Queen Bitch

by Michael Anderle

  Gerry stopped five feet from Bethany Anne, and looked at each of her team and then Jonathan and turned over to Nathan and back to Bethany Anne, “Plan ‘B’?”

  Bethany Anne sighed, “Yeah, looks like it. Sorry about the breakage. I tried.”

  Gerry gave a sad smile, “I know, if we can keep it down to just the uninvited, we will have had a small victory. Unfortunately, I’m not sure you really would be able to make a good point without something like this happening anyway. I have to tell you, I am happier being on your side, than not.”

  Her smile lit up the tunnel. “You know Gerry, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  He looked perplexed, “Really? Where have my manners been?”

  She replied, “In a sock drawer, probably.” Bethany Anne looked over at the two others, “Jonathan, nice to meet you. Nathan you irredeemable nut plonker, Ecaterina wants me to say ‘hi’.” She smiled because whatever Nathan decided to say, Ecaterina would hear him back in the plane. Both she and Bobcat where in listen-only mode. Dan was as well back in Florida.

  Nathan just smiled, “I’ll see her soon enough, I’m sure. Did I tell you I’m getting a house down in Miami?”

  That busted Bethany Anne up. She barked out a couple of laughs before getting her act together. What a way to woo a girl; let her know in the middle of an op that he was being a stalky-stalker.

  Then, she heard Ecaterina’s voice in her ear. “Tell ‘friendly pooch’ that he better get his game mask on.”

  Bethany Anne leaned a little to her left to look down the tunnel towards the other group. It seemed that all of the faces she could see in the front were ones she hadn’t noticed before. She leaned back again. “Well, It looks like this is about to start. Other than Ecaterina wanting me to tell ‘friendly pooch’ to get his game mask on, anyone got any last words?”

  Gerry stifled a snort and Bethany Anne could see that Jonathan, John and Eric were all smiling. That was the result that Ecaterina was probably going for. Everyone was loose going into the showdown.

  “No? Not you either poochy-boy? Nothing, you got nothing? Ok. Let’s sit still until they kick it off. You guys got your ear protection?”

  All three of the Weres reached into their pockets and casually put in ear plugs.

  “Eric, you ready?”

  Eric brought his hand out of his pocket, showing Ecaterina the flash bang he had brought along. It was Darryl’s idea and a brilliant one. Since Weres could increase their hearing sensitivity he had suggested they might try to disorient them right away. Most of the just frustrated group would be trying to listen in to the talk and straining their senses to the max.

  The flash bang would deliver a 170+ dB noise to rock their world and since they would be looking into the tunnel, she hoped their eyes would appreciate the sudden eye-searing brilliance. Darryl got Nathan’s attention and tossed him one.

  Bethany Anne was getting impatient. “Well, fuck. What do these asswad badgers want? A fucking invitation?”

  John smiled next to her, “Really? Asswad badgers? That’s the best you got?”

  “Give it a shot, you wanking crap herder.”

  Jonathan couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. This vampire was drop dead gorgeous, but what an incredibly foul mouth she had.

  Before John could reply, there was a screaming voice from behind Gerry. Everyone was careful to keep watching their area.

  “You won’t let me join you Gerry? I’m not good enough for the council? Well, say hello to my little friend!” With that, the guy behind the voice started to bring up an old Thompson machine gun.

  Who the hell brings a Thompson machine gun to a party anymore? What the fuck was this about? Before numb-nuts could bring his gun level, Bethany Anne had already shot him twice in the arm holding the gun, turning him around where he fell on the ground. He was a big target.

  She looked over at John, who was exasperated with her as he asked, “Who was supposed to fire first?”

  “Oh don’t give me any lip! He was quoting Scarface for pete’s sake. Doesn’t he realize what a dick-move that is?”

  John should have figured that Bethany Anne would break the rules. Nathan noticed her team leads irritation and just smiled to himself, welcome to his world.

  Everyone continued their vigilance as the Bethany Anne and her team lead ‘had a moment’ about following the agreed rules of engagement. Finally, Scarface wannabe was able to stand back up and started to scream, “Kill them all!”

  Well, that should cover the rules just fine, she thought.

  Eric let the flash bang fly. Gerry, Jonathan and Nathan took off towards their side of the tunnel while Darryl and Scott turned around to cover them. Eric and John went to the sides of the tunnel and Bethany Anne just dropped to the floor. There wasn’t a good reason to be standing at that moment. All of them shut their eyes.

  Two of the new group had listened and started to pull pistols from under their jackets. All of the Weres were looking into the tunnel when the flash bang went off. The tunnel focused the sound to all of the Weres at the entrance. Many of them immediately fell down, their hands over their ears faces grimacing in pain. A handful either fell to their knees or didn’t go down, but none of them were immediately able to start firing down the tunnel.

  Unfortunately, Weres heal a lot quicker from any sort of damage. Three of the twelve were already trying to just blindly fire into the tunnel.

