SUE VS SUE: FINALE!

[a_sporking_rat]

This is it, folks! The last segment of SUE VS SUE! I would like to thank everyone for reading and commenting and following it thus far, as well as the creation of so many donated characters for its used. For this section in particular, credit must be given to writtenelision; without going into spoilers, everything that Lucretia reveals to Lucille and Maureen was writtenelision's idea.

Odile (" the tiny brunette holding the battle-axe...screaming a Norse battle-cry"), Odette, Hank, Fidget, Victoria, Emily, Maureen, Simon, and Rowan also belong to writtenelision
Edgar/Aggie, Sig, Tom Sallow, and Astrid belong to cygnusrex
Cefyn belongs to wickedgrayson
Sadhya belongs to Phoenixofborg
Wander and Ghislaine belong to wandering worlds
Tung belongs to Tungsten monk
Mitria belongs to mitrian
Ufa belongs to uf_addict
Nan belongs to nanoquill
Anyone else who isn't AB canon belongs to me



The refugees had not simply been dumped into New York City and then left to their own devices with no aid; living arrangements, some temporary, some possibly permanent, had been made for them. For instance, Yiyu was staying with Sandhya's Streak, and Gil was rotating among members of the snakes, swans, and rats who could take on a temporary housemate until he found lodging.

And Valentina got a place of honor: Maureen's own home, with her family. Lucille had insisted, and Maureen certainly wasn't going to say no as soon as she say the little cherub. This decision was, in fact, less disastrous than one would have thought. In fact, it seemed to be a perfect fit so far.

Simon was currently playing with Thomas and Valentina. While he was a terrible little snob to most others, he, like his mother and Lucille, had a very big soft spot for children and animals. He was a sharp lad as well, and was starting already to pick up that Valentina was not a mental child like she pretended, but since acting like her physical age seemed to make her happy, he went along with it, since, again, he liked children and would rather interact with a person who behaved as a child. He was also aware of her sadistic tendencies, which the family had been warned about before taking her in, but since clearly his mother didn't think she was a danger to him or Thomas or Delilah, Simon didn't worry about it. Mother was never wrong. He expected Valentina was probably smart enough to know that hurting the children of Maureen and Lucille, even such a vulnerable target as Delilah, was a bad move on her part, and given how old she was, she was not a vampire given to making bad moves. Plus, Thomas shared her sadism, as it turned out, and Simon had to be sure to keep an eye on them to make sure they didn't terrorize small animals in the garden or the like. Again, he liked animals, though if they'd gone after grown people his only concern would have been that they might get themselves or his family into trouble with the law. Simon was funny like that.

As for Delilah, even though she was much more mentally immature than her body suggested, let alone her actual chronological age, she fancied herself a Mature Adult as compared to "babies" like Valentina and Thomas, and thus made something of a show of not having anything to do with them because she was far too Mature and Adult to trifle with such children when she had such important Mature and Adult things to do. Naturally, this was quite amusing to Valentina, while Simon found it cute. Thomas was still immature himself enough to be insulted by it, but that would pass in time when he realized one could never take anything Dolly said too seriously. Especially with how weird she'd been lately. Weirder than usual, that is. For instance, it was weird when she opened the nursery doors, because, again, she didn't like to have anything to do with "little kids" and "babies" as she called them, and never came to join Simon in playing with them. Weirder still, she thrust them open almost with fanfare, whereas usually she slipped about like a shadowy little ghost. And she did not enter the nursery, but stood there in the doorway, and spoke, her eyes raised to the ceiling, her tone between that of an announcement and a choir, "Do you hear Her?"

This sort of nonsensical outburst was still something of a novelty to Valentina, who, hiding her amusement, politely prompted Delilah to continue, to explain. She did, stepping further into the room, her arms out, her eyes entreating as she rambled breathlessly, "While we're here on the other side of her midnight, there's a conclusion, a revolution, a willing coalition, because our mother knows how the bugle blows, violent and delicious souls, just a little confusion on where their heads have been...their potion will be a poison, and we'll all let their darkness invade us on the other side of right...don't be afraid...In Excelsias Dea!"

"Yes, I think Mother and Aunt Lucy are probably doing a splendid job and should be home soon," said Simon in reply.

"Yes. Yes, they've gone Andromeda. Ruler of men, ruler of all. Holding my tears because they're still on this side. In pairs, they know how to get nasty, like girls I've stood with before, so I know somewhere someone must know the ending, and that girl will be gone, the one who would pit woman against feminist, because the truth melts her magic, always."

That last line, that bit about the truth, was a quote from The Last Unicorn. She loved that book, she loved unicorns, and she was a little like the butterfly from that tale herself, only able to repeat bits of songs and stories to make herself understood. Something about the insanity her death and resurrection and vampirism had inflicted on her had messed with the bits of her brain concerned with language, the parts that pieced together the right words to convey a certain thought or idea or message, and now Delilah couldn't do that anymore, hadn't been able to since she'd been turned, for over a hundred years. Her brain would only be able to pick out, say, the third best word for what she meant, or some word that the best word reminded her of, so it was like she spoke in code and metaphors and just plain nonsense, and it when it wasn't that, it was regurgitations of others people's words in place of her own, because her own were poor or weak or just plain inaccessible, unable to make the journey from her mind to her mouth.

"She is risen, She is risen!"

***
The rebels arrived at the Circus just as the werewolves had gotten Hiero, Damian, and Richard's body out its doors. Immediately, they cut the bonds of Hiero and Damian so that they could join the assault, and tried to put Richard's body aside in the most respectful way they had time for. Richard's body, however, had other ideas; it suddenly rose to its feet, jerking its limbs as it moved, and lurched towards them. No one thought he was alive, though, as their enhanced senses told them he was still very much dead.

