Everyday,

  Including Holidays

  Published by Jan Stryvant

  Copyright 2021 Jan Stryvant

  Copyright Jan Stryvant 2021

  Cover Credits: eBook Launch (http://ebooklaunch.com/)

  No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form without expressed, written consent from the author. The material in this story may feature graphic depictions of a sexual or adult nature and is intended for a mature audience only. All characters in this story are fictional and of the legal age of consent for any activities they engage in. Any resemblance between characters, places, or things in this story, and people living or dead, actual places, or events, is purely coincidental. It's fiction; I made it up.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be copied and given away, or copied and sold, to other people. Got that? No copying, please! If you would like to share this book with another person, it would be really nice if you purchased an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use, please consider purchasing your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  #77058

  Table of Contents

  Fort 63

  Lycan Forces Headquarters

  We Are In Control …

  …You Are Not

  May Be a Price to Pay

  Grand Theft Satellite

  Under Pressure

  The Gift that Keeps Giving

  Catching Up

  Home Again, Home Again…

  Reassessing

  Including Holidays

  No Rest for the Weary

  Christmas Presence

  Post War Nightmares

  Mihalis

  Afterword

  Fort 63

  Sean looked around as he inspected the fort. The 'border' on the quarantine zone was 1,400 miles long, and they'd built a fort about every 10 miles along it. Fifteen of those forts were major installations, built to help support the forts to either side, up to 50 miles away.

  As projects went, it hadn't been cheap, and it hadn't been fast. But it was up and running now, and that meant he had to go look at it.

  "Sure doesn't look like much, does it, Boss?" Travis, the head of Sean's bodyguards, said in a soft voice.

  "I think this is one of the smaller ones," Sean agreed. None of the forts had been what he'd expected. For some reason, he'd thought they'd look like something out of the middle ages. Instead they were made from metal panels that had been thrown up quickly to act as walls, with a lot of heavily modified shipping containers stacked and piled inside in ways that apparently made sense to the people who worked there, even if he couldn't make heads nor tails out of it.

  "They remind me of the forts from the TV shows about the old west," Travis said, looking a little thoughtful. "In here is a small sliver of civilization, and out there"—he waved with a hand—"is Indian country."

  Sean snorted. "Don't let any of our Paiute hear you say that!"

  Travis laughed. "According to them, it is Indian country, and they have every intention of getting it back!"

  Sean shook his head in response. Getting all of it back was his job, and while he appreciated the sentiments of everyone wanting to win this war, and win it now, he knew it wasn't going to be over in any of these people's lifetimes. Maybe in their children's or grandchildren's, but definitely not theirs.

  "Sir!" a Marine major said, running up and saluting. "Sorry I'm late, sir!"

  "At ease, Major Koch," Sean said returning the salute, "and please, just call me Sean."

  "Yes, Sean," Major Koch said, quickly taking some of the starch out. Sean had read his record; Koch was on the fast track to colonel. He'd done two tours in Afghanistan and was both respected and loved by his troops. He was a tiger lycan, having volunteered early on to being infected.

  "I just received word a few minutes ago that you were coming to inspect, Sean. There aren't any problems, are there?"

  Sean shook his head. "I'm here by random chance. I don't have the time to inspect everybody; that's what I pay General Kennedy for," Sean said with a grin, "but I need to understand what you're all dealing with and see it for myself now that our containment line is finally up and running."

  Major Koch snorted. "Yeah, it's up, but barely. I've got two fire teams out to the east and three to the west, keeping an eye on things."

  "That many?" Sean said, surprised.

  "With the heavy terrain here, they keep thinking they can sneak through. It's nothing serious, just one or two at a time. We'd see anything larger long before it got here. But it's just been a right pain in the ass. Colonel Blythe, the commander of Fort 55, has been kind enough to have a couple of his helos make a pass through here at random intervals to help us keep things under control."

  Sean nodded. Fort 55 was one of the big ones, with actual buildings and hangers, and a fairly large artillery contingent. It was also conveniently close to Mountain Home Air Force Base, which made it the largest of all the 'big' forts. He'd flown in there before grabbing a couple of Humvees and driving out to 63, stopping at a couple of the other larger forts along the way.

  "So how does this compare to the Middle East?" Travis asked.

  Major Koch shrugged. "Better food, friendlier locals. While I don't like the idea of having to fight on our home turf, the people here are all on our side, at least." He turned and looked at Sean. "When do you think they'll try to push out?"

  "As soon as they realize we've changed our tactics," Sean replied. "Now that the border is secure, I've ordered all our units that have been harassing them to pull out. The djevel lords will immediately try to strike out for one of the cities, and of course they'll hit the border."

  "And then?"

  Sean shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. My wife Estrella thinks some of the smarter lords will try to consolidate power and dig in, take the long view. The weaker or dumber ones will kill themselves trying to get out."

  "So the dumb die, and the smart live on," Major Koch grumbled.

  "That's usually the way of things."

