He frowned when he saw Martin Brennan’s name highlighted in red. Clicking on the report, he read the transcript from the emergency 911 call. Frank got to the part of the transcript where Brandin Couter described Martin as having a chunk of his neck missing, Frank now understood why it had been quiet for the last couple of weeks.
The Forsaken must be searching for Bethany Anne. He picked up his phone and dialed a Miami phone number.
He wasn’t sure how she would take this call. He knew from his research that she loved Martin Brennan as a surrogate father from her time here in Washington D.C.. He wasn’t sure what would happen when she found out that he was murdered, most likely by the Forsaken. He knew that there would be hell to pay. He hoped his old bones would be up to the task.
2
Miami, FL – USA
John Grimes was bench pressing 380lbs while his team worked out around him in the new gym. Eric was spotting him. Their operations commander, Dan Bosse, had requested that Bethany Anne turn the three-car garage in her latest house purchase into a weight room for the tac team.
“All right hulk, it looks like you’re finally maxing out. You haven’t gone past that one 390lb rep the other day. But if you freaking drop this, all I can say is goodbye!” Eric smiled. John just had to push through and dropped the weight on the bar, finally getting a chance to laugh out loud.
The whole team was paying attention to the changes John had gone through in the past couple of weeks. Bethany Anne had given John her blood to heal him on an operation out in the Everglades that mortally wounded him. It healed him of the knife wound and broken arm he suffered while fighting Nosferatu. It also healed his old scars and it seemed to help him become more physically fit as well.
John was a huge man at 6’ 4” with arms the size of trees, as Darryl liked to say. They couldn’t use the term ‘illegal in three states’ because that was actually Scott. Scott was much shorter than John but Darryl thought Scott’s arms made him a freak of nature.
They all were happy to be together and working out again. Before Bethany Anne had changed everything, they were seconded as a temporary team to take on the Forsaken. Now, they called themselves TQB and they had finally received special patches that Darryl and Scott had designed. The patches had a skull’s head, women’s hair and vampire teeth with the term “Queen Bitch” embroidered at the top and “Aeternitatem” under the skull. These guys had signed up to be the Queen’s guard and they felt they needed to be the baddest humans they could be.
Half of Bethany Anne’s potential problems never materialized when these four surrounded her. The only wolf whistles she heard were from half a block away and usually so low a human couldn’t hear them.
As an incredibly wealthy woman who had her own eccentricities, like flying around in a Black Hawk helicopter, she was becoming a source of news in the local Miami community.
Bethany Anne just called the team her bitches. They didn’t care. She could call them worse, and she had, whenever they sparred against each other. Even when she didn’t Vamp out, they couldn’t get her in a lock. She admitted she had been proficient in martial arts before she was transformed. Now, because of the changes to her body she would explode into action and often whoever she was training with found themselves on the floor.
She didn’t give in to their complaining to ‘go easy on the humans, super girl.’ She said that she would go easy on them as soon as the next Nosferatu agreed to let them just slit its neck.
One time, when Darryl goaded her into ’showing him some muscles’ she casually went over and picked up the barbell John had been bench pressing and calmly did one armed curls while looking at him. All he could say was “Fuck me.” She put the barbell back down while rolling her eyes. She didn’t hate cussing, she hated uninspired cussing.
She made Darryl drop and give her fifteen push-ups while she stood on his back. Each rep required a new and creative epithet. He repeated one he’d already used on the twelfth rep and she made him start all over. So, fifteen reps became twenty-seven. Darryl had been careful about uninspired cussing since that day.
John finished his reps and he pulled 15lbs off of each side of the bar as Scott got on the bench. John’s phone started playing Barracuda. He picked it up and hit the button to take the call. The boss was calling.
“Yes, BA?” Lately, John was trying little things to annoy his boss. She had completely gotten his goat when he had been listening patiently to the former owner of this house.
