She jerked upright, her heart pumping a little faster, as she tried to figure out where in the little vault he might be.
“Bethany Anne, you might as well sit down. Reach to your left and you will find the closest chair.”
“You have me at a disadvantage.” She reached down and found the chair back, pulling it out she only slightly banged her leg against the table before sitting down. “Who am I speaking with?” The way he sounded, he would probably be at the other end.
“My name is Michael and I am the one who is offering you a potential way to continue your effort to help others. My family has been working, behind the scenes, to help the military of this country handle hard cases, dangerous cases. Cases you would never hear about on TV. It is a lot of responsibility to help those who cannot know they have been helped. This is similar to helping those who have already passed away, true? Does this interest you?”
His voice was older, cultured, but also sounded just ancient at the same time.
“I don’t know yet. Well, not true. Yes, I want to help others who need it. But I have questions. How do you expect to get out without anyone seeing? Why do you believe you can fix what no other doctors here in the States can fix? Are you with a special ops group? Special Medical Testing?”
“No. Well, nothing that you would understand. There are some facets to the family that you might consider similar to these groups you are familiar with. However, the reason I know you can be cured is that I’ve worked with and studied blood and blood issues for most of my adult life.”
“Oh? How long would that be, Michael?”
“Well over one thousand of your years, Bethany Anne. Your kind might call me a vampire, but that isn’t entirely true for me. For my children, maybe, certainly for their children. Our blood changes us, will change you. It will never allow the bad things going through your body that your doctors cannot fix. You will, in all ways, have a body superior to what you have now.”
“What’s the downside to going through this procedure?”
“Unimaginable pain.”
Bethany Anne had kinda expected something crazy from this situation, so while she was certainly spooked, she could only die once, right? In for a dime, in for a dozen…
“So, if you’re not exactly a vampire, what are you?”
“Bethany Anne, I’ve been waiting all day for you to ask that, I am…”
Thirty minutes later, base air control gave approval for the very unique civilian plane to taxi. The plane’s destination was the East Coast.
While the plane was starting to ramp up her engines and prepare final checks before starting down the runway, the klaxon startled everyone and the vault door started to open. The conversation was excited when everyone realized that Bethany Anne wasn’t inside the room and the knife was missing, as well.
She was right, the General thought, she was going to leave her way. Good thing it worked out. A $32,000 bill for one night of drinking would really have sucked to reimburse on her existing salary. Good thing her life insurance was paid up.
Smiling to himself, the General took a prepared envelope Kevin was holding and taped it to the door. Lance Reynolds stared at the red button, something his only daughter had touched just a few minutes before, and gently pushed it. He turned around and started the walk back out of Level 5.
He chose to think of this event as one mission that had an undetermined length of time associated with it. She wasn’t gone, not to him.
Kevin just stared at the empty vault along with Dr. Evenich and the other soldiers. No one knew what to say.
Ten seconds later a gruff and annoyed General called out, “Kevin! Get your ass and everyone else we have down here moving!”
Then he hit the stairs and never again returned to Level 5.
Washington, D.C.
Three weeks later, the group that approved Bethany Anne to receive a Black Visa was docked a few points in their quarterly review. That one night cost them over $32,000 and she wasn’t around to pay the bill. Apparently their risk program needed to be tweaked.
Over in Washington, Martin looked at one of the last charges from Bethany Anne’s company credit card and smiled. If she was going out, she sure made the company pay for it.
He closed the agency credit card report. Yeah, she wasn’t gone. The only reason Bethany Anne would screw the company like that was because she was going to return the payment, with interest. He wasn’t sure how she was going to beat Death, but he would bet his savings that Death was worried about her right now.
He smiled a little as he reached for the next report needing his review.
10
Carpathian Mountains, Romania
“Dammit, you know this is bitchin’ cold, right?” Bethany Anne was wrapped up like a walrus, trying to stay on the trail the two mountain guides had plowed through the knee-high snow ahead of her.
“We’ve been in these mountains almost five days, and I’m not complaining much, actually, let’s be fair, I’m complaining a lot.” Bethany Anne adjusted the goggles that protected her eyes from the sunlight on the snow. With the infusion of Michael’s… something. Blood? Didn’t seem totally like that, but Bethany Anne could feel changes happening and frankly, she didn’t seem to be bothered nearly as much by the cold as she thought she should.
Michael looked ahead down the side of the mountain, trying to remember how it looked so many centuries ago as he had traveled through this area to find the cave he was looking for.
“Bethany, we both know that you are neither as bothered by the cold as you are suggesting or feeling as tired as you might have just a few days ago had you started this little excursion by yourself.” Michael considered he had quite explicitly figured out why there were so few females in his family.
They mouthed off, a lot.
