Simple Things, page 12
part #13 of The Valens Legacy Series
"Any ideas?" Chad asked.
"I know a place," Jack chuckled, "but I'm not sure how soon I can get them."
"Do whatever you gotta do," Adam told him. "If you need money or anything, tell Roxy I okayed it."
Adam was snoozing in the trench they'd dug. Six hours after they'd blown up the second 'fort' the traffic through the gate stopped again, and for the last day there'd been no action, nothing. He was starting to wonder if they'd given up on using this gateway.
"We got something!" someone called out, and almost immediately someone started to shoot. A moment later almost everyone had opened fire and, looking over the small berm in front of their trench, Adam could see a large number of råge and ridders were swarming out of the gate. A half dozen biskops were right behind them, and at least two dozen raseri!
Those demons, and several others even Adam didn't recognize took a lot more damage to put down than the smaller demons, and it looked like these might even be using magic.
Swirling out en masse behind them came literally hundreds of bonde, who immediately started digging ditches, while the råge, ridders, biskops, and raseri did their best to protect them and hold off Adam's troops.
These larger demons were proving harder to kill, and each time they dropped one, another one came out of the gate, as if there was a never-ending supply of them. Some of the troops were picking off the bonde because they were easy kills, but every time their numbers seemed to be dropping, another hundred came out of the gate.
"Damn, they're serious this time," Adam called over the radio.
"Keep their heads down, I'm going to have the helicopters do another strafing pass and see if we can get them in those trenches they're hiding in."
"We're running low on ammo here, so if something doesn't break soon, we're going to have to run down there and do this the old-fashioned way," Adam warned him.
As Adam and the others watched, one of the Huey's came roaring by, firing its twin machine guns and tearing up the ground, when suddenly a slew of projectiles came flying up from the ground and tore it to shreds. It quickly burst into flames and exploded as they watched.
"Damn, what the hell was that?" Jon called over the radio.
"Magic," Adam told them. "Some of the demons I don't recognize must be their equivalent of magic users. Send one of the other helicopters back to get someone out here to help suppress 'em, or we're going to be in serious trouble."
"I'm on it!" Chad called back.
Adam turned to his troops. "Make your shots count; when we're almost out, we're going over the top to take them on with our swords. Try to hit those odd-looking ones, got it?"
Everyone nodded. They'd all heard Chad say he was going to get them some magical support, but they didn't know when it would arrive.
Adam kept his head down and let the others do the shooting, saving his last magazine for the charge and gave the rest of his to the others, as he tried to figure out which ones they had to worry about the most.
When the magic users finally got there, his men were almost out of bullets. Fortunately they weren't coming out of the gateway anymore. Apparently they were getting confident in their position.
"Okay," Chad called, "they think they can suppress the worst of it, I've got seven of them circling back at the LZ."
"Great!" Adam called. "Everybody! On three, over the top and charge!"
"One!"
"Two!"
"Three!"
Leaping up over the berm and holding his rifle out in front of him, Adam charged down the slight rise, firing as he went, until the bolt locked open. Dropping the rifle, he drew his sword and went after one of those strange demons, who was apparently trying to cast something and looking very surprised.
Right up until Adam cut its head off.
The others hit the demons as he attacked the next one, and they all jumped down into the demon's trench work, hacking and slashing with a will. Several had enough bullets left that they were able to use them to devastating effect at such a close range, but soon it was just sword on sword, like the first fights had been.
But this time there were a lot fewer of them, and they weren't being reinforced by more demons coming out of the gate. Twenty minutes after they started, they'd taken the demon's position and killed everything there.
Chad got everyone working with their shovels to quickly reset the lay of the land, then hunkered down to await the next attack, but nothing further came that day, until at last the gate collapsed.
"Damn, that felt good," Chad said, coming up to Adam as the helicopters started to ferry everyone back to base.
"When's the next window?" Adam asked.
"It opened over a day ago."
"And there hasn't been a gate yet?"
"Oh, a small one opened and closed just a few hours ago."
"What?" Adam asked, shocked.
"Maitland handled it. With the rifles, they had it a lot easier than we did. The smaller gateway made it harder to move too many people through, and they gave up after five or six hours."
"I'm finally starting to feel optimistic about all of this."
"What, you though we were going to lose?"
