——————– ———
The next evening . . .
——————– ———
Eliza woke up in her own bed, just as the sun was going down. Despite what human legends claimed, vampires didn’t burst into flame in sunlight. They just slept during the day. The entire group had houses in the same area in a fenced in compound on the outskirts of town. They ate, trained and hung out together. The humans had taken to sleeping during the day as well. And thankfully, none of them gave her grief about where she had been after the job was over. And when she awoke, there was some interesting news waiting for her as the entire crew was sitting in the conference room of her house.
“Hey bright eyes,” said Wyrm.
Eliza looked around. The group looked concerned. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“The Heaven’s Eye got snagged at the airport this afternoon,” said Dennis.
“I was tapped into the police info stream, and it sounds like a professional job,” said Wyrm. “A hell of a lot better than the clowns we dealt with yesterday.”
Eliza brow furrowed a bit. “You think the whole thing at the museum last night was just a set up? Trying to get them to move the diamond before they were ready?”
“If that’s the case,” contributed Allyson, “then the person or persons behind this are a hell of a lot smarter than we thought. If the first group gets lucky and pulls it off, then fine. Otherwise, they knew just how the diamond would get moved out of the country and were waiting for it. And the plane they left in crossed into Mexico shortly after takeoff and was ditched. The perps are long gone.”
“Crap!” This troubled Eliza. The entire escapade had just evolved into something a little more sinister. “Well, it isn’t our problem anymore,” she said. “They shouldn’t have been so careless.” But no one was going to be mentally willing to drop it, and Eliza realized that. “Wyrm, would you do me a favor? Hook into the web and access the Arcanum.” The “Arcanum” was, for all intents and purposes, every piece of magical knowledge that humans had learned or been given about magic from the known history of Terra. “Rumor has it that a religious group was after this rock. Sects and cults tend to have some pretty odd beliefs, and they might have one about the Eye. See if you can find anything about powers or prophecies associated with big diamonds or jewels in general. It may not be our concern anymore, but it could be somebody’s.”
“Got it. What are you going to be doing?”
“I’m going to make sure the money for this job got transferred to the right account, then I’m going to orb my parents and see if they know anything that might not have made it into the Arcanum.”
Eliza went back to her bedroom and accessed the groups account. Sure enough, the money was sitting there, as was a message from the museum staff thanking them for the job they did. With the finances in order, she went over to her orb. Orbs were the magical equivalent of telephones, capable of projecting the voices of the users across seemingly infinite distances, and they were the only way for the two worlds to communicate besides direct travel. She talked to her father for a while, telling him about the job and her concerns regarding the diamond. He was obviously upset at her choice of vocation and the fact that she had been in danger, but he promised to look into any information the Prime Minster of his land might have regarding prophecies and diamonds. He wished her well, told her to be more careful, and they disconnected the transmission.
“Oh well,” thought Eliza. “It’ll probably turn out to be nothing.”
————— —————-
A few days later . . .
————— —————-
Eliza was going insane. Wyrm had been scanning the police data stream for days, but no one had any idea of where the Heaven’s Eye had gone. Eliza knew that such a jewel would be impossible to sell or display anywhere, so whoever took it must have some kind of designs for it. That was when her orb started to glow and she received a communication from her father.
“Hello dear,” her father said.
“Hello father.”
“I looked into this object that you were described. I couldn’t find any doomsday spells or dark prophecies that involved a large . . . What was it you called it?”
“A diamond. It is a fairly valuable object over here.”
“Yes. Anyway, nothing outright diabolical about such an object or anything really similar to it. But there was one very bizarre spell that used a . . . wait, I’ve got it here. Here it is, ‘A large crystalline orb with a thousand faces that shine like the stars of the night sky.’ But that is from a mending spell from millennia ago. The sorcerer who wrote the spell had gone mad a century earlier and no one had any idea what he was talking about. But he was powerful, so the scribes held on to it. They thought someone might make sense of it someday.”
