“Oh, you mean her guards?”
Damn, he already knew about them. “Yes. John, Eric, Darryl and Scott. Gabrielle’s the head of the group.”
“Why did you call them her own?” Barnabas asked.
“You need to think about it as a capitalized ‘O’. When you do that, you realize that it is another title. It just happens to be one that is a little more P.C. than ‘Her Bitches’.”
Barnabas mused, “I would have thought they would be more upset with being called bitches.”
Frank shook his head, “No. It goes back a couple of years ago when I asked Bethany Anne for help. Well, to be truthful I would have begged for her help. I was losing people left and right due to a lot of Nosferatu hits across America. I had lost all of my Nicht contacts and support. Without Carl, who was Michael’s contact at the time, no one else in his family would lift a finger in support until she came on the scene. She joined an opp in Florida and it’s been nothing but a wild ride since then. She and the four men I told you about connected in a hellacious fight in the Florida Everglades. They bonded and have been inseparable since. They have her back and she has theirs. Then, Gabrielle came aboard and took the lead position due to her skills and experience over the centuries. They took the name as the ‘Queen Bitch’s Guards’ and even made a patch.” Frank turned back to look at the vampire on the other side of the small round table, “Have you seen one yet?”
“Skull with vampire teeth and red eyes?”
Frank nodded, “That’s the one. Trust me, no one who knows what that patch means wants to screw around with any of them.”
“They don’t seem to wear it much.”
“No, only on special occasions. If it’s visible, it’s an operations moment.”
Both men took a sip of their wine and enjoyed the quiet for a moment. “So now you do special projects?” Barnabas asked.
“I mentioned I still keep an ear open for events around the world, but now I also keep tabs on chatter that might mean someone is onto us. That includes any or all of the family for the people on Bethany Anne’s teams.”
Barnabas’s eyebrows furrowed, “She asked you to watch out for her people’s families?”
“No.” Frank answered.
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because if she had to ask, I’m not the right person to be on her team. I know my boss and she cares considerably more than she might let on. You don’t want to cross her, and you sure as hell don’t want to threaten someone she loves.”
“Why is that?”
Frank turned to stare at Barnabas to see if he was completely clueless, or if it was a simple response to continue the conversation. Barnabas turned when he realized Frank had been quiet for a few seconds and had turned to stare at him.
“What?”
“I’m not sure if you haven’t been paying attention, but I doubt that. I’ll assume that you weren’t paying attention and I’ll answer the question, but don’t pretend to not know the answer. Bethany Anne’s sense of right and wrong is pretty strong. But her sense of fairness can be very skewed if she feels that someone is threatening those that are helpless or those that are pawns in a game. She was furious when they were taking her off of a dead-cases team because she felt the dead wouldn’t get justice. If she feels someone is threatening her own, her people?”
Frank turned back to look over the night waters, “Then we might witness what happens when justice releases a Fury.”
Barnabas sipped his wine, he was very familiar with the tales of the Furies, he could imagine some of what a mythological Fury could do in today’s society.
He enjoyed another sip of his wine, the waters would turn red with blood as it had in the battles centuries in the past.
