SUE VS SUE

[a_sporking_rat]

This installment uses some terminology in regards to the weretigers that was made up during RP. It's not canon, but it makes sense and makes things less confusing, so I'm including it.

In the books, a tiger "clan" can refer either to a group of tigers in the same way pack does for the wolves or rodere from the rats, but can also mean what color they come from--Cynric, for example is from the blue clan in the sense of his lineage but is a member of Anita's clan in terms of group affiliation. Changs rule the clans in terms of color lineage, so Bibiana rules the entire white clan aka all the white weretigers in the USA, but may not rule the smaller clan that a particular tiger of their color belongs to in terms of group affiliation.

Obviously, that's confusing as fuck, so this is the system we use:

Clan - The color they originate from. White Clan, Red Clan, and so on. As seen in the books, most members of a clan will live in a mass commune in one place made up only or almost exclusively of members of that clan color (the White Clan in Vegas, Red clan in Seattle, etc.) where they are ruled by the Chang, who is the ruler of that Clan.

Streak - Some, however, will live elsewhere in the country rather than the HQ of their clan, and, if they are not the only solitary tigers in the area (as is probably usually the case) will group together in a Streak. Unlike the Clans, these Streaks are much smaller, not huge communes, and much more like other minority-therian societies in terms of size and structure. They are usually of mixed-colors rather than all one, and while each tiger owes their ultimate loyalty to his Clan Chang, they are more immediately ruled over by the Sahiba of the Streak. Basically, the Chang is President, the Sahiba is the mayor. Streaks may also be called Little Clans, since the Sahiba is usually a Little Queen.

Little Queen - A female with enough power to leave her own clan and establish a Streak of her own.

Sahiba - A Little Queen or other female tiger who has actually done so. She may have founded the Streak, or taken or inherited it from another Sahiba, or the Streak formed itself and she came to them later. Who gets to be Sahiba depends a lot on what kind of weretigers make up the Streak; a Streak of mostly Clan tigers will probably never accept an orange survivor as their Sahiba no matter how powerful she is, whereas a Streak of mostly orange tigers probably isn't going to care about whether their Sahiba has 'pure' breeding, and a Streak made up of mostly white clan tigers might demand that their Sahiba only be a white clan tiger as well. It all varies.

So, Klaus belongs to the White Clan and thus owes his loyalty to them and Bibi first, but he's a member of a Streak headed by a Sahiba called Sandhya, whom he is loyal to second, and Sandhya is of the Red Clan and thus answers to Cho rather than Bibi, hence the conflict of interest Klaus will be having in this installment that is 'addressed' by Lucille.



***
I didn't know how Lucille had survived, but I knew that the next time I faced her, she wouldn't. Because next time, it wouldn't just be me alone. It would be me and my lovers, my family of choice, who mean so much more than bonds of mere flesh and blood and law to inferior step-mothers who dare to be blonde. It would be bonds of love, of warmth, of happy, of making love and loving it, truly enjoying it, and letting myself, and it would let me, let us, triumph over her, because she loved no one, felt for no one, and she could not triumph over the force of so many together, together because they wanted to be, because we loved each other. And she must know that, or else she wouldn't have taken Damian. Yes, taken, that was how I felt about what had happened to him. He was right here in the Circus in terms of his pale beautiful perfectly-muscled-but-long-lean body, but his heart was not here. He had betrayed us, something I'd thought impossible. He was my Vampire Servant, the only Vampire Servant that anyone has ever had because I am the only necromancer in centuries (those other necromancers I met before don't count) and the only necromancer ever to make a Vampire Servant, he shouldn't have been able to do this. But more than that, even if his will had been his, why should he have ever wanted to?

Damian might not have been one of the more regular men in my bed, but he loved it when he was, and he knew how to share. He didn’t begrudge more of my time going to my main squeezes. He had gained so much through me, and through the other men I was connected to, I know he would never throw it all away---the love, the sex, the daywalking, having a family, perhaps the only family he’d had in a thousand years, a place where he was warm and wanted and valued not for his Viking skills, not for his blood-redhead beauty, but for himself, for who he was. What could she have offered him? Nothing but empty power, and perhaps not even that, and at the price of taking everything he had found with me.

So I knew he’d never do this willingly. Lucille had gotten to him inside somehow, psychically warped him. I found it doubtful she could do it to the extent that I had with some of my men, like Nicky, who was my Bride, as in Brides of Dracula, after those baby vampire women in the book who couldn’t even hunt on their own, and was made to be my cannon fodder with no free will of his own rather than a lover and only partly-brainwashed like an animal to call. She wasn’t a vampire, and it was a vampire talent, and I was only able to do it because I was a necromancer with the special talent of absorbing any vampire power that was used against me, even though no one had ever actually tried to make me a Bride. She could only have done something lesser, more shallow, false, but whatever it was, no matter how weak, it had worked. That didn’t surprise me either; despite his age, and however much older he got, he would never be a Master. Some vampires just never did. That weakness, that defect, had been what made him vulnerable to her despite his bond to me, I was sure.

Until it was undone, I had to keep the rest of my lovers safe. We had to protect our own. I had even once killed a lover of mine when he had threatened the others, had tried to kill Nathaniel out of his jealousy over me, and while I never wanted to do that again, there was no length I would not go to for the men I loved. Of course, the problem with Damian was, if that did have to happen for the good of us all, how likely was it that Nathaniel and I could survive it?

