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  "That's another thing that worries the President. Friday's explosion was most certainly not under the 'silence' the councils have promised to follow, even if the previous actions were. For that matter, the attack on the Pub on Thursday, and several other earlier events, all of which involve Mr. Valens, weren't under their code of 'silence' either."

  "Other than Friday's explosion, I don't think we can blame Valens for the other events," Carl said.

  "That's neither here nor there. The fact remains that he's the center of all of these actions, and we don't have the slightest idea what the end of all those actions will be. We know he's motivated to free the lycans, but what happens after that?"

  Everyone in the room looked at each other uncomfortably.

  "And that's my point." The Secretary sighed. "So, what do we do? Option one is definitely off the table; we have to do something."

  "I'd recommend we send someone out to make contact with him," Kensington said.

  "I think we should bring him in," Peter disagreed, shaking his head. "If we cater to him, we're letting him think he's the one with the power. I say bring him in, charge him with terrorism."

  "George?" the Secretary asked, noticing that he looked a little uncertain.

  "I agree with most of what Peter said. We need to show him he's just a man, and we're the most powerful nation on Earth. Put the fear of that in the back of his mind. But I would only threaten him with the charges, and I sure wouldn't make it public. Use the threat as a lever to get what we want, then once we have him in our pocket, we can just drop 'em."

  The Secretary nodded. "I don't think I have to ask Carl, he'll go with Vincent, I'm sure. Alistair?"

  "I'd go with my boss as well. You have to understand, Ma'am, the Gradatim really weren't very nice people. We know they slaughtered over a thousand lycans the day before yesterday. Men, women, and children."

  "Just because they may have been bad people, that does not give Mr. Valens the right to set off nuclear weapons. Especially not within our country's borders so close to a major city."

  The Secretary sighed. "Thank you for your time, gentlemen. Don't leave town, the President may have need of your counsel again."

  "Yes, Ma'am," they all said, and standing up, they filed out of the room.

  "They're gonna try and arrest him, aren't they?" Carl asked after they were out of earshot of the others.

  "I think that's a fair conclusion," Kensington said with a shake of his head. What good is having an expert when no one listens to them?

  "I feel sorry for the poor fools they send to bring him in." Carl chuckled.

  "Don't you mean their widows?" Alistair asked.

  "Nah. In fact, I'll lay you five-to-one odds he sends them home with their tails between their legs."

  "I'll put twenty on that!" Alistair chuckled.

  "Here's hoping you lose, Alistair," Kensington said with a smile.

  #

  Todd Quincy Adams, the national head of the Vestibulum in the United States, looked around the council room of their estate in Boston. They had Virgil Gerhard on one of their magical communications devices, which, while not as clear as a telephone, could not be tapped or traced by a third party.

  "Virgil, we here on the council have been discussing the future, and we wondered, with the Gradatim in Los Angeles all but wiped out, how hard would it be for you to become the preeminent council there?"

  "I'd have to take on Sapientia; they've got close to the same number of mages we do, though we've got double the number of lycans, probably more, since they freed a lot of theirs and cut their staff down. Still, I'd want to, at the very least, borrow Lehmann's from up in Fresno."

  "We talked to him earlier today; he attacked the Gradatim last night. He won, but their lycan force took a hell of a beating. I can tell him to send them to you, but I don't think he's got more than thirty or forty left."

  "It'd help. What about the Ascendance?"

  "What about them?" Todd asked.

  "Well, I heard they took advantage of our Seattle compatriots last night,"

  "More like wiped them out," Edward, one of the men on the council, grumbled.

  "So I was wondering if I should hit them as well?" Virgil continued.

  "I'll leave that decision in your hands, but Sapientia is the key here. They're pushing for dominance over us now; I guess they figure without our lycans we can't stand up to them. Well here in Boston, we've been thinking if we don't want to lose our standing, we're going to need to cut Sapientia down in both size and standing. We believe if we could either remove or reduce their presence in a few key locations, that the others would still look to us as the leaders, and we'd then have the numbers over all the other councils.

