Of Inferno, Tempest.. [Prologue] And Other Crap Like That

The world was blurry when I woke up.

We were moving, but I was sitting down, so I assumed we were in a car. I was sitting in the backseat, my head resting on someone’s shoulder. It was still night, but with a tinge of dawn at the edges.

I lifted my head. “Whu… where are we? What’s goin on?” My voice came out thicker than normal. The head slightly above mine turned and Cabe’s face came into focus.

“Shh, don’t worry, babe. We’re still in that fucking cop car. One of the pigs tackled you from behind and you hit your head. You might have a concussion though so don’t fall asleep on me ok?” he said, bringing his arm awkwardly up to wrap it around my shoulders. I sat up slightly.

“Ok. How long was I out?” Something cold and metallic jangled against my wrists and I realised I was wearing handcuffs.

“Oh, my God. Handcuffs?” I said incredulously, suddenly pissed off, “Are they serious?” I could hear quiet conversation in the front of the car. “What are they going to do to us? Hey, you!” I said, banging my bound hands against the barrier between the front and back of the car, “What the hell is going on? Where the fuck are you taking us?”

The cop in the passenger seat turned around. “Do yourself a favour and calm the fuck down, sweetheart. We’re taking you to the Police Station. Where people go when they get caught having illegal fireworks. Oh, and alcohol, and drugs,” he said sarcastically.

“You can’t prove that and you know it.” I said. “We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Right Cabe?” He nodded silently.

“Oh no, we can prove it, alright. So I suggest you shut the hell up, for your own good,” the one driving butted in.

“Yeah, right,” I glared, slumping back in my seat. We started to slow down and turn into an underground parking area, underneath a large grey stone building. “About time,” I muttered under my breath.

After being practically dragged and shoved out of the car, we walked towards a lift and got in. One of the cops – Sgt. Wilson, his badge read – pressed the button for Floor 3. We hummed upwards.

Once we reached Floor 3 and the door opened, the other cop – Sgt Harrin – shoved Cabe in the back and walked out of the lift. I started to follow, but Wilson grabbed my shoulder and stopped me.

“What the hell? This is Floor 3, dumbass. Aren’t we meant to get off too?” I said angrily, shrugging his hand off. Cabe turned around outside the elevator and the doors started to close. He started to struggle against the cops holding and I managed to mouth ‘love you’ at him before the doors closed.

“Allie! What the fuck? Where are you taking her?” he yelled at them, but the doors had already closed. This time the cop pushed the button for Floor 7.

“Floor 7? What the hell is on Floor 7?” I asked, still glaring at him. He had the nerve to actually smile.

“Fiery little bitch, aren’t you? Ironic.” He said, pretty much to himself, looking me over.

“Pig,” I sneered at him, slightly puzzled at why that was ironic, and then turned my back on him again. We reached Floor 7, which I assumed was the top floor, but the door didn’t open. Instead, I was practically thrown off balance as we moved sideways.

Yeah. Sideways.

“Woah. What the hell?” I said, stumbling slightly. We stopped again, and then started to go down. “What is this, the fucking Great Glass Elevator?” Where are we going? I asked him, but he stayed quiet.

We started to speed up, going down faster. I tried to figure out which floor we were going to but my sense of direction was a tiny bit screwed up by being in a mirrored box.

The elevator stopped suddenly and I lurched forward slightly, while the cop stayed solid. This just annoyed me more. He reached forward to grab my shoulder again and once again I shoved him off. “I can walk by myself, thanks,” I said acidly.
“Fine. Walk.” The doors opened onto what just looked like a normal police office. Only without the windows.

“Huh? Where are the windows? Are we underground?” I asked the cop, but he just prodded me and kept walking. There were other pigs there, but dressed in a variant of uniform I had never seen before. They all looked me over as I walked in, taking in my bright red and black hair, tight black pants, black tank top with strategic holes ripped in it and black eyeliner. And then the handcuffs. I stared back at them all defiantly.

Sgt Wilson, or whatever his name was, led me around a couple of corners and down a corridor. A woman approached us as we walked down it, stopping us and giving me a once over before turning to Wilson and saying, “This is the last one?”

