Trying Times (The Valens Legacy Book 14)

by Jan Stryvant

  Peg nodded. "Yeah, me and Sheila will stay here. We all know Jo won't go; she's too attached to the twins. I don't think Dae will want to go, either."

  "Actually, I was going to leave her in charge," Roxy said. "After me, she's the only one I know you'll all listen too."

  "Why do we all listen to Roxy again?" Sheila asked sotto voce.

  "It's the sad cat eyes, you just can't say no," Peg stage-whispered back. "Unlike Dae, who threatens to shave us bald if we don't obey."

  Roxy sighed again and rolled her eyes.

  "We're leaving after dinner, Cali. Will Alska be okay?"

  Cali nodded. "Deidre will take care of her for me. When Louise isn't, that is."

  "What are you going to do with Sean, Junior?" Peg asked.

  Roxy snorted. "Between my mom and Sean's mom, I barely get any time with my own son as it is!"

  "You taking Estrella too?"

  "Probably, I don't think she can go a day without Sean around." Roxy grinned. "She's almost as bad as I am!"

  "I'll be ready," Cali told her.

  "Oh! We're flying on a charter jet."

  "Which means?"

  "No TSA; we can bring whatever we want."

  Cali jumped up, clapped her hands, and laughed, delighted. "Oh! Goodie! I can bring all my toys, then!" And she ran out of the room.

  "Sometimes that girl scares me." Roxy sighed.

  "Only sometimes?" Sheila asked, surprised. "She's a bleedin assassin! She should be scaring you a whole lot more than just sometimes!"

  Roxy snorted. "I know her ticklish spots. Besides, I'm not afraid of her that way."

  Peg laughed and nodded. "It's more the way she enjoys playing with all those 'toys' of hers."

  "Seriously," Roxy said with a nod. "We had to put her on a budget. She's got more knives than Jo has shoes."

  "And Jo has a lot of shoes!" Peg laughed.

  "Well, I gotta go find Dae," Roxy said and left them.

  Daelyn was in her workshop, of course. It looked like she had one of the turbines off of a helicopter, in pieces, scattered all over her workbench. One of the A&Ps had tried to tell Daelyn she wasn't 'certified' to work on the motors.

  After Daelyn had finished schooling him on them, no one had ever bothered her again. Getting between a gear-head dwarf and a motor of any type was never wise. Instead, they gave her the harder jobs to fix.

  "What's up, Rox?" Daelyn said, setting down her tools.

  "We're flying out tonight to Washington. Steve's got problems."

  "Who's 'we'?"

  "Sean, Rob, Cali, Stell, me, John, Cenna, Stewart, Rachel, April, and Travis' protective detail. I'm guessing you want to stay here with little Bernard, because I'm definitely not bringing any of the kids into that cesspit."

  Daelyn smiled and nodded. "Yeah, I wouldn't want any of our kids there, either. I'm guessin' you want me in charge while you're gone?"

  Roxy nodded and smiled. "I love you all, but we both know, between you and me, the others just aren't cut out for it."

  "Jo could do it," Daelyn said after a moment's reflection.

  "I don't like putting her in that kind of position," Roxy admitted with a sad look. "She really is a lover and not a fighter. It's not fair to her."

  "While you and I both enjoy kickin' ass," Daelyn said with a laugh.

  Roxy grinned back at her. "Well, there is that. And Cali." They looked at each other and snickered. "She'd just kill everybody who annoyed her."

  "I'm not so sure that's a bad thing! And knowing Cali, nobody would know who did it, either!"

  "I'm just glad she's on our side," Roxy admitted.

  "Well, let me get this put back together and get a little abuse in on our lion-boy before he leaves. You sure about taking Stell with you?"

  "I haven't asked her yet, but I'll be surprised if she wants to stay home. Why?"

  "Eh, I thought I might take her out in the 'Cuda and let her appreciate the full effect!"

  "I bet she'd love it. Well, I need to check in with Oak and make arrangements. Later, Dae!"

  "Later Rox!"