So until then, he’s kept here at the Circus, safe and sound. Jean-Claude won’t let me see him, to spare me the pain, so I stay here snuggled with my other men to help me forget, to forget and just meld into the puppy pile of warm loving bodies of the men that I love, while a ‘cure’ is looked for by Jean-Claude and Hiero, whom Jean-Claude says has come around.

He assures me that Damian is being treated as humanely as possible, of course.

***

Lucille and Maureen met with Jean-Claude in the now-abandoned secret dungeon of Narcisuss’s club, which was still in full operation and had its usual clientele doing their usual things in the floors above, ignorant of the trio beneath. Jean-Claude had come alone, and this was a foolish decision, one he would normally not ever have made. He did not even realize this, however. He was not allowed to. Because him coming alone had been what worked best for Lucille and Maureen, and thus could not be questioned by anyone, no matter how odd it was. Maureen and Lucille likewise lacked any accompaniment, but for them it was no such risk, of course. Their biggest problem was not vomiting at the sight of his outfit, let alone not saying anything.

When introductions were made, Jean-Claude allowed the smallest shadow of polite surprise upon his face when he learned the dark-haired woman Lucille had brought with her. Maureen Garrett-Schmitt and her anti-vampire campaigns were well-known even outside of New York, but the only remark he made was to compliment her on how much younger she looked in person rather than in newspaper photographs he had seen. Indeed, she did. Much more so she had recently, though the years had always been very kind to Maureen, kinder than they are to almost anyone else without the aid of plastic surgery. But in the past day or so, it had been something more; her face no more simply stalled time, but had begun to reverse it. Since Jean-Claude had never met Maureen or Lucille in person, and never even seen a photo of the latter, he did not realize that Maureen not only had started to reverse her aging…while Lucille was gaining years. They each looked, in fact, as if they had gone the same number of years in the opposite direction.

But since this wasn’t noticed, it also was not discussed. What was discussed was what Jean-Claude desired.

“I knew that Anita would have much to offer when I first made her my Human Servant. And I have been proven right in this, much more so than I ever expected. What is hers is mine, by vampire law. And yet, I do not wield the metaphysical energies she does. I cannot call multiple beasts like Padma as she can, or eat anger and fear, I have neither her necromancy nor her new elemental abilities. Should she die, I would be able to keep no claim on the many therianthrope communities she has become queen of, least of all because I would perhaps not survive her death myself. And yet…I am beginning to think that her death is perhaps what would benefit me most.”

Logically, him telling them all this did not make sense. He had come to this meeting under the belief that they already knew what he wanted, since they had promised that Maureen could do it, and so when he found out they had no idea what he wanted, he should have left, not told them, not let it tumble with his lips so freely and in total truth. But he did not realize this. He could not realize this. He only kept speaking, never knowing that he should even want to stop himself,

“I believe that she is becoming, as some feared she might, a new Marmee Noir who will rule over us all. If this comes to pass, I shall lose power over her, and become yet another poor slave in her harem with not enough thought in my own head left to understand my own tragedy. But if she is destroyed, I lose all I have gained through her, and perhaps my own life, because of the link between us as Vampire Master and Human Servant. Anita has shown the ability to tamper with such links, and even destroy them if she so chooses. It was a power held only by the Mother of All Darkness herself, and I believe it may be the key to killing her with no loss to myself. If someone else could find a way to manipulate that link so that, just as my power of the ardeur flowed into her through it, all of her powers could then flow into myself instead, and then the link me cut, severed, destroyed, then she could be killed and I would keep all of her powers, all of her peoples, under my command. When the boy Hiero let me access that link to speak to her even when your powers, Lucille, were making that impossible, I thought perhaps I could use him for that, that because he was related to you, a being of great power yourself, then he might share your power, might be able to do more, to do what I wish…but he cannot. He is a normal witch, strong but normal, useless. Nothing like what you are. Tell me then, can this lovely woman you claim to be a new necromancer do as my little idiot Anita has done, and set me free from her? Destroy your enemy in the same blow?”

“Maureen?” Lucille asked her companion sweetly.

“Well, if your seer says I can, I see no reason not to try,” Maureen answered just as sweetly. While Jean-Claude spoke with the gravity that the situation deserved, the woman had light, casual tones, as if debating what to order for dinner. “But I can’t do it right now right here for you, of course. We’ll need Anita as well.”

“Then, my ladies, I shall bring her to you,” he made a sweeping bow, “Many thanks; for this, I shall also set free your sorceror cousin, as a gesture of good faith.”

“Oh, keep him,” Lucille sounded as if she couldn’t care less.

“Now, now, he does have good taste in shoes, I’ve heard,” Maureen didn’t sound as if she cared much more.

After Jean-Claude had left, Lucille and Maureen called the members of Rafael’s Rodere who had been in charge of sweeping for electronic bugs at the Circus and Jean-Claude’s clubs in the past, and who had kindly done the same for this basement. According to them, a single one on his person had been found, but neither Lucille nor Maureen believed that Jean-Claude had been aware of it. Someone else had put the device on to him.

Someone else had heard what they had planned.

