Not even sure what day this is, they all seem to blend together lately. The Padre met with his enemy to broker some secret deal. Padre informs us he will meet again at noon. We devise a plan and set ourselves up in Lichenstein where it will be dark so Danno can play. The Padre is going to meet with Janice and at the right time will grapple him and drag him into a portal I will have prepared to us. Ohm enhances the Padre's muscles so he will be nearly guaranteed to overpower Janice. The time finally comes and the Padre is able to force Janice through the portal. Red is waiting with a dart rifle loaded with Malconthet's blood, which is quite dangerous to just about anybody. The dart strikes true but Janice is well protected and the needle does not pierce the skin. Danno drops from the sky to tackle Janice, but Janice is quicker than normal and moves out of the way. So begins the melee. Janice seems to be un-hittable and the group is having a hard time even bruising him. Ohm realizes this protection of Janice's is not his own but appears to be from a mage. Ohm turns out to be right as he unravels the shielding spell upon Janice and he becomes a little squishier. I scrambled his particles next reducing his protections even more and that proves to be enough as he soon lies still upon the ground.
The fight seemed a little too easy. Something wasn't right. Almost upon cue the corpse of Janice rises to it's feet. It sticks Danno with a needle of some dark liquid and jumps far away. It then reaches toward Danno and this small black mote of energy comes out his chest and into Janice's hand before any of us can stop it. Janice says his name is now Samiel, the Angel of Death and we hear a familiar deeply disturbed laugh. This bastard just used Danno to bring Stephen the crazy ass ex-werewolf back to life. All though I'm not sure life is the proper term.
At this point we are pissed. All this shit was a ploy by Janice to get at Danno to do this resurrection shit. Then the Padre decided to finally inform us that Janice had offered him a deal to poison Danno's blood or some shit. I really didn't pay attention, I was leaving as fast as possible before I stabbed the Padre through the eye. This was not going to turn out well. I grabbed Danno and we went straight to the Lady Abigail to find out about this Samiel thing and to inform her of the shit that just happened. This was definitely a good idea for me, I was full of rage and the presence of Lady Abigail is enough to calm anybody. I was concerned this angel of death may be for real but Lady Abigail assured me he was only using the name, if the true Samiel was present she would have known. Danno was convinced Janice injected him with some mind control agent even though I tried to assure him his aura looked normal (normal is a relative term here). Lady Abigail seconded my opinion but Danno still didn't seem sure. She also told us that the tattoo thing on Janice's chest was the Gate of the Phoenix, some fae artifact used to portal around like I did but it apparently also had the power of rebirth which is what we witnessed.
Still too many unanswered questions. Since our subterfuge is over, I will myself to Puck's computer in New York and just grab the whole damn thing and bring it back to the warehouse to dismantle. I focus all my will into unraveling the protections of the hard drive and slowly pull them apart revealing all the data in the secure file I originally left alone. All kinds of information mostly related to the Padre and this Gate of the Phoenix. Apparently Padre's slaver was in possession of the Gate and Puck started following the goings on of the Padre because he managed to escape her, which no changeling has managed to do before. I guess he thought the Padre might be able to help him retrieve the artifact but with the bitch losing her power it appears Puck was able to get it or Janice did.
The night was still young and we were in a mood and figured the best thing is to just get back to work, forget about this fae crap and do our job, we have already wasted enough time with it so we geared up and headed to Porto, Spain, without the Padre.
