Red Skies

by Jan Stryvant

  "Why should you care?" Peg giggled back. "We're rich!"

  "But it's the thought that counts, right?"

  Peg laughed. "Right! Six hundred and thirty bucks, Canadian."

  "Oh, why that's enough for a nice pair of shoes!"

  Peg grinned. "Maybe tomorrow Sean'll let us get a little shopping in. But for now, I think we'd better head back before Roxy gets mad."

  ...It's Another

  "Why such an early start?" Ron asked Sean as they started to gear up. It was eight thirty, and they'd said they were hitting at midnight originally.

  "I'm worried about them detecting us if we all show up at once. So we're going to stage in from outside of town on foot. It'll probably take us a couple of hours to get into position. Then we're going to spend a little time watching them. Your security has been dealing with them a lot longer than we have. If they're spooked, we need to be careful."

  "When do you want us to send our mages for the ritual of silence?"

  Sean swore to himself, he'd forgotten about that. "Can you have them come with us now? Warn them they're going to have to do some walking."

  Ron nodded. "I was going to go myself, but I'm getting a bit too old for long walks at night. Give me a moment and I gather up a few of the younger men. It'll be a good exercise for them."

  Sean nodded and smiled, happy to have dodged that bullet. He'd go without them if he had to, but he'd rather play it safe.

  "Sure is a pretty sunset," Peg commented as they headed out to the vans. "Sure it isn't still too bright out?"

  Sean paused a moment and looked up at the sky, it really was a lovely sunset, all full of reds, purples, blues, and yellows.

  "No, we should be okay."

  "Red skies at night, sailors delight," Roxy quoted.

  "Well, I sure hope that's a good omen," a young woman being followed closely by four young men said as she came up to them.

  "And who would you be?" Roxy asked.

  "We're the magic users who are going to be performing the ritual of silence tonight. I'm Gail; I'm the one leading the circle tonight."

  "Wow, points for equality."

  "Trust me, I'd rather not be here," the young woman sighed, "but I'm more powerful than the rest of these guys, so I not only get to go along, I get to be in charge."

  "What, worried something might happen?" Peg asked.

  "It's not that, I'd just rather be doing research than going out and getting my shoes muddy. Or better yet, sitting in a nice comfy chair while somebody buys me a drink."

  "Sounds like you found your double, Peg!" Roxy chuckled.

  "You're a magic user too?" Gail asked, looking Peg over. "I didn't know there were lycan mages."

  "We're not common, but we exist. Sean over there is one, too."

  "Yeah, I've heard about him."

  "Really?" Peg asked, surprised.

  "Yeah, everybody is suddenly all interested in lions and stuff, so there's lots of research going on into them. But I've got better things to do with my time."

  "Want to go to O'Keefe's when this is all done?"

  "You've been to O'Keefe's? I thought you just got here?"

  "I did a little exploring while the others were getting ready," Peg said with a grin.

  "Girl, you're on!" Gail turned to the other four guys. "I'm riding with her; the rest of you can follow us, or ride in one of the other vans. Just do as they tell you, like Mr. Williams said."

  Peg smiled and showed Gail to the van that Chad, Sean, Roxy, Max, and a dozen wolves were packed into the back of.

  "Not bothered by all of us, are you?" Jace, who was driving, asked.

  Gail snorted. "Hardly, I've been dating Claude ever since they freed them."

  "What about before they freed them?"

  Gail smiled wickedly. "Then I just dragged him back to my rooms kicking and screaming every night. Though, come to think of it, he never did seem to kick and scream all that much."

  That got a laugh out of most of them, and putting the van in gear, Jace drove off, the rest of the vehicles falling in line behind them.

  "Umm, I thought you were all going to head out to the outskirts of town?" Gail asked after a little while.

  "Nope. We're going to be attacking here in the next few minutes," Chad told her. "We were afraid someone might accidentally tip off the Vestis that we were in town, so rather than wait until late, as we normally do, we're going to hit them now."