***
While Lucille and Maureen were meeting the Master of the City, everyone else at the school was just, well, hanging out again. For instance, two of the wererats and Edgar were seated on top of spare desks talking. The former were now lacking Mikey Joe, who had gone back to New York via the evacuation program that was now in place for the non-combatants, but the rest were still there. Max and Wander had stayed because, of course, they were fighters, but Hank and Eva were staying for other people; Eva for her friend Odette, and Hank for his crush Edgar. Edgar, unfortunately, seemed more concerned with someone else; he'd found out from Nan how his friend Hiero was being held forcibly by Jean-Claude, and was fretting over it to Max and Hank extensively.

"What if they don't come back with him?" Edgar said, seated on what had once been a teacher's desk, "It's not as if he's a high priority for Lucille, they've never gotten along, and I don't think Maureen has ever even met him, why should she care?"

"She's gonna win," Max assured him, seated on top of a student's desk near Edgar, "Both of 'em, Lucille and Maureen, they're gonna win, and then we'll get Hiero back anyway."

"Could you rescue him like you did Fell?" asked Hank. He was seated at another desk, in the chair properly rather than perched on the desk itself like his friends. He felt bad for Edgar and Max because they were friends with Hiero, but he was also wildly jealous of Edgar's concern over Hiero too, and then that just made him feel guilty. Because of this, he'd stayed quiet for most of the conversation, but he couldn't help bringing this up. He didn't like Hiero for taking Edgar's attention, but...

"We couldn't," said Max thoughtfully, "The security's gotta have been upped...someone else could though. Somebody already in there."

"The werewolves!" Edgar and Hank exclaimed together.

Max grinned, "Exactly."

"Only thing is...Lucille wasn't happy with you lot when you saved Fell without her say-so," Hank noted nervously, "I don't think she'll appreciate this being pulled off behind her back either."

"But he ought to be saved sooner than later," said Max. Her tone made it clear she didn't disagree with Hank, but was rather trying to sort out the boundaries of their dilemma.

"It's not jest him." They all turned to see who had joined them, though the Cockney accent gave it away on its own. Wander was standing there with Richard and Tung. She jerked a thumb back at the Ulfric, "I were askin' 'im 'bout Meph and ter tell me a Tom Tit about that Shang-Da bloke, an' I find out Shang-Da jest told him--"

"---that Damian is in a worse spot than Hiero," finished Tung. The wererats and Edgar might not have a reason to be upset by this, but Tung did. She'd been the one that had encountered Damian when they'd been trying to escape the Circus, the one that he had reached out to and told that he wanted to get out of this life, get away from Anita and the Circus. She hadn't been able to take him with her then, since his mental ties to Anita would have let her see everything through his eyes and at the time their location had still been secret, and so he had been left behind to wait for whenever the rebels could find a way to take him without also taking a living bug for Anita and her lot. Now they'd waited too long, and his desires had been discovered by his Necromancer Master. He was paying the price for it too, and was only even still alive, Shang-Da had told Richard, until a way could be found to sever his connection from Anita.

"But Anita can break bonds between Master and Servant," said Max, confused, "It's one of the reasons she's supposed to be such a big honking deal."

Richard gave a bitter grin, "If she showed that she could cut her own Servants free, she'd have to face the question of why she doesn't free all of them, when she claims their binding was unintentional and gives her such moral woes. Trust me, you try bringing up the idea with Cynric or Nicky or any of the others she says she really truly is bothered by, and see what happens."

Wander made some comments that were too heavily in dialect for the rest to make out, but the general tone was clear so they knew what she said was both obscene and correct concerning Anita.

"You don't need to risk your skins with Lucille by asking my guards to help Damian," Richard continued, "I'm going to do that anyway. And Hiero too. You have my word."

***
"So, what de matter wit' you?"

Klaus, snapped momentarily out of the daze he usually got in around Ghislaine due to the peculiar effect that the Cajun rotter's scent seemed to have on all tigers, "What?"

"Somethin' up," said Ghislaine, "You smellin' stressed, and like you have been all day."

Klaus straightened up, composing himself, "I've no idea what you mean."

Despite having turned into her veritable shadow since meeting her, as Gideon now had too, Klaus did not know Ghislaine personally well at all, and was not at all inclined to pour out any worries or concerns that he might have to her. Klaus was proud, and he liked to handle things on his own, especially when it was his business in the first place. Ghislaine chose to leave it alone, but Gideon, who had also been hanging around her due to her tiger-alluring scent when this conversation happened, took it back to their leaders. There could be no chance of dissent in the ranks at a time like this.

And so when Klaus was heading towards the training area later that day, he was intercepted by Lucille, "Hey big fella, you feeling alright lately?"

She sounded way too casual, almost friendly. It gave Klaus shivers up his spine and he even recoiled a little. He was indeed big, and strong, and tough, but he wasn't stupid and he knew all that was nothing to Lucy.

"Just fine," he said, normally as possible.

"Oh good. Cuz a little cat told me you might be getting a case of nerves on us," Lucille languidly leaned against the wall, then reached out and stroked Klaus's chest right down over where his heart would be, and it skipped a beat. "Now, I'm no Freud, but mind if I take a little gander just why that would be? If that were the case, of course. Which it's not, right?"

"Right," he said, knowing this was a trap and seeing no way out, "But, sure, go ahead. Just hypothetically."

"Just hypothetically," she repeated, stepping from the wall towards him and putting an arm across his shoulders, "Just hypothetically, I think, you might be having a conflict of alliances. It would be oh so understandable."

