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

  "Do I have to drink blood? Because, I have to admit I’m not really looking forward to that.” Maybe there was something good to come out of this colossal fuck-up.

  Most of the time, probably not. Blood, human or other, has a connection to the ethereal as well. We have a limited tap directly. Provided you don't do anything which takes too much effort, you will not need to consume blood.

  "Define 'too much effort'."

  Physical exertion for extended periods of time, significant healing, almost dying.

  “Well, that provides a positive reinforcement to stay safe,” she muttered. Looking around the room, she could see it wasn’t that big. The sarcophagus, or whatever the medical pod was, had about four feet of space on all sides around it. There were white walls, which were remarkably clean, all things considered. There was also the outline of a partial circle about eight feet high on the wall to her right. Little rectangles with rounded corners were present on all the walls. She decided they must be drawers of some type.

  The symbiont wasn’t speaking. Probably thought he had pissed me off enough, she thought.

  Getting her head around the situation, she realized she needed to get a little more information and then start planning what the hell she should do.

  Michael had given her some information before she went under. Some concerns he had about the attack on Bill. Attacking his family in America really pissed him off.

  He was ‘quite peeved’ he had exclaimed. His face was as annoyed as if he had just had a bad cup of tea.

  Talk about understated emotional empathy. Look it up on Wikipedia and she was sure Michael’s face would be the picture for it.

  Nothing for it, she thought, it’s time to get started.

  12

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Nathan got out of the pool a few minutes before and had taken a quick shower to wash away the chlorine. The chlorine just totally messed up his sense of smell. Not to mention that he really didn’t feel like reeking of eau de YMCA pool all day.

  He was in town to discuss the cyber attack that his Boston branch thwarted this past week. All of the Boston team, and three up from New York, spent most of the last eight days eating, sleeping and breathing cybernetic warfare with a group out of China against one of their financial clients. He was here to understand if they had done anything new that could be shared with his other three teams and to personally thank each of them. He was giving them all a five thousand dollar bonus, which he would share after he got the after-action review. Then, it was a few hours out of town to go camping and if there weren’t any fools doing it on the trail, he could enjoy getting furry.

  The phone he used for pack business rang. Grabbing it, he saw an unfamiliar number. He opened a special program that would simultaneously answer the phone and track the number and location back to the unknown caller.

  “Nathan here,” he snapped, his voice, a little deeper and gravelly, well, maybe ‘growly’ since he hated picking up pack business.

  Nonplussed, Frank replied, “Yeah, good to talk with you too, furball.”

  Nathan took a second to overcome his immediate desire to reach through the phone and personally shove a chair up Frank’s ass. Giving it a second, when his mind cleared enough to think it through, he answered, “Hello, Frank. I can’t say it’s been too long. I could go another thirty years and it wouldn’t be long enough.” He got dressed, put on his shoes, grabbed his bag, stuck his headphones in his ears and headed out to the underground parking lot.

  “Trust me,” Frank said, “I feel you on this one. I wouldn’t call except after six months you’re the only one I think I can trust on this.”

  He felt a little sigh coming on. He wasn’t making it to the campsite this weekend, it seemed. He pushed the alarm on his MB GLE, confirmed that it was both unlocked and nothing had been done to the car in his absence, got in and closed the door, locking out sound from the outside.

  “By the way, I’m feeling your love. Your tracking program is pretty good but I think it’s going to get lost up on SatCom3. I figured you might be anxious if a new number came across but damn, Nathan.”

  “Yeah, well, if your business was being attacked by China’s digital black ops for trillions of dollars, I think you might be a little concerned as well.” Nathan turned out on the street and headed to the office.

  “Hmm, I seem to have heard about that attack. But even though it started in China I think you might need to see about ‘super special’ connections on this one. It’s one of the reasons I came to you. I knew you’d try to stay neutral but the other team isn’t giving you an option.”

  “Really? Hmmmm. One sec.” Nathan muted the line, grabbed his other phone and hit the speed dial for the Boston office. “Tim? Nathan. I want your guys to look at all of our other clients, even those that don’t ever get attacked. I have a hunch that our clients aren’t the target, we are. Yeah. Start the Guardian install on all clients immediately. Get with the other three offices and everyone take someone. Make financial clients first priority, then everyone else in descending order of PR nightmare. My gut says they’re trying to cause us problems.” Nathan listened for a few seconds. “Yeah, good thought. They might be trying to get us to focus on one area and then hit us in another. Take every team up to the same level and I’ll call in a few favors to get additional help. Be there in ten minutes.” Nathan clicked the call off.

  He picked up the original phone call, “Sorry, Frank. I had to take your comment under advisement and give out orders.”

  “No problem, I scratched your furry back and now you’re free to help me,” he said.

  Nathan thought about how stupid it would be for a normal human to knowingly irritate a Were. Then considered how stupid it would be for a Were to cross the main government contact. Kinda hard to dodge all of the bullets, all of the time. Sometimes, enough bullets really becomes a quantity has a quality of its own situation. “Yeah, OK, tell me what you got.”

