My top priority was to protect Kalli at any cost. That was probably a mistake. I threw myself on top of her, placing myself between Kalli and the black fire. A blood-curdling scream informed me of my error.

“Mrs. Hodgins!” Kalli screamed, trying to push me off of her.

I refused to budge until I felt the last of the black flame dissipate. An alarm sounded in the distance accompanied by the sounds of people running. I rolled off of Kalli, still feeling a prickling sensation in my back.

Kalli leapt to her feet and rushed over to the desk Mrs. Hodgins had been standing behind. Her expression when she looked up was panicked. “Melvin! Come quick. She’s hurt!”

With a groan, I pushed off the ground and rushed to Kalli’s side. While Mrs. Hodgins had managed to turn, she didn’t quite make it and half of her face was covered in the muck from the blast. Kalli whimpered out loud. “Do something, Mel.”

I hesitated. I was poisoned, cursed. Wouldn’t healing her do more harm than good? Where were the guild healers? I almost cried out for help when I remembered what Lavender said. It was possible to heal but only with light magic. No mana. Mana was bad.

Turning on my magic light beam, I focused the healing wave on Mrs. Hodgins’ face, saying a silent prayer as I let the spell wash over her. Whatever it was that got on her began to bubble and drip off. She groaned, letting me know she was at least alive.

At the center of the blast, Dr. Pemplescrap stood frozen with her hand outstretched, covered in black goo. The only thing saving her eyes from the muck was her thick glasses. I wasn’t sure how she did it but the explosion seemed to have not affected her at all other than stunning the green woman.

Heavy footsteps in the distance got my attention and soon the room was flooded with people covered with shiny plastic-looking robes that also covered their faces. I continued to do my best for Mrs. Hodgins as they swarmed into the room.

Kalli waved frantically and shouted, “Over here! Mrs. Hodgins needs help.”

One of the shiny firemages rushed over and removed her hood. “Move out of the way. How is she hurt? What exactly happened?”

“We were testing a poison.” I began weakly. “It exploded.”

The woman who removed the hood glanced up at me while applying a strange paste to the side of Mrs. Hodgins’s face. “That’s forbidden outside of the lab. Who authorized this?”

I didn’t know what to say. As far as I knew, Mrs. Hodgins and Dr. Pemblescrap were high-ranking guild members. Noticing our worry, the woman’s expression softened. “Look, she’s going to be fine. It looks like you managed to get whatever that was off of her before it did any real damage. We won’t know for sure until we run some tests but it looks like she might get away with just a scar or two.”

Kalli let out a long sigh, apparently having been holding her breath. She fell to her knees and took one of Mrs. Hodgins’s hands in her own. “Don’t worry, I’m here for you.”

Wondering how the guild handled magical injuries, I asked, “Is there a hospital for the awakened?”

The woman nodded as she continued to treat Mrs. Hodgins. “Yes but that’s only for serious injuries. The local hospital is more than adequate for injuries like this. Our medics will see to it that she has the proper ointment for her malady and they will send us samples of her blood to make sure there are no surprises but other than that, she should be fine.”

Heaving a sigh of relief, I climbed to my feet and made my way over to the wrecked table where the potion exploded. Dr. Pemblescrap was coming out of her stupor, looking around in mild surprise.

Another of the robed men pulled his hood off. “Geronima, what’s the meaning of this? You know better than to conduct unauthorized experiments outside of quarantine.”

She grinned sheepishly. “It was just a simple poison deconstruction. This boy never told me if contained anything volatile.”

“I told you we didn’t know what was in it,” I argued, not wanting to be thrown under the bus.

“Who are you?” The man asked, redirecting his glare to me.

I wanted to know who he was too.

Name

Dazon Wren

Class

Actuationist

Level

73

Affection Level

Serious

Another new name and class I knew nothing about. It would help if the system could tell me what his role was with the guild.

Deciding not to be rude, I introduced myself. “My name is Melvin Murphy.”

The glare turned into a raised eyebrow. “I see. The Melvin Murphy. What brings you here today?”

Did he know of me? Did Mrs. Hodgins tell him…or someone else? It was hard to be sure. Kalli explained for me. “We came to visit Mrs. Hodgins.”

“And this magical experiment?” Dazon inquired, running a gloved finger through the ashes on the wrecked table. “Did either of you have a part in this mayhem?”

“We brought samples of something we thought was poison,” I explained. “Dr. Pemblescrap wanted to run some tests on it. I didn’t know there was a protocol.”

“Indeed,” Dazon muttered, returning his stink eye to Dr. Pemblescrap. “Very well. This is coming out of your pay, Geronima.”

It was when I turned to walk back to Kalli that he stopped me. “Wait, Mr. Murphy, you’re contaminated.”

I froze. Did he sense the poison? Was there some sort of skill that allowed him to analyze my mana? It all made sense when he said, “Can you not feel that? You have a sticky black substance on your back. Come over here and let one of my men take a look at you.”

