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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 5581304" data-attributes="member: 12037">They pulled their car over to where the grab had taken place, taking a quick look around in case any obvious signs remained. The job they had described to them was quick... professional. They knew there wouldn't be anything mundane to find, but they looked anyway. The van had been staking the place out, after all. They knew he would be coming out, but how? That was the million dollar question."You guys sense any magical mumbo-jumbo here?"Emerald shook her head. "Not me.""Nothing with me either," Jack replied."If there was some at one time, it's been washed away by the rain," Emerald added."What are the odds they were plain, ordinary, mortals?" Max asked. Emerald and Jack swapped a look of uncertainty.Max sighed. "Alright." He wagged his fingers in the air. "Well, do your stuff."Jack focused his mind and held the hairs of the kidnapped man. The hairs would act as a link for his tracking spell, a necessary component in order to form a bond for the spell to take hold. There had been pictures of him in the apartment, and he formed an image in his head. He pulled out a piece of chalk and drew a circle on the sidewalk to help contain the energy and serve as a construct to hold the spell before he released it. The ground was wet, but he managed to get it done without too much difficulty.As he started performing his spell, Jack and Emerald noticed the dark figure of a man across the street in an alley way. He was short and stocky with a sparse head of hair. His nose was broken, and he had a scowl that looked like it was sculpted perfectly to fit onto his particular face. As soon as they saw him, he backed into the shadows and disappeared into the alley. They exchanged looks, and each grabbed a shot gun from the car. Emerald quietly slid along the walls of the building as Max walked straight down the alley in full view. They had some questions to ask. Jack saw them go, but continued his spell. He would join them in a minute."What do we have here?" Max called out as the man came into view. There were some others with him, but they were in the shadows and he couldn't see them very well. They fidgeted constantly with their hands.Looks like some druggies, Emerald thought to herself, as she crouched, shotgun at the ready, not having been seen. She counted. One... three... five. Hopefully Max would get some information out of them, but she figured a little backup never hurt.The short man deepened his scowl at the sight of Max, if that were possible, his frown sinking. They couldn't see any weapons on him or the others. "I could ask you the same thing. What brings you around here?""We're investigating a kidnapping," Max replied matter-o-factly, giving no inflection or sign of emotion behind the words. "Now, I've answered your question. You answer mine.""Never said I would." He licked his lips. "So, I suggest we just go our own ways."Max shook his head. "Just tell me if you know anything, ugly. Your hanging out here is awfully suspicious. I think you know something, and I think you're going to tell me if you know what's good for you."The man's eyes narrowed. "No more suspicious than you. Maybe I shouldn't take you at your word." He growled a bit. It was deep and guttural, like an animal.It was then that Jack, having completed his spell, arrived to see what was going on. He took one look at the man, his first good look, and lost his breath for a moment. It was unmistakably a bad job on the disguise, but he was the only one who had experience with this particular creature before: a flesh eater of the worst kind. "Ghoul!" he shouted out as soon as he saw it, his finger extended.That one word was all it took to set everything off.The ghoul was fast. Max was only halfway through bringing up his shotgun when the monster was on him, its muscles bulging in strange places, claws extending from its fingertips, and its teeth sharpening. He barely had time to fall back, almost tripping over his own feet at the sudden onslaught, two of the sharp talons raking across his arm in a sharp burst of pain, but he managed to put some distance between himself and his attacker.Emerald hadn't been seen. She let loose a shotgun blast right at the ghoul. Ghouls might be fast, and they might be tough, but a shotgun fills them with holes just about as good as anything else, and it howled in pain as its sides were ripped and torn by the buckshot, blood spilling out onto the street. The monster looked directly at her burning with rage.With a word and a motion, Jack tried to take this opportunity to catch the ghoul off guard. He launched himself directly at the ghoul, aiming directly for its head. The ghoul saw him coming, though, and ducked under his flying kick, sending Jack further through the air than anticipated. He landed on the figures in the back, knocking himself and two of them onto the ground in a heap. Getting the first look at them, he caught his second surprise of the night.He had never seen this before, but he knew what it was. They were human, mortals, but enthralled to the point where they had no mind left of their own. They were merely shells of rage, waiting to be aimed wherever they could find a target. He could see it in their eyes, they were gone. They were completely and utterly empty.Max caught his footing, and finally got his shotgun up, pointing it directly at the beast perhaps five paces in front of him, and he fired. It tried to move out of the way, but it was too late. Its arm was nearly ripped off and fell into an unusable swing, the ghoul letting out a howl of pain that echoed through the alley.Behind it, the enthralled mass came down on Jack, who was on his hands and knees. They moved around, trying to surround him, to keep him from getting away, but he backed himself into a corner and slipped toward Emerald, keeping an escape route ready for himself if he needed. One tried to grab him, but he threw the guy off. Then they started kicking at his head, chest, and legs. They were wild, though, and Jack managed to fend them off while pushing himself up against the wall. Grabbing one, he threw it into another, slamming their heads together with a slight crack, both falling to the ground unconscious.The ghoul decided it had had enough, and jumped up to a fire escape to make a break for the rooftop. Unfortunately for it, Emerald was ready. Closing her hand into a fist, she focused her power through a ring, an item to to help power her air spells. With a thought she formed a quick buffet of wind that threw the ghoul against the building hard. There was the sound of glass breaking and a scream from somewhere inside the building. "It's just unconscious. We need the information, Max.""Yeah, well, we've got to get out of here." Max yelled out to the others, as he mounted the fire escape to grab the ghoul. Saying this wasn't a nice part of town was an understatement, but the police would show up eventually. There had been enough gunshots and screams that somebody was bound to make a call to 911. As he reached the ghoul, he grimaced. He was going to get black blood all over his clothes... and his car. "The things I do for the job," he muttered under his breath.At street level, while Max was doing that, Emerald went over to Jack. He had mopped up the opponents there, who were on the ground, still breathing."They're beyond help." He said. "They're just going to wake up in a couple of hours, and with no one to tell them what to do, they'll go on a rampage. Maybe on the cops." He frowned. He didn't say what he was thinking, because he couldn't be sure. But, he knew that one of the creatures that did this were Black Court vampires. They created their thralls by destroying any shred of humanity in them with black magic and used them as foot soldiers. The three of them were unlikely to be able to take on a Black Court vampire. The alternative, that these were the handiwork of a warlock, was almost just as bad. Anyone who could do this to another human would surely be driven completely insane by the darkness of the intent. Black magic wasn't something one toyed with.Emerald didn't hesitate. She shot each of them in the head with her pistol.Jack looked at her. "That won't look good for us if somebody points the cops to us.""Then we'll just have to get out of here really fast," Max replied as he hit the ground, ghoul all over his shoulders and back."What's that smell?" asked Emerald.Max didn't respond. He had a trash bag in his trunk, which he tried to stuff the ghoul into, and they tied him up in the back seat as Jack drove away."Still have that tracking spell up?" Emerald asked."Yeah. I'm headed that way."Max sat in the back with the ghoul. "Wakey wakey," he said slapping him around a little as they hit the on ramp to the highway. "We've got some questions for you."</blockquote>

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