Only one way to find out, and that was to learn more about him.
As he sat down again, she took a mug and drew another draft. He wasn’t quite finished with his first but the owner wouldn’t mind 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 were a small loss compared to the many extras that she got guys to purchase.
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 set the cold mug, a drop of froth coming 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 taken her hand off of it and waited patiently. Ecaterina knew patience, whether she was waiting for a tracked animal to break from its cover 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? It looks good, but I didn’t ask for it.”
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.
He looked hurt, but the answering smile on the corner of his lips gave his playacting 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 wondered 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’d 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’d like to use something from someone who goes out all the time. I prefer quality equipment.”
“OK, you need to buy another mug while I make a 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 always checked out the women for Ivan when he did any transactions and he returned the favor. What was family for? Well, that and Ivan wouldn’t go and rat 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 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 look over her shoulder see if this guy was checking her out.
Just because she didn’t get into any serious relationships didn’t mean she was unaware of how the game was played. She called Ivan’s number and he picked up 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 it would fit.
Ivan agreed and said he would be there in half an hour. Hanging up, she pulled the third draft and walked back. Setting the beer 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.
15
Carpathian Mountains, Romania
Inside the ship, 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 pace more than 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 them so they had adjusted the size in the medical and science room and the hallways to the best of their abilities in the ships they had. It still meant that most of the ship was undersized for her. Well, the new her which was about five inches taller than she was before. She imagined that it wouldn’t have been too bad a fit before, but there was no way someone much taller was going to be very comfortable in the core areas of the ship.
She had discussed their ability to fix the ship and what its capabilities were. There were no armaments, because his kind didn’t 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 in pretty good shape. The materials used by his people suffered no discernible rusting or any negative reaction to Earth’s atmosphere that she could see. 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. Because these mountains had more than enough other areas to explore, it seemed 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 stingy about divulging information when he chose to be.
She supposed that’s what happened when you were the literal pinnacle of power for so long—ignore what you didn’t want to talk about. She decided 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 human modified by the same source. Michael didn’t want another child doing his bidding, he wanted to pass the baton, she realized. He wanted t
o provide someone else with the same chance at superior capabilities to hold their own against even his firstborn children.
The realization struck her. That bastard had gone and left her on purpose! A white hot fury started burning behind her eyes.
“That motherfucking 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 his fucking 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 one arm at a time and beat his head in! 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 masking 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 into the rooms behind them.
It looked like not only was her anger a bit more intense than before, but the damage potential was off the charts now. Looking down at her bloody hands, she could see the skin growing back over her knuckles and while some pain remained, 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 karmic response.
You have depleted 60% of the reserves.
“So, no bloodsucking 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 ascertained the 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 for different reasons.
She hadn’t stopped thinking about the potential for the ‘infamous seven’ as she thought of them, bringing their pissing match to her neck of the universe, but TOM couldn’t tell her exactly how far away they were since 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.
TOM had obviously skipped too far and didn’t have any decent astral cartography or enough time to take really good long-range views before he was on this particular world and couldn’t get back out into space to get the kind of views he 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 leaving her clothes on the fold-out bench, she got ready to lie back down in the pod.
The medical pod is set up 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 all this alone.” She thought for a second. “What options are there? You’ve told me about the speed, the power is 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, possibly 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 had 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 by exchanging your bone structure for synthetic materials. This will take a few more days in the pod, is this acceptable?
“Is it going to affect my weight?”
No, the new substances are barely different in weight from the bone construction you have now. However, the structure will rearrange the molecules in a significantly stronger fashion.
“How much stronger?”
It ups your bone compression capabilities, which are already pretty good, by a factor of seven, your tension abilities by a factor of twelve and your shear abilities, which are normally your species bone’s weakest, by a factor of eighteen.
“That could be handy, tell me what to push to make that happen.” Bethany Anne went through the menu as TOM instructed, the pod door opened again and she got in. The pod door closed and her last thought was that she’d forgotten to triple confirm he wouldn’t change the length of her legs.
Brasov, Romania
Nathan walked back to his hotel. He had stayed at the pub for another hour and a half, eating another bowl of the soup and talking with Ivan. It was obvious he was related to Ecaterina, they smelled similar.
He never gave any indication or admitted that he knew her, but it wasn’t a difficult discussion. Ivan’s English was superb with an accent Nathan would kill for. He was close enough to Nathan’s 6’ 4” toned physique that he could rent Ivan’s stuff. He was surprised to find out that he was negotiating with Ivan for Ecaterina’s help out in the mountains. Apparently, she was the best in a family known for their abilities out in the wi
ld and had been all over the mountains in that area.
Ivan drove a hard bargain to rent his admittedly high quality gear. But Nathan was absolutely screwed on the amount he was paying for Ecaterina’s help. He could only appreciate how Ivan had let slip who was taking him into the mountain at the very moment he mentioned the daily price, no partial days, and Nathan’s mind went on a slight bend, wrapping his head around the very attractive bartender, not only enjoyed being out in the wilderness, but she was one of the best in the area. His inner animal really was excited about the possibilities and he just said ‘yes’ without doing any sort of conversion of the requested amount to American dollars.
He thought he just paid her approximately six months’ worth of wages for two to three days out in the wild. He hadn’t been so obviously out-negotiated in, well, decades. Whilst his wallet was hurting, his heart was happy.
He picked up that feeling of being watched as soon as he exited the pub. Surreptitiously he adjusted his gear and caught a familiar perfume on the wind. Well, he knew that he had one pegged. He didn’t look around to find her, as knowing he was clued in was enough for him right now. The question was whether this was just a quiet surveillance op or something else. Keeping his senses on alert, he walked back to the hotel.
He arrived back at his room and once inside started pulling his gear from holsters and pockets. He checked in with his teams back in the States. The people Frank provided, an additional four hundred over his existing forty, were able to substantially reduce the implementation time for all of his clients. They had caught one client who had just come under attack and it only took a few hours to win that fight. All of them were now under his new guardian project protection, so he thought they were going to be good for the next two quarters at a minimum. If he got extremely lucky, it could take as many as eight to twelve months before the hackers were able to find any holes that his own team hadn’t found and patched proactively.
Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Set One: Books 1-7, Death Becomes Her, Queen Bitch, Love Lost, Bite This, Never Forsaken, Under My Heel, Kneel or Die (Kurtherian Gambit Boxed Sets) Page 13