  Bethany Anne heard the flash bang go off on the other side of the tunnel.

  Bethany Anne blew the brains out of the one in the middle while John stitched the one to the left up the torso and Eric put a three round blast into the stomach of the one on the right. All three went down at that point. Silver really makes a Were lose focus.

  Bethany Anne suddenly appeared in the midst of the group. She would grab a Were, stab him with her Bowie in the gut and fling him into the tunnel. John and Eric would grab the Were who would be trying to deal with the sudden pain and zip-tie them. John popped one on the head when he tried to kick him.

  The last Were on the ground before Bethany Anne was Paul Gleason, Scarface wannabe himself. Gerry had given her a quick synopsis of the possible party crashers and Paul had been the obvious ring leader making noise. He was also very easy to recognize from Gerry’s description.

  Everyone else had taken a step back leaving Paul and Bethany alone.

  His arm was healed. He was at least three hundred pounds of muscle and fat. His arms were huge. She wondered if she could just arm wrestle him for the win?

  “You cunt-licking bitch!” His face was flushed red in his anger.

  Apparently not.

  Paul was getting his prodigious weight off of the ground. Figures, she had to fight a Were that was strong and a fucking ox. He had some blood coming out of his ear.

  She heard a shot and then Eric yell at one of guys behind her. “I told you to fucking stay still! Now you get to feel that shit until we unzip you. Don’t be a fucktard, ace. We’re trying to get you all through this without killing anyone. You asshat.”

  “Stay down Mr. Gleason, I’ll only ask you politely once.”

  He continued getting up and held his Thompson in his left hand. She let him finish. Might as well make an object lesson out of this one. Most of the other Weres that had been hurt by the flash bang had healed by now. Two in the front of the blast had a couple of friends trying to help them off to the side.

  She heard Darryl and Scott each fire. Must be entertaining back there as well.

  Paul just had to get his idiot on. He started screaming again at Bethany Anne, spittle flying, “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you want, bitch. No vampire is going to take away my rights!”

  He dared her to do something, anything. He was about a foot taller than her and twice her weight. Paul had bested over eighteen other Weres in fights, and had downed over twelve humans in a bar fight back in his home town. She didn’t look like she could hurt an old man, much less him.

  One issu
e with fighting big people or obese people is it takes a huge amount of strength to actually hurt them if you punch them in the stomach. Part of the problem is just how much distance through the stomach you have to attain through fat before you can hurt them.

  She was trying to keep this as death-free as possible. If she personally killed Paul, others would use it as a political tool for years.

  Bethan Anne pivoted on her left foot and kicked Paul in his right kneecap, shattering it. His fibula breaking out of the skin. Paul never saw her move. He went down again, the Thompson dropped off to the side. Now his cussing got a lot louder. She walked over and picked up the Thompson and considered breaking it. What a waste that would be.

  She looked at all of the guys who stood there. She turned back and walked over to Paul and looked down at him.

  “Which part of ‘don’t stand up’ didn’t you understand? I personally don’t give a shit what you say around anyone in the Were community. But if you let the humans know about the UnknownWorld? I will kill you Mr. Gleason. Or, if you are man enough, you can try right now. How about it? Are you brave enough without your twenty one other goons to take on the little-bitty girl vampire, boy?”

  At this point, Bethany Anne’s patience broke, Fuck ‘em.

  Everyone who was watching her face took one or two involuntary steps backwards. Three guys in the back turned around and ran. Paul looked up into Bethany Anne’s face as her eyes turned red and her teeth grew out. He couldn’t think straight anymore, she wasn’t a tiny frail woman. He started to pull his body backwards away from her in fear.

  She reached down and grabbed Paul’s left leg, the one not trying to mend itself. Her voice dark and deadly, “Come with me.” Paul was grabbing the ground, sticks, holes in the concrete, anything. He struggled, kicked, yelled and cursed as he tried to break the vampires grip on his leg. She just kept pulling him into the dark tunnel and down it.

  John watched as she came walking into the tunnel. He could see the glowing eyes with Bethany Anne’s’ outline. That was fucking cool.

  He and Eric had already tied up the eleven stabbed guys, took all of their weapons away from them and triple zip-tied them.

  One idiot had decided to show how Weres could huff and puff and break the zip ties. So Eric shot him in the gut and zip tied him again. He was moaning in pain and sweating like a sonofabitch at the moment.

  All of them were sitting with their backs against the wall and watched as the tiny looking vampire pulled the kicking and screaming Paul Gleason down the tunnel, all heads turning in unison.

  She tossed the Thompson to John and kept going down the tunnel.

  Eric looked over at him from the other side of the tunnel. “He is a clusterfuck experiment.”

  John laughed, “Hey, if she didn’t hear that…”

  They could hear Bethany Anne yell over Paul’s sobbing cries, “I heard that.” She was half-way to the other entrance at that point.