“But mend what? Why would anyone go through this much trouble for a spell like that, especially one that’s never been tested?”
“We aren’t even sure that’s what it is for. Maybe they are just insane. They are human after all.”
“Father, your aristocracy is showing. I know a lot of perfectly nice humans. Several work for me.”
“You aren’t . . . cavorting with any of them, are you? Please tell me you’ve had the common sense to avoid . . . mingling with human males.”
If it weren’t for the tinge of bigotry, Eliza would have laughed at that statement. “No father, I haven’t been sleeping with any human males. I can’t believe that you still hold on to those old prejudices.”
“They are a different species, no matter how similar. Our alliances should remain political, not social. And I wish you would get this foolish idea being a glorified guard out of your head and come back home.”
Eliza was irked. “This is my decision. I like it here. I like these people and I like what I do. Just because I won’t be your political puppet . . .”
“Why must everything be so dramatic with you? There is nothing wrong with showing respect to your elders and respecting their wishes,” he said, somewhat angrily. Eliza’s father usually kept his composure, so he must be really ticked off. But Eliza didn’t care.
“Yet you’ve shown a blatant disregard for mine. I know you think this is just a phase. Have you actually considered the possibility that maybe I don’t want the life you planned for me? That I might actually know more of what’s better for me than you do? You can be so obstinate!”
Her father was almost growling. “Young lady, we will continue this conversation when you have recovered a modicum of composure and can show proper respect.”
“My stance won’t have changed,” Eliza returned as her father effectively “hung up” on her. She stormed angrily out of the room and onto her balcony, letting the cool night air and evening fog chill her boiling blood. “I am so tired of him,” she said to the enveloping darkness.
—————– ——
The next day . . .
—————– ——
Eliza was woken after having gone to bed only a few hours earlier. It was eleven in the morning, and that dreadful sun was blasting into the room. As she gained coherence, someone started closing the shades. Allyson was shaking her by the shoulders and Dennis was the one making it tolerably dark. Allyson looked . . . terrified.
“What?” asked Eliza, suddenly wide-awake.
“Wyrm got an emergency message from the police stream that woke him up. God . . . Eliza . . . the portal between dimensions . . . it’s closed!”
Eliza felt suddenly hollow and the air seemed thicker. Allyson pulled her into the main room where everyone else was waiting. Someone had fired up her holograph projector and tuned it into the national news station. The cameras and reporters were all at the Point, the place in France where the dimensional crack had formed. There was normally a large, jagged, glowing area about one hundred feet long and seventy feet high there. Now, there was nothing. The reporters claimed that by all accounts, a large group of armed men had broken into the facility build to house the portal, placed the stolen Heaven’s Eye diamond in the crevice, and then a robed figure had performed an incantation. The crack had shimmered even more brightly for a moment, then had slowly closed. Before it had completely closed, the figure had teleported himself or herself and the armed group away. After the crack had closed, magic wielding people all over the world reported having lost the ability to manipulate magic.
Eliza was stunned. She felt something missing, something that she had always felt deep inside herself. She turned and tried to levitate a pillow that was sitting on her couch. It should have been simple. It was something she had learned to do in her first year of schooling. Nothing happened. The pillow just sat there. Then, a breaking announcement came over the news stream.
Apparently, a holo-tape had been sent to every major world leader and major news organization. A figured cloaked in a dark robe appeared in the viewing field.
“Greetings, fellow rightful denizens of Earth,” the figure said. “We are the Purity! For centuries, the human world has been under siege by monsters from realm of hell itself. These creatures of the night came to this world to corrupt and conquer it. But the governments of this world, and even some decent but deceived human beings, embraced them. Well, no more! We have sealed the gates to hell forever! We used their own ‘magics’ against them. Now, we of the Purity will begin our crusade to rid the world of its inhuman impurities, making it safe once again for the human race!” Then the holo-video ended.