Jack was wobbling when he left Nightcorp, the twilit street swimming in his vision. Damned vampires. He’d finally gotten a couple of cool lines, and a compelling plot to show off his skills, but instead he’d been bound to a table in a sci-fi lab and had needles stabbed into him, as though one strip of tree meat could make acceptable the paranormal equivalent of cattle mutilation – he was surprised nothing had been shoved up his ass, or body parts replaced by appliances.

He staggered to the kerb, noting with indifference the agitation of the usually stoic Choo-chooin. Passers-by had stopped to watch, and a couple were even filming with their phones: his head was reared high, throat flexing in an attempt to swallow a pair of flailing legs, trousers and all.

Jack put a hand on Choo-chooin's serpentine neck. “Oi. You can’t just go around eating people on the street.” He could have sworn the turtle rolled its eyes, before spitting out a tall, dark-haired man in a uniform.

He coughed as he stumbled, a metal contraption in his hand stealing his balance, and he toppled to the floor, bouncing back up with a snarl. He was stocky, with a square jaw and perfect teeth, a face that could have been handsome if not for the foul-smelling goo dripping from it. The smell mixed with the greasy air of kebabs and pizzas wafting from the street’s establishments, making Jack’s stomach churn.

The uniform caught his eye the most. A pair of black trousers, with gleaming shoes, and a reflective jacket worn over a stab vest and shirt. His belt wouldn’t have been out of place in a Ratman comic.

“On second thoughts,” said Jack, “you should eat him.”

The Policeman glared at him, but said nothing, instead dragging the yellow metal thing to Choo-chooin's front leg, and flailing like an inflatable tube man to avoid the kicks as he tried to attach it.

Jack stared flatly. “Oi, what are you doing?”

He looked up at Jack, his upper lip twitching. “I’m clamping you. You can’t park here.”

Jack blinked, a friction in his chest readying to catch fire. “Really? That’s your problem?”

The officer narrowed his eyes, a peculiar whirring noise emanating from between his ears. “Hang on, come to think of it... why is it a bloody turtle?”

“Nah, it’s too late for that, you moron! Besides, who do you think you are? You can’t put a clamp on a living creature, you monster!”

The officer’s eyes widened, his face flushing red. “The only monster here is the ‘living creature’ that was trying to swallow me thirty seconds ago! Just buy a car like a normal person!”

Jack licked his teeth, suppressing a growl as he gestured to the clamp in the officer’s hand. “I’d swallow you as well if you tried to stick that thing on my leg! And be realistic here, you think we have the budget for me to get a car? Even the cover’s just a phone background the author edited on Paint!”

“There is no budget, you dunce!”

“Yeah, that’s what I just said.”

He growled, reaching into one of the pockets of his stab vest. “You leave me no choice.”

Jack’s heart chose that moment to revisit the holiday home it had constructed on his tongue. “Wait, no, you can’t do that. Choo-chooin's not a vehicle, he’s my friend!”

The officer looked down his nose at Jack. “I’m not sure what that thing is, but it doesn’t matter: under the Exotic & Arcane Creatures Act 1978, any and all fauna, native or otherwise, that can be mounted and ridden must adhere to regional traffic laws for a vehicle of the applicable size!”

Jack’s knees almost gave way. “N-no, seriously, please... I can’t afford to pay a fine!”

He shrugged, hand still fishing in his pockets. “Not my problem. Now where did I put the bloody thing?”

Jack pulled a small rectangle from within his jacket, offering it to the officer as sweat trickled from his brow. “Now, come on, surely there’s some kind of alternative arrangement. It doesn’t have to be like this, I can help you out!”

The officer took Jack’s card, eying it the same way an agent would their hundredth crappy romance of the day. “A jack-of-all-trades? Is this meant to be a business card? It doesn’t even have your name on it.”

“Yeah it does,” said Jack. “Right there. Jack Of All Trades.”

The officer did a double-take. “That’s your name? Your parents called you that?”

“Yep.”

“Then what do you do?”

“I’m a jack-of-all-trades.”

The officer almost tore out his wavy hair. “Augh! You know what, it doesn’t matter. We don’t need the help of some lowlife.” He threw Jack’s card to the floor.

Jack exhaled hard, scrunching his nose. “Screw you, a fine’s only a punishment for poor people anyway! How about you take a break from your war on the working class and have some empathy for a second, you capitalist cretin! And should a Police officer really be littering? I swear, bloody fat-cats and their big wigs-”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Jack!” A voice rang out from the Nightcorp entrance.

He screwed his eyes shut, begging any gods that happened to be taking a break from designing new fish that he was wrong. “Oh, for crying out loud, no. Of all the clichéd developments...”

Approaching him was a pair of figures, a man and a woman. With night falling, they had foregone the usual cloaks, but Silas wouldn’t have needed one anyway.

His wig could probably shade the entire city.

The other figure was a woman of average height, blonde and fit with a black blazer and pencil skirt. She was stunning, but Jack knew what was underneath, so he wasn’t taken.

The officer, on the other hand, couldn’t keep his eyes from her. She sighed, staring through him and focusing on keeping their conversation’s sound waves away from outside ears.

“Jack,” said Silas again, panting, and gestured to the veiled ghoul. “This is Mandy, one of our tech ghourus-”

“You mean gurus?” said Jack.

