Challenges Read online

  CONTENTS

  Kurtherian Gambit

  Dedication

  Legal

  Payback

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Epilogue

  Seed Vault

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  Natale Authors Notes

  Michael Author Notes

  Books by Natalie Grey

  Books by Michael Anderle

  Social Links

  Challenges

  Frank Kurns: Tales of the Unknownworld 04

  By Natalie Grey and Michael Anderle

  A part of

  The Kurtherian Gambit Universe

  Written and Created

  by Michael Anderle

  The Kurtherian Gambit Universe

  (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are

  Copyright (c) 2015-2018 by Michael Anderle and LMPBN Publishing.

  DEDICATION

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  To Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  To Live The Life We Are

  Called.

  Challenges

  JIT Readers

  Daniel Weigert

  James Caplan

  Jed Moulton

  John Ashmore

  John Findlay

  John Raison

  Joshua Ahles

  Kelly O’Donnell

  Kimberly Boyer

  Larry Omans

  Micky Cocker

  Paul Westman

  Peter Manis

  Sarah Weir

  Thomas Ogden

  Tim Bischoff

  If I missed anyone, please let me know!

  Editor - Lynne Stiegler

  Challenges (this book) is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2018 Natalie Grey and Michael T. Anderle

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, January 2018

  The Kurtherian Gambit (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2017 by Michael T. Anderle and LMBPN Publishing.

  Payback

  By Natalie Grey & Michael Anderle

  CHAPTER ONE

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  Gabrielle took a sip of her wine and settled back in her chair with a purr of contentment, “I swear, this is the best steak I’ve had in years.”

  “It is what we’re known for.” Tabitha forced a smile and sniffed the wine tentatively.

  “Drink it. You’ll like it.” Gabrielle lifted a glass to toast. “It’s a bonarda—a type of wine I haven’t had since Italy, way back in the day.”

  “How ‘way back?’” Tabitha clinked glasses and smiled. She took a cautious gulp. “Oh, that’s good.”

  Gabrielle watched, amused. After centuries spending time with both the richest of the rich and the starving artists of the world, she had learned an appreciation for the finer things in life—both food, and art.

  And occasionally other types of hedonism.

  She cleared her throat hastily.

  “Way, way back.”

  Gabrielle lapsed into silence as she cut another bite of steak. She was worried about this excursion. In many ways, Tabitha reminded her of some of the artists Gabrielle had known over the years: insanely talented with souls like bright fires. But they hadn’t often been happy, those people. Sometimes a soul burned so brightly it ate a person up.

  And Tabitha didn’t have the hard edge Gabrielle associated with the bohemians she had known. Despite everything, Tabitha seemed to lack the air of cynicism that so often came with counterculture.

  That wasn’t to say she didn’t try. From the tattoos to the piercings to the dyed hair, Tabitha went out of her way to look like someone with sharp edges. Someone you didn’t want to get close to.

  The thing was, when you were a few centuries old you started to get a feel for when that was an act. Tabitha was a talented person, someone whose talents had put her in the middle of a game she was really too young and naïve to play.

  A game she was walking back into tonight.

  And that was why Gabrielle was worried. “I’ve been thinking about what you told me,” she said. She paused as the waiter came by and gave Tabitha’s clothes and hair a nasty look. The man took one look at Gabrielle’s cold eyes, however, and was gone like a shot. Gabrielle watched him go and turned back to Tabitha. “You said you wanted to make sure people were safe.”

  “A lot of people sheltered me over the years,” Tabitha explained. “And I want to make sure that none of Anton’s old friends are hurting them.”

  “Anton’s crew is done,” Gabrielle assured her.

  “Anton wasn’t picky about who he used,” Tabitha said bluntly. She put her knife and fork down as if she were oblivious to the expensive food in front of her. “Anton and his higher-ups aren’t around anymore, but he worked with a lot of people once or twice, humans who were on the wrong side of the law. The sort of people no one was going to miss. They didn’t know what Anton was—most of them didn’t, anyway—but they do know how to be very, very mean. All they care about is themselves.”

  “Wait, back up. Some of them knew what Anton was?”

  “It’s not… Um...” Tabitha searched for the words. “It’s not always the same in the human underworld as it is in the normal world. People there are likely to believe all sorts of things. They believe in angels and demons and curses and that kinda stuff, so when they found out about Anton it wasn’t like this was some big revelation. It was something they’d always believed in anyway.”

  Gabrielle sat back and considered this.

  This was dangerous. She knew it was up to her to make sure all who were aware of the vampires were either convinced that they were wrong or otherwise taken care of.

