by Jan Stryvant
"One. We've been here for six hours."
That staggered Sean for a moment. "Six hours?" He looked around. "I think I need some food, and to talk to Chad and Claudia. Where's Cali and Daelyn?"
"Eating," Roxy said and pointed over to where the two were sitting.
'Dad, how long will this gateway stay open?'
'Probably another six hours.'
"The First says it should close in about six hours," Sean relayed to Roxy.
"Well, that's good," Roxy said with a sigh.
'It gets worse now,' the First said with a sigh of his own. 'We had one in South America a few hours ago as well. They're going to start popping up every few days, and they're going to get larger and longer, in stages, until the main ones open up.'
'How many main ones?'
'One big one somewhere around here that will stay open for two years, another in South America, then a few more temporary ones in Europe or Asia. But we'll keep getting these smaller ones every few days from here on out. The next time you sleep, I'll have someone explain it to you.'
Sean shook his head and started walking towards the person handing out food.
"What's wrong?" Roxy asked, so Sean told her what the First had just told him.
"I think maybe we need to talk to the president, Sean."
Sean snorted. "He's probably looking at pictures of us right now."
Welcome to the Party
"In conclusion, we lost fourteen of our own, and killed somewhere between five hundred and a thousand of theirs. They stopped trying to come through the gate two hours ago, and according to Sean," Chad motioned to Sean, who was now seated at the head of the table, "the gateway will close in another hour and a half. As it seems to be shrinking now, I think that's a fair assessment."
Chad sat down, and Sean looked around the room. The entire Lycan Fellowship was there, as were Arthur from Sapientia, Joseph from Eruditio, Samis and Roloff representing the dwarves, Sawyer, Mayor Schiere, and Governor Sandavol.
"Any questions on any of that?"
"Is it okay if I talk to Colonel Tibbets about what happened?" the governor asked Sean.
"Talk to whomever you want; none of this is secret. The war's begun, and unfortunately we've got a front row seat, because it looks like Black Rock is where the gates are going to be opening."
"How many?"
Sean sighed. "I don't have exact numbers, but we're going to see one like we saw today, every few days, for almost four years."
"Well, that's bad, but it's not that bad..."
"That's the least of it," Sean sighed. "We're also going to get bigger and longer ones along with those until the big one opens up. That one will stay open for two years."
"Just how many of these big gates are we talking about?" asked Bill Channing, his father-in-law.
"Two. One here, one in South America someplace. There will be two or three more permanent gates that open when the main ones do, but they'll be small ones, and they'll be in Asia or Europe."
"You said that a small gate was about ten yards across. Just how big are the big ones?" The governor asked again.
"One hundred yards."
"Damn, you could fly an airliner through that!" said Jorge, the head of the boar families, with a low whistle.
"Has anyone contacted the president?" Jeffery of the bear clans asked.
"We're trying," Sean said with a grimace. "Too many people think it was just another piece of performance art by the Burners up on the playa in Black Rock, so they're making it hard for us to talk to him. But it's not as big a deal as you might think; humans are easy prey to djevels or demons, whatever you want to call them. That's why they're here, to eat human souls. So we want to keep humans as far away from them as possible."
"What about lycan souls?" Mayor Schiere asked.
Sean grinned, all teeth. "They don't like 'em and can't eat 'em. Same for Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Dark Elves, and Fey."
"Where are the elves, anyway?" The mayor asked, looking around.
"They're all down in South America," Samis volunteered. "They like the rain forests and the lack of civilization down there."
"I hear Canada and Southeast Asia have some as well," Roloff pointed out. "No idea if there're any other places with 'em."
"And the only reason we have any Fey here," Sean said, "is because they're related to me."
"Oh!"
"So, that's the bad news. What's the good news?" Bill asked.
Sean frowned. "There isn't a lot of good news, unfortunately. We're going to need to base our people closer to Black Rock eventually, so we can respond faster. This means that a lot of them are going to have to quit their mundane jobs, and that's going to make their lives harder. We've got ten months before the large gate opens; until then, we'll be fighting against guerilla-type attacks, as we won't know where a gate is going to open until it does.
"Once the main gate opens, we'll have a defined front, but even then, the small gates will still cause us problems."
"This is why I wish you'd invited Colonel Tibbets," Governor Sandoval said with a sigh. "He understands the military aspect far better than I do."
"If I may, Sean?" Chad asked.
"Have at it," Sean said and waved to him.
"Look," Chad said, standing up, "they're going to have two beachheads into our world. That may sound like a lot, but not in this day and age. We've got better logistics, and there're a lot more of us now than the last time they tried to take us over.
"Yes, it's going to be rough, especially the first few months that the main gate's open. But as long as we deny them their objective, it will close again."
"And just what is their objective?"
"To make it permanent, of course, so they can spend the next several thousand years living off of the human population on the planet, until it's gone."
"And how do they go about doing that?"
Joseph raised a hand, and Chad yielded to him. "By moving enough of their people here, and our people there, to upset the natural balance of the worlds. So all we have to do is keep them on their side, and stay on our side."
"Or at least kill any that get here," Chad added with a smile.
