She was a little pissed that she had been taken so easily. With her eyes on where the shot had come from that had hit Nathan, she never noticed the guy coming up behind her. She wasn’t sure how he had found her under the brush – she’d considered herself well hidden..
She figured that the mythology obviously had truth to it and they could sense more than she could as a human.
It wasn’t as scary as she thought it might be. She had thought that people changing to wolves might be like that Michael Jackson video, painful and scary looking. Since they just seemed to ‘change’, without grotesque bones, stretching and howling, that part was less of a put-off than she would have thought.
That her uncle was a bear was startling. It explained his absence and why she felt safe so often in this area. She had seen his tracks from time to time, but they had never been too close and while she had been careful, there was never any feeling that the large bear had been upset with her being up here.
Her hands were still shaking. She had willed them to stop, that this wasn’t how her family reacted, wasn’t causing them to still. Yeah, she was freaking out but her body was handling the situation in her sub-conscience, while her mind worked to place everything together.
Then, the obvious protection of Nathan when he held her when the woman approached her. His talking to her, with the utmost of respect. This is a woman who Ecaterina wanted to know more about. This woman walked the way, she wasn’t sure which way but it was obvious that whatever path she took, it wasn’t going to be a normal, well-trodden path. It would be a path of excitement, of stories that she would never get a chance to be a part of if she stayed in Brasov.
She wanted to go with this woman. That was her decision. Her hands calmed and she started pulling her gear together. Bethany Anne had said they were going to stay the night to make sure she was OK. Playing the weak woman card wouldn’t get her any points, and frankly it wasn’t who Ecaterina was. Well, unless she was using it as bait.
She heard her uncle coming up behind her, she got out of the tent and started striking it.
She looked up to her uncle as she pulled a stake and saw the concern plainly written on his face. Dropping the stake, she walked to him while opening her arms. She could see he was trying not to scare her, to give her space.
That wasn’t flying with her, this was her uncle, who had protected her, taken bullets for her, the guardian on the mountain. She wrapped him in her biggest, most loving hug, resting her head on his chest as he wrapped his arms around her. Staying like that for a couple of minutes.
She stepped apart and looked him in the eyes, “Thank you, Uncle. I care not what you are, I only know I care who you are in here.” She touched his shirt where his heart would be.
“Ecaterina, my favorite niece.” His eyes shone brightly, a feeling of relief that she gave him her love so willingly. “I’m sorry you were a part of this. If I had known anything would happen, I would have been up here last night. I am ashamed I didn’t know about the pack.” He looked around her space, noting that she had traps, some already dismantled, around where she slept.
He sighed, “However, I have to give you some information if you are going to survive the coming discussions. This woman, you know she is what we call a vampire. There are no good vampires, at least not that I know. The best, if you will, will leave you alone if you abide by their rules, but they don’t suffer much and the most powerful one will kill you as soon as look at you if you don’t respect him. Please, can you hold that quick spirited tongue of yours?” His eyes entreated her to answer the question with a ‘yes’.
“I do not have a spirited tongue! This is just a tale Mama tells to make me more subservient so men will like me more.” Her uncle raised his an eyebrow as if she had just made his point.
Maybe she was a bit quick, she reasoned. Even Ivan would occasionally suggest she not be so argumentative. “OK, maybe I am a little quick, but that is only with family.”
Her uncle raised his other eyebrow.
She slumped a little. Who was she kidding? She loved a good verbal fight. She hadn’t felt scared around this woman, so it wasn’t like she felt a need to be meek.
“Why is this so important, Uncle? What is she that would even have you, as big as you can be, doing her bidding?” She crossed her arms, waiting for an answer.
Alexi looked around and realized that Ecaterina had been packing. She obviously didn’t want to wait through the night. Knowing he was going back to Brasov, where he hadn’t been for a while, he was actually ready to go himself. He started helping her disable the rest of the traps. If you weren’t going to be checking the traps, you wouldn’t leave them to hurt anything that might pass by. It wasn’t what a good hunter and trapper would do, so no one in his family would do it.
Ecaterina finally joined him.
“These vampires, the strongest ones, the powerful ones, they are not like the stories. The weaker ones, yes, they are. However, there are two groups. One good and one bad, yes?” He looked over to make sure Ecaterina was listening. That wasn’t a problem, Ecaterina knew how to strike camp in her sleep. She was listening.
“None are fun to mess with. The good ones can be OK to deal with, but very touchy about their honor. The head of that family is named Michael. He is the one who created a list of rules when he found out about us, the Wechselbalg. Most people, if they know anything about us, think of us as werewolves and werebears and other things. Pretty much we all talk that way, but it isn’t what we are.”
He finished dismembering his traps and placed the parts by the tree, so Ecaterina could put the pieces where she could find them again. If she ever made it back up to this mountain again.
