February 17, 2001 Coralis flew to the flyball practice an hour earlier to attend a meeting with the team officials. She remembered what the EBEE elder agents had told her a few days ago. Despite the confidence she’d shown during that meeting, she was hoping that she’d actually be able to renew her contract with The Northerners. She also remembered the elves attacking the royal vampire family in Chicago, and Prince Hendrick calling her the next day to let her know that their elf prisoner was a militant for a movement pushing for the elementals to go out of hiding. She felt that the elves striking King Matthew’s stronghold a few hours after EBEE elders told her to cut ties with the king’s youngest child wasn’t any coincidence, but she had to be able to prove it. “Three days ago, we received words from an EBEE representative, verifying that your contract with us was going to end, stating that it was in everyone’s best interest. However, as you know, we have been discussing extending y
February 18, 2001She stood in the middle of the EBEE main meeting room, with Andrew to her right. She didn’t want to be there, she knew that it meant trouble. She focused on steeling her mind, harder than she ever had to, harder than she did when facing Lord Meozo. Her mind went to Frank and she wondered if it wouldn’t be better to break up with him. She knew Princess Veronica could handle herself, but she also didn’t want more trouble coming her way: she didn’t want more attacks on the royal vampire family and wondered if it was related to her. “Blue Thunder, it was brought to our attention that your contract with The Northerners had been renewed for another 3 years. Is that correct?” said Phraton. “Yes, it is correct. I told you that my flyball career wasn’t going to end at the end of this season. When I agreed to start an apprenticeship with the European Bureau of Elemental Energy, I made it very clear that my flyball career was going to be my main focus, until it would be time t
April 11, 2001 – 10:00 Stephanie McNally, Frank’ sister, had been working part-time at Healing Moon, a clinic specializing in werewolf health, for the past few months. Located in a wooded area west of Mirabel, near Saint-Hermas community, it was considered a neutral ground for werewolf packs and other clans of shifters. She worked there with her friend Clarissa. For the local population unaware of the supernatural world, Healing Moon was considered a trauma centre for animal attacks. Locals would also bring their cats and dogs there for their regular checkups. Stephanie, however, knew better: two of her childhood friends were werewolves. She’d known Clarissa and Lily since elementary school, but found out the truth about what they were when going on a camping trip with them at 12. Clarissa knew that Stephanie was considering a career as a veterinarian and wasn’t afraid of werewolves, so she got her to start working at Healing Moon. She walked into the clinic to start her shift, an
April 11, 2001 – 11:05 “Yes, definitely,” said Coralis and looked at Emma, then at Jessica. “Once we figure out what we’re dealing with exactly, we’ll need to test you two out as well. I’m not sensing damage on your connection to your wolves, but he drew blood, so we’ll make sure that you’re not infected as well. Anyone else got into contact with them?” Emma and Jessica shook their head. “No. He arrived here last night and passed out as soon he passed the front door. He didn’t wake up until this morning,” said Jessica. “I smelled Turmeric on both of them, think we’re dealing with coven witches?” said Eva, sniffing the air toward Emma and Jessica. “I’m not smelling it on them.” “Think we’re dealing with something worse. Coven witches might have a hand in this, but there is something else at play. Owil’s connection to his wolf was cut off, it’s like someone highjacked it and was trying to summon his wolf. We’ll need to run some tests on his blood to determine what he’s been injected
April 11, 2001 – 12:10 “Technically speaking, I’m an elemental mage. A spirit mage to be precise. Some kind of witch according to uh, human lore.” “A mage? Wait, so a witch and a mage aren’t the same thing?” “Not at all. Most mages find it offensive to be called witches. Personally, I don’t really care, even if I don’t like the majority of witches. The main differences are in the way we use energy and how we call for it, but I do understand that even within the supernatural world, people don’t know the difference between a witch and a mage.” “Daaamn! Wait… can I say that or is damn a word I should avoid using? I’m sorry, I thought I knew all about the supernatural when I found out about werewolves, but clearly, I don’t know anything about it. I mean, I will always remember you saving my mom’s life a few months ago, but this explains so, so much. Can you fight like that because of what you are or it’s a skill you developed?” Coralis wanted to laugh over the damn comment, but she co
April 11, 2001 – 12:55 As soon as they walked into the clinic, Emma gestured for Coralis to follow her. “I gave him enough sedative to keep him out cold for hours, but it’s already wearing off,” said Emma, as Coralis removed her eyeglasses and slid them into her cloak. Coralis followed her to Luke’s room and saw him fighting his restraints. She rushed to him, brought her left hand to his chest and stared into his eyes. A light glow was coming out of her and everyone in the room gasped. Gradually, the patient calmed down. “Someone was trying to summon his wolf,” said Coralis. She removed her hand from his chest but kept looking into his eyes. “How is it even possible?” said Emma. “I know that demons and some mythical beings can be summoned, but I’ve never heard of a werewolf, or even of a Lycan, who could be summoned,” said Jessica. “That’s what we will find out when Eva comes back,” said Coralis. Stephanie was still in awe by what she saw. She didn’t know that demons exist
