by Jan Stryvant
"Google Maps should be good enough. These guys are the small fry; the Gradatim are the ones I'm really worried about. I'll ask John to come back up here tonight and take a bunch of shots of their place after the sun's gone down."
Sean reached over and woke up Roxy, Cali, and Peg.
"We're about to start looking at the council houses," he told them.
"Ah, finally, something to do," Roxy said, stretching, as Sean appreciated the view. Cali smiled and did the same, showing off perhaps a little bit when she noticed Sean watching her as well."
"Is that all?" Peg said and yawned. "Wake me if anything exciting happens."
"Yeah, this can be pretty boring," Roxy agreed, "but it is important."
"Then wake me when something important happens," Peg mumbled, curled back up on the seat, and fell asleep.
"I thought lions were supposed to be the lazy ones?" Chad joked.
"More like the exhausted ones," Sean said with a wink.
"You got no one to blame for that but yourself."
"Oh, we definitely help," Roxy said, grinning.
"Well, let's look at what we're dealing with," Chad said, changing the subject, as they turned off the highway and started down towards the council houses.
"Cali, could you move up front and tell us if there are any traps on the walls?"
"Okay!" Cali smiled and moved up just behind Rufus in the passenger's seat up front, where she could have a direct view.
Sean and the others in the back turned to watch the monitors. The van didn't have any windows in the back, as that would make it easy for anyone outside to see the people inside. However, it did have a couple of flat-screen monitors set up, which were attached to cameras hidden on the roof of the van. Sean was fairly impressed. John had set this up for them a couple of days ago so they could drive around and gather information more discretely.
They all watched for the next hour, except for Peg who was sound asleep, as they drove around the neighborhood. First they went over the Vestibulum's compound, and then the Ascendance's. Exciting it wasn't, but the amount of security was minimal. The walls they had weren't really all that high.
Cali did find the open points in the spells on the walls, at least. There weren't any traps on them, but they did have quite a few alarm spells.
"Well, let's go check out the Gradatim," Chad ordered as they headed back to the highway."
"How about stopping for some lunch?" Sean asked.
"Yeah, I like the sound of that," Chad agreed. "Steven, tell Rufus up front where to go so we can stop and get something to eat."
"Sure thing. I'll take you to the Rams Head. It's on the way, and they've got good burgers."
They spent the ride looking over the pictures and marking weak spots as Chad planned, with Sean and Steven's help. The traffic got worse as they got closer to the city, and Steven ended up helping Chad develop routes for after the attack on Saturday night so they could get out of town as quickly as possible.
"So no one goes up the river?" Chad asked.
"Not really. It's almost always open up Highway 30, and if you take it up to here," Steven pointed to a spot well north of the city, "you can cross the river, bypass Vancouver, and be on your way to Seattle next."
"That would mean we'd have to move our marshaling point," Chad said, looking over the map.
"Why?"
"It's easier to start and come back to the same place. Less confusion among our people if they know to come back to where they started, if any of them should get separated."
"I guess we won't be marshaling out of Sapientia's place then?" Roxy asked.
"Actually, I told Sean it wouldn't be a good idea to drag them into this," Chad told Roxy. "We haven't even sent anyone over there yet to request the silence ritual."
"Are you going to?"
"Well," Chad looked at Sean, who shrugged, "we're not sure. Sean's worried about us becoming too dependant on Sapientia, and I'm worried about it being too obvious if we keep relying on them."
"What other choice do you have?"
"We could go with Eruditio," Sean said, "or we could just forgo any of that at all. Peg, Jolene, and I could put some silence spells down on any blast points when we go in, then maybe have a diversion ready elsewhere if things get out of hand."
"We could stage down here by the rail yard," Steven said and pointed to the map. "My wife owns a couple of the warehouses down there, so it wouldn't be an issue."
Sean and Chad looked at each other, then back at Steven.
"She's rich. I thought I mentioned that before?"
"Just how rich is she?" Chad said.
