Head Down (The Valens Legacy Book 4) Read online

  "Maybe we should seek to compromise?" Jeffery asked.

  Clyde, from one of the horse clans shook his head, "When you compromise with evil, evil wins. Jeff, I know you're the cautious type, I honestly can't blame you. But this is where we are. Our ancestors came out west to get away from this very thing, which has followed us here. It's time to make a stand and put an end to this, once and for all."

  Sean smiled, he'd have to find the time to talk with Clyde at some point, he was a pretty solid guy.

  "Okay," Sean said, "I've got nothing else for you all right now, and I have a lot of things to deal with, among which is trying to make all of those tags you're asking me for. So I'll leave you all to continue on with your usual business."

  And with that, Sean nodded to everyone and left the room. They could bitch about him after he was gone, he was sure Bill or Chad would fill him in later.

  "How'd it go?" Peg asked as he joined the others back 'home.'

  "Quickly," Sean smiled, "it went very quickly. Apparently they remember what happened with Michael, so they don't argue to my face." He turned to Roxy and Daelyn.

  "What's the story on the wolves we freed? How many want to stay with us?"

  "All of them," Roxy sighed. "At least Chad isn't complaining about it."

  "Well, he's got enough troubles as it is right now. Do we have space for that many?"

  "I'm sending forty of them to the bunker," Daelyn told him. "I've even worked out a deal with my uncle to get a bunch of them jobs."

  "Really? Wow!" Sean smiled, "Doing what?"

  "Delivery drivers. He hates pulling his workers off the line to go deliver product. Most of it's only part time, but it'll still give them something to do as they settle in to their new lives."

  "Thanks, Hon!" Sean smiled, and then turned to Jolene. "What's the story on our elven friends?"

  "Well, the younger two, who actually are twins, are still scared spitless," Jolene sighed. "They're not even eighteen yet. Cali, the redhead, is a little older and a lot more grateful, though I think she's still suffering from culture shock as well as the shock of going from a slave, to being free in an alien culture as well as a foreign land."

  "And the oldest one?"

  "Deidre. She's about a hundred years old, near as I can guess."

  "What?" Sean's eyes widened in surprise.

  "Elves are long lived, Hon. I thought you knew that?"

  "Still, knowing it and seeing it are two different things."

  Jolene shrugged, "She's an adult by their standards, where the other three are not. So they look to her for guidance right now, and she's asked how long are they welcome to stay, and what can she do to show her gratitude?"

  "Is that a come-on?" Sean sighed.

  Jolene laughed, "Very much. She's worried about being put out on the street and knows that she and the other three wouldn't last ten minutes on their own right now."

  "Well, they can stay here, or in the bunker I guess, their choice."

  "Don't put them in the bunker," Daelyn warned.

  "Why not?" Sean asked.

  "Dwarves and dark elves have a history, and it's not a good one. Being as we both tend to live underground, there have been some conflicts over the millennia. Now while I don't think anyone in my hometown has ever even seen a dark elf, some dwarves can be pretty superstitious. I would say that for now, it's probably better to keep them away, far away."

  Sean nodded, "Jo, tell them they're welcome to stay here as long as they want, and sexual favors are not required."

  "What, not gonna try for another wife?" Jo teased.

  "I don't think I want to date a woman who's eighty years older than me," Sean grinned, "Plus I'm still breaking in Peg!" He laughed and leaning over gave Peg, who was blushing, a hug.

  "So what's next on the schedule?" Roxy asked. "When are we taking on Vestibulum?"

  Sean shook his head, "I honestly don't know. I need to spend a few days working on my machine downstairs, as well as cranking out a lot more collars and tags. We definitely need a cash influx. Further, some of the items I picked up off of that guy were pretty interesting, so I want to see about improving things for all of us.

  "The Vesti's are at least three times the size that Harkins' group was, and have a lot more lycans. Also after that little stunt they pulled, we know that they're a lot more cold blooded than we thought."

  Jolene nodded, "True, but once the truth comes out about what they did, I think they'll find themselves a lot more isolated than they are now."

  Sean shrugged, "All I can say is, I hope so."

  Dream a Little Dream

  Sean looked around as he opened his eyes, he knew he was dreaming, but this time they weren't in the clearing. They were on the side of a mountain somewhere, with a view that stretched out for miles.

  And there were lions everywhere below him. Thousands of them, sitting there, waiting, watching.

  Turning around and looking up the mountain there was just the lion that was his lion.

  "Where are we?" Sean asked.

  "The meeting of the gods," his lion said with a smirk, "yes, we were all rather full of ourselves back then."

  "You all had a meeting?"

  His lion nodded, "Every lion that was still alive, that was descended from those of us in the clearing, we all made our way here, to talk, to discuss certain realities that we'd begun to notice."

  "What reality? What had you noticed?"

  "That I was dying."

  Sean looked at him confused, "We all die eventually, why would that cause such an issue?"

  "Remember what I showed you in the second dream? The village?"

  Sean nodded.

  "That was many years after the first dream. How many, I don't know, because when we first became aware, we weren't all that intelligent. But I suspect it was at least a hundred years, maybe more, it's possible that it was hundreds, maybe even a thousand."

