That was the best John could hope for, so he grabbed the small victory when he could. They finished talking about inconsequential things. Bethany Anne asked whether he had any chance to hook up with anyone on either of the boats and he pulled up his empty wrist to stare at it. “Oh! Look at the time, got to run. Great talking to you and everything boss, but someone is calling my name.” Nothing happened for a second, so John raised his voice, “I said, SOMEONE is calling my name!”
Eric’s voice came from the other room, “John, come quickly. Someone is calling your name!” She smiled as John waved and exited quickly from the room. She got up from the table as she heard John smack Eric and tell him, “You ass!” Eric’s laughter followed her into her room as she shut the door.
The next morning, Ecaterina was surprised when Bethany Anne came out of the closet, John and Eric with her.
John nodded to Ecaterina, Eric was talking, “That was bad ass boss. You beat Disney World rides hands down…oof!” He bent over a little, holding his stomach. Ecaterina assumed Bethany Anne hit him, but she didn’t see anything happen.
Bethany Anne smiled towards Ecaterina, “Feeling better?”
Ecaterina was up for it today, “Yes, filled to capacity and slept very well.” Making sure there would be no misinterpretation, she added, “Dinner was nice, too.” Bethany Anne smirked. The Ecaterina of old was back. Ecaterina asked for her phone, letting her know she needed to add a couple of phone numbers. Bethany Anne handed it to her.
Bethany Anne took off for the door, “Everyone downstairs ready?” She noticed Michael wasn’t laying on her bed. “Where’s Michael?”
Ecaterina turned around to walk with Bethany Anne out of her suite, the two men following behind them. “He grabbed an SUV and went for breakfast; he also said he needed a change of clothes. I’ve got to say, he’s a changed man.” They started down the stairs.
Bethany Anne was confused, “Changed how? How much can you change a guy who has lived a thousand years? I can’t change my own…” The front door opened and Lance was coming in. “Dad. How are you this lovely morning?” He was certainly looking younger himself. He had a high and tight across the top since his hair was coming back in dark again.
Lance smiled, “Hi baby. I see you have the terrible two-some with you this morning?” Lance preferred his daughter to have protection and loved how it annoyed her at the same time. As a parent, you get your kicks where you can.
Bethany Anne’s smile went up a notch. “Yup, and you will be happy to know they are staying here for a while.” Lance’s smile dropped. “What? Why?”
Lance closed the door so Bethany Anne grabbed his arm in hers and started them all to the living room. “Because I’m popping between here and the ships so much, Gabrielle, Dan and John preferred to carry the protection at both locations, plus you aren’t protected here.”
Lance was walking along, but noticing his freedom quickly slipping away, “I’ve got Nathan here! He is a hell of a guard, right?” Lance looked over his shoulder to see if John would jump in to help him. The look on John’s face told him he was screwed. He turned back around, resigned to having shadows again. Dammit!
John and Eric both smirked after Lance turned around. John was more worried about Bethany Anne when she was here. She made a good point that they would have duties around the home front if she was back on the boats.
Bethany Anne looked around, “Where’s Stephen?” Frank was sitting on a couch, typing on his laptop.
Ecaterina answered, “He went with Michael.”
Bethany Anne went into the kitchen to grab a water, “Really? I wonder how that is going.” She came back into the living area and sat down on the love seat. “Where’s Patricia?”
Lance sat next to her, “On the phone with some old contacts. We might have a way to get the base early.”
Bethany Anne sat forward, “Really? That would be freaking fantastic. God, that would make things easier right now.”
Lance nodded, “Yes. It seems a multi-national corporation has been making quiet but very interesting inroads with both senators and congressman, especially one from the great state of Florida, and since the company is willing to help some of the military who have family in the area and are paying tax revenues there is a lot of political desire to make this happen. The company is willing to pay a twenty-million-dollar bonus if the closing of the base and movement of military personnel happen quickly. The company has agreed to help significantly and it is a ninety-nine year lease, so that was the last hurdle. Should the government go to war, they have the right to reinstate parts of the base.”
Bethany Anne’s eyes got frosty, “Dad. That could be a liability. You know we are going to war.”
Lance smiled, “Well, it seemed that the legal language requires the war to be with a known terrestrial country. It can’t be with anything less than Russia, China or a coalition having a minimum of one million soldiers. That will, in fact, preclude them from grabbing the base if we go to war with say Iraq again. Plus, since we lease the base, they would lose the income plus have to mobilize everyone back. Once we have the base and everyone is happy, I’ll go back and renegotiate in a couple of years or so. But, it gets us the base quickly.
Bethany Anne thought about the downsides and had to agree this was probably the best solution right now. She sat back again. “Well, that is still good news, but make sure we have a bolt hole. I don’t want some trumped up agency knocking on the front door telling us to leave everything and get out. I want there to be doors we can then use to get out the back with our stuff.”