  But frankly, if they were the type of people she suspected they were, she wasn’t going to spend much time trying to persuade them. She was going to bring them to justice instead.

  “So you want me to hurt these people,” Gabrielle said finally.

  “No! No.” Tabitha shook her head. She took a bite of steak and chewed, mouth partly open as she thought.

  Gabrielle bit back a smile. Michael and Stephen would be having an aneurysm right about now if they were here to witness this. Tabitha ate and drank with the focused air of someone who’d gone hungry before and viewed food mostly as fuel.

  Tabitha said finally, “I want to make sure people are okay, that’s all.”

  “Oh?” Gabrielle had long ago learned not to direct the flow of conversations by guessing at what sh
e thought the other person might say. The longer she spent as a vampire, the less she seemed to understand how human minds worked.

  “Look, I…put people in danger.” Tabitha looked miserable. “I got in over my head, and other people could have suffered for it. A lot of them. My whole family, and all the people who sheltered me. I didn’t want to take help, but I needed somewhere to stay. They could have been hurt because of me.”

  Gabrielle smiled. “When I was very young—okay, younger than I am now—I got mixed up with some revolutionaries who thought they were going to assassinate a whole bunch of government officials. I was…stupid.” She shook her head. “I was very idealistic in those days, and I was trying to be very moral, very…chaste.” To be honest she’d been prudish, but she didn’t feel like sharing that. “Well, I fell in love with this young man who wanted to go around butchering officials and their families, and he talked about all the injustice in the world and how he would save things. I foolishly believed him.”

  Tabitha took a bite of her food as she listened. Gabrielle was easily one of the most beautiful, elegant people Tabitha had ever met. She was so otherworldly that she didn’t even make Tabitha feel self-conscious. Trying to compete with her would be like competing with a statue or a sunset. Gabrielle was on another level.

  Tabitha would never have thought that Gabrielle would do stupid things.

  “Well, someone in the revolutionary group started to have second thoughts. They argued that it wasn’t right to go around killing people’s families, and Henri—that was his name—killed the dissenters in front of all of us.

  “I should have known right then that he wasn’t about to listen to reason. Luc had made very good points. He was being very respectful, but Henri always had an impulsive streak. In that moment the scales fell from my eyes and I realized I had aligned myself with a common criminal. Henri wasn’t really a revolutionary. He was just a violent man who wanted to be important.”

  “So what did you do?” Tabitha’s eyes were very round.

  “I stayed,” Gabrielle said bluntly. “I kept working with them for weeks after that because I wanted to keep loving Henri and I wanted to keep feeling like I was part of a group that was fighting for justice, even though I knew that wasn’t what they were doing anymore.”

  “So why did you stay?” Tabitha asked.

  “You tell me.” Gabrielle studied her, and then looked down at her plate. “These steaks are so good I could almost have another one.”

  “This is nothing,” Tabitha said absently. “The best food in Argentina is choripan.”

  “What’s choripan?” Gabrielle plucked a menu from a passing waiter and scanned it. “It’s not here.”

  “Of course it’s not there. A place like this would never serve it.” Tabitha gestured at the four-star establishment with a wry grin. From the white-and-black clad waiters to the subtle clinking of crystal and china, the whole place was worlds away from where she’d grown up. “Choripan is street food. It’s a sort of sandwich with sausage in it.”

  “And it’s better than this?” Gabrielle gestured at the steak and the wine.

  “Oh, yes.” Tabitha sighed happily at the memory. “Sometimes when I had enough money for more than rice and beans—which wasn’t very often—I’d go get a choripan. I never had enough money for anything really, so I felt so guilty buying it. I would wolf it down in an alley, but I remember it was just the best food ever. A choripan and a Coke.” She grinned and shrugged.

  Gabrielle smiled. “Best food ever? I’m going to need to have one of those.”

  “We’ll get one in my old neighborhood, I promise.” Tabitha wolfed down the rest of her food.

  “So,” Gabrielle began, “have you thought about what I asked you?”

  “Wha’d’you mean?” Tabitha swallowed a large bite of steak. “What?” she asked again.

  “The reasons I stayed in the revolutionary group?” Gabrielle asked her.

  “I don’t know.” Tabitha shrugged.

  “Because it’s easy to keep making the same mistakes,” Gabrielle told her. “It is very, very easy to see the world one way, and then even when it leads you down a bad path you don’t change your behavior because you can’t see the choices you actually have. I was so desperate to keep being a person who was fighting for justice, who loved this wonderful man, that I got tangled up in something that wasn’t justice with a terrible man. I kept making that mistake until I could believe in myself.”