She started to walk around him, sauntering past his side, circling like a shark, "I mean...Bibiana and her white tigers, they've joined up with Jean-Claude and his pet, haven't they? And that's your clan. So you might be thinking it's your duty to turn traitor on me; I know how loyal you are to your kind. But Sandhya, your Little Queen, the Sahiba of your Streak, your little clan in New York, well, she's a red, isn't she? And the reds have thrown their lot in with me, with us. So if you turn your back on me...you're turning your back on your Streak and your Sahiba. But if you don't, you're a clan traitor to Bibiana and the white tigers."

Klaus tried not to show that this was, in fact, exactly what he had been wrestling with himself over. He knew that she knew anyway, of course, but it was a matter of dignity.

"Gosh, I'm starting to see why it's better for Streaks to just have tigers from one color clan, you get situations like this, answering to a Sahiba of one color and a Chang of another and you just don't know what to do..."

She had made full circle now, and was right in front of him again. She looked up into his eyes and grasped his shirt firmly but not aggressively in her hands, "I'll make it easy for you, big man. I'll do for you what Anita does for hers---take all that trouble off your shoulders. Hard to choose? You don't have to."

Just as when vampires use their powers, her eyes changed, the color of her iris taking over the entire eyeball, so that he was looking into two all-consuming orbs of blue, and he felt her Padma-line powers rush into him, first under his skin then down through the muscle and into his bones and finally hitting his center, his soul, and twisting it from the inside out so that his thoughts, his will, his mind, his choices, none of it was his, and neither was his loyalty. All his clan pride, all his culture, everything he was brought up with and devoted to, she made it cease to matter. He was not, could no longer be, faithful to Bibiana or to Sandhya, only to Lucille. One queen to rule them all, including him, and who pushed all other masters from his mind. He felt it happening and could not even try to rebel, could barely even want to.

She ran a finger under his jawline and then said, as she started to saunter away, "You have any more problems like that, handsome, you just come to me. I'm here to help!"

When she returned to the room that she was sharing with Maureen, the latter was there, waiting for her.
"I know what you did," said Maureen to Lucille, "I felt it."

A pause, then, "I approve."

Lucille kissed her, "Of course you did."

They both knew that neither of them would ever do anything that the other wouldn't have done. So they never even needed to ask the other. Which was good, since they were both ladies, creatures, who needed permission from no one. At least, so it seemed.

"Yiyu doesn't want to fight either," said Maureen.

"I can fix that."

"I'd rather you not. Let's give her to Reba."

Lucille cocked her head, visibly perplexed, both at the suggestion itself and that they were not on the same wavelength about it. How could they not already be of one mind on everything?

"We don't need her to win, and I believe her loyalty would be better won by kindness than being forced to fight," said Maureen.

"We don't need loyalty to be earned. I can make them loyal."

"Ah, but that is what Anita did, and look what it's gotten her." Maureen chided, "Besides, Lucy darling, while I know you're no humanitarian, I got involved in this to end the way Anita ruled, not continue it."

"Don't you go soft on me," Lucille warned. She didn't need to say what she'd do if Maureen ever did that.

Luckily, Maureen's shark smile assuaged all her doubts. Maureen might be the nicer of the pair, but she was still no less dangerous, and that was all Lucille needed to know.

***

Rowan was a his/he/him today. Well, tonight; the sun had just gone down. He changed around gender like he changed his clothes, and even if he was a man today, there was still a pair of black silk stockings under the trousers of his dapper suit, and high heels that peeked out from the pants' hems, and so he was very careful in how he walked over the thick grass that surrounded the school. But he had enough experience in them, as well as natural grace galore, he made it just fine without getting them stuck in the dirt.

Call it a way with nature.

He stopped at one particular spot. The rest of the yard surrounding the abandoned school was full of uncut grass and weeds of no remarkable quality whatsoever, but here was a spot that overflowed with exotic growths. Flowers, mushrooms, tangles of vividly alive green thorns, all in a space about as big as oh, say, a grave. And then, a moment later, as Rowan watched, it all began to wilt. The flowers rotted, the mushrooms shriveled up in on themselves, the thorn vines collapsed into gray dust, and a thin, white hand with long fingers reached up out of the ground amidst it all. An arm followed, and a head with long blonde hair, and soon all of Lucretia was coming up from the earth. The dirt fell away from her like water off the back of a waterfowl, not a single speck sticking to her skin or hair, as if she were made of the slickest stone possible. There were plants in her hair too, and wrapped around her body, and they withered away into nothing the moment they touched the air, just as the vegetation had over her 'grave' where she slept for the day. She was naked, her body white and sterile-looking as marble or plastic, and her nudity showed how bizarrely skinny she was; she should have looked emaciated, but she didn't, it looked as if, like a greyhound, this was just how she was supposed to be. It was as if her body, though close to that of a human at first glance, worked on different rules. And perhaps it was simply due to loss of pigment, but her small breasts looked as though they lacked nipples, and though Rowan was not one to stare at such a personal place uninvited, an accidental glance downwards suggested she just might lack genitals. Just might.

