Love Lost (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 3)

by Michael Anderle

  “Doesn’t it get cold down here?”

  Frank barked a laugh, “Hell yes! I complain horribly about both the cold and the damp. The last 15 years has been rough on these old bones!” He slapped his leg and smiled.

  Dan took over the questioning, “Why don’t you go public with everything you know about the paranormal?”

  Frank just shook his head, “Do you realize what kind of catastrophe that would be? We have enough issues with people stocking food, water and guns without proving the existence of vampires and werewolves!”

  Dan wasn’t convinced, “What if you got called in front of congress and ordered to tell all?”

  Frank smiled at that one. “Dan, I’ve been alive for almost a hundred years. Don’t you think I’ve had this same discussion with myself? Congress is a wishy-washy, whiney bunch of people who can’t see past the next election. They have no concept of the long game. Most of them would sell their mothers to get some publicity. I’d drink the red kool-aid before giving those…” at this he looked at Bethany Anne, “ass-munches, anything.”

  Bethany Anne looked him in the eye, “If you weren’t so feeble, I would make you drop and give me 20 for re-using the same curse word.”

  “If I wasn’t so old, I might give a fuck, too.” He smiled broadly at her. She was beginning to like this curmudgeon.

  “Now, I’ve been answering your questions for the last ten minutes, how about you answer mine?”

  Dan stopped him, “Hold on, one more. I want to make sure I understand. You use this job to help the human race, particularly those here in America. Not the government you work for?”

  “Dan, when I was born the government was of the people working for the people. Not their own personal interests. So as far as I’m concerned, I never stopped working how I started working. It’s the management that has changed the tune.”

  Bethany Anne broke in, “How about a change in management?”

  Frank just look at her and raised his right eyebrow. He’d been waiting twenty years to do that in front of a vampire.

  —

  Nathan hated this van. It wasn’t the cheapest model but it certainly had the cheapest damn springs used for the driver’s seat. The damn seat cushion was non-existent as well. If he didn’t have a spring imprint in his butt, he would be shocked.

  He pulled left into the short drive down to the private aviation facility. He needed to go to hanger 18. He turned the wrong way once and had to turn around. He finally found the right hanger, and there were lights on in the facility.

  No sooner than he had stopped and turned off the van when the door to the office slammed open and he could see Ecaterina running to him. What was going on?

  He jumped out of the van and quickly closed the door to brace himself as she slammed into him. He got the hug of a lifetime while she was kissing his neck, face firmly planted on his shoulder. “Don’t you die on me, Nathan Lowell.”

  What the hell? What happened to the team?

  “Baby, what’s going on?” He wasn’t sure of the problem, so he couldn’t try to fix it, yet. She pulled away from him, resting her head on his chest, listening to his heat beating fast in his chest. He started to ask her again but she put a finger on his lips.

  “You just called me baby, this is sweet word. Don’t say anything and ruin.” Nathan just smiled and enveloped Ecaterina in a full, warm hug. When she got emotional, her command of the English language slipped a little. After a couple of minutes, she finally started talking into his shirt. It was a good thing his hearing was so good.

  “We went by place where Bethany Anne’s friend was killed. The yellow tape was still around and you could see blood stains on concrete. I thought about what if it was you that had been killed. My heart wouldn’t stop racing until I could feel you in my hands, hear your heartbeat with my own ears. Then my heart trusted that you are ok.”

  “I’m ok, baby. If you like that word so much, I’ll call you my baby until the end of time.”

  “Do not make promise you cannot keep, Mr. Lowell.” Nathan smiled, she was picking up Bethany Anne mannerisms. Calling him by his last name when he was skating on thin ice.

  “Ecaterina, look at me. No, stop and look at me.” She pulled away reluctantly from his chest and looked into his eyes. “I can’t imagine my life without you. Without your smile, without your accent, without your touch. The only way to get rid of me, is to kick me away three times. If you do that, I’ll know that you mean it. This will start the moment you say, ‘I agree.’”

  She looked into his eyes, those gorgeous green eyes. He had just pushed the decision back into her lap. She now had the power. Never had a man caused her so such confusion as this one. Well, he was Wechselbalg, they could be a handful. Then again, look at her brother. Completely human and still a handful.

  Did she really want this? Did she just say it because she had wanted a connection? Well, now he had called her bluff. What was it going to be?

  His eyes were earnest. No pressure to say anything either way. They were accepting eyes. He accepted her in all of her ways including the desire to go and be on the mountains, to be in the forest and to play in nature. She smiled. Every day that she had this man next to her, she would have nature walking beside her.

