Demon Days

by Jan Stryvant

  Sean could feel himself nearing the edge, he was going to be there soon, and from the way Deidre was goading him on, she wasn't all that far herself. Her legs were wrapped tight around his waist now, her hands had a death grip on his hair, and she was panting into his ear while nibbling on it as well. When she slipped her tongue into his ear, he lost it completely and, wrapping his arms around her, he gasped as he buried himself to the hilt and came inside her.

  "I love you, Deidre," he moaned softly.

  Deidre gasped herself and bucked back against him, surprised as Sean's orgasm triggered one of her own.

  "I love you too, Master," she whispered back, but she could only smile when she noticed he was already fast asleep. Stroking his head slowly, she got comfortable beneath him, enjoying the weight of him as well as their still being so intimately entwined.

  The door opened then, and she looked up; Roxy was there, looking at the two of them.

  "I nee..."

  Deidre put her finger up to her lips and softly 'shushed' her.

  Roxy lowered her voice to a whisper. "I need Sean. Claudia and Maitland have some things to go over."

  "No," Deidre whispered back. "My lord and master is exhausted. He will stay here and sleep until I say he can go."

  "Deidre," Roxy warned.

  "You of all people should not be arguing with me, Lady Roxy. Have you not seen the lines under his eyes? He needs his rest. Either deal with the others yourself, or tell them to come back later. The king runs the kingdom, it does not run him."

  Roxy tilted her head and appeared lost in thought a moment. Then she came in, picked up the blanket at the foot of the couch, and spread it over the two of them. "I'll post one of the twins outside the door to make sure you're not disturbed," Roxy said and, closing the door on the way out, she left.

  Deidre sighed and smiled. Roxy was a good woman, but there were six of them, and only one of him. They needed to learn to manage him better. Perhaps she should teach them? But that could wait for later. For now she was with him, and she was going to give him the gift of a nice long rest.

  "Where's Sean?" Claudia asked when Roxy came back into the room.

  "Out like a light, and I'm not going to wake him," Roxy said. "So let's all sit down and I'll deal with it."

  "What about Sean?"

  "I'll fill him in when he wakes up, of course."

  "But this needs his attention!"

  Roxy sighed. "Do we really want to go down this road again, Claudia? Now, what's the problem?"

  "I've got an investigative reporter snooping around after what happened last night!"

  "But nothing happened last night, so what's the problem?"

  "Well, after last night's issue, he heard about the one we had to the north after interviewing a bunch of Burners. Turns out some of the folks at Burning Man who went up there to look took pictures, so they tracked down the tail numbers on one of my helicopters!"

  "Oh! I see," Roxy said and thought about it a moment; the solutions were actually pretty simple. "Okay, remove the tail numbers from all your helicopters, or cover them up. In fact, I'm going to tell everyone to do it."

  "We can't do that!"

  "Sure we can, and in fact I just told you to!" Roxy said and smiled. "What are they going to do? Fine us? By the time it goes to court, we'll be at war, and no one's gonna care anymore. But we don't need anyone else tracking our helos back here."

  "What about the reporter?"

  Roxy shrugged. "Tell him everything. Don't lie, don't sugarcoat it, tell him the entire story."

  "I can't do that!"

  "Why not?"

  "What about the silence? Staying out of sight? Not letting the mundanes know about us?"

  "Look, if you don't want to do it, send him up here and I will."

  "But he's not going to believe a word of it! No one will!"

  Roxy smiled. "Well, then, that's his problem. Course, if you want to drive it home, you could just shift for him, introduce him to a couple of werewolves, maybe even let him take some pictures."

  "The fellowship would kill me!"

  "Sean runs the fellowship now, Claudia. They won't say 'boo'. Sean's already had Steve start a campaign to out all of us. Lycans are being spotted and even photographed in all of the major cities. Six months from now, lycans aren't going to be a secret anymore."

  "Oh, the magic users are gonna love that!"

