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) Read online

  The only reason Martin knew them was because of the red soles.

  He counted silently in his head, expecting to hit thirty before her next question. He got to seventeen.

  “If you didn’t tell the General, and I’m still on the team,” it was evident this paper she was tapping on her shoes was proper orders and she was still gainfully employed, “why the hell am I being sent out to the middle of the country?”

  “That,” Martin stated, “is the question of the morning.”

  2

  Military Base, Colorado Mountains

  “Sir, everything is good. The air inside the vault is now fresh enough and the only issues with the envelope are nothing, really. The vault must have been hermetically sealed and basically a perfect preservative. Everything in there was exactly how it was when it was sealed.” The scientist, one Dr. John Evenich, rattled off the whole thing as if he was giving a lecture.

  The General, and his Sergeant and a number of techs were all down on Level Five.

  The General looked down at the smaller man and chewed an unlit cigar while thinking this through.

  “And exactly when, John, did that happen?” The General looked up and saw two more scientists going through the room. There wasn’t much to see. It was approximately ten feet wide and fifteen long, with a conference style table in the middle and four chairs. Three at one end, each on a side and the fourth on the far end as if it was the head of the table. There was a knife on a stand in the center with a phrase engraved on the hilt. No one touched it. Lance couldn’t be sure what it said as it seemed to be in a different language, but he had a good guess what it probably meant.

  Dr. Evenich looked at his paperwork, “Um, August 24th, 1945.”

  “So, about two weeks after they dropped the atomic bombs?” General Reynolds continued chewing on his cigar.

  “Yes.” Dr. Evenich was feeling a little less excited under the constant scrutiny of the base commander. While not officially his superior—different chain of command—the scientists were here on his continued good pleasure, shorthand for don’t piss him off.

  “Well, give me the envelope. I’m going up to my office, it’s too hot down here.” With that, he gestured to have the envelope pulled off of the door.

  Dr. Evenich’s eyes grew wide, “But General, the significance! We can’t just grab it and go. We need to see what is on it, test particulars. It will be scientifically ruined by our hands just touching it!”

  General Reynolds’ head swiveled to stare at the doctor, still telegraphing his demand for the envelope.

  “Dr. Evenich, this says ‘To the Base Commander, On his honor’, and trust me, when someone says that from 1945, they were NEVER thinking about scientists looking at it for clues. I believe this is important. This isn’t a democracy and I’m done discussing the subject. Sergeant, step to and get me that envelope. Men come out of that room. Leave one guard here to make sure no more intrusions happen. Get those men out and no one, and I mean NO ONE, touch that knife until I say it’s OK. Am I clear?”

  A heady chorus of ‘Yes Sirs!’ was called out.

  “John?” The General very pointedly eyed Dr. Evenich and waited until the envelope was brought to him.

  Dr. John Evenich, seeing his most prized historical object taken away to be pawed by apes after he and others had worked eight months on the base, just shook his head.

  Maybe it would be OK to shine a light in there and get some pictures? Dr. Evenich walked off and started calling instructions to his people.

  New York City, New York

  Carl waited until Michael, the patriarch of the family, came out of his personal suite inside the massive home. Michael was dressed in a very well fitting three-piece suit of dark blue with light gray pinstriping, white shirt and silver cufflinks. Michael looked a young and robust fifty, but Carl knew he was way older physically. He just wasn’t sure how old. There was barely any gray in his black hair.

  It had taken about two hours for Michael to appear from his inner sanctum once Carl had requested his presence. Unlike a normal sleeper, it took a lot to get through Michael’s torpor when he was actively hibernating.

  While he was externally calm and collected, one only had to look into Michael’s piercing blue eyes to realize the anger that boiled within.

  He walked past Carl who bowed and followed him out of the residence of the converted building and into the business and operations area. Carl noticed that he was just as well built and muscular as he remembered him being five years ago when he went into hibernation.

  It was as if he hadn’t aged a day.

  Michael had been expecting to be awakened in five more years. He had checked the date on awakening and this was too early. He immediately released his senses to first confirm the residence was safe, and then checked on his connection to his grandchild here in America.

  When he couldn’t feel William, he knew the reason for being awoken. Now he wanted answers.

  Carl spoke up, “Sir, I’ve edited a video clip of the operation. It’s ready for you to view.”

  Michael sat down at his desk and woke up his laptop. It was a five-year-old model, since Michael had no ability to keep up with the operating system changes between times of sleep and wakefulness, so he kept the old operating system until he was accustomed to using the laptop for a few days. At least it wasn’t as bad as last time when he had to come to grips with the Internet, he thought.

  He hit the play button on the machine and watched the fifteen minutes of relevant material on how his grandchild had died.

  By the end he had some ideas about what might have happened. Not that he could figure out how they were able to retrieve the serum, or knew what to do with it. Both of those questions needed answering.

  However, it did indicate one vital concern. He couldn’t just find a good candidate and train them, or have one of his children’s children take William’s place as he had done for a long time.

