Love Lost (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 3) Read online

  “Gabrielle, take off those fucking pants.”

  Gabrielle knew when to question orders and this wasn’t one of those times. She reached down and untied her shoes and then took them off. Then, she unbuckled and took off her pants which had blood all over them.

  Bethany Anne put a hand out to Eric, “Eric, light.” She could have used Gabrielle’s light, but she was trying to make a point and Eric was slowly getting it. When she turned on Eric’s own flashlight and looked at the pair of very attractive and very female legs, there wasn’t a scratch or scar on them. She turned the light off and handed it back to Eric. “What she needs, ass wipe, is a pair of clean pants. Know your partner’s skills. She was letting you hold her because she didn’t know how to get through your mental pissing on yourself. Your The Queen Bitch’s guard and now so is Gabrielle. So suck it up and thank her by not forgetting she is a tough motherfucker, not a helpless little girl. She can bench press you, remember?”

  Bethany Anne could tell that Eric had gotten the point. She turned on Gabrielle. “Stop treating them as something that breaks easily! That won’t help them, understand me? If you do, I’ll personally slap the ever loving shit out of you until it takes a week for you to heal. You won’t do me or them any good. Now let’s get out of here. Costa Rica can kiss my ass for now, I’ll enjoy it another time.” She turned around.

  The team was so tired they didn’t realize that it was Bethany Anne who was the last on and closed the door.

  Two hours later, they were back on the Polarus which turned to the northeast and starting putting on the power. Chief Engineer John Rodriquez already had the ship running faster than it was supposed to be capable of by ten percent. However; he had plans and just needed the time and the budget. This ship was going to sing through the waves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Costa Rica & Panama

  Back in San Jose, Julian’s team made it back to Clarita’s house where they found the three dead bodies. Julian called the police commissioner and informed him that there had been a hit at this house while they were out. Life was going to become very dangerous for the Forsaken in Central America as different powerful vampires struggled to see who would come out on top.

  Three others, however; decided that they would calmly and quietly slip into the night. Two days later, each of them received an email from their mother’s email address. It informed them that Bethany Anne had killed their mother for the sins of Adrian and their mother when attacking her personal friend in Washington D.C. They were told that Bethany Anne promised their mother that if they stayed out of her path, she wouldn’t come after them.

  Over in Panama, Claudia argued with both of her brothers to reach out to Bethany Anne, but got nowhere with them. She finally took it upon herself to email and request an audience with Bethany Anne on the phone.

  She was surprised to have her phone ring not even five minutes later.

  She picked it up, it was an unknown number. “Hello?”

  The voice on the other end sounded European. “Hello, this is Ecaterina, I work for Bethany Anne. Is this Claudia?”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand from your email that you wish to speak with Bethany Anne. Unfortunately, she is up in the air at the moment on her way to Europe. How may I assist you?”

  “You would help me?”

  “No, I asked how I may assist you. If you ask the right question, they my assistance will go well for you. If you say the wrong thing, my assistance might be to help you to an early grave. So be careful what you ask for or tell me. So, Claudia, how may I assist you?”

  That caused Claudia to get her thoughts together. “I am calling on behalf of myself and perhaps my two brothers. They don’t want to bother Bethany Anne but I don’t know where to go.”

  “Explain better, please.”

  “Ok. Anton, who is one of Michael’s children, commands all of Central and South America and Mexico. However; my mother was the head of Central America under him. If we try to stay in Central America, then whoever takes over here for Anton will find us and kill us. We cannot go to either Mexico or South America either. So, we either need to fight or flee. None of us wish to continue as Forsaken but we don’t know where to flee to.”

  “I see, can you get out of Central America?”

  “Yes, if we move soon enough it will not be a problem.”

  “Then you have two choices. You can meet with Bethany Anne when she gets back to America. I can’t tell you when that will happen.” Ecaterina heard Claudio gasp at that. Ok, so that wasn’t a choice Claudia was comfortable with. “Or, you may meet up with Bethany Anne in Europe. You will need to contact Stephen in Romania and ask his permission to come into his area of influence. If you want, I will contact him on your behalf. However; I will warn you in advance that if you do anything that Stephen considers disrespectful in word or deed to Bethany Anne you won’t need to worry about her. Stephen will kill you himself.”

  “Thank you, I would appreciate you providing this opportunity. When would Stephen have the time to talk with you?”

  “Hold on the line, Claudia.”

  Claudia heard the line click and then silence. How powerful was Bethany Anne that a helper of hers could call up another of Michael’s children and just ask permission for others to join him in Romania? The line clicked again.

  “Stephen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Claudia.”

  “Yes.” Oh my god, Stephen was on the phone.