"Bitch brought him back!" snarled Jamil as he looked at the walking meat-puppet that had once been his beloved Ulfric, "She can't even let him go when he's dead!"

"Somebody put him down once and for all," said Shang-Da, disgusted.

"Happy to oblige," said Fidget, stepping forward with his flamethrower, but as he reached to turn it on, Shang-Da, despite what he had just said, jumped in front of it.

"What are you doing?! Only fire takes care o' zombies, everyone knows that!"

"He's Lukoi! And an Ulfric! The way of the pack is to eat him, so he becomes munin, and lives on through us all! We can't do that if he's ash!"

"Well, you can't do it when he's a zombie either, because they stay animate even if you chop 'em up to little bits! You want undead meat jumping around in your stomach to Anita pulling the strings?"

"They stay animate...if the animator keeps animating them," cut in Hank, nervous at interrupting, and looking even more nervously at the corpse of Richard, which was being held back from attacking them by several of his former Pack. "If we wait until Lucille and Maureen can defeat Anita, then he'll stop being a zombie, since she won't have the power to animate his body anymore. And then you can...you know..."

He gulped, but they all did indeed know. And didn't see why he was squeamish, since real rats ate their dead as a matter of course, in order to avoid the scent of rot drawing predators towards their nest. But then, the NYC bunch in general seemed to be possessed of the curious opinion that they were defined by their individuality and personality rather than whatever therianthropy they happened to be infected with. How very odd, no? Why, Hank here even preferred to wear boxers when in rat form, and certainly didn't strut around nude! Still, even if they were a bunch of weirdos in the eyes of St. Louis, and Hank a wimpy prude especially, he had a good idea.

"What do we do with him till then?" asked Graham, who had the zombie in a headlock and was trying to avoid its teeth. "Is it okay to chop him up? I mean, we could still eat the pieces..."

"You're going to be the one in pieces yourself!" Micah had emerged from the doors of the Circus, and he didn't look surprised to see the rebels, "I knew you were up to something, you lupine bastards, and now that Richard is dead, guess what, you're all mine!"

He clearly believed that, Anita being Anita, she'd maintain her claim to being queen of the werewolves along with everything else, and what was hers was Micah's make no mistake. No one had the chance to contradict him, though, since that was when the Circus snipers on the roof opened fire on the rebels while Micah laughed from the doorstep, guards pouring out all around him, heavily armed, to fight them as well. The wave of wereleopards, werelions, and red weretigers met against the wave of wererats, werehyenas, werewolves, and white weretigers with the rebels among them.

Bullets were everywhere, but Wicked and Truth, being high-fantasy knockoffs, fought with swords, back to back, striking in a circle around themselves, deflecting bullets with their blades because they were of a lost line of super-fast vampires but also because IT'S COOL AND THE ONLY WAY TO ACCOUNT FOR WHY SOMEONE DOESN'T JUST SHOOT 'EM OK? Astrid and Cefyn saw this, and fought their way to the pair, leaping at them, Astrid to Wicked and Cefyn to Truth, their own equally old-timey weapons out, and they quartet began fighting furiously like a Lord of the Rings tag team event. Wicked and Truth might be, according to Anita, the best warriors of their kind, but Astrid and Cefyn were Dragon-line ladies, and even before their deaths they had been, respectively, a Viking and a Pict. In short, you don't fuck with these two, not even if you're thinly-veiled expies of Aragorn and Legolas. Steel clanged against steel, thrusts (NO NOT THOSE KIND) were parried and evaded, the men ducked swings, the women dodged blows, neither able to stop or slow for even the smallest of split-seconds lest they lose a limb or worse. Some others from both sides tried to enter the fight, but it was impossible to do without getting hurt themselves in the process, and so their battle was given a wide berth indeed.

The other vampires were finding Sig and Odette in particular to be a formidable pair themselves. Vampires, you see, are vulnerable to belief. Anything a person believes in, truly has faith in, becomes an anti-vampire weapon. And part of the job of the Herald in swanmane Flocks was to believe in the other members of the Flock. Odette was a very, very good Herald, and Sig was shining with her belief, his entire body glowing white as if he were a man-shaped star...a very tall man-shaped star that looked a lot like Stephen Merchant. Simply getting within range of his light caused the vampires to recoil, and they burned wherever he touched them. Odette's faith spread also to his skill with guns, and so when he fired, the bullets that came from his gun had the same effects on the vampires as if they had been blessed by a priest or made from sacred silver. One of the vampires who knew the ways of swanmanes, who knew someone, some Herald, must be believing in this Swan Prince for him to shine like this, to be able to do these things, left the mob and went in search of the source that was powering him. He found her, a little blonde girl hiding in the carnival section of the Circus, close enough to see her Prince fighting. She cowered before the vampire when he found her, frozen, unable to flee because it would break her concentration on believing absolutely in Sig, but her fear was already making her falter, making Sig's light start to flicker on and off...and soon it would go out forever, with the death of the girl.

At least, that was what the vampire thought just before a sword pierced him through his back and came out the other end, skewering his heart.

