Harry Potter and the Runecraeft of the Norns

Chapter Three: Nightfall

Late morning Lower Manhattan was thronging with foot traffic when they passed through the Financial District undercover—the ferryman wearing the body of the man the dragon smashed into a doorjamb the previous day and the Norwegian Ridgeback in the form of the one whose neck she broke—to the point where the physical adept had to jostle his way through the crowd with his elbows, taking the opportunity to lift a few wallets as he went, while his daughters followed close behind. Stopping at each bank along the way, they stayed just long enough to purchase currency straps and convert a portion of the dirty money they had received from Rome's fence for the stolen goods they acquired from the dead man's stash house into traveler's cheques.

It was when they were exiting the last bank that he saw it; in most of the previous cases, it had simply been an orb of sorts, regardless of the size, but this time, he saw a white wolf's head that continually morphed into a man's face and then back, glowing inside of a person dressed in a tan trenchcoat and a black fedora, a figure out of place both due to the weather and the typical fashion of the bankers who frequented the area.

"I see it," said the dragon, before the Hermetic mage even bumped her arm to get her attention. "I'll split off, tail from across the street."

"Don't forget to alter self every few blocks so you don't look the same."

"Wilco."

With that, the Norwegian Ridgeback broke off from her father and sister, ducking into the crowd while the shadowrunner reached into his haversack and pulled out a balaclava, handing it to the blonde beside him. Quickly, she tied her hair into a bun, then pulled the ski mask on over her head, the fabric disappearing into skin as soon as it was fully down around her neck.

An instant later, she wore the countenance of somebody else, a hard-faced girl who was a Slytherin at Hogwarts, if the shadowrunner recalled correctly.

The trio tailed their target several blocks, changing faces, jackets, hats and body language as they went, until the person they were following turned sharply into an alleyway. Quickly, the shadowrunner and the artist followed behind, only to discover the alleyway opened into a courtyard, where a tall, handsome man with tawny skin and short black hair was hanging up his fedora and trench coat on the corner of a dumpster. Beside him, a metal trash can was afire, throwing up cinders and smoke.

"I thought I was being followed," said the man, his voice a deep, rich baritone. The next sounds that left his mouth, though, sounded eerily similar to the crackling of fire.

From the blaze rose a vaguely humanoid form composed purely of flames, hanging in the air for a moment before suddenly flying forward at the boy and the girl in a rush.

The shadowrunner started to react, but the artist pressed her left hand lightly against his leg, stepping forward with her other hand raised, and the animated conflagration came to a screeching halt right before the extended limb.

"O spirit of fire, thank you for your service," Luna said calmly. "You may return to whence you came and claim you well-deserved rest."

The burning figure seemed to consider the words for a moment, then emitted a delighted sound before disintegrating into wisps of smoke.

"That's new," remarked the man, as he withdrew a small figurine carved of stone from his pants pocket; from a distance, the Hermetic mage thought it looked like a four-legged beast. He went on to make more fire sounds with his mouth, shimmying his entire body in a manner reminsice of a flickering candle as he extended his free hand towards the two children.

"Move!"

Hearing the bellowed warning, the adepts scattered just in time for the dragon to barrel through where they had been a moment earlier, swinging her outstretched hands away from the centerline of her body even as a ball of fire started to form before the man's hand.

Instantly, the flames winked out, like all the air around it suddenly contained no oxygen.

"What the fuck?!" exclaimed the man, before his lips curled back into a snarl. "Fine, we'll do this the hard way!"

No sooner than the words left his lips, his face began to lengthen into a snout, teeth elongating into canines as black fur started to sprout from his skin, fingers curling into claws as his shirt started to tear at the seams, revealing more dark fur sprouting from his skin.

"Okay, then, werewolf it is," observed the shadowrunner as the man's ears stretched into lupine ones and he started to develop a hunch in his posture. Reaching his haversack, he started to draw an USAS-12 from his bag but only managed to get to the pistol grip clear of the lip of his haversack before the dragon put a hand on his chest and gently nudged him backwards.

"I got this," Liv said with confidence, pulling off her coat and handing it to the physical adept.

A split second later, her clothes exploded apart as she rapidly expanded, filling the space of the courtyard as olive skin turned into mud-colored scales, spines sprouting along the back of her head and down her spine as quickly she grew to the size of a Classic transit bus, venom dripping from her fangs as smoke wafted up from her nostrils, mouth curling in a snarl.

