Both had the frenzied look of people working on too much caffeine and not enough rest. If you had asked either one, they would admit it was the most important project of their life. They had asked for a project budget of two million to test the next stage. Nathan informed them that they had a thirty million dollar budget, to be paid in increments of five million to get the building rented and the infrastructure done.
The CEO expected many assurances they would not bring about the end of civilization by doing this project. But the CEO needed to know if they truly had the beginning of a strong AI in mere weeks. They had expected a couple of years to work on the project.
Cost, they were told, was not a concern.
Both felt like they had been handpicked to help usher in the next stage of human civilization. Now if they could just design a system that would protect the rest of humanity if the new entity was malevolent they were golden.
They called it quits at two in the morning. They needed a few hours of sleep before they met the real estate agent at ten to view possible buildings.
Nathan had explained that the unnamed CEO had asked how they would move the new AI if they were successful? Both had been at a loss for words. Their assumption was wherever they built the infrastructure would be where it was housed.
Nathan told them not a chance. Once it was proven, they should expect a new location to be named and that wherever it was, they would be asked to move to the new location to stay with the project. He had other, even more exciting information to discuss with them soon.
Neither could figure out how you could top the possible existence of a new sentience.
After the call was over and they had both whooped for joy at the challenge and the opportunity to see their project through, they talked about what could possibly be more exciting than a new AI?
Tom mentioned the Tsoukalos meme from Ancient Aliens. “I’m not saying it was aliens, but ALIENS!” Both busted out laughing at that idea then quickly forgot Nathan’s statement as they got wrapped up in the effort to make his challenge a reality.
Jeffrey was notified late that afternoon the company’s account had a wire transfer for five million dollars pending which would clear the account by midnight.
If he had any doubts on how fast Nathan wanted them moving, a wire hitting the same day was a clear indication that they had better push the gas pedal to the floorboard and never hit the brakes.
The Queen Bitch’s Ship Polarus, near Costa Rica
Bethany Anne had spoken with Claudia and her brothers Juan and Scott. They had provided a good group of vampire names she could try to track down and ended up texting the names to Frank. Eventually, she would talk to him.
Ecaterina had spoken with him, however. They had received permission to fly Shelly into San Jose. Since Costa Rica abolished their military in 1948, there wasn’t a base in the capital they could land at. The Juan Santamaria International Airport was too far away from downtown San Jose, and Bethany Anne refused the request from the police for them to land at that location. They finally found a landing spot close to a small hospital that was next to a metro train station near downtown. They would tell reporters it was a mercy mission to get someone to the hospital.
If things didn’t work out well, they might have need of the place.
That evening, Bethany Anne and Gabrielle both suited up in black with their swords and pistols. Bethany Anne had her leather pants on. Killian was on the bird with them, with Ecaterina taking on his responsibilities back on the Polarus. Nathan, Dan, Pete and Todd had stayed behind to help cover any security concerns.
Bobcat had flight duties and John, Eric, Darryl and Scott were suited up in their team suits. Everyone had one pistol loaded with darts that put humans to sleep.
Unlike Michael's interventions in the past, Bethany Anne’s group wasn’t here to just take care of Nosferatu whose makers had been killed, but also any Forsaken they could find.
The San Jose Police had narrowed the search pattern for the Nosferatu to a twelve block area. There had been three missing persons reported a week before. Then another two had been horribly murdered two nights ago. The corpses looked like something had ripped their throats out.
Those who were naturally skeptical blamed it on a wild animal. That was ludicrous, but for some it was a blanket to cover their worries before they became outright fears.
They broke into two teams of three. Bethany Anne, John and Darryl went up the first street, while Gabrielle, Eric and Scott took the next block over. At ten o’clock at night, the stillness in a major city was disturbing. Everyone was scared to be out at night. The rumors had become outrageous enough that some had come close to the truth. The zombie stories were the most frightening to the populace. Bethany Anne’s teams were described to the citizens as a small American special operations force brought in to handle the drug addled citizens who had been taking cocaine mixed with a new drug which had calamitous side effects.
Those that knew the missing argued that they were never into drugs. Between the police telling their story and the neighbors who wanted to believe the police, they got the ‘truth tellers’ to keep quiet.
They were about ten minutes into their patrol when Bethany Anne paused. They were in the middle of a street, trying to make sure nothing could surprise them when she spotted a human female approaching them, five blocks away.
She was rapidly walking towards them but was looking over her shoulder.
She couldn’t be more than twenty-five, but looked closer to twenty and pretty short. The guys were able to see her as she passed under a streetlight. That’s when they heard the screech.
18
Downtown San Jose, Costa Rica
Giannini Oviedo was scared. This evening wasn’t like the previous night. She drove to a different part of town, where the murders had happened. She parked ten blocks away and carefully made her way towards the area where the bodies had been found, their throats ripped out.
She hadn’t made it two blocks when she felt her skin crawl. She looked behind her and swore when she saw two eyes, glowing in the dark and staring at her. The eyes were between her and her car.
She panicked and started walking faster without thinking that each step she took, she was a step farther away from transportation.
