Blood Witch (4 page)

The Supervisors Head Quarters was firmly located at the old airbase that closed back
in the 90s. Before they were located in any old building, away from other people,
and that wouldn’t get noticed by the outside world. Every so many years they would
have to relocate so no one would be suspicious. The base had free open buildings only
a few other companies were there, the biggest being the AT&T Call. The space was perfect,
and the place blended in with the other buildings out there. No one to question the
amount of vehicles, it was just another corporation fronting as security.

The three walked into the small, main office. It housed Angelina the night secretary.
She sat at her nice, uncluttered desk, playing World of Warcraft. The four seats in
the waiting area were empty, as usual. The room’s walls were a nice off white, with
small murals here and there, a fake plant sat in a corner, depressing music played
lightly through the room. It had to have been Angelina’s choice. Her job was just
for show, in case a regular human happened to walk in. Most people would be surprised
how curious people can be. She nodded to them never really taking her eyes off the
monitor.

They went through the main door into the main office. There they entered into the
very quiet room, all eyes from those half human to other Opposites watching them.
They stood there and Leslie looked around, not sure if they were in some sort of trouble
or what by the awkward silence. Usually the place was alive with voices, dispatchers,
who mostly occupied the main area. They too, were staring at the three young Supervisors,
faces blank.

The room itself was a huge square, most of it taken up with nice desks set with computers
and phone headsets. The dispatchers had their run of the area, taking all the calls,
and placing the right Supervisors where they were needed. They ranged from weres,
banshees, fey of different types, a troll or two, and other breeds of Opposites. Around
them were half breeds to humans who had seen too much. They were the dispatchers’
secretaries. They kept all the paperwork together, and were the go to guys or gals
if called for something.

The halls led to the Supervisor’s offices were housed. The first rooms were labs and
specially designed rooms for experiments. Underneath the building were their holding
cells, which had once been storage rooms, and quite possibly bomb shelters. Now they
were magically warded and sealed.

Collin handed the bio-bag to a tech who would do a few tests on the vamp and then
incinerate the head. They were creating a vampire record to pinpoint the vampire gene
and mapping the genealogy of them. The tech took the bag quietly and stepped back
with the others. The three looked around uneasily; even the lab techs and other supervisors
were out watching them, even some who weren’t on shift yet.

“Okay, what did we do now?” Patrick finally asked.

“They are waiting in your office,” Cheryl, the main dispatcher, said. Her short, auburn
hair was spiked; her ebony orb eyes seemed to stare into their souls. Leslie fought
the shiver that wanted to overcome her; she hated being stared at by the banshees.
It had been creepy enough to see what happened when someone got killed; their wailing
call of the death frightened her.

They walked down the right hall. Faces peeked out at them from the half open doors.
“Is this freaking anyone else out?” Collin asked in a whisper.

Leslie nodded. She was the closest to Patrick’s door, and she could feel the crowd
behind them. She opened the door, and at first, the shock at who they saw in the room
made them all pause. Then, as their brains sprang into action, they all had their
guns out.

Two of the three visitors looked amused; the third had a very hostile look on her
face. The man sitting, smiled at them. “We have papers,” he said. His voice held a
thick Spanish accent.

The three exchanged a puzzled look as the seated man motioned to the man standing
to his left. He stood about five-six, and as he walked a few steps forward. He held
out a folder. Patrick quickly grabbed it from him and read over the papers. He handed
them to Leslie, his face blank. Leslie eyed the papers and then handed them over to
Collin.

She put up her gun, since it would be considered cold blooded murder to kill them,
so the papers said. “Well, this is different.”

“No one else would talk to us. They asked us to wait here for you three. I take it
you three must be the rookies?”

Leslie nodded.

“Well, why are you here exactly?” Patrick asked. They were rooted to their spot by
the door.

“We were told that we had to come talk to the Supervisors in the area that we decided
to settle in. And so, here we are. I am Raphael; I am Shepherd to my flock.” He stood
and walked toward them, making all three take a step back.

He stopped face cold, showing no emotion, but his eyes watched them curiously. “I
forget this is new to all of us. I am sorry. My flock is small; we are about half
a dozen.”

“That isn’t very small,” Collin said.

His dead black eyes stared at him. “You carry our blood.”

Collin nodded.

“I carry the disease.”

“We understand that this concept will be rather new to those here in the Supervisors.
And the idea is new to us as well, but we hope to live in harmony with the other Opposites.
We do not think like the others.”

