Podcasts about genghis

What was life like to be married to Genghis Khan?In this new limited series, Real Wives of Dictators, we're finding out all about the women behind, or alongside, some of histories most notorious men.First up is Börte Üjin, the woman who built the Mongol empire alongside her husband, Genghis, in the 12th and 13th centuries.Were they in love? What happened when she was kidnapped by a rival tribe? And what was her relationship like with the other women in Genghis' life?Joining Kate today is historian Marie Favereau, author of The Horde: How The Mongols Changed The World, to help us find out.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.If you'd like to get in touch with the show you can contact us at betwixt@historyhit.com.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.

Good and bad unintended consequences.By FinalStand. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.The highest cost of losing a war is the rage of your children."Maybe the Canadian is not so much an 'ex' girlfriend?" Orsi leered. It was the old 'if he is so good that she still wants him back after a colossal screw up, I wanted a taste' expression."Do you think she will help you?" Katalin inquired."She'll help," Pamela huffed playfully. "My grandson has plenty of ex-girlfriends. Most of them want him back, despite his colorful lifestyle. It is one of his more amusing qualities.""Let's get something to eat," I tried to turn the conversation away from my past sexcapades."You are engaged?" Jolan didn't miss a beat."It is complicated," I sighed. "Let's just say I really like her, but she's seven years older, divorced with one young daughter and has a father who hates that I live and breathe.""Do you have any male friends?" Monika joined the Cáel Quiz Bowl."Yes," I replied with confidence. "My roommate Timothy and I are great friends.""He's gay," Pamela pierced their disbelief. "He and Cáel are true brothers-in-arms, I'll give Cáel that much.""Do you have any straight male friends?" Orsi was enjoying taunting me."Do Chaz or Vincent count?" I looked to Pamela."They are straight males, but they don't really know you yet," Pamela failed to be of much help. "I think Vincent insinuated he'd shoot you if you dated any of his three daughters. It was friendly of him to warn you. I supposed that could be construed as liking you.""Are all your acquaintances violent?" Anya seemed worried."Vincent isn't violent. He's with the US FBI," I retorted. Pause. "Okay, he carries a gun and shoots it, he's a law officer. They can do that.""You seem to be stressed," Orsi put an arm around my waist. "Let us ease your worries." Hallelujah!Note: One of History's LessonsIn the last 75 years of military history, airpower had been a decisive factor in every major conflict, save one. Most Americans would think the one exception was US involvement in Vietnam and they'd be wrong: right country, wrong time. Indochina's War of Independence against France was the exception. There, the French Air Force was simply inadequate to the task.Yes, the United States and its allies eventually lost the struggle in Vietnam. But it was their airpower that kept the conflict running as long as it did. For the most part, the Allied and Communist military hardware on the ground were equivalent. While the Allies had superior quantities of supplies, the Communists countered that with numbers, and therein lies the rub.Airpower allowed the Allies to smash large North Vietnamese formations south of the Demilitarized Zone and thus prevented the numerical advantage from coming into play. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong made one serious stab at a conventional militarily challenge to the Allies, the Tet Offensive, and after initial successes, they were crushed.With the NVA unable to flex their superior numbers, the Allies were able to innovate helicopter-borne counter-insurgency operations. The North Vietnam's Army (NVA) was forced to operate in smaller units, so the Allies were able to engage them in troop numbers that helicopters could support. The air forces didn't deliver ultimate victory, but air power alone had never been able to do so on land. It was only when the US lost faith in achieving any positive outcome in Viet Nam and pulled out, that the North was finally able to overrun the South 20 months later. But every major power today understands the lesson.End of Note(Big Trouble in Little China)The military importance of airpower was now haunting the leadership of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). Their problem wasn't aircraft. Most of their air fleet consisted of the most advanced models produced during the last two decades. The problem was that 80% of their pilots were dead, or dying. Their ground crews were in the same peril. Even shanghaiing commercial pilots couldn't meet the projected pilot shortfall.Classic PLA defense doctrine was to soak up an enemy (Russian) attack and bog down the aggressor with semi-guerilla warfare (classic small unit tactics backed up with larger, light infantry formations). Then, when the invaders were over-extended and exhausted, the armored / mechanized / motorized forces would counter-attack and destroy their foes. This last bit required air superiority through attrition.The twin enemies of this strategy were the price of technology and the Chinese economic priorities. With the rising cost of the high-tech equipment and a central government focus on developing the overall economy, the Chinese went for an ever smaller counter attack striking force, thus skewing the burden of depth of support far in favor of their relatively static militia/police units.So now, while the PLA / PLAAF's main divisions, brigades and Air Wings were some of the best equipped on the planet, the economic necessities had also meant the militia was financially neglected, remaining little more than early Cold War Era non-mechanized infantry formations. To compensate, the Chinese had placed greater and greater emphasis on the deployment capabilities of their scarcer, technologically advanced formations.When the Anthrax outbreak started, the strike force personnel were the first personnel 'vaccinated'. Now those men and women were coughing out the last days and hours of their lives. Unfortunately, you couldn't simply put a few commercial truck drivers in a T-99 Main Battle Tank and expect them to be anything more than a rolling coffin. The same went for a commercial airline pilot and a Chengdu J-10 multi-role fighter. The best you could hope for was for him/her to make successful takeoffs and landings.A further critical factor was that the Khanate's first strike had also targeted key defense industries. The damage hadn't been irreparable. Most military production would be only a month to six weeks behind schedule. But there would be a gap.It was just becoming clear that roughly 80% of their highly-trained, frontline combatants were going to die anyway. Their Reserves were looking at 30~40% attrition due to the illness as well. In the short term (three months), they would be fighting with whatever they started with. Within the very short term (one week), they were going to have a bunch of high-priced equipment and no one trained to use it. With chilling practicality, the Chinese leaders decided to throw their dying troopers into one immediate, massive counter-offensive against the Khanate.Just as Temujin predicted they would. Things were playing out according to plan.Note: World Events SummaryRound #1 had seen the Khanate unite several countries under one, their, banner. Earth  and  Sky soldiers had rolled across the Chinese border as their Air Force and Missile Regiments had used precision strikes to hammer Chinese bases, sever their transportation network and crippled their civilian infrastructure.Next, the frontier offensive units had been obliterated, the cities bypassed and the Khanate Tumens had sped forward to the geographic junctures between what the Khanate wanted and from whence the PLA had to come. In the last phase of Round #1, the Khanate prepped for the inevitable PLA / PLAAF counter-strike.Round #2 had now begun:Step One: Declare to the World that the Khanate was a nuclear power. As history would later reveal, this was a lie, but no one had any way of initially knowing that. Hell, the Khanate hadn't even existed 72 hours ago. Satellite imagery did show the Khanate had medium-range strategic missiles capable of hitting any location in the People's Republic. In Beijing, a nuclear response was taken off the table.Step Two: Initiate the largest air-battle in the history of Asia. Not just planes either. Both sides flew fleets of UCAV's at one another. It wasn't really even a battle between China and just the Khanate. Virtually all of the UAV technology the Khanate was using was Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese in origin, plus some US-Russian-shared technology thrown into the mix.When the South Korean design team saw the footage of their bleeding-edge dogfighting UCAVs shooting down their PRC opponents, they were thrilled (their design rocked!), shocked (what was their 'baby' doing dominating Chinese airspace?) and anxious (members of South Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration, DAPA, were rushing over to chat with them).Similar things were happening in Japan, Taiwan, Russia and the United States. The Communist Party leadership in Beijing were beginning to seriously consider the possibility that everyone was out to get them. Of course, all the Ambassadors in Beijing were bobbing their heads with the utmost respect while swearing on the lives of their first born sons that their nations had nothing to do with any of this.These foreign diplomats promised to look into these egregious breaches of their scientific integrity and were saying how sorry they were that the PLA and PLAAF were getting ass-raped for the World's viewing pleasure. No, they couldn't stop the Khanate posting such things to the internet, something to do with freedom. Paranoia had been creeping into the Potentates' thoughts since the Pakistan/Aksai Chan incident.As they watched their very expensive jets and UCAV's being obliterated, distrust of the global community became the 800 pound gorilla in the room. To add habaneros to the open wounds, the United States and the United Kingdom began dropping hints that they had some sort of highly personal communication conduit with the Khanate's secretive and unresponsive leadership. Yes Virginia Wolfe, the Western World was out to get the People's Republic.'Great Mao's Ghost', all that claptrap their grandfathers had babbled on about (1) the Korea War, (2) the Sino-Soviet grudge match, (3) the Sino-Vietnamese conflict and (4) the persistent support for the renegade province of Formosa all being a continuous effort by the liberal democracies and post-colonial imperialist to contain Chinese communism, didn't sound so crazy anymore.Step Three: Plaster all those PLA ground units that had started moving toward them when the air war began and the Chinese envisioned they would control the skies. The T-99 was a great tank. It also blew up rather spectacularly when it was stuck on a rail car (you don't drive your tanks halfway across China, it kills the treads).As Craig Kilborn put into his late night repertoire:"What do you call a Khanate UCAV driver who isn't an ace yet? Late for work.""What's the difference between me coming off a weekend long Las Vegas bender and a Khanate pilot? Not a damn thing. We've both been up for three days straight, yet everyone expects us to work tonight."Some PLA generals decided to make an all-out charge at the Tumens. Genghis's boys and girls were having none of that. They weren't using their Russian-built Khanate tanks to kill Chinese-built PLA tanks. No, their tanks were sneaking around and picking off the Chinese anti-air vehicles.The Chinese tanks and APCs engaged the dismounted Khanate infantry who, as Aksai Chin had shown, possessed some of the latest anti-tank weaponry. In the few cases where the PLA threw caution to the wind, they did some damage to the Khanate by sheer weight of numbers. For the rest, it was death by airpower.With their anti-air shield gone, the battle became little more than a grisly, real-life FPS game. It wasn't 'THE END'. China still had over 2,000,000 troops to call upon versus the roughly 200,000 the Khanate could currently muster. The PLA's new dilemma was how to transport these mostly truck-bound troops anywhere near the front lines without seeing them also exterminated from the air.After the Tumens gobbled up the majority of the PLA's available mobile forces, they resumed their advance toward the provincial boundaries of Xinjiang and Nin Mongol. There was little left to slow them down. The Chinese still held most of the urban centers in Xinjiang and Nei Mongol, yet they were isolated. And Khanate follow-up forces (the national armies they'd 'inherited') were putting the disease-riddled major municipalities under siege.All over the 24/7 World Wide News cycle, talking heads and military gurus were of two minds about the Khanate's offensive. Most harped on the fact that while the Khanate was making great territorial gains, it was barely making a dent in the Chinese population and economy. Uniformly, those people insisted that before the end of November, the Khanate would be crushed and a reordering of Asia was going to be the next great Mandate for the United Nations.A few of the braver unconventional pundits pointed out the same thing, but with the opposite conclusion, arguing:1.There were virtually no military forces in the conquered areas to contend with the Khanate's hold on the regions.2.Their popularity in the rural towns and countryside seriously undercut any hope for a pro-PRC insurgency.3.Driving the Khanate's forces back to their starting points would be a long and difficult endeavor that the World Economy might not be able to endure.When the PLAAF was effectively castrated after thirty-six hours of continuous aerial combat, a lot of experts were left with egg on their faces. One lone commentator asked the most fearful question of all. Where was the Khanate getting the financing, technical know-how and expertise to pull all of this off? There was a reason to be afraid of that answer.And while I was entertaining my six sailor-saviors, there were two other things of a diplomatic nature only just revealing themselves. Publically, Vladimir Putin had graciously offered to mediate the crisis while 'stealthily' increasing the readiness of his Eastern Military District. If there was any confusion, that meant activating a shitload of troops on the Manchurian border, not along the frontiers of the former nations of Mongolia and Kazakhstan.After all, Mongolia was terribly poor. Manchuria/Northeastern China? Manchuria was rich, rich, rich! From the Kremlin, Putin spoke of 'projecting a presence' into the 'lost territory' of Manchuria, citing Russia's long involvement in the region. By his interpretation of history, the Russians (aka the Soviet Union) had rescued Manchukuo (the theoretically INDEPENDENT Imperial Japanese puppet state of Manchuria) from the Japanese in 1945. They'd even given it back to the PRC for safekeeping after World War II was concluded.Putin promised Russia was ready and willing to help out the PRC once again, suggesting that maybe a preemptive intervention would forestall the inevitable Khanate attack, thus saving the wealthy, industrialized province from the ravages of war. Surely Putin's Russians could be relied on to withdraw once the Khanate struggle was resolved? Surprisingly, despite being recent beneficiaries of President Putin's promises, the Ukraine remained remiss in their accolades regarding his rectitude.In the other bit of breaking news; an intermediary convinced the Khanate to extend an invitation to the Red Cross, Red Crescent and the WHO to investigate the recently conquered regions in preparations for a humanitarian mission.That intermediary was Hana Sulkanen; for reasons no one could fathom, she alone had the clout to get the otherwise unresponsive new regime to open up and she was using that influence to bring about a desperately needed relief effort to aid the civilians caught up in that dynastic struggle. A Princess indeed. No one was surprised that the PRC protested, claiming that since the territory wasn't conquered, any intervention was a gross violation of Chinese sovereignty.End of Note(To Live and Die in Hun-Gray)Orsi may have been the troupe leader, but Anya needed me more, so she came first."I need a shower before we catch some dinner," I announced as we meandered the streets of Mindszent. My lady friends were all processing that as I wound an arm around Anya's waist and pulled her close. "Shower?" I smiled down at her, she was about 5 foot 7. It took her a few seconds to click on my invitation."Yeah, sure, that would be nice," she reciprocated my casual waist hold. Several of her friends giggled over her delay. We were heading back to the Seven Fishermen's Guest House."Do you do this, picking up strange girls you've barely met for, you know?" she said in Bulgarian, as she looked at me expectantly."Yes and no," I began, in Russian. "I often find myself encountering very intriguing women, for which I know I am a fortunate man. I embrace sensuality. That means I know what I'm doing, but I'm not the 'bring him home to meet the parents' kind of guy.""What of your fiancée? Do you feel bad about cheating on her?" Anya pursued me."Hana is wonderful. I've met her father and it went badly both times," I confessed."How?" Anya looked concerned for me."Would you two speak a language the rest of us can understand?" Monika teased us."Very well," I nodded to Monika, and turned back to Anya, "The first time, his son raped a girl and I threatened the young man's life," I revealed. "Jormo, Hana's father, wasn't happy when I did so. The second time, he hit me twice, once in the gut and once in the head," I continued."Why did he hit you?" Orsi butted in."I'd rather not say. You may think less of me," I confessed. Pamela gave me a wink for playing my audience so well. I'm glad she's family (kinda/sorta)."The boy, he is dead?" Magdalena guessed. "Hana's brother?""I really shouldn't talk about that," I evaded. "It is a family matter." That's right. The family that my grandmother had brought me into as her intern / slayer-in-training. There is no reason to create a new lie when you can embellish a previous one."Do you ever feel bad about what you do?" Katalin asked Pamela. We love movies."As I see it, if I show up looking for you, you've done something to deserve it," Pamela gave her sage philosophy behind being an assassin."Are you, bi-sexual?" Jolan murmured. Pamela smacked me in the chest as I laughed. "Did I say something wrong?" Jolan worried. Pamela was a killer."No, you are fine," Pamela patted Jolan's shoulder. "I'm straight and happily so. It just so happens that most of my co-workers are women. Day in, day out, nothing but sweaty female bodies working out, sparring and grappling together, and afterwards, the massages."That was my Grandma, poking all the lesbian buttons of the women around me. Best of all, she did it with the detached air of a sexually indifferent matron. She was stirring up the lassies while keeping them focused on me. We walked into the courtyard of our guest house."Don't take too long, you two," Orsi teased us."Ha!" Pamela chuckled. "That's like asking the Sun to hurry up and rise, the Moon to set too soon, or the sea to stay at low tide forever.""Anya," I whispered into her ear. "How many orgasms do you want?" Anya's eyes expanded. Her eyes flickered toward her friends, then back to me. She held up one finger, I grinned speculatively. Anya held up two fingers. I kissed her fingers.

