A/N: This chapter was meant to span from where it starts, through the meeting, to the group's return to the safehouse. The chapter is getting extremely long, especially with the personalities involved and the range of "diplomatic" interactions taking place. I'm estimating that by the time I am done, this chapter may very well beat out Chapter 53's record length for this fic of 25.5k words. As such, I've decided to split it up.
I also decided I should split this up so I can give a preemptive content warning that later Parts will have some strong mentions of rape on two different accounts that I can't avoid. The first is kept vaguely defined to certain things that took place in the past; much as when Poseidon broke certain news to Vlad about what happened to Persephone in Chapter 57, or when Vlad had to explain to Mercedes why Mihnea had done different things during his rampage in Chapter 61. The second, while handled in an offscreen fashion, instead of being directly portrayed in gritty detail, does still get far more immediately explicit. I don't like writing about those types of situations, I'm trying to handle the content in as delicate a fashion as possible; but one of the canon characters is who they are and that's going to be biting them in the ass when it comes up in order for this alliance to be able to move forward productively, and we're also dealing with things that happened in Vlad's wife's past and its current ramifications. I don't take that subject lightly, and I want readers who may be sensitive to that type of content to have a warning that it's coming, why, and the general idea of how it's going to be presented.
Chapter 68
The OG Cerberus- Part One
At dusk the next day, Alucard and Walter took their leave of the safehouse in their shadow forms and sped in a roughly western direction towards the agreed upon location for their latest parlay meeting.
Seras and Pip were left behind to guard Mercedes and Xander. While it seemed unlikely trouble would catch up to them that evening, no one was willing to take any complacent chances that would invite misfortune while the two eldest and most experienced members of the family were gone. Seras and Pip had weapons strapped at their waists, hidden from the child's eyes by jackets so as not to worry him unnecessarily. Once Xander was asleep for the night, Pip would be loading on the other weapons he had on hand. The mercenary Captain also discreetly placed small caches of his grenades at strategic points in rooms surrounding where his cousins would be for the night, so no matter what direction an enemy might need be intercepted, he had at least a few extra welcoming gifts ready to toss their way.
Mercedes was trying to distract herself from her anxious wondering of the many ways this meeting between her estranged husband and her friends might go by seeing to her son's bedtime routine. Once Xander was in bed, she planned to spoil herself a little bit with some time in the sauna and self-care with some beauty products picked up in Tenerife, especially her poor hair being put through so many boxed dye jobs. Depending on how things went tonight, tomorrow night it should be safe to summon up Hades, check on her grieving hound's mental state, and give him the attention he was long overdue to have.
Vlad had voluntarily reaffirmed his promise before leaving that he'd be extending every effort to be diplomatic for tonight's meeting. The empath believed he meant that, but she was still a little worried because this time he would be in discussions with a former lover of hers that wasn't being run off, but was a potential ally. The young woman could sense her dragon of a husband was still harboring some less than pleasant thoughts about that reality, despite her own diplomatic attempt to reassure him last night that she was trying not to linger on those types of things in the past, not just the brief bit with Vin, and was willing to make the attempts for their longer standing marriage to work. She could rationally think of plenty of acceptable reasons why he might be bothered by certain details, and mentally grant that it would be unreasonable to expect him to immediately make peace with it. There were a number of things she was trying to adjust to, which he was being supportive and accepting of, more so than she would have thought likely; and apparently this go around he had a few things to make peace with that were unfamiliar territory for him to be contending with. So long as he was continuing to actively handle his negative thoughts in ways that weren't causing unneeded harm or discord, she wasn't going to hold natural internal reactions against him and would try to return the attempts to bridge their complicated situation. She was hoping that if things eventually settled between them, his mental unrest on that particular subject would settle as well and this wouldn't turn into an actual problem between them.
As for those friends her husband was off to meet with... Mercedes' thoughts were still a tangle of confusion, even if over the last few days she was coming to some strong suspicions on the general 'how' for them managing to get themselves involved in current matters. Her intuition was poking at her and saying that the current group she was surrounded by and Liam weren't the only ones from her past that she was currently not consciously remembering connections to. Vlad describing her current state as "amnesiac" seemed all too appropriate these days. Even if she was forgetting so much, however, looking back on different conversations and interactions with those three, and different tiny things her seer senses had flashed at her in their presences, she was becoming more certain that they knew her from previous lives and their memories weren't nearly so scattered as hers were.