“This happened centuries ago. It is what was told to me. Michael found the heads of the Wechselbalg and told them that they had to find better ways to hide themselves. There were too many stories of men who became wolves and preyed on people, and vampires. It is the time his own children were causing havoc as well. He let it be known that if you let humans know what you were, that you had to take care of the problem. If that meant the human had to die, then you had to take care of it. He was busy for a while with two of his children that disappeared leaving too many young vampires, almost nosferatu, he had to track down and dispatch dozens and those two children were not seen again. It was difficult in those days to find anybody, if they didn’t want to be found. I can tell you, those two children did not want Michael to find them.”
Ecaterina stopped filling her backpack, “Why is he considered the good side, if everyone is afraid of him and he killed so many that even his own children fled?”
“The stories are that they felt they should be able to become the dominant species, rulers setup for all to give fealty to. Michael didn’t agree. Those children he had left and all of their children have been in a struggle to contain the forsaken ever since. Now, it is probably too late for the forsaken to overtake any world power with the weapons and technology they have. At least, I would think so.”
“What about this one, this Bethany Anne?”
Alexi had a faraway look, then focused on Ecaterina. “Katia, you need to be careful with this one. She is powerful. I know from Nathan that she is a new vampire, and she was chosen by Michael to become one of the family, but she is something different. She doesn’t show the respect to Michael every other vampire has. Something strange is going on here and I don’t know the answer. She isn’t the same as any of the others I’ve heard stories about. She is able to take the sunlight, and only two others can do that. She is dangerous, like all vampires, but even so, I don’t know what to think about someone so new, yet walking into a fight and ending it so quickly.”
“Is she more powerful than the others? The other children?”
“I can’t answer that. I don’t know, and I have no idea what she wants yet. According to Nathan, he was sent here to find her and Michael. Now that he has found her, I think he just wants to lose her again.”
“So he can go hom
e? Back to America?” Ecaterina glanced over to where Nathan’s tent was.
Alexi, following her gaze, answered as casually as he could. “Maybe, maybe not. I think he has found a new thing he wants to learn more about. I don’t believe he is going to be given much of a choice as to whether he can go back by himself – from either the vampire, or this other interest he has.” Alexi had to look down toward the lake to keep Ecaterina from seeing his smile.
He heard a soft mumble, barely audible to even his enhanced hearing. “I wonder what he is so interested in?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Carpathian Mountains, Romania
Bethany Anne was coming up on the clearing when she heard Nathan yell that he was going to the lake. She wanted to talk with him anyway, so she angled away and was waiting for Nathan when he arrived at the shore.
She wasn’t hiding from him, and he easily knew she was there when he came out of the trees on the small animal path. He spoke easily to her, his voice a fine mellow sound.
“Hello, again.” Nathan took off his shirt and went to the cool, clear water and used it as a rag to clean his upper body.
Bethany Anne noticed he was ripped. His clothes did a good job hiding the muscles, but he had a chest to die for, well, if she could. Maybe Ecaterina would appreciate it? She knew that there was a connection between them. It was obvious by the fire and Bethany Anne, who could appreciate a side of beefcake if it was going to wash right in front of her, didn’t have the time or inclination to get involved romantically with everything else going on.
She could just about sneeze on the amount of pheromones he was throwing off. He had it bad.
After washing a little, he turned towards Bethany Anne who had just sat there. “I want to thank you for helping earlier. If you hadn’t gotten involved, that group would have most likely taken Alexi and me out, and Ecaterina would probably have been hurt before she was killed. They wouldn’t have wanted any witnesses and Ecaterina isn’t the type to just lay there and take it.”
“You’re welcome, but I wouldn’t have killed Algerian if he hadn’t disobeyed my order to stop and change. I wasn’t protecting you, I was punishing disobedience. I suppose that worked out for you, in the end. I killed the sniper as the most expedient action and I was a little unfocused. I noticed the first wolf trying to get around Alexi and attack the girl. I would not allow that to happen. The wolf I killed by you had attacked me, it wasn’t personal and I needed the…” she didn’t want to admit energy, since she didn’t know if anyone understood how her capabilities worked, so she finished her sentence, “…sustenance.”
Her voice had a slightly hard edge to it, which became more telling the more she seemed to think about Algerian’s actions.
“So, Mr. Lowell, were you sent her to search for Michael, and if so, by whom?”
Well, Nathan thought, here goes the pivot point. He put on his extra shirt and leaned up against another rock about ten feet from Bethany Anne.
“I was asked, as a favor, to see if I could find you and Michael by a man with the name of Frank Kurns. He is the Government representative that connects to the UnknownWorld groups. My company came under attack by, we thought, the Chinese, only to find out it was another group. Still not sure if it is vamps or Weres. He needed someone he could trust and was able to solve a problem for me that put me into his immediate debt. My coming over here was to wipe the slate clean.”
