Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set One: Books 1-7, Death Becomes Her, Queen Bitch, Love Lost, Bite This, Never Forsaken, Under My Heel, Kneel or Die (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets)

by Michael Anderle

  Military Base, Colorado Mountains

  Michael could feel the spirit coming his way, this was fire, this was an honorable person, this was someone to know. This was the woman?

  While his powers caused everyone to ignore him, he was still physically in the room.

  Michael stared as the door opened and Bethany Anne entered the outer office. Carl held the door for her and then let himself out.

  She smelled a little different than most humans. Not bad, and while he read the file and knew the blood inside her was quickly killing her, he could feel its song, its fire, what coursed through her veins was as exciting to him as it was unexpected.

  As she entered the office, Michael stepped out after Carl, unseen.

  Bethany Anne opened the door to her father’s outer office. There was a nice looking man exiting who held the door for her to enter.

  He looked like he recognized her before stepping out and closing the door behind himself, but she couldn’t remember ever having seen him. Maybe he saw one of her dad’s pictures of her in his office.

  She saw her dad motioning to her to give him a minute through the open door and then he continued talking with someone else in his office.

  “How are you doing, dear?” Patricia was smiling from her chair behind her desk and Sergeant Kevin McCoullagh was soon leaving her dad’s office.

  She shared small talk with Patricia for a minute and stepped into her dad’s office as he came around the desk and gave her a big hug.

  “Good to see you again, Bethany Anne.” Lance sized up his daughter pretty quickly. She wasn’t happy to be here, he noted. Since he hadn’t sent for her, he wasn’t sure where to go next with this conversation.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Yup, she was a little frosty. Time to get back into his comfort zone. He sat behind his desk and leaned back in his chair.

  “Take a seat and tell me why you’re here. We don’t normally see anyone from your group at this base.”

  She sat in the same chair that the older guy had just vacated, reached into her purse and pulled out a piece of folded paper.

  “I’m here because I was directed to meet with you today at 15:30. I figured something happened and strings were pulled. I was yanked off of my case, stuffed in a bird and sent here first class. I assumed you were behind this.” Sitting up on the edge of the chair, Bethany Anne didn’t relax her posture at all.

  Leaning forward, Lance reached for the orders. “I didn’t order you to come here, Bethany Anne. In fact, the timing is pretty bad. Let’s see what your orders are and if we can, I’ll send you back after we at least have dinner together tonight.”

  Her father never lied to her. If he didn’t know anything about her orders, this was getting either stranger by the minute, or there was a colossal screw up in paperwork somewhere. She handed the paper over to her dad. “I thought you had to know about it. All it says is to arrive here at the base, present myself to you and that I would learn more from a letter which says ‘Our Debt of Honor’.” She looked up at the General.

  Bethany Anne knew that her father hadn’t been giving this meeting his full attention. She had enough experience growing up to recognize when her father was mentally elsewhere.

  But when she finished speaking his expression changed to a look she wasn’t used to seeing.

  His face went totally white. Ashen, he looked afraid. The only other time that she‘d seen this look was when her mom died.

  He opened the letter, quickly glanced at the contents. There wasn’t much there, it wasn’t as if her father could misinterpret anything so she wasn’t sure why he kept staring at it.

  Lance took the letter from Bethany Anne, but he had a hard time concentrating. His heart wanted to beat too loud right now.

  This couldn’t be right.

  He felt hollow. If Bethany Anne was the interview, then he was going to lose her. Just like Meredith, her mother.

  Lance had always had a room of bitterness and anger inside his heart. He knew that he had in some way been responsible for killing his wife. She was too young. He always believed that if he had focused on her more, he could have seen something early enough to get help. Somehow, there had to have been a cure for whatever had killed his wife. Medicine had advanced and there should have been something they could do.

  But no, he focused on his job, his career. He knew his career and he felt comfortable there. He loved his wife. Her smile never failed to bring a smile to his own face. But he had been on the career track with the military to be promoted quickly and he assumed he had plenty of time later to settle a bit and enjoy his personal life.

  He wasn’t going to wait until retirement.

  Their daughter was born when Meredith was twenty-four and he was twenty-six. Meredith gave so much attention to Bethany Anne that he felt justified focusing fully on his job.

  He never saw the signs that she was any sicker than maybe a cold or the flu until one Sunday morning he rolled over and she was gone. Her body was there, but her soul had left during the night, and he hadn’t noticed that happening, either.

  Bethany Anne was too young to understand, but he had sought help for himself. He was able to work his way through part of the grieving process, but when it came time to forgive himself, he took the crushing blame and packed it into his heart.

  For what he had done, he deserved to pay penance for the rest of his life and he was going to. It didn’t matter what the psychologist told him.

