by C. J. Pinard
“Malina, what did you do?” Thomas gasped.
She grinned, her full, pretty lips looking unusually mischievous. “Let’s just say that ‘stuff’ I gave them will do absolutely nothing for them. I don’t even know what they want it for, but the spell I put on it will do the opposite of that,” she finished.
Kathryn laughed. “Good one, Malina, good one!”
“All right, let’s go. We have some vampires to catch. And this time, we show no mercy!” Jonathan said, grabbing his coat and gun holster from the hook.
As they raced into the hallway, Lillian pushed the call button for the elevator when they all heard a noise. They looked down the long hallway and saw Steve the janitor, unwinding the cord to the vacuum, whistling.
“Hiya, folks,” Steve said.
“Come here, you little puke,” Jonathan said, dashing toward the vampire.
But Thomas was faster – of course; already had Steve by the collar.
As Jonathan started his yelling tirade, Kathryn closed her eyes and delved into his mind and heard Steve’s panicked inner voice:
Oh, shit, they’re onto me! Pascal’s going to owe me big time if I get out of this. My own personal supply of live donors, no questions asked!
Her eyes snapped open and she screamed, “Jonathan! He’s a VAMPIRE!”
∞∞∞
“Darius! Where in the hell is this place?” Pascal said from the backseat of the Towncar.
It was the driver, Mike who answered, “The GPS says about another hour to go, boss.” He had to yell over the screeching of the windshield wipers that were trying desperately to keep up with the driving rain.
“What are we going to this place for anyway?” Darius asked, pushing a human female off his lap. She slumped over the seat, unconscious. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I already told you, I want to try something with this stuff the sylph gave us,” Pascal answered, looking down at the satchel he had on his lap.
“What is that stuff?” asked Joshua, who had come along for the ride.
“It’s what the sylphs give the humans to keep them immortal,” Angel answered.
“Why would we want that?” Joshua inquired.
Pascal let out an exasperated breath. “Don’t worry about it, you child. We shall soon see if it does what I think it will when we reach the Oregon Vortex.”
∞∞∞
“What?!” Jonathan roared. Then he was on him. He had Steve by the throat. Thomas, Kathryn, and Lillian all had their guns drawn.
Thomas was standing in front of Malina protectively.
“Listen here and listen good, leech. You have exactly fifteen seconds to tell me where Pascal is before I snap your neck!” Jonathan said, spitting in Steve’s face.
Steve’s eyes had turned black and his fangs were out, but he said nothing.
“You don’t scare me, freak. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…” Jonathan started.
Steve just hissed like a wild animal, venom dripping from his mouth. He was clawing at Jonathan’s hand but remained silent.
“Twelve, eleven, ten, nine…”
“You better start talking, Vampire Steve, or Jonathan here is going to use your body as a punching bag after he rips your head from it,” Thomas said through his teeth.
“I’m not telling you cops shit!” he choked out.
“Eight, seven, six, five…”
A loud noise exploded in everyone’s ears, followed by a blood-curdling scream. Jonathan looked down and saw a giant hole in Steve’s leg. Blood was spurting out of it, and Steve was screaming like a little girl.
They all turned around to see Lillian holding a smoking UV gun with a wicked smile on her lips, a look of naughtiness in her lavender eyes. She just shrugged and said, “It’ll heal.”
Jonathan smirked, then turned back to Steve. “Well?”
Steve gasped for breath. “Okay, okay. Pascal told me he was heading to some vortex. I don’t know where it is and that’s all I know!” Steve said angrily.
“When did they leave?” Jonathan asked, tightening his grip on Steve’s throat.
“About three hours ago,” Steve wheezed.
Jonathan let go of Steve who fell onto the floor. After Steve recovered his breath, he started to stand back up, and as soon as he did, Jonathan yanked him by the collar and said facetiously, “Vampire Steve, I hereby find you guilty of violating the Treaty of Zie and the act of Treason against the Zie. I sentence you to death by ultraviolet light.”
Before Steve could say a word, Jonathan had plucked his gun from his side holster and fired a single shot into Steve’s chest. The vampire fell back to the floor and turned brown, then gray, then to ash right before their eyes, leaving a huge pile in the hallway.
Jonathan knew he was the enforcer and not the judge, but today, he felt like being both. He had had enough.
Kathryn pointed at the ashy mess and said, “Dang, now who’s going to clean this up?”
Thomas snickered, then asked, “Malina, if you will please?”
She shook off the shock of the vampire kill (she would never get used to that), and waved her hand in the air, calling a portal. A shimmer in the hallway appeared and Malina stepped in. The other four followed in step behind her.
∞∞∞
The Towncar’s headlights illuminated a sign outside a squat building indicating they were at a novelty shop for the Vortex. The rain seemed to be coming in sideways as the headlights blazed onto the wet building. The car pulled into a parking space in front.
Leaving the woman in the backseat to let her sleep off her assault, the five vampires got out of the car. They then hopped the fence leading to the touristy area of the park. It was off-season, not to mention nighttime, so there wasn’t a soul around. Varying bird, insect, and even some animal sounds could be heard in the woods surrounding the strange attraction. A large flash of lightning split across the blackened sky and illuminated their surroundings briefly. It was followed closely by a boom of thunder.