The seer wasn't sure how precisely that was possible; there were clearly a great many things about her friends that she was unaware of. That they were in fact her friends, even if Jan was a vastly more annoying and small dose one, that she hadn't been wrong in her intuition in trusting them as far as she had, continued to feel like the correct conclusion to come to. She was getting the strong and persistent feeling that, somehow, they had found ways to intentionally cross paths with her; and their reasons for doing so had been to try helping in their own ways. That they had been trying to poke at her subconscious and spark certain understandings on some level; understandings that would make revelations like the current ones easier to handle when they came about.
When she and Vin had decided to ditch the rave two years ago and hopped onto his motorcycle to do so, he had music being sent through Bluetooth to their helmets, turned up loud to help keep her distracted from her upset thoughts as they rode off. The first song he had played, Labyrinth by the German band Oomph!, was frequently slipping into her thoughts since finding out her friends had contacted Vlad, and especially since he said it was Vin in specific who was heading that parlay attempt. At the time, that song seemed like it was aimed at giving her catharsis from her immediate upset, a fellow empath reassuring her she had at least one friend who had the capability and willingness to help her through the twisted up mess she was mentally in...
Now, she was fairly certain that while those might have been Vin's immediate goals, he had also been giving a secondary warning that more upsets could be on the horizon and she should be stepping carefully after they parted ways. She wasn't sure what his and the Valentine brothers' exact motivations had been in being so circumspect, but she was willing to give the benefit of the doubt that it had been something similar to Vlad's. That they hadn't wanted to overwhelm her with information she wasn't prepared to hear and could potentially send her spiraling into an even worse mental place she might have more trouble being pulled out of.
Something that seemed even more likely after recent events and she thought back on the last time she had messaged Vin. It was the morning of Iscariot's attack. Her alarms had woken her up, she had made sure her weapons were in place, and then she went out to the kitchen to start the coffee and prepare the drugged milk for Xander to drink when he woke up. But when she went to fill the coffee pot, she noticed her hands were shaking.
Fears of facing Father Anderson, without any aid from an ally like the Vampire King, had already started to creep into her groggy thoughts. Fight or flight instincts were starting to rise up as she questioned whether or not she and her hounds would be able to protect herself and her son, even with all her last minute plan adjusting. Fears were creeping in of whether she'd be living through the weekend and able to see her family again, to see Liam and their friends again, to see Geo and Felix get engaged and married. To log on with Val and their gaming friends and grind their way through some satisfyingly brutal and strategic boss fights; and have ridiculously petty arguments over how the loot would get split, particularly in trying to get Jan and Val and Bastion to swallow their competitive urges and let some of the junior members of the raid have a first pick to help them catch up in usefulness to the senior members. If Anderson succeeded in killing them one of these immediate mornings he was due to arrive, not only would she have failed her son in the most critical ways, there were so many people she'd be leaving behind because she had been too weak to survive. People she cared for to different degrees, and who likewise cared about her in return, who would suddenly get the shocking news that she and Xander were dead and would feel varying levels of distress over that news.
With dawn being close at hand, she hadn't felt safe trying to fallback on katas to psyche herself up again. She'd be unnecessarily tiring herself out and possibly distracted if that was indeed the morning the zealots were coming for her and Xander.
Instinct had flared, saying she needed help combating the fears before they could sabotage her chances of success. She knew she couldn't call someone local; that would risk not only worrying them, but possibly dragging them into this mess and them dying. She hadn't spoken to Pippi in two years, she had no idea what he might be doing in that moment or if her call would end up going to voicemail like it almost always did when she tried to be the first to call; and even if her big cousin did pick up, it felt like an incredibly selfish idea to potentially send him into a nuclear reaction by asking for advice that, no matter how carefully the request was worded, would insinuate she was in trouble that he couldn't help with. She had been far from Tukiko's grave and the things she used for that ritual, and was therefore unable to summon him up for emergency advice.
