"PILOT"

Recommended Listening: Soundtrack of My Life

Artist: Less Than Jake

Album: In with the Out Crowd

My name is Jason James Johnson, and believe it or not, my life is actually kind of normal. I live in the St. Louis city metro area. I am a business major at Washington University, in the Olin Business Program. I work part time at a gas station. I live in an apartment with my girlfriend, Trisha. I root for the Cardinals, cuss the Rams for their horrible losing streak, and I bleed Blue. I enjoy going to the Jazz clubs, partying it up at Mardi Gras. I stay away from the Casino Queen, half because I'm not even old enough yet, and half because I know it's just a waste of money. I laugh at tourists who stare at the Arch in awe, because I see it every day. When I was a kid, the City Museum and Six Flags were my favorite places to spend a day of fun. Normal, right?

Normal, aside from being a wizard. . Yeah, A real wizard. Not one of those sideshow freaks who link metal hoops together or play card tricks. I mean magic.

Summoning fire from nowhere, calling objects to my hand, tracking monsters, voodoo rituals, etc. Magic. Real fun stuff. Unfortunately, being a wizard also makes having technology almost a no-no. Something to it just doesn't handle sensitive electrical circuits very well, so everything I own has to have been made pre-Korean War-era. Yippee…

And the other, not so normal problem? Trish doesn't have a clue what I am. To her, I'm merely technologically impaired, and happen to break TVs and cell phones within minutes of being close to them. After spending almost eighteen months with me, she had finally gotten used to not being able to have technology around, and was even beginning to like it. And who says candles aren't more romantic?

I'm not just a wizard, but also a Warden of the White Council. The White Council is like the wizard equivalent of a government, and they employ certain wizards, like me, as Wardens. Wardens are the White Council's version of police, Spetsnaz, Delta Force, and Jedi Knights all wrapped into one. We are charged with the overall mission of upholding the Seven Laws of Magic, be it by hunting down black magic practitioners, or executing said dark wizards on the spot. We also protect the Senior Council member's, play security guard at wizardly get-togethers, and occasionally fight beings of the spirit world. The Warden's mission has broadened in the last couple of years, due to the war with the Red Court of Vampires.

We're now the Council's front line cannon fodder.

Yeah, my life is pretty normal.

A quick look to my watch tells me it's just past six-thirty. That's good, because it means I just get back in time to wake up my girlfriend. Popping the key into the front door of our shared apartment door, however, reveals something unexpected.

There, in front of our old, porcelain-white gas stove is my beautiful girlfriend of a year and a half wearing nothing but a short, tight, white t-shirt and panties. Excuse me while I drool, it's hard not to. Hey, at five foot three, one hundred-thirty pounds, Trisha fills out her bedtime usual very nicely. Her dirty blonde hair is up in a sloppy ponytail and her trimmed bangs come just short of her perfectly arched eyebrows, accentuating her pale green eyes. Her pointed chin and wide, tall forehead tops it all off, giving her face a cute, irresistible heart shaped appearance.

And said cute face is staring pseudo angry daggers me. "And where were you, Mr. Anti-Technology?"

That's her nickname for me, since she knows that anything electronic made after the sixty's tends to mysteriously quit working around me. What she doesn't know is they do because I'm a wizard

"Oh, I just went on a morning jog," I lie smoothly, snatching a piece of bacon from her plate and munching on it thoughtfully.

"Yeah," she mutters, losing all sense of humor. Uh oh. "You, oh ye who smokes a pack and a half a day went running."

"Just because I smoke doesn't mean I can't be athletic, too."

"Bull," Trish sighed. "I'm a pre-med student at SLU. I'm not even going to bother quoting to you all the evidence that tells me you're full of crap. Just eat your damn breakfast and go to school."

She tossed two plates of bacon, eggs, and pancakes angrily on the table, poured me a glass of orange juice, and sat down with coffee. Did I mention I have to keep the whole me-being-a-wizard thing under wraps?

"Pulpy orange juice?" I asked, taking a seat as well. I knew she was mad at me for disappearing at three in the morning and lying about it, but sheesh. That isn't an excuse to deny me my black gold. A man needs his coffee.

"Yes," she answered coolly. "You are watching your diet from now on."

"Huh?"

"You heard me," she replied calmly, though the anger was evident in her voice. "You drink coffee excessively, smoke your Camels even more so, and you eat fatty, sugary, salty, greasy foods like a fat kid in a bakery. The cigarettes and coffee are going to shoot your blood pressure through the roof, and all the cholesterol is just going to burn out your heart."

"So what if I am a fat kid in a bakery?" I snap as I tear into a slice of bacon. As soon as it hits my tongue, however, I gag. "Bah, what the hell is this?"

"Bacon," Trish answers, arching her already curved eyebrow.

"No, bacon tastes good and crunches. This tastes like old sock and has a texture to match."

"Its fat-free turkey bacon, for your information. Diet, remember, Jason?"

"To hell with that," I bark as I stand up. Three hours of sleep, battling five vampires in an abandoned Granite City warehouse and no coffee was making me an angry, pissy, whiny dull boy. Grabbing my messenger bag from the floor by the apartment door, I stalked out and slammed the apartment shut behind me. "See you after work," I bark.

