Note: I'm currently GM-ing for a Dresden Files RPG group. The stories I'm posting here are based on our gaming sessions, and characters. Characters are original work, but most are not mine. The ones that aren't mine are used with the permission of their creators.
"I've never seen anything like this before this week, man. When I find the guy who's doing this, I think he's going to be 'accidentally shot resisting arrest'." The speaker was Officer Robert Huskeene, a tall and athletically built man with salt and pepper hair. His outrage was well placed: This call was the third time he and his partner James Tyveck had been called out to a scene straight out of a charnel-house nightmare. A young child, only 8 or 9 years old, had been tied to the meat cutting table of an east-side restaurant. The boy's heart had been hacked out and burned on a natural-gas grill normally reserved for searing steaks. His blood had fountained out of him and settled on every horizontal surface around in drops, smears and sorry puddles. All of the blood, that is, that hadn't been smeared in occult formulae on nearly every vertical surface. The smell of burned meat still hung heavy in the roiled, smoky atmosphere. James, a stocky man dark of hair and eye in his early thirties, leaned in to get a better look at the symbols above where the ruins of the heart still smouldered. Just like the other two times this scene had played out before him, he couldn't make hide nor hair of what they were meant to accomplish. That meant he would need to do something that he didn't want to do: Open his second sight.
The benefits of using the second sight were considerable, laying bare to him the ways and means of what had been done with magic. Like all gifts, however, it came with a drawback: Opening his eyes in that way left him vulnerable to attacks, both psychic and physical. This last was why he hadn't done this on the prior occasions. "Watch my back for a minute Rob," he said. "I'm going to take a closer look at these runes." Ignoring the muttered "About time, man" behind his back, James prepared himself, taking in and exhaling several deep breaths. Then he opened all of his eyes, and viewed the world in its splendor and hideous glory. The colours of his mundane surroundings looked muted, as if they were washed out, making the blood, including the runes, stand out in stark relief. They thrummed with residual power, more than might be expected from most blood, even that of a child. Another odd thing about it was that it was contaminated by the aura of another person, probably the one using it in a ritual. The longer he focused his vision on the awful runes (and he could see now that they were truly awful), the clearer they became, until they filled his entire field of vision. With an effort he managed to close his supernatural sight, letting the mundane details snap back into focus. "It's a real ritual, Rob. This bastard is using the kids to power something nasty. We need to shut this guy down fast. It looks like he's gathering power, whatever it is he wants to do." James rose to his feet and headed for the door "I've got everything I'm going to get here. Let's let the tech guys do their work." Rob took a moment to get a picture of the boy, tightly focused on his face. He then hurriedly followed him out into the restaurant proper, and then out into the parking lot, saying for the hundredth or so time "Have you ever noticed just how many of the weird cases we seem to catch, man? It's almost like you go looking specifically for them or something." Rob got into their car and started the engine while James got in, "Any ideas on how we're going to find him? I was thinking that the first two kids went missing from the same school. Maybe this one did too. Can you check into the school? Maybe narrow down which kids are targets for this wackjob?" "It's doable, but It'll probably knock me out to do it. We'll need to ask the principal to call a general assembly." The two officers drove at a quick but still marginally law-abiding pace toward Saint Frances Elementary School.
The principal of Saint Frances was a tall woman, nearly six feet tall, with a surprising amount of dark in her hair into her mid-fifties, and her name was Marianne Joslyn. She had met with the two officers twice already this week, and knew that their latest visit wasn't going to be filled with good news. The grimaces on their faces reinforced the impression, sinking her stomach even farther. "Good morning, officers Tyveck and Huskeene. Has another of my children been taken?" "May be, ma'am. Do you recognise this boy?" Rob showed her the picture he had taken of the boy from the restaurant kitchen. She looked closely at the screen of his phone for a minute, and nodded. "Yes, that's Geoff Tanner. He's in my grade 5 class...was in, I guess." She met Rob's eyes, "That's the third child from my school taken in less than a week. Do you think someone connected to my school is doing these things? What can I do to help?" James cleared his throat. "We have an idea, Mme Joslyn. Can you call a general assembly for this afternoon, under a pretext? We'll need to make sure everyone is there, or at least make a list of who doesn't attend. Can you do that for us?" "Of course I can, and will. Is 1:30 ok?" At James' nod, she made a note "Excellent. I'll mention it to the teachers during the morning break. Is there anything else I can do for you?" "No thank you, ma'am. You have a good morning, and we'll see you in a few hours. We'll see ourselves out for now." Both officers made their way to the door, and out to their car. They had some work to do in the meantime.
