Under My Heel

by Michael Anderle

The four marines were barely restraining their anger as they watched the videos of the massacres that were running on the newscast again.

  The news had made it around the Ad Aeternitatem pretty quickly. A few of the marines had casually commented that ‘France is on the way to the Mediterranean, right’? Wishful thinking, they knew. They had their task and it was to get Stephen, the new owner of the two ships, back near his country so that they could continue their efforts to take care of the Forsaken and prepare to move to low earth orbit.

  Pete and the Guardians walked into the mess, coming off of one of their training sessions. Every Were could easily smell the pheromones rife around the ship. Pete broke off from his team to go to Todd’s table. They would be working out with Todd’s team in a couple of hours. Since the boarding action a few weeks back had happened, Todd and Pete had become close friends and both groups worked and trained hard together.

  The marines leaned towards using their guns and the Guardians leaned towards fast and ferocious close quarters killing.

  Together, the two teams were taking their skills up another notch or five.

  Todd turned his head, recognizing Pete standing next to him.

  Pete asked, “What’s going on? The smell of anger is all over the ship, but it’s really thick in here with you guys.”

  Chet answered the question without taking his eyes off of the T.V. on the wall, “Fucking terrorists went walking around the city, killing indiscriminately. Another group went into a packed concert and started blasting away before they had a police stand-off and two of them detonated suicide vests. Probably over a hundred killed and many hundreds wounded. Cock-sucking pricks won’t stand up and fight like fucking men, they have to send kids to go kill themselves. Mind-fuckers just twist the words of their religion to get the young to do what they want.”

  Pete raised an eyebrow at Todd, who shrugged. Pete looked over at Chet, “Damn Chet, why don’t you tell me what you really think?”

  Todd jumped in, “Nothing that any of the rest of us aren’t thinking, we want a chance at these ass-holes so bad we can taste it.”

  Pete shrugged, “So? Why don’t we ask if it can be done?”

  A voice asked from right beside Pete, “If what can be done?”

  Pete, who had supernatural hearing, damn near jumped out of his skin. Stephen had come up beside him and spoken close enough that Pete could feel his breath in the air. He twisted around look at the older, much older, vampire. “Dammit, Stephen! God, you’re going to fucking cause a heart attack sneaking up on me!”

  Stephen smiled at the young Were. “Pete, there isn’t a chance I could scare you so badly that you couldn’t regenerate the damage. I’m just using you for practice.”

  Todd was happy those two were talking for a minute. It provided him a moment to get his own heart under control. Todd had Pete in his vision, so he knew for a fact that Stephen had just appeared out of nothing or as close to it that he couldn’t tell the difference. Chet and Kevin hadn’t even flinched. He wasn’t sure if they were even aware of the conversation going on around them at the moment. Paul was trying to pretend he hadn’t just jumped a foot out of his own chair.

  Pete grumped back, “Can’t you choose someone like Gabrielle or Bethany Anne for that?”

  Stephen waved away his question, “Bethany Anne always knows where I am at, whenever I’m within miles of the woman. Gabrielle learned my tricks a couple of centuries ago.”

  Sensing a chance to earn some money, Pete asked Stephen, “Really? How many centuries ago?” There was a very hush-hush bounty on Gabrielle’s age. Rumor had it that the amount was now ten-thousand and a few people were whispering that it was Bethany Anne, herself, who was willing to pay the bounty. No questions asked.

  Stephen turned to look at Pete’s guileless face, a perfect mask of innocence. “Peter, you will have to do much, much better than that to find out Gabrielle’s age.” Stephen detected just the barest hint of flinching in Pete’s eyes.

  Pete shook his head negatively, “No, just curious how long it took her to learn your tricks.”

  Stephen turned his head to look at the table, everyone sitting there had turned around to watch his conversation with Pete. “So, what is it that you wish to know could be done?”

  Pete threw answering over to Todd’s court. The two of them were almost getting good enough that they didn’t need to talk, just that telepathic abilities friends acquired whenever they were around each other long enough.

  Todd mentally threw a ‘you dick’ over to Pete who smiled his acknowledgment of the barb.

  Todd pointed his thumb back over his shoulder at the T.V. on the wall. “These cock-suckers… Err, sorry.” Unlike Bethany Anne, Stephen wasn’t so loose with the cursing when he spoke. “The terrorists over in France. We were wishing that we could get a chance to pin their asses to the wall. Any chance your contacts could dig up a M249 for us?”

  “Oooh oooh, How about a jeep with a Gau-17/A?” Kevin asked, with his hand up, bouncing in his seat.

