Then he hit the stairs and never returned to Level 5.
Washington, D.C.
Three weeks later, the group that approved Bethany Anne to receive a Black Visa was docked a few points in their quarterly review. That one night cost them over $32,000 and she wasn’t around to pay the bill. Apparently their risk program needed to be tweaked.
Over in Washington, Martin looked at one of the last charges from Bethany Anne’s company credit card and smiled. If she was going out, she sure made the company pay for it.
He closed the agency credit card report. Yeah, she wasn’t gone. The only reason Bethany Anne would screw the company like that was because she was going to return the payment, with interest. He wasn’t sure how she was going to beat death, but he would bet his savings that Death was worried about her right now.
He smiled a little as he reached for the next report needing his review.
CHAPTER TEN
Carpathian Mountains, Romania
“Dammit, you know this is bitchin’ cold, right?” Bethany Anne was wrapped up like a walrus trying to stay on the trail the two mountain guides had plowed through the knee-high snow ahead of her.
“We’ve been in these mountains almost five days, while I’m not complaining much, actually, let’s be fair, I’m complaining a lot.” Bethany Anne adjusted her goggles that protected her eyes from the sunlight off of the snow. With the infusion of Michael’s… something. Blood? Didn’t seem totally like that, but Bethany Anne could feel changes happening and frankly, she didn’t seem to be bothered nearly as much by the cold as she felt she should.
Michael looked ahead down the side of the mountain, trying to remember how it might have looked so many centuries ago as he had traveled through this area to find the cave he was looking for.
“Bethany, we both know that you are neither as bothered by the cold as you are suggesting or feeling as tired as you might have just a few days ago had you started this little excursion by yourself.” Michael considered he had quite explicitly figured out why there were so few females in his family.
They mouthed off, a lot.
Even when there wasn’t something to talk about, occasionally they had to fill in the dead air with whatever was on their mind. If the female happened to be incredibly intelligent, agitated and who despised the term ‘patience’ in all of its definitions it could be bad for those who had to be around them for a long period of time.
At least the trail guides didn’t speak English. No need for them to try to occasionally carry on a conversation.
Michael put up with it from her as it was part of her personality and something, this impatience, was going to help her and the world, no doubt, in the future. His burden, was dealing with it in the present. He surmised that his name would be slandered for hundreds of years as those who had to deal with Bethany Anne took his name in vain.
History would vindicate him, or not. Either way, he doubted he was going to worry about it too much longer.
He started to recognize the location of certain peaks. They were on the right mountain, and in the right area.
He spoke to the guides in their language, generations old before these were born. Fortunately, they didn’t hold to the superstitious ways of only a couple of generations back. Those guides would never have agreed to come up here.
Too many horror stories were started in this area of the world, for good reason.
Before Michael sailed to America, he came to this area again to hide the entrance to the cave. He tracked down two Weres who suffered through psychological issues. Both had hunted humans and killed them which led to the whispers in the bars and homes throughout the countryside. Hiding the bodies down a crevice, Michael left. The stories forgotten in time.
While some in the UnknownWorld probably knew the stories, he wasn’t sure which of the different groups believed them. He supposed he could have stayed awake more often and tried to stay up to date with all the changes. However, for him it was just too much. Too many centuries and too many changes to overcome in the last couple of hundred years.
His morality, his belief system, was too strict to co-exist with this world, these people. His was a very black and white system with pretty consistent punishment judgements for those who broke his faith, his laws, his rules.
For the last fifty years, he chose to sleep more often than not. Allowing his children and grandchildren to deal with the world at large.
One should know truth, and truth was taking the time to know oneself. Not to lie about your actions, your feelings, your thoughts and beliefs but accept yourself for what and who you are. Once you understand those things, your future is more assured as you won’t subconsciously be fighting both your enemies and yourself to accomplish your goals.
Michael realized many centuries before that he was not malleable on his honor. In the last couple of centuries it caused more and more problems as he killed those who thought his honor was something to be negotiated, that it was his problem he would not bend and recognize grey areas in a negotiation.
Unfortunately, when dead, one didn’t learn very well. Michael recognized this and being truthful to himself, he realized that was the only recourse he would choose. When you are personally powerful and deadly enough to mete out the punishment with practically no checks and balances, one should be careful how many times you were called upon to judge the actions of others.
It was time to sleep, for possibly a final time and bring another in at the top. One who would rather die striving for others, even for just the honor of those who had already died. That was what called to Michael when he tested Bethany Anne. Her religious beliefs were, he considered, different. He tested her mettle and she would die before failing her desire to help others, those who needed her when she could make a difference.