  #

  Betty woke up to the sounds of other people around her. Opening her eyes, she blinked as things slowly came into focus. There was a curtain pulled halfway around her bed, an IV hanger with a couple of bags beside it, and a tube running down into her arm!

  "Hello? Anybody? Where am I?" she called out and tried to sit up, but a lance of pain in her stomach laid her flat on her back almost immediately.

  "It's okay, Betty, we're in the hospital," a calm voice called out. She recognized it almost immediately as Cindy's voice.

  "Why am I..." Betty stopped and, choking up, she started to cry as she remembered what she'd seen. Pastor Cross was shooting people! In the back! And he'd looked her right in the eyes and shot her, too!

  A nurse pulled the curtain back as she came over to Betty's side.

  "There, there, young lady. Everything's fine; you're going to be alright."

  "He, he shot me!" Betty sobbed. "He looked me right in the eye and he shot me!" Betty gasped between sobs.

  "They shot all of us, the filthy bastards," Carol said in a loud voice.

  "The doctors told me you were all shot with silver bullets," the nurse said, not looking up from Betty as she checked her over. "Next time you decide to shoot at people, I suggest you learn not to shoot each other first."

  "What, what about my baby?" Betty asked, putting her hands down on her heavily bandaged abdomen.

  The nurse looked up at her. "I'm sorry honey, you lost the baby. The silver in the bullet caused a reaction, and you miscarried, but at least you can still try again."

  Betty wailed when she heard she'd lost the child, but she wailed even louder when the nurse suggested she could try again.

  "He shot me! I don't want to have his child! He knew I was pregnant, and he still shot me!" she cried out.

  The ward quieted as the other women looked sympathetically at Betty, sobbing in her hospital bed.

  "Wait right here a moment, honey, I have someone you need to talk to."

  They watched as the nurse quickly walked to the door and spoke to someone outside. A moment later a policewoman came into the room and walked with the nurse over to Betty's bedside.

  "Betty, I'm Officer O'Toole. The nurse tells me you saw who shot you and the others?"

  Betty nodded as she was crying. "I, we... I could see we were losing, so I turned to run, and I saw him there, he was just shooting people in the back. He shot both the women next to me, and then..." Betty shuddered and sobbed a moment. "Then he shot me! He told me he loved me! He told me God had meant for us to start a new generation! That I was his special child! And he, and he, he shot me!"

  "Who shot you?" Cindy asked in an angry voice from across the room.

  "Pastor Cross! I told him this morning that I was carrying his baby! And he told me we was gonna celebrate after, afterwards. And he shot me! He killed our baby! He murdered our child!"

  Officer O'Toole looked up at the sounds of swearing and cursing from the other women in the ward. All of them were in here because they were pregnant, and more than one person had surmised already that the good pastor had been casting his own 'seed' amongst his 'flock'. They'd had a report that he was the one who had shot all these women, and ballistics was having a field day, tying all the bullets to the same weapon.

  "I think you should sedate her, Nurse," Officer O'Toole said, then walked over to several of the women who were having, at the very least, a heated conversation, if not flat out arguing.

  "Ladies," Officer O'Toole said and, lowering her voice, she continued, "I hate to ask, but were you all...?"

  "Yes we were, Officer! And I had no idea!"

  "You are?"

  "I'm Carol, that's Cindy, Karen, Joyce, Tommi, and Linda."

  "I knew," Cindy said.

  "I knew, too," Karen agreed, nodding.

  "Yet you still slept with him?"

  "Pastor Cross is a hard man to resist," Cind
y said. "And to be honest, up until a minute ago, I would have died to defend that son of a bitch."

  "He told me we were doing the Good Lord's work, and Heaven help me, I believed him!" Linda said angrily.

  "But why would he do such a thing?" Karen asked in a soft voice.

  "I gather he thought he was protecting you from the 'lycan menace' or something," Officer O'Toole said with a sigh. "Whom, I might add, saved your lives."

  "I thought the police saved our lives?" Cindy said.

  "Nope. We didn't get up there until a couple of hours later. Their medics bandaged you up, and they flew you in here on their own helicopters. Some friends of yours decided to shoot up downtown Sparks, so all the police went there instead."

