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  Frank Kurns Boxed Set

  Tales Of The Unknown World Books 1-4

  Natalie Grey

  Michael Anderle

  The Frank Kurns Boxed Set (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.

  This book Copyright © 2019 Natalie Grey, Michael Anderle

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  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

  Version 1.00, July 2019

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-356-5

  The Kurtherian Gambit (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2015-2019 by Michael T. Anderle.

  Contents

  You Don’t Touch John’s Cousin

  Bitch’s Night Out

  Bellatrix

  Challenges

  You Don’t Touch John’s Cousin

  Frank Kurns Stories of the UnknownWorld Book 1

  Chapter One

  John Grimes, Queen’s Bitch and one of the few massively modified humans in existence, crumpled the newspaper in his hands.

  Frank Kurns had called him, giving him the news that a married cousin of his had problems.

  Problems he might have taken care of had he been around, not fighting fucking Forsaken for the last two years.

  Even if he could change being on the team, he wouldn’t. Without Bethany Anne’s help in the Everglades, he would not be here to do anything about the problem now.

  But he was both alive to do something and working on how to do it.

  He stood up, six and a half feet of mental muscle and masculinity. No one ever confused John Grimes with a metrosexual. He was clean-shaven and his nails were clipped, but one didn’t expect the latest colognes or skin goop to be found on his person.

  He hadn’t used anything before he received Bethany Anne’s blood, and he sure as hell didn’t need it now.

  He picked up his holsters and slid them on, then grabbed his “MIB” jacket. He pocketed the dark sunglasses he enjoyed wearing so much. He had always made an entrance; his size alone guaranteed that. After he went through the military, he had added danger to his aura. He had been there and done that, and people could sense it.

  Then he’d gotten roped into the Forsaken/Nosferatu bullshit. That had opened his eyes in ways he never wanted to share with the world at large.

  However, that wasn’t the problem at hand. Right now, his cousin Cheryl Lynn had issues of the gang variety.

  She was in the middle of divorcing a significantly bad life-choice named Mark, and Mark was now using his not-inconsiderable legal knowledge to put her and their two children through hell for rejecting him. The children, both pre-teen, had chosen their mom, not him.

  He blamed them all instead of looking in the mirror.

  John grabbed the SUV keys and set out to find his ultimate boss to discuss the situation with her. He might not go since he was focused on keeping Bethany Anne safe, but he knew Bethany Anne wouldn’t allow this to stand. He wasn’t sure who she would send, but John was certain it would get taken care of.

  He was as sure of that as he was that the sun would rise in the east every morning.

  What he hadn’t figured into the equation was that she would make sure he got a chance to deal with this problem himself.

  How? By going along for the ride.

  Mark Lindell looked in the mirror and flicked an incredibly small piece of lint off his suit jacket’s shoulder.

  He turned left and then turned right, eyeing himself in the mirror to confirm what he believed was true.

  He looked damn good.

  The twenty-one-year-old in his bed, still sleeping off their night together, was another reminder that he hadn’t lost his touch in or out of bed.

  He had brought her here to one of the more exclusive hotels in Dallas and paid for several days. It was late Friday morning, and he was sated. He didn’t need another ego stroke and figured she could find her own damn way home.

  He left a note mentioning that the room had another couple hundred on the account for her to order room service and that she should enjoy it for another night, but that he had been called away to deal with work issues. It was so much easier to end it this way.

  Besides, he had put a smiley face on the note. That should make it better, right?

  He shut the suite door behind him, hoping he didn’t wake Sarah. Or was it Jenni?

  No, it was Tammy. Jenni had been last weekend.

  He waited for the elevator to drop the twenty-one stories from the top of the hotel to the main floor and exited, then headed to the front desk and signed out. He made sure the bill was paid and the suite incidentals credit had a maximum approved amount. By the time he made it to the valet, his Mercedes SLK was waiting for him.

  He tipped the valet a twenty and got in. He figured he would at least swing by his office and check a few things. No reason to be a liar. Cheryl Lynn had thrown his lying in his face for the last nine months, ever since she had found out about him being at this very hotel with a pair of twins instead of working late that night with the guys from the advertising agency.

  That had offended him. He had worked late with the guys from the agency, but they had gone out for dinner. When the sisters looked him over, he knew he had just been put on the “interesting” list. He noticed their glances from time to time during the meal.

  He didn’t want to be on the interesting list. He wanted to move to the desired list, so when dinner was over, he told the agency guys he was going to rest for a minute before the trip home.

  He had been on the hunt, and he had to get his fix in. He needed to feel alive, and there wasn’t a better way to make that happen than closing deals. In his world, getting a woman to go to a hotel room with him was closing a deal.

