Head Down Page 12

  Sean looked at the guy at the back door, he didn't look at all happy.

  "Dude," Sean chuckled, "he gets testy when he's hungry. Really, be happy that he didn't rip your arm off. Now go do as he says."

  Muttering darkly the guy stomped away from the door.

  They were going over the plans Sawyer had sent them a half-hour later when someone knocked on the front door again.

  "Dammit, can't these guys take orders?" Chad grumbled and getting up he went over to the front door.

  "What part of 'go around back and wait your turn' can't you understand?" Chad said.

  "I'm not some cub!" came the growled reply.

  "No, of course not!" Chad said conversationally, "A cub would have a little respect when he showed up at someone else's home and would understand that maybe he doesn't want to be made a fool out of in the middle of my front lawn where the entire world can watch!"

  Sean and the girls heard a growled, "I'll make you pay for your disrespect."

  "And the rest of you, backyard too!"

  Shutting the door, Chad sighed. "This shit isn't going away, is it?"

  "Nope," Sean grinned.

  "And just why the hell are you grinning? Are you behind this?"

  "Nope, well, other than making you a wolf I'm not."

  "Oak made me a wolf."

  "Because I told him to," Sean pointed out.

  Chad nodded, "Point," he said looking thoughtful for a moment. "Didn't you say that they were looking for a new alpha earlier?"

  "Yup."

  "What happened to the old one?"

  "I fired him."

  Chad snorted, "You fired him? How the hell does that work."

  "Sorry, that's between me and whoever takes his place," Sean grinned.

  "Ass," Chad said, grinning back. "You're loving every minute of this crap, admit it."

  "Hey," Sean said spreading his hands, "you're the one who wanted to become a wolf. I'm just sitting here and watching the natural consequences of your becoming one unfold."

  "Riiiiiiight," Chad chuckled and shook his head, "well, now that I know what game I'm playing, it's time to go outside and cheat outrageously."

  Turning, Chad went out the backdoor, it was getting dark out, but fortunately that didn't really matter to any of them.

  Sean and the gals all got up and went over to the door to watch.

  "Okay! Just which one of you fine gentlemen is the biggest and the baddest here?"

  One of them stepped forward.

  "Ah fine! We have a volunteer. Sean, on three?"

  "One-two-three!" Sean said immediately and Chad just threw himself at the guy.

  Sean wasn't really that experienced at judo, oh sure, Chad had shown him the basics, Chad had shown all of his friends that much. Because Chad loved showing everyone just how good he was at it. Not that Sean could blame him; Chad's mom had been dumping Chad and his brother off at the dojo a couple of times a week since he was like seven, so she could have some peace and quiet.

  Still, Sean was impressed. This guy seemed to have a little understanding of just what was going on and actually managed to last a good twenty seconds before Chad had him tied up, his arm bent back and twisted in a way that was obviously very painful, while Chad stood over the guy, who was now on the ground on his back, with Chad's foot on the guy's neck.

  "So, yield?" Chad said with a smile, "Or do I rip your arm off and beat you to death with it?"

  "I yield," came a very pained reply.

  Smiling, Chad released the grip and helped the man up. "So," Chad asked looking around, "Just who is in charge of the pack right now?"

  "Ryan," several of them said.

  "Ah, wasn't he Michael's second?"

  They all nodded. "Fine. Would one of you be so kind as to call him on your cellphone for me, and tell him to get his ass down here," Chad's voice dropped then and he growled, "now! I've had enough of this crap, I'm taking over."

  "But you haven't even been a wolf for a week yet!" one of them said.

  "Yes, so just imagine how much nastier I'll be by then!" Chad said cheerily. "Send him inside when he gets here.

  "Come on, Sean, let's get back to planning that attack."

  Sean noticed several of the wolves' eyes get wide.

  "Attack?" One of them said.

  "If you're nice, I might even let you join me," Chad threw back over his shoulder as Sean followed him inside.

  "Ah, I love it when a plan comes together," Sean chuckled.

  "And just how many years have you been waiting to use that line on me?" Chad snickered.

