Logan wanted to be upset with Sarah, he really did. Not only was she the reason the artifact recovery failed, she also got herself cursed while doing it. Seeing weakness weakness, his beast urged him to use that opening to attack. Its rage affected him enough to growl, making the girl squeak and shrink back further.

  He forcefully suppressed his beast and took a deep breath. “I’m going to contact Master Sigurd and give him my report.”

  Miyuki wished him luck as he got up and walked to the wall-mounted TV. He pressed his thumb to a circle on the border. He immediately felt the tingling sensation of a magi-tech sensor. After the scan completed, it turned on with a line of text across the center asking for instructions. He told the screen to connect him to Master Sigurd. After giving his personal security code, a line saying “calling” blinked.

  He only needed to wait a few seconds before the call connected. Master Sigurd was sitting at his Los Angeles office with the city skyline spread behind him through floor-to-ceiling windows. Logan put his fist over his heart in the being salute. “Logan, why are you contacting me? Did something happen?”

  Logan’s eye twitched as he lowered his fist. “Yes sir. Do you want the good news, the bad news or the worse news?

  “Suprise me,” he said flatly.

  “The good news is that we were able to retrieve the artifact.”

  “Alright,” Master Sigurd nodded, “and the rest?”

  Logan hesitated, “the bad news is one of the archeologists got to it first and became beast cursed. We were able to collect them just after it happened so there weren’t any other witnesses.”

  “Damn. I am hesitant to ask but…what’s the worse news?”

  “We were ambushed by six crusaders as we were returning to our plane. They had the same stealth ability as when they attacked me while also using what are probably anti-being bullets. We have collected samples of both and I left a tracking token so a cleanup crew can remove the evidence.”

  Master Sigurd frowned. “Anti-being bullets?”

  “Yes sir. When in skin contact both the amulet holding the stealth enchantment and the bullets felt like our skin was being singed without any actual damage being done. When I was shot with them they felt like they were burning me from the inside. The feeling quickly spread before immediately stopping once they were removed. They caused increased pain and a sapping weakness. If I didn’t have my regeneration I would have easily been disabled.”

  As Logan spoke Master Sigurd’s frown grew worse until his eyebrows met forming a straight line. “That does…complicate things,” he said carefully. “Is the cursed there?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Show them to me.”

  He found her still sitting on the couch but had stopped crying, watching him with puffy red eyes. She didn’t move even though she had heard the conversation. Miyuki got up, gently grabbed Sarah’s arm, and pulled her to her feet. Sarah shuffled forward until she stood next to Logan.

  He didn’t know how far the camera showed so he slid to his right and had her stand where he was. Even without focusing his power on his senses he smelled the fear practically dripping off the girl. She looked like a naughty pup with an upset parent bearing down on them.

  Master Sigurd put on a smile reminiscent of a loving grandfather. “Child, what is your name?”

  “Sarah,” she answered meekly.

  His face softened further. “Listen child,” he said in a calm tone as if talking to a scared animal, “you have entered something far beyond anything you could have imagined. You have entered a world where dreams and nightmares come true. We are the ones who keep the balance. We make sure humans are safe from all the things that go bump in the night.”

  He sat back in his chair. “We will not hurt you unless you resist. You must understand, what we are doing is for your own good.”

  Sarah bristled. “My own good? You kidnap me for practically no reason, tell me I’ll never see my family again, and throw me into a situation I can’t make heads or tails of. How is any of that for my own good?!”

  Logan was both surprised and upset at her outburst. He was further surprised by his master’s laughter.

  “What’s so funny?!” She yelled at him.

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  Master Sigurd slowly brought himself back to focus. “It’s nothing really, I just have the feeling you’ll fit in just fine. The first thing you need to survive our world is a fearless disposition. I would call being kidnapped by two agents and yelling at their boss quite fearless.” His smile then fell. “Unfortunately, without strength, courage is stupidity.”

  He crossed his arms and started thinking. Sarah was going to interrupt until he placed a hand on her shoulder. She just glared at him.

  “Fine,” he said leaning forward, “I’m going to call a full council to go over your…discoveries. When you touch down, you’ll get in the waiting transport and travel directly here, understood?”