"No, but I thought it was going to be a lot worse. The biggest thing we had going for us in the past was that there weren't a lot of people, so it was easier to guard the population centers. Also, the demons never came through in the kinds of numbers we're seeing this time. Even in South America, I've been told they're seeing far fewer. Normally they don't start coming through in any real numbers until the main gateway opens up."
"Well, according to what Sean told me, they've never run into such huge numbers of their 'food' before, so I'd suspect they're getting greedy."
"But then why aren't they hitting South America harder? Really, it doesn't make much sense."
Chad shrugged. "I have no idea. Right now my only goal is to make it through to July of next year without a permanent gate opening. As long as we do that, this will have an end."
"That end is still a long way away," Adam said with a shake of his head.
"Yeah, but we'll get there. Never fear, we'll get there."
The Daily Grind
Sean was sitting on the ley line in just the cloak Estrella had given him. After almost a week of wearing his armor constantly, he was tired of wearing it. If it wasn't for the need to keep concealed from anyone who might be spying on them, he wouldn't even be wearing the cloak.
Right now he had a problem and was trying to figure out how to deal with it while soaking up as much energy as he could, which unfortunately wasn't enough. What he needed was a battery, so he could store the larger amounts of energy he was used to working with, but sadly he didn't have one in his back pocket right now. He'd have to make one. And because he didn't have a lot of power, it would have to be a small one. Which, of course, he didn't have a tar file for.
So he was spending hours of his time in his workshop, building virtual model after virtual model, trying to find one he could make with the power he had available. Unfortunately he kept coming up short. He could try to build one the old-fashioned way, but he'd only be able to work on it when a gateway was open, which meant it would take him at least a month. He'd need to build a workshop first, then find all the necessary components to actually build it the 'old-fashioned way', beyond just the item to cast it into.
And finding an item to cast the spell into was presenting its own problems.
He felt a painful tug on his ear, so he quickly saved his work and popped out.
"What's wrong?" he asked Estrella.
"How long are you going to stay like that?" she growled at him.
"Huh?" Sean looked at his watch; he'd been in the workshop for over seven hours. "Oh! Sorry," he said a little sheepishly, "I tend to lose track of time when I'm working. I wanted to get as much done before the gateway closed."
"It's a large gate, there's no rush."
"How did you know that?" he asked, surprised.
"Because I sent out a couple of scouts to spy on King Sladd and his people. This one didn't open up in a hellige, probably because somebody destroyed that one."
Sean just smiled and shrugged.
"That means it's in a random location, and in this case, one much easier to spy on.
"Anyway, I thought you might like to take a break and do something a bit more enjoyable for a while?"
Sean was about to say no, when he noticed she was standing there, naked. Estrella looked really good naked, as in 'incredibly hot' good, and well, she'd only recently started being nice to him. So he'd really hate to make her upset and…oh who was he fooling? She was hot, she wanted him, and he wasn't about to say no, as his own lion was whispering suggestions in the back of his head that the rest of his body was already agreeing with.
"Well, now that you mention it," Sean said and, slowly standing up, he stretched and yawned widely. Smiling down at her, he pulled her up against him and kissed her. She definitely fit well against him, and her lips tasted nice.
Estrella started to push against him, so he broke the kiss and looked down at her.
"What?"
"Not here. I really don't want to put on a show."
"Do they even know what we're doing?" Sean teased. He dropped his right arm from around her, but kept his left one there as they turned to face the building and walked towards it.
"Oh, they know," she said, putting her arm around him as well. "Though to them, we look like two different races."
"Because of my mane?"
"That's part of it," Estrella said, then made a face. "Let's not go over it right now, demon reproduction is not an exciting topic."
"But lion reproduction is, right?" Sean said with a grin.
"This isn't that! This is just us engaging in a little non-reproductive fun," she said and bumped him with her hip.
"What? You don't want my babies?" Sean said, acting crestfallen.
"Nope, I only want you for your body," Estrella said with a laugh.
Sean had to admit she had a nice laugh; she had definitely lightened up a lot since they'd gone to bed together.
"But if you get me out of here and back home," she said giving him a sultry look, "I'll certainly consider it."
"But not before, hmmm?" Sean teased.
"This is the last place in all of heaven and hell I'd want to bring a child into," Estrella admitted with a heavy sigh.
"At least we can practice!" Sean said and gave her a squeeze.