More than her Barbie doll body, however, Rowan was curious about the growth and decay of plants, and asked about it. Lucretia, who showed no surprise on having found someone waiting for her to rise, answered that, just as some fear vampires could feed on fear and some lust vampires feed on lust, some vampires of the Earthmover line could, like herself, feed on the energy of the earth itself.

"I drain it out of the plants and fungi and all that which grows from the earth and its energies," she explained further, "And just as lust vampires can raise lust, or fear and rage vampires induce terror and rage, I nourish such things in my slumber, so that I may feed on them when I rise."

"And can all of your kind of vampire do this?"

"Only some Earthmovers, only some."

"I didn't mean Earthmovers."

She looked at him with bland incuriosity, her absurdly large blue eyes blank and placid, and did not respond.

"I don't think you're just a vampire," Rowan pushed, "I think you're one of the things that the vampires like to tell humans don't exist."

Lucretia's expression did not change, nor did her silence.

"I'm not accusing you," Rowan assured, "I simply wanted to know. I'm a friend. I'm like you."

"You are not a vampire."

"No. And I'm not a werefox either." As Rowan said this, he appeared to shift, body changing and clothing tearing, and before Lucretia stood a black fox in the remains of Rowan's suit, a pair of stylish black heels still on its hind paws.

"A very good glamor," said Lucretia approvingly, "And no one ever sensed it, smelled it, not even your fellow therians."

Suddenly, Rowan was standing before her again, form fully human, suit fully intact, saying, "Yes, it goes farther than merely effecting vision. Smell, hearing, even touch, all of those are fooled. Fidget knows, but only because I let him. Gil never had any idea. Lucille does, because, well, her kind just know, don't they?"

"And you conceal it from the others?"

"It's a well-known fey policy that we conceal as much of our existence as possible from Anita. Bad enough that the halfbreeds Magnus and Dorcas drew her attention to us. If I let the others know what I am, she could get the knowledge from then. Tongues loosen absurdly around her. Her kind, you know."

"I know her kind well."

"Well, I suppose that's why Oliver chose you. What I want to know is, are you fey too? One of those few fey vampires that the Council keep secret? Or are you something else? A regular vampire who is simply so old she seems like she was never human at all? Or something stranger still? I cannot tell, even being what I am."

"Well, if I were fey, alive or undead," Lucretia smiled, "I would never give you a straight answer, now would I?"

And that was answer enough for Rowan.

***

As Anita writhed around on silk sheets with so many muscled furry bodies wrapped around her, she screamed my passion to the ceiling and painted her pleasure down their arms in bloody half-moons as each took his turn inside her body.

“So hot!” said Micah in that deep growly male voice that men get during these times because they’re men.

“So wet!” said Nathaniel in the same voice because no matter how submissive they are all men get like that because they are men and men are dominant.

“So tight!” said Crispin, and his voice was like that too because he was also a man.

“No woman has ever liked sex as much as you!” Cynric, who had that voice too, proving he was an adult man, since physical development alone determines that.

“No woman was ever as good in bed as you!” said Domino.

“No woman has ever been kind enough to take me into her bed like you!” said Ethan.

“Well, it might help if you, you know, did something.” said Dev, “Also, Cynric? You’ve never been with another woman, you have no idea about what they’re like. Ethan, your mixed-reed status might make you a pariah among weretigers, but you’re studly by the standards of the entire rest of the country, okay, she’s not a saint for finding you hot. Domino, you told her you were like Ethan, right? Couldn’t get any sex because you were a half-breed? If that were the case, you wouldn’t have much more of a frame of reference than Cynric to judge by, but, well, that’s not what happened and I think Anita should know. Anita, Dom’s not a half-breed. He’s a regular white tiger who just has really heavy striping. That’s why he has hair that’s a pretty even mix of black and white. The reason he didn’t get laid is he was kind of an asshole in his clan from what I’ve heard. Plus, he just automatically gave you the sort of sob story you seem to like after you ate his mind and bound him to you because, well, that’s what we do when you do that.”

Everything stopped. Everyone looked at him. He knew it had been a bad idea to speak up, but now that he had started, he decided to finish.

“I’m sorry, I’d just like to have some actual sex instead of basically boning a pillow. That’s what it’s like, she just lies there and scratches and sure I cum but that’s not super hard to make a guy do, you know?” said Dev, “And the commentary you guys give didn’t used to bug me, but I can’t take anymore. It’s so much bullshit that I’m actually getting turned-off. I didn’t want to say anything, but poly is all about communication, so…”

This probably would have gotten very nasty for Dev very fast if Jean-Claude had not chosen then to enter the bedchamber. After giving Anita her requisite five minutes to go over every detail of his appearance and outfit, he spoke, “Ma petite, I am sorry to interrupt, and even sorrier not to join, but there is an urgent matter which requires the skill of the Executioner. Please, come avec moi."

Dev took this opportunity to just slip out of the bedroom past Jean-Claude. He knew how risky what he'd just done had been, and now more than ever it was clear your had to keep your head down or else you might end up like Damian, but...

All his life, Dev had been deprived of options. He had been bred like a beast by the Harlequin, raised for the pleasure of powerful vampires, and handed off from Jake to Anita like a farmer selling a piece of a livestock. He had never minded, either. It was all he had known, all he had been taught to expect. It had been the same once he was in Anita's possession as well: he was an object, a pet, and he had a Master and rules that he had to live by, and that was that. Options? Options were not an option. Nor were choices, nor was whatever he might wants. He had barely even had wants, in fact, because they were just so irrelevant to his actual existence that he barely had had the capacity to dream of them. Even less so after Micah and Anita had warped his mind so as to make him a 'better' harem addition for them.