  "Hit?" Gail asked, sounding a little worried.

  "Do you have any friends over there?" Sean asked suddenly.

  "Well, I used to know this one girl, but I haven't seen her around much of late."

  "What's her name?"

  "Emily. Emily Roy."

  "Pass the word, don't kill Emily Roy," Sean said, clicking his mic on for a moment. This time he'd made sure to put his radio on beforehand.

  "I'm going to be wishing I wasn't here, aren't I?"

  "I'm already wishing it," Sean sighed, "and I'm the one in charge."

  "Okay, we're here," Jace said, pulling over to the side of the road.

  Sean heard the other two teams reporting that they were in position as well.

  "Take Gail and her friends wherever they need to go to set up, Jace," Sean said, and then turned back to her as everyone started to get out. "You've got three minutes to get going. Sorry to do this to you, but we all have to grow up sooner or later."

  "God, I better talk to the guys in the back real quick before they freak." Gail looked around as she followed him out of the van. "This should do, if you could leave a couple men with us, just in case, I'd appreciate it."

  "Jace, you got the duty. Grab someone to help you," Chad ordered, and then shifting into their hybrid forms, they all charged their rifles, checked their gear one last time, and when Chad gave the order, they started running for the compound. Chad's strategy was a fairly simple one: Blitzkrieg. They had overwhelming numbers, so they were just going to immediately overrun the place. One group was going to hit the kennels and start securing them immediately, ignoring anything else. The other group would attack the area around the kennels, forcing back anyone who might try to attack them or those inside.

  Sean, Chad, and the others were just going to slaughter all the guards and anyone who resisted. The only thing that could stop the slaughter was the group hitting the kennel telling them there hadn't been an execution.

  "Spare the women and children," Sean ordered as they came in sight of the compound.

  Sean noticed the guard at the gate didn't react as they all came into sight, in fact he seemed to be ignoring them until they got about twenty yards away, when he started to look confused. Someone shot and killed the guard then, and he heard Peg give a sigh of relief.

  "That was not easy," she grumbled.

  They came to a stop at the gates as several people ran though the guardhouse and unlocked them. Pulling them open, they all streamed inside, and it was about that time that someone sounded the alarm.

  Unfortunately for the Vestibulum, it was too late. A squad of the werewolves charged the barracks the mercenaries were staying in, killing two as they came out the front door. They then pushed past the dying mercs and ran inside, the windows lighting up from the vicious firefight that erupted inside.

  Sean ran for the main council house, with Roxy and Peg and a squad close behind, as Chad and Max each took a squad and started to secure the grounds and the outbuildings. Sean figured it was most likely that Frank and the other senior magic users would be inside here, so it would be best if he and Peg attacked them first.

  Sean's earpiece came to life then as he kicked in the door and shot a very surprised looking man smoking a pipe. "Baron here, the kennels are completely empty. Repeat, they're empty."

  "Everyone, be careful with your weapons! Any of our people left are going to be working in the buildings!" Chad called out on the radio next.

  "Hold off on the mass effect spells, Peg!" Sean growled and, turning to the right, started to make his way throu
gh the building.

  "Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs," Peg grumbled back as she followed Roxy, who took half the squad and went left. Sean left one of his men in cover to keep an eye on the stairway that went up to the second floor.

  Because their rifles were all suppressed, people were still just reacting as Sean cleared the next two rooms. He shot three more magic users before they could do anything, the other members of the squad shooting another three. Apparently they'd come in just after dinner, and a lot of council members were still sitting around and chatting.

  "Women and children on the floor or we'll shoot you!" Sean yelled as they burst into what looked like a dining room. There were only two men in the room; Sean shot one in the head, and somebody got the other one. But there were at least a dozen women, and probably twice as many children.

  Sean shot an older woman in the foot as she started to cast something, causing her to scream and drop to the floor.

  "We're not kidding!" Sean yelled again. "Get down or die!" Sean pointed to two of his men. "Keep an eye on them, anyone tries anything, hose 'em all down."