"We most certainly can! So what are you doing out there, anyway?"
"Trying to build a magical battery."
"Why?"
"Because those two ley lines don't give me enough power to do what I want to do."
"And what do you want to do?"
"Build a few things, fix your necklace."
"Well, with any luck, a gateway will open here soon, and you can mess with it back home."
"With any luck," Sean said and smiled down at her as he led her into the bedroom. Sean had learned a long time ago that luck was something he didn't have a lot of. But he wasn't going to tell her that.
"Now," he said, shedding the cloak and pulling her close to his now equally naked body. "Where were we?"
"What's it like being a magic user?"
Sean was lying on his side, pleasantly exhausted, with Estrella cuddled up and all but clinging to his back, her chin on his shoulder. He used to find that a little strange, but he'd since grown used to it; Roberta and Daelyn both preferred to cuddle like that.
Sean shrugged. "I don't know how to explain it, really. I guess it's like the mystical shit we can do as lions, only a bit more mundane?"
"'Mystical shit'?"
"It's a technical term," Sean said, grinning, "meaning all the stuff lions get to do, a lot of which I'm still learning."
" I haven't been able to do any of that stuff for over a thousand years now. It relies heavily on how many lycans there are in the world, and up until last week, there was only one here."
"Now there are two."
" I hate to tell you this, but we lions don't generate all that much on our own. One of the things Father told me about long, long ago, was when it was just him and the original pride, they had none of those powers."
"So no 'mystical shit'?" Sean teased.
"Nope, no 'mystical shit'."
"Then how did they learn about it?"
"They just did, I guess. Then by trial and error, they started to figure out the things they could do. It's not like they didn't have time to experiment."
Sean smacked himself on the forehead as he remembered his stats program.
"What was that for?" she asked.
"With the gateways opening up to home, our 'lion powers' should be able to recharge! Let me check."
"You can do that?"
"Magic users have spells to check on their development, and to help them when it comes time to learn new things. When dad got kicked out of my head, I realized I could use that spell to look at our lion abilities. Give me a moment."
Sean cast the spell to call up his stats program and immediately tripped the dropdown under the 'mental' stat. He then scrolled all the way down to the 'Status' entry.
He blinked.
The 'Available' stat was over a hundred thousand points!
As he watched it, he saw it wasn't a static number; it was constantly changing. It would drop a fair amount every so often, then slowly climb back up.
Moving down, his 'Stored' stat was now at 270, and was very slowly increasing. He remembered it had been at 232 when he'd looked at it last.
But what really blew him away was the last line, the 'Generating/Using' stat. It was 1,804,623 generating, and 9,027 using.
Sean remembered the First telling him almost a year ago that there were a little over nine thousand lions alive in the world today, then telling him how many lycans there were in North America. This was how he knew! He had a direct tap on all of them!
"Oh, shit," he said and quickly scrolled up to find the 'Visit–Incorporeal' skill. It required about a hundred thousand points.
"What?"
"We're connected!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I can see how many lycans there are, and how many live lions right now! And however it is we get power, I'm getting it."
"Then I must be getting it, too," Estrella mused.
"Can you go to sleep and visit the lion world?"
"I've tried that at least a thousand times since I came here, Sean. It doesn't work."
"Try it again, please."
"Why?"
"Because I asked you to?" Sean grumbled and scrolled back down to the Status numbers. "Would you prefer me to order you?"
"You wouldn't dare!" Estrella growled back in his ear.
"Did you give all your previous husbands this much grief?" Sean sighed as he watched the numbers.
"You're not my husband!"
"I can fix that," Sean growled back.
"You wouldn't!"
"Care to bet?" Dropping the spell, Sean rolled over quickly to face Estrella, who was glaring at him.
"Don't you…! Don't you…"
Sean grabbed the ruffs on the sides of her head with his paws and smiled.
"Welcome to the family, Mrs. Valens!" he said, and pulled her close, noticing the very shocked expression on her face. Then he kissed her long and hard.
She kicked him in the shin, kneed him in the nuts, then shifted into her full lioness form, and smacked him hard enough with a paw to send him flying.
Shifting into his own lion form, Sean rolled to his feet and looked at her. The expression on her face, as she realized how big he was compared to her, he found to be amusing.
But she still launched herself at him, claws out, and Sean didn't hesitate to let his lion handle the fight.