Before her, the werewolf cowered, shivering, lips pulled back at the corner of his mouth, his ears flat and pinned back against his skull, visibly shrinking to the floor; by the time he was prone, the fur had retracted back into his body, leaving him with tattered cloth hanging off his skin.

"What the hell are you?" gasped the man, slick with cold sweat.

"Nobody to fuck with," said the dragon casually, melting back into her human form and taking her coat back from the Hermetic mage, pulling it on and cinching it closed around her waist.

"Why the drek did you attack us anyways?" asked the physical adept.

"I thought you were Hunters," said the man, slowly getting up off the ground.

"Hunters?"

"They're people who hunt people like me."

"People like…?"

"Werewolves. Vampires. You know? Anybody who don't fit into their neat little view of the world."

"Well, we're not that," said the artist. "Who are you, anyways?"

"I'm Cub," said the man, slowly pulling on his trenchcoat. "I'm a private investigator."

"Cub? That seems a little on the nose," the Hermetic mage remarked.

"Jacob Whitewolf," said the self-described private investigator, taking a business card out of his pocket and giving it to the artist, who turned it over in her hands before handing it to the shadowrunner.

"Well, fate works in funny ways," the Hermetic mage said. "We've actually been hired to find somebody in New York."

"That does seem like fate," Cub said. "Why don't we go back to my office, and we can discuss it in detail with my partner?"

~ooOoo~

The ferryman glanced around the fifth-story office as he entered it, taking a moment to look inside before following the werewolf through the front door.

The walls were undecorated brick, lined with a series of filing cabinets, several with drawers pulled open and loose sheafs of paper sticking out at odd angles; perpendicular to them were a series of windows complete covered by black curtains, while a cheap office desk covered in piles of papers filled a good portion of the room, perpendicular to the suite's front door and opposite a flush door that intimated the presence of a back room. A small, stained sofa took up a good portion of the remainder; the artist immediately plopped herself down upon it as soon as she was in the room, pulling a pad of paper and some pencils out of her bag as she did.

The young woman seated at the table looked up as the werewolf entered the room, her gorgeous countenance lighting up as she favored him with a warm smile. Her inverted-teardrop-shaped face was framed by long brown hair the color of dark chocolate that cascaded onto the basic pink tank top enfolding her slender frame, accentuating her fair skin.

Seeing the guests the werewolf had brought with him, she rose out of her seat; as she did, her shirt bobbed slightly where it was tight around her chest, and the shadowrunner suddenly found his pants a little tighter than he was comfortable in.

"This is my partner, Eddie," said the private investigator, as the woman extended a hand. "Eddie, these are, uh…"

"Hunter," said the physical adept, clasping the woman's hand briefly before letting go. "That's my name, not my profession."

"I'm Dia," said Luna, taking the woman's proffered hands in both her own and shaking it energetically. "This is my best friend in the whole world, May."

The dragon nodded in agreement without saying a word or shaking hands, though she did shoot a glance at the Hermetic mage and tapped her upper lip where a canine tooth would be.

"Eduarda Miciela Assunção Gonçalves," explained the woman. "Friends call me 'Eddie'."

"I take you're a vampire?" remarked the ferryman.

The woman immediately tensed. "What makes you think that?"

"Blackout curtains, the fact your partner said 'Werewolves, vampires' when I asked him who 'people like him' were…"

"You smell like a vampire," Liv interjected.

"Smell like a… how would you even know what a vampire smells like?"

"Friend of ours was a vampire."

"'Was'?"

"She got better."

"How is that even possible?"

"Given your werewolf friend here can cast spells and summon spirits, it shouldn't surprise you the answer is 'magic'," the Hermetic mage answered.

A beat followed.

"So what if I'm a vampire? What difference does that make?"

"Honestly, none."

"So, then, why are you here?"

"Actually, they're here because they're looking for somebody, Eddie," the werewolf explained.

"This person," Luna said, handing over the sketch she had been working on.

"Did you draw this?" Eddie asked, taking the sheaf of paper from the artist. "It looks like it could be a photo."

"It's a thing I do," said the artist brightly. "Cub turns into a wolf, you can't walk around in the sun, and I draw pictures that look real."