Frank looked up from his typing and grinned, “Not very trusting, are you?”
“Hell no! I’ve worked government, remember? I put away some of these creeps. I trust them to either be altruistic, which has its own issues, work for themselves or work for the money. I’ve never found them to be very pragmatic unless there was a political reason for it. So, no. Speaking of that, how is our Congressman Pepper?”
“Helpful. At least so far. We haven’t asked too much and he is careful making demands of us with all of the dirt Frank has on him. He has talked with Anton, but told him off so we think we have him bought and paid for. Anton invited him to an event he has in two weeks, but Pepper told him he was stuck in meetings and couldn’t make it.”
Bethany Anne’s eyes narrowed, “Hold on, did you say Anton is having an event? Why is this the first I’m hearing about this?”
Nathan chose that moment to arrive, his hair an unruly mess, but he looked pretty relaxed. He went over to Ecaterina and gave her a kiss. “What did I miss?”
Bethany Anne answered for her, “You missed telling me that Anton is having a party?” Nathan sat down next to Ecaterina.
“Yes, Bethany Anne, Anton is having a party. I told them not to tell you until I had more to go on. With Michael here, I have more information and the beginning of a plan. The problem..” The front door opened again. Bethany Anne could hear Michael and Stephen talking as the door shut, discussing fashion. This was becoming a damned reality TV show.
Bethany Anne put up a hand to Nathan to stop him from continuing. She turned to Lance, “Is Patricia going to be coming in anytime soon?”
Lance shook his head, “Unlikely. She had a list of over twenty names. She should be busy for at least a couple of hours.”
Michael and Stephen walked into the room, both dressed fashionably for Miami weather. Stephen looked good as always but Michael was a significant step above. He had lost his age and a very young and scrumptious thirty year-old was smiling as he walked in. This man was going to get jumped if he walked into a bachelorette party anytime soon.
“Hello you guys, take a seat. I’m just coming up to speed on what you all have been making happen without telling me.”
Stephen grabbed two chairs from the kitchen table and gave one to Michael, who was remarkably calm and seemed to be enjoying life. Bethany Anne noticed that even Nathan wasn’t shying away from the man as he reached over to shake his
hand. Something was going on behind her back. That they were all happy meant something, she just didn’t know what, yet.
The two male vampires sat next to each other. Bethany Anne was having a hard time figuring out what was going on. She quickly looked around the room.
Stephen and Michael talking and looking relaxed together. Weird, check.
Nathan shaking Michael’s hand and not flinching. Cold day in hell, check.
Ecaterina and Nathan happy with each other. Well, at least one thing was nice and didn’t give her ominous feelings… Wait a minute.
She speared Nathan with a finger, “You prick! You’re sure you know how to nail Anton and don’t want me to be part of it.”
Stephen’s large grin let her know she was heading in the right direction. Michael’s face gave nothing away and Nathan only let out a small grimace.
He started, “Not exactly. It’s just we have a good idea of what Anton is going to do and we think we should discuss options.”
“I’m listening.” She sat back, her arms crossed in front of her.
“Anton has the party, which I was about to tell you about. The thought is to use Pepper’s invitation and you be his plus one. Once inside, Pepper will leave again. You can deal with Anton. We will have Killian and Ecaterina at two separate locations with views into his house.”
Bethany Anne’s voice was a little short, “You know where he lives?” She was already considering getting a plane ticket and flying down there right now. Make that three tickets, and a ticket for a dog. Damn, she would have to have Paul Jameson come get her. Fuck, she wasn’t going to make this happen fast at all.
Nathan turned to Frank, who started speaking while he turned his laptop around, “We have the location of the party. I don’t think it is his main house. So, right now no. The man is very security conscious so I highly doubt he is here except for the party.”
There went her need to call Paul right then. That was when she noticed Ecaterina smiling, holding Bethany Anne’s phone which she had asked for earlier and had never given her back.
Bethany Anne smiled, sneaky bitch. Her team knew her too well it seemed.
Michael chose to interrupt her efforts to go kill Anton right then. “Bethany Anne, have you ever wondered why I didn’t kill Anton a long time ago?”
Bethany Anne turned back to Michael. “Hell yes. That prick needed to be gone a long time ago and certainly after World War II.”
Michael leaned forward in his chair, “Granted, I didn’t know about his efforts in World War II or I might have tracked him down, or I might not have.” Frank turned his laptop around and started typing while Michael talked. This was history talking.
Like, literal history. The man should be in a museum just answering questions. She smirked to herself, maybe she could get him to do something like Chippendales. Oh shit! Her face locked in place. She was trying desperately to not laugh out loud at her own thought. Michael strutting his stuff at Chippendales for the ladies. God! That was too much. Time stopped as she willed herself to stop thinking about the subject. Anton, Anton… Need to focus on killing Anton.
