Sean was seriously considering using a sleep spell on her at that point, as he was sore in places no man had a right to be sore. She'd ridden him hard and put him away we—about a dozen times.

  Then made him do it a couple dozen more.

  "That was nice," she purred, cuddled up against him, her head against this chest. "I guess your wives must have learned you a thing or three."

  "Does this mean you'll let me sleep now?" Sean asked, still panting.

  "You can't be tired already, can you, Hon?"

  "May I remind you when this day started out, I was laying in a cart healing from a couple dozen stab wounds?"

  Estrella laughed. "Oh, right. Don't worry; I'm feeling a bit sore myself. You really know how to put a lady through her paces, Sean."

  Sean kissed her and smiled, then closed his eyes, and zonked out immediately.

  Estrella smiled happily and, putting her arms around him, closed her own eyes.

  "So, number seven…"

  The Morning After

  "Jolene, dear, it's so good to see you again," Arthur said, giving his niece a hug. "And you as well, Roberta," he said, taking her hand lightly in his and giving her a small nod. "What brings you around today? And where are Adam and the others?"

  "Adam," Jolene sighed, "is still recovering from yesterday. You may not have heard, but the Air Force showed up yesterday, and in their effort to 'help', they damn near cost us the fight."

  Arthur showed them to a couple of seats, then sat down himself.

  "I'd heard some rumors about that. I thought they'd be safe from the demons, being in the sky?"

  Jolene shook her head no. "Apparently their abilities are line of sight. If they can see you, they can do whatever they want to you."

  "I'll have to warn the others. We have spells and items we can use to shield us from such effects, but everyone thought there was a range involved."

  "Which brings us to why we're here. How much of the shield—or whatever you want to call it—Adam asked you to build is finished?"

  "None of it, I'm afraid, why?"

  "Because we had several small groups of devils break out yesterday, and now we have to hunt them down. If they leave the area, it'd be nice to at least know where they left."

  "I'll use that as a prod to get the others working together. We’re going to need your help, though."

  "My help?"

  "I mean the help of your lycans," Arthur clarified.

  "How so?"

  "If there are demons running around out there, my people and the magic users from the other councils are going to need to be protected while they're working."

  "Ah, yeah. I can see that." Jolene smiled. "How soon do you think you can get them going on this?"

  "By the end of the week. Though driving out to all those spots will take a while."

  "I'm sure we can loan you a helicopter and a pilot," Roberta put in.

  "That would definitely help," Arthur agreed. "The spell itself isn't that hard; we had it figured out yesterday. The hard part is erecting a ward that size. It's going to take a lot of people about eight hours of work. We're going to practice by putting one up around one of the casinos tomorrow with a smaller group."

  "Thanks, Arthur," Jolene said with a smile. "It will help us a lot."

  "What are your plans for hunting them down, anyway?"

  Jolene shook her head and Roberta spoke.

  "We're going to work on that later today. Obviously we're going to need some manner of tracking them down. Either from where they break out of containment, or maybe something magical to locate them in an area. Then we'll send in a team of lycans to take them out."

  Arthur nodded slowly while she talked.

  "You know, I think this is the kind of thing those of us at Sapientia would be willing to help out with. We really can't do much when it comes to the battles you're having at the gateways when they open. But tracking them down, we can help with the magic for that, and if it's a small group, I daresay a couple of mages would be helpful to any team you send out."

  "Are you sure you want to get your people involved in this, Arthur?"

  Arthur nodded.

  "It's time for us to get involved. I think this is a good place for us to start."

  "We'll take whatever help we can get!" Jolene said.

  Roberta nodded. "Agreed."

  Arthur smiled. "Then it's agreed. I'll round up volunteers and we'll call you when we've got some." Arthur paused a moment, then added, "How are you doing, now that Sean's not here?"

  "It's a bit rough at times." Jolene sighed. "I mean, we know he's still alive and all, but we have no idea what he's dealing with. As far as we know, no one's gone through a gateway before who wasn't ‘food’ for the djevels, and of course they didn't last long."