  "You heard the man! Try anything and everybody gets it!" one of the two yelled out as Sean advanced into the kitchen. There were two men there, both very dead. One had a large steak knife stuck through his eye, the other had a meat cleaver buried to his nose, bisecting his skull from the top. There were four women in the room who immediately shifted into hybrid forms while raising their hands.

  "How many are left alive?" Sean asked.

  "We're it. The others are all dead," one of them growled.

  "They killed everyone? Why?"

  "Demons run this house now, lion. That's why! Can't you smell it? They're killing everyone, lycans and humans. The ones who help just get to die last."

  Sean blinked and, inhaling deeply through his nose as he swept the room, he could smell it. A faint but persuasive wrongness was in the air. He wrinkled his nose as the scent hit him.

  'I was afraid of this,' the First said suddenly.

  'What the hell is it?'

  'A possessor.'

  'A what?'

  'Think of it as a demonic leach. They infect you, then take you over, killing your soul and possessing your body. They're not any more powerful than the body they possess, but they're immune to most damage.'

  "If they find out you know, they kill you," one of the other women said.

  "Where is it? Who is it?" Sean asked growling.

  "Mr. Watkins. I think he's upstairs now."

  Sean spun around and dashed out of the room just in time to see the old lady he'd shot in the foot jump up suddenly and grab one of the wolves' guns as the other shot her, doing no damage.

  Ripping the crowbar Claude had given him off of his belt, Sean buried it in the back of her head, crushing her skull and dropping her to the floor. Sean noticed the other women in the room were looking at the body in shock.

  "We've got a demon problem," Sean warned everyone over the radio as he pulled the crowbar back out, "use your iron weapons if bullets won't stop 'em." Moving on to the staircase, Sean found the guy he'd left was still there.

  "Nothing yet, Sean," the werewolf said and motioned up the stairs.

  Putting up a shield spell, Sean charged up the stairs, coming out in a hallway with doors to either side. The scent of corruption seemed heavier to the left, so turning that way, he quickly started to go down the hallway, kicking in doors and shooting anyone he saw.

  The first two went down. The third one charged him while throwing several paralyzation and sleep spells at him. Sean responded with a cramping spell, which made it stumble for a moment, during which Sean used his crowbar to destroy the man's head.

  One of his guys fell to the floor at the next door, struck by some sort of energy bolt. Dashing up to that door, Sean saw a magic user starting another spell, and shooting him twice in the face didn't stop him!

  Putting his hand up and triggering a flame jet, Sean sucked in the energy from another energy blast and used it to set the man on fire. Amazingly, that didn't stop him either, but it did slow him down long enough for one of Sean's other squad members to attack him with a tire iron. From the looks of the damage each strike was doing, Sean felt confident enough to leave him to it and moved on to the next door. This one was a lot fancier than the rest, and kicking it in, there were three men, one of them older than the other two.

  Sean hosed them all down with bullets, then dropped the rifle and started countering the spells two of them were casting, while the third fell to the floor dead. Sean guessed he hadn't been possessed yet.

  'It takes time for them to take over your body and eat your soul.'

  Sean was too busy to pay too much attention to the First's words as he was suddenly in the middle of a magical duel with the other two magic users, one of which he could only assume must have once been Frank Watkins.

  'Damn, these things are powerful!' Sean said as he parried an ice bolt and fired back with a massive fountain of ice spell in an attempt to freeze them solid.

  'They have the host's powers and knowledge. They take over everything. It makes them hard to detect.'

  Sean grunted and flung the crowbar at the one standing next to Watkins, hitting it in the head and driving it back momentarily as it took damage from the crowbar, giving Sean the opportunity to advance into the room so the others could join the fight. Though what they were going to do to help him, he wasn't sure.

  Sean spent the next several minutes slugging it out magically with the two magic users; they were taking damage, or at least the lesser of the two was, but Sean was burning up his mana at an impressive rate.

