by Jan Stryvant
"What are you doing here?" the first voice called again, "And what are you carrying?"
"Oh, I thought I'd bring you a little gift," Sean chuckled.
"Why would you bring us a gift?"
"What, you never had a cat before? We love to show off our hunting skills!" Sean laughed and laying Preston down on the ground he pulled the pillow case off Preston's head.
"Is that?" The second voice gasped.
"Well, as I live and breathe, leader Preston, how nice to see you again!" The first woman had walked out of the shadows and Sean could see she was rather attractive, and in very good shape. He'd guess her age about early to mid twenties, she had that look on her face that she knew what she was doing and for all that she was rather lovely, that mature sense to her that told you she wasn't someone to mess with.
"Joyce, go get Deanna."
"She's asleep!"
"So wake her up! Now go!"
"And leave you here with him?"
"Girl, if you can't tell when a cat wants to be friends, you're hopeless. Now go!"
Sean heard the Joyce run off, as the first woman stopped in front of him, looking Sean over rather appraisingly.
"Boy, you're sure a big one!" She laughed.
"So I've been told," Sean smiled down at her, she was probably a few inches under six foot herself, while Sean was now about eight feet tall.
"I'm Sean," he said and offered his hand. He had his monitor spell running, he was curious to see what she'd do.
"I'm Roberta," she said and shook his hand. Sean was honestly surprised that she didn't try anything.
"So," Roberta continued, "to what do we owe the honor of this little gift?" and she nudged Preston, who was squirming wide-eyed on the ground, with her foot.
"Well, honestly," Sean said looking down at her, "I heard about how he killed two of your members because they balked at killing a mundane. Now for all that I want him dead for trying to kill me, and for killing several lycans and mundanes with that storm, I figured your claim on his life was the better one as he killed your friends."
Roberta nodded, "They balked at killing her, because the whole reason he dumped her was he found out she'd been a prostitute before she'd become a showgirl."
Sean's eyes widened and he looked down at Preston, "Really? That's pretty pathetic!"
"Oh? What would you have done?" Roberta asked him, "If you'd found out your woman had slept with a lot of men before you married her?"
Sean snorted, "Oh come on, you have to know by now that one of my wives is a tantric witch. She's probably slept with more men than his ex did."
Roberta, Sean noticed, had the good graces to blush, "Err, sorry, I'd forgotten about that."
"Honestly, I wasn't very experienced when we met, and now," Sean purred rather loudly, "I get the benefit of all that knowledge and experience!" Sean nudged Preston again, who was now staring off towards the coven house. "And this idiot should have realized what he had before he threw it all away."
"You wouldn't care to come inside for a few hours, would you?" Roberta asked Sean with a rather sweet smile.
"Sorry, still breaking in number three," Sean grinned back, "besides, I think I see your boss coming. Probably best I leave."
"Aww," Roberta pouted.
"Well, maybe if your group and mine can be friends, I'll see about visiting," Sean purred. "I'd rather be friends than enemies!"
Sean turned and jogged off then, as Deanna, the leader of the Sorceress guild came up and looked down at Preston.
"Well, well. Look at the nice little rat that the cat left for us! Such a thoughtful gift! Come on, Roberta, help me get him inside. Joyce, call the coven and get everyone out of bed. We've got some work to do!"
A Meeting of Minds
Bill Channing opened the door and walked into the conference room and looked around at the people seated at the table. There hadn't been a meeting like this one in a long time.
A very long time.
"So, did you talk to him, Bill?" Boris, the head of the tiger families asked as Bill strode over to the chair at the head of the table.
"Yes, I did."
"And your daughter?"
"She's fine. Apparently she was wounded, but Sean was able to heal her."
"What about the reports of him getting shot as well?" Ted, one of the heads of the leopard families asked.
"Oh, he told me he was shot, with silver bullets no less."
"So, he has it then? His father's item? It really works?"
