Chapter 7

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Bound Barriers

Chapter 6

4:00 AM, 11 November 1981, London

–Alexander Wells-

It had been a week since he had found his first "spell" if he could even call it that. He had been pretty happy about it at first, but over the course of the next few hours, he had found some pretty glaring flaws in that spell.

First of all, it needed sunlight to fall directly on the piece of barrier for extended periods of time. Depending on the size and placement of the barriers, it could take anywhere between a couple of hours to an entire day for the barrier to soak itself in sunlight, especially due to the limited son London receives throughout the year. The upside was that the larger the barrier, the more the sunlight required and the bigger the boom. He had actually tested the effects of it on seawater when he had visited Brighton Beach as a way to change the scenery for his training. Let's just say that it was a good thing that he was invisible and covered in a barrier away from the water otherwise the heat from the steam alone would have cooked him, let alone the blast of water that followed his death ray.

But as a result of that trip, he found something pretty interesting to do on the beaches. It turned out that a part of the beach, a part that was invisible to anybody without magic, was sequestered by some magical couple who was also lounging on their patio on their beachfront property. Firstly, he found out that the charms to hide places from muggles didn't work on him, and secondly, his barriers could not negate the effects of wards, at least not completely.

He had tried going, in his invisible mode, into their property to see if he could find anything noteworthy, especially since their doors were just open and, from what he could see, they were completely out of it, as evidenced by the dozens of liquor bottles that lay around them. He was also being so daring because he had two barriers aimed right at both of their faces, which had enough sunlight stored in them that not even bones would remain of the wizards if they were fortunate enough to get hit by one of his death rays. 

As part of his training, he had a couple barriers always conjured around himself, and it was a pretty good exercise in coordination as he kept moving them around out of sight without them crashing into each other.

His endeavour to enter their property undetected failed because he, in his moderate wisdom, failed to take into account the fact that a property such as this must have had some sort of wards built into it for protection. He had naively assumed that the notice me not charm must have been the only protection for a property that was situated inside a predominantly muggle beach.

Hell, the Ministry of Magic must have some pretty strict guidelines on how to safeguard property in the majority muggle areas. Of course, whether they were followed or not was a whole different story.

It was a pretty unique feeling, bumping into something you can't even see or detect. When he had crashed into the wards, he had instantly zoomed far away and had almost fired the death rays right in their faces, but he noticed, while going far back, that even as their figures became smaller, they never moved. Sighing in resignation, he felt pretty stupid for overreacting like that, but it was not his fault that he almost botched his first encounter with wizards by forgetting something elementary like wards.

Upon further poking at the ward layout, he realised that while he himself could not enter the property, his barriers could. So, with that in mind, he sent in two fist sized barriers, as they were exponentially easier to control than the bigger ones, and set them directly above the two wand holsters he could see and set them to "absorb" mode.

Having given the command, he went back to his hotel and found the comfy chair that was given to him as part of the suite, perks of being rich.

Covering that chair in an invisible barrier, he took off back to the wizards' beach house and sat on it, waiting for either the barriers to complete the absorption or for the wizards to wake up, though he was doubtful of them waking before his powers had done their job. Already, in the dozen minutes it had taken him to arrive at his hotel and bring the chair here, the barriers had already absorbed about 30% of their capacity. The only problem was that the barriers had started to take on a bluish hue that could not be hidden, no matter how hard he tried with his control over the barriers.

That could be a problem, especially if the barriers took on some abnormal properties that were out of his control. Though he could probably rely quite a bit on their drunken nature to explain any anomalies, he didn't want to take any chances, so sensing that the barriers had already been filled halfway to their capacity, he pulled them out.

The only problem was that taking the barriers filled with magic out of the ward pulled some sort of emergency alarm that flashed a tattoo of some sort that was on the chest of that person, flaming red. 

Whatever that alarm was, it managed to rouse the clearly drunk wizard, and the wizard seemed to know what the alarm was for since he immediately searched for his wand, and after using it to cast multiple spells around the ward boundary, he woke up his female companion, who was clearly hungover from the alcohol they must have been consuming.

He didn't know what happened next, as he had already fled the area and even hastily left the hotel he was staying at in his car so as not to raise suspicion if the wizards went looking. 