Come time for the assembly, James leaned in toward Rob and said in a stage-whisper "Once she starts talking, I'll take a close look at the crowd. If I pass out, can you do me a favour and get me out the door as quietly as possible? This is going to hurt. A lot." Rob nodded, and put a helpful arm across James' shoulders. They didn't have long to wait. A few minutes later, Marianne Joslyn walked up to the podium and James heard her start to speak. "Hello everyone. As you know, house-league sports are going to be starting next month, and teams need to be selected by the end of next week. At the end of this assembly, you will have half an hour to get together and select your teams. The first sport this year will be floor hockey..." Her voice trailed off in his ears as he made his preparations, and opened his second sight to the fundamental forces of the world. He swept his enhanced vision over the crowd arrayed before him, noting with the perfect memory that using the second sight always imposes that four of the children in the crowd have the potential for some kind of magical talent of one kind or another. That explains the extra power in the blood James thought to himself. If the child being sacrificed had magical potential, their blood would be more potent than that of a normal child of the same age. James swept his gaze over the assembled children, all this taking fewer than a dozen seconds. Then he saw something more horrible than anything he had seen in his life.
In a life dedicated to the pursuit of law, James had used his second sight when necessary to close a case, and he had seen some wretched things in his day. He had looked upon the twisted souls of murderers, rapists and worse; he had looked upon the victims of crimes, and the scenes they were found in, seeking tiny clues that could be used to put the perpetrators of those terrible deeds away, viewed them with the unerring memory and perfect clarity of recall that always came with opening his inner eye. All of that paled against what he now saw. As he swivelled his gaze over to the assembled staff, he saw a soul twisted by hate, stained with evil deeds, and swollen with misbegotten power. The man's aura swirled around him like gale-force whirlwhind, invisible to the coworkers who stood oblivious on either side of him. The evil of it was palpable to James' sight, glowing a sickening crimson light around him and through him so strongly that James very nearly couldn't discern the person inside it. James caught himself as he was about to scream, clenching his jaw shut and continuing to sweep his gaze around with only a small jerk of his head to signify the revulsion he felt for what he saw. When the sweep was complete, he closed his second sight and sagged against the wall he was leaning on. Rob leaned in "See anything?" he whispered. "Some. I'll tell you after." Both men settled in to wait out the rest of the assembly.
After the assembly, James and Rob went to Marianne Joslyn's office and looked at a list of the serving staff members, determining that the man James saw with the evil aura was the gym teacher, a man named Joshua Anthony. Mr. Anthony was a substitute, who had been hired three weeks before. "I think we need to ask Mr. Anthony to come in and talk to us." James said to Rob in the car on the way back to the station. "I'll ask for a few uniforms to come with us when we bring him in. From the look of his aura we'll need to present overwhelming force for him to even consider talking to us. While I'm gathering up the uniforms, you track down the guy's address; we'll head there straight away."
Mr. Anthony was trimming his front hedge when the police arrived. "Mr. Joshua Anthony?" Rob's voice boomed "We're from the Saskatoon Police Service, and we're going to need you to come with us and answer some questions." As Rob and James had discussed previously, four uniformed members were spread out, two to either side, forming a semicircle surrounding Mr. Anthony. Anthony, for his part, looked around at the members surrounding him and put down his shears on the front step of his home. His eyes gained an intensity, and the air around him seemed to crackle with power. He extended his right hand, fingers out and pointing toward the right-most member. "You should have left me alone, mortal fools. You are dealing with powers well beyond yourselves." Then a wave of flame seven feet tall and ten feet wide rose up out of the ground before him and swept forward, engulfing both uniformed members on his right-hand side before either man could react. The screams were caught in their throats, their burned-out corpses collapsed to the ground. This act gave birth to a stunned silence, everyone present looking on in shock at the now-unmasked sorceror. He glared back at them, flames licking around him, from his feet to his toes, and licking out to burn a circle of ash in the grass and the hedge nearby. "I am not ungracious, you mortal fools. I will allow you to run away if you so choose." Then he raised his left hand, fingers out, pointing toward the members on his left. This was too much for the uniformed men; they ran toward their squad car, one man fumbling for his keys. It didn't do them any good, however. A wave of fire, nearly identical to the previous one, formed in front of them, staying stationary. Their own momentum drove them forward into the wall of flame, their screams cutting off suddenly as the heat drew the air from their lungs and burned their flesh to an unrecognizable char. The screams galvanised James into action; he drew his sidearm and fired in a smooth, practised motion, aiming for center mass. Alas, his action didn't go unnoticed by his target. A roaring inferno rose up in response to a gesture the man made, a flame of such heat that it melted the soft alloyed lead of the round, changed a deadly projectile into an annoying and mildly painful splash of molten metal. Hearing the gunshot shook Rob into drawing his own weapon and firing several times into the wall of fire, aiming where he had last seen a target until his weapon clicked empty several times.