  "Plus, of course, the demonstrated will to use it."

  "Okay," Virgil agreed. "What about this werelion who's going around releasing the lycans?"

  "Last we heard, he just hit San Francisco today. That's another reason to get this done tonight, before he gets to you. I want you to win this, then send whatever you've got left on to Phoenix. As soon as they get there, we'll use them to attack Sapientia. After that, we'll send them on to Dallas.

  "It's use them or lose them, so we might as well use them to our best advantage."

  "Does that mean it's a foregone conclusion that this werelion is going to win?"

  "We're hearing rumors from our contacts in Washington that the President is going to reinterpret the York Treaty to remove the lycans as 'property' and set them free, at which point they'll become his problem, and he's welcome to them."

  "Alright. I'll get right on it. If there's nothing else, I need to get to work on this right now."

  "No, that's it. Good bye, Virgil."

  Todd looked around the room again as the connection with Virgil was severed.

  "Next order of business, what to do with our lycans up here in the northeast."

  "I say we should send them all to Atlanta," Edward said. "With that many, we could easily overwhelm all the other councils there and make it our city, as well. Then we could send whatever we have left to Mexico and get them out of the country where that werelion won't be able to get to them, and any presidential dictates won't matter."

  "I agree," Kevin, another council member, said with a heavy sigh. "As much as I would like to push all the other councils out of Boston and make it our city once and for all, there are too many people here. We'd never be able to keep the silence. If the President is already thinking of making changes to the treaty, any public outcry would put us in a bad position. We don't have enough lycans to take on the government."

  Todd nodded. "Especially if Sapientia and Eruditio were to side with them."

  "But we would have enough to take on the Mexican government," Edward chuckled, "if we end up shipping everything we've got there after these 'lessons'."

  "A valid point," Todd conceded. "Anyone have any other ideas?"

  Todd went around the table and let each of the council members speak their mind. Most agreed with Edward's idea, but there were a few who were feeling a bit more cautious.

  "I like Edward's idea," Roland, one of the older members said. "However, I'm concerned about where the Ascendance is going to fall, as well as who is going to rise up to replace Gradatim. I would suggest we take attacks against the Ascendance off the table and see if we can't patch things up with them."

  "Why would we want to do that?" Kevin asked.

  "Because if we push too many people over to Sapientia's side, we risk losing everything."

  Todd raised his hand before Kevin could reply.

  "I agree that we need to proceed cautiously for now. That's why we only had Virgil in the meeting, and not any of the other council heads. I want to see how tonight's battle in Los Angeles plays out among the other councils, and the U.S. government, should they get wind of it. If worse comes to worst, we can rebuke Virgil and tell everyone he acted on his own."

  "That would mean we couldn't attack Sapientia in Atlanta, wouldn't it?"
Edward asked.

  Todd nodded. "I'm afraid so. But on the other hand, that would give us far greater numbers in Mexico."

  "It might be time to start pushing down into South America," Roland pointed out. "We'd have a much freer hand there, and things are much more civilized there now than they used to be."

  "And we'd be back in a position of power with the governments there," Edward said with a smile.

  Todd tapped on the table. "Gentlemen, let's not get ahead of ourselves! Let's wait and see how events play out tonight. If Los Angeles doesn't generate any backlash, then we'll let the Atlanta operation go forward.

  "If it causes too many problems, we'll have them skip Atlanta and just move on to Mexico as we discussed. Agreed?"

  Todd looked around the table as the others all agreed.

  "Wonderful. Let's meet here tomorrow morning, about ten. We'll discuss our next steps then."

  Standing up, Todd dismissed the others. If they could keep their status here in the US and Mexico, that would go a long way towards keeping the Vestibulum's status overall, but right now they had to play it smart. One wrong move, and they could find themselves at a serious disadvantage.

