Petre didn’t even make a sound as she grabbed him and threw him back into the tunnel, landing with a thud. If she was lucky, she just broke his damn neck. She told Alexi to hold the fort for a few minutes, they would call if everything was good with Nathan.
She jumped down into the tunnel, spotted an old light switch and clicked it on. Very dim red lights lit up about every fifty feet back towards the house. Enough for a vampire to see easily. Grabbing Petre’s foot, she started walking down the pathway. She stayed alert in case he should wake up, otherwise, she didn’t care if he hit more rocks on the way back to the house, in fact, she steered with purpose and knocked Petre’s head against two large rocks on the side of the tunnel.
She had read somewhere about how to live a purpose-driven life. She figured she just had a purpose-driven moment and could work up from there.
Brasov, Romania
When she got back to the house with Petre, his bullet wound was healed enough to stop bleeding and it looked like his leg was getting better. The swelling on his head wound was going down.
She exited the tunnels into an office; the door was hidden behind a bookcase. She cut him ten demerits for lack of evil lair exit originality. Seeing a cricket bat signed by the Romanian cricket team on a wall display, she grabbed it and went back to where Petre was starting to stir on the floor. She calmly palmed the bat in her right hand and slammed it down on Petre’s forehead. He stopped moving.
His souvenir bat now had a little dent where it connected with his head and some of the signatures were smeared. She decided she liked this bat. She grabbed Petre’s left leg with her unencumbered hand, dragged him back through the house and dropped him off in the room with the tarp where he shot her.
Poetic justice, she thought.
By the time she finished dropping Petre, Nathan was coming back downstairs with two laptops in his hands. She gave him a raised eyebrow.
Nathan quickly asked his most pressing concern, “Is Ecaterina, or Alexi… Are they OK?”
“Yes. You should be proud of our Ecaterina, she trapped Petre coming out of the exit she was responsible for after he couldn’t get past Alexi’s door. He literally never looked for the bear trap that caught his foot.”
Nathan stood there, a puzzled expression on his face, “Bear trap? Wouldn’t he have been paying attention? Those aren’t easy to hide.”
“Not when he was staring at her bare tits. I’m sure he never noticed anything above her neck or below her navel. I heard the screams and by the time I found the end of the tunnel, she had hit him with an old rusted iron cross. When I got out, she was already buttoning up her shirt and picking up the cross again. You should have been there.”
Nathan’s face was classic guy, slack jawed with a thousand yard stare. She snapped her fingers in front of him. “What did you find out, what’s with the laptops?”
Shaking it off, Nathan answered. “Found them in a safe in his bedroom. Idiot never changed the safe’s original combination from the manufacturer. I’m going to put them into a clean room and see what we can get off them.”
“Anything else?”
“No, nothing. These two dead guys can’t tell us anything, either.”
“We’ll get it out of Petre as soon as I let him wake up.”
“Let him?”
“I found a cricket bat. I’m still pissed at getting shot, that shit hurt.”
“Yeah, I was able to see right through you. Why didn’t that take you out?” Nathan was pretty sure he didn’t know of any vampire stories where that kind of damage wouldn’t have hurt the vampire, especially such a young vampire, significantly more. She shouldn’t have been able to stand up, certainly.
“Story for another time.”
“When?”
“About thirty minutes after I trust you more. Now stop being nosy and help me figure out a way to stage this house so they don’t come looking for DNA evidence.”
Seemed like she had the normal vampire trust issues. Or, Nathan conceded, she could have been this way before the ‘V’ change.
He looked around at all of the blood everywhere. Even taking up the tarp, they couldn’t clean this house enough that a CSI group wasn’t going to get her blood. “Not going to happen. There’s no way they can miss the arterial spray and not realize something else went on. Shit, there’s a damn hole in the wall with half your stomach in it.”
She looked where he was pointing. That was just gross—her insides sprayed across the wall.
TOM, are the authorities going to find the nanocytes in my blood all over this room?
No. Within an hour, your blood won’t be recognizable and the organs that are presently on display will be decomposing at a very fast rate. So long as no one throws them in a cryogenic vat, nothing here will be traceable back to you and no nanocytes will remain.
More than likely the pack would find this place before the cops. By the time she was done with Petre, there wouldn’t be any DNA evidence left for any cops, if they were even called. If it was true about sun turning them into ash, she’d get a broom to make sure Petre wasn’t a recognizable lump. Otherwise, she’d toss him into the house.
But Nathan’s scent was all over this house. Looked like fire it was, then. Even if the house didn’t all go up, the smoke would be enough to mask any of Nathan’s scent.
“Nathan, did you find any money in the safe?”
“Yeah, enough to get us all first class tickets back to the States and a little extra. I found a few pieces of jewelry, not sure whose. Some paperwork and insurance documents, house documents and the like. Nothing but the laptops, money and jewelry seemed that important.”
“OK. We can use the money to get out of Romania without using credit cards and if we need bribes to get across the border.”
Nathan looked at her and smiled, “I think you’re still remembering being human. I don’t think you need to worry about getting across the border, you could probably just run past them and they wouldn’t see you.”
