Chapter 2 – A house in the country
Alex walked the street warily, his eyes glancing from shadow to shadow, searching for the face he'd memorized from the photographs in the file. He'd been shown the file in a dark room of and old mansion building. As he pictured the photograph in his minds eye, long wild jet black hair surrounding a gaunt face and hollow lifeless eyes, he remembered the events of the past two hours.
It had started when he touched down at Heathrow airport. Walking down the steps to the runway he'd been greeted by two stone faced chauffeurs stood by a dreary black saloon. He had climbed reluctantly into the back, lit up a cigarette and closed his eyes for the journey. Three hours later he'd opened his eyes and climbed stiffly out of the car to the smell of pine trees and woodlands. Up ahead had been a large manor house, surrounded by a thick forest of pine and totally dominating the cleared area of woodland. Inside the grandeur had continued with rich oak furniture and wall panels, expensive carpets and several well known pieces of art. The truly intriguing part of the experience had been as he was ushered by a steward into the library. A section of wall had swung forward revealing a fully staffed control centre with monitoring equipment, state of the art computers and even a radar sensor. Through this lay the most important room in the house, the one to which Alex had been directly shown.
This room was dark and shadowy, Alex and the figure at the end of the table barely able to see each other, the only discernable feature a pair of sharp piercing eyes. The voice accompanying them gruff and old, but with a sense of refinement. "Alex, come sit. We've got something of an issue. You're aware of project Nebraska?" The man had folded his hands in front of his face and waited for a reply. "The joint project between the Vatican's Legion XVII and both the human and magical British governments, involving communication of mutually beneficial ideas and shared problem solving?" Alex had replied. The man had gone on to highlight a specific clause of the Nebraska agreement, namely the requisition of a Vatican special officer in the event of a serious security threat to the non-magical population from magical assailants.
And so here he was, searching for a witch called Bellatrix Black, supposedly a known magical terrorist tonight en-route to the murder and torture of the British Foreign Minister. He strolled casually up the streets, eyes raking all passers by. Suddenly he noticed a woman entirely different to the nocturnal people such as druggies, slappers and drunken teenagerse he'd spotted over the past hour. She wore a long black cloak drawn close around her, hood pulled up to hide the face but as she passed a street lamp he caught a climps of it - the pronounced cheek-bones, unfocused grey eyes and a pallid complexion. This has her, his target! He crossed the street and started towards her, thumbing the saftey catch off of his weapon and whispering a short prayer. Just as he raised the gun a young girl with a short pixie-like haircut stepped from an alleyway, totally engrossed in the music thumping from her headphones. She stopped frozen, taking in the tall man with the glistening silver gun and the bedraggled woman in the black cloak apparently holding a piece of wood or a stick in her hand.
She opened her mouth to scream as light and sound exploded from both sides…