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)

by Michael Anderle

  She entered the code to wake Gabrielle up. TOM had explained how to make part of the pod cover transparent so she could see in, and Gabrielle would be able to see out. It wasn’t a big area, maybe six inches square but she remembered her first experience feeling claustrophobic when she woke up.

  She was standing over the pod looking at Gabrielle’s face when she opened her eyes. She had a strong sense of deja vu, she was there when her father woke up, too.

  Gabrielle’s eyes went from staring into the distance to focused and quickly found Bethany Anne looking down at her. She smiled in recognition at her friend. She heard Bethany Anne explain how to open the pod from the inside, so she felt around until she found the lever and pulled it. The pod door opened and Bethany Anne stood back, out of her way. Eric and John were out in the hallway, on the other side of the closed door.

  “I feel different.”

  TOM?

  It looks like a few deficiencies were detected and corrected. She is approximately an inch taller and her muscles have been tightened up. Her bones had some of the same work to strengthen them as yours did. She can walk in the sun without any issues and generally, her nanocytes have been upgraded. She has a small direct pull on the Etheric now.

  That’s kick-ass, my own six-million dollar vampire girl.

  “Well, you’ve been modified some by the process. I can tell you that you’ll need a new wardrobe. You're about an inch taller, and by just eyeballing you, I’d say the inch is in your legs. You look a little tighter all over.” Bethany Anne pointed to her breasts, “Ecaterina is going to be jealous, no support necessary there. Not that a lot was needed before.”

  Gabrielle looked down. “Did I get enlarged a cup?”

  “No, at least TOM didn’t mention it, probably just a general re-shape. Good thing you don’t wear black spandex, or the guys wouldn’t be able to focus on their jobs.” Gabrielle stuck her tongue out at Bethany Anne who was making a ‘turn around’ gesture. “Yup, you get to learn how to get rid of the tattoo.”

  “That figures.”

  Bethany Anne turned and grabbed the pile of clothes, “The pants will probably be a little short and it all might be just a touch larger than you’re used to, but overall I think you'll like this.”

  Gabrielle started putting on the clothes, “I feel a little awkward at the moment.”

  “You're just getting accustomed to the new height and different size. Your muscle memory is confused. We’ll need to spar to get you comfortable quicker. Speaking of sparring, I had to pull you out of the pod early. We have some trouble.”

  Gabrielle looked at Bethany Anne as she pulled her shirt on. “What trouble?”

  “We are almost to Costa Rica. The power vacuum has caused all sorts of Forsaken fighting including random rampages by Nosferatu after their makers were killed. We’re going in.”

  “What about Anton?”

  “That schlong midget is shoot to kill.”

  Gabrielle sat down on the small bench connected to the wall and grabbed the combat boots. “I still can’t believe you’re looking to kill one of Michael’s children.”

  “Believe it. Michael is either dead, in which case one of his kids probably killed him. Or he’s captured, in which case see the kid comment just mentioned or he is purposefully hiding. If he’s hiding, then Carl is probably with him and they are aware of what is going on. He’s welcome to pick up the fucking phone and call me, but I’ll just hang up on his ass. If he was going to deal with Anton before, it would have been centuries ago. That we have evidence Anton was involved in the worst of the Nazi atrocities is enough for me to condemn his sorry ass. Michael knew my background before he changed me, so it can’t be a surprise I care about the rights of the deceased. Even the deceased of seventy years ago.”

  Gabrielle could feel the righteous fury Bethany Anne barely held in check. There was no changing Bethany Anne’s mind on this subject. Either Bethany Anne or Anton was going to die, and Gabrielle was going to do her fucking best to make sure it wasn’t Bethany Anne. She stomped her feet to get them to settle in the boots and stood up. The clothes fit much better than she had a right to expect. “Then Anton had better say his final prayers, hadn’t he?” She smiled at Bethany Anne who nodded.

  Bethany Anne looked around the room and made sure it was clean. She turned and programmed the pod to close and to ready itself for use. Maybe she would be able to talk Stephen into it.

  She walked to the door and let it open before continuing out. John and Eric had been lounging against the wall opposite the door and stood up as she exited. They looked behind her and she saw the surprise on their faces. Yeah, TOM had to have tweaked the Pod for attractive parameters. Both men took a second to get their game faces back on.

  Eric stuck out his hand to Gabrielle, “Are you finished sleeping? Ready to get your lazy ass up and help us take care of some Nosferatu?”

  Gabrielle noticed the change in Eric’s demeanor. This wasn’t a guy that was picking on her as a woman, this was a guy who was picking on his teammate when they wanted them aboard. She shook his hand, and then started squeezing while smiling. Eric grunted and then started to go down to one knee. “Eric, you sheep-loving ass herder. You can’t run into the light and hide from me anymore. You ready to make sure someone isn’t on your six so I don’t take a bullet to the chest?”

  “I will be if you don’t break my trigger finger!” Eric was able to smile. Gabrielle let go and then hugged both Eric and John.

  “Gabrielle, since you seem to be so happy showing off your strength, we need to go over to the Polarus and spar to get you ready again.”

