by C. J. Pinard
Tyler looked at the young nurse with an intimidating stare and said, “Which room, Samantha?”
She looked at a whiteboard behind her and then back at Tyler. “Room three.”
Tyler wheeled Malina into room three and yanked the bed covers back. Thomas helped her in. He grabbed a gown and tossed it to Thomas and said, “Help her change into that.” Then he was gone, yanking the curtain closed around the bed.
Malina let out another yell. Thomas managed to strip her clothes off and get the gown loosely on her. When the contraction passed, she said breathlessly, “Where is Doctor Conley? Did anyone call him?”
“May I come in?” Tyler asked.
“Yes,” Thomas answered. As Tyler entered, he said, “Her doctor is Conley, did someone call him?”
Tyler shook his head. “He’s out of town. You’ll have to take who’s on-call.”
Malina wailed, “Drugs! Please!”
Tyler looked pensively at Thomas. “I need to check her to see how far along she is.”
Thomas looked at him strangely. “Have you ever delivered a baby before?”
Tyler laughed. “Yes, plenty of times, young girls come into the ER at the last minute and pop them out. It’s crazy.”
He was cut off by another yell by Malina. He told her to lie back and he checked her progress. “Uh oh, baby’s here.” His eyes were wide as he looked at Thomas with a smile.
Malina screamed this time. Thomas was petting her hair.
“Push for me, sweetie,” Tyler said, pushing up her gown. “Nurse!” he yelled.
Samantha came running in. “What is it, Dr. James?”
“I need a cart in here now, this baby is crowning!”
“Be right back.”
Malina began to grunt and he reached down as Malina then screamed, as the baby came out very easily. A squirming, wailing baby was in her arms and Thomas’s eyes were wide, and then he began to tear up. “Oh, dear God, that was so fast!”
Nurse Samantha came in with the tray of medical equipment and laughed. “Okay, guess I took too long!”
Tyler snatched a pair of medical scissors from the tray and looked at Thomas. “Want to cut the cord?”
“Sure,” he said, taking the medical scissors from Tyler and clipping the pulsating umbilical cord. Tyler placed the baby on Malina’s chest.
Tyler announced, “It’s a girl.”
Malina started sobbing. “Oh, Thomas, look at her. She’s beautiful and perfect.” She pushed the goop off of the baby’s head and kissed her dark hair. “So beautiful.” Tears were streaming down her face.
Nurse Samantha came over. “May I weigh her?”
Malina smiled through her tears. “Sure,” she said, handing her the baby.
“What’s her name?” Samantha asked.
Malina looked at Thomas, then back to the baby. “Trinity Elizabeth.”
Samantha smiled. “Beautiful name.” She carried the squirming baby to the other side of the room where an infant scale sat on a table.
Thomas looked at his wife. “I understand Elizabeth for your mother. Trinity?”
She smiled. “Yes, she’s three parts; sylph, human, and Immortal.”
Chapter 21
∞∞∞
A week later, the new family was back in their apartment, adjusting to life with a newborn. Sleep deprived but happy, the couple was sitting in the new nursery, which was in the process of being painted lavender and pink with white block letters spelling out “TRINITY” on the wall.
“So, how do you feel?” Thomas asked, rubbing the baby’s head as she slept in her mother’s arms.
Malina smiled. “I feel the same. I mean, aside from the exhaustion of having a baby, I don’t feel any different.”
“When are you going to try?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t want to.”
He smiled. “Just try. Might as well know.”
She frowned. “I already know it won’t work. It’s the way it is.”
“Okay,” he sighed.
“Here, hold your daughter. I need to use the restroom.” She planted the baby in his arms. As Thomas held her, Trinity opened her big blue eyes and looked at her daddy, just staring. Then her bottom lip jutted out and she began to cry, and Thomas could swear he saw a small flash of lightning in her tiny eyes. As he was lost in the awe of her, he heard Malina squeal from the hallway. He walked over and saw her smiling, looking at something. She grinned at him, and then pointed. “Look.”
He turned to see a shimmering portal lurking at the end of the hallway.
“Oh, my God! You did it! How? How is this possible?”
“I, I don’t know,” she stuttered, still smiling.
They both stood there speechless until Malina finally spoke. “Well, I am not going to question it. Let’s just go with it!”
“I second that!”
Trinity began to squeak and he handed off the baby. “I think she’s hungry.”
Malina laughed. “You always think she’s hungry.”
∞∞∞
Elizabeth’s purple robes were billowing out behind her as she floated, surrounded by clouds. Her honey-colored eyes were looking kindly right into her daughter’s soul. “Oh, my beautiful Malina. Have you not read the notes I left for you? They are encrypted in my spell book. The answers you seek are all there. You must do an unlocking spell to release them. You and your wonderful husband have confirmed what I had suspected all those years ago when Jonathan and Emma were supposed to have their baby…”
It was two a.m. and Malina jerked awake. She was sitting up in the rocking chair, having dozed off after feeding Trinity.
“Wow, what a dream,” she mumbled, carefully placing the sleeping baby into her bassinet.