Mercedes' instincts had told her there was only one safe person to try to contact. She had retrieved her phone and sent off a message to Vin over the encrypted messenger app the cyber security specialist insisted on using for private communications. Someone who had always been a consistently trustworthy friend, who was damn near unshakable in any sort of situation because of his military experience, and who should be on his lunch break and free to respond. "I don't want to worry you, and please don't say anything to the others right now, especially Val, but the business I had the other night wasn't normal business. I'm in big trouble, the sort I need to once more get myself out of, it's way worse than last time and coming to a head very soon, and I'm terrified that I'm not going to survive. I know it's almost unforgivably unfair to just drop this on you, and I'm truly sorry I am; but I really need someone who will understand, without me having to give lengthy explanations, to tell me things have a chance of turning out okay."
Vin had replied barely three minutes later, as the coffee pot was starting to brew and she had moved on to measure out the herbs for the milk. "Hate to break it to you, She-Wolf, but you being in any kind of danger makes me worried. Mission failed on that one. I wish you had said something sooner; you should damn well know by now that when the chips are down, I'll always be around. But I also know you. You're stronger than you give yourself credit for and I have faith you can survive whatever immediate threat there is. So dry those beautiful eyes, bury your fears, hold your head up high, and with noble acts -be- the light that makes a better world possible for your son. If things get bad enough that you hear the angels calling your name, you yell for them to fuck back off to where they belong because you're not done living yet, and you keep fighting with hope in your bloody hands until the battle is won and it's safe to lay down your sword. And remember that you're -never- alone, even if feels like it in this moment. I may not be able to make it there in person to help, I'm sorry to have to concede that, but you can absolutely bank on me making the trip to you, ASAP, to make sure you also survive whatever the newest post-fight fallout might be."
That reassurance and advice coming from someone who had seen the horrors of battle, who had sustained life threatening injuries and still managed to survive it, was exactly what she had needed in that moment. Even if it was only supportive sentiment that couldn't tangibly help the situation she had gotten herself backed into a desperate corner on, it had given her hope and pushed her thoughts back into a more productive direction. The seer had sent back, "Thank you, Vin, for everything. I hope I'll be seeing you soon and able to explain everything when I do."
Less than a minute later, Vin replied with, "You're never under obligations to give explanations. My first, last, and only concern when things get FUBAR is making sure you come out of it as safe as possible. I -will- be seeing you soon, She-Wolf. So stop messaging me and prepare for battle."
That message ending on such a confident assurance and demand had brought a grateful, if tired, smile to the priestess's face before tossing her phone to the side of the counter with a mental thank you to her intuition for doing something right in coming up with the idea to message Vin. She had felt guilty for the worry she was now leaving him with, but she was hoping she'd make it through this alive and be able to send him a message to that effect. And even if she wasn't under obligations to give an explanation, he certainly deserved one after this was done so he'd understand just how grateful she was that he had once again been exactly the sort of friend she had needed at exactly the right moment.
Coffee brewing and milk steeping, she had grabbed her iPod and put the song Vin had referenced in both messages onto repeat. A dark wave song that wasn't by his favored Euro bands, but Vin had still declared to be an anthem of true soldiers willing to sacrifice everything to protect whatever or whoever it was that they loved. Following her fellow empath's advice, she blasted the music through her earbuds and ears and straight at her seditious brain, concentrating on the words and on bolstering up her resolve to face Anderson and survive. When the coffee was ready, she had poured it into the wolf emblazoned mug Vin had sent her for her 18th birthday and had been with her through so many different moves and turbulent times; telling herself as she did so that she had managed to survive every single one of those incidents and she'd survive this one too if she fought like hell to make it happen.
The priestess had managed to survive; ultimately in thanks to her husband showing up in a rampaging dragon fury to protect her and their son from The Hierophant that she had been unable to do enough damage to and force him to retreat. Frustrating as that inability of hers was, her perfect record of accurate card readings remained unbroken. She had set out to divine an answer for how to survive Anderson, not for if she could manage to kill him. Those weren't mutually exclusive questions and could have different answers, so she had gone with the more realistic option. She had reasoned that her best case hope for survival was she'd somehow manage to kill him in the process of trying to survive him; a middle ground case would be whatever answer she pulled would allow her to do enough damage to drive him off; and worst case scenario was somewhere along the lines of holding the psychopath at bay until neighbors called the police and the priest ran to avoid the authorities. Her powers had latched onto her cards and they delivered a clear enough answer that it acted as a catalyst, kicking her senses into overdrive to deliver a more detailed plan for survival.