Bill sighed as he pulled the chair out and sat down heavily. All of the eyes in the room were on him, like it or not, he'd somehow inherited the job as the head of all of the lycan families and clans in Nevada. Part of that was being the sheriff of such a large city like Las Vegas, part of it was because he knew the governor, but the biggest part of it was that Sean Valens, the son of Bernard Valens, was now his son-in-law. Bill had heard rumors about Ben Valens, everyone in Nevada had, or rather, every lycan had. The man who was going to set them free, the man who was going to end the hold that the magic-users all had over them.
The man that rumor claimed the councils had all chipped in and hired an assassin to murder.
And now, not only had those rumors all turned out to have been true, but it had all been dumped squarely in Bill's lap. Bill wasn't sure if he should kiss his daughter for hooking up with the Valens' boy, or punish her. Not that punishing her had ever done a whit of good. Besides, he liked the kid, he had a spine. Bill didn't doubt that when it came to his daughter Roxy, Sean probably would put him through a wall. Probably two.
Looking at the others at the table, Bill nodded. "Yes, he has it. It exists, however I suspect that he only has the one."
"Why would you say that?" Jorge, the head of the boar families asked.
"Because if he had two, my daughter would have been wearing one, obviously."
"My youngest, he told me yesterday that Sawyer received a package from your son-in-law," Jorge said, looking around the room. "There were ten lycan necklaces in it. All the same. Made by Sean Valens, for Sawyer to sell."
"Ten of them?" Claudia, the representative from the eastern wolf clans said, looking surprised. "And why is he selling them?"
"I suspect he needs the money, and my youngest heard him say that he wants to crash the economy on those things that the magic users treasure the most."
That got them all talking for a moment, and Bill could understand why. Clothing was the second biggest problem most lycans faced. After silver of course. Keeping the necklaces expensive and rare was something that lycans had been complaining about for centuries. Bill rapped on the table with his knuckles to get their attention, quickly quieting back down they all turned to face him. There were twenty lycans in the room, each one a representative for their families or their clans, depending on how they were organized. Sixteen different species, most of them predators, but not all.
"We know he has the item, the first question is, can he make more? The second question is, how fast can he make them? The third question," Bill looked around the room slowly, "What are we going to do about it?"
"Why support him of course!" Boris laughed.
Bill shook his head slowly, "I'm not so sure about that."
"What? How can you say that?" Boris asked, looking puzzled.
"Yes," Claudia agreed, "How can you say that? Especially as he's your son-in-law."
Bill sighed, "When I talked to him, he made it clear he wanted me to remain neutral right now."
"Why would he say that?"
"I don't know, I didn't get the chance to ask him, but thinking about it on the way over here today, well we all know what happened to Kyle, Susan, and Walt. The councils, they're all worried now, and after this little stunt, some of them are going to start watching all of us very closely. If we do anything at all out of the ordinary, they'll be all over us. The last thing we want is another purge like the night of the 'Silver Death' back in the eighteen hundreds, right?"
Everyo
ne's faces got somber and they all nodded. The purge had been limited mostly to Northern Europe, but it explained why so many lycans lived in the United States now, especially in the mid-west. Hundreds had fled to the new world, maybe thousands, as many back in Europe died. No one knew for sure just how bad it was, but at least ten or twenty thousand had died.
"So right now, it's business as usual. If anyone asks, as far as we're concerned, Sean is just another young buck who's got problems that we don't want any part of. A kid with anger issues over what was done to his family. His magic user family. We're not even sure he's one of ours."
"You'd abandon your own daughter?" Michael, the alpha for the western wolf packs, said looking rather shocked.
Bill smiled, "I didn't quite say that, now did I?" Bill looked around the room again, "We lay low, and we practice patience. We've waited this long, we can wait a little longer. We do nothing to draw attention to ourselves and we make damn sure we keep our hotheads in line! You know as well as I do that there's going to be a lot of spying going on by the mages. I don't care what anyone believes, but I do care what everyone says.