  "Too many!"

  Twenty minutes later, Ryan showed up, out of breath and not looking exactly happy to be there.

  "What's so important that I had to get here 'immediately?'" Ryan asked looking at Sean rather annoyed.

  Sean pointed to Chad.

  "Ah, Ryan," Chad said standing up, "I'm taking over."

  "What?"

  "I'm the new Alpha of the Western Packs. Sean told me you were looking for someone to take the position, and guess what? I'm just pissed off enough from all the people coming by my house over the last few days to play dominance games, that I've decided to help you out."

  Ryan looked at Chad, who was smiling and looking very polite and congenial, in a most disconcerting way. He then looked at Sean.

  "Don't look at me," Sean said grinning, "this is a wolf thing, not a lion thing."

  "You can't just say you're taking over," Ryan protested, looking at Chad.

  "I just did," Chad pointed out in his most helpful voice. "Now if you like, I can take you out into the backyard and kick your ass around it a few times, or you could just bow to the inevitable and save time."

  Ryan took a step back, blinking.

  "He does that to people," Sean said to Roxy, Daelyn, and Jolene who were all watching with interest.

  "What, what do I tell the others?"

  "Ah yes, the others. You call up all of the important folks in the pack and you tell them to get their asses down here, now, tonight, so they can meet their new alpha. This way if any of them has a problem, I can beat it out of them now, and we can all just move on as one big happy family."

  "But, but I can't do that!"

  Sean noticed that Ryan had that deer in the headlights look that people got when Chad started to steamroll them.

  "Ryan," Chad lowered his voice.

  "Yes?"

  "That wasn't a request. That was an order. You're my second, you follow my orders. Got that?"

  "Err, yes, Chad. I'll go call them. Now." and Ryan walked quickly out of the room, obviously wanting to be somewhere else right now.

  Chad looked around the room and sighed. "You guys can stay the night if you want. I don't think we're going to be getting much more planning done, not if I'm gonna be cracking the whip all night."

  "Oh! This is gonna be interesting!" Roxy chuckled, "Mind if we watch?"

  Chad motioned towards the couch, "Be my guests!" Chad paused and pondered a moment, "Maybe I should send some of those guys in the backyard out to get more food. Wouldn't want to be a bad host, would I?"

  Sean and the girls got comfortable on the couch and watched as Chad corralled a couple of the wolves out back, gave them a shopping list and some cash and sent them off to get some snacks and drinks. Fifteen minutes later, people started to show up.

  "Wow," Jolene whispered, "It's like one of those old mafia crime movies where everyone shows up to kiss the ring of the new Don."

  Roxy snorted, "Yeah, wolves are like that. But when you consider the size of some of the packs, they have to be."

  "Just how big is the Western Pack?"

  Roxy shrugged, "Couple thousand, easy. Over half the lycans around Reno are wolves, and the Western Pack and the Eastern Pack control nearly everyone that isn't a slave to the mages."

  "Oops, looks like someone isn't getting along," Daelyn said.

  They all watched as Chad literally dragged one of the people out the back door.
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  Five minutes later Chad brought them back inside, with his arm around them, talking to them quietly as they just nodded and said 'yes' while looking very dazed with a fair bit of grass stains and dirt rubbed across their face.

  "Well, I think we know who won that match-up," Roxy snickered.

  "They all look kind of shell-shocked," Sean agreed, as Chad let go of the now very subdued looking man and went to shake hands and greet the ones that had shown up while he was outside having a 'discussion.'

  "That's cause their last alpha wasn't really a very strong one," Roxy whispered back so only they would hear it. "Chad's going through them like the proverbial shit through a goose. And all of their inner wolves are in shock as they finally see what a real alpha looks like."

  'Is that why you pushed him out?' Sean asked his lion.

  'Michael didn't understand that he is about the pack, that the pack is not about him. He was ignoring his wolf, becoming all too human, like I told you.'

  'Chad can be pretty self-centered you know,' Sean warned.

  'So can I,' his lion chuckled. 'But I've seen enough of him, to know that he will value those under him and not just take them as his due.'