"Umm, you know how some people have more money than god?"
"She's that rich?" Chad asked, looking impressed.
"Oh no, she makes them look poor," Steven said with a smirk.
"Whatever," Sean sighed, "that's not important right now."
"We're here!" Jace announced from the driver's seat.
"Good, I'm starved," Sean said. "Peg, wake up, food."
"Ah! Something important!" Peg yawned, stretching as she sat up, while Sean appreciated the view.
"Well, let's go inside, we can continue this later," Chad agreed.
The lunch crowd was just finishing up, so they didn't have too much trouble finding a place to sit. Sean slipped the hostess a twenty and got them all seated in the back.
"You know, no one knows we're here," Peg said, smiling.
"Old habits."
"How can they be old? You only got infected about four months ago!"
"Yeah, but it sure feels like a lifetime," Sean chuckled, then added with a wink, "must be the lack of sleep?"
Peg blushed as Cali giggled.
"Now, let's order and relax for a bit while we enjoy lunch."
#
"Damn, I swear the traffic around here is worse than LA," Sam said to Owen as they headed back towards the Gradatim compound. They'd spent the last hour making sure they had people watching both Sapientia and Eruditio. Ethan Huell, the leader of the local Gradatim, had been quick to agree with Sam's assessment of the situation, thankfully.
"Yeah, between all the mountains, the rocky hills, and the rivers, it's kind of a tight squeeze around here," Owen agreed. "If we didn't have such a nice place up in the hills, I think we'd have moved further west ourselves."
"How about we stop and get something to eat? I'm famished."
Owen nodded, "Yeah, me too. Burgers okay? The local McMenamins has good burgers and about two dozen great beers on tap."
Sam laughed. "You had me at burgers, but damn I could go for a couple of beers right now, myself."
"Just be happy the lunch rush is over, these places are all packed come noon," Owen said as he found an open spot by the curb and pulled in.
"At least the weather up here is nice," Sam said as they got out and walked over to the pub.
"Summers are great up here, but the rest of the time, it's raining." Owen chuckled.
"It can't be raining all the time?" Sam asked curiously.
"We have twenty different words to describe the type of rain up here, Sam. Everything from 'misting' to 'torrential downpour'. Live here a few years, and you don't even bother with an umbrella anymore, getting wet is just part of the charm."
Sam laughed and shook his head. "Yeah, I don't think I could deal with that."
Opening the door, they went inside.
"Got anything by the window?" Owen asked.
"Sure," the hostess told them and led them over to a window seat.
"This is a really nice city you have here, Owen, even with the traffic."
"Yeah, and in the summertime the sun doesn't go down until really late. It'll be light here until ten."
"At least the short nights will make it a lot harder on that kid. He never strikes during the day."
Roxy had her hand over Sean's mouth and was sitting in his lap while Peg held on to one arm and Cali held on to the other.
"Stop it!" she whispered into his
ear as Sean growled deep in his throat. Peg had noticed it the instant her father had come in, and Sean had tried to get up almost immediately to go kill him, witnesses be damned!
"This isn't the time or place!" Roxy said and banged his head lightly against the wall behind the booth to get his attention. "If you kill him now, they'll know you're here! You'll ruin everything!"
"He hurt Peg," Sean said in a soft, but very angry, voice.
"Sean, Honey," Peg whispered, "please? Not here? Not now? Do it for me? Please, Sean? I want him dead too, trust me on that! I want to see you kill him more than you want to kill him! But we can't do it here, we have to wait!"
Sean was so angry he was shaking. Right now almost nothing mattered more than getting up, going over there, ripping that smug bastard's arms off, and beating him to death with them.
Almost.
Roxy sitting in his lap blocked his view, and while he could overpower the three of them, it wasn't as pressing now that he couldn't see him. He couldn't recall ever being so angry in all his life! Never! Not once! The rage he'd felt was shocking in how overwhelming it was, and only now was he even considering holding it back.