  Chet bopped him on the head, “You ass.”

  Stephen looked up at the television and watched it for a few seconds. In all of his centuries of living, he had witnessed atrocities that made this seem minor by comparison. Then again, all that evil needed to be able to prosper was for good men and women to do nothing. Or, he considered, not be allowed to do something. His face turned thoughtful and Todd risked a glance over at Pete who shrugged.

  Now, all of Pete’s team had joined Todd’s group and were standing around. Stephen looked around and noticed he had some of the boat’s crew watching him as well. He measured the emotions on all of their faces.

  “I take it this,” he waved his hand at the television, “is something that angers you, turns your sense of justice into a desire for revenge?”

  Todd answered, “Not revenge, retribution.”

  Stephen turned back to look down at his marine lead. “They have been judged as deserving of punishment for their actions and you would like to know if that is something that is within our operational parameters?”

  Todd wasn’t sure how to answer that. He knew Stephen would never go against Bethany Anne’s desires. No hope but to admit what he wanted and see how the dice rolled, “Pretty much, yeah.”

  There were grunts of agreement from around Stephen. Oh yes, these people were angry at the atrocities they watched unfold on the television.

  Stephen looked back at the T.V. while everyone in the dining room looked at him. He smiled, a malicious smile, causing a few to want to take a step back. Most had thought Stephen a fun-loving vampire who rarely raised his voice.

  The face of the vampire in front of them right then would have caused nightmares for most, had they been younger. “My Queen has appointed, to me, the responsibility of cleaning up Europe. I believe her intent is to make Europe a safe haven in anticipation of the upheaval we will all cause when we move to our next stage. Personally, I believe that ridding Europe of this pestilence would be within my understanding of her instructions.”

  He looked between the two commanders, “Let’s call a meeting with Dan and the Captains of the ships. If it is agreed that an operation is practical and it is something we want a chance at…” Stephen pointed to the T.V., “Then these … cock-suckers?” Stephen raised an eyebrow to Todd who nodded, “Then these cock-suckers will learn what it means to find themselves as the focus of the Queen Bitch’s Navy.”

  Stephen walked out of the dining room to the shouts, and yells, of a group of men and women who saw a chance for retribution come within their grasp.

  Somewhere in Germany

  It took David three days to locate the appropriately available contact in the U.S. Military. Those damn Americans could be an ethical pain-in-the-ass. Finally, one of his contacts in the German military was able to provide a contact that was at least malleable in their efforts to protect the U.S. Further, they were high enough up to be able to setup the orders he wanted given.

  It was another fi
ve minutes to assure the contact that a problem in Syria was going to occur, and that he would be provided an outside force to deal with the issue. He just needed to make sure that the outside force wasn’t allowed air support after they arrived.

  The two agreed on a price and hung up.

  David smiled, too bad the outside force wouldn’t be called until AFTER the contact sacrificed a few of his own men first.

  David crushed the phone over the trash can, wiped his hands together to get rid of the small pieces. Now, if this Bethany Anne worked the same, they would come to the rescue if a large Nosferatu outbreak happened.

  David stood up and grabbed his coat, it was time he took a trip to Syria. It had been a while since he had drunk enough blood to turn young again. That was one benefit of creating a large Nosferatu group, you had a lot of blood to drink in the process and one always looked really good after the effort.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Queen Bitch’s Ship Ad Aeternitatem

  Marcus was looking down at his scratch-pad and up at the drawings the three of them had taped to the whiteboard on the wall.

  Bobcat and William were in discussion over something to do with fins. Something wasn’t right and Marcus couldn’t grasp it, yet.

  “Gentleman.” He spoke a little louder, “Gentleman!” Bobcat and William turned to face him. Marcus pointed to the sketches. “Why are we using three as the assumed number of people on the rocket?”

  Bobcat answered, “That is how many Bethany Anne requested, two and a pilot.”

  Marcus walked up to the whiteboard and looked through the sketches. They all looked like some variation of the old V-2 rockets from World War II. “Who would we need to ask if that is the right decision?”

  Bobcat’s eyes stopped tracking Marcus and looked over their designs, “Probably Dan at first, but also Todd and Pete.”

  Marcus turned to look at Bobcat over his shoulder, “Not Bethany Anne’s group?”

  William snorted, “Why would she take something slow like this?”

  Marcus’s mouth dropped open, “Slow? Do you realize just how fast this can actually go? We are talking up to Mach 42 and that is just in the atmosphere.” There was a new hypersonic private jet concept out of Bombardier that was possibly going to do Mach 24, so humans were going to catch up with the craft eventually, but it wouldn’t be as agile or safe as their craft.

