by Jan Stryvant
"Let's go," Sean told Roxy in a subdued voice. As they walked out of the room, he closed the door behind them.
"What did he do to them?" Roxy asked.
"He turned them all into lions."
"What?" Roxy looked at him shocked, "How is that punishment?"
"Because no lion's soul will come to any of them. I believe I've told you this before; when you're bitten by a lion, you're judged. If you're judged worthy, a lion's soul joins with you, and you become a lion. When you finally die, that soul goes back where it came from to await reincarnation. Sometimes, the person bit also becomes a lion soul, like I have."
"And what happens if you're judged not worthy?" Roxy asked.
"You turn into a regular lion, but an insane and enraged one. You attack everything and everyone and even yourself in your insanity, until you die, painfully, suffering every moment."
"And you just locked them in a room with only each other."
"And I'm going to burn the building down too," Sean said, a little grimly.
"You did the right thing, Sean."
"Are you talking about the people I killed earlier today? Or my letting the First deal with this lot?"
"Both," Roxy said and hugged him, "Sometimes you have to let your lion do the dirty work, if for no other reason than to be able to sleep at night."
Sean nodded and sighed. As they came out into the main gaming room, the smell of gasoline was everywhere. No one was left in the building; everyone had done what they had to do and then cleared out.
Sean stopped at the exit, as Roxy held one of the doors open for him. Turning back, he took one last look around; there were bodies and blood and bullet holes everywhere. Raising a hand, he made the proper gesture and cast a fireball into the building, hitting the back wall, and watched as everything caught on fire, the flames spreading quickly from the gasoline that had soaked in everywhere.
Turning then, he followed Roxy out to the van. By the time they pulled out of the parking lot, the Marta-Hari had flames coming out of the windows.
Sean shook his head, "I wonder just how they're going to cover this one up?"
"Human slavery ring," Roxy said. "I can hear them talking about it on the radio now. With as many dead bodies in there as there is. They got a whole story planned already."
"Great, I'm done; take us back to Roxy's."
"We'll be at Roxy's in a few minutes," Daelyn said.
Sean sighed and leaned his head against the side of the van as Cali and Roberta hugged him, "Let's go home tomorrow. I think I've head enough of this town to last me a while."
Reno
Sean sighed, happy to be back in his own bed again. They'd had to spend Friday at Ted's as Sean personally thanked everyone for helping him, and then spent some time with all of those that they'd rescued the night before.
The hero worship was equal parts heady and scary. Yeah, it definitely felt fantastic to have all those people praising him and thanking him, it definitely made his ego soar and helped ease all those fears and concerns from the night before. He didn't feel so bad about all the nasty shit he'd done when he looked down into the adoring eyes of a young woman who had been saved from all of that abuse.
However, growing up in Reno, he'd seen the type of people who'd let fame go to their heads and become complete and utter assholes. The last thing he wanted was to be an entitled prick. It was easy to see why so many succumbed to the temptation, right now these people thought he was a god and would do anything he told them to.
And what made it worse, was maybe he really was a god. The First definitely qualified, and in more ways that one. Now Sean had gotten a taste of that power and that life, and it scared him more than the thought of what he'd done last night, walking around like some demented Jason clone with a large knife and telling people that they had to 'go into the box.' Yeah, that was some demented crap last night.
In the end, they'd freed one hundred and sixty-two, one hundred and thirty-nine of which were women, many of whom Sean suspected had been prostituted, as well as some of the men. Sean may have promised to leave them alone if they stopped enslaving lycans, but from some of the comments Sean overheard when Bill and Ted were talking, Sean had the distinct impression that both the local prosecutor and the gaming commission were going to launching some investigations now that they had people willing to testify.
But one thing was certain, the magic users in Vegas now knew that there was, in fact, a lion, which could use magic, and who was a complete and total psycho when it came to protecting 'his' people. Sean was sure that the rumors of that would spread rather quickly, moving beyond Vegas soon enough.
Sean wondered briefly if Dolitt's son had survived or not. They'd left Las Vegas before the deadline for Harry had passed, so he had no way of knowing and wasn't all that sure he wanted to find out.
Sean had done what he'd said he'd do; he'd helped them free the lycans that were slaves. He'd set Bill up with a machine that would protect his officers, and that even Ted could take advantage of. He'd do what he could to get more collars and tags down there as soon as he could, so they could more easily deal with the problems that the magic users caused whenever they came to town.
Sean doubted that there wouldn't be more problems, or that he wouldn't have to go back to deal with them either. Like it or not, Vegas was 'his' now, and he'd have to deal with that. But for right now, right now he could just enjoy being back home.
Sean looked over at the clock, it was almost ten. He'd slept a fair deal on the way back home, so he wasn't all that tired now. Daelyn, Jolene, and Roberta were all sound asleep. Apparently, Cali, Peg, and Roxy had already gotten up. Sean's stomach reminded him that he'd missed breakfast, so he carefully got out of bed and pulling on a pair of pants, headed for the kitchen.
"Morning, Love," Roxy said and came over to give Sean a kiss as he came into the kitchen.
"Morning. Where's Peg and Cali?" Sean asked, looking around.