I tromp down the stairs of the apartment building, nodding at Old Mick along the way. The old man is our neighbor, and had lived in the same apartment for fifty years. The fifth and top floor is where our two humble abodes reside, with a small hallway and the stairs splitting the two apart. Old Mick himself is a quiet, but honest and good guy with a balding head and pale blue eyes. His wife died ten years ago, and ever since the old man never quite recovered. He gave me a grandfatherly smile as I went by him.

Walking out into the garage, I throw my bag into the cab of my candy apple red, '70 Ford truck. Bessie, as I call her, rumbled to life with a raucous purr oh her rebuilt engine. She was a pet project of mine in High School, and since my dad was and still is loaded, she got the works.

A complete engine and transmission overhaul spiffed up the performance. When I bought her of a widowed farm wife, the timing of the engine was so horrendous that when it idled the entire cab just shook. A new body kit patched up the suspension, lowered it a tad, and made the ride smoother. The interior was refurbished, and the old, moth eaten bench seats were replaced with big, shiny leather racing seats.

The red paint job had been another little side job, with a lot of help and inspiration from my teacher, Winona. To the casual, naked eye the sheen was the prettiful candy apple red. However, beneath the shiny coats of red were sigils and runes, painstakingly stenciled and with great detail to form subtle protective wards. Why? They keep nasty things like ectoplasm and zombie-juice and vampire claws off the sheet metal of my prized possession.

I love my truck. Every gas guzzling, piston clankin', air polluttin', smoke belchin' inch of her. Lord, Mr. Ford, if only you had made women the way you had made your trucks.

Remember what I said about rush hour? Well, I'm complaining about it now. Technically, Trish and I don't live in St. Louis, exactly. But Florissant is pretty damn close, and the rush hour on interstate 270 and 170 all the way to Washington University is just as bad as it is on 55 and 64. Add in my lack of coffee, close quarters to new age technology, and grumpy fellow commuters, and my day was not off to as great of a start.

A middle-age, pot-bellied man in a cheap business suit had driven in the left lane alongside me for five minutes before his Camry had an electrical blowout. He was forced to plow off the interstate and slam into the ditch just to get out of the way of everyone else. Blushing, I put a cap on my emotions, lest they ruin someone else's day, too.

Before long, the signature Quad roof of Hollings Hall came into my view and it wasn't much longer after that that Bessie was parked and I was walking to my first of my two classes that morning. I stifled a yawn as I stopped into the café in the student center. Going for my Masters in business in the Olin Business School was hard work on its own, but add in duties as a Warden of the White Council, a part time job at Florissant gas station, and a live-in girlfriend who wanted to change every aspect of my manly nature, and it got tedious. Oh hail, ye who brings coffee.

I like my coffee the same way I like my metal; black. Maybe a little sugar, maybe a tad of milk every once in a while to keep it from being too bitter, but almost always black. Always bitter. I get my taste from dear ole dad, the old jarhead.

With a rueful smirk, I'm ready to hit my lectures. Quantitative Decision making only runs for an hour or so, but after ten minutes it feels like an eternity. My professor is as dry and nasally as the Merlin himself at times, I swear. But alas, I somehow manage to stay alert enough to take the majority of the notes and then some.

I spent my half hour of downtime back in that small café, chugging down another cup or three of coffee when he walks in. Quincy, that is. Quincy is, quite simply, a messenger for the Wardens. And I haven't even explained what a Warden is, have I?

So to say I wasn't surprised when Quincy the Messenger showed up at my place of higher learning would be an understatement. I was kinda expecting the old bastard.

Short, stocky, and well over a hundred years old, Quincy still didn't look a day over forty-five. A slight paunch in the middle, coupled with well trimmed salt and pepper black hair made him look sophisticatedly well aged. He wore a neat goatee that had been trimmed up top, but was held longer down on his chin by a few centimeters. Almond shaped, sharp hazel eyes never left my forehead. Dressed in a snazzy, if comfortably old fashioned silk suit, he was overall charismatic in appearance.

"Warden Johnson," he drawled in a smooth, half-British, half-East Coast accent. "How do you fare this morning?"

"After the party last night, fairly well," I reply in the code we were supposed to employ in public. I wave for him to take a seat in the lounge chair opposite of mine. "I take the trash from said shindig has been taken care of?"

"But of course," Quincy answered. "You were not too horribly impaired by the evening's events, I hope?"

"A few scratches," I mutter, shifting uncomfortably. It wouldn't be too long now before I would need to change the bandages. "Nothing that a little TLC can't fix."

"Ah, good, good," he simpered, keeping up the ruse. His eyes never stared away from my forehead and mine never left his goatee, lest we engage in an unwanted soulgaze. A soulgaze happens when a wizard locks eyes with another person. You see them and everything they've done, and vice versa, all in a flash of a second. What you see cannot be unseen, and stays with you. Forever.

"Your Aunt sends her regards, and wishes that this letter and adjoining package sees you through satisfactorily," he produced an envelope with my legal name on it.

I don't bother opening it. I know what it was; a debrief on last night's run in with the vampires, sent from Warden Commander Luccio's office. And just in case you hadn't figured it out, Luccio is "The Aunt." The code was a necessity for survival, or so the powers that be believe. We were at war with sneaky, shifty vampires. To any possible passerby or wannabe spy, Quincy would look like an old uncle or family friend. Not someone who had high level intelligence on the enemy.

"Thank you," I say as I tuck the letter into my bag. "I'll get back to her as soon as I possibly can."

"You must, now. She very much wishes to hear back from you by tonight."

Great, just another thing to add to the schedule.

Just a plot setter. No big, really.