[September 16th, 2006 Seattle Washington 3:30:AM]
"Yeah Boss, I'm in…" Breathed a deep, raspy voice.
The person the man was speaking to said something, but whatever it was, was too quiet for the little girl listening to hear. She cowered under her bed, sure that whoever the man was, he was a threat to her and her family.
She'd finally fallen asleep, only to be woken up a few minutes later, by someone throwing a flower pot through her second-floor bedroom window. She'd woken up with a jolt, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. Her head swiveled around the room, her eyes having instantly adjusted to the dark, cut she couldn't see anything at first. Catlike, she dove under her bed, where she now lay hidden, lying flat on her belly, her thin, linin bed-skirt all that was hiding her from whoever was in her house.
"Don't worry about it, trust me, they're not gonna wake up. All I have to do now, is grab the kid and I'm out of here." The man said.
The little girl shivered with terror as the man's heavy footsteps came closer and closer. It was all she could do not to scream when she heard the hinge creak as her bedroom door swung open.
"Now…" The man said. "If I were a little girl, where would I hide?" He asked himself, as he rummaged around the room.
She let out a small squeal as she heard him swear when he hit his foot against the large toybox at the end of her bed.
"Ha! There you are…" He exclaimed as he grabbed her by her ankles and pulled her out from under the bed.
[September 16th, 2006, Quantico Virginia 7:00 AM]
The FBI's SRU (Super Natural Response Unit) was tasked with dealing with any and all crimes involving or victimizing America's growing population of what were collectively called Mystics. Mystics, served as the official, and politically correct, umbrella term for all manner of Vampires, Werewolves, Mermaids, Reapers, Witches/Wizards, Shape-Shifters, basically if it wasn't your ordinary, everyday, run of the mill human, it was their job to take care of it. All the unit's members were some form of Mystic themselves. The unit's youngest member, Dr. Spencer Reid, was a Vampire.
On this particular day, they'd been called in just as the sun was rising. He'd learned to take precautions on sunny mornings like this one, specialized sunscreen, sunglasses, long sleeves, gloves, anything to make sure that as little sunlight touched his skin as possible, driving his antique Volvo to work instead of walking to the train station, also helped.
Upon his arrival, Reid made a beeline for the coffee bar, filling his travel mug with double-shot espresso and pouring in a small vial's worth of donated blood, before sweetening it with five tablespoons of sugar.
Unable to wait any longer, he took a deep gulp of the hot mixture. Caffeine still did its job, but there was no substitute for blood, not only did it have a smooth, salty flavor that he would never get tired of, but it refreshed him in a way he couldn't quite articulate.
When he set his mug down, he heard the heavy, clomping, unmistakable footsteps of his favorite werewolf, who then howled right in his ear, making him jump.
"Geeze Morgan… do you have to do that?" He asked, turning to look at him.
Morgan looked almost human at the moment, despite the fact that they were still in the throes of the full moon, sunlight had erased almost all visible traces of his wolf form except for luminescent golden wolf eyes. Still, Morgan could always speak perfect canine, howls and all, no matter where they were in the lunar cycle.
"Morning Reid…" Morgan said with a chuckle, his elongated, dog-like teeth still showing as well, with the harsh light coming in through the window, they, and Morgan's glowing eyes were all Reid could see.
"What's got you so jumpy this morning?"
"Have you looked outside lately?" He asked.
"What's the matter? Too bright out there for ya Vampire Boy?" Morgan asked jokingly. "Seriously though, I thought Vampires burst into flames in direct sunlight, so how does sunlight feel to you guys?" He asked.
"It's kind of like a human getting a vat of ice-cold water dumped on them, only once it's been on you for about ten seconds or so you realize that the water is actually a mild acid and it starts to feel like your skin is burning wherever it touched." Reid explained. "As for just looking out a non-UV protected window, imagine getting that substance in your eyes."
"Ok ow…" Morgan agreed.
"Yeah, not pleasant. Interestingly enough, although the common image of Vampires bursting into flames in direct sunlight is a stereotype, there actually is some truth to it, there are at least five different known forms of Vampirism, all with varying degrees of solar intolerance and all with differing abilities, weaknesses, and needs." He replied in his characteristic 'much more than you ever really wanted to know' way of his. "I''m what's called a Moroi, sunlight is painful for us but wouldn't actually be dangerous unless we went sun tanning at the beach, which no Moroi in their right mind would do anyway. Vampirs are the ones that spontaneously combust in direct sunlight."
"Noted…" Morgan said, trying to digest everything Reid had just told him.
"Morning guys…" Came another familiar voice as Emily Prentiss stepped through the glass doors. As always, she wore a long, hooded cloak, as her decapitated head hovered just a couple of inches above her neck. Emily was a Dulahan, the grim reaper of Irish folklore.
Her head turned, ninety-degrees to its left, independent of its body, so that it was facing them. Her eyes locked gazes with Morgan, as though transfixed by the glowing wolf eyes the full moon forced him to keep on full display.
