“No, Cholly Jake,” the voice replied, “I’m not sure of that.”

  Cholly licked his lips. “My momma warned me about you, but I didn’t believe her. We all thought she was slightly damaged in the brain. The stories she would tell after her dreaming!”

  “Stories? People have told dream stories for centuries, Cholly. I should know, I’ve heard them for over a thousand years.”

  Cholly whispered a curse as he decided to let go. A viselike grip wrapped around his hand on the dead-man switch, keeping his hold tight.

  “Now,” the voice whispered to Cholly, who had closed his eyes expecting the ship to blow apart. “The problem with a device like this is the person you are playing with might be able to read your thoughts.”

  Cholly opened one fearful eye and took in the visage of the man in front of him. He was holding a sword in his right hand, his left hand wrapped around Cholly’s own.

  He grinned at Cholly.

  “If that person can read your thoughts, he will know if you intend to truly kill yourself, and when. Then he gets to stop you.” Michael looked down at the dead-man switch. “You won’t be needing this anymore.”

  Michael slashed down, severing Cholly’s hand at the wrist. He moved to Cholly’s left so he was out of the way of the spurting blood as the man screamed, grabbing his bleeding stump and dropping to his knees.

  “So, dead-man switches only work—”

  The ship dropped suddenly, and Cholly gasped as he lost his balance. Michael looked around and back at the switch. He chewed his lip and finished his statement, “if you release the button, or do a piss-poor job making them in the first place, dammit!”

  The ship dropped a second time and Cholly looked back to grin at the man. Looked like Cholly was going to win, with or without his hand.

  Except the devil wasn’t there anymore.

  Arnold let go of the door handle to hold Amanda in his arms.

  “Why now, you big ox?” her muffled voice cried. “Now that we’re going to die, you have the courage to hold me?”

  “I’ve told you before,” he answered, playing with her hair for a moment until the ship lurched again. They sprawled back ten feet. Arnold yelled for Amanda and grabbed her leg. There was a clang from the door as it slammed open.

  Good thing they weren’t there, or they would absolutely be dead at the moment.

  Then, he felt Amanda, himself and—another—as they floated away from the ship. Arnold’s vision was focused on the ship as they sped away. As the ship fell, it turned black and shrank for a split second, then shattered and exploded. An invisible wave caused a massive disturbance in the clouds around the ship before it was lost to his sight.

  “Arnold?” Amanda’s voice called out, gentle in the night.

  “I’m here, Amanda,” he replied, trying to get a lock on where her voice was coming from.

  That’s when a third voice entered their conversation, and Arnold’s blood, assuming he still had any, froze.

  “The two of you,” the male voice told them, “are all that is left of the Folly.”

  Amanda tried to keep ahold of her courage and asked, “Are you Death?”

  The chuckle that came back to them didn’t reassure Amanda at all, but his words did. “No, although some have called me different versions of Death over the centuries. My name is Michael.”

  Amanda interrupted, “You’re the ArchAngel!”

  There was a pause in the communication. “No, not the ArchAngel Michael you’re thinking of. I am not Christianity’s High Angel for God.”

  “But, you saved us when you could have easily killed us for being on the ship,” Amanda argued. Arnold fell in love again with her voice, the purity of her heart evident in her simple questions. Not that she was simple, but she never failed to ask the questions. “Why?”

  Michael kept one part of his mind focused on the power sources to facilitate the return to the ArchAngel as he pondered her question. Why had he saved them? The old Michael would have killed everyone and not thought twice about it. They were on a pirate ship, obviously then trusted by the pirates.

  His voice softened. “Because love is more powerful than deceit and selfishness. One cannot love as you two do, not only each other but also family and friends, and be truly evil.” They continued to speed towards the ship barely discernible in the clouds. “And because I myself have been changed by love, and I’ll stay on the path as best I can.”

  They allowed their host’s answer to wash over them as they pondered what the hell they were doing when it seemed the Heavens opened and God’s own lightning surrounded them.

  The ship they were approaching was hit multiple times, and as their speed increased, Arnold noticed an explosion in the aft section.

  Right where the antigrav technology should be located.

  Chapter Five

  Over the Pacific

  “Find me that ship,” Akio snapped. While their technology was substantial, even with a hundred and fifty-plus years of improvements since Bethany Anne had left, they had trouble locating a ship in a storm over the ocean. Separating the power sources from the large natural disturbances was not something Eve had developed any algorithms for yet.

  “I am trying, Akio-san,” Eve answered. This time, Akio detected a bit of fluctuation in her answer.

  He was stressing the AI too much. Akio pondered his obligations to everyone in a blistering second. His honor to his Queen. His responsibility to Eve, and his friendship, he realized, with both of them.

  The grim line of his lips said he was surprised at himself, if you knew this man well enough to tell.

  Akio had an AI as a friend. Over fifteen decades, and only now was he willing to accept even he could learn a new trick or two.

  “Do not stress, Eve,” he said. “We will be successful, the Queen is assured.”