Cáel saves a spirit and risks losing his soul.By FinalStand. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.Life gives you two chances to get it right; be who you want to be, or who you need to be.(Making choices we can live with)"Trouble," Wiesława relayed to our vehicle. Velma had an 'issue' at my apartment. She'd gone ahead in order to see to my security. My GL-550 had come within a block of the apartment when Wiesława's call came."Tell me what the problem is," I demanded. Wiesława relayed my request."Your roommate won't let them search your bedroom," was the answer I got back."Fuck that," I grumbled. "Tell Velma I'm coming up. Wiesława, take us to the front of my place." She gave me a cautious look, testing my resolve. Sensing that I'd jump out if I had to, she spoke over her blue-tooth to Velma. She wisely didn't pass on Velma's vitriol at me poking my nose into my SD's business, protecting me.As we pulled up and double-parked, everyone piled out."Are we going to need any "extra" assistance?" Delilah suggested. Considering the flock of 'follow-up' cars and SUV's tailing us, I wasn't overly worried about the law enforcement angle.What was I worried about? It wasn't dark yet on a weekday and Timothy was home. Since Velma would have informed me if he was toting around the Black Death, this had to be a crisis of a personal nature, most likely my personal nature. Wiesława struggled to keep pace with me as I took the stairs three at a time. She'd given up on me letting her go first.At the third floor landing we came across one of Velma's team covering that approach. A second member was at the door and from inside, I could hear Velma cursing in Hittite under her breath. But first,"I really don't think you'll need your sword, Saku," Delilah advised. "Timothy's not that kind of trouble.""Hey Velma, Crewe (who, together with Constanza, I'd sparred with, way long ago) and Timothy," I loudly announced myself just as I stepped in. "What seems to be the problem?" Timothy sighed and gave a head-toss to my closed bedroom door. Since I didn't want to be an asshole, I turned to Velma. "Let me send a neutral party to check things out." I had so many to choose from, Miyako, Selena, Vincent and Delilah.Saku might kill on general principle. Buffy and Wiesława were Amazons and I was beginning to think that Amazons, shit. I sighed, groaned and lowered my head. I looked to Timothy and clapped my wrists together (slave-like). He nodded. Rhada. Mother-puss-bucket! What was I going to do?"I've changed my mind, Velma, the room is fine," I started off. "I know for a certainty that my life is not imperiled by my visitor. Everyone else, I am about to have sex, so could you please head out to a restaurant and give me an hour, or two?" I took in the rest. Timothy coughed and pointed to the ceiling. "Three hours, " another cough, "four hours." No more coughing."Who is it?" Buffy snarled, lest I forgot that I was her scratching post. She was resenting the lack of scratching going on between us. I was about to tell her I needed some private time,, or just not tell her anything. But I was working on not being a jerk. I pulled Buffy to Timothy's room and gave her the lowdown. She mulled over the information. Her wrapping a hand around the back of my head and pulling me into a steamy kiss was unlooked for."Okay," she smiled. "Please don't think I'm not righteously pissed with the two of you, but I know you are doing the best you can with your limited survival instincts.I'll take care of everyone." Off she went and in moments, the room had cleared out until it was just Timothy and me."She stopped by work this afternoon looking pretty badly beaten up, emotionally," he explained. "I doubt she's slept in three days and she's really confused about all kinds of things. I was in the process of letting her know you weren't going to be back for two more days when the Welcome Wagon arrived.I figured the last thing she needed, before seeing you, was public exposure," he said."Thanks buddy," I hugged him. "A few hundred guys tried to kill me and Aya last night, so we came back early. Now," I steeled myself, opened the door and entered my room. Rhada was at the head of the bed, her knees pulled up to her chin and my pillows stacked up around her in some sad effort at a visual barrier.Her eyes had a sunken quality to them that suggested someone two steps past hopelessness. She was waiting for me to say something, which was an added truckload of bad news in my book. I began to undress in an unhurried manner. The shirt came off. Working the belt free came next."I've missed you," I said in a calm, yet positive manner. No response.I finished undressing while she remained frozen and emotionally clouded. I made some semi-educated guesses. Her mind was probably an incomprehensible cyclone of clashing upbringing principles and adult desires. She didn't need to be built up, Rhada needed to be rescued. That kind of emotional crisis was something I didn't need, or want, at this moment in my life.Rhada had nowhere else to go. Her martial bravery was of no use in the matter of her heart's insistent call. Her fear was of a different nature. She was looking down that unholy, dark corridor that was the last walk of all failed Amazons. She craved her personal slavery to a man and master. It was tough to move farther away from her native culture than that, or so she thought."Have you missed me?" I asked with authority. I ran two fingers along her left jawline. Rhada nodded. It was a rather feeble effort. "I asked you a question.""Yes," she sniffled."I am curious why you are hiding your body from me, Rhada," I prodded her. I wasn't 'curious'; I was peeved and she knew it"I don't know why I'm here," she moaned."Oh, " I mused. I was on her like lightning.She struggled weakly as we rolled around until she was ass-up on my lap. I had her right arm pinned to her back. Two sharp blows rained down on her covered posterior. Just two for now."I asked you a question. We both know your answer was inadequate," I spoke softly. Two more stinging, open-handed slaps to her buttocks. "I have defeated you in battle," two more smacks. "I have repeatedly taken you by force as my captive," two more with her accompanying moan."What makes you think you can defy me now, Rhada?" The promised blows did not fall. "I own you, don't I?" She moaned wantonly from anticipation of the spanking that wasn't coming. The lesson was simple: punishment and reward were mine to dispense, not for her to demand."I'm sorry," she mumbled."The incompetent are sorry, failures are sorry, useless people are sorry," I stated, followed by two more loud, cupped-hand blows on her ass. "People apologize when they commit an error. People apologize if they plan to learn from their mistakes. Now, are you someone else's miserable excuse for a human being, or are you MY person who learns from her lapses in judgment?""I bring shame to my people," she whimpered. Two more smacks fell upon her backside."Why do you insist on insulting me, Rhada?" two more, far harder, spanks landed causing her to gasp in pain. "Of all the Amazons I have defeated, I picked you to be mine, captive, no other. I thought you had the fierce spirit worthy of my fighting prowess.Your crawling up and dying inside disappoints me," I continued. It didn't disappoint me; it scared me. Rhada was so fiery and feisty. Seeing her mentally ground down into a crippled state ate at my mind."I'm afraid, Cáel," she choked out between her tears.The emotional riptide she was going through caused her to shake uncontrollably. I telegraphed my intent to move her, face down, to the middle of the bed. As I straddled her, I dragged her hands over her head and crossed her wrists. I nuzzled her shoulder, the crux of her neck, and ear."What are you afraid of, my captive?" I murmured.The term 'captive' along with the gentle affections brought forth a pleasurable response from her."I am perverse," she whispered. "I want you to take me as I cry and scream. I want to feel your body pressing down on me as you are doing now.I beg to be spanked, lashed, tease and tormented by you. Steal my sight and hearing. Render me helpless and utterly at your mercy, my Cáel," she pleaded. I'd allow the 'my'."And?" I mused."And?" she was confused."I was waiting for you to request something perverse, something I wouldn't do to you," I explained. I punctuated that by pulling her shirt aside and biting down on her shoulder strong enough to leave deep indentations on her flesh."Aha!" she yelped. She still wasn't making the connection, how incredibly stubborn of her."Do you doubt my bravery?" She didn't respond, so I bit into and worried her left earlobe. "Do you doubt my dedication to the Host?""No," she moaned. "You are an excellent warrior.""So we both agree I have earned the right to take you as my captive," I teased her."This is why I find your insolence to be so confusing," I kept up my routine. "It is almost as if you would rather be bound, whipped, beaten, spanked, bitten, lashed, covered with hot wax, blindfolded, and gagged instead of giving me my due obedience." Rhada's deep sensual moan was what I had been looking for. She spread her legs slightly then pushed her ass against my crotch."I am yours," she sniffled slightly. "You defeated me in battle and I can expect no other fate.""Dates take off their clothes. Slaves strip before their masters," I related. Not true. I had enjoyed multiple stripteases in my time and even give a few. What Rhada wanted to know was that I hungered for her naked flesh."You are on top of me," she protested. I pulled her braid to the side and chomped down her right shoulder. That earned me another squeal. Rhada's initial efforts were frantic, inspired by her pain. Within seconds she recalled our shared moments and slowed down. She knew I liked to watch her clothes come off and go back on. I'm odd that way.I rewarded her obedience with alternating kisses and nips to her freshly exposed flesh. As we progressed, Rhada became more insistent for sexual attention. Her finely honed thighs and abdominal muscles ground her buttocks against my cock in a continuous, circular motion. In our current state, she couldn't get her pants and panties off.When I rolled off, Rhada shot me a worried look. First she flashed up fear because she mistook my look for one of anger. In a second, she keyed to my real mood. I was going to own her, stretch her to her limits and then take it one step further. I was going to use my war captive as I saw fit, rip my pleasure from her passion and break her doubts down to their foundations.She shimmied out of her remaining clothing. I rummaged up the appropriate toys with a bit of an amused snort. Odette had organized the 'toy box' (including a bill for 'modernizing and updating' of my equipment.) What girl does that for a guy, categorize sexual aids she knows you are going to use on other women in your life?"Loosen your braid," I directed her after I turned and soaked in the view. She was in the center of the bed, kneeling with her buttock resting on her heels. Rhada's hands rested just above the knees, her great brown eyes had more of their old spark to them. Part of that was caused by my words sinking into her psyche. The rest was her love affair with my physique.Me and all my scars, plus I had a new one for her to judge and appreciate."Small caliber round from a Seven Pillar's QCW-Type 05," I informed her. Amazons loved their weaponry and their martial exploits."Did you kill him?" she asked with her intensity overcoming her attempt at a demur nature."Him and a bunch of other guys," I chose to answer as she unbraided her silky, black hair that cascade down to the small of her back. I was the son of a Chicago working stiff, not some super-soldier."You fought for the Host and killed our enemies," she tried to ease my mind.I wanted to feel bad about what had happened. The horror I had inflicted would never go away."Most of them were burned alive," I enhanced her experience by ripping open my own, fresh mental scar tissue. For Rhada, ruthlessness, martial valor and battlefield accomplishments were their own aphrodisiac.In her translation of events, her captor had proven yet again he was a fearless, masculine champion, a lion-heart. I put one knee on the bed and waited. Rhada had to shuffle to me. It was interesting to see the magnetic effect of the three items I held in my casual grasp, a leather collar, a thin silver-coated chain and a pair of leather handcuffs. I motioned with the cuffs first.I left it for her to discern my intention. I wanted her to put her wrists forward, yet I wanted to train her to know my wishes. Not only would it keep her mind and perceptions occupied, it would give her a needed sense of learning and broadening her education. It was a very subtle narrowing of the eyes that I used to tip her off.She half-turned with her wrists at her back, caught my 'displeasure' and then extended her arms toward me. I cuffed her right wrist, then her left wrist and finally cinched them together with their two bronze links, all the while demanding she retain eye contact with me. With our silent measuring of our true grit, we established our positions.Without that clash of wills, everything else would be tawdry trinkets of no value. As she accepted those bonds, she set aside her willingness to challenge me and embraced our new sense of harmony. A corner had been turned. Submission became the only outcome her destiny allowed. Mamitu; the Amazon belief that the Goddesses put nothing before the sisters that experience hadn't prepared them for.Out of arrogance, she had struck me. Destiny had prepared me for the fight and I had won. In tribute to destiny, Rhada had acknowledged the lesson and was finally learning from it. I yanked her wrists up roughly until they were extended high over her head. Rhada kept them there, as I intended, because now was time for the collar.This time she couldn't keep her eyes from flickering to the device until it passed beneath her chin. With the cuffs, I had been deliberate and relentlessly purposeful. The collar was an easy gesture, me exerting my rights as her captor and master, nothing more. I spared her a smile. Her dark brown-olive complexion, nearly black around the areola and nipple, was extended by the raising of the arms overhead for my viewing pleasure.Lastly, there was the chain. It had clasps at both ends, so I hooked it around the single ring on the collar and pulled Rhada toward me. I feasted on her lips, touched tongue to tongue inside and outside our mouths, and ended up chewing her lower lip. As I pulled and plucked it with my teeth, my fingers began to coax a stiffening of her teats.Gentle caresses turned into vigorous touching that evolved into painful pinches between the thumb and forefinger and energetic plucking. I let my kisses migrate from her lips to nose (briefly) then her cheeks and the underside of her jawline. Rhada made a gasping-choking noise as I nibbled her flesh.My distraction must have worked because she missed my hands moving down. The middle and forefinger of my left became a wedge working between her buttocks. With the right, I led with my middle finger, using my fore- and ring-fingers to part her labia. The clip-rings of the chain were secured on each thumb.Her fluids turned her sex into warm molasses coating folds of molten tenderness. My solo probing finger didn't penetrate, not yet. I ran the length of her vulva vestibule, rubbing her vaginal and urethral openings. Rhada expressed a piteous whine as I stoked her sexual frustrations. I ratcheted up my torture when my left twin fingers reached her sphincter.Tap the opening, tease her with false penetrations. My lips reached her neck right beneath her ear. I pulled in the flesh with a powerful suction, grabbing the tiny tip of taut flesh with my teeth. Her dolorous pleading ramped up as I delved my fingers in simultaneously. Rhada's anal ring pulsed, alternating between ushering my forefinger inside and resisted my progress.I was breaching her defenses without lubrication. It was wiggling, tentative advancement on my part and sensations of extreme sensitivity on her part. By comparison, her vagina virtually sucked me in. Having been denied sex for so long (if you counted two weeks as long) all the while fantasizing to the point of tripwire anticipation, she was quickly rising to orgasm."Do not," I cautioned her. Rhada trembled. Her groans became guttural as she reached down into her physical conditioning to exhibit some control over her racing heart rate and labored breathing. Had I stopped my assault, she might have held out. I didn't. The task for us both was to push her past the point of control. She was going to lose, that was given.How she lost was the lesson. What level of stimulation was going to be too much? She fought it with every fiber of her being. She fought it for me. Rhada sweated profusely and vibrated like a gypsy tambourine. She could not win. She knew I never intended for her to win. But I wanted her to reach down deep and fight.She would fail and I would punish her for her failure, but it would be a punishment that she felt was well-deserved, and she craved that. Even her failure was part of our dynamic, captor and captive. Pain with a purpose. Pain as a thread that united us. She could not wound herself the way I could. Everything she could inflict, she would sense and prepare for.I provided torment from unexpected angles and stimuli in a myriad of forms. Everything faded until only the touch and the pleasure of the messenger remained."Urah, " her opening declaration of the overwhelming tide was animalistic and desperate.For fifteen seconds I continued to play with her as her climax turned upon itself, building and becoming more chaotic. In the back of my mind, I realized my sex play was being cruel to my neighbors. I had to hope the anonymous death threats would keep Mr. Fiennes at bay.I'd deal with my 'friendly' female neighbor later, once I figured out how to repay her for her patience and the cookies she'd sent over when I was ill. For Rhada, it was a temporary cessation of my sexual attention and allowing her to rest her body against mine. I admired her ability to hold her arms aloft. Still,"You failed," I whispered into her ear. Rhada hiccupped. I dragged my fingers covered with her cunt juice up her pubic mount, abdomen, around the belly button and between her breasts. At the conclusion of the trip was the resounding 'click' of that end of the leash being attached to her collar. "I don't think you have been humble before me."I looped the chain around her shoulder, then dragged it over her left breast. She shivered. My next stop was beneath her right breast. Her nipple seemed to swell up as I rubbed the other loop all over her areola. Next under the right mammary, then looping the chain around her right arm before reaching around the back and securing the second clasp.It was both a symbol of her captivity and body ornamentation. The shiny silver links contrasted with her dusky, sweaty flesh.

On this episode of ABL Live, we covered a variety of topics, including Clay Travis calling out the Democratic Party over a lack of masculine male leadership, the ongoing drama with Elon Musk's involvement with the Federal Government, the Jay-Z & Diddy lawsuit being dropped by the accuser, John Fetterman slamming Trump over banning transgender people from the military, and much more!

Genghis Khan's daughters are shadowy figures: we don't know exactly how many there were or what all of their names were, but historians have pieced together bits and pieces of a story. Enough to know that Genghis valued his daughters highly and they played an essential role in his strategy. An army-on-the-move needs someone to rule the lands they've already conquered, and the Great Khan's daughters were born for that. Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures. Support the show on my Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83998235) for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on Buy Me a Coffee. Join Into History (intohistory.com/herhalfofhistory/) for a community of ad-free history podcasts plus bonus content. Visit Evergreen Podcasts to listen to more great shows. Follow me on Threads as @herhalfofhistory. Or on Facebook or Instagram as Her Half of History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

fWotD Episode 2795: Jochi Welcome to Featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia’s finest articles.The featured article for Sunday, 29 December 2024 is Jochi.Jochi (Mongolian: ᠵᠦᠴᠢ; c. 1182 – c. 1225), also known as Jüchi, was a prince of the early Mongol Empire. His life was marked by controversy over the circumstances of his birth and culminated in his estrangement from his family. He was nevertheless a prominent military commander and the progenitor of the family who ruled over the khanate of the Golden Horde.Jochi was the son of Börte, the first wife of the Mongol leader Temüjin. For many months before Jochi's birth, Börte had been a captive of the Merkit tribe, one of whom forcibly married and raped her. Although there was thus considerable doubt over Jochi's parentage, Temüjin considered him his son and treated him accordingly. Many Mongols, most prominently Börte's next son Chagatai, disagreed; these tensions eventually led to both Chagatai and Jochi being excluded from the line of succession to the Mongol throne.After Temüjin founded the Mongol Empire in 1206 and took the name Genghis Khan, he entrusted Jochi with nine thousand warriors and a large territory in the west of the Mongol heartland; Jochi commanded and participated in numerous campaigns to secure and extend Mongol power in the region. He was also a prominent commander during the invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire (1219–1221), during which he subdued cities and tribes to the north. During the 1221 Siege of Gurganj, tensions arose between him, his brothers, and Genghis, which never healed. Jochi was still estranged from his family when he died of ill health c. 1225. His son Batu was appointed to rule his territories in his stead.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:53 UTC on Sunday, 29 December 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Jochi on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Justin.