"Well, I can walk around in the sun a little bit," the vampire said. "I'd just need to put on SPF one hundred sunscreen."

"Does that work for all vampires?"

"Not that I know of, but I'm the only vampire I know, and I got an exorcism not long after I became a vampire, and that changed me."

"An exorcism?"

"My family's very Catholic, and after I first turned, I didn't have a shadow or a reflection, I was repulsed by crosses, I had a serious craving for blood, plus I would start burning up as soon as sun hit me, so my vovó convinced the church to give me an exorcism. They tied me down, prayed over me, anointed me holy water, the works; after a while, I started appearing in the mirror and casting a shadow, and that's when the exorcist said the demon had been expelled. Since then, my symptoms have been more manageable; I'm fine with crosses, I rarely have cravings for blood, and I can go into the sun and not burn up if I've got high SPF sunblock on."

"So, not quite a daywalker," observed the dragon.

"What's a 'daywalker'?"

"It's what we call our friend; she can walk around during the day like she was never embraced."

"'Embraced'?"

"What you just called 'turned'," Harry explained. "So, can you help us find him?"

"Who is he to you?" inquired the werewolf.

"I don't know the gonk, but the client knew him from the war."

"The war? Which one?"

"World War II; he was a scout and raider from Brooklyn who was assigned to British Intelligence, and she was presumably in British Intel. From the way she tells it, it seems there was a time when they were very close."

"We can take your case," Cub said, "but our rate is fifty dollars an hour, plus expenses."

"That's a pretty good deal for having a guide through your backyard," said the shadowrunner. "We could investigate on our own, but without local contacts, progress would probably be slow."

"What's his name?"

"Peter Gallo."

"If he's still in New York, we have friends who can look him up."

"You have any friends that make paper?"

"You know that's against the law."

"Do I look like a badge?"

Eduarda started to answer, but the dragon interrupted. "Hear that?"

The room went silent for a moment, and through the windows and walls was the distant rumbling of engines.

"That sounds like a lot of motorcycles," said the werewolf, eyes narrowing in concentration; without a word, he crossed to the window, pulling the curtain away from the glass ever-so-slightly and peeking out to the streets below. "Bikers."

"You mind?" asked the ferryman, tilting his head in the direction of the windows, and the werewolf gestured as graciously with one hand; crossing over, the physical adept pulled the curtain aside just far enough to look towards the street and immediately spotted a gang of men in black leather vests parking their chopper-style motorcycles, but that wasn't what was disturbing; it was what they pulled out of the grey panel van that pulled up behind them he found worrying.

"Since when do go-gangs carry crossbows?" asked the ferryman, before turning to the vampire. "I'm pretty sure they're coming for you, and they know you're kindred."

"'Kindred'?"

"A vampire," explained the shadowrunner. "When did you breach the Masquerade?"

"'Masquerade'?"

"When did you do something that might have let slip you were a vampire?"

"I don't know? I don't think I did. How do you even know they're here for me?"

"You hunt people, you bring guns; if you're bringing a crossbow to a gunfight, you're probably trying to stake a vampire."

"'Probably'?"

"Never hunted a vampire, so don't know if staking is actually effective," said the ferryman. "Personally, I'd go for something bladed; take a limb off, and they can't use it.

"So, what disciplines do you have?"

"'Disciplines'?"

"Vampire powers."

"I… I don't think I have any."

A beat followed as the ferryman digested the revelation.

"In that case, we might have come here because we needed your services, but right now, you're going to need ours," said the shadowrunner.

"Your services?" asked Cub, incredulous. "I thought you were a private investigator."

"That's one of the services we can provide," the shadowrunner said.

"One of the services? Jesus, what exactly are you guys?"

"Shadowrunners," said Luna, before addressing Harry. "I need something out of the trunk with all the stuff from the thing we hunted."

"What the hell's a 'shadowrunner'?" asked the werewolf.

"Solos of fortune," the physical adept answered matter-of-factly, shucking off his haversack and tossing it across the room into the artist's waiting arms.

"That doesn't explain anything!"

"We perform acquisitions, enforcement, exterminations, extractions, investigations, protection, terminations… you get the idea…"

A shocked silence filled the room; in it, Luna let herself into the haversack, then returned a moment later with a roll of rawhide under one arm, casually twirling a thick roll of silvery tape around her other wrist.