  "That's their problem. Now, anything else? If not, I got work to do."

  Claudia sighed. "No, that's it. Guess I'm gonna go scare the hell out of a news reporter."

  "You can always send him up here, you know."

  Claudia laughed a little sourly. "After forty-one years of having to hide what I am, I might as well enjoy this."

  "That's the spirit! Have fun, Claudia."

  "I'll certainly try," Claudia said, smiling a little wryly as she left.

  "Great." Daelyn smiled at Roxy. "Now that that's done, we gotta 'nother fire you need to put out."

  "Me? You got as much power here as I do, girl!" Roxy laughed.

  "Alright then, I'll just tell your father that you were too busy to come and help him and your mom settle..." Daelyn laughed. Roxy was already gone; that girl could sure move when she wanted to.

  Sean yawned and snuggled up against whoever was tucked up under his chin. It was warm, it was comfortable, and for the first time in a long while, he really didn't have a care in the world.

  Other than the erection between his legs, of course. Running his hands up the body of the woman pressing back against him, he found her breasts just as his nose identified her as Deidre.

  "Umm, my master's awake, I see!" Deidre giggled.

  "Mmm, hmm. What time is it?"

  "A little after six."

  "What?" Sean blinked.

  "You needed the rest, Master."

  "Where are the girls?"

  "Working," Deidre said, rolling over and starting to kiss his chest.

  "I'm sorry I made you miss your job," Sean said as Deidre reached down and cupped his sac with a hand.

  "Master, you are my job." She kissed his chest again. "Though I must admit that it's a labor of love."

  "Speaking of love," Sean said and started to put his hands to work. "As long as we're already here, I don't think anyone will miss us for another hour, do you?"

  "Oh, definitely not, Master Sean. Definitely not."

  It was closer to two hours, when Sean joined the others in the main dining room, showered, dressed, and feeling rather mellow. Deidre was still passed out on the couch with a smile on her face, the last he'd looked.

  "Wow, I wish I looked that relaxed," Chad said from the dining room table where he was drinking from a large cup of black coffee, with a huge map laid out across the table in front of him. Maitland, Ryan, and Max were there, as well as Roxy, Daelyn, Ruthelma, Bill, and Sean's mother Louise.

  "Maybe you and Max should spend a little time working on the next generation, then, after this meeting is over," Sean said with a wink, as Chad blushed and Max downright leered at her husband.

  "So, I take it these are our plans for the next gateway attack?" Sean asked, motioning to the maps on the table.

  Chad nodded. "I've marked out fourteen different spots for observation posts that I want to start setting up immediately. Bill got the governor to talk to Colonel Tibbets, who agreed to loan us a couple of helicopters and their crews, as well as teams to help with setting up and manning the posts."

  "Really?" Sean was impressed.

  "I had a long talk with the governor," Bill spoke up. "He agreed to appoint me as a special liaison to you so he could be kept in the loop on what's happening. Tibbets also agreed that it's better to start easing his troops into working with us now, so they'll be ready when the time comes."

  "It's nice to see someone's taking us seriously," Roxy said and smiled at her father.

  "I've known him since before he became governor. He knows I won't bullshit him," Bill said and shrugged.

&
nbsp; "So what are these other spots on the map?" Sean asked, walking over to the table and looking down at all the symbols on it.

  "Well, we're going to need to pre-position some of our people in order to be able to react quickly if the enemy makes a sudden dash for any of the major population centers in the area," Chad said and pointed to five different places on the map.

  "We've also been discussing what to do with the refugees," Max said.

  "Do you think we're going to have a lot of them?" Sean asked. "There really aren't a lot of large towns, or even small ones, up by Black Rock."

  Maitland shook his head. "Every civilian within a hundred, perhaps even two hundred, miles of the main gateway will have to be evacuated. Not just for their own protection, but to make room for the military forces that are going to have to set up our defenses in the area."