  Cheryl Lynn had confronted him when he got in a little past two A.M. He had tried to play it off as a one-time incident, but the little bitch’d had him tailed for the next six months. She got pictures of him with three other conquests—conquests that she just didn’t understand met a need in his ego. Sleeping with them was the ultimate proof that he could conquer; the perfect and unarguable truth that he was desired, the incontrovertible proof being when they lost their damn minds and screamed.

  The women didn’t mean anything to him and he had told her so, but Cheryl Lynn wouldn’t listen. Neither of his children would either. The bitch had obviously lied to them about him and acted as if he was somehow not a good man because he still had it and used it occasionally.

  He hadn’t thought twice when she had confronted him with the pictures and asked, “Am I not enough for you?”

  He’d just shrugged. “Been there, done that.”

  So she’d left and filed for divorce. That had been three months ago.

  Dallas Love Field, Personal Jets Area

  Chester Dextress was waiting for the private jet to finish their taxi. His responsibility was to make sure they had the hookups to refuel and take care of the wastewater and any other supplies or replenishment they might need.

 
He was waiting in front of the private hanger for one of the FBOs (fixed based operators) to help the Gulfstream when a black late-model Jeep with heavily-tinted windows drove in, followed by a Mercedes Maybach S600. Chester whistled to himself.

  That last was one sweet ride, and downright sexy.

  They were heading right for him.

  This incoming was apparently a pretty high-level person. He wasn’t sure who it was, but with that kind of car, Chester was guessing Fortune 500 CEO. He turned his attention back to the Gulfstream as it slowly made its way to him. He could see the pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit.

  His tablet buzzed, so he looked down and reviewed the instructions. The plan was refueling and departure. That worked for him; he liked the in-and-outs. Everyone would be focused, and he wouldn’t have to wait around for instructions.

  The plane stopped as coolly as could be, and the door was lowering no more than thirty seconds afterward. He watched as a sharp-looking young man stepped down the ladder and walked around, checking the area before calling back into the plane.

  King Kong stepped to the door.

  Chester wanted to stare, but he was able to get his astonishment under control when Sir Fucking-Large-as-a-Tree came down the steps and scanned the area. This guy had black sunglasses and was wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a blood-red tie. When he finished his review, the first guy went to stand by the steps. The big guy started walking over to the first vehicle, the black Jeep.

  A professional-looking black man stepped out of the Jeep and closed his door. He waited for Kong, and they shook hands. As Chester watched, the big man nodded and started walking around the Jeep. He pulled out what looked like a metal pencil that turned into a long rod with a mirror on the bottom when he pulled it out. He walked around the Jeep, using the mirror to look underneath.

  Finished, he took a clipboard from the black gentleman and signed it. The driver of the Jeep took the paperwork back, pulled a copy for King Kong, and handed him a yellow copy and a set of keys. Then he walked over to the Mercedes, and it left.

  What the hell?

  Chester looked around to see the first guy accept a long bag that clinked from someone in the plane and walk it over to the Jeep. Biggie put it in the back.

  Chester didn’t think that looked like a golf bag, but if it was what he thought it might be, he didn’t want anyone to know that.

  He turned to see another person leave the plane. This time Chester’s mouth did open and fail to close.

  “Please, oh please.” He spoke under his breath, “Please be a damsel in distress!” Chester didn’t know how to provide mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but he was willing to pretend that his experience as an almost-ok-french-kisser was sufficient to make the attempt.

  The woman was dressed in a beautiful white short-sleeved top and long flowing black pants and sported some sort of red-soled high heels. It was a cool day, in the low sixties, but she didn’t seem fazed. He looked very closely, and her top was tight enough that he would have known if she had been.

  Damn!

  It wasn’t but a minute before she jumped into the passenger seat of the Jeep. Biggie went around to the driver’s seat, and they took off.

  Chester got his little cart in gear. He would be in a happy daze for a while from the memory of that angel walking across the tarmac.

  That was one lucky guy.

  Chapter 2

  Dallas, TX, USA

  Cheryl Lynn wanted to give up, sit down and cry. She touched the area by her right eye and flinched. It hurt as bad as it looked, and it looked pretty bad.

  She was in the tiny bathroom she shared with Tina and Todd, her two children. Her hopefully soon-to-be-ex-husband had cut off all of her accounts, but fortunately she’d had a rainy day fund where she had put money for Christmas each and every year that Mark hadn’t cared about.

  She had squirreled over seven thousand dollars into that account, and it had been enough for her to get this mostly horrible little one bedroom apartment and put a few pieces of furniture in it she found on Craigslist. A phone call to get two guys and a truck for fifty bucks, and she and the kids at least could sleep on a bed and a fold-out futon couch.