His accomplishment would be making her more than the others, to give her that advantage and more.
She would fight, she would make alliances and she had the ability to think ‘out of the box’. Something Michael felt too set in his ways to accomplish anymore.
His family and this world needed guidance, love and discipline from someone as powerful as him. He just didn’t have it to give.
Honor demanded he provide a replacement for this world, this time, and the future world – and future times that needed to come. Bethany Anne was his hope, his desire, his penance and his sleep.
Now, if she would just stop bitching long enough so he could think.
New York City, New York
Nathan Lowell, the second under Gerry who was both the Alpha of the New York pack and the present head of the American Pack Council for the Were. He was presently enjoying a nice dinner in New York City having arrived there the day before. While the town was pretty nice, he felt sure that once he finished his business for his consulting company here, he would enjoy upper New York much better. Plenty of places to go camping there.
He didn’t pay any attention to the extra special service he received from the adorable brunette waitress, or the spectacularly unsuccessful flirting he was receiving.
Nathan ordered his typical dinner which included a fair amount of steak and lamb. He rather enjoyed lamb even if many of his pack didn’t. Plus, unlike a lot of the group, he enjoyed vegetables. He couldn’t remember or even count the number of times that caused him issues. It seems to a lot of Weres, only ‘baby wolves’ ate vegetables.
Often the only way to solve the argument was when he crammed enough vegetables down the throat of the guy giving him lip that he gave up trying to have fun at his expense and swallow so that he could breathe.
Since, typically, Nathan was holding his nose shut the choice was swallow or suffocate.
Nathan was powerful enough, and deadly enough to be the pack alpha, However, he wasn’t willing to suffer the politics and the constant interruptions with all the other alphas around the country intruding in his life. Typically, he would be happy farther down the pack and frankly didn’t enjoy the position of second, either. Howev
er, enough other wolves would challenge him and the only very wolf characteristic he shared was the absolute inability to accept losing.
It just pissed him off. So, since his choice was lose a challenge to a Were trying to move up the ranks, eventually he ended up as Gerry’s second and since he never desired the top spot he never fought Gerry for it.
Now, he still had fights but enough of the hotheads failed when challenging him that the fights for pack rank were farther apart. He predominantly received respect universally across the packs for his no-nonsense practical attitude and that he had information resources that were very helpful – especially when it came to the vampire interactions.
The testosterone filled young idiots in his own pack didn’t like him. Additionally, he rarely entertained anyone with enough political ambition to kiss his furry ass that desired to talk with Gerry, the Council Alpha. So, Gerry was in the envious position that since no one but alphas could talk to him unless they spoke with Nathan first, and very few of the pack wanted to speak with Nathan, Gerry was rarely bothered.
Gerry found it to be a spectacular situation and did his level best to move other responsibilities Nathan would normally have over to his third, Nirene. She took care of the pack in ways that most alphas would tend to if they didn’t have Gerry’s responsibilities. Furthermore, if anyone gave her grief they had learned to apologize before Nathan heard about it. He would find Nirene, get the story from her, and then the offending, mostly male but the occasional female too, would get a visit from Nathan.
Then they had, what he liked to term, a binomial decision. Either they apologized to Nirene and made good on a heartfelt apology for their actions which disrespected her office, or they suffered enough pain until they decided apologizing allowed them to live.
Two Weres went the distance. Fighting Nathan, thinking they could make him bend on his commitment to apologize or else. After they both died, others started apologizing before Nathan showed up at their door to request the apology.
One smart-ass decided to try to hide from Nathan by driving to another state and using a cabin in the woods he knew about. It took Nathan a week to locate him and the rumor was that he made the guy call Nirene and beg for an apology before he dropped him off at a crack doctor’s home for his injuries sustained in a beating which happened after the call. The second beating was for running and causing Nathan to take time away from his company.
Gerry was the only one of two surviving Council members who survived the Were’s version of a Saint Valentine’s Day massacre. It happened about 150 years ago when the alphas, their seconds and thirds had a case of stupidity and paid for it. It took almost two years for the packs to finally settle down after all of the upheaval with so many leadership positions open at once.
Pack dynamics, normally changing every few decades at most, suddenly had to change for every pack, for every alpha, second and third at one time. Most of the worst of it was over within eighteen months, but avarice, cunning and long lives left a few challenges remain years after the original struggles.
The other leader which was smart enough to survive the massacre, Thomas, suddenly had a case of dead due to stupidity about twenty-five years later. He suffered from arrogance as he got older and one of Michael’s kids took umbrage to an off-hand comment Thomas made regarding Michael.