  Lance deserved it, so he would take it. But staring down at the paper in his hands, apparently his penance hadn’t been enough. Lance might not have been a perfect father, but he had tried to make up for his mistakes. He cared deeply for his daughter and brought her up the only way he knew how. He had made sure she could stand on her own two feet both intellectually and physically. Bethany Anne went to a very expensive private school and had graduated summa cum laude.

  She had been chased, some might say harassed, by the best universities in the nation. Major corporations had also pursued her with their open checkbooks but all she asked for was a chance to serve.

  The CIA had grabbed her in a second, only to lose her in two years after her basic courses were finished and she went into the black agency hole of no return. Even he didn’t have the security clearance to know everything that went on in her group, as different an agency as it was. He was happy she wanted to serve, but knew that she would be wasted in his branch.

  While he felt the CIA would be a little stressful for him, she would do fine. When he found out she had been recruited for other duties, which had pissed off her CIA bosses, he was careful not to let her see it concerned him that she might go into black ops. While she was certainly mentally and physically fit enough, she hadn’t had that certain something that some of the spooks and black ops operatives seemed to have to do the darker deeds.

  When she told him she had been put on research projects and cold cases, he had been relieved. He had heard the disappointment in her voice and knew she wanted something ‘in the action.’

  He just told her that she needed a little seasoning, apparently.

  When she had closed a couple of major and politically sensitive cases, one involving a spy deep in their own agency and another with a high ranking senator, she seemed pleased with her role. He hadn’t heard about her wanting more ‘action oriented’ roles for a while.

  He knew that her boss, Martin, had been incredibly pleased with his recruit. While Lance didn’t bend any rules, he had checked up on her a couple of times, surreptitiously, so she wouldn’t find out. General or not, she would come down on him like a ton of bricks if she thought he was helping her out in any way. She stood on her own two feet and made things happen because of who she was, not who he was.

  Just like he taught her.

  So, he never made any special calls on her behalf, ever.

  But now? Now he wanted to in the worst way possible. He wanted to stab his phone and tell Patricia to get that spook up in Washington on t
he phone to tell him to shove offering his daughter as an honor sacrifice up his ass.

  Spook or not, Carl’s boss could have his daughter when he pried Lance’s arms from around her shoulders. He lost his wife because he wasn’t there for her when she was sick, he wouldn't fail his daughter.

  But now he had to face something he had feared as Bethany Anne grew older.

  His daughter was going to die.

  Michael followed Kevin out of the office and changed to myst. He had watched Bethany Anne talk with Patricia and studied what he could about her.

  With an internal sigh, he decided to swing by Carl and sent him a message to go back to the plane, he would meet him there later.

  The plane had everything they would need to stay the night. There were only two of them, and Michael didn’t need much room to sleep. In fact, there were only two ways to get to the area that Michael slept, and both of them were so small that you couldn’t fit a hand into the pipes which, after a couple of twists and turns opened into a small area in the back of the plane underneath the bedroom. It actually was part of the bedroom but there was a metal plate between his section and the bed above. While he couldn’t myst into the area from outside the plane normally, there was a way to open a small hole for his entrance and exit while the plane was on the ground. If he ever left the plane and failed to get back on before it took off, it would automatically close before the plane hit 100 mph and he would have to get back to wherever he needed to be some other way.

  He had the modifications done after he took possession, and none of them were shown on the plane schematics. Those that had done the upgrades had their memories changed, they couldn’t remember doing anything but a few touch-ups to the interior bedroom in the back.

  That was where Carl or William would have slept, normally.

  Michael was a sun-walker, as was one other of his immediate children. But by the second generation the sun would destroy a grandchild. It would be only minutes before death by exposure. By the third generation their death was instantaneous.

  Most of them could stay awake in the day, but they weren’t superhuman, they needed sleep like anyone else. But since most were affected by sunlight it was more convenient to sleep during the day.

  For Vampires, blood was useful but it wasn’t quite a ‘drink or die’ situation. It was the ability to exercise ‘other’ talents that required the energy blood afforded every vampire. Those that they fought, the Forsaken, would harvest humans and drink at least weekly. The more they drank, the more their changed bodies craved it until it was almost all consuming for them. They were the true vampires of old, the evil monsters the tales were told about.

  Michael had been fighting for so long already that he was tired and slept often. His body aged about one year in ten for every year he was awake, and perhaps one year in twenty for every year he slept.

  The belief that vampires were forever young was inaccurate. If you consider how much a normal person would age in fifty years; a vampire would only look five years older. If he slept, then the vampire might only have aged a couple of years.

  There was one way for a vampire to roll back the time on their body. They had to create a new vampire. When the process was finished, their body would become about the same age as the new acolyte.

  This was never a problem for those they fought. They had no concerns for who they turned and whether they died or not. If they made someone change who failed, they would shrug and walk out years or decades younger leaving a dried-up husk behind.

  Just another missing persons case.

  Michael had only turned six so far in his life and none since he had come to America.

  He didn’t have a sire. The story of his turning was unique and certainly more painful than most turnings he had been privy to.