"Yes, that works too," Joseph agreed with a thoughtful look.
"Umm, I do have one final thing I'd like to address?" the governor said, looking around.
"Sure thing, Governor Sandoval, what is it?"
"The men and women who died today, is there anything we can do for their families?"
Sean sighed heavily, but smiled all the same. "They'll be taken care of, Governor. But thank you very much for the thought." Sean looked around the room then. "Chad, myself, and the rest of our planning team will be spending the next twenty-four hours figuring out how to handle the next incident. We'll let you know what we decide and what your part is. Any questions?"
No one raised their hands, but Sean wasn't all that surprised. They'd just been given a lot to digest.
"Okay, we're adjourned. We'll meet again in a week. Again, you're free to bring anyone you think is important, or tell anyone you think will believe you. I would suggest to all of you that you start thinking about what you're going to do once John Q. Public figures all this out."
Getting up, Sean left the room first, with Cali and Daelyn. Roxy and the rest of the girls were getting things cleaned up for the next fight.
"Sean, wait up," Bill said, trotting after him.
Sean stopped and smiled at him. "What's up?"
"I want on your team."
Sean blinked a moment, "Huh? What about Vegas?"
Bill snorted. "I've been there long enough; it's time to move on. I'm going to tell the governor he can appoint me to a special task force to work with you, which will give him a direct line to you, or I'm gonna retire and he doesn't get anything."
Sean laughed. "A direct line? Really? You think he'll buy it?"
"You're my son-in-law first, lion second. If you won't tell me what I need to know, then I'll just ask my daughte
r."
Sean stuck out his hand, and Bill shook it.
"Welcome aboard, Dad."
"It's the chance of a lifetime, Son. How could I possibly want to miss this?"
"Because your wife Gloria is going to kill you?" Daelyn said with a scowl.
Bill smiled even wider. "She's coming, too. You're still going to need a medical office, and who better to run it than her?"
"I thought she ran a morgue?" Daelyn said, making a face.
"She's still a doctor."
"And she's not squeamish," Sean said. "Okay, sounds good. I need to head back to the ranch. I'll see you when you get there."
"So now what?" Chad asked Sean as Daelyn drove them back to the ranch. Chad had all but moved out of the house he'd been renting, and was now living in a compound up in the west hills, not unlike the ones Claudia and Sean were both living in. Apparently Chad was taxing his people now, same as Claudia.
"That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn't it? From what I've been told, the gates open on a three-day cycle. If you know when the cycle starts, then you know how much time after a gate closes is safe before the next one opens."
"That sounds interesting."
"I find it more confusing than anything else," Sean admitted. "A lot of it is based on a seventy-two-hour cycle, or three days. From here on out, everything starts somewhere in one of those three-day cycles. For the next month, we only get those small gates. For the following three months, half of those gates will be medium ones. They're a bit larger, and they stay open three times as long."
"Is there any pattern to which one opens next?"
"Nope, completely random, and even saying 'half' is just an estimate.
"Then for the six months after that, it starts to get rough; one third of the small gate periods will have a large gate open in them. That gate lasts for sixty hours, and it's possible for that gate to overlap the next three-day period, meaning we could conceivably have two large gates open at the same time."
"And that's the hundred-yard-wide gate?"
"No, it's only about sixty yards wide. In the middle of that, at least, is one three-day period with no gates at all. But then at the end of those ten months, the really large gateway, or maybe I should call it the main gateway? Anyhow, that opens, and stays open for twenty-four months. It starts out small, like just another one of the small gates, but it doesn't close. Instead, it grows over three months, and all the time the main gate is open, small gates continue to open." Sean stopped to take a breath.
"Now, here's where it gets complicated. After the main gate has been open for nine months, the small gates upgrade to medium-sized ones, but they only open every twelve days, for twenty-four hours. This happens seven times, then there's a three-day break, after which a medium gate opens for forty-eight hours. That gate is the one that becomes the permanent gate. If the conditions exist for it to achieve 'permanency' are achieved, the main gate collapses immediately."
"And we've lost the war."
Sean nodded. "But if that gate closes on its own after forty-eight hours, it doesn't matter what happens anymore. The main gate will exist to the end of its twenty-four-month cycle, starting to shrink back down three months before it closes. Then we get the same six-month, three-month, one-month set of cycles on the way out that we got on the way in."
Chad nodded, and Sean could see he was thinking. "Do we have a range on how spread out all of these will be?"
"Everything will happen within about five hundred miles of the main gate. In fact, by plotting all the gateways that open, we can probably figure out where that one will be. But..."
Chad sighed, "But, what?"
"There are off-location gates as well. They don't start forming until the six-month sequence. Those gates never get larger than the small gate, but they can open in a much larger region, as they jump around a lot."
"How do the demons control them?"
"Djevels," Cali corrected with a grin.
Sean and Chad both rolled their eyes.
"They don't," Sean said. "Or as far as we know, they don't. But their world bumps into a lot of other worlds, so they're a lot more experienced with this whole 'gateway' thing. I asked one of the lionesses who seems to be more research oriented to talk to Perkins up in Vancouver to get the Eruditio working on it."