  William shrugged, “Yeah? But if you can step 7,000 miles in a second even Mach ’42’ might be a tad on the slow side.”

  Marcus’s face scrunched up. He had tried to ask her about her Etheric walking as well, but she politely pointed him back to this task and told him, “One Nobel prize winning project at a time, Marcus.” Before he wiped the shit-eating grin off of his face, she was out of the room.

  Marcus shrugged, nothing he could do about that curiosity at the moment.

  Bobcat started his question by drawing out his first word, “Sooooooo…. You’re wanting to figure out if Bethany Anne has made the right choice of how many people should be in the craft?” It was Bobcat’s turn to think about the question. “Fuck if I know. Let’s ask Dan and the guys what they want. We had better get this done pronto though.”

  —

  Marcus, Bobcat and William were walking down the hallway when they caught sight of Tim Kinley, from the Guardians. He was the easiest one for Bobcat to remember as he was the tallest of the group.

  “Tim!” Bobcat called out.

  Tim turned his head as he continued down the hallway, “Yeah?”

  “Have you seen Pete or Todd?”

  He pointed the way he was walking, “This way, they are with Dan, Stephen and the Captains in the meeting room.”

  “Meeting room?” Marcus asked, looking between his teammates.

  “BT FOOM,” said William, shrugging.

  Marcus’s face looked comical as he was trying to parse the letters. Bobcat felt pity for the scientist, “Beats-the-fuck-out-of-me.”

  “Ah.” Marcus figured it would take him another lifetime to learn all of the acronyms his new military friends used.

  The three guys came up to the meeting room and were surprised to see a group of eleven crew standing around the door talking to each other.

  As they walked up, the door opened and Dan stuck his head out, “Can someone go fetch…” He noticed Bobcat walking up. “Just the man I wanted, can you three join us, please?”

  He left the door open and the three men followed Dan into the room.

  It was a pretty large room. It hadn’t started as a meeting room, but rather a medium sized holding area for some expensive plaything or another. The team had dropped a couple of tables and twenty chairs for this exact reason. Typically, they would have held the meeting in the nicer rooms on the Polarus, but most of the people were here on the Ad Aeternitatem, so Dan, Captain Thomas and Jean Dukes had joined Captain Wagner, Todd, Pete and Stephen, who was sitting at the head of the table.

  The three men sat down, clueless as to what was happening.

  Buenos Aires Argentina

  Michael was working through the papers in Anton’s main house. He was disgusted by what he had found over the last few weeks.

  Moreover, he was ashamed that he had allowed it to go on as long as he had.

  His first efforts had been to find, and get rid of, the research apparatus and people that Anton had built over the decades since he had run from Germany. Michael had been ruthless when he learned some of the scientists had been old Nazi’s that Anton had helped keep alive far longer than their normal lifespan.

  He had even taken a couple of days to track one down who had heard of the ‘change in management’ and fled to Chili. When Michael had someone executed on his orders, he required the head to be brought back to him as proof. He wasn’t going to take any chances.

  He wasn’t as trusting as he might have been before his altercation with David. His hubris had certainly caught up with him and he now only trusted a few.

  Three of Anton’s main people had to be eliminated. They had tried to talk the walk without taking a step in the right direction. Unfortunately for them, Michael could hear their thoughts on the matter. Most of the time he would allow them to make a mistake, not just judge them on their inner musings. It helped others to believe he was being fair.

  Of course, a few wondered how Michael always seemed to be around when the offenders were breaking his rules.

  He was going through each of the files in Anton’s desk. He had come across some notes related to his contacts in South America and set them aside for later review. He had created another pile for Anton’s banking information.

  Anton had little notes all over the place. Often, they would only have a few words on them scrawled in a scratchy way Michael found difficult to decipher. Anton’s handwriting had always been horrible and becoming a vampire, Michael admitted, did nothing to help.

  He had found a U.S. folder and was able to decipher a few short notes on a plan related to banking in Miami. He figured this must be the effort Bethany Anne had interrupted. He called Bethany Anne’s phone and was surprised when Ecaterina answered for her. It seemed Bethany Anne had left her phone in her room when she stepped over to the ship, from Miami, with Gabrielle. Michael decided he didn’t need Bethany Anne specifically to answer his question when Ecaterina mentioned that John Grimes was in the house.

  Pity that.

  John was able to confirm the information and Michael hung up.

  Michael had almost ignored some writing in the corner of a worksheet as useless until he caught ‘Were contact’.