Chapter 10

Only two days later, everyone was gathered in the living room of the tower.

Sarah and Benny sat together on the couch, holding the little coyote baby.

"Hannah Australia Bunny," Sarah smiled, "See, Nadine? We can come up with good names without that stinking dictionary."

Nadine was flipping through the book. Finally, she sighed and tossed it aside. "I can't argue. 'Australia' isn't even in here."

Suddenly, Zadavia appeared on the screen. "Team, we have a problem! The museum has finally finished searching the premises in the aftermath of the blackout the other night when they had no security. They found two skeletons that were clearly the remains of two of the guards who had been on duty that night. And one of the jewels in that same hall was missing. This is a picture." A picture appeared over her on the screen of the golden diamond that had been stolen.

Daniella, Wendy, and Sophie looked…and all three at once went into shock, freezing.

Ace noticed first. "You girls recognize it…?"

Daniella quickly dropped what she was doing and rushed to grab a book. She flipped through it until she found what she was looking for and held it up. "That's the Titan Stone!"

"Even I know that's bad!" Wendy cried.

Kelly groaned. "Tell me it's not another Janus stone."

"Worse. It literally connects to the power of Titans—the evil immortals."

"Whoever took it," Sophie continued, "could easily destroy us in one sweep if they unlocked that power!"

Lexi then looked closer at the picture. "Ace…Tech, Duck, Rev, Slam…does that picture look familiar to you?"

Duck scoffed. "Oh, come on! We never go to that museum—" He then really looked closer. "…oh boy…"

Tech carefully took the book from Daniella, as if afraid it would fall apart in his hands. "That museum was being robbed on one of our first successful missions together. That jewel was the target. There were three robbers, 17 hostages—we were still a little out of the popular know at the time so we took them by surprise. You don't think they knew about more than its mortal-market value, do you?"

Daniella sighed. "Mortal-market? Maybe a couple thousand. Magic-market? They could do the ritual and take the whole realm and all its riches. If they had enough hostages, they could easily have taken any of the crown jewels in that building, but they struck specifically at the Titan Stone. They must have known."

"Maybe one of the robbers came back for the Stone," suggested Brenda, placing a hand on her engorged womb, "If the museum security shorted out, who's to say the jail's didn't short out, too?!"

"I hate to admit it," Zadavia spoke up, "but Brenda's idea is valid. The jail would've called if something was wrong, but their communications are still down. The blackout was citywide."

"Who's got the power to knock out the entire power grid?" Benny asked.

"Well, none of those robbers did," Tech said. Then growled. "But I can think of a couple people who can."

A few hours later…

Nadine, Benny, Robert, Ryan, Michael, Tech, Ace, Rev, Daniella, Wendy, and Sophie rushed into the jail.

The warden instantly took notice of them. "Oh! Good! You're here! We're still accounting for all the prisoners, but it seems some of them might have gotten loose when the power was knocked out." He led them over to the console.

Tech instantly sifted through the files. "We think an old enemy might be responsible for the blackout. It was citywide, so it must have been rigged. But there are only a handful of people capable of that and the most likely choice is dead."

"Well, I can't think of any of our prisoners that might be responsible—especially since the high-level security prisoners that have yet to be accounted for probably didn't get loose until after the blackout."

Tech then came to ones that were loose. "You can't find these five?"

"Yeah, but just those five so far. Any others are not a big deal at the moment."

Tech stepped aside.

The other ten who had come along checked.

Weathervane
Electro J. Fudd
Massive
Ophiuchus Sam
Black Velvet

"Weathervane and Massive have the power to short out the power grid," Ace said, "And a blackout is right up Velvet's alley."

"Yeah, but, like the warden said," Nadine said, "they didn't get out until after the blackout shorted the security."

Daniella looked at her husband. "Rev. Your turn."

Rev rushed to the console and started sifting through the criminal files as fast as he could go (well, as fast as the computer could go, he could go faster than that). "The-three-robbers-from-the-jewel-heist-are-still-locked-up-in-fact-it-seems-one-of-them-died-about-five-years-ago-still-behind-bars."

Ryan looked at the console suspiciously. "Give me a second." He put his hand to the console and the monitor flickered as his eyes flashed green. "Well, it's not been tampered with. At least not recently. All the files are as accurate as the staff can get them."

"And what if the staff is wrong?" Michael asked in concern, "What then?"

The warden stepped back in. "I can assure you, we're holding things up as best we can. But in light of recent circumstances, things are getting a bit…out of hand around here."

Benny looked at him suspiciously. "'Recent circumstances'? Plural? The blackout wasn't your first problem?"

The warden sighed. "Son, a lot of odd things have been happening lately. Just last week, we had at least 15 problems, some of which we still haven't been able to handle. For instance, one of the general population female prisoners suddenly snapped the other day. In the middle of a run, she broke out screaming and attacked five of the other prisoners. They're all dead. She seemed to have stabbed them in the neck, but we couldn't find a knife on her, in range of her, or even in her possession."

At that, the 11 heroes exchanged looks.

Robert came forward. "You wouldn't happen to have pictures of the bodies or anything, would you?"

The warden nodded and pulled them up on the console.

They looked.

Sure enough, every victim had two bloody holes in their neck.

Wendy quickly turned her attention to the warden. "Where are they now?"

"Bodies disappeared. Killer's still in a high-security containment cell."

