Dmitri scrolled through his e-mail again. Sometimes his blackberry was the most useful thing in the world, and other times, like now, it felt like a useless little piece of plastic and metal. To be fair it wasn’t the device’s fault that Dmitri hated flying, and that somehow he’d gotten hassled by customs when he’d flown in from Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, an airport located in Georgia, a state located on the east coast of the United States. To be fair it was probably his fault for getting lost, but that didn’t make him any happier. Thank God he didn’t have a plane to catch until next week.
His long wait for a plane wasn’t helping his mood though. He was standing in line waiting to rent a car for the week. He’d been waiting for what seemed like hours, and there was one person ahead of him now… but there was some technical issue, and she’d taken almost as long as all the rest of the people in front of her to get a car. The person behind him had jumped in to another line, and already had his car and was gone.
He scrolled down through his email, wishing that something new would come in, anything! He was trying to distract himself from his jet lag, and his car rental issues, and his customs issues, and the fact that he’d had to deal with homeland security today because of the gun he’d been carrying in his luggage. He’d gotten through the airport in Atlanta just fine with all the paperwork he kept up to date in order to carry weapons, and he never carried them in his person, but because of a signature space he’d missed he’d had to fight with homeland security this morning, because they were afraid he was a terrorist… not that he couldn’t have been, but his paperwork had been approved, and the gun wasn’t even loaded, stupid bureaucracy!
Finally he was able to get up to the counter to rent a car. His position wasn’t being helped along by the pencil pusher behind the desk. He wished the man was a warlock so he could have an excuse to shoot him. He could tell that this was going to be a real fight to get what he wanted, and he was already in a very bad mood.
~
After having arrived in LA in the early morning, Dmitri Ravinoff was able to collapse on to his bed and pass out for a few hours in the evening, after spending over 8 hours fighting with airport bureaucracy and traffic. He hopped on the bed as soon as his hotel door was shut and closed his eyes. He didn’t wake up until a few hours later, at which point it was past ten, and he was hungry.
He’d been LA a couple dozen times before, and he knew nearby bar that served food until really late. He stopped long enough to change in to more comfortable clothes, grab his wallet and keys, and head out the door and down the street. Only a few steps down the street and he remembered that he didn’t have his gun… oh well, how likely was he to meet anyone worth shooting tonight anyway?
He was focused on only three things: 1) getting to the bar 2) getting food 3) getting the annoyingly catchy teeny-bopper song from the airplane radio out of his head. He was very sure on his ability to accomplish the first two, it was the third that would be a problem, but he was up to the challenge.
It didn’t take more than five minutes of walking before he was walking in the front door of the bar. His eyes swept over the place, examining each person as he walked up to the bar and found a seat alone at the far end. He had a habit of sizing everyone up when he went anywhere. It saved his life on a number of occasions. It didn’t take him long at all to figure out that there were magic users in the bar. That wasn’t that uncommon. Though magical creatures were a minority it wasn’t uncommon to see magical persons living as normal people. On a trip to Japan he’d even found a vampire working at a hostess bar. Vampires weren’t his business, though, so he’d simply enjoyed the night talking to another person with magic abilities. He knew a lot more about vampires now than most hunters who weren’t vampire hunters, and maybe more than some of them.
When he’d been young he’d tried to go after every magical creature he saw until his master had sat him down and explained to him how being a hunter really worked. Hunters would only go after those that fell in to their hunting rank. Being a witch hunter there was no point in going after pixies. Unless you fell into a rank where you had to hunt a certain magical type, friendships could even occur. It was an oddly hypocritical system where Witch Hunters could befriend Vampires and Werewolves, and Dragon Hunters could befriend fairies, but it made dealing with the magical community easier. Many hunters didn’t go after targets unless they were in a certain threat level, for instance, most hunters wouldn’t bother going after witches who had full time jobs and didn’t seem to bother anyone, but Dmitri wasn’t one of those hunters.
