Wrong Name 02.

All Characters are 18+

Chapters will be short but output will be high.

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***Prologue 03***

Rick stood leaning against the wall of one of the buildings that made up the alley he was standing in. He slowly drew in the smoke from his cigarette as he watched the five boys gang up on the scrawny-looking blonde boy on the ground trying and failing to protect himself from the countless punches and kicks that kept raining on him. This was a less populated section of district thirteen, as such few people would walk past this alley. And even if they were to walk by, the moment they saw what was going on, they would probably increase their pace, acting like they hadn't seen anything.

The city of Haven had thirteen districts. No one knew if it was on purpose or not, but they were numbered from the richest districts to the poorest. Districts one to three were for the rich. Four to ten were for the middle class. Eleven and twelve were for the lower class. If you lived in district thirteen, then you were basically scum. Things were so bad here that the police only came in to take away dead bodies. As for keeping or trying to solve crimes, well... this isn't some TV show, was the popular phrase in district thirteen.

Anyone who looked into the alley, if they could see through the cloaking spell he'd cast, might have been tempted to think that Rick was the lookout for the gang that was assaulting the boy on the ground. Rick, however, had never met any of them before today. If he'd not happened to walk past the alley just a few minutes prior, then he probably never would have met them. When he'd walked into the alley, the five boys had been trying to get the boy on the ground to give them all his money. The boy on the ground had feigned reaching for his pocket to get the money. Then faster than Rick would have thought him capable of being, he had struck out.

His punch had connected with the largest of the five boys. The boy had probably been hoping to either knock out the boy or stun him enough to break out of the encirclement. He didn't even wait to see if he had succeeded in knocking him out. The moment the punched boy had taken a step back, the scrawny-looking boy had already been moving to try to escape through the small gap formed. But given his thin almost emaciated form, his punch couldn't have packed that much power. As evidenced by the fact that it was the one he'd punched that stopped him by grabbing onto the back of the escaping boy's collar. Broken ribs, a broken nose, two purple eyes, left eye swollen shut, busted upper lip, front teeth knocked loose. Rick calmly analyzed the damage the boy on the ground had taken from his beating.

Like the people that had come across the scene and quickly walked away, he felt absolutely no inclination to try and save the boy on the ground. If anything, he was glad to have come across this scene. The coven had given him his last warning that morning. If he didn't bring in a recruit in the next week, his end wouldn't be pretty. The demon that the head of his coven had summoned wasn't a particularly forgiving one. One of the requirements he'd agreed to when he joined the coven was to bring in at least one new member every three months.

That had sounded easy at the start. What Rick hadn't factored into his decision at the time, was the fact that he was a loner with barely any friends. And if that wasn't bad enough, he was also below average in the looks department. Between his complete lack of social skills and having a face that even his mother didn't like, he couldn't exactly walk up to people and say, "Hey, wanna join this demon-worshipping coven I'm in?"

But, while he couldn't convince strangers to join, a young man seeking revenge was the perfect target for him. Promises of gaining the power to pay back every single one of the five boys beating him up right now, and any other person that might wish to hurt him in the future. That was a pitch that he could make. His own life hadn't much improved since he joined the coven, but he saw no reason to add this little detail into the mix.

The boys seemed to have finally grown tired of assaulting the boy on the ground as they finally reached into his pockets and took his wallet and turned to start walking out of the alley. Even though they'd just beaten someone half to death, they didn't move with any haste. Even they knew what kind of neighborhood they lived in. There were no heroes in district thirteen. No one would be coming to save the boy on the ground.

Rick pressed himself up against the wall he'd been leaning on as the boys walked by. What he had cast was only the basic version of the spell. It was the spell he'd gotten on joining the coven. And after three months, he was yet to garner enough merit within the coven to advance it or get other better spells. At first, he'd thought that he'd gotten a really cool spell. One that could hide him from the eyes of those around him, even if he was standing before them. It made him feel like a ninja or some stupid shit like that. It wasn't until he'd spent some time in the coven and become exposed to more magic that he realized just how shitty the spell he got was.

Not only was it lousy when compared to other much better spells, but also because of just how easy it was to break it. When the spell was cast, he couldn't move around too much or it would break. He also had to make sure not to make any kind of noise while under the cloaking spell. If that was all, then Rick wouldn't have considered the spell to be so bad. However, the spell didn't even need magic to break. If one stared at the place he was for more than thirty seconds, then the spell would start to come apart. They'd start to think that there was something there even before their eyes could actually see it. And given the restriction on his movements while he was cloaked, he couldn't exactly move to another spot fast enough to avoid detection.

And just to add insult to injury, there were people against whom his cloaking spell didn't work. When it came to members of the coven with more magic than he had, Rick could understand. There were, however, instances where people who didn't even have an ounce of magic to them could see through his cloaking spell. Rick had wanted to ask about it from the other coven members. But in a sect that worships demons, revealing one's weaknesses is essentially asking for a one-way ticket to hell. As such, Rick was still in the dark as to why some people can see through his cloaking spell while others can't. The only good thing about the situation was the fact that very few people can see through it. In the whole of district thirteen, there were only three people that he knew of that weren't affected by his cloaking spell.

Once the five boys had walked past him and left the alley, Rick lifted his cloaking spell and walked over to the boy on the ground. Moans and groans of pain left him as he slowly crawled on the ground towards the alley wall that was closest to him. Once he reached it, the boy struggled and pushed his badly battered body until he was able to rest his back against the wall. He then proceeded to cough up a mouthful of blood on the ground before him.

"You okay kid?" Rick spoke up feigning concern for the boy.

"Just peachy," He groaned without bothering to try and look up at who it was that was talking to him.

"What happened to you?" Rick further asked.

Rather than answering him, the boy looked up at him with a look of confusion mixed in with clear annoyance. "So a front-row seat to my beat down wasn't enough, you now need the behind the scenes as well?" he countered

Rick's eyes widened his jaws clenching. It was a good thing the boy had turned away from him after speaking otherwise he'd have seen the shock on his face. The number of people who can see through his cloaking spell in district thirteen had just gone up to four and this boy was one of them. He had planned to act like he empathized with his situation and rope him in that way. Rick wasn't sure at what point he had been seen, but one thing was for sure, the boy knew that he had watched him get beaten and had done nothing to help him. Rick could feel his heart beating hard in his chest as he saw his chances of getting the boy to join the coven go up in smoke.

No! He couldn't let this happen. Rick didn't want to find out what the demon would do to him if he didn't honor the agreement that he'd made when he joined the coven. Rather than try and make some excuse, Rick decided to just go with the flow and adapt to the situation. The look on Rick's face because icy cold as he regarded the boy. "Do you want to be stronger?" He asked in a tone that made it clear that this was an opportunity that wouldn't come around twice.

The boy regarded the strange man before him for a long while before he spoke up. "Yes..."