  "We keep hoping he'll get a message back to us through the lions," Roberta confessed, "but while they know he's alive, they haven't been able to talk with him yet."

  Arthur nodded again. " I hope he makes it back home safe and sound."

  "So do we, Uncle." Jolene sighed. "So do we."

  #

  Lieutenant Jack Kennedy looked at the door before him and paused a moment, his hand raised to knock. He'd done some sketchy stuff in his career so far; it was the Army way after all, especially if you wore the Ranger patch. 'Graveyards are full of second place finishers!' as one of his instructors always liked to say, right up there with 'Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing!'

  And after losing several close friends today, along with the cute cougar gal he'd been getting close to… sometimes you just gotta take the initiative. Ranger school had been real big on that too, and sometimes you had to break the rules to win. A few years in the sandbox had taught him all about that, along with don't get caught and if they didn't see me, I didn't do it.

  But he was going to have to enlist people to do this who weren't Army. That kind of grated. Bringing in outsiders was necessary, sometimes, but they weren't Army. It could be worse of course; they could be Air Force.

  Taking a deep breath, he knocked on the door. Rangers lead the way.

  "Yes?"

  Opening the door, he stepped inside. Smiling at the two girls sitting on the bed, he closed the door behind him and turned to the young man sitting by the desk with an open school book.

  "Stewart Reese, right?" Jack asked with an easy smile.

  "Can I help you with something? I don't recall inviting you in."

  "Jack Kennedy. Lieutenant Jack Kennedy, United States Army, that is." Jack crouched down a little and glanced over at the girls. "Umm, can we talk privately for a minute? I'm not really supposed to be doing this and…" Jack looked around conspiratorially. It was all about the upfront sale. Once you had 'em interested, it was just a matter of up-selling them one step at a time.

  He'd learned that from the sergeant of the first platoon he'd been given command of, back when he was still a butter-bar. Jerry always had an angle, as well as a fair deal of larceny in his heart, and had been quite pleased to find his new lieutenant to be an apt pupil.

  "They stay. They're my wives," Stewart said, looking at him.

  "Two wives? At your age?" Jack said, raising his eyebrows. He already knew this of course; he knew everything about Stewart. You don't go into action without having studied the map, after all. "That's pretty damn impressive! Now I know I came to the right place!"

  "Right place for what?" Stewart said, looking him over. "You may be a big buff cougar, but there's three of us, and I know magic, so don't think we can't toss you out."

  Jack nodded. "Sorry, look. You all know what happened yesterday, right? Out at the gateway?"

  "You got bombed," said Rachel, the wolf lycan, "and a lot of you…"

  "Died," Jack finished, nodding. "But it wasn't just the bombing. That was bad enough, but it was what happened afterwards. Yeah we won in the end, but we had our asses handed to us, and that's when we took the most casualties."

  "And what does that have to do with us?" Rachel asked again.

  Jack nodded slowly a moment and looked up at her from his lower position crouched on the floor. He tweaked to it immediately; Rachel was the one calling the shots here. She was obviously older than Stewart, and he'd heard rumors that Stewart had bought her on the black market before he'd been infected.

  "It has nothing to do with you really, but it has everything to do with my friends, and maybe your friends too?"

  "I'm listening."

  "We had some ammo for our rifles, not a lot, but it was enough to put us on top before those damn bombs fell. We were supposed to get more, but with the Guard base blown up, we're not getting it until it's fixed."

  "And?"

  Jack smiled, all teeth. "I know where to get a metric shit-ton of the stuff, but I need Stewart's help."

  "Why me?" Stewart asked before Rachel could reply, showing Jack that Rachel didn't hold all the reins.

  "I need a magic user, and you're the only one available."

  "What about Peg? Or Roberta? Or even Jolene?"

  "Peg's about to pop, so I can't ask her. Jolene's a tantric witch; I don't think we need that kind of magic!" Jack said with a grin. "Roberta, well, no offense, but she doesn't seem to be the type who goes around bending rules, right?"

