Etheric Adventures Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by S. R. Russell

  “But I lost,” Anne proclaimed dejectedly.

  “Against a larger, more experienced opponent, while not using any of your special attacks and with no help from Jinx,” John said, pointing out all the advantages Anne would have in a real fight, not wanting to demean or depress the girl.

  Anne’s lips were compressed in a straight line as she considered John’s words. “I guess,” she finally admitted. “Are we done? ‘Cause I could really use some time under a hot shower if you don’t mind.”

  John chuckled. “A hot shower or a tub of ice water,” he commented with a nod. “I’ll figure out which I want by the time I get home.”

  Chapter Nine

  Anne was silently fretting about the time it was taking to get 3PO operational, so she nearly wet herself at the voice in her head.

  “Anne?”

  Anne clutched her chest. “Empress, you gave me quite a shock.”

  “Well, at least you’re not like Tabitha, questioning if I’m me.” Bethany Anne’s mental voice clearly indicated her amusement.

  “Seshat can talk to me through the implanted transceiver, but only you and Jinx can talk to me telepathically, and you’re not Jinx,” Anne commented reasonably.

  “Except for Achronyx, I think I’m the only one talking to Tabitha in this manner. That doesn’t stop her from asking if I’m me,” Bethany Anne declared.

  “Well, Tabitha is one of a kind, and if you ever doubt it, she’ll tell you so herself. What can I do for you today?” Anne decided the only way to settle her nerves at being contacted by Bethany Anne was to get to the point.

  “Meredith has deduced that with Guardian Connors outside your apartment, you are probably home. Do you have time for a visit?” Bethany Anne asked her young friend.

  “Certainly, Highness. Where do you want me to meet you?” Anne responded nervously.

  Bethany Anne must have sensed Anne’s nervousness. “Relax, your front door will be fine. Just warn Arthur I’m dropping in. See you in a couple.”

  Knowing that Bethany Anne didn’t need “a couple” to show up somewhere as close as her apartment, Anne hurried to the door to inform her guard that Bethany Anne was incoming momentarily.

  “The ‘she’s coming down the street’ dropping in’ or the ‘don’t move from where you are’ dropping in?” Guardian Connors asked.

  “That one. The ‘don’t blink or you’ll miss her’…and good evening, Empress, Ashur!” Anne shouted happily as Bethany Anne and Ashur appeared about ten feet from her doorstep.

  Bethany Anne watched in amusement as Anne was almost knocked down as Jinx pushed past the girl to greet her sire.

  “Good evening, Guardian Connors.” Bethany Anne offered a friendly smile to the head of Anne’s guard detail. “Are you two fuzzy butts coming in to join us, or are you going to run wild in the park?”

  “Run wild,” Ashur declared with a howl, followed by an enthusiastic yip from Jinx.

  Anne stepped aside to allow Bethany Anne to enter. “Have fun, guys,” Anne told the canines as she closed the door.

  “I have cold Coke,” Anne informed her guest.

  “Sounds perfect.” Bethany Anne smiled and nodded.

  “Have a seat, and I’ll be right back.” Anne’s voice faded as she headed to the kitchen.

  Returning with two Cokes, Anne gave one to Bethany Anne and opened the second one for herself, then settled in to find out why she was being visited by the Empress.

  “Relax,” Bethany Anne ordered. “Now that you’ve been fully upgraded, I figured I should inform you of the, let’s call them ‘vampiric traits’ to make it easier. From your experience with that quack therapist, you know you’re starting to develop mind-reading capability. That’s one possible trait. Having heard John say his clothes looked like an advertisement from a slice-and-dice commercial, I imagine you found you can produce claws.” Bethany Anne held up a hand with four-inch claws extending past the ends of her fingers.

  Anne nodded, conveying both her confirmation and acceptance of Bethany Anne’s information. “They don’t seem to be too effective. They barely scratched John, and he just shrugged it off,” Anne said morosely.

  Bethany Anne took another sip from her Coke. “They will be a lot more effective against non-enhanced beings. You’ll get there,” Bethany Anne encouraged, then continued, “Super-speed, super senses, mind-reading, claws.” She ticked the items off on her now-clawless fingers. “Those are some of the possible traits.”

