Death Becomes Her

by Michael Anderle

  If anything happened out in this area, Nathan figured this Were would know. How, he considered, was he going to get an introduction to a bear?

  —

  Ecaterina was watching the new customer out of the corner of her eye. He was obviously American, and obviously not a typical tourist. His clothes, while not flashy, were high quality and he walked with a grace that suggested a hunter; more than just a game hunter. No this man hunted other people when you watched him carefully keep everyone under surveillance through the mirrors.

  She had caught his eye when asking for his drink preference and for a moment his eyes seemed to change, to be more than human. It was disconcerting and by the time she had drawn his ale, she figured that a reflection off of the glass must have caught her somehow.

  Then again, she had seen too much in the mountains nearby to think that maybe the old stories had more truth in them than the new generations wanted to admit.

  Her family had been in this area for the last seven generations. They had come from Germany to work in this area. While she was presently tending bar, her real skill, passed down to every member of her family whether male or female, was out in the mountains.

  Cali and Alin had just come back from a pretty desolate area and had mentioned seeing huge tracks of a brown bear. While brown bears were well known in this area most people had not seen really large brown bears. She knew of one because she often tracked on the mountain it called home.

  She loved her family, and loved the mountains but she had a desire to see ‘what was on the other side’. Some called it a curse, the need that caused unhappiness. But for her, it was a desire to see more, to do more. She was happy enough right now, but staying here wouldn’t last.

  She had not dated much and never been seriously involved with any guy. She didn’t want to have any more ties to this area. While she would come back, she knew she wasn’t going to stay in this town. This caused her to wonder why she was so interested in this man. What was he to her plans to leave Brasov? Would he be a trap to keep her here?

  Only one way to find out, and that was to learn more about him.

  As he sat down again at the bar, she took a mug and drew another draft. He wasn’t quite finished with his first but the owner would be OK if he didn’t pay. Most guys took it as a favor when she proactively brought them another round. The few who turned it away was a small loss compared to the many extras that were purchased.

  She caught his eye as she came up to him, trying to size him up as if she was out in the mountains, following the tracks of an animal.

  Nice, big, good looking animal, she thought. She smiled without forcing it at all.

  “You want to try another ale? Maybe something that would go well with the soup?” She placed the cold mug, froth coming slightly down the side next to the almost finished first mug and raised her eyebrow.

  He pursed his lips and looked down at the second mug, she hadn’t drawn her hand away from it and waited patiently. Ecaterina knew patience, whether she was waiting for a tracked animal to break from its hide or a man deciding whether he was buying an ale, a smile or a chance at a contact number.

  “Depends,” he said, “Can I ask you a couple of questions if I buy that ale that looks good but I didn’t ask for?”

  Damn, she thought, not going to be easy. Well, challenge is good.

  “Yah, probably. So long as it has nothing to do with what time I get off or my phone number.” She took away the sting with a twinkle in her eye and a smile on her face.

  He looked hurt, but the smile on the corner of his lips gave his play acting away. “OK, so I’ll think of two completely different questions, fair?” He reached for the ale forcing Ecaterina to either accept the deal or pull the beer away.

  How did the hunter become the hunted, she thought to herself. Well, you can always come around and catch them from the back.

  “As you Americans like to say, ‘shoot’.” She pulled his first mug away, and wiped the bar down.

  “I would like to go out and see some of the mountains, do you know of anyone who can help me find my way around out there?” He kept his eyes on hers as he took a pull on the mug. He broke eye contact to look down at the beer. “Hey! This is really good, why didn’t you suggest it the first time?”

  “Is this your second question?” She smiled at him, raising her eyebrow again.

  The man seemed nonplussed at that question, looked down at the mug, and back at her. His smile reached to the heavens and the stars were alight in his eyes. “OK, you got me there. How about I buy one more of these and I get three questions?”

  “Possibly, let me hear your second question and then maybe I decide if you need another mug, yes?” One should always know what type of bait to use, her papa would say when he first taught her the mountains.

  “OK, fair enough. Is there a way I can get outfitted to stay out in the mountains for two, maybe three days? I just need to rent, not to buy and I would prefer to use something from someone who goes out all of the time. I figure their equipment will keep me warm.”

  “OK, you need to buy second mug while I make phone call. When are you interested in leaving?” Ecaterina needed her brother to negotiate price with this man. It was always smart to let someone who wasn’t involved and didn’t have a stake to front your business effort and right now she could tell she was too intrigued to make a smart call. Ivan would do a good job checking him out. She would always check out the women for Ivan when he would do any transactions and he returned the favor. What was family for? Well, that and Ivan wouldn’t go and rat out the situation to Papa and Mama that she was considering taking this American out on the mountain alone.