"They grabbed Sheila about an hour ago and ran into town to do some 'shopping.'"
Sean almost shuddered, "Those three? I'd hate to see what they come back with!"
"Knowing them, you won't," Roxy laughed, "Well, not anytime before you need to at least."
"Oh, make sure no one makes any plans for Sunday night, we're all going over to Steve's for dinner tomorrow, so I can pay off Terri for those two helicopters."
Roxy looked at him, "All of us? All six of us?"
Sean smiled, "She's gonna have to find out sooner or later. The marriage is next month after all."
"Oh, that's right," Roxy stopped and thought a moment, "any idea what to get them for a wedding gift?"
"Well, I was thinking we could get Steve that cat girl he always wanted," Sean joked.
"Hmmm," Roxy grinned, "I wonder if Terri is into cat boys?"
"I had that same conversation with Steve a couple of days ago, and he didn't sound very thrilled with the idea."
"That or he's now working feverishly to sell Terri on the idea!" Roxy laughed, "So any other plans for the weekend?"
"I want to grab Jo and go visit her uncle at some point."
"Oh? Something going on I should know about?"
"Chad's complaining about a lack of intelligence, and the Ascendants are definitely up to something. I figured I'd go hit up Arthur to see if he could share anything with us, and then maybe go pay Harrison over at Eruditio a visit as well."
"Well, it's too early to go visiting anybody, so come and have some breakfast."
Sean nodded, "True. When Jo wakes up, could you ask her to call her uncle and set up a meeting after lunch?"
"I'll take care of it," Roxy smiled.
"Thanks, Hon," Sean gave Roxy a kiss and then headed to the dining room, surprised to see that his mother was there.
"Hi, Mom," Sean said and gave her a hug.
"Aren't you cold?" Louise said, looking at her son who was wearing a loose pair of pants and nothing else.
Sean smiled, it was just like old t
imes suddenly.
"No, Mom, I'm fine. So what's new?"
"What's new is I'm trying to decide what to do with myself. I can't go back to dealing cards, but I don't want to sit around all day not doing anything either."
Sean nodded and smiled up at Roxy as she put a plate of food before him, then sat down beside him.
"You could run one of our businesses for us," Roxy told her.
"I'm not sure I know enough about running a business," Louise admitted.
"Maybe not," Sean said, "but you know a lot about casinos and quite a few of the people who run them here. We're going to start a janitorial service, a bonded one. How'd you like to help set it up, then go around and try to convince people to hire us?"
"Also, we're going to open a casino," Roxy said.
Sean almost dropped his fork and looked at her, "We are?" he said, surprised.
Roxy grinned at him, "Yes, we are. We've got a whole bunch of experienced casino workers and star acrobats who need a job and were more than happy to agree to come up to Reno and work for you!"
"Oh...."
Sean stared at his food for a minute, thinking about that before a nudge from Roxy got him eating again. Sean noticed his mother was smirking at him, but she and Roxy were discussing the janitorial business at this point, and his mother did seem interested in the idea.
"What are your plans for the day?" Louise asked her son when he'd finally finished eating.
"Well, my next task is to build a machine to turn out more of those amulets," Sean gestured to the one his mother was wearing around her neck. "Daelyn told me that she can have the hardware for it in a day.
"After that, I guess it's time to finally start work on a machine to build silver tags, followed by one to make these lycan collars," Sean said, fingering the one hanging around his neck.
"I still can't believe that you can actually do that, that you can build a machine that actually enchants things." Louise smiled, "Your father would be so proud of you."
Sean blushed, "Thanks, Mom."
"So once it's done, how fast do you think your machine will be able to turn them out?" Roxy asked.
"Well, the machine I made your father took about four times as long to do the enchantment as I do. So, I'm thinking it'll take four to five minutes to enchant each collar. The tags, however, take more energy and time, so I'm thinking ten to fifteen minutes each?" Sean shrugged, "I won't know for sure until after I've built the machines."
Sean watched as Roxy did some quick math.
"So about two hundred and eighty collars and maybe a hundred tags a day?"
Sean shrugged, "If we ran them both non-stop, maybe. But someone's going to have to run it, and I'd rather not have any accidents, so probably a fair bit less than that."
"Still," Louise pointed out, "that's going to add up pretty quickly, even if you only make say a hundred a day. That's three thousand a month."
Sean nodded, "True, but there's almost a million of us in North America so it would take decades to make enough collars and tags for all of us. Eventually, I'm going to have to build more machines."
"And that doesn't even take the rest of the world into consideration," Roxy added.
"Yeah, I'm sure that I'm going to have to ship a machine or two to Europe one of these days," Sean agreed. "What's Maitland, Ruth, Philo and his Pooka friend been up to?"
"Well, Maitland's been talking a fair bit with your friends Chad and Claudia. When he's not spending time with that lady he met over at the Lux that is."
"He's dating her?" Sean said, surprised.
"Apparently," Louise chuckled. "Ruth has been teasing him about it a little."
"She's been staying out of trouble I hope?" Roxy grumbled.