"Birdy!" Odette exclaimed as the tall blonde androgyne in the dapper suit behind the vampire withdrew his/her blade and the body fell to the ground. She threw her hands around the neck of her savior, who hugged her back with a guttural cry of "Cygnet!" and both this newcomer and Sig flared brighter than ever, a stunning silvery-white, as did the sudden surge of swans overhead. The Red Clan had not just used their secret routes to get refugees out of St.Louis, they had used it to bring reinforcements from New York into the city as well, and the entire Flock of New York City had just arrive! Some of the swanmanes were shifted, and they swooped down upon the battle with grenades of holy water, or to attack therian enemies on Anita's side, while others, like Gaspard (the one who had just saved Odette) were in human form, such as the tiny brunette holding the battle-axe that was dropped, screaming a Norse battle-cry, by one of the shifted swans from above into the melee.

"Oh, Odile's here too!" said Odette happily, recognizing her sister.

"Yes, we brought the whole family," said Gaspard, smiling and still holding her, "We even brought...Roy."

"Roy?" Odette's eyes widened, and it was hard to tell if it was in eagerness or fear.

"Yes," Gaspard tapped Odette's nose affectionately, "He's going to see Anita."

Odette was not the only one in need of a rescue. Hiero, panicked and confused and defenseless, had no idea what to do. He hit the dirt, covering his head, knowing his magic couldn't shield him from guns. He screamed and recoiled, ready to beg for his life, when someone grabbed at him, but when he looked up he saw Edgar, his friend. Without asking questions, he let the weresnake help him up and got to his feet, and they started trying to make their way out of the melee without getting irreparably hurt. Max joined them, so that while Edgar shielded Hiero with his body as much as he could, since his therian healing could allow him to survive non-silver bullets, Max walked in front of the pair and fought a path through the mob for them, while Hank tailed right behind in rat form so he could bite the hell out of anyone who tried to touch his Edgar.

Fidget too was clearing a path of his own, and considering it was with his flamethrower, everyone was quick to get out of his way without opposition. He, however, was headed towards the Circus instead of away from it. He made it in, and continue to fight his way further and further down, unafraid of using fire in such close quarters, and planting the butterfly bombs made by Victoria along the way as he went...

The clockwork butterfly bombs were essentially a lightweight brass flamework in the shape off, of course, a butterfly, with blue plastic filling in the wings that looked beautifully like stained-glass window in miniature, and a glowing blue power core of pure concentrated magic as the abdomen of the butterfly. This powered them, enabling them to fly, and they could be bespelled to target other magical things, to hone in on specific types of supernatural energy; in this case, anyone whose energy had been touched by Anita's. The pretty little bombs would hurl themselves downwards at the targets, also careful to avoid anything that was NOT a target so there was less chance of friendly fire, and exploded, releasing whatever was in the cannister that made up their thorax: holy water, silver shrapnel, or just plain fire and explosives.

Victoria had also created, with the aid of Fidget and Wander, a kind of similar clockwork jetpack that contained little flamethrower which could be fired by whatever was wearing it. What was wearing it was a team of cats and small dogs, mentally controlled by Armel, who used his power to guide their paws to push this or that button to steer themselves as they flew through the air overhead, commanding them to bite upon the little stick in their mouth that fired the weapons. On the ground, he also commanded a bunch of deer and larger dogs with flamethrowers on their backs, courtesy of Fidget, constructed in such a way that the jets of flame shot far away from the animals themselves and they could not be burned by their own weapons as they ran about through the melee firing on Anita's forces. But just as someone had figured out there must be someone behind Sig's anti-vampire glow, someone realized there must be a Padma-vampire psychically piloting these animals, and Armel, absorbed in concentration, didn't realize he was under attack until it was too late and he was pinned to the ground by the throat.

"I really hate you Padma-lines," said Bibiana, raising her other hand high as it shifted into claws, "Or any vampire that controls tigers, really."

Armel had time to wince and look away as those claws came down to take his entire face off, but when her hand was halfway down Bibiana was knocked off of him by a divebombing swan from above. She was sent rolling aside, just in time to see what was happening amidst the other tigers. Klaus and Gideon were spots of white and orange in the army of reds going against Bibiana's own whites, and she felt hot anger at the traitor till she felt Lucille's energy in him, and understood. It could not be helped, though, she'd have to take him down herself, but as she tried to get to Klaus, she stumbled upon another battle: Julia had cornered Victor, and Bibi realized that she had also turned traitor, turned to Lucille, and she felt no energy from Lucille in Julia either, so it was by choice. Bibi could understand her grudge against Victor, and turned aside, even as Victor, scenting his mother, cried out for her. It was in vain; Victor might have done as she said recently, but his track record had been against her, in favor of his father, and she would not answer his claims to her maternity now. There were others more worthy of saving. The goldens, last of their kind, and Cynric, last of his. They were not her clan, but they were her species, and it was her duty to help preserve their kind.

Dev, Envy, Pride, and the other golden weretigers were trying to hold the weretigers in Anita's harem back from fighting, trying to talk them out of this, Dev himself struggling as much with himself and Anita's inner hold on him as he was with theirs. Crispin, Domino, Ethan, and Cynric weren't having any of it, however, and it looked like that was at least partly a choice for some of them.

"Listen to me, you don't need to be trapped like this with her, Maureen can---"

"I trapped her, you idiot!" Ethan retorted as he went hand to clawed hand with Dev, "I was a nobody in my clan and I knew the best way to get power was through boning her! She waltzed in there and I sucked up like a hoover, next thing I know I've got special protected status! I get to waltz into St. Louis and everyone gets out of my way because they know I can just whine to her if they don't! And she doesn't even wanna fuck me that much, it's great!"

"You want out, go ahead," said Crispin, jumping on Pride from behind, "Less competition for us!"