  Eve, her voice back on track, responded, “We lost the ability to speak to the Queen a long time ago, Akio. How can you be certain?”

  “Little one, it is time I teach you,” he said, his reflexes pulling the ship he was piloting hard to the side as he dodged clouds that seemed to be roiling more than usual, “about a human concept called faith.”

  Antigrav Ship ArchAngel

  “The fact that you took out two other people should have alerted you to the fact the second asshole pirate was mine!” yelled Jacqueline.

  Mark and Jacqueline were still arguing out on the deck. Each had a hand on the pirates’ second craft. Captain O’Banion had tried to call them in after their successful eviction of the pirates. When he opened the door to talk to them, they both turned to look at him.

  One pair of red eyes, one pair of yellow.

  Family arguments weren’t his problem. He shouted, “Thank you!” and shut the door. He told those who had been ready, if not exactly willing, to help them that they could go back to their tasks. Those two were arguing with each other and it was best to let them get the arguing out of their system.

  Five minutes later, all hell broke loose.

  “What the fuck?” Jacqueline screeched as the ship lurched to the side. Both she and Mark slammed their other hands onto the slip of a ship and grabbed hold.

  Jacqueline failed to grab anything useful. A second and third bolt of lightning cracked, the sound blasting through their heightened senses, and the electricity ran through all of the metal on the deck. The ship’s capacity for capturing errant lightning bolts had been temporarily overwhelmed.

  Mark grabbed Jacqueline’s free hand, locking on as if he would be her safety belt. He easily moved her whole body to place her second hand on a bar.

  “Goddammit!” he yelled at her. “Don’t you fucking think about falling off or I’ll jump after you and cuss you out the whole way down!”

  Jacqueline’s expression was one of maniacal glee as the adrenaline hit her. They enjoyed the wild ride as the humans inside fought to keep their ship afloat in the sky.

  “Not if you fall first, Vamp Boy!”

  Then one last lightning bolt hit the ship and both of them screamed in incredible pain.

  Michael saw his two charges out in the storm, arguing by a boat he knew hadn’t been there when he had left the ship. He had obviously failed to detect the intruders on the way to the pirates’ ship. He wanted to roll his eyes in frustration.

  Didn’t they realize they were in a Gott Verdammt storm?

  They needed to get over their damned issues and become friends or partners or something. This dancing around was for the young.

  Which unfortunately, they were.

  God, he missed Bethany Anne.

  The ship was in trouble and he had to make a fast decision. Considering their height, he could catch it before they hit the seas below.

  He took the two humans onto the ship and rematerialized in the middle of the bridge.

  “What do you mean we lost the left bank of batteries?” the captain yelled as he helped his first mate get back to his feet. The engineer’s voice replied over the speaker, “I mean we blew out our capacitors and they sunk the power safely to the grounds. Unless you got a handy recharging unit, Captain, we just lost half our power!”

  Miles ground his teeth. Losing half their power meant they were effectively screwed. He would need to decide whether continuing on would be better, or just to let the ship go down. The storm had been heading west, so trying to retreat would just be putting them back in its path. Maybe the girl had been right, and waking the vampire is what he should have done. Now he had damned everybody.

  That’s when three people materialized on his bridge.

  The shared pain from his charges pissed Michael off, so his sudden appearance—eyes glowing as bright as those on the bridge had ever seen—wasn’t the gentle arrival he had hoped to accomplish.

  “These two,” Michael said, “are good people. Find out what they can do and use them. I’m done with this fucking storm.” With that declaration, he pivoted and exited the bridge.

  The captain looked at the people Michael had dropped, their confusion matching his own.

  “Okay,” the captain barked, “what did you do on your ship?”

  Michael left the bridge through the hatch to the deck. He turned the lock and slammed it shut.

  His two charges, he noticed, looked weak, but seemed to be dealing with their sudden electrocution.

  He darted over to them and pressed his hands together, rubbing them and willing the power to generate. There was no waiting or coercing. This time it would obey him.

  Or he would go into the Etheric and rip that dimension a new asshole.

  He pressed a hand against both Mark and Jacqueline, pushing energy to them to allow their nanocytes to heal them. Mark recovered first, his eyes darting to Jacqueline. He noticed Michael’s hand on her and moved his gaze up the arm to Michael himself.

  Mark swallowed. He was apparently in no mood to talk.

  Jacqueline gasped a breath, then moaned. “Oh God that fucking huurrrrtttt.” Her eyes popped open. She looked over to see who was touching her, then back at Mark.

  She slapped his arm. “What the hell, Mark? What did you do to get us electrocuted?”

  “You two,” Michael growled, his voice richer and deeper than normal. They peered at him, but he was looking up at the clouds, his face a mask of extreme displeasure. “Just kiss and get it over with.”

  He stood up, noticing neither Jacqueline’s surprise nor Mark’s narrowed-eyed look of determination.

  The captain sent the new people down to the engine room. Apparently they had worked there on the other ship, being useless anywhere else. They wouldn’t fight, but ability to work with technology trumped bloodthirsty every time.