  After Anne nodded, Bethany Anne continued, “You’ve heard of Michael?”

  Anne swallowed hard. With no way of knowing how to talk about Bethany Anne’s lost boyfriend, she just nodded.

  “It’s all right.” Bethany Anne took a deep breath. “I’m still hurting, and I’m also still pissed with him. Let’s not talk about him. I just brought him up because he could make cutting edges along his arms out of Etheric energy. He could also turn into a gaseous form that was invisible. He taught me the Etheric edges thing, but I could never Myst. On the other hand, he could never learn to enter the Etheric the way you and I can.”

  “What determines who can do what?” Anne asked, relieved to see the hurt expression fade from Bethany Anne’s face.

  “TOM says there is not enough data to do any significant analysis,” Bethany Anne declared. “My personal guess is it has something to do with an individual’s ability to adapt to the nanocytes. The greater the adaptation, the more the individual can do.”

  “That would make sense.” Anne nodded in agreement.

  “Good. With me so far?” At Anne’s smile, Bethany Anne continued, “Other traits we know of are the ability to project fear and to dominate. It’s referred to as compulsion when you touch the minds of humans.”

  Bethany Anne smiled at Anne’s half-raised hand. “Yes?”

  “Mind reading, projecting fear, compulsion—are they related?” Anne asked, curiosity gleaming in her eyes.

  Bethany Anne started cursing internally. How did we miss that? she asked TOM.

  Possibly because we’ve been busy trying to save the universe? TOM replied blandly.

  Oh yeah, good point, Bethany Anne returned brightly.

  “I just checked with TOM, and I’m embarrassed to say, we hadn’t even considered it a possibility. As TOM suggested, saving the universe has been keeping us preoccupied,” Bethany Anne admitted.

  “No kidding,” Anne responded. “That’s one of the reasons you have people like me. Would it be all right if I looked into those possibilities?”

  Bethany Anne’s expression was a strange mix. She was nodding and frowning at the same time. “We’re fighting a war. We might not have an active battlefront at the moment, but we’re at war nonetheless.” Bethany Anne held up a hand when she saw Anne wanted to interject. Once Anne subsided, she continued, “It might eventually be useful to find out if we could train or develop vampiric traits based on whatever markers make them viable for an individual. However, I expect we’ll be in a shooting war soon, and if you can invent something that improves the odds of winning and keeping our people alive, that’s where I need your focus.”

  Anne’s expression was suddenly somber as the responsibility Bethany Anne was living with daily made itself evident in a way Anne could feel. “Am I a bad person for being glad you’re the Empress and not me?” she asked timidly.

  Bethany Anne’s smile was heartfelt. “There are days I don’t want to be me, so I won’t hold it against you.”

  She paused for a moment to let Anne process the information, then continued, “Michael was the first attempted conversion and TOM didn’t have a chance to optimize things, which made it extremely painful for Michael. He left the Pod-doc before he was ready and had to drink blood for the majority of his life to supply enough Etheric energy to his nanocytes so they didn’t kill him.”

  Bethany Anne chuckled as Anne’s face scrunched in disgust. “Any questions?”

  Anne sighed. “That’s such a large information dump that it will probably t
ake me a couple of days to determine if I have questions.”

  Bethany Anne smiled as she rose. “You know where to find me if you do. I’ll be doing my Empress thing.” Sticking her tongue out at Anne, BA stepped, leaving a somewhat stunned Anne.

  Jinx’ message, Bethany Anne stopped by to get my sire, and I’m on my way home, got Anne’s mind in gear again.

  Chapter Ten

  Genevieve Hamilton paced for several minutes before she finally worked up the nerve to make the call. The attractive brunette that was the avatar for Anne’s computer answered her call. Gina was in awe; the voice that came from her tablet was so completely synched to the image, she couldn’t tell it wasn’t a real person.

  “Good morning, Genevieve. How may I assist you today?” the AI asked.

  “Umm, hi?” Gina forced out, then stumbled to a stop.

  The avatar of Anne’s computer giggled and stuck out her tongue.

