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  "Will, it's good to see you." Gary smiled and came over to where William was sitting. "I had no idea you were a fan of Wiener Works."

  William looked up and saw it was Gary Schaffer from Gradatim.

  "Hey, Gary. Sorry to hear about your father; pull up a seat if you want."

  Gary smiled and did just that.

  "Sorry to hear about your father as well, Will."

  "I'm just glad it's over." William sighed.

  Gary pursed his lips and nodded his head in agreement. "Me too. How many did you lose?"

  "Fifty." William sighed. "They asked me to lead the memorial service; I don't know why, but they did."

  "Well from what I heard, you did a good job of holding everyone together, especially when those guys from the Vestibulum lost their shit."

  "Yeah, I guess. Sorry about your guys that got killed, I was just too worried about my own at that point."

  Gary nodded. "Not your fault. I warned them; they choose to ignore me."

  "How many did you lose?"

  "Fifty-one."

  "Is it true you're the new council head?"

  Gary snorted. "Yeah. I don't understand it. The whole council gets wiped, and they put the least-qualified guy in charge of leading it."

  William smiled at that. "I want to thank you for leaving that food for us, when it meant your own people had to go hungry," William told him. "It meant a lot, to all of us."

  Gary looked a little embarrassed. "I did it for us as much as I did it for you. Lately I've started to wonder what it is we all stand for, and why the hell we spend so much time fighting each other. The Vestibulum left over a hundred and twenty people up on that hill, and for what?"

  William nodded. "The world's changing, and we haven't been. So it reared up and bit us on the ass. Harris put me on the council in my father's seat, but honestly, with all the other members dead but him, I'm number two now. All because I wanted to live."

  "It's not just that, Will. We took the time to help the others. That first night and the next day, a lot of us were no better than savages. You and me, we at least held on to our humanity. We got tested, and a lot of people failed. The others see that, and they're embarrassed by it. So they want the few of us who passed the test to lead them into a better future."

  William looked at Gary.

  "Bullshit."

  Gary laughed. "Yeah, maybe, but it helped me sleep last night, so it might just help you."

  William shook his head and smiled. Gary had a point; William hadn't slept very well at all last night.

  "Hey, I'm getting married next weekend. We decided to move it up to try and give people something a bit better to think of. I'll send you an invitation."

  "I don't know, Gary."

  "Dude, she's got a younger sister, and she's hot. You're a hero now, and you're on the Ascendance's council. Trust me, she'll be interested. And maybe, just maybe, if we're in-laws we won't do any of this stupid shit anymore that ends up with half of our friends dying up in the woods."

  William smiled and nodded slowly. "Yeah, I'd like that. Just don't invite anybody from the Vestibulum. While I don't want a war with them, I really don't want to see any of them for a while."

  Gary nodded. "Yeah, I feel the same way. I'm still worried the only hatchet that they want to bury is in our heads."

  "I'm leaning on Harris to ally with Sapientia, he's not crazy about it, but I told him we need to face the new reality; the Vestibulum is on the way out, they're the past now."

  Gary thought about that. "You know, I think you may have a point there."

  They talked a little longer while they waited for their orders, then Gary left William to sit and eat while he took his home to his fiancée.

  Gary had had to field a phone call from the Leader of the Gradatim in Los Angeles this morning. Rupert Spencer had a lot of questions about what had happened and what the lycans had done. Gary had told him most of it, but not all. When Gary had flipped off the others yesterday and headed off on his own, he was flipping off all of Gradatim.

  He didn't believe in what they stood for anymore, and he sure didn't believe in Rupert Spencer and his words of retaliation and winning back 'all they had lost'.

  Gary knew when he was beat, he could feel it in his bones. William was right about the Vestibulum being the past, but that wasn't all that was in the past. Every man on the new council now was one of the people who had followed Gary out of that canyon and back home.

  And Gary was by no means done with leading them.

  On The Road Again

  Chad was watching the Gradatim compound on the screen of a laptop as he sat on the top of the next hill over from theirs. The Gradatim compound was in the hills a little to the south of Eugene. A good place to be unobserved and to do whatever they felt like without prying eyes.

  It did make them a little harder to spy on, but apparently they hadn't been keeping up with modern technology, and John had come through handily with several high-flying and relatively quiet drones that sported high-quality cameras.

  "Is that the woman you were interested in?" John asked, watching on another screen as he piloted the drone focused on the front gate.

  "Yup, that's her. Let's see what happens."

  As they watched, she was led to a spot in the middle of the compound, then nothing happened for a couple of minutes until a man came out of the main building quickly and strode up to her. Nothing happened for several more minutes as they watched.

  "Too bad we didn't get up here sooner," John said. "I probably could have salted their grounds with a couple of listening devices."

  "This is still better than we expected," Chad said.

  "Oh, he does not look happy," John noted as the man started to gesticulate.

  "I can't believe she's not running," Chad said.

  "What? Why?"

  "He's about to execute her."

  "I can," Max said, looking over Chad's shoulder, "she's got nothing left to live for."

  A moment later the woman fell over, writhing on the ground.

  "Looks like he hit her with a blast of silver," Max said. "Pretty painful way to die."

