Authors: Ryan T. Nelson
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “Let’s just grab the gear and follow him.” I picked up the gun case I’d set aside and started walking after Ghost, leaving Rachel to gather her wits and follow me.
This was going to be interesting.
11
Ghosts place was a study in contradiction. From the outside it looked like a rundown old shack, much like you’d expect to see in some old western movie about a ghost town or something. Half rotted wooden decking surrounding a small stucco structure. On the inside it wasn’t much different, save for the steel reinforced walls, electronic door locks and state of the art computer and monitoring equipment.
“Planning on running an invasion of Calexico from here?” I asked as I looked around.
“Only if they give me any shit over my border claims.” He grinned at me in such a way that even I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.
“You’ve changed a lot, dude,” I commented.
“I haven’t changed. Times changed around me.” He sank into a plush leather chair before a bank of computers that took up one whole wall of the forty foot long building. “I didn’t have any choice but to adapt or die.”
“Is that what you learned in Germany?”
“Don’t.”
“I was jus-”
“Don’t, Gabe,” he cut me off. “Leave it be. I don’t want to talk about it. Why are you here?”
“What happened to the friendly banter and camaraderie?”
“You getting a price on your head and me trying to stay clear of Brotherhood dealings for the last century. You coming here has put a huge target on my back and I don’t like it.”
“Point taken.” I sat down on a low wooden bench a few feet away from Ghost and motioned for Rachel to join me. “The shit has hit the fan on a monumental scale, Ghost. I need your help.”
“Give me one reason.”
“Grim.”
“You would have to bring up that old bastard.”
“Old, yes. Bastard, yes. But he’s also lead wolf at this point.”
Ghost narrowed his eyes and studied me. I sat back and calmly let him. Ghost and I went way back. 5 years after I was changed Thren
tü
brought Ghost into the brotherhood and had Grim, my old mentor, change him. Grim taught us both how to fight, and how to think. Something Threntü had not planned on. For eighty years Ghost and I were conjoined twins. Best of friends, sparring partners and general criminal masterminds around the compound causing all kinds of juvenile trouble for the organization that Grim would then have to bail us out of.
Physically he hadn’t changed much over the years.
He looked to be about thirty years old, give or take a nickel. Six feet tall, lanky, and with a distinctive wolfish air about him, no pun intended. Even as a human it had been commented that he resembled a big shaggy wolf. Today he wore black BDU combat pants, black boots and a light gray trench coat with the sleeves torn off. The pants and boots were both two sizes too large for him and the coat nearly brushed the ground when he stood.
Inky black hair hung in layered waves to his shoulders and a pair of piercingly green eyes peered out from beneath his bangs. He had that chiseled jaw that was the staple of cartoon and comic book superheroes and the haunted gaze of a tortured soul all rolled into one neat package.
You could practically feel the pheromones rolling off of him.
“What happened to Lyserg?”
“Dead.”
“How?”
“No idea, just heard it through the grape-vine about twenty years back.”
“That would only have put Grim at 6th in line.”
“The others all went within a few years of each other. Very sensationalized deaths. War and battle, one died of starvation.”
“Starvation?” He perked up at that. It wasn’t in a werewolf to starve. If they didn’t eat their animalistic side kicked in and took control and they would rampage for weeks until their hunger was satisfied. Hence the stories and legends of the crazed mad killers. It took a few generations for that kink to be figured out and new wolves had to quickly get over their revulsion at the idea of eating raw flesh.
“Cynthia. She went mad. Something inside her snapped and she spent the last few days screaming and tearing at the walls of her estate. She killed every member of her pack and sat in her chambers for who knows how long until she just keeled over one morning.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I know. I‘d say that Threntü had something to do with it but he doesn‘t have any type of telepathic abilities, last I heard.”
“Would someone like to clue the human in on what’s going on?” Rachel snapped testily from beside me.
We ignored her. This was delicate work and I could feel a thin sheen of sweat standing out on my forehead. I resisted the urge to wipe it away. My answers to Ghosts questioning was very important. They would determine the level of help he gave us, or if he tossed me out and ate Rachel alive.
“There’s no way he would have accepted the position. You know he hated being in charge.”
“They didn’t give him a choice. He either took it, or let someone far less suited take it and risk returning to the time before the treaty.”
He snorted. “Not possible,” he scoffed. “Grim would have just killed whoever tried to cause that kind of trouble.”
“Not even Grim could take on the entire wind clan.”
That got the Ghosts attention.
“Fuck me,” he breathed, a dumbstruck expression pasted across his face.
“No thanks, I’ve had it up to my eyebrows with werewolves in my bed,” I quipped.
He ignored me. “You’ve gotta be shitting me.”
“I wouldn’t shit you, you’re my favorite turd.”
“Virith save you, Gabriel, could you cut out the fucking banter for twelve seconds and tell me you’re kidding? Threntü’s all kinds of nuts but he’s not that insane.”
“You forget who talked the heads into creating me Ghost.” I gazed calmly at him. “He thought up a being that could either save or destroy the vampires and werewolves and you don’t think he’s crazy enough to pit his entire clan against the rest? He’d sacrifice every last one of them if it gave him any kind of power.”
“He was trying to unify the clans and you went south on him.”
“Bull-fucking-shit, Ghost. He was trying to create a puppet so he could sit in the shadows and pull my strings. I was never really meant to be anything more than a figure head. Now that a lot of the oldest are dying he’s got a price out on my head and is attempting to bring me in. He wants his puppet back. I don’t intend to give him the satisfaction.”
“So we didn’t come here to hide?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t hide,” I growled.
Ghost laughed. “I can think of a few times where you did exactly that.”
