m guessing going to meet this Abas Khan now that your assignment remains incomplete is out of the question.”

“Didn’t seem the kind of man to forgive failure so easily.”

Lucia sighed.

“If only we had the specifics of what he expected you to do. We’re stumbling around in the blind here. We only have two leads left for us to follow.”

“Which ones are those?”

“We find Azhar somehow. That one’s harder to do, seeing as he rules a vast chunk of the asian continent from what I hear. And he’s a monster to rival even my father.”

“And the other one?”

“Victor and his mage friend, Hans are connected to this somehow. We go to Iceland and we hunt them down. It’s a more viable strategy, honestly.”

“Then let’s go with that. It certainly sounds more manageable.”

“I thought you’d be more enthusiastic at the prospect of getting your revenge.”

“Hmm. I am not interested in revenge, though I would like to know why he did what he did. I don’t want to kill him the way Anders does.”

“And if Anders had died by his hand that day?”

“I… I don’t know. I’m mostly sick of this fighting. I don’t know, I feel like the only end to this path is the one Victor gave to my compatriots.”

Lucia wasn’t the one to ponder the nature of conflict and give Magnus an answer that would set his worries to rest.

Conflict was natural, a necessity for her survival, and the quickest way to enact her will on the world.

Quite simply, she was not nearly as averse to it as she would have been just a few weeks ago, seeing it as a natural part of the world she had been brought into.

So she said nothing.

“Where are we going right now?”

“Airport.”

“What, right now?”

“We can book our flight and get shelter in the waiting rooms at the same time.”

“From the sun and anyone that may be hunting us?”

“Exactly. And tomorrow night, we will be on our way to Iceland. From there… I suppose we’ll improvise.”