If you want, I suppose you can.
Yeah, but Adrian is from South America. I’m not ready to dive into that ‘wretched hive of scum and villainy’ just yet.
Why not send him?
Who, Adrian? I want him dead. I can’t let him go back even to spread stories about me.
What if we re-program his nanocytes to slowly stop working. He will age rapidly and then die a horrible death.
Really? A vampire version of the wasting disease? What happens if he drinks more blood?
Well, with reprogrammed nanocytes, each time he receives more energy, they would work that much faster to… What is your favorite saying here? ‘Fuck him up’? Yup, that would do it.
How deliciously ironic that would be. If he doesn’t drink, he dies. If he drinks, he dies faster. The whole time he is talking about me. TOM, you just got moved from the couch to your own room.
TOM was pleased at that comment. He and Bethany Anne had a very rocky start to their relationship since he had jumped aboard her body without permission. She hadn’t taken the intrusion very well at all. While he certainly couldn’t go anywhere, he could tell how she felt about him by where she ‘allowed him to sleep’. So far, there was the doghouse and the couch. Now she was offering him his own room.
Do I get a furniture allowance?
You get a sleeping bag, don’t push it.
Damn.
What do we need to do to prepare this nanocyte reprogramming effort?
Well, like most of my nanocyte concoctions, we are going to start with a bag of blood and a syringe of your blood after I modify their core stage programming.
How are you changing the programming when the blood is in the syringe?
I’m not, I’m changing the nanocytes in your body. Before you stick me back on the couch, I’ll put in place a set of instructions to automatically reject any change in programming that is detrimental to you. They will be coded to your DNA and attack any nanocytes which are in your system which your nanocytes don’t recognize.
Kind of like white-blood cells. Ok. You can have a cot in your bedroom too.
Great, TOM thought, at this rate he would have his own house within five years. He got busy making the programming changes using the Kurtherian computer in Bethany Anne’s head. It would take at least twelve hours for enough of her nanocytes to have their programming changed before he would suggest they pull her blood. That would provide enough mutated nanocytes in the syringe to infect Adrian.
For a Kurtherian, he mused, he was becoming pretty bloodthirsty hanging around Bethany Anne.
Miami, FL - USA
The team had three SUVs waiting for them back in Miami. One was for the crew’s equipment, including Killian's new toys. Bethany Anne had said hello to the sniper when getting on the plane. Killian had respectfully nodded and said hello back. He had been wearing his necklace on the outside of his shirt until he knew she had seen it. Then he tucked it inside his shirt.
He had done well. That shot had been the lynchpin in Ecaterina’s plan. The General was the bait—she always started with the bait—and then there was a moment he was totally focused on his pain to allow Bethany Anne to get in place. Ecaterina had figured that once the vampire got off the ground again he wouldn’t place too much consideration on how a human got in front of the General so fast.
It had worked wonderfully.
The team already knew Killian, so that wasn’t a problem and Killian already knew about the Forsaken. On the plane Dan had gone over the core information related to the new structure of the group. Killian had decided to join under a six month probationary period. Every member of Dan’s group, which included TQB, had the option to force a vote to kick him off. While that wasn’t a big deal to Killian, when Dan took him aside and let him know that if he was kicked off, he would be mind-wiped back to before he knew about anything related to the Forsaken he was shaken a bit. The reputation of his mouth had certainly caught up to him.
He had to think about that for a little while before agreeing. He had a couple of years on the team before this latest op and while he had some good times, there wasn’t anything there that he would miss too much if he was forced to forget it. Realizing that he was just living a life, not making a life, he decided to join something bigger than himself. If he couldn’t command his own tongue, he deserved the punishment.
He had decided during the operation that he was going to change. Well, this decision put paid to the reality that he would change or else he wouldn’t remember any of these people. That one agreement to Dan’s condition helped smooth the ruffled feathers of the team. All of them knew the old Killian would have just been glib about the whole situation. This Killian had seemed to have considered the ramifications and acted like an adult.
John had stuck out his hand and looked at him square in the eye, “Welcome to Team Queen Bitch, Aeternitatem.”
Killian had grasped the hand in a shake that would cement his future and it was special. “What is ‘Aeternitatem?’”
John looked at him and smiled, “For Eternity.”
Killian looked into Eric and Dan’s eyes and saw the agreement and determination in both of them. Should anyone have been able to see Killian’s face at that moment, they would have seen the same change in his own demeanor. He wasn’t personally a religious man, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell that by looking at his face at that moment. Whether it was belief, acceptance or the determination of a man who understood that he had done wrong, who is to say?
The Killian that had walked onto the plane in Washington was not the same Killian who got off in Miami.
Over in the corner, Frank was furiously writing in a dialect that time had forgotten.
12
Miami, FL - USA & Central America
Adrian had been easy to inject. The syringe with Bethany Anne’s blood was ready at 5:30 PM, but after she had talked with Stephen and explained Adrian's physical damage, Stephen had said he should sleep for at least one to two days. They waited an extra six hours to make sure the nanocytes were fully activated and injected Adrian. He didn’t even flinch.
