Enchanted Immortals Series Box Set: Books 1-4 plus Novella

by C. J. Pinard

  “You know, that sauce matches your hair,” Christian said. “In fact, I think you may actually have some in your hair.”

  She absently smoothed a stray curl behind her ear. She normally wore her hair up and away from her face, but sometimes the curls would escape and frame her face. “Oops. What can I say? I love ribs.”

  Christian paused the forkful of baked beans at his lips. “Well, you are from the South.”

  She laughed. “I suppose.”

  The bell above the small diner’s door chimed and neither of them turned around, but as the man who entered alone approached the counter, Annette could hear an animalistic grunting ringing in her ears.

  Stupid whore! I should rip her face off. She crosses me one more time and I will! Thinks she can screw around on me? Doesn’t she know who I am? She wants an animal in bed? Oh, I’ll give her an animal, all right. Won’t she be surprised when she lies down with a man and wakes up with a two hundred pound cat!

  Annette stiffened at his words. All the blood drained from her face as she slowly turned around to see a tall-ish man with dark skin and shifty eyes approach the counter and study the menu posted above the pimply-face clerk’s head.

  Christian studied her face. “What is it, Russell?”

  “Ah, nothing. Tell me, Estes, what do you make of the guy at the counter?”

  Christian slid his eyes past her and cocked his head to the right. “Nothing, really. Seems a bit shady but other than that…”

  “Keep an eye on him,” she cautioned.

  He smirked. “Why? You know him?”

  “Uh, yeah,” she lied. “I think he’s a shifter.”

  Christian’s eyes got big. “What? How do you know that?”

  Shit. “Uh, he hit on me in a bar once. Was super drunk, said he was an animal in bed. It was quite disgusting, I’ll tell you.”

  Christian threw back his head and laughed. “Okay, while that’s not the most romantic line, that doesn’t mean he’s a shifter!”

  “Then call it women’s intuition.” She looked at him very serious, her face still pale. “Just humor me, Estes, okay?”

  He nodded and shrugged. “Okay.”

  The dark-skinned man grabbed a tray of fried chicken and red beans and rice and sat at a nearby table, eating alone. Annette turned around in her seat, pretending to study the menu, but slid a glance in his direction. She could see he was indeed wearing a gold wedding ring and feared for his wife.

  Even if she was, perhaps, a cheating whore.

  The man quickly finished his meal and left out the door. Christian and Annette were already in their government vehicle in the parking lot, waiting for him to exit the diner.

  The shapeshifter took off down the sidewalk on foot and headed toward nearby Lincoln Park.

  Christian looked at Annette from the driver’s seat of the Ford. “We gonna follow on foot?”

  She nodded. “Oh, yes.”

  They quietly left the car and began following him. The sun was beginning to go down and the streetlights popped on, their orange glow matching the colors of the fading sunset along the Chicago skyline.

  “Where the hell is he going?” Christian asked, slightly winded at their fast-walking, trying to keep up with the man – and Annette, who didn’t seem to be having any troubles.

  Annette grinned at him. “You need to exercise more.”

  “Are you offering to be my personal instructor?”

  She bit her lip and shook her head. Then she punched him in the arm for good measure. “In your dreams, Estes.”

  “Look,” Christian said as the man kept to the park’s path, “not everyone can be as fit as you.” He raked her with his eyes from head to toe.

  A red stain crept up her neck and settled into her pale face and she looked away. “Gotta keep up with the big boys, you know.”

  Christian laughed. Annette didn’t even clear five-foot-three and probably weighed 100 pounds soaking wet with boots on. But what she lacked in physical stature, she made up with in attitude. He liked that.

  The shifter looked as though he was heading for a dense copse of trees at the edge of the waterfront.

  “It’s game time,” Annette said, pushing her chin in the man’s direction.

  Christian raised his eyebrows. “Game time?”

  “Just try to keep up,” she muttered, taking off at a slow jog.