  "So no one here knows what you're going to do?" Rachel asked, interrupting Stewart before he could reply.

  Jack gave her a goofy smile, one of the ones he used to practice before a mirror, "Welllllllll, you know, they've all got much more important things to worry about right now, and I thought 'why should I burden them with this little thing, too?'"

  "Why, Jack," Stewart said. "Why?"

  "Like I said, I need a magic user."

  Stewart shook his head, "Uh uh. I mean 'Why are you doing this?' No bull, just the straight-up shit."

  Jack looked into Stewart's eyes. "Because I'm tried of seeing my friends fighting until they drop, crawling home after each fight, only to slog out there the next day, getting cut to shreds again and again until they die. The demons don't care; they die, they come back next week, and do it all again. We're killing ourselves out there, and fighting on their terms with fucking swords and knives ain't getting it. I gotta do something, and while you may not be Obi-Wan, you're my last hope."

  "Why can't you just wait until they send it to us?" asked April, the fox lycan.

  "Because that'll be weeks, maybe months from now. The next window opens Saturday, and anytime after that we could get another gate."

  "So you're just going to steal a bunch of ammunition?" Stewart asked.

  Jack smiled. "'Steal' is such a dirty word. I'm just going to 'expedite it to its intended destination a few weeks early' is all."

  "And where does this expediting take place from?" Rachel asked with a mischievous smile.

  Jack smiled back; if he had her, he probably had Stewart.

  "Oh, this little Army depot about thirty miles from here."

  "And we're just going to drive up there, the four of us?"

  "What, do I look like an amateur?" Jack scoffed. "Of course not, I got us a couple of trucks and a bunch of folks to help us."

  "So what do you need me for?" Stewart asked.

  "I don't want anyone to remember we're there; failing that, I don't want them to be able to identify us. You and the rest they'll just be pissed at; you're civilians. Me? I'm military; I'll be in the shit if we get caught. Plus we need this; we can't afford to fail."

  "Won't they catch you anyway?" April asked. "I mean, once they see we have all those bullets?"

  "We'll just say we bought 'em on the black market and shrug," Jack said with an innocent look while shrugging his shoulders. "The fact of the matter is, by the time they realize the stuff is gone, it won't matter anymore." He turned back to Stewart. "So, can you help me?"

  Stewart looked at Rachel, who gave a slight nod of her head. "They're our friends too, Stew."

  "Yeah, they are," Stewart agreed and looked back at Jack. "Besides, I need a break from all this school work. I'm in."

  "Awesome! I'll stop by tomorrow around noon. Be ready."

  "What am I going to do? I'll need to prepare."

  "Do you know any spells to mentally dominate a human, make them help us, then forget they ever saw us?"

  Stewart nodded slowly. His father…the man he'd thought was his father, had been all about mental domination spells, and had forced Stewart to learn a lot of them. He may not like them, he may not even be great at them, but he could do them.

  "I can help; I know a few spells."

  Jack smiled. Jace had been a wealth of information about Stewart; of course Stewart knew the kind of spells Jack needed. That's why he was here, after all.

  "Thanks, Stew!" Jack said, smiling as he stood up slowly and stuck out his hand.

  "I owe you, I owe you big!"

  Stewart took the hand and shook it. "You don't owe me anything, Jack. Our people need it. It's the least I can do."

  Jack smiled to himself as he left the room. A trip to the base was in order now. He'd need to get a bunch of vehicles for this, which meant convincing or bribing a few folks. He'd done some ground work a couple of days ago, back when he thought he'd just have to liberate the ammunition from them. There was this supply sergeant who’d been giving him the eye. Sure, she was a bit older than him; ok, maybe more than 'a bit'. But if he had to take one for the team, he could think of worse things, and she was actually kind of cute.

  "Okay, Jack," Michelle purred and, rolling over, looked at him. "What exactly do you need?"

  "Gee, you make me feel all cheap and tawdry!" Jack said with a chuckle.

  "Anything from a Ranger always has a string attached."

  "That's Airborne!" He snickered. "We're more hands on than they are."

