Chapter 1

Alvaria's Point Of View.

The stench of fire and burnt flesh was the first thing that caught my attention as I stepped out of my car . I looked around the cars and frontline workers all around the crime scene . Mass murder was not something that happens everyday and when it did it was usually followed by a paparazzi frenzy so the lack of paparazzi around the scene caught me about of guard. The FBI really did run a tight ship here…it was not an easy task to keep such a huge incident on the down low but I could tell that they had everything under control.

"Mam…you cannot pass this line ,the area is off limits ,"

I identified myself to the officer with ease.

"Special agent Jade Johnson …FBI,"

I grabbed my badge and flashed it at the man to back up my claim before crossing the yellow tape. The sound of voices talking all about the crime scene caught me off guard a bit. The local police was standing on its own side talking amongst themselves Whilst the emergency care team was kept further off the crime scene and denied passage. I had done this job well enough to get a vague idea of what was going on. No I am not actually FBI I just use that to mingle Amongst the humans am more of a Fabulous Badguy Incinerator and Jade Johnson isn't exactly my name just a cover .

" Boy am I glad that you are here . The local police called us over to check this out and I don't even know what to tell them. I had to hold the medical team back just to make sure that I get your opinion first before anything is done to the crime scene…have you seen anything like this before?"

I braced myself and entered the bus but I was never ready for what my eyes caught sight of … char , ashes and smoke caught my attention and retained it as I tried not to focus much on all of the dead bodies. The whole bus was filled with dead passengers more like what they used to be before they were all burnt to a crisp. Everyone was still seated in their seats and burnt pitch black with nothing but horror on what used to be their faces. I guess the bright side of it all is having FBI supervisory special agent Dave Morgan's tall ,dark and handsome a** as my supervising agent… definitely a needed silver lining.

"There are two passengers unaccounted for according to the bus company …one person is Miss Sophie Smith , she booked her ticket online but did not show up for the bus ride and the other passenger is unknown. What the hell happened here Jade…I looked at it from every angle possible but I can't seem to come to any plausible conclusion. I even had the radiation and toxics guys come around here with hazmat suits doing tests and whatnot but none of them could figure this mess out. This is your speciality ,tell me what the hell happened here …what do I tell the local police ? How do I explain it to the medics , media and victims' families?"

Special agent Morgan and I have found ourselves teaming up on many cases but this was on a level of its own. I have never in my life seen such carnage and tragedy . Man ,woman and children all brutally murdered at once , just burnt to a crisp.

"Between the two of us …I really don't know what to tell you. My team is on their way to help me find out whatever the hell this could be as of now . Whatever monster did this will definitely get what it has coming to it and you can trust me on that. I will need some privacy for a while here as soon as my team gets here .we will leave you to proceed with the processing of the crime scene as soon as we are done with our examination of the situation. I advise a dangerous mix of chemicals , radiation or gas leak …those would be your best bet to explain this to the town's folks . Any cover up will surely make more sense than the truth behind this massacre .

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. My crew soon showed up just as I was talking about them . I guess you could add cool timing to the Infinite list of things they are good at. Just in the case that you have not caught along hi …my name is Alvaria Green and I am a hunter . Not the hunting of animals ,more like monsters. You could call my prey animals because most are and it does take an animal to commit such mass murder in cold blood but my speciality is taking care of anything that goes bump in the night…well I guess day too in this case.

Fighting monsters and killing stuff is literally the whole job description , getting rid of evidence , making things go away and creating solid cover-ups for supernatural attacks . Unlike those holy than thou movie hero's or book protagonists my team and u don't work purely out of the goodness of our hearts. Good deeds are just that…good , they don't pay the bills or make you a millionaire. Yes we enjoy what we do but that does not mean we can't earn a good living while at it.

"Holy hell! What the Fu*CK happened here ? Did you find it like this or you touched something that you shouldn't again ?"

Damien was at it again trying to get on my nerves with the teasing. I only messed up that one time and it was an accident but he won't let me live it down.

"D Stop messing with LV , it was probably just an accident, am sure she didn't mean to burn everything up right?"

For a second there I thought Freya would have my back but I was obviously wrong as she too joined in on teasing me for something that only happened one time. We always make it a point to never use our real names in public…well at least not our full names.

"Will you guys just stop this? Agent Morgan will think you are psychopaths . Stop joking around for a second will you and don't keep bringing that fire up …it was just that one time ,it is not my fault that gas is so flammable,"

The two dummies tried to put on their serious faces as they waved at agent Morgan who was outside the bus looking at us exactly how we looked…demanted . Now you must be wondering why my friends would be joking around and smiling at the face of this horrible tragedy …simple , coping mechanism. You cannot deal with the things that we deal with on a daily basis without becoming numb to it all and letting it eat away at you. I would say that we are only human but we aren't but we're people nonetheless…well more or less .

A girl uses a fireball spell to take care of a bunch of rogue wolves in a gas station once and suddenly she just can never live it down…just annoying if you ask me. They should put signs around or something…actually nevermind I think they did have fire signs up.

