I walked through the door of the law firm and right in front of me was my nephew, unharmed and joyful. The vampires had given him willingly. Uderach contacted us moments later telling me I no longer needed to be a champion. Jaser went back to her mom, and Tedet and I went back to fixing ships. Everyone lived happily ever after.

But nothing is ever that simple. Nothing is so conveniently easy and good. Life has hardships and sometimes those hardships are mountains to scale. One must scale those mountains to find the oasis beyond the frozen wasteland that is the peak of the mountain range. Unfortunately for us, the lush oasis was situated behind several layers of mountain ranges, one layer after another with valleys so deep and dry that no life could survive unless you decided to live with the bare minimum – sometimes even with less.

The next hurdle came in the form of a car trip to the law firm. We were going there to scare some vampires to give us back my nephew. If their answer wasn’t to our liking, Tedet would blow them up.

But wait, wasn’t I against this whole idea? Why am I going through with Tedet to set off a MOAB in downtown Al Patreck, possibly killing Jaser along with several innocent people, causing decillions in damage, and maybe becoming a target of justice, having police searching for us throughout the country?

The answer is, I’m not.

Let’s rewind the tape twenty-one hours, back to when Tedet told me he’d be blowing up the building to its foundations

* * *

“We blow them up,” he said with a straight face. There was nothing implied in those words. He wasn’t joking either.

“No way,” I answered.

“Where do we go from here, then, Ed?”

“I have no idea but I’m not blowing anything up anymore.”

“I have nothing to offer, Ed. Either we go there and get what we want, or we go there and we get what we want,” he said almost stabbing me with his bulky fingers. His pimples were colored like they normally are. He wasn’t angry, he was simply stating the situation we were in.

“And what does blowing them up give us that we want?” I asked betting Tedet to give a good answer. I said implying a checkmate because there was literally nothing he could say that would convince me, unless his answer is ‘rescuing your nephew.’

“Revenge,” he answered, and though his pimples didn’t change in color I could taste the sweet aroma of desire coming from Tedet. “If we don’t get your nephew, we won’t be getting him any other way. It’s done. We’re two days before you’re summoned by Uderach and we are ninety-five percent certain this nephew business with vampires and torviela is related to the duel.

“When the time comes, they will use him to tear you down. And then they will kill him in front of you anyway.”

I wanted to spit on his face. I was disgusted with his way of thinking. I would never do what he was suggesting just for revenge, and I would rather have him appear during the championship and give back my word on Uderach to save my nephew. I’m willing to give him and my power for the sake of my nephew. I don’t care what all that would mean for me and the torviela.

“I’ve seen that face before…” he began speaking.

“So, you know what it means?”

“Vaguely,” he answered convinced of his interpretation. “But I summarize it to a very stubborn human.”

I didn’t answer that. He was mostly right, I was being stubborn but only for the right reasons. I turned to face the tablet. In it, all the parts and costs, the taxes we’d pay and the money we’d split between us. It gave me a headache. I growled and dropped the terminal unto a protruding section of the ship Tedet was working on. The tablet fell on it and got stuck, the display turned off by itself.

“What do you want from me, Ed?” Tedet asked almost as he was begging me to ask for his help. “I don’t know what else to do for you. This is all I can do.”

“You could do better, Ted. You could do a lot better than this.”

Something fell in the background. Trisd was saying ‘sorry’ several times. Salev began moaning in pain. Tedet turned around to see beyond across the shop and saw nothing just like me.

Without turning, Tedet began speaking. “I know I’m useless with human emotions, Ed. But I try real hard for you. I really do,” he said and I could swear I could hear his voice wavering. It was all in my head. “But I can’t do it. It’s not how I’m programmed. I couldn’t care less about your nephew or your sister. I couldn’t care less about your twin bother if you had one. That’s not how I – how we work, Ed. You’re what matters to me. My girlfriend is what matters to me.

“The vampires, the torvielas. They all look like they are putting you in danger and they’ve already hurt you. To me, it’s simple to see what our next action must be. It’s you, humans, that put us in this position of some nonsensical altruism.”

“If I matter to you, my nephew would, too,” I said, spitefully.

“And he does. But I won’t put him before you. Not a chance. If I had to shoot a hundred people to save you I would, and I trust you’d do the same. All I ask is to let me save you.”

“I don’t need saving, Ted. It’s my nephew. Why don’t you see it?”

“I understand perfectly well, but you’re still in danger. What else is there to do? If they have Jaser, they’d take him to the law firm. But they won’t give him up. We can’t take him away like that, there is no magic that lets us poof him out of thin air.”

I prepared an answer but something caught my attention. ‘Poof out’ – appear. Disappear. We can’t make him disappear and appear with magic, but we could make him disappear from the law firm by using magic to our advantage.

“What if we could?” I proposed, perplexed with the possibility, and though I asked it out loud, I did not direct it towards Tedet. “What if we could make him disappear?”

“You mean you can’t pull him out of a hat?” he asked sarcastically, with a tone that implied he was trying to offend me.

“We go in. We sneak him out.”