He knew very well that witches may seem harmless, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t doing spells. Witches were never harmless, just as hunters were never harmless. Their training and abilities meant that at any point they could start using what they knew. Using magic was as normal as solving math problems to a mathematician, sometimes they’d do it without meaning to, because it was so ingrained in to their psyches.
For Dmitri there were only three types of magic users he worried about: witches, warlocks, and magic court royalty. Otherwise, unless danger to normal people was involved, he stayed out of it. Yet, if he saw any of those three kinds, God save their souls.
His eyes ran over the people in the bar, landing on a young man about his age sitting on the other side of the the bar. The man seemed a little off, probably a magic user. He wasn’t a warlock, though, that was for sure… he seemed too… bubbly for that. Besides, he’d never met a self respecting warlock who’d read trashy vampire novels. No, no, he’d have to be a fairy.
Dmitri pulled out his blackberry, flipping through his e-mail to the message he’d gotten about the fairy prince. No description, perfect, but a name, Oleander… weird name for a boy, even for fairies. Dmitri stood, walking over and sitting down next to the fairy boy. The fairy, who would still be considered a youth, though he looked to be in his mid twenties, was definitely fairy royalty. He had too much power to be anything else.
“I didn’t think anyone but girls read stuff like that.” Dmitri said. Not a bad opening line. The fairy dog-eared his page and turned to Dimi, smiling pleasantly. Dimi reciprocated the smile, turning on the charm. Hey, fairy royalty would get him a nice paycheck this month.
“I know, but you wouldn’t believe how much women love me for being able to talk about these silly things. Besides, they’re hilarious and addictive.” He said with a little too much pride, which a woman might find cute, and Dimi found amusing. “I’m Oleander.” The fairy said, offering the hunter his hand.
“Dimi,” he responded, smiling broader, shaking the fairies hand. He couldn’t even believe his luck. God, what a blessing! The fairy didn’t even to seem to know what he was, and was content to talk and build a transient friendship. This one wouldn’t even be hard.
“Can I get you two anything?” came a soft female voice from behind the counter.
Oleander’s attention immediately turned and sharpened onto this woman. How cute, he was courting her. “Whatever you suggest is fine with me.” Even his tone had a smile to it.
Dimi turned his head to look at the girl, focusing on her eyes, they were pink tinted… odd… She was a witch; the flash of fear in her eyes confirmed it. Suddenly her face turned in to an impenetrable marble mask. He couldn’t read her anymore. It was so odd, most witches still acted afraid, or would try to run. She just kept on going like nothing was wrong.
“Oleander, why don’t you come with me for a moment, there’s something I want to show you in the back.” She said with a pleasant stone smile. The fairy jumped at the chance, and got up, following her back instantly.
Dmitri waited until they were out of his sight before he got up and walked very quickly out of the bar. As soon as he was outside he started running, sprinting, back to his hotel to get his gun. On the way there he started looking over his email about the new witches.
Pink eyes, they had to be contacts, they were tinted to keep the sun out, but it wasn’t a normal thing for a normal witch to do. He had to see if his hunch was right, ahh, there it was!
“Looking a Medusa in the eye is deadly. In children you will be turned to stone, but for adult Medusas your heart, your breathing, your mind, will simply stop, and you will be dead with no trace of what killed you, the set up for the perfect crime.
You must look directly into the eyes of a Medusa for this to work though, so the effects can be negated if a Medusa wears sunglasses, or tinted lenses. Recently pink tinted lens have become popular with Medusas. Be very careful…”
Dmitri stopped reading after that. He quickly opened the door to his hotel room and grabbed his gun, loading it, and shoving a couple of extra rounds in his pockets before he ran out of his room, slamming the door as he went.
God, if you let me catch them I’ll never leave my room without my gun again! He prayed as he sprinted down the stairs two at a time and out, heading full speed back to the bar.
Spoiler
In all reality this is Chapter 4 of my book, but chapters 1-3 are in part one.