While the explosion did manage to burn me a bit, I knew exactly what he was talking about. “That’s not from the blast. That’s my armor. I own an artifact.”

“Wait just a second.” Dazon gasped, taking a renewed interest in my back. “I recognize this armor. It’s from the museum. I was there the day you stole it. The powers that be told me to let it go but I’ve always wondered who was brazen enough to march into a secure facility and walk out with a top-class relic.”

“Secure?” I spat the word. “Did you know Kalli was abducted from that place? Where were you when that happened? She could have been killed.”

I was deflecting but I had a point and he knew it. Dazon cleared his throat and explained. “While we go to great lengths to safeguard the more valuable artifacts in the museum, we had little reason to believe that any patrons would be in danger. Those at risk typically come with their own protection. Still, I apologize. We were caught off guard. She was kidnapped by a vampire, right?”

That part wasn’t clear. While Mrs. Shaw was ultimately behind the kidnapping, I always thought it was Eddie’s dad that grabbed her in the first place. Either that or Mr. Bellview. Speaking of the man in red. “Hey, Mr. Wren, does Mr. Bellview still come here? As a bounty hunter, I mean.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry but we don’t give out information like that. Why do you ask?”

“I was thinking about hiring him to help me find someone,” I replied, realizing what I was worried about.

“Who?” Kalli and Dazon asked at the same time, though Kalli’s question came through in my mind along with a wave of worry.

“My mom.” I managed to choke out. Why was I getting emotional?

“She’s been missing for a while now.”

Dazon looked at me with sympathy in his expression. “I’ll see what I can do. Do you trust Mr. Bellview? Is that why you requested him?”

Well, that and he owed me a favor. I grinned. “Yep! I trust him.”

“Very well.” He bowed. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Then he tore from the room. I was so grateful to get off the hook about the artifact that I didn’t even notice the other woman poking and prodding my back. “It looks like this boy is going to need to go to the hospital too. His skin is red from the explosion. We need to be cautious since we don’t know what contaminants were released.”

I was dragged kicking and screaming to the hospital. Well, not really. I just didn’t want to go. Kalli chose to ride with Mrs. Hodgins to the ambulance while I was brought in a car. She seemed to be fine but I had no way of checking because of the corruption in my core. Dr. Pemblescrap offered to ride with me but I turned her down flatly. It wasn’t like I was a kid and besides, I didn’t even know the woman.

At the hospital, the doctors tried to cut my artifact off with scissors. It was funny watching their faces as the artifact reformed over and over.

Then someone gave me a black wristband. The nurses that had been fawning over me suddenly all couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. The orderly who applied the wristband nodded and informed me, “As far as they are concerned you now have the plague. Don’t worry, an expert will be by shortly to give you a once over. If he determines that you aren’t a risk to yourself or the community, you’ll be free to go.”

“What about the others?” I asked, worried about Mrs. Hodgins.

“Others?” He looked at a clipboard. “Oh, right. It looks like minor injuries. She might have to stay overnight but she should be fine as well.”

Meanwhile in Ukraine…

The man with the pointy beard walked slowly through a decimated street.

It was here that the boy removed a tank from existence.

His brother. Sibling. Relative. Someone he was related to. The man had a nose for these kinds of things. The person who invaded his war was indeed of his bloodline. The M bloodline.

The first question he needed to establish was what this person was doing in his territory. His war. Standing at the spot where the tank vanished yielded no clues. The tank simply wasn’t there. Whatever magic this was, it had to be powerful. M’s didn’t know weak magic. That was a given.

He strode across the street to the spot he had seen the boy. The M in question was still a child. Perhaps just at the age of maturity, perhaps a little younger.

BANG

BANG

BANG

Mosquitos! He looked up to see three bullets frozen in mid-air, trapped in his static distortion field. Just across the street, three masked rebels stared blankly at him, not believing what they were seeing.

He normally didn’t stoop to swatting flies but in this case, he could leave no witnesses. If the wrong people were alerted to his actions, the whole war would have been for naught.

Producing a wand with a flick of his wrist, he swished it back and forth, like a conductor directing a symphony. Black lines appeared in the air around the rebels moments before their bodies were torn apart.

He re-holstered his wand and dusted off his hands. He hated wasting mana on insignificant pawns. Such a waste. Then he remembered his mission and marched over to the spot where the boy vanished.

He could smell it. Magic in the air. Teleportation was powerful. A mage had to rip a hole in the fabric of time and space to do it. That kind of damage left its mark. Like a syringe plunging into the belly of a diabetic. It was small but it was still there.

A gloved hand reached out and stroked the air, caressing the gash left behind by the magic. All he had to do was peel the portal open again and he could follow. A line in the void was drawn. A line that would lead him to the boy, and ultimately to their father.

Putting thoughts to action, he folded his mana into the gash and stepped into the void. The hunt was on!