'I think she likes us,' his lion said after they'd been slugging it out and tearing at each other for a good ten minutes.
'You think?'
'She's just making us prove ourself.'
Sean thought his lion was crazy, but when he finally had her pinned underneath him with a firm grip on her neck, she suddenly stopped fighting, rolled over onto her paws, and took a few steps forward. Looking back at him, she gave him the 'come hither' look both Disney and his wives were famous for as she shifted back to her hybrid form.
Sean didn't hesitate. Shifting back as well, he crawled up behind her. Grabbing her hips, he pulled himself over and on top of her, covering her. He was hard as a rock in an instant, and he was shocked to find her as excited as he was. Plunging into her to the hilt, he took her hard and fast, wrapping his arms tightly around her as he grabbed her with his mouth at the base of her neck.
Estrella growled loudly, and immediately began bucking back against him as she shivered, then yowled loudly beneath him, digging her claws into the floor.
It didn't take Sean long to hit his peak, and when he did, Estrella hit hers, too. They both growled loudly as Estrella's arms gave out, and they collapsed to the floor, panting heavily and purring loudly.
"Okay," Estrella said after a few minutes, as they both just laid there and enjoyed the afterglow. "Now I'll try to go."
Sean shook his head. "Lionesses are crazy." He sighed and kissed the side of her head.
"Hey, I'm a daughter of the First. If you can't bring enough to the table to prove you're good enough, you don't deserve me!"
"No, you're Sean Valens' wife, and I'm starting to think insanity is required," Sean said and gave her a hug as she purred.
"Well, you do act a little crazy, I'll admit," Estrella said with a snicker.
"Just go talk to Dad. Okay?"
Sean called up his stats program as she closed her eyes, and got to the 'Available' field just in time to see it drop by almost half. He'd suspected Estrella, being older and more experienced, wouldn't need as much power as he would.
Første opened the door then and, looking around, took in their relative positions, as well as all the blood and destruction in the room.
"So you really are demons," he stated simply.
"Excuse me?" Sean asked.
"We'd all wondered if Brune En was a demon or not. She never mated with any. But now I see why. None of us would have survived the attempt, especially not one that left you so bloody."
"I know a place," Jack chuckled, "but I'm not sure how soon I can get them."
"Do whatever you gotta do," Adam told him. "If you need money or anything, tell Roxy I okayed it."
Adam was snoozing in the trench they'd dug. Six hours after they'd blown up the second 'fort' the traffic through the gate stopped again, and for the last day there'd been no action, nothing. He was starting to wonder if they'd given up on using this gateway.
"We got something!" someone called out, and almost immediately someone started to shoot. A moment later almost everyone had opened fire and, looking over the small berm in front of their trench, Adam could see a large number of råge and ridders were swarming out of the gate. A half dozen biskops were right behind them, and at least two dozen raseri!
Those demons, and several others even Adam didn't recognize took a lot more damage to put down than the smaller demons, and it looked like these might even be using magic.
Swirling out en masse behind them came literally hundreds of bonde, who immediately started digging ditches, while the råge, ridders, biskops, and raseri did their best to protect them and hold off Adam's troops.
These larger demons were proving harder to kill, and each time they dropped one, another one came out of the gate, as if there was a never-ending supply of them. Some of the troops were picking off the bonde because they were easy kills, but every time their numbers seemed to be dropping, another hundred came out of the gate.
"Damn, they're serious this time," Adam called over the radio.
"Keep their heads down, I'm going to have the helicopters do another strafing pass and see if we can get them in those trenches they're hiding in."
"We're running low on ammo here, so if something doesn't break soon, we're going to have to run down there and do this the old-fashioned way," Adam warned him.
As Adam and the others watched, one of the Huey's came roaring by, firing its twin machine guns and tearing up the ground, when suddenly a slew of projectiles came flying up from the ground and tore it to shreds. It quickly burst into flames and exploded as they watched.
"Damn, what the hell was that?" Jon called over the radio.
"Magic," Adam told them. "Some of the demons I don't recognize must be their equivalent of magic users. Send one of the other helicopters back to get someone out here to help suppress 'em, or we're going to be in serious trouble."
"I'm on it!" Chad called back.