  “Stephen, thank you for taking my call.”

  “It is no problem, Ecaterina. Your brother is a pleasure and you sound like you would be an even larger pleasure.”

  “Stephen, I’m taken you romeo. I didn’t call to setup a date, so behave. I have Claudia on the line. She is a child of Clarita.”

  “Didn’t Bethany Anne just end a point of difficulty with a Clarita?”

  “Yes, the very same Clarita. However; Bethany Anne at the end had great respect for Clarita and if she could have, she would have spared her life. Unfortunately, the best she could do was promise to not put the sins of the parent on her children. Does this make sense?”

  “Yes, very much so.”

  “Good. Claudia reached out to me and explained to me that in order for them to try and break the sins of the parent, they need to leave the America’s. Would you be willing to host Claudia and her brothers until they can talk with Bethany Anne?”

  “One minute, Ecaterina. Claudia?”

  “Yes?”

  “Clarita’s parent was Anton, right?”

  “Yes. If we do not leave we will eventually be found by him.”

  “Yes, he is what Bethany Anne would term a ‘world class dick’. I have never liked him. If you and your siblings wish the protection of my house with the opportunity to speak with Bethany Anne you may have it. However; we do not attack humans here. I will not allow anything of Anton to besmirch my Queen’s lands. Follow the rules of my house and you have nothing to fear. Let Ecaterina know the timing and Ivan will work with you when you land for transportation to my house. Is that all Ecaterina?”

  “Yes, thank you on behalf of Bethany Anne, Stephen.”

  “Ecaterina, you know I would do that just to see your smile, right?”

  “Stephen, you know Nathan will try and give you a new asshole if you keep flirting?”

  Claudia couldn’t believe the way these two were talking. Who was Nathan? How was this human talking so casually with a child of Michaels?

  Stephen laughed, “Yes, yes. I know Bethany Anne would not be pleased if I upset Nathan. I promise I will stop until you come to your senses.”

  “Stephen!”

  “Ok, that was the last one. I promise. Now, Bethany Anne is on her way, correct?”

  “Yes. The team and Gabrielle are headed your way again. They plan on staying with you and going from there when the SEA AXE is close to Italy.”

  “Very good. I’ll make sure we are prepared for her visit. Have a good night, Ec
aterina. I look forward to meeting you and your brothers, Claudia.”

  “Thank you very much, Señor Stephen.”

  “Ooh, I like that. Señor Stephen.”

  Ecaterina’s voice was frustrated, “Stephen!”

  “Oops, I hear Ivan calling. Bye both of you.” He clicked off.

  “Claudia, are you still there?”

  “Yes, but honestly I don’t know what to make of this phone call. Was that truly Michael’s son Stephen?”

  “Yes, yes it was. Be careful when you get there. He has always been a ladies man and now he has been looking at Tinder way too much. You, I think, will be just the type of woman he wants to try his moves on.”

  “What, a single female vampire?”

  “No, breathing. I get the impression that single is not a concern for Stephen.”

  “What did Bethany Anne do the first time she met him?”

  “You will have to ask him. Text me back at this phone number when you guys have your plans finished. I’ve got to go.”

  “Thank you, Ecaterina.”

  “No worries, just don’t do something to upset Bethany Anne and I will be golden.”

  “I won’t. If my brothers even consider it I will beat them silly.”

  “That’s the spirit! Gotta go, bye.”

  They hung up. Claudia wasn’t sure what to make of the call, but she quickly called her brothers to tell them the news. They agreed to make plans to go to Romania.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Jeffrey Diamantz closed up and locked his desk. He had been the CEO of Patriarch Research, a small military research firm in the Nevada area for the last fifteen years.

  Working out of a seven story building in North Las Vegas, life was pretty good until two years before.

  His team had been working on a machine learning software application for heuristic internet defense. Plugging in the beginning sets of rules, the application would then seek to learn all it could and then create causality hypothesis and test them as well. With the absolute crumbling of costs, companies such as his now had access to thousands of computers by using Amazon AWS and similar technologies.

  They could create a testing application, spin up the hundreds or thousands of instances for computational efforts and shut them down within a day or two.

  However; a year ago during one of their tests a couple of problems occurred. They were running data from large credit card and financial companies who were exploring what the vast amount of financial data might provide them.

  Two things occurred simultaneously. The first was unexpected evidence of unknown financial superpowers that were previously unsuspected. That information went back to the financial companies who reached out to the government. This was a hot potato the financial companies didn’t want to handle. The second was their learning program crossed the technology singularity as near as they could tell. Fortunately, it was during the last ten seconds of the planned test and machines had started to ’spin down’ and go offline automatically.

  To cross the singularity was a technological event of the millennium. His team decided to not tell a single soul.

