by Jan Stryvant
Dropping flat on the small platform, he tried to get as much cover as he could as he hid from their return fire. Wes was trying to pick off one of the attacking wolves shooting at him when he suddenly felt a strong hand grab him by the back of the neck.
"What the hell?" John mumbled as he looked through the viewscreen for his drone that was currently flying over the Vestibulum compound.
"What's going on?" Cenna, a very attractive female lycan wolf who had apparently taken an interest in him, asked. John probably shouldn't have agreed to let her help him, she'd been trying to get him into bed now for days. But she was actually pretty damn smart, and a very quick learner.
"There's a large group of people moving out of the Vesti's compound. On foot, no less!"
"Let me see," Cenna said and called the image up on her display.
"It's a strike team!" she said after a moment and looked at him.
John sighed and picked up his phone and called Chad.
"What's up?" Chad answered.
"The Vestis are sending out a strike team. Looks to be about forty strong. Shouldn't it be a multiple of six?"
"The Vestis use ten-member teams," Cenna said.
"The Vesti teams are based on ten," Chad echoed.
"Well, they look like they mean business," John said. "They're definitely well armed."
"They see you?"
"Nah, we're over a half mile away."
"Okay, follow them, keep me informed. I'll tell George to spin up the chopper, and I'll get a team together to see if we can't tag 'em before they get where they're going."
"I'll listen for you on the radio," John said and hung up the phone.
"I think they're heading to the Gradatim compound," Cenna said as John set the drone to follow them.
"I think you're right."
"They just got rid of all of their lycans, didn't they?"
"Yup, and I guess the Vestis have decided to strike before we take theirs away as well." John checked the map on his second monitor. "Tell your friend Swift to drive us over a bit closer to the Grads, but don't get too close. I don't want to end up in the middle of this."
"He's not really my friend," Cenna said and patted him on the leg with a smile, "you are."
John sighed and went back to flying the drone.
"Looks like you were right, Sir," Fastpaw said to Kory, the mage that was leading them. "All of their lycans just left the property, except for their domestics."
Kory nodded. "Let's go back to the others. It should take them about twenty minutes to get to the Gradatim's compound. We'll strike then."
"Yes, Sir," Fastpaw said and, putting his binoculars away, he followed Kory back to the cars and trucks that were waiting down the block from them.
"Okay," Kory said, looking around at the twenty-four wolves and five other mages. Unlike the Vestibulum, Kory was not about to leave the main compound of the Ascendants undefended. "Tonight is our chance to pay them back for Reno. We will hit the compound first. Kill every Vestibulum member you come across. Be quick about it, too, I want us to be gone before their raiding party returns. Also," Kory smiled, "we have about a dozen homes to visit before the word gets out."
"What about their lycans?" Peppermint, one of their lycans, asked.
Kory shrugged. "If they don't get in the way, leave them alone. If they want to run or come with us, that's fine. But don't waste your bullets."
"John, what's the status?" Chad asked over the radio.
"Where the hell have you been, Chad?" John grumbled into his mike. "They're almost done! They're forming up to start heading back."
"Sorry about that, took a little longer to get spun up than I thought. Besides, not our monkeys, not our circus, right?"
John sighed. "Chad, just because they're the bad guys, it doesn't mean I enjoy watching what just happened. Let me pull my drone back so you guys don't have to deal with it."
"Sounds good. I'm going to drop our people to intercept them on the way back. How many of them are there?"
"Eighteen."
"Eighteen? I thought you said forty went out?"
"Why do you think I'm bitching at you?" John sighed.
"Damn. Okay, we got it from here. Just let me know when we're about to make contact, then I want you to circle 'round and keep an eye on the Vestis for me.
"Got it," John said, then looking up at Cenna, he saw she was topless again. Normally he'd just appreciate the view.
"Put your damn shirt on, Cenna."
"But it's hot in here," she said, winking at him coyly.
"Not tonight," he all but growled at her, "I'm not in the mood for any games."
Cenna sighed and, grabbing her shirt, she put it back on. "Sorry, I thought it might take your mind off of it," she said and motioned towards the monitors.
John grumbled, but he knew she meant well. Why she was so interested in him of all people was beyond him, however. There were a lot more male wolves around than females, and she was the center of a lot of attention. Yet she was ignoring them and focusing on him.
At least she was bright. He was going to talk to Sean about hiring her when they got back to Reno. He could definitely use the help, and if she wanted to flash him once in a while, well, he'd just 'suffer' through it.
John had Cenna launch the second drone and fly it over to the Vestibulum's compound as he followed their wolves. When the Vestibulum's wolves fell into Chad's ambush, there was a brief scuffle, but Chad had a bunch of wands, and he didn't hesitate to use them, quickly splitting four off from the main group. As soon as those four were collared and had their pellets removed, Chad sent them back to their cohorts, who almost immediately surrendered.
John had to admit, turning Chad into a wolf and making him his general had been one of Sean's better ideas. He set the drone to fly back to the van and looked over at Cenna.
"You've been awfully quiet, Cenna. What's up with the Vestis?" John asked, switching his monitor over to the second channel.