  Gabrielle turned and looked at Bethany Anne, who was walking down the hallway towards the ship’s exit. John and Eric started to smile at her. Bethany Anne called out, “By the way, we will be working swords without protection. Hope you’re up to it.”

  Gabrielle’s face went a little white. Her team was decimated when it was the five of them against Bethany Anne alone. Now she was going to spar with her by herself? With edged weapons? Oh, this was not going to be fun. She just looked at the two men whose grins were twice as large as they had been a moment before. She started walking after Bethany Anne and flipped the guys the finger over her shoulder. She called out to them, “Stop looking at my ass!”

  All she heard was the laughter from her teammates. The three of them heard Bethany Anne from down the hall. “After I finish with you, I want you to work on the team. Four guards against one highly capable Nosferatu.”

  She turned around to see John and Eric’s faces look like they had eaten lemons. She smiled and pointed to herself. “Payback’s this bitch, you two!”

  Eric looked over at John. “We can hope Bethany Anne puts her back in the medical pod, right?”

  John retorted, “You're the one who had to make the lazy ass comment.”

  Eric mumbled, “Seemed funny at the time.”

  Bethany Anne waited until her team was with her. She hit the open sequence and when the door opened, John stepped off first.

  Washington D.C., USA

  Frank Kurns came out of his room at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, set his laptop bag down and turned to lock the door. A second later, Lance Reynolds opened his door a few feet over to the right. “Good morning, Lance.” Frank grabbed his bag again and shouldered it. He never liked the look of the backpack bags for men his age. Hell, even his new age. Ok, he just had to admit he hated the backpack look on anyone not in school.

  “Morning, Frank.” Lance turned to shut his door and put up the sign to let housekeeping know to stay out. Lance dealt with his own room needs as he had ever since his wife Meredith had passed away.

  Frank looked a little closer at Lance who noticed Frank’s scrutiny and looked back at him, “Yes?”

  “You seem a little, just a little, better rested this morning than normal.”

  “Bethany Anne.”

  “Ah.” The two of them started for the elevators. “I thought you were going to wait a while.”


  “She pulled a dirty trick.”

  Frank laughed a little. “Stuck the blood in your drink?”

  “No, emotional terrorism. She told me she didn’t want to watch her father age in front of her eyes, it hurt her too much and then hugged me like I was going to die that night.”

  “She cried on your shoulder, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  “Effective.”

  Lance grunted his agreement. They hit the button to go down to the ground floor. “It worked.”

  The two stepped onto the elevator. Both had on D.C. power suits. Dark blue with light colored blue shirts, Hermes ties which didn’t associate them with either party and black Oxford shoes. Ecaterina had dressed them.

  Now, the older man looked the younger as Lance took the lead coming out of the elevator. The valet brought their rental car around and Frank jumped in the driver’s seat. This was his town, so he was the best choice to drive around.

  Their task was to find out what was going on with the review into Bethany Anne’s companies and who was behind the research. If it wasn’t politically motivated, they might be able to set up a couple of meetings, answer some questions and leave. If it was politically motivated, they would have to find out if it was a set up by outside forces or inside movers trying to find someone to shake for political gain.

  Either way, they needed to quash this interest in Bethany Anne’s corporation before the information became too well known.

  They stopped at a small pancake house and got a booth. Both had coffee while Lance had pancakes with eggs and bacon and Frank chose oatmeal.

  After their food was served, Lance started the conversation, “Any luck last night?” Frank had spent the evening in his room after going to his office. Some of the information he needed wasn’t in the core computer he accessed from his secured laptop.

  “Yes and no. The original information did come from the companies that Patriarch had done the financial research on. That report sat without a priority and no notice for almost a year. Then, a minor staffer to a significant congressman out of Florida made a request about a couple of businesses, which turned up the Patriarch information. From there, more data mining was requested. Until the last few months, it had been sporadic. Since about two months before the Miami incident, it started to get significantly higher.”

  “So, is the staffer working for someone else, or is the congressman asking the staffer to do this for him?” Lance drank his coffee, pleasantly surprised at the quality.

  “Both good questions.”

  “So, we don’t know if the congressman is in on it or not. Based on the information you and Dan told me about the situation back in the Everglades and the terrorist attacks, it seems likely the request for information is connected. What if the attacks on the companies that you guys broke up wasn’t going for fiscal gain?”

  “Well, we can ask two of the hackers on that job.”

  “That’s right, Nathan took them in, right?” Frank nodded.

  “Ok. It’s looking possible that the information from Patriarch Research is a tool to help find and locate other companies in our group. We need to know if it was a financial attack, data attack or a fishing expedition.”

  Frank pulled out his phone and hit Nathan’s number. After a minute of talking with Nathan, who promised to get the two employees to call him, he hung up.

