Demon Days

by Jan Stryvant

  "He's no longer any friend of mine, General," Musalino said, quickly realizing just which way the wind was blowing. "Obviously he's become a very sick man. I knew he didn't like Mr. Valens, but I had no idea that he was engaging in this kind of behavior, or I would have told you myself! This reflects badly on us all."

  "Yes, it does. I expect to see your full cooperation going forward, Captain."

  Captain Musalino nodded; he honestly didn't like Valens or the lycans very much either, but he knew his friend Chris had gone off the deep end, and if he wasn't careful, he'd find his own career dragged down with him.

  If that happened, his wife would kill him.

  Mueller was fuming the entire trip to the airport. There wasn't anything scheduled to leave the small National Guard base nearby, so he'd have to fly on a commercial airliner. To make matters worse, he was being accompanied by two sergeants from the Guard base who'd been ordered to see him on the airplane, and make sure he didn't get off of it before it had taken off.

  There would be two more waiting for him when it landed in Washington. While he wasn't under arrest, yet, he was definitely on restriction.

  That bastard lieutenant was behind it, obviously. Mueller didn't think that Valens guy had the brains to do anything like this. He was just a dumb brute who relied on strength and mystical mumbo-jumbo.

  "If you two gentlemen would excuse us please, for just a moment? We'd like to have a little talk with your prisoner there."

  "Why of course, Miss."

  Mueller blinked and looked up. There were two very attractive women standing there and the guards, who had been ordered not to leave him alone, got up and walked over to the other side of the airport lounge, just out of earshot.

  "Ah, Captain Mueller," said the one who had spoken, and she dropped into the seat on his left, while the other one took the seat on his right. "You've been a very, very bad boy, haven't you?"

  "Stealing women's knickers!" the one on his right snickered in a heavily British accented voice. "How crude!"

  "And then trying to use a love potion on one!" The first giggled. "Love potions don't work on lycans, silly boy."

  "I did nothing of the sort!" Mueller retorted hotly. "I was framed!"

  "I know," the first one said with a very sweet smile. "I'm the one who framed you."

  Mueller started to get out of his seat when the second young woman, who couldn't weigh more than a hundred pounds, put a hand on his chest and forced him back into his seat like he weighed nothing at all!

  "Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Peg Valens, and Sean is my husband. You've made him very angry, you know, and well, us wives just didn't appreciate that."

  "You, you...you!" Mueller sputtered. He had two of the animals on either side of him! He'd heard stories about just how violent they could be, and that oaf Valens had shown him that more than once!

  "Before you go, sweetie," the British one said. "A little something to ponder. Lions are very territorial, and jealous—oh boy are they jealous!"

  "What? Why should that matter to me?"

  "You don't get it, do you," the first one said with a smile that was all teeth, and no humor anymore. "Those vials, the panties. What do you think my husband is going to do if one of those turns out to have come from one of his wives?"

  "Or his mistresses," the other added. "He has several, you know, he's a very lusty lion, after all."

  "But, but, I didn't do any of that, and you know it!"

  "That's right, I do know it," Peg said with a wink. "So I thought it was only fair that I told you. If Sean should discover any of that came from us, well..."

  "First you will know pain," Sheila said.

  "And then you will know fear," Peg agreed.

  "And then you will die," Sheila said with a giggle.

  "Enjoy your flight!" Peg laughed, and the two of them got up and sashayed away as the two sergeants sat back down next to him.

  "Those women!" Mueller said.

  "What women?"

  "The two that were just sitting next to me!"

  The first sergeant looked at the second one and just shook his head.

  "We haven't moved since we got here, Captain."

  "But, but they said he was going to kill me!"

  "I'm sure they did, Captain," the other sergeant said with a shake of his head.

  Mueller shivered in his seat. They'd used magic on the guards. They wanted him to know they'd set him up, that they'd framed him! That they wanted to see him punished. That they wanted him to suffer. That Valens would eventually discover one of his wives' panties or hair among the evidence they themselves had planted there.

