He watched as the SUV parked and two men exited the vehicle and carefully watched the cars near them. The two men, one white and one black, each took a side and then scanned their environs. Both seemed very polished in their black suits, white shirts and dark ties. He couldn’t tell what the tie color was from his height. The white guy then opened a door and an older gentleman got out of the back. He had short, grey hair. The older man then walked between the two men with a military air and they started into his building.
Oh crap! That might be his group. Jeffrey turned back to his desk and hit his intercom button. His secretary, Annette, answered, “Yes sir?”
“Annette, do we have the meeting room ready?”
“Yes, I’m just waiting to start the coffee closer to ten AM.”
“Go ahead and start the coffee, I think the parent company COO just arrived.”
“Yes sir. Did you expect him early?”
“No, but I hope it’s a good sign.”
“Ok, I’ll get it done.”
“Thanks.” He let go of the phone button. The system was really old. In fact, the phone boards were too costly to replace as they weren’t manufactured anymore. Three years ago, he had to buy a used board that cost a quarter of a new system just to keep the phones working. He and his team used IP telephony for most of their communications but the desktop to desktop systems were in place, so they just continued to use them for the occasional call using POTS.
Two minutes later, his phone buzzed so he hit the intercom button. “Yes Annette?”
“Sir, there is a Mr. Reynolds here to see you.”
“Thank you, Annette. Please see Mr. Reynolds to the conference room and I will grab my stuff and be right there.”
“Yes sir.”
She hung up. Jeffrey took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds and blew out to release the anxiety he felt. He grabbed his laptop and the few charts he had printed up and went to go meet his boss.
New York City, New York - USA
Gerry was making his way across the city to a meeting with Nathan and the ‘green’ team that still desired to work with Bethany Anne and were close enough to drive in with only two days notice.
Gerry was exhausted. Since Nathan had left his pack to work with Bethany Anne, he and Nirene had to deal with too many headaches that just didn’t happen when Nathan was the gatekeeper.
He had been a really spoiled Alpha and had not fully appreciated just how much crap never materialized because those lower than Nathan didn’t want to have to deal with him. Furthermore, after having a long dinner with Nirene, he found out just how many times Nathan had reprimanded those who had given Nirene a hard time.
But the prodigal son was coming back this morning. While it wouldn’t help Gerry long term, it had caused a significant reduction in those who wanted to meet with Gerry on pack business.
Nirene couldn’t pick up the remaining responsibilities Nathan took care of. He had been responsible for communicating with the vampires and frankly, Gerry had to agree that he was still handling that responsibility.
Now, Nathan and Pete were coming back to talk with the eighteen Were that were interested in possibly working with Bethany Anne. Ten of the other werewolves got religion after the meeting with Bethany Anne at Fort Tilden, and thought better of continuing their bad acts. They had suddenly decided that keeping their mouths shut and living a normal Wechselbalg life was preferable to getting any closer to the vampire.
Gerry guessed that he had at least one, maybe two members of the American Pack Council that were still deliberately agitating some of the younger males. But once those younger males went with Nathan, they would officially be his problem. Gerry wasn’t concerned at that point. The younger Weres would either shape up or ship out, possibly in a coffin. If Nathan didn’t put them into one, he felt Bethany Anne would take care of the issue.
His attitude might seem a little uncaring, but he was tired of the young thinking that life should be fair. A few deaths, like Paul Gleason’s, made a convincing lesson for those who had been mouthing off. Many had been properly motivated just by her security team, but even for those the humans didn’t scare, not one of them failed to be wary of Bethany Anne after she talked with each one personally
He pulled into the old warehouse parking lot. The pack had bought the building over thirty years ago for occasional discussions between some of the males who needed to have an officially sanctioned rank fight. It sometimes ended up with a dead pack member who’d refused to submit since the rules stated someone had to submit or die.
Gerry hadn’t been here for a sanctioned pack fight in over five years. Until Nathan had suggested using it for the meeting, the warehouse had slipped Gerry’s mind.