  While Papa understood she could just leave him out there and she could take care of herself, her mama would have a handful of reasons she would have to either marry him or go to the nunnery the very next day.

  Mama was a handful and Ivan was smart enough to keep their transactions quiet else payback would be a bitch.

  The man pursed his lips as if thinking it through, “Say right after breakfast tomorrow?”

  She nodded her head in acceptance of the information, threw the towel over her shoulder and walked to the other end of the bar to call Ivan. It took everything she had not to find out if this guy was checking her out by looking over her shoulder.

  Just because she didn’t get into any serious relationships didn’t meant that she didn’t know how the game was played. She called Ivan’s number and got him on the second ring.

  She spoke to him in Romanian, not too loudly, and explained that she needed him to come and talk with an American about taking him out to the mountains and renting him gear. Probably Ivan’s gear since he seemed big enough that his gear would fit.

  Ivan agreed and said he would be there in half an hour. Hanging up, she pulled the third draft and walked back to the other side. Placing it in front of him, she explained that a man named Ivan would be there in thirty minutes to discuss the trip and the rental with him. He accepted her mug graciously and watched her walk away. She didn’t need to look over her shoulder to see if he was watching, she could feel his eyes tracking her all the way back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Carpathian Mountains, Romania

  Inside the craft, Bethany Anne had what she termed ‘communication issues’ with Tom. She had left his personal cabin and used the hallways to walk and talk so she had room to turn around beyond just five steps.

  She had taken the time to check out the rest of the craft, what there was to see of it. The main compartments were there, cockpit area, almost too small for her to fit in comfortably. No large Star Trek bridge on this ship. There was Tom’s room, the medical room, which was thankfully larger, along with the door and hallway between the entrance and the medical room. Bethany Anne asked about that design decision and he explained that they knew the seven had species that dwarfed their size so they had adjusted the size in the medical and science room and the hallways leading between them to the be
st of their abilities with the ships they had. It still meant that almost every other area on the ship was undersized for her. Well, the new her which was about five inches taller than she was before. She imagined that previously, it wouldn’t have been too bad a fit but there was no way someone much taller was going to be very comfortable in the core areas of the ship.

  She had discussed the ability to fix the ship and what it could do. There were no armaments, his kind didn’t really have the ability to even think about being personally responsible for the purposeful destruction of others. Why put in place what you weren’t going to use?

  Most of the craft was sufficiently in pretty good shape. The materials his kind used suffered no discernible rusting or any negative reaction to Earth’s atmosphere that she could tell. There was plenty of growth over the craft, which helped shield it from any satellite surveillance, and there was only the one way into the valley if you didn’t include coming over the incredibly high peaks or parachuting in. With it being in these mountains with more than enough other areas to explore, it seems that Michael might have been the only other human here in generations.

  She never did get the story of how he had stumbled upon it or what he was doing in such a remote place a thousand years ago. Michael could be pretty annoying about divulging any information when he chose to be.

  She figured that is what happened when you were the literal pinnacle of power for so long, ignore what you didn’t want to talk about. She figured it was part of the reason he had such a dysfunctional family.

  Because, let’s face it, he was responsible for all known vampires in the world. It obviously wasn’t Tom’s fault. Although he started it all, he was stuck here and every other vamp out there had Michael as their great-great-great-something-something papa vamp at the top.

  Like it or not.

  She considered that he had become overwhelmed in time. Choosing to only get involved in the most egregious situations and letting his remaining children and their children take the battle to the other side.

  Until her.

  She was now the second modified human from the same source. Michael didn’t want another child doing his bidding, he wanted to pass the baton, she realized. He wanted to provide someone else with the same chance at superior capabilities to hold their own against even his first born children.

  The reason hit her between the eyes. That bastard had gone and left her on purpose! A white hot fury started forming behind her eyes.

  “That mother-fucking bastard! I’ll tear off his nads and throw them so far away even he couldn’t find them! I’m going to take this ship and shove it up his ass right after I slap that aristocratic ass’s face! So help me I’m going to find that conspiratorial, responsibility shirking, morality judging fucktard and sit on his back while I rip off an arm at a time and beat his head! I cannot believe he fucking left me here – alone, to clean up his mess!” She accentuated every comment by punching and kicking the wall, her temper allowing her to ignore the pain for the moment.

  As her anger started to subside, Bethany Anne finally truly looked at the metal walls and realized that her hands were bloody and there were sizable dents in the metal, with one or two holes showing into the rooms behind them.

