The Bewitched Box Set

by W. J. May

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  Discover more at:

  www.mandematthews.com

  Credits

  Copy Editing

  Ann Mauren, AMDesign Studios

  Cover Design

  AMDesign Studios

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  Acknowledgements

  Of course any book requires a team of readers, editors, critique partners, supporters and more. Thank you so much: Lance Matthews, May Hancock, Kathia Donalds, Ann Mauren and Mary Endersbe. I am forever in your debt.

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  Connect with the Author

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  Story 6 – BSI by C.J. Pinard

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  BSI: Bureau of Supernatural Investigation

  By C.J. Pinard

  Copyright 2013 C.J. Pinard

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Dedication:

  This is for my friend Kristen, for sharing her love of free gore with the world.

  “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” Joseph Conrad

  * * *

  PROLOGUE

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  Washington, D.C. – 1945

  It was one a.m. and the small pub was closing. The D.C. night was quiet and had died down, and he was spent. A long week of college classes and a part-time job in a small diner had left him purely exhausted.

  He slipped out of Joe’s Tavern and looked both ways down the foggy street before making his way along the sidewalk. Dim orange streetlights barely lit his way, every other one seemed to flicker, as if about to go out. The snapping of his shoes on the concrete was the only sound to keep him company. The quiet February night was cold and blustery, and the whiskey he’d consumed in the tavern was the only thing keeping him warm. He walked quickly past businesses, such as butcher shops and beauty shops. They were closed up tight for the night, and the weekend for that matter, and lay silent and dark as he passed. His breath turned to mist in the air as he hurried along.

  He pulled the collar of his beige trench coat up tighter around his throat as he walked with his head down. He only had five blocks to make it to his modest downtown apartment. His father was a high-ranking government official in the FBI and was paid very well for his talents. As a World War I vet, his father had seen his share of horrors and dumped every last ounce of his energy into his job at the FBI, fighting crime. He was well respected and valued amongst his civil service peers, supervisors, and subordinates.

  He thought about his father and how much he, too, respected him. It was hard to grow up under such an iron fist, but he now realized that it was for his own good. His sister, Macy, had not fared as well with the strict discipline, but she, too, was finally outgrowing her rebellion and was now doing well for herself, attending college in Connecticut to work in nursing.

  Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t notice someone staggering out of the alley just ahead of him. The stranger dropped to the ground and lay still. He almost tripped over the bleeding man, stopping short before he did.

  He looked down at the man who was lying at his feet. Bleeding from the neck, he peered into the stranger’s face and realized he wasn’t a stranger at all. It was his fellow classmate, Ronnie, whom he recognized from his Political Science class. As he bent down, he noticed Ronnie’s neck was torn open and blood was gushing fast from his pulsing carotid artery. He pressed a hand to the wound and looked into Ronnie’s terrified face.

  “Ronnie! What happened?”

  Wheezing, Ronnie choked out, “Paul, get out of here. Now, hurry, run.”

  Paul bent down and placed his face close to Ronnie’s mouth. “What happened to you?”

  Ronnie’s eyes went big as he looked beyond his Good Samaritan friend at the figure standing behind him. He let out a gasp and then blacked out.

  Paul felt a cold tingle of dread crawl on his flesh, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He slowly rose to his feet and very carefully turned around. Ronnie’s blood trickled off the palm of Paul’s hand and leaked down his fingertips, splattering the concrete in slow, fat drops. Standing behind him was a man – no, it couldn’t be a man – a man would have whites to his eyes. This... creature had solid black eyes with not a speck of white, and had a set of fangs protruding from his mouth that would make a rattlesnake envious.

  Paul gasped in horror and turned to run, but it was all in vain. The creature snatched him up by the collar of his trench coat and yanked him backward, pulling him into an intimate embrace with Paul’s back to his assailant’s front.

  Paul, frozen with fear, listened as the man – the creature – hissed in his ear. “It will do you no good to run. You cannot outrun me, you cannot hide from me. I am stronger and faster than you, and you are nothing but a meal to me.” He ended his tirade with a deranged laugh.

  Before Paul could expel his last cry, the creature bit down into his neck. He wheezed into the dark, empty night until his whimpers stopped and his body lie motionless on the sidewalk next to his friend, Ronnie.

  The creature – the vampire – sped off into the night at preternatural speed, laughing and sated.

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  Washington, D.C. – 1945

  The massive boardroom was set in front of a plate glass window on the third floor. He was passing out a stack of papers, setting them neatly in front of each chair around the table. The meeting was to start in ten minutes and he was especially anxious about this one.

  Jim Blackwell, Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a sub department of the newly formed U.S. Department of Justice, was going to blow the minds of the six individuals invited to this meeting. A meeting that would change everything they thought they knew about the world.