Turning off his car, he got out and walked over to the door. He nodded to the four guys already waiting there. He unlocked the door and flipped on the light switch. There were large ventilation fans on the roof, but it was cold enough and the building too large to consider warming it up for this meeting. The floors were concrete and the building had old metal siding and dusty pink insulation batting between the studs and joists. A long time ago, the pack had paid to put down some epoxy to make the concrete easier to clean after a particularly bloody argument broke out before a particular fight. The blood had been all over the place so bad they had to clean the area before the official fight could occur. By the time the floor had dried well enough to continue, the two combatants had worked out their argument and the original fight never did happen.
The fluorescent lights started warming up and ever so slowly brought light to the ten thousand square foot building. The four other guys followed Gerry in the door. Over the next thirty minutes, another ten cars with fourteen people showed up.
Gerry noticed Terry Manestes come in, he was one of the last to join the group. Terry had been gut shot at the meeting with Bethany Anne’s group and his cousin Jack had been shot in the head. Jack had died from the exchange. That Terry had been shot in the stomach was due to his not trying to incite everyone at that moment to kill Bethany Anne. Gerry wondered if he was here to continue Paul Gleason’s efforts or not. Terry was Nathan’s problem for this meeting, not his.
Gerry talked with everyone. For once, he wasn’t the main attraction and no one wanted to kiss his ass. He could sense a level of unease. Bethany Anne wasn’t expected, and Gerry told the guys this two or three times. While none of them would be happy meeting Nathan, even Nathan was the lesser of two evils when the other option was Bethany Anne.
What Gerry would never have considered was that neither Bethany Anne, Nathan nor Gerry would be the talk of the group after this mornings' meeting was over.
Constanta, Romania
The team had landed at the airport safely and Stephen and Ivan had been waiting for them. Unlike the first time, Gabrielle had chosen to go with Ivan and sit beside him. If truth be told, she sat very, very beside him. Eric smiled at that and was happy for the guy. They ended up discussing the Costa Rican operation. Eric was a little embarrassed when Gabrielle explained how she got shot in the chest and leg. Fortunately, the chest shot was stopped by her armor, but when she landed on the ground she had gotten shot one more time in the leg before Eric had been able to kill the guy.
Ivan sort of freaked out a little at that part of the story. Gabrielle told him she was just fine and grabbed his hand and put it somewhere in the vicinity of her lap to prove to Ivan she was healed. Although Eric couldn’t see where Gabrielle put his hand—he was sitting behind Gabrielle—the look on Ivan’s face suggested it wasn’t where she had been shot.
Lucky bastard, Eric thought.
In Stephen’s car, Bethany Anne sat in back with John up in front and Stephen driving. Stephen had replaced the two Mercedes that he had before with brand new ones for this trip. Even with her wealth, Bethany Anne didn’t understand Stephen’s insistence that he was replacing the two previous cars because they had been ‘almost new.’ Now, she wished she had asked Gabrielle about it on the flight
over. Not knowing Stephen’s meaning behind the phrase was like an itch she couldn’t scratch and it bugged her.
Bethany Anne wanted to get more information about the time Anton left Europe. “Stephen, do you remember much of World War II?”
“Yes, my Queen. I was awake during those years, a truly ugly time. Easy to feed, but all of the senseless death and atrocities that happened to both sides was troubling.”
“Gabrielle told me that Anton left Europe on a German U-Boat at the end of the war.” Bethany Anne went ahead and told him the rest of what Gabrielle had told him on the plane. At this point, they pulled the cars in behind Stephen’s house and everyone took their luggage inside.
Once everyone was moved into their rooms, Bethany Anne joined Stephen back in the living room and sat in the same chair from which she had watched Stephen recuperate. That experience seemed like a lifetime ago. John and Eric joined her, but Ivan and Gabrielle seemed to have gone missing. She stilled for a second to listen a little better and could hear the cadence of heavy breathing and a bed squeaking. She rolled her eyes and decided to continue the discussion from the car. If those two didn’t make it out here by the time she needed them, she would think of a suitable punishment that, hopefully, would be embarrassing as hell.