Michael caught the factual gesture and raised an eyebrow, but then continued unaware of the real reason Bethany Anne didn’t release her emotions. Michael assumed she was pissed, it was better to not ask. “The problem is when you kill him, you will have a major problem with the Forsaken vampires in all of South America. He is the lesser of two evils.”
Her face carefully controlled, she asked, “So, kill him and potentially hundreds or thousands die due to vampire politics as others try to take control?”
Michael nodded, “Yes. That is the sum of it.”
Chippendales forgotten, Bethany Anne thought out loud, “We went through a period of this in San Jose.” Michael looked at her. “Costa Rica, not California.” No one seemed to have updated him on anything that had gone on since they rescued him. Then again, he had been asleep for a large part of the time, too.
She stood up and started pacing in the living room, everyone surrounding her was sitting, she didn’t have much room to pace before she turned around. “What happens now if a powerful vampire kills the highest level vampire in an area to take control?”
Michael didn’t like the way this conversation was starting to head, but answered the question. “Unless someone challenges him, or her, then the new Vampire controls what goes on. However, if you have a non-Forsaken take over a Forsaken area, you will still need to clean up everyone who believes vampires should rule humans.”
She decided not to correct him. Vampires were humans, just genetically modified. Which, when you went down that path meant they had genetic mutations over humans and that left you with vampires are mutants. Back to square one.
“Michael, why did you allow this bullshit to continue?” She wasn’t accusing him, but genuinely curious.
Everyone looked at Michael. He wasn’t giving off the Patriarchal air he was accustomed to wearing and no one seemed to be judging him. He sat back in his chair. “Two reasons. When it started, I lost them. It wasn’t easy to track people back in those centuries.” Frank was nodding along, it made sense to him, “The second was I thought it was a phase, like teenage boys? Something they would grow out of eventually. The men they were before they were vampires wasn’t the men they became. It was like when they changed into vampires, something within their minds changed as well. I felt a duty to the men I had changed to give them another chance. Over time, my inactivity allowed them to grow until fixing the…”
Bethany Anne finished his sentence. “Fixing the problem was a bigger issue than leaving it alone.” He nodded his agreement. She could understand both the emotional issues and the practical issues. It didn’t make her happy. She still had a little girls desire to slap the shit out of him.
She went back to her seat and sat down. “Which brings us back to Anton. I’m sorry, but that psychotic bastard is going to die. Not just for having been the head of the group which killed Martin, but all of the people in those camps and I’m sure the hundreds if not thousands since. He is messing with the formula in some form or fashion. He has to go.”
Nathan took up the conversation, “So, there it is in a nutshell. We have the place, we have the time, we have the beginning of the plan. You couldn’t have done anything with the information before now and after talking with Michael, I understand the political issues better. I don’t; however, have a solution for the massive amount of San Jose type of operations we will have to do to clean up South America.”
Bethany Anne put her elbows on her knees and put her chin on her hands, thinking. “Michael, what do vampires understand more than anything else?”
Michael was quick to answer, “Power.”
“Who is the most powerful Vampire in all of history, as far as they know?”
Michael was a lot slower answering this question, with significantly less enthusiasm, “Me.”
She turned to him with a smile, “So, once Anton is dead, and I will be there making sure that bastard is dead, you are going to clean up South America. Consider it your penance for making this mistake so many centuries ago.” Her voice got a little harder, and little more commanding. “In fact, consider the penance for the thousands of people he has killed over the decades and the hundreds of thousands he probably was at least partially responsible for. Your Honor has been compromised and I will beat you with it until you make this right. David and Anton have signed their own death sentences.” Michael’s face got a decidedly less friendly visage when she mentioned David, “And we will collect. Both because they deserve it and because I can’t have a problem on my back if I’m dealing with other … issues.” She didn’t want to mention the aliens at the moment and lose the momentum on the present subject.
She softened her voice, adding the honey were before she was using a stick, “Will you do this, Michael? Will you take control in South America when Anton is out of the way?”
He pursed his lips. “What about Europe?”
Stephen shrugged his shoulders and said, “I’ve got Europe. I might need a new house after the latest issue, but I’ve already committed to fixing Europe.”
Bethany Anne cocked her head, “How about two houses? Of the floating variety?”
Stephen looked at her, “Your ships?”
She nodded, “Yes. I am about to move to a fixed base in Colorado, at least I hope so. The ships need to move and they have been in and around South America too long. I will ‘sell’ them to you so that if someone tracks me, it looks like a legitimate change of ownership. The Guardians need to get some seasoning. I’ll be here in North and South America, so the TBQ can help if Michael needs it and the CG will help you. We need to get a few more fronts going. Keep my trans-location areas clear for me and a…” She looked at John, “Small team can come over on short notice, and a much larger team with planning. Plus, Nathan needs to work in Europe too.” Nathan seemed surprised at that comment.
Never Forsaken (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 5) Page 21