After five blocks, she could see a second pair of eyes when she glanced behind her. Unlike the previous night, no cars had been driving on the road. It was like the whole city had shut down and was hiding behind their doors.
Now she understood why. The mace and Taser in her hands were little comfort compared to the fear she felt. One of the stories was that the people were killed by wild animals. She had been told before that you never ran from a wild animal as it would immediately chase you down. She didn’t have long enough legs to even consider trying to outrun an animal.
When she saw the pair of eyes behind her, she calculated the animal was either very tall, or walked on two legs.
Her heart was beating loud enough that someone standing next to her could hear it. If anyone had been willing to come with her that night. Even her best friend Enrique had told her she was crazy and she shouldn’t go. Nothing she said would persuade him to go with her. But she needed the story to move up at the paper, so she grabbed the mace and the Taser and left him to go downtown.
Now, she was sure she was going to die for her desire to get ahead. She started praying the prayers she learned at church as a kid. Hopefully, the ten years between this evening and the last time she darkened the church doors wouldn’t be held against her.
There was a bone-chilling screech behind her, her mind lost it and she started running. When she looked behind her, she saw two figures loping towards her. Both had eyes that seemed to glow a dull red and bloodstains on their jaws and down their necks to shirts that had seen better days. They were easily catching up.
She put everything she had into running and stopped looking behind her, it wasn’t helping and she didn’t want to slam into anything.
That was when she saw the three people a block ahead of her. Two had military weapons and the closest, a female, had pistols in holsters on each side of her chest and sword handles over her shoulders. She angled to run towards them.
She heard the footfalls of the things behind her. They were getting closer. She heard the woman in front of her yell as she turned to look behind her again. Breaking the rule she had just given herself not to look.
Bethany Anne yelled, “Get…”
Giannini Oviedo tripped when she stepped into a small pothole in the road, falling to the ground trying desperately to protect her head.
“Down.” Bethany Anne fired both pistols, three bullets at each of the Nosferatu’s heads. Both stumbled, falling as their ability to think left out the back of their skulls when .45 rounds blew chunks out of their heads. The most they could do as Bethany Anne walked up to them was twitch their limbs. Bethany Anne took out a sword and cut off their heads. Their twitching stopped. John and Darryl kept watch beside and behind them.
She pulled out a small radio device. “BA here, two down.” She put the small radio back on the clip by her waist. She hated the short name, but it was agreed no real names on the radios tonight. Ecaterina had voted to have the guys use the ‘P’ names from the Washington D.C. operation, but John told her it was only good for one op. Bethany Anne replaced her spent ammunition. Her gun with the darts was in a holster on her hip. She was used to drawing the guns from the shoulder holsters so didn’t want to change anything with them.
Darryl knelt down next to the woman who was shaking uncontrollably, the aftereffects of the adrenaline rush her body had subjected her to. He set aside the mace and Taser to make sure she didn’t spray or Tase them as they tried to help her.
Darryl made sure she was ok, talking in a soothing tone. He pulled out a small packet of antibiotic cream and a sterile pad that he used to gently clean her wounds. After a minute, he was able to get her name.
Bethany Anne cocked her head; she heard footfalls. Lots and lots of footfalls coming in their direction. She pulled her radio back out. “Hey G. Get your team over to our location, I think we have company. You read?” She got back an affirmative. They were three blocks over. While Gabrielle could make it easily, she could only go as fast as their slowest runner, which was Scott as Eric was taller and had a longer stride.
She clipped the radio back on. “Guys, we need to get her to safety, fast. Ideas?”
John spied a metal dumpster and pointed, “There?”
She followed his finger. “Works, let’s go.” Darryl picked up the woman in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder and they jogged together the half block. The dumpster had three bags of trash in it. John easily reached down and pulled them out.
“It’s disgusting,” he said, “But it will be better than being with us and the smell might protect her if she doesn’t make a sound.”
Bethany Anne thought about that for a second. “Good point.” She grabbed the pistol at her hip and calmly shot the woman in the ass. The lady over Darryl’s shoulder started to say something, then she was completely out. John reached over and pulled the dart out. He tossed it to Bethany Anne who put it into a small pocket that protected her from the needles. John helped Darryl put the woman into the garbage dumpster and shut the lid.
The guys could hear the Nosferatu at that point. Now, Bethany Anne could see the Nosferatu all racing in their direction, there were eight in this pack. She could hear Gabrielle and her team coming up the side street.
Bethany Anne quipped, “I’m not sure this is going to be reason to even break a sweat.”
John saw the eight Nosferatu and considered what she said. “Yeah, you might be right.” If John had seen eight Nosferatu running down the street late at night just a few months back, he would have soiled his pants.
Gabrielle and the guys joined them and the Nosferatu slowed a bit when the reinforcements came into sight.
Scott whistled. “Well, what the hell are we going to do? That’s only eight. Are you going to leave any of the sticky fuck-balls for us Bethany Anne?” Bethany Anne snorted.
Gabrielle looked back at Scott. Even with her new moves and better body, she didn’t want to try and attack all eight by herself and Scott didn’t seem at all worried.