Adam turned to his troops. "Make your shots count; when we're almost out, we're going over the top to take them on with our swords. Try to hit those odd-looking ones, got it?"
Everyone nodded. They'd all heard Chad say he was going to get them some magical support, but they didn't know when it would arrive.
Adam kept his head down and let the others do the shooting, saving his last magazine for the charge and gave the rest of his to the others, as he tried to figure out which ones they had to worry about the most.
When the magic users finally got there, his men were almost out of bullets. Fortunately they weren't coming out of the gateway anymore. Apparently they were getting confident in their position.
"Okay," Chad called, "they think they can suppress the worst of it, I've got seven of them circling back at the LZ."
"Great!" Adam called. "Everybody! On three, over the top and charge!"
"One!"
"Two!"
"Three!"
Leaping up over the berm and holding his rifle out in front of him, Adam charged down the slight rise, firing as he went, until the bolt locked open. Dropping the rifle, he drew his sword and went after one of those strange demons, who was apparently trying to cast something and looking very surprised.
Right up until Adam cut its head off.
The others hit the demons as he attacked the next one, and they all jumped down into the demon's trench work, hacking and slashing with a will. Several had enough bullets left that they were able to use them to devastating effect at such a close range, but soon it was just sword on sword, like the first fights had been.
But this time there were a lot fewer of them, and they weren't being reinforced by more demons coming out of the gate. Twenty minutes after they started, they'd taken the demon's position and killed everything there.
Chad got everyone working with their shovels to quickly reset the lay of the land, then hunkered down to await the next attack, but nothing further came that day, until at last the gate collapsed.
"Damn, that felt good," Chad said, coming up to Adam as the helicopters started to ferry everyone back to base.
"When's the next window?" Adam asked.
"It opened over a day ago."
"And there hasn't been a gate yet?"
"Oh, a small one opened and closed just a few hours ago."
"What?" Adam asked, shocked.
"Maitland handled it. With the rifles, they had it a lot easier than we did. The smaller gateway made it harder to move too many people through, and they gave up after five or six hours."
"I'm finally starting to feel optimistic about all of this."
"What, you though we were going to lose?"
"No, but I thought it was going to be a lot worse. The biggest thing we had going for us in the past was that there weren't a lot of people, so it was easier to guard the population centers. Also, the demons never came through in the kinds of numbers we're seeing this time. Even in South America, I've been told they're seeing far fewer. Normally they don't start coming through in any real numbers until the main gateway opens up."
"Well, according to what Sean told me, they've never run into such huge numbers of their 'food' before, so I'd suspect they're getting greedy."
"But then why aren't they hitting South America harder? Really, it doesn't make much sense."
Chad shrugged. "I have no idea. Right now my only goal is to make it through to July of next year without a permanent gate opening. As long as we do that, this will have an end."
"That end is still a long way away," Adam said with a shake of his head.
"Yeah, but we'll get there. Never fear, we'll get there."
The Daily Grind
Sean was sitting on the ley line in just the cloak Estrella had given him. After almost a week of wearing his armor constantly, he was tired of wearing it. If it wasn't for the need to keep concealed from anyone who might be spying on them, he wouldn't even be wearing the cloak.
Right now he had a problem and was trying to figure out how to deal with it while soaking up as much energy as he could, which unfortunately wasn't enough. What he needed was a battery, so he could store the larger amounts of energy he was used to working with, but sadly he didn't have one in his back pocket right now. He'd have to make one. And because he didn't have a lot of power, it would have to be a small one. Which, of course, he didn't have a tar file for.
So he was spending hours of his time in his workshop, building virtual model after virtual model, trying to find one he could make with the power he had available. Unfortunately he kept coming up short. He could try to build one the old-fashioned way, but he'd only be able to work on it when a gateway was open, which meant it would take him at least a month. He'd need to build a workshop first, then find all the necessary components to actually build it the 'old-fashioned way', beyond just the item to cast it into.
And finding an item to cast the spell into was presenting its own problems.
He felt a painful tug on his ear, so he quickly saved his work and popped out.
"What's wrong?" he asked Estrella.
"How long are you going to stay like that?" she growled at him.
"Huh?" Sean looked at his watch; he'd been in the workshop for over seven hours. "Oh! Sorry," he said a little sheepishly, "I tend to lose track of time when I'm working. I wanted to get as much done before the gateway closed."