“Until they looked at the video, sure. But I get your point. What about you?”
“Me? I can just change and run across and meet up with you on the other side.”
“What about Ecaterina?”
“She’s going?” Nathan’s interest peaked.
“If she wants. She held her own and stopped a vampire. That’s pretty gutsy in my book. Granted, he wasn’t the shiniest tool in the shed, but she didn’t know that. I wish I could have seen Petre’s eyes when that bear trap crunched his leg.”
“Speaking of Petre, what do you want to do with him?”
“I’m going to talk with him, but I’ll do that alone. You can help me by finding whatever fuel you can use to start a fire. Your smell is all over this house, so I want all of the rooms to have a chance to go up in flames when I’m done.”
“What about your…” He waved a hand towards the wall.
“Won’t be a problem by the time we leave. Call Ecaterina and Alexi and let them know we’ll meet them back at the room to grab our stuff and decide where to go next. I don’t want them here in the house. Did you find any video?”
“No, they actually didn’t have any video.”
“Hmmm…”
Nathan was reminded of the ‘whiny bitch’ comment and started to think a tactical retreat was in order. “I’m just going to go and find that fuel…”
Bethany Anne watched him walk out, “You just do that.” She walked over to Petre and thought about whacking him one more time for good measure, but decided she needed to get answers and get back to Brasov.
Now, what would be the best way to motivate a sun-fearing vampire? She reached down and grabbed one of Petre’s legs and started towards the front door, “You know, Petre, you should have put on a little more sunscreen on this morning. I’m thinking you’re about to have a serious sunburn issue. Watch the doorstep. Damn, that had to hurt, if you were awake to feel it, anyway.”
Nathan came back into the kitchen area in time to hear Bethany Ann
e muttering at the completely comatose Petre as she pulled his body out through the front door, down the step and around the corner.
“Michael was either a genius or suffering from a mental lapse when he chose that woman,” he mused.
Nathan could hear Bethany Anne’s voice from out front coming through the door. “I heard that!”
Nathan got busy splashing the gasoline he’d found in the garage around the kitchen. “Well, fuckity-fuck, the walk back is going to suck.”
Her voice was soft, and right behind his ear, “Don’t make me pull off one of Petre’s legs and beat your disrespectful ass, Mr. Lowell.” Nathan turned around, but she was already gone.
Nathan kept his mouth shut this time.
Brasov, Romania
Alexi, Ecaterina and Ivan were in the small basement when Nathan and Bethany Anne got back. Nathan immediately went to take a shower as the smoke was bothering his nose.
Alexi had been explaining his life to both his niece and nephew, how he had been mauled as a child and had healed up in a winter season when he shouldn’t have completely healed at all. He hadn’t told any others in their family, for good reason. Regardless of how Bethany Anne felt, he required them to give their word that they would not pass it on to others in the family. Ivan was good leaving this whole experience behind him if he could, but he could tell his sister wanted to know more. Her closeness to the natural realm just flamed up her excitement about people who could get even closer to nature than she could, and she had a driving need to know more, to be more.
There was someone who could tell her more, but he just went to take a shower. There was one other person who could and would stop what she wanted to do with merely a word. So when Bethany Anne came in she excused herself from her uncle and brother and walked over to Bethany Anne.
She asked Bethany Anne for a moment of her time, feeling trepidation, knowing her future could be changed just by asking for the chance to do more. What would Bethany Anne say? Would her help with capturing Petre be enough? Would she do what Nathan had talked about and follow this Michael’s rules and make her forget? She was throwing the dice. If she stayed here in Brasov, she could learn more from her uncle, maybe find a way to safely change herself and feel the wind through her hair as she walked through the forests as a bear.
She had considered that idea seriously, but right now there was another that she wanted to be with, to learn more about. He was a man after her own heart, and he was so much more.
She feared that he might eventually give in to Bethany Anne. The vampire was exquisite, beyond beautiful, and she knew that if it wasn’t for the scary vampire part Nathan would be more attracted to her. Besides, if she wasn’t close enough for Nathan to focus on, he would do what all men did and start losing his brain cells. His brain would stop reminding him how dangerous and deadly she was and all he would remember was the package of female perfection she presented. At least, when she wasn’t beating people with their own arms she had pulled off a moment before.
They went upstairs and sat at the table in the kitchen. Ecaterina started, “I want to thank you for all you have done helping my uncle and me with these packs and Petre. If you had left us, we would have had to hide out on the mountain and they could have attacked our family until we were forced to come down. So, thank you.
“But, I have favor I want to ask. It is a big favor, I know. I want to leave with you. I’m not sure what I can bring, but I can help and I will learn. Better English? Yes? No problem. I will do better on my speech. If you need help in any way, I want to help. I want to learn more, to do more. This area, this area is beautiful, but I want more. I wanted more before you and Nathan came, I want to learn more. More about the Wechselbalg.”
Bethany Anne considered the earnest woman. “You realize that you could have died today with Petre? Not every vampire or Were we fight is going to be so easily distracted by an amazing pair of breasts.” Bethany Anne grinned. Ecaterina blushed a little.
