Something Wicked This Way Cums: Enter the Mage.

13:00pm, Sunny Day Mall – North Parking Lot. Zone A

The black saloon car drew up into a disabled spot right outside the main entrance of Sunny Day Mall.

A gorgeous obsidian haired beauty stepped out. All leather jacket, tots and ankle boots. Twenty-three if she was a day. Black hair, pale skin, dark lipstick, a silver ring through one ear, and an expression that suggested she found most of the world faintly disappointing. This was inaccurate. She did not find most of the world disappointing. She found it structurally vulgar, morally lazy, and almost wilfully uninteresting.

She was called Mara Ravenshade, which sounded like the sort of name a girl invented for herself at sixteen and then had to keep out of sheer stubbornness. In fact, it was her real name, a fact she considered one of the few gestures of good taste the universe had ever made on her behalf.

Her body was a deliberate, sculpted contradiction of softness and strength. She favoured tight, black band t-shirts that did little to hide the generous swell of her natural tits, large, heavy breasts that moved with a liquid freedom beneath the thin cotton, a clear invitation to a gaze she would instantly punish. Below, her toned stomach was a pale, flat plane, leading to a pair of thick, powerful thighs that strained against the fabric of her ripped jeans, each step a testament to hours of disciplined self-improvement. Her ass was a masterpiece, two perfect, curved globes that were firm yet yielded, a shape that made men instinctively adjust their pants and then feel ashamed for doing so. Her face was a gothic masterpiece of pale foundation and sharp, winged eyeliner, her raven hair a stark, dramatic frame. But it was the black lipstick, a perfect, glossy line of defiance, that sealed the unspoken message: everything you see is designed for sex, but not with you.

Most people, she thought, if handed proof that the universe contained hidden systems of power, would waste time looking for comfort. Protection charms. Love workings. Little household blessings. Pathetic things. Mara had gone another way. **** Miasma had presented itself to her with all the austere charm of a locked mausoleum. It was difficult, dangerous, and smelled, on certain bad nights, faintly of damp copper and sweet rot. Naturally, she had fallen in love.

Technically she had not killed anyone yet. This was a point of fact, not hesitation. She wasn’t a fool. Killing someone with magic was no different to killing someone with a gun or knife. Easy to do with the right tools. Difficult to escape the consequences.

She had, however, animated the dead on more than one occasion, with mixed but encouraging results. The first corpse had barely managed indignity. The second had stood. The third had walked. Not far, admittedly, but far enough to settle the principle. She was progressing. But she needed more. Without a teacher she needed some kind of instruction.

Mara scanned the outside of the Mall and the mundanes making their way, this way and that around it. The whole place was saturated with magic. The cloying sickly sweet scent of Life-Coven magic but magic none the less. No two ways about it. Sunny Day was definitely a Nexus and the Life-Coven was making hay.

Time to burn the way, loot the barn and kill the farmer. Metaphorically…

…or not.

Sighing at having to enter such a dreadfully kitsch example of mundane Americana she pursed her lips and entered.

The air in the mall was thick with the scent of popcorn, cheap perfume, and something els. A faint, electric tang of raw life magic that made the hairs on Mara’s arms stand up. She moved through the chaos like a shark through a chummed sea, her dark gaze cataloguing the frantic encounters, the flushed faces, the **** scurrying into fitting rooms and restrooms. A pimply teenager, no older than eighteen, blocked her path near the food court, his greasy fingers clutching a holographic Breeding Pass like it was a winning lottery ticket. His eyes were wide with a ****, hormonal fervour.

"Hey, you," he stammered, thrusting the card towards her. "You... you have to... the Pass..."

Mara didn't even break her stride. She simply looked at him, her expression one of bored contempt, and the Pass's insistent pull, the faint, cajoling whisper in the back of her mind, dissolved into nothing.

As a level 5 **** Miasma Sorceress she was immune to this parlour trick. "Move," she commanded, her voice a low, dismissive growl that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with sheer, unadulterated presence.

"You have to! The Pass says so!" the teen whined, his face a pathetic mask of thwarted entitlement. "It's the law!"

Mara sighed. She stopped and turned to face him fully, her head tilting. "The problem," she began, her voice a silken menace, "is that I'm debating whether or not you should be my first kill. Not because you're important, you understand, but simply on principle. A simple knee to the groin ought to do it, but then I was thinking... why not fry every sperm in those miserable, underdeveloped testicles with a nice, little Hex of Spite? Make sure your particular, disappointing genetic line ends here and now in this cheap pathetic bazaar."

She raised a hand, her fingers beginning to twitch, the faint, coppery smell of **** Miasma starting to coalesce around her nails. The teen paled, stumbling back, the Breeding Pass falling from his nerveless fingers. But just as she was about to unleash the petty, satisfying curse, a different pull tugged at her senses. It was stronger, deeper, a chaotic resonance that was utterly alien to the cloying, pulsing life energy of the Breeding Pass.

For a moment, she was frozen, a creature of pure purpose. Her raven hair, dark as a starless sky, stirred in an unseen current, whipping back from her face as she stared out across the chaotic expanse of the mall, her gaze locked on the source of that strange, wild magic. She looked like the villain of her own personal story, a beautiful, terrible tableau caught in the flickering fluorescent lights, a cinematic masterpiece of gothic resolve.

Then, as if remembering a minor, unfinished piece of business, she blinked. "Oh yes," she murmured, almost to herself. In a single, fluid motion that was as efficient as it was brutal, she drove her knee up into the teenager's groin with the **** of a car door being slammed. He made a sound like a punctured balloon, a high, thin squeak of agony as he collapsed to the floor, clutching himself. Mara didn't even look down. She simply stepped over his writhing form satisfied he’d be breeding no one for the afternoon and her attention already fixed on her true destination.