As the echoes faded away, a tense silence prevailed for several moments. Presently the wall of flame died down to reveal that Mr. Anthony had vanished. "Holy hell!" Rob hissed through clenched teeth, turning to James "What the hell was that?" "That was a sorcerer." James replied, "I didn't think he was anywhere near that powerful, but there we have it. We need to put all four of those kids under covert surveillance right now." He moved to their unmarked car, and requested the surveillance with an emphasis on not engaging Anthony if he should apear. He also requested a coroner to pick up the bodies of the fallen. When he got back from the car, Rob was still staring at the burned out circle in the grass where Anthony was standing when this fiasco started. "How do we even stand up to that, man? He kills people just by pointing at them. He can fucking stop bullets! How do we beat that?" James walked right up to Rob and put a hand on his shoulder. "I have a plan, but for it to work I need you on board. Do you know what I did for a living before I came to this city?" Rob shook his head, and James continued "I worked with a church-funded outfit called the Eye of Thoth. They find people with talents like mine, and train them to use those talents to protect people against the weird stuff that's out there, and there's some really weird stuff out there, man. SOP for dealing with a sorcerer is to kill them from a distance, or from ambush, before they can kill you with their mojo. We're also going to need to stop off at my place and get my rifle. We can do this. This guy isn't invincible, it just seems that way." James walked toward Mr. Anthony's house and pulled the door open. "If we're lucky, he'll have working notes inside on his ritual.
The interior of Joshua Anthony's house was a study in contrasts. One room, for example the living room, would be extremely tidy, as if just cleaned by a platoon of obsessive-compulsive french maids. The next room was a kitchen. It was a picture of devastation. The cupboards were torn open, some missing their doors, the tabletop was etched in symbols half eldritch and half nonsense scrawlings. Nearly every surface was scorched, and ruined. Broken dishes were strewn about. The whole house was like that, perfect order bordered by complete ruination. Rob followed James throughout the house. Finally they reached the basement, and the descent into Mr. Anthony's madness was complete.
The walls, ceiling, and floors of the basement were all covered in symbols drawn in blood, except for a small circular area in the exact center of the room. Flanking the circle were two tables. On one tabletop was a mess of notebooks, pens, and pencils. The other was scrupulously clean, with only a single notebook placed in the exact center of the table. The notebook was closed and flanked with a single pen on either side, one of black ink, and one of blue. James opened the notebook to the last page with writing on it and read the cramped script contained therein: 'The Masters were pleased when I gave them the little manchild! When I give them the others, I'll be made into a GOD just like them! When the celestial gate opened in the witching hour I took the chance and opened the childs heart and then i took the blood and then i gave the blood to the god and then he gave me power and made me powerful! They said i'll be a master of all powerful majic if i kill one more theysaid if i do it at the art garden and then ill be a god myself! The fools who run this city will be thenext ones to fal. Then ill be the one who tels everyone what to do!' The book continued in that same kind of vein, but James had seen all he needed to see. "He's sacrificing the kids in the hour after midnight. That means we've still got some time. I'll bet anything that when he says the art garden he means the botanical garden at the mendel gallery. We need to get set up!" James hurried up the stairs and ran to the car.
Later that night, placed on a vantage point atop the riverside mendel art gallery, James had only an hour to wait until he got a call from the unit watching the home of young Wendell Kirby, telling him that the boy had been taken. He took the final opportunity to check over his weapon. Built by Law Enforcement Internation in the United Kingdom, this rifle was based on a silent weapon used during world war II. Ideally suited for covert and silent firing due to its very low velocity rounds. A bolt-action weapon, the only noise it produces is that of the firing pin striking the primer. An excellent weapon, James thought for what must have been the thousandth time, for the kind of work he was about to engage in. Less than a half-hour after he finished his final check-over, a car made its way into the mendel parking lot, and Joshua Anthony got out of it and dragged a small boy out of the backseat. The boy was limp, as if unconscious. James took aim carefully through his scope, and pulled the trigger, putting a round into the deranged sorcerer's head. When the body fell, James took a few moments to put two more shells into his torso to be certain. Then he carefully packed up his rifle into its case and scooped up the young boy into his car and drove him back to his parents.
The next day, James was called into the office of the Chief of Saskatoon's Police Service. Chief Grutle was quick in getting to the point. "James, I've been to the morgue and I've seen the bodies that Anthony bastard made of my men. I've also talked to Huskeene. Now I want to know what you know." "This will take a while, sir." "I need to know." So James laid it out. The fact that there are things out there that prey on humanity. Vampires, ghouls, and faeries are very, very real, no matter how strange that sounds. That not every disappearance is motivated by human beings. That there are people out there who have mobilized to fight back against the things that take people away into the night, and that he was one of them.
When he finished, Chief Grutle rose and shook his hand across the desk. "You've given me the truth, and I appreciate it. I wouldn't believe you if I hadn't seen it myself. As it stands, I'm forming a new unit, and I want you to head it up. Your group will take on the supernatural threats that appear in my city. You form and operate the team, minimum oversight. The reports you file will have two versions: One version will be for my eyes only, and that will have the full details, no matter how outlandish they might seem; The other version will be for the official record. That version will have perfectly mundane explanations for every event you and your team encounter. Do you understand?" "Very much sir. Thank you." James stood, and at a gesture from the chief, he left the office. He had a lot of planning to do.