'Is it always this bad?'
'No, as you get older and more experienced, you'll learn that waiting for the right time to tear them to pieces is just so much more satisfying,' the First chuckled in his head.
"This isn't the time," Sean admitted, slowly, though it felt like he was pulling his own teeth out as he said it.
"Thank god." Roxy sighed.
"Now I better get ready to cast an illusion if he comes this way," Peg said, letting go of Sean's arm.
"I'm thinking it might be better if I go out the back and hide out of sight someplace. If he walks by our booth, I'll have to kill him," Sean admitted.
"I'll go with you," Cali said.
"No, stay here. If two of us leave, it'll look suspicious."
"What about your food?" Chad asked.
"Get it to go, tell 'em I got a call from work and had to run back to the office," Sean said and, keeping his head down, he got up out of the booth and made a beeline for the back of the pub. Thankfully Sam Wilston was sitting up front by the window, and Sean and the others had sat in the back.
"Leaving?" the waiter asked as Sean ducked by him.
"My boss is out front, and I'm supposed to be working through lunch. My wife'll bring it to me when she leaves," Sean said quickly.
"Wow, he must really be some kind of asshole," The waiter said.
"You don't know the half of it."
Sean made his way through the kitchen and ducked out the back door before the cook could say anything. There really weren't a lot of places to hide, and he didn't feel all that much like hiding anyway. Heading back to the van, he figured he could wait there, or better yet, the pizza place a few doors down, once he realized he didn't have the keys for the van.
Ordering four slices and getting a drink, Sean sat down and waited for the others to come back to the van. Sam Wilston. What the hell was he doing up here? Is this where he ran to, after he'd escaped from Reno? Or was there something else going on? Gradatim's power base was more on the west coast, because their main headquarters was in Los Angeles. Sean had no idea how powerful they were in Europe, but he doubted they were as strong as they were here in the States.
Still, after what had gone on in Reno, Sean was shocked to see that apparently Sam was still accepted by the other members of the Gradatim. Steven had recognized who Sam was eating lunch with, Owen Lee, the right-hand man of Ethan Huell, the leader of the local Gradatim council.
Eating his pizza, Sean wondered what was going on, something was obviously happening. When two unmarked vans suddenly went flying by on the street, followed by the sounds of screeching tires, he dropped the pizza and ran for the exit as the sounds of an explosion brought all of his worst fears to life.
All The Madmen
Sam felt it, as he sat there eating his lunch, one of his daughters was here, and as Camellia was back in Reno, it could only be Peggy.
"Call a strike team," Sam said in a soft voice to Owen after he swallowed.
"What?" Owen looked surprised.
"My daughter Peggy is here, in this building someplace."
"So?"
"So, I know she's taken up with that lion. I think he's even made her one of his wives. So if she's here..."
"He's here," Owen said, pulling out his phone and texting quickly, telling the team that they were at the McMenamins Ram's Head pub.
Sam picked up his beer and took a drink while trying to look around the pub unobtrusively. It went back a ways towards the kitchen and the bathrooms. There were still a good deal of people inside, so he didn't see anybody he recognized, but he knew all of his kids' magical auras; he'd made sure to become familiar with them, same as his wife's, so they wouldn't catch him when he was doing something best kept secret.
"Okay, they're on their way; they'll be here in five minutes."
"I thought you said traffic was bad?"
"We're not that far from the compound."
Sam nodded and looked out the window; there weren't all that many people on the street.
"What do we do about witnesses?" Owen asked.
"Kill them," Sam said without hesitation.
"You sure?" Owen asked, lowering his voice.
"Course I'm sure. If no one is alive to say what happened, it'll make it easier for us to make up a story and force it on the mundanes. Not like the news media or the police are magic users, right?"
"Ethan won't be happy."
"If we kill this lion, he won't care, and Rupert will reward all of us," Sam said calmly as he checked his protective spells to make sure he was ready for what was about to happen.
"What about your daughter?"