  "Well, let me give you the five-cent tour. All things considered, this is actually a pretty nice setup we got here."

  Sean nodded and waved for the major to be about it. The tour didn't take all that long; 63 wasn't that big, there were only 200 or so Marines stationed there, and almost half of those were out manning the small outposts where the major had set up his fire teams.

  "How's your magic support been?" Sean asked as they walked back to the Humvees they'd arrived in.

  Sean noticed the major blush slightly. "It's been, ummm, enthusiastic."

  "Enthusiastic?" Sean asked, stopping to look at Major Koch.

  "They, um. They sent us a tantric witch."

  Sean kept a straight face as he thought about a couple hundred Marines out in the middle of nowhere with a tantric witch. A couple hundred lycan Marines, which he knew from personal experience tantric witches were particularly fond of.

  Travis, however, snickered loudly.

  "I take it she's not having any issues getting the power she needs?" Sean asked, almost causing Travis to go into convulsions as he tried not to laugh out loud.

  "Let's just say our magical wards are second to none. And, quite frankly, I'm a bit worried at times that the young woman is going to hurt herself."

  "So, want us to send you a second one?" Sean asked with a bit of a smirk.

  Major Koch snorted. "Then I'd be worried about my men hurting themselves! Have a safe trip, Sean."

  "Thanks, Major," Sean said with a wave and climbed up into the back of one of the Humvees, as the rest of his security team mounted up as well.

  "I thought tantric witches didn't do combat magic?" Travis asked, still snickering.

  "Tantric witches pretty much do whatever they want to," Sean told him. "Give them a steady supply of power…"

  "Like 200 horny Marines," Travis quipped.

  "…and they can do stuff that pisses regular magic users off to no end. That's why they hate them so much."

  "Any idea how she ended up out here?"

  "Volunteered, if memory serves me right," Sean told him and shrugged. "I don't even try to keep track of everyone anymore. We got over a half million troops on the perimeter, another quarter million in assault troops, another quarter in quick reaction forces spread out all over the country, and what, four million more in reserves, spread out to every city, town, and village?

  "And that doesn't even take the Regular Army, Air Force, Navy, or Marines into account, more than half of which are now lycans as well."

  "And somewhere around 5% of the population," Travis added, smiling helpfully.

  "Do you want to head back to Mountain Home?" asked Chet, who was up front driving.

  "Take us to Fort 70," Sean said. "We'll spend the night there."

  "Why not push on to the next major base?" Travis asked him.

  "I want to get a feel for what the average grunt is dealing with," Sean said, leaning back in his seat. "Wake me when we get there."

  Closing his eyes, Sean checked in at Lion la-la land —he really needed to come up with a better name for it. Dad, the First, was still on vacation, along with all his wives, and no one knew where they were. Well, Sean knew, but he wasn't telling.

  He was due for a briefing on the situation in eastern Germany. Things were still a mess there, and then there was
the whole thing going on in Mongolia. Apparently there'd been a wandering gate dumping djevels over there, too, but they'd all been dumped in the desert, so no one had known about it.

  To make matters worse, China had popped a couple of nukes into the middle of them, and now there was radiation as well as djevels, and China was trying to tell people they had everything under control on the one hand, while screaming for help in private on the other.

  Sean was being very cautious, dealing with them. He'd put Ceithir in charge of it before she'd had the chance to sneak off and take a vacation of her own. Apparently she had very good sources of information, as well as a fair deal of power of her own over there. As he understood it, she was a 'senior party official', one who'd also suddenly developed a strong rapport with the lions, as the party heads had now discovered, thus making her indispensable.

  Now if they'd just listen to the experts who were trying to help, maybe they could get that under control as well. But face saving was a major part of Chinese society, and the party leaders were a lot more interested in that than in anything else currently. Ceithir had told him not to worry about it, but these days, worrying seemed to be his most important job.

  #

  Sean woke up before they got to Fort 70, his little 'meeting' having taken a lot less time than he'd expected it to. One of the things he was still getting used to was, the lions kept the bullshit to absolute zero. Everyone knew where they stood, and opposing viewpoints were always brought up in private, and hashed out there, as well.

  The First had long ago made it clear that opposing viewpoints weren't allowed. That wasn't to say they didn't happen, but when they did, if the point wasn't a good one, you could end up getting your ass soundly kicked for wasting the First's time.

  That was a tradition Sean had shamelessly continued, and after several lions had discovered Sean could kick ass just as well as the First, things had settled down immediately.

  Opening his eyes, Sean watched the border going by on his right as they continued to drive the perimeter. There was an actual 'fence' of sorts, more as a warning to the folks on the outside, because sections of the border were mined. Some of those mines were mundane; some of them were magical. Sean was still entertaining debate regarding how much of the border they really wanted to do that to, because eventually the border would have to contract.

  The important question now was when.

  They had a lot of demons outside the border that needed to be found and eradicated, and he needed to concentrate his efforts there first. With the border complete and manned, he was able to free up a good portion of his forces to start doing just that.