“Leslie,” she said, nodding and pointed to Collin. “Collin and Patrick.” The men all
nodded when she said their names.

Seeing that the three weren’t going to harm them, Leslie walked over to the other
side of the desk. She looked them over. They were vampires like all other vampires.
Their skin was white as snow, which meant all three were a few decades old. Their
black veins stood out under the skin, reminding Leslie of varicose veins. But unlike
the other vampires, they had knowledge in their dark orbs. She didn’t see the bloodlust
she had seen in others.

“I guess we should ask you a few questions. Collin,” she said taking a seat. He came
over and slid in front of the computer. Patrick came to stand behind her. “Since this
is new, I guess we should first ask about residence.”

“We have found a place. A nice house. It is a two bedroom house on Elm Ave off of
Mackee road. I do not understand the numbers, but Jennifer here can fill you in on
that. It has a big yard, and the neighbors are not very close.”

“One of the secretaries in the main office will get your home info. So, how are you
guys feeding?” The slight murmuring outside the office hushed to a deep quiet as everyone
listened.

“We still drink blood, but we can take it without killing the human.”

“Do you prefer just human?”

He nodded. “We have a few human donors who come to us freely. They wish to be turned
or have turned their suicidal behaviors to being bit by us. You can interview them.
They are also our day guardians and help with bills and other needs that can only
be done during the daylight hours.”

“We will be putting you on probation and will be stopping in during the daylight hours
to talk to your, um, humans,” Leslie said.

“What?” Collin looked at her.

She nodded. “We have to be sure about this, and we can’t just be sure you aren’t going
to take some humans into your house and slaughter them.”

“I think it is very fair,” Raphael said.

“We’ve never really done this before, so say sixty days?” she asked, looking at the
others. They shrugged.

He was thinking it over as thin white fingers drummed on his chin. “That sounds roughly
fair. I hear jobs do that as well.” He stood and they walked to the door. “So then,
who will be checking on us?”

She looked around at her partners and then back at him. “We will, since it seems no
one else is up to it.”

“We shall give our address and information to a secretary. We do wish to be a part
of this world; we want nothing more than to be treated almost human again.” A sad
look went over his face. “Some of us did not choose to be this way. So then, we will
expect to hear more about our probation. Our terms and whatnot. At our cocktail party
we will be throwing. We will be inviting all the leaders of the packs and clans of
the area, and I do hope that you three will come and watch how civil we wish to be
seen for here on in.”

“It is very nice of you to offer us an invite, and we will be in contact.”

“Thank you, and good evening,” he said giving her a small nod. They watched them walk
out of the office

Patrick sunk into a chair beside Leslie. The three stared at the door. “What the hell
just happened?”

“We have vampires who are legal citizens of the Opposite Side,” Collin said. “It might
explain the drop in deaths. What if it becomes a trend?”

“As if we don’t have enough to worry about,” Leslie said. “Vampires becoming legal
citizens. It is kind of big.”

“Maybe now is not the time to bring up the Fresno case.”

She looked down at her hands on the desk. “A group of rogues, who kill for fun as
we thought?”

“Yes, but the forensics say that it’s not just vampires, its wereanimals too. The
teeth marks are proof.”

“Crap,” Patrick said. “Well let’s get something to eat. I’m hungry. Then we can talk
more about this. I bet our forensic labs will be ready by them.”

They sat in the conference room with files and papers spread out before them, as the
air around them smelled of burger grease, ketchup and mayonnaise. They studied the
reports on the deaths, and the forensic findings, which weren’t much since as they
destroyed the body parts they had destroyed the evidence with it.

“What I don’t get is the first kill, the two bodies.” Collin pushed the file out so
they all could see it.

“Could have been their first kill,” Patrick said. “Testing the waters, as Fred likes
to say.”

“Or it could have been what started their bloodlust,” Leslie said with a french-fry
in hand.

They looked at her. “Huh?” Collin managed with a mouthful of burger.

“They were hungry, slipped, killing two people, and they liked the bloodlust it gave
them. One possibility.”

Patrick said, “I just don’t see that.”

Carlos busted into the room with a few files. He was one of the youngest lab rats
in the lab, and he was exactly that. He stood about five-four and weighed at most
ninety pounds. Small for a wererat. Even in his rat form, he was a runt. The Rat Pack
didn’t like runts, so he either stayed with a pack down in San Diego and got the shit
beat out of him, or became a Supervisor. He had gone through to get his forensic degree,
and became a Supervisor lab rat. Of course, he had to leave Southern California, and
moved up north, because the local Rata Rey, Rat King, labeled Carlos a narc and the
Rat Pack decided they didn’t want him around.