  “You’ve heard that Michael’s gone missing?” Frank asked, no beating around the bush on this one. Nathan was probably the best informed Were in the world. Just because he wasn’t the alpha, didn’t mean, in his case, he wasn’t the best.

  Nathan turned down the street to his Boston offices, then stopped at the guard shack before going into the underground parking lot. Pulling into the prime parking position, he stopped the car but didn’t get out.

  “I’ve heard all the rumors, but nothing my personal computer search filters return have provided anything but rumors. Do you have anything concrete?”

  “No, but his plane went down over the ocean, and we don’t have bodies for anyone in the plane. No pilot, no Carl, no Michael.”

  “How do you know they were on the plane?”

  “How does anyone know anything about Michael? We know that the pilot and Carl were on the plane, because they were on airport security cam video. We have audio that includes Carl and Michael talking a few minutes before the plane disappeared.”

  “How did you get audio of them talking?” Nathan wanted to know if Frank was in a bad enough situation to divulge any government secrets.

  “We heard them behind the conversation between the pilot and the tower before they left the tower’s airspace. How did you think?” Frank, always good with saying everything and nothing, replied.

  “Well, I had hopes you did a laser wisk against the plane’s windows from a satellite and listened to the vibrations.” It was incredibly weak, but a plausible concept if you believed in black helicopters (which, he realized, were actually real.)

  “Um hmm. Yeah, I got nothing on that, Nathan.”

  “OK, what do you want in payment for the heads up?”

  “I need you to go to old Europe. The last verifiable sighting of Michael was in a small town out there a little over six months ago, I think. See if you can backtrack anything from there.”

  Nathan stared out of the window for a few seconds. This just wasn’t a good idea. Although he recognized the titanic
power shift that would happen if Michael was actually gone, he needed to be here with his businesses if he was being targeted by anyone in the UnknownWorld right now. “Frank, I think I need to ask for another favor. Right now, as you know, I’m a little bit on the defensive. I have over two hundred clients that are bait to these, whatever ‘these’ are.”

  Frank sighed. “Nathan, I know you do. Over two hundred and fifty high-paying, high-value clients that I know about. I’ve got resources I can tap that can help a national security company overcome attacks by Chinese hackers. What I don’t have is a clandestine operative I trust to sort this out. If you trust me to get you good people, with maximum security clearances, to help your teams out, we can get your issues resolved in a quarter of the time. Hand it off to your top guys to pass out the responsibility. My guys can handle it inside Cheyenne, or they can be placed at your offices. Tonight if you need them.”

  Shit, he thought, Frank is in a serious bind. In four offices, he had about forty highly technical people working for him. How many was Frank willing to give him for one person? “How many, Frank? I’ve got an attack happening as we speak and I’m sitting under one of my offices on the phone with you. Not to mention that Europe isn’t totally healthy for an American of my persuasion.”

  “Nathan, you want four hundred? I’ll find you four hundred in three hours.”

  Nathan sighed, “Well, fuckity-fuck. Looks like I’m going to Europe.”

  Brasov, Romania

  A little jet-lagged, Nathan arrived in Brasov, Romania. An important town, the history going back to the Neolithic age, Nathan hadn’t visited it before in his travels.

  He grabbed a bus heading up to Poiana Brasov, a nearby winter resort area, one of the most popular for tourists. It was in this small town that Frank was last able to confirm Michael’s existence.

  Freaking spooky, Nathan thought, maybe there was more to the rumor that Dracula came from Transylvania than he had considered?

  Winter had come too early in September in Nathan's opinion. It wasn’t supposed to get all white and cold until mid-November.

  Either way, he needed to get moving. He had called the local alpha for permission to be in his area. These packs went way, way back and could be very persnickety about other packs’ members in their areas without permission. Since it was a tourist area, the discussion ended up being more a formality than he had imagined it might, considering his position in the American Council.

  Frank had provided him with the information about the hotel that had the security footage that included Michael. He decided he would start with that hotel and enlarge the circle. As he got off the bus, he felt something touch his senses. He stepped off as if nothing had caught his attention and took a couple of steps forward so he didn’t block the other passengers. He looked in the opposite direction from his hotel and then back again as if he was trying to find it, even though he already knew which way to go.

  He saw no one, which didn’t mean no one was there, it just meant that they weren’t amateurs. He walked towards the hotel, putting his whole body on alert, while completely relaxing his muscles so that they wouldn’t twitch uncharacteristically and give away that he was on guard.

  The hotel was typical old school. Smaller buildings with a lot of the refinements of the last hundred years retrofitted. Not even a personal bath for each room.

  Looked like it would be an expensive couple of days. He would pay the minimum necessary to have a personal bath, even if he had to go all the way to the penthouse. If there was anything he hated, it was sharing a bathroom. He had spent a minor fortune renovating a brownstone in the New York area just a few years ago to make sure that every bedroom had a personal bathroom.