Stephen is a recently retired Navy SEAL with 24 years of active duty service. Immediately upon graduating from high school he enlisted in the Navy and went to Basic Underwater Demolition School BUD/S. Stephen was assigned to SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team TWO where he specialized as a SDV Pilot, small arms marksmanship instructor, and scout/sniper. In 1999 Stephen successfully screened and went to Naval Special Warfare Development Group (SEAL Team 6). During his 11 years at the command, Steve successfully completed 10 combat deployments to both OIF (Iraq) and OEF (Afghanistan). During his combat tours as an assault team sniper and team leader, he was awarded the Silver Star and five Bronze Star medals for heroic actions while engaged in National level HVT combat missions, among other medals and awards. Before retiring he started his own consulting business, (TIER ONE Global Consulting LLC) specializing in soldiering skills, combat shooting, austere high altitude jump training, and lead climbing rock courses to private clients and government agencies. In 2012 he was the Today, Stephen is the owner-operator of Dark Desert Defense. Stephen also owns Six Shooters LLC. This company works specifically in the entertainment industry, film, TV, and video games. Genghis was born and raised in New Zealand (NZ). At the age of 17 he was accepted for Officer Training with the Royal New Zealand Army. After serving 7 years with the military Genghis moved to the US where he studied at San Francisco State University(SSU). Genghis grew up around firearms. From an early age he was shooting and hunting with his father. His time in the military led to a greater understanding or firearms specifically in a combat environment. In 2008 Genghis moved to Ghana, Africa where he owned Gold and Diamond mining operations, he also worked as a consultant at this time in security and aviation. In 2010 Genghis returned to the US and decided to teach part time as a firearms instructor, after a couple of bad experiences with the facilities and training offered in Las Vegas, Genghis and his partners decided to open their own range offering training and firearms experiences. Genghis went on to train more and more clients offering a bespoke approach to defensive firearms training. Genghis now owns and operates multiple tourism attractions as well as being one of the principles for Dark Desert Defense. As a veteran himself Genghis also founded and is the chairman of the Veterans Training Fund, a 501(c) 3 that assists veterans in assimilating back into society.  https://www.darkdesertdefense.com/  

Jack Weatherford returns to the pod which marks a pretty sentimental moment for me (links are at the bottom of this email, before the transcript snippet).Jack's first appearance was #19 of the podcast. To this day, it's my favourite podcast I've ever recorded. These are links to the first appearance. Jack Weatherford #19 on SpotifyJack Weatherford #19 on AppleJack Weatherford #19 on YoutubeBut four years ago, when I had just started this podcast, I had written to Jack telling how I was listening to the final chapters of his book while walking across sand dunes in Merghouza, (a desolate slice of the Sahara in south west Morocco). The chapter was making the case for how the plagues viral spread was downstream of the Mongols connectivity of the modern world. I wrote that I was keen to interview him for this podcast that I had just started. There were lots of rejection for a while in the first few years and I had no expectations he would even get back to me. But to my surprise he did, and it was an emphatic yes. We corresponded a bit over email, recorded a 4 hour discussion, of which 3 where published And it was as much a dedication to Mongolia as it was Genghis Khan and the Mongols. And I've waited in the years since to see him appear on Rogan, Fridman, Tim Ferriss or even a Dan Carlin addendum, since these are all blokes who have openly praised and spoken about Jack's work many times. But so far, nothing, although it looks like one of them may correct this, which Jack may or may not give away at the end.But onto this episode today. Jack has just published his final instalment on the Mongols, his fourth book on the topic. It's called Emperor Of The Seas and it's about Genghis's grandson, Kublai Khan, who expanded the Mongol territory beyond the dominion his grandfather conquered 50 years before him. Kublai folded into the Khan empire the fertile agricultural lands of south China, repurposed that fleet and the expertise along with and expanded the Khan empire beyond the oceans. Mongols sitting on horseback, atop goat skins, riding wooden ships. Jack Weatherford #190 Of The Curious Worldview Podcast on YoutubeEmperor Of The Seas - Jack Weatherford

If you cannot compromise; Challenge! In 25 parts, edited from the works of FinalStand. Listen and subscribe to the ► Podcast at Connected.. “Every person is alone. That is the definition of Free-will.” The gift from Grandpa that keeps on giving. I almost miss not killing him myself." "That man was an eternal foe of the Amazons, Cáel. His death was necessary for peace with the Illuminati, thus peace with all the other factions," Pamela related. I began laughing. "So my misogynistic family heritage comes from my Mother and my misandristic lineage comes from my Father," I clued Pamela in. She found it to be hilariously ironic too. "We still have to be careful," Pamela nudged me. "After all, your Grandfather had plans for your body. Whether we choose to believe it was to be a vessel for your Grandfather's essence; or, if you prefer, he put something in your Mother's DNA that, when combined with the machinery he used to store his memories, would bring him back to life; Cáel O'Shea always was thinking three steps ahead." "Why didn't you kill me when you figured this out?" I stared at her. "You hold the fate of House Ishara inside of you," Pamela smiled warmly. "Besides, I like you. No one really understands me like you do. Everyone else thinks I have a sick sense of humor." "I wish you had been my Grandmother," I nodded. "Wait; wait," Pamela held me back from continuing. "Because if I had been your Grandmother, you would have known to avoid a nut-ranch like Havenstone." "Are you like my psychic twin?" I teased her. She was right, of course. "I had a twin brother," Pamela turned sad. "I have always wondered what path his spirit traveled once they took him to the cliffs." "The fact that you still recall him with empathy speaks volumes for you, Pamela," I hugged her. "I felt the same way, you know," Pamela drew comfort from my warmth. I was uncertain of her meaning. "When they told me what happened to boys; I couldn't accept it. Their reasoning rang hollow and I saw their denial of their own blood to be self-defeating." "I have always wanted to believe my brother waits for me in the Hall of Ancestors so I can finally see his face and tell him I'm sorry that I was the one that was spared," she confessed. "You weren't spared, Pamela," I comforted her. "You had children and grandchildren so that way your brother will have grand-nephews and great grand-nephews whose actions are recorded in the deeds of your house and their names inscribed in the roster of the Host." "That's my hope anyway," I added. "Let it be so," she whispered.  (A Step back in time: that Weekend, between Oneida and Nicole) The weekend;  I'd had plenty of relaxing sex over the weekend, bonded with Oneida somewhat while we biked Saturday morning, had sex with Gael, junior of House Bendis (the woman who let me borrow her phone so I could invite Buffy, Helena and Desiree to my little induction ceremony), then had a late afternoon date with Nikita. Escorting Yasmin and her son to the airport for the start of her Havenstone training after dinner was unsettling. The boy, Braulio, seemed worried, Yasmin was glad to see me, really glad to see me then finished if off by commenting that she could tell 'something had changed'. I affirmed her hunch without going into the details. As Yasmin's mood improved, so did her son's. I wished her luck. She told me I'd need it more. Late Saturday night I was invited to a party by Libra. Brooke showed up date-less (she wasn't jumping into a new relationship) so she glommed onto me; us. Marla and Libra had a huge phone fight about her (Marla) not being 21 yet, thus not invited to the party. Felix was there having reconnected with Gina because he had both a glib tongue and an awe-inspiring sexual arsenal. Felix's attempts to recoup any ground with Brook failed miserably. She had her own bitterness toward Trent, her memory of me handing her panties under an outdoor cafe's table as a trophy Felix had taken the night before and displayed openly in my office, and my own masculine support to draw strength from. Felix and I did not verbally, or socially, spar. He accepted the verdict of our first contest and, for all his faults, he acknowledged that my victory had worth and obeyed his conscience on the matter. If anything, he was visually more respectful than ever before. I wasn't his equal; no man and definitely no woman was; yet I was now a competitor he would have to give his very best to defeat. Sunday morning had been just me and Odette. We'd cuddled on the sofa, watched some TV and then I took her to Havenstone for time in the pool. I kept the overly-aggressive Amazons at bay while getting Odette used to the idea of regular exercise; hanging out with Timothy and I required greater endurance than her sedentary youthful stamina provided. An early afternoon invite to a 'pick-up' basketball game at the community, two-court, outdoor lot with Jason, the bar-back from the Yuppie bar, brought me back in contact with Katy Lee Baker, aka Delivery Girl. Odette tagged along. It also brought me in contact with the local 'wild-life'. A Latin King clique was starting to operate in the area and Jason's crew were the native inhabitants who took exception to this. We played for about half an hour were everyone learned I was a big, fat liar. I was actually good at basketball, despite my earlier claims at ignorance. The Kings showed up, drove off the younger teens playing on the other court. A few more of those jokers showed up and it was now 'our turn' to make space. That went over like a shit brick. The Kings outnumbered us a good two-to-one, but Jason wasn't backing down. I was struggling to convince Jason that discretion was the better part of valor when some of the new Latin King arrivals tried to play with a few of the local ladies who had come down to watch their menfolk pull off their shirts and get sweaty. Poor Odette; she had been in the company of so many powerful, confident and lethal women she'd forgotten she wasn't one. A King grabbed Katy Lee's breast. Odette hit the asshole in the stomach, put a shin to his nuts and finished him off with grabbing his head and driving it into her upward moving knee, dropping him like the sack of shit he was. But wait, he had five buddies. Poo was being served up and the electric switch was about to be flipped. "I'll be back to help in a moment," I growled to Jason as the gang members jumped Odette. Katy Lee and a slightly older woman rushed to Odette's aid. The Kings didn't ignore my approach, peeling off two to 'deal with me'. They really shouldn't have hit Odette because now I was angry. The feces hit the rotary wind machine. With their last shows of bravado, I lay into the closest bastards. The sixteen year old was hesitantly pulling out his 32 caliber ACP while reconsidering his poor life choices as I hit his buddy so hard he went airborne, two teeth and a fountain of blood coming from the ruin I'd made of his face. Gun guy was next. I clamped my left hand on his right, gun-toting wrist then drove my knee into his elbow. The elbow snapped upward with a sound reminiscent of a car backfiring. His screams drowned out the thud of his gun dropping to the court surface. For the three remaining Latin Kings I was closing with, a terrible social reality came crashing in. Gangs rely on several tools to exert power; a propensity for violence, illegal finances, a fierce reputation, and superior numbers. By the look on my face, they discovered that their numbers didn't bother me in the least. I knew exactly who they were and didn't give a damn. My desire to destroy them was motivated by something far stronger than any currency, and I was clearly better at this whole violence thing than they seemed to be. They had their pride and the fidelity with their gang, plus their intimidation tactics were going wrong so fast, they couldn't process the disaster quickly enough to alter course. These guys were not professional warriors by any stretch of the imagination. 'Warriors'; perhaps. 'Professional'; definitely not. Their ability to rapidly adapt to a changing situation was woefully under-developed. In gang hand-to-hand combat, you bunch up your members, overrun a foe and beat him to the ground. Fighting a practitioner of Brazilian jujutsu, standing close to one another is the Last thing you want to do. I was a whirlwind of destruction, fed by the understanding that Jason's bunch needed me back real soon. The asshat who tried to use a knife on me got his hand pinned to the court for his audacity. I repeat, threatening Odette had infuriated me. At center court, Jason had his hands full and then some. The Latin Kings had the edges in both numbers and ferocity. The only other hometown boy holding his own was this thick, solid Puerto Rican guy named Bennie; the rest were in trouble. I started with the four-on-one stomp-down on one of Jason's friends; I'd missed the guy's beat down. My inner Amazon was leading the charge. Unlike all my previous encounters, I was intentionally causing pain. I wasn't trying to drive them off, or render them hors de combat. No, my desire was to strike terror in their hearts, inflicting suffering in order to eradicate my foes' resolve to fight. Knees snapped, bones broke, faces were stomped into the court and internal organs ruptured. Even my erstwhile allies were aghast at the wickedness with which I treated our enemy. "Ah; Cáel; are you okay?" Jason mumbled when the last King went down. He'd have a shiner on his left eye soon and his lip was split and bleeding. I hadn't come through unscathed either. Havenstone had seriously upped my pain threshold. Jason wasn't really asking about my physical well-being anyway. I had to get ahead of this; predicament. "Let's get this trash off the court," I commanded. The boys hesitated until Jason picked up one of my semi-conscious victims. "Come on 'Pendejo', leave and don't come back," Jason yanked the man up and began shoving him toward the gate he and his buddies had arrived by. The rest of Jason's friends joined in and we began cleaning up the place. One gangster decided he was too hurt to be moved. I'd rammed his shoulder into the goalpost, breaking his collarbone. He was crying about the pain he was in. I pulled him up. He was around 7 foot 2 inches tall and 275 pounds. I wrapped my hands around his thick bull neck and slowly raised him up off the ground. His face was reddening, his good hand was trying to break my hold and his legs were flailing about in the open air. [In Spanish] "Pain, Asshole? No, pain is me having to come back here and hunt you and your vermin buddies down," I seethed. "I don't live here. These men are not my friends. You touched my girl and I am God Almighty when it comes to defending those of my household. I am not in a gang. I am not a criminal. If you, or your gang, come within a block of this place, I will become Death. Today, there are too many witnesses. This is your reprieve; your moment of grace," I snarled. "Use it wisely. It will not happen again," I finished in a fury. I dropped him to his wobbly feet, catching his good hand before he fell over. That act of compassion after my dire threat confused the guy. "Go," I returned to English. The rest of the Latin Kings walked, stumbled, were dragged from the court. "Who are you again?" Bennie inquired. "Cáel Nyilas," I grinned. "I'm an Aerospace Engineer working on the feasibility of having hamsters running on their wheels being used to recharge batteries on manned flights to Mars." "Hamster wrangling has to be one tough profession," Katy Lee snickered as she and Odette came up. "Come on now," Jason winced as he licked his lip. "Brawling is about panic, anger and the management of those two forces," I told them. "I was the only one in this fight in control of himself, so my actions look out of proportions to what really happened." "They were kicking our asses," Bennie chuckled. "Not as bad as you guys think," I consoled them. "None of you guys ran, or curled up in a ball. That allowed me to pick my fights. I clearly have more hand-to-hand combat experience, but none of that would have mattered had you guys freaked out." There was some truth in what I said. Had they panicked, I would have grabbed Odette and Katy Lee then fled as well. Since they toughed it out, and the Latin Kings exerted virtually no command and control, I was able take on the gang members in small, bite-sized chunks. My training and experience took care of the rest. This also made the somewhat traumatized ballplayers feel proud about the cuts and bruises they'd received. Now they realized they had 'won' this scuffle, they'd played their parts courageously and had all been instrumental in a successful stratagem. The fact that none of them knew that when the blows were raining in it meant nothing. The women who'd come out to watch the game then witnessed the beat down knew their men had been brave, taken their licks and routed their enemies. Martial ardor, baby! 'Defending' a woman does not diminish her. It increases her odds of dealing with insults and threats in a positive manner. Women who look down on women who use their pussies to better themselves are being stupid. It is the equivalent of having a complete toolbox and only using the hammer. The women were going to give up some level of sex to reward the men. The men, in turn, had an example of the kind of behavior that would get them what they wanted; defending your ladies equated to feminine reward. That did not mean penetration; life was far more complex. It did mean she would hang around you, talk to you and trust you (most likely more than she should). Guys still had to seal the deal, figure out what she wanted and deliver. That had been the working arrangement between men and women for most of the last 80,000 years. What I didn't know at the time was that I was being spied upon, that this spy called Buffy; my 'spear and shield'; and Buffy would gather up some Security Detail chicks. Why would SD help? Some morons had tried to murder the Head of House Ishara and that wasn't something the Amazons would tolerate. That Latin King clique was contemplating revenge. They were about to get schooled by the Grand Mistresses of that brutal and unforgiving Art form. I could never let Odette know. After all, to her they were someone's sons, brothers and husbands. My chilling rationalization was that, for whatever reason, the Latin Kings had redefined themselves as carnivores, preying on the rest of mankind. They should have studied what nature was really like. Predators had predators of their own. They'd been big, bad caimans, snatching all that came to the water's edge. In nature, the caiman was careful because jaguars hunted and ate caimans. In the urban jungle, there were things far more dangerous than gang-bangers living in the shadows that jealously guarded their spot as apex predator. Odette and I exited the field. I'd have to catch Katy Lee another time. I was to get the bad news from Ulyssa and her sister about the death in her family. Timothy, Odette and I worked out some more as Odette and I took turns relating the fight to Timothy. He reminded us that the Latin Kings were a powerhouse in the city as well as nationwide. Nicole called at the point I was ready for bed and the rest was family history. (Monday morning) I locked my bike up as normal. When I saw the security guards eyeing me funny, I grew cautious. "Is there a problem?" I asked the woman scanning my ID. She was fearfully hesitant. "Wait, are you worried that I'm pissed about Friday morning?" "We were only doing our jobs, Cáel of Ishara," she told me. "Oh," I chuckled. "So that is what is bothering you." I smiled at the group. "Of course you were doing your jobs. I would have been surprised if you hadn't and I'm certainly not angry about what went down. You acted in defense of Havenstone and I never saw it any other way." That gave them some relief. My next problem. "Has anyone from the Security Detail called about me?" I asked. "I don't see anyone here to pick me up this morning." "I'll call them," she offered. The answer was that they weren't