  “Yes sir,” Logan saluted.

  “I expect you to be ready to present your findings to the Council upon arrival, and bring the new girl with you.” With a single motion Master Sigurd moved and ended the call.

  ****************************************************

  Miyuki didn’t know what to think. On one hand she was relieved that it didn’t sound like they were going to be punished. On the other a full council was being called. There had only been two in her entire life, and she would know since her mother complained about each of them for the next decade. It turned out Logan was just like her.

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t know whether to breathe or panic.” he started pacing up and down the cabin.

  “This is bad. This is really bad.”

  “What do you think this means?” Miyuki asked.

  He stopped and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m guessing The Light is a bigger threat than we thought. I’m not sure how they were able to ambush me twice in a row. I have my suspicions but nothing concrete.”

  She understood where he was going. Either they were hacked or there was a mole. Normally, she would think that either option was impossible. Their communications were either done magically or with magi-tech, neither of which regular humans would be able to use. Keepers should all be devoted to the protection and betterment of the being-kind. The checks, both magical and mondaine, should weed out anyone who would be willing to feed information to a bunch of fanatical terrorists.

  “Hey,” Sarah said, “someone tell me what’s going on.”

  Logan was too busy pacing to answer her.

  “A meeting of the five most powerful magical beings in existence was called together,” Miyuki said.

  “So?”

  Miyuki looked her straight in the eye. “They don’t meet lightly, or at all. The last time a full council was called, the Chernobyl disaster happened.”

  Sarah glared at her. “You seriously want me to believe that you people are responsible for Chernobyl?”

  “All our people are responsible for is trying to get some beings out of a messed up lab that was doing horrific experiments on them. When the scientists saw they were going to lose, they started a meltdown. The rest of it was entirely due to the crap system the plant was built with.”

  “Sure, let's assume you’re being honest. What does this have to do with me?” Sarah asked indignantly. “I’m the victim here. You guys are the ones who kidnapped me.”

  To be honest, Miyuki was a little impressed. The girl who only minutes before was scared out of her mind was yelling at two people she personally witnessed jump into active gunfire. Her beast was already influencing her. Either that or her anger outweighed her fear.

  Logan stopped and turned blazing eyes on Sarah. “Would you shut up?! Half of all this is your fault!”

  He returned to pacing “You had to pull a Ralph Norton and walk into the secret room and activate the cursed artifact. You’re the kind of person when given a cursed book with a big DO NOT OPEN on the front you’ll go to the first page and start reading. You’d get mummy cursed so hard.”

  “What?” She asked, confused.

  While rubbing his face, he grumbled something about young people not watching the classics. “You just had to go in the artifact chamber didn’t you? Couldn’t resist entering the one place in the entire temple humans shouldn’t go near.”

  “Hey, I-” she was cut off by him marching up to her with furious eyes.

  Miyuki recognized Logan’s beast rearing up and moved to intercept.

  “I said shut up!” he roared.

  As his hand rose to grab at Sarah, Miyuki got between the two of them. She put a hand on his chest and pushed back.

  “Breath Logan,” she instructed.

  He snarled down at her. She felt his internal energy agitate and begin bleeding into his muscles. She threw together a spell circle on her palm and pushed mana through. It began to heat itself, the temperature raising quickly. He still pushed against her for a few moments before stepping back and covering the hot spot with his hand. By that time, the circle was hot enough to be equivalent to near-boiling water. The only reason she wasn’t hurt by it was because she was a Kitsune.

  “You back?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he grunted, “thanks.”

  He took a handful of deep breaths before speaking calmly. “Sarah, you’re right. None of this is by your choice and you don’t know why you should even be listening to us. I was in a very…similar situation when I was introduced to magic.”

  Sarah, not as confident as she was before the 190 cm tall soldier growled at her, nodded. “Okay, yeah.”

  Miyuki knew that if the three of them were supposed to share a plane for the next twenty hours they needed to reach some sort of equilibrium.

  Miyuki lowered her arm. “How about we all take a step back for a minute.” The two cursed beings nodded, Sarah’s must more stilted than Logan’s. “Good. Now Sarah, you deserve some answers.”