  Three months ago, Jim had received the phone call every parent dreads. His son, Paul Blackwell, had been murdered three blocks from his apartment on his way home from a tavern one night. As if the devastation of that news wasn’t enough, his death was very suspicious, and as of now, still unsolved.

  Well, it was according to the Washington D.C. Police Department.

  Jim’s grief let him do little else but search for his son’s killer. One day, while Jim was poring over police reports and photos, General Alexander Frost, a high-ranking Air Force official stationed in New Mexico, came into his office, catching Jim in an especially rare, vulnerable moment.

  “Sir, a word?” General Frost said.

  Jim looked up from his notes and reports, a pained expression across his handsome features. He looked at the five-star General, in his perfectly pressed green uniform, which was spattered with awards and medals. General Frost's hair and moustache matched his name, white as snow.

  Jim stood and went around the desk to shake the General’s hand. “General Frost, this is a surprise. Please, have a seat.”

  The General nodded and removed his cap, sitting as instructed. “Mr. Blackwell, I’m here about your son.”

  Jim couldn’t hide his surprise. “Is that so? Do you have some information for me?
”

  General Frost’s usually confident appearance wavered a little bit, bordering on sheepish. “Yes, Jim. But it will require that you keep somewhat of an... open mind.”

  “I am all ears, General. I just want to find out what happened to Paul, and get the son-of-a-bitch who killed him,” he said, clearing his throat to stay the sob that wanted to jerk up out of his chest.

  The General nodded. “Well, sir, first I need to ask: Do you know what kind of work we do at our base in New Mexico?”

  Jim thought for a minute, then replied, “Yes, you do tests on aircrafts, and I hear you do some top-secret investigations regarding craters in the earth out there.”

  “Yes. All of that is true, but there are a very small number of us who are actually in charge of investigating... the strange and unusual. It’s our job to keep things that Americans cannot make sense of away from the public eye.”

  Jim cocked his head to the side, interested, but serious. “Such as?”

  The General looked hesitant. “Open mind, right, Jim?” At Jim’s nod, the General took a deep breath. “Extraterrestrial sightings, succubae, werewolves, shapeshifters, and vampires.”

  Jim let a mirthful laugh. “C’mon, General, be serious with me here. I can handle it.”

  General Frost measured Jim with a grave look. “I am being serious.”

  At the General’s silence, Jim’s face also grew sober and all the blood drained from his face. “You aren’t joking, are you?” The General shook his head and Jim swallowed hard. “Tell me everything, Alexander.”

  As Jim Blackwell looked around the boardroom, he spotted his chosen five: His two highest ranking FBI agents, Adam Swift and Gary Hall, and the three Special Agents in Charge (or, SACs) of the three (supernaturally) busiest areas of the country: San Francisco, Chicago, and New Orleans.

  All the agents were silently staring at Jim as the boardroom door opened and General Frost walked in carrying a large metal suitcase. Jim smiled, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners. He smoothed back his short black hair, then put his hands in the pockets of his suit pants.

  “General Frost, thank you for coming,” Jim said.

  The General removed his hat and nodded at Jim, silently coming to stand next to him.

  Jim started, “Gentlemen, thank you for coming to this meeting. Today we are here because as Assistant Director, I have received permission to start a new sub branch of the D.O.J. It’s going to be called ‘The Bureau of Supernatural Investigation’ and you five have been chosen to be a part of it.”

  The group let out a gasp and began murmuring amongst themselves.

  Jim held up a hand. “Look, I know it sounds strange, but please hear us out. By the end of this meeting, not only will you have hard proof that we have a great need for this branch, you will feel the swell of pride knowing you are part of making history.

  “Many of you know my son, Paul, was murdered three months ago here in D.C. His killer is still at large, and I now believe – no, I know – that he was killed by a vampire.”

  The SAC of the Chicago office, a young man named Al Cartwright, laughed. “C’mon, Jim, with all due respect, I think your grief is clouding your judgment here.”

  “Let me show you something, Al.” Jim walked to the suitcase the General had brought and entered a code into the scrolling lock, and the suitcase unlocked with a click. Raising the lid, he pulled out a brown paper sack about the size of a bowling ball, although it appeared to be quite light. He set the sack on the boardroom table and carefully removed its contents. He held a clean bony skull of a vampire up in both hands, careful to keep it from dropping.

  “What in the hell is that?” Al asked, mortified.

  The only difference the skull held from a normal human one was a large set of fangs where the eyeteeth should be. They were still very sharp.

  “This, Al, is a vampire skull. The General and his men at the base in New Mexico collect these types of things.” He turned to face the General. “General Frost, where did you get this particular skull?”