Digging into every magic trick she could think of and find chance to employ, combining her magic with the martial skills Tukiko san and her friends and tutors had helped her gain, intuitively following the battle hardened advice both Vlad and Vin had given while in the heat of the fight- it had worked to stall the bayonet wielding priest long enough to survive him. She had followed Vlad's advice throughout the entire fight to not hold back, to strike hard and with the intent to kill, and do whatever she could to stay out of the path of return strikes. When she had been staring down the blessed blade of her potential destruction and the metaphorical angels were calling her name, she had survived that critical moment in the fight because of Vin's advice. She had managed to maintain enough righteous fury to keep her sword raised and tell that ignorant zealot to go fuck himself with his own. That defiance in the face of death had bought enough time for Athene to arrive. She still hadn't had a chance to properly grieve the loss of one of her beloved hounds; she was keeping that sorrow stuffed deep, deep down until she could grieve with Hades present. But Athene had shown up for the last second save, and her loyal hell hound had willingly made the ultimate sacrifice to protect her mistress. As painful as it was in that moment, physically and emotionally, she had instinctually continued to follow Vin's advice. She had forced herself to keep her fears as buried as possible so she could keep fighting, with literal bloody hands, to keep The Hierophant from her son.
The priestess had dug deep, as deep as she possibly could, and she had scrounged up enough strength that she had managed to survive the immediate fight. And even though they had their blowout that caused her to throw his undead ass out of her apartment and the Vampire King had indeed stormed off in a barely contained tempest of fury, he had still come back. And even if he and his servants had been delayed in rejoining her because they had been committing wholesale slaughter on the small army of enemies and complications had ensued, they still made it in time. And even when death had tried to take her while she was unconscious and defenseless, her dragon of a husband hadn't hesitated to leap into yet another battle on her behalf that most would have considered to have a hopelessly foregone conclusion. The King Bastard had precisely zero qualms about telling even whatever cosmic powers there were to fuck ten kinds of off, and he had used his dark powers to drag her soul back where it belonged.
So Vin had been proven right on another account; in many ways that, even with whatever he might have been hiding from her, she was fairly certain he had no possible way of anticipating. She hadn't been facing down Anderson alone, not by a long shot, and it was also thanks to that gigantic group effort that she and Xander had survived.
And now, as blindsiding as it initially felt, Vin had gone into guard dog mode with the knowledge a female friend was in danger and had managed to track her down. From what little Vlad had said, it sounded like Vin was one of Walter's occasional contractors when he needed help running Intel work. She didn't know if Vin had somehow known who he was getting the presumably anonymously arranged side contracts from, or if that had been a lucky coincidence because experts in his line of work weren't exactly a dime a dozen and he happened to be good enough that he made it through Walter's screening process. Whatever was going on there, Vin must've been using the full extent of his skills and contacts to put the pieces together of exactly what kind of trouble she had been in. Perhaps Luke or Jan had contacted him and given him the inside perspective from the vampire community of Iscariot being to blame for the attack in Philly and that the third party reportedly involved was none other than the Vampire King himself and his servants.
Even realizing what sort of trouble she had been in, and the reputations of who she was now 'allied' with, Vin still hadn't hesitated on trying to make good on his promise to see her soon and making sure she was surviving everything as best as could be expected. Luke and Jan must've used the chaos up in the tri-state area to make a timely exit from their exile in the States so the Elders wouldn't immediately realize they were gone. She wasn't sure how those two had managed to do so without being tracked down by now. Maybe Vin with his special forces training had something to do with it. Or maybe she was underestimating the Valentines' skills and they had pulled that one off on their own. However things went down, whatever behind the scenes conspiring might have been done, the three of them were together now.
Mercedes had a feeling asking Vlad for information on those three wasn't going to be very productive. He seemed to be sincerely blindsided by the recent turn of events and had needed information from her to help make sense of it. However she knew them in the past, and whatever connections they had to motivate those three to seek her out and take those risks- she could only rationalize it must have been connections from before her husband had found her in different lives, perhaps some parallel ways to how she knew them now, and perhaps in past lives they had lost contact for different reasons by the time Vlad had found her.