"Exactly how do you think we should go about this ? Spell ideas ? Maybe try siphoning energy since it was a pretty tragic event. We can't exactly track what we don't know besides there is no evidence of anything . Everything went up in flames…literally,"

Freya is the resident know it all of the group …the brains of the whole operation. Damien is the muscle of the group …at least that is what he chooses to tell himself and I am just whatever I need to be at any given time or situation. We decided to go with Freya's idea to siphon energy out of the bus.

It would usually take more preparation and equipment to do the type of siphoning we were about to do but there was so much raw energy lingering around the vicinity and a lot of lives lost it was easy to draw out the necessary energy needed for the spell work. The downside of all the negative energy in the air was unfortunately too much for one to bear alone which is why we shared the drawback. We stood still in the middle of the bus and held hands whilst Freya did the spellwork.

Magic was always about balance …call it a give and take if you will. For all of the negative energy we were absorbing in order to siphon the vessel our own light energy was being drained out. Both Freya and I focused our energy on Damien as we used his vision to see what wasn't but once was. The darkness around us soon evolved to the carnage in the bus before slowly dissolving back into what the bus used to look like before the ball of darkness took over.

The people were lively and talking amongst themselves in the bus with a few asleep and some babies crying. We looked around the vicinity trying to find the disturbance within the energy . For the most part the whole vessel had a fairly balanced energy rate except for one area behind us. We turned around on instinct and focused on the high condensation of energy at the corner of the bus only to find a boy? More like a very young looking ,chiseled ,buff man just like any other except for his energy distribution…he was a supernatural . Bulks of energy radiated off of him with a dark aura surrounding his whole being.

We stood in the unstable energy balance field struggling to maintain the siphoning of the energy as he took out a dark ,beaten up leather book from his backpack and changed the energy dynamics. Something about the book just screamed magic "artifact…danger …sh*ts about to hit the fan" call it instinct ,gut or vibe but I just saw the negative escalation of events Coming . Somehow it was as if we could hear the beating of his heart as he opened the antique book . I closed my eyes with a jolt of pain hitting them as a bright burning blue light radiated out of the book and filled the entire bus. A sudden beasty male figure appeared in a shadow right behind him standing tall as if being drawn to protect the man with the book when a looming darkness soon covered the interior followed by a burning fire filling up the entire bus in one swift motion .

"Sh"t!"

"Fu*k!"

"Ahh,"

We all said at the same time as we fell to the burnt black bus floor with a loud thud . An overpowering sudden wave of energy threw us back and shook the bus for a few seconds before slowly getting back to equilibrium and stabilizing.

"Are you all ok? What happened? Is the thing back?"

Agent Morgan was in the bus in an instant with his team right behind him ,guns drawn and ready to fire .

"No ,Morgan...we are fine," I looked around at my team and adjusted my statement "well…somewhat fine. Everything is under control. Your team can take it from here …we will track and take care of the situation before midnight,"

I could barely get the words out as the urge to rub my sore but cheeks grew by the second. Falling on your a** is always embarrassing but trying to rub away the pain in front of special agents would definitely top embarrassing so I refrained myself.

"Guys come on…get off your a**es. Let's go, we need to let the team do their job ,"

I motioned off to my moaning and groaning team as I tried to limp myself out of the bus. My a** was sore ,my back was throbbing and my pride was wounded but that did not mean I wasn't going to at least try to leave the crime scene with my head held high.

"Hey Ummm…jade . When can we have that dinner you promised me . I can tell you are busy so how about we get late lunch tomorrow , looks like you will be working the night shift,"

Ohhh yeah Ummm so agent Morgan and I kind of had a thing a while back but let's not get Into that. I probably looked like a hot mess , limping and covered in ash ,dirt and fire residue but that didn't mean I couldn't flirt…a little flirting never hurt no one.

"Sure agent Morgan…bring your handcuffs and maybe some oil for my back," *wink*

I wish I could say I did a super model power walk and strutted my stuff away but I unfortunately still had to limp away.

"Ok now that Alvaria Is done flirting…what do you think we are dealing with here ? What about the shadowy figure we saw and the magic book ? If you ask me I say that the book was just juiced up on dark magic and that's what caused all of that…well death. What do you think,"

Freya was making a good Point but I just can't wrap my mind around the book causing such carnage . There was just too much going on in that deep dive and there was a lot of negative energy all about ,we could have been seeing things .

"Well I am with Freya on the dark magic being what powered the book but I still think it had to be a dragon. I mean think about it …controlled fire from one side of the bus to the other. I know people died but just think about it, a dragon that just sounds so cool . I knew they just had to exist. I am tired of fighting the same monsters all the time…I would like a challenge. What do you think, LV?'

For a second there I actually considered the existence of dragons but that was folklore. There is no such thing as dragons. Damien was still a big overgrown baby so I am not exactly shocked that he would actually want a dragon to be on the streets burning up people just so he could say he once slayed a dragon…it is just typical of him.

"I think I will have to disagree with both of you. That being said, how about a little wager on what the creature is. I pick witch. It just makes more sense for it to be a fire witch ,they are rare but at least they exist unlike Damien's dragon . Winner gets to pick how and who kills it,"

I said my peace and we all agreed on the wager and walked off into the forest ready for war.The bets were off…we have magic book , dragon and fire witch. This is about to be a lot of fun especially if I win.