"It's a large gate, there's no rush."
"How did you know that?" he asked, surprised.
"Because I sent out a couple of scouts to spy on King Sladd and his people. This one didn't open up in a hellige, probably because somebody destroyed that one."
Sean just smiled and shrugged.
"That means it's in a random location, and in this case, one much easier to spy on.
"Anyway, I thought you might like to take a break and do something a bit more enjoyable for a while?"
Sean was about to say no, when he noticed she was standing there, naked. Estrella looked really good naked, as in 'incredibly hot' good, and well, she'd only recently started being nice to him. So he'd really hate to make her upset and…oh who was he fooling? She was hot, she wanted him, and he wasn't about to say no, as his own lion was whispering suggestions in the back of his head that the rest of his body was already agreeing with.
"Well, now that you mention it," Sean said and, slowly standing up, he stretched and yawned widely. Smiling down at her, he pulled her up against him and kissed her. She definitely fit well against him, and her lips tasted nice.
Estrella started to push against him, so he broke the kiss and looked down at her.
"What?"
"Not here. I really don't want to put on a show."
"Do they even know what we're doing?" Sean teased. He dropped his right arm from around her, but kept his left one there as they turned to face the building and walked towards it.
"Oh, they know," she said, putting her arm around him as well. "Though to them, we look like two different races."
"Because of my mane?"
"That's part of it," Estrella said, then made a face. "Let's not go over it right now, demon reproduction is not an exciting topic."
"But lion reproduction is, right?" Sean said with a grin.
"This isn't that! This is just us engaging in a little non-reproductive fun," she said and bumped him with her hip.
"What? You don't want my babies?" Sean said, acting crestfallen.
"Nope, I only want you for your body," Estrella said with a laugh.
Sean had to admit she had a nice laugh; she had definitely lightened up a lot since they'd gone to bed together.
"But if you get me out of here and back home," she said giving him a sultry look, "I'll certainly consider it."
"But not before, hmmm?" Sean teased.
"This is the last place in all of heaven and hell I'd want to bring a child into," Estrella admitted with a heavy sigh.
"At least we can practice!" Sean said and gave her a squeeze.
"We most certainly can! So what are you doing out there, anyway?"
"Trying to build a magical battery."
"Why?"
"Because those two ley lines don't give me enough power to do what I want to do."
"And what do you want to do?"
"Build a few things, fix your necklace."
"Well, with any luck, a gateway will open here soon, and you can mess with it back home."
"With any luck," Sean said and smiled down at her as he led her into the bedroom. Sean had learned a long time ago that luck was something he didn't have a lot of. But he wasn't going to tell her that.
"Now," he said, shedding the cloak and pulling her close to his now equally naked body. "Where were we?"
"What's it like being a magic user?"
Sean was lying on his side, pleasantly exhausted, with Estrella cuddled up and all but clinging to his back, her chin on his shoulder. He used to find that a little strange, but he'd since grown used to it; Roberta and Daelyn both preferred to cuddle like that.
Sean shrugged. "I don't know how to explain it, really. I guess it's like the mystical shit we can do as lions, only a bit more mundane?"
"'Mystical shit'?"
"It's a technical term," Sean said, grinning, "meaning all the stuff lions get to do, a lot of which I'm still learning."
" I haven't been able to do any of that stuff for over a thousand years now. It relies heavily on how many lycans there are in the world, and up until last week, there was only one here."
"Now there are two."
" I hate to tell you this, but we lions don't generate all that much on our own. One of the things Father told me about long, long ago, was when it was just him and the original pride, they had none of those powers."
"So no 'mystical shit'?" Sean teased.
"Nope, no 'mystical shit'."
"Then how did they learn about it?"
"They just did, I guess. Then by trial and error, they started to figure out the things they could do. It's not like they didn't have time to experiment."
Sean smacked himself on the forehead as he remembered his stats program.
"What was that for?" she asked.
"With the gateways opening up to home, our 'lion powers' should be able to recharge! Let me check."
"You can do that?"
"Magic users have spells to check on their development, and to help them when it comes time to learn new things. When dad got kicked out of my head, I realized I could use that spell to look at our lion abilities. Give me a moment."
Sean cast the spell to call up his stats program and immediately tripped the dropdown under the 'mental' stat. He then scrolled all the way down to the 'Status' entry.