  What should they do with the power to create a machine that can then create a better version of itself? By connecting it to hardware such as Amazon AWS, it could theoretically procure enough computing power that Strong AI ver 1.0 became Strong AI ver 1.1 in less than a day. They could hypothetically create every mans dream or every mans disaster within just a few weeks.

  The team has been losing sleep over this problem. Tom Billings, the lead programmer, had lost half of his hair.

  Now, the team had been attacked at the network level for information from over seas. Someone was getting more and more data out of their system and they had to decide whether to bring the software back online to protect themselves or go about their defense in more prosaic methods. Jeffrey had ordered the team to cut all internet into the system for the last two days. The need to open the connections back up was becoming overwhelming. As soon as they did that, however; it would allow their attacker a crack back at them.

  They ordered new IP addresses and were planning on connected through a different VPN for very small time slices. Hopefully, it would stall the attackers from finding their ip holes and give them a little breathing room.

  The temptation for every research firm was to test their best against the enemy. But what happens when your best might decide to take over the world?

  On top of that problem, he now had a meeting with the owners of the company. In fifteen years, he had never personally met a single investor of Patriarch Research. Hell, he didn’t even know why the company was named what it was.

  Yesterday, he was notified that the COO of TBQ Enterprises wanted to have a meet and greet. He got a name, but the only information he was able to find was for a recently retired General. It was possible it was the same guy, and considering his company was tied into military research it made sense, but what the hell was he going to tell him?

  He had the tiger by the tail and if he let go, everyone was going to get mauled.

  Well, at the end of the day (and it was the end of the day) the buck for the company stopped at his desk. But the decision for this situation needed to get punted up the line.

  Decision made, and a lot of stress off of his shoulders, Jeffrey went downstairs and got into his five year old Lexus. He drove home and had a smile for his wife for the first time since summer.

  Let those who made more money than him decide what to do.

  Michael’s Notes (Love Lost - The Kurtherian Gambit 03):

  Thank you, I cannot express my appreciation enough that not only did you pick up the third book, but you read it all the way to the end and NOW, your reading this as well!

  So, in the Queen Bitch’s Authors Note, I promised I would not get the third book finished in 9 days. I stayed true to my promise. It took about 13 days or so.

  I’ve been listening to ‘Authoring Podcasts’ and one of them (Sell More Books Now) was discussing a blog post by a lady who says that no one can produce great literature striving to accomplish finishing four books a year.

  I never suggested I wanted to create great literature, I just want to write fun stories. There is a difference. Star Wars is not great cinema, but it is hella’ fun cinema. Well, ok, the first three were hella’ fun. We can all argue the second set of three.

  Han shot first, it’s all I’m saying.

  So, NaNoWriMo was a success. Over 150,000 words this November. I think that makes me good for the next two years. Once again, not GREAT LITERATURE, just fun stories :-)

  I’m going to slow down a bit now that I have the first three accomplished. My fourth book, BITE THIS (or BITE ME), will be out in December. The fifth book, however; might be out late December or sometime in January. For my ‘real’ job, I have a new(ish) client that I’m looking forward to working with and my time to write will probably be curtailed in the short term.

  I mentioned on my blog post (http://kurtherianbooks.com) that an authors success usually entails LOTS of pre-work before you release your book. However; I just put Death Becomes Her and Queen Bitch out in the wild with no notice and no advertising. I really hope that if you enjoy reading these stories, you will share with your Kindle Unlimited friends the link and encourage them to read it as well.

  I mentioned in Queen Bitch that my income from Kindle Unlimited was 5x more than purchases. That isn’t true any more. It actually is approximately even before Amazon takes their 30% cut. Perhaps the reason is that those who have Kindle Unlimited were willing to take a leap of faith to read the book and until you wonderful readers put up awesome reviews, those who were spending their money were a lot more skeptical which is understandable. Also, it took Amazon a little while to generate the 10% free read as well. Both excellent reasons for the difference in the beginning.

  Feel free to jump on the Facebook page to ask me any questions about being an Author on Amazon. I’m happy to share what experiences I can.

&nbs
p; I’ve mentioned before, my writing is more escapist. I love a good action story, but more than that I want to engage with the characters. I want to feel what they are going through if possible. I want situations that make me get excited, worried, laugh and say ‘take that, sucka!’ out loud. The challenges faced by the protagonists don’t have to be life threatening, it could be a challenge to ask that special someone out for a date that keeps the story flowing. I’m not really into books that keep you constantly afraid for the characters. If I care about a character, I’ll turn the page, and buy the next book, just to see them reach a personal milestone that is challenging to that character. However; having said all of that action is what drives the story forward.