The sight was nothing short of beautiful; seated in an expensive leather fitted chair flown all the way from Brazil, with a view only fitting for a god-like status as hers, from the tallest building in the state, Brenda Aurelius smiled at herself before taking a look at her watch.
“She should be here already,” she sounded in an exhausted tone before getting up from her seat.
Staring at her watch expectantly and intermittently just before beginning to pace, Brenda stared at the portrait on the wall which bore the image of the man considered by many to be the brains behind their company being in almost every country in the world as they had grown more influential with each passing year since his mysterious death.
Brenda felt a thin smile crawl into the corners of her lips while she ran her fingers along the image of her deceased husband. It felt rather fitting for her to continue and even expand on his legacy, seeing she assumed office a week after his demise and even managed to double the company’s worldwide girth within the space of few years.
Through the years, nothing much had come to change about the company on the outside; they remained the leading force behind the legal peaceful coexistence between supernatural beings and humans at large. The balance was always something her husband counted as one of utmost importance to their power and influence. She had made certain it remained so, with a few major improvements and tweaks going on behind the scene.
Turning around hurriedly just as the office doors slid open to reveal her secretary, Nora Jones, the bespectacled shape shifter whose role had become irreplaceable over the years as her advisor as well as other things. Brenda walked back to her seat.
“What is it Nora?” Brenda asked with a slight frown.
Nora shifted uncomfortably in her stance and sighed intermittently before looking back towards the door.
Brenda could sense something wasn’t right and she was feeling somewhat impatient by the entire ordeal. “Are you going to tell me or am I going to get it from you telepathically!?”
Nora cleared her throat and bowed gently. “My apologies, but I wasn’t sure on how to break the news about losing ten shipments of the gene enhancing drugs sent over to the military last month.”
Brenda tightened her fists into balls and rammed them hard into the glossy ebony table before her. She maintained a blank expression and nodded gently almost as if she understood what had occurred.
“Who was in charge of the trade?” she simply asked.
Nora began scrolling through the tablet in her hand before looking back up, “Alaric.”
Brenda sighed and leaned her head closer to the table. She had felt somewhat troubled when he was tasked to make the delivery but against her burning instincts, decided to allow him to carry on with it.
“And the reason why we lost the packages?” she asked subtly.
Nora replied instantly, “They just were never delivered… they never reached their destination and Alaric hasn’t been found since then.”
Brenda got to her feet and began chuckling as she stared out the window and looked at the humans roaming the busy streets underneath her, like ants. She always had a fascination about how the ordinary human mind worked and each time she felt she was close to figuring out all they were capable of doing, they always seemed to blindside her on every turn.
“The entire worth of the missing packages would be sixteen million dollars, correct?” she asked from where she stood with her finger drawing an unseen pattern against the massive glass window before her.
Nora shook her head, “Eighteen million dollars to be precise.”
Brenda bobbed her head and slowly rolled up her sleeves before revealing a rune extending from the upper part of her arms towards her wrist where it stopped. Slipping her left hand into her pants pocket and taking out a pocketknife, she flicked the blade open and pressed the sharp silver into her wrist, grinning as it made a clean cut and began letting down trickles of blood.
Brenda returned to her table, pulled out one of the drawers and took out a bowl that seemed older than the Roman Empire, then began to mix some items that produced a brightly glowing liquid inside of it. Nora watched on, seemingly fearless and unperturbed by what her boss was doing.
“You might want to take some fresh air for what is about to happen Nora,” Brenda warned while she held her bleeding wrist over the bowl.
“I don’t need air,” Nora replied.
Her response drew a thin smile from Brenda’s face, just before she watched the blood brew within the bowl and begin to boil dangerously for a few more seconds until the liquid in the bowl turned colorless. Brenda seemed to take a long pause almost as if she tried to think hard and well about what she intended to do first before slipping her right hand into the colorless liquid and staring blankly at the invisible markings she had made on the glass window earlier.
“Let’s see where our little thief is and how we can bring him to justice,” she chuckled before sprinkling a handful of the colorless liquid onto the wall.