“Open Leadership Position: local werewolf pack needs new alpha, this one had deadly case of ‘Mouthing Off Around Vampire’.”
Nathan didn’t even remember the vampire’s name. He didn’t even seem to show much emotion over the situation, it was just ‘comment made, physical reply executed’ and the vampire relayed his message to the next highest appropriate representative who became all ears and no comments.
Had Thomas implement just five seconds of keeping his alpha mouth shut, he might be here today.
Probably not, Nathan considered, once you go down the stupid path when you are older you tend to stick to the path.
It wasn’t impossible to kill a vampire, and depending on how young and whose sire they had the vampire might not be personally powerful. If you dealt with any of the vampires that weren’t part of Michael’s family, they tended to be more of a group than a family.
You might piss off a few of that particular group and have a major fight on your hands, but it wasn’t the same if you targeted the family. It was a death sentence when you did that. Maybe not right away, but eventually Michael found out about it when he was awake and you were guaranteed a shorter life.
Michael firmly believed in an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth for a death of any in his family. Although, frankly, he couldn’t be bothered by making sure the count of the dead on the other side was in any way limited to the one who killed a family member. Since his children knew the score, they would normally have taken care of the problem to keep the body count down.
Michael firmly believed in the old biblical version of cut down the tree, burn out the roots and then salt the ground so nothing ever grew there again.
Nathan took out his cell phone and scanned through his many business and personal email addresses looking for important messages. As both the CEO of a high-level internet defense firm and his own hacking abilities he kept fresh, he had access not only to data on the internet, but the dark web and the locations and conversations hackers kept to themselves. If he couldn’t locate it in the hidden places, he had online personas which he would use to go and ‘find’ the information out of corporate and governmental databases.
There were no emails for business concerns. That was nice.
Then, he took out another phone that he used strictly for pack business and went to Craigslist in each of the fourteen cities that were used this quarter. If you read between the lines, the messages made sense and were a bitch for the NSA and the government to figure out. Especially if anyone actually called the people, they did have the items for sale, or the contacts the information provided.
Michael was on his fourth city, Los Angeles, in the right section when one of the ads caught his attention.
“The Archangel has awoken! New cherubim has been picked and the land of the gentiles will receive your due. Time to visit the promised land and take back what is ours!”
Nathan pondered that message. While at the surface it was another innocuous religious nut job message, for most of the UnknownWorld, they referred to Michael as the archangel and any new children of his as cherubim. The land of the gentiles was typically America (or could mean anything outside old Europe, really).
The more aggressive groups under the American Pack Council had been gossiping for weeks about the rumors. They chafed under the rules Michael dictated and since he was rarely around to implement, it left the responsibility for discipline to the council which was not appreciated.
Until you could pin down what Michael was doing and why, smart supernaturals would keep as low a profile as possible – except the young and the idiots. Usually those two went together like politicians and lying.
Nathan sighed and felt a migraine coming on. Of all the responsibilities which Nathan had, Gerry never took away Nathan’s role as the liaison with Michael’s family, and for good reason, Nathan was never stupid. He could keep his anger on a really short leash around a vampire.
Michael would typically talk with Gerry over the phone, and usually Carl would call to setup the time and phone number so Gerry could be ready and apprised of the reason. Nathan hadn’t heard from Carl in a while.
Rumors were that the families were fighting again and one of Michael’s favorites was caught with his pants down and had died in an incredibly large flaming explosion.
Nathan didn’t have any real feelings for Bill, the missing vampire, except for professional courtesy. He did his job, Nathan did his and the few times they crossed it was respectful.
There are two types of vampires. Forsaken and Michael’s family. Another way to think about it was simply, Michael’s family and every other vampire in the world. Seeing how the size of the oth
er team was pretty large, most werewolves would work with the dishonored believing them to be the winning team. If not right now, then eventually.
Nathan, however, had enough contacts across the world to realize that the fight was pretty even. It was more quality over quantity in some respects. But even one loss, like Bill getting taken out, was a hit on Michael’s family. Kinda like your hockey player being put in the penalty box for a game or season.
So, enough rumors happen and the betting man, or wolf, figured Michael was awake and was personally choosing another child.
A lot of supernaturals had been secretly talking about how they could eventually either take out Michael’s family or hurt them enough so Michael’s rules of the UnknownWorld would become irrelevant. They would talk tactics such as going after the top children, the most powerful.
Good strategy to become instantly irrelevant, was Nathan’s opinion.
Death Becomes Her Page 10