He nodded. “Picked her up right where they said.”

She pursed her lips. I guessed her to maybe have been late forties. Her hair was dark brown, with hints of grey in the top, and she wore a black pantsuit. “I never did approve of the way they chose them,” she said to him, “but it seems to work, I suppose.”

“Yeah, it does,” Wilson said, “but shit, they always seem to need a fucking attitude adjustment.”

I glared at him. “Adjust away, asshole,” I sneered. He started to push me down the corridor. “It was nice to meet you,” I said in mock-politeness to the woman.

“Get me the report once you’ve dropped her off,” the woman said. “I’ll be at my desk.”

“Sure thing, Chris. After I finish bandaging myself up from the biting and scratching,” he said, obviously trying to be funny. I mimed hysterical laughter.

“Oh, you’re so funny. Seriously. Do you do stand-up? Cause with wit like that you would just kill audiences.”

“Shut up, brat. In here.” He opened a door and pushed me into what looked like another office. There was the usual bookshelf, filing cabinet, huge desk. What was slightly unusual were the four chairs sitting on one side of it, three of them filled by people who looked about my age – one girl, and two guys. They turned to stare at me as I walked in. On the other side of the desk was another chair, this time filled by a wiry man about fifty-something years old, with light grey hair cropped short. It was him who spoke first, in an accent that was vaguely European.

“Ah, Allie. Nice of you to join us. Please take a seat.” He gestured towards the empty chair. Then he looked up at Sgt Wilson. “Thankyou, Alan, you may go. Oh, and make sure she stays, at least for a little while. I hope it wasn’t too big a problem.”

“Not at all,” ‘Alan’ said dryly as he unlocked one of the handcuffs and then fastened it to the arm of the chair. I was trapped.

“Wait. What the hell? This can’t be legal! Let me go!” I exclaimed, pulling on the cuffs in vain.

“Alright, now that we’re all here, we can begin.” The man said, looking at the four of us. He kind of reminded me a little of Sir Ian McKellen, only not. “My name is Mr. Airaldi, and what I’m about to tell you is going to change your life.”

There was a dramatic pause.

“Uh huh. Right. Well, if it’s all the same to you, I like my life the way it is. So I might just leave now.” I said, pulling a bobby pin out of my hair and fiddling with the lock on the cuffs. After a second, the mechanism popped open and I pulled the cuff off my wrist.

“Well, I don’t know how you did that, but the door is locked anyway. You may as well listen to me.” Airaldi said, waiting patiently for me to try the door handle and sit back down, which I did. Unfortunately, he was right.

I sat still and glared at him contemptuously. Or what I hoped was contemptuous.

“First of all, I’ll start introductions. Everyone, this is Althea Leclair.”

I grimaced. “It’s Allie. How do you even know my name? Have you been stalking me? Is that what this is? You’ve been stalking the four of us for no apparent reason and now you decide to hold us captive? You are sick.”

“Uh, no, it was on your licence when they brought you in. Although I did know it beforehand, I am not a stalker. Allie, from left to right this is Rhett, Lorelei and Art.” Airaldi said calmly.

I looked around at the other three sitting in chairs to my right. Rhett was… well, gorgeous. His hair was white-blonde, and cut so it swept slightly forward onto his face in straightish feathers. It complimented pale, almost chiselled features, and his eyes were this dark, sea-storm blue, the eyebrow above one of them framed at the end with a silver spiked bar. He was wearing a shirt the same colour as his eyes that had an Aereogramme logo splashed across the front and dark cargo shorts. There was a word tattooed on the inside of his left wrist that I couldn’t read. His eyes seemed to bore into mine as we looked at each other, and I turned away, suddenly flustered.

Lorelei was pretty – her medium length dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, revealing a multitude of piercings lining her ears. Her shirt was plain black, elbow length sleeves and button down, the top few buttons undone to show her bikini underneath, also black. Slightly darker patches over her chest indicated it was still damp. She was also wearing bright, royal blue boardies and a severely pissed off expression.