  John smiled, “Dammit! That was a good one!”

  —

  Nathan, Gerry and Jonathan took off towards the opposite opening. They saw Bethany Anne’s people pivot to point up the tunnel. Jonathan sure hoped they were good shots.

  Jonathan had gone to Gerry with mixed emotions. He had a real good idea what was going to go down. He wasn’t sure what he would do, but he thought his only choice was going to be to try and kill the vampire. If he didn’t, he feared his only child would be executed.

  Pete was stupid, immature, spoiled, and a list of other things. But at the end of the list he was still his son. He felt so much guilt for bringing him up so poorly. What he hadn’t counted on was a vampire you could actually talk to. In the car, he decided that staying with the council and trying to make this work with Bethany Anne was the path he would take. She hadn’t promised him anything other than they would talk after this incident. Gerry had confided with him earlier out of Nathan’s hearing that Nathan had told him he would leave before taking sides against her.

  On the phone, she seemed… human? Well, good enough. She didn’t seem like the cold, aloof vampires he was familiar with. God knows if it had been Michael he would have tried to just hide Pete. If Pete didn’t like it, well that’s what drugs are for. Maybe by the time he had figured where his dad had shipped him to and how to get back to America he would have grown a little.

  Jonathan had allowed the rumors of a weak vampire to influence his actions. As he was running with Gerry, he realized there were a lot of Weres who had expected as much.

  He was surprised how collected she looked within the spec-ops team. This lady had been there, done that and didn’t give a shit what you thought. She only cared if you could walk the talk and the men around her had obviously been able to do that. They all seemed like a well-oiled team. But Nathan had told him she arrived in the States just a few days before.

  How she got this team was news to Gerry.

  As they ran, he saw the flash bang fly ahead of them. They heard the other teams go off and closed their eyes and everyone stopped running, and bowed their heads and covered their ears. A second later their flash bang went off.

  They finished the run to the tunnel entrance and he heard the two humans come up the tunnel. Eight of the ten Weres were on the ground trying to get over the pain of the flash bang.

  The two standing had their heads in their hands, cussing.

  The three formed up, with Gerry in the lead. He had to wait a little while as they got over the pain.

  Gerry started yelling at them. “What are you idiots doing here? You were not invited by the council to be a part of this conclave!”

  The two guys that had stayed standing puffed their chests out in belligerence, the one on the left started first by pointing back into the tunnel. “We aren’t just going to let some vampire command us anymore!” His ‘more’ was punctuated by a shot coming down the tunnel and someone from Bethany Anne’s team telling another someone to not be a fucktard.

  Gerry didn’t look behind him, “And how exactly are you going to stop her?”

  Both of them pulled pistols out of their jackets. The one on the right yelled, “By shooting the bitch, right boys!” He turned to look around at the other eight. They were all looking right at him as Scott shot him thorough the head. He fell down like a rag doll whose strings were just cut.

  At the same time, Darryl shot his partner in the stomach. It would hurt, but he would come out of it ok. The first one? Probably not.

  Gerry just shook his head and reached down to kick the pistols behind him.

  The eight standing realized they weren’t only facing Nathan Lowell, everyone knew him, but the Council lead, another alpha and at least two shooters in the darkened tunnels.

  They were officially screwed and they knew it.

  Their emotions told them to rip and tear and scream their rage, but under the hard gaze of alphas their desire was to submit.

  They had conflicting emotions roiling around the bodies and their minds when they heard Paul Gleason crying and yelling and screaming in fear. He was getting closer.

  All of them started looking into the tunnel. Even Gerry, Nathan and Jonathan looked over their shoulders. They could see Bethany Anne’s outline coming closer and then they noticed the red eyes staring at them as she was dragging Paul Gleason behind her as if he was a small sack of flour she was dragging with a cord.

  The closer she got the more his sobs of pain turned to cries of fear as his knee was slowly healing. They could tell his right knee had been messed up pretty well.

  She dragged him over towards the two council members and Nathan. Dropping his leg her voice dripping with malevolence, “You have a pack member that requires punishment. You can do it, or….“ At this, she looked at all of the eight standing team over on this side of the tunnel. “I will take my punishment out on everyone I feel has broken faith with me today.” She looked back at Gerry, “What is your decision?”

  Gerry felt all eight of the standing pack guys pleading with their ey
es to make a decision. The gut-shot guy on the ground looked up at him, his fear overcoming his pain shaking his head back and forth as he held his arms over his stomach.

  Gerry looked over at Jonathan who nodded yes. Gerry then looked over at Nathan and nodded. Nathan was the one Gerry relied on to keep his pack in line. As he was the Alpha of the whole pack, no one liked it if Nathan Lowell came to town.

  Nathan went over to Paul Gleason and told him to stand up. Paul got his legs, even the mostly healed right one, under him and stood up and turned towards the two members.

  Now that the vampire wasn’t dragging him away, he was trying to figure out how to get out of this situation.