  He'd talked to their main headquarters in Brussels last night, and there was still a good bit of hope that the lycan rebellion wouldn't be spreading over there, that they'd be able to contain it to the United States. Todd wasn't sure about that, but he couldn't fault their 'wait and see' attitude—well, not publicly at least. He personally had no intention of waiting any longer. Now it was time to act and grab as much as he could to keep the Vestibulum well positioned for whatever was coming next. If this gambit didn't work out in Las Angeles, it just meant he'd have to switch to other methods.

  Fresno

  "Okay, according to our information, that's the Gradatim compound," Sean said, looking out the window of the van.

  "The one with the gates blown off?" Cali asked.

  "Looks like someone got here before we did," Peg added.

  "Sure does."

  "Why don't we ask that man waving to us from the other side of the street," Maitland said.

  Sean looked in the direction Maitland had indicated, and sure enough, there was a man standing there waving at them.

  "Might as well." Sean looked at the driver. "Pull over by them, I'll go see what they want."

  "I'll tell the buses to hang back," Roberta said and grabbed the radio.

  Getting out of the van with Cali in tow, Sean walked up to the man who was looking at them.

  "Sean?" he asked, a little uncertain.

  "Sorry about the lack of clothing," Sean said, as he was only wearing a pair of pants. "I had a bit of an accident. You are?"

  "Henry, Henry Blake of Sapientia. Our council head told me to wait here; he said Arthur Troy has been trying to call you for a while now."

  "Oh? Why's that? And what happened here?"

  "What happened here is, the Vestibulum took out Gradatim last night. They then sent their surviving lycans off to the city to join up with their people there. We suspect they're going to hit either the Ascendants or us."

  "Let me guess, Arthur wants us to go to LA and protect your people there?"

  "Well," Henry hesitated a moment and looked a little surprised, "yeah! Arthur said you promised to help us if we were attacked by lycans still in thrall to one of the other councils, and well…" Henry gestured to the damaged gates across the street.

  Sean looked at the van, the driver had the window down and Maitland was no doubt listening in.

  "How long a drive is it from here to LA?"

  "Four hours? It's like two hundred miles."

  Sean looked at his watch, it was almost five.

  "Guess we're going to LA. Come on, you can show us where to go."

  "What?" Henry said, looking shocked.

  "I'm betting they won't hit until after the sun sets, but I got a couple hundred people who need to eat, rest, and get set up for tonight. That means we're leaving now. As my phone was destroyed when my pants got disintegrated, that also means I need someone to coordinate," Sean smiled at him, "and that would be you."

  "Umm, but I..."

  "Henry," Sean said, taking his arm and dragging him to the van, "if you were important, they wouldn't have sent you here. So look on the bright side, now you're important. You get to tell everyone you brought the cavalry."

  Sean could see the gears turning in Henry's head. "Well, when you put it that way!" he said with a huge smile.

  "Great. Roberta, call the buses, let 'em know what we're doing. We'll stop for gas and munchies at the next truck stop."

  "Got it, Hon."

  Sean introduced Henry to everyone in the van, then sat down by Maitland as Henry got out his phone and called his council head.

  "Relieved or disappointed?" Maitland asked him in a low voice.

  "Relieved," Sean said with a wry smile. "You?"

  "Excited. I like battles where I'm the defender; they feel so much more justified. I didn't enjoy this afternoon, and I wasn't looking forward to this one here, either."

  Sean nodded. "Me neither, but it had to be done," he said with a shrug and a sigh.

  "Yes, it had to be done," Maitland agreed. "Sometimes we just have to bear down and teach the other side that there is a difference between a fight and an all-out war. We don't have to like it, in fact, it's better if we hate it, lest we find ourselves engaging in the very things we despise our enemies for."

  Sean nodded; obviously his great uncle had spent a lot of time considering these things in the past. "Well, let's look at the maps and get Henry there to tell us where we're going and see if we can't figure out some sort of strategy," Sean said, grabbing his laptop.

