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“Do I have a hope of beating him? I can’t turn tail and run, but I didn’t get this old by partaking in battles I have zero hope of winning.”
“If you rebind Cora, and then do the binding with Kirsten, Nathan, and Aaron again to invoke the four elements, and…”
He looked around the room and back to me. “You’ll need to boost your power, likely with a huge orgy, and with some torture happening on the edges to feed Etta. I can and will help you with the timing, so you’re powered up just before the fighting forces arrive. Kirsten won’t be thrilled with taking part in an orgy in this realm, but she will. Sophia won’t take part in the orgy, but she’ll probably agree to have sex with Aaron in a tent off to the side. However, Aaron will send her to Faerie long before there can be a risk to her safety, so you’ll only have his participation to build lust for a short time. He can torture people for Etta once he sends his queen away, though.”
“Wolves, vampires, and both security forces will have to be involved in the orgy,” I said, considering the logistics. “Possibly some of the bikers, and if I can get other animal groups…” I considered who to ask, and said, “Harrison, the imperator crocodile king will probably agree to help.”
“You’ll want Horse and Gabby, for sure. Bash and Angelica might agree to the orgy, but you should offer the tent option. You should be clear that the bikers with human ol’ladies should not come, only those mated to supernaturals who wish to help. Also, tell them all single bikers are welcome to come alone.” He looked around and then telepathed, You should assume Nathan will come alone. It’s likely he’ll bring some lionesses, but you should invite him and whoever he wishes to bring, and leave it at that.
He didn’t want that last part getting back to Nathan, and I completely understood why, so I addressed the part he’d said out loud. “Does this mean the human members of my flock should be taken elsewhere?”
Mordecai shook his head. “They are blood oathed to you and thus can help build power. Also, the way to keep them the safest is for you to win, and the more people you have present who are loyal to you, willing to give you their power, the stronger you are, and the better chance you have of coming out on top. You’ll gain the respect of the bikers by telling them to protect their humans, so the ones who do come will give you that much more.”
“I’m going to assume we’ll want more than just the local wolves and vampires, so I should pull in the top vampires from every state I’m over.”
Mordecai nodded, “And Cora should do the same with her wolves. You’ll want to leave either the Master or the Secundo in each city, and bring in possibly the top ten, otherwise. Cora will want to do the same, leaving either the Alpha or Beta, but otherwise, bringing the most powerful from each large pack.”
I looked around the room and back to Mordecai. “My three courses of action are to send Cora to Alfheim, possibly for good, if she’ll go, and then try to negotiate with Ell, rather than fight him — or to do everything I can to gain power and fight him full out.” I took a breath. “Or realize I’m going to either die the true death or be turned into a slave, send Cora away, and fight him with all I can, knowing there’s no way I can win.”
“We both know you aren’t going to do the latter, which is why I said you have two options.”
Venom sat with his legs stretched out straight as he sat on a sofa, slouched over, looking as if he wasn’t a threat to anyone, though we all knew different. “I’ll follow you into hell itself if we have even a chance of winning. The thing is, if you were Master of Chattanooga, or even Tennessee, I’d push towards just taking all of us to Alfheim and letting him have the territory, but we’re responsible for every vampire in nine states, and by default, the supernaturals as well. We can’t abandon them all. If Kirsten is serious about letting us invite vampires from nine states, and if Mordecai thinks we have at least a thirty-five percent chance of beating the bastard, then my vote, if I had one, would be for us to power the fuck up and fight the motherfucker.”
“I value your counsel, as always. Thank you for being the first to speak up.” I looked around the room. “Venom is correct that this isn’t a democracy and the final decision has to be mine, but all of you are here because I value your counsel, so please feel free to give it, if you feel strongly one way or the other.”
“If we can successfully beat him,” Etta said, “I believe we’ll be able to set up a separate Concilio, one for all of the Americas, or perhaps just North America. We can declare ourselves no longer under the demesne of the European Concilio. The question is whether to state this aim before we fight, or after. If we do so before, other vampires from the Americas will likely help us fight, but the Concilio may decide to back Ell, which would be bad. However, we could share it with trusted Masters of other states, such as Zander, Gavin, and Augustus, to entice them to send some of their people to help us fight.”
“If this is your aim,” Mordecai said, “It should be spoken via telepathy only as a hypothetical, and, as Etta suggested, only to trusted Master Vampires with power.”
“Let’s table that, for now.” I was absolutely going to do this, but I didn’t want too many people knowing. “I’m not comfortable with what amounts to treason of the highest order amongst our kind.”
I quickly changed the subject and asked Etta, “Are you on board with setting up a torture area to the side of the orgy, so you can feed from the fear of however many victims we can arrange?”
“Absolutely. If we can obtain people with a death sentence, so we torture them and eventually kill them, that will be best. Otherwise, shifters who need to be punished is fine, since we can do a lot of damage that they can later heal. You can call Brooke in to help with the torture, and I’m told she has a few people who help her torture and kill pedophiles, whom I’m sure she’ll happily bring with her. I have no doubt we can find plenty of sadists, I’m just unsure of how we’ll gather the victims.”
“That won’t be a problem,” I told her. I knew several masochists who’d agree to six hours of torture with no hard limits and no safeword for a hefty paycheck, and Bran would be able to supply the names of several more. Also, Kendric likely had some people we could torture, though he’d want favors instead of money, but we’d figure it out. Hell, I might convince Brooke to find some homeless pedophiles no one would miss, and to bring them with her. Even if they were human, our slayer would likely look the other way. Though, I wasn’t so sure about Blaze, so I should probably doublecheck with Ryan before making that assumption.
“We fight,” said Josef. “We pull in every person of power we can, and we fight.” He looked to Mordecai. “You’re here, so that means you’re getting involved. Can you add some of your kind to the power bank?”
Mordecai nodded. “I have several offspring who are demigods and demigoddesses. They can help without breaking rules, and many of them will do so simply because I ask. Also, there are a few categories of divinity who are not constrained from becoming involved in the affairs of men.” He looked from Josef to me. “If everyone fighting is vampire or shapeshifter, it can be said I’m not involved in the affairs of men. It’s something I’d have never considered before meeting Kirsten, but it’s a loophole I’m willing to take.”
“Then I’ll make sure the only humans present are women, and that we do our best to get them to safety after the orgy and before the fighting. Will that work?”
“It will. This means I’ll also be able to help with some timing, once we draw closer to the battle.”
Chapter 23
Cora
Three days of boredom, where I knew absolutely nothing about what was going on outside of Drake Security, but I understood that if Ell still had a backdoor into my head, it was imperative I didn’t know anything more than where I was.
Kelsey found three ticking timebombs he’d put in. If I’d gone another twelve hours without her removing them, I’d have died simply because he no longer had access to me, to keep me alive.
They didn’t tell me about them until after the three days were up, nor was I aware Aaron had put a team in place to go in and search for others, in case Kelsey hadn’t found them all.
It turns out, in the room beside me were a half dozen of our people plus an expert in such things Aaron had brought in as a consultant, and they hadn’t found more. Ell had set the little self-destruct sequences to go off in thirty-six hours, which likely meant he intended to do it at the same time every day, but he gave himself a twelve-hour cushion, in case he couldn’t get to it right away. Every time he reset them, he’d have another day and a half before he had to do so again.
He hadn’t bothered telling me about them, but he likely would’ve before he’d let me out of the hole I’d been chained into. Even if I’d had the freedom to move around, I’d have never been free of him, since I’d have been forced to check in daily to get the kill-switch reset.