Domino, at least, looked as if they might be getting through to him. His mind might have been altered by Anita when she bound him to her, but his memories hadn't been. He recalled how he'd wanted nothing to do with her, how irritating he'd found her when she'd come to pay a visit to the White Clan, barging in there with her gun demanding to see Bibiana with them in tow, entitled and pushy, and then, then she'd decided to eat his anger, and she said she'd done that so she wouldn't do anything else to him, to avoid enslaving him, and he didn't know if that were true or not and he didn't care. She'd done it as an attack, as a punishment, against his consent, to hurt him for not fawning over like Ethan had at first sight, and then he was trapped with her forever, and he couldn't do anything about it so he'd just tried to live with it, adjust to it, stay out of her sight and thus out of her mind and thus out of her bed, but now...now there might be a way out that didn't involve eating a bullet...if only he could fight the bonds on his own mind, his own soul, to accept...

Maybe he would have lost. Maybe he would have won. It will never be known, because before another second had passed, Rafael and Lisandro had intervened in the fight and put Crispin, Domino, and Ethan all out of their misery forever. Dev seemed to be sucessfully resisting Anita's control, as evident by how he had been trying to persuade the others to as well, so they spared him, but Cynric...Bibiana was in half-shifted form, shielding Cynric, having taken the bullet meant for his head in her shoulder instead as she hunched over him.

"Step aside, tiger queen," said Lisandro, stepping forward, "We have to take out everyone who's in Anita's power, to weaken her as much as possible. There's nothing you can do."

"You let Mephistopheles stand!" snarled Bibiana, not letting go of Cynric.

"Mephisto can be saved," said Rafael, having picked up Wander's nickname for him, "Already he fights his bond, and the power it gives to her. But the boy is too far gone. He's like her lion, her Bride, more than the other Therian Servants are. He'll die anyway when she does."

"Cynric can be saved too! He is the last blue male, and he must be, for the sake of his species, his clan, he---"

"You want to keep him alive just to breed him out like a stud animal?!" Rafael had been calm and cool before, but now he erupted in anger, pointing his gun, clearly willing now to shoot through the Chang without hesitation.

"He can be saved though, I said!" Bibiana did not step aside, "Lucille's necromancer, she can break the bonds, can't she?"

Rafael looked suspicious, "How do you know about Maureen?"

Bibiana did not answer. Instead, she grabbed Cynric, who was still trying to rejoin the fight, in her mouth by his neck like a real tiger with a cub, and bounded away through the melee. Rafael tried to follow, but could not clear the crowd as her huge hybrid form could, and gave up. Poor Cynric would, as he had said, die anyway. He had only wanted to give him the mercy of a quick bullet to the head rather than the horror of being dragged down with Anita.

Anita's weretigers were not the only Servants of her that had lost control of themselves. Jason, Damian, and Nicky were all fighting as well against the rebel forces, hard as Damian, like Domino, struggled inside against it. They had been met by the experimental trio: Tung, Fell, and Mitria. Nicky, in lion-man form, was taking on Fell, who was also in hybrid form, and finding it harder than he thought it would be to fight a were-platypus. Her tail slapped him aside every time he tried to lunge at her, and once he was down she would be upon him, clawing at him with the great spurs on her heels. And while in nature, the poison of the spurs was found only in those of the male platypus, but the lab that had created these three had decided to go on and change that, as long as they were making new breeds anyway. So not only was each of Fell's stabbing spur blows painful in itself, it left more painful poison still in Nicky after each blow was struck, and as they pair fought, one could actually see the stab sites on his body swelling with fluid. Jason, in full wolf form, was having almost as much problems with Mitria the were-armadillo. She didn't have poisonous spurs, but she had incredible claws, and, just as Fell could counter any attack by Nicky with her tail, Mitria could defend from everything Jason could dish out by curling into an armored ball.

Tung was currently un-shifted, and warding off Damian's attacks with one of her great Indian swords, but not actually attacking him, only blocking and defending. She could tell he was beyond his own control, and held out the hope that he could be helped. All of a sudden, he stopped fighting, stood still in his tracks, his entire force of will focused solely inward, fighting Anita inside as hard as he could. Tung was hopeful, but also not foolish, and she used this time to take on her own hybrid form. She started to get taller, and bigger, towering at eight feet or more, becoming huge through the shoulders and arms, her entire body all muscle. Her head changed shape, growing lots of sharp teeth in its massive mouth, and a protuberance began to grown out of her back, a fin, and her skin changed to black and white. Tung's therian species was finally clear for all the world to see: SHE WAS A FREAKING WERE-ORCA!

It was a good thing she'd transformed when she did, for just as she had finished, Damian lunged at her, having lost his battle within. Tung raised neither arms nor weapons in defense; she simply bit his head off as he came. As she spat it back out beside his still-twitching lifeless body, she wondered if he hadn't known she was going to do that, if he hadn't decided to make the suicide lunge for that very reason during his last moment of control. The thought filled her with such rage, not against him but for him, for what he had been driven to, that she fell upon Nicky, finishing off what Fell had started, ripping his limbs from his body and then plunging her kukri through his back, through his heart, as Fell shoved her spur into his eye, filling his brain with poison. Jason tried to take Tung down then, lunging on her back where she could not reach him, biting and clawing at her thick black whale flesh. Fell and Mitria tried to get him off, but Tung pushed them away, and then slammed her back into the ground, crushing the werewolf to a pulp beneath her immense orca-woman mass.

Meanwhile, Nathaniel and Micah had decided to get while the getting was good; the outcome of this battle didn't matter to them. As long as Anita herself survived, they would be fine, and they didn't give a shit about the rest of the Circus. They managed to hoof it all the way out through the carnival grounds, out of sight and earshot of the battle, when suddenly, before them, standing perfectly still and calm as if she had been waiting, was Lucretia. They knew better than to look into her gaze, but this did not save them; her looking upon them was enough that her vampire psychic abilities reached out and trapped them out the spot, paralyzing them, making their brains freeze their bodies. Still looking calm, even rather friendly, she began to walk towards them, and as she did, she began to change.