But then the New York rebels had come to town, and they had made it known that options were what they offered. The option of getting away from Anita, of CHOOSING to do that rather than it simply happening to him, the option to decide for himself who he sided with, if he could...and, more and more lately, it seemed he could. More and more, he could feel his old self coming back, from before he had been bonded to Anita and his very thought processes changed to suit her. And so more and more, he found himself realizing how wrong everything was. Some in little ways, minor irritations like what he had expressed in the bedroom, but some in very big ways, ways that even with his upbringing he still understood were wrong, fucked up, monstrous. He didn't dare say anything about the bigger ways, not alone, but he was hoping that maybe if he started to remark on the smaller things, other people would too, and they could go from there. He couldn't run to the New Yorkers while he was still tied to Anita (he didn't know how Yiyu had done it, but he thought it had something to do with the fact that Anita hadn't even realized she was gone yet, but would eventually realize if a penis had strayed from the herd) and he wasn't sure he necessarily wanted to join up with them either, not until he knew more about them. He'd hate to go from the frying pan to the fire, after all.

Meanwhile, after Dev had left the bedroom, another weretiger entered. It was Victor, prince of the White Tiger Clan, and he glanced around to be sure that Jean-Claude was no longer there before he came in, as he could smell the vampire's recent presence. Jean-Claude, however, had left to give Anita time--which she needed copious amounts of for everything, as the whole Circus knew--to get out of bed, get dressed, optionally shower (god, it reeked in here from the sex and Victor knew she probably didn't care that she did too), and put on a ton of weapons while listing the make and model of each even though she was unlikely to actually use a single one. She was starting just this as Victor entered, and he couldn't help thinking that any occasion which caused for so much artillery was not an occasion you should also wear such high heels to. But, unlike Dev, he knew to keep his mouth shut on such things, and, not even acknowledging the other men in the room (no more than one would, say, acknowledge a rack of dildos) he addressed Anita. She started to say something about how they couldn't do sex now, no, really, they couldn't, totally not a chance, nudge nudge hint hint

Since Victor's goal was to stop her from going with Jean-Claude, he obliged, and the other men just sort of ceased to exist. They were still technically there, but, much like guards and other bystanders when Anita started humping someone, they just tried to imitate furniture as much as possible, which made Anita forget they were there. Much like a T-rex, if you didn't speak or move, she no longer registered you at all. Given how long sex with Anita typically lasted, the time it took to bone her also didn't alarm Jean-Claude that his 'ma petite' was going to be stalled and then stopped entirely, if Victor had anything to do with it. He didn't have all the details, but his mother had told him that Jean-Claude mustn't be allowed to take Anita to whatever it was he was going to, and while Victor's first loyalty was to his father, he assumed that his mother and father had the same motives and goals in this, that to do as one said was to also serve the other.

Victor was very, very wrong in this. Because Bibiana knew full well where his loyalties lay, and since her goal was to use Anita to break her bonds with Victor's father, which would very much NOT be in Maximillian Bellici's best interest, she let Victor believe his silly idea. Otherwise, he wouldn't go to stop Anita from going to her destruction, now would he? Yes, it had been Bibi who had planted the bug on Jean-Claude, unbeknownst to the vampire, and she was enraged that he was going to welch on his half of the deal by letting his Human Servant be stripped from him and destroyed before she could free Bibiana from her own vampire Master/husband. Sure, if it turned out this Maureen could break bonds too, maybe she could do it instead, but what if she couldn't and Anita was simply killed instead, losing Bibi's chance forever? And if Maureen could, well...Lucille's people had no reason to do Bibi any favors, not when the white tigers were allies to Jean-Claude.

So when Victor had finished, he told her, "Jean-Claude sent me to tell you that the crisis has been averted, you need not go."

"Yeah Anita, don't go," said a voice from the doorway. It was Richard. He had returned, and he smelled...curious. Sterile, almost. Like he had done something to take all previous scents off him....

His presence set off Anita like a mad dog. Instantly she was sniping at him even from underneath Victor, simultaneously chewing him out for having been missing in such a critical time while also trying to seduce him in the most vitriolic way possible. She pretty clearly wanted him back out of sheer spite, but she wanted him to be the one that came begging her. And Richard played right into it, feeding her back exactly what she wanted to hear, and before Victor knew it, Richard was pushing and pushing for Anita to do as Victor had asked and not go with Jean-Claude...so naturally that was exactly what she did, and all of Victor's coaxing and attempts at distraction were for naught, she was out the door past Richard to go to her vampire Master...and her doom.

Richard grinned, and Victor realized with horror that this was exactly what the Wolf King wanted.

***
Jean-Claude had Anita drive to an area just northeast of downtown, where the hustle and bustle of the city almost immediately became the stark silence of desertion. They parked the car beside, and walked on to, one of the squares that made up the St. Louis "urban prairies": a long flat expanse of grass interrupted only here and there by the odd abandoned building. She had asked earlier about bringing guards, but he had spoken of how this was something only she could do, how she didn't need the added trouble of making sure no one else got killed (since she was, after all, really the only competent person on the planet, was she not?), and all the other things she liked to hear of that nature, and soon enough she was in fact ready to argue *him* down about the idea instead of vice versa. Naturally, she thought the plan to go as a lone duo was all hers now.