“Stephen, tell me more about Anton and World War II if you could?”
“As you wish. While I stayed chiefly in the area between Poland to the north, and Yugoslavia and Turkey to the south, there were a couple of times I traveled to Italy on Michael’s command.”
“He talked to you, then?”
Stephen thought about that question and the night that he had laid open his soul for this woman. He decided to refine his statement. “No, he sent commands at that time. Michael was working with the United States and he had us here in Europe do certain strategic operations at times to help acquire information, or occasional small assassination strikes.”
Bethany Anne understood the clarification. Michael had never been too close to his children, so he didn’t talk to them so much as send them instructions what to do. “Who was here helping Michael at that time?”
“Well, myself of course and Hugo. Anton was not on his side nor David either.”
“Wait, I thought David wasn’t a Forsaken?”
“No, but he was German and he took Germany’s side in the war.”
“Michael didn’t have a problem with that?”
“Not from an Honor side, no. Michael could understand fighting for one’s country. So long as David didn’t embrace making humans little better than cattle then his children aren’t dishonorable.”
“So, at that time, Anton and David might have been working together?”
“Well, I suppose so. Although for different reasons. David would be concerned about Germany, not so much the Third Reich. Anton on the other hand was embedded in the Third Reich and he had close ties to Adolf Eichmann and Joseph Mengele. He was instrumental in the creation of The Ahnenerbe in Germany in ‘34 or ‘35. He had plans to use his own vampire skills to support the illusion he was a true Nordic, despite his less than blond hair and white skin. Unfortunately for him, it became obvious Germany was eventually going to lose the war so he left for South America where so many of the Nazi Germans fled using the rat-lines. I think he used his abilities to persuade the captain of a U-Boat to take him to Argentina.”
“Well, a submarine would keep him out of the sun.” Bethany Anne felt she was on to something here. But it was time that Gabrielle got involved. She could hear noise, but it sounded more like… yup, there was a zipper. Thirty seconds later, Gabrielle came down the hallway.
“Sorry for being late.” She flashed a smile at her papa who rolled his eyes. He was the one known for going out with the ladies, and yet here Gabrielle was the one hooking up. How much had changed in just a few hundred years between the two of them!
Bethany Anne asked Gabrielle, “Will Ivan have enough strength to join us?” She cocked an eyebrow at her.
Gabrielle looked shocked, “I didn’t drink from Ivan!”
Bethany Anne just shook her head and pursed her lips. “Wasn’t asking about blood loss, more like is he sleeping now?”
“Ah… Maybe?” She winked at the guys. John and Eric tried to turn their heads to hide their smiles and failed completely.
Bethany Anne turned to Stephen. “You know, I was expecting this from you, not her. I don’t suppose Ivan needs to hear this anyway.” Gabrielle went and sat down by Stephen. John and Eric were comfortable enough around vampires now, but it was a guy thing not to sit too close when other seats were available. It might have been considered a step up for human-vampire relations that they chose not to sit next to him for such a normal reason.
They didn’t sit near Bethany Anne for a completely different reason. She had a habit of flicking their ear if they made a wisecrack and they were within easy reach. But she wouldn’t normally get up and zip across the room to do it.
“Ok, add to the conversation if you have something important, otherwise let me get through the short story and we might be able to figure out where Michael is, or isn’t.” Stephen cocked his head slightly and looked over at Gabrielle in question. Bethany Anne continued, “Gabrielle might have mentioned we spoke about this on the plane if she hadn’t been competing in horizontal Olympics instead of welcoming her loving dad.”
Gabrielle put her head in her hands. “I’m not going to hear the end of this, am I?”
“Probably not. Now be a good little wank-bait and stay quiet while I talk.” Gabrielle’s mouth dropped open. Bethany Anne smiled as she realized she'd scored on the older woman and at long last found one of her sensitive spots. After a few hundred years, you probably didn’t have as many hang-ups as most others. Gabrielle’s eyes narrowed at Bethany Anne.