She was growing taller, her limbs longer, her fingers hideously longer too, her entire body elongating in every way. Her mouth started smiling wider and wider, too wide to be physically possible, showing that all her teeth were now long and sharp, not just the usual pair of dainty fangs a vampire had. Her eyes changed too, becoming like an insect's, solid and yet made of many little lenses, filling her face almost as much as her horrible new Glasgow grin did. Her simple black clothing vanished and they could see that growths were appearing all over her limbs, at first looking like white root vegetables made from her own flesh, like warts gone out of control, but then the growths got longer and longer, reaching out, ensnaring the unfortunate but very deserving pair of wereleopards, who could not tell if their gruesome bonds were truly made of her body or were metaphyical in nature, perhaps tendrils of ectoplasm. Her hair seemed too to take on a life of its tentacular own, while two great stalks grew from above her eyes, and great shadows spread over the ground beneath her like rapidly-growing tree roots, infecting it with her very essence and sapping up all its natural energy, the energy of the earth.

Perhaps this really happened. Perhaps it was an illusion, a vampire mind trick. It did not matter which, for either way, Nathaniel and Micah were driven insane by the sight, and, shortly after that, dead, with no corpses left to even hint at their horrible fate. Maybe she ate them whole. Maybe they were swallowed up by the earth. Maybe her strange tendrils drained them away into nothing but dust. Maybe she simply shorted out their existence, or spirited their bodies away. It will never be known. But it was done, and now Lucretia, clothed once more and looking like a perfectly normal woman again, if a somewhat unusually tall and pale and thin one, decided she was needed elsewhere and took to the air in flight.

***

It was Mr. Oliver who had driven Maureen and Lucille to the patch of "urban prairie" for the final showdown, and he who had sent the mental message to his child Lucretia to gather their followers. After the women had gotten out and begun their business with Jean-Claude, he had driven the car off a little ways, knowing that out of sight was out of mind for Anita, stepped out, and waited. Now, he observed their battle. There was not much else he could do; old and powerful and wise as he was, this was something bigger than him, and while he might do his small part in having helped it come to pass, ultimately he knew he had no greater role in who would win or lose than the work of a single earthworm did in whether a crop thrived or failed.

As he had suspected, the SUEs were canceling each other out too much to hurt each other; they kept attacking, physically and magically, but nothing stuck to the other. However, just as Lucille could be disobeyed by her followers in the presence of Anita, so too could Anita suffer actual damage, actual consequences, when close to two other SUES. Just not necessarily from those SUEs. This was why an army was needed in the first place, why Lucille and Maureen alone weren't enough; they made her vulnerable to outside forces, but were in turn weakened just as much by her themselves. All they had ensured was that Anita could be defeated now, not that she would. The others had a chance now, as long as Maureen and Lucille were there. But it was still only a chance, not a guarantee for them either.

Just as Lucretia had told them to do, they came, hurtling on to the field in a huge truck, provided by the Red Clan. The back opened, and they poured out immediately, surrounding Anita, getting between her and the other SUEs. Before Anita could even start mentally cataloging and critiquing their appearances, they had started to attack. The werehyena and wererat guards went first, swarming the ground around Anita, surrounding her, some shifted or half-shifted, others in their human form using guns and weapons. The remaining white tigers tried to fight them, but could do little against their numbers. Anita, however, did not need their aid, for she swiftly handled the situation herself. In five minutes or less, all the guards were slaughtered. This had given Lucille and Maureen's crew the time they needed to get set up, to get into various strategic points out of Anita's range of sight or metaphysical senses, and to get what weapons they needed set up for action. That had been the plan in the first place, as directed by Lucretia before she went with the others to the Circus. For the rebels would not fall so easily as the guards had, Lucretia knew. Why? Because Maureen and Lucille personally knew them. They were 'real' to them. Neither Maureen nor Lucille nor Anita had really known any of the guards, not even their names, and therefore they were easily-felled cannon fodder, whereas the ones they knew as individuals automatically had more power and protection around their existence. It was as if reality were a movie and SUEs were the viewers; anyone cast a mere extra, a nameless face in a crowd, could easily be killed off, but those who got close to the SUE, became relevant to them in any way, got more and more immune to such dangers. Yes, Lucretia knew much of the ways of SUEs, and had planned accordingly.

Melanie and Ghislaine hurled themselves at Anita first, Melanie in her half-snake form, Ghislaine in her rotting form, both sinking their teeth into her. Deadly lamia venom and the necrosis known as "corruption" that comes from rotter bites immediately entered her body, but before they could affect her both her assailants were alight with flame from her fancy new red-tiger pyrokinesis. Fire was the one thing that could surely kill a rotting vamp, and as for Melanie, well, immortality doesn't make anything like that hurt less. Some of the hyena and rat guards ran towards the pair as they fell back, but Rowan got there first, leaping ahead of everyone in her black fox form (or rather, the illusion of a black fox form) and landing in front of the two writhing fire-engulfed figures, surprising Anita enough for her to pause in her course of finishing them off. Around where the paws of the black fox touched the ground, the earth from beneath the grass hurled itself upon the burning women, smothering the flame, while the moisture in the ground beneath the fox and moisture in the air around it condensed into hovering water than crashed upon the pair. They were blackened, charcoaled, having been burned by Anita not only on the outside but from within as well, yet they still lived.