“It works more often than not in my experience. Men never get over them from baby to coffin, yes? Unless they like men, then I have Nathan flash them, right?”
Bethany Anne burst out laughing imagining Nathan being up in the forest rubbing his nipples at a gay vampire coming out of the tunnel. That made Ecaterina to start laughing at her own comment and they fueled each other’s mirth for a solid two minutes, tears streaming down their cheeks imagining the big, strong Mr. Lowell tweaking his nipples and blowing kisses at a Vamp.
Finally, Bethany Anne reached over and covered Ecaterina’s mouth and told her to stop laughing. She was starting to cramp up and they finally slowed down to chuckling and got the tears wiped off their faces.
“Honestly, I don’t know where we’re going next, Ecaterina. We probably have to deal with this pack here in Brasov and have Nathan find out what’s on those laptops. I didn’t get too much from Petre, even though he lasted longer than I would have given him credit for. I’m hoping that we find something to go on as I don’t want to continue doing this blind. I’m behind the other side by a good margin and I have many more questions than answers. You could die tomorrow if you stay with me. Are you OK with that? I can give you a couple of days to think about it if you want. But asking to be a part of me, my group, under my protection, is a lifetime commitment. Others will know you chose a side that most of the world doesn’t know exists. You’ll be on my team, there won’t be an option to opt-out, to quit, in the future.”
To her credit, Ecaterina didn’t just blurt out an answer but paused to think about the possible ramifications to her life. She felt comfortable that Bethany Anne wouldn’t just mind-wipe her if she declined. But this was a path to the outside and to knowledge of people no one else knew about. An opportunity to see the world, and if it was going to be a short ride, it would be one full of experiences she craved and answers to questions that she hadn’t known existed a week before. She knew that Nathan had reservations about Bethany Anne, but she had none. She didn’t come with presupposed baggage about vampires, so Ecaterina went on what she had seen herself, and her interactions with Bethany Anne.
Besides, how could you not love a vampire that had such a wonderful laugh?
Bethany Anne sat back in her chair, she wasn’t going to rush Ecaterina’s decision. If Ecaterina wanted more time she could have it. She didn’t need to know until they left Brasov and that wasn’t going to happen today. She did wonder what was going through her thoughts. When she had come out of that tunnel and seen how Ecaterina had taken out Petre, that sealed the deal for Bethany Anne. Ecaterina could come along if she wanted to. She knew Nathan was going to be a very happy guy and Bethany Anne knew that was playing a part in Ecaterina’s considerations.
Personally, she wished that they would just do the horizontal mambo and get it over with. It was so plainly obvious that they liked each other. For once, Ecaterina had someone she was interested in enough she worried about getting his attentions, and Nathan didn’t want to scare her away by coming on too strong.
Those two were going to provide more than an ample amount of opportunities for mischief in the future, she hoped that they got a chance to enjoy life together.
She couldn’t see the future, but she knew that she had some tasks to accomplish. The local issues, of course, plus it was time to get a hold of Frank and get him involved. Then they needed to acquire access to the funds and accounts that she knew about, which would involve a trip in to Switzerland or maybe Germany. Michael had a child in Germany, so she would probably choose Switzerland for her first contact with the banks. Nathan was going to need to deal with his own interests as well. She couldn’t just keep him as a pet. Well, to be fair, she certainly could do it but she had come to enjoy his company, and his input. He was an important contact in the Were community and she was going to completely upset the strictures the UnknownWorld had lived within for centuries. That alone would cause all sorts of problems. People, and she was using that term very loosely, did not like it when their comfortable
understanding and place in the world was upset.
Bethany Anne got up from the table. She needed to get clean herself and go shopping. She would use some of the money Nathan took from Petre’s house to get herself some clothes that fit appropriately. She didn’t know if Brasov had a fashionable shoe store, but she hoped no ladies were wearing a pair of Christian Louboutin size sevens on her way to the store, she didn’t need that kind of temptation right now.
She heard Nathan come out of the shower downstairs. It was time he made himself useful and helped Bethany Anne locate the appropriate fashionable stores available in Brasov. Bethany Anne was on a mission for a new wardrobe and she spared a moment to pity any fool who managed to get in her way.
FINIS
Author Notes: Michael Anderle
Thank you, I cannot express my appreciation enough that not only did you pick up this book, but you read it all the way to the end and NOW, you’re reading this as well!
I love to read, I have ever since I was in elementary school. I would have to admit that my reading got a tremendous boost due to how often I was grounded. My parents didn’t believe that television or visiting friends were options while grounded.
I got grounded often. It was so bad that one time I was running neck-and-neck in a reading competition in homeroom class at school simply because I was grounded and had nothing else I could do.
The only kind of friends I could invite over were The Three Investigators (http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Terror-Castle-Three-Investigators/dp/0679811761).
I found their stories exciting, their special clubhouse in the junkyard amazing and the secret candy-in-the-globe so creative I tried to make one for myself. This was probably second or third grade. After destroying my mother’s globe, one she had since (I think) her high school years, I found out that my imagination wasn’t sufficient to overcome my lack of craft skills.
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 21