  "You mean, have me figure out a strategy while you try to poke holes in it," Maitland said with a smile.

  "Uh-oh," Peg leaned over and whispered in his ear. "Looks like Ruth has found a new plaything!"

  Sean glanced back and saw that Ruth was putting the moves on Henry, not that it looked like it was taking all that many.

  "Eh, he's a grown man. He can take care of himself."

  "You sure about that?" Peg asked with a chuckle.

  "He's got some faerie blood in him," Maitland said after looking back at his daughter and Henry for a moment. "Not as much as Sean, here, but a little. I'm sure he'll be okay. But still, we better get the address and whatever knowledge he's got out of him before he's too besotted to think about anything else." Maitland chuckled.

  The sun had already set and it was almost ten o'clock when they finally got there. Sean wasn't pleased with the late hour, but traffic had been worse than expected, and the buses had been a bit slower going over the grapevine, as well.

  Fortunately everyone was well-rested, having slept on the buses, apparently in wolf form, from the smell of things. Sean just hoped he didn't get any funny questions from the rental agency when he brought the buses back.

  Thankfully the local folks had sent some of their lycans out to pick up a couple of vanloads of food.

  "Sean?"

  Sean looked over and saw an older man, thin and clean-shaven, with graying blond hair walking over towards him.

  "Yes, that would be me. And you are?"

  "Vincent Powers, I'm the local council head. I really want to thank you for coming to our aid here tonight."

  Sean smiled and shook hands with him. "Well, I told Arthur we'd help out if something like this should come to pass, but honestly, Sapientia has been very helpful. Maybe not as much as Eruditio," Sean added with a grin, "but hands down, you're the folks I'd rather see running things."

  "About that, we had a meeting earlier today, all of the council leaders here in the US, that is. We discussed it, and we've decided to publicly back you, to become your allies. If you'll have us, that is."

  Sean blinked, momentarily taken aback by that. Even the First had sat up in his head and taken notice.

  "You want to be our allies?" Sean said, his surprise evident. "After what I did t
o the Gradatim here?"

  "Sean," Vincent said, looking a little unhappy, "there are those of us who wonder if we'd taken a stronger and more public stance backing you, if maybe we could have prevented all of that. Gradatim was already in trouble for other things with the other councils."

  'That demon I'll bet,' the First said.

  "That demon in Eugene?" Sean repeated.

  Vincent nodded. "Perceptive. They were in serious trouble over it, trouble like we've never had before, well, at least not in this country. Besides, it's not like we haven't been helping you already, well Arthur has been at least, right?"

  'Any qualms before I accept his offer?' Sean asked the First.

  'Not a one.'

  Sean smiled. "I'd be delighted to have Sapientia as allies."

  Vincent smiled broadly. "Thank you. Now, I was thinking that, as you are our allies, I would call up the Ascendance, tell them what the Vestibulum is planning, and offer to defend them, but only on the condition that they release all their lycans immediately."

  "One moment." Sean looked around and spied Maitland talking with his daughter.

  "Maitland! I need your advice!"

  Maitland looked up and saw him, said something to his daughter, and hurried over.

  "Yes, Sean?"

  Sean quickly explained Vincent's idea. "I'm worried because we'd have to split our forces."

  Maitland nodded. "I need to look at a map, but I think we could put one quarter here, one quarter at the other location, and stick half someplace in the middle to serve as a reaction force. It shouldn't be hard to hold the Vestibulum off long enough for them to show up."

  "And give them one hell of a surprise," Sean agreed and looked up at Vincent. "Let's look at a map and make sure we can do this. If it looks plausible, I'm all for it. We can tell them if they refuse, we'll come and get their lycans now and leave them high and dry when the Vestibulum shows up."

  Vincent smiled. "That's wonderful! I love it! Let's go inside, I've got a couple of forestry maps of the area with a lot of detail. I'll have Guillermo, my security head, go over everything with you."