“I was making a strategic retreat numb-nuts,” I snapped
at him. “Much like right now. Ghost. I need your help.”
“What are you thinking Gabe.”
“I’m going to take a war to the Brotherhood.”
* * * * * *
????? Mexico: February 7, 2005
I opened my eyes slowly, sleep fell away like a heavy shroud and it did not leave quickly or easily. It took me a few minutes after my eyes first opened to drag my carcass out of the plush bed I’d fallen into. The mattress was so thick that my, less than careful, movements didn’t disturb Rachel in the slightest from where she slept nude beside me.
I glanced back at her as I stood beside the bed. Her hair was spread in a halo around her head on the snow white pillow cover and the white sheet had fallen to her waist. Her full breasts shook with every breath she took and her nipples rapidly hardened in the cool air.
For a moment I thought about getting back into bed with her but the tightening in my chest told me that would be the worst thing I could possibly do. I hadn’t had a drink since the night before I’d met her. I needed to feed. So I went in search of Ghost. I dressed quickly, pulling on my BDU pants and my boots silently in the dark and I grabbed a black shirt from the closet on my way out.
The compound Ghost had was much larger than I had first estimated it to be. It butted up against a cliff so he’d blasted and carved and I don’t know what else a comfortably sized space into the rocks like the secret base of the evil villain in a bad spy movie.
I had the almost irresistible urge to break out into a bad British accent when I walked those halls.
Can’t imagine why.
Anyway, I found him in the front room where we spoke the day before, sitting before that bank of computers again.
“So what is it you do with these things?” I asked as I dropped heavily into a seat next to him. “I never thought of you as the type to be on the cutting edge of technology.”
“I’m not. But I do have some interest in what’s going on in the world around me. In particular, what’s going on within the Brotherhood. I’ve had most of the highest reaching members under nearly constant surveillance for years now and I missed all that information you gave me yesterday. Lyserg, Cynthia, Grim.”
He sighed and shook his shaggy head. “How did I miss all
of that?”
“Why does it matter?” I asked. “You missed it. Move on and help me get back at that bastard. Help me get him and this will all be over and we can go back to our pathetic and solitary existences,” I finished a note of bitterness in my voice that I couldn’t hide no matter how much I tried.
He looked sidelong at me. “You never did get over that idea did you?”
“No and I never will,” I snapped.
“You really need to stop living in the past Gabe, that was nearly two hundred years ago.”
“The past is all I have sometimes.”
* * * * * *
Ireland: May 1, 1809
I stayed low to the ground, sneaking through the brush by the side of the trail. I could hear my quarry approaching. Heavy breathing and footsteps reverberated through the ground beneath my knees and the palms of my hands. I could smell them. Heavy and musky on the air as they slowly approached.
I held my breath. Five seconds. They drew closer. Four. Only a scant dozen feet away now. Three. They paused and I willed my heartbeat to slow as if they could somehow hear my anticipation in the pounding in my chest. Two. Closer still, now. One.
"NOW!” I roared and I leaped out of the brush onto their back. The dagger in my hand flashed once, a bright glint of metal in the wan sunlight and then a spray of blood and the quarry dropped amidst the stink of released bowels and streaming blood.
I dropped next to them, staring into the terrified bucks’ eyes as it thrashed in the last moments of its life. A moment later the light slowly went out and the massive animal quit moving.
“Good job Gabriel. Did ye really hafta yell like that though?” she asked.
“No, but it was fun,” I laughed and rolled over on the ground to stare up at her.
Hair as bright as fire tumbled around her narrow shoulders in a curly cascading wave. Bright green eyes stared at me from a pale, heart shaped face and a perky pair of breasts shook beneath the thin material of her blouse as she laughed. Her leather trousers creaked as she crouched down next to me and leaned over to place the sweetest, lingering kiss on my lips.
I loved Ireland. Hadn’t been there in decades and when I’d first arrived a couple of years before I’d instantly felt at home among the rolling hills and plentiful forests. I may be a worldly vampire now, and had been for over a hundred years, but Ireland would always be in my blood. Human or vampire I was a son of this land and I knew it, even if I couldn’t remember if this was actually where I’d been born.
“Ash, what you do to me,” I murmured when she pulled away.
She quirked an eyebrow and smirked at me. “An' what might that be my love?”
I grinned and she squealed when my hands slid under her shirt to grab hold of one of her breasts. I squeezed hard, and ran my thumb over one rapidly hardening nipple as I pulled her down for another kiss. A quick pinch and she moaned into my mouth. I could hear her heart beating faster and a feather light touch on her neck let me feel her pulse racing beneath her skin. It was always great with another vampire, I didn’t have to worry so much about controlling my strength. Any human woman would have been screaming in agony, not moaning with pleasure as she was.
When I let her go her face was flushed and her eyes were bright as she looked down at me. We would have continued from there but tramping footsteps caught our attention and we scrambled to our feet.
“Great timing, Ghost,” I mock snarled, glaring at him as he stepped out of the brush onto the game trail.
“Oh, did I interrupt something?” he asked, eyes wide and innocent.
“You know damn well that you interrupted something Puppy, you were downwind of us.”
He growled. “How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me that you little punk?”
“Little? I’m five years older than you. And I call you that simply because I know it annoys you. It’s the only other entertainment I get these
days.”
“You know I’m gonna kill you one of these days for comments like that, right?”
“Try it, fuzz ball. See how far it gets you.”
“Boy’s, I love how you two’re fightin’ over lil’ ol’ me, but I think the wolves might be interested in your kill, Gabe. Unless you dress it and we move it quick,” Ash cut in.