  And they wanted him to know just what Valens would do when that time came.

  Mueller gulped and started to sweat.

  Grind

  Sean looked around the table. The general hadn't been invited to this meeting; he didn't even know about it. They were at Claudia's, and it was the entire lycan fellowship, plus Arthur from Sapientia, Joseph from Eruditio, and even Deanna from the Sorceress guild. Sawyer was there representing the goblins. Samis and Roloff were representing the dwarves. His uncle was there as well, even though there weren't any Fey who lived in the area.

  "I've called you all here today," Sean said starting off, "because I wanted you to be able to talk freely, without any fear of what you say here today getting back to mundane society. I know some of you," Sean nodded towards the mages, dwarves, and Sawyer, "prefer not to come to mundane attention. I may not always agree with that, but it's not my place to make decisions for you.

  "But we need to talk about the war. We're coming to the end of the first phase. The president is on board, and some of the military is on board now as well. We seem to have a handle on dealing with the gateways now, when they're about as easy as they're going to get. However, they're going to get harder, and that's going to start next week.

  "I need the magic users to get involved. I need the dwarves to fight with us as well. I need the goblins to take a much more aggressive stance on spying, to be sure we're not going to be betrayed by some possessed or easily influenced mundane."

  Sean sighed and shook his head. "Chad is convinced that Reno is going to be devastated, that sooner or later the enemy is going to gain a foothold. He's been telling me that we've had it easy, and we've been lucky.

  "And he's been telling me that it's not going to last. So we need to start planning our contingencies. We'll need strongholds, we'll need some hidden caches, we'll need a place to send our families where it's safe."

  "Safe from the demons, or safe from the humans?" Sawyer asked in a voice tinged with sarcasm.

  "Both," Sean said. "We're all going to be suffering the brunt of the fighting. The last thing I want is for us to be taken advantage of because we're in a weakened condition."

  "And here I was worried I was gonna have to have words with ya' in private!" Sawyer chuckled. "That's why I like you, Kid. You think things through."

  "Does that apply to the magic users as well?" Arthur asked.

  Sean nodded. "I've thought about what you've said, and I have to admit you had a point. The governments would use and abuse us all far more than the worst of you ever did if you were to fall under their sway.

  "Hence this meeting. For all that we need to work with the government and the mundanes and garner as much of their support as we can, we still need to remember that humans and their governments can be very fickle. Today's ally is tomorrow's enemy and all that kind of thing.

  "So we need to make plans, and we need to draw some boundaries. We're going to be working with humans heavily from this point on. Secret meetings aren't going to be very secret, so we probably won't be having any of these again for a very long time to come. If the mundanes find out we're plotting behind their backs, they're going to assume the worst."

  "So we stop plotting?" Claudia asked.

  "In large groups, yeah, we do. Anything dealing with the war and winning it, by definition that's not going to be something w
e hide from the mundanes, because we need their help. But our fallback positions, our secret caches, and the hidden places we need? Those are going to be closely-held secrets, and considering how easy it is to get answers out of the mundanes, we're not going to share that with any of them.

  "So we're going to need somebody who's just naturally sneaky, paranoid, and would never sell us out, because he knows lions have very long memories. Am I right, Sawyer?"

  "Wait, Sawyer?" Claudia asked.

  "You'd trust a goblin with our most important secrets?" Samis asked.

  "Yes, Sean," Arthur agreed. "Anything of ours that gets stolen nearly always turns up in his shop."

  "What?" Sawyer protested. "How can you say such things? I'm the epitome of an honest businessman!"

  Sean sighed. "Sawyer, if you were an honest businessman, I wouldn't trust you to do this right. Why do you think I always appeal to your greed and larceny? Those are things you can trust."

  Sawyer grinned. "Yeah, those 'honest' ones are the ones you gotta watch out for, cause they're always hiding something."