  'And here I thought it was just because he was dissing us.'

  'Well yeah, that too!' his lion sent with a snicker.

  Sean started awake when he heard Chad calling his name.

  "Hmmm? What?" he asked untangling himself from the girls who'd all fallen asleep on the couch as well.

  "It's after midnight, why don't you all go hit the guest room? Ryan tells me there's still a few people coming I need to see."

  Sean nodded and shaking the girls awake he stood up and yawned.

  "Any problems then?" Sean asked.

  "Oh, lots," Chad sighed, "but while I didn't cause them, I guess I own 'em now. Eh, I'll deal with it." Sean watched as Chad looked around at the wolves in the room. There were still quite a few there.

  "Such as?"

  "Oh, it's a wolf thing, you wouldn't understand," Chad said with a wink.

  "Ass," Sean chuckled and gathering up the girls, they all went off to bed.

  See a Man About a Dog

  "What time did you get to bed?" Sean asked Chad as he met him in the kitchen. Daelyn was already up, making breakfast. He'd left Roxy and Jolene in the shower.

  "I didn't," Chad said, looking at his watch. "And I need to get going here pretty quickly to open up the shop."

  "So much for making plans," Sean grumbled.

  "Don't worry; I'll work on them while I'm there. I got most of the basics from you already, anyway. We can get together tonight and go over everything."

  Sean nodded, "So, how'd it go last night?"

  "Good, it went good. Organizationally, they're a mess. Rules wise, a lot of people have been sliding on a number of things. The biggest complaint I got last night was a lack of discipline. Michael wasn't much for backing up his lieutenants or even his captains all that much.

  "I had a long talk with Claudia last night, I told her it was for the sake of 'uniformity' but really I just wanted a sense of what worked."

  "How'd she react to being woken up in the middle of the night?"

  Chad snorted, "She was waiting for my call. I think she knew about my power play before most of the pack did."

  "So she's got spies in your organization?"

  "Power abhors a vacuum, you know that!" Chad smirked, "I bet if I hadn't moved when I did, she probably would have moved to roll us all up into her group by the weekend."

  "What are you going to do about it?"

  "We're having lunch," Chad grinned, "at my shop."

  "Brutal!" Sean laughed.

  "Hey, I'm gonna order a couple of six foot subs from the sub-shop down the street," Chad grinned even wider, "and a whole case of soda!"

  "I don't know her well enough to know what she'll think of that," Sean admitted.

  "Oh, I'm sure she'll get the point. This is a casual business meeting; we're supposed to be allies so I'm making it clear I'm cutting right past all the political dancing and getting down to brass tacks. The Western Packs are a mess, and she knows it.

  "By the by, how many of those tags do you have now?"

  "Um, Two hundred and eighteen tags, one hundred and fifty collars."

  "Don't forget we promised the fellowship a hundred," Daelyn said as she came over and put two plates of food on the table, one for Sean, and one for herself.

  "I'll take sixty tags and fifty collars," Chad said.

  Sean looked at him, "You know I'm not just giving those away, right?"

  "Un-huh," Chad grinned, "And I also know I'm doing you a huge favor by taking over the Western Pack, which you are going to be notorious for asking favors from."

  "Notorious?" Sean asked raising an eyebrow as he started to eat.

  "Well yeah, of course! I'm one of your best friends after all, a point which I'll make clear when I give Claudia ten tags," Chad made a little dismissal gesture with his right hand, "for free, 'think nothing of it Claudia, me and Sean go way back.'"

  Sean choked on his eggs for a moment, "Damn, that's cruel!"

  "Yup," Chad nodded, "and if you got it flaunt it. Besides, not only will it nail down my position as the alpha, but it'll make it clear that when you ask me for favors, that I'm not doing it for money or power, but because you're my friend."

  "And that'll work?"

  "Hell yeah it'll work," Roxy said walking into the kitchen, wearing two towels and nothing else. "You're a lion, Hon. In fact right now you're the lion. I'm surprised my dad hasn't asked you to take over running the fellowship already. You already made it clear that no one gets to challenge you when you tossed Michael out."