June 22, 2001 Stephanie McNally decided to join her coworkers for dinner and drinks after work. Emma’s pack was based in Saint-Jerome, a city near their workplace. They went to The Wooded Tavern, a restaurant bar located right outside of Emma’s pack-land. The establishment looked like a bungalow and sat at the end of an off-road that was hard to notice from the main road, because of the dense forest hiding its entry: people had to know it was there. Despite being operated by werewolves, local vampires would sometimes hang out there. The Northerners’ team members enjoyed going there once in a while after a game, when they didn’t want to be interrupted by fans or journalists. “It’s Friday night, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m in no rush to go back home. Wanna go to The Wooded Tavern?” said Steven, one of their defenders, who was in his first season with the flyball team. “I’d be down for that, actually. Frank is working tonight and I didn’t get called by any agency for a case
June 29, 2001 – 14:51 Coralis was at her flyball practice, one of the last ones of the season. When she would be up in the sky during a flyball game or practice, she’d usually leave her hologram on the ground or in the locker. However, she was expecting a call from Eva, regarding the ghoul case they had been working on the previous week, so she kept it on her. The practice was almost over. She stood on the ground, in the middle of the field, listening to Brono’s briefing. She felt her hologram vibrating and pulled it out of her cloak. She walked away from the group to answer it. “Can you come pick me up at metro Henri-Bourassa? Healing Moon is requesting our presence,” said Eva. “Healing Moon? Right now?” “General Tobly wanted to send me and Emery there, but apparently, the Healing Moon insisted on you and me. High Fay Ellya agreed, because it involved ghouls, and well, it could be related to what we’d been working on in Grenville last week. She warned them that it could take long
July 20, 2003Despite going to bed in the middle of the night following the celebrations of winning the Silver Cup, once again, Coralis woke up early. She hoped she wouldn’t get called by the EBEE to go on a case. She knew Frank would be working all day, so she agreed to meet with Panjik and Sonylla for training.Frank woke up while she was still busy making breakfast.“Morning luv!” he said while standing behind her kissing her neck with his hands on her waist.“Morning!” she said, turning her head to kiss him back on the mouth. “Breakfast is almost ready.”“Still wanna go train today? With the workload you’ve had for the past few months, I’d think you deserve a break,” said Frank as he filled his mug with coffee.Frank sat on a stool by the kitchen island.“Yes, I need to. Panjik wants to help me train my spirit magic and give additional fire magic training to Sonylla, and I won’t pass on that. I was supposed to go to London for hand combat and weapon training with the EBEE… but I’l
June 8, 2003 – 16:45They chuckled as they got deeper into the forest. The scent trail led them to a clearing and a hunter’s cabin at the back of it.They saw five goblins playing cards outside of the cabin. Coralis, Veronica and Eva stood behind the tree line and watched the goblins for a minute.“If the vampires involved don’t have a daylight bracelet, they won’t stick their nose outside. We each kill one goblin, tie up the other two and we then go into the cabin,” said Veronica.They bumped each other’s fists and walked toward the goblins. As soon as they saw the trio approaching, the goblins stood up, accidentally reversing the card table.Without stopping nor saying a word, Coralis and Veronica unsheathed their swords and Eva pulled out her knife. The goblins walked toward them.“What are you doing here? You aren’t supposed to be here,” said one of them.The women quickly beheaded three of his companions and Veronica got behind him, grabbed his wrists and pushed him down. Coralis
June 8, 2003 – 14:00“Lucas! That smells like him,” said Trisha.“Nah, that has an EBEE stench,” said Eva, sniffing the air. “Only Blue has officially been sent here. The smell purge probably was just in case I’d be here, but I agree with her, this looks like a setup. In the middle of a human town like that, either they want to force her to expose herself to humans to solve the case… or they hope to be able to take her out alone when she searches for the missing people.”“Last year, some elders at the EBEE worked with Lucas to take down my family, but they failed. I think the setup isn’t just against Blue, it’s also to expose us. Why else would they leave corpses drained of blood for humans to find?” said Veronica.“All right, so we will solve this case the old-fashioned way and talk in code between us when town folks are around,” said Coralis, her hand on the door handle. “Here is what we will do. We will go next door to confirm our theory, and then we check on the corpses. We will d