"Make sure everyone knows, if they get asked about any kind of protection from silver, they don't believe it, they think it's a scam. The Ascendance people just made that story up because they didn't want to look like wimps getting beat up by a single lycan kid still coming to terms with his beast."
Bill leaned forward in his chair then, "But, we keep our eyes and ears open, we check our defenses, our own safe houses, and we keep everything quiet and under wraps. Pick out your best fighters, your most trusted people. Figure out just how many of this thing, whatever it is, you'll need in order to protect your core people and your safe houses from what we all fear may be coming. I'll want numbers, so if Sean can in fact make these things, I can give him an initial target."
The others around the table nodded slowly.
"Understand, that if, IF, he can do what his father set out to do, he will become not only a very big target to the magic users, but he'll become the most important lycan in the state, hell, probably the world. That means we will be making whatever sacrifices we must, to protect him, and I'm pretty damn sure that some of those are probably going to be pretty big ones.
"Agreed?"
"Agreed," they all replied with a nod of their heads.
"What of the other groups, the other races? Have we heard anything from them?" Boris asked.
"I'm still sounding them out, rather cautiously," Bill told them, "using the 'terrorist attack' on the mall as my excuse for talking to them. The dwarves are on the fence, but they're leaning heavily our way. Apparently they've already talked with Sean and discussed this. Their biggest fear is a war that gets out of hand and exposes us all, but they've never been fans of the mages overall, while they've always been friends of ours. So push comes to shove, they'll be with us.
"Sawyer's got the goblins lined up behind us...."
"You talked to Sawyer?" Ted laughed, "And he's still alive?"
Bill grinned, showing teeth, "Let's just say, we've reached an agreement. Besides, he stands to make a lot of money off of this, and you know how Sawyer likes his money."
They all nodded at that.
"Everyone else really hasn't discovered what's going on as of yet, and I didn't see any reason to enlighten them." Bill looked over all the faces surrounding the table again.
"I spoke with Arthur Troy yesterday."
"Why would you do that?" Jorge asked, looking surprised.
"Because Sean told me that it wasn't the Lithuanians that launched the first attack on him, but that it was the Council of the Ascendants. And he had proof. Troy's been on the fence about us for some time now; I'm hoping this just might push him off onto our side of it."
Jorge nodded, "So, what did Troy say to that?"
"He wanted to know what I wanted, and I told him that I wanted the council of Sapientia to see the light, just like our friends on the council of Eruditio already had."
"And?" Boris prompted.
"He thanked me for giving him something to think about."
"Aren't you worried that he'll realize your daughter is with Sean, and try to use that against you?" Claudia asked.
"Considering his niece is with Sean now, I suspect he already knows that."
"He's up to two now?"
"Three actually," Bill smiled, "Samis's niece is also with them."
"Well, that explains the dwarves then," Claudia nodded."
Roger, a werecougar, and one of the oldest lycans in the room spoke up then.
"I think it's safe to say where the Ascendants and Gradatims are going to end up. Eruditio is on our side, they have been for decades now, and I hope if we can get Troy on our side, the Sapientians will come over as well.
"But the big question, Bill and everyone else is this: what about Vestibulum? They're the big boys, what do we do about them?"
Bill shook his head, "It's true that they're our real enemy, odds are they'll come out against us, just because they hate change and they've gotten rather cozy with the way things are. But right now, they see Sean's anger pointed at the Ascendants and Gradatims, who they despise. So I suspect they're just gonna sit back and do nothing until that plays out."
"So, they'll play politics," Roger said, making it a statement and not a question.
"Yeah, I think that's a safe bet. It's how they got to where they are today."
Bill looked around the table one last time, "That's all I know, and until I know anymore, there isn't anything else to say. Again, keep your heads down. We don't need any problems right now. They've still got the upper hand and they know it."
Leaning back in his chair, Bill watched as they all got up and filed out the door. Keeping the lid on this was going to be difficult, if not impossible. The only thing in his favor right now was that all of the coven leaders that he was worried about had such big egos that asking their other covens to send help wouldn't occur to them.
