Love Lost (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 3)

by Michael Anderle

  She smiled, “I don’t need them for anything, and poor Adrian needs a little energy. Do you know of any volunteers?” The two men started whimpering. John spoke into a mic, “Wrap it up, back to the plane.” He grabbed the missing arm on the way out of the alley.

  Adrian’s two henchmen were found dead later that morning. No marks on their bodies. Two days later, the coroner report said that both smelled of alcohol, but no alcohol was found in their bloodstream. Both, however; suffered from not having enough blood in their systems to live.

  Flying to Miami, FL - USA

  The team, including Frank and Killian but without Darryl and Scott, flew back to Miami, Fl. Her Father now had a few extra days in Washington D.C to say goodbye to some friends that he might want to contact in the future, and finish out the political game for his retirement. Bethany Anne felt confident that Adrian was the main Forsaken here in the United States.

  Darryl and Scott were tasked with keeping tabs on the new CEO to be. Bobcat had scheduled William to go through the plane for one day and then button her back up for a trip back to Washington. If it still looked like the General wanted to stay a little while longer, Bobcat would grant William authorization to work on the plane in twelve hour increments.

  Adrian did not provide his maker’s name, yet. However; she felt that a trip to the Everglades early next morning would be a very educational opportunity. The team had learned from her discussions with Petre’. A vampire had to have a belief that it could live. She would call Stephen when they landed to find out more.

  Ecaterina had talked with Ivan for a few minutes on the way to the airport. Ivan was apparently having a blast and it looked like he and Stephen had a bromance. Bethany Anne had to agree that he was a fun guy and she hoped Ivan didn’t ruin Stephen for her.

  She snorted, here she was worrying whether a human in his twenties was going to ruin a vampire in his centuries. How messed up was that?

  She wished she had Stephen with her at the moment. Without a vicious reputation, she kept having to do things the hard way.

  Mind you, Adrian was going to die. He had killed Martin Brennan and that was a death sentence. That he had enjoyed it only added substantially to the torture during his expiration. She considered her options as she stared out of the window at the rising sun. Adrian had gone to sleep after he drank from his cronies. She felt it a fitting resolution to their end. Work with vampire, die by vampire.

  Good thing she wasn’t one. She snorted at that again. She prayed that wasn’t an omen for her team.

  Not one of them, even her father, had lifted so much as an eyebrow when she gave the command that allowed Adrian to kill those men so that he could live. They packed up and decided to just leave the van where it was. No use putting their DNA in it.

  She decided to see if TOM had any ideas.

  TOM, is there a way to bring about assured death with significant pain to Adrian? There are bonus points for anything that helps provide me a reputation in the Vampire community.

  I thought you already were getting a reputation in the vampire community? No community to speak of here in the United States, but you are known in various circles in Europe.

  So, I should get a T-Shirt that says ‘I’m big in Romania’?

  She got a feeling of sneezing in her spinal cord. She guessed that meant TOM was laughing. That was a new and odd sensation.

  If you want, I suppose you can.

  Yeah, but Adrian is from South America. I’m not ready to dive into that ‘pit of scum and villainy’ just yet.

  Why not send him?

  Who, Adrian? I want him dead. I can’t let him go back South even to spread stories about me.

  What if we re-program his nanocytes to slowly stop working. He will age rapidly and then die a horrible death.

  Really? A vampire version of the wasting disease? What happens if he drinks more blood?

  Well, with reprogrammed nanocytes, each time he receives more energy, they would work that much faster to… What is your favorite saying here? ‘Fuck him up’? Yup, that would do it.

  How deliciously ironic that would be. If he doesn’t drink, he dies. If he drinks, he dies faster. The whole time he is talking about me. TOM, you just got moved from the couch to your own room.

  TOM was pleased at that comment. He and Bethany Anne had a very rocky start to their relationship since he had jumped aboard her body without permission. She hadn’t taken the intrusion very well at all. While he certainly couldn’t go anywhere, he could tell how she felt about him by where she ‘allowed him to sleep’. So far, there was the dog-house and the couch. Now she was offering him his own room.

  Do I get a furniture allowance?

  You get a sleeping bag, don’t push it.

  Damn.

  What do we need to do to prepare this nanocyte reprogramming effort?

  Well, like most of my nanocyte concoctions, we are going to start with a bag of blood and a syringe of your blood after I modify their core stage programming.

  How are you changing the programming when the blood is in the syringe?

  I’m not, I’m changing the nanocytes in your body. Before you stick me back on the couch, I’ll put in place a set of instructions to automatically reject any change in programming that is detrimental to you. They will be coded to your DNA and attack any nanocytes which are in your system which your nanocytes don’t recognize.

  Kind of like white-blood cells. Ok. You can have a cot in your bedroom too.