Whatever those answers were, Mercedes knew she'd have to wait until she eventually saw her friends to potentially get some sort of satisfactory explanation. Her seer senses weren't sending up an alarm that something terrible might be about to happen; so she was trying to trust that, as he had thus far done to the best of her knowledge, Vlad would be keeping his word about being diplomatic and likely offering to bring her friends back with him. If her instincts and theories were right, her friends would be accepting that offer. Unless something exceedingly improbable somehow happened to throw things off, or unless her senses were maybe too frazzled to be getting a warning, this meeting should come to some sort of conclusion that didn't include someone she had attachments to dying or otherwise being in a serious danger.
The seer told herself she needed to once again trust her instincts, and trust those four's better natures. This meeting would go okay. It might be strained because of the personalities of the people involved, but it would be okay. And when it was done and her friends arrived, maybe she'd get some answers to some of her biggest questions tied to those three, and be filled in on whatever information they felt needed to be shared in regards to their mutual enemies.
Perhaps that would be enough to make the continuing whirlwind of weird in her head die down. The intensity had decreased to an extent with certain revelations and subsequent understandings being had in regards to Vlad and the other members of their immediate little family, and some of the causes for problems she had experienced with Liam might have abruptly shifted into a clearer focus, but that tempest of weird was still very much present in her mind and making it difficult to see things that were apparently visible to varying extents to so many around her. That was not a state of being the seer enjoyed being in.
Mercedes was dearly hoping that when her friends arrived, at the very least Vin would have enough answers to give; answers that would allow her to ultimately unlock the ability to do what she hadn't been able to do in past incarnations. She needed to find a way to escape from this almost impossibly treacherous Labyrinth that kept prematurely cutting her life short. She believed Vlad had done everything he possibly could to protect her in each life, but things kept going horribly wrong for them and their son and those closest to them. That couldn't just be coincidence or bad luck or her dragon of a husband not being powerful enough to protect everyone. There had to be something more to this.
The seer needed more information from anyone who might have it to have a clearer understanding of what was going on. Then maybe she could dig even deeper and focus her powers in productive ways, seek answers once she actually knew what the right questions to be asking were, and finally find some hidden exit that hadn't been tried before.
One way or other, the priestess was determined to find a way out of this fucking deathtrap Labyrinth and finally live out a full life with the people she had obviously deep connections to but kept being snatched away from. She was desperately praying she could manage it in this incarnation; but if not, she was going to find a way to make damn sure that those left behind were in as stable of a state of cooperation with one another as possible, and had as much information as she could possibly glean to share back with her, so that her next incarnation will hopefully be exponentially better equipped to make the next escape attempt.
.
.
.
Parc Natural de Sant Llorenç del Munt i l'Obac was just over thirty kilometers away from Corró d'Amunt as the crow flies. Or, in this case, as the void-formed shadows flew. Traveling at a pace Walter was capable of matching, they would make it there in twenty minutes, a solid hour and a half before the other party was due to arrive. As they made that trip, Vlad's mind was turning over the situation for what was literally the ninety-eighth time over the last sixty-eight hours since he received a certain communique.
While this meeting was to be held with entities offering themselves as allies, and there was enough surrounding circumstances and known information to warrant allowing them to prove that intent, they were still, to varying degrees, unknown entities and those intents had yet to be verified.
There was also under consideration the mixed intel on other known hostile entities that they currently had. They had received the three word response to their backdoor truce offering two days after it was sent. That missive presumably indicated that the Elder collective led by reincarnated Olympians had exiled their leader for acting on his instincts to make an alliance with his stab-happy father for the sake of taking down the Vampire King, and that Apollo was no longer in the States with the Elder's support behind him, he only had Zeus and whatever children The Paladin had with him. They couldn't come to a conclusive answer at the time of if those Olympians knew who they used to be and that's why they had chosen the sigils they had; or if they were under the same impression the scion of the Drăculești dynesty had been taught, that they were simply descended from such powerful demons and that bloodline gave them an edge over normal humans or vampires or the other Elders, and so they were quietly flaunting that supposed superiority through their sigils as some inside joke amongst themselves.