  He had come to a pretty early end of his human existence in the mountains back in what is now called Romania. The alien essence which created vampires sought to ride a human’s body, changing it into something more like their original hosts, he believed. Michael had never figured out if it was something from this universe, or elsewhere.

  The virus was part of him. If he drained a human, the exchange of his blood with the human’s would allow the virus to overcome the host’s ability to protect itself. Michael believed it was at this time the challenge to a person’s soul occurred.

  The first stage brought agonizing pain throughout the nervous system. The body wasn’t physically hurt, but every nerve felt on fire, rough and raw. It was as if the body had been dropped into a pool of acid being eaten from both inside as well as outside of the body. A lot of humans died at this point. Why keep on living when you had no idea how long the pain would last?

  Michael had seen some of the strongest give up at this stage, and some of the most physically frail persevere.

  The human’s thinking brain would be offline, all it could do was feel the pain.

  Slowly a person would regain the ability to think through this pain, and it was at this stage that the most insidious attack of the virus occurred.

  It would tempt the host. Once the change had begun, the host had already mutated enough that the virus would be able to continue living and seek blood with an unquenchable desire. Here the virus would start whispering into the host’s mind that they had become gods. How, if they would just allow the virus to take control a little while, it could stop the pain that was forever causing them to scream and gnash their teeth, and give them rest.

  Oh, but the lie it told. If the host agreed, the virus would be able to lock out the host’s will and they would be a passenger in their own mind while the virus became the monster of legend, only listening to the desire for flesh or the commands of their maker.

  They would become Nosferatu. With no humanity left. Possessed of incredible strength, a cadaverous gray skin and red eyes the host would rise up to start killing and drinking any they could hear, see or sense. It would go on an eating and killing frenzy until it was satiated and could find a place to safely hide while it finished the transformation. When the host woke up, the original soul was no longer in possession, and would never be again.

  With each successive generation the virus was weaker, and the challenges to overcome were less. This would help some to make it through the transformation with their soul intact, but that vampire’s power would never be as great as its ‘parent.’ If a host were to overcome the virus and then fall into a mental exhaustion, they would fail to retain their memories and possibly lose their knowledge and wake up as but children. They would need to be taught all over again how to eat, how to walk and how to talk.

  Those who were barely able to overcome the virus would be weak as vampires. Still stronger than most humans, but certainly more useful in supporting roles which didn’t require them to think. They followed orders very well.

  The longer the host fought the virus, the more of themselves they would retain. Should they fight all the way through until they woke up, then they would be as strong as their potential allowed and would remember everything before their transformation.

  Even with the careful selection Michael required of any of his family, to have a candidate make it all the way without failing the conversion was still an unusual event.

  So, he required any in his family to only select from those who were going to die. If the selected were to choose death over the pain, then at most they lost six months of their life. If the virus was able to persuade them to allow it to take control, then when it opened its red eyes it would be decapitated before it blinked once.

  Michael’s family never allowed a Nosferatu to live, it’s what they fought against and what they had been fighting against for ages.

  There were two sides of this struggle between the vampires. Those of Michael’s family, and everyone else.

  7

  Military Base, Colorado Mountains

  Bethany Anne could see so many emotions crossing her dad’s face. It was rare that he didn’t keep a shield up, so she knew he was h
urting.

  It had been a long time, but she let her professional demeanor relax and set aside the mask of toughness she wore while out in the world.

  “Dad, what is it?” She reached across the desk and took one of his big, calloused hands.

  He looked into her eyes. “How long do you have?”

  She stared at him, blank faced for a minute while her mind raced. It was obvious he didn’t know when she got here that she was sick. He wouldn’t have hugged her and gotten straight down to business. In fact, until he read the orders, he wasn’t really even thinking about her being here much at all.

  So what had changed? Why had her orders upset him so much and how had it tipped him off to ask her about it? And should she answer the question? Lying was out. He didn’t lie to her, she wouldn’t lie to him.

  She might, however, not answer the question.

  Her indecision reached her eyes.

  He asked her again, softly, “How long?”

  She sighed. “Six months. I think that the doctors could be wrong. They don’t understand how my blood cells are so messed up and they can’t find any problems with me. I’ve been to four specialists so far.”

  Lance straightened up a little in his chair and his eyes lost their unfocused look, “Then I guess we’ll go to a fifth, and a sixth. If we have to see another ten doctors, Bethany Anne, we will see another ten doctors. I won’t let this take you.”

  “Dad, I’ve worked with some of the best. I asked Martin for a couple of favors and he was able to get me in to see some highly placed specialists...”

  “Martin knew about this and didn’t tell me?” Lance’s face started to color again and he had an outlet to start focusing on.

  Bethany Anne stopped that cold.

  “He had no right to tell you! It was my decision and I asked for his promise to tell no one. If I didn’t need him to make the requests for me, I wouldn’t have told him, either. This is my fight, my battle and I will make it happen my way.”