by Erin R Flynn
“Your plan could still get you overrun,” Darius worried.
I sighed. “Fine, if it gets hairy or close to that, Kristof can blur around the baddies and get me out of there and they will follow my scent and go back to not wanting you guys or to fuck with you. Yeah, that will still leave a lot to kill, but hi, we have a ton of people and weapons. We can raid an Air Force base to play. Dude, let’s do it. Seriously.”
“I’m in,” Cerdic called over. “If it makes my princess happy, then fuck it, let’s have some fun and go wild.”
“Remind me to let you grab my ass later,” I teased him, smiling when he burst out laughing. I glanced between Darius and Jaxon, about bouncing on my toes. “Come on, just think how many we can set free and won’t infect others later? That’s a lot of energy from ghosts with the leopards attached to me.” I wiggled my eyebrows. “And you like how that makes me feel after.”
They were almost there, so I decided to push them over the edge.
“I’ll give you each a ‘we’re going to fuck hard and probably ruin what I’m wearing’ reward.”
They both groaned, and I knew we’d won, Wolfe, Wilson, and I bumping fists. I changed the plan a bit.
“Let’s leave the Air Force base until tomorrow,” I suggested, picking up the navigation unit and typing in what I needed. “The semi can bring a few trailers to block the bridge and give us the height, but let’s head to the dealerships Anchorage has and find electric cars. Even those little hatchbacks have a lot of room to load up weapons and ammo.”
“Good, that helps us for the next few days, as well as we can send teams to scout,” James agreed, looking over my shoulder. “And those of us who are good on rifles will take on top of the trailers facing north and south while others make ammo runs and refill clips.”
I let out an evil chuckle. “Good thing I just cleaned my baby.”
“She means her sniper rifle,” Vance told his siblings, smirking at James. “You were implying she can run ammo and refill clips, but she’s probably a better shot than you and rocks that rifle when she’s only had it a few weeks.”
“Yeah, we should start filling all the clips we can,” I muttered, ignoring what James implied. Fine, he didn’t know me and he was used to stories of princesses not getting their hands dirty.
I’d gotten a lot more than that dirty, and I didn’t mean in the fun way.
It turned out the gas stations hadn’t been completely raided and drained like lots of places, so it made me wonder how fast the infection had reached there if there was still gas. But it made us change the plan again as we raided a huge Dodge/Ram dealership, finding keys and fueling up trucks. There were over a thousand people on the ship according to James and Trisha, so it was a lot of help.
And they were hard workers, well trained and used to communicating well to handle the job they needed to. People had quickly broken up into teams and tasks. Those who knew how to cook or handle meat worked at camp for not just dinner but overnight cooking and processing meat for the freezers. Others took trucks and raided gun stores.
Then another group found RV and camper rental places and drove them to the camp so they didn’t have to go back to the ship for a few nights. They weren’t being used anyways. I heard James and Trisha talking about parking all the campers somewhere covered when we were done so they could still be there next year. Most started right up, as EMPs didn’t take out engines or only need to be restarted.
Granted, a lot of the batteries had been dead, but that was where I’d come in.
Then there was the group who was prepping with the original plans of loading solar panels and other weapons into trailers they were going to take to Ireland as my gift. We’d see how much they came up with because maybe some would come to the coven instead of as gifts.
The last group headed back to the ship to start running systems and like doing ship stuff. No, I didn’t get it all, but someone had to handle getting things going in proper order now that they had the reactor going. All I knew was they were thrilled about water pumps for toilets and showers. Yeah, I would have been too.
With so many people, we got a fuck ton of everything done. Like a fuck ton even if it had been only an afternoon before dinner… And then we had hours of day left.
“Right, it’s Alaska in April,” Darius muttered, glancing around. “There’s only four or five hours of real night or something I think.”
“Well, apparently your princess is better at planning than you are because I thought of that,” I teased him. I had. I’d read that in the atlas when I’d been traveling. All that sort of stuff fascinated me, and I ate up any books I could on seasons and how different months affected the world.
“You’re just that perfect,” he praised, winking at me. I was sitting on Jaxon’s lap since he’d been about at his limit for letting Darius hog me. It was a bit weird to constantly be touching them, but it wasn’t all bad as they were super attentive.
I moaned as I took the first bite of dinner. “What is this? This fish is awesome.”
“Rainbow trout, Princess,” the margay shifter who’d brought it to me, Simon, told me. “It’s one of mine and my margay’s favorites.”
“Inez is fine, really,” I replied. “It’s great. Thank you so much. I’ve never had fresh rainbow trout, only canned trout I think. You don’t always ask when it’s food and you’re starving.” I tried the hare that Maggie the ocelot shifter had given me, and it was so good I turned and demanded Jaxon try some, which amused the others.
We were sitting at our big folding table, our normal group along with James, Trisha, and my new feline shifter friends who didn’t seem to want to be too far away from me. It was nice, comfortable, like we’d done it for years and just felt… Right.
“Why don’t you tell us what you’re planning for your coven?” James said before taking a drink of his beer and looking at it. “I’m shocked you found beer still good.”