“Hi, Carlos,” Collin said before taking another bite of his ultimate double steak
and cheeseburger.

“Who let you out of the cage?” Patrick said. Wererats were below him on the food chain,
they used to be sport back before any of the group had been born. Just stories, but
Patrick, like all other werebears, still treated the rats beneath them. Leslie didn’t
like it much, but it was something that had been going on forever.

Carlos ignored him, and slid the files over to Leslie. “Hi Leslie,” he said running
his nervous, shaking hand through his short, black hair.

“Thanks Carlos,” she said as she grabbed up the files. “Usually we just come and get
the files from you. You must have found something interesting to bring us these.”

“I sure did. So, before, we couldn’t make out much of the bite marks, but we got a
full print. And we ran it through the database. And it came up as a bear tooth.”

“No way,” Collin and Leslie said at the same time.

He nodded. “We ran the test over three times and it came back bear each time. So we
did some digging and we found some bear DNA in there.”

“Shit. I need to tell Nathan,” Patrick said.

“Not yet, we have to be really sure about this. Or else if it gets leaked out, the
wolves will use the info to start this stupid war that they so want to happen,” Leslie
said. She looked at Carlos. “You have more, I take it, by the excited look in your
eyes?”

“I do. We found the drugs in the blood. A form of X, but it has vampire and lycanthrope
traits in it.”

“Impossible!” Collin said, “The two bloods can’t live together unless it found a livable
donor. Like me, a half-breed.”

“Well the test says what it is.”

“What kind of lycanthrope are we talking about?”

“Undetermined. Maybe it’s mutated in the drug with the vampire blood. When we do tests,
it brings us to wolf and bear. This again can’t happen since the different strains
of lycanthrope can’t live together.” He was true. There had only been half-breeds
who were wereanimal and vampire. However, never had there been a case of a half-breed
who was two different weres.

“That’s why I picked up the smell in the blood. I smelled the vampire and lycanthrope,”
Leslie said, mostly to herself.

“Only wereanimals have a sense of smell that good,” Carlos said, eyeing the Blood
Witch.

The guys shrugged it off because they knew it bothered her. How did a blood witch
start coming down with wereanimal abilities? It just never happened. Of course, the
blood witches have been very few and most very secretive in their power, so not much
had been studied.

“Anything else?” Collin asked the lab rat.

“Not as of yet,” he said.

“Okay, well, let us know if you do have any more.”

Carlos left them alone with the new evidence. “If we have rogue bears out there, Nathan
should know. He could set up a line and see if we can hunt them down. The full moon
is coming, and this could cause a lot of crap,” Patrick said.

“We need to think this through. If we tell, it could get out to the wolves that there
are rogue bears. Of course they will use it against your brother, and show he isn’t
fit, and kings do not step down from a challenge. But this would be challenge not
in ranks, but to blood. And then we have to step in, and you know what will happen
if the bears are brought up on charges. The wolves will want blood for stupid shit,
and there goes the civil war we have been trying to prevent. Both your clans are equally
matched, it will spill over to the normal world, and then think of all the trouble
we are going to have,” Leslie said.

“Damn, everything is so fucking complicated,” Patrick said as he looked over the closest
file.

“What if this has something to do with the wolves?” Collin said. “Maybe this is something
they planned. I mean, there is wolf blood in it too.”

“I dunno,” Leslie said between chewing on the cap of her pen. “You really think Jonathan
could come up with something as crazy as rogue bears? And where would he get the blood.”

“Not just that, but bear lycanthrope is harder to catch than wolf lycanthrope, it’s
much easier to be born with it than catch it. So they would have to pump someone with
a lot of bear blood to actually get them to change,” Patrick said.

“I’m just throwing out suggestions,” Collin replied.

“And right now that’s all we have. However, we have to think of it this way: if this
did get out, the wolves have a lot to benefit from this. So maybe they do have ties
to it. But I doubt Jonathan would dirty his hands too much. He might want to rule
the Northern Central Valley, but he also knows if he gets caught, it will turn around
and bite him on his furry ass,” Patrick said.

“You know Jonathan to a point, Les. What do you think his ties would be to this?”
Collin asked.

Anger. Her mind clouded in with white noise. “You know I don’t know him
that
well. Fuck.” She got to her feet quickly, toppling her chair. “Everyone assumes I
seem to know him so well. Bite me.” She walked out the door.

“Ouch,” Patrick said and Collin nodded.