"Mono, please," said the artist, and the self-described solo complied, tossing her his friction folder, which she caught by pinning it against her body with an elbow.

"What are you doing?" asked the vampire, as the artist flipped the knife open.

"Do you have a lavatory?" the physical adept asked the werewolf, who pointed at the flush door. "Excuse me, I'll be right back."

"I'm making body armor," the girl explained, as Harry disappeared through the door, carefully cutting the hide into large rectangles before folding them over crosswise and slicing a slit along the crease. Carefully, she pulled it on over herself like a poncho, then tore off pieces of tape with her teeth and fastened the sides together.

"I'm sorry to break it to you, but I don't think that's going to stop a crossbow," said the vampire gently, as the artist tried to fit her with a makeshift vest.

"Just put it on," Luna insisted as she tried to lift it high enough to drape it over Eddie's shoulders.

After a moment, the vampire relented, leaning over so the artist could swathe her in it like a poncho before taping the sides together. Then, the girl suddenly stepped back, pulling out a kitchen knife out her bag and pointing it at the vampire's torso.

"Wait!" Eddie ejaculated in fear, but it was too late; the girl charged forward, driving the blade into the vampire's stomach.

Retreating, the vampire patted her stomach rapidly in a panic, then pulled her hand back in surprise. "There aren't any holes in me and I'm not bleeding."

"See?" the artist told the vampire, playfully twirling the knife between her fingers before slipping it back into her bag. "Nothing to worry about; it won't get through that."

Turning towards the werewolf, she added. "Now, it's your turn, mister."

Cub's nose crinkled in distaste at the dried gore on the untreated animal hide, but leaned over nonetheless, allowing Luna to put makeshift body armor on him.

The door to the back room opened just as the artist finished taping together the rawhide vest on the werewolf, and a boy with peroxide blonde hair emerged through it, pulling his locks back over his head with one hand as he did so.

"Um, who the hell are you?" asked the vampire.

"Hunter," said the boy. "I'm more comfortable fighting in my own body."

"You're just a kid!" Cub exclaimed in shock, only to gasp as the dragon-in-man's-form melted into the form of a young girl, though not the human form Liv normally took, the jeans she had been wearing sliding off of her body as they no longer fit while the plain short-sleeve T-shirt she wore became a minidress, which she cinched around her waist with the belt she pulled from the trousers on the floor before stepping out of the shoes that no longer fit her feet. "What are you two, ten?"

"I'm twelve, but age is just a number," the ferryman said. As Luna outfitted him with a vest of his own, he asked, "Why didn't I think of this?"

"You're the practical one, I'm the creative one," said the artist, smiling brightly as she straightened the body armor on the boy's torso and pressed his folded knife into his palm. "There you go."

"Martin said something about this," remarked the shadowrunner. "Something about how I sometimes have 'cognitive fixedness'."

"Don't know what that means," Luna said with a shrug.

"Doesn't matter right now," said Harry, turning back towards the private investigators as he strapped on a chest holster over the rawhide vest. "You going to hire us or not?"

"Listen kid, this is no time to play pretend," said Cub.

As if to make a point, Harry drew a Beretta 92FS from his haversack, making a show of releasing the magazine and checking its contents before shoving it back into its well and pulling back the slide, flicking off the safety and sliding it into the holster on his chest.

"Chummer, do I look like I play pretend?"

"What's it going to cost us?" Eddie asked.

"We help you free of charge, you return the favor when you help us find Gallo," negotiated the solo. "Deal?"

"Do you swear you're not going to hurt the person we help you find?"

"Like I said, our client's intimated they were very close, like she may have known him biblically."

The werewolf and the vampire shared a look, then nodded to each other. "Okay, you're hired," said the werewolf.

Turning to the dragon, the physical adept asked, "Whereabouts are they right now?"

"They're two stories down, but they're taking the stairs, so we've got a little bit of time," answered the dragon after taking a moment to listen.

"Help me set up the Claymores," said the ferryman, as he pulled several of the mines out of his haversack. Glancing towards the vampire, he asked, "You have sunscreen on?"

"I put some on every morning," Eddie said. "Why?"

"All right, when the Claymores go off, Dia, you take them out the fire escape," instructed the shadowrunner. "May, you give me some covering fire, then peel off and help them down."