“You get about one in five that taste stale or smells bad and those don’t drink,” Asher warned them.
James nodded and focused on me. “So you’ve been having dreams or ideas of your coven you’ve not told others?”
Darius leaned over and kissed my shoulder when I didn’t answer. “We’re just talking. I know it weighs on you as princess, and it will be your coven, but nothing will be decided tonight.” He gestured to the twins. “They’ve been plotting how big your pool will be and the amount of waterslides.”
Wilson let out a huff and stuck his nose in the air. “I demand it of all my friends. There must also be heated toilet seats if it’s somewhere cold, and it is required that my suite has a large tub for all my bath toys.”
I burst out laughing, not the only one amused by what he said, but feeling lighter and not so tense about the topic. I let out a sigh and glanced around. “I need some paper and pen.”
“On it,” Asher told me and darted to the camper. He came out with a sketch pad and pencil.
I thanked him and took it from him. I drew several concentric circles. “I don’t know how many layers.” Then from the second circle I drew lines out that went north, south, east, and west, sort of like a bullseye with quadrants. “This is what I keep seeing.” I tapped the center circle. “This is where the first seed is planted, this coven tree you guys say it will grow into.”
“It’s the root of your land and magic, the land knowing you’re princess of the area, and there’s layers to that,” Kristof explained. “You build upon it with your blood, and like waves of decisions and ripples of what we do, it fans out.”
I nodded I heard him. “This next circle is the coven house, but it looks like a castle in my mind, really it does. But it’s built around the tree, protecting it and like the courtyard of the castle?”
“Where is this?” Trisha asked.
I winced. “Where Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico intersect. It’s a reservation, and I haven’t been there yet. I have no idea why that spot, but that’s what the map points to, and I’v
e dreamed of that exact spot. There’s a monument there, but something else happened there that makes it… Need to be the spot.” I wanted to say reclaimed, but that sounded horrible when it was a reservation.
The feeling I got from my dreams or what I’d seen was that it was once a temple forgotten by history, and it shouldn’t have been. That when people had “settled” what was already there, it was destroyed and worse than that, pushed to that reservation like they should be grateful instead of the horrendous things that were done to them.
I waved that off, knowing I’d have to tell it later probably, but none of this was set in stone, just what I’d been thinking about.
“From there, the lines are streets and the area blocks.” I pointed to that first circle that was cut into quarters. “These are houses or residences of the families of my knights or their trusted friends. Nobody but friends near the castle.”
“Um, where are we?” Callum asked hesitantly.
“In the castle with us,” I muttered, gesturing to Darius and Jaxon. “You guys get your own wing or maybe not wing if it’s a circle, but whatever, you know what I mean.” I pointed to the next circle. “These are for vampires and shifters that are part of the coven.” Then the next circle. “These will be shops and businesses.
“Maybe another circle of that or any of it, I don’t know.” I pointed to the last circle. “This will be the river, the moat of our coven really.” I drew a line from the northeast where the river would come in, explaining that. “So that’s the access to the coven. There’s a huge block so no ships just get in, but that quadrant is port on either side and security, cargo, and people being checked.
“This next quadrant on the other side of the river will be farms and like animals.” I glanced at the leopards and cats, excited to talk about it now that I’d started. “Okay, this next part makes sense now that I’ve met you all, but I have no idea how this will all seriously work.” I tapped the quadrant across from the port one. “This will be jungle. I kept seeing this whole area of being jungle and hi, jungle cats, duh.
“But that’s probably where people would try and get in if they want to, but there will be jungle cats to eat them.” I chuckled, scratching my head. “I saw Zootopia downloaded on a Kindle once, and I thought this was just because of that and I wanted fun like that, but now I’m thinking maybe I was supposed to find that Kindle so I could get the visual I should have.
“This last area will be greenhouses for all the food but outside the moat and maybe a wall to keep the city safe. I don’t know. That seems a bit much, but you guys keep talking about how many will come for me, and a wall won’t just cure everything, or yeah, you can fucking climb over walls, duh, but they’re good to hide behind if people are shooting. I don’t know. Maybe it would just be cool?”
I shrugged and glanced up at the others, clearing my throat when I got a range of looks. I closed the sketchbook and tossed the pen down, focusing on my food again. This was why I hadn’t wanted to bring it up. I knew I would be crushed if someone laughed or said it was stupid, and I didn’t know why since it didn’t seem to even really be my idea if it came in dreams.
Well, most of it hadn’t been. Just the sketch of the circles and lines. The rest I had sort of pieced together by what felt right.
“Every castle and city should have a wall,” Cerdic said firmly as he reached over and grabbed the book. “You’re right in that, love.”
“We’re shocked you had such an answer when you’ve been acting like you didn’t think on any of this,” Vance explained gently. “I think it’s wicked, Inez. Really, I do. I’m just blown away because all I’ve heard you say is that first seed is a tree.”