  No, this time, he needed someone fully trained within the military here in the U.S.. Also, rejuvenation was a consideration if he was going to be involved in this campaign.

  He would have to request a pre-trained candidate. He had to call on the debt owed his family.

  “Carl, did you start the request through the Primary Contact?”

  “Yes sir. Frank is still with us, so he’s taking care of a lot at that end.”

  “Good, confirm my request officially with Frank. I want to know what they’re going to send us before I go to the vault. I want to know what three candidates are waiting for me.”

  Here we go, thought Carl.

  “Sir, we have a preliminary report from Frank. I’m sorry, but since the last time we implemented the request for Debt of Honor, the military has been getting very good at filtering out potentially unhealthy recruits. The military doesn’t want to invest in training to find out that investment will die soon.”

  Carl thought about the requirements for candidates. As he understood them they were pretty simple. The candidates had to be trained and top 25% in martial skills, very bright intellectually, live with purpose and (strangely enough for a vampire) very religious. Finally, while the religion tended to cut their options, the last one very nearly did them in.

  They had to be going to die in the next six months.

  Washington, D.C.

  Frank was notified that Michael was awake, and the debt was being called in.

  Frank sighed. It wasn’t that the request was unexpected. In fact, since Bill was killed, Frank could have won a major bet that this time the requirements were going to be very strict. The last time this occurred was before any of the military or spooks had tied their first bootie or put on their first baby shoe.

  This was going to ruffle a few feathers. God help them all if someone didn’t step up.

  Frank was old enough, and he had been around when Michael’s Debt of Honor was demanded. Some of the military people on the base made it through alive that night because one, just one of those guys,
had the honor Michael demanded.

  Unfortunately, it took two hundred and fifty deaths before anyone figured out Michael was not joking about the honor that was due his family.

  More than a few heads rolled that night.

  Military Base, Colorado Mountains

  Up in his office, the General was alone with Patricia and the Sergeant.

  “Kevin, give me some privacy but stay close. Patricia, hold my calls.”

  Sergeant Kevin McCoullagh waited for Patricia to step through the door and then shut it, staying outside the door at parade rest.

  Patricia went to her phone bank and set up routing for all calls to the General to come to her station.

  Inside the office, Lance sat down behind his desk and just looked at the envelope for a second. Well, nothing would get accomplished if he just stared at the outside of the envelope.

  He opened his left topmost drawer and pulled out a metal letter opener, this one with a bald eagle on the handle with the feet grabbing the blade. It was a relic as old as he was.

  Sliding the blade up through the crease, it did feel like it was a fresh envelope. He opened the letter and started reading.

  August 24, 1945

  Attn: Current Base Commander

  If you are reading this document, then you are in trying times. If you are not aware of any at this time, I feel confident this is due to ignorance.

  Be aware you will receive a call both explaining this vault, and your responsibilities on your honor (there was that phrase again) to support the request of Agent Smith (no, I don’t know his real name, nor does anyone else.)

  Be aware that this situation is extremely sensitive, and most information about it was very close to the vest. In fact, most people won’t believe you in any case.

  Lance stopped reading, reached over to his phone and punched a button, “Patricia!”

  “Yes, General?”

  “Call down to Five and tell John and his henchmen that they are kicked out. If he gives you any lip, tell Kevin to go down with a few guys and bring them up.” With that, he punched off the call and went back to reading.

  “Without giving further information than is my right, I will say on my honor that without the help and support of Agent Smith and his family we might have failed to catch the actual danger coming from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and selected different cities. There were three agents, not Americans, who went into the cities and brought us proof that Japan was creating mutated soldiers and was getting ready to deploy these troops in the war.

  In order for there to be no doubt that the base, the soldiers, and the scientists were still inside, these three agents stayed close to the base to verify personally nothing left those bases before the strike occurred.

  They were there when the bombs were dropped.

  We owe them so much. We returned so little.

  When this vault opens, a request against our debt, our honorable debt, is being made.

  On my honor this day I plead with you to honor our debt.”

  Lance read it a second time. Family helped us? Lance thought that strange. Maybe they were from Japan?

  He slid the letter back in the envelope and was lost deep in thought for a few minutes.

  His phone starting to ring pulled him out of his thoughts. He yelled at the door, “Patricia, I said hold ALL calls!” Damn, she was getting a little out of bounds not listening to orders. That needed to stop.

  The phone switched over to conference call mode without Lance touching it.

  “General,” said a deep, gravelly voice, “I assure you, Patricia took all the right steps. It took me an extra thirty seconds to bypass her main control panel to contact you directly.”

  “And you are?” asked the General, staring at the phone as if he was deciding whether to shoot it or just beat it senseless. No need to be too up-this-guy’s-ass until he knew who to give the verbal enema to.

  “The man who is going to tell you about the past, the future, and the vault.”