A series of hissing noises began to escape the glass surface, before the markings slowly gained color and glowed deep red in form of what appeared to be a skull with serpents crawling out through the crevices in it. Nora remained still, feeling her fingers tremble but didn’t show just how nervous she was about seeing the serpents come to life from the glass’s surface.
Brenda stepped closer to the glass window reaching forward with her hand, she invited the slithery red and black serpents atop her hand while they slowly began to circle her wrist and tighten their grip around her arm without causing her any harm.
“Hear me my children,” she whispered. “Alaric Saltz faracsch illeim srutheda!”
The snakes slowly lifted their heads, seemed to bob the flattened surface gently and then vanish immediately without further ado. Brenda stared at the markings on the window and watched them disappear slowly, leaving her with the view of the city beneath once again and to her amusement.
“If only things could be done easier,” she sighed. “Humans are fickle minded beings and they never see the larger picture until consequences begin to burst forth in their faces.”
Nora nodded and looked at the tablet in her hand which had just received a notification.
“She should be here in a few minutes,” Nora looked up and said to her boss.
Brenda clapped her hands together excitedly and turned back around with a wild grin. “Perfect! Just perfect!”
Nora seemed confused and could not believe what she had heard. The decision to entertain “Her” when they had something as sensitive as Alaric’s situation to handle baffled Nora, but she kept her thoughts to herself, wondering what the lady had in mind exactly.
“You’re thinking this isn’t such a good idea, aren’t you?” Brenda approached her worried looking assistant with a hug.
Nora finally spoke, “She is only sixteen and I don’t think she is cut out for any of this just yet.”
Brenda waved away the claim and turned back around as the walls began to shudder dangerously, and the ceiling threatened to collapse down hard on them. Yet, Nora remained glued to the spot, smiling at her boss who had the weirdest of expression on her face, granted she was about to do something many if not all would regard to be absolute evil.
Hisses filled the room as though it was occupied by a thousand snakes, and the floor right in the center of the office began to slither irritatingly, prompting Nora to take a step backwards as her boss moved closer to it without a bother.
“Bring the traitor to me, Salzaar!” she commanded.
The hissing stopped and got replaced by a loud sizzling noise like smoke arising from the cracks in the earth place fueled by dangerous gases. The largest snake head Nora had ever seen in her life rose from the center of the room, mighty in its size, and devilishly scary as well while it seemed to have wrapped itself around something.
Brenda circled the snake slowly, clapping her hands together in show of satisfaction and taking in deep breaths. “Don’t be greedy now Salazaar… hand the traitor over.”
The snake rose up and shifted into a snake like man. It was a J’ra’reth demon. It bobbed its head, hissed and responded, “This one reeks of sins my mistress… he reeks of nothing, but sins and it fills my belly with hunger just tasting him in my grasp.”
Nora’s face whitened, and her right heel broke just by taking a few steps backwards hurriedly. The J’ra’reth demon didn’t seem to have taken note of her presence earlier but it did now and with a sharp swing of its head it looked in her direction and began hurrying towards her at great speed. Nora felt her heart’s walls collapse and her lungs suddenly flatten as she struggled for air.
“Nora! Don’t move!” Brenda warned her immediately.
The demon serpent hissed with its focus resting solely on Nora. “I’ve not had a shape shifter in ages! They taste even better than the lowly humans and are great for my skin!”
Brenda snapped her fingers together, causing the serpent to halt but not of its own volition. It struggled greatly against the restraints wrapped around its large body and hissed aloud and angrily in discontent.
“This isn’t fair mistress!” it continued to hiss aggressively. “This isn’t fair!”
Brenda smiled and walked over to Nora before laying her hand to rest on the visibly shaken lady’s shoulder.
“Look at her… just look at how shaky she is,” the Salazaar continued. “I bet her fear tastes good and will be even more gratifying than whatever payment you plan on giving me for this current task.”
Brenda shook her head and closed her eyes. “You attack only those who I wish for you to attack Salazaar, and this lady right here is never going to be your meal or price, so I command you to remain still.”
Salazaar suddenly remained still, granting Nora the first opportunity to see its entire body. Its skin was a mysterious beauty to behold; from the golden traces lining its back to the mix of sliver running along its belly. The black scales were smooth. Its large head was partially human shaped, but it was elongated outward and pointed as a snake. It bore dark shades which shone brightly in the light and bounced off beautifully against the other colors on its body.