  The General cleared his throat. “A few of my airmen were out on the town one night and this thing attacked one of them.” He pointed at the skull. “One of my airmen used his service weapon to shoot the thing, but it didn’t stay down for long. He had the body in the back of the van to bring to us, believing it to be dead, when it recovered from its wounds and killed two of my men before the driver was able to shoot it again. Fortunately, my airman also had a buck knife on his belt and went through the arduous task of decapitating it while it was down. The van was a bloody mess.” He ended by shaking his head and letting out a small shudder.

  Everyone in the room sat as still as statues. In the deathly quiet, you could almost hear their hearts beating.

  “I thought that would get your attention,” Jim said with an amused look. He turned around and grabbed a stack of photographs while the agents passed around the skull, examining it, some of them putting their fingers to the sharp points of its teeth.

  Jim laid a series of six photographs on the table.

  The General grabbed the skull and carefully put it back in its sack, placing it back in the suitcase.

  Jim said, “Take a look at these. In the first photograph, you will see a man. In the very last one, you will see a wolf. Look what happens in the four photographs in between.”

  The men got up and gaped at the photographs of a shapeshifter transforming before the camera’s watchful eye. They let out a variety of curses.

  “These cannot be real,” Agent Swift piped up. Special Agent Adam Swift was a seasoned agent out of the San Francisco office. In his late forties, he was a short, squat man with thinning brown hair, but a friendly smile. He was also damn good at his job, and had no unsolved cases.

  “Oh, but they are, Agent Swift,” said Jim.

  Agent Swift shook his head. “I need a cigarette.”

  “One more, then we’ll let you go,” Jim said. He carefully stacked the photos and put them back in the suitcase, then removed a strange piece of metal and another photograph. He handed the metal to the first agent, who examined it, then passed it to the next.

  Jim raised an eyebrow. “Ever seen anything like that?” he asked to no one in particular.

  Nobody answered.

  “That is a piece of an alien aircraft our men are investigating at the base in New Mexico. Best they can tell, it’s some sort of futuristic alloy material not yet known to us. Now, look at this.” He passed around a photograph of a strange creature with a large head and abnormally large eyes. It had no nose and a very small mouth, and a very thin body lacking sexual organs.

  Adam Swift gawped at the photo then back up at Jim. “I’m really gonna need that smoke now.”

  PART I: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – 1946

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  Special Agent Anthony Bianchi sat at his small desk in the Seattle, Washington FBI field office, where he had been hired five years earlier as a Special Agent. He was intently studying the photographs of a murder that occurred on a local Navy base. As he placed the photographs in neat order, he put his knuckles to his lips, his brow furrowed in concentration.

  “Tony, a word?”

  Agent Bianchi lifted his dark head to look in the direction of the voice. His boss, Special Agent in Charge Shane Green, was calling him from his office.

  “Yeah, boss?” he asked at the doorway of the SAC’s office.

  SAC Shane Green was a tall, red-haired man with a thin build. Tony was convinced he only owned three suits; a brown one, a blue one, and a black one.

  “Have a seat, Tony,” SAC Green said.

  Agent Bianchi nodded, sitting.

  “So the San Francisco field office needs agents. How do you feel about going to California?”

  Anthony Bianchi had a secret that very few people knew, his boss not being one of them. While not quite six feet tall with deep, smoky brown eyes and a head full of thick, jet-black Italian hair, he appeared to be barely thirty
years old. The truth was, Tony was about seventy-five years old. So he couldn’t very well tell the SAC that he had already lived and worked in California about twenty years ago. He plastered on his charming smile.

  “I would love that, sir,” he replied.

  SAC Green smiled wide. “Great, just great. Start packing then, you’re to report in two weeks.”

  Agent Bianchi stood and smiled, reaching out a hand to shake. “Thank you, sir.”

  Exiting the office, he grinned to himself, happy to get back to California and the coven he’d left over two decades ago.

  ∞∞∞

  Two weeks later, Agent Bianchi parked his car in the lot of a small square brick building in downtown San Francisco. He narrowed his eyes at the structure and pondered why it was so... unremarkable. The FBI Building in Seattle had been a tall, grand design with mirrored windows. He thought this building resembled an oversized outhouse.

  He exited his large beige Chevy and made his way to the door, which was just as unremarkable, save for an address number: 2200. He glanced at the number, then at the piece of paper in his hand. As soon as he opened the door, he was greeted immediately.

  “Anthony Bianchi?” the man said, holding out his hand.

  “Yes, that’s me,” he replied, shaking the man’s proffered hand.

  The short man had a smoldering cigarette in his left hand and wore a friendly smile. “Adam Swift. Nice to meet you.”

  Adam led the way to a small room that looked much like an interrogation room and indicated for him to sit.

  “Cigarette?” Adam asked as he also sat.

  Tony shook his head. “No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

  Adam took a long drag then tapped an ash into a heavy glass ashtray, setting it there to smolder. “So what did your SAC tell you when he informed you to report here?”