  Finished at the front desk, and lucky that others hadn’t realized the weather was going to change so early this year, he was able swap his reserved room for only an arm. His leg would be available for the next expensive charge.

  Getting into his room using an old fashioned key, he pulled a small rectangle the size of a quarter and twice as thick from his grooming kit. The brown plastic device had a male audio jack on one side. Plugging it into a specially modified Android phone, he clicked on a folder to bring up a special set of security programs. The selfie camera came on and he held it to his right eye. After it took a picture, he moved it to his lips, and then took his whole face.

  Although earlier iterations tried to use images as passcodes, they were quickly hacked with just plain pictures. The device he placed in the audio jack was using technology through the camera as well as some inside the device to confirm this was Nathan whilst verifying respiration and other biometrics.

  The folder opened, giving him access to other programs that let him search the room for anything nasty or just plain annoying. While the phone went to work to locate anything in the digital realm, he started giving the room a physical check.

  He found one really old spy bug under the bedside table where an old phone would have sat. He supposed the old thing was from the Cold War and considered leaving it there. Thinking better of that idea, shaking his head—when younger he never would have been so careless—he pulled a small metallic box out of his suitcase and dropped the bug in it. The box was a small faraday cage, not letting anything in or out. Besides, maybe the bug had history and he would find out it was used decades ago and he would have a piece of spy memorabilia.

  Leaving his bag on the chair next to the bed, he grabbed his phone and grooming kit and went into the bathroom. There was a knock on the door.

  Sticking his head out of the bathroom, he called out, “Who’s there?”

  Voice a little muffled, not horribly since these old hotels really didn’t have great insulation, he heard a girl say, “Housekeeping. I’m here to turn down your bed, sir.” She had a great accent.

  He stepped over and unlocked the door, and stepping back into the bathroom he yelled for her to come in and shut the door.

  Hearing her come in, he took a peek through the crack in the door and caught the profile of an attractive blond. He made the appropriate noises and paid attention to his phone while turning on the water.

  After about forty-five seconds, she said that she was finished and the door shut. Immediately, his phone got a ping on one of the wireless bands before going dark again. Nathan knew that they must have bugged his first room, but by changing rooms he had messed up their plans, whoever they were.

  He decided to finish up in the bathroom and go ahead and leave the existing bug or bugs alone. She probably bugged his bag somehow, he would have. He was going to need to set up a drop of clothes and other materials at another hotel and leave everything else here. He had everything he couldn’t leave behind in the grooming kit, which he always had with him.

  He exited the bathroom and could smell the perfume she was wearing. It was really strong. Strong enough to mess up his sense of smell, but not enough to completely cover the scent of a Were. He wouldn’t be able to recognize her personal scent in the future, but he hoped she liked the same fragrance.

  So, whether this was just a pack issue not trusting someone at his level in their territory, something to do with the attacks on his business, or something that was going on with this business of Michael’s he didn’t know. One thing was sure, it just got a lot more interesting.

  13

  Carpathian Mountains, Romania

  Bethany Anne had found her clothes outside what she now thought of the ‘pod room.’ They didn’t fit her wonderfully now, her unexpected traveling companion’s ministrations had affected her physically and she was now a little taller and leaner. Clothes too small beat not having any clothes at all.

  “Is there some sort of office on this ship?” Bethany Anne winced at how she must look talking to the air like this.

  Yes. Go down this hallway and take your first left. The door on the right will open into pilot’s cabin and office.

  “Um, where did they go?” Bethany Anne seriously didn’t want to run into a corpse a thousand years
old.

  I believe you would call him a ‘ghost in the machine’ now.

  She paused to consider that comment. “Are you telling me that you were the pilot on this craft?”

  Yes.

  “And your body is where, exactly? I know your, something, is in my spinal cord but frankly I don’t need to see a body.” Bethany Anne wasn’t really squeamish, but she didn’t want a physical picture to go with the disembodied voice she heard in her head.

  I had the craft break it down into its constituent parts before you woke up. I intended to hitch a ride, as you called it a long time ago. Unfortunately, Michael wasn’t a match for me and he left before I could really read the situation well. He didn’t react as I had expected and I was unable to have any sort of conversation. I wasn’t in this valley very long before he stumbled into this craft. There were no radio waves for me to listen to, no way to learn about your world or your language at that time. I’ve only been really learning about your world in the last few decades. I’ve tapped into a couple of satellites, but they are mostly generic news and entertainment related. I’ve understood for a while that your people find the most horrendous stories fun.

  “Don’t knock it when you don’t know what else we go through.” She was a little perturbed at the alien for criticizing human television although she herself thought a lot of what passed for entertainment in the last decade was mostly trash TV. She supposed people were able to secretly feel superior when watching the horrific train wrecks others were making of their own lives on national television.

  Well, she couldn’t knock it too much as her secret pleasure was watching The Real Housewives of Orange County. Those women couldn’t seem to keep a relationship going without catfights and backstabbing, and Vicki? My God, that lady needed serious help.