The J’ra’reth demon itself was larger than she could imagine, stretching at almost eight feet. It took one more disappointing look at Brenda and a disappointed one at Nora before letting go of a shaken-up Alaric which had been in its grasp all along.
“I had to pull him from the most disgusting place in Brazil,” Salazaar explained with a hiss. “He sure reeks of guilt.”
Brenda went on her knee, keeping an eye on the demon while it continued to eye the nervous looking Nora. “Are you certain you don’t want that fresh air now Nora?”
Nora gave it some good thought but managed to shake her head profusely. “No… I want to be here.”
Salazaar spat out and seemed to have laughed hard at her. “This one is strong minded, and I like her even more now.”
Brenda ignored them both, getting up to her feet and waving a finger at Alaric who gently rose in the air and travelled across the room before getting pinned against the glass window. Arms spread apart, legs widened and his heart racing wildly while he coughed and gasped for air, Alaric finally dragged himself back into focus.
“Time to wake up,” Brenda slapped his cheek gently, prompting him to suck in ample amount of air and gasp upon seeing her face.
Alaric’s face whitened, and his lips began to tremble. “It… it… you… you sent a snake after me!”
Salazaar seemed enraged as it slithered angrily over but stopped upon seeing Brenda hold up her hand.
“You call me a snake!?” it fumed.
“Please, I didn’t mean to and I can get it back for you if you give me some time,” Alaric begged.
Brenda remained still and folded her arms across her chest as she seemed to weigh her options. “We should let someone else decide if I let you live or if you’d become snack to Salazaar.”
Salazaar let off a soft hiss. “Yeah… yeah… I get the low delicacy even after doing the biggest job.”
Brenda waved at the door, commanding it to open as she ushered in the ebony skinned, slender framed girl with long ebony hair and a school bag slapped on her back into the office. The teenage girl looked around but wore no expression of being confused before halting at the sight of the J’ra’reth demon just a few feet from her.
“Welcome Miss Alexandra,” Nora bowed her head respectfully. “It is good to have you join us.”
Alex nodded gently but kept her eyes focused on the J’ra’reth demon. “Hello Nora… it is good to see you too, but can you kindly call me Alex like everyone else?”
Nora nodded and stepped aside to grant the girl passage.
“Mom,” Alex called out to Brenda. “What is Salazaar doing here?”
“He brought us a rat threatening to crumble our empire,” her mother replied with a smile. “I was hoping you could pass the judgment on what happens to our little thief.”
Alex sighed and stepped closer to see who the thief was, and her face suddenly fell flat. She recognized the man to be one of their human suppliers.
“Alaric has been loyal for years and you even fought hard to get him out of jail some years ago, didn’t you?” Alex took her mother down memory lane.
Brenda shrugged her shoulders and replied, “Which means my debt to him has been paid in full, but here we have him, stealing from me… no, from us.”
Alex sighed and nodded her head gently. “Okay mom… but my decision is that you let him go and find other ways to punish him but not by pinning him on the wall while Salazaar salivates about eating him.”
Salazaar hissed. “He isn’t that much of a prized asset for me to want to salivate over.”
“I can hear you,” Alaric voiced. “I am human you know and the Oracles… the Oracles that your kinds speak about wouldn’t want you harming humans.”
Brenda burst into a loud and nauseating laughter before halting immediately.
“The Oracles would definitely have no interest in a low life thieving bastard like you,” Brenda said. “Since I promised to allow my dear and compassionate daughter to be the judge to your fate, then I have to comply with what she asks.”
Alaric sighed in gratitude and gently began to smile as he felt his arms get freed as well as his legs immediately.
Brenda wrapped her arm around her daughter’s neck and began leading her towards the door when she whispered, “Salazaar! Fetch!”
The J’ra’reth demon wasted no time in being obedient, leaping for the man’s head and chewing it off immediately. Nora looked away and walked behind her boss while Alex shook her head and sighed in exhaustion.
“You just had to kill him on a technicality, didn’t you?” she asked her mother.
