“So long as they don’t act like they will physically harm me or my team then we are good. If they have the strong and stupid types they might want to leave them at home.”
“What kind of team is this? Do you have additional vampires? I understand from Ecaterina that Ivan is working with Stephen?”
Damn, she should have mentioned to Ecaterina that she didn’t want everything shared with Nathan. It wasn’t she didn’t trust Nathan, but she didn’t want to share all of her actions with Gerry and Gerry’s contacts. Like Frank. “No, it’s my team that works with Frank.”
“So they already know of the UnknownWorld. Ok. I hope they don’t get intimidated easily.”
“Shit Nathan, my team took out two Forsaken last night and a bunch of terrorists today. I don’t think they are going to flinch by a few mouthy meatheads with a bad attitude. One second.” She covered the phone with her hand. It wasn’t that she was going to stop Nathan from hearing anything but it gave the illusion of privacy. “Hey, Darryl. Are you and Scott available for a few minutes to talk with Bobcat? He’s the pilot, Bill. Yeah, a nickname. Let him ask you anything he wants and answer it all honestly or decline to answer it at all. Nothing is off the plate for me. Yeah, even that. I don’t care, your choice if you want to offer it up. I need you to vet him for the team’s primary pilot. Yup, I’m hiring or buying his company so make sure you boys can play together in the sand, thanks.”
She came back on the phone. “Sorry about that, needed to get some more meetings going while we talked. So, setup the meeting with the banking company for us to go over there and with the hotheads too. I’ll have four additionally with me. They will all be armed with silver frangibles.”
“Bethany Anne, we both know you don’t need support. There isn’t a Were out there that can take you.”
“It isn’t about fear, it’s about perception Nathan. I don’t want to scare them; I want them to want to join me. I won’t ignore them as I’m going to co-opt them.”
Nathan was speechless. This, he hadn’t figured on. No vampire had officially worked with Werewolves or any of the Wechselbalg in anything other than a very superior position and it sounded like Bethany Anne had different plans. She was bringing humans and calling them team members. Certainly she would do no less for Werewolves. Just what the fuck had Michael gotten them all into? He thought, not for the first time, that Michael was either a genius or a madman. Unlike the last time, he was smart enough to not say that out loud over the phone. While she couldn’t scare the crap out of him like she did last time, he knew she would remember it.
He did some political calculations, except for a couple of people on the council who figured that it was time to ‘rise above it all and proclaim themselves superior’, this might work. He needed to talk with Gerry. He was the main one that this could seriously threaten.
“Ok, send me anything special you want and I’ll get with Gerry on this. Anything special Gerry should know?”
Bethany Anne considered this question. “No. Tell him nothing changes with the council setup. I’m just going to have a new organization that needs men and women who don’t know how to take any shit from anyone that isn’t on my team. The council will still stay in place for everyone else. That should get most of those that need an outlet for their more aggressive tendencies.”
“Ok, I’ll let him know.”
“Great, my team and I will be up there tomorrow. Make sure you take care of Ecaterina as I am going to pick her up and come back to Florida after the meeting.”
“Will do, see you tomorrow.”
They both said goodbye and hung-up. He got on his laptop and went to sign in to the main database that showed where he had real estate in the Miami area. If he didn’t already own any, he was going online house hunting. If the girl of your dreams had to live where you lived, then it seemed prudent to be able to visit her. He might like Bethany Anne and he was sure he could visit her home anytime. He just didn’t want to stay there and have her super-hearing listening in all of the time.
Miami, FL USA
Bethany Anne went out to the van where Dan and John were still together talking. They both turned to her as she came up. John asked her, pointing with his head over to the hanger. “What are the guys doing?”
“I’m having them talk with Bobcat, our pilot, vetting him. I still need you to do that if you have a minute after Dan?”
Dan answered her, “No, we are finished. Nice piece of work. I have a team picking up that van you left over in South Miami. Don’t want that left behind. Other than that there wasn’t much left for the FBI and the memories of what you did to the team guarding the hostages wasn’t seen very clearly at all. The only person I think got a good view was a mom that was watching her son as he was about to get beaten by that one terrorist. The one who lost his head?”
Bethany Anne nodded affirmatively, “Yup. He was about to slam his gun butt into the little kid. Fortunately, he was closest when I exited the stairs.”
“Well, the stories coming from the hostages are that there were at least two members on each side. One for each group of three terrorists.”
“Are they still claiming that it was terrorists?”
“The news isn’t changing the story, so easier to call them that at the moment.”
John interjected, “You guys need me? I’m going to talk with Bill and get this going. I’d be happy to have access to a Black Hawk and pilot all the time.”
Both just said no and he took off over to the hanger to join the rest of the team talking with Bobcat in the office.