But once they did, it would get ugly, very very fast.
Bill's phone rang and looking at it, he saw Arthur Troy's number.
"Yes, Arthur?" He said answering it, wondering what had led Arthur to call him.
"The leader of the Totis Viribus was kidnapped last night; apparently someone overpowered his guards, then him, and got away without being seen."
"So, you think Sean did it?" Bill asked, swearing to himself, if this didn't set off the mages and their councils, nothing would.
"Well, Bill, I would except for one thing."
"And what would that be, Arthur?"
"His head is on a pike in front of the Sorceress Guild's coven house."
"WHAT!" Bill sat up straight and put his feet on the floor.
"Oh, don't worry; they've got it screened heavily with magic. Only a magic user or a creature of magic can see it. It won't even show up on a camera."
Bill let out the breath he was holding, "So they got him back for killing their members. I guess that means the war between them and Totis Viribus is heating up. Just what we need right now."
"Yes, indeed," Arthur said, "just what we need right now. The Ascendants biggest ally has lost its leader and is in a war with someone else. Who knew that those sorceresses were able to physically overpower the guards and then carry him out of there without even being seen."
Bill snorted, the message was clear: Arthur felt that Sean had done it.
"Well," Bill sighed, "we all know that Preston had a thing for hookers. Maybe one of them gals got all dressed up and set a trap for him."
"Oh, obviously," Arthur agreed in a voice that made it clear to Bill that Arthur didn't believe that for a minute.
"Thank you for calling, Arthur. I hope this means you're taking my proposal seriously."
"Oh, trust me, I'm taking it very seriously. As the old song said, 'the times, they are a changing,' and I for one have no desire to see my people left behind when they do."
"Bye, Arthur."
"Good bye."
>
Bill shook his head as he put his phone away. The kid had balls alright, and apparently brains too.
Friday Morning
"Where have you been all night?" Daelyn asked Sean as he came down the stairs, yawning. It was almost six, he'd stopped at an all-night restaurant because after all the shifting and running around, he'd been starving.
"Dealing with an asshole," Sean smiled and leaning down a little bit he kissed Daelyn.
"How is Roxy feeling?"
"Better. Her strength is coming back quickly. Jo and I are going to do some food shopping later this morning."
Sean nodded and headed back towards their bedroom. He was tired, nearly exhausted. He hadn't had a good night's sleep since, well since Tuesday? Or maybe it was Monday.
Stepping into the room he dropped the pillowcase with the items he'd stolen from Preston and looked over at Roxy as she smiled up at him. She must have taken a shower, because she didn't look like the bedraggled mess she'd been when she'd woken up yesterday, covered in dried blood, looking scared, and her eyes red from crying. She was back in her human form of course, and she raised a hand from under the sheet to beckon him over.
"You look like shit," Roxy told him, as he sat on the edge of the bed.
"Gee, thanks," Sean laughed a little nervously and yawned.
"When was the last time you slept, Hon?" Roxy asked, rolling onto her side.
"Umm, Tuesday?" Sean sighed and smiled, she called him 'hon' and she didn't sound angry.
Roxy picked up on it immediately, "What's wrong?"
Sean turned to her and got down on his knees next to the bed, so his face was level with hers.
"I'm so sorry, Rox, I screwed up! I should have given you the tag; I should have been paying attention! I got careless, I wasn't thinking! And I, I, I almost lost you!"
Roxy sighed, "It wasn't your fault, Hon, if anything it was mine. I should have been paying more attention."
"I was in charge, Love, it was my idea, I'm the one to blame."
"Sean?" Roxy growled.
Sean stopped and blinked at her, "Yes, dear?"
"You are the least experienced at this of any of us. Well, maybe not Jo," Roxy grinned, "breaking and entering isn't exactly her style. But I've got a lot more experience at this sort of stuff than you do. I got lazy, I wasn't paying attention, I just thank god," Roxy shivered then, "that you were able to save me."