Chapter 57: The Magic in Me Part Two.

Standing there in the Shining Light Foundation corridors was Rachel Roth, who stared down at Harry, Karen, Chloe, and Kara. Batman, as always, stood in the background, stoic and calm, not letting the presence of this girl rattle him, even if she suddenly disappeared. Then again, Batman would not be one to complain about sudden appearances or disappearances given some of the habits that he had.

"I noticed the demons coming through the portal, I managed to blast some of them, but I'm afraid that I'm outgunned," Rachel responded when she turned to the three Heralds, their Herald, Batman, and Zatanna. "The guy doing this is an extremely powerful sorcerer with years of experience..."

"Felix Faust, he sold his soul to a demon to get everlasting power and immorality," Harry responded without missing a beat and Chloe raised an eyebrow at this revelation.

"A fitting name then," Chloe responded and Kara nodded before she turned around to face Rachel.

"The problem is that our powers aren't...working as they should be," Kara offered in a frustrated voice when she held her hands up, they were glowing and she had no idea how to turn them off. "All of the powers that we have and there are always going to be certain quirks to them, one of them is that on Friday the Thirteenth, with the occult energies in the air..."

Karen sneezed and all of the furniture in the room developed wings and started to fly away. Harry, who sighed, moved over to reign them in one at a time and took a calming stance. The dark haired wizard could not let things like this rattle him, for if it did rattle him, then there would be a problem. He managed to undo the charms Karen did who offered him an apologetic look which Harry brushed off.

"Perhaps magic isn't the answer to this," Batman stated in his usual tone of voice and when he had the full attention of the group, he pressed on. "Perhaps technology will give us the heads up where magic is failing as of now or at least weaken it enough to where you can go in and fix the problem before it spreads."

Harry found himself intrigued by Batman's words and a quick wave of his hand invited the World's Greatest Detective to go on.

"I have been tracking this energy signature since it manifested, I believe I've found a way to pinpoint the problem and hopefully stop it," Batman responded to them all and sure enough he held out a device in his hand.

Chloe really could not help herself from asking the one question that she was sure was on the minds of many people.

"What don't you have in that belt of yours?"

Batman did not rise to the bait and respond, except for one patented Batman glare of death.

"Well, I guess I can check getting the death glare from Batman off of my bucket list," Chloe answered with a bright smile.

Zatanna was oddly quiet at that moment, knowing what she might have brought into this world. In hindsight, she should have checked the calendar, it was Friday the Thirteenth, she knew about the high concentration of occult energies flowing through the air. That was a lesson her father pounded in her head constantly, to try and impart on her the reasons why messing with any magic on that day ensnares the mind.

"I'll see what I can do to make this right, if I can make this right," Zatanna offered when she closed her eyes and felt the demons around her.

"The portal, I can lock on it and seal it so nothing else goes through," Rachel answered when she looked at the three Heralds and Chloe who nodded. "I suspect Faust may be on your most wanted list."

"Yes, he is," Kara informed Rachel and the young half demon girl tried to concentrate her magic. Shutting a portal for her should be child's play, given that it was unwise to leave portals open when traveling between dimensions. There was always a fear that something else would get through.

The fact was that this portal was harder to shut but Rachel managed to summon the full strength of her powers to seal the portal shut. It was a hard process but it was done, and it left her breathing heavily, dizzy, and she staggered back into Harry's arms, where he managed to catch her.

"Alright there?" Harry asked Rachel with a smile on his face and Rachel felt his hands on her arms, but she shook her head off to block the thoughts out of her mind.

"Yeah, doing better than the rest of this city's doing," Rachel responded but Kara, Karen, and Harry now stood on their feet, ready for action. They all took long and deep breaths before they turned around to head out towards the chaos.

Karen stopped before she realized something and the blonde offered the entire group as mile.

"Let's not go to them this time," Karen responded when she looked at them all and Harry and Kara wondered what she was talking about, as did Chloe. "We go to them, we'll get destroyed. Herd them to us one at a time and we'll send them on their way."

"Herding demons, well that's new," Kara answered but she saw the merits of the plan.

Harry, Kara, Karen, and Chloe got in position, as did Rachel and Zatanna.

"You might want to stand clear, you don't have any magical powers and they'll sense that," Rachel remarked to Batman when she looked over her shoulder.

