It's a Trap

After Amanda had recovered, she was greeted by a view of both Gaude and Irma staring at her.

"Now, speak. Why does a bunch of vampires related to the Sanguini family want to kill you?", Gaude asked firmly.

Amanda, who had already hidden her face halfway under the blanket, spoke in a muffled voice: "I don't know. My father just told me to hide when other vampires show up. That's why I came with you from America, to get away from them. I didn't know they would follow me even here."

"Fine, I'll believe you for now. You'll stay put in the house until the grown-ups get the situation sorted. Even if you omitted some important information, I won't allow you to get hurt because of that."

With those words, Gaude and Irma walked away from Amanda's bedroom where she had been moved to recuperate after the more serious part of her injuries had been taken care of by feeding her a few potions and a gallon of blood. "What grownups? You're both younger than me!", Amanda muttered quietly, hoping that Irma's sensitive ears didn't pick it up.

Once they were outside of what Gaude figured to be Amanda's range of hearing, he spoke: "Irma, we'll be going to Interrogation. I need to find out where I can find that damn Sanguini family. It seems one of them getting on my nerves wasn't enough for them, now they sent an entire team. However, that's where their luck ran out, since now we have some of them alive and ready for questioning."

"Laly, take us to Interrogation, observation room one."

A twist and a pop later, they had arrived in a brightly lit room that had a wall covered in two-way mirrors. As to who had figured out how to enchant them, it was one of Gaude's charm researchers that was tasked with figuring out all the possible uses of the Protean charm and its derivatives. It turned out to be quite simple.

The mirrors were both each other's masters and slaves at the same time. Everything that one mirror 'saw' was reflected on the other. Even sound was transmitted in a similar way, allowing for low-tech high-res video calls. The one thing that the Protean charm researcher was still working on was how to end a 'call' or network the mirrors for that matter.

The mirrors displayed each of the interrogation rooms, cells and the corridors. There was a being in red robes, wearing a wide-rimmed pointy had concealing all of their features. That being was keeping a constant eye on the monitors.

Irma glanced at the surveillance system and asked: "Wait, aren't those…?"

"Yeah, the vampires that we had that scuffle with. As you can see, those that survived have been interrogated and detained. It's really convenient that Muggle law doesn't really extend to the undead. Oh, and there's a few special cases of common criminals, too, their crimes just rubbed me the wrong way so I left them in here instead of re-educating them."

"Who's that?", Irma then asked, pointing at the being in a red robe.

"Who do you mean?", Gaude asked. There was nobody where Irma was pointing.

"Stop trying to fool me with your tricks. The one with the red clothes that was standing there and looking at those screens."

"Oh, that. A special unit consisting of individuals from a certain magical species with a few helpful modifications. They're very anonymous and stealthy. There was a need for those that would take care of very special tasks, and I happened to have a good base at hand, so I put them to good use."

By the time Gaude's explanation had ended, Irma had glanced away from the spot she had been staring at and forgotten that she had seen someone there.

"I'm sorry, I must've zoned out for a bit, put who to good use?"

"Oh, nothing, I was just thinking out loud.", Gaude said dismissively, thinking that it was better if Irma didn't know what she shouldn't. There was only one other person that knew of the existence of the Faceless, the receptionist of the Firepit, but with him, knowing of their existence was a means to keep him in line.

"So, you have your own prison. Is there anything else I should know?"

"Well, remember when I told you I was pulled from my adult body into an infant one? My adult body was on a completely different planet, in a completely different universe. Cool, right?"

"Wait, so, you're an a- alien?"

"Nope, as human as me and you. Born and raised on a planet called Earth, just a dimension or two apart, that's all.

Anyway, I have vampires to interrogate, and having you as backup can't hurt."

"So now I'm your personal interrogation tool?"

"Nah, you're my big sister. Big sisters are supposed to be scary to my enemies."

Gaude then went from interrogation room to interrogation room, asking for reports from the elves that were working on the vampires. The interrogation elves weren't your run of the mill house elves anymore.

Due to the special nature of their task, they had been trained in Occlumency to at least know when a subject was trying to mess with their mind. If that happened, the elves were to apparate out of the room immediately, then sedate the subject with extreme prejudice and put them into holding until Gaude was free to take over personally.

As it stood, none of the vampires that had been successfully interrogated had been any help, only knowing that they had to capture Amanda and kill anyone that got in the way. However, there were two vampires that had obtained extraordinary merits by giving their all in an attempt to charm the elf interrogating them and had thus earned the right for special treatment.