  Sean took a minute to appreciate the view; she had one towel wrapped around her hips in that way that he could never get to stay on, and the other hanging around her neck, so the ends came down over her chest to just barely keep her 'decent.'

  "Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you about that," Chad said as Roxy sat down on Sean's lap and started to eat his breakfast, after giving him a kiss. "What exactly is the deal with lions? I've picked up on the way they treat you and refer to you."

  "Enough to take advantage of it, I've noticed," Sean chuckled and went back to eating, before Roxy cleaned his plate on him.

  "Well, of course! Gotta press those advantages."

  "Well," Sean said leaning back in his seat and letting Roxy eat his breakfast, "lions were the first of the were-folk. They're the oldest of the old. They even predate a few of the fairies and other supernatural folk. Legend is that they were there at the beginning."

  "The beginning of what?"

  "Everything," Sean said soberly. "We're the lawgivers, the final arbiters, and supposedly we can do all sorts of mystical crap."

  "Is that why you wouldn't bite me?" Chad asked, curious.

  "Most people bit by lions die, Chad." Sean said with a sigh. "Sampson knew, when he bit me, that there was a chance that he was killing me."

  'Oh no, he knew you'd be fine. We'd been trying to get him to bite you for years.'

  'Thanks, and Chad doesn't need to know that.'

  "Why?"

  "Mystical shit," Sean grinned.

  Chad rolled his eyes, "I need to go, can I have those tags?"

  Sean nodded and getting up, he let Roxy have his seat and went to the guest room to get the tags and the collars.

  After Chad had left he returned to the kitchen, Roxy had lost the top towel and was cooking now, as Jolene, who was also topless, sat at the table.

  "Sean, dear," Jolene started off, "I've been thinking."

  "Uh-oh!" Sean grinned, "She used 'Sean' and 'dear'! I'm in trouble now, aren't I?"

  Roxy and Daelyn snickered as Jolene just gave him a long-suffering look and sighed.

  "I was thinking about what Sawyer said last night, and well, this morning I made a few phone calls to some old friends."

  "Said about what?"

  "About what Sapientia is doing."<
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  "They're not doing anything," Sean said going over to look over Roxy's shoulder and see if any of the food was ready yet.

  "Exactly, they're not doing anything. Why do you think that is?"

  "They expect Sean to lose?" Daelyn piped up.

  Jolene shook her head, "My uncle isn't that stupid."

  "So they expect him to win? Then why aren't they preparing like the others?"

  Sean looked back at Jolene suddenly getting an idea, "Because you cannot lose if you throw the race?"

  Jolene nodded, "I think he's already decided to give up."

  "Why would he do that?"

  "That's a good question, isn't it?" Jolene agreed. "Why don't we go ask him?"

  Sean thought about that a moment, Sapientia was the oldest of all the councils, they'd been first after all, and a lot of the laws that governed the magical community had been created by them. Winning them over, without violence, would go a long way to establishing the legitimacy of what he was trying to do.

  Sean's stomach growled then.

  "After breakfast," he smiled, "after breakfast."

  Arthur Troy was sitting at the desk in his office, going over the numbers that his accountants had provided him, along with the estimates of what they thought maintaining a small army of lycans was costing them.

  "Damned if Joseph didn't have a point," he mumbled.

  "Sir?" Franks, the replacement for Charles asked from where he was sitting across the room.

  "Just going over the estimates from our accountants, it would seem that the good Mr. Harrison had a valid point. I had no idea that our costs over the last two decades had climbed this much. Makes me wonder where else we're losing money?"

  "Is keeping lycans really that expensive, Sir?"

  "It's not all that expensive, but there are a great many costs associated with it, that I really hadn't considered. As I understand it, in the old days, if you wanted lycan servants, you pretty much had to breed your own. But now?" Arthur snorted, "If Mr. Harrison's numbers are correct, and I have learned to respect his research, there are a lot more of them than there are of us.

  "While we may be paying less than what passes for a minimum wage nowadays, we're paying that for a lot of them, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week."