"Uh, that might be a problem," said the artist, peeking out the window. "They moved the van to right under the fire escape, and they've got a bloke just smoking and waiting."

"Well, frag me," swore the solo of fortune as he wired a blasting cap into the mine he had planted on the floor. "We'll need a different exit strategy, but until then, grab some cover in the back and we'll let you know after the drek kicks off and we figure something out on the go."

Then, to the werewolf and the vampire, "You packing heat?"

"We've never had to," Cub said.

The ferryman sighed. "Anybody gets cute, Dia, wax them."

The artist gave a crisp salute, then ushered the two private investigators into the back room as the dragon pushed the desk into the center of the room and flipped it onto its side before taking cover behind it.

"Incoming tangos," announced the dragon softly, fingers tightening around the handguard of her USAS-12.

There was a moment of absolute stillness; then, the door to the office splintered off its hinges and two vest-wearing men stormed through, weapons raised, only to be met with the cacophony of two simultaneous explosions that sent them flying backwards into the hallway and the crush of bikers trying to rush through the doorway, turning them into a pile of tangled bodies, the brunt of the collision making them drop their crossbows.

Quickly, the dragon rose from behind the desk, firing her automatic shotgun through the doorway and filling the mass of bodies with slugs.

"Reloading!" Liv called out as her weapon went dry, but even as she dropped back behind cover and ejected the magazine from the shotgun, the men in the hallway were stumbling unsteadily back onto their feet, blood oozing slowly from the new holes in their bodies.

As the first of the wounded men crossed the threshold into the office, the shadowrunner slipped out from where he had been hiding next to the doorframe, blowing the man's brains out with a well-placed bullet through the temple before changing levels as he moved and fired again, crumpling another vest-clad man and spattering his grey matter across the ceiling even as the ferryman kept going, stopping only after he had taken cover on the far side of the door. From where he stood, he observed something unusual: those injured in the torso did not bleed as profusely was would expected from a gunshot wound, begging the question of why, though it was less a pressing concern as the bikers started trying to use their wounded comrades as human shields while they pushed forward into the office.

"They do know that drek only works in movies, right?" Harry remarked to Liv, who shot another biker through the stomach as if to prove a point, crumpling both him and the one directly behind him to the hallway floor, but the biker pushed the body aside and slowly got back up, only to have his forehead blow apart, spraying grey matter, blood and skull fragments across the floor when the ferryman put a bullet through his brain stem from above.

"Body shots aren't working, and they're going to get in," noted the dragon, as the ferryman killed another biker with a headshot. "Plus, we need some of them alive to interrogate, so… monos?"

"Monos," the physical adept agreed, shoving his pistol into his chest holster even as another biker closed in on him, while the dragon dropped her shotgun so it hung from the sling off her shoulder and drew the sword from her rucksack, running two fingers over the side of the blade as she turned it back into a mono-edged weapon.

Seeing the boy holster the sidearm, the biker's lips curled into a wide grin; without further ado, the vest-clad man rushed forward, intent on wrapping his hands around the ferryman's neck, only for the physical adept to step inside his reach and drive the back of his left forearm into the man's chest with enough force to make the man grimace.

Abruptly, the shadowrunner ducked, turning his arm and driving his ulna unto the man's chest, supporting his left arm at the inside of the elbow with his right hand as he channeled Astral power to the tattoo on his forearm; a black, zero-thickness disc of magical force instantly materialized just an inch above the back of his forearm, slicing clean through the biker's body, sending everything above the shield tumbling over the solo's head as he kicked the lower half away forcefully, then quickly drove the edge of magical shield through the man's neck, decapitating him.

The physical adept whirled at the sound of footsteps, smashing the flat of the force screen into another biker's stomach as he got too close and firing three rapid punches into the man's body before he swung the edge of his magical shield through his arms as he tried to grab the shadowrunner by the shoulders, sending them dropping to the floor before the physical adept suddenly changed levels, separating the biker's legs from his torso with a quick swipe.

A few steps away from him, the dragon spun on the balls of her feet, the blade of the sword in her hands whipping through the air as she hacked through the torso of an assailant who tried to get too close, the molecule-thin edge effortlessly slicing through skin, flesh, ribcage, organs and spine as Liv swung the sword in an upwards trajectory. Without slowing, she continued to rotate, cleaving through another biker who tried unsuccessfully to dodge the blade of the weapon, which entered through the cheek just below the corner of his mouth and exited above the ear on the other side, turning his head into a flapping mess.