  Her smile lit up, “Yes, Nathan Lowell. You are mine and I am yours, I agree!” She said the last in a squeal and kissed Nathan Lowell hard enough to make his toes curl and uncurl ten times over. He heard cheering from inside the hanger. He forgot Pete was with them and could hear them talking. That little were-bag was probably giving a play-by-play like a soccer sports announcer.

  They finally came up for air and Ecaterina hugged him fiercely.

  “Baby.”

  “Hmmm?” She seemed in a dreamy state, holding him with her face implanted in his chest.

  “I have something for you.”

  “What?” She could be a really short conversationalist at times. He really loved this woman.

  “Come see, it’s in the back of the van.”

  She walked with him to the van, but wouldn’t let go of his waist. He had to reach into his left front pants pocket with his right hand for the key to the van because she wouldn’t let go of his arm. He got the van door unlocked and pulled it open.

  “Boxes? You have big taped-up boxes for me?” Nathan smiled and handed her a knife. She reluctantly let go of him, but she was a very curious woman. She reminded him of a squirrel looking at a new nut in a tree.

  Cutting the top of the first box, she lifted the lid and in the light provided by the van she saw her carefully packed equipment from Romania.

  “My baby!”

  Nathan had to realize that part of the reason he loved this woman was her love of nature. He had just reunited her with the friends that she had way before she knew him. She had carried these items all over the mountains by her house.

  Half way through the second box, she started crying. Not loud, but Nathan noticed her wiping tears away. “Katia?” She looked at him and smiled. She turned around and getting on her knees she leaned out of the van bed wanting a hug. Nathan stepped up. It was his job now, after all.

  “You understand me, Nathan Lowell.” She pointed to the boxes behind her. “There has never been another man who understands me like you. Why didn’t you come sooner to Romania? Why did you take so long?”

  “Believe it or not, I was hiding from vampires.” She busted out laughing at that statement, reached up and kissed him gently on each eye. For these eyes could see into her soul and he accepted what they could see in her.

  She got out of the van and gently closed the doors. “We will get them later, I have them close by now and that is good. I have you closer and that is better.” She led them into and through the office and into the hanger.

  Bobcat, Darryl, Scott, Eric and Pete were all standing around a tall table. Eric was pulling in a pile of small bills and winked at Nathan as they came into the hanger. He said to no one in particular, “Told you she wouldn’t finis
h the boxes.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Washington, D.C. - USA

  Power. The thought of it, the possession or the wielding of power is a drug to many people, often to their detriment. They say that knowledge is power. What they usually mean is that knowledge provides the power to accomplish activities and goals by use of the knowledge to help create the plans, practices or tactics to accomplish the goal. However; the common use of the phrase is that knowledge is power of itself. With knowledge you can make things happen by saying it is so.

  For example, if a person asks to have their street which suffers from a dozen potholes paved, they can use knowledge to ask the right people to put it on a list. That information will be shared with city planners who will ascertain if the street needs it more or less than other streets needing repair.

  However; the person who saw the mayor spend last night in an orgy and has the proof of that knowledge can get the street paved much quicker for far less effort. Two different types of knowledge and power.

  Frank Kurns was a knowledge and power junky. Over the last 70+ years, he had spent a considerable sum of time manipulating the use of knowledge to attain the power to get good deeds done without a lot of arm twisting and outright blackmail. Now, when he called up many of the military and political public servants they didn’t ask what he had on them. Most of them didn’t care anymore. They heard the rumors that something big went down and they received credit for the help in an uncertain time. If Frank called, they listened and then they did.

  The problem was what Bethany Anne and Dan had just shared. He had been fighting to keep the UnknownWorld a secret for two generations. Now, Bethany Anne had proof that humanity wasn’t alone in the Universe.

  There was more power in Bethany Anne’s little pinky of knowledge and proof than all of his computers and databases. The problem was he wouldn’t be able to keep his position in Washington if he wanted to help the world.

  Her argument was convincing. Once the major super powers knew that a private company had access to and controlled the technology of an alien spacecraft, they would have to get it at any cost.

  Frank didn’t have any proof that the government did or didn’t have their own spacecraft. For the sake of the argument, if they did but were unable to keep the pace with Bethany Anne’s technology progress, it could get ugly quick.

  If they didn’t, then life was going to start at ugly and get much worse.

  Either way, they would be looking for any kind of leverage against Bethany Anne they could achieve and Frank would eventually be uncovered. Like a blind mole under a log. They would try to figure out how he had been living so long and he would be both a government secret and a science experiment. He wasn’t looking forward to being either option.

  Or, he could just give the word and Bethany Anne would kill him so fast he wouldn’t feel any pain. If someone had asked him to make a choice three months ago, he might have opted for death. However; since Bethany Anne had come on the scene, life hadn’t been as interesting to him since the 1950’s.