"I might not have magical powers, but you'll find that I'm oddly resourceful," Batman answered without missing a beat and the group did not argue with him.

The three Heralds of Death fired up a ritual that would hopefully bring their party guests to them for a visit. Harry, Kara, and Karen drew in their breaths, now was not the time to think the worst, even if the worst resounded in the back of their minds. Their powers could short out on this day and cause them a boatload of problems. The Herald Trio and their Herald watched the glowing outside.

The arrival of several demons with black bodies, glowing red eyes, and sharp fangs indicated that their attempt to tempt the monsters worked, perhaps a bit too well, but it worked. The Heralds manifested their garb and Zatanna closed her eyes before she summoned all the power to her.

"Ezeerf!" Zatanna yelled when she blasted the demons nice and hard with her spell and they froze on the spot allowing the Heralds to swoop in and knock them out of the running.

Rachel closed her eyes and they began to glow before she immobilized the demons and blasted them off to nowhere. These were nothing compared to her father but it was obvious that Faust was going for quantity over quality. This was a simple mistake for would be sorcerers, they always tried to mangle the numbers.

Batman aimed a baterang and threw them at the demons causing them pain. This was not your ordinary baterang, no far from it, Batman and a friend of his named Jason Blood had these specially made to harm demons of all sorts. Blood especially wanted these made in case his more demonic side got out of control but that was beside the point. Batman unloaded with an attack after attack on them, flinging the special objects around.

"I bet I reaped more demons than you did!" Karen yelled when she swung her scythe and destroyed two more of them.

"You didn't!" Kara yelled back at Karen when she smashed her way through more creatures.

"Yes, I did!" Karen fired back when she smashed her way through some creatures of her own. The two blondes glared at each other before Chloe shook her head.

"Oh will you two knock it off, it doesn't really matter!" Chloe yelled when she dived down and knocked out eight in one fell swoop. "Besides, I think I got both of you beat."

Kara and Karen gave Chloe mocking glares when Harry allowed himself seconds of amusement the antics of his wieves, but he knew that through their collective efforts, they sent most of the demons off, with the exception of the ones controlled directly by Faust.

They took down the slaves, now it was time to find the master, and that meant another Undesirable. Faust was on their list and it was time to collect.

Faust's eyes widened with sadistic glee when he looked over everything before him, the screams of other people were music to his ears. They beat in his ear drums like pure magic. That was a type of feeling that could not be replaced at all and his legions of demons marched into town to raze some hell, for lack of a better term. His sadistic expression never wavered, not even for a second when he watched.

The mood of the powerful sorcerer was cut short when three figures showed up to lead another group. He recognized their power but Faust did not fear it. He knew what today was.

'Three minutes until midnight,' Kara thought to Karen and Harry and they all nodded, three minutes before their powers returned back to normal, although if they knocked Faust into a different timezone, Friday the Thirteenth would have already passed.

In fact, Harry thought that was not the worst idea in the world, as the demons made a circle around Faust to surround him.

"Ah, and it's the little enchanter trying to fix her mistake," Faust taunted when his eyes found their way toward Zatanna but Zatanna blocked the taunts out of her head and raised a hand up to wave it.

"Eci tsalb!" Zatanna yelled when she turned her hand around and fired the ice from it towards the demons.

"Impossible, there is no way for you to..." Faust started but a baterang blew up the pedestal he stood on.

Kara flew in at super speed and tried to punch him but Faust blocked it when he put the shield up. Another block and Kara continued to punch at him.

Next Karen flew herself at the shield and it crashed with a sadistic impact. The two blonde Kryptonians knocked themselves against the shield and tried to break free, shot after shot but they found that it was hard to crack through the defenses that Faust erected.

Harry offered his own input to the situation, burning through the demons with help from Chloe, they blew up into dust. He knocked into the shield and it cracked with Faust finding himself unable to sustain it for much longer.

"I don't understand!" Faust yelled when Kara broke through the shield, flipped up, and kicked him in the face whilst Karen tripped him from behind.

Faust was a powerful sorcerer but his body was rather frail, unlike that of the Heralds who kept themselves in good shape and would be so even if they didn't have their powers.

"It's after midnight!" Harry called and Faust realized what happened as his demons disappeared when the Heralds banished them.

Faust tried to get away but Zatanna teleported in front of him and lifted her hand before her eyes glowed.