Anita lunged at the fox, trying to grab it, but it was far to quick for her, and seemed almost to teleport, always being in a different place. There even seemed to be more than one. She grew so frustrated that she swiftly began trying to hit it with lighting, calling the strikes down upon it, but she had no more luck with this than she had with her bare hands. She was so distracted, single-minded thing that she was, she didn't even notice Cornelius until he had leaped into the air and kicked her in the back of the head with a flying blow. The fox let out a geckering that sounded bizarrely like a laugh as Anita was sent falling face first in the mud. Cornelius wasted no time jumping on her back, but still had her therian speed and rolled out from under him just before he made contact, and as she sat up she saw what he was wearing.

"Jean-Claude's missing shirt!" she exclaimed.

"Indeed! And the pants too," Cornelius made a sweeping gesture to draw attention to the atrocities masquerading as trousers upon his legs, "Now, normally I'd not be caught even undead in these, but, well, I just had to show your boyfriend what he was doing wrong. Thought perhaps if he saw how unspeakable they were on someone else..."

Anita's eyes got very wide, her brown irises and black pupils merely dark little ink-drops in a pair of white dinner plates, and she began to breathe very hard. Then, her eyes went completely black, and behind her, all the bits and pieces that had been Jean-Claude swarmed together like bloody slugs congregating and within seconds had formed into a man-sized mass that became Jean-Claude, clothed and all, back together but not truly alive. A zombie, like Richard. She thrust an arm forward and he lunged at Cornelius. Cornelius didn't even flinch, but thrust out his own fist at the oncoming zombie, plunging it through Jean-Claude's open mouth and out the other side so that the former vampire master had impaled itself, still animate, upon Cornelius' arm. Anita started to try to turn her necromancy on Cornelius now, but found Maureen already in his mind, guarding him against Anita's powers with her own. Meanwhile, distraction enabled Rowan time to shift back to human form, grab her fallen comrades, and haul them back to where Maureen and Lucille stood, using all their powers just to keep Anita fallible,to keep her less immune to defeat than a true SUE despite all her powers. There was nothing to be done for Melanie except time, but Maureen, as a necromancer, could heal Ghislaine, which she did, and without sex, simply a laying of hands. As for Anita, her super-healing had gone above and beyond even what was normal for such an ability, curing her of both the lamia venom and the rotter corruption before the effects even began.

"Fire!" Cornelius yelled as soon as his teammates were no longer near Anita, and he held Jean-Claude up as a meat shield to protect himself as Wander hurled bombs and the clockwork butterfly weapons Victoria had provided her with, and Anita blasted them apart and away with lightning and wind before they even reached her. The remaining others tried to shoot her, but her horrible 80s hair stopped all the headshots before they got anywhere near her ridiculously-thick-anyway skull. When it was clear that ranged weapons weren't working, Cornelius signaled for them to halt by tossing Jean-Claude aside, and Maureen's necromancy ensured that the corpse did not rise again. He and Anita began to go at it hand to hand--NO NOT LIKE THAT--her judo slowed down from therian speed to vampire speed because of how much she was talking about it in her head, making them evenly matched. She couldn't get to him with her necromancy, not with Maureen's own already holding him--not controlling him, just sitting there so no one else's could come in---but his own psychic powers were still able to get to her just fine, and he plunged the full force of them into her brain---

And fell back on the grass, paralyzed, his eyes staring wide and unseeing. At the same moment, Maureen, who had been in his head, screamed and clutched her temples, going weak at the knees. Poor Cornelius had not been shunted out of Anita's mind by any psychic defenses of her own, oh no; he had ejected himself with dangerous force in repulsion because of what he saw there, and, through him, Maureen had seen it too. Before Anita could do anything to him, however, she was divebombed by something huge and white that plummeted out of the sky like a honking missile of feathery doom, knocking her so hard that she herself flew fifty feet before slamming into the ground.

"Well," said Maureen, looking up at the sky as the gigantic swan rose rapidly up through the air for another attack, "That must be Roy."

Roy was well known to the supernatural population of New York; Maureen had learned of him through Tom Sallow the werelion. He was not a swanmane, but one of the normal swans that resided in Central Park and were often controlled by the Flock for various reasons. Well, no, Roy wasn't exactly normal...he was a particularly large, aggressive specimen, and that was saying something when one considered that swans were by nature already vicious murder machines made of hate. Again and again Roy attacking Anita, striking her with great force and velocity, over and over, and there was nothing she could do, no power she could use against him. He was battering her to death like a mere human before their very eyes, her rapid healing the only reason she was still breathing.

Rowan, in human form again, called to the sky, "Wait, my friend---I want the coup de grace!"

Shockingly, the swan listened, and landed beside the enormous smiledon that was Lucille.

"Aw, no fair!" said Wander,"Oy wanted ter finish 'er off, if you ladies won't."

"Now now," said Maureen, "Rowan hasn't really had her turn yet, and you have."

Anita saw Rowan standing over her, and while Rowan was a woman right now, Anita still judged her only by her body, and saw a beautiful slender white man instead. Immediately, she released the ardeur, and it spilled out, pouring into Rowan...who laughed.

"You think to pull that trick on my kind? Fool---the fey invented that, and it's been nothing but a great joke to Belle Morte to have given it to you!"

Vittorio had told Anita that Belle Morte had never been human even before she had become a vampire. Anita had never bothered to wonder just what that made Belle Morte instead.

Rowan raised a hand, and was about to bring it down, when Anita changed tactics with a trick that another very old and very powerful female vampire had given to her instead: the life-draining power of Obsidian Butterfly. Rowan screamed, fixed to the spot, as Anita began to drain her life away.