  She wouldn’t let him out of this room alive without making a decision. Further, she had informed him that he would be answering truthfully. That she couldn’t provide any chance but that he was fully committed. Dan had shared how he went through this same situation a week before. Bethany Anne had provided the first hint when he shook her hand and joined the team. Another couple of hints and he got the message that the Forsaken were a big threat, but the bigger one was on the event horizon.

  Dan had a few misgivings. He had been a part of the DOD, if unrecognized, for decades. But with what Bethany Anne had shared he had to agree that to save the USA, the world was going to need to be saved as well. She had the finances and ability to see this through with the right people and the right strategy. It wasn’t going to be a short fight, but for those that signed on, it would be a just fight.

  Frank wasn’t stupid. They weren’t sharing this with him so that he could die in a few years. Bethany Anne must know how to help him stay younger. She confirmed it when their discussion finally slowed to a halt, everyone thinking their own thoughts.

  “So, Frank. Still care to write your memoirs of me in another hundred years?”

  “You can really do that? You can make me younger?”

  She seemed to be having an internal discussion, “Yes, although you will have to have the process done a few times to gently bring you back. It will probably take at least eighteen months so that we don’t lose too much of your time sleeping.”

  “Do I get your permission to publish it, in say 2137?” Frank had a big smile on his face.

  Bethany laughed. “I’ll tell you what. Once we have accomplished faster than light travel for at least twenty five years, you can publish the book.”

  “That could be a truly long time from now. We are still using chemical rockets.”

  “We are, but not the Kurtherians.”

  “Well, ok true. But just because you’re talking with one somehow, doesn’t mean it can explain how to build their technology.” Bethany Anne hadn’t explained that TOM was a part of her; she left it vague on exactly how she communicated with the alien.

  Time to come clean with both Frank and Dan. She looked them both in the eyes, “Guys, I never said that I didn’t have a mostly working spaceship, you just assumed I didn’t.”

  For once, neither Frank or Dan had anything to ask for at least ten seconds. Then she couldn’t shut them up.

  There was a knock on the door. Damn! She had forgotten about poor John outside.

  Frank got up and undid the locks. He opened the door, in his best Lurch voice, “Yeessss?”

  John stuck his head in, “Food anyone? I’m starving.”

  They all looked at each other and then the time. It was past midnight. Yup, dinner time.

  The went back to the SUV and after John made sure that no additional bombs or explosives had been attached, they went to a 24 hour diner that Bethany Anne had found on the way to the airport. Finishing the food, they went on to the hanger. Eric met them at the door; apparently, they had decided to keep a watch.

  Bethany Anne had to agree, she wasn’t thinking all of this through and her team was back-stopping her very well. With Frank on board, she just needed two more on her team and she could get started. Well, after she got rid of the pesky vamp and his team that was playing in her backyard.

  Bethany Anne thought about that for a second. Truly, America might be her back yard but she felt the world was her responsibility. First she would kick the Forsaken out of her back yard, then the whole planet. Can’t protect the front if your flank is open to attack.

  There was a van she wasn’t familiar with at the hanger. They parked next to it. It was on her side and it just took a second for her to smell it. John looked at the van and then looked at her, “Nathan.”

  John just nodded and went over to talk with Eric then went inside ahead of them. Eric greeted everyone. Bethany Anne and Frank went on into the hanger through the office. She found four air mattresses on the ground by the wall away from the plane. Ecaterina and Nathan were on one and seemed really comfortable together. Something must have happened there.

  Pete was half-on half-off another mattress. He apparently moved around a lot while he slept. Darryl had a mattress and Scott had a mattress. She could tell that Nathan, Ecaterina, Darryl and Scott were all pretending to be asleep. Their breathing and heartbeats gave them away. She hadn’t expected to be able to bring Frank and Dan in here without waking them up. She appreciated them letting her move on towards the plane without providing an update right then. They knew the plane was leaving in the morning, anything else could wait.

  She followed Frank up into the plane and found Bobcat sleeping in the second row. Although she had sensed him already, she would have guessed the pilot wouldn’t want to be away from his bird. He might do it in the future, but right now the plane was very much his responsibility and she respected how he handled his responsibility.

 
She grabbed a small cup and a sharp knife from the bar area. It was still stocked from the previous owner. As soon as they got back, she believed all of this would get thrown out. Well, at least thrown out of the plane and into someone’s office, most likely. Completely new everything would be purchased for the plane.

  She moved to the back where Frank had sat down. In the back, the seats faced each other. One deep to each side of the aisle. They were very nice seats.

  Frank looked excited to be moving forward. Once he had grasped the political dynamics of the future, he had a pretty cut and dried decision matrix. Stay with the government and his future became increasingly unclear and most roads led to a bad end. He could go ahead and choose to disappear and die, or he could take door number three and join the team.