Those two were also the ones that Gaude suspected of being true vampires of the Sanguini family.

"Irma, hold your wolf. I'm curious about a thing or two, so let me just try it first.

Laly, bring me one that's already been interrogated."

A moment later, Laly apparated into the room, a sedated vampire slumping onto a steel chair.

The chair wasn't exactly law enforcement standard, but Gaude didn't let that bother him, as a lot of what he did wasn't strictly in accordance with any kind of law that could be applied to the British territory.

The chair was stainless steel, with clamps for arms, legs and head. The chair's surface was covered in runes, that were connected by lines of various shapes into a complex array, that would supposedly hold anyone and anything in their current form, meaning no shapeshifting out of restraints.

As soon as the vampire came to, Gaude assaulted its mind with full force and before it recovered, he went through its memories. Gaude found out that this vampire had been turned by one of the two unruly ones. He then took out a syringe filled with a blackish liquid and injected it into the creature's heart.

As soon as he did, the vampire let out a blood curdling scream, as if it had started its transformation into a banshee or something similar. Slowly at first, but with hastening pace, the vampire's blood vessels turned black. The vampire became immobile and finally started crumbling until only dust remained.

"Eh? Looks like dead man's blood doesn't work quite as advertised? I should try it on true vampires once I'm done with the interrogation."

"Bring the one in cell D-fifteen.", Gaude said to the elf that was on standby. "No need to clean up, I think it'll help loosen his tongue."

With a twist of the air and a pop, another slumbering vampire was delivered and ten seconds later, already secured to the interrogation chair. This time, there was a bulb of garlic on the steel table next to the interrogation chair. Gaude was peeling a clove and threw a drop of Wiggenweld potion into the vampire's partially open mouth.

A moment later, the vampire was fully alert. Suddenly, the creature started coughing as if he had inhaled teargas or something.

"Oh, interesting.", Gaude said. He then cut the freshly peeled garlic clove in half and pressed it onto the vampire's hand.

The vampire hissed, clearly in discomfort. Gaude removed the garlic and discovered that there was a red marking on the vampire's pale skin.

"Hmm, I expected more from that one. Anyway, let me just get the introductions out of the way. See that guy?", Gaude pointed at the dust that was covering the floor. "That's Bob. Bob wasn't very cooperative, so I dusted him. Don't be like Bob.

That next to me is Irma. To me, she's a very kind-hearted big sister, but to you bloodsuckers, she's as ferocious as a Werewolf.

Next up is me. I'm the guy that asks questions. You will answer them, unless, as I said, you want to end up like Bob. Don't know a Bob? Yeah, I just arbitrarily named the guy, he didn't really introduce himself."

"I'll tell you what you want to know, just please take the garlic away!", the vampire whined through coughing fits, obviously quite inexperienced in the whole being interrogated thing. Not that Gaude minded. There were many more experiments he wanted to perform and a lot of vampires that had offered themselves up for his purposes.

Gaude decided to start off easy, without the use of Veritaserum. It had been a while since he had done a proper Q&A and somehow, he had a lot of stress built up.

"First, off, who sent you?", Gaude asked while cutting a slice from an apple with a silver knife. He knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from the vampire, to get him more open to telling the truth.

"If I tell you that, I'll be killed by the family!", came the reply.

Gaude stabbed the silver knife into the vampire's thigh, eliciting a rather high-pitched scream from him. "Wrong answer.", Gaude said. "There are much worse things than getting killed. For instance, I could come here every morning, flay an arm, a leg or half your torso, feed you blood so you can recover, make sure you can't kill yourself and do it all over again the next morning. Or, I could ask Irma to be so kind as to tear you to tiny little pieces and still keep you alive. You know Werewolf bites, they never heal proper. Let's try again, why don't we? Who sent you?"

The vampire's eyes were bulging as if trying to escape his skull after he imagined how it would be like to get skinned over and over again without any hope for the sweet release of death, or even worse, get torn apart by a Werewolf, have the two curses clashing in what remains of his body and be kept alive with potions and blood, but just barely.

"It was the Sanguini family, okay?"

"That wasn't so hard, was it now? Next question: where can I find them?"

"I only know where to find their butler, he's the one we've been dealing with. We were supposed to catch some little bitch and bring her to him. He said we'd get a chance to move into the main family from the branch if we did it right."

Half an hour later, the layer of dust on the floor had thickened by a bit.