Bethany Anne stood up, wanting to think on her feet and started pacing up and down the bank of the lake. Ten steps forward, ten steps back and repeat.
“What are you and Alexi, exactly?”
A little caught off-guard, as he had assumed Bethany Anne knew about them, “Most call us Weres.”
She stopped, looked him in the eyes and raised an eyebrow. “Nathan, you don’t go through any type of mutation from one to the other that I could tell. One second you’re one thing, the next you’re something else. I have a general understanding how to make a vampire, but I’m completely clueless when it comes to, well, to you Weres.” She continued her pacing.
Nathan watched her for a minute, then scratched at his chin. “Well, we have another name, called Wechselbalg in German. It means ‘changeling’. Don’t know if that helps or not. We have the whole conservation of mass issues with the different sizes. I’m not much for waving a wand over the whole thing and saying ‘magic’, but I’ve done as much research as possible and haven’t figured anything out. You say you know how vampires are made?”
He was just trying to keep the conversation going. He was certainly not trying to get the inside information on vamps and how to make, and potentially unmake, them.
Bethany Anne didn’t rise to the bait. “Yes, yes I do. No, I won’t be sharing that with you right now. Not knowing how you change is going to be an itch I need to scratch until I figure it out. Not to be very personal with you, but how old are you?” She stopped pacing and looked at him again, her eyes seemed suddenly very serious, very watchful.
God, he thought, I hate vampires. “I’m a little over eighty-four.” Next she was going to be asking him about robbing the cradle.
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re a very energetic eighty-four, Mr. Lowell.”
Nathan couldn’t figure out why she changed back and forth from his first name to his last name. It was off-putting. Maybe that was the whole reason, keep him on his toes. Well, since she wasn’t trying to drain him of blood, it was going to take a lot more than just changing which name she was using to cause him to become flustered.
“Yeah, Wechselbalg are pretty long-lived. Depending on how much time we stay as our animal, we can live between a late normal human to almost 240 years, occasionally, more.
It was his turn, he figured. “Since you seemed to be a little upset with Michael, I surmise that you haven’t seen him lately, or that you have seen too much of him?”
She continued her pacing. “Yeah, are you talking about my comment on cleaning up his bullshit?”
Nathan didn’t want to correct her, but that was the gist of the answer.
“No, I don’t know where he is. So, from that standpoint Frank might know more about it than me. He left about six or seven months ago and I haven’t seen him since. Why does Frank want you to find him so bad?”
“Well, Frank has his personal plane with Carl, you know Carl?” She nodded that she did, “well, the plane disappeared over the English Channel, no bodies found, no wreckage. Frank works with Carl to get things cleaned up, certain things, that Michael’s family is better equipped to engage and it isn’t happening without a contact. Carl was the contact and the family isn’t moving much without the threat of Michael hanging over their head. So, he has lost a fair amount of people trying to keep a lid on the… problems.”
“Are we talking monsters, Mr. Lowell? Are these the problems Michael’s family took care of that even the Black Op combat groups are cautious with?”
“Yes, probably.”
“OK, and you, Mr. Lowell? Tell me about Nathan Lowell, how are you someone that Frank Kurns feels comfortable talking with? No need to be humble, I would like the real dirt.”
Oh, fuckity-fuck. Life just took the left turn into gibbering concern. He didn’t want to tell this lady anything more about himself. He wanted to go home. OK, maybe after a few more days with Ecaterina he would want to go home. Probably… perhaps.
Maybe the two of them could sneak out together? Nathan snorted, like he had Alexi fooled.
Nathan went ahead and told her everything that was probably relevant to the situation. He glossed over his different companies and explained that his main company was a security agency for digital communications, hoping she didn’t clue in too much what that actually was. He wasn’t going to bet he pulled one over on her, but he could claim he mentioned it.
“So, you are the second to the main alpha of all packs in the US? Correct? Good. I can work with that.”
Damn, translate that to, “I can work with you,” or one better, “You
will work for me, slave!” Nathan sighed.
“Don’t look so down, Mr. Lowell! Carl told me about Frank, so I know he can be trusted and ergo, I’m piggy-backing Frank’s credentials on to you. I need a contact to help me get into the game and you’re it. Just consider that Frank’s payback is going to take longer.”
Nathan felt like he had just won the nomination to be the first runner sent on a suicide mission. “How long might this go on? I do have those aforementioned businesses to run.”
“Well, until we find Carl alive, or I can replace you. Your concerns on your business are duly noted and we will look into that situation. I need your focus to be on helping me sort this fuster-cluck out.”
“You do know that the vampires really aren’t going to want to talk with me, right? Vampires don’t have a good opinion of Weres. Well, anyone really so I guess I can’t make that a hate crime particular to Weres at all.”
Death Becomes Her Page 20