  Great, TOM thought, at this rate he would have his own house within five years. He got busy making the programming changes using the Kurtherian computer in Bethany Anne’s head. It would take at least twelve hours for enough of her nanocytes to have their programming changed before he would suggest they pull her blood. That would provide enough mutated nanocytes in the syringe to infect Adrian.

  For a Kurtherian, he mused, he was becoming pretty blood thirsty hanging around Bethany Anne.

  Miami, FL - USA

  The team had three SUV’s waiting for them back in Miami. One was for the crew’s equipment including Killian's new toys. Bethany Anne had said hello to the sniper when getting on the plane. Killian had respectfully nodded and said hello back. He had been wearing his necklace on the outside of his shirt until he knew she had seen it. Then he had placed it inside his shirt.

  He had done well. That shot had been the linch-pin in Ecaterina’s plan. The General was the bait, she always started with the bait, and then there was a moment he was totally focused on his pain to allow Bethany Anne to get in place. Ecaterina had figured that once the vampire got off the ground again he wouldn’t place too much consideration on how a human got in front of the General so fast.

  It had worked wonderfully.

  The team already knew Killian, so that wasn’t a problem and Killian already knew about the Forsaken. On the plane Dan had gone over the core information related to the new structure of the group. Killian had decided to join under a six month probationary period. Every member of Dan’s group, which included TQB, had an option to force a vote to kick him off. While that wasn’t a big deal to Killian, when Dan took him aside and let him know that if he was kicked off, he would be mind-wiped back to before he knew about anything related to the Forsaken he was shaken a bit. The reputation of his mouth had certainly caught up to him.

  He had to think about that for a little while before agreeing. He had a couple of years on the team before this latest op and while he had some good times, there wasn’t anything there that he would miss too much if he was forced to forget it. Realizing that he was just living a life, not making a life, he decided to join something bigger than himself. If he couldn’t command his own tongue, he deserved the punishment.

  He had decided during the operation that he was going to change. Well, this decision put paid to the reality that he would change or else he wouldn’t remember any of these people. That one agreement to Dan’s condition helped smooth the rough feathers of the team towards him. All of
them knew the old Killian would have just been glib about the whole situation. This Killian had seemed to have considered the ramifications and acted like an adult.

  John had stuck out his hand and looked at him square in the eye, “Welcome to Team Queen Bitch, Aeternitatem.”

  Killian had grasped hand in a shake that would cement his future and it was special. “What is ‘Aeternitatem’?”

  John looked at him and smiled, “For Eternity.”

  Killian looked into Eric and Dan’s eyes and saw the agreement and determination in both of them. Should anyone have been able to watch Killian’s face at that moment, they would have been able to see the same change in his own demeanor. He wasn’t personally a religious man, however; you wouldn’t have been able to tell that by looking at his face at that moment. Whether it was belief, acceptance or determination of a man who understood that he had done wrong, who is to say?

  The Killian that had walked onto the plane in Washington was not the same Killian who got off in Miami.

  Over in the corner, Frank was furiously writing in a dialect that time had forgotten.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Miami, FL - USA & Central America

  Adrian had been easy to inject. The syringe with Bethany Anne’s blood was ready at 5:30 PM, but after she had talked with Stephen and explained Adrian's physical damages, Stephen had said he should sleep for at least one to two days. They waited an extra six hours to make sure the nanocytes were fully activated and injected Adrian. He didn’t even flinch.

  They had rented a crappy hotel room near the Miami International airport. John, Dan and Bethany Anne had stayed with the vampire who was laid out on the bed. Bethany Anne was sitting at the foot of the bed in a chair. John and Dan were standing beside her, one on each side. Adrian might be fast, but both men had their protective vests on. While Bethany Anne was confident that Adrian was a significantly weaker vampire than she, he could still overpower the humans. Plus, they had earplugs in case he tried that same trick to control the men that he had tried with Bethany Anne.

  She hadn’t felt any compulsion when he commanded her earlier, so it didn’t register on her radar. However; he had certainly expected something to happen, so they wouldn’t take any risks.

  She pantomimed putting earplugs in their ears. When they had finished, she calmly spoke towards Adrian's inanimate body. “If you choose to remain among both the living and pain free, you will cease faking your asleep. However, If I’m wrong that you aren’t faking, I’ll apologize for your broken legs later.”

  Adrian opened his eyes. He trusted that she would break his legs again. He felt both arms working. These people had allowed him to heal. He was shirtless which was practical since his last shirt and jacket had its arm blown off. These people didn’t fuck around. He chose to move very slowly. At the foot of the bed were three people. He recognized the vampire and the large man to her right. The older man to her left was new. Neither looked as if they were particularly concerned with being in the room with him. He looked around. He was in a pretty crappy hotel room. The scents from the bed disgusted him. The two cattle didn’t concern him. Although he wouldn’t put it past the big guy to put up a fight. However; the female vampire was a different matter altogether.

