"Magical Misconduct"

Chapter 2 - The Wizard of Brighton

Nolan Peters drank a cup of ice water and tried his best not to think about the fact that everyone he knew wanted him dead. His storm cloud gray eyes watched the ocean waves as they crashed against one another out off the coast. The quaint bed and breakfast that smartly found solid ground near enough to the beach provided a charming view of the ocean. It was that view that brought many customers in the form of sun block covered, loud Hawaiian shirt wearing idiots. Nolan was aware of each person that walked through the simple wood and glass doors out onto the expansive deck where he sat through a glyph he had drawn next to the large doorway when no one was looking. If anything non-human came through here he would feel it thanks to his connection to the glyph.

He was being dramatic, not everyone wanted to kill him, There was that one bull of a copper who had in fact, saved him. But he had run as far away from that situation before things had turned messy which is how everything with him tended to go. But now as he switched to the steaming cup of black tea he remembers those kind ocean blue eyes. The little wrinkles around them, the large nose above thin kissable lips and the patch or dark hair beneath his lips. It hurts remembering him, how concerned he had been for Nolan. To be fair there had been a lot of blood, most of it his from where fangs had torn chunks out of the fatty areas of him, Nolan remembers the tall muscular man in the cheap suit rounding the corner, gun raised. Nolan had looked into those eyes and saw the concern for him.

"This seat taken?" A woman said with a French accent, Nolan didn't look up.

"Yeah," he said his Welsh accent thick and he wondered if she knew what a Chav was. It was a stupid label people stuck to him the minute he opened his bearded mouth. No matter how nice he was, people thought him mean and he never understood why. It took seconds for the comprehension that he had no interest in being social to come to whoever it was before they got lost and he was left in his own head again. Which was precisely where he wanted to be. He could of gone anywhere in the world, become anyone but he had chosen to stay in England.

The difference between being alone in a place you don't know and a place you do know is so terrifying he didn't want to experience it. That and the advance from King that sat nicely in a bank account. He let out a breath and watched the waves, his mind drifting back to that moment England had stopped feeling like home. He had been one year younger at twenty three years old in the city. He had forged papers for criminals then, easy to do with a bit of magic and an eye for detail. All he had needed was ink. It didn't matter what was on the paper, he used his magic to create whatever some paying vandal or gangster wanted it to say for the right price.

He had been freelance doing odd jobs for anyone who needed doing what he did. He was fine, or that's what he had told himself. He lived with three roommates in a small two story flat that looked like the pictures in magazines his mother had read when she was alive. Nolan knew he should be proud of it, he wasn't alone then. He and his friends hit the discos on the weekends, drinking and carrying on til closing. Often times he went home with a bloke who through beer goggles appeared worth his time. Life had been lovely and simple.

But as if on cue, Marlon came. Marlon was and is the closest thing to a father Nolan had ever known. The man who had knocked up his mum long since in the wind. Marlon had taken up with his mother when he was just learning to talk. It wasn't til he was ten and a right little shit that Marlon began his nightly visits to his bed. No one believed him, a Barrister a pedophile? No couldn't be true. The more Nolan had said it the worse Marlon became, til finally at 16 he had run into the night. Every few weeks Marlon found him, like a shadow or Satan himself the man came and ruined his happy ever after. Then nothing for years he hadn't seen or heard from Marlon.

The night he came home to find his roommates body parts nailed to the wall of his home, he knew. There was only one person cruel enough to do something like that. But what told him it was Marlon beyond the shadow of a doubt was the words "Still Happy?" Drawn in blood above the limbs. Nolan had cried and screamed in fury. Their lovely flat was covered in blood and viscera. Signs of a struggle across nearly every surface.

Was there anything he could do? Half mad with grief he had stumbled out of the flat and called the police like an idiot. He should have known Marlon wouldn't be far. Marlon had to see the pain he caused, had to see the different flavors of agony Nolan presented. Nolan had been standing outside the flat shaking from the magic and anger flowing through his blood like his veins were glass and them the neon. When he heard the growls, low and gutteral coming from all around him. He had sprinted away down rows of apartments. Scrambled over fences, the heavy footfall behind him growing louder as the creatures drew closer and closer.

Any time he had glanced a look behind him though there was nothing there. A few minutes and he was out of breath, slumped against a brick wall breathing in gasps. His lungs burned, tears rolled down his cheeks from the pain coursing through him. When the teeth had torn their way through his left leg he had cried out in agony. As if from nowhere the black dog appeared, large and snarling it tore flesh from his thigh and chewed his meat as he had collapsed to the ground screaming.

"Hey Mate you alright?" King's voice snapped Nolan back to the present. He looked up at King and his three companions confused and embarrassed. It was only then he felt the glyph's power had been shivering across his skin like waves of water. He turned on the charm and stood too fast causing his tea cup to tip as the table shook from the force of his errant magic. Tobin reached out and froze the falling hot liquid before it splashed King while Gena and Griff rushed around to stand before the table blocking it's view from everything.

King's eyes went wide at the frozen in mid air tea, Nolan waves a hand of his own over it and the tea returns to the cup after it righted itself a moment before it.

"Right well, not my finest moment but Hello," Nolan said trying to keep his voice level but between that trip down memory lane and almost throwing tea, his voice was a bit shakey.

"Hello I'm Tobin and that's," Tobin started but King cut him off.

"Not impressed, are you really the most powerful wizard of England or just a chav?" King asked annoyed. He had come to see a man who looked like King Arthur's Merlin. Not some teenager in a track suit who couldn't even stand up properly.

"Oye! Who you calling Chav!? I'm Nolan yeah but I never said I was the best at anything. That's other people talking. Besides you caught me having a think, anyone would be right startled if they're interupted in the middle?" Nolan shouted and King raised an eyebrow at the disrespect tone.

"Do you know who you're talking to?" King asked irritated

"A stuffy King or something like that and that's all well and good if you walk on four legs and howl at the moon. But I'm not some stuffy virgin raisin man pulling rabbits out of hats. Ok I'm a wizard, and you're right offensive aren't ya prat?" Nolan declared as he glared at King.

King felt like strangling this man here and now but one look at Griff who shook his head and King took a breath and exhaled.

"This guy I swear, now you must be Tobin, how do you do?" Nolan asked holding out a hand to Tobin who took it and they shaked. King growls at the two of them and Gena looks at King then the two men's hands. Tobin takes a step back and Nolan smirks.

"Well clearly this is going to be bloody brilliant, would you all like to sit and have a cuppa tea first and we work out the details or start straight away. King looks at Tobin who looks at Nolan with a look of excitement, King pulls out a chair after a moment of silence and sits down and everyone else does the same.

"Great! I'm buying! It is after all your money paying for this," Nolan says as he sits and grins and King grits his teeth.