“So, you were talking about the mom?”
Dan continued, “Yes. She saw you because she was already looking at that guy when you showed up and backhanded his head off of his shoulders?”
“Pretty much.”
“Ok, well she isn’t talking. She has her son and she just wants to forget the whole experience. She has clammed up so tight you would think someone threatened her.”
“Hey, it wasn’t me! I didn’t stop to talk with anyone. We had three minutes to get the op finished so there was no lolly-gagging on our side. “
Dan snorted. “It took you guys maybe, maybe, one minute to take everyone down. Now I’m finding out from Eric and John separately that John seems to have excelled in the past 24 hours? Not to mention that he came back to me in perfect health with a massive knife wound and blood all over him last night? Want to talk about that as I think about your earlier offer?”
Bethany Anne considered the situation. She wanted Dan on board, but she really didn’t want this info leaked out. “Yes, I’ll share but it will be on your honor that it never goes further than you without my permission. That includes Frank as well, do you understand?” As she watched Dan consider her ultimatum, she realized that she just used that damn phrase ‘on your honor’ that had started everything back with her Dad at his base. She really hoped she wasn’t turning into Michael.
“Agreed.”
“Ok, take a walk with me.” They started across the tarmac and she didn’t say anything for the first hundred yards. “How much do you know about how a vampire is transformed?”
“Not much. Bill didn’t explain the situation except to say it’s painful as hell and it’s not easy to accomplish. The problem is that if you can’t survive the transformation, you turn into a Nosferatu and you’re little more than a hungry pile of vampire flesh that doesn’t have much intelligence. Cunning, yes. But not intelligent.”
“True enough I suppose, but the problem is that the way Michael and his children create vampires isn’t the correct method. I won’t go into the how and why of it right now. However; I can tell you the first stage in the transformation is to correct the problems with the body at a cellular level. Nothing moves forward until that happens.”
She waited to see if Dan could put it together.
“So, you’re saying that you had to give John your blood last night? Is that why you raided the blood stores last night before you left so fast to help them?”
“Not really. I needed the blood myself. My body uses it as a type of energy. However; when I got to the guys they had taken out two forsaken and John was bleeding horribly with his own knife stuck through his kevlar jacket and a blood sucking wound in his lungs. I asked him if he would trust me. We had no time. He agreed and I slit my wrist to feed him the healing properties in it. While I did this, Eric pulled the jacket and shirts out of the way.
When John couldn’t drink any more he feinted, I dropped blood on and into his wound in his chest. I pretty much collapsed after that. Both of us were down for a while and hadn’t gotten up much earlier than when the helicopter picked us up. By the time you saw John, the healing was mostly finished. He didn’t have enough blood to go past this first stage of healing. So, worrying about him changing into a vampire is just wasted energy. He can’t do it.”
“What about his new skills?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you about that. I think it is just the first stage correcting some of John’s natural genetic mistakes in his DNA increasing things. If he hasn’t told you, all of his scars are gone now and a problem he had with his calf is healed as well.”
They stopped a couple of hundred yards away. Both looking towards the distance lost in thought.
Dan looked back at her. “That’s why you don’t want people to know. You are literally the fountain of youth here in Florida.”
She smiled a little, “Yeah, Ponce De Leon was a little early to find me.”
“Yeah, well, that was a fabricated story anyway. I appreciate you trusting me with this knowledge. I got your back, Bethany Anne. The fact that you would do that for John and you didn’t know him for even 24 hours means a lot to me.”
“Dan, they were my team. You don’t leave your team behind and letting them die when you can do something about it is, de facto, leaving them behind.”
Dan made his decision. He held out his hand and Bethany Anne took it, confused.
“Bethany Anne, I am officially asking you to allow me to join your merry band of military miscreants as we fuck up these Forsaken and anyone else who needs an ass kicking across this world.”
She smiled a hugely radiant smile and added, “And beyond the world Dan? Any limitations?”
Little did Dan know what he was agreeing to, “No ma’am. Whether they be here or anywhere out there we can reach, they will be dealt with.”
She shook his hand and he couldn’t believe this beautiful woman with a smile to sail a million ships was as dangerous as she was. Dan finished the hand shake and they started back to the hanger. It felt to Dan Bosse like he had just turned a major chapter in his life. He would always remember his life as ‘pre-shake and post-shake’.
He never did regret that hand shake, but he often questioned his sanity at the time.
They called Frank together to pitch him on the idea and what was necessary to make it happen. Frank was starting to consider asking Bethany Anne to see if she knew how to give him a few years more. This was becoming fun all over again and he didn’t have anyone to give it to, anyway. Now that she was batting for the other team. He consoled himself that he had been right and she would have made a perfect replacement for him.