expecting me, but I could come down if I desired. That was promising. My ID card worked for the lower levels now. Walking past the Armory was intriguing; in that they barely noticed me. In the prep room for the shooting range there was; nothing. No guns for me to try out, or even look at. I went to the firing range looking for one of my 'friendly' SD ladies. They were all giving me the cold shoulder. Naomi told me why; Constanza. The SD were very angry with my interference in justice for Constanza versus Pamela. Since Naomi had been there when the entire incident went down, I didn't laugh in her face. I got coldly furious instead. If I wanted a firearm, I could go to the Armory and check one out, so that's what I did. The guards there weren't helpful either. Inside was; well; everything. I called up SD and asked them to send an armorer to help me make some selections. Ten minutes later, the lady had still not arrived. That made me laugh. They were tit-for-tatting the wrong guy. Glasses and ear protection came first. I left the Armory with my weapon of choice for the day, a full bandolier and a crate of ammo. I could see the SD chick's guarding the Armory eyes bug-out. I grinned and headed for the shooting range. They surreptitiously called somebody. Knowing that, I hurried myself along, passing straight through prep room for the firing line. I was a man on a mission. See, I could be a raging prick when I wanted to be. Those SD babes should have talked with any number of the Amazons who already knew me. I had made it clear; make my life difficult if you wished, but accept whatever payback I could imagine. Respecting House Ishara wasn't even a question. For pummeling me over Constanza, they were about to get a whole new kind of Righteous Pricking, courtesy of the house they refused to treat with equality. An Amazon finished firing off a clip for her personal defense weapon and was checking her pistol's slide action. "Excuse me," I said as I stepped up. She was about to scream something. Most likely 'stop!' Since I had no intention of complying, I didn't wait; or stop. For me, I was suddenly wondering what the precise blast radius of a 40 mm grenade was. I pulled the trigger anyway. I swear by Ishara-turned-Ishtar, I hit that target right in the 10 ring. The explosion the grenade caused when it hit the back wall rendered my claims moot. Even with eye and ear protection, I could barely hear anything because of the ringing echo, or see anything because of the dust. The flashing yellow lights and klaxons going off indicated something bad had happened. Bad wasn't done yet. I walked to the next stand where the Amazon had ducked down while she oriented herself to the threat. "Good morning," I yelled at her. Then I aimed and prepared to squeeze off my second round. With all the dust in the air, I could barely make out the outline of the target I was shooting at. Accuracy at this point was unnecessary. This bitching toy seemed to kill everything. Third station; third shot and the Amazons were starting to figure out what was going on. Some moron was firing a grenade launcher within an indoor firing range. Before the fourth shot they figured out it was me. Now those bitches had a problem. The lead Amazon tried to get my attention despite my constant attempts to ignore her. I resolved the issue by tapping my six-shot bang-bang and indicating I had two shots left; and I used them. Only when I stopped to reload did the ladies screw up the courage to exhibit some kind of physical resistance. Naomi pulled off my ear protection. "What are you doing?" she shouted at me. She wasn't being rude. All our ears were ringing. "I'm being left to my own devices, you 'failures' to every concept of loyalty, respect and faith," I replied to the entire group. "Constanza called House Ishara an abomination, insane and diseased," I spat out my hate. "I spared her life when I should have had her stricken from the roles of her house and butchered her like some beast. I showed mercy and this is how the Security Detail responds? Congratulations, you have earned my contempt." "But why are you using a grenade launcher; indoors?" Naomi struggled to understand. "Oh," I smirked. "Because I can. I'm superior to all of you here so I can do what I want and you have to suck it up. I am the Head of a First House so none of you have a choice. Every one of you chose to show me no respect and, out of respect for your lack of respect, you get no respect." They were trying to figure how to work around that when I upped the ante. "I'm also going to direct the other members of House Ishara to come down here at random times and fire off grenades, use flamethrowers, or; how about tear gas; tear gas sounds good." "That would degrade the readiness of the Security Detail," the first Amazon protested. "Not my problem. Take your complaints to Elsa or Saint Marie. Make sure to start your complaint with exactly how you behaved toward me; but use the names Beyoncé, Ursula, Katrina, or Messina instead of mine," I glared. "Now excuse me. I have a box full of high explosives to work through." And off I went. There were 25 shooting lanes. I had fired off my 22nd grenade when Elsa showed up. "Cáel of Ishara, why are you destroying this training area?" she inquired calmly. "Working through a crate of grenades. I thought that would be obvious," I joked. "Is there something wrong we should talk about?" Elsa was keeping her anger in check. "Your underlings were chronically disrespectful. Since positive reinforcement failed; being nice to any of your weakling-bullies was counter-productive; I decided to employ the stick treatment," I met her gaze. "Stop destroying the firing line; please," Elsa ground out through clenched teeth. "You are right," I nodded. "I need to take a few of these upstairs to the pure-blood gym. There is a lot more damage I could do there. This place is already a mess." Desiree's voice broke the silence. She must have come in with Elsa. "Cáel," Desiree yawned. "How do you want to resolve this crisis? That doesn't involve setting off seismic sensors all over New York City, that is?" "Hmmm; fine, every member of the Security Detail is to write a romantic poem then read it aloud to a 'Runner' while at that 'Runners' workstation," I invented a punishment. "Ishara is the Goddess of Love as well as Oaths. It is a fitting tribute to her that romantic verses from the heart be created and spoken aloud." "It is also fitting that the recipients be 'Runners', since it will unite them in both their appreciation of love and their anger with me for throwing my weight around like every other Full-Blood who thinks they are better because of some quirk of birth," I concluded. "It will be done," Elsa intoned. That part of the matter was settled. Elsa looked at my grenade launcher. An unhappy sigh escaped my lips as I handed it over. "Elsa, I'm coming for weapon's practice again tomorrow," I informed her. Now I was going to burn off some time in the pool then get to work, or so I hoped. I hadn't gotten away with this because I was Cáel Nyilas, or the Head of House Ishara. I got away with it because Elsa didn't want to see the faces of the Council when she explained what her people had done. The Council members treating me like offal was their business. Other Amazons deciding that they could treat ANY member of the Council that poorly wouldn't fly; reference to the fate of Leona. Why had SD treated me poorly? Constanza. If they repeated my conversation with Constanza that cost her an eye, the outcome was known by all. Constanza would cease being an Amazon right before she died. I made it to Katrina's office four minutes before seven only to find Katrina absent while Daphne, Brielle and Pamela were hanging around. Dora and Fabiola followed me in. Everyone made it before the deadline, Katrina last of all. As Katrina began the meeting, Brielle left. Pamela and Katrina ignored one another. My work review was far better than normal. I'd sold Anthrax to a terrorist cell, but it had turned out to be a mislabeled Anthrax antidote instead, so all was good. Daphne was trying to figure out how her glowing report over my efforts had been so misconstrued. My assigned boss for the day was Rosette, one of the senior members of Executive Services. "Katrina, I need a moment of your time; in private," I requested as the meeting broke up. "As Cáel, or the Head of House Ishara?" she asked. "Neither," I replied. She waved the others away with Tigger shutting the door. Pamela remained seated. Katrina shot me a look concerning Pamela's presence. "I don't control her," I shrugged. "She hangs around me for her own reasons." Katrina nodded. I walked to the edge of Katrina's desk, put my palms on its cool surface. "Katrina, I am the Grandson of Cáel O'Shea, I met Brianna O'Shea earlier this morning, she knows who I am and was brought to town because some genetic research done on me." "Brianna knows where I work and who I work for, as in you. Pamela said the word 'Protocols' and Brianna backed off, but I'm sure she wants to see me again. I've warned my Dad about what happened and to destroy everything associated with my Mom. By the way, Brianna looks exactly like my Mother did when I was first born; exactly," I emphasized. Had the situation not been so completely screwed up, I would have treasured the steamrollered look on Katrina's face. "She is with something called the Illuminati. She doesn't know about me and House Ishara. When Brianna tried to figure how this Protocol/Truce thing involved me, Pamela stonewalled her," I added. "Pamela, I can understand Cáel not immediately bringing this to my attention," Katrina's cool exterior reasserted itself. "He doesn't know what's going on. You do." "I didn't feel inclined to do your job for you, Katrina," Pamela gave a rapier-thin smile. "Besides, you are part of the brain trust that sent him home Friday night cloaked in ignorance, not I." "Cáel," Katrina turned back to me. "How did you meet Brianna O'Shea?" "I met a lawyer, screwed her to multiple orgasms in the Women's room of some bar, met her again plus her lawyer buddies and Sunday night she called me to her downtown office to screw her into enlightenment; which I did," I sighed. "She was working on a case involving DNA ownership, which is oddly germane to my current predicament," I grinned. "Cáel, we need you to report to medical for more testing," Katrina ordered. "I apologize, but House Ishara does not believe that would be in its best interest so Cáel must decline," I nodded. "Will there be anything else?" Will battled Will to no outcome. She nodded and I left. Pamela ghosted along behind me. Rosetta intersected my path and off we went. I was given no clue as to my assignment; no surprise. I texted Buffy: 'Nothing new happening. Pick me up at 5:30 Wed. morning.' That meant there was no new development on the committee to help House Ishara pick 'Runners'. I had played nice. Katrina and Hayden had dodged me on Friday afternoon. This morning, she owed it to me to show some kind of progress. That wasn't what she offered. I had made a concession, they refused to reciprocate, so now I was free of any obligation to consider their wishes. I wanted more 'Runners' and come Wednesday morning, I was adding twenty. Working with Rosette (and Pamela) was a triple-barreled experience. Errands were the largest bulk of our time, but the rest was other mundane tasks of the most basic sort. Within the workload were instructions in the craft of being unseen. Executive Services was more than laundry and daycare; it was about not disrupting the lives of clients. A side benefit of that was learning how to move through any group and not be memorable; to not give off the subtle clues that you were an outsider. Not only could a group of executives hold a conversation without an ES person disrupting their trains of thought, people trained to look for threats wouldn't be tipped off to your presence either. It was peon-craft for beginners. Executive Services personnel weren't ninja; they were inconsequential. As I had bubbled to Katrina on day one, Executive Services got to go everywhere and learn how everything worked. What I didn't appreciate was that was how Counter-Intelligence worked too. From what I wedged out of Rosette, Counter-Intelligence had never uncovered a successful internal conspiracy. They had ferreted out multiple peripheral programs meant to gather information on Havenstone, but no Amazon had been critically compromised; which meant several Amazons had been blackmailed yet gone to ES before doing any damage. Rosette appreciated that fanatic devotion, but she'd never hold complete faith in it. Her job was vigilance. (What is really going on?) The third barrel was the real unhappy news. For all their illegal activities, Havenstone was not the Sinaloa Cartel. There were not a global criminal organization that invited international law enforcement scrutiny. So why did they devote so much time and energy to security? They weren't alone in the shadows of world-wide civilization. At the top of the pile was the Illuminati. They were a hydra controlled by a ruthless, cutthroat conclave; membership uncertain. They were a Darwinian meritocracy until the top tier of leadership, where a group of smaller secret societies and families monopolized the real influence. Their biggest strength, and weakness, was that most of the people in the organization didn't even know they were part of the Illuminati. After that was a mishmash of groups with different abilities that made rating them difficult. The Condottieri were rather simple; they sold mercenaries and weapons to anyone with the coin with the sideline of promoting conflict by any means necessary. The Nine Clans; that sounded familiar; were assassins in the truest sense of the word. Hashshashin, Ninja, Thuggee, Black Lotus, Coils of the Serpent, Brotherhood of the Wolf, the Black Hand, Cult of the Jaguar and the Ghost Tigers. They were not just murder for hire, but murder to advance their cause. Harmonious existence was bad for business, so they stirred up rivalries and conflict in every corner of the globe. The Egyptian Rite Masons sounded sublime. They weren't. They may have been a secret order older than the Amazons, claiming descent to the days of Imhotep. The Egyptians were the oldest enemy of the Illuminati. The Egyptian Rite's goal was a global autocratic government, were the Illuminati wanted a capitalist oligarchy in charge of global commerce; with the Illuminati pulling all the strings. The Egyptian Rite were not restricted to Egypt anymore; membership was open to all races and genders. The Earth and Sky Society were not New Agers. They were the descendants of Genghis Khan and were devoted to the reincarnation of the Greatest World Conqueror of all time. Before tossing them into the rubbish bin of bad ideas, know that Genghis was the largest single genetic contributor (via rape) to the human gene pool since the mystical Eve. To be a member you had to have a genetic link to ole Genghis. The Seven Pillars of Heaven were an ancient Chinese Secret Society out for; you guessed it; World Domination. To be a true member of this group you had to be Pure Han Chinese and a man, or bound to one. Needless to say, Havenstone and the Seven Pillars did not get along. The final bit of information; these groups were what was left of the Great Secret Societies; the survivors. Havenstone's place in all of this chaos was complicated. By mid-5th century BCE, the Egyptians were aware of the Amazons. The Amazons were not causing problems for the Egyptians, so they parted on decent terms and that was that. By the first century ADE, the political landscape had changed. Amazons had penetrated Roman society and brought Latin houses into their structure. Amazingly, the Egyptians contacted the Amazons again, figured out the Amazons only wanted co-existence so co-existence they got. In the late 4th century, the Amazons returned the favor. The Amazons told the Egyptians something horribly bad was coming across the Eurasian steppes and the Egyptians better batten down the hatches. A few decades later, the Huns were pressing on the Roman Empire's frontier. What is not generally know is that in the ranks of Hunnish horde were the Sarmatians, successors to the Scythians, who had allied Amazons in their ranks. This gave the Amazons, thus the Egyptians, contacts on both sides of the Roman-Attila conflict. By the mid-5th century the two secret societies parted ways once more. Their relationship had been useful, but not close. From the Amazons viewpoint, it was the equivalent of getting good gossip at the fish market. The Egyptians appreciated the intelligence, but wanted, and didn't get, military assistance in propping up the Roman Empire. For the Amazons, the fall of the Western Roman Empire was the trigger for a massive Diaspora. A few houses decided to tough it out in Western Europe and its packs of warring Germanic tribes. Others travelled to Egypt and from there, down the Nile to Ethiopia and Central Africa. A third group travelled farther East than ever before, eventually settling in Southern India. Of course, the World never stands still. In the late 8th century, the Illuminati was founded as a mercantile society trying to restructure the shattered Western and Central European economies. It turned out that there was a major pass over the Alps between eastern Italy and southern Germany that was a safe transit region. The Illuminati decided to seize it. The Egyptians popped up, revealed to the infant Illuminati that they didn't want them to do that, but were ignored. The Egyptians were out to rebuild European civilization, which meant, in their eyes, you didn't go around butchering those who were restoring law and order. The Egyptians went to the mountain pass and warned the Amazons there what was coming their way. The Illuminati convinced a local Lombard warlord that the pass would be a nice addition to his territory and off he went. Two months later, their bully boy hadn't returned. Neither had any of his men. Never ones to retreat from failure, the Illuminati sent another force and those guys were never seen again as well. This time the Egyptians showed back up to warn the Illuminati that those people whose land they'd been trying to steal were sick of their meddling and were coming to settle matters. Would the Egyptians help the Illuminati deal with this threat, now that it was out of the mountains? The Egyptians politely declined stating 'better the sitting stone you know than the rolling one that sets things around it on fire'. The Illuminati fled from their first base and that is the reason why they hate the Amazons and Egyptians to this day. Mind you, the Illuminati had no idea who lived in that mountain pass at that time. A few decades after the incident, the Amazons relocated northward. Being good stewards over their lands had given up unwelcome rewards; namely people came to them seeking sanctuary. Amazons can be rather cold-hearted. That does not mean they kill you for knocking on their door. When the number of refugees became too great, the houses voted for migration over slaughter. The Amazons travelled to the Black Forest, dispersing from there, and left the people behind to become known as the Swiss. Everywhere, Europe was tough for the Amazons in the Middle Ages. Heavily male-dominated Germanic cultures in the North, Islamic culture in the South, piracy in between and an epidemic of warfare all around. It was in Sub-Saharan Africa where the Amazons prospered the most. There, migrating populations worked in their favor, as did the style of warfare generally practiced. Perversely, the increase in the East African Arabic slave trade worked in the Amazon's favor. Not only could they 'liberate' captured populations; males for breeding and women for recruits; it encouraged local tribes to temporarily ally with the Amazons to fight off the slavers. The Subcontinent turned out to be a mixed bag. In the South, Amazons prospered and grew in numbers and houses. The problem was that they became too strong. Normally they would have spread out, but Eastern India proved more hostile than acceptable and further East looked like a crap-shoot. China didn't look welcoming at all. So, the Indian Amazons were caught up in a series of wars when Northern powers tried to move South and the Southern lords were in some serious need of aid. The issue was there were multiple players in the shadows pulling the strings. One day, the Egyptians came knocking. The Egyptians knew the Amazons well enough to not try to draft them into their cause. They simply told the Amazons who the key players were and what they were trying to do. Why would they do this? It was obvious. Amazons existed for two reasons; live free and make baby Amazons. Those other asshole Secret Societies were threatening both of those