Blue Flames

Chapter 2

"You owe me big time, Kenji," I said, holding the phone to my ear.

After a hot shower, I laid down on the springy bed in a motel room in the suburbs of Los Angeles. The place was surprisingly clean. Everything was relatively new, the bathroom was spotless, the water piping hot and the lone bed in the room comfortable enough. The only downside was that the T.V. didn't work. But hey, at least the room didn't smell like a year old lasagna stuffed in rancid smelling socks. I shuddered at the memory of my last motel room.

Kenji's deep voice came through the phone.

"I know," he said, "I still can't believe they're making you go all the way up there. Though, to be honest, the pay in this one is worth it."

"Yeah."

He had a point. This mission's payment was almost double what I got from the usual Order's gigs. "Hey, what do you think about the vampire?"

I had recounted all last night's events for him. Kenji was kind of my mentor slash friend. He was the one who had gotten me into headhunting when I turned eighteen.

When I was sixteen, I was working part time in a martial arts dojo. That's where I met him. He was friends with the instructor and visited regularly. When I discovered he was a headhunter, I had to beg him for months to help me become one myself.

He had been skeptical, to say the least. He thought I was a crazy teenager. But when my bugging got too much, he offered me a bet. One fight. Whoever gets the other on their back first wins. If he won, I would not bother him again. If I did, he would show me the ropes to become a headhunter.

I had won. More so because Kenji was not expecting a teenager half his size and weight to be any good, than anything else. He later admitted that it was very petty of him to take on a teenager. He had thought I would lose and leave him alone. It didn't go as planned for him. Kenji was stunned. And although it was the last thing he wanted to do, his japanese honor wouldn't let him break his word.

And here we are, nine years later.

"That in itself tells me there's something off going on," Kenji said now, "the order never, ever makes mistakes like this. The last thing they want on their hands is a jurisdiction fight between an agent and a headhunter."

And everyone knew that if a fight escalated between a human and an immortal, it would mean trouble to the precarious balance of the current situation in the world. The human would be lucky to walk out with his or her life.

Humans have always been treated as less by other races. Humans were weaker, slower and lived laughably short lives compared to the immortal races. That was a fact of life. Some immortals treated them as nothing but a source of amusement for however long their lives lasted. But those were only rumors I had heard of. The immortal races liked to present very tolerant and very friendly public faces. Especially the vampires, since they needed humans close and relatively unafraid for obvious reasons.

"Hmm," I hummed, my mind racing, "what I don't understand is why the vampire gave me the man in the first place. He could've just taken both the man and the stolen item back."

"Well, you did fight side by side," Kenji replied. I hummed again. Kenji didn't know that I had basically saved the vampire's life. I hadn't told Kenji about my magic. I had never told anyone about my magic. It was a lesson drained into my head by uncle Robert. Keep your magic hidden, stay out of the immortal world.

"It's just that he didn't strike me as the sharing type," I said, "and why go all the way to Portland just to get the payment?"

"The case is probably high profile enough that they want to handle everything related to it in the main chapter," Kenji offered.