“I much prefer the term ‘pinup model’ to ‘wank bait!’” John and Eric’s heads bounced from one lady to the other as if they were watching a tennis match.
“I’m sure you do, but that is so seventies. Maybe you would prefer boner gypsy?”
“No!”
“Jizz Queen?”
“No! I don’t even know what jizz is!” Now, Gabrielle was getting a little red. She hadn’t kept up with slang in a while.
“How about Wank Conductor? Boner Barn? Dick Harmonica? I have more.” By now, John, Eric and Stephen were having trouble keeping their sniggering in control.
“No, no and hell no! Stop already! All right, all right I give up, I won’t play hide the sausage before meetings, ok?” Gabrielle looked like she had just been reprimanded by her mom and was blushing at the attention.
Finally, all three men burst out laughing as the younger Bethany Anne got the older Gabrielle to capitulate.
“Good. All things in their right time and that time is not before my meetings.”
Gabrielle turned on her dad and slapped him, hard. Both John and Eric knew that if she hit them that hard, they would feel it into next week and quickly tried to get their laughing under control. Stephen? Not so much. It just made him laugh harder. Finally, John and Eric couldn’t keep a straight face and started sniggering again only to have Gabrielle turn to eye them both. They quickly got their mirth back in control and Gabrielle focused back on her dad.
“Look, you reprobate! I can’t believe I’m the one getting raked over the coals here while YOU have the gall to laugh at me!” This only made Stephen laugh harder. Apparently, hundreds of years of pent up harassment can take a few minutes to be exhausted. Finally, Gabrielle just sat back in the couch and ignored him. A couple of minutes later, Stephen got it under control.
Bethany Anne arched her eyebrow, “Are we better, Stephen?”
“Yes, sorry, but that has been centuries in the making. Oh my lord, I never thought I would live to see that.”
Gabrielle spoke straight ahead, not looking over at Stephen next to her. “You might not if you keep this up.”
Stephen took that as his cue to shove his mirth back in a box to be enjoyed l
ater. “Of course, decorum should be maintained.” He winked at Bethany Anne who almost lost it herself. With iron-willed determination and seriously biting down on her tongue she was able to abstain from laughing herself.
“Ok. Glad you got that out of your system, the both of you.” Gabrielle just raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Here’s the story. Bill, over in America, got killed by three Nosferatu. They were a special type who could be controlled beyond their lust for blood. You could, in some way, program them with this special serum. Michael said he thought the knowledge of how to make the serum had been lost in 1945 when the US bombed Japan. But the video clips Carl had showed that, somehow, at least three of these special Nosferatu had been created. If this serum is either in production or even if it can be created in small batches we have a serious fuster-cluck on our hands. My working theory is that whoever was working on it in Japan might have moved a copy, incomplete probably since we hadn’t seen it before now…”
Eric jumped in, “On the I-52 to U-530 transfer in 1944!” Eric was a private History Channel junkie, he even loved Ancient Aliens.
John spoke. “What the hell? Why is this the first I’ve heard of this?”
Bethany Anne answered her team leader. “Because we’ve had enough on our plates. Until Frank and my dad got on board, I didn’t have the resources to break down all of the existing problems Michael left me, and start isolating their sources. When Clarita attacked me using Adrian, we finally fingered Anton as the source of our problems in America. That Adrian was the one responsible for trapping and killing Bill then gave away who he got the nasty Nosferatu from.”
Eric said, “Yeah, but none of the other Nosferatu we fought exhibited any kind of special programming. They were all fast, strong and pretty much what we’ve fought for years.”
Bethany Anne nodded. “I spoke with Dan. Frank had a copy of Bill’s final operation, which Carl had shared with him. Dan confirmed he had never seen any Nosferatu hold it together as those three had done. When they exploded their bombs, nothing suggested they cared about dying. They looked like really intelligent zombies.”
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 64