“Tell you what. If Gabrielle can’t handle them, I’ll let you finish them off, how does that sound?”
Gabrielle turned back to Bethany Anne. “What?” She was looking right at Bethany Anne when the beautiful woman’s face lost her humanity and took on the visage of the destroyer.
Bethany Anne turned back to the Nosferatu and spoke in a deeper, bone chilling voice, “Watch and learn, little vampire girl.” Gabrielle didn’t have a good reply for that before the destruction came.
Bethany Anne’s hands blurred into action, pulling her pistols and shooting four of the Nosferatu twice in the head and two of them once in the head before jamming both pistols back in their holsters and reaching for her blades. The two front Nosferatu didn’t notice that their six compatriots behind them were sprawled on the ground. Bethany Anne started racing ahead to meet them as the two front ones continued running to get to the fresh meat. The left Nosferatu was five feet closer than the other one. That just meant it was the first one to have its head cut off. The second lasted a full half second longer. The two Nosferatu who had suffered just one bullet to their heads had made it as far as standing up before they lost their heads. The final four were twitching and screeching on the ground as Bethany Anne calmly walked over and dispatched each one.
She looked up, eyes still glowing red and fangs extended. She smiled at Gabrielle, “Did you learn anything?”
Gabrielle nodded. She learned how to cut a group of Nosferatu down to size before slicing off their heads and this woman was even more scary fucking dangerous than she had originally thought.
They were able to draw out two more small groups of Nosferatu in the next fifteen blocks. Bethany Anne made Gabrielle work both small groups with two guys backing her up. The closest the Nosferatu got was a small rip in Gabrielle's protective vest before Scott shot it in the head and Gabrielle quickly dispatched it.
Occasionally, they would see a person trying to peek out at the gunshots. After each fight, she radioed Bobcat who would give the street address to the police to take care of the bodies. After their first fight, she made sure to relay where they had dropped off the drugged woman for safety.
They had cleaned out fifteen Nosferatu by the time they got back to the helicopter. It was a good trip back, everyone happy to have been in a fight that went so well.
The second night provided more practice and the third a chance to capture a Forsaken leader.
Giannini slowly woke up in a small hospital room. Both hands were bandaged and there was a lady in a suit reading some clipped together papers sitting in the corner.
“Hello?”
The lady had dark black hair, glasses and was probably in her forties.
“Hello, Señorita Oviedo. How are you feeling?”
“Drowsy, disoriented. Where am I?”
“You are at the clinic near the police headquarters. I am Superintendent Rodriguez of the Costa Rica Police. I am one of the officers in charge of the task force for investigating missing persons and murder cases. Do you feel up to giving me an interview? I apologize for interrupting your rest, but we need to acquire as much information as we can right now. Time is important and don’t be embarrassed, let me know all of your impressions from last night.”
“Sure, sure.” Giannini hit the button to make her bed sit up. She wasn’t feeling bad, and the drowsiness was slowly receding. “Where do you want me to start?”
“How about what time you went downtown and why you were on the road?”
Giannini blew out her breath. “Well, the why is easy enough. I am a reporter for the Tico Times and I want to crack open a story to get my work seen. Being a reporter is a dog eat dog job, and if I can’t break my own story I will be st
uck fact checking other people's work and that is boring me to death. So, I heard about the people disappearing and the murders.” She looked over at Rodriguez. “You will be happy to hear that none of my contacts in the police force would tell me anything.” Rodriguez smiled. “So, two nights ago I went out and while it was creepy, nothing happened. I heard about the murders and decided I would try to find something out last night.”
“You went by yourself?”
“Yes, but not because I didn’t try to get some people to go with me. Even my best friend told me I was crazy in the head but I wanted a story.”
As Giannini warmed up to telling what happened the previous night, she realized she had a story if the Superintendent would let her write it.
She continued, “So, I parked the car and was walking to the area where the murders were supposed to have happened. I probably had only made it two blocks before I heard something behind me. I panicked and started running away from the sound, which was away from my car as well. After a couple of blocks I could see eyes glowing behind me.”
“Glowing?” The Superintendent had been writing down Giannini’s story, but stopped to question her.
“Yes, I could first see one, then two pairs of dark red eyes behind me as I was running. They were humans.”
“Not animals?”
“Certainly not animals.” Giannini noticed the Superintendent didn’t seem surprised to hear this, but rather was making sure that Giannini was certain of what she saw. “I was able to see them in the light. It was two people, and they had bloodstains on their face and their shirts.
“What happened then?”
“As they got closer to me, I saw three people standing out in the middle of the street, two men and a woman. All had guns and were dressed in black. The men had military guns, rifles and the woman had pistols and I think swords.”
“The woman had swords?”
“Oh, certainly. The woman was the closest to me. She started to tell me something but I looked behind me and got my foot caught in a pothole or something and stumbled. There were lots of gunshots and then nothing. I was so terrified. One of the men, a black man, came over and helped me.” She looked down at her hands. “He cleaned up my scraped hands and then the lady said something about more coming. I was freaking out. The black gentleman threw me over his shoulder and then I felt something hit my butt, like they pinched me, and then I woke up here.”
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 79