  When they reached the thicket of trees, Christian turned to Annette and put his hand on his holster. He whispered, “I’ll go first, stay behind me –”

  Without warning, a large black panther pounced out from behind a thick tree and pinned Annette to the ground. It was growling and began swiping its beastly claws along her chest and neck while its massive weight kept her flat. She was screaming, her fists flailing punches at the creature, her feet trying to kick it off her.

  Christian went to grab his service pistol and his sweaty hands slipped twice, before he got it unsnapped from its holster, and even then he almost dropped it. Finally taking aim, the second he cocked back the hammer, the creature whipped its head around and looked right at Christian, who swallowed hard. Wasting no time, he fired three shots at the panther, his eyes locked with its yellow ones. The gigantic cat howled in pain and jumped off Annette and came bounding toward Christian.

  Annette rolled over and had her revolver out before she had even stood up fully and fired two shots into the back of its skull before it reached Christian, who was also up at the ready, aiming to shoot.

  The panther slumped over, five bullet holes seeping dark red blood from its head and torso. As it took its last breath, its furry black body began to change. Its claws and teeth shrank back into its body, its fur dissipating into dark brown skin, its eyes turning from yellow slits to normal chocolate brown pupils. Where once there was a panther, lay a very dead, naked human.

  Annette limped over to Christian, who had to grab hold of her before she collapsed. She had vicious, bloody stripes on her neck and chest, her shirt ripped to shreds. Christian holstered his gun and kept his eyes on the shapeshifter. His hands were shaking as he took off his jacket and put it around Annette, who then passed out in his arms.

  Chapter 8

  Leo Burton rushed into the emergency room of Mercy Hospital in Chicago, frantic. He grabbed the first nurse he laid eyes on and looked down at her. “I need Annette Russell’s room.”

  The nurse, a small blonde lady with a nametag that read Lisa, looked at the large meat hook wrapped around her upper arm, then back up into the face of its owner. His face was twisted with pain and panic. Untangling herself from his grip, she pointed to the reception desk. “You’ll need to ask the candy striper. She has a directory.”

  He nodded and the nurse walked off in a huff, adjusting her uniform.

  After locating Annette’s room, Leo’s large legs easily took the stairs two at a time to the third floor.

  “Sir, can I help you?” he heard a female voice say as he whizzed by the nurse’s station. Totally ignoring her, he barreled into room six and stopped when he saw Annette sitting up in the hospital bed, smiling. The room was all white, even the bedcoverings and the paint, and a curtain was open, letting in some daylight. There was a young man sitting in a chair next to her bed and Leo’s eyes were immediately drawn to their linked hands.

  Annette’s eyes flicked up to the doorway and she smiled even wider. “Hey, Leo.”

  Christian pulled his hand from hers. He turned around and frowned at the large and imposing figure taking up most of the doorway.

  “Hey, kid, you okay?”

  She nodded. “Ah, Leo, this is my colleague, Special Agent Christian Estes. Christian, this is my… friend, Leo.”

  The two men shook hands.

  “Please,” Christian said, indicating the chair, “I was just leaving anyway. I have a shitload of paperwork to fill out.”

  Leo nodded. “Thanks.”

  With a small wave, Christian said, “I’ll see you back in the office soon, Russell. Get better.”
<
br />   “See you later, Estes.” She smiled.

  Leo watched Christian leave and stood up and hugged Annette. She winced and he pulled off her quickly, eyeing her bandaging, which was seeping blood. “Holy shit, woman, what the hell happened?”

  She took a deep breath. “Shifter got me.”

  He sat back down, his eyes big. “Tell me everything.”

  When she was finished with the tale, he looked at her and said, “So you realize your three mistakes, right?”

  She looked at him, confused. “Well I realized two of them right away, but a third?”

  “Yes, first, you didn’t have your gun drawn,” he started.

  She nodded. “I was working on it.”

  Ignoring her, he continued, “Secondly, you underestimated the shifter. I mean, what were you expecting, to get to watch him shift?”