  By the time the waitress refilled their coffees, Frank's phone had a call coming in from Texas. “Frank Kurns. Yes, thank you for taking the time to call, Ben. I am looking into what information you were directed to procure during your job in Miami a while back. Yes, the job before you took work with Mr. Lowell’s company. I work for the lady who was in charge of the security during that job. Yes, her. Really? You want to meet her?” Frank looked at Lance, who just shrugged. “I can’t tell you if that is or isn’t possible right now, Ben. The better person to ask would be Mr. Lowell. I don’t know of any reason the lady wouldn’t be willing to meet with you, but make it known to Mr. Lowell and let him know I asked you to do so.”

  Frank listened to the phone for a bit while Lance finished his eggs.

  “So, you guys were looking to create back doors into the organization to extract what, exactly? Right, I understand what you’re talking about. Yes, I have had some experience with that technology. Interesting, so the last item was to transfer money from bank accounts to hide the Trojan horse and the worms? Ok… No, I don’t think it was a problem we didn’t go into more detail before now. That’s what I needed to know, thank you for your help.” Frank said his good bye and hung up.

  Lance pushed his plate away. “So, rob them to hide the data attack?”

  “Pretty much. He said that they had some good code that should have been pretty untraceable once it was installed. But he and the female hacker have already given Nathan’s company, or I guess I should say Bethany Anne’s company, everything they know about the code. So, their product, Guardian, has the ability to look inside firewalls and protect the network. The company is discretely passing the word around to companies who aren’t their customers. They’ve picked up two consultations and one client so far just by being nice people.”

  “Ok, but where does this get us? We know that the attacks would have been financially successful, but the real desire was to get inside the companies. What are they looking for?”

  The waitress came and took their dishes and topped off their coffees. Frank voiced his first thought. “What if they don’t know?”

  Lance reached over for the Splenda. “Just a fishing expedition?”

  “No, what if there are rumors that Michael has something, but they don’t know what it is. If I was in charge of a project like that, I would first limit my scope.”

  “All of Michael’s companies.”

  Frank nodded. “The second would be to get into each one and start a massive digging expedition. They’re getting cash, new research they might or might not be able to use and still searching for the answer.”

  Lance took a sip, too sweet. “To the question they don’t know how to ask. That only works if they don’t fear getting caught.”

  Frank thought about that. “They were already operating in America. I think they either didn’t fear getting caught, or considered it worth the risk. For them to push so hard while Michael was gone and have attacked his companies directly speaks to them having inside information. They believe the risk from Michael is small or nonexistent.”

  “Until Bethany Anne came along, that was true. Her busting up the Miami operation had to put a crimp in their plans.”

  Frank thought back to the fight and the aftermath. “I bet we have a bigger Miami connection than we think right now. The congressman and the staffer come from that area. I need to see if there are any phone records I can procure for that time frame from the congressman himself.”

  “Who is it?”

  “William Pepper. Pretty powerful in the Appropriations Committee. Been in office for six terms so far. I have some background tasks running to get more information on him. That will probably take until this evening or tomorrow before I have a good brief.”

  “Do we need to be here in D.C., or go back to Miami?” Lance called the waitress over to top him off and dilute the oversweet coffee.

  “Both of the suspects are here in D.C., plus some of my own support is back in my office and I need to be there to use those old computers.”

  “Do we need to move them?” Taking a sip, Lance seemed pleased with his coffee.

  “Eventually. But I don’t know where I would feel safe if we moved them. So best to leave them here in D.C. until we get our own location with better security.” Frank pushed his coffee away and grabbed his water, the caffeine was starting to make him jittery.

  Frank’s phone rang again, another Texas number. “Hello, Frank Kurns. Hello Tabitha, I appreciate the call back.” Frank went through the same discussion with Tabitha that he had with Ben. He politely said good bye and hung up. “Same information that
Ben gave me earlier. She had the same instructions as the other two.”

  “Bethany Anne hit one too hard when trying to incapacitate them, right?”

  “Yes. I asked her about it and she mentioned the last time she had done that was to a Wechselbalg, so she hadn’t adjusted for the ‘human eggshell,’ her words not mine.”

  Lance snorted. “That sounds like her. I don’t know any other person who can get so righteously angry for a person who has been in the grave for years and then turn around and be the one who puts a person into the grave just seconds later.”

  Frank raised his water to Lance. “Strangely enough, that’s why I follow her, Lance. By the way, did I ever tell you the first time I listened in on her operation and heard her call someone ass-munch on the team radios? God, I thought I was going to die of laughter that night.” Frank was on the cusp of laughing right there in the pancake house. “I think that night was when I started to think I could live a little while longer.”

  “Really? Here, let me tell you a story about when she was in high school and we were at a martial arts tournament…”

  Frank put his water down. “Wait, wait. Let me get my journal out of my bag. I’m collecting stories, hold on.”

  The two men sat another hour while Lance thought of three different stories about his young daughter and told them to Frank. By the time the men finished, both had been laughing for the last thirty minutes. Frank had to fight to contain himself enough to jot down any notes. They left a large tip for the waitress and left the restaurant.

  15

  The Queen Bitch’s Ship Polarus, near Costa Rica

  The clanging of swords had the staccato sound of a string of fireworks going off. There would be a fast set of sounds with moments of silence and then an occasional clang and then the fury would start again.