"Don't you just love it when they cooperate, Irma?"

"Who are you really?", Irma asked, still shocked at the brutality she had seen from Gaude towards a helpless victim.

"We had that talk already. Rally the Wolves, the best transformers only, split them into let's say, three teams. Get a house elf for each team. I'm going to try and persuade Amanda to be bait."

Gaude had Berkel take him to Amanda, who was quite predictably using Gaude's bed as a place to conduct some light reading.

"Hey, Mandy, there's something I want you to do."

"What do you need?", she asked.

"Well, I've found out where the Sanguini family's main branch butler will be waiting for those assholes from before to deliver you. I want you to act as bait, to keep that guy from suspecting anything. I believe you don't like to be under indefinite house arrest either.", Gaude explained.

"Yeah, okay. Let's go!", she said with a slight smile that lasted a split second.

Gaude had Berkel take them to the army base, where the troops were already lined up. Well, not the base's original troops, they had been deployed for intelligence gathering operations on a global scale, but the Werewolf troops, with Irma in front of the lineup.

Finally, Laly cast her trademark high quality illusions over Irma and Gaude, making them look like the two vampires that were roped in by the butler. While Polyjuice wasn't an option in the case of non-human species, that wasn't the case with illusions, as long as you didn't get found out due to lacking the special characteristics of the species you tried to impersonate.

A moment later, Laly had delivered them onto a rooftop a few blocks from the abandoned building that was the agreed upon meeting place. It was late evening and a half moon was rising over the horizon. The wind had already quieted down to a gentle breeze.

Gaude took out an instrument to measure wind speed and direction and after confirming it, he said: "Take us behind that building.", Gaude said while pointing at a house near their target. "We'll walk from there. That way we'll stay downwind from the house, less risk of getting our cover blown too early."

Gaude then closed the distance with Amanda.

"What is it? I'm your sister by blood, remember?", the ten-year old looking girl in a frilly black dress spoke in a flustered tone.

"Sorry about this.", Gaude replied, taking a telekinetic hold of her light body and depositing her to the illusion's shoulder. While the illusions weren't solid holograms, with the help of telekinesis and a lot of control over it, that issue could be mitigated to the degree of being indistinguishable from solid objects.

"What are you doing?", Amanda asked in a puzzled tone of voice.

"We'll have to make it look convincing, don't we? Just pretend you're asleep and it'll be perfect.", Gaude said.

They approached the house in a leisurely pace.

Suddenly, Irma stopped and spoke: "There's a lot more than just one in there. Smells like a trap."

"A Trap, you say? In we go!.", Gaude answered with a gleeful grin. "We'll just have to kidnap that Trap before the rest can react and get the hell out of dodge, right?"

"Who's a Trap?", Amanda asked, breaking her act of being asleep.

"Gaude?", Irma said in a questioning tone, not aware either.

"It's a form of art meant to be appreciated from a respectful distance. Now, let's keep going."

The trio then approached the house and entered through a half-rotten side door. Inside, even the floorboards looked rotten and the wallpaper was peeling down from the drywall, a sorry state for a building. Inside, they were greeted by the visage of a man in a butler's suit, one that Gaude recognized as the father of the two vampires that were already sprinkled into the greenhouses as fertilizer.

"So, you've brought her. Good. You're not completely incomp-

Werewolf!", the vampire butler yelled out in alarm, only now getting a whiff of Irma's scent.

The butler's face changed into a pasty one and fangs grew out from between his lips, but even before he managed to strike out, Irma had already knocked the butler on the back of his head, rendering him extremely compliant with whatever the trio had in mind for him.

'Take that, long uninterrupted transformation sequences!', Gaude thought privately.

Outwardly, he said with a disappointed tone of voice: "You're not a Trap at all. You're just a bald tick."

As soon as the butler shouted out, the ceiling and the walls of the room were broken down and at least ten more vampires burst out, to no surprise the three that took a triangle formation around the downed butler.

Gaude took out a handheld two-way mirror that was connected to one in the Werewolf Academy where the troops were on standby. While Irma and Amanda were blocking attacks, Gaude commanded: "Capture alive if possible, if not, bring back the corpses. The potions' lab is interested in Vampire ingredients."

"Laly, take us to interrogation. It's time to find out our next destination."

This time, Gaude didn't bother with the regular interrogation techniques, instead, he softened the old vampire up with a generous helping of Veritaserum and Legilimency to loosen the old vampire's defenses.