  "How do you know he won't sell us out?" Arthur said. "Sawyer's dislike for magic users is well known, Sean. Not," Arthur sighed and shook his head, "that I exactly blame him."

  "That's why I only invited you three here. You're about the only ones I trust. Feel free to warn the other councils; they need to be aware of the problems we'll be facing, too. However, they will not be a part of our internal deliberations. Also, I don't think they'd want to work with the rest of us."

  "Don't worry yourself, Arthur," Sawyer said. "We'll give you a year and a day until after the war is over before any of my people start to 'acquire' any of your people's goods."

  "Please don't make me regret this too much." Arthur sighed.

  "Anyone else?" Sean asked, looking around.

  "You sure you can make him mind you?" Claudia asked. "'Cause if you are, I'm fine with it."

  Sean laughed. "Mind me? Hell, no. But I trust Sawyer to do this and do it right. He knows what's at stake as much as any of us. He's got just as much to lose, probably more, and like 'em or not, Goblins always keep their word and their contracts."

  "Plus you'll all owe ole Sawyer for the rest of your natural or unnatural lives," Sawyer cackled. "Trust me, that right there is gonna make this all so worthwhile!"

  "Great, now that we got that settled, I've got an initial agreement for fuel, spare parts, food, and clothing. We're trying to get more helicopters, armored personnel carriers, communications gear, and well, I need all of you to tell me what you need."

  "What about weapons?" Roloff asked.

  "If we can use them, then by all means I'll ask for them. But let's not start up any black markets, okay? The last thing we need is to get our supplies cut off."

  "Surely you don't think we'd do that, do you, Sean?"

  Sean snorted. "I'd be doing it if things weren't so dire; hell, I've done it before. So yeah, I think you'll all do it. There isn't a one of us here who won't do what we have to for our people. So if you're going to do anything that could bite us on the ass, at least talk to Sawyer and warn me.

  "Okay?"

  Everyone around the table nodded.

  "Now, let's all discuss just how you're going to start helping in the upcoming battles. Chad?"

  Sean sat back and listened to them as they all hammered things out. There wasn't a lot the magic users could do right now, so they'd mostly be held in reserve until the main gateway opened. The dwarves, however, were eager to become more involved, and Roloff would be meeting with Chad later to work out the details.

  Sean sighed happily as he walked into the house. Roxy, Jolene, Daelyn, Roberta, Peg, and Cali were there waiting for him.

  "How'd the meeting go?"

  "Well, it went very well," Sean said with a smile. "I didn't have to threaten anyone, or even drop any hints. I think they're all starting to see just exactly what we're up against. How'd things go back here?"

  "They went rather well, and we've got General Baker and his team for a few more weeks."

  "Oh? I thought they were supposed to fly back to testify at that dweeb's court martial?"

  "Nope! He hung himself!" Peg said with a smile.

  "Well, neither you nor Cali have been anywhere near there, so I guess I don't have to worry that you might have been involved. What about the other one?"

  "He's been too busy worrying about his own neck to think that what happened might have been a set up. Sheila and I have been keeping an eye on him."

  Sean nodded. "Well, the next window opens at midnight, so what do you say to making an early night of it?"

  "Oh, lion-boy wants to play, does he?" Daelyn asked with a wink.

  "I think I might be persuaded," Sean said with a grin.

  Between Us and Them

  Sean sighed and dropped his ass onto the folding chair one of the support people had set up, Roxy dropping into the one next to his.

  "Damn, that was a rough one," she said, looking over the battlefield that was now a tar-covered mess of dead demons, with several lycan bodies mixed in, unfortunately.

  "Welcome to your first large gate," Sean said, splaying out a bit in the chair as one of the attendants started to clean his armor and fur. "What day is it?" Sean asked them.

  "Sunday, February twenty-fourth, Milord. Almost five o'clock."

  "So that gives us..." Sean thought for a moment, he was pretty exhausted after sixty straight hours of fighting, "seven hours until the next window opens."

