Queen Bitch

by Michael Anderle

  The problem was the young have a really short attention span and believe they will live forever. “Gerry, if we don’t get ahead of this issue, I fear that we will have another Valentines Day event.”

  Gerry knew Nathan wasn’t pulling his leg, but he just had a hard time understanding that comment. Gerry didn’t want to remember the details of that day. There was so much blood all over the place, and that bastard Michael actually played with a couple of his personal friends by ripping arms off and then impaling them into the floor and allowing them to, sort of, get back together before doing it again.

  Unfortunately, what had happened was exactly the sort of thing he had been warning the council would happen for five years before the slaughter. Gerry had felt as Noah must have in the Old Testament. As everyone who had laughed at him as the Ark door closed, only to have them screaming when the flood happened. He could have tried to fight, but it would have been pointless.

  Someone was going to need to be available to pull the packs together so this was the only retribution for the massive breach of Michael’s Honor the council instigated. Why so many of his fellow Alphas thought they could take down Michael had always confused Gerry. Even most of the seconds and thirds behind the fools followed their leaders into calamity.

  Well, they all followed that foolishness into death.

  Two of the alphas had tried to sneak out through an air shaft that they could barely fit in. Michael had pulled them both back out and just cut their heads off with his hands. Gerry watched, but never understood what was going on. It was like Michael had wolverine hands, but Gerry never saw any knives or metal in his hands. But occasionally, like those two who tried to get away it was simply a slice and the blood would fly up everywhere while the head landed a few feet away cleanly cut off.

  But to be worried a new vamp could do this? Not making sense.

  Nathan continued. “I can see your doubt my friend. And trust me, when I first saw her walking into the bushes where I was fighting Algerian and another of his lackeys I saw red-eyed death walking. The other wolf jumped her. She caught him in the air. She didn’t even stagger at the weight, Gerry. Then, she watched both of us as she just pulled the wolves head almost completely back and then drank his blood, which was spraying everywhere. Then Gerry? She just stepped over the body and told the two of us to change. I got busy and that idiot Algerian decided he was going to go for my throat. He never had a chance. He had barely moved in my direction before she had grabbed him, picked him up and threw him down on the ground like it was nothing. He had to be at least twenty pounds heavier than me. Then she picked him back up and hit him in the back of the skull with her forearm to knock him out.”

  “Why did she knock him out?”

  “Questioning. She wanted answers out of him. Which, by the way, she got. During the interrogation she was waiting for Algerian to wake up. Some how, I guess she heard his heartbeat or sensed something, she knew he had woken up and was playing possum. She went to the fire and grabbed a stick out of it that was burning on one end and told Alexi, a Were bear to hold him down. When he had a foot on him, she threw the stick on his body. He stopped playing like he was asleep and struggled like hell to get the burning stick off of him. She tells him to change back right then or suffer again until she is satisfied he had learned the lesson. He decided to change back.”

  “Then what?”

  “She got the information out of Algerian but not before he tried to come after me again. She caught him and this time impaled his hand into the ground with my silver laced Bowie knife. She warned him the next time it would be with a 5” tree trunk. He got the message. When she figured she had what she wanted, Alexi asked to finish the execution as it was personal. Even a 1,000 lb Werebear was on his best behavior around her. She might seem a little small, but do not underestimate her, Gerry. That lady can be death walking when she wants to be.”

  Gerry was still undecided and Nathan called him on it.

  “You don’t seem to get it, Gerry. Don’t. Underestimate. Her.”

  Gerry shook his head. “Nathan, I get it. I trust you are telling me the truth but I got half the council advocating strenuously to break from the Strictures and the other half wringing their hands. None of Michael’s kids are talking with Frank which means no one expects them to come over to ‘the new world’ to deal with anything. They will assume it is Bethany Anne’s problem and the rebellion group sees a great opportunity to be ‘free’ again.”

  Nathan pursed his lips. “Gerry, tell you what. If you decide to either do nothing or, god forbid, support this idiocy then let me know. I’ll get Ecaterina and I two tickets back to Romania and wait until the dust settles. Hell, Alexi would let us run over his mountain I bet.”

  Gerry hardened his eyes. He had known Nathan a long time and here he was admitting he would leave him in a time of trouble. He about said something that he would regret as he realized he was looking at himself 150 years ago, trying to make the first council understand that attacking Michael was death.

  He shook his head, leaned back in his chair and sighed. Ecaterina spoke up.

  “I don’t know why you two boys try to figure this out just by yourselves. Why don’t you call Bethany Anne and ask her?”

  Nathan wanted to slap his forehead and Gerry looked surprised. “What? She would talk with us about it?”

  Nathan snorted, “Yeah. I didn’t mention that she wasn’t going to kill Algerian because he was fighting. He just didn’t listen to the ultimatum. He signed his death sentence when he disobeyed her, NOT because he disobeyed something that the strictures said. She doesn’t always side with Michaels command. Ecaterina here is the first example. She didn’t wipe any of the UnknownWorld from her mind.”