Even when there wasn’t anything to talk about, occasionally they had to fill in the dead air with whatever was on their mind. If the female happened to be incredibly intelligent, agitated and despised the term ‘patience’ in all of its definitions it could be bad for those who had to be around them for a long period of time.
At least the trail guides didn’t speak English. No need for them to try to carry on a conversation.
Michael put up with it from her as it was part of her personality and something, this impatience, was going to help her and the world, no doubt, in the future. His burden was dealing with it in the present. He surmised that his name would be slandered for hundreds of years as those who had to deal with Bethany Anne took his name in vain.
History would vindicate him, or not. Either way, he doubted he was going to worry about it too much longer.
He started to recognize certain peaks. They were on the right mountain, and in the right area.
He spoke to the guides in their language, generations old before these were born. Fortunately, they didn’t hold to the superstitious ways of only a couple of generations back. Those guides would never have agreed to come up here.
Too many horror stories were started in this area of the world, and for good reason.
Before Michael sailed to America, he had come to this area again to hide the entrance to the cave. He tracked down two Weres who suffered with psychological issues. Both had hunted humans and killed them, which led to the whispers in the taverns and homes throughout the countryside. Hiding the bodies down a crevice, Michael left. The stories were forgotten in time.
While some in the UnknownWorld probably knew the stories, he wasn’t sure which of the different groups believed them. He supposed he could have stayed awake more often and tried to stay up to date with all the changes. But it was just too much. Too many centuries and too many changes to overcome in the last couple of hundred years.
His morality, his belief system, was too strict to coexist with this world, these people. His was a very black and white system with consistent judgments and punishments for those who broke his faith, his laws, his rules.
For the last fifty years, he chose to sleep
more often than not, allowing his children and grandchildren to deal with the world at large.
One should know truth, and truth was taking the time to know oneself. Not to lie about your actions, your feelings, your thoughts and beliefs but accept yourself for what and who you are. Once you understand those things, your future is more assured as you won’t subconsciously be fighting both your enemies and yourself to accomplish your goals.
Michael realized many centuries before that he was not malleable regarding his honor. In the last couple of centuries it caused more and more problems as he killed those who thought his honor was something to be negotiated, that it was his problem he would not bend and recognize gray areas.
Unfortunately, when dead, one didn’t learn very well. Michael recognized this and being truthful to himself, he realized that was the only recourse he would choose. When one is personally powerful and deadly enough to mete out punishment with practically no checks and balances, one should be careful how many times they are called upon to judge the actions of others.
It was time to sleep, for possibly the final time, and bring another in at the top. One who would rather die striving for others, or even for just the honor of those who had already died. That was what called to Michael when he tested Bethany Anne. Her religious beliefs were, he considered, different. He tested her mettle and she would die before failing her desire to help others, those who needed her when she could make a difference.
His accomplishment would be making her more than the others, to give her that advantage and more.
She would fight, she would make alliances and she had the ability to think ‘out of the box.’ Something Michael felt too set in his ways to accomplish anymore.
His family and this world needed guidance, love and discipline from someone as powerful as he. He just didn’t have it to give.
Honor demanded he provide a replacement for this world, this time, and the future world—and future times that needed to come. Bethany Anne was his hope, his desire, his penance and his sleep.
Now, if she would just stop bitching long enough so he could think.
New York City, New York
Nathan Lowell was second under Gerry who was both the Alpha of the New York Pack and the present head of the American Pack Council for the Were. He was presently enjoying a nice dinner in New York City, having arrived there the day before. While the town was pretty nice, he felt sure that once he finished his business for his consulting company here, he would enjoy upper New York state much more. Plenty of places to go camping there.
He didn’t pay any attention to the extra special service he received from the adorable brunette waitress, or the spectacularly unsuccessful flirting he was the target of.
Nathan ordered his typical dinner which included a fair amount of steak and lamb. He rather enjoyed lamb even if many of his pack didn’t. Plus, unlike a lot of the group, he liked vegetables. He couldn’t remember or even count the number of times that caused him issues. It seemed to a lot of Weres, only ‘baby wolves’ ate vegetables.
Often the only way to solve the argument was to cram enough vegetables down the throat of the guy giving him lip that he gave up trying to have fun at his expense and swallowed so that he could breathe.
Since typically, Nathan was holding his nose shut the choice was swallow or suffocate.
Nathan was powerful enough, and deadly enough to be the pack alpha, but he wasn’t willing to suffer the politics and the constant interruptions of the other alphas around the country intruding in his life. He was happy farther down the pack and frankly didn’t enjoy the position of second, either. Sadly, enough other wolves challenged him and the only wolf characteristic he shared was the absolute inability to accept losing.
It just pissed him off. So, since his only other choice was to lose a challenge to a Were trying to move up the ranks, eventually he ended up as Gerry’s second. And since he never desired the top spot he never fought Gerry for it.