Given the past treacherous acts of the Olympians, however, they had decided to err on the side of caution and assume the worst- that the Olympians had figured out reincarnation was possible, and subsequently they had put together some idea of who they used to be. Just how much they remembered, and what their powers might be, was a largely unknown set of factors. Given that Poseidon's access to his natural powers had been diminished by becoming a vampire, they were of the thought that the same was likely to have happened to lesser Olympians with similarly conflicting innate powers. Which undoubtedly accounted for some of the collective hatred the Elders were harboring towards the Vampire King. However, they also knew from Mercedes's related observations that Apollo, at the very least, had managed to make some old powers surface, and Walter had been on the receiving end of Apollo's daughter's brand of telekinetic attack. So it was also judged just as likely that those Olympians with powers that complimented their vampiric state, or had lived long enough in current incarnations to adjust their control on their powers to push past the conflicting effects, were to be considered higher threats than the usual sorts they faced on a daily basis. Unfortunately, at the moment, they had no way of knowing exactly what powers the Olympians had up their sleeves; but they were aware the Olympians had largely regained the ability to cast some enchantments that could be problematic if given the chance to work their magic.
The day after the return missive from the Olympians came in, a press release statement sent a mild shockwave through America's business sector and stock markets. After recent traumatic events in Philadelphia that included the deaths or injuries of multiple longtime friends, and would've included himself had he not been late to his meeting, modern aristocrat Liam Sëaghdha had decided to step down from his positions at all of his companies. His controlling interests in those companies had been sold off entirely to three of his closest surviving friends and business partners, at extremely slashed rates. His stateside residences had likewise been sold for a steal to others he had contacts with, and he had liquidated his entire investment portfolio. The grieving billionaire was retiring to an undisclosed location outside the country to reprioritize his life, seek spiritual healing, and pursue personal interests he had been neglecting during his ambitious push to advance the business empire he had inherited.
In essence, the PR cover released into the mundane world was meant to signal that Apollo had indeed been exiled, and he had been backed into relinquishing all American financial interests to other Elders. The underlying message was to Alucard, though whether it was meant to be so explicit or not was up for debate. Liam felt he had nothing to lose now, he had pulled all his finances from obligations to have it free for other purposes, he had at least managed to secure Iscariot's "spiritual" backing, and The Hawk would be making it his hellbent mission to come after the Vampire King because said King's mocking warning had come about and Liam blamed him for that. While that would indicate the split between the Elders and Liam was legitimate, it could just as easily be its own sort of elaborate PR moves in hopes of lowering Alucard's guard and then making another attempt at a unified strike. Either way, the lesser Olympians were in the United States for the time being, and Zeus and Apollo had indeed teamed up, and Eris was with them. Those three, Zeus's four recruits, and quite likely the Knights of Saint George (as there had yet to be reports of their deaths), were now undoubtedly holed up in some warded fortress in some remote part of the world one wouldn't expect to find the billionaire, and would be there for some long stretch of time while they strategized their next plan for attack.
Which gave the King of Death time to safely settle his wife and son somewhere, and then move on with his own plans for research. He was fairly certain he and his servants could outright destroy these enemies if they were lured into bringing the attack to him, in a place that was advantageous for himself, and the right surprise attacks were launched; particularly because his wife had already seen them so easily rip through Liam's posse in a minorly defended last minute safehouse. However, he did feel the obligation to make one last attempt to make peace with his wife's father and fellow King before resorting to the soul-rending option, and he dearly wanted to make Apollo and Eris pay for their actions instead of giving them merciful oblivion. Both of which required the undertaking to expand his abilities and time enough to do so.
The Dragon and The Angel of Death had assessed that, as things stood, the clock was on to simply determine which method would be employed for permanently ending the threat the Olympians posed, based on how quickly it took for Apollo and Zeus to come up with their plans and try launching them. And with their Queen being a seer, they had a high likelihood of getting advanced warning that attack was finally coming, how it was intended to be launched, and how successful or unsuccessful they'd be in putting down the Olympians. If complications were shown to have arose in the vision, they could plan around those and turn the battle back in their favor. While not letting their guard down, the Underworld faction had felt they had reason to be justifiably confident in their prospects for victory by one means or other.