  Chad nodded, and started to point to a bunch of blue boxes with 'X's in them connected by squiggly lines. "These are where we're tentatively thinking of building our defensive positions. But right now it's more of an exercise than anything else."

  "Until the main gateway's position is known," Maitland agreed. "Until then, Chad and I will be engaging in our favorite pastime."

  "Oh?" Sean asked. "What's that?"

  Chad grinned. "Arguing over the benefits and liabilities of fixed defenses versus mobile ones."

  Maitland nodded and grinned back. "Chad here has some very novel ideas on the subject."

  "They've almost come to blows twice now." Max sighed.

  "If you're not willing to fight for what you think is right," Maitland said philosophically, "then no one is going to think your ideas have any value."

  "Well, I didn't hire either of you to be pussies," Sean sighed, "but if it ever does come to blows, I better not see anything more than a black eye. I need you both too much. Got it?"

  Chad and Maitland both nodded.

  "That reminds me," Chad said. "I ordered John home from DC this afternoon. I hope you don't mind."

  "You ordered John?" Sean laughed. "Wow, you are a masochist when you're tired, aren't you?"

  "Oh, please, I got Steve to convince him I needed his help more than Steve did right now." Chad snorted. "But one of the keys to tracking these people is going to be drones. I want John and Cenna to train a bunch of our people on using them. Colonel Tibbets is trying to wrangle us a couple of Predators and their operators on the excuse of a training exercise, but it will be a couple of weeks before that gets going."

  "Has anyone talked to Carl or Vincent over at the Secret Service about satellite imaging?"

  Chad looked up at Sean and blinked. "They can do that?"

  "I know they can do it, I just don't know if they can do it for us."

  "Maybe you should order Carl to do it?" Ruthelma suggested.

  Sean shook his head. "I can't afford to have Carl lose his job. If the powers in Washington see any of us exercising that kind of influence over government workers, they'll probably get fired, and anyone favorable to us will be viewed suspiciously from then on."

  "What about those congressmen? I know you're ordering them around."

  "That's different," Sean smiled. "They're elected. People bribe and blackmail them all the time. It's part of the system."

  "I'd say something about how crude that is, but I can't say that we Fey are really any better." She sighed.

  Sean shrugged and, pulling out the chair between Roxy and Daelyn, he sat down. "So what's the plan once the next gate opens? And could someone bring me some food please? I'm starving."

  "Overall it's pretty simple," Chad told him. "Like I said before, we just sit there and watch what they do until the gate closes, then we move in and wipe them out."

  "Why wait until it closes?"

  "Because then no one in the Onderwereld will know exactly what happened to them. We'll spend the time observing them while preparing for an all-out attack. But," Chad shrugged, "that plan makes a lot of assumptions. So we've got a number of contingencies in case we see them doing something that we can't allow."

  "Such as?"

  "Well, like I already said, if they make a dash for any of the population centers, we'll intervene. Also, if they start digging in, building fortifications, or even head towards the National Guard base, we'll attack."

  "Or if they start doing something we don't really understand," Maitland continued. "The whole purpose of this is to figure out what their tactics are; once we have an idea of just what their plan is, there's really no point in continuing the exercise."

  "That about sums it up," Chad agreed. "Once either one of us," Chad motioned to Maitland and himself, "decides to attack, that's the end of the exercise. We know we're taking risks here, and we realize that there will probably be civilian casualties. But what we learn now will hopefully save a lot more lives later on."

  Sean nodded. "So what do you think they'll do? I'm sure you've come up with at least a dozen different scenarios."

  "I think they're going to scout out the area," Maitland said.

  "And I think they're going to establish defenses," Max said.

  "While I think they're going to spearhead an attack on Reno," Chad countered.

  "Oh? Why's that, Chad?" Sean asked as Roberta came out and set a plate with a steak on it in front of him.

  "We know they've already got sources here; the possessed in DC, that guy on the president's staff, so I'm sure they've got all the intel on us they need. So I think they'll just be greedy and go for the food—that is, Reno."