Art was also pretty hot, but in a different way to Rhett. His hair, far from being blonde, was a shade which looked like it might have been… grey? I couldn’t tell in the light. Not a light, old grey – just a couple of shades down from black, but not brown. How odd. It was just cut all the same length over his head, about a few inches long and straight. Almost emo. He was wearing a green shirt that said ‘I Love Your Mum’ and black shorts, and had snakebites in his lower lip. He turned his head to look at me, winked and I saw a shoulder tattoo poking out from the neck and arm of his t shirt. Both of the guys were fairly muscly.

All of them were just as handcuffed to their seat as I was before.

“Greetings, fellow captives of a stalker,” I said sarcastically, recovering my wits and waving at them before turning back to Airaldi. “Now what?”

He sighed. “First of all, you aren’t going to believe any of this at first, and I don’t expect you to. I will ask you to keep an open mind, however.”

“Yeah, yeah. Are you actually going to tell us or just leave us cuffed here forever?” Lorelei said impatiently.

“Yes, yes, I’m just warning you. Alright. Who here has seen Underworld?”

“What, like… the movie?” Rhett asked, his deep voice sounding puzzled.

“Yes, the movie,” Mr. A said.

We all nodded warily. “So?”

“Van Helsing? The Village? The TV series Supernatural? Blade? The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Anyone go to see 30 Days of Night?”

All of us nodded for at least one of them. “Why is this at all relevant?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

“Ever think they might be real?” he asked us.

Lorelei snorted derisively. “No.”

Airaldi smiled slightly. “Wrong.”

We all stared at him. Then Art exhales thoughtfully and goes, “Uh, what the fuck?” His voice had a joking quality to it that seemed to be missing from Rhett’s.

“Fair enough, I suppose. But believe it or not, Hollywood pretty much got something right for once. Those… things… you see in movies more or less actually exist, albeit in slightly different forms.”

“Are you crazy?” Lorelei inquired of Airaldi. Then her eyes widened. “Oh God, we’re being held captive by a crazy person.” She started to tug on her cuff, unsuccessfully.

“Calm down, Lorelei, I assure you I am completely sane. Those … beings – vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, etc – actually exist. I, along with many others, have not only seen them, but fought them. That is what this underground part of the building is for. We are the Department of Paranormal and Supernatural Activity, in charge of taking care of these beasts of the night, cleaning up after them, and protecting the public.”

There was a slight pause.

“I thought you said you were sane.”

“I am.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

I broke in. “I thought that sort of thing only existed in America… and… if this is real, and you aren’t insane… what does it have to do with us?”

“You believe this crap?” Lorelei said incredulously.

“I want to, is that the same thing?” I answered, still looking at Airaldi, who just smiled.

“Ok, me too,” Rhett said sceptically. “But you still haven’t explained where we come in.”

“I’m getting to that. I can still see you’re not convinced, which is going to be difficult. Just… keep an open mind, alright?” Airaldi asked us, and we nodded slowly. “Now, as I explained, this is a branch of the Government. It’s a whole Department devoted to Paranormal Relations, which means we interact with these… creatures… and deal with them. That can mean anything from negotiating a peace treaty with a vampire clan to eradicating some of the smaller, more irritating vermin.”

“I see,” Art said in a voice that implied he didn’t see at all.

“Now the thing is, as you may have worked out already, that we at the Department are still all only human. We have a large amount of resources at our behest but it still doesn’t match the fact that these creatures have supernatural abilities. Luckily for us, nature decided to intervene. In April of 1938 – yes, 1938, this has been around for a long time – four abnormal teenagers were born who, on their eighteenth birthday came into possession of a piece of jewellery. They looked like this.” Airaldi bent to get a bunch of old looking photographs from a desk drawer and distributed them to us. They were all different types and styles – there was a ring, a necklace, an armband and a bracelet.

“The jewellery, when worn on that birthday, revealed their true nature,” he continued while we looked, “and each of them came into their power. It would turn out that they were not human at all, but elementals, destined to control fire, the earth, the oceans and the air. They were able to use it to fight the same thing we do today. Ever since then, they have been seamlessly replaced by a new generation, every seventeen years.”

He paused again and looked at us.

“I believe that you are that new generation.”