That morning had started with an ass chewing from the former owner, Ms. Joshwood. She had been complaining about delivery trucks blocking her driveway and neither of them noticed Bethany Anne step up behind John. She had slipped an arm around his waist and then got into a spitting catfight with Ms. Joshwood. Those two went at it with him caught in the middle.
Then Bethany Anne blew his freaking mind. She got pissy with the older woman and decided to act like a hussy.
Bethany Anne told Ms. Joshwood that all of the noise was because she needed time to make sure which of her nine bedrooms were the best for sex. John’s face went red. She continued on and acted as if John was the guy she used for testing the rooms. At that point in the completely fabricated story, the blood had completely drained from his face.
It wasn’t that he didn’t think she was attractive, he certainly did. But there were two important considerations. The first was that she was his primary and boss. He had always believed there should be a line between boss and high level employees like himself. The second was that he had seen her when she was at her fucking scariest. He didn’t trust himself in any relationship where instead of sleeping on the couch, he might have to get his arm reattached at the hospital if he pissed her off.
That kind of concern can get in the way of a man’s libido.
She was quick with the request this morning, “Hey, are you guys ready to go for a run?”
He held his phone with one hand, “Can you give us five minutes?” He circled his fingers to get everyone’s attention to prep to leave. He pantomimed running with two fingers.
“Sure, I’ll be there in five.”
They hurried. When Bethany Anne said five minutes, you didn’t want to be even one second late. She could just ‘pop’ over and start walking for the door. They all got their running gear on. She had decided to see what kind of stamina she had while pushing her team’s training as well. They needed to be in shape as she planned to get Wechselbalg teams and she didn’t want any smartass remarks about out of shape humans protecting her.
She would often walk into the workout room and play the AC/DC song Big Balls. She told them it was to remind them just who they represented. In fact, the team rather enjoyed AC/DC songs and they had an impromptu awards ceremony to make AC/DC the official team band.
Five minutes became six. Six minutes became seven. John told the guys they were going over to her house, as something had to be wrong.
They closed up and jogged next door. Here in Key Biscayne, they made houses big. That is, when you paid almost ten million for them.
John hit the front door and knocked. While he could have just gone in, he was also responsible for working with Pete.
Pete was the son of a Were Alpha in Colorado. Pete had screwed up and his father Jonathan had asked Bethany Anne if there was anything she would be willing to do to help fix the situation. She did, and in payment Pete had to work with her team for three months.
John had worked out with Pete for an hour and a half that morning starting at 5:00 a.m. When John found out that Pete was a late night partier who never found a morning he couldn’t hate, it was the first bit of poison John made Pete swallow.
Now, John was making sure that he was handling security as well as proper decorum when answering the front door. Pete whined that answering the door was ‘menial and beneath him.’ Eric had to hide his smile. Pete was making this too easy for John.
Pete opened the door after confirming who was there. John had rigged a special camera to watch t
he front door from inside the house. He used this camera to check on Pete’s effectiveness at all times of the day and night. In the beginning, Pete would just open the door. Each time Pete was lazy, John would show up within two minutes and make him do fifty, then a hundred pushups. Pete knew that the next time he screwed up he was going to be pushing one-fifty.
When Pete opened the door, his eyes were wide open and he had a very scared look on his face. Pete looked at the guys for a second, not realizing who was in front of him. He obviously had a situation that he didn’t know what to do with.
John snapped him out of it, “What’s going on, Pete?”
Pete stepped outside, which made John take a quick step back, and he closed the door. “John, you can’t go in there!”
“What’s going on?”
“Hell if I know!” Pete looked back at the closed door. “She got a phone call and then she suddenly screamed and dropped to her knees. Ecaterina tried to get close but she was completely in Vamp mode. Her eyes are damn near glowing John! Even Ecaterina is worried and all Bethany Anne can do is cry right now.”