  'I could really use a suggestion right now!' Sean sent as he started to move in closer for physical combat as his mana dropped towards unsafe limits.

  'Let me out!'

  Sean shifted into full lion form and let the First have control. In an instant, the First was on the more powerful one, savaging him with teeth and claws, ripping pieces out of him with every strike as he bowled the man over onto the ground and tore at him with all four paws, his jaws snapping at Watkins' face.

  Sean was rather surprised to see that he was doing damage, and doing a fair bit of it as they fought. Watkins couldn't get off any spells and had given up trying, and was now simply trying to keep his head or neck out of Sean's massive jaws.

  While this was going on, the others had rushed in to attack the lesser of the two with their iron crowbars and tire irons as it turned to attack Sean from behind. It managed to hit Sean twice before they set on it, and those attacks had hurt him, but the First seemed unbothered by Sean's pain or wounds, and continued to attack ferociously.

  When he finally managed to get Watkins' head between his jaws, the First leapt off of the body and started to shake Watkins around like a dog would shake a stuffed animal. Sean could hear the bones in the neck cracking, and then reforming to crack again as the First applied more and more pressure, until suddenly the skull collapsed between Sean's jaws and he found his muzzle full of brain.

  "Blaugh!" Sean growled, shaking his head and spitting out pieces of skull and gray matter as the First retreated and let Sean take control again.

  'You're enough of a lion now that they're not immune to your attacks. But be warned, it takes a lot more work than a Faerie sword, or even iron weapons.'

  Sean nodded and then clicked his radio. "Chad, what's our status?"

  "All the men are dead, I think we've gotten all the ones who'd become demons. We've got twenty-three women and sixteen children taken prisoner."

  "Move them away from the buildings, I want to talk to them," Sean said. "Oh, and torch everything. All of it. Even their vehicles."

  "You going to kill them all like the Eruditio did to the folks in Oregon?"

  "I don't know; first I need to find out what happened."

  "Weren't they summoning demons?" Max asked.

  "I don't think so," Sean said. "Someone call Ron, tell him I need him and his senior council t
o come here, now."

  "Roger that!"

  "How many did we lose?" Sean asked Tad, one of the guys on his squad.

  "Two from our group. I don't know how many more we lost, Sean."

  Sean sighed. "Help me search the building before we set fire to it, just in case there's anything of value here."

  Sean hadn't found anything beyond some fairly standard magical items when he got a call over the radio from Roxy.

  "Better come on down into the cellar, Hon."

  "Why? Something wrong?" Sean said and, flagging his men, he immediately headed for the stairs.

  "Peg found their casting circle, and she says you need to see it before we burn it all down."

  "On it!" Sean said and raced down there.

  As he entered the basement, he could feel that something was...off. The basement itself was finished and looked rather nice. The casting circle for ritual spells was set off to the side, closer to one of the walls, and it was well lit and appeared to be fairly old.

  Peg was examining it closely.

  "Don't step inside it," she warned.

  "Why not?"

  "Something feels off about this, and I'd rather not take any chances. You're not supposed to be able to summon anything with a casting circle, but then, no one really knows anything about summoning anymore anyway."

  "Does it feel like the one in Oregon did?"

  Peg shook her head. "No, but it still feels off, and there's the scent of human blood in the air."

  Walking over to it, Sean knelt down and put his hand on one of the sigils laid in the concrete. It did feel off to him. It came to him rather suddenly then, it felt like the place he'd been to in his visions!

  Sean keyed his radio. "Chad, do we have any explosives? I don't need a lot, just enough to ruin some concrete."

  "Sure, where are you?"

  "In the basement."

  "I'll have 'em down there in a minute."

  "That bad?" Roxy asked, coming over to him.

  "Yeah, I think it could be, and I'd rather not take any chances."

  Sean waited until one of Chad's men came down with a small charge and showed him where to place it. One loud bang later, and the circle was destroyed. Putting his hand on it then, he felt nothing.