Chapter 575
“Mr. Chaver, Ms. Baker, thank you for coming.” An agent wearing a grey suit with a pair of silver earbuds in his ears came and greeted Caroline and Thomas at the site of a former bar lycan and vampires, which was leveled by Caroline during a fight. Just like some other sites, the clean up, media coverup and quarantine was left to the agents of the Division. “I am Agent Hall, I work for Ms. Wong.”
“Hi Agent Hall, how’s it going?” Thomas shook hands with the agent, they met before while he was digging into the history of this very bar, and the related intels about the organization and M.Os of the vampires and lycans.
“We did have some interesting findings that you may want to take a look at, per Ms. Wong’s order, all the related information has been organized and we will share some copies with you.” Agent Hall led them into the ring of police tapes and to an exposed cellar area at the center of the site: “And some of them will be thanks to you, if you hadn’t brought this place completely down, we wouldn’t even get a chance to dig deep under it. Because as you can imagine, our department’s kinda lacking in personnel that could pass as either lycans or vampires.”
“What about that guy - that … Alexander guy?” Caroline asked as she followed agent Hall into the cellar, where she could see many storage rooms with different internal decorations and shelves and racks with different sizes, heights and widths, and many different items that were placed on them: “He’s a lycan right?”
“Mr. Alexander was indeed a lycan, and he was once a member of a small clan, known for producing highly otherwise gifted lycans. But none of them could be a spy or be undercover, for there is a distinct scent from the members of that clan, which could be instantly recognized by other lycans and vampires.” Agent Hall led Caroline and Thomas into a side room, where there was a table covered by a clean grey table cloth, and had some documents and small items on it. There were other agents of the Division in the cellar cataloguing different items and removing items from the shelves and crates carefully and slowly.
“Okay, so what do we have?” Thomas took a folder handed to him by Agent Hall and asked: “This bar is some kind of underground illegal substance dealing site, no? And did the half-succubus bartender say anything useful?”
“The ledger she tried to get her hands on contains coded information on other dealers of the entire ring, we were able to decipher some, and we are already planning on moving on some of them. And more importantly, these rings don’t just traffic and deal blood vials spiked with drugs, these rings also dabble in weapons and magical artifact trading.” Agent Hall handed Caroline another folder, which contained mostly pictures attached to records handwritten on thick enchanted parchments: “These are additional transcripts from some of our experts on lease - they examined some of the artifacts that were stored here and wrote down their findings.”
Caroline took out one of the record - it was one about a curved sword, and according to the one who examined it, this sword had dull edges, which meant that it was not made for close quarter combat, and the arrays carved on the hilt and both sides of the spine of the blade indicated that this blade should be used to fit into a larger array or enchanted structure.
“This ‘larger structure’ that could fit the enchanted blades - have you found what it could be?” Caroline flipped over a page and asked.
“No we have not, but we’ve been searching for it.” Agent Hall sighed: “All the examiners were busy, so we were not able to schedule someone to visit this site on time - we would’ve been able to, but most of them are assigned to the factory site, where the fight broke out and we’ve uncovered a lot more things and, thanks to you.”
“Okay, we will be heading there next. ” Thomas looked through a few more pages of the documents he was handed: “Wait - there’s bodies here? Did you find anything about the bodies?”
“Yeah, here.” Agent Hall extended his hand to another room on the side with a locked metal door that was also sealed with some kind of magic: “Let me show you some of them.”
“What - you still keep them here?”
“We kinda had to.” Agent Hall led the way and unlocked the metal door using an enchanted glowing key fob. Gears turned inside the metal door, and slowly it swung open.
Behind the metal door was a spacious room with a completely round floor plan, with a giant circle covering the entire perfectly round floor. There was nothing on the floor beside six metal plates placed on six critical nodes inside the circle, inside which one could see black burnt marks left by wax or oil. But what caught the eyes of both Thomas and Caroline, were the six corpses that were somehow embedded into the walls - the walls submerged most parts of these bodies like sand or water, while leaving enough parts exposed to show that these bodies were contorted and tied up. From the conditions of the walls they could see that the bodies had been there for quite a while, but none of the bodies showed any sign of decay or rot.
“We consulted with Master Nameless and Ms. Pei, both of them advised against moving these bodies without preparation and caution.” Agent Hall said: “I believe Ms. Pei is working on this, but I was informed that you should see this as well.”