"So, what is it?" Anita asked. He had kept her in suspense the entire car ride. As if in answer, a sleek and expensive car pulled up soundlessly out of the darkness on the opposite end of the vast green square, and two women emerged from it: Lucille and Maureen. Having already mentally picked Lucille's appearance to pieces in their previous encounters, Anita honed in on this newcomer. Unlike Lucille, where her focus was on how different the tall blonde was from herself, curves aside, when it came to Maureen Anita instead seethed over how similar she was to herself: petite, black-haired, pale skinned, perfect pinup figure. Everything Anita saw herself as. But she also saw herself as superior still, and she convinced herself that the other's raven hair was in fact a mere dark brown, that her porcelain pallor had a hint more color and a blemish here and there and was mostly due to makeup anyway, that her waist not as small, her bust not as big, her booty very much a white girl booty. All false, but what Anita saw and what was there was always so very different...and usually, what was there would become what she saw. Not so with Maureen though. Anita had no such power of her and her sister SUE Lucille. It was what Jean-Claude was counting on.

When they got close enough for Anita to mentally catalog their outfits, with emphatic inner envious disgust at how stylish and sensual and fashionable and feminine they were, she drew her gun, "Stop right there, or I fire!"

Lucille gave her a curious look, "Are you serious? It didn't work on you when I did it, what makes you think it will work on me? Or are you still catching on to the fact you're not so unique anymore?"

"It does seem to take her awhile, doesn't it, love?" Maureen said to Lucille, though very much so Anita could hear, "Honestly, you two have been out this how long and she hasn't figure out how it works even a little? Perhaps you actually did manage some permanent damage in her brain with that bullet."

"What doesn't kill you can still hurt like a bitch!" Anita proclaimed, not lowering her weapon.

"Maureen, Lucille," said Jean-Claude, "When can you begin?"

"Right now," they said together, and took a simultaneous step inwards towards one another, as their respective iris colors took over their entire eyeballs.

"Wait," said Jean-Claude, "May I have a word with her first?"

Anita turned to face Jean-Claude, and found his face fixed in a horrific smirk of hate.

"Anita...ma petite...how long I have wanted to say this to you..."

She didn't even looked confused. She looked expectant of the usual compliments, in fact, the toadying he'd been doing for years to keep her complacent. Even now, there was not the slightest suspicion. in her face, and she was not one who could hide anything from him. And then, so as not to waste time, so as not to give her the chance to catch on and react, he told her what he wanted to in a mere thought, not so much a telepathic message as a sudden dumping of instantaneous understanding into her brain. He told her how she had never tamed him, never had his heart. How it was but a prolonged act to gain access to her powers and bind those to him. He told her how he thought of her as nothing but a brainless whore with no power over what was between her legs, and that was why he dressed and displayed her as such to others at every opportunity, and how he knew that way she loved it and that disgusted him, and proved that she deserved such treatment and worse. How poor she was at sex, how dull in all regards in and outside the bed, how her taste in everything from men to fashion was a travesty even by his own overly-camp standards, how he hated to be near her because it made his very brain ache to share her thoughts and hear her words, how he had known her for what she was at the very moment she crossed his path---a great fool, but a great tool.

This was the last thing he wanted to use their bond for before it was broken, the last thing he wanted her to know before she died. All this, she learned in a mere moment, a split-second, and then Maureen was between them, her hands on their arms, connecting them metaphysically through her own body. Anita was vaguely aware of a screech of wheels as a third car, and a fourth and fifth, swung off the nearby road and careened on to the grass, vaguely aware at the sounds of shouting as the white weretigers within piled out and ran towards them. Perhaps if she'd had any ability to concentrate, her Master of Tigers powers could have saved them when Lucille, not allowing them to interrupt, turned her own Padma-line abilities against them to make them stop in their tracks and then fall belly-up on the ground in submission, looking all the more absurd in this because they were mostly human-formed. But she didn't. Anita had just faced an absolute onslaught of the one thing that hurt her most, the one thing that SUEs were truly weak against, the thing that their powers always tried to suppress and warp and deflect the most: the truth. She was stunned from the inside out, and could do nothing as Maureen held the bond between her and Jean-Claude inside herself, like a bead strung on a length of string held between two people, and tampered with it. Then it ceased being like a string, and became a suction, and Anita was aware, terribly painfully agonizingly aware of ever power she had siphoning swiftly out of her and along the current of metaphysical energy into Jean-Claude. Then, abruptly, it stopped. The current was cut, out, gone.

The bond was severed.

Anita dropped down to her knees in the grass, her eyes wide, glassy, staring at nothing.

There was silence and stillness in the air for a moment. The white weretigers stared, waiting, afraid. Jean-Claude looked down at his hands, feeling the mass of new power burning all over within him like lightning. He grinned.

And then he exploded into a million bloody shreds, splattering everybody.

***
Richard decided to have Damian and Hiero escorted out of the Circus in the least suspicious way: blatantly and openly. Making absolutely no attempt to hide what they were doing, he and his werewolves walked up through the Circus stairs and maze-like corridors towards the exit, Hiero and Damian in their center midst. The only aspect of disguise was that both men had their hands bound, Damian's with super-strong silver-plated chains and crosses. The intent was that anyone who saw them would assume that the witch and vampire were still very much prisoners, and whatever was going on must obviously be going on by the authority of Jean-Claude and Anita...both of whom were conveniently out of the place and thus unable to contradict this.