  New York City, New York

  Michael looked up at Carl standing across his desk. “Carl, are you telling me that throughout all of the military, there is, and I quote ‘only one’ candidate that will fulfill the Debt of Honor?” His blue eyes were piercing.

  Michael was very, very touchy about Honor. With him, it should always be capitalized.

  “Unfortunately, yes sir.”

  Pursing his lips, Michael asked the follow-up question, “And this candidate is a woman?”

  Not knowing where Michael was going with this—he never seemed sexist to Carl—he simply agreed, “Yes.”

  Michael became quiet and reflective for a moment.

  Michael could hear Carl’s thoughts, and he was right. Michael wasn’t sexist in the least. However, Michael, with all of his children over the years, had never had a direct daughter.

  He had a granddaughter in Europe by the name of Gabrielle, but he had never met her. She was one of his son Stephen’s children. That child had never tried creating a daughter ever again.

  Not that he ever heard negative things about her activities; she always produced results. Michael just got the impression the results came with a little extra baggage for the effort.

  While that was one consideration, a more significant concern was how often female conversions failed. So far, they only had two successful turns in eight centuries—Gabrielle and one other in Asia. He called that granddaughter Sunshine because her full name was too much to deal with.

  Many women decided the pain they went through during the transformation was too much to endure. All too often, Death was a welcome respite. Better to choose death than become a Nosferatu and be killed when they awoke.

  Michael knew this since he, literally, wrote the rule they were to be killed.

  Michael looked up at Carl.

  “She meets all aspects of the candidate requirements?” While Frank was excellent, and Michael didn’t doubt his ability, he wanted Carl’s thoughts on the matter.

  “Yes sir. Actually, she is a rare achiever. She’s top three percent in martial prowess. While she’s strong, she isn’t a man and therefore there is a slight deficit. She ranked highest in intellectual capability on all of her tests. She comes from a family where both sides have been military for decades, and her father is presently a general. Her drive is to protect the people.”

  “Her faith?”

  Carl knew the question was coming and was prepared. Although finding out about a person’s true faith was a little harder with so many people professing faith but attending their house of worship only once or twice a year. It made it difficult to positively assert any real answer to this question.

  “Sir, we were able to get a read on her when she found out that she was diagnosed with a strange and rare blood disease. She didn’t fade away or ignore her responsibilities after understanding she had little time to live. Her comment was, and I quote, ‘all within God’s grace and God’s design.’ The only concern she seems to be bothered with, that we can tell, is not being able to close her cases and failing to tell her father she’s going to die soon.”

  Michael looked up from the dossier of Bethany Anne Reynolds while Carl was giving him an overview. “She would lie?”

  Carl only hesitated a moment getting his thoughts together.

  “No,” Carl opined. ”I just get the impression that she’s stoic, like her father. I believe she has a genetic condition inherited from her mother who died when she was also twenty-eight. Since the doctors give her about four to eight months, she might make twenty-nine.”

  “Our cutoff is six months, Carl.” Michael’s voice brooked no malleability on the time frame.

  “Yes, sir. However, what Frank has uncovered from the doctor’s report and what’s in her official record, it looks like she might make five to six months if she is very fortunate. More than likely sir, she has three.”

  Michael closed the folder. “Well, the quantity of possible candidates is not to my satisfaction. However, these q
ualifications unquestionably meet the minimum and exceed them. Should the military allow the interview to occur, I will consider them to have honored the debt. Should she fail the test, honor will still be satisfied.”

  At this statement, Carl was relieved and the tension he was carrying on his shoulders eased. The military could talk about how much ass they kicked all day and all night and promote honor in commercials for the Marines. But, if they failed Michael’s request, however unprepared they were, they had no idea what they stood to lose for not honoring their Debt of Honor to the family.

  In fact, General Reynolds’ whole base might be considered forfeit. Carl hadn’t been around the last time this happened but had heard about Michael’s children taking out ‘nests’ of dishonorable people ranging from hundreds to thousands.

  Although this base had probably two, maybe three thousand soldiers and support personnel, this time, the patriarch of the family was awake. Carl was concerned that if the General acted dishonorably, thousands would pay the price for his actions.

  Carl knew that America had suffered from moral turpitude over the last few decades. Now, being able to close a deal with a handshake was only possible in small-town America for the most part. So Carl was a little concerned.

  Fortunately, the military was one of the last governmental organizations which prized honor. While there had been serious issues with honor in the last two wars in the Middle East and in the actions against prisoners, Carl hoped General Reynolds was still from the older generation. A generation that didn’t consider morals to be malleable.

  For Michael, the question of a person’s honor was a binary with no middle ground.

  It was why both Carl and Frank had been concerned about waking up Michael, and why Frank was so stringent when he ran through the military’s personnel databases. He even went so far as opening up the filters to the quasi-military groups, such as Bethany Anne’s program, to try to find perfect candidates. Frank believed all the candidates had to be perfect on paper, and in reality.