June 8, 2003 – 11:00Coralis hovered above the rooftop of Eva’s apartment building. Because of her line of work, Eva didn’t want to live on any pack lands, to prevent endangering innocent pack members if one of her enemies decided to seek out revenge against her.Given their long list of enemies, Coralis had her building warded recently, to prevent any elementals from entering Eva’s building, except for her very short list of trusted ones. She also warded it to allow Eva to go in and out of her apartment using portals to and from her rooftop, without any human seeing anyone mysteriously appearing and disappearing from it.“I hate portals, but I think I’m going to start using that method when coming home covered in blood,” said Coralis as Eva sat behind her.“Are we still meeting with Princess Veronica in a small town near Chicago called Clear Valley?”“Yes, Alfredino sent me there. I called Veronica right after I ended my call with him. No one in her family called the EBEE and she sai
April 26, 2003After her flyball game in France, she stopped at her London flat. She hadn’t been there for a month and Henry told her she had a pile of mail waiting for her.“Hey sis, it feels like forever since we haven’t seen each other, yet you still live here, technically,” said Erik.“True, last time I stopped here for the night, you weren’t there.”“Ah yes, we were playing in Asia. Are you still working in Scotland?”“Not at the moment. This past month I’ve been working more in the United States, but I’m being sent to just about everywhere for consulting works lately.”“That explains why you’ve been getting a lot of mail from EBEE,” said Henry.“While I’m here, I should also collect my stash of uncashed checks.”“Speaking of the United States, we got a tip regarding Fart in the Sea, somewhere in Florida. You in?” said Gus.“If I don’t have to be across the planet when you’re going there, count me in.”Coralis had a drink with them and took off toward Montreal. She arrived at her
March 10, 2003Coralis got back home in the middle of the night. They considered installing a pet door on their kitchen window. Their back door didn’t have a screen door. The window did have a screened layer, but it wasn’t the time of the year to leave the windows open and they didn’t want squirrels to come in during summertime. It would look suspicious if only Cheetah could pass through a pet door, so they decided against it.Once again, she had a lot of blood on herself, but her winter coat was clean. She was hoping that no one would notice the blood on her face as she crossed the street and was thankful that Frank chose an apartment located across the street from the park.She took a shower to get the blood off her skin and crawled into bed next to Frank. He turned to bring her closer to him.“Hey luv!” he said in a sleepy voice, as she passed her left arm around his chest. “How was your night?”“Long and weird. Elf against pixies, goblins and djinns in the mix. We were 6 agents an
December 24, 2002 – 21:35“There is a lot of truth to that, I think,” said Coralis.“What about your bloodlines? You two are pure-blooded, right?” said Lizzy.“Yes, we are. Mine originates from the Roman goddess Salacia, we’re water mages. We’re close to our god and although most of my family lives in an elemental realm… somewhere underground… we never agreed to the radical ideology that wants us to rule over humans. We believe we should guide and protect, not rule and enslave.”Sebastian removed his vest and rolled up the short sleeve of his shirt to reveal what looked like a small tattoo behind his left shoulder, a pattern symbolizing his family goddess.“When we reach maturity, usually a few years after graduation, but depends on bloodline and, well, life events,” continued Sebastian while putting his vest back on, “we get the mark of our family god. It appears on our skin overnight or gradually, depending on the bloodline.”“Oh, so we could potentially be in danger from your kind?
December 24, 2002 – 21:00“Uh, right, sure. I admit I’m not fully knowledgeable about human marriage rituals, I mean, ceremonies, except from what I saw in the movies I watched with Stephanie. I’ve had classes on human society at school so we can blend in better, but the teacher didn’t elaborate on the marriage part. Coralis might have to teach me about it,”“Nah, my past among humans taught me about divorce, I’m not a reference there.”“Right, so. Yes, we view mates as soulmates and unlike humans, we don’t do divorce. For us, when we decide to take a mate, it’s a forever thing and the ritual ensures that. However, I will also point out that when it comes to mixed couples, I mean, when an elemental takes a non-elemental mate, or spouse, we may or may not do the full ritual, it depends on the couple and uh, the non-elemental partner,” said Sebastian.“Why does it differ, is it because it involved a certain amount of magic?” said Frank, his arm still around Coralis’s shoulder.“Partiall
December 24, 2002 – 19:10“BRO!” said Stephanie and Frank at the same time.They all stopped eating.“Why would we?” said Coralis.“Humans aren’t our enemies, I don’t see why we would kill you all just because we could,” said Sebastian.“I’m not trying to offend anyone, but I can’t help myself from wondering if you’re all into a fake bubble, feeling safe when you aren’t, although I can hear myself thinking clearly, so I don’t know. I’m confused about all of this. Coralis, if you grew up in orphanages, shouldn’t you hate us all? Unless you didn’t.”“BRO! That’s enough!” said Frank, then looked at Coralis, “Luv, you don’t have to answer him.”“It’s fine,” she said while massaging his thigh to reassure him. “It’s a legit concern, especially considering the current heated climate among elemental clans and other supernatural. There are a lot of clans and factions out there that want me to hate humans enough to turn against them.”“But you would never, I know you would never, right? Neither