"I don't see anyone," she looked up at him, "anyone alive. I think I see bodies, but that's it."
"Shit," John keyed the mike, "Chad, I think we have a problem!"
"Are the Vestis coming after us?"
"No, they're dead."
"You sure?"
"Give me a few, but you might want to take your new-found friends and go check the place out."
"Roger."
John took over control of the drone, a special quad-copter design and fairly quiet as those things went, but he normally kept it up as high as possible due to the werewolves' hearing. Now he brought it down to fifty feet so he could get a better picture.
"Damn, those are bodies alright," John swore and circled the main building slowly. Coming down lower, he moved over to the windows and looked into them.
"Great Spirit," John swore, looking at the scene before him as he came to the third window. Lying on the floor was a dead woman with a baby in her arms. A dead baby.
Raising the drone, he pressed the recall button on it.
"It's a slaughter, Chad. I'm not so sure you want to go there."
"The folks we just got want to check it out. Head back to base. We'll talk to you there."
"Got it," John said and turned off the radio, then leaned back in the seat thinking about what he'd seen. Sean had told him about what the Vestis had done to the Ascendants back in Reno. And now someone had done it to them up here.
Someone sat in his lap as the van started up. Opening his eyes, he saw Cenna was looking up at him; the two drones were now sitting in their racks.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," she said in a soft voice.
"How have you managed to live with those people?" John asked.
"Like this," Cenna said and, pressing up against him, she kissed him.
John put his arms around her; suddenly the idea of spending the night alone wasn't as attractive as it had been half an hour before.
On the Road
"I see they gave you a good sendoff!" Maitland laughed
as Sean tried to snooze in the back of the large van they were riding in.
"Well at least they're out like a light." Sean sighed and looked at Peg, Cali, and Roberta, who were curled up against each other and sound asleep.
"And both my cousin and father wonder why I made a pass at you." Ruth snorted.
"It was the glamour part that pissed me off." Sean sighed. "Yeah, it's a bit of an ego boost that a faerie would even consider me, but really Ruth, that part was just rude."
Ruth sighed. "Yeah, your mom really lit into me for it. But in my defense, I'm incredibly spoiled and used to getting what I want when it comes to men!" Ruth grinned at him after she finished.
Sean yawned and shook his head. "I don't even want to know about faerie courting rituals or how any of that works. Just please, don't ever try it again."
"I won't, don't worry! Like I said, Louise was quite clear, and she has a history of following through on her threats. Besides, your cheetah, Roxy, would skin me alive!" Ruth said with a chuckle. "Get her some faerie armor and a sword, and she'd be a sight to behold!"
Sean blinked and remembered a conversation then from almost a week ago.
"Just how hard is it to get faerie armor and weapons?"
"I don't know." Ruth shrugged and turned to her father. "Do you know?"
Maitland nodded. "Actually, I do. Why would you be interested in it, though? Your firearms are far more powerful than our swords."
Sean made a face. "Because we ran into a demon up in Eugene. A raseri djevel, I believe it was called."
Maitland looked surprised, and Ruth's eyes were wide.
"How the hell did one of those get there?"
"They were summoning them." Sean sighed. "We killed the summoner, only way we could get rid of it, since we didn't have any cold iron weapons, nor did we have anything magical enough to slay it."
"Your dwarven friends should be able to make it, as long as they have the proper materials, and I guess I can teach you how to enchant it. Making it of high enough quality to properly accept the enchantments is the hard part. The next hardest is getting the proper materials and finding a smith who is talented enough to be able to smith them together."
"What makes getting the materials so hard?"
"Most of them are only found in volcanic vents, so that makes them fairly expensive."
"Thankfully we have more than enough of them out here," Sean mused, thinking about what Daelyn's brother, his brother-in-law, did up in Oregon.
"I'll talk to Daelyn's uncle about it, I'm sure he'll know somebody with the appropriate skill levels."
Sean nodded and looked at his watch and then outside the van. "Looks like we're almost there," he said and, leaning back, started to stretch. "Time to go to work."
Gary sighed pacing back and forth a little nervously. The wedding wouldn't start for at least another hour, and guests were just now starting to arrive. Yesterday's destruction of the Gradatim national headquarters had proven his instincts correct, and suddenly everyone felt a lot better about breaking from the national council. Gary had no idea how the hell the lycans had done it, but he'd bet his last dollar they were behind it.
Obviously they'd gotten wind of the Gradatim's plans and had decided they'd had enough and acted first. He really had no idea where he wanted to go with everything next. Walter Clark over at Sapientia had suggested Solidad, but Gary wasn't sure that was where the future lay. He was seriously considering making overtures to Eruditio; their staunch neutrality and focus on learning really looked like the future to him. Sure, it would mean stepping down as the head, but this wasn't about him really.
"Gary! Come quick! Trouble!" someone yelled from the front of the gathering hall.
"Dammit!" Gary swore under his breath and ran for the front door.
Running outside, there were a number of people curled up on the ground, and a large force of men with wands and weapons, who were all being led by a werelion.
"There are no lycans here!" Gary yelled angrily at him. "You took them! Why can't you just leave us alone!"