  “I sense you are nervous, so let me start. I am Seshat. I was named after the Egyptian goddess of wisdom, knowledge, and a few other things I won’t bore you with. I started life as an EI, but thanks to Anne, and to some extent Jinx, I have become self-aware and am now classed as an AI. And, just so you know, Anne refers to AIs like ADAM and me as EPs, as in Electronic Person or people.”

  “That is so cool!” Gina blurted. “Oh, and call me Gina, please.”

  “Very well, and thank you, Gina. Now, what can I help you with?” the EP responded.

  “Well, I was hoping I could take Anne up on her offer for employment.” Gina bit her lip and crossed her fingers behind her back.

  “Excellent!” Seshat exclaimed. “Anne is busy with the end of her school year this week. How does next Monday sound?”

  “Next Monday is good with me, thank you.” Gina struggled to maintain her excitement.

  Once the details had been decided and the call had been disconnected, Gina picked up her son and spun him around. “Mommy has a new job, little man.”

  It was lunch period on the last day of the school year. Anne led Jinx to their usual corner table in the cafeteria.

  Stop! Anne cried to Jinx.

  What? Jinx asked, sniffing the enticing smell coming from the floor.

  That smells something like antifreeze from Earth. I recognize the smell because my dad’s car overheated one day, and that’s what it smelled like.

  It smells good, Jinx sent, licking her lips.

  Yes, but it’s dangerous, Anne told her friend. According to experts, it smells good and tastes sweet to dogs and cats, but when they drink it, they end up with crystals growing in their kidneys that kill them slowly and painfully. Some people even set bowls of the stuff out to kill strays. The anguish in Anne’s last sentence made it through their mental link to Jinx.

  That’s messed up! Jinx exclaimed. Wait, that means someone here wants to hurt me. Who would want to do that?

  That’s something we need to find out, Anne growled as she started scanning the lunchroom.

  Dan the Man, as he wanted his friends to call him, sat with anticipation as the snob Anne and her mutt companion walked to their table. The Goody Two-Shoes was so concerned about not being a bother that she always sat in the corner closest to the exit. She made this so easy it was criminal.

  This was the last day of school, and by the time the mutt was sick, no one would be able to connect him to it. Serves them right. When he’d asked Anne for a date, the stuck-up little witch had turned him down, and when he’d tried to pressure her into going out with him, her mutt had growled at him! Well, this would show them!

  Anne closed her eyes to block out distractions as she scanned the cafeteria. Using the ability she’d developed with the therapist, her head started to hurt, but she ignored it. There! Glee. Anne opened her eyes and found she was looking at the table where that Dan creep sat.

  Stevie arrived at the table she shared with Anne and Jinx just in time to see Anne’s eyes glow blood-red and claws grow from her fingers. Stevie quickly grabbed a girl who was going to intercept Anne and pulled her away, shaking her head.

  At the girl’s questioning look, Stevie sat and pulled the girl down beside her. “The bistok droppings are about to hit the rotating object.”

  Stevie sat transfixed as Anne stalked across the cafeteria. She was almost bouncing in her seat as Mr. Jenkins stepped in front of Anne. Stevie saw the exact moment Jenkins realized he wasn’t facing a normal person. The big swallow he took told the story. As much as she despised the man, she had to give him credit for not bolting away.

  “Get out of my way,” Stevie heard Anne tell the shop teacher.

  “You’re out of line, and I can’t let you do whatever it is you intend,” Mr. Jenkins proclaimed.

  “I wasn’t asking permission,” Anne told the teacher.

  “You are a student here, and you will do what the staff tells you!” Stevie was glad it was Anne he was shouting at because she was certain she saw spit flying at her friend.

  “I’m afraid apprehending an attempted murderer outranks you being a teacher,” Anne replied coldly.

  “What are you talking about?” Mr. Jenkins demanded.

  “Him!” Anne thrust her arm past the teacher, pointing at a Were Stevie wasn’t familiar with. “He tried to poison Jinx.”

  The Were called, laughing, “She’s sick. How do you attempt murder on a mutt?”

  Stevie didn’t hear Anne’s response, but from the way Anne was standing, she suspected a conversation with Seshat was going on.

