In many ways, Vernon was her opposite. He was a big boy, over six and a half feet tall, well-muscled, but not overly so. He wore his hair a little long and shaggy under his cowboy hat, and he preferred tactical-wear to a suit and tie. You wouldn’t catch him dead in a pair of loafers. It was always combat boots, and he was always armed; even in the depths of the UN HQ. His carefree attitude was often confused as him not giving a shit, and sometimes that was true. It was also true that the Response Division needed him a hell of a lot more than he needed it.
“You are a Supervisory Special Agent of my division, Vernon, if you’re going to take a nap at least do it in your office,” she continued, venting her frustration.
“I have an office?” he was genuinely surprised.
“Fuck,” Evelyn sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose to ward off a migraine. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Easy, send me back on the road,” he replied, and started to lean back to throw his feet up again, but stopped himself.
Vernon Dud was made for many things. As a shifter, he was made for strength and speed. As a mage, he was an incredibly rare hybrid that could bring an extra level of power to deal with every threat. Lastly, as a Texan, he brought two, heavy-caliber, rune-encrusted Colt Frontier six shooters to the show; and the ability to shoot the wings off a fly at fifty meters. He was meant to drive fast cars and fuck loose women while listening to the devil’s music. He was not meant to sit in an office and play politics.
He also shouldn’t be a supervisory special agent. SSA’s usually took ten to fifteen years of dedication to achieve. He was only twenty-four, and he’d only been promoted because they knew they needed to pay him more to keep him. Most of the division was human. The division didn’t track down humans that refused to register. The mission was to keep track of the extraordinary, and those same extraordinary people weren’t inclined to work for the people they saw as infringing on their freedoms.
Vernon could accomplish missions alone that took teams of specially trained humans. He knew that. Evelyn knew that, and his ego was sized accordingly. So, sometimes, it was her job to bring it back down a notch.
“Be careful what you wish for,” her exasperated sigh shifted, and Vernon tensed. “I’ve got something on the threat board for you to check out.”
The threat board housed everything from shifter serial killers to mages conjuring eldritch terrors. Vernon tried to remember anything that was blinking red on the board as he’d left the room. Things were mostly green with a few yellow spots.
Evelyn pulled a tablet from her desk drawer and tossed it to Vernon. Technically, he should have been carrying his UN-issued tablet with him at all times, but it was probably still sitting in the office he didn’t remember he had.
“This was just elevated to yellow. Low priority, but still, it gets you back on the road,” she waited while he read the synopsis.
As he read, his face soured. “You want me to check in on a high school?”
“Yes,” she replied seriously. “There was a localized, unregistered, unnatural weather event. Those require a permit, and there was none on file with the local PD or us.”
“A permit violation . . . at a high school,” he deadpanned, hoping this was a joke. “Can’t the local PD handle this?”
“No,” she replied just as serious. “The school is full of the rich and famous; human and supernatural alike. The local PD doesn’t have the balls to go up there. They need someone with enough weight to throw around before they’ll even step on campus.”
“So, I’m a glorified babysitter,” he closed his eyes tight and hoped this was all just a bad dream.
“At least you aren’t here making my life more difficult,” she leveled with him. “I’ve got you a bus ticket that leaves from Grand Central in an hour. Get your go bag and get out of here,” she gave a wave of dismissal and turned her attention to other pressing issues.
Vernon wanted to argue with her, but she’d already moved on. “Fine,” he growled, and for the hundredth time wished he’d been born a hundred and fifty years ago.
He would kill to be a desperado, sheriff, or a US Marshall in the wild west. A life of gambling, whoring, and fighting sounded just fine to him. He unconsciously gave his revolvers a stroke and headed back to the room to grab his kit. That secured, he headed for the lobby to catch a cab.
He passed lines of protesters, human and supernatural; chanting and marching in a designated area. Some had signs concerning income inequality, others human rights, but by far the majority were to disband his division and repeal the WRA. Since he didn’t wear a patch designating his division, and his badge was tucked away in his bag, he didn’t draw the ire of the crowd.
“Thank gods,” he thought as a yellow cab pulled out of line to pick him up. “He just couldn’t deal with anymore stupidity today.”
Chapter 6
“What in the ever-loving fuck was that?” Lilith regained consciousness in near-complete darkness.
The first sign something was wrong was that she didn’t snap to being fully awake. She was drowsy, groggy even, and that had never happened. Of course, she was only eighteen, but from everything her mother told her, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Succubae didn’t need sleep like humans. A few hours every couple of days was enough, and if she stayed fed, she could go for weeks