“Now what?” Joshua asked, looking around.
“Let’s hike this way,” Pascal said, pointing toward an incline leading deeper into the woods.
Angel had a large gun with her, and the rest of them carried handguns.
“You seem to know your way around here. You been here before?” Darius asked.
“I remember when they discovered this place,” Pascal answered. “It was in the early 1900s. Settlers would go missing up in these parts, or come back with strange ailments. Some would just plain go crazy if they spent too much time here.”
“That’s really weird. I’ll admit I get a strange feeling being here. And the ground feels odd – off somehow,” Angel said, looking down at her boots.
After they had hiked for about fifteen minutes, they stopped in a clearing and looked around. The rain had reduced to a slight drizzle but lightning still silently illuminated the pitch-black heavens every few minutes.
“We stop here,” Pascal said. He opened the satchel and pulled out a vial of Enchantment. He shook it between his thumb and forefinger, and with a playful smile on his dead lips, he said, “Okay, who goes first?”
∞∞∞
The four Immortals and one tiny sylph stepped through the portal and found themselves immediately drenched with rain. Malina waved her arm to close the portal and they all quickly ran over to a nearby building and took shelter under a green awning. A flash of lightning lit up their faces as they all looked around, taking in their surroundings.
“This place looks deserted,” Thomas said.
“And creepy,” Lillian added.
“What now?” Kathryn asked, looking at Jonathan.
It was Malina who answered. “The vampires are close by. They have the Enchantment I made. The blood in it is calling to me.”
They all gave her an odd look, but decided they had no choice but to roll with it. Thomas took off his trench coat and put it over Malina’s shoulders as they started to walk. He knew this was not the tim
e or the place to think about kissing Malina but he couldn’t help it. Being that close to her brought it out in him. He didn’t understand why it had taken forty years for him to get up the nerve to ask her out on a date. He really could kick himself for being so lame. But, he had had a lot of growing up to do.
And how does it work, a sylph and an Immortal? Has it ever been done before? Surely, they could not be the first. Thomas thought back to the stories and legends he has heard over the years. He heard the whole reason for the Zie granting Immortality to select humans was because a sylph had begged for it for her human lover. How did the story go? They fell in love after he saved her from a vampire attack and couldn’t bear to spend eternity without him. He wondered if that story were even true – and if so – were those two still alive, still around somewhere?
Another snap of light from the sky brought him back to the situation at hand. He looked down at Malina and saw an arm around her shoulder and realized it was his own. She didn’t seem to be uncomfortable with it. Maybe she returned his feelings. Or maybe she just thought of him as just a friend and he was stupid to think anything otherwise.
“Stop!” Malina whispered, holding her hand up to the group trailing behind her. They all stood stock-still and listened. With their enhanced hearing, they could hear voices. They were arguing.
“What do you mean, who’s going first?” said the first voice.
“I’m not asking, I’m telling,” said the second, an English accent present.
“You’re crazy if you think I’m drinking that shit!” said a third.
Jonathan turned to the group and put his finger over his lips. He then flattened the palm of his hand at them to indicate for them to get down. The group crouched down at his command and watched as he walked slowly toward the sounds of the voices and disappeared into the trees.
He returned thirty seconds later and whispered to the group, “It’s them, let’s go.”
They walked on quietly, guns drawn, when they entered a clearing.
“Congratulations, D, you are tonight’s winner. You got yourself caught by the cops so you get to be tonight’s guinea pig. Bottoms up!” said Pascal, handing Darius a vial.
“Do you really think he’ll be able to walk in the sun after drinking this?” Joshua asked.
The Immortals saw the five vampires standing there. Darius held a vial of Enchantment to his lips. He shrugged, then downed the vial’s contents.
Thomas pulled a Swiss army knife from his pocket and sliced the palm of his hand and waited.
Suddenly, all the vampires froze, and looked in their direction.
“Get down, bloodsuckers!” Jonathan yelled to the vampires, gun drawn.
Of course, they did the exact opposite of that.
Thomas flashed to Angel and quickly disarmed her and placed iron handcuffs on her before she had a chance to make a noise. She screamed in protest.
Jonathan had gone for Darius’s legs but he was too quick and chucked the vial away and ran from him.
Kathryn and Lillian had Pascal, Mike, and Joshua at gunpoint. Kathryn walked over and yanked their guns from the vampires’ holsters and threw them into the woods.
“Get their cell phones,” Kathryn ordered Lillian.
“Boy does this feel familiar,” Lillian grinned as she plucked the vampires’ cell phones from their pockets. They hissed at her. She just laughed.
Then, they heard a shrilly scream, it was coming from Angel. As they looked down at her, they saw she had a horrified look on her face, and she was looking at Darius.
That’s when Darius fell to his knees and let out a wail, similar to a wounded animal.
As everyone in the clearing looked over at him, instead of the young, strong, svelte Darius they knew, there stood a seventy-year-old man, gray hair, wrinkled skin, clothes hanging loosely off of him, and he was wailing.