  "I hope it's not another large gate," Roxy said with a yawn as another of the attendants started to clean her up.

  Sean watched as they were being trucked in. Most of the fighters were too tired to do more than just lay where they were. The small gates were bad enough, now often leading to about eight hours of combat. The medium gates—at thirty-six hours—were incredibly taxing, the defenders taking it in shifts as they fought.

  But the large gates, which were open for sixty hours, were just plain hell. This was the sixth one they'd had to deal with, and everyone was exhausted. Sean had over three thousand people in the field around him, and by the end of the cycle they were all beat, even with Chad and him rotating groups in and out of combat.

  General Baker was continuing to be worth every last inch of his obnoxious ass. Sean still didn't like the man very much, and he didn't care for Sean very much either, but his ideas on troop support and resource movement where both radical and appreciated. He was the one who'd come up with the idea of having the troops cleaned up and fed on the battlefield—where they often collapsed, exhausted, after the last of the enemy was eliminated—now that the large gates had begun.

  Sometimes even before the fighting was done.

  In the six or so months since the incident at Empire, the war had progressed a lot better than Sean had expected for their side. A few other small towns had been hit, but with a lot less loss of life, especially now that the government had started relocating people out of the area. There were still issues, of course, but they were dealing with them. But the enemy had redoubled its efforts since they'd entered the third phase of the gate cycle. Sean was not looking forward to the next phase, when the fixed gate would open and remain open for the next two years.

  "How'd the machineguns do?" Sean asked as he raised a hand to flag over one of the people distributing food.

  "Nada, zero effect," Roxy sighed.

  "Well, let's grab a bite to eat and go cruise by Sawyer's, then we can go check on the kids. Which is where you should be, instead of out here," Sean grumbled.

  "I didn't come out until the third wave," Roxy told him. "Sean Junior can survive without his mother for half a day."

  Sean just shook his head. Roberta had delivered a very healthy human baby girl back in January, as had Cali, only hers was a dark elf. Roxy had delivered their son—a young werelion—at the beginning of the month and had been itching to get back out onto the battlefield since then.

  "Jolene should have deli
vered by now," Sean said; she'd gone into labor just before the large gateway had been spotted.

  "She'd delivered before I came out here; Nguvu and Mtawala. She wants to know why you picked those names, and why they were so important, by the way."

  "I told you, those are the two lions who came and saved my bacon," Sean said with a huge yawn as he grabbed a bottle of water and what looked like a large hunk of beef from the guy hauling food around.

  "Oh, Dae went into labor about thirty minutes after you left and delivered a dwarven son. She named him Bernard after your father."

  Sean smiled. "I'll have to thank her when we get back." Sean looked around and flagged down one of the attendants who was carrying a radio.

  "Yes, Milord?"

  Sean tried not to roll his eyes at that. Someone had thought that calling all of the lycans in the field 'Milord' and 'Milady' would help improve morale, and the attendants had all taken it to heart. If it wasn't for the fact that the troops really did seem to appreciate it, he would have put a stop to it.

  "Call my command helicopter; tell them to come pick me and my team up in fifteen minutes."

  Sean heard several muted groans around him.

  "Oh, come off it, you guys!" Roxy laughed. "We're going back home, not to another fight."

  "That's what you think," Hunter muttered. "My wife's six months pregnant. After being gone for three days, she's gonna kill me in bed!"

  Several of the men snickered at that, and Sean just laughed as he made quick work of the meat he'd been handed. It definitely hit the spot, and he started feeling a little less tired. He'd have to grab something else before they got onboard for the flight back.

  "How much longer is this phase?" someone else asked.

  "About four months," Hunter replied. "Then it's on to the big one."

  "I can't wait," they sighed.

  "Really?" Sean asked, looking over at Nero, who was the one talking.

  "Yup. Then we don't have to do all this running around. We just plant our asses in front of their big ass gate and fight them until they're all dead."