The piece of magic he had taken from those wizards had fizzled out as soon as he ordered the barriers to release it. He didn't know what sort of effect he had been expecting, but apart from some sort of blue dust that dissipated as soon as it came into contact with the atmosphere, there was no effect on the surroundings. Maybe the amount of magic absorbed was not enough?

13 November 1981, London

That encounter encouraged him to look for more magic users in the area to absorb their magic for further experimentation. Especially since he was now aware that he could see things that the wizards tried to hide from the muggles or the No-Maj people.

So, after doing another round of experiments on his abilities on top of taking a combat ready class in one of the nearby military training institutes, he had been constantly roaming the entirety of London in search of areas that looked like they were inhabited entirely by wizards.

His search bore him no fruit, so he decided to search for the seedier areas of London, but even that didn't help him much. He had decided to call it quits when, one night around 4 AM, he was flying over the vibrant area of Soho when he spotted a person dragging a woman with one hand and drinking from a bottle with one hand. 

His eyes narrowed, and he flew slightly closer to investigate since the size of the man and the ease with which he dragged the much bigger woman did not match in his mind. When he went closer, goosebumps rose on his skin as he saw that the woman had gone completely pale and was bleeding slightly from her neck, where two conspicuous bite marks could be seen. He instantly zoomed away in fright because he had realised what the being in front of him was.

A Vampire.

He didn't know much about them aside from the common facts, such as their propensity to resort to violence at the slightest inconvenience and their ability to feed off others's blood, along with their enhanced physical attributes. Also, their weakness to the sun, along with silver.

So, he didn't want to take any risks with the incident but he also could not just leave that woman to the mercy of that vampire. From what he could gather, the woman was probably turned into the thrall of that vampire after draining her of blood since the vampire was going to all the effort to take the woman back to his home. 

He could have followed that vampire back to his place but he was not sure if that was a wise decision because he was sure that he was not adequately prepared to deal with a single vampire let alone multiple vampires. He also did not want to push his luck since the vampire in front of him could have had his senses dulled because he was clearly under the influence but any other vampire he could encounter might just be able to sense him.

So, at that moment, he made a decision.

The decision to try and capture the vampire but not after thoroughly disabling the vampire. He did not want a case of a runaway vampire on his hands. Especially since he did not exactly have a designated prison or storage facility where he could discretely experiment on the vampire.

From what he could gather from memory, vampires did not have the ability to use wand based magic. That could work in his advantage since he would not have to worry about any surprising wandless abilities. Some vampires did possess limited magical abilities such as short-range teleportation but he was sure that the grunt in front of him did not have such an ability.

He was also sure that his barriers would protect him from the mind magic and hypnosis abilities that all vampires innately possessed. Even then, as a precaution, he enlarged the barrier around his body to store enough air for him to last at least an hour. 

Looking nearby, he found a pretty old looking tree from which he snagged a branch for himself. He then sharpened the branch using one of his sharpened edge barriers, just as a precaution.

Taking deep breaths, he flexed his hands in order to stop them from clamming up, as he was going to be taking a big step here.

Attacking a magical being, however weakened he might be.

Psyching himself up, he hovered right above the vampire who was still unaware that his executioner was right above him. He then cast a barrier right in the vampire's way. The vampire, in his drunken stupor, collided directly with his barrier and stumbled back. To his credit, the vampire didn't let go of either the woman or the bottle.

It was fine, though, because he had planned for that. The moment the vampire stumbled back, he stepped on one of his barriers that he had cast beforehand.

As soon as the vampire stepped on his barrier, two things happened at once. The barrier the vampire was standing on, expanded rapidly to cover the entire body of the vampire like a skin tight suit. Second, a sharp piece of barrier accelerated to the limit and passed right through his wrist, dropping the woman he was holding with his left hand.

The woman groaned in pain but other than that, she showed no external reaction. 

"What the-" the vampire muttered as he struggled to get out of the invisible bonds holding him in place. 

He created another barrier that covered the woman, and his eyes narrowed into slits as he got the readings from his barrier. His barriers could absorb heat as well, and from the miniscule readings he was getting from the woman, he was sure that she had also been turned into a vampire, most probably against her will as well.

Well, there was no need to be merciful with this vampire then. Without even showing himself, he floated both the vampire and the woman with him, taking them with him to a more secluded place.

One where, preferably, nobody will be able to hear the vampire scream.

Word Count - 2068

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