We quickly put the previous day out of our thoughts and focus. We have some rise in an underworld power to investigate. We start with these two warehouses on the outskirts of this little ass town. Danno changes into a bat to do some aerial survelliance. This is a new trick of his and while it does have the potential to be useful, I find it very stereotypical. Vampire turning into a bat, at this rate next month he will be counting everything in the warehouse and dressing up like Count Chocula. Maybe I should get a robe and pointy hat and we will be ready for next halloween. As we silently joke Danno the rest of us move towards the warehouse silently waiting for our intel. Danno is still able to squeak through the comm system and I can understand him enough to get the point across, bat is not really an expressive language. Basically we have some armed guard with machine guns, workers moving boxes in and bringing other boxes out and loading into a truck. Ohm had remembered to give Danno the sight so he could scan for supernaturals and he found one inside barking out orders. something was off about his aura and Danno couldn't really pin point it. We found a back door that wasn't really guarded and had a poorly designed card swipe system that I easily bypassed. I moved in first but Ohm sneezed or something and caught a guards attention who started looking my way, luckily it was kinda dark and I am quick to think on my feet. I created an illusion of the guard we saw patrolling out back and convinced the guard watching the back door that he was just checking it was locked and went back to his patrol. The guard watching the back door shrugged and went back to his patrol. The rest slide in and we find some hiding spots. Ohm goes invisible to find out what is in the boxes. Find your standard tourist items. There are some statues mixed in and Ohm analyzes the material makeup and sees the statues aren't completely hollow. He breaks one open and find shotguns shells, he analyzes those and sees they are incendiary rounds. After a little more investigating we deduce that the workers are bringing in the boxes full of tourist stuff and putting the shells in the statues, then loading the boxes back up. Danno flies into the truck and waits for it to leave. He plans on hitching a ride to it's destination. The rest of us sit and wait for the supernatural to make another appearance. He eventually does and I get some time to analyze his aura. He is a Vampire. But there is something else about him, something that would require a more detailed analysis, but don't really have time for that right now. Danno reminds us that we have been here awhile and the sun is on it's way and he still hasn't reached his destination. That also means our vampire here will need to leave soon. I send Red outside to get ready to follow the vampire should he leave and I will myself to Danno's location in the truck to relieve him. I let go the portal spell I was holding on to and send him back to the comfort of the warehouse to hide from that evil sun and I make myself comfortable in the truck. GPS shows we are heading in the direction of Madrid.
Finally make it to Madrid. I escape from the truck unoticed and watch them unpack. They are bringing everything into the back of a typical looking tourist type place. I am soon interrupted by a cop wondering what it is I'm doing hiding behind a card this early in the morning. I pull out my "badge" and inform him I'm working undercover for customs and I think these guys are smuggling things. He believes me and gives me some good info about this store. He says they have been watching it for a couple months now, they know something is up but every time they try to set up stakeouts or get warrants the higher ups tell them to stop. Sounds like your typical corruption. The cop mentions that people usually come at night and are showed to the back room. They finally finish unloading and I thank the cop for his help and quickly generate a spanish cell phone number and tell him to call it if he sees anything else going on here. Soon as he leaves I will myself back to the warehouse for a nap.
During the morning Red followed our Vampire to a shack near town. He noticed paw prints nearby and soon found out there were some dogs protecting the place. Apparently dogs can also become vampire ghouls (eww) and they don't like Red being nearby, he tries to reason with them in wolf, but they are dogs and they are addicted to vampire. Can't reason with crazy and they attack Red and he makes a break for it.
Night falls and I grab Danno and return us to Madrid. The others have to take a train from Porto. Danno and I go clubbing, looking for other vampires so Danno can find out how to present himself to the Prince of the city. Danno finds that info and also finds out that mages are kill on sight for the vampires. That gives me a warm fuzzy feeling and I have to check my ego at the door and try to stay low. I teach Danno how to speak spanish and he goes to visit the Prince. He finds out that the vampires didn't even know there were mages in the city until very recently and so the Prince ordered a census, the mages didn't take kindly to that and said no. The Prince didn't like no and wants to kill them all. The others arrive finally and we head over to the Free Council lorehouse (without the vampire) to hear the mage's side of the story.
The lorehouse is in an old library and the mage librarian is wary of us but sees that I am a libertine and lets me in. I talk to an older mage about what's going on. Same story as the Prince. Most of the mages didn't want to start a war but the councilors did. This didn't sound right, a badly outnumbered group of mages openly declaring war against vampires? I suspect this vampire we saw back in Porto was behind this, somehow he was controlling the council and using them to take out the Prince. I asked if I could get an audience with the sentinel, I figured he was was probably more accessible and probably know something about these incendiary rounds. I wait around for a bit and the sentinel shows up. His aura is not right. I use the death sight and get a real good look and see that there is definitely a touch of vampire there. I start talking about how I've had some experience fighting vampires trying to get him to talk about what he was planning on using. Eventually it gets down to guns and he draws attention to the shotgun he is carrying. I don't even need to look to know what kind of bullets he has in there. Some more small talk and he leaves. I immediately inform the others of what I found. Seems like our assumptions were correct, this vampire in Porto is supplying arms to the mages and using them to take down the standing Prince. We can't let that happen and we get together to decide what our next move is.
Cygin