goals. Warfare is doubly hard on a female population and women spending years in combat aren't making babies. Take into account that during this time period a massive amount of the world's population lived in India. Add to that the Amazon numbers were respectively tiny (invisible) and Every Secret Society they were fighting didn't think much of women. A few thousand gurgling last breathes later and two of India's oldest Secret Societies were gone, or eviscerated. Why had they left the other, Islamic, secret society alone? The Islamic society operated in the populous North, not the jungle-covered South. Why did they leave the Amazons alone? The Amazons exhibited a shocking capacity for violence. The Muslim group was a 'secret' Secret Society. The Amazons were a 'hidden/don't screw with us' Secret Society. A side effect of the war in India was the creation of another Secret Society; the 9 Clans. They weren't nine back then, but thanks to the Amazons and Egyptians, this East Asian group picked up the Thuggee and, within a century, the Hashshashin. Things were about to get even more interesting. For the Amazons in India, life existed off the beaten path so it took a year for the Amazons to realize those 'dirty little men' who had shown up in some western Indian ports were, in fact, Europeans; in a European-built ship. They didn't know Portuguese, but they knew Latin and with a little bit off effort, they got an updated history of Europe. Amazons had been meeting regularly every thirty years, or so, to choose the next High Priestess and exchange notes. These meeting did not include studies of technological, political, or social improvements. Stealing the twenty-first ship to show up, the Amazons sailed home; Europe, that is. They stopped off in East Africa to spread the good news then, upon landing, went to tell their European sisters that their pilgrimages were no longer a matter of torturous overland travel. They could use nifty ships like these instead. With that came even better news; some Genoese, nut-job, failure of a mathematician had discovered a brand new land and they were going to check it out. The decision was made. The Indians were going back home. Their Europeans sisters were going to 'acquire' some instructions on how to sail a ship then 'obtain' some ships and divide them up among the three strongholds. Europe would be heading to the west, Africa would sail around the Cape of Good Hope (not yet named that), back toward Europe to link up their communication network (and in time, bump into Brazil), and India would head east to the South-east Asian archipelago, sailing around the hostile Asian kingdoms. Hopefully, the fleet sailing west and the one heading east would meet one day. Unfortunately, North and South America stood in the way of that dream. The 'little' hitch in this plan was who those ships belonged to. Nearly half the commerce of Europe at the time was either controlled, or influenced by, the Illuminati. The Amazons were running off with their equipment and profits; whoops. A cherry on top to that 'whoops' was that the Illuminati were only starting to come out of a bloody war with the Condottieri. The Condottieri had started out as a business venture/strong arm of the Illuminati. In classic Illuminati fashion, the leaders of the Condottieri didn't know precisely who they were working for. In fact, they thought they were independent. When the Illuminati yanked that leash, it snapped and the blood-letting began. The Illuminati had more money than the Pope and the subtle ability to call upon the kingdoms of the Mediterranean World. What did the Condottieri have? A small cadre of loyal, professional fighting men and the best strategic and tactical minds in the West; the ones the Illuminati had recruited into the Condottieri in the first place. Whoops yet again. The Illuminati had every resource under the Sun. The Condottieri knew they were screwed, but they'd been in screwed up situations before and battled through. They needed to stay alive until the path to victory presented itself. Re-enter the Egyptians and the 9 Clans (still not 9 yet). The Egyptians? The Egyptians made a butt-load of money on the silk and spice trade's overland routes. The Western Europeans/Illuminati were about to cut them out of that. The Egyptians needed time to reposition themselves. The revolt of the Condottieri was a gift from the Divine and suddenly the mercenaries had funds and ships. The 9 Clans? The Illuminati was a 'Does it All' organization. If the Illuminati won, who would need assassins? This was class warfare, pure and simple. Even with three-on-one, the Illuminati fought back and fought well. The Amazon predations were not the deciding factor in the war. It wasn't even their war. Soon enough, the Amazons were buying their own boats and going elsewhere. The Illuminati doesn't forgive, or forget. For some reason, they took the Amazon thefts personally, despite its negligible impact. Maybe it was that all the other players were regionally invested while the Amazons seemed to be dog-piling them. The fact that Amazons had existed in Europe for nearly 2500 years either didn't occur to them, or they didn't care. Flash forward to the start of the 20th century. Through the discrete use of marriage-assassination, land grabs and the basic lawlessness in the Western United States, rural South America, Australia and the islands of Southeast Asia, the Amazons had grown vastly in numbers and economic influence. The Egyptians come knocking once more. Unlike past encounters, they were bringing an offer of alliance. The Illuminati controlled key assets in the British Empire and were using those chokeholds to eliminate their rivals. This was not news to the Amazons. Their holdings in India and the Dutch East Indies had been under pressure of the Illuminati for a century. Ever since the Illuminati nearly ground out the Thuggee (one of the 9 Clans), the Egyptians and Amazons have been constantly harassed. This was not the first warning the Egyptians had brought. The Amazons hadn't want a war with the Illuminati and they certainly didn't trust the Egyptians. This time they agreed to go to war though. Why? Two things; totally unrelated. First, the Illuminati and the Seven Pillars of Heaven had agreed to carve up Asia. Amazons lived in Asia and they were no man's chattel. Secondly, the Women's Rights movement was in full swing. The Amazons had nothing to do with it. Those were outsider females. What interested the Amazons were the legal ramifications of Women's Equality. The Amazons were poised for a massive increase in their financial footprint. With the Illuminati out of the way, or at least, preoccupied, they could seize assets and have time to fortify before they could be attacked. Women's Equality would allow this to take place. Basically, the Amazons were going to exploit the blood, sweat and tears of women to advance their agenda. From all accounts, the only groups that recalled the Amazons last foray into Secret Society politics were the Amazons and Egyptians. Certainly no one had enlightened the Condottieri. They started smacking around some Amazon bases in Europe and unleashed 'Hell on Earth'. With the help of the Egyptians, they got to it in Amazon fashion. A General of the Condottieri and his family were eating at a Naples eatery when five women dresses like nuns walked in and shot up him, his entire family plus some bodyguards. When the response team showed up, they killed them too. A few police were added to the obituary column as the Amazons escaped. Welcome to Amazon warfare. The Condottieri were furious over such a public breach, as well as the losses. They swore a vendetta. The 9 Clans happily informed the Condottieri that a 'War of Extermination' was the Amazon default setting. The Condottieri were not afraid; not yet. See, there was another secret society called La Solidaridad. Working on intelligence from the Illuminati, La Solidaridad overran an Amazon compound in Argentina. They thought it would be funny to take the survivors as sex slaves. Maybe the Illuminati was experimenting to see just how pissed-off Amazons could get. Maybe La Solidaridad hadn't read their Homer, especially those parts concerning Ancient World vengeance. It took the Host six months to start things rolling then the carnage began. They made damn sure the men knew they were being hunted by women. They weren't there to out-macho the men, or make a point. Every night, they attacked the men and their families in the cities and towns. For safeties sake, La Solidaridad retreated to their country estates. Huge mistake. A good number of them had to have hunted at some point in their lives. How they missed being 'flushed out into the open' was beyond me. Out in the countryside, there was nowhere to hide. Walls meant little because Amazons were incredibly fit and trained to fight at night. Most of the families the Amazons killed. They were the lucky ones. The survivors? By using a new Edison device, they took some home movies of the fates of those men. The Amazon's favorite tactic was to shove lit sticks of dynamite in the men's asses then steer them toward the closest river. One guy actually made it. His relief didn't last long. The Amazons had done something to turn the normally safe caiman population into rabidly aggressive swarmers. Bitches; insanely, sadistic bitches. In eighteen months, La Solidaridad had ceased to exist as an organization and never recovered. The Illuminati used that time wisely to beat down the Egyptians, Earth and Sky, and the 9 Clans, aided by the Seven Pillars. Having concluded their first order of business, the Amazons sent their home movie to the Condottieri. It wasn't mercy toward the Condottieri. I was psychological warfare. The Amazons needed the Condottieri off-balance so they could go after their real enemy. It seemed the Illuminati had instructed La Solidaridad on how to 'intimidate' the Amazons; through rape, torture and enslavement. Specifically, it was Cáel O'Shea who set the tragedy in motion; Granddad. Beyond Granddad being impossibly fucking old, he had possessed some seriously out of control animosity where Amazons were concerned. Before the Amazon's could implement their hunt, the 9 Clans intervened. The Illuminati had been giving them real problems and they saw a way to gain some breathing space. Had the Amazons and 9 Clans been in communication, the World might be a very different place today. Instead, the heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne was wacked by the Black Hand, some Serbian numbskulls took the fall and the rest of us got World War I. Oddly enough, this one murder accomplished the goals of the 9 Clans, Amazons, Egyptians and Earth and Sky Society. The British Empire still stood, but was wrecked. China was much worse off than that. Before the Amazons could gain their vengeance, the Egyptians negotiated a cease-fire between groups. The Amazon Council was furious yet unwilling to fight the Illuminati alone. They kept down their bile; and waited. In the post-War period, the Amazon/Illuminati feud ate much of their resources (probably the Egyptian's intentions all along). A truly dark side of this struggle was the Amazon support for the Nazis. Did the Amazons switch course? Yes, but not for the reasons most people would think. Jews, gypsies, communists and homosexuals going into camps didn't worry them one bit. What did? Let's go back in time to those women in the Swiss Alps who headed north. A great many of them went North then East; to places like Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It wasn't so much a matter of whimsy as one of terrain and population. All the best farmland was in western Germany, the Low Countries and France. That's where the Germanic peoples settled. Behind them, to the East, were the Slavs. The Slavs had three things the Amazons liked; low population density, weak social hierarchies and crappy land. That meant they could live in relative isolation, not be subject to an all-powerful king and not be inundated with migrating hordes wanting to steal their dank swamps, deep forests and isolate meadows. Sometime in early 1939, right after the Third Reich snatched up Bohemia, some Amazon augur decided to open up Hitler's Mein Kampf to see what was going on i.e. to see when Hitler would get around to jumping on England; the whole reason the Amazon were supporting him. What she found out was bad, bad, bad! The genocide of a bunch of people they could care less about? Not a problem. Invading the Slavic lands? What? Russia/Soviet Union hadn't been the big foe in WWI and they certainly were not Germany's greatest enemy at the moment; Britain was! Drang Nach Osten? That was an undefined migration of Germans back into Slavic lands that ended over 600 years ago? Their Eastern European sisters were in grave danger from a lunatic. The common sense response (for Amazons) was to kill the Hitler. They couldn't get close, so they took their problem to their old allies, the Egyptians and 9 Clans. Those two saw nothing wrong with the way things were developing. The Amazons swallowed their pride and went to the Illuminati who seemed rather enchanted with the idea of the fascists and communists annihilating one another. They had no way to safely approach the Soviets. Pulling their sister houses out of Eastern Europe was no longer an option; the other Secret Societies would be looking for that and try to figure out where the Amazon home bases were. The Amazons decided to make a fight of it. They were not going to charge panzers with spears. No, they started setting up caches of supplies and weapons in the most inaccessible places imaginable. The hope was that as Nazi Germany was grinding Communist Russia to dust, they could smuggle out their people in the chaos to Sweden then points west. The problem was WW II didn't work out that way. Great Britain got spanked at Dunkirk and Poland, France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and Norway all surrendered to the Nazi blitzkrieg. Then the Germans invaded Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia went under, but the Soviet Union didn't fall. Much to the Amazon Council's horror, resistance units began to interact with the local Amazons in an effort to improve their mutual survivability. Tales of mysterious female fighter, appearing to slay their enemies then disappearing into the wilderness filtered to both the Stavka (Russians) and SOE (British). The SOE discovered an answer to the mystery in mid-1942, by way of the fledgling US OSS. The Americans 'found' three female Army recruits who volunteered for such a mission. A month later, the partisan bands with those agents found the 'Forest Women' and all the lights came on. Unknown to the public World, the Amazon Council decided that the best hope for their kinswomen was to bring down the Nazis and ride out the Allied conquest. All of that might have been a happily little footnote except for what happened next. Hundreds of Amazons fought; no surprise; yet they didn't fight alone this time. Men and women of the local populace fought side by side with these lethal warriors. They shared battle plans, food, fire and medical care. That huge cultural barrier created over two and a half millennia began to erode. They bled together and were forced from time to time to place their lives in each other's hands. They witnessed one another's courage and sacrifice. They watched them bury their dead, nurture their young and weep at their pain. Whenever things looked darkest, the Amazon would turn to their partisan partners and say with utmost confidence 'we have survived worse; so can you'. The seminal event happened on the night of February 17th, 1944. For two years, the fractured, wounded women that are ever-present wherever there is war began to attach themselves to the Amazon bands. At first they were little more than annoyances. In time, the Amazons tried to turn these women into something 'useful'. Later, a few earned the right to follow the Amazons into battle. On that February night, two ladies were inducted into House Živa. This was hardly the first time outsider women were brought into the Host, but this circumstance was unique; induction in the middle of a war, having proven themselves in battle before their now-sisters. From that action; not the last in that conflict; was born the concept of the 'Runners'. With the end of WWII, the Amazons emerged more powerful than ever. The three strongest groups in the United States were the Egyptians, Illuminati and the Amazons. The Amazons profited the most; having started with the lowest profile and having infiltrated both the government and business sectors during the war effort. Using the Freemasons, the Egyptians reaped great benefit from the US war effort too. Always forward-looking, the Egyptians helped the Amazons as well. Still, not everything was rosy. For the Public World, World War II ended in September of 1945. That was barely a blip in the Secret Societies' radar. The calamity came on the 10th of December 1949. Using their pawns in the Chinese Communist Party, the Seven Pillars had re-unified China and were back on the world stage. Earth and Sky and the 9 Clans were dealt a setback. A fourth secret society involved in the Chinese struggle was absorbed by the 7 Pillars. The problem was that all the societies were locked in a bitter struggle yet devastated and over-extended. The 9 Clans, fearing the ratcheting up of Cold War intelligence-gathering services by multiple national governments asked for a global truce. The Amazons were dangerously exposed and over-extended. The Illuminati decided this was their time to strike and nothing could deter them. Into this backdrop, came the news to the Amazons that they had serious genetic issues. That led to the First Directive; the recruitment of 'Runners' as an established program as well as the explosion of what I knew as Executive Services. In a truly bizarre twist, U.S. and Soviet agents found themselves engaged in cat-and-mouse games with European NATO agents. Amazons had penetrated the proto-CIA during the war in an effort to reach their European sisters. In Eastern Europe, many of those partisans went over to the Communists when the Soviets overran their countries and looked favorably upon their erstwhile allies from the War. They couldn't match the influence that the many of the other secret societies possessed. Instead they pulled upon existing, personal relationships. I worked with a negative result of those days; Desiree, or more accurately, Desiree's parents. I was also walking with the final resolution of that crisis. The Secret Societies proved they could work just as fast as the UN. In three decades they had resolved nothing and were spending more and more time on damage control. Three events converged. The Illuminati had figured out the full-blooded Amazons were dying out so they knew they could win a game of attrition. The rest of the groups were coming to the conclusion that wiping out the Amazons was the easier course of action. The Amazons had, without a doubt, located the leader of the Illuminati, Cáel O'Shea. O'Shea was in sight of his goal; the extermination of the Amazons; when a lone Amazon got to him first. O'Shea's death sent titanic shockwaves through the Illuminati. There was a scramble for the top spot, fear over how much the Amazons knew about their inner workings, and how the other secret orders would take this bit of news. The Illuminati recoiled from the event, agreed to a truce and that led to the protocols that kept Brianna from dragging me off; gunshot wounds and all. That had been the state of affairs for the last thirty years. Again, the World had not stood still. China was an economic powerhouse, the EU grew stronger, and wars of political ideology had been replaced by religious-based terrorism. The Amazons were at a critical juncture in their history. The 'New' Directive was their best chance at staving off extinction and the Houses were fighting it kicking and screaming. The First Directive wasn't being implemented properly. If nothing changed, the Amazons would be dragged under by the weight of their own bigotry. But wait! There was this idiot with no conception of history getting in the way of Amazon extinction; the decline toward oblivion that six murderous factions were waiting for. In this epic there were no 'friends', only 'allies of convenience'. The Egyptians weren't buddies. They simply preferred others to fight their battles for them. The Amazons fit that bill nicely, but if they were dying out, the Egyptians would be more concerned in filling the Amazon void than mourning over the Host's grave. The Illuminati and Seven Pillars were enemies. Though there was little animosity between the Earth  and  Sky and the Amazons, the E and S were based on perpetuating the legacy of the World's greatest rapist. The 9 Clans were the 9 Clans and their business was all about the precise application of death. They had no friends and if they pretended to be your friend, it was only so they could position themselves to kill you. It was only business. They rarely played with debts, obligations and vendettas. Still, if a member of the 9 Clans said they owed you, it was worth the assassin's weight in Iridium. As a bonus, the 9 Clans were gender-neutral. Outside of the Amazons, they had been using females in their numbers the longest. Because of this, the 9 Clans tried to interact with the Amazon using women from their own ranks, minimizing the sexual tension between the groups. The Condottieri had also began recruiting women into their ranks over the past twenty years. Their leadership was still all-male with the added complications of the unresolved Naples killings and the brutal destruction of La Solidaridad. Also, while the Amazons were not business competitors, they didn't employ the Condottieri either. All these micro-wars had been very good for the Condottieri, allowing them to build up quite a stable of talent and a huge war chest. If the Amazons recovered, the global map would change. How so? Madi and Rhada weren't from Cleveland, but from India where unresolved crimes against women were too common. Palli Chandra, the VP of International Finance and Ngozi from my sparring match were from Central Africa and I'd gathered from