"Etercnoc seenk!" Zatanna yelled at the top of her lungs and Faust found himself unable to move from his positioning, his knees weighed down several times their normal wait.

"I refuse to lose, I have power, my plan was foolproof!" Faust yelled when he tried to move but the three Heralds approached him and he felt the sweet embrace of Death tickle him.

The three Heralds surrounded Faust with the intentions to make him go on dancing in their heads and now Faust tried to push himself away but his knees knocked together. He became frantic and his blasts of magic did not really match up to the powers of the Herald of Death, especially when Friday the thirteenth became Saturday the fourteenth and the three heralds rounded upon them.

"You've proven yourself to be a fool!" Karen responded when her two fellow Heralds nodded and their eyes glowed together before they held their scythes

Faust braced himself for the end, he feared death, his heart beat against his chest with a loud thump-thump. He knew what was waiting on the other side and it was not warmth and friendship. The deal he made came back to haunt him, and Karen, Kara, and Harry raised their weapons before they swung for the fences to smash them hard into Faust.

Faust felt himself bombarded with the magical energies that ripped through him and he screamed out the top of his lungs. It was a blood curdling shriek when he felt himself dragged into the afterlife by the minions of his master, the one he made the deal with, he was dragged off to the beyond.

Everyone watched as they could hear his screams echo and get louder, louder, louder, and more frantic, there was no question about it, wherever Faust was going, it was not going to be pleasant. His suffering was going to be assured and the damage that happened in Metropolis reversed.

Harry, Karen, and Kara worked a little magic of their own and it was like nothing ever happened.

"So what exactly happened to Faust?" Chloe asked when she looked at.

"Well when you make a deal with a demon for ultimate power, they tend to get the most out of the arrangement," Rachel responded as she heard the final echoes of his blood curdling shrieks.

Chloe heard them too and to be honest, Faust was not someone that she would shed too many tears by given what he did. The Heralds stood around and sure enough, Batman disappeared into the night, now that the mission was accomplished.

That's what Batman did, he disappeared into the night, swift as vengeance and only appeared when he was needed. Harry thought that he pinpointed how Batman did it but he would allow him to disappear into the night. It was part of his mask, part of who Batman was. He was vengeance, he was the night, and all that good stuff.

"I think we're done," Kara remarked to break the awkward silence that developed between the entire group.

"No demons around, so I think that we are," Rachel confirmed and everyone sighed in relief.

Thankfully they were able to minimize the damage caused by these hoards of demons and there was no one that was killed. Although if Rachel did not seal the portal they poured through, there would be even more problems, as their sheer numbers tended to overwhelm most people and then there was the fact that they would grow in power the more than they feasted off of each and every person out there.

Luck was not a term that Harry Potter threw around loosely but tonight, they were lucky that they did not suffer a horrific defeat and get destroyed. It spoke well for the control that they had over their Herald of Death Powers that they did not be overwhelmed by the Friday the Thirteenth insanity.

Luck had nothing to do with anything; skill had everything to with winning the day.

Zatanna drew in a breath when she stood outside and looked up at the sky in Metropolis, there were many things that she did that were questionable. Her desire to speak with her father one last time was exploited by Faust and she knew it one hundred percent of the way. There were times where her heart defeated her head and she thought about what she should have done. The dark haired magic user peered up into the sky and stood on the lawn outside of the Shining Light Foundation.

"Do you have a place to stay?"

Zatanna spun around to see Harry hovering there before her.

"I thought that you'd be chasing me off by now, given all the trouble I caused you and your...wives," Zatanna responded, with the word rolling off her tongue like some oddity that she could barely fathom yet there it was. She shook her head and turned to face Harry. "Only you Harry."

"That statement is so ambiguous that it could pertain to many things that have happened in my life," Harry responded when his expression never faltered. "Seriously speaking, what are you going to do now?"

Zatanna thought about this question long and hard, to be honest, that was a good question and one that she wondered about. Harry always asked the questions that made her wonder and the dark haired magical sorceress pondered this question over in her mind, she mulled it over, and thought about it.

"Well I know one thing is for certain, I'm not going to dabble in mysterious spell books that I buy from supposedly kind owners at a second hand book shop," Zatanna responded and Harry's face contorted into a tiny bit of a smile.

"That's a good idea."

Zatanna stared at Harry, there earlier meetings had been far more innocent in their own ways, even if Harry had an entire mad cult out for his blood.