“Oh. No,” Pascal breathed.
∞∞∞
As the Immortals shoved the four vampires and one old now-human man in through the portal (back to the cells in the Murphy Architecture building), Thomas and Malina were the last to go through. As Malina went to step through, Thomas held her back by grabbing her by the waist. He spun her around and put his hands to both sides of her face and stared right into her flashing eyes. She smiled up at him, and as his eyes trailed down to her waiting lips, he kissed her softly, but with the most passion he has ever felt. She put her hands into his hair and kissed him back, as the electricity that bolted through both of them rivaled the lightning in the sky.
She waved her hand and closed the portal, preferring her rain-drenched kiss over a trip home.
Epilogue
∞∞∞
San Francisco – 1968
“I’m so sorry, dad,” Thomas said, holding his father’s hand at his bedside vigil.
I forgive you, son! Joseph said inside his mind.
While Nurse Barbara had told young Thomas that his “grandfather” was in a medically-induced coma, that was really only half of the truth.
His body was in a coma; his mind, however, was not.
“I never meant to hurt you and mom,” Thomas said, wiping a tear. “I didn’t ask for this life. But I did become a cop, just like you wanted.” He let out a humorless half-laugh.
I’m proud of you, my son. I’m not angry at you. I never believed you were dead. I never stopped looking for you. I knew you were still alive. I could feel it. I could feel you. I love you…
When the machines started beeping and the medical staff rushed in, Thomas slipped quietly away to the elevators to grieve.
After the medical staff worked on him with their compressions and paddles, they knew they had to stop; they knew he was gone. The room went silent as the doctor pronounced Joseph O’Malley dead, reciting time of death. Barbara looked down as she went to pull the sheet over his face. Confusion splashed over her face as she saw a single tear cascade down from the patient’s right eye and splatter onto the pillow.
She then looked around for young Thomas and saw him as the elevator doors were closing, with the same tear leaking from the same eye.
∞∞∞
THE END
Enchanted Immortals 2: The Vortex
By C.J. Pinard
Copyright 2012 C.J. Pinard
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my dear friends, Lisa P. and Wendy G. for their unwavering belief in me and their extra sets of eyes!
SYNOPSIS:
All Jonathan Murphy ever wanted was to work hard, love his wife, raise his children, and die a peaceful death. What life dealt him is the exact opposite. In the space of a mere instant, the life he once knew – the life he wanted – is no more. In its place, he is given great strength and immortality; but it comes with strings. Strings that bind him to the sylphs and other humans, whom he must protect against those who destroyed the life he once knew – the Fae. Along with his partners, Thomas and Kathryn, he works faithfully and tirelessly enforcing the laws of the Zie to please his queens. But a time is coming where he may have to revert to his barbaric ways of dispensing justice, even if it means killing a former lover.
“Before we acquire great power, we must acquire wisdom to use it.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
PROLOGUE
∞∞∞
“That’s why we’ve nicknamed it the ‘Enchanted Forest’,” she replied, giggling.
The trees were towered up all around, casting shadows in varying degrees of eeriness. The sun was setting now, barely visible between the mass of thick trees surrounding them. They were standing in a small clearing in the dense Sutro Forest, which sat smack-dab in the middle of 1963 San Francisco.
Yes, there is a forest in the middle of the city.
“Always joking and pranking, you sylphs,” Jonathan replied, not amused. He then downed the vial of Enchantment as if it contained the same liquid he kept at home in his heavy glass decanter. He shuddered and handed the vial back to Serina.
As they contin
ued to trek through the deep forestry, the three of them stopped short at the sounds of whispering. Then, an icy wind blew right through them, which was strange, considering it was July.
“Just keep moving,” Kathryn said quietly, eyeing both of them, then putting her head down. She began walking again, quickening her pace.
“But what was that?” Thomas asked, concerned.
“Voices of the dead,” she replied. “I just can’t believe you can hear that.”
Thomas and Jonathan didn’t need to hear any more. Their boots trudged over the mushy leaves and foliage that covered the forest floor as they quickened their pace to get out of the haunted area.
The sylph had already disappeared through her portal and back to wherever it was she spent her days, but the Immortals were going to take it on foot back to the Hyde Street bank building where they worked and lived.
The Sutro Forest was an area known for a high suicide rate; a beautiful place for people to die.
But not all the souls who left the Earth in this exquisitely dark place moved on to the next life. Some were trapped there, maintaining a strong presence. It did not seem to bother the sylphs; they found the area peaceful and quiet, despite its reputation. Humans mostly avoided the area, unless they were on some sort of ghost hunt.
Or they couldn’t cope any longer.
CHAPTER 1
∞∞∞
Newcastle, England – 1809
He was hiking along the countryside, lost in his own thoughts. A carpenter’s tool bag stuffed with twibylls, sickles, an edger, and a dibber was slung over his shoulder as he made his way home from a long and sweaty day of working in the sun. His tall frame cast an extra-long shadow along the dusty ground. Rubbing his hand over his face stubble, his mind twirled with his responsibilities.