Chapter 2

The following new characters appear in this chapter:

Joe Hendericks

Assistant Manager of the Miami branch of Dragon Security, 5’-10’’ tall, 180 pounds, 47 years old, brown hair going gray, gray eyes

Keith

Employee of Dragon Security, 5’-11’’ tall, 170 pounds, 26 years old, light brown hair, Blue eyes, rather handsome

George

Pimp, kidnapper, 5’-9’’ tall, about 36 years old, greasy hair.

Francisco

Pimp, kidnapper, man with no name, but later identified, 5’-8’’ tall, 180 pounds, 35 years old, black hair, brown eyes

Manuel

Pimp, kidnapper, 5’-6’’ tall, about 220 pounds, brown eyes, kidnapped Aleshia

We brought up Aleshia’s disappearance to our parents that evening, along with our desire to go to Miami to look for her. Our parents were not anxious for us to do this alone.

“But we have an office there. We won’t be there alone. I already talked to Joe, and he is checking on things,” I assured them. This seemed to reduce their resistance somewhat, but it wasn’t until the following afternoon that we received permission to go. We were sure that they had checked with those at the Miami office to see if the story was true.

The next morning we left in our car. We had wanted a convertible when we passed our driving test and got our driver’s license. Mother, however, insisted that we get a practical car instead. Since she was the one paying for it, that is what we got. It was a nice enough car and had travel seats for our Familiars. We mainly used it when we were going someplace that we hadn’t been previously, or were taking someone else with us. For going to college in Atlanta, we just transferred there. It was simpler, and we didn’t need a parking space or fuel.

We had packed our things that night and loaded them into the car the next morning. Our Familiars weren’t going with us this time, so there was plenty of room in car. We left early that morning.

We picked up I-285, the Perimeter Highway, on the east side of Atlanta from US 78, and took it around the outskirts of Atlanta to its south-side where we picked up I-75 and took it all of the way to Florida. Continuing on I-75 in Florida, we stopped for gas outside of Gainesville, and continued south on I-75 to where it had a turnoff to the Florida Turnpike, a toll road, which we took most of the way to Miami before getting on I-95 and took it into to Miami. This route was easier and shorter than taking I-75 to Macon, and then taking I-16 all of the way across Georgia to Savannah to pick up I-95 to drive to Miami. It took us over 11 hours of driving and 700 miles from our house to reach Miami.

After leaving the Atlanta area, we really noticed the lack of Ley Lines on the way to Florida. As we neared the coast and the ocean, there were occasional stretches of Ley Lines, but they weren’t all that powerful. On reaching Miami, we found a couple of Ley Lines, but noticed that our Witch Magic and our Black Magic were stronger here in the south of Florida. We were sure that we could work with that.

Joe had set us up in a hotel located just off of Biscayne Blvd. and not too far from the company’s offices there. We had seen on the internet that there were a lot of hotels in downtown Miami and even more on Miami Beach. We checked into the hotel before calling the office to see who was on duty that we knew. The phone rang three times before it was answered.

“Dragon Security, how may I help you?” someone said.

“This is Dallas Kavanagh. Is Joe there now?” I asked.

“Good afternoon, Miss Kavanagh. We weren’t expecting your call this soon. We thought that you wouldn’t be here until some time later. Joe is off until the morning shift. Are you at your hotel presently?” he asked.

“Yes, we got in a short time ago. We left very early this morning. We’ll come by the office in the morning to talk to him. We need a good night’s sleep, it was a long drive,” I told him before disconnecting.

“Let’s go eat and then get a good night’s sleep. Joe won’t be in until the morning,” I told Doreen. We changed clothes before going down to dinner at the hotel. The food was all right, and we put the meals on the hotel bill for our room, as the company was paying for it.

Following a good night’s sleep, we were up early, had breakfast, and were soon ready to head for the Offices of Dragon Security.

The building that our offices were in sat right on the only strong Ley Line that ran through Downtown Miami presently. There was another Line that we detected later, but it was deep under the Miami River. The walk to the offices wasn’t that long, only a few blocks. It wasn’t worth taking our car as traffic in Miami is, at least, as bad as traffic in Atlanta is, and there is always a parking problem.

There was no trouble finding the correct building even though we had never been there previously. The wards around the building were easy for us to detect from quite some distance away.

Arriving at the entrance of the building, we passed through the Dragon Ward around the building and opened the entry door to the lobby. There was an employee passing through the lobby as we entered, and he just stopped and stared at us in shock and amazement.

“You can’t do that!” he uttered as we moved toward him. “Or at least, you shouldn’t be able to do that. Who are you? Do you have an appointment? How did you get through the wards?” he finished in confusion. Doreen and I just smiled at him.

“We’re the Kavanagh sisters. We’re here to see Joe,” Doreen told him, taking the lead for a change. She must have found him cute, or she wouldn’t have said anything.

“Joe? Do you mean Mr. Hendricks?” he asked before he realized just who we were.

“You ... you’re the Kavanagh sisters?” he asked in a shocked voice.

“Yes, we are,” I answered just before Joe emerged from another part of the building.

“Dallas, Doreen, welcome to the Miami branch of Dragon Security. I detected your arrival several minutes ago, but needed to finish what I was doing. Has Keith welcomed you?” he asked, looking at the very flustered employee who had greeted us.

“I’m afraid that Keith is a bit flustered by our appearance. We tend to do that to many young males,” Doreen told him. I was sure that she definitely liked him now, as she seldom speaks when not necessary.