The fey have, of course, very long lives, and so in the few moments she was drained Rowan did not even begin to wrinkle, let alone become a living mummy like Jamil and Shang-da had suffered. But the fey also have great magic, and so in those few moments, Anita gained more power than if she had drained the lives of both werewolves multiple times over. And she would have done more had not Roy intervened again, crashing into her with a raging honk, breaking her concentration, setting a horrified Rowan loose. But Anita was fed up now with the antics of these underlings, and with her elemental powers boosted and then some by the fey energy, she blasted the swan aside with a gust of wind, then turned that gust upon Rowan and the rest. It shoved them back, too much for them to even walk against despite their supernatural strength, and then began to whirl and churn around them, becoming a tornado in seconds, which swelled to encompass them all, Anita included, then the entire square, then over several, including where Oliver waited with the car. When it cleared, they were all gone. It was just Anita, Maureen, and the massive Lucille-cat once again.

"Stalemate," said Anita smugly, looking at her SUE sisters with one hand on her hip.

Then, her eyes widened, and her facial expression changed as she stared past them at something behind them, and a squeak came from her lips, "...Mother?"

Maureen and the she-cat turned to see Lucretia standing a few paces behind them, her long blonde hair and long black dress blowing to the side despite there not being anymore wind at all. To them, she looked like herself, or rather, as they were used to seeing her: a tall, pale, and willowy woman with what Anita would spitefully call Nordic coloring. Certain not the raven-tressed Mexican beauty she claimed her mother to have been. But to Anita, who was so stunned she seemed paralyzed, her mouth open, her eyes reverent and adoring and sad, she did indeed look like the mysterious and late Mrs. Blake, wreathed in light like a saint with a halo, a Marian apparition. The other two, for a moment, almost remembered something themselves as they looked upon her, something stirring in their own minds, but before Maureen could speak of it, Lucretia extended an arm towards the pair of them and said, "No, they are Mother, the Mother of Us All."

This snapped Anita out of it, and she cried angrily as she saw Lucretia for what she was, the beloved image being snatched away from her, "No! I defeated Marmee Noir, I drank the Mother of All Darkness, you liar! Don't try to trick me, you can't bring her back any more than you can my own mother!"

"I cannot help what my image stirs in your memories; do not blame me for that," said Lucretia calmly, "And you defeated a stalking horseA phantom created from your own mind to test you as an avatar for her, and you failed. Now her true heirs are here to eliminate you, and take what is rightfully theirs as queens of our world."

Anita laughed, "They can't hurt me! None of this is hurting me, nothing can destroy me, and you know why? Because I love people, I love them enough to see past the lies the necromancer made Jean-Claude say, enough that it gives me power---"

As Anita rambled on aloud to herself, Maureen spoke to Lucretia instead, "She's right about something, anyway: we can't do any lasting damage to her, nor her to us. Anything we do to one another, if it even has any effect, heals. Two against one still doesn't make any difference, SUEs still screw reality in their favor."

"One thing can," said Lucretia gravely, "Even with what she took from Rowan, she has been weakened. Now that you two have stood near her long enough to enable others to break her down and make her vulnerable to it, you can use it against her, and not even her SUEhood will be able to stand against it: the truth."

Maureen and Lucille turned back to where Anita was still yammering. Lucille reached into the mind of every wereanimal, Maureen into the mind of every vampire, and they took everything those people had ever thought and seen and experienced of Anita and what she really was, how she really was, and together they psychically shoved it into the mind of the other SUE.

Externally, nothing happened, besides Anita stopping her rant in mid-word. But in a moment, everything changed. Anita collapsed under the sudden onslaught of words and thoughts and feelings running through her, unstoppable, unable to be denied and blocked out, unable to be argued against or ignored or warped with unsound logic. She had to face the truth, the real truth, about herself and her life and her choices at last, and her scream was one that made even Maureen and Lucille shudder and take no pleasure in for once in their sadistic lives.

She lay there, her hands pulling at her hair, weeping softly and unglamooursly with lots of snot and redness and sniffling, curling into a feetle position, a perfectly normal woman.

Normal.

No longer a SUE.

Lucille moved forward, mouth opening, claws unsheathing, about to kill her, but Maureen put a hand against one of her massive gold-furred shoulders, "No. Let her live like this. Completely human, not even an ordinary-level animator, no lovers, no bodyguards, no servants, nothing. From now on, she's going to have to deal with the world as it was, and how it would react to her words, attitudes, behaviors, all like the normal person she is."

As Maureen had shown with the case of Yiyu, she had more empathy than Lucille did. And while this could, as also with Yiyu, make her nicer, kinder, more merciful...it could also enable her to be far, far crueler than Lucille could understand.

They left her there, lying in the grass, helpless and mundane. Mr. Oliver's car had gone, having carried off and destroyed by the whirlwind, and so Lucille carried the other two women on her back, back towards light they could see in the city that was the entire Circus burning down thanks to Fidget.

As they walked, Lucretia explained a great many things to them. For one, why they didn't cancel each others' SUE powers out like regular SUEs would.

"Because you are one in the same SUE, you see. You are each one half of the Mother---a necromancer and a werecat--reincarnated into a human shell. Maureen was born first, and so her powers had to be repressed for a long time. If she'd displayed them before Lucille was born and had also awakened her own SUE abilities, she'd be vulnerable to attack by those Council members who would not wish the return of the Mother, such as Belle Morte. Only the Earthmover is old enough to understand how inevitable, and how natural, that return is."

"So I had these powers all along," said Maureen, "I...I've met you before, I'm sure of it..."