  Gerry turned his head and looked at her, “I was wondering…”

  It was Ecaterina’s turn to snort. “Just like men. Snort and beat your breasts while just talking might solve it.” She reached inside of her white coat and pulled out her cell phone. She hit Bethany Anne’s speed dial and immediately went to voicemail, so she left a message. “Hey, it’s Ecaterina. Nathan has a small issue come up with the Weres and the council and he and…” She looked at Gerry real quick to get his permission, he nodded. “Gerry need to talk with you over some stupidity with younger Weres. They need you to know your opinion on something before all the stupid stuff starts. Give me or them a call. Hope it’s going well with Stephen.”

  She hung up and stared at both men. Nathan looked relieved and Gerry looked confused.

  “Stephen?”

  She answered. “Yes, one of Michaels children who is based out of Romania. She went to track him down and have, what did she call it Nathan? It started with a ‘d’?”

  Nathan shook his head and smiled a little. “She called it a ‘discussion’. However; she was using it as a euphemism for she was going to lay down the law and he would either get in line or she would kick his ass, and if that didn’t work she would take him out.”

  Gerry wanted to ask about this Stephen comment. Ecaterina didn’t want them going down that road. That was personal business of Bethany Anne’s and she didn’t feel they needed to butt in.

  “So, the word ‘euphemism’ is when you use one word for another that you don’t want to say in polite company?”

  “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Or you could use it as a joke, too.”

  “I still don’t translate jokes that well in English, but I will get better. I promised Bethany Anne I would work on my English so I need to understand this euphemism better. Can you two help me?” She smiled her best ‘please oh please’ smile to them both.

  She looked back at both men who had totally forgotten their big argument a minute ago and were trying to upstage each other with explaining euphemisms.

  Nathan started, “Here is an example ‘you have passed away instead of died.’”

  Gerry came back with, “correctional facility instead of jail.”

  “Letting someone go instead of fired.” Natha
n raised his eye to Gerry as if to say ‘your turn’.

  “Collateral damage instead of deaths.”

  Nathan gave a point to Gerry. “Big-boned instead of fat.”

  Gerry gave a point with his head to Nathan, “Time challenged instead of late.”

  Nathan just held out his hand and twisted it left and right like, ‘not quite good enough’. “Sanitation engineer instead of garbageman.”

  That got Gerry to award a point to Nathan. It was two points to one.

  You just needed the right bait, she thought. Plus, she was getting good information. Two birds, one stone.

  Washington, D.C. USA

  It was ten o’clock that night when Frank finally got a chance to talk with Agent Bosse alone. He had tasked the marines to come help when the whole operation was caught in the ambush. Both Frank and Bosse had been concerned about something like this happening. It was the reason he had moved heaven and earth, or at least called in favors from the military, to get Bethany Anne to Florida in time.

  As he got the story from Dan, he was becoming more and more surprised. Bethany Anne was significantly more powerful than he had assumed, even with Nathan’s update to take her seriously. Considering she was picked up in Constanta Romania, that means she was probably meeting with Michael’s child Stephen. He wondered how that went.

  Dan was explaining that not only had she handled the forsaken, but somehow she managed to help her team who had taken out two forsaken by themselves in the open, with no fatalities. He then went to explain how the team’s story was definitely not adding up.

  Frank wanted clarification on the team’s story. “Why’s that?”

  Dan answered from the phone, “my main team lead is a guy by the name of John Grimes. She definitely had both he and his number one, Eric, comfortable before they even arrived. But something happening out on that little island in the ‘glades. When the five of them came off that chopper after the battle, the four team members surrounded her like she was a princess and they were the guards. Mind you, she is in black battle fatigues covered head to foot in mud, blood and gore and looking like she couldn’t lift a pencil off the floor. She was very tired. Now, John is coming up to me and his vest Is completely mangled, it has a big hole where a knife when through it and he had blood all over his chest and a little on his neck and chin. All of them were full of mud and stuff, but John’s vest looked like he had been stabbed. But he was walking as if he had just woken up. She did something out there to heal John.”

  “So, what’s your problem with that?”

  “Frank, don’t be an ass. I realize that I’ve been a dick about vampires for fifteen years and I own this one. She is one tough nut, and I mean that in a nice way. But what did she do out there? Is John going to stay human? Does she have some sort of connection with those men that can make them do what she wants? Get this, when they get off the helicopter, I hear the end of a conversation where she is telling John he better not ‘touch her tit again’ or she would kick him in the privates until Miami.”

  Dan sighed on the other side of the phone. “Look, Frank, I’m not freaking out and I can’t tell you about other vampires, but I’m good working with Bethany Anne. I just don’t like surprises and now I’m having to reevaluate my vampire prejudice. Give me something to go on that I’m not just being mind melded or something. I want to know she is the real deal and isn’t playing me and my men.”