“Come up to the office, and I’ll lay out what we have learned about your friend,” Joe told us. As we moved to follow him, Doreen moved over to Keith.

“Don’t worry, we don’t bite ... not much anyway,” she told him in a quiet voice before following me. She definitely liked him, I had decided.

Up in his office a short time later, Joe seemed a bit nervous, if a male near Dragons can be said to be nervous.

“The information that I gave you from the police is still accurate. There is more information about your friend’s disappearance, however,” he said but appeared to be even more nervous.

“We had to ... lean on a number of people to get this information,” he told us in a cautious voice.

“Don’t worry about it, Joe,” I told him. “If what we suspect is true, the claws will be coming out,” I continued.

“Claws, hell, if what we think happened is true, the Dragons will be coming out, and there will be blood in the streets,” Doreen told him with a grin. Joe appeared to be relieved on hearing this.

“After applying some Dragon persuasion, we learned that she was last seen going into one particular club / bar in the Latin Quarter. I sent a couple of our guys in there to check out the place. They didn’t come up with much. Of course, they were guys, and they weren’t supposed to call attention to themselves. Still, they were sure that something was going on there under the table,” Joe told us.

“Where is this bar?” Doreen asked.

“Come over to the Operations Center, and I’ll show you,” he told us.

The Operations Center was a large room that took up most of the floor that it was on. There were numerous computer consoles where our employees monitored the properties that we protected. It was reasonably active at this time of the morning. More interesting to us were the large maps on the walls and on mobile stands. They covered the entire area where we had clients from Boca Raton in the north to Palmetto Bay south of Miami proper. There was an extra large map of the Miami, Miami Beach, and the Coconut Grove areas. All of the properties and businesses that we protected were indicated by numbered pins on the maps.

Specifically outlined presently were the Latin Quarter and Little Havana. Joe led us over to that part of the map and pointed to a black unnumbered pin in the map.

“This is where the bar in question is. Do you think that you can find it alone?” he asked. We checked where our hotel was on the map and checked out how to reach the bar from there. We would park our car a couple of blocks from there and walk to the bar.

“We see how to get there. We’ll check it out tonight. Don’t worry if you don’t hear from us for a few days,” I told him.

“Don’t be surprised if you hear about the police finding a number of dead bodies. We intend to clean out this infection,” Doreen added. Joe only smiled. We returned to our hotel following that, to rest and prepare for visiting that bar tonight.

Arriving there that evening, we approached the bouncer who barred entrance to the club / bar. We had parked our car a couple of blocks away with a Dragon ward around it to keep those interested in it away. As we made our way into the Latin Quarter, we noticed that the buildings became progressively older and less well maintained. The area near the bar can only be described as rundown.

We walked up to the large bouncer on duty outside of the bar. There wasn’t a line for patrons waiting for admittance yet that evening, but he still barred the door checking on the age of those seeking admittance. He smiled at the two of us, as he ogled our bodies. He was sure that these two would be prime candidates for those looking for women for their brothels.

“Hi, I’m Dallas,” I said. “I’m the talkative one. This is my twin sister, Doreen. Don’t upset Doreen. She tends to blast people or things that upset her. We’re 21 and just recently finished our third year in college. We came down here for a vacation by ourselves and to get away from our family. They always want to tell us what to do.

“We are Princesses, actually Dragon Princesses. Our mother is the Dragon Queen, and she told us that we are Princesses when we were three. It didn’t mean a lot to us then as there were seldom other children around us to be impressed. We were mostly home-schooled. Believe me, you don’t send Dragon children to school with normal children, or even the children of Witches, or other Magic users. Not if you want the other children to survive. We did meet the sons and a few daughters of some of our parents employees. Our mom is the President and CEO of Dragon Security. Our dad is the Operations Chief and actually runs the business. He’s busy a lot, so is mom being the Queen,” I finished with a smile.

The man on the door allowed them to enter after checking their identifications. He thought that he had heard all of the bullshit stories that these damned gringo kids had made up already, but this pair were more full of themselves and had more bullshit than any of the others he had seen while working here. He was sure that it would do them little good inside, and they would be making their living on their backs shortly. He intended to get his share of them also.

It wasn’t totally dark in the club, but the lighting was very subdued, so it was difficult to tell if it was in as poor a condition as the outside had been with our human vision. Later with our Dragon vision, we could see that it was in a bit better condition, but far from new and could use an update. We didn’t have long to check this out, as there were a number of men in the club and they were all watching us, as were the few women present. There was someone playing music, if a bit loudly, and a few people were dancing in the middle of the club. Many more were at the bar or seated at tables or in booths and drinking. Doreen and I made our way to the bar and managed to get seats together.

“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked on arriving in front of us.

“Two Tequilas,” I told him, as we didn’t expect that they had wine here, and we figured they couldn’t drug the Tequila if it was poured in front of us. The bartender produced two shot glasses, empty glasses, poured the Tequila from the bottle, and produced a plate with lime slices and salt. We downed the Tequila, licked the salt off of our wrists and ate the lime slices. It was a strong drink, but we weren’t worried.

Looking around after finishing, we noticed that a number of the men were still watching us, but none of them approached us at that time.

We ordered a cocktail following that, as we had seen several of the other women had them. The men appeared to be drinking whiskey of one kind or another or beer, but not many of them were drinking Tequila.

A couple of drinks later, we were approached by man of about average height and maybe 36 years of age. He was wearing slacks and a sports shirt, but had his hair slicked down with something that made it look greasy.

“Are you ladies here to party?” he asked, as we hadn’t moved from our seats at the bar.