He still had fights now but with every challenger that was vanquished, the fights for pack rank were farther apart. He was respected universally across the packs for his no-nonsense practical attitude and he had information resources that were very helpful—especially when it came to the vampire interactions.
The testosterone-filled young idiots in his own pack didn’t like him. Additionally, he rarely entertained anyone with enough political ambition to kiss his furry ass that desired to talk with Gerry, the Council Alpha. So, Gerry was in the enviable position that since no one but alphas could talk to him unless they spoke with Nathan first, and very few of the pack wanted to speak with Nathan, Gerry was rarely bothered.
Gerry found it to be a spectacular situation and did his level best to move responsibilities Nathan would normally have over to his third, Nirene. She took care of the pack in ways that most alphas would tend to if they didn’t have Gerry’s responsibilities. Furthermore, if anyone gave her grief they had learned to apologize before Nathan heard about it. He would find Nirene, get the story from her, and then the offender, mostly male but the occasional female too, would get a visit from Nathan.
Then they had, what he liked to term, a binomial decision. Either they apologized to Nirene and made good on a heartfelt penance for their actions that disrespected her office, or they suffered pain until they decided apologizing allowed them to live.
Two Weres went the distance. Fighting Nathan, thinking they could make him bend on his demand they apologize or else. After they both died, others started apologizing before Nathan showed up at their door to request the apology.
One smart-ass decided to try to hide from Nathan by driving to another state and hiding in a cabin in the woods. It took Nathan a week to locate him and the rumor was that Nathan beat him, then made him call Nirene and beg an apology from her.
Once the call was over, Nathan dropped him off at a med school dropout’s home for injuries suffered when Nathan beat his ass a second time. The second beating was for running and causing Nathan to take time away from his businesses to track him down.
Gerry was the only one of two surviving Council members who survived the Were’s version of a Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. It happened a hundred and fifty years ago when the alphas, their seconds and thirds had a case of stupidity and paid for it. It took almost two years for the packs to finally settle down after all of the upheaval, with so many leadership positions open at once.
Pack dynamics, normally changing every few decades at most, suddenly had to change for every pack, for every alpha, second and third at the same time. Most of the worst of it was over within eighteen months, but avarice, cunning and long lives left a few challenges remaining years after the original struggles.
The other leader who was smart enough to survive the massacre, Thomas, suddenly had a case of dead due to stupidity about twenty-five years later. He suffered from arrogance as he got older and one of Michael’s kids took umbrage to an offhand comment Thomas made regarding Michael.
“Open Leadership Position: Local werewolf pack needs new alpha, this one had a deadly case of ‘Mouthing Off Around Vampire’.”
Nathan didn’t remember the vampire’s name. He didn’t even seem to show much emotion over the situation, it was just ‘comment made, physical reply executed’ and the vampire relayed his message to the next highest appropriate representative who became all ears and no comments.
Had Thomas implemented just five seconds of keeping his alpha mouth shut, he might be here today.
Probably not, Nathan considered, once you go down the stupid path when you’re older you tend to stick to the path.
It wasn’t impossible to kill a vampire, and depending on how young and who their sire was the vampire might not be personally powerful. If you dealt with any of the vampires that weren’t part of Michael’s family, they tended to be more of a group than a family.
You might piss off a few of that particular group and have a major fight on your hands, but it wasn’t the same if you targeted the fam
ily. It was a death sentence when you did that. Maybe not right away, but eventually Michael woke up and found out about it and you were guaranteed a shorter life.
Michael firmly believed in an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth for a death of any of his family. Although frankly, he couldn’t be bothered with making sure the count of the dead on the other side was in any way limited to the one who killed a family member. Since his children knew the score, they would normally take care of the problem to keep the body count down.
Michael believed in the old biblical philosophy of cut down the tree, burn out the roots and then salt the ground so nothing ever grew there again.
Nathan took out his cell phone and scanned through his many business and personal email addresses looking for important messages. As the CEO of a high-level internet defense firm and with his own hacking abilities, he had access not only to data on the internet, but the dark net and the locations and conversations hackers kept to themselves. If he couldn’t locate it in the hidden places, he had online personas he would use to go and ‘find’ the information in corporate and governmental databases.
There were no emails for business concerns. That was nice.
Then he took out another phone that he used strictly for pack business and went to Craigslist in each of the fourteen cities that were used this quarter. If you read between the lines, the messages made sense and were a bitch for the NSA and the government to figure out. Especially if anyone actually called the people—they did have the items for sale, or the contacts the information provided.
Nathan was on his fourth city, Los Angeles, in the right section when one of the ads caught his attention.
“The Archangel has awoken! New cherubim has been picked and the land of the Gentiles will receive their due. Time to visit the promised land and take back what is ours!”
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) Page 9