Everything was going just fine, except that, when they were halfway out, Richard dropped down dead.

"Shit!" Jamil exclaimed, "Someone offed Jean-Claude!"

"Or Anita," said Clay, kneeling down by Richard, "It must have been Lucille."

Jamil shook his head, "You can't off Anita. As for Jean-Claude, Lucille knows killing him would kill Richard, and Richard is on her side now, why would she do that? I think Anita killed him."

"You don't know Lucille," piped up Hiero, "If it benefited her to kill Jean-Claude, she'd happily do it without caring about what happened to Richard. Especially if she thinks she'd have the werewolves on her side regardless."

"Well, she's right," said Shang-Da bitterly as he got down to pick up his fallen Ulfric, "I don't fucking care who we have to side with anymore to stick it to that bitch."

He and Jamil carried Richard between as they proceeded the rest of the way out of the Circus.

Out of the Circus forever.

***

"He wasn’t a SUE, he couldn’t contain the power of one", said one of the women behind Anita. She wasn't sure which, she was staring soundlessly at the bloody spot on the grass where Jean-Claude had been, at the scraps of his frilly shirt and leather pants that lay here and there in the gore.

"We knew it would happen."

"That it wouldn’t defeat you, or even help in it."

"But we wanted to get rid of him."

"Because we just don’t like him."

"He’s so tacky."

"And that accent is so fake."

"Don’t be upset, Anita dear, we clearly did you a favor."

"You heard all his thoughts."

"So did we when we touched the link to break it."

"And even though he’s not wrong about you.."

"...You should still thank us."

Anita wheeled around in fury, her eyes wild, her hands hooked over like claws, and she jumped to her feet howling, "Whores!"

It might not make sense to most people that this would be the first thing she would use to describe the women who had engineered the murder of one of her lovers, but it was the worst insult Anita had in her vocabulary: a word that meant both a woman, and someone who had sex. A sex-having woman. The worst possible thing, much worse than a murderer, and thus the only word that could convey her rage. That rage spread from her to the weretigers that Bibiana had sent to stop this, to stop Anita from being destroyed as was 'supposed' to happen, and some began to open fire at Lucille and Maureen, while others shifted in a flow of fur and flesh and sprung towards them, Anita's will and hate and anger and wounded pride filling their minds through her link to them as Master of Tigers.

Lucille took the bullets, healing them instantaneously. She wasn't sure yet if Maureen had come fully into her own SUE abilities to do the same, and as she healed, she herself began to shift, and the sight was so stunning to Anita that the weretigers were stunned too through her, so much so they stopped, overcome by the energy pouring off of her, energy that Anita had only felt once before, and only, she realized now, as a pale shadow...

Before them all now stood a gigantic sabre-toothed cat, bigger than any real one had ever been, bigger than a Kodiak bear, bigger than a rhinocerus, its shoulder easily a few heads taller than Maureen. It was beautiful, with a coat like that of a clouded leopard in gold and cream. The white weretigers drew back around Anita, shielding her, and both Maureen and the were-smiledon Lucille sneered. This re-ignited Anita's fury, and she thrust her power at them through the weretigers, which attacked, and with her elemental powers, which shook the earth and engulfed her opponents in flames.

It did nothing. Lucille, burning and yet unharmed, leaped upon the smaller therians and dispatched them as easily as a terrier would vermin. Maureen, similarly unharmed, shook her flaming hair like a model in a shampoo commercial, and the fire was extinguished without her scalp or skin or even clothing being so much as singed.

"You can't hurt us," she said, "Let's find out if we can hurt you."

***

Lucretia jerked her head up as she received the words she'd been waiting for from Mr. Oliver in her mind. It was time. She then forwarded the command to all of Lucille's forces, and wherever they were, they all knew what to do: To divide themselves, for some to go the urban prairie where Anita was, and for some to the Circus of the Damned.

Klaus, Gideon, Armel, Max, Edgar, Hank, Fidget, and the Red Clan tigers would go to the Circus, so as not to fall to Anita's power as Master of Tigers. Astrid, Cefyn, Tung, Fell, and Mitria would also go to the Circus, as would half the werehyena and wererat combatants. Edgar and Max had tried to persuade Hank to stay at the school where it was safe, but he would likewise not relent, refusing to leave either of them to fight without him, useless though he too felt that he was.

Rowan, Ghislaine, Wander, Cornelius, Sig, Odette, Melanie, Lucretia, and the other half of the werehyena and wererat fighters would go to where Lucille and Maureen were facing off with their fellow SUE. Emily and Victoria were not going anywhere, but Victoria's clockwork butterfly contraptions were going with both groups. As with Hank and Max and Edgar, both of the mermaids tried to get Odette to stay out of the actual battle, as did Eva (who was also staying behind) and Max and Sig, but Odette insisted that it was the role of the Herald to be there when other members of the Flock did battle, and Sig, as the Swan Prince of the New York City Flock, knew this and had to give in.

And though Lucretia did not tell them, they all inherently knew that this was it, this was what they had come for: the final battle.