They had rented a crappy hotel room near the Miami International Airport. John, Dan and Bethany Anne had stayed with the vampire who was laid out on the bed. Bethany Anne was sitting at the foot of the bed in a chair. John and Dan were standing beside her, one on each side. Adrian might be fast, but both men had their protective vests on. While Bethany Anne was confident that Adrian was a significantly weaker vampire than she, he could still overpower the humans. Plus, they had earplugs in case he tried that same trick to control the men that he had tried with Bethany Anne.
She hadn’t felt any compulsion when he commanded her earlier, so it didn’t register on her radar. But he had certainly expected something to happen, so they wouldn’t take any risks.
She pantomimed putting earplugs in their ears. When they had finished, she calmly spoke towards Adrian's inanimate body. “If you choose to remain among both the living and the pain free, you will cease faking you’re asleep. If I’m wrong that you aren’t faking, I’ll apologize for your broken legs later.”
Adrian opened his eyes. He believed that she would break his legs again. He felt both arms working. These people had allowed him to heal. He was shirtless which was practical since his last shirt and jacket had its arm blown off. These people didn’t fuck around. He chose to move very slowly. At the foot of the bed were three people. He recognized the vampire and the large man to her right. The older man to her left was new. Neither looked as if they were particularly concerned about being in the room with him. He looked around. He was in a pretty crappy hotel room. The scents from the bed disgusted him. The two cattle didn’t concern him, although he wouldn’t put it past the big guy to put up a fight. The female vampire was a different matter altogether.
That she hadn’t just killed him was a good indication she wanted something. Whether he lived beyond that was completely open.
“I’m awake. Do I have to st
ay lying on this bed, or can I get up like a civilized being?”
“If you were truly civilized, I wouldn’t be having a conversation with you at this time. Civilized beings don’t go around creating Nosferatu and killing people.”
Adrian’s response popped out of his mouth, “They were only cattle, it doesn’t matter.”
Her voice got icy cold. “One of those ‘cattle’ was very important to me. So that certainly made Martin matter. That you are alive for the time being can quickly change if you mouth off your Forsaken bullshit around me.”
Adrian decided that being quiet would allow him to live longer.
“You may sit up. Dan, would you throw him a t-shirt?”
Adrian felt a t-shirt hit him as he leaned forward to sit up on the bed. He eyed the three watching him as he pulled it on. They all looked at him as if he were a bug they wanted to clean off of their shoes. He was getting upset but dared not say anything more for fear of Bethany Anne’s anger. She certainly could back up anything she cared to say and there wasn’t a damn thing Adrian could do about it. That she was so young and yet so powerful was pretty damn disturbing. She started the questioning.
“What is the name of your parent?”
“What is in it for me to tell you this?”
“A trip to Mexico City leaving at 8:30 PM.” Bethany Anne reached down on the floor and pulled up an envelope and tossed it to him.
He opened the envelope and inside was his license, passport and a one-way ticket to Mexico City. He could hear the jets taking off, so the airport was close by. It could be a ruse, it certainly would have been a ruse if she were Forsaken, but with humans around her it was obvious she wasn’t one.
“Forgive me for not making the ticket a round-trip. But if I ever see you again, I will assume you are doing something I disagree with and will kill you on sight. That includes when I come to South America.”
Adrian looked up at this. Michael and his group didn’t go into Central or South America very often. Only on major outbreaks when the Forsaken screwed up and couldn’t handle their own internal troubles. Most of the time they held an uneasy truce, working together to contain the problem.
Forsaken didn’t appreciate uncontrolled explosions of Nosferatu. When it did happen, underlings with delusions of rising above their station by assassination often came out of the dank holes they were hiding in. While Michael’s team would take care of the Nosferatu trouble, the Forsaken would be pruning the tree, so to speak.
“Why would you be coming to Central or South America?”
“Why, to discuss with your parent my unhappiness with his latest efforts here in the United States, of course. I’m sure that he had assumed you would just die in the process and left you as a cutout. With you dead, no one would be alive to let me trace back the trouble and assign the blame.”
“She.”
“Come again?”
Adrian considered everything Bethany Anne had just said. It now seemed obvious that he must have been used by Clarita, his maker. She had been very persuasive about the power he would wield when this project was done. That was very unlike any vampire and he had bought it. She had always claimed that he was her favorite child. His anger at his own stupidity was rising. Clarita must be concerned Adrian would rise up against her, so had attacked him first. The conniving bitch.
“My maker is a female, not a male. Her name is Clarita, or at least that’s what she has answered to these last couple of centuries.”
“Does she have a home?”
He smiled, “Yes, of course. She has dozens of homes from Guatemala to the border of Panama. She is the lead of Central America. I cannot give you more information than that.”
“Well, had I known I might have sent you back a little more south. Mexico City seemed a good point for your departure.”
“Why let me go at all?”