If you cannot compromise; Challenge! In 25 parts, edited from the works of FinalStand. Listen and subscribe to the ► Podcast at Connected.. “Every person is alone. That is the definition of Free-will.” The gift from Grandpa that keeps on giving. I almost miss not killing him myself." "That man was an eternal foe of the Amazons, Cáel. His death was necessary for peace with the Illuminati, thus peace with all the other factions," Pamela related. I began laughing. "So my misogynistic family heritage comes from my Mother and my misandristic lineage comes from my Father," I clued Pamela in. She found it to be hilariously ironic too. "We still have to be careful," Pamela nudged me. "After all, your Grandfather had plans for your body. Whether we choose to believe it was to be a vessel for your Grandfather's essence; or, if you prefer, he put something in your Mother's DNA that, when combined with the machinery he used to store his memories, would bring him back to life; Cáel O'Shea always was thinking three steps ahead." "Why didn't you kill me when you figured this out?" I stared at her. "You hold the fate of House Ishara inside of you," Pamela smiled warmly. "Besides, I like you. No one really understands me like you do. Everyone else thinks I have a sick sense of humor." "I wish you had been my Grandmother," I nodded. "Wait; wait," Pamela held me back from continuing. "Because if I had been your Grandmother, you would have known to avoid a nut-ranch like Havenstone." "Are you like my psychic twin?" I teased her. She was right, of course. "I had a twin brother," Pamela turned sad. "I have always wondered what path his spirit traveled once they took him to the cliffs." "The fact that you still recall him with empathy speaks volumes for you, Pamela," I hugged her. "I felt the same way, you know," Pamela drew comfort from my warmth. I was uncertain of her meaning. "When they told me what happened to boys; I couldn't accept it. Their reasoning rang hollow and I saw their denial of their own blood to be self-defeating." "I have always wanted to believe my brother waits for me in the Hall of Ancestors so I can finally see his face and tell him I'm sorry that I was the one that was spared," she confessed. "You weren't spared, Pamela," I comforted her. "You had children and grandchildren so that way your brother will have grand-nephews and great grand-nephews whose actions are recorded in the deeds of your house and their names inscribed in the roster of the Host." "That's my hope anyway," I added. "Let it be so," she whispered.  (A Step back in time: that Weekend, between Oneida and Nicole) The weekend;  I'd had plenty of relaxing sex over the weekend, bonded with Oneida somewhat while we biked Saturday morning, had sex with Gael, junior of House Bendis (the woman who let me borrow her phone so I could invite Buffy, Helena and Desiree to my little induction ceremony), then had a late afternoon date with Nikita. Escorting Yasmin and her son to the airport for the start of her Havenstone training after dinner was unsettling. The boy, Braulio, seemed worried, Yasmin was glad to see me, really glad to see me then finished if off by commenting that she could tell 'something had changed'. I affirmed her hunch without going into the details. As Yasmin's mood improved, so did her son's. I wished her luck. She told me I'd need it more. Late Saturday night I was invited to a party by Libra. Brooke showed up date-less (she wasn't jumping into a new relationship) so she glommed onto me; us. Marla and Libra had a huge phone fight about her (Marla) not being 21 yet, thus not invited to the party. Felix was there having reconnected with Gina because he had both a glib tongue and an awe-inspiring sexual arsenal. Felix's attempts to recoup any ground with Brook failed miserably. She had her own bitterness toward Trent, her memory of me handing her panties under an outdoor cafe's table as a trophy Felix had taken the night before and displayed openly in my office, and my own masculine support to draw strength from. Felix and I did not verbally, or socially, spar. He accepted the verdict of our first contest and, for all his faults, he acknowledged that my victory had worth and obeyed his conscience on the matter. If anything, he was visually more respectful than ever before. I wasn't his equal; no man and definitely no woman was; yet I was now a competitor he would have to give his very best to defeat. Sunday morning had been just me and Odette. We'd cuddled on the sofa, watched some TV and then I took her to Havenstone for time in the pool. I kept the overly-aggressive Amazons at bay while getting Odette used to the idea of regular exercise; hanging out with Timothy and I required greater endurance than her sedentary youthful stamina provided. An early afternoon invite to a 'pick-up' basketball game at the community, two-court, outdoor lot with Jason, the bar-back from the Yuppie bar, brought me back in contact with Katy Lee Baker, aka Delivery Girl. Odette tagged along. It also brought me in contact with the local 'wild-life'. A Latin King clique was starting to operate in the area and Jason's crew were the native inhabitants who took exception to this. We played for about half an hour were everyone learned I was a big, fat liar. I was actually good at basketball, despite my earlier claims at ignorance. The Kings showed up, drove off the younger teens playing on the other court. A few more of those jokers showed up and it was now 'our turn' to make space. That went over like a shit brick. The Kings outnumbered us a good two-to-one, but Jason wasn't backing down. I was struggling to convince Jason that discretion was the better part of valor when some of the new Latin King arrivals tried to play with a few of the local ladies who had come down to watch their menfolk pull off their shirts and get sweaty. Poor Odette; she had been in the company of so many powerful, confident and lethal women she'd forgotten she wasn't one. A King grabbed Katy Lee's breast. Odette hit the asshole in the stomach, put a shin to his nuts and finished him off with grabbing his head and driving it into her upward moving knee, dropping him like the sack of shit he was. But wait, he had five buddies. Poo was being served up and the electric switch was about to be flipped. "I'll be back to help in a moment," I growled to Jason as the gang members jumped Odette. Katy Lee and a slightly older woman rushed to Odette's aid. The Kings didn't ignore my approach, peeling off two to 'deal with me'. They really shouldn't have hit Odette because now I was angry. The feces hit the rotary wind machine. With their last shows of bravado, I lay into the closest bastards. The sixteen year old was hesitantly pulling out his 32 caliber ACP while reconsidering his poor life choices as I hit his buddy so hard he went airborne, two teeth and a fountain of blood coming from the ruin I'd made of his face. Gun guy was next. I clamped my left hand on his right, gun-toting wrist then drove my knee into his elbow. The elbow snapped upward with a sound reminiscent of a car backfiring. His screams drowned out the thud of his gun dropping to the court surface. For the three remaining Latin Kings I was closing with, a terrible social reality came crashing in. Gangs rely on several tools to exert power; a propensity for violence, illegal finances, a fierce reputation, and superior numbers. By the look on my face, they discovered that their numbers didn't bother me in the least. I knew exactly who they were and didn't give a damn. My desire to destroy them was motivated by something far stronger than any currency, and I was clearly better at this whole violence thing than they seemed to be. They had their pride and the fidelity with their gang, plus their intimidation tactics were going wrong so fast, they couldn't process the disaster quickly enough to alter course. These guys were not professional warriors by any stretch of the imagination. 'Warriors'; perhaps. 'Professional'; definitely not. Their ability to rapidly adapt to a changing situation was woefully under-developed. In gang hand-to-hand combat, you bunch up your members, overrun a foe and beat him to the ground. Fighting a practitioner of Brazilian jujutsu, standing close to one another is the Last thing you want to do. I was a whirlwind of destruction, fed by the understanding that Jason's bunch needed me back real soon. The asshat who tried to use a knife on me got his hand pinned to the court for his audacity. I repeat, threatening Odette had infuriated me. At center court, Jason had his hands full and then some. The Latin Kings had the edges in both numbers and ferocity. The only other hometown boy holding his own was this thick, solid Puerto Rican guy named Bennie; the rest were in trouble. I started with the four-on-one stomp-down on one of Jason's friends; I'd missed the guy's beat down. My inner Amazon was leading the charge. Unlike all my previous encounters, I was intentionally causing pain. I wasn't trying to drive them off, or render them hors de combat. No, my desire was to strike terror in their hearts, inflicting suffering in order to eradicate my foes' resolve to fight. Knees snapped, bones broke, faces were stomped into the court and internal organs ruptured. Even my erstwhile allies were aghast at the wickedness with which I treated our enemy. "Ah; Cáel; are you okay?" Jason mumbled when the last King went down. He'd have a shiner on his left eye soon and his lip was split and bleeding. I hadn't come through unscathed either. Havenstone had seriously upped my pain threshold. Jason wasn't really asking about my physical well-being anyway. I had to get ahead of this; predicament. "Let's get this trash off the court," I commanded. The boys hesitated until Jason picked up one of my semi-conscious victims. "Come on 'Pendejo', leave and don't come back," Jason yanked the man up and began shoving him toward the gate he and his buddies had arrived by. The rest of Jason's friends joined in and we began cleaning up the place. One gangster decided he was too hurt to be moved. I'd rammed his shoulder into the goalpost, breaking his collarbone. He was crying about the pain he was in. I pulled him up. He was around 7 foot 2 inches tall and 275 pounds. I wrapped my hands around his thick bull neck and slowly raised him up off the ground. His face was reddening, his good hand was trying to break my hold and his legs were flailing about in the open air. [In Spanish] "Pain, Asshole? No, pain is me having to come back here and hunt you and your vermin buddies down," I seethed. "I don't live here. These men are not my friends. You touched my girl and I am God Almighty when it comes to defending those of my household. I am not in a gang. I am not a criminal. If you, or your gang, come within a block of this place, I will become Death. Today, there are too many witnesses. This is your reprieve; your moment of grace," I snarled. "Use it wisely. It will not happen again," I finished in a fury. I dropped him to his wobbly feet, catching his good hand before he fell over. That act of compassion after my dire threat confused the guy. "Go," I returned to English. The rest of the Latin Kings walked, stumbled, were dragged from the court. "Who are you again?" Bennie inquired. "Cáel Nyilas," I grinned. "I'm an Aerospace Engineer working on the feasibility of having hamsters running on their wheels being used to recharge batteries on manned flights to Mars." "Hamster wrangling has to be one tough profession," Katy Lee snickered as she and Odette came up. "Come on now," Jason winced as he licked his lip. "Brawling is about panic, anger and the management of those two forces," I told them. "I was the only one in this fight in control of himself, so my actions look out of proportions to what really happened." "They were kicking our asses," Bennie chuckled. "Not as bad as you guys think," I consoled them. "None of you guys ran, or curled up in a ball. That allowed me to pick my fights. I clearly have more hand-to-hand combat experience, but none of that would have mattered had you guys freaked out." There was some truth in what I said. Had they panicked, I would have grabbed Odette and Katy Lee then fled as well. Since they toughed it out, and the Latin Kings exerted virtually no command and control, I was able take on the gang members in small, bite-sized chunks. My training and experience took care of the rest. This also made the somewhat traumatized ballplayers feel proud about the cuts and bruises they'd received. Now they realized they had 'won' this scuffle, they'd played their parts courageously and had all been instrumental in a successful stratagem. The fact that none of them knew that when the blows were raining in it meant nothing. The women who'd come out to watch the game then witnessed the beat down knew their men had been brave, taken their licks and routed their enemies. Martial ardor, baby! 'Defending' a woman does not diminish her. It increases her odds of dealing with insults and threats in a positive manner. Women who look down on women who use their pussies to better themselves are being stupid. It is the equivalent of having a complete toolbox and only using the hammer. The women were going to give up some level of sex to reward the men. The men, in turn, had an example of the kind of behavior that would get them what they wanted; defending your ladies equated to feminine reward. That did not mean penetration; life was far more complex. It did mean she would hang around you, talk to you and trust you (most likely more than she should). Guys still had to seal the deal, figure out what she wanted and deliver. That had been the working arrangement between men and women for most of the last 80,000 years. What I didn't know at the time was that I was being spied upon, that this spy called Buffy; my 'spear and shield'; and Buffy would gather up some Security Detail chicks. Why would SD help? Some morons had tried to murder the Head of House Ishara and that wasn't something the Amazons would tolerate. That Latin King clique was contemplating revenge. They were about to get schooled by the Grand Mistresses of that brutal and unforgiving Art form. I could never let Odette know. After all, to her they were someone's sons, brothers and husbands. My chilling rationalization was that, for whatever reason, the Latin Kings had redefined themselves as carnivores, preying on the rest of mankind. They should have studied what nature was really like. Predators had predators of their own. They'd been big, bad caimans, snatching all that came to the water's edge. In nature, the caiman was careful because jaguars hunted and ate caimans. In the urban jungle, there were things far more dangerous than gang-bangers living in the shadows that jealously guarded their spot as apex predator. Odette and I exited the field. I'd have to catch Katy Lee another time. I was to get the bad news from Ulyssa and her sister about the death in her family. Timothy, Odette and I worked out some more as Odette and I took turns relating the fight to Timothy. He reminded us that the Latin Kings were a powerhouse in the city as well as nationwide. Nicole called at the point I was ready for bed and the rest was family history. (Monday morning) I locked my bike up as normal. When I saw the security guards eyeing me funny, I grew cautious. "Is there a problem?" I asked the woman scanning my ID. She was fearfully hesitant. "Wait, are you worried that I'm pissed about Friday morning?" "We were only doing our jobs, Cáel of Ishara," she told me. "Oh," I chuckled. "So that is what is bothering you." I smiled at the group. "Of course you were doing your jobs. I would have been surprised if you hadn't and I'm certainly not angry about what went down. You acted in defense of Havenstone and I never saw it any other way." That gave them some relief. My next problem. "Has anyone from the Security Detail called about me?" I asked. "I don't see anyone here to pick me up this morning." "I'll call them," she offered. The answer was that they weren't expecting me, but I could come down if I desired. That was promising. My ID card worked for the lower levels now. Walking past the Armory was intriguing; in that they barely noticed me. In the prep room for the shooting range there was; nothing. No guns for me to try out, or even look at. I went to the firing range looking for one of my 'friendly' SD ladies. They were all giving me the cold shoulder. Naomi told me why; Constanza. The SD were very angry with my interference in justice for Constanza versus Pamela. Since Naomi had been there when the entire incident went down, I didn't laugh in her face. I got coldly furious instead. If I wanted a firearm, I could go to the Armory and check one out, so that's what I did. The guards there weren't helpful either. Inside was; well; everything. I called up SD and asked them to send an armorer to help me make some selections. Ten minutes later, the lady had still not arrived. That made me laugh. They were tit-for-tatting the wrong guy. Glasses and ear protection came first. I left the Armory with my weapon of choice for the day, a full bandolier and a crate of ammo. I could see the SD chick's guarding the Armory eyes bug-out. I grinned and headed for the shooting range. They surreptitiously called somebody. Knowing that, I hurried myself along, passing straight through prep room for the firing line. I was a man on a mission. See, I could be a raging prick when I wanted to be. Those SD babes should have talked with any number of the Amazons who already knew me. I had made it clear; make my life difficult if you wished, but accept whatever payback I could imagine. Respecting House Ishara wasn't even a question. For pummeling me over Constanza, they were about to get a whole new kind of Righteous Pricking, courtesy of the house they refused to treat with equality. An Amazon finished firing off a clip for her personal defense weapon and was checking her pistol's slide action. "Excuse me," I said as I stepped up. She was about to scream something. Most likely 'stop!' Since I had no intention of complying, I didn't wait; or stop. For me, I was suddenly wondering what the precise blast radius of a 40 mm grenade was. I pulled the trigger anyway. I swear by Ishara-turned-Ishtar, I hit that target right in the 10 ring. The explosion the grenade caused when it hit the back wall rendered my claims moot. Even with eye and ear protection, I could barely hear anything because of the ringing echo, or see anything because of the dust. The flashing yellow lights and klaxons going off indicated something bad had happened. Bad wasn't done yet. I walked to the next stand where the Amazon had ducked down while she oriented herself to the threat. "Good morning," I yelled at her. Then I aimed and prepared to squeeze off my second round. With all the dust in the air, I could barely make out the outline of the target I was shooting at. Accuracy at this point was unnecessary. This bitching toy seemed to kill everything. Third station; third shot and the Amazons were starting to figure out what was going on. Some moron was firing a grenade launcher within an indoor firing range. Before the fourth shot they figured out it was me. Now those bitches had a problem. The lead Amazon tried to get my attention despite my constant attempts to ignore her. I resolved the issue by tapping my