"I swear I'll find some way to make this up to you," Zatanna added when she looked at Harry.

"I know you will," Harry responded when the two stared at each other.

There was a long pause with neither knowing what to say.

"So, I'm assuming that you defeated that Sinclair woman," Zatanna remarked to break the silence and Harry offered her a crisp not when his eyes never left her, not even for a single moment. Always when Harry looked at her, Zatanna felt like his eyes scanned her. "I wondered if you went down in a blaze of glory, given that you disappeared for six years."

A tense smile appeared over Harry's face when his expression turned to face Zatanna and the dark haired Herald of Death took a moment to lean forward and peer into her eyes. Having him be so up close and personal caused shivers to fill her being and move down her spine.

"Six years was a long time but it flashed by in an instant the more I think about what happened," Harry answered Zatanna and that cryptic statement was all Zatanna was going to get out of Harry at this present moment. The dark haired sorceress stepped forward. "It's getting late, I got a daughter to tend to, and my wives are wondering where I am."

"I think that I have a journey to take starting now, but maybe I'll be back around before you think," Zatanna offered Harry with a shrug.

"Maybe," Harry agreed when he looked back at her and a breeze blew between the both of them.

Harry and Zatanna stood across from each other, with one of them wishing that she listened to the other. They dodged a very narrow bullet tonight with what occurred and Zatanna spun around, not even blinking with anything that happened. The dark haired young sorceress walked off and Harry watched her live.

"I take it you two have had dealings in the past."

Rachel stood behind Harry and Harry turned around to face her.

"One could say that," Harry answered Rachel in a crisp and ambiguous tone of voice.

It was true, before Harry met Kara, he really didn't have any luck with love and she opened the doors for something great, and Harry was glad for it. There was many times where his curiosity got the better of him but thankfully when he fished Kara out of that lake, that was not one of those times.

Rachel stood before Harry and Harry decided to bring up a point that he had with her.

"Your powers are getting stronger and more refined I see," Harry answered Rachel when the young half demon looked back at him. "If you would like to, I'll help you train your powers a little bit, to make sure that they don't go off the rails at the worst time."

Rachel thought about the offer and a part of her felt honored that Harry of all people, especially with his busy schedule, offered to train her in the art of her powers. She had some grounding in her powers but she was nowhere near perfect. Harry could help her become better.

It did seem like she was forming some kind of connection with Harry, although what that was, Rachel did not know what it was. Although there were many instances where she felt more at ease around Harry, where she trusted him, and given the fear that surrounded her up until the defeat with Trigon, there were instances were trust was something that was hard to come by.

"I thank you, and I'll keep that in mind," Rachel responded to Harry with a smile crossing her face.

"Great, we can start your training on Monday morning," Harry answered with a smile back towards Rachel which she returned.

Tonight was a productive night to say the very least, with the demons banished and Faust taken down. Harry checked the Undesirable counter, they were down to eight. Harry wondered what happened when they hit zero and wondered if the work of the Heralds would truly be done.

Then again, Harry doubted that there work would ever be done, there would always be evil out there to fight and always be people who would try to cheat death. Yet, as long as the Heralds were out there and did their jobs, those people could not run forever. They would find them, tracking them down, and hopefully everything would work out for the best.

After the night that was, Harry decided to return back home where three lovely young women were waiting for him. That was one of the perks of his position to say the very least. There was thankfully no call that indicated that Clark was in trouble, which was good, he needed a day off about as bad as Harry did. Plus, Lois, Lana, and Raya should be able to cover each other.

With that thought, Harry smiled before he returned home with a pop, tonight had been a long one and he looked forward to some downtime before the next major crisis.

"For once, it was actually pretty boring come to think about it," Lana responded when Clark, Lois, and Lana swung by the Shining Light Foundation the next day.

"Speak for yourself, I was the one who got dragged into the hotel room several times by all of you," Clark responded when he looked at Harry, almost expecting him to come to his defense.

"Congratulations," Harry said when he patted Clark on the shoulder and Lois, Lana, Chloe, Kara, and Karen all looked highly amused.

There were some days where Clark thought he was fighting a losing battle and this was one of those days by far. He decided to go with the flow. As the old saying went, if you can't beat them, join them. At least that's what Clark had in mind and his mind went wild with many thoughts. The young Kryptonian male sat down on the chair beside them.