  "What a sick bastard," John said.

  "Sometimes I think these people all grew up watching B-rate action movies with the way they 'reward' their followers," Max said with a shake of her head. "It's a wonder anyone is loyal to them in the first place."

  "Well, let's get back to counting people and mapping defenses," Chad said. "Sean'll be here just after sunset, and we want to hit them tonight."

  "What a slave driver," John sighed. "Bad enough you made us drive all the way up here through the night!"

  "As I heard it, you slept in the back of your van all night while one of my gals drove!" Max laughed.

  "Well, it's the thought that counts!" John said with a grin.

  "So, what's the plan?" Sean asked as they sat in the back of one of the trailers. It was after nine, and the sun had set almost an hour ago.

  "Charge in, grab everybody, and charge back out." Chad grinned. "You know, the usual!"

  "Surely it can't be that simple."

  "There's only eighteen lycans here, from what we've seen, and only a dozen magic users. Male magic users that is, we haven't seen any of their wives yet. All the men appear to be older; they either have white hair or they're bald. Of the eighteen lycans, four are male, all the rest are female, and most of those appear to be fairly young."

  "Sex slaves?" Jolene asked.

  "Probably," Chad agreed with a nod.

  "Why is…" Sean paused a moment. "Scratch that. Does anyone else find it suspicious that this place has so few people in it? It's got room for a lot more people than a dozen men and their sex toys."

  "Might be a school," Peg said. "It is summer, and even a lot of the magic schools close down then."

  "Or it could be some sort of research center," Jolene said, looking at the map of the grounds thoughtfully. "In either case, what they did to Dawn should make you wonder."

  "What, executing her?" Max said.

  "No, making her betray her own kind and thinking she was doing the right thing. This place may be small, but I suspect the magic users inside are all going to be powerful."

  "What did Terry tell you about it?" Sean asked Chad.

  "Not much, said Dawn told him she always steered clear of it."

  "Where is he, anyway?" Roxy asked.

  "Scrambling to move a bunch of people and change a bunch of things. They really have no idea how much Dawn knew or how much she told, because no one ever thought she was a spy."

  "How long was she the alpha?"

  "Five years, but she'd been in the pack for at least eight before that. When the previous alpha died, she took over."

  "Well, we're here and we've got a lot of people with us, so what's the plan?" Sean asked. "Other than run in and run out?"

  "Pretty much what we did to the Ascendance in Reno. You come in with a team on the helicopter and land on the roof of the main building. Four teams of twenty will approach these positions," Chad said, pointing to spots on the map. "When the alarm goes off, they'll concentrate on taking out the sentries and cutting holes in the fences."

  "Those may be trapped, you know," Sean said.

  "More like definitely," Jolene agreed.

  "I can take a look at them beforehand," Cali said from the front of the trailer.

  "She can see magical traps," Sean said to Chad's befuddled look.

  "Oh. To continue, we'll hold the remaining two hundred troops in these three positions, ready to storm in and do whatever they have to do."

  "We really did over-commit, didn't we?" Roxy chuckled.

  "Well, we had no idea what we were up against," Chad said. "And I'd rather have them and not need them."

  "Than need them and not have them," Roxy agreed.

  "So, are they all kept here in the kennel?" Peg asked, looking at the map.

  "Only the four males and possibly two of the female lycans are living in there, from what we can see. All the rest are in the main building."

  "Oh, fun." Sean sighed. "When are we going in?"

  "As soon as Cali gets back from checking the fences," Chad said.

  "That early?" Sean said, surprised.

  "Well, if each of these guys has one of the girls in his bedroom, you're not going to take them by surprise once you're inside the building. So why even try to? That's why I said 'When the alarm goes off' not 'if'. Just shoot everything that moves with a wand. Collar the girls, we'll hit the kennels and the guard tower while you do that, then we get the hell out of dodge and see what we've got."

  Chad looked around. "Where's Daelyn, anyway?"

  "Off talking to her brother to see what other intelligence she can get."

  "Ah, good. Cali, let's go check those fences out, then we'll get this show on the road."

  "Okay!" Cali said with a cheerful smile.

  An hour later Sean was climbing into the helicopter, along with Cali, Roxy, Peg, and a twelve-man strike team. It was a little close inside, but they weren't going all that far. Sean cast a silence spell on the helicopter as soon as he was inside, and they took off.

  "How does the building look?" Sean asked Cali as they approached from the south.

  "The first two floors have got lines all over them. The third-floor windows only have one, and the roof has a couple lines on it too, but the peak is clear as long as you don't move more than a couple of feet from it."

  "Why is the peak clear?"

  "Birds probably," Cali said with a shrug as she pulled the zipper on her black jump suit up to her neck and started to fasten her body armor. "Just follow me and stay between the spray lines."

  "Everybody hear that?" Sean asked, looking at the others.

  Everyone nodded.

  "Where do you want me to go?" George, the pilot, asked.

  "Can you hover over the center of the roof? Then we can all get out to either side on the peak," Cali told him.

  "Easy-peasy."