Now, he had some arms to twist, favors to use and suggestions to make. Life just went past interesting to fascinating.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Miami, FL USA
Bethany Anne left Dan at the van and decided to check in on the status of her team and her possible new team member. She stopped and took a look at the Black Hawk. When you looked at it up close, it had its dings and dents of course and paint peeling in certain places. But there weren’t any large oil leaks on the ground or around anywhere she could see. She wasn’t a mechanic, so she didn’t know what she was looking for exactly but she figured she would be able to tell if it was a rat trap. She wished she had thought about that at the time they jumped on, but needs must and she got real lucky.
She didn’t want to trust luck again. Plus, she hired a pilot, not a mechanic. She needed a mechanic on her team and as far as she knew, the team didn’t have anything like that. She wondered where the best place to store all of her teams toys was going to be?
She knew that flying around in a military helicopter needed to be either over the top, or rather infrequently. Since she expected to be running and gunning, over the top was the only choice.
Considering these issues, she walked over to the door and knocked on it. Eric opened the door and peaked out, seeing her he opened it all the way and had a grin on her face. She smelled the alcohol before she saw the bottles the guys were trying to hide from whoever was at the door. She rolled her eyes.
She didn’t want any, but she didn’t care if they had any. Since all five of them were acting like busted little teenagers, she figured they were bonding just fine.
“Do I have to separate you guys from Bobcat? Is he already a bad influence on you guys?”
John pulled his Shiner Bach out from behind him. “Only if you allow us to keep his case of Shiner?” He grinned unrepentantly. They all joined him and pulled their beers out from their hiding places. Obviously Bobcat had the best hiding place down under the desk since he was sitting in his own desk chair. The guys were all over the room standing and sitting as they wanted to.
“You would have to take that up with him. I suppose this is the ritual drinking of new found friendship and team bonding?”
“We’re all good if you are good. Uh, just one clarification?”
“Whats that?”
“He’s not sure he believes us on your, um…”
Bobcat took over, “Oh geez, John. Grow a pair.” He turned to Bethany Anne. “Are you really a vampire?” He didn’t look concerned at the question, but needed confirmation.
She smiled and willed her eyes to glow red and her fangs to grow. Bobcat looked a little shocked at the reality. It was one thing to be talking about the pretty intense team leader; it was a different situation to see what she looked like when she went all vampire on them. It took everything Bobcat had to not try to crawl into his right hand drawer.
She let her eyes fall back to normal and her fangs to retract. She had hated the idea of doing that back in Switzerland, but realized it really was the easiest way to make a point. Apparently, it affected the person looking at her at a fundamental level that really got the fight or flight reaction. Always flight.
Bobcat took his cue from the guys around him. They didn’t get ready to fight for their lives so he was able to pull his shit together. He didn’t think these guys would steer him wrong.
He looked over at the guys, but talked to John. “Sorry about not believing you.”
John just laughed and put his hand out to shake, “Welcome to the team, Bobcat. If you handle when our leader vamps out like that and not pee in your pants, I think you’re able to cut it. You got my vote.”
Bobcat leaned forward and shook his hand and looked over at the woman with the smile on her face. “Anything I need to do?”
“Well, I don’t have an HR office if that’s what you mean and I don’t seal it with a bite, either.” She smiled and the guys took it as an opportunity to laugh off a little adrenaline they felt from a moment ago.
“So, you’re now my lead of all things having to do with transportation on the ground and in the air. I need to get the six of us up to New York the day after tomorrow. I don’t care how we get there, but I want it fast and safe. Also, do you have a mechanic?”
Bobcat shook his head. “Not full time. Most of the basic engine work I do myself. I’ve got a chief engineer friend that is between rotations that helps me from time to time. “
“Is he good enough to retrofit the bird out there?”
“Like an engine overhaul? She shouldn’t need that for another 500 hours.”
“No, I mean brand new engines. I want whatever is the latest available for the bird. While you’re at it, see what the difference is for a new bird. I don’t want to be a penny wise and a
pound foolish.”
“A new bird is probably north of $30 million.”
“And new engines?”
“Not even close.”
“Well, check into it. I suspect we will use you for drop off and pickup and perhaps supply runs. No telling how bad it could get. Also, see what the latest coatings are for the bird. See if there is anything that we can get that wouldn’t be obviously Military. We can’t hide her during the day so maybe we can put a face on her that hides her in plain site.”
“What, something like a changing paint?”
“Well, sure if that is possible, however; I was thinking of something like a dark red that doesn’t scream military during the day but is still hard to see at night. Plus anything radar absorbing to mix with it if possible.”
“That’s going to get us all up in the government’s ass, you know.”
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