Tedet croaked and cackled. “This isn’t time for jokes, but, hell, Ed, was this a good one!”

I furrowed my brows. “No, you distract them. I sneak in. We get the hell out! It’s possible. You can totally distract them by using your preferred method of ‘kill ‘em all.’ While they try to deal with you I step in from a back door and try my best to squeeze in and out with Jaser.”

“You’re assuming he's there. What if he’s not.”

“You were making the same assumption earlier, and yet you were fine with killing him. And if he isn’t, then why go there to force their hand?”

“Because of the war.”

He got me there. “Okay, but where else would they have him?”

“You’re a wizard, you should know. Don’t you all communicate with each other about vampires and torviela?”

The Cabal keeps tabs on the leeches since they are humanity’s oldest and biggest enemy. Humans no longer had a natural predator, it probably was a consequence of that that a supernatural one rose to pray on us. Theories are wide and varied but not we nor they know the reason. The oldest beings in the supernatural realm may know, but there’s no way for us to get answers from them by just asking – actually, I misspoke, we could get that information by just asking, but that doesn’t mean they won’t take something from us after the fact.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

As for the knowledge of where the vampires are, that takes a lot of effort and time, and even though the Cabal is big, the people in charge of it all are few. I’m on the lower echelons of the Cabal and I never tried to climb up the ladder. I don’t really care about being an official member of the Cabal but as a wizard, you can’t evade being part of it. I can draw similarities with a certain sci-fi story with laser swords. If you can do magic and they find you, you must be part of it and we’re instructed in the ways to avoid corruptive magic and how to avoid using magic to hurt other mortals.

I was forced into it, but I avoid them now as much as possible. I don’t really enjoy the way they institutionalized magic. As for the radera… they are almost the same.

In any case, maybe the Cabal knows about other places where they could hold my nephew, but there are problems with asking them. First, I need to contact them, and that’s already putting them in danger. Secondly, I need them to act so they accept my request, and given how I’m related to a torviela now, I don’t like my chances. Lastly, I will be asking them to permit me to start a huge conflict, which could put more people in danger. The conclusion was: I don’t have time, I can’t let them know about me being the champion of a leech, and they won’t give priority to a single human over many.

“Forget them, they won’t help,” I concluded. “This might just be the only chance. We don’t have time if what we believe is true. If we act now, we catch them with their pants down.”

“So long as they don’t move the man from that place to another,” he warned.

“They are a big organization; they need time to move. And besides, they will never imagine we’d go knock on their front door. Given how strong they think their stronghold is, I don’t believe they’ll move him until tomorrow or the next day, just before the reunion with Uderach.”

“Then tomorrow before sunset, when they’re a bit groggy. Your house, same as always.” To which I nodded. Tedet looked at me quietly, then made a hissing sound. “Let’s hope it works.” Then he made the same hissing sound again.

I looked at him a bit too long before I said anything. That sound I had never heard seemed too deliberate to be a reaction to something.

“Was that not good enough?” he asked. I looked at him confused. “I guess, I need to practice my sighing.”

I wanted to ask. But I just couldn’t be bothered.

* * *

Twenty hours later, in the car. The only gun we had, which is the one I left behind in the car was on Tedet’s lap. We hoped we wouldn’t use it since that would attract unwanted attention. As for me, I had prepared a small amulet, this was something I bought a long ago and tried my hardest to practice complex magic. The silver amulet hanged from my neck, it was the outline of a crescent moon and the size of a fingernail. The magic I managed to put on it was a stealth one. It didn’t turn me invisible, it just made me harder to notice. Creatures would see me as part of the background, like just another pedestrian in the street or just another office worker, one more commensal at the table. But caught the attention of anyone with my actions, the spell would not be able to conceal me.

This amulet would not be enough for this mission, so Tedet helped me with a vial made from his alchemy. When he applies it to me topically, it should help me make people avoid me with their senses. Like suddenly feel uncomfortable when near me or when they tried looking at me. With these two and some sneaky actions, I should be able to keep myself mostly away from danger. And with Tedet taking their attention from anything else, that should make me a little less visible.

Tedet stopped three blocks from the main building and I got out of the car.

“I’ll walk in first,” I said. “I’ll give you the signal so you can start the operation.”

“What signal?” he asked.

“I’ll scratch my head,” I said while I placed my hand on my scalp and started scratching.

“Sure,” he said. “I guess that’ll do.”

Tedet took two vials from the dashboard, where they sat, and popped them open – he actually unscrewed the vials. Grabbing my hand, he poured a small amount of their content on my hand and then placed his other hand that had the markings on a five-pointed star on it and spoke some Goktoga words.

“Invisibility and something to reinforce that ankle,” he explained. “I’ll keep an eye on you so I don’t lose you,” he said.

I nodded. “The operation Bloody Mary is a go.”

I expected some sort of reaction from Tedet, but all I got was a deep stare. Whether he was telling me to shut my mouth and not make jokes or to get on with it and step away from the car, all that mattered was that he didn’t enjoy the joke.