Hearing footfall from the side, the dragon-in-girl's-form turned just in time to see two more vest-clad men rushing at her; without hesitating, she threw the sword into the chest of the man on the left, the blade piercing through his sternum to the hilt with such force he was thrown off his feet and sent flying into the wall, where the weapon pinned him for the brief moment it took gravity to pull him down the mono-edge, splitting him in two before the blade was dragged down the wall and into the floor, stopped from going any further only when the crossguard was stopped by the dead man's cleft-apart head.

Quickly, she stepped towards the other man rushing at her, lightly pressing her right palm into his chest and stopping him dead in his tracks; dropping her center of gravity slightly, she pressed upwards, lifting the biker off his feet, then suddenly drove downwards with all her might, slamming him spine-first into the side of the overturned desk with such force the wood splintered even as the man's eyes bulged as he folded over backwards in a way his vertebrae were not meant to bend.

Seeing the growing number of corpses scattered around the room, one of the bikers shouted, "Run!", and they were in full retreat, scrambling over the dead bodies and hurrying down the hallway from whence they came; the dragon started to give chase, but the shadowrunner caught her by the arm as she passed by.

"What?" Liv demanded.

"The window's faster," said the ferryman, jerking a thumb towards the curtained aperture. "Getaway driver and transport… Better to take it all out before they get down there. Motorcycles might be worth something to the right people too.

"Remember: they saw magic, so no one lives."

The dragon's lips curled back into a predatory smile. Giving her father a thumbs up, she charged directly in the direction of the window, smashing through it as she leapt out of the office; a moment later, there was the sound of metal crushing under impact, a yell of surprise, then a brief silence followed by more cries of panic, and finally, a gunshot punctuating the proceedings.

All the while, the Hermetic mage was crouched over the man whose limbs he had severed, observing him with a close eye. Rather than spurt blood as would be expected, the stumps where his arms and legs once were instead oozed slowly, and when Harry reached for his neck, the biker tried to bite him, earning a slap across the face, snapping his head sideways violently and rendering him unconscious before the boy finally placed two fingers on his carotid artery to take his pulse.

"So, ghouls are a thing, huh?" the physical adept mused aloud to himself, surveying the carnage he and the dragon had wrought as he stood up. With his friction folder, Harry cut the man's leather vest from his body, then sliced it into strips, collecting debris from around the room to create and apply makeshift tourniquets to each of the man's extremities.

A gust of hot air blew the black curtains away from the smashed window; through it wafted the dragon-in-girl's-form, landing lightly on her bare feet on one of the few spots on the floor not splattered with blood or guts. Glancing towards the Hermetic mage, she tilted her head toward the tourniqueted biker and twitched an eyebrow upwards, receiving a nod of confirmation.

Kneeling by and grabbing the biker by the front of his shirt, the Norwedgian Ridgeback slapped him several times across the face until he stirred, then took him by the jaw with her free hand, holding his head in place she looked into his eyes for a long moment before suddenly wrenching his head sideways viciously.

"That's it?" asked the shadowrunner as the dragon stood up, letting the limbless biker slump to the ground, his head turned at an odd angle.

"There wasn't much to him," the dragon said dismissively. "I took everything in there going back five years, and I'll go through it later if we need it."

"Leave the bodies," said the solo, as the dragon started to wave a hand towards the corpses littering the room and hallway.

"What? Why?"

"Gunshot means badges. Badges need to find something to feel useful and not at all like the incompetents they really are. You weren't using your own fingerprints, were you?"

"I don't have fingerprints," the dragon countered. "Why give them a way to identify me?"

"That's my girl. Well, I'm wearing a dead man's prints right now and Dia's wearing gloves, so they'll never trace it back to us if we play this right even if they have an entire crime scene's worth of evidence. Just leave the USAS."

"No," Liv declared defiantly even as the physical adept ejected the magazine from his Beretta in preparation for field stripping it. "I'm not making Lulu walk through a mile of shit just so some coppers can pat themselves on the back. I'm cleaning this up."

The ferryman stopped what he was doing, and stillness hung in the room for a moment; then, he pushed the bullets back into the gun and slid it into the holster inside his waistband. "Fine."