Bethany Anne leaned forward, her eyes starting to glow red and even Adrian’s mouth was getting dry. He could feel her anger, her power, from the bed. “You will tell those you meet that I will not allow any to come to these lands. Clarita has now signed her death warrant by sending you. I will take my anger out on her and her whole family. Those that stay in all of Central America have been warned. If I find any from Guatemala to Panama, they have forfeited their lives. I would suggest you find another place to stay after you deliver my message.”
“Why would I do that? Clarita could well kill me when I speak to her.”
“Not my problem. If I can’t persuade you your life depends on doing this after you leave me, then how powerful could I be?” She leaned back in her chair.
Adrian felt as if he was in a throne room, with her advisors on either side of her instead of a crappy cheap hotel. She had regally pointed with her head to the door. He was expected to leave. He considered for a moment to try and take control of the two humans but dropped it. She could kill them too easily and then his life was forfeit. He doubted she would be so lenient a second time. She had a name, now. He might as well take his exit cue. He turned and put his legs down. He stood up to the side of the bed closest to the door.
“Take the bag with you.”
He noticed a small carryon bag by the door. He walked over and picked it up looking inside. It had a hundred dollars American, a bottle of Evian water and a Snickers. He picked up the Snickers and then looked back at the strange vampire.
“It is a suggestion to try and eat something that might agree with you more than blood now. Do try and change your asshole ways, Adrian. It is a very strong suggestion.”
He smirked at her and dropped the Snickers back in the bag. He would have the Snickers as a dessert to the first human meal he would procure once he got back to Central America. He wouldn’t hunt in Mexico. The vampire that held that territory wasn’t very forgiving of those who took supper without permission. He had enough willpower to make it to Guatemala City.
He closed the door behind him. It was just after sunset. As he had thought, the airport wasn’t that far away. He walked towards the street that led to the airport. He was considering how to consolidate his power in Central America after Bethany Anne and Clarita had their discussion. He knew one would die and the other might be very weak. If it was Bethany Anne who was weak, then he might get America as a consolation prize.
Although he would have to find a vampire willing to accept the cold. He hated his time in Washington D.C.
It took him a week to end up in front of Clarita. His ear had already fallen off and half of his hair was gone. Originally, he had not intended to tell her anything. He had felt a little ill, which never happened to him, when he got to Mexico City. It was everything he could do to not grab the first meal right then. He took a room in a basement and got on another flight to Guatemala City the next morning.
By then, he remembered Bethany Anne’s statement about making sure he would pass along the message. After his feeding, which he believed would help him, he only got worse. In a panic, he called and found out where Clarita was staying. He lost his ear on the way there.
They wouldn’t let him enter the house. She had a balcony and she came out on it, looking down at her child who was wasting away before her eyes.
“What is happening to you, Adrian?” She was concerned. Adrian was sent to America and she had planned to make it her home and leave Central America for him to run. He looked like he was being eaten by bugs. All of her security stayed ten feet away from him.
“You! You happened to me! This Bethany Anne has done this to me for killing her human friend. She told me she would make sure I would deliver a message and I am happy to do it!” Clarita was shocked to see the anger and hatred coming from her favorite child.
“What could one human do to you, child?”
“Not a human, Mother.” He practically spat the name at her. “She is a vampire and commanded me to tell you that you have signed your death warrant. All that stay in Central America will die, their lives forfeit. If any set foot in America again, she will kill t
hem as well.”
Clarita was getting angry. There was only so much insolence she would take, even from a child she had loved and who was obviously dying. “Watch your tongue, Adrian! Whatever is taking you can be made worse!” Her eyes were aflame in red.
Adrian scoffed, “What? You think your anger worries me now? I have seen true death walking and you are not in her league. I’ve been stabbed, mutilated, my arm shot completely off. Your tortures mean nothing to me. I thought you cared and I have been ashamed to find out that there is no love among the Forsaken!” With that said, Adrian reached under his coat and pulled a pin on a grenade. Three of the security vampires jumped him and two died in the blast with Adrian. Clarita just flinched at the explosion, watching her child die in anger and violence, hating her.
Clarita turned around and walked back into her office, closing the balcony doors behind her. Whoever this Bethany Anne was, she had made an impression on Adrian and had killed him thousands of miles away right in front of her. Bethany Anne had turned her child against her and Clarita mourned Adrian’s loss, her heart aching with the pain of his words and the betrayal she saw in his eyes.
Clarita had killed Bethany Anne’s friend through Adrian. If there were two things Clarita understood as a vampire, it was revenge and the art of making statements. Bethany Anne had killed her son for both of those reasons. She mourned love lost when Adrian had died. Further, she couldn’t stop the rumors this night would create. She had made a mistake trusting her maker and his fight against Michael. She was going to pay the price with her own life, most likely.
She sighed. She had things to take care of and three other children to see to safety. Adrian had been the most adamant supporter of the Forsaken creed. Clarita followed because her maker pushed the creed. Her other three children were truly ambivalent. Maybe she could get them to see other options and decide on a course of action that would not destroy her line forever.
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 50