Brenda smiled. “You asked that I let him go and not have him pinned on the wall, which was what I did but you never asked for Salazaar not to eat him.”
“Can you not act like a lawyer with me right now please?” Alex demanded.
Her mother shook her head and replied, “We are lawyers darling… at least to the world that’s what we are and that was what your father wanted us to be, which is why you are going to be a great one once you graduate.”
They exited the room and heard nothing but silence coming from inside as they distanced themselves from what was bound to be a messy scene.
“Clean the mess,” Brenda ordered.
Nora bowed gently and headed off immediately, while a perplexed looking Alex took a deep stare into her mother’s eyes.
“What exactly am I here for?” she asked. “I didn’t get anything informative from your message.”
“I have an errand for you,” her mother responded.
Alex waited impatiently for the elevator doors to slide open as they continued to descend at dangerous speed into the earth and some feet underneath the company. Her mother had never invited her down to the bunker before, so it had to mean something really important is up. Yet, she remained impatient, tapping her finger into the elevator wall and sighing intermittently every chance she got.
“We are here,” Brenda voiced before stepping out from the elevator.
Her daughter followed her into what appeared to be an office built inside of the bunker. It was well furnished with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment which she had never seen before. The walls bore paddings to prevent sound from getting out, and the floors shone brilliantly with marble tiles which would be no doubt expensive.
“What is this place?” Alex asked while staring at the big monitors hanging on the walls just a few feet from the single office table and chair in the room.
Brenda circled the table and invited her daughter to have her seat, so they could speak.
“This is the safest place for any of my actions and the one place I can sincerely open up to you without the possibility of being eavesdropped on,” Brenda explained. “I have a plan that will…”
Alex shook her head and waved her arms in the air immediately, even before her mother could finish her sentence. “If this is another drug or weapons related dealing, I don’t want a part of it. The last shipment operation I oversaw was my last. That filth is beneath me.”
Brenda had expected a tough stance from her daughter against any shady deal.
“We have everything we ever need mother,” Alex reminded her. “You are a kick ask lawyer to the world and a successful CEO with a hand in over a hundred of companies worldwide.”
Brenda soaked in the accolades while she granted her daughter to rain down her moral epiphany as hard as possible.
“Yet, you decide to stand for fraudulent and bad people in court and you always win, isn’t it enough to just want to go clean?” Alex concluded. “I mean, I want to be a proud lawyer who fights for the good of the people and not one who simply does it for the riches.”
Her mother had about enough and held her hand high to halt her daughter from talking further. She reached into her drawer and took out a remote before pointing it towards the screens behind her daughter causing them all burst to life with images that sprawled across. Alex remained still, staring at her mother before slowly turning around with nothing but a perplexed expression on her face.
“What is this?” she mumbled before stopping in her track. Her eyes widen with disbelief fright and anguish.
The largest screen bore the scariest pictures yet, which were of bloodied human bodies sprawled while creatures called “cleaners,” which were quite disgusting beings whose roles were to devour dead bodies, were cleaning up the bodies with a group of armed vampires supervising them.
“Do you have any idea what is going on?” Brenda asked while pointing towards the screen.
Alex felt her heart sink and her throat glued with no response for her mother. Some of the humans weren’t entirely dead to have the “Cleaners” clean them up, the vampires ripped their bodies apart with bullets in hopes of making the job easier for the devouring creatures. She stared at their faces and felt herself grow disgusted immediately.
“Those… those are humans,” Alex stuttered as she kept pointing in the direction of the deceased bodies.
Her mother simply nodded. “They are human casualties as a result of our own doings in the supernatural world, filled with hunger to overcome each other. Without any legitimate ruling power.”
Alex barely heard what her mother had said but she wanted answers as to what exactly was going on and why the vampires were feeding the beasts with human remains that obviously had been battered and left for dead.
“These images and recordings were taken a week ago just south of here, in Beverly,” Brenda explained.
Alex turned around immediately with a startled expression. “Beverly!? Isn’t that...”
“Gregory Hamilton’s turf? Yes darling, it is the area of town belonging to the Hamiltons,” her mother answered.
Alex moved closer to the screens and reached for the largest one where the cleaners were consuming the humans whole and without mercy, before drifting to the smaller screens bearing videos of vampires forcefully tying to convert humans.