"Just like that?"

"Just like what?"

"You're not going to forbid me?"

"You weren't asking permission. You're a big dragon; you make a decision, you live with the consequences."

The dragon considered the implication of what had just transpired, then waved a hand at the carnage before her, using her magic to reduce the gore to their component atoms, which she then dispersed with a gust of wind from the hallway and out the window she had smashed through in her hurry to get to the ground level, leaving behind only the dead bikers' possessions. Quickly, the two bagged the personal effects by their individual late owners, taking care to keep each deceased man's belongings in separate zippered plastic bags; once everything was packaged and put away, the dragon retrieved her sword from where had become lodged in the floor, the crossguard preventing it from sinking through the hardwood paneling.

It took no effort for the dragon to upright the desk she had overturned before the chaos started, then repair it and the rest of the damage to the office with mending; at the same time, the shadowrunner crossed to the door at the back of the room, rapping on it lightly twice with the back of his knuckles.

The doorway cracked, and the physical adept dove to the side as a small, hoofed creature with a smashed-looking horn rushed through the crevice between the door and the doorframe, missing the boy by inches in its headlong charge; skidding as it tried to slow down and face its target again, it took a large loop to turn around, then once more lowered its head and surged towards the solo of fortune, who waited until just before impact to plant foot one on the floor and push off hard, sending himself airborne.

Unable to stop its momentum, it smashed into the wall just as the boy landed back on his feet, shattering into countless fragments; only then did Harry notice it was composed entirely of brick.

"Sorry, earth spirits are plonkers," apologized the artist as she emerged from the back room.

"Crumple-Horned Snorkack?" asked the Hermetic mage, twitching an eyebrow upwards.

"I know, right? Never thought it'd be so easy to find one; all I had to do was ask!"

"What the hell happened in here?" asked the werewolf, as he stepped into the office and surveyed the damage done, only to find it disheveled, not destroyed. "I could have sworn I heard fighting."

"We took care of business," said the dragon casually.

"You make it sound so easy," mused the vampire.

"We're professionals," said the shadowrunner. "It's why you hired us."

Author's Notes: When Shinshikaizer and I first discussed Hermetic Arts, it was meant to be part of a larger project we dubbed "The Anti-Project" that would take the novel series popular around the time we were in school together and re-framed them with a x-punk—dungeonpunk and cyberpunk in the case of Hermetic Arts, gothic punk in the case of the Anti-Twilight project—bent, with Harry Potter being one of the series that was brought up, and Twilight being another. Granted, Cub and Eddie weren't our original angle into that sub-project (they're not dark enough), but it was meant to be in the same shared universe, so in that regard, it still fits, though I don't really have any interest in writing the project focused on vampires and werewolves.

Animals instinctively know when they're facing something higher up on the food chain than themselves, so of course the wolf part of a werewolf would be the same way when faced with an actual dragon.

If magic is real, then ancient organized religions must know about it, and they must have their own forms of it. By extension, because demons are also real, exorcisms must be real, and must have some sort of tangible effect on those who undergo it, even if they aren't really possessed by demons.

Whereas Patience is much more similar to the classic World of Darkness kindred, Eddie is nothing like that because she doesn't have that frame of reference to inform her of what she is capable of, though it probably wouldn't have helped her, given the effects of the exorcism. In Vampire: The Masquerade, a vampire's belief has a lot to do with the disciplines they develop, hence Caitiff sometimes getting a grab bag of abilities, or even abilities that other kindred don't have.

In V:TM, ghouls are humans who have consumed vitae, which in turn grants them an extended lifespan, increased strength, durability and regenerative function. As Harry as demonstrated, he's already beyond them on a physical level just from being an adept.

A sword is still a sword, even if it's primarily used a cutting implement rather than a weapon up until this point. I really wanted to showcase an evolution of Harry's close-combat style against enemies more his size, as well as give Liv a bit of shine when things actually get kind of serious.

The pandemic is still on-going, so please take care to be safe. According to scientists in Hong Kong, there's another 2-3 years of mask-wearing still to come, and COVID will become like the flu, where people will need 2-3 vaccinations a year.

Once again, many thanks to my long-suffering editor Romantically Distant and to pmansell for proofing and editing my work. Also, thank you for reading what I've written.