  It was something. She needed a job, but Mark had placed legal issues on her record, and it was messing up her ability to find a job.

  This evening, she had been coming back to the apartment from the small grocery store six blocks away with tonight’s dinner and some food for the weekend.

  She had been accosted by two guys who had started whistling at her from the doorway of a closed barber shop. One was a white guy who hadn’t shaved in a few days. He was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt with a red ball cap. His compatriot was Hispanic. The white guy had been looking at her, elbowing his friend and laughing.

  She had ignored them, but when she heard their footsteps behind her, she had tried to walk a little faster, lugging her bags. She had turned around one time and noticed the two guys behind her.

  She had four blocks to go. She made the mistake of thinking that cutting through the parking lot of an apartment complex would be both safer and faster. When she had made it halfway through the dark area where the cars were parked, another guy had come out of bushes at the other end and smiled at her. She saw the faint gleam of his teeth in the poor light from the security lamp that had been installed on the side of the apartment building too many years ago.

  She looked over her shoulder at the two guys behind her. Nothing to do but go forward, so she’d set her shoulders and picked up the pace. The guy in front was considerably overweight, and his dark t-shirt didn’t keep an expanse of his white belly from showing.

  It was like a plumbers’ crack but on the other side.

  When she kept walking toward him, he spoke; his voice seemed pretty high to be coming out of such a huge guy. “Where you goin’, sweetheart?” He talked around a toothpick in his mouth.

  Cheryl Lynn glanced at him and made to walk past. “To my kids. They’re hungry,” she mumbled.

  “Not getting by without paying a toll, sweetie.”

  His little black eyes hinted at a darker meaning than she wanted to think about. “I’ve got nothing you want.” She went to step around him, and he moved to block her.

  “Sweetie, you got everything I might want. Food and…” He was surprised when she lashed out to kick him between the legs.

  Momma had always told her that talking never solved anything when someone threatened you.

  “Goddammit!” The big-bellied guy dropped to his knees, his voice now even higher. Cheryl Lynn heard footsteps running up behind her and started swinging the grocery bags before she even looked.

  She hit the Hispanic man upside his head with the canned goods bag and it ripped, cans flying everywhere. The momentum of the other packages carried her too far around, and the white guy grabbed her left arm and clamped his right arm across her face.

  She stomped down hard on his instep and bit his arm, causing him to pull it back.

  “Fucking bitch!”

  That was when she lost her focus and pain flared up in her face. She had been hit with a glancing blow from the guy’s other hand, and it caused her to stumble to her right. The first guy was getting slowly to his feet.

  She swung her other packages at the guy who had hit her and started running for all she was worth.

  Her adrenaline pumping, she took a second to look behind and noticed the white guy helping the last guy, who yelled after her when she went around the corner. His voice carried.

  “Mark sends his regards!”

  The cold compress she had applied to her face was helping a little. When she got home, she told the children to call for a pizza. She wasn’t going back out there tonight. She couldn’t make herself do it.

  Thirty minutes later, the doorbell rang. She got up to open the door to make sure it was only the pizza guy when Todd ran in from the kitchen yelling, “Pizza!”

  “Wait!” she yelled at him, but he was too excited
and too trusting.

  They were all too trusting. She hadn’t ever been in a situation like this in her life. She had grown up in a small town, gone to a small university, and gotten married. Everything had been idyllic—until she had confronted Mark.

  Not for the first time, she wondered if she should have stomped on her pride for the kids’ sake. She was willing to take the mental abuse and games. She might be willing to fight, but if Mark took his anger out on Tina and Todd, Cheryl Lynn wouldn’t be able to forgive herself.

  “Hello, young man…” Cheryl Lynn’s blood ran cold. Todd was staring up at someone who had to be tall. The door blocked her view, but his voice was deep.

  This wasn’t the pizza guy.

  Cheryl Lynn’s demeanor changed. Those motherfuckers had come for her children! She raced into her kitchen and yanked open the utensils drawer and halfway screamed, “Get away from the door, Todd!” She grabbed the meanest-looking knife she had, a cheap chef’s knife.

  Todd was transfixed by the guy as Cheryl Lynn raced to the door. She reached over to pull Todd out of the way so she could try to slam it shut. That was when she got a glance at the guy in the suit and the woman.

  She let go of Todd slowly and brought her left hand up to her mouth, covering it. Tears started streaming down her face.

  The big man smiled at her. “Hello, cuz. It’s been a while.”

  She opened the door, stifled a sob, and went to hug her cousin, little John.

  John deftly took the knife from her as she grabbed him and started sobbing into his chest. John heard a minor commotion behind him and glanced over his shoulder to see Bethany Anne paying a pizza guy down by the street. She also pulled her phone out, and he heard her order more food.