"Anyway, we brought you back something," Lois answered to the three Heralds and they looked rather surprised by this statement by Lois. "I know, it's a bit sudden but...there you go."

Lois, Lana, and Clark hoisted up a large tomb onto the desk in front of Harry, Kara, and Karen.

"You went grave robbing?" Chloe asked when she raised an eyebrow.

"More like Lois tripped on it and we noticed the symbols," Clark answered and Lois turned around at him with a mock glare.

"I don't trip, Smallville, I descended to the ground gracefully," Lois answered but Clark offered a smile that indicated that he took great pleasure to get underneath her skin. So Lois decided to take great pleasure in using her super strength to twist Clark's arm behind his back in a hammerlock move.

Clark did not really feel pain but he could not power out of it either. Plus, it did stand to reason that all kinds of pain were not physical, there were some that emotional and Lois pushed Clark down onto the ground, standing above him, with her foot on the back of his head.

"Say it Smallville!" Lois called out to him.

"Uncle?" Clark asked and Lois got up and Clark pulled himself up to the ground.

Harry, Kara, and Karen were only mildly amused by their antics on the account they had something in front of them that they might have been searching for. The tomb sat before them on the desk and their eyes took a long gaze towards it when they peered at the symbols on it. The symbols were that of death, with the triangle, the circle, and the line, the same markings that they knew from their training and that had been on the first gravestone.

"Lois...fell gracefully over it when Lois and Clark were following up a lead about smugglers," Lana answered when she looked at them.

"And it wasn't a very good lead either, you know what they were smuggling?" Lois asked then and Kara, Karen, and Harry figured that even if they did not want to know, Lois was going to let them in on the fact anyway. "They were smuggling cheese, and the stuff reeked. I thought that it would be something good for all the trouble we went to going after it."

"Well it does make for a cheesy story," Clark answered with a wide grin and Lois turned her attention to him with an agitated glare.

"You were warned abound the puns, Smallville," Lois answered but Harry put his hand up before he turned to Lana, Lois, and Clark.

"I need the three of you to leave and go into the next room because if I set this thing off with you nearby, it might hurt any of you," Harry answered before they looked at them. "You three are not Heralds, and when one of those things were touched by Lex, his brain got fried."

"Good thing someone didn't touch one of the symbols," Lana remarked them, feeling pleased that she had the foresight and Clark's cough sounded like "Lois".

With a narrowed eye glared, Lois, Lana, and Clark exited the room at super speed. Thankfully, Harry knew of a charm to make sure that nothing blew around when people exited at super speed. Chloe wished that she had Harry around years ago to perform that charm; it would have saved her from having to clean up a lot of messes after hurricane Clark blew into town.

Without another word, Harry, Kara, and Karen saw the three symbols on the tomb and they pressed their hands to them simultaneously. The blinding white light filled the room and caused the desk to rattle underneath him. It reacted a bit differently that the other one and they waited on pins and needles for the other shoe to drop.

The crypt cracked open to reveal an antique box within it. The three Heralds grabbed the box and they felt it swing open.

Sure enough the contents were mostly the same, with a third of a map and another key.

"So all we need to have is one more key and one more piece of the map," Harry answered, pleased that Lois's skills to inadvertently stumble upon trouble, or perhaps intentionally even, came in handy.

"Easier said than done, I think," Kara commented and Harry placed a hand on hers, before he smiled. Chloe put a hand on Kara's other hand, and Karen put a hand on Chloe and Harry's hand and the three Heralds and their Herald stood in a circle.

"No matter what, no matter how, no matter what it is, we'll find it."

Clark poked his head into the door, he heard the humming and the light show, so he was concerned. However, he saw Harry, Karen, Kara, and Chloe in the midst of a moment and wondered if he was premature in trying to break something up. He stood there in wait and decided that since he was there, he would ask the painfully obvious question that was on the tip of his tongue.

"Is everyone..."

"Fine, Clark, thanks for asking," Kara responded with a smile crossing her face when she looked back at her cousin. "Everything worked out well...its just some piece of paper and a weird key."

"But does the key have any significance?" Lois asked, her reporter instincts getting the better of her.

"You know Lois, if you need to worry about it, we'll tell you," Chloe answered for the Heralds and Lois looked back at her cousin. "All three of you."