six-shot bang-bang and indicating I had two shots left; and I used them. Only when I stopped to reload did the ladies screw up the courage to exhibit some kind of physical resistance. Naomi pulled off my ear protection. "What are you doing?" she shouted at me. She wasn't being rude. All our ears were ringing. "I'm being left to my own devices, you 'failures' to every concept of loyalty, respect and faith," I replied to the entire group. "Constanza called House Ishara an abomination, insane and diseased," I spat out my hate. "I spared her life when I should have had her stricken from the roles of her house and butchered her like some beast. I showed mercy and this is how the Security Detail responds? Congratulations, you have earned my contempt." "But why are you using a grenade launcher; indoors?" Naomi struggled to understand. "Oh," I smirked. "Because I can. I'm superior to all of you here so I can do what I want and you have to suck it up. I am the Head of a First House so none of you have a choice. Every one of you chose to show me no respect and, out of respect for your lack of respect, you get no respect." They were trying to figure how to work around that when I upped the ante. "I'm also going to direct the other members of House Ishara to come down here at random times and fire off grenades, use flamethrowers, or; how about tear gas; tear gas sounds good." "That would degrade the readiness of the Security Detail," the first Amazon protested. "Not my problem. Take your complaints to Elsa or Saint Marie. Make sure to start your complaint with exactly how you behaved toward me; but use the names Beyoncé, Ursula, Katrina, or Messina instead of mine," I glared. "Now excuse me. I have a box full of high explosives to work through." And off I went. There were 25 shooting lanes. I had fired off my 22nd grenade when Elsa showed up. "Cáel of Ishara, why are you destroying this training area?" she inquired calmly. "Working through a crate of grenades. I thought that would be obvious," I joked. "Is there something wrong we should talk about?" Elsa was keeping her anger in check. "Your underlings were chronically disrespectful. Since positive reinforcement failed; being nice to any of your weakling-bullies was counter-productive; I decided to employ the stick treatment," I met her gaze. "Stop destroying the firing line; please," Elsa ground out through clenched teeth. "You are right," I nodded. "I need to take a few of these upstairs to the pure-blood gym. There is a lot more damage I could do there. This place is already a mess." Desiree's voice broke the silence. She must have come in with Elsa. "Cáel," Desiree yawned. "How do you want to resolve this crisis? That doesn't involve setting off seismic sensors all over New York City, that is?" "Hmmm; fine, every member of the Security Detail is to write a romantic poem then read it aloud to a 'Runner' while at that 'Runners' workstation," I invented a punishment. "Ishara is the Goddess of Love as well as Oaths. It is a fitting tribute to her that romantic verses from the heart be created and spoken aloud." "It is also fitting that the recipients be 'Runners', since it will unite them in both their appreciation of love and their anger with me for throwing my weight around like every other Full-Blood who thinks they are better because of some quirk of birth," I concluded. "It will be done," Elsa intoned. That part of the matter was settled. Elsa looked at my grenade launcher. An unhappy sigh escaped my lips as I handed it over. "Elsa, I'm coming for weapon's practice again tomorrow," I informed her. Now I was going to burn off some time in the pool then get to work, or so I hoped. I hadn't gotten away with this because I was Cáel Nyilas, or the Head of House Ishara. I got away with it because Elsa didn't want to see the faces of the Council when she explained what her people had done. The Council members treating me like offal was their business. Other Amazons deciding that they could treat ANY member of the Council that poorly wouldn't fly; reference to the fate of Leona. Why had SD treated me poorly? Constanza. If they repeated my conversation with Constanza that cost her an eye, the outcome was known by all. Constanza would cease being an Amazon right before she died. I made it to Katrina's office four minutes before seven only to find Katrina absent while Daphne, Brielle and Pamela were hanging around. Dora and Fabiola followed me in. Everyone made it before the deadline, Katrina last of all. As Katrina began the meeting, Brielle left. Pamela and Katrina ignored one another. My work review was far better than normal. I'd sold Anthrax to a terrorist cell, but it had turned out to be a mislabeled Anthrax antidote instead, so all was good. Daphne was trying to figure out how her glowing report over my efforts had been so misconstrued. My assigned boss for the day was Rosette, one of the senior members of Executive Services. "Katrina, I need a moment of your time; in private," I requested as the meeting broke up. "As Cáel, or the Head of House Ishara?" she asked. "Neither," I replied. She waved the others away with Tigger shutting the door. Pamela remained seated. Katrina shot me a look concerning Pamela's presence. "I don't control her," I shrugged. "She hangs around me for her own reasons." Katrina nodded. I walked to the edge of Katrina's desk, put my palms on its cool surface. "Katrina, I am the Grandson of Cáel O'Shea, I met Brianna O'Shea earlier this morning, she knows who I am and was brought to town because some genetic research done on me." "Brianna knows where I work and who I work for, as in you. Pamela said the word 'Protocols' and Brianna backed off, but I'm sure she wants to see me again. I've warned my Dad about what happened and to destroy everything associated with my Mom. By the way, Brianna looks exactly like my Mother did when I was first born; exactly," I emphasized. Had the situation not been so completely screwed up, I would have treasured the steamrollered look on Katrina's face. "She is with something called the Illuminati. She doesn't know about me and House Ishara. When Brianna tried to figure how this Protocol/Truce thing involved me, Pamela stonewalled her," I added. "Pamela, I can understand Cáel not immediately bringing this to my attention," Katrina's cool exterior reasserted itself. "He doesn't know what's going on. You do." "I didn't feel inclined to do your job for you, Katrina," Pamela gave a rapier-thin smile. "Besides, you are part of the brain trust that sent him home Friday night cloaked in ignorance, not I." "Cáel," Katrina turned back to me. "How did you meet Brianna O'Shea?" "I met a lawyer, screwed her to multiple orgasms in the Women's room of some bar, met her again plus her lawyer buddies and Sunday night she called me to her downtown office to screw her into enlightenment; which I did," I sighed. "She was working on a case involving DNA ownership, which is oddly germane to my current predicament," I grinned. "Cáel, we need you to report to medical for more testing," Katrina ordered. "I apologize, but House Ishara does not believe that would be in its best interest so Cáel must decline," I nodded. "Will there be anything else?" Will battled Will to no outcome. She nodded and I left. Pamela ghosted along behind me. Rosetta intersected my path and off we went. I was given no clue as to my assignment; no surprise. I texted Buffy: 'Nothing new happening. Pick me up at 5:30 Wed. morning.' That meant there was no new development on the committee to help House Ishara pick 'Runners'. I had played nice. Katrina and Hayden had dodged me on Friday afternoon. This morning, she owed it to me to show some kind of progress. That wasn't what she offered. I had made a concession, they refused to reciprocate, so now I was free of any obligation to consider their wishes. I wanted more 'Runners' and come Wednesday morning, I was adding twenty. Working with Rosette (and Pamela) was a triple-barreled experience. Errands were the largest bulk of our time, but the rest was other mundane tasks of the most basic sort. Within the workload were instructions in the craft of being unseen. Executive Services was more than laundry and daycare; it was about not disrupting the lives of clients. A side benefit of that was learning how to move through any group and not be memorable; to not give off the subtle clues that you were an outsider. Not only could a group of executives hold a conversation without an ES person disrupting their trains of thought, people trained to look for threats wouldn't be tipped off to your presence either. It was peon-craft for beginners. Executive Services personnel weren't ninja; they were inconsequential. As I had bubbled to Katrina on day one, Executive Services got to go everywhere and learn how everything worked. What I didn't appreciate was that was how Counter-Intelligence worked too. From what I wedged out of Rosette, Counter-Intelligence had never uncovered a successful internal conspiracy. They had ferreted out multiple peripheral programs meant to gather information on Havenstone, but no Amazon had been critically compromised; which meant several Amazons had been blackmailed yet gone to ES before doing any damage. Rosette appreciated that fanatic devotion, but she'd never hold complete faith in it. Her job was vigilance. (What is really going on?) The third barrel was the real unhappy news. For all their illegal activities, Havenstone was not the Sinaloa Cartel. There were not a global criminal organization that invited international law enforcement scrutiny. So why did they devote so much time and energy to security? They weren't alone in the shadows of world-wide civilization. At the top of the pile was the Illuminati. They were a hydra controlled by a ruthless, cutthroat conclave; membership uncertain. They were a Darwinian meritocracy until the top tier of leadership, where a group of smaller secret societies and families monopolized the real influence. Their biggest strength, and weakness, was that most of the people in the organization didn't even know they were part of the Illuminati. After that was a mishmash of groups with different abilities that made rating them difficult. The Condottieri were rather simple; they sold mercenaries and weapons to anyone with the coin with the sideline of promoting conflict by any means necessary. The Nine Clans; that sounded familiar; were assassins in the truest sense of the word. Hashshashin, Ninja, Thuggee, Black Lotus, Coils of the Serpent, Brotherhood of the Wolf, the Black Hand, Cult of the Jaguar and the Ghost Tigers. They were not just murder for hire, but murder to advance their cause. Harmonious existence was bad for business, so they stirred up rivalries and conflict in every corner of the globe. The Egyptian Rite Masons sounded sublime. They weren't. They may have been a secret order older than the Amazons, claiming descent to the days of Imhotep. The Egyptians were the oldest enemy of the Illuminati. The Egyptian Rite's goal was a global autocratic government, were the Illuminati wanted a capitalist oligarchy in charge of global commerce; with the Illuminati pulling all the strings. The Egyptian Rite were not restricted to Egypt anymore; membership was open to all races and genders. The Earth and Sky Society were not New Agers. They were the descendants of Genghis Khan and were devoted to the reincarnation of the Greatest World Conqueror of all time. Before tossing them into the rubbish bin of bad ideas, know that Genghis was the largest single genetic contributor (via rape) to the human gene pool since the mystical Eve. To be a member you had to have a genetic link to ole Genghis. The Seven Pillars of Heaven were an ancient Chinese Secret Society out for; you guessed it; World Domination. To be a true member of this group you had to be Pure Han Chinese and a man, or bound to one. Needless to say, Havenstone and the Seven Pillars did not get along. The final bit of information; these groups were what was left of the Great Secret Societies; the survivors. Havenstone's place in all of this chaos was complicated. By mid-5th century BCE, the Egyptians were aware of the Amazons. The Amazons were not causing problems for the Egyptians, so they parted on decent terms and that was that. By the first century ADE, the political landscape had changed. Amazons had penetrated Roman society and brought Latin houses into their structure. Amazingly, the Egyptians contacted the Amazons again, figured out the Amazons only wanted co-existence so co-existence they got. In the late 4th century, the Amazons returned the favor. The Amazons told the Egyptians something horribly bad was coming across the Eurasian steppes and the Egyptians better batten down the hatches. A few decades later, the Huns were pressing on the Roman Empire's frontier. What is not generally know is that in the ranks of Hunnish horde were the Sarmatians, successors to the Scythians, who had allied Amazons in their ranks. This gave the Amazons, thus the Egyptians, contacts on both sides of the Roman-Attila conflict. By the mid-5th century the two secret societies parted ways once more. Their relationship had been useful, but not close. From the Amazons viewpoint, it was the equivalent of getting good gossip at the fish market. The Egyptians appreciated the intelligence, but wanted, and didn't get, military assistance in propping up the Roman Empire. For the Amazons, the fall of the Western Roman Empire was the trigger for a massive Diaspora. A few houses decided to tough it out in Western Europe and its packs of warring Germanic tribes. Others travelled to Egypt and from there, down the Nile to Ethiopia and Central Africa. A third group travelled farther East than ever before, eventually settling in Southern India. Of course, the World never stands still. In the late 8th century, the Illuminati was founded as a mercantile society trying to restructure the shattered Western and Central European economies. It turned out that there was a major pass over the Alps between eastern Italy and southern Germany that was a safe transit region. The Illuminati decided to seize it. The Egyptians popped up, revealed to the infant Illuminati that they didn't want them to do that, but were ignored. The Egyptians were out to rebuild European civilization, which meant, in their eyes, you didn't go around butchering those who were restoring law and order. The Egyptians went to the mountain pass and warned the Amazons there what was coming their way. The Illuminati convinced a local Lombard warlord that the pass would be a nice addition to his territory and off he went. Two months later, their bully boy hadn't returned. Neither had any of his men. Never ones to retreat from failure, the Illuminati sent another force and those guys were never seen again as well. This time the Egyptians showed back up to warn the Illuminati that those people whose land they'd been trying to steal were sick of their meddling and were coming to settle matters. Would the Egyptians help the Illuminati deal with this threat, now that it was out of the mountains? The Egyptians politely declined stating 'better the sitting stone you know than the rolling one that sets things around it on fire'. The Illuminati fled from their first base and that is the reason why they hate the Amazons and Egyptians to this day. Mind you, the Illuminati had no idea who lived in that mountain pass at that time. A few decades after the incident, the Amazons relocated northward. Being good stewards over their lands had given up unwelcome rewards; namely people came to them seeking sanctuary. Amazons can be rather cold-hearted. That does not mean they kill you for knocking on their door. When the number of refugees became too great, the houses voted for migration over slaughter. The Amazons travelled to the Black Forest, dispersing from there, and left the people behind to become known as the Swiss. Everywhere, Europe was tough for the Amazons in the Middle Ages. Heavily male-dominated Germanic cultures in the North, Islamic culture in the South, piracy in between and an epidemic of warfare all around. It was in Sub-Saharan Africa where the Amazons prospered the most. There, migrating populations worked in their favor, as did the style of warfare generally practiced. Perversely, the increase in the East African Arabic slave trade worked in the Amazon's favor. Not only could they 'liberate' captured populations; males for breeding and women for recruits; it encouraged local tribes to temporarily ally with the Amazons to fight off the slavers. The Subcontinent turned out to be a mixed bag. In the South, Amazons prospered and grew in numbers and houses. The problem was that they became too strong. Normally they would have spread out, but Eastern India proved more hostile than acceptable and further East looked like a crap-shoot. China didn't look welcoming at all. So, the Indian Amazons were caught up in a series of wars when Northern powers tried to move South and the Southern lords were in some serious need of aid. The issue was there were multiple players in the shadows pulling the strings. One day, the Egyptians came knocking. The Egyptians knew the Amazons well enough to not try to draft them into their cause. They simply told the Amazons who the key players were and what they were trying to do. Why would they do this? It was obvious. Amazons existed for two reasons; live free and make baby Amazons. Those other asshole Secret Societies were threatening both of those goals. Warfare is doubly hard on a female population and women spending years in combat aren't making babies. Take into account that during this time period a massive amount of the world's population lived in India. Add to that the Amazon numbers were respectively tiny (invisible) and Every Secret Society they were fighting didn't think much of women. A few thousand gurgling last breathes later and two of India's oldest Secret Societies were gone, or eviscerated. Why had they left the other, Islamic, secret society alone? The Islamic society operated in the populous North, not the jungle-covered South. Why did they leave the Amazons alone? The Amazons exhibited a shocking capacity for violence. The Muslim group was a 'secret' Secret Society. The Amazons were a 'hidden/don't screw with us' Secret Society. A side effect of the war in India was the creation of another Secret Society; the 9 Clans. They weren't nine back then, but thanks to the Amazons and Egyptians, this East Asian group picked up the Thuggee and, within a century, the Hashshashin. Things were about to get even more interesting. For the Amazons in India, life existed off the beaten path so it took a year for the Amazons to realize those 'dirty little men' who had shown up in some western Indian ports were, in fact, Europeans; in a European-built ship. They didn't know Portuguese, but they knew Latin and with a little bit off effort, they got an updated history of Europe. Amazons had been meeting regularly every thirty years, or so, to choose the next High Priestess and exchange notes. These meeting did not include studies of technological, political, or social improvements. Stealing the twenty-first ship to show up, the Amazons sailed home; Europe, that is. They stopped off in East Africa to spread the good news then, upon landing, went to tell their European sisters that their pilgrimages were no longer a matter of torturous overland travel. They could use nifty ships like these instead. With that came even better news; some Genoese, nut-job, failure of a mathematician had discovered a brand new land and they were going to check it out. The decision was made. The Indians were going back home. Their Europeans sisters were going to 'acquire' some instructions on how to sail a ship then 'obtain' some ships and divide them up among the three strongholds. Europe would be heading to the west, Africa would sail around the Cape of Good Hope (not yet named that), back toward Europe to link up their communication network (and in time, bump into Brazil), and India would head east to the South-east Asian archipelago, sailing around the hostile Asian kingdoms. Hopefully, the fleet sailing west and the one heading east would meet one day. Unfortunately, North and South America stood in the way of that dream. The 'little' hitch in this plan was who those ships belonged to. Nearly half the commerce of Europe at the time was either controlled, or influenced by, the Illuminati. The Amazons were running off with their equipment and profits; whoops. A cherry on top to that 'whoops' was that the Illuminati were only starting to come out of a bloody war with the Condottieri. The Condottieri had started out as a business venture/strong arm of the Illuminati. In classic Illuminati fashion, the leaders of the Condottieri didn't know precisely who they were