<div align="center"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;"><em>Austin Callum Crawford</em></span><br/><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;">Don’t mind the cops in monkey suits</span></span></div><hr/><br/><div class="floatleft">(http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy145/alxnjsh/characters/478a460debcbc.jpg?t=1324234288)</div>Austin had only just clicked “send” on his phone when he got the call of police presence needed at the site of a homicide. He managed to get in a quick “l8r” in a follow-up text to Tray. Austin’s closest friend would understand, their conversations had been interrupted in the past.<br/><br/>Austin Crawford was a uniformed cop. It’s the most associated vision of a police officer – responding to an emergency and asserting authority. Sometimes they were called in to provide crowd control which appeared to be the current request. Nothing major and probably boring. Pulling out from the curb, Austin flipped on the lights and began to race through the city.<br/><br/>Minutes later he found himself at a relatively quiet crime scene. Austin stepped out the squad car, his uniform tightening around his chest and biceps as he closed the door behind him. Of course, the scene was a fairly dark alleyway that stank like trash and who knows what else. Murder scenes were so rarely in bright sunny parks with people mulling about.<br/><br/>Brute show of force. That seemed to be the assignment. Austin recognized a cop from a nearby precinct already on the scene and nodded to him. “Stiff?” He asked as his eyes shifted back out the alley to monitor the scene. So far there wasn’t much of a crowd.<br/><br/>“Yeah, another kid.” He responded with his finger sweeping across his neck. Austin nodded slightly.<br/><br/>Austin shook his head. “I hope we get this guy.” It was horrific. The meticulous nature of the deaths – the ritual behind it. Austin was all too familiar with the scene. He had experience many of them during his time in the Underworld.<br/><br/>Austin was part of a hidden world that lived in parallel to the mortal realm. It consisted of good and evil. He was the product of evil, but fought daily to live contrary. Austin started his life in a middle-class working family with parents Jake and Annie. He led an idyllic life, excelling in sports and leading an active social life.<br/><br/>All of this changed on his 15th birthday when, returning home from school, he found his mother dead. It was an apparent homicide and all clues pointed to his father as the murderer. Austin then learned that his father ‘Jake’ was actually ‘Amartes,’ a high level demon. With the shock of his mother’s death and the news of his ancestry and supernatural world, Austin snapped. The power that emanated from him coursed through his flesh and destroyed his home and all evidence of the death.<br/><br/>Amartes took his grieving son, now in his demonic form of Agares, to the Underworld. For five years Austin learned the ways of demons and honed his powers. All was in the name of revenge for his mother’s death. At 20, Austin abandoned the demonic world, paying off a seer to cloak him from the Underworld, and entered the mortal world once again. Austin entered the police academy and took courses at a nearby school. That’s where he met his best…or perhaps only…friend Tray. Tray wasn’t like most of the guys he knew and it was good for Austin to break out from his typical crowd and experience others. Austin felt instinctively protective of Tray for some unknown reason. It seemed to give Austin additional purpose to his existence.<br/><br/>Back at the scene, Austin watched a jogger move past the alley and take no notice to the police presence. Austin merely sighed. The mortal world was clueless and he would work to ensure it stayed that way while avenging his mother’s death.<br/>