  It looks like not only was her anger a bit more intense than before, but the damage was off the charts now. Looking down at her hands, the blood was still there, but she could see the skin regrowing back over the bare knuckles and while some pain existed, it helped her to snap out of the tantrum and wasn’t debilitating.

  Trying to slow her breathing, she asked in an alarmingly calm voice, “Tom, how much energy did I just use up?” She was starting to think that maybe this temper tantrum was going to require a disgusting karma response.

  You have depleted 60% of the reserves I had set aside.

  “So, no blood sucking right now?”

  No.

  Well, she thought, that was a small favor. Considering the damage to the metal wall, even as thin as the metal was, she was going to have a hell of a right hook.

  “How long to get the reserves back?”

  Probably twenty-four hours to get you back to where you were, but I haven’t attained any sort of maximum for you at this time. I don’t know your maximum.

  “OK, since I’m healing already and probably need to get a once-over tell me how to get the computer installed and how to setup the pod-doc to handle it since you aren’t this machine’s ghost any more.” He directed her to the engineering compartment in the back of the ship.

  After retrieving the small, dark green lattice-looking material from the engineering and engine’s area, Tom had her place it in a small compartment in the medical pod. He directed her through how to turn it on and what symbols and buttons to push as they lit up on the glass surface. Not having a clue what any of it meant was annoying, but she trusted that Tom was now as personally vested in her wellbeing as she was, if only for different reasons.

  She hadn’t stopped thinking about the potential for the ‘infamous seven’ as she referred to them bringing their pissing match to their neck of the universe, but Tom couldn’t tell her exactly how far away they were since the wormhole threw all sorts of issues into his last transfer and the onboard computers didn’t have any navigation information available for this part of the galaxy. It was expected he would have mapped his way through the unknown dark and therefore have the necessary information to find his way home. Pretty much how cowboys would ride and occasionally look behind them to help them get back again.

  They had obviously skipped too far and didn’t have any decent astral cartography or enough time to take really good long-range views before they were on this particular world and couldn’t get back out into space to truly get the kind of views they needed for the craft’s sensors.

  So, not wanting to take future worry and bring it into the present, she decided she would focus on the here and now and let the future deal with that problem. She hoped. Getting undressed and placing her clothes on the fold-out bench, she got ready to lie back down in the pod.

  The medical pod is setup to handle the minor surgery. Since we are not looking to be back again anytime soon, are there any body enhancements you want to consider before you get back into the pod again? Did the new body affect you overly much? I tried to adjust according to what your DNA said was the ‘perfect’ you. It wasn’t like I could ask you in advance.

  “So, the DNA said I should have these legs? Hell no,” she waved at her body up and down, “leave this all alone.” She thought for a second. “What options are there? You’ve told me about the speed, the power is now obvious, the ethereal energy, and we haven’t tried tapping into that yet. I don’t seem to get hungry or thirsty anymore, but I swear if I can’t enjoy an Italian sausage and pepperoni pizza I’m going to figure out a way to kick your ass. Hey, am I going to gain weight easily if I eat and I’m pulling energy?”

  You won’t gain weight no matter what you eat. Anything you consume, I can pull energies from the etheric to use, in some form or fashion even if it is just to get rid of it.

  “So, wait, I can’t be poisoned?”

  Yes, someone can try to poison you, but eventually I could neutralize the poison and either get rid of it through your body or move the energy into the etheric. You would suffer, potentially seriously before anything could be done for you, depending on the type of poison. If you are incapacitated, you could suffer other attacks without being able to function.

  Bethany Anne, as clothed as the day she was born, considered her options. She was going under the knife for what she hoped was the last time.

  “I don’t suppose you have any options for armor?” She smiled, in spite of herself, thinking what would happen if she got into a fight and she could turn her skin into armor.

  You want to walk around in a metal skin, is that what you’re asking for?

  Bethany Anne could hear his incredulity in her mind. Taken aback that he didn’t exclaim it couldn’t be done, but rather it ha
d its own constraints, allowed her to consider the results of always weighing hundreds of pounds.

  “No, skip that, but the idea is sound. Can you do something so that my body is more difficult to break if I start punching through metal walls, or I’m hit with bullets or something?”

  Bethany Anne was starting to realize she could almost hear a small buzz when Tom was obviously thinking hard. She waited as patiently as she could to let him think this through.

  The system allows me to exchange certain amalgams of materials for what you have in your body already. Even with the etheric, we do know how to rapidly change one for another such that your skin could just change to a metal substance. I have set the pod to review your internal structure to confirm what can and can’t be done. Your skeletal structure can most likely be enhanced more than I’ve already done by exchanging your bone structure for synthetic materials. This will take a few more days in the pod, is this acceptable?