“I have so many questions,” Trisha added. “It sounds amazing, but just wow, that was a lot fast. You think big, girl, and I like it.” She leaned in to look over Cerdic’s shoulder. “So like there would be a coven bakery and this would be how castles used to run where there was a town basically on castle grounds. Would you have your own money system like it’s your own country or keep with the gold?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it, looking around and seeing the excited gazes. They weren’t laughing at me; it had been levels of shock and surprise.
Cool.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I can’t just start the country of Team Inez on US soil.”
James snorted. “What US? There’s nothing left.”
“Yeah, there is, and it’s not good,” Vance worried. “We were at Fort Knox, and those fuckers are crazy. I don’t know what else is left, but it’s basically some nut fuck governors that have reformed the government.”
James burst out laughing. “That would not be who was next. I would be more eligible than a governor. I’m probably Secretary of the Navy as the highest ranking officer left. That’s how I got pushed up to admiral, as the admiral in charge of our carrier group got infected and dead. That puts me under the chain of command of the Secretary of Defense, and I’m probably that job too. All the federal elected everyone got bombed in DC as congress was in session. That’s the whole line of succession.”
“Yeah, well, logic doesn’t work well with crazies,” Vance reminded them.
“Right, but even crazy has limits, and you have the miracle princess here that fixed a nuclear fucking reactor and is claiming four states, so that’s a lot of everything that goes boom to threaten them with if they’re stupid,” Trisha argued. “We were all military. We know how to use it all.”
“You just want to be Secretary of Defense of country Team Inez,” I teased her, smiling when she did. “Guys, really, we need a better name than that.”
“I do,” she purred, wiggling her eyebrows at me. “But no, I was in the moment you didn’t have rings of caste levels where vamps go before shifters and then humans or whatever.”
“Right, we need humans for you guys to feed,” I muttered, having forgotten that.
“We didn’t have humans on the ship for the last three years or more,” she countered. “Vamps can feed from us.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that. Screw the humans then.” I shrugged.
She coughed on her next bite. “That’s a bit harsh.”
I blew a raspberry. “Do you know how many places I’ve been to that always get eaten from the inside? Someone is always infected and doesn’t tell. I didn’t know I was invulnerable or a vampire for years. I got scratched or bitten more than once running. You know what I didn’t do? I didn’t go to a fucking settlement and risk others.”
“Right, but there are bad apples in every species,” she said gently. “We’ll make sure only good ones come in of all species.”
“Yeah, but then you guys have to hide you’re not human,” I grumbled. “Or us. Me too. How would we explain half of it if we had to be human?”
“Why do we need to?” Cerdic said after a moment. He shrugged when people gave him shocked looks. “My family’s coven is out. There’s no news or worry of getting annihilated by countries or humans. There aren’t enough of them. It used to be that we were out and humans knew.”
“It was a much easier time,” Kristof added, sounding like he knew from experience and yeah, he was super old.
“Dude, how old are you?” Tyson asked him.
Kristof shrugged. “Most find it tacky if you keep count after a few thousand years. I stopped counting because really, a birthday didn’t mean much by then.” He leaned over and tapped the sketch. “This is well done as a starting plan to rebuild and do it right as a new coven. I have been to that area though, and there is only a smaller river flowing right there.”
“Yeah, that’s one of the seriously strange parts,” I grumbled. “It’s why I was practicing what else my power could do with the trees.”
“You’re supposed to wipe out everything there and start fresh,” he surmised.
“And build a river from the ocean,” I mumbled, knowing they would still all hear me. “Fine, global warming didn’t happen as everyone had thought and there are assho
les who say it was because the reports were all bullshit. They weren’t, but it was the immediate, almost complete ceasing of carbon emissions after the bombs all dropped. However, there is still that too high sea level thing that I read about.”
“And you’re going to fix that?” James asked, raising that disbelieving eyebrow at me again.
“Fuck if I know, dude. I just have this dream of actually making a huge ass fucking river starting from Seattle and following the path of highways around there and the circle river around the coven. Yeah, no big. Just use magic to dig it out and build it up and out so the planet can reclaim the land for life and animals instead of falling apart everything. No big. Just another princess thing to handle.”
“Whoa, no wonder you’ve not said anything,” Vance whispered, giving me a worried look. “Damn. Okay, well, as the civil engineer on Team Inez, I’ll start figuring out how deep and the way to do this best maybe.”
“You might not have all the information you’d need on that, but let’s put a pin in all of this for now,” Jaxon said. “We have hunting and fun first.”
A topic change sounded perfect.
14
“So we’re clear on the wager, right?” James checked. “I win and you, a vampire princess, will make me homemade bread and a breakfast scrambler.”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “And if I win, you’ll let me bring you on a visit to another court wearing a collar and leash in shifted form.”
“We have an accord, Princess,” he purred, taking my extended hand and kissing it instead of shaking.
I rolled my eyes and moved to get set up. After dinner, most had gotten back to their tasks. I’d had hot sex with Jaxon in the camper, but then it was still hours before nightfall, so a lot of us were excited and ready to go. We’d decided to have some fun and had gone hunting, clearing a large hotel on the northwest side of downtown, which was south of the port so not the immediate area handled.
Corrupted didn’t come out in the sun after all.