"We need to see her. Now."

Ten minutes later…

The 11 were led to a containment cell and left to their business.

Sure enough, there sat a young woman, her dark hair shaggy and matted, her skin turned silvery, and her eyes shadowy red. She seemed pretty thin for a monster.

Daniella looked at her nine companions and nodded to them to let her handle it. She entered the cell and sat down. "Hey."

The girl glared at her. "Get out."

"Wow. I thought you'd jump on the chance for another victim."

She looked at her. "You know—"

"It's kind of hard to miss."

"I…" She started coughing.

Daniella caught sight of a water glass lying nearby and, sighing, handed it over.

The girl took it and scurried away into a corner to drink it.

"How'd it happen?"

"Don't know."

"I'd think you'd recall something like what happened to you."

"It didn't happen. It just…became."

Daniella blinked. "What are you talking about—"

"I felt it. It tore through me. Made me do…what I did."

"You mean when you killed those other prisoners."

"I did bad things the first time around. But it never went higher than shoplifting. This was way out of my league."

"Especially given how you did it."

"I don't wanna talk about it."

"You kind of did."

"Get out!"

Daniella sighed and walked off, leaving her be, still stuck in her cell. She suddenly stopped walking and looked back. "I didn't catch a name."

She sighed. "…Jasmine."

"Jasmine…blooms at night."

She just turned away. "Are you leaving or not?"

Daniella turned back to her friends and pulled them off.

Wendy scoffed as they left. "'Blooms at night.' Appropriate."

"She's not a Vampire."

Wendy froze, as did the others. "What?! What do you mean she's not a—"

Daniella held up her right arm and pulled down her sleeve to reveal an empty vial of holy water there. It'd been emptied into the water glass. "If she were, she'd be dust by now."

Sophie processed this. "So what is she?"

Daniella hesitated… "A Blood Demon."

Sophie blinked in shock. "A…that can't be right."

"They said she just snapped. If it just happened last week…if my calculations over their report are right, it happened right as the moon hit its zenith. It was the first Blood Moon of the Cycle."

"Uh…what are we talking about?" asked Robert, everyone else (except the triplets, obviously) agreeing.

Daniella sighed. "A Blood Demon is a demon that feeds the same way a Vampire does. Only their victims don't turn into Vampires or demons or anything, they become Ashes—and don't ask me to explain that one, it's actually kind of complicated. The Blood Demon can reproduce the way a human does, though. And when the child of a Blood Demon stands under the light of a Blood Moon, things go bad. They begin to lose their human qualities. Worst of all, this one came in a Cycle—that one time every few years when there's more than one. This one will have three. On the next, she'll not only have the ability to awaken power, it will be awakened. On the third, she'll lose her soul. And, as we all know, it's all downhill from there."

"Why would she have a Blood Demon parent and not even know about it or anything?" Wendy asked.

"I looked at her file. Her mother died about ten years ago—only eight before she was convicted. That must have been it, she didn't get a chance to tell her." She sighed. "…so I looked into her mother's file…and it turns out she was one of the hostages in the heist that tried to take the Titan Stone."

That drew attention.

"You don't think…" Sophie panicked, "…that maybe some of the Stone's power got unleashed?"

Daniella sighed. "There's no way to know…but I'm afraid to say 'yes.'"

"Well, if it went straight from Titan to Blood Demon, there's no telling what happened to the others!"

"That's it," Ryan suddenly realized, "That's it! It's not one of the robbers we're dealing with! One of the hostages came around."

Tech then realized his son was right. "One of the hostages…or their kids…no wonder we couldn't figure it out!"

Suddenly, their COMMs were ringing.

Ace answered. "What's up, doc?"

"Guys, we have a problem!" Lexi's voice came through in a panic, "Weathervane and Massive are causing havoc downtown."

The 11 of them exchanged looks. Now they felt stupid. In their rush to handle their occult issues, it'd slipped their mind that five old enemies had broken out.

"How much time do we have until something goes wrong?" Michael asked.

"Maybe about ten minutes—WHOA!" BANG! "…make that five."

"We're coming!" Benny said.

They went running. They finally came back to the main room.

"Get us out, warden, we've got prison bait to catch," Robert smirked.

The warden started to open the door—

Suddenly, the lights went out.

The warden hit the override but nothing happened.

"Thanks for finding our prize, Loonies," a voice sounded over the intercom, "We'll just leave you to enjoy a taste of your own sentencing."

The warden kept hitting the system circuits but nothing was working. "Someone's shorted out the controls on the locks! Everything's staying shut!"

Ryan came forward and sent a pulse of technopathic charge through the system. It ricocheted. He was sent flying into a railing and fell to the floor.

"Well, that didn't work," Michael sighed. He opened his COMM. "Guys! I know you've got problems of your own, but we could really use some help here!" All he got in return was static. "Hello? Guys? Lex? Kelly? Sarah? ANYONE!" He groaned. "Even our communications are broken!"

"They're not broken, someone shorted them out," Tech said, "Whoever this is wants us locked in. For good."

Suddenly, Nadine screamed.

Ryan quickly took his wife's side. "It's OK, we'll get out."

Nadine looked at him. "…it's not that…"

Ryan took a second…then figured out just what she meant. The last few minutes had pushed her over the edge two months early. Her water broke. "…aw, nuts."