  "Alright, let's go," Sean said and everyone checked their weapons. Each of them had four of the cramping wands and a suppressed twenty-two pistol that fired enchanted bullets. Roxy, Cali, and two of the other members of the assault team had suppressed semi-automatic rifles that fired a three-hundred-caliber AAC Blackout round in case they needed something a bit more serious.

  Sliding the doors back, they held on while George quickly brought them in, then they all unloaded onto the roof quickly out the two doors. Cali had started marking lines with a can of fluorescent orange spray paint the moment she landed on the roof, then moved quickly towards the edge, stopping only to toss a rope to Sean when she got there.

  Sean carefully lowered her over the side, while two of the team grabbed his belt to counterbalance him, and the others quietly rigged the line the rest of them would be using.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Sean felt three sharp tugs and the line went slack, so he quickly coiled it and set it to the side on the roof.

  "The line ready?" he asked one of the two holding his belt.

  "Here it is," one of them said and tossed the end over the side. It was just long enough to go down a few feet past the window, and that was it.

  "Me first," Roxy growled softly, "I'm lighter than you and stronger than Cali."

  Sean nodded and watched as Roxy slipped over the side. When the line went slack, he followed her, sliding down until he was opposite the window, and Roxy leaned out and pulled him in.

  Letting go of the rope, he went over to where Cali was examining the door. They were in a bedroom, but the lack of sheets on the bed showed it wasn't currently in use.

  "Door's clear," Cali said.

  Sean nodded and, taking out an interesting little gadget John had given him, he slipped an optical cable under the door, and looking at a small cellphone sized device, he scanned the third-floor hallway.

  "Empty."

  Cali nodded, and Sean kept watch while the others made it into the room and got ready. Everyone was still in human form, Chad had suggested they should only shift when it became necessary, as it might confuse the residents as to the identity of their attackers.

  Everyone gave a thumbs-up, and Cali opened the door, leading them slowly down the hallway towards the stairway at the end. She could see a magical trip line at the end of the hallway by the staircase, so she waved everyone to a stop when she got close to it.

  Kneeling down on the floor, she took a moment to examine it to be sure it was what it looked like, then she took another minute to slowly drain it away until it winked out of existence.

  Waving them to follow her again, she started down the staircase. There was another trip line just before the second floor, and thankfully there was nobody walking around, so she spent another couple minutes, first examining, and then draining it.

  When she stepped out onto the floor, she could see ten doors on each side of the hallway, and except for the doorway on the opposite end of the hallway, every door had a magical trap on it.

  "All of the doors are trapped," Cali whispered softly in Sean's ear. "It will take me a while to defeat all of them."

  "Start with this one, then go back and forth across the hallway," Sean whispered back.

  Turning to the others, he gathered them in closely.

  "All the doors are trapped. Once she takes the traps down, we'll all go in at once and use the wands."

  "What if someone comes out before she's done?" Jon asked.

  "We take 'em down, hit the rooms that have had their doors cleared, and hope nobody hears us."

  "You know there are two more doors than there are us, right?" Roxy said.

  "Well, see if you can figure out which ones are empty, and have Cali do those last."

  Roxy nodded and shifted into her hybrid form so she could use her better sense of smell and hearing. Going over to Cali, she whispered the plan to her as they started going door to door.

  Twenty very tense minutes later, Cali had made it halfway down the hallway, having skipped three doors, when one of the doors opened and an older man stepped out. Roxy punched him in the kidney, then put a hand around his mouth and pulled him away from the open doorway as she put him in a sleeper hold.

  "Olaf? What was that?" a woman's voice called from the doorway.

  One of the others stepped around the corner with a wand and fired it off, and all hell broke loose as an alarm suddenly split the night. Eight doors were immediately kicked in and several wands were fired. Sean ducked into the room Peg had gone into. A brief glance told him there was an older man in the bed with a female lycan, both of whom were under the effects of the cramping spell.

  Taking cover in the doorway, Sean got his wands ready as people started to come out of the rooms – or rather, women started to come out. One woman each came out of six of the rooms and were quickly dropped with the wands, but all of them had been armed with machine pistols, and two of them had fired off a lot of rounds as they went down. One of other women was hit by the crossfire and started to react almost immediately.

  "Silver!" Jon called out. Moving forward carefully, he grabbed the woman's arm, pulled her back, and tried to get a collar and tag on her before she died.

  Sean himself was a bit busier deflecting the spells that came out of the four rooms.

  "Magic users," Sean hissed, and as he watched, Roxy and Cali pulled tear gas grenades off their belts and tossed them into the rooms, one after another.

  Sean immediately followed that by going down the hallway with a gust spell before him and stopped at the first doorway. There was an old man in there about to cast something, so Sean hit him with a cramper.

  When he got to the next room, that man had already started to blow the teargas back out, but he wasn't ready for the cramper spell and went down.

  The next man started a magical duel, but Roxy ducked around Sean's back and shot the man in the legs, dropping him. Looking up to the next door, Cali was already coming back towards them.

  "I took care of it!" Cali smiled.

  Sean blinked; there were three open doors behind her. That had been quick.

  "How's the one that got shot?" Sean asked, turning around.

 

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