“You must understand the anatomy on how vampires work, since you’ve been homeschooled about them and other creatures for years,” Brenda stepped closer.
Alex nodded her head with a slight frown. “They are able to successfully mate with their kind to bring forth children or convert humans by biting them and draining them towards the brink of death before letting them live with their venom in their veins until they feed on blood.”
Brenda watched on with an impressed look on her face.
“Well, you are correct, but not entirely,” her mother noted.
Alex had her gaze on her mother now and didn’t plan on looking away. She wanted answers.
“There are some descendants of great vampire bloodlines like the Hamiltons whose venom is too powerful for just any ordinary human to carry within them and so they die,” her mother explained. “So, they bite and try to convert as many as possible but with very little success of finding those with the right amount of mental strength to withstand the process.”
Alex finally understood why the human carcasses were being discarded. It made her sick to her stomach, but even more disturbing was the fact her family were close friends with the family responsible for such hideous crimes against humanity.
“Why are they trying to turn so many people into vampires?” Alex asked confused. “I mean, don’t they have enough pure bloods to continue their legacy without any threats coming their way?”
Brenda simply flipped through the scenes to bring forth an image of a large clinic known to every supernatural being in the country. The large white clinic which embodied equality and peace brought her nostalgic moments as she hurriedly looked away and back at her mother immediately.
“The Hamiltons are smart vampires and very deadly ones with a vicious streak that means they will go at any lengths necessary to get whatever they want,” Brenda replied.
“Aren’t we just like them, considering how you run things?” Alex shot back.
Brenda shook her head. “They seek to have all the power, and control every creature, which is what owning that clinic would provide them due to something your young mind hasn’t comprehended about what it means to own that clinic and the neighborhood zone.”
The clinic looked ordinary, asides the fact that supernatural beings couldn’t use their abilities when they were inside of it. “The Kings own the clinic, the mayor. Right? Wasn’t it passed to his wife?”
“True but the mayor is too busy to run it and the territory is weak, so the clinic is weak. That clinic holds the answers to a lot of questions which the founder took to his grave, but which will become available to whoever comes to possess it,” Brenda continued before returning to her desk. “Which is why I need you, darling.”
Alex could feel she wasn’t about to like whatever requests her mother was going to make. Remaining mute and waving at her mother to get on with it, Alex stared blankly at the woman.
“As you know, Gregory Hamilton controls the vicious cycle of their vampire reign right now and his next of kin is your friend, Marcus Hamilton,” Brenda rubbed her hands together slowly. “I want you to bring him to me.”
Alex sensed there was more to what her mother had in mind but pushing the woman wasn’t going to yield any results. She took another look at the wasted human lives on the monitor screens and could pretty much relate with what it meant to get one’s hands pretty dirty in the bid to further a cause but killing humans and discarding them in such manner was just too difficult to stomach.
“Why can’t you send Salazaar to get him?” Alex asked without looking back.
Brenda remained silent momentarily before getting up and approaching her daughter. Alex felt her spine trickle with nervousness and her skin crawl as soon as her mother touched her, but it wasn’t out of fear but for the fact she just saw another vampire come to the fields with a truck load of dead humans which he offloaded to the “Cleaners” to feed upon.
“I cannot send Salazaar to do this because I don’t trust that demon entirely and most importantly because Gregory Hamilton is bad news to mess with and especially not with his family involved,” Brenda whispered into her daughter’s ears.
“You want to use my friendship with Hamilton to bring down his father,” Alex muttered upon figuring out her mother’s plan.
Brenda nodded while her daughter slipped out from her reach and began walking back to the elevator. Alex didn’t need any more convincing to get the job done; her mother needed her and that was all that mattered.
“I will have him ready to meet with you,” Alex promised just before the elevator doors opened and she stepped inside.
Brenda nodded, held her hands behind her back and replied, “I know you will darling. I trust you will.”
Alex had no idea where Hamilton was, but she would perform her task regardless. But first, she needed to return to school before any teacher noticed her prolonged absence. She was not an upperclassman and wasn’t allowed to be off school grounds without parental written approval.