John was concerned. He had known Bethany Anne for a few weeks, but in all of that time she had never had an emotional response like she was showing right now. Oh crap, what if she got violently angry? “Who was on the phone, Pete?”
“I have no idea. Fred somebody. She seemed happy to get the call at first.”
John was trying to think through this quickly. Eric asked, “Frank?”
Pete looked surprised, “Yeah! That’s it, Frank.”
“Shit.” John opened the door and walked in. His boss needed him. He entered the foyer, looking around. He heard the sounds of heartbreak. The crying came from the back kitchen.
As he came around the corner, Ecaterina looked up at him. She displayed worry, anguish and a touch of fear. She had no idea what to do for her friend right now.
Bethany Anne was on the floor, the remains of her phone still in her hand. She had crushed it in her anguish as she rocked on her knees, her head touching the floor and coming back up.
Well, his job description never said he would die an old man in his bed. He went up to Bethany Anne, knelt by her and put his arm across her. At his size, he was just about a huge human blanket.
3
Miami, FL – USA
Bethany Anne felt the presence of someone coming towards her. She was struggling to reign in her emotions, straining everything she had to not start venting her anger, her frustration and her loss. If that happened she didn’t know the extent of the damage she would cause. When she had been angry back with TOM on the spaceship, she had literally punched holes through metal. That was before the upgrades to her bones and other abilities.
God no! The person was kneeling beside her and she stiffened in alarm as John put his arm across her back. Her pain suddenly lessened and she could feel the tension melt from her shoulders in the embrace.
The pain at finding out that Martin was murdered was overwhelming her. In her head TOM had gone catatonic because he had never experienced these emotions before. He was dealing with his own struggles to not be overwhelmed by the crushing feelings.
She slowly relaxed her hands. Her fingernails had drawn blood stabbing her palms. Slowly, ever so slowly, she broke down into steady, heavy sobs while tears flowed down her face.
John held her for at least ten minutes. She was able to sense that Ecaterina, Eric, Pete, Darryl and Scott were in the next room. Dan was with Bobcat checking out a plane.
“I’ve got you, Bethany Anne.” John said it over and over in so low a voice, no one else could hear him, not even Pete. He had been saying it for so long his throat had to be getting dry.
She took deep, calming breaths. Sat up a little and actually leaned into John’s embrace. It was the sort of human comfort a person needed. Whether they were human or not.
“Thank you, John.” Her voice was full of anguish and loss. For the first time in John’s experience, Bethany Anne sounded fragile.
Someone was going to get fucked up. Then, he decided, that someone was going to die. His team didn’t really have any rules of engagement except battle through to the other side and whoever was left alive, won.
“Just give me a target, BA, I promise you their death.”
Bethany Anne had to smile a little at that. Wasn’t she known for being the bloodthirsty one, both literally and figuratively? Her influence was apparently bleeding over to John.
“They might not be Forsaken.”
“And your point?”
Her eyes were almost back to human again, she pulled back and John dropped his arm. She looked into his eyes; there were no second thoughts there, just determination.
“Aeternitatem, John?” She looked deep into his eyes, into his soul.
John looked down into Bethany Anne’s eyes. Tracks of tears, some laced with small amounts of blood. John answered grimly, “Aeternitatem.”
No longer Agent, Dan Bosse was working with Bobcat to close on a modified Gulfstream G550. It had the best engines you could get in the civilian market and it was the only one in their region they could look at.
Their chief Engineer, Billy “William” Stevenson was going over the bird while Bobcat kept the owner and pilot talking about their experiences with the plane. The owner was a businessman whose tech companies had suffered with the growth of SAAS competition and he needed to unload it in the worst way. But he was trying to get top dollar and Bobcat and Dan were arguing for a fifteen percent reduction, knowing he needed out from under it.