"Well then, you won't mind if we have a look, will you?" the lion yelled back.
"Look all you want, but stop messing with my guests and my people! Just who the hell do you think you are?"
The lion gave him a look then and walked over to him. Gary noticed he wasn't carrying any weapons, but then, after what he'd seen him do up in the mountains last week, he didn't think he needed any.
"Who are you?" the lion growled at him.
"I'm Gary, and for now at least, I'm the guy in charge of this," Gary waved a hand at the compound. "I want nothing to do with lycans anymore, no one here does! That's why we broke with Gradatim when they put out that stupid order! I don't need this shit, today of all days, and I don't need you!
"Just go away, and leave us alone!"
Sean looked down at the magic user in front of him, the guy was in a tux, but then everyone around here was all dressed up, and there were decorations everywhere.
"What's going on here?"
"A wedding, as if it's any of your damn business!" Gary said, staring at him. "After you slaughtered us up in the hills, I thought maybe it might be a nice idea to give everyone something nice to focus on, and you have to come here and fuck it all up!"
Sean blinked, this guy had balls. He was almost in Sean's face yelling at him, but he hadn't resorted to force or tried any magic on him.
"Sean," Hunter said, trotting over.
"Yeah?" Sean asked without taking his eyes off the angry magic user in front of him.
"That guy's on the level, he's the one we saw up in the hills that I told you about, name's Gary. Also, all the Gradatim stuff has been either painted over or torn down. Sten's calling Clark to see what he knows."
"See!" Gary yelled at him. "Just like I told you!"
Sean shrugged. "Fine, have a few of your people lead my folks around to show them it's all like you said. If everything is fine, we'll be out of here in a few minutes.
"But if you try anything," Sean growled, "I'll kill everyone here, understood?"
Gary clenched his fists and all but growled, "Dave! Niles! Show them whatever they want to see and make sure everyone behaves! Jill will kill me if you mess up the decorations! And that goes for you and your people too, Sean! Anyone messes up the decorations, and I promise you my fiancée will have your ass!"
Sean looked down at Gary as his eyebrows went up. Somebody had obviously reached the 'too pissed to give a damn' level.
"Anyone breaks anything," Sean called out, "and I will put my foot up their ass. Let's not ruin the gal's wedding."
"Thank you." Gary sighed, and then looked at the men on the ground. "Shit, how many of them did you cramp?"
"I'll take care of it," Sean said. "So you really broke with Gradatim before I blew them up?"
"Hell, yeah. I'm not an idiot, after what you did up in the mountains, it's pretty damn obvious we've become a council of morons. Fat and lazy morons who were too afraid to stand on our own two feet anymore. At least now I don't have to worry about them trying to kill me and my friends, because I told Rupert we were done. So thanks for that, I guess." Gary stopped and took a breath, then dropping his voice so only Sean and Hunter could hear him, he continued.
"I know what we did was wrong, and yeah, morally you had every right to do to us what you did up there. But understand, you killed my father and the father of my fiancée. So if you're not off my property and out of my sight in the next fifteen minutes, Sean Valens, I'm going to do my best to kill you. I don't blame anyone else here for what happened, but I do blame you. Understand?"
Sean nodded slowly. "Yeah, I understand. Hunter, keep a hand on things, I'm gonna unlock the folks we cramped and go wait outside the gates. If they're not Gradatim and they're not holding any lycans, we don't have any quarrel with them."
"Sure thing, Sean," Hunter said and watched Gary as Sean dealt with the folks they'd cramped up then left the compound.
"That was pretty
brave of you," Hunter said.
"I just don't want to see anybody else hurt." Gary sighed.
"No, I mean threatening to kill him. You wouldn't last a second against him, he's a god."
Gary snorted.
Hunter grinned. "No, really. I've seen him do shit." Hunter shook his head. "He doesn't believe it himself, but it's weird. We all know it, hard not to when you've seen all the shit some of us have. It was pretty shocking to find out the myths were actually true.
"So, you gonna join Solidad like the Reno group did?"
"Actually, I'm thinking maybe we should join Eruditio, if they'll have us."
"You know, if you really are going to do that, and you want to break completely from the past, you should sell this place."
Gary blinked and looked at him. "You think so?"
Hunter nodded. "That or tear down the walls you got up around it. You guys all wall yourself in, you separate yourselves from each other, from the mundanes, from the world around you. You all think you're still living in the dark ages. The Eruditio folks, they don't do that." Hunter got out a card and handed it to Gary.
"If you want to sell this place, give me a call. My wife's trying to get her realtor's license. She'd be thrilled."
Gary shook his head and gave a soft laugh as he looked at the card. "Werewolves selling real estate. You're right; we are out of touch with the world around us."
Two hours later they were rolling into San Francisco; Sean and Maitland were looking over the maps that they had of the area.
"Well, that's their building," Sean said, pointing to a large building in Nob Hill, one that was almost as long as a city block.
"Everyone lives there?" Maitland asked.
Sean nodded. "Apparently. When you consider the cost of housing in the area, I'm not all that surprised, really. It's one of the best parts of town, or so I'm told."