  Miles watched Michael help his two charges, then stand up and stride to the middle of the deck. Michael looked around as if he were seeing something no one else could.

  All at once his eyes flashed red, bright enough to cast shadows as he threw his arms into the air. Blue energy left his hands to attack the weather, but lightning fought back and struck him. Mother Nature was not pleased with him, and didn’t take to his machinations to manipulate her will lying down.

  Michael ignored the disintegration of his body as the Etheric healed him at the atomic level. He had spent over a hundred years inside the Etheric being put back together molecule by molecule.

  He and the Etheric were old associates. Perhaps not friends, but certainly intimate nonetheless.

  Michael kept his hands raised, pulling in the power of the storm and shunting it into the Etheric. At the same time, he pushed power back out into the air to change the temperature.

  He was in the center, screaming at the storm. Although close, neither Jacqueline nor Mark could hear as they clutched each other. The power being unleashed mere steps from them was more than their minds could take in.

  “You think you’re worse than an atomic bomb?” Michael screamed, “YOU NEED TO BRING MORE THAN THIS!”

  So Mother Nature hit him with three lightning bolts at once as he pulled in power.

  “THAT TICKLES, BITCH!” he shouted back. If he had thought about it, he would have had to admit he was lying.

  The pain was enormous.

  His eyes narrowed, he reinforced his will, his voice a whisper, “I promised her I would be back. I am the Dark Messiah, I am the ArchAngel, but more than that, my name is Michael Nacht and I stayed together for her. You are in no way more powerful than my fucking love.” Michael grinned maniacally as he remembered his friends from the past and what they might say in such a situation as this.

  “SUCK IT!” he yelled, and started laughing as he pushed more Etheric energy into the atmosphere. The lightning became less frequent, and the winds started decreasing.

  Bethany Anne certainly wouldn’t get the same Michael back, but all things considered?

  That was a good thing.

  The Duke’s Residence in Germany

  Lightning flashed twice before a low boom of thunder could be felt by the human guiding the large antigrav vehicle through the narrow brick walls of the estate to the landing pad inside.

  His face was soaked from the rain, but it would have been wet with sweat even had the weather been dry.

  The last person in this position had failed to keep their focus and the vehicle had scraped against the wall on the way in.

  The Duke had ripped the flagman’s head off and licked the blood from his neck in front of a good portion of those in the castle that night.

  There were many outside of this building that did not understand just what the Duke was. But those within these walls were very aware, and were either here because they had sworn loyalty, or…

  Because they were slaves.

  Bryon Donnington had started out a believer, but it had only taken two weeks to understand the lie he had been fed. He wasn’t the follower of a great man, but of a monster. To keep his own head on his shoulders now, he needed to stop thinking about useless shit in the middle of a storm and make sure this damned vehicle made it down without scratching the paint.

  Moments later, he flagged the driver to kill the engines. He saluted the car with a hand over his heart as he had been taught half a year back, then turned and walked towards his quarters in the Duke’s castle.

  William ‘Duke’ Renaud strode through the doors, which closed behind him. With hours to go until sunrise, he scowled at the weather. No sun to stop him from enjoying the outdoors, but he wasn’t willing to get his clothes soaked by staying outside.

  He glanced at the map on the large table in his planning room as he walked in. A fraction of a moment later he stopped, then pivoted to his left and took three steps to look over the large map of Europe. He frowned and reached up to tap his lips as he concentrated on what had changed in the past four nights.

  He spoke at slightly above a normal level. “Gerard?”

  Seconds later a man approached the door and bowed. “Yes sir?”

  The Duke pointed at the map. “Why are we missing two pack tokens in Paris?”

  The man answered, “Sir, I was informed by Terrance that the leaders of packs Leleuand and Duval have not been back to the staging area outside of Paris in the last three nights.”

  His master continued tapping his lips. “So, you believe they have decided to break the agreement?”

  “I cannot say at the moment if they will remain absent, my lord. However, they have officially missed two meetings in three days.”

  The Duke nodded his understanding. “We have the firstborn child of the Alphas of both the Leleuand and Duval packs, correct?”

  “That is correct, sir.”

  “Good.” The Duke turned back to his original direction and started walking towards a side exit. “Do pull those two children out and videotape them being served to the Nosferatu, Gerard.”

  Gerard nodded to the rapidly retreating shadow as he closed the doors to the planning room. “Very good, sir.”

  Less than five minutes later, the Duke could hear the screams of fear as the two teenagers were pulled from their rooms. He smiled.

  One mustn’t hesitate to mete out punishment; respect was so easily lost.

  His grandfather, Michael, had taught him that just before he had been entombed by the same man.

  Chapter Six

  Japan

  Yuko fluttered around the base. Eve followed her and asked more questions than the usually patient Yuko cared to answer.

  The little android stopped in exasperation as Yuko used the rag in her hand to wipe the top of a frame that had been on the hallway’s wall for the last two decades.

  Eve pointed back down the hall. “This is as close to clean as we can get unless you wish to re-clean everything which hasn’t been touched in the last two days.”