  Michelle laughed. "Well, you've definitely been hands on the last hour! But honestly, I've got almost ten years on you, and the only reason a stud like you picks up a gal like me is because of ulterior motives. I've been a sergeant a lot longer than you've had that silver bar, I'm sure."

  Jack smiled and rolled over on top of her, pushing her onto her back. "Now don't go selling yourself short. This actually turned into quite the delight, and I'd be more than willing to work a few return engagements into the deal."

  "Uh huh, so what's the deal?"

  "I need to borrow a few trucks."

  "How many is a 'few'?"

  "Umm, enough to haul twenty tons of 5.56 ammunition. I need them tomorrow."

  "This is the stuff that was supposed to be shipped in here until that hotshot colonel got our runway hosed, right?"

  Jack smiled and gave her a kiss. "Sure is."

  "So five hundred pounds a pallet, forty pallets, eight pallets a truck, five trucks. Now," she said and wrapped her legs around him. "Why should I give them to you, and what are you going to do with it?"

  "What do you think I'm going to do with it? We need that stuff, especially after the way we got hosed when that hotshot dropped a bunch of hundred pounders on us."

  "You're one of them, aren't you?"

  "One of what?" Jack asked, looking at her.

  "Don't play coy with me, Lieutenant," she laughed, "I've been doing this almost twenty years now, and you ain't completely dry behind those ears yet."

  Jack rolled his eyes and sighed. "Yes, I'm one of them."

  "I thought so, part of why I'm entertaining the idea. Now let me see it."

  Jack pushed down on the bed, raising himself up a little, and looked down at her, eyes wide. "What?"

  "Shift, I wanna see it."

  "Are you crazy, woman?"

  "I'm considering committing a huge ass felony, so damn, I must be. Come on! If we're gonna be partners in crime, I don't want no secrets!"

  "Promise you won't scream?" Jack asked, giving her the eye.

  "Only if you make me," Michelle said with a giggle.

  Jack shifted into his hybrid form.

  "Ooooh, you're a sexy kitty, aren't you!"

  "What were you expecting, a wolf?"

  "Actually, yeah, but this is so much better." Michelle ran her hands along his sides. "Wow, your fur is soft."

  "Do we have a deal?" Jack asked as she rubbed other parts of her body into his. Apparently she really liked fur.

  "Come back down here and let's do a little more negotiating." She laughed.

  "No more rewards for you until I have a deal," Jack growled.

  Michelle laughed. "Oh that felt nice! I wonder if I can make the kitty purr."

  "Michelle!" he growled.

  "Okay, okay, I'll get your five trucks, but I get one, you only get four."

  "Huh? What the hell are you going to do with that ammunition?"

  "Same thing you are! You're not the only one who lost people, Jack! If they hit us once, they're gonna hit us again, and I sure as hell want to make sure our people have bullets that’ll kill those fuckers."

  "You're human, you wouldn't last a second."

  "True. That's why a lot of us have been talking about paying a little visit to you folks up on the hill, and maybe joining the ranks of the occasionally furry."

  "Wait, what?"

  "Of course, now that I know kitty is on the menu, I'm definitely a lot more interested than I was when the only option was wolf."

  "I'm a cougar, Michelle, not a kitty."

  "Oh? Do cougars purr?"

  "Only when they're happy."

  "Well, why don't we see if I can make the kitty purr?" she said and giggled again.

  Shaking his head, Jack decided why the hell not? He needed the ammo, after all, and from what his nose was telling him, she was pretty excited by the prospect.

  "Fine, we have a deal. And if you can make me purr, I'll come back as many times as you want."

  #

  Jack smiled as they drove up highway 395. Michelle had definitely made him purr last night, and again this morning. Damn if he wasn't going to be spending more time with that woman.

  "What's got you happy?" Stewart asked from the seat beside him when they finally turned off the highway for the base. Jack had Stewart dressed up in a private's uniform. The next three trucks had wolves he'd dressed up as corporals, and he'd given very explicit instructions on what they were to say and how they were to act.

 

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