She stumbled into the kitchen and pulled the spell book from her satchel and opened it. She flipped through the pages then silently chanted an unlocking incantation over the blank pages in the back. Slowly the scrawlings of her mother began to appear:
If my theories are correct, once Jonathan and Emma’s baby is born, Emma may still be a sylph afterward and may not be affected by the childbirth curse that is mortality. My prediction is that Jonathan’s Immortal blood may negate the curse, and any baby born true of both Immortal and sylph may reverse the curse and keep the sylph from turning human. I am, curious, however, if a male child may turn into an Immortal naturally…
Malina closed the book with a thud and smiled. “Oh, my sweet mother. I miss you so. But you were right, mother. You were so right. I wish you were here to see my sweet Trinity, she looks just like you,” she whispered and closed her eyes.
∞∞∞
“I’m gonna miss you but the two years will fly by,” Jonathan said, hugging Tyler.
Tyler had a backpack slung over his shoulder, and he was wearing khaki shorts, flip flops, and a polo shirt. He smiled. “I guess. I was dreading it at first, but I’m looking forward to what I can learn.”
Kathryn hugged him. “We’ll see you periodically when we come to the island for trials and things. Sometimes I like to just go there to warm up. Portland is so cold!”
He laughed. “You got that right. Well, I’m ready,” he said, looking at Malina.
She waved her hand in the air and a shimmery portal appeared. She handed the baby to Kathryn, who immediately began cooing and talking to the child. Tyler and Malina stepped through onto the warm sands of the Island of Nymph and were greeted by Bill, who was very happy to see his replacement, as he was off to Denver for his new assignment in the coven there.
Malina hugged Tyler and stepped back through the still-open portal and back to her home in Portland with her husband and beautiful new baby to live out the rest of her long life. Jonathan and Kathryn were waiting for her, and they all went into Jonathan and Kathryn’s apartment and had dinner to celebrate everything that had happened over the past year.
Life had been hectic, but life was good, and would continue to be that way for a long, long time.
Epilog
ue
∞∞∞
Angel was standing at the airport ticket counter with a small suitcase and a backpack, waiting in line. She had dyed her platinum hair back to dark blonde and took the black streaks out, and once again had it up in a ponytail. She wore jean capri pants and a light purple hoodie. She was looking down at a piece of paper she had printed off, when someone tapped her on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, Angel?” said a good-looking young man with sandy blonde hair and ocean blue eyes. He had on a black polo shirt with some sort of yellow emblem and khaki cargo pants. He was chewing on a toothpick and held a black duffel bag in his tanned, muscular arm.
She looked a little confused. He seemed vaguely familiar but she couldn’t place him. “Yeah. Well, I used to be. The name is Jessica Lewis now. Or again, I guess. Who are you?”
“My name is Jason Swift, I work for the BSI.”
She had been told about the BSI from Mike, who thought it only fair to warn her and Darius of the small group of humans from the Justice Department who knew about their kind, so she was slightly alarmed at his revelation.
“Well,” she said, looking around and dropping her voice to a whisper, “I’m not a vampire anymore.”
He laughed, amusement and flirtation dancing in his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”
She looked confused. “Um, okay. Well, what can I do for you then, Mr. Swift?”
“First of all, call me Jason. Secondly, where are you going?”
She smiled. “Colorado. I’ve had enough of Oregon.”
“Well, there’s the irony of it. I’ve just been transferred to our Denver field office,” Jason said.
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
He nodded. “So, what are your plans when you get there?”
She smiled. “Find a job, find an apartment, find a life.”
“Dancing?” he asked, amused.
She shook her head. “Wasn’t planning on it. I’ll wait tables if I have to.”
He looked at her paper. “I see we’re on the same flight.” He waved his ticket at her.
She smiled. “So, we are.”
THE END
∞∞∞
BSI: Bureau of Supernatural Investigation
(An Enchanted Immortals Novella)
By C.J. Pinard
Copyright 2013 C.J. Pinard
Dedication:
This is for my friend Kristen, for sharing her love of free gore with the world.
SYNOPSIS:
Supernatural creatures have roamed the Earth since the beginning of time. There was a time when humans would not tolerate having vampires and other creatures in their midst, stealing their young and killing their fellow human beings. These humans took care of business with pitchforks, sharpened stakes, and fires. As the centuries passed, the supernatural creatures learned that they needed to hide in order to survive. As they did, humans evolved, and after a few decades, humans no longer believed the tales from mythology and folklore. Then the creatures became more bold again, showing themselves when they should have stayed hidden.
In 1945, the assistant director of the FBI suffered a horrible tragedy, which he learned later was supernaturally related. He created a small branch of the Department of Justice called the Bureau of Supernatural Investigation – the BSI. Little did he know that there were already men and women policing the world of the supernatural – or the “Fae.” The only difference was that this other group had a huge advantage over the humans running the BSI; they were also immortal, just like the creatures they policed. Should the BSI and the Immortals work together to keep the peace?
Follow agents and Immortals from the four supernaturally busiest places in the country – San Francisco, Chicago, New Orleans, and Washington D.C. and watch the BSI evolve.
Vampires, shapeshifters, succubae, and Immortals. What is the Justice Department hiding?
“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
~Joseph Conrad
PROLOGUE
∞∞∞
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.”