Silas waved the comment away. “I know what I said. Anyway, she did her magic, the more technological kind, and managed to find records from the other side – that is to say, legal ownership documents for a property registered to one of the missing employees.”

Jack’s mind raced, and a light feeling began to soar in his chest. “So you have a base? You get a name as well?”

Silas nodded. “Maybe, or maybe it’s nothing.” He nodded at Mandy, who handed Jack a folder. “Consider this a request, one which you will be rewarded handsomely for. Find me the leader of the New Bloods.”

Jack smiled. Even without being told, that was exactly what he’d planned to do. Vampires didn’t get to Silas’ age without being cunning; if he succeeded, then the old fox would be rid of the haemorrhoids growing in the ass-crack of his empire, at little cost to himself, and if he failed, then all Silas got was older.

“I’d be happy to take your money,” he said, his neck hairs standing on end as he heard a long tearing from behind him. “It can’t be...”

He whipped round, watching the officer slap a ticket on Choo-chooin's forehead. The turtle blinked in affront. “But it is. You’re being fined for parking violations.”

“But...”

“And copyright infringement.”

“That’s a completely different issue!”

Their argument was cut short by a chomping sound, and the shrieking of a traffic cop.

***

Lydia had always hated procedural shows and novels. The depicted mundanity didn’t interest her, so rigid in its way; she sought the extraordinary, to reach out and touch it, to understand it. She could always find others to do the things she couldn’t.

But she wished she’d paid more attention, since she didn’t know what came next. The hedge witch had sent her to a warehouse in some rundown part of the city, full of holiday apartments and caravan parks and teens with jeans halfway down their legs. The streetlights had come on, and an acrid smell permeated her senses.

It was quiet. Too quiet. She approached from the air, and even next to a residential street, the building was surrounded by nothing but a high wall with barbed wire atop it. There were no cars in the area.

The warehouse was medium-sized, long and low with a flat roof and expansive yard. It wasn’t lit, which made sense, since vampires had acute night vision.

Her lip curled when she thought of the vampires. Since ancient times, they’d been preying on humanity, draining them dry and tossing the scraps out for the other monsters. Before The Revelation, her people had responded in kind: hunting them down without mercy.

But from the Second World War came the Supernormal Accords, and the whole thing was blown open, and then people started talking about war crimes and the rights of sentient creatures, like they’d ever cared about the rights of their burger.

Moo, went the hippies and diplomats.

Humanity had tried to make friends with one of its natural predators. But it wasn’t the fear of parking tickets or sirens that kept them cowering in their building; it was the violence the Circle would bring down upon them the moment a single atom even thought about violating the treaties, and today, that would be her.

She had no room for mercy. Only the coals and bellows.

The promise of a full wheel of cheese had motivated the hedge witch to provide an exact location: the north-east corner of the building, so she flew in from the north.

Her brain twisted as she wondered why there was a giant turtle lying outside the gate.

***

Jack stopped at his office first, and found that Andrea had left her mountain of files.

They were neatly stacked, until the air pressure displacement from him opening the door disrupted their precarious balance, and created a paper-fall with no equal. He sighed, and read the folder Silas’ ghouru had given him. It didn’t say much, but that was Silas all over.

It did tell him that a man named Lawrence Crispley, formerly of Nightcorp, had bought a warehouse in South Shore, while still employed. He was probably the leader.

There was no need to waste any more time. After a moment’s hesitation, he reached into his desk drawer, pulling out a handgun and sliding it in his waistband. The license had been hell to obtain, but worth it. Though he hated using it, some things – and people – just wanted to kill you.

The guy he’d bought it from had carved it with runes, so it was more than just a gun. He cast an eye to the sheath standing in the corner, but decided against it. It was too cumbersome.

The ride was a short one, and when he arrived, he used Choo-chooin as a platform to scrabble over the wall. The silence pressed further in with every second.

“Intruder!” yelled a voice. He couldn’t see a thing.

The entrance was straight ahead. Roughly. He sprinted, pumping both arms and legs almost fast enough to sprain them. He could smell sweat from behind him, and hear several sets of ragged breathing, almost predatory in their bloodlust.

His vison began to adjust, and he smirked. If he could get inside, he’d be at less of a disadvantage. Hopefully. He could see the door, around twenty feet away, and though he’d only been running a few seconds, it felt like hours. He had ground his own teeth to dust.

He reached the door, opening it and slamming it shut behind him, as if that would make any difference.

His heart decided to permanently move in to its holiday home. He was in a gargantuan room, full of machines and hospital trolleys and fridges, a few chalk-white bodies hooked up to machines and monitors having blood pumped into them. The lights were on dim, and shadows danced across the exposed brick walls.

There was a group to his left, maybe twenty fresh-faced vampires, teenagers at best, with wide eyes that were more often full of tears than not. They all had pallid skin tinged with blue, and moved like arthritic robots. In front of them were three men, burly and pale and dressed in hooded cloaks that were torn at the tails. They gave off an air of menace, like they might turn into bats any second.

“Sorry,” said Jack. “I was looking for The Supernormal, I’m clearly on the wrong set.”

The door burst open behind him, and one of the guards said, “intruder!”

The vampires all stared at him, and he swallowed his trachea. “Now that I have your attention.”