  “You were a vampire then, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So why didn’t you realize you could leave?”

  “Because I would have had to reevaluate who I was and how I believed the world worked. Believe it or not, sometimes it’s easier to stay around a homicidal maniac than it is to challenge your beliefs about the world.”

  Gabrielle sighed. She knew what she needed to say here, but she also knew that Tabitha might not believe her.

  That was always the problem with speaking the truth. People tended to be highly resistant to it.

  “I am going to tell you something that may sound absurd,” Gabrielle said finally. “As absurd as me telling you that this steak is better than choripan, for instance.”

  Tabitha laughed, and it was such a young sound that Gabrielle paused for a moment to drink it in.

  She had to say this. Tabitha had her whole life ahead of her, so it would be better if she could live it in a good way rather than being trapped by her past.

  “When you were young, you made mistakes,” Gabrielle told her. “You know that. It’s not new information.”

  Tabitha sobered at once. She nodded. “I know,” she admitted bravely.

  “To be fair to you, Anton was much stronger than you were, both physically and in terms of power. You were right about that. But as you said, you also made mistakes. You let them blackmail you and draw you deeper into their world.”

  Tabitha looked down at her lap.

  “So why did you come back?”

  “To protect people!” Tabitha looked up at her with tears in her eyes. “I swear it’s true!”

  “I know it’s true,” Gabrielle said with a small smile. “I don’t think you’re lying to me. But ask yourself why you’re doing this now and you didn’t do it before.”

  “Oh.” Tabitha looked away.

  She didn’t know what to think of that question. When she’d been a nobody, hiding in the shadows and trying to run away from the people who practically ran her life, she’d been scared all the time. The world had felt too big for her. Now…

  “They don’t have control over me anymore,” she said finally.

  “Exactly,” Gabrielle told her. “They don’t. You know that in your head. But in your heart, I think maybe you still believe you’re the same person—the one who made mistakes and is still vulnerable and weak. If you’re going to change how you behave here, you’re going to have to believe you’re a different person now.”

  “But I’m not a different person,” Tabitha said at once.

  Gabrielle bit back a smile. She reminded herself that she’d expected this response. “So what’s different?”

  “The world. Anton is gone, because of you guys. I…just got lucky.”

  It was clear Tabitha could not yet understand that she was becoming a stronger person, herself. Less of a victim.

  And Gabrielle couldn’t convince her of that. Tabitha had to realize that for herself.

  “I see. So you wanted my help.” Gabrielle poured herself another glass of wine, eyes fixed on Tabitha. “For what exactly, since you don’t want me to hurt them.” She paused. “Unless that meant you wanted me to kill them painlessly.”

  “God, no!” Tabitha looked around herself guiltily, as if someone might have overheard them. “That wasn’t what I meant at all!”

  “Mm-hmm.” Gabrielle took a sip of her wine.

  “I don’t want you to solve my problems for me,” Tabitha said defiantly.

  “So why am I here?�
��

  Tabitha swallowed hard. “Because…I’m afraid I can’t do it on my own.”

  There was a silence. Tabitha looked away, so Gabrielle had the opportunity to study her. There was more sympathy in her gaze than Tabitha likely would have guessed. Gabrielle understood what it was to feel young and outmatched by the world.

  Contrary to popular belief, being a vampire didn’t make you feel invincible. Sometimes it made you realize just how big the world was, how easy it was for even someone so strong to be overwhelmed. Michael and his children had picked sides in World War II because they couldn’t change something that big or avert it entirely.

  Gabrielle hesitated, and then reached out to take Tabitha’s hand. “You can’t do it on your own,” she said bluntly.

  Tabitha’s eyes widened. “If that’s what you think of me—”

  “That’s not an insult,” Gabrielle said. “People don’t go it alone in this world. There’s always luck and other people helping to get you where you are. If people didn’t need help sometimes there would never have been a Stephen or any of the others—Michael would have done it on his own. Bethany Anne wouldn’t have built TQB. The people who fight at our side for love and loyalty are a part of us. Being able to have those friendships shows who you are as a person.”

  Tabitha hesitated. “I just want to be able to solve my own problems.”

  “Sometimes you can.” Gabrielle lifted a shoulder. “For this, I am guessing that you will need a bit of both. You will need some help, and you will also need to believe that you are a new person now.”

  Tabitha’s face was pale. “I’m not sure I can do that. I want to be better and braver. I’m not sure I am, though.”

  “Try.” Gabrielle smiled. “I’m here to help you face your past, not deal with it for you so you can run from it. Now finish your wine. I’ll cry if you let that go to waste.”