"We're honestly piecing everything together ourselves," Karen added with a smile towards Clark, Lana, and Lois. "So did you and Raya spend much time together?"

"I think Raya spent a bit more time enjoying the slot machines where we were than Clark," Lana offered with a mirthful expression in her eyes. "It's always the ones you least expect."

Karen hoped that her chosen protector would have a stronger place in Clark's heart, the strongest place, but their journey only began. It was one of those things where she felt like her competitive nature needed to win out every single time. She did appreciate one single fact.

The three Heralds chose someone in their own way to protect Clark, when they couldn't always watch over him. Kara chose Lana, Harry chose Lois, and Karen chose Raya, and that was amazing how things worked out in that way. Karen felt her head get a bit clearer since she found her family and ever since she misplaced the crystal her father gave her when she left Krypton. It was a part of her old life though, Karen wanted a new life.

Even though she felt should likely she track down that crystal because if it fell in the wrong hands, anyone who came across it could be in mortal peril.

Clark felt that Karen being nice to him after the way that she treated him when she first got here was weird and unsettling but then again, in some way she was family. He knew that people could change and he hoped that things would continue to get better in time. Clark also was under the impression that Kara, Karen, and Harry were up to something top secret but despite his temptation to find out, he decided not to.

There were certain matters that Clark could not fathom and his mind would not piece together. The Heralds knew what they were doing and Clark resolved to just step back, let them do what they needed to do, and worry about his life.

Harry sat waiting up in his office and there was a knock on the door that brought him out of his thoughts. He leaned forward and addressed the person on the other side.

"Come in," Harry responded and the office door clicked up to reveal that Zatanna was on the other end. She was dressed in a tight white top and a black skirt, displaying her long legs in fishnets. The dark haired magic user entered the room and took a look at Harry. "Hey, Zatanna, didn't expect you to come back around here."

"Well, I did some thinking, and I don't think that I could leave town without thanking you for helping me," she told him with a smile on her face when she looked Harry over. "And I had a discussion with your wives. We've agreed that there's only one way that I can make this up for you. And I can show you want I wanted to do to you all those years ago if we hadn't gotten interrupted."

'Yeah Harry, I did, take her, she owes you big time,' Kara confirmed to him.

Harry got to his feet, with a smile on his face when he drank in Zatanna's form and sent butterflies flapping in her stomach.

"I'm sure we can make up for what you've done, yes," Harry responded when he grabbed Zatanna around her waist and the two looked over each other.

"I don't know what's changed about you but there's something powerful about you and it's….well it's amazing," Zatanna breathed when she looked at Harry with a gaze through her eyes and Harry stared back at her, a smile crossing his face.

"I'm sure it is amazing," Harry responded when he looked back at her honestly, a smile crossing his face. "And I'm sure the two of us can work out something together."

Harry bent Zatanna back and pushed her against the wall before his mouth met hers and his hands brushed through her silky black hair. She felt a warmth flooding through her body like nothing she ever felt before. Harry ran his hands all over her body when she opened her mouth to allow his tongue inside. The two of them had their tongues dance with the passion that defied belief.

The kiss broke apart and Zatanna felt flushed from that action, before she reached forward and grabbed the bulge in Harry's pants.

"Take me home and take your payment," Zatanna breathed to Harry, rubbing him through the fabric of his trousers and working him over. Her eyes danced with the passion and desire, desire to have this cock in her and penetrate her like she allowed no man to ever do so before.

Harry scooped her up in his arms and the next thing they knew, they were back in Harry's bedroom. She collapsed down on the bed, feeling flushed with pleasure and Harry began to strip off her clothes and his before the real fun began.

Smut/Lemon Begins.

-PROFILE

Smut/Lemon Ends.

Tess bit her lip when she sat on a chair on her desk and held it in her hands, partially transfixed by what sat in her hand, the orb she found all of those months away. Her best scientists had not been able to dent it, not even scratch it, and most certainly would not be able to open it. It was a mystery of what this orb was but Tess felt the need to figure out how to open it, if nothing else the contents would offer a hint towards Lex's psychosis.

Yet there was no identifiable markings of any kind whatsoever, in fact the orb was clear and purple, without a trace. Tess set the orb down on the desk with a smile crossing her face when she took it to the high security vault in the back of her office and locked it away. It would be unwise to study it for too much longer especially when one considered the amount of time she spent on it already.