  "Wait, lions don't live that long, how could that be?"

  "Yes, exactly, how could that be? As we got older, we got wiser, smarter, our intelligence grew. There was a time when I was the king of a small kingdom, and the other lions and I played games of conquest and war, pitting our lycan armies against one another. Then we all grew bored of that game and moved on to other things. By that time I suspect I was over ten thousand years old."

  "Ten thousand years?" Sean looked at him in shock.

  "We couldn't die, Sean. Not those of us in the original clearing. We didn't age, and it was almost impossible, if not impossible, to kill one of us. Our offspring, our direct offspring that came only from mating with one another, who were pure lions like us, they were the same, and so were their children.

  "We were everywhere in the world. But one day, we noticed that we could no longer reproduce, and that the youngest generation was not as strong as the oldest. They were growing old, and dying. So the word went out, that there would be a gathering of all of us, in a hundred years, on this remote mountainside, where I and my brothers and sisters had taken to meeting every thousand years, to talk."

  Sean shook his head, "I find this a little hard to believe! How old were you?"

  Sean's lion laughed, "The fact that I'm in your head should be enough to convince you, but at this point I suspect I was somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty thousand years old."

  "But, but how?"

  "Who knows?" he shrugged, "We had no idea what created us, or why. But we could tell, I could tell, that we were starting to slow down, to grow old, that our time had come, and we would not rule the world for much longer.

  "So we gathered here all of us for one last time, to try and understand that which was happening to us. We had thought ourselves immortal, we had thought ourselves gods, and we were now all learning that even gods have an end, and ours was upon us.

  "So we discussed and we debated. We talked about the good we had done and the bad, we wondered what would become of our children without us to guide them, and realized at that point that we really h
adn't been very good stewards of the lycans we had created.

  "We resolved to set forth in our remaining days and do right by those children of ours, whom we had first created, and then used as pawns in our own games of pride and power, before just abandoning them to their own devices. Honestly, it's a miracle that they didn't all die out after all we had done to them.

  "We gave them laws, we gave them traditions, and we gave them a purpose. By then modern man, while still primitive, outnumbered our children greatly and we could make no more. Modern man was also a lot more determined and was now possessed of his own tricks, namely magic.

  "So we entered into a partnership with the magic users, who were not common and were often enslaved or killed by those who sought to use them for their own purposes: the lycans would protect them and their families, they would in turn raise and train lycans, civilize them."

  "And then what?" Sean asked.

  "Then we died," his lion answered. "All of us, we started to fall quickly. In a space of two weeks, all but a hundred of us were gone. Only the very youngest were left. But then a most curious thing happened."

  "Yes?" Sean prompted.

  "Those hundred were able to have children once more, and those children were us, reincarnated. With the passage of time, and our cycling through being alive again and again, we learned how to exist in those times when we're 'dead' and we learned how to talk to each other as well.

  "What it comes down to, is that when you are bit by a lion, if you are judged worthy of a lion's soul, one of us inhabits you, and you become a lion. If one of us does not, you die. Also, a child cannot be born, if there is not a soul ready to be reborn. The number of lion souls that can be alive at any time, is tied to the number of lycans that exist. During our height, when we lived as kings and fought our wars of pride, there were many more lycans in the world than there are even today.

  "In our foolishness we destroyed ourselves by cutting their numbers through both our wars and our neglect. This resolved us even further to be better stewards of our children, for if they all die, we will all die as well.

  "And of course, just as we abused our children as we became prideful and full of ourselves, so too have the mages that we once entrusted them too. We put up with centuries of abuse by the mages because we really had no choice. We encouraged many lycans to live free, as they became smarter and more civilized and could do so without consequence. Now we seek to end the agreement that put so many of our people in bondage and consequently has held our numbers in check.

  "And that is why you are here."

  "Why me?" Sean asked.

  "Because you are your father's son. Your father was a good man, Sean. When Sampson asked him one day to help with our problem, and explained to him our need, he did so without a second thought. Your father lost everything because of us. We knew that you would pick up his fight, when the time came for you to learn about it."

  "Did you really try to get Sampson to bite me?"

  His lion chuckled, "Yeah, but he said you deserved the chance to become a young man before I came along. He didn't want me overwhelming you."

  Sean nodded and thought about that.

  "Just how did you get everyone to stop fighting, anyway?"

  "Remember how I told you that we all have a connection to our children?"

  Sean nodded, "Yes."

  "All of the wolves that fled to this country after the great purge in Europe are my descendants."

  "All?" Sean said, surprised.

  "I like wolves, a lot," his lion chuckled, "they form family groups not all that different than a lion's pride. I was the one in the family who didn't want everyone to drift away, that's why I stayed in Europe long after everyone else was gone. I was the oldest, had been the leader of the pride." Sean's lion sighed, "I guess you could say I was compensating. But that's why there are more wolves than any other lycan out there."

  "So, you really like wolves?" Sean chuckled.

  "Maybe you could add a few to the pride? Just to make an old lion happy?" his lion teased.