And then the wolf's communique came in, throwing new unknown factors onto the board for consideration. From the way the communique identified them, it was safely theorized that there were five extra reincarnated demons to assess, three of whom were offering to be allies, two of whom had joined Olympus. One of their queen's friends who had been decidedly concerned for her wellbeing and exceedingly helpful to try ensuring that, had ended up with the misfortune of Apollo digging in his head for answers to where she was. Vlad was not inclined to believe that Geo had intentionally declared himself an enemy; he was willing to give the human the benefit of the doubt that he either volunteered to join Liam because he had been fed an exceedingly convincing lie that played on his concerns for Mercedes and Xander, or Apollo had flat out hypnotically mindfucked the human into an alliance. Geo's partner, Felix, was likely dragged in to keep them from being separated and Geo's attentions from being split with worry for his lover. They were fairly certain Apollo didn't have an interest in Geo's presence for martial purposes, as the human would prove to be only the most minor of aid; but because he was planning ahead for the possibility of his attack being successful and retrieving Mercedes and Xander. He'd be able to use the trusted and friendly faces as pawns in his mental games against his captives he viewed as his rightful family to reclaim. Which meant that, while Geo and Felix were now on the list of people to kill if they went out of their way to make themselves a threat, Vlad and Walter were now trying to consider what options may be available to spare those two if they could be convinced to stand down during a fight.
More significant for consideration was the allusion to "Project Olympus" and everything that implied. It was an almost certainty that Zeus's incarnation of Oszkár had personally sired Apollo's incarnation of Liam. Oszkár had made his deals with Iscariot to awaken his bloodline and turn himself into the entity known as Paladin Alexander Anderson. The Paladin had personally led at least two known crusades against Liam in Philadelphia. Which meant that Liam was aware of what Oszkár had done to himself. Given the name of the project, they were guessing the Paladin had inadvertently given Liam ideas to increase his own power; perhaps in secondary hopes of ridding himself and the other Olympians of the vampiric influences they clearly made every attempt to minimize in their personal lives and was a theorized cause for part of their collective hatred of the Vampire King. Project Olympus had been what caused Luke and Jan to be exiled, and they knew from Mercedes that the exile started sometime in the nineties. Which meant Project Olympus had been some undertaking in the works for at least the last three decades; and if they were right about what it was, that it had probably started shortly after the attack in 1985. It may be what was allowing some like Liam and the deceased Janna to unlock what powers they had managed thus far, but it clearly wasn't as progressed as whatever Zeus had done to himself.
Their theory was also supported by the fact the Paladin had brought in large groups of medical teams to the latest Philadelphia crusade; teams that hadn't been involved with a prior project together and had an array of expertise in medicine. Vlad was reasonably certain that when Anderson made whatever backdoor deals he had with the lesser Elders to have his moles among that collective and have a better chance of slaying his vampiric tainted offspring, Marrick, who had been such a deeply trusted subordinate of Apollo, must have informed him of that special project Liam was running as a bargaining tool for whatever it was he hoped to gain in return. The medical teams had almost certainly been there to retrieve and analyze whatever materials were connected to Project Olympus and see if they could find anything useful for their own agents, including Anderson. The medical teams, like the grunts recruited for the crusade, were dead. But now Zeus and Apollo were directly working together, with two ongoing projects of such natures now likely being combined.
Which meant when Zeus and Apollo eventually launched their attack, they and the other Olympians could be doing so with some unknown increase to their powers from more fully restoring themselves. Which meant that, if such an attack was well enough orchestrated, instead of ripping through the Olympians, the Olympians might be the ones to rip through the Underworld faction and history could once again repeat of them incapacitating him just long enough to make off with his wife and son, or all but the King of Death ending up dead in the course of the fight.
That thought was causing a lot of old fears to try surfacing and needing more frequent suppressing. That thought had also fueled Vlad's determination to take whatever measures were necessary to keep his family safe this time. Which meant he needed to know everything the Valentine Brothers knew about the Olympians themselves from having worked side by side with them. He needed to know everything Luke knew about Project Olympus to know what might change with the Olympians if their work was successfully combined with Oszkár's, and to potentially put any of that information at the disposal of his wife and Walter to hopefully speed up their own researches. He needed to know whatever Intel they managed to lure out of Val before she had gotten her internet privileges revoked. He needed whatever Intel that fucking impertinent wolf had managed to pick up over the course of a theorized two and a half centuries for his current incarnation, based on names he had given.
And if Olympus was truly poised to potentially become such an increased threat, The Dragon had to concede that mutt's point that he and his servants might end up needing not only the various branches of Intel, but a few extra fighters when the battle came to help minimize the chances of the Olympians succeeding in their goals.
Walter had compiled a dossier on the wolf's known aliases and titles. It seemed likely, when cross-referenced with everything those in their faction had witnessed of him, that he was telling the truth about the names, if not the titles. One thing under consideration and much debate was that he claimed to be the creator of hell hounds. Both the King and Queen's