He blinked.
The 'Available' stat was over a hundred thousand points!
As he watched it, he saw it wasn't a static number; it was constantly changing. It would drop a fair amount every so often, then slowly climb back up.
Moving down, his 'Stored' stat was now at 270, and was very slowly increasing. He remembered it had been at 232 when he'd looked at it last.
But what really blew him away was the last line, the 'Generating/Using' stat. It was 1,804,623 generating, and 9,027 using.
Sean remembered the First telling him almost a year ago that there were a little over nine thousand lions alive in the world today, then telling him how many lycans there were in North America. This was how he knew! He had a direct tap on all of them!
"Oh, shit," he said and quickly scrolled up to find the 'Visit–Incorporeal' skill. It required about a hundred thousand points.
"What?"
"We're connected!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I can see how many lycans there are, and how many live lions right now! And however it is we get power, I'm getting it."
"Then I must be getting it, too," Estrella mused.
"Can you go to sleep and visit the lion world?"
"I've tried that at least a thousand times since I came here, Sean. It doesn't work."
"Try it again, please."
"Why?"
"Because I asked you to?" Sean grumbled and scrolled back down to the Status numbers. "Would you prefer me to order you?"
"You wouldn't dare!" Estrella growled back in his ear.
"Did you give all your previous husbands this much grief?" Sean sighed as he watched the numbers.
"You're not my husband!"
"I can fix that," Sean growled back.
"You wouldn't!"
"Care to bet?" Dropping the spell, Sean rolled over quickly to face Estrella, who was glaring at him.
"Don't you…! Don't you…"
Sean grabbed the ruffs on the sides of her head with his paws and smiled.
"Welcome to the family, Mrs. Valens!" he said, and pulled her close, noticing the very shocked expression on her face. Then he kissed her long and hard.
She kicked him in the shin, kneed him in the nuts, then shifted into her full lioness form, and smacked him hard enough with a paw to send him flying.
Shifting into his own lion form, Sean rolled to his feet and looked at her. The expression on her face, as she realized how big he was compared to her, he found to be amusing.
But she still launched herself at him, claws out, and Sean didn't hesitate to let his lion handle the fight.
'I think she likes us,' his lion said after they'd been slugging it out and tearing at each other for a good ten minutes.
'You think?'
'She's just making us prove ourself.'
Sean thought his lion was crazy, but when he finally had her pinned underneath him with a firm grip on her neck, she suddenly stopped fighting, rolled over onto her paws, and took a few steps forward. Looking back at him, she gave him the 'come hither' look both Disney and his wives were famous for as she shifted back to her hybrid form.
Sean didn't hesitate. Shifting back as well, he crawled up behind her. Grabbing her hips, he pulled himself over and on top of her, covering her. He was hard as a rock in an instant, and he was shocked to find her as excited as he was. Plunging into her to the hilt, he took her hard and fast, wrapping his arms tightly around her as he grabbed her with his mouth at the base of her neck.
Estrella growled loudly, and immediately began bucking back against him as she shivered, then yowled loudly beneath him, digging her claws into the floor.
It didn't take Sean long to hit his peak, and when he did, Estrella hit hers, too. They both growled loudly as Estrella's arms gave out, and they collapsed to the floor, panting heavily and purring loudly.
"Okay," Estrella said after a few minutes, as they both just laid there and enjoyed the afterglow. "Now I'll try to go."
Sean shook his head. "Lionesses are crazy." He sighed and kissed the side of her head.
"Hey, I'm a daughter of the First. If you can't bring enough to the table to prove you're good enough, you don't deserve me!"
"No, you're Sean Valens' wife, and I'm starting to think insanity is required," Sean said and gave her a hug as she purred.
"Well, you do act a little crazy, I'll admit," Estrella said with a snicker.
"Just go talk to Dad. Okay?"
Sean called up his stats program as she closed her eyes, and got to the 'Available' field just in time to see it drop by almost half. He'd suspected Estrella, being older and more experienced, wouldn't need as much power as he would.
Første opened the door then and, looking around, took in their relative positions, as well as all the blood and destruction in the room.
"So you really are demons," he stated simply.
"Excuse me?" Sean asked.
"We'd all wondered if Brune En was a demon or not. She never mated with any. But now I see why. None of us would have survived the attempt, especially not one that left you so bloody."