  "I'm going back to sleep," Sean said. "Before this conversation gets me in trouble."

  Saturday Morning

  Waking up, Sean looked at the clock, it wasn't six yet, but for some reason he couldn't sleep. Actually, there were a lot of reasons that he couldn't sleep, it seemed every time he dealt with one, a bigger one rose up to replace it.

  Carefully untangling himself from the girls, he got out of bed and walking out of the bedroom he could hear sounds coming up from downstairs as he stepped out of their room.

  He really didn't want to talk to anyone, so grabbing his phone and a jacket; he went up onto the roof.

  He'd been up there maybe five minutes when the door opened up and Jolene stepped out.

  "Here, spread this out," she said and threw a sleeping bag at him.

  Catching it, he did so. It was a fairly large one, surprisingly.

  Jolene handed him a pillow, then she surprised him by dropping the robe she was wearing, and shivering as she winked at him, she slipped into the sleeping bag.

  "Burr, it's cold!" she said looking up at him.

  "It's like forty degrees out, of course it's freezing!" He laughed, grinning down at her.

  "That was a hint, Sean. Now get naked and get in here with me."

  Sean wasn't wearing all that much, so it only took him a moment to lose the pants and his jacket.

  "My, aren't we the demanding one," he said, smiling at her.

  "Hey, you made me your wife, that means I get to make all the demands that I want!"

  Sean cocked an eyebrow at her, "Oh? And just what demands are that?"

  "On your back, and I'll show you!" Jolene said with a saucy grin.

  Doing as he was told, he was both pleased and surprised as Jolene disappeared down into the sleeping bag and started to use her rather talented hands and mouth on him. Jolene was as fascinated with oral sex as he was, and as she'd taught him everything he now knew about it, she was incredibly good at it.

  She had Sean reduced to nothing more than gasps, and loud moans of pleasure in fairly short order. She didn't stop until he'd satisfied both her ego and her hunger, as well as his own lustful desires, and then climbing up his body, she'd fitted him inside before his erection could flag, and started up again, riding him with a very lustful expression on her face.

  Grabbing her hips and working in time against her motions, Sean just looked into her eyes and enjoyed himself. He could feel Jolene was feeding on his magic, and it didn't take him long to find out just what she was doing with it, as the air around them started to warm up.

  "So you're having sex, so you can warm up the air around us, so you can have sex?" Sean laughed, panting.

  "Can you think of a better reason?" She moaned back at him.

  Sean had to admit, he couldn't.

  Jolene, being Jolene, it didn't take her long to have her first orgasm, or her second, or all of the ones after that, which he didn't even bother to count. He knew that sometimes Jolene missed her former wanton and lascivious lifestyle, and having just plain old hardcore lustful sex out in the open on the roof of their building must have really been hitting the spot for her.

  By the time she began slowing down, he was more than ready to go again, so rolling over on top of her, Sean just let her have it, hard and fast, getting just as loud as she was, until with two very loud cries of passion and lust, they both came together.

  "Hmmm," she sighed, cuddling happily against him, "I think I'll keep you."

  "And here I was worried you might not love me anymore," Sean teased and then yelped as she bit his nipple.

  "Don't even joke about that," she warned him with a little growl of her own.

  Sighing, he hugged her and kissed the top of her head. "I love you very much, Jolene Valens. And you are never ever getting away."

  "That's more like it," she said, cuddling up and almost immediately falling asleep looking happy and content.

  Putting his ar
m around her, he laid back in the sleeping bag just enjoying the feeling of Jolene curled up under his arm and just stared up at the sky and started to think about things. Things like what he needed to do next, and what he needed to do differently, as well as just how the hell had he gotten to this place in life?

  The more he thought about it however, the more it all just came back to his biggest problem, the one that was looming not on the horizon, but right in front of his face: The Council of Vestibulum.

  They were big, they were powerful, and they apparently had a plan of just how to deal with him and his little revolution. He still was having trouble wrapping his head around just what they'd done to the Ascendants. Best as he could figure it out, they'd killed over two hundred people Thursday night, and they'd done it all in cold blood.

  They hadn't spared anybody, except for in the few cases where they'd been blocked by Sean's people, and that had been just plain luck.

  Then there were the wolves. His wolves. He'd added another one hundred and thirty-two from his attack on the Ascendants. Those were the ones they'd rescued from the compound, as well as those they'd gotten from the raids on the members homes. Of those, seventy of them were trained fighters, and all of them had marketable skills.

  With all the cooks and servants he'd picked up, he figured he might as well open up a restaurant. Daelyn had teased him about opening up a strip club, considering the number of rather attractive women they now had, but he told her flat out he feared even suggesting such a thing would get him killed, and that she probably shouldn't even be joking about it. Too many of the lycan females had been abused by the Ascendants, and the last thing he wanted to do was to be anything like them at all.

  Interestingly enough, the Sapientia wolves had all rented a couple of houses within easy driving distance of the compound. About half had been let go, the other half could either live there, or elsewhere. Sean had heard that for now, those that could live there were, but they were all very busily exploring their options and Chad was moving aggressively to add them to his pack.