working for. In fact, they thought they were independent. When the Illuminati yanked that leash, it snapped and the blood-letting began. The Illuminati had more money than the Pope and the subtle ability to call upon the kingdoms of the Mediterranean World. What did the Condottieri have? A small cadre of loyal, professional fighting men and the best strategic and tactical minds in the West; the ones the Illuminati had recruited into the Condottieri in the first place. Whoops yet again. The Illuminati had every resource under the Sun. The Condottieri knew they were screwed, but they'd been in screwed up situations before and battled through. They needed to stay alive until the path to victory presented itself. Re-enter the Egyptians and the 9 Clans (still not 9 yet). The Egyptians? The Egyptians made a butt-load of money on the silk and spice trade's overland routes. The Western Europeans/Illuminati were about to cut them out of that. The Egyptians needed time to reposition themselves. The revolt of the Condottieri was a gift from the Divine and suddenly the mercenaries had funds and ships. The 9 Clans? The Illuminati was a 'Does it All' organization. If the Illuminati won, who would need assassins? This was class warfare, pure and simple. Even with three-on-one, the Illuminati fought back and fought well. The Amazon predations were not the deciding factor in the war. It wasn't even their war. Soon enough, the Amazons were buying their own boats and going elsewhere. The Illuminati doesn't forgive, or forget. For some reason, they took the Amazon thefts personally, despite its negligible impact. Maybe it was that all the other players were regionally invested while the Amazons seemed to be dog-piling them. The fact that Amazons had existed in Europe for nearly 2500 years either didn't occur to them, or they didn't care. Flash forward to the start of the 20th century. Through the discrete use of marriage-assassination, land grabs and the basic lawlessness in the Western United States, rural South America, Australia and the islands of Southeast Asia, the Amazons had grown vastly in numbers and economic influence. The Egyptians come knocking once more. Unlike past encounters, they were bringing an offer of alliance. The Illuminati controlled key assets in the British Empire and were using those chokeholds to eliminate their rivals. This was not news to the Amazons. Their holdings in India and the Dutch East Indies had been under pressure of the Illuminati for a century. Ever since the Illuminati nearly ground out the Thuggee (one of the 9 Clans), the Egyptians and Amazons have been constantly harassed. This was not the first warning the Egyptians had brought. The Amazons hadn't want a war with the Illuminati and they certainly didn't trust the Egyptians. This time they agreed to go to war though. Why? Two things; totally unrelated. First, the Illuminati and the Seven Pillars of Heaven had agreed to carve up Asia. Amazons lived in Asia and they were no man's chattel. Secondly, the Women's Rights movement was in full swing. The Amazons had nothing to do with it. Those were outsider females. What interested the Amazons were the legal ramifications of Women's Equality. The Amazons were poised for a massive increase in their financial footprint. With the Illuminati out of the way, or at least, preoccupied, they could seize assets and have time to fortify before they could be attacked. Women's Equality would allow this to take place. Basically, the Amazons were going to exploit the blood, sweat and tears of women to advance their agenda. From all accounts, the only groups that recalled the Amazons last foray into Secret Society politics were the Amazons and Egyptians. Certainly no one had enlightened the Condottieri. They started smacking around some Amazon bases in Europe and unleashed 'Hell on Earth'. With the help of the Egyptians, they got to it in Amazon fashion. A General of the Condottieri and his family were eating at a Naples eatery when five women dresses like nuns walked in and shot up him, his entire family plus some bodyguards. When the response team showed up, they killed them too. A few police were added to the obituary column as the Amazons escaped. Welcome to Amazon warfare. The Condottieri were furious over such a public breach, as well as the losses. They swore a vendetta. The 9 Clans happily informed the Condottieri that a 'War of Extermination' was the Amazon default setting. The Condottieri were not afraid; not yet. See, there was another secret society called La Solidaridad. Working on intelligence from the Illuminati, La Solidaridad overran an Amazon compound in Argentina. They thought it would be funny to take the survivors as sex slaves. Maybe the Illuminati was experimenting to see just how pissed-off Amazons could get. Maybe La Solidaridad hadn't read their Homer, especially those parts concerning Ancient World vengeance. It took the Host six months to start things rolling then the carnage began. They made damn sure the men knew they were being hunted by women. They weren't there to out-macho the men, or make a point. Every night, they attacked the men and their families in the cities and towns. For safeties sake, La Solidaridad retreated to their country estates. Huge mistake. A good number of them had to have hunted at some point in their lives. How they missed being 'flushed out into the open' was beyond me. Out in the countryside, there was nowhere to hide. Walls meant little because Amazons were incredibly fit and trained to fight at night. Most of the families the Amazons killed. They were the lucky ones. The survivors? By using a new Edison device, they took some home movies of the fates of those men. The Amazon's favorite tactic was to shove lit sticks of dynamite in the men's asses then steer them toward the closest river. One guy actually made it. His relief didn't last long. The Amazons had done something to turn the normally safe caiman population into rabidly aggressive swarmers. Bitches; insanely, sadistic bitches. In eighteen months, La Solidaridad had ceased to exist as an organization and never recovered. The Illuminati used that time wisely to beat down the Egyptians, Earth and Sky, and the 9 Clans, aided by the Seven Pillars. Having concluded their first order of business, the Amazons sent their home movie to the Condottieri. It wasn't mercy toward the Condottieri. I was psychological warfare. The Amazons needed the Condottieri off-balance so they could go after their real enemy. It seemed the Illuminati had instructed La Solidaridad on how to 'intimidate' the Amazons; through rape, torture and enslavement. Specifically, it was Cáel O'Shea who set the tragedy in motion; Granddad. Beyond Granddad being impossibly fucking old, he had possessed some seriously out of control animosity where Amazons were concerned. Before the Amazon's could implement their hunt, the 9 Clans intervened. The Illuminati had been giving them real problems and they saw a way to gain some breathing space. Had the Amazons and 9 Clans been in communication, the World might be a very different place today. Instead, the heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne was wacked by the Black Hand, some Serbian numbskulls took the fall and the rest of us got World War I. Oddly enough, this one murder accomplished the goals of the 9 Clans, Amazons, Egyptians and Earth and Sky Society. The British Empire still stood, but was wrecked. China was much worse off than that. Before the Amazons could gain their vengeance, the Egyptians negotiated a cease-fire between groups. The Amazon Council was furious yet unwilling to fight the Illuminati alone. They kept down their bile; and waited. In the post-War period, the Amazon/Illuminati feud ate much of their resources (probably the Egyptian's intentions all along). A truly dark side of this struggle was the Amazon support for the Nazis. Did the Amazons switch course? Yes, but not for the reasons most people would think. Jews, gypsies, communists and homosexuals going into camps didn't worry them one bit. What did? Let's go back in time to those women in the Swiss Alps who headed north. A great many of them went North then East; to places like Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It wasn't so much a matter of whimsy as one of terrain and population. All the best farmland was in western Germany, the Low Countries and France. That's where the Germanic peoples settled. Behind them, to the East, were the Slavs. The Slavs had three things the Amazons liked; low population density, weak social hierarchies and crappy land. That meant they could live in relative isolation, not be subject to an all-powerful king and not be inundated with migrating hordes wanting to steal their dank swamps, deep forests and isolate meadows. Sometime in early 1939, right after the Third Reich snatched up Bohemia, some Amazon augur decided to open up Hitler's Mein Kampf to see what was going on i.e. to see when Hitler would get around to jumping on England; the whole reason the Amazon were supporting him. What she found out was bad, bad, bad! The genocide of a bunch of people they could care less about? Not a problem. Invading the Slavic lands? What? Russia/Soviet Union hadn't been the big foe in WWI and they certainly were not Germany's greatest enemy at the moment; Britain was! Drang Nach Osten? That was an undefined migration of Germans back into Slavic lands that ended over 600 years ago? Their Eastern European sisters were in grave danger from a lunatic. The common sense response (for Amazons) was to kill the Hitler. They couldn't get close, so they took their problem to their old allies, the Egyptians and 9 Clans. Those two saw nothing wrong with the way things were developing. The Amazons swallowed their pride and went to the Illuminati who seemed rather enchanted with the idea of the fascists and communists annihilating one another. They had no way to safely approach the Soviets. Pulling their sister houses out of Eastern Europe was no longer an option; the other Secret Societies would be looking for that and try to figure out where the Amazon home bases were. The Amazons decided to make a fight of it. They were not going to charge panzers with spears. No, they started setting up caches of supplies and weapons in the most inaccessible places imaginable. The hope was that as Nazi Germany was grinding Communist Russia to dust, they could smuggle out their people in the chaos to Sweden then points west. The problem was WW II didn't work out that way. Great Britain got spanked at Dunkirk and Poland, France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and Norway all surrendered to the Nazi blitzkrieg. Then the Germans invaded Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia went under, but the Soviet Union didn't fall. Much to the Amazon Council's horror, resistance units began to interact with the local Amazons in an effort to improve their mutual survivability. Tales of mysterious female fighter, appearing to slay their enemies then disappearing into the wilderness filtered to both the Stavka (Russians) and SOE (British). The SOE discovered an answer to the mystery in mid-1942, by way of the fledgling US OSS. The Americans 'found' three female Army recruits who volunteered for such a mission. A month later, the partisan bands with those agents found the 'Forest Women' and all the lights came on. Unknown to the public World, the Amazon Council decided that the best hope for their kinswomen was to bring down the Nazis and ride out the Allied conquest. All of that might have been a happily little footnote except for what happened next. Hundreds of Amazons fought; no surprise; yet they didn't fight alone this time. Men and women of the local populace fought side by side with these lethal warriors. They shared battle plans, food, fire and medical care. That huge cultural barrier created over two and a half millennia began to erode. They bled together and were forced from time to time to place their lives in each other's hands. They witnessed one another's courage and sacrifice. They watched them bury their dead, nurture their young and weep at their pain. Whenever things looked darkest, the Amazon would turn to their partisan partners and say with utmost confidence 'we have survived worse; so can you'. The seminal event happened on the night of February 17th, 1944. For two years, the fractured, wounded women that are ever-present wherever there is war began to attach themselves to the Amazon bands. At first they were little more than annoyances. In time, the Amazons tried to turn these women into something 'useful'. Later, a few earned the right to follow the Amazons into battle. On that February night, two ladies were inducted into House Živa. This was hardly the first time outsider women were brought into the Host, but this circumstance was unique; induction in the middle of a war, having proven themselves in battle before their now-sisters. From that action; not the last in that conflict; was born the concept of the 'Runners'. With the end of WWII, the Amazons emerged more powerful than ever. The three strongest groups in the United States were the Egyptians, Illuminati and the Amazons. The Amazons profited the most; having started with the lowest profile and having infiltrated both the government and business sectors during the war effort. Using the Freemasons, the Egyptians reaped great benefit from the US war effort too. Always forward-looking, the Egyptians helped the Amazons as well. Still, not everything was rosy. For the Public World, World War II ended in September of 1945. That was barely a blip in the Secret Societies' radar. The calamity came on the 10th of December 1949. Using their pawns in the Chinese Communist Party, the Seven Pillars had re-unified China and were back on the world stage. Earth and Sky and the 9 Clans were dealt a setback. A fourth secret society involved in the Chinese struggle was absorbed by the 7 Pillars. The problem was that all the societies were locked in a bitter struggle yet devastated and over-extended. The 9 Clans, fearing the ratcheting up of Cold War intelligence-gathering services by multiple national governments asked for a global truce. The Amazons were dangerously exposed and over-extended. The Illuminati decided this was their time to strike and nothing could deter them. Into this backdrop, came the news to the Amazons that they had serious genetic issues. That led to the First Directive; the recruitment of 'Runners' as an established program as well as the explosion of what I knew as Executive Services. In a truly bizarre twist, U.S. and Soviet agents found themselves engaged in cat-and-mouse games with European NATO agents. Amazons had penetrated the proto-CIA during the war in an effort to reach their European sisters. In Eastern Europe, many of those partisans went over to the Communists when the Soviets overran their countries and looked favorably upon their erstwhile allies from the War. They couldn't match the influence that the many of the other secret societies possessed. Instead they pulled upon existing, personal relationships. I worked with a negative result of those days; Desiree, or more accurately, Desiree's parents. I was also walking with the final resolution of that crisis. The Secret Societies proved they could work just as fast as the UN. In three decades they had resolved nothing and were spending more and more time on damage control. Three events converged. The Illuminati had figured out the full-blooded Amazons were dying out so they knew they could win a game of attrition. The rest of the groups were coming to the conclusion that wiping out the Amazons was the easier course of action. The Amazons had, without a doubt, located the leader of the Illuminati, Cáel O'Shea. O'Shea was in sight of his goal; the extermination of the Amazons; when a lone Amazon got to him first. O'Shea's death sent titanic shockwaves through the Illuminati. There was a scramble for the top spot, fear over how much the Amazons knew about their inner workings, and how the other secret orders would take this bit of news. The Illuminati recoiled from the event, agreed to a truce and that led to the protocols that kept Brianna from dragging me off; gunshot wounds and all. That had been the state of affairs for the last thirty years. Again, the World had not stood still. China was an economic powerhouse, the EU grew stronger, and wars of political ideology had been replaced by religious-based terrorism. The Amazons were at a critical juncture in their history. The 'New' Directive was their best chance at staving off extinction and the Houses were fighting it kicking and screaming. The First Directive wasn't being implemented properly. If nothing changed, the Amazons would be dragged under by the weight of their own bigotry. But wait! There was this idiot with no conception of history getting in the way of Amazon extinction; the decline toward oblivion that six murderous factions were waiting for. In this epic there were no 'friends', only 'allies of convenience'. The Egyptians weren't buddies. They simply preferred others to fight their battles for them. The Amazons fit that bill nicely, but if they were dying out, the Egyptians would be more concerned in filling the Amazon void than mourning over the Host's grave. The Illuminati and Seven Pillars were enemies. Though there was little animosity between the Earth  and  Sky and the Amazons, the E and S were based on perpetuating the legacy of the World's greatest rapist. The 9 Clans were the 9 Clans and their business was all about the precise application of death. They had no friends and if they pretended to be your friend, it was only so they could position themselves to kill you. It was only business. They rarely played with debts, obligations and vendettas. Still, if a member of the 9 Clans said they owed you, it was worth the assassin's weight in Iridium. As a bonus, the 9 Clans were gender-neutral. Outside of the Amazons, they had been using females in their numbers the longest. Because of this, the 9 Clans tried to interact with the Amazon using women from their own ranks, minimizing the sexual tension between the groups. The Condottieri had also began recruiting women into their ranks over the past twenty years. Their leadership was still all-male with the added complications of the unresolved Naples killings and the brutal destruction of La Solidaridad. Also, while the Amazons were not business competitors, they didn't employ the Condottieri either. All these micro-wars had been very good for the Condottieri, allowing them to build up quite a stable of talent and a huge war chest. If the Amazons recovered, the global map would change. How so? Madi and Rhada weren't from Cleveland, but from India where unresolved crimes against women were too common. Palli Chandra, the VP of International Finance and Ngozi from my sparring match were from Central Africa and I'd gathered from

In this week's episode, Cara Jo & Moriah are united in Denver and joined by Jason Wedekind, of Genghis Kern. We discuss his journey into printing, his experience in the design world (seriously cool branding & packaging is his speciality), and how he came to be a part of the Letterpress Depot.  The Letterpress Depot will be a living museum where you can get your hands inky and learn about letterpress, but it will also be a community oriented space in Englewood, Colorado where you can host meetings, attend workshops, and so much more. In order for this historic building (and it's incredible collection of equipment!) to be open to the public, they need our support! No matter where you're located, you can provide valuable assistance to make sure this resource is opened as soon as possible. During the month of November, your donation will go twice as far thanks to Colorado Gives. Your donation will be matched, so there is no better time than today to donate whatever you can! You can also purchase limited edition letterpress prints and more on their virtual marketplace, or purchase a membership to the museum. Don't forget to follow them on Instagram or join the mailing list to receive all the progress updates and stay in touch. Colorado has a rich letterpress history and it's not done yet. Jason, Cara Jo, and so many more are not only a part of the story, but working hard to keep this legacy alive for generations to come. Tune into the episode to hear all about Jason's story, Genghis Kern, the story behind the Depot & the plans for the future.  Links: Colorado Gives: https://www.coloradogives.org/organization/LetterpressDepot Depot: http://www.letterpressdepot.org/Depot IG: https://www.instagram.com/letterpressdepot

Cáel's tombstone: For the love of women, women put him here.In 25 parts, edited from the works of FinalStand.Listen and subscribe to the ► Podcast at Connected..