Dan’s phone rang. He looked down at it: John Grimes. He hit receive. “What’s up John? Bethany Anne making you guys run another five miles?” Dan’s face lost his smile as he listened to John on the other side. His anger started to boil, his plans coming together in his mind. “Got it. I’ll finish here and be back in two hours at the outside. Make plans to leave within five if necessary. Yeah, full battle rattle and MIB to start. Let me close this deal and I’ll get back there to confirm. Is Ecaterina there? Yeah, let me speak with her.”
“Hey Kat. I’m sorry to hear about Bethany Anne’s loss. Yes, I know who he was; I’ll explain when I get there. I need a favor. Can you call Nathan and let him know I need his skills? No, not his business skills, his computer skills. Please tell him I’ll call in about half an hour? Thanks, bye.” He hung up.
Gathering his paperwork, he walked over to William and asked him in a tight, soft voice. “William, can this bird lift this afternoon? Bethany Anne needs to be in Washington D.C., I would prefer we use our own plane.”
William looked over at Dan, and the serious expression on his face. He thought about it a minute. The plane was really in great shape. While he might have wanted a few more hours for a more thorough inspection, he felt OK with recommending it to go out right then. “If the boss needs it to fly, I’ll be on the wings flapping myself.”
Dan looked at him. “I’ll hold you to that, even if I have to duct tape you to the engine.” Dan turned around and started walking to the three men.
William took that as permission and pulled out a power tool from his belt. No time like the present to fix one or two items. He reached up to a cover and started pulling the screws out.
Dan joined the three men. Timothy Peters took a look behind Dan, “What the hell is he doing to my plane?”
Dan looked at him, “My plane if you sell it to me right now for your asking price. No questions and we have to close within an hour.”
Timothy looked at Dan’s face and decided that trying to dicker with him wasn’t a good choice. He held out his hand, “Deal.”
Dan left Bobcat to finish everything and provided the account numbers to move the money. It wasn’t like he kept millions on him. Getting in the company SUV, he broke a few speed limits getting back over the bridge to Key Biscayne.
He got on the phone and hit the code to call Nathan Lowell.
Savannah, GA – USA
Nathan Lowell was having a late breakfast when h
is phone started playing “I’ve only got eyes for you, babe.” He smiled. It was Ecaterina. Setting his fork aside, he put the phone to his left ear and grabbed his pad and a pen.
He wasn’t sure if this was Ecaterina calling her boyfriend or Ecaterina calling for her boss.
“Hi baby, what’s up?
“Nathan, we have a problem.”
Blood drained from Nathan’s face, what had he done? “What is it, baby?”
“Someone has killed a friend of Bethany Anne, she is, how you say, all broken?” Despite himself, he relaxed a little. Ecaterina wasn’t upset at something he had done. His relationship with Ecaterina was the connection that the rest of his reality worked around. If that line was solid, then he could focus on the rest of the world.
He didn’t correct her, “Who was killed?”
“A guy called Martin, her boss from her last place of employment. He was someone special. Dan has asked if you could take a call in a little less than half an hour?”
“Certainly baby. Whatever is needed, I’ll do.”
“Thank you Nathan. This is personal. She came for me, she came for you. Now, now I feel I will help. These men, whether they are Forsaken, human or Wechselbalg, they must be found, Nathan. Dan is on his way back soon and the team is getting suited up. Everyone here is pissed, I am pissed.”
Nathan could understand. Bethany Anne had a way of making things happen in people’s lives. Both good and bad things. Usually good for her friends and bad for those not so friendly. She had grown from a boss to their leader. He could only imagine what her team back at the houses was getting ready to do. He knew what Dan was probably going to call him about, but Ecaterina just confirmed it for him.
“Dan says he needs you for your skills, your computer skills.” She sounded a little confused. He had worked with her back in Romania to do some simple Google work. She didn’t realize that he was a world class hacker as well. Dan did. Whether it was because Bethany Anne told him, Frank told him or his name was somewhere on a list that he hoped didn’t exist didn’t matter. What mattered was his friend was hurting and she needed him.
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 43