"Yeah, knowing just when and where they're going to open up would help us a hell of a lot," Chad said with a nod.
"I know," Sean sighed, "I know. Basically, we have twenty-two months and one day to 'win' this, to keep them from making the gateway permanent."
"Yeah, but after that we have another twenty-two months of dealing with sore losers."
"You think so?"
Chad snorted. "They're dem... djevels," he winked at Cali, who smiled. "Do you really think they're just gonna go, 'oh, we lost, too bad, so sad, let's all go home and pout'? Hell, no. I'm sure they're gonna go all scorched earth on us. But there's no use in talking about that problem until we handle this one."
Sean nodded.
"But I've got a plan so cunning, you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel."
"Alright Blackadder, let's hear it."
"We invade."
Sean turned and looked at Chad. "Are you crazy? Why would we want to invade them?"
"Because they'd never expect it, that's why!" Chad said, smiling.
"But invading them plays right into their hands by moving more of our people onto their lands. That's the last thing we want to do!"
"Ah, but think about this, if we're holding the gate from the other side, then when the time draws near for that crucial moment, we can all just withdraw through the gateway. Besides, if we make them think we want this gateway as much as they do, that we want to take over their lands, well, it's bound to cause some confusion."
'Dad?'
'Remember how I said we really need to assassinate their leaders?'
'Yes, I do. What of it?'
'This just may be the way to go about getting it done.'
Sean pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger and sighed. "Write it all up, and when you think you've got something, show it to me and we'll see."
"What? It's a good idea!" Chad said, looking a little surprised.
"It's just that I'm not all that sure we can even survive on the other side of those gateways."
"Well, I guess we'll just have to find out then."
"Just as long as you're not the one doing the finding out."
"Sean, you can't expect..."
"Chad! That's an order!" Sean growled and put some of his lion into it. "We can't afford to lose you! I may be the figurehead, but you're the brains behind the operation. You will not be going or taking stupid risks! If worse comes to worst, I can be replaced. You sure as hell can not."
Chad went from looking pissed to looking very embarrassed. "You know, it's hard to argue with you when you say stuff like that."
They pulled up at the ranch then, and Daelyn parked the van they'd been using.
"Well, let's go get the current status of the force out at Black Rock. Should almost be time to bring them home," Chad said, looking at his watch.
Sean nodded and waved. "I'm going to go in and get some rest. It's after midnight, and I need a break."
"Not going to call Steve?"
"It can wait," Sean said and yawned, "until tomorrow when he's awake."
Grabbing Cali, Sean made a beeline for the bedroom. As soon as he got inside, he pulled her close and started kissing her, his hands slipping up under the usual skintight shirt she was wearing.
"I thought you were tired?" Cali giggled.
"I'm never too tired for you," Sean whispered and, grabbing the bottom of her shirt, he pulled it up over her head, then immediately pulled her close and went to work on one of her ears with his tongue, causing her knees to buckle as she gasped and grabbed on to him.
Walking her backwards toward the dresser, Sean grabbed her tight ass and hauled her up until she was sitting on th
e edge, then grabbing the hem of her pants, he pulled them down, quickly peeling her out of them. Once he had them past her knees, he just raised up a foot and pushed them down the rest of the way.
Cali meanwhile had undone his pants, which fell to the floor, as Sean still favored loose cargo pants, though with the necklace he didn't have to worry about ruining them anymore.
Lowering his mouth to those luscious dark breasts of hers, Sean started nipping and tugging at them with his teeth while getting her pants the rest of the way off, then kicked off his own as Cali's legs went around him, pulling him closer as her hands roughly pulled his shirt off, sending buttons flying everywhere.
"Take me, my Husband," Cali said, panting. "Take me now!"
Sean was almost painfully erect, so standing back up straight, he pulled her close as she guided him inside of her. Sean almost growled at how hot and wet she was. Obviously she'd been waiting for this as much as he had. Sean was finding that combat made him quite horny.
Plunging into the hilt, Sean didn't hesitate and, raising his mouth back to her lips, he sent his tongue past her lips and held her tight as they let go and savored each other's bodies completely. It may have been fast, but it was satisfying, and Cali quickly joined him when he hit his peak deep inside her.
Letting his head lie on Cali's shoulder as he caught his breath and basked in the afterglow, Sean briefly pondered the prospects of the four years of war facing him, when he felt someone running their fingers through his hair. Opening his eyes, he saw Daelyn was now sitting on the dresser next to Cali.
"Okay, Lion-boy, now it's my turn," Daelyn said with a hungry smile.
Deniable Plausibility
"Morning, Tisha," Steve said as Tisha came into his office. Sean had been right; Tisha was cute as hell, and looked eighteen because she was eighteen.
In this body.
Apparently lions who died were reincarnated, so while Tisha looked eighteen and had the body of an eighteen year old, she was actually over ten thousand years old. Amazingly, she had playing the cute little mindless blond down pat. Right up until Terri had read her the riot act while holding a cattle prod, which she'd just finished sticking Tisha with five seconds after she'd made a pass at Steve.