"I don't think she's going to be staying here much longer," Louise admitted. "She's getting bored, and she doesn't really know anybody here, and," Louise looked at her son and smiled, "she's just a little bit afraid of what might happen to her if she goes around playing the kinds of tricks here that she plays on the mortals and other fairies back home."
"Well at least she's learning," Sean grinned. "And Uncle Philo?"
"Mostly they've been doing what they do back home."
"And that is?"
"Hanging out in pubs and drinking and talking to the locals." Louise shrugged, "Neither of them really ever gets in trouble. Any mischief that they get up to tends either to be harmless pranks or helping out those who need it."
Sean nodded and leaning back in his chair he stretched.
"Well, I need to check in with Oak and talk to my other alphas, by then it'll probably be time to grab Jo and whoever else wants to come with me and go pay her uncle a visit."
Getting up Sean gave his mother a hug and Roxy a kiss, and then went and made the rounds.
Walking around the property with Oak, as they went over the current state of all of his building projects, Sean tried not to sigh too loudly, or laugh for that matter either. His 'pack' of wolf lycans had gotten huge! Between the hundred plus wolves from Sacramento, and the almost a hundred and fifty that he'd 'captured' after the attack on his home, he had almost five hundred who were in his 'pack' now! It was almost insane. Thankfully they had sent about a hundred of them off to the bunker, and once the building downtown was rebuilt he could send at least another hundred over there, but that would still be a lot of people living up here. If he didn't watch out, the authorities might think he was running some sort of cult or something.
That thought made him smile because technically, he was running a 'cult or something.'
When he found out that Chad had siphoned off a couple hundred for his own pack after the battle, Sean had almost called him up and asked him if he wanted any more. The only thing really saving him right now was that all of the wolves here were used to living in kennels under a strict regiment. His alphas had told him that they were more worried about people flipping out from the lack of rules and fences than from having to continue living in barracks.
On the plus side, the female to male ratio had improved, as two-thirds of the wolves they'd gotten after the battle were female. Sean had been a little worried about the social aspects of any gross imbalance, even if Oak, Hunter, Sten, and now Art had told him not to worry about it.
Walking through the barracks with Oak had been a bit embarrassing when they got to the newest additions. Sean hadn't really had the chance to meet any of the former Vestibulum wolves, or any of Art's for that matter either. The Vestibulum wolves had all come up to him, their postures very submissive, and they had all asked to see his lion form.
When he shifted into it, they all shifted into their wolves and lay down on the floor before him. Sean had to admit that it was a bit uncomfortable for him, but he could feel the First was rather taken with it.
And it occurred to him then that all of these wolves, all of them, were descended from the lion in his head, the First, and they could somehow feel that their ancestor, their creator, was there. They were all his children, and after thousands of years and hundreds of generations, they were still his. They didn't care that they'd been left by their creator, their god, to fend for themselves, to be trained and civilized by the magic users. All that mattered was he was here now, and they he had set them free.
The wolves from Sacramento were a lot more relaxed about it when Sean was introduced to them. Of course, they hadn't gone to war against him and lost, technically you could say that Sean had freed or stolen them, even it if had been Chad who did the actual job. Sean had ordered him to do it after all. So while they all showed their respect, none of them felt the need to actually get down and bow to him like the others had done.
It was while Sean was meeting with the Sacramento wolves that Sean actually got to meet Lady Sarah, Art's girlfriend. Surprisingly she was living with Art in the small room that the alpha's or those with mates got.
"Surprised?" Sarah asked after they'd been introduced.
Sean smiled back at her, "That you made the right choice and came h
ere? No. But I am a bit surprised that you didn't get an apartment in town. It is kind of crowded in these quarters."
"Until things settle down, I'd rather be here, where it's safe, then out there, where my husband might get a hold of me. I called a couple of my girlfriends back home, and they've told me just how livid he is."
"They're still talking to you?" Sean asked, a little surprised by that, "Aren't you like, excommunicated because you're living with a lycan now?"
Sarah snorted, "The only thing that they're mad about is that all of their boyfriends left town. Of course, for them, they were just having a little fling on the side. I'm the only one who actually loved her boyfriend more than her husband."
"So why didn't you leave him sooner?" Sean asked, curious.
"And go where? You have to understand, I really didn't have a lot of options, and I had children to raise. Now that things have changed," Sarah smiled, "I can change."
"I just hope that the rest of the magic users out there can learn to accept it."
Sarah laughed and shook her head, "You, young man, have a very long row to hoe before you. The Ascendance, Vestibulum, Gradatim, even Sapientia, they're all about power, that and not much else. The Ascendants are just honest about it; they don't try and hide what they are behind fancy slogans or old rules."
"What about Sapientia?" Sean asked, curious what her take on them would be.
"Sapientia is just more laid back and cultured about it. They'd rather be the one whispering in the ear of the man in power, than that man themselves.
"No, the only ones not pursuing power over all else are Eruditio, and even they have their moments when they grab for what they want."
"Not a flattering picture, Sarah."
"I'm not one for lying to others, much less myself anymore. I married for wealth and power, Sean, and while I got both of those in spades, I got very little happiness until one very pissed off wolf decided to take his anger out on one very unhappy housewife. The rest, as you might say, is history."