Maybe I should be taking my life more seriously. I crack jokes all the time and my nephew is in danger. Besides, I’m about to step into a vampire stronghold all by myself.

I’m starting to believe that making jokes is a coping mechanism, because I am scared of the situation but I just can’t handle being afraid all the time, and despite how helpful Tedet is, he isn’t supporting me emotionally. On the other hand, making jokes doesn’t hurt anybody. I’ll just keep the jokes to myself.

I lifted my hands in surrender, then I closed the door behind me and moved away.

Downtown Al Patreck.

It’s good to live far away from this place. The place is bustling with people. Crowded to the brim. The city isn’t even the most populated, there are at least ten more populated cities around the world, some with more than five times the population and with less area to occupy. Maybe I should be happy that my city isn’t as terrible. I’ve seen pictures of their streets and they all look orders of magnitude worse than BQ. In any case, Downtown isn’t fun, and it isn’t safe either.

However, we’re here for only a moment. I scratch my head and continue forward. As I get closer, I can see Tedet’s car pulling over in front of the building. ‘Leeches!’ he screamed, ‘come out you dirty blood-sucking pieces of shit!’ That starts calling everyone’s attention. ‘I know who you are, you shit vampires! Come out and talk to me!’

I walk to the corner of an alley, a back door should be placed at the far end but I wait for a little. I hear Tedet’s screaming being suffocated by hundreds of mumbling people. I can barely make out what he’s saying. Another person comes out screaming, ‘who are you?’ they asked, and Tedet answered. ‘The mansion?’ I heard him ask. That had to be my cue, I hoped he had attracted enough attention to let me sneak by.

I hold on to my amulet, I take out a business card from my pocket and I slip it through the emergency door lock. It opens quite easily and I manage to get it. You’d think they want better security, but knowing they are vampires it doesn’t matter that anyone gets in since they’ll be turning themselves over, basically serving themselves to the leeches. I wasn’t an ordinary person, mind you, I’m a wizard and I’m getting my nephew out of there without a hitch. I just hope he is in there.

Infiltration number three. This time, I’m meaning for it to be stealthy. I pull off my coat and underneath I’m wearing formal clothing, I’m sure I could pass for a lawyer or an employee of sorts. Not catching attention is the main focus of the magic I’m wearing, so I should do my best to make others feel like I belong, just another person in the building but while still avoiding people and their direct eye contact.

Be casual. I told myself as I walk into a hall with a bunch of cubicles and desks, my long coat still in hand.

“Here we go, Ed,” I said to myself in a whisper. “Time to shine…”

No, wait. Time to not shine. Don’t shite at all. Be cool, be obscure.

“A radera?” I heard people talk. “What is he doing here?”

“I heard he said we screwed him over on a case,” said another.

I kept walking.

“Another one?”

“Yes, they think they can get their money back.”

“Idiots…”

I crossed a door and walked further in. A hall that led into another room with more desks and fewer cubicles. The storage rooms, the tool closet, or stairs to a basement should be somewhere in the back.

“Vampires? What’s it talking about?” said a sharp-looking man.

“He must be crazy,” a similar-looking woman answered. Twins?

Come on, Ted, give me as much time as you can.

The door on the back leads into an emergency staircase. I casually open the door and walk into it. A woman runs down and looks at me.

“S-sorry,” I said. And I move out of the way while she steps back and then crosses the door.

“No, I’m sorry,” she answered. “My bad, I was running.”

She passed by and I moved on like nothing happened.

“W-wait…” she began, but I closed the door behind me and quickly move my ear behind towards the door and try to hear anything from the other side.

“Did you hear?” the man said.

“Huh? Wha- I, oh, yes,” the running woman said.

“What’s with you? You look like you saw a ghost,” said the twin woman.

“No, I just thought that the guy earlier—never mind. It was nothing,” the running woman concluded before changing the subject. “The man outside seems to be claiming to blow the building up.”

Are you kidding me?!

“Are you joking?” the twins said at the same time.

Sweet Mary, Ted, you’re moving too fast!

“Yes! He said something about vampires--”

I couldn’t wait to hear anymore. Whatever he was saying just urged me to continue at a rushed pace. Thankfully, that woman decided to forget about me, so I could move onward without a hitch. I looked at the stairs and there’s another door next to them. I cross my fingers and open it.

“Bingo,” I said quietly.

The stairs before me led down into a basement. Jaser must be in there, just like how the mansion also had cells under it.

There was only one problem.

“This is too easy,” I said. “It can’t be this easy, right?”

With hesitation, I stepped down and into another vampire catacomb. The way down was scarier because things had gone too smooth for my liking. There had to be a catch. There had to be something that makes my life harder. I can feel it. I can sense the evil crawling down my back. A presence from above. From the door that I just came through.

I look back. There is was.

“Hey,” said the running woman. “What are you doing here?”

I looked at her baffled. If she’s a vampire, I was screwed. The whole operation was a bust. I began opening my mouth to speak.

Screams erupted behind her. She turned to see in terror. I used her distraction to jump down and into the darkness.

I knew it. Things are never easy, now, are they, Ted?