  “Well, yeah, I was hoping to show Junior there…” She pointed at the doorway.

  He cut her off. “No. They shift very fast, split-second fast, Annette.”

  She sighed. “I know. And number three?”

  “Bringing that rookie human agent with you.”

  Her eyes flashed in anger. “But he’s not just some human, he’s a BSI agent! He’s gotta learn. On the job training, what better way to get his feet wet? That pathetic academy they sent us to in Georgia didn’t teach us nothin’. There’s no amount of training that prepares a person for something like this.”

  “Well you’re lucky he’s a decent shot, looks like he slowed it down enough for you to get a shot off. What did you tell the hospital staff?”

  She smiled slightly. “That we were hiking and a panther attacked us.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “A panther attack in Illinois?”

  She shrugged and sipped some water out of a straw from a cup she had on a tray next to her bed. “Not my problem, really. Gave them a fake name.”

  “And the body? Do I need to take care of it?”

  “No, Agent Estes dropped me in the ER then went straight to BSI headquarters and reported it. I guess the SAC already sent a team out to take care of it.”

  “Sounds like they are gonna be a good asset to us.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I think once they learn more about the Fae, they’re going to help us out a lot. I’m just glad I could get in with them.”

  “We are too, kid, we are too,” Leo said, smiling at her. “So when you going back to work?”

  She gingerly pulled the bandage off her neck and said, “How does it look?”

  He squinted at it and said, “The dried blood makes it look worse than it is, but they’re already scabbed over. You probably won’t even have a scar three days from now.”

  She nodded. “Good. Well I’m taking a week off. The government’s paying for it and there’s no way to explain the rapid healing to the BSI. I don’t care how open-minded they are.”

  ∞∞∞

  Christian slid the key into the lock of his one-bedroom apartment in Hyde Park. His body was physically exhausted but his mind was buzzing, the memories and events of the day bouncing around in his brain like a ball in a pinball machine. What was causing his pounding headache, however, were the unanswered questions.

  He stripped off his trench coat, which was coated in Annette’s dried blood, and tossed it into the hamper. Kicking off his shoes, he made his way to the fridge and grabbed a can of beer. Then he walked to the large black and white TV and turned the dial, flipping it on.

  He plunked himself on the couch, looking at the Andy Griffith Show, but not really watching it. As he put the beer to his lips and let the cool, tart liquid wash down his throat, he let out a shudder, thinking about that cat’s yellow eyes staring at him as he shot it.

  How is it possible for a human being to turn into an animal? What would cause something like that? Some radiation exposure or something?

  The answer was: they weren’t human beings.

  At the academy, they’d been schooled on shapeshifters and vampires. And while vampires fascinated him, he almost found them easier to understand on a scientific level. Apparently to become one, a normal human being has to be bitten by one, have some of their blood drained and drunk by a vampire, then the human has to drink the vampire’s blood. Apparently the mixing causes a full transformation after about three full days. Christian thought of this as a type of poisoning which caused the side effects of not being able to tolerate sunlight and rapid healing. The non-aging/immortality thing was odd, but he could still wrap his mind around that condition more than a shapeshifter. Apparently, they were born that way. Or so, the BSI had been told by a few they had extracted information from.

  How they extracted the information, Christian didn’t even want to speculate on.

  Again with the immortality, once reaching adulthood, they just stopped aging. They can live for decades, centuries, millennia even, as long as they didn’t get themselves killed, which seemed to happen often, especially in their animal forms. What he’d been taught was that they weren’t very bright. Maybe stupidity was also in their genes.

  Christian laughed humorlessly at his little joke when he took one last swig from the beer can, which was now about empty.

  His last questions, however, were the most haunting. He was no doctor, but he knew there was no way on God’s green Earth that Annette should have been sitting up and smiling less than a day after such a vicious attack. He didn’t care how many narcotics they’d pumped into her. Those wounds should have at least required a few hundred stitches. He’d seen the claws on that beast, they were practically glinting in the dwindling light of sunset as it pounced. Instead, the doctors had said the wounds seemed “superficial” and would heal on their own.