"What about her?" Sam asked.
"Don't you want her captured?"
Sam shrugged. "She's damaged goods; I don't think any magic user is going to want to be with her after she's been a lycan's plaything for the last few months."
Owen nodded slowly. "Yeah, I can see your point. Probably be doing her a kindness when we kill her."
Sam let out a heavy sigh to make it sound like he didn't care much for the idea, when truth was he didn't care in the slightest what happened to her. He'd heard a rumor she'd survived, that the boy had saved her, but he was sure every time she looked at the scars he'd left on her she was cursing him. Probably why she took up with the boy, not like a lot of people would want a woman as scarred as she no doubt was now from the whip he'd been using on her.
Owen's phone beeped once a couple of minutes later as they sat and waited.
"That's them; they'll be pulling up outside any moment."
Sam nodded. "Well, let's get this started," he said and, standing up, he stretched, then as a pair of vans stopped in the middle of the street, he cast a fireball into the back of the pub.
Peg had finished her burger and was waiting for the others to finish. She'd put up a small illusion to hide her own appearance, in case her father came back here to use the bathroom, she didn't want to chance just trying to hide her face. Roxy was now sitting next to her, Cali sitting next over, with Chad and Steven sitting across from them. Jace and Rufus, the other two from the van, were sitting in the booth across from theirs.
She was watching her father, carefully, while the others finished up and talked. She didn't trust the bastard. Not one inch. She knew everything he'd done, both to and with Sheila. She knew about all of his backstabbing ways, his manipulations, and how little he'd cared about either her or Camellia. Roger and Charles may have been worse, but she didn't doubt her father was fully capable of equal amounts of vileness and cruelty. He just did it to get ahead, unlike the other two, who had done it as much for fun as for advancement.
When he stood up and stretched, alarm bells went off in her head. "Guys!" she warned.
"What?" Roxy said, head snapping around instantly to look at Sam.
Peg swore as her fathe
r wound up and cast a fireball into the back of the bar, barely managing to cast a deflection spell as it flew back towards them, exploding with enough force to kill several of the patrons outright, and leave half a dozen more with their hair and clothing on fire.
Roxy didn't hesitate; the moment Peg had warned her she'd gone for her pistol, and as Sam cast the fireball, she immediately returned fire. Sam apparently had some sort of spell running that deflected her first two shots, but the man with him didn't, and Roxy had the satisfaction of seeing his head explode as she shot him in the left ear.
But her satisfaction was short lived as the windows blew in and a team of magic users started to fire more offensive spells in through the now shattered windows.
By now, both Jace and Rufus had started to return fire, and Cali was quickly flinging knives at the magic users who were either brave or fool enough to come in the front door.
"Out the back!" Chad yelled at them. "Quickly! Before they trap us in here!"
Roxy nodded and reloaded. "Cali and I will clear it! Move, Cali!"
Cali nodded, and Roxy noticed she know had a MAC-10 in her hands. Where the hell she'd been hiding that Roxy didn't have the time to ask, as they quickly fled the booth, heading towards the back.
Peg cast another deflection and shielding spell to protect their backs as they went.
"Steven! Go!" Chad called, and Peg noticed he had a wand he was using. She swore at that, all the wands they had laying around at home, and she hadn't thought to grab a single one!
"Go, Peg!"
Peg shook her head. "No, you go. I'm the only one with magic here!"
Chad swore, but Peg noticed he didn't argue.
"Jace, behind me, Rufus, cover her!" was all Chad said as he moved to the back.
Peg could hear gunfire out in the street now; she could only guess that Sean and the security team that had been following them all morning in a car were involved. There were some powerful spells going off outside, and a van out front suddenly blew up with enough force to shake the entire building.
She couldn't see her father anymore, and Rufus was shaking his head from the force of the explosion. From the ringing in her ears, she suspected her own eardrums had ruptured and were quickly growing back. Checking her own mana levels, Peg could see she was getting low. It was time to leave.