  Frank thought about that. Could she? Actually, the bigger question was would she? He couldn’t rule anything out with Bethany Anne since he didn’t know that much about her. Every bit of information including the two guys he had over in Romania tracking down the stories were helping him create a picture of Bethany Anne. Just this morning he finally tracked down a Paul Rutherford who had gone to the police to give a statement and just vomited up all of his crimes. They had tracked him back to the same train she and Nathan were on. One of his crimes included trying to use Rohypnol on women. Seems like he found one woman it wouldn’t work on.

  “Dan, I don’t have an easy answer for you. My gut feeling says no. She wasn’t anything like that before she was transformed and from my research vampires don’t change their core personality. In fact, it usually accentuates it. One of the biggest concerns I have is Bethany Anne going berserk if she met some stupid gang who either attacked her or some innocent bystander. She hated injustice before, she won’t allow it now.”

  “Why would her meeting a gang be a problem? They certainly wouldn’t be able to hurt her now. Hell, a few less gang bangers might be a good thing.”

  “Dan, I’m not worried about one or two. But if someone intelligent enough to go and find all twenty gang members in different homes all die? When the deaths include people’s arms and legs getting torn off, or heads splattered all over the place I think we would find the FBI all up our asses, what do you think?”

  Dan had almost lost a cousin to gang bangers, they threw her out of a car violently when carjacking her new Camaro. “I think I wouldn’t mourn their loss too much and I’d help hide the bodies.”

  Ok, Frank thought, that was a bad example.

  “Frank, I hear what you’re saying. We are trying to keep this out of the public’s eye and a bunch of Feddies with those big FBI letters on their jackets only draws the reporters. I get it. So you’re telling me you think she is the real deal, what I see is what I get?”

  “Pretty much. Oh, I’m not suggesting you stop being polite, but if she is easy going than I wouldn’t think it’s all a ruse to get you off balance and then kill someone.”

  “Hey, tell me what you think of this story.”

  “Ok.”

  “So, I am talking to Bethany Anne in the command tent and we finish. Then as I’m walking out I tell John Grimes to help her get her clothes to get dressed. As I’m walking away I hear John, who is in the tent with Bethany Anne now, practically yell to her ‘Hey fuck-face, what kind of guns do you want?’. Frank, you could have heard a pin drop it got so quiet. I thought he just lost his ever-loving mind.” Dan paused.

  “So, tell me the rest!”

  “She told him he had to do better than ‘fuck-face’ or she would make him get down and do 50 pushups while she stood on top of him.”

  “Huh, who would have thought a vampire had a good sense of humor. Well, that about confirms my guess that you have the real Bethany Anne with you. However; that being the case I really would suggest a box of athletic cups for your men who don’t know her well enough. If she thinks any of them are being sexist towards her? They might not find him again, ever. She put a few in the hospital and that was before she was a vampire. Imagine what she can do now.”

  “No, I don’t think she would get a chance to hurt anyone. These men love her. I think they would be beating the shit out of anyone who didn’t treat her right. That includes their best friends. It is kind of scary.”

  “So, we are seeing a real charismatic leader here, huh?”

  “Yeah, that’s about right.”

  “Good, that helps me on another problem. I need someone to pick up the pieces on the American Council side. They are being a bunch of pussies on one side and breast beating nutcases on the other. Gerry is trying to figure out what to do. Fortunately, Nathan is back and he is the Were who found Bethany Anne over in Romania. Well, maybe she found him, whatever. He met her in Romania and was supposed to talk with Gerry earlier today. I really hope they had a good conversation.”

  “Well, me too. Werewolves and the other Weres are nothing to sneeze at. I wish I had some on my team from time to time but they keep telling me the ‘rules’ won’t allow it. They just wouldn’t tell me whose rules.”

  “That was probably Michael’s strictures. They wouldn’t even admit that much because they fear him too much. That is part of the problem; they don’t fear Bethany Anne enough.”

  Dan laughed a little on the line, “Frank, if you saw what I did when her eyes glowed red and her fangs were growing out of her mouth? Well, let’s say you get religion
pretty quickly.”

  “Good! That’s good to know. Now, I just have to figure out how to make a connection happen.”

  “Yeah, you worry on that, I’ll worry about what I got down here. You need anything from Bethany Anne?”

  “No, I’ll call her directly if I do. No need to get you caught up in our conversation.”

  “Ok, thanks for the help with the military; it was a boost there at the end. I’m going to see if she has anywhere to stay. If she doesn’t, we will get her a room with us to clean up and rest. Talk to you later.”

  “Bye.” The line went dead.

  Frank was tired. He had been up all day and monitored the take down and the ambush as best he could. He needed to be more restful when he talked with Bethany Anne again.

  He closed down his office and went home.