  Seshat, is Bethany Anne available? Anne asked her EP friend.

  >>One second,<< Seshat responded instantly.

  What does my researcher need today? Bethany Anne’s voice came a few seconds later.

  I need a royal statement regarding the status of the dogs. I plan to kick the crap out of someone when they resist arrest for attempting to murder Jinx. Trouble is, they’re claiming Jinx isn’t a person. Anne futilely put her hands over her ears at the deluge of profanity that came from the Empress.

  Finally, Bethany Anne calmed down enough to ask, You at school?

  Yes, Highness, Anne answered formally.

  Be right there.

  “The Empress will be here shortly,” Anne declared.

  “In the meantime,” Anne stomped on Mr. Jenkins’ toes, “that’s for obstructing Justice.”

  Anne smiled evilly as the shop teacher hopped around on one foot and bumped into a trashcan. Anne picked up the surprised teacher, toed the lid off the full trashcan, and, turning Jenkins upside-down, dumped him into it. “And that’s for Stevie,” she said as she brushed her hands together as if trying to rid them of a noxious substance.

  Bethany Anne arrived at the school cafeteria as Anne formed a disk of Etheric energy between her hands and pushed it forward, cutting the cafeteria table in half.

  Anne ignored the smoking and melted plastic and stalked toward her enemy. Everyone scattered except for one boy, who swung a fist at Anne.

  Anne didn’t even acknowledge the punch. She simply flicked out her hand too fast for a normal person to see and backhanded the boy. She hit the Were with enough force to throw him five feet, where he lay in a heap on the floor, moaning in pain.

  Easy there, champ, Bethany Anne sent to Anne, hoping the girl was still in control of herself.

  He tried to poison Jinx! Anne’s reply was so intense it almost gave Bethany Anne a headache.

  Are you sure it was him? Bethany Anne verified.

  Yes! I scanned the room for the person responsible. When I singled him out, his defense was that Jinx is just an animal. This time, Anne’s communications didn’t blast into Bethany Anne’s head.

  Does anyone realize how you discovered him? Bethany Anne wanted to know.

  I don’t think so, was Anne’s hesitant reply.

  Let’s try to keep it that way. There aren’t many of us with the ability, and having you as a secret mind-reader would benefit me immensely, Bethany Anne informed her young friend.

  As you wish,
Anne responded quietly.

  “What’s going on here?” Bethany Anne’s voice cut through the screams and chatter of sixty some-odd teens.

  Understanding that Anne was trying to get her and her littermates official status, Jinx growled, “This piece of bistok droppings tried to poison me, and I request trial by combat.”

  So it can talk, Dan thought as he forced himself to stand. Stupid animal is doing my work for me! “Bring it!” he screamed to the cafeteria.

  “Anne?” Bethany Anne asked.

  Anne smiled at Dan the creep, showing her fangs. “Sounds good to me,” she said as she stepped back to allow Jinx a clear path. “All we need to know is if he wants his little boy parts chewed off or his puppy-making parts.”

  Dan started stripping, which caused some of the girls present to shriek and giggle. Dan pointed at Anne. “She can’t interfere!” he snarled, then shifted.

  Jinx worked hard to control her hackles. She wasn’t concerned with the outcome, but a canine’s hackles rising to make the animal look larger was almost instinctive. She watched the Were shift and noted that he wasn’t any larger than she was.

  Jinx watched in disbelief as wolf-Dan launched himself into the air with a howl. He has serious issues if he thinks he’s a bird instead of a wolf, Jinx told Anne.

  Jinx could sense Anne’s amusement underlying the Concentrate dear one that Anne sent back to her.

  Staying low, Jinx moved forward to get under her opponent, and as soon as his teeth couldn’t reach down to grab her, Jinx darted up and clamped her jaws on a dangling foreleg. She pivoted so all her feet could be used for traction and braced herself. As soon as the Were’s trajectory had carried him far enough that Jinx felt his leg start to tug in her mouth, she yanked backward as hard as she could while shaking her head violently. Jinx imagined even the humans could hear the joint pop when it came free of the socket.