Tess debated many things about that orb in her hand but there were other things that were on her mind.

"We uncovered the entire field and found something Miss Mercer."

Curiosity got the better of Tess and she wondered with as many trips as Lex recorded on file, along with many that he did not record, how could he miss something like this? It defied all conventional belief and all standard logic, yet Tess stood forward with a thought on her mind of what was before her.

"What is it?" Tess wondered and the box was brought before them.

It was nothing extraordinary whatsoever, it was a carved box with the strange symbols on it, the same symbol Lex sketched that he found on the gravestone.

The same symbol Tess noted that she did not find a translation for no matter how many books or records she poured through. That symbol was in no language ever recorded by humans and that was the key word, no language ever recorded by humans. Tess placed her hands on the edge of the box, careful not to touch the symbols.

She recalled from Lex's extensive records that the time he touched the symbol on the gravestone, his brain was short circuited for a time and then reset by a mysterious force. Sorcery or either highly advanced alien technology was the two most logical explanations and Tess could not determine right yet what offered more unanswered questions for her. The power before her was personified in this box.

"More reports have come out about the serial killer, Miss Mercer."

Her contact handed Tess the latest police reports that were faxed to her, the creature, the monster continued to attack, but Tess determined from a few grainy photos that it was not a monster but rather a man. It was the other one, the one that was sent on Earth with the traveler that would need to be a challenge that he must overcome or doomsday would strike the world.

The words "neither can live whilst the other survives" was found on the inscription in the scrolls Tess located that described the battle. The killer grew in power and she wondered what the traveler was doing. While the world burned around them, Tess wondered whether or not the traveler understood that he had to take certain steps to preserve the future of the world.

She heard of the three messengers of Death who had been sent forth.

Lex's notes were vague but Tess located information about what Lionel Luthor left behind, a series of journal entries that grew more and more frantic the more time past. There was one final entry that was written days before Lionel was murdered by a gunman.

"Death will visit them all before the end of Doomsday."

Tess could not wrap her mind around that situation and she tapped her fingers across the desk, before she delved into another area of interest, security recordings that she uncovered over the last few days before Lex's trip to the Artic. Lex's body was uncovered, dead and decayed several days ago but Tess wanted to find out even more information regarding what she had at her disposal.

"Are you saying he's the one?"

That was Lex and Tess almost heard something, the faintest whisper but no matter how much she heard, the person who spoke was out of reach.

"The traveler, all this time...you've got me by the throat anyway, what's your stake in this?"

More silence but once again Tess swore she heard something in the silence.

"We do need to have a talk after what happened, Kal-El and I, after all of the lies.'

There was a long time where Tess should have heard words but there was nothing on the other end of the recording except for constant static. She fine tuned every single bit of the recording but there was nothing, nothing.

Tess read the final words that Lionel Luthor wrote before he passed on.

"Death will visit them all before the end of Doomsday."

The more she knew, the less Tess understood, and for someone like her, she did not like that at all.

The box in front of her presented another mystery, the same mystery that may have indirectly led to Lex's demise. Harry Potter stood before her as an enigma, someone that she wanted to understand but someone that seemed to be a few steps ahead of her. As much as Tess loathed to admit it, the ball was in Harry Potter's court.

Then she looked at the symbol, maybe not, given that these symbols followed Harry Potter around wherever he went. Tess wondered if she held an item that he required for whatever his destiny was. It would be prudent once more to get in touch with him and try and determine what his game was.

The killer continued to pile up his victims but given the context clues Tess read, there was every indication that Harry knew what was going on here, even if he did not have a way to defeat it. The Traveler was also in the middle of it and then there was Kal-El.

"Death will visit them all before the end of Doomsday."

A statement that Lionel made that would live on infamy that looped through Tess's mind.

Also, she heard a humming from the vault and she swung it open.

Tess swore that the orb started to hum and then she heard voices within it but it remained still, silent, and ominous in the vault. Tess tapped on the orb, it had her rattled, she'll admit that much. Yet the orb remained silent and quiet.

Almost too quiet.

Tess turned around and walked away. Once she was gone, a quiet voice spoke from within the orb.

"Soon, it will be fulfilled," a female voice stated from within the orb. "Harry will lead them, it's in his DNA, he will make all who oppose him kneel before him."

To Be Continued in the Next Chapter "Calm Before the Storm."