The two things were connected in her mind, and in another minute, she knew why, "You! You were there, that night with the fear vamps, you...you..."

"Your trauma with them awoke your powers early, in defense of yourself," explained Lucretia, "You destroyed them, and I entered your mind to repress the memory of the act, as well as put the abilities back to sleep inside you. The memories return now that your powers are awake again."

Lucille made some sound beneath them, and, as if she understood and were answering a remark made, Lucretia said to the great cat, "Yes, that was me too. I've been watching, all your lives"

"Delilah," Maureen had a second realization, "She knew. You're the one she was calling Lootie, calling her grandmother. She tried to tell me about you!"

"Yes, and she knows what you are now, both of you. She felt a connection to the Mother in you when She began stirring, and knew Her for what She was."

"I've become younger in just days," said Maureen, "And Lucille is getting older. Is that because of our connection? Is it going to stop?"

"It will cease when you both become the same age. Your early thirties, I should think. And then neither of you shall ever age another hour. You are, remember, two halves of the same whole; your bodies are simply now remedying that you were born years apart."

"Why now? Why did the Mother choose now to return, to become us?"

"She could feel, even deep in Her slumber, that another SUE was stirring in the ether, the space before space, ready to be born, ready to pour its essence in from another dimension to a mortal body in this one."

"Anita Blake."

"Yes. And so She made Herself into you, Maureen, first, several years ahead, and then Lucille after. She tested Anita, to see if perhaps she could be a worthy third vessel, or at least a worthy foe, sending her the Stalking Horse and other silliness made from her own psyche like the Harlequin, but the very absurdity of these shadow foes proved that Anita was neither, and must simply be destroyed before she took all that should belong to Her. And so you did."

They reached the edge of the Circus grounds, blazing and littered with bodies, where their troops stood, stoic and triumphant, waiting for their Queens.

"Remember," said Lucretia, "One day, I may be coming for you."

And then she was simply gone.

***
EPILOGUE

The rest of the Council came to eliminate Lucille and Maureen, as they had planned all along to do to whichever SUE won. Belle Morte was particularly furious with them both for taking her biggest stronghold in America and for ending the amusement that had been Anita. Alas, they were no match for two SUEs, and were dispatched, though not killed. Lucille and Maureen decided to keep Council alive and intact to serve their functions, just simply with Lucille and Maureen as dual queens of the Council as the MOAD had once been. And while Council no longer to touch the affairs of therians, Maureen and Lucille, just like the MOAD before them, now queens of them too.

Their powers were divided as well. Lucille all the powers of a therian, Maureen all those of a necromancer, and both now had the vampire abilities of all lines as well as the tiger elemental powers, just like Anita had. The Padma-line power was divided between them as well; Lucille's call all animals had split, so now she called all carnivores and Maureen all herbivores (both were able to summon omnivores). This was appropriate for Maureen, whose power lay in being a human that fought back against vampires---people always forgot it was the so-called prey animals that were the most dangerous. Case in point, the swanmanes. Maureen especially favored deer, another commonly under-estimated creature.

Dolly, Simon, and Thomas were all spoiled as hell even more now, along with Valentina whom the Queens had jointly adopted.

Envy, Julia, and Yiyu lived with the Red Clan. Envy and Yiyu were still in touch with Max and Lucille and Maureen and everyone else they had met and liked.

Cynric, free of Anita, had gone back to White Clan with Bibiana, whom the Queens had forgiven for aiding Anita. They demonstrated this forgiveness by breaking her bond with her husband and Master, and after he was...disposed of...the White Chang gave her loyalty to the two queens happily.

Ghislaine had somehow wound up as new Master of Tigers, which was why she'd always smelled so good to them, though she was below the Changs and the Queens of All Darkness in rank still. The weretigers would answer to Lucille and Maureen first, their Changs second, then Ghislaine.

Wander resumed dating Dev, as well as Shang-Da and Graham.

Ufa began cutting hair for everyone and doing a roaring business, and it is through this she met Jamil (because, seriously, waist-length cornrows) and they are now together.

Nan was kept on retainer as a seer for the Queens, and the experimental trio was their royal guard. Tung in particular was working with ancient vampires to help uncover facts about previously unknown histories and cultures.

Fidget was very happy to have burned down Circus. True, he couldn't burn the caverns and caves themselves but everything that was wooden, or cloth, or suggested in any way at all that a tacky vampire had once owned the place was gone.

Hank was now dating Edgar, whom he could now call "Aggie" because they are close. He was jealous of Hiero, who had no idea of this and was just glad that he and his friends were alive. Max and Aggie and Hank are still friends, Max and Eva and Odette are still friends. Victoria and Emily are now friends with Eva and Odette too, and thinking of starting a mermaid group in NYC with Tallulah and Perdita. Perdita and Bianca, one of the St. Louis swanmanes, had become a couple as well.

Rafael was rebuilding supernatural community with the help of Sylvie, who was the new Ulfric. Donovan had been deposed by the NYC swanmanes for what he had allowed Anita to do to swanmanes across American through him, and his Flock was now searching for a new Swan Prince for the City. St. Louis also was in need of a new Oba since Narcissus has chosen to give up his responsibilities and go to live with Asher in NYC, not to mention, for obvious reasons, a new Rex, Regina, Nimir-Raj, and Nimir-Ra. In the meantime, though, Lucille and Maureen were happy to look after them all.

Speaking of Asher, he was now second to Armel in NYC, and bossing him around tremendously. Meng Die had taken over in St. Louis as Master of the City.

And of course, no one is thinking of overthrowing Maureen and Lucille...

...because no one *can* think of it.