  There was a lot of traffic on the road, most of it military. Not many civilians wanted to get this close to the 'demon preserve', and Sean really didn't blame them. When slowed down, Sean looked up front and saw they were coming to a checkpoint, behind which lay the walled city of Burley, Idaho.

  "Can I see your ID and orders, please," the werewolf standing guard said as Chet rolled down his window.

  "Sure thing," Chet said, and they all rolled their windows down as several more werewolves came up to the sides.

  "Lion!" the one who'd come up to Sean's window said.

  "Oh! Sorry! I didn't know!" the werewolf who was looking through Chet's orders said. "You're good to go!"

  "Check us anyway," Sean said from the back.

  "Umm, are you sure?"

  Sean laughed. "Of course I'm sure. Look, if they cast illusions or any of that shit, what's to stop them from looking like a lion? Pass the word, Sergeant"—Sean glanced at his uniform nametag—"Wells. Lions go through checkpoints just like everyone else. If any lion bitches about it, tell them to take it up with me."

  "Umm, what if they use their powers on us?"

  "Powers?" Chet asked.

  "Yeah, you know. How they can force us to do shit."

  "Well, then, you'll know they're a real lion, won't you?" Travis said with a laugh. "So you don't have to see their IDs."

  Sergeant Wells looked at Sean.

  "Yeah, what he said," Sean said, motioning towards Travis. "What's it like out here? They treating you folks all right?"

  "It's getting better," Sergeant Wells replied. "When we first got here, there were some issues with people going into bars and restaurants."

  Sean leaned forward, looking at Sergeant Wells. "What? I hadn't heard about that!"

  "Well, you see, sir," Sergeant Wells said, looking a little embarrassed, "health code says 'no animals', and they were all worried about the health inspectors fining them if we left fur in the restaurants. Once Colonel Lewis here figured that out, things went a lot smoother. So human form only in the fancier places, no animal forms inside any of the bars or such, and if fur becomes a problem, we send over some folks to help clean it out so no one runs afoul of the health inspectors."

  "Huh, hadn't thought about that," Sean said, leaning back into his seat.

  "Should I let Colonel Lewis know you're in town, sir?"

  Sean shook his head. "No, we're just passing through to Fort 70. Don't tell them I'm coming. This isn't an inspection tour; I'm just trying to make sure I understand what everyone is up against."

  "Yessir," Sergeant Wells said, handing the documents back to Chet, then he saluted.

  Sean returned the salute and collected his ID from the werewolf who'd examined it.

  "Let's go," Sean said and rolled his window up as they drove past the checkpoint and the gates.

  "Wow, a walled city," Chet said, looking around. "Ten years ago, I'd have thought someone was pulling my leg if they'd told me I'd be seeing them around here."

  Sean snorted. "How do you think I feel? I went from a clueless college kid playing videogames to being in charge of this mess."

  Chet looked over his shoulder at Sean and grinned. "Sorry, Boss, but one thing none of us are ever gonna complain about is you being in charge."

  "Yeah," Travis continued as Chet went back to watching his driving, "it doesn't matter how much your life sucks, Sean. Ours are waaaaay better, and that's what counts!"

  Sean sighed as the others in the Humvee laughed and high-fived. Members of his security team had died defending him, but not a single one had ever blamed him, and he knew if he could bring back any of the dead ones, they'd have told him they were happy for their sacrifice.

  Because he had made their lives better.

  Then of course there was the small matter that he was a god now. Their god, in fact. The only reason he didn't drag the First, Keairra, and all the rest back and give them their old jobs back was because, plain and simple, the invasion would have happened whether he'd been there to help or not.

  The First had claimed they couldn't have done it without him, and as much as he'd have liked to say 'oh, anybody could have done it,' the simple truth was that no, anybody couldn't have done it. How much of it was luck and how much of it was fate? Well, that was one of the questions he'd given up on months ago.

  Besides, if anybody had earned a vacation, it was the First and his wives. They'd been dealing with these demons since before recorded history. That they trusted him completely to deal with their problems now was just another sign of how far he'd come, and how well he'd done.

  Shaking his head, he looked outside the Humvee through the armored glass. He didn't have time for 'woolgathering', as his mother called it; he had a job to do, so he did it.

  It wasn't like there hadn't been rewards along the way. He had his wives—his 'pride', as Roxy and Estrella were fond of saying. He had his children, and he had his friends. Or most of them, at least. The only things he really missed now were John and his old place up on the ridge by Sun Valley. Sure, the new place his dwarven in-laws had built was way nicer up on Lyon's Peak, but life had been a lot more clear-cut then.

  Plus, back then, he wasn't in charge of over 10 million people, and on a first name basis with several world leaders.

  Sean snorted and looked at his wolves. "I'd threaten to put you all on kibble, but knowing you guys, you'd like it."

  "Hell, we got a bag in the trunk!" Chet said with a laugh.

  "Seriously?"

  "Makes for good trail rations, and you never know. The stuff's pretty high protein, and it's hella cheap compared to those ration bars."