  That she hadn’t just killed him was a good indication she wanted something. Whether he lived beyond that was completely open.

  “I’m awake. Do I have to stay lying on this bed, or can I get up like a civilized being?”

  “If you were truly civilized, I wouldn’t be having a conversation with you at this time. Civilized beings don’t go around creating Nosferatu and killing people.”

  Adrian’s glib response popped out of his mouth, “They were only cattle, it doesn’t matter.”

  Her voice got icy cold, “One of those ‘cattle’ was very important to me. So that certainly made Martin matter. That you are alive for the time being can quickly change if you mouth off your Forsaken bullshit around me.”

  Adrian decided that being quiet would allow him to live longer.

  “You may sit up. Dan, would you throw him a t-shirt?”

  Adrian felt a t-shirt hit him as he leaned forward to sit up on the bed. He eyed the three watching him as he pulled the t-shirt on. They all looked at him as if he were a bug they wanted to clean off of their shoes. He was getting upset but dared not say anything more for fear of Bethany Anne’s anger. She certainly could back up anything she cared to do and there wasn’t a damn thing Adrian could do about it. That she was so young and yet so powerful was pretty damn disturbing. She started the questioning.

  “What is the name of your parent?”

  “What is in it for me to tell you this?”

  “A trip to Mexico City leaving at 8:30 PM.” Bethany Anne reached down on the floor and pulled up an envelope and tossed it to him.

  He opened the envelope and inside was his license, passport and a one-way ticket to Mexico City. He could hear the jets taking off, so the airport was close by. It could be a ruse, it certainly would have been a ruse if she were Forsaken, but with humans around her it was obvious she wasn’t one.

  “Forgive me for not making the ticket a round-trip. But if I ever see you again, I will assume you are doing something I disagree with and will kill you on sight. That includes when I come to South America.”

  Adrian looked up at this. Michael and his group didn’t go into Central or South America very often. Only on major outbreaks when the Forsaken screwed up and couldn’t handle their own internal troubles. Most of the time they held an uneasy truce, working together to contain the problem.

  Forsaken didn’t appreciate uncontrolled explosions of Nosferatu . When it did happen, underlings with delusions of rising above their station by assassination often came out of the dank holes they were hiding in. While Michael’s team would take care of the Nosferatu trouble, the Forsaken would be pruning the tree, so to speak.

  “Why would you be coming to Central or South America?”

  “Why, to discuss with your parent my unhappiness with his latest effort here in the United States, of course. I’m sure that he had assumed you would just die in the process and left you as a cut-out. With you dead, no one would be alive to let me trace back the trouble and assign the blame.”

  “She.”

  “Come again?”

  Adrian considered everything Bethany Anne had just said. It now seemed obvious that he must have been used by Clarita, his maker. She had been very insistent on the power he would wield when this project was done. That was very unlike any vampire and he had bought it. She had always claimed that he was her favorite child. His anger at his own stupidity was rising. Clarita must be concerned Adrian would rise up against her, so had attacked him first. The conniving bitch.

  “My maker is a female, not a male. Her name is Clarita, or at least that is what she has answered to these last couple of centuries.”

  “Does she have a home?”

  He smiled, “Yes, of course. She has dozens of homes From Guatemala to the border of Panama. She is the lead of Central America. I cannot give you more information than that.”

  “Well, had I known I might have sent you back a little more South. However; Mexico City seemed a good point for your departure.”

  “Why let me go at all?”

  Bethany Anne leaned forward, her eyes starting to glow red and even Adrian’s mouth was getting dry. He could feel her anger, her power, from the bed. “You will tell those you meet that I will not allow any to come to these lands. Clarita has now signed her death warrant by sending you. I will take my anger out on her and her whole family. Those that stay in all of Central America have been warned. If I find any from Guatemala to Panama, they have forfeited their life. I would suggest you find another place to stay after you deliver my message.”

  “Why would I do that? Clarita could well kill me when I speak to her.”

  “Not my problem. If I can’t persuade you your life depends on doing this after you leave me, then h
ow powerful could I be?” She leaned back in her chair.

  Adrian felt as if he was in a throne room, with her advisors on either side of her instead of a crappy cheap hotel. She had regally pointed with her head to the door. He was expected to leave. He considered for a moment to try and take control of the two humans but dropped it. She could kill them too easily and then his life was forfeit. He doubted she would be so lenient a second time. She had a name, now. He might as well take his exit cue. He turned and put his legs down. He stood up to the side of the bed closest to the door.

  “Take the bag with you.”

  He noticed a small carryon bag by the door. He walked over and picked it up looking inside. It had a hundred dollars American, a bottle of Evian water and a Snickers. He picked up the snickers and then looked back at the strange vampire.