  "And I think they'll go for the nearest military base, so the food's unprotected," Max countered.

  "Maitland?" Sean prompted.

  "Any good commander always verifies his intelligence."

  "And that," Chad said, "is why we need to let them do what they're going to do, so we can see which of our theories is the right one."

  "Or if we'll all just completely wrong," Maitland agreed.

  'Tell them you agree with their plan and you accept the risk,' the First piped up suddenly.

  'Huh?'

  'You need to accept the responsibility. Otherwise Chad and the others are going to second guess themselves to death when the bill for all of this comes due.'

  'I'm not sure I understand. I mean, I'm in charge, of course this is my responsibility.'

  'Yes, and they need to be reminded of that constantly. This plan may very well lead to the death of innocents. In fact, I'm sure it will. That's on your head, not theirs. You need to take that load off of them, and you need to do it now, beforehand.'

  'Great. The joys of leadership. I understand.'

  Sean set down his fork for a moment and looked around the table.

  "Just to be clear, I agree and I approve. Anybody asks, I commanded this, got it?"

  Sean saw both Chad and Max relax visibly. Maitland gave a small nod of approval.

  "Now, Max, Chad, go home and get some rest. Don't make me have to order you," Sean said with a smile. "And Ryan, if Chad doesn't get some rest, I expect you to rat him out to me. That is an order."

  "Okay, okay, I get the point." Chad laughed and got up. "Ryan, I'm going home before I get spanked. If you could gather all this up for me, I'd appreciate it. Come on, Max."

  Sean smiled as they both left and returned to eating his dinner, which Roxy and Daelyn were now picking at.

  "So, what else did I miss?"

  "I think Reno is about to get a very large shock," Roxy said, then told Sean about Claudia's visit this morning.

  Sean nodded. "Call Steve and let him know. Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd really like to go into town and either see a movie or catch a show at one of the casinos."

  Everyone nodded and smiled.

  "A break would be good," Daelyn agreed.

  Army Ants

  Sean was sitting in the command post at the National Guard base. Apparently Colonel Tibbets didn't believe in half measures. Not only had he sent his men and women out to help with the surveillance posts, he'd given them sa
tellite and microwave links for the sensors and cameras that had been set up.

  All of which were now being displayed on multiple big screen monitors against the wall, with one truly large screen in the middle of them. Many of their troops were staging at the base, and if necessary, the governor had said he'd declare an emergency and allow the colonel to add his helicopters and their lift capability to that of Sean's forces.

  Sean looked at the mission clock, which had started the moment the gate had been spotted. Kweeda had once again warned them just after it had formed, and the gate had now been open for three hours. Demons had started to come out of it about two hours ago and were forming up into groups as they watched.

  "I'd say I won," Max mused, "but they're not digging in so much as getting organized."

  "Well, they've burned up a quarter of their time," Sean said. "They've got nine hours left. Whatever they're going to do, they need to get started on it if they're expecting to get back through that gate before it drops."

  "They're not going back," Chad said. He was sitting about five feet from the main screen, which was displaying some incredibly high-definition live images. "They're taking so long because they're organizing their supply train."

  "That looks way too light to be a supply train," Colonel Tibbets pointed out. "They've already got over five hundred soldiers out there. If they're planning on staying, they're going to need a lot more food. Not to mention medical supplies."

  Chad shook his head. "They don't need food; we're their food, or rather, you and the rest of the non-lycan populace are. As for medical supplies? Killing them just sends them back to hell, and they're a lot hardier than any human. So they're not going to bother."

  "Well, shit," Colonel Tibbets swore, "I hadn't considered that! With a train that light, they're going to be able to move a hell of a lot faster than I was thinking." Tibbets turned to one of his aides. "Jim, tell the boys they're going to have a thirty-minute warning, so they need to make sure everything is ready to rock when I give the orders."

  "Yessir!" Jim said and dashed out of the room.