  "They, they had their hands on us?" Karen said, looking shocked.

  Officer O'Toole shrugged. "Beats me. I mean, I guess they'd have had to, to put you in the helicopters and fly you out here."

  "But, but they're evil!"

  Officer O'Toole looked at Karen and snorted. "Right, and the guy who told you this, who knocked all of you up, shot you in the back, and left you to die is doing 'God's work'."

  "But they've committed blasphemy! They've claimed to be gods!" Joyce said, looking upset.

  Officer O'Toole shrugged. "Maybe you should ask them about it instead of taking somebody else's word for it."

  "What happens to us next?" Cindy asked.

  "Once you're all well enough to attend a hearing, the judge'll set bail and give you a trial date."

  "Trial date?"

  "You killed three people; surely you didn't think there wasn't going to be a trial?"

  "I didn't kill anybody!" Cindy protested, and the others nodded in agreement.

  "Doesn't matter. You were all part of the group that did; you were all caught in the commission of a crime that led to the death of another.

  "If I were you ladies, I'd start looking for a lawyer."

  O'Toole headed back out of the room and called her boss. The lycans had told them they hadn't shot those women, and now they had a statement from an eyewitness. The DA was just going to love this.

  Carol watched as the officer closed the door behind her.

  "Now what do we do?" Cindy asked with a heavy sigh.

  "I'm getting an abortion, that's what I'm going to do," Carol growled.

  "What!" Karen gasped. "How could you!"

  "That bastard told me he'd make sure my husband would never realize it wasn't his child. That cheating on Paul was okay because it was the Lord's will. Well I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not gonna give birth to that murdering bastard's child and risk losing my husband.

  "And if I hear any of you told my Paul about this, I'll be sure to let everyone know you were cheating, too."

  "Carol's right," Cindy said. "We keep our mouths shut about this; it ain't nobody's business but ours."

  "Well, I'm keeping my baby," Karen said and gave them a challenging look.

  "Karen, I'm happy for you, and I wish you all the best. But you still need to keep your mouth shut. The last thing your kid is going to need to hear is how his daddy shot you in the back."

  "I just can't believe you knew," Linda said, looking over at Cindy.

  "Roy's sterile, he can't have children," Cindy said with a shrug. "We both thought Pastor Cross would be a good birth father. We were happy when I got pregnant, but I can tell you this: If I ever see that man again, I will shoot him until he stops moving."

  "Amen," several agreed.

  Washington

  Sean looked around him. There was a pretty big group on the airplane, twenty in total, and that few only because Travis had only brought half of Sean's 'bodyguards'. Sean felt a little bad about not letting Travis bring the entire team of twenty, but then again, at least he'd brought Travis along in the first place.

  Travis was the guy charge of his security detail, but Sean hadn't been giving him a lot of opportunities to do his job of late. At least they'd taken the time during the month he was gone to really learn how to do their jobs. John had even fitted them all out with special radios like the Secret Service used.

  Estrella was sitting next to him, looking cool and collected, but the hand she had on his leg was holding on with a death grip. At least when she looked out the window now, she couldn't see the ground. That had helped her fear a lot.

  "Sorry you didn't stay home?" Sean asked her in a soft voice.

  "No. I need to get used to this. You say people do this all the time now?"

  Sean nodded. "Hundreds of thousands of people a year."

  "And humans built this?"

  "Yup. Without the djevels coming through constantly and the lions mucking about playing their games, things have improved dramatically."

  "Just remember," Cali whispered from the seat on the other side of Estrella, apparently their mutual love of all things edged and stabby had formed into quick friendship, "the city we are going to is very busy and very crowded. Don't let it overwhelm you. All of it will be like downtown Reno."

  "I think that worries me more than the flying," she admitted.

  "It took me time to get used to it," Cali agreed, "and I came from a place much more modern than you did."

  "Don't worry, it'll be fine," Sean said and looked at his watch. They'd be landing at four a.m. local time, or about one a.m. his time. Most of the others were catching naps, but Estrella had been too keyed up to sleep, despite the caffeine crash. So Sean had mostly been keeping her mind off of things, and Cali had been more than pleased to help.

