Then, she said that he was a ‘friendly pooch.’ His carefully neutral face slipped a little. Oh my god, did she just say that?
He went through the horrible scenarios in his head. Just how many assholes was he going to have to deal with before he got through this mess? He wanted to wipe his face in frustration, but Gerry was looking at him with a huge smile. He decided not to give the guy another reason to gloat. Gerry asked him if he wanted something to drink.
What he wanted was two fingers of whiskey followed by three more, but he realized that was the frustration talking, again. “Yeah, how about some water?”
Grabbing two waters, Gerry gave one to Ecaterina and the other to Nathan and while they sat in the chairs in front of his desk, he walked back around the huge thing and sat down. He looked over at Nathan. “You have no idea how my life has sucked since you’ve been gone, my friend.”
Nathan smiled. It was nice to feel the appreciation. “Yeah, actually I can.” OK, now he knew the negotiating edge to make sure Ecaterina’s little comment didn’t go any further. Maybe the damage could be mitigated. “Let’s get down to business without hearing your ‘woe is Gerry’ venting for the next thirty minutes. What about the troublemakers here? Does the Council have any ideas?”
“Sadly, very few. Half of them want to wring their necks, the other half is just saying that the young need to vent their spleen and to give them some time. They’re too focused on the fact there is no Michael. So what are they going to do, kill their own?”
Nathan considered that. It was true that the Pack Council handed out death sentences from time to time for heinous crimes against humanity. But not for just talking smack. The vampires always handled that issue if they heard it in person. It was only when the pack started talking outside the UnknownWorld and it got back to Michael’s family that it became a problem. Of course, it almost always got back to Michael when Carl or someone filling Carl’s role was involved. Then a vampire would start executions and the first the Council would know about it was when they received frightened phone calls. Often, they got the calls in the middle of the night from the spouses or significant others of the suddenly non-communicative werewolves who had lost their heads. Occasionally right next to them in bed. Scary as hell.
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’m afraid that we’re going to have another Valentine’s Day event.”
Gerry knew Nathan wasn’t pulling his leg, but he had a hard time understanding that. 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 on 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 like 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 airshaft 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. But occasionally, like those two who tried to get away, it was simply a slice and the blood would spray 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 one 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 wolf’s head almost completely off 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. Somehow, 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 burning stick and told Alexi, a werebear, 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’s satisfied he’s 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 pinned his hand to the ground with my silver-laced Bowie knife. She warned him the next time it would be with a five-inch tree trunk. He got the message. When she had what she wanted, Alexi asked to finish the execution as it was personal. Even a thousand pound werebear was on his best behavior around her. She might be young, but do not underestimate her, Gerry. That lady is death walking when she wants to be.”
Gerry was still unconvinced 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’re 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’s 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 me two tickets back to Romania and wait until the dust settles. Hell, Alexi would let us run over his mountain I bet.”
Gerry’s eyes hardened. He had known Nathan a long time but here he was announcing he would leave him in a time of trouble. He almost said something that he would regret when 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’d 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 her ultimatum. He signed his death sentence when he disobeyed her, not because he disobeyed something that the strictures said. She doesn’t always agree with Michael’s rules. 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…�
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It was Ecaterina’s turn to scoff. “Just like men. Snort and beat your breast when 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 really quick to get his permission, he nodded. “Gerry need to talk with you over some stupidity with younger Weres. They need to know your opinion about 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 them. Nathan looked relieved and Gerry looked confused.
“Stephen?”
She answered. “Yes, one of Michael’s 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.’ But, 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 statement. 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 at them both.
She looked at the two 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: passed away instead of died.”
Gerry came back with, “Correctional facility instead of jail.”
“Letting someone go instead of fired.” Nathan raised his eye at 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 garbage man.”
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 that 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 more and more surprised. Bethany Anne was significantly more powerful than he had expected, even with Nathan’s urging to take her seriously. Considering she was picked up in Constanta, Romania, that meant 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 on 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 him and his number one, Eric, comfortable before they even arrived. But something happened 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’s 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. Then John comes up to me and his vest is completely mangled, it has a big hole where a knife went through it and he had blood all over his chest and a little on his neck and chin. All of them were covered in mud and stuff, but John’s vest looked like he had been stabbed. But he was walking like he’d 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’s telling John he better not ‘touch her tit again’ or she would kick him in the privates all the way to 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 that says I’m not just being mind-melded or something. I want to know she’s 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. Apparently 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 gangbangers might be a good thing.”
“Dan, I’m not worried about one or two. But if someone intelligent enough finds twenty gang members in different homes, all dead? 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 gangbangers, 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’re trying to keep this out of the public eye and a bunch of Feds with those big FBI letters on their jackets only draws the reporters. I get it. So you’re telling me you think she’s 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 easygoing then 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’m talking to Bethany Anne in the command tent and we finish. Then as I’m walking out I tell John Grimes to get her fatigues. As I’m walking away I hear John, who is in the tent with Bethan
y Anne now, practically yell at 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 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’d make him get down and do fifty 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. 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’s kind of scary.”
“So, we’re seeing a real charismatic leader here, huh?”
“Yeah, that’s about right.”
“Good, that helps me with another problem. I need someone to pick up the pieces on the American Council side. They’re being a bunch of pussies on one side and breast beating nutcases on the other. Gerry is trying to decide what to do. Fortunately, Nathan is back and he’s 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’s 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.”
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 32