"Morgan, I think you forgot to change back completely…" Said. "Seriously, those eyes are just creepy."
"Says the girl whose head isn't attached." Morgan bit back. "Besides, you do know the full moon lasts for three whole days, not just one night right? Sunlight allows me to change back for the most part, but the eyes and teeth aren't going anywhere until the full moon actually ends."
"So tonight when the moon rises you'll be forced to go full wolf-mode again huh?"
"Yup… what about you? You planning on walking around like that all day?" He asked.
"Well, I could anchor my head to my neck with a collar, or I could just carry my head, but it will stay like this unless I do something with it." She replied.
"Um… guys…" Came another familiar voice. It was the team's technical analyst and resident fairy, Penelope Garcia. She was floating just a few inches off the ground as her wings, which could appear pink, purple, or blue depending on the angle at which the light hit them, fluttered behind her."I hate to be the one to rain on the morning parade, especially on such a nice day, but we have a case. Hotch, Rossi, and JJ are already in the conference room."
With that, the they followed her into the roundtable conference room. Reid was grateful to leave the blinding light of the front hallway for the section of the building's sixth floor that served as the headquarters for the FBI's newest unit. Their office was much more Mystic friendly, the windows were polarized to keep sunlight radiation out, there was a mini fridge in the corner with bottles of human blood, donated by willing feeders and delivered on a weekly basis, and wolfsbane serum, wolfsbane serum allowed werewolves to retain their normal personalities and control their behavior when they were forced into full wolf form by the full moon.
The conference room that they used to present new cases was up a small flight of stairs on a landing above the rest of the office, next to it was a library of both ancient and modern texts concerning all manner of mythical creatures. The rest of the team was already there, Hotch stood, staring at a picture of a little girl on the monitor with a furrowed brow and a worried look in his red, cat-like demon eyes. Rossi and JJ were sitting on the far side of the table, both in human form. As Reid took his place at the conference table there were several photos of the same young girl with a narrow frame, delicate features, inky black hair, and glasses with rounded rectangular lenses in the files in front of him. She looked human, but the closer he inspected the hard copies of the photos, the more certain he became that she was actually a vampire, and more specifically, a Moroi, like himself. She was extremely pale, as though she never went out in the sun without some sort of protection; and her upper and lower canine teeth were noticeably elongated, the fangs of an immature vampire who had yet to lose and replace them with her longer, sharper, adult set. Though she didn't seem to be more than five or six years old, she was tall for her age, like all Moroi, and as if the teeth hadn't been enough of a giveaway, the way the camera flash had hit her glasses told him that her lenses were polarized just like the windows in their office, meant to keep her eyes safe from the painful, blinding effects of the sun.
JJ, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Kirin, floated out of her seat in her human form and grabbed the remote off the table in front of her and began the briefing.
"This is five-year-old Raven Blackwell, she's a young Moroi who disappeared from her home in Seattle Washington last night. Her parents, William and Harper Blackwell are Dhampirs, people who carry Moroi genes in their DNA but have few vampire traits. They enrolled Raven in a local public school because there was no night school for Mystics within a hundred miles of their home. When neighbors from across the street went to check things out, They found the parents dead on the floor of the master bedroom, and Raven missing. Her bedroom window was broken. There was a flower pot from the garden on the side of the house lying broken on the floor at the foot of Raven's bed. The best guess right now is that the Unsub used the flower pot to bust the window open and then used a ladder to get up to the second floor." She explained.
"Well whatever happened, we have two deceased victims and a missing little girl, there's no time to waste. Wheels up in twenty." Hotch ordered.
[8:10 AM, On the Jet]
Reid: "Alone yes, that's the keyword, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it, and Hell is only a poor Synonym - Stephen King
"I don't get it." JJ exclaimed. "How does a five-year-old get kidnapped out of her bedroom in the middle of the night? Home is where I a child should feel safe."
"That bothers me too. The whole family were pretty low risk." Emily added.
"So the one thing we know for sure, is this Unsub definitely enjoys a challenge. Taking out both parents and kidnapping a little girl is ballsy. The question is, who are we even looking for? Is it a single Unsub? Are we looking for a team? Are they Mystic and if so, what kind? Male? Female?"
"Motive is gonna mean everything for this case. If she was taken by a pedophile it's likely that it was another Moroi. Sexually motivated unsubs rarely cross racial lines. As for male or female, we all know the statistics there. Women typically abduct infants, men take children." Morgan pointed out.
"That's true. However, as we all know, not everyone is on board with the recognition of Mystics as citizens, we can't rule out a hate crime carried out by humans who may have resented the presence of a Moroi student in a school filled mostly with ordinary humans." Hotch added. "We need to figure out why she was taken and we need to do it fast. When we land, Morgan and Prentiss, go see what you can learn from the ME, Reid, Dave, go to the victims' house and walk the crime scene, and JJ and I will coordinate with the CARD team and local authorities." Hotch ordered.