  "I'm gonna go talk to dad for a while, okay?" he asked.

  "You can do that from up here?" Estrella asked, surprised.

  "Don't see why not," Sean said with a shrug. "Close your eyes and join me if you want," he said and, closing his eyes and relaxing, he focused on going to 'the mountain', as they called it, or 'Lion La La Land', as he liked to think of it. He'd realized after the last time he'd gone that now the First was gone, he could easily enter a trance-like state to go there.

  He wondered briefly if the First had been preventing him from doing that, or if it was just because he'd never tried before?

  §

  Standing up and stretching, Sean's lion half reminded him that it had been way too long since they'd been out for a run, and they needed to fix that.

  "Hello, Son," the First said.

  "Hi, Dad," Sean said, smiling back at him. "You know, I was just thinking."

  "Oh? What about?"

  Sean blinked a moment. "You know, that's a first!"

  "What is?"

  "That you don't know what I'm thinking," Sean said with a lopsided grin. "I could get used to this!"

  Sean noticed Estrella had suddenly popped into view and was getting up.

  "I'm not sure I will." The First sighed theatrically. "So what were you thinking about?"

  "Oh, maybe when Estrella decides she wants children, you could be reborn?" Sean winked at him.

  "No!" Estrella growled. "Definitely not! I'll drown him in a bucket!"

  Sean blinked and looked at her. "I thought you liked your father?"

  "The last thing any lioness wants to do is reincarnate their own parents."

  "But just think, we could call him 'son', and put him to bed early, and make him stand in the corner when he misbehaves!" Sean said with a laugh.

  "Your sense of humor alone is why you still need me." The First sighed, shaking his head. Sean noticed he was smiling, if only a little.

  "That reminds me," Sean said. "About Nguvu and Mtawala."

  "What about them?"

  "Well, they were reincarnated into Jo's babies. But they just seem like regular babies. Why is that?"

  "They won't be able to remember who they are until they are around five or six, and even then, it'll only be for brief moments. Their lions will remember who they are long before they can. They'll get it all back about the time they hit puberty."

  "Huh, strange."

  "So, Adam tells me you're holding on to
him?"

  Sean smiled and nodded.

  "I'd complain, but I know you'd just ignore it," the First said with a chuckle. "Then again, Keairra has been so pleased he's finally found a place he fits in, she'd probably be very unhappy with me if I tried to take him away."

  "I like having him there too, Father," Estrella said. "He's been helping me understand what's changed since I was here last. There's just so much history to catch up on!"

  "Oh, has Tisha updated you about the current problem in Washington?" Sean asked.

  "Yes, she was here earlier."

  "We're on a flight there right now. Any suggestions?"

  "Let me know what country you're dealing with, and I'll see what strings we can pull."

  Sean nodded. "Which reminds me, now that I don't have you in my head to tease the council leaders of Sapientia and Eruditio with strange tidbits of information, I have no idea what to say to them the next time I meet them!"

  The First laughed. "Well then, sit down and make yourself comfortable, and I'll tell you a few stories so you can drop some more surprises on them. Estrella, your mother is down the hillside over there talking to your aunts," he said, pointing with a paw. "As much as I enjoy your company, she'll be most displeased if you don't visit with her."

  "Okay, Father!" Estrella said and trotted off towards Keairra.

  "You're not getting rid of her for any particular reason, are you?" Sean asked, curious.

  The First shook his head. "Not really, other than Keairra really would be unhappy. Estrella was her last daughter, and she missed her terribly."

  "That reminds me," Sean said, "after you left, I discovered a bunch of stuff in my head."

  "Oh? What's that?"

  Sean took a few minutes to explain the lists on the lion powers he'd found. The First was already familiar with the spell, he'd watched Sean use it dozens of times.

  "Well, that is interesting. So you can tell how many lions are alive at any time?"

  "And how many lycans there are," Sean said with a nod. "Is that how you do it?"

  The First shook his head. "I've always just known. Just as I've always had a feeling for how much power is out there. Those of us in the first two generations figure it out eventually. Those in the third can feel the power levels and access the simpler abilities."