  Whatever that means.

  Annette, while pretty and attractive in a sexual way, was also a little strange. There was something off about her but Christian couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was a combination of things. Her background seemed strange; no family around and she just randomly moves to Chicago? She seemed adventuresome and driven, so he’d chalked it up to that. Then there were her physical abilities. She’d beat out all the guys in her class at the academy in both speed and skill – and even bragged about it. And that panther, my God. He saw the way she’d fought it off. That thing should have chopped her head off with one swipe of those claws, but she’d held her ground against it.

  Perhaps vampires and shapeshifters weren’t the only supernatural creatures out there. He’d seen her in the sunlight so he knew she wasn’t a vampire. Could she be a shifter? His mind was buzzing again, and it wasn’t from the beer.

  Christian shuddered again and asked Andy Griffith’s smiling face on the screen, “What in God’s name have I gotten myself involved in?”

  ∞∞∞

  A week later, Christian and Annette were seated in the conference room at BSI headquarters for their weekly briefing.

  “Special Agent Russell, would you like to join me up here and tell us what happened on the night of October 2nd?” said SAC Al Cartwright.

  Annette nodded, stood, and shot Christian a warning look. He was confused by this, but said nothing.

  Since the BSI was still a top secret part of the Justice Department, each field office only had about ten agents and all the ones from the Chicago field office were all seated around the conference room table. Annette Russell was the only female in the Chicago field office.

  She stood, straightening out her black polyester skirt and blazer and looped a stray curl behind her ear. “I think you all have heard about the shapeshifter attack so I’ll make this quick and just give you the facts so you don’t have to speculate anymore. We followed the suspect on foot from a diner to a somewhat secluded walking trail in Lincoln Park. Instead of having our weapons drawn, we decided to try to sneak up on him as he went deep into the woods for what we assumed was a shift. We were right about that, but were caught off-guard when he literally pounced out, now no longer a man but a two hundred pound black panther with yellow eyes and teeth
and claws that meant business.

  “He sprang on me, but my wonderful partner, Estes here,” she looked at Christian and smiled, “was quick on his feet and shot him, then he collapsed and died. I’ll tell you though, even though we didn’t get to see him transform into the cat, it was sure a sight watching him morph back into a man.”

  The room was deathly quiet, all the agents just staring at her.

  “So they really do exist…” said a young agent sitting right next her.

  She laughed. “Yeah, Jameson, they really do. You think the government just made up this stuff? These creatures are very real. Make sure your weapon is out and at the ready when you think you’re going to confront one.”

  Another agent named Ray Porter said, “Why were you following him anyway? Did you know he was a shifter?”

  “That’s a good question, Porter. The guy was acting weird, kind of twitchy and had shifty eyes – no pun intended – and I just had a feeling about him.”

  The agents frowned at her. It wasn’t the answer they were looking for but she had nothing else to give them. Intuition or just a hunch was going to have do for now. Telling them she was one hundred and thirteen years old and had the Immortal gift of mind-reading was not an option. Yeah, women’s intuition was definitely going to have to win out on this one.

  “Thank you, Agent Russell. Is there anything else you’d like to share? Advice or tips?” SAC Cartwright asked.

  She nodded. “Yes, please watch your backs and never go out alone at night. Shifters are one thing, but vampires, I hear, are a lot more deadly.”

  “Briefing adjourned, see you back next Monday,” Al Cartwright said.

  As they left the meeting, Christian looked at Annette and said, “You really aren’t going to tell me how you knew he was a shifter, are you?”

  She smiled and popped a piece of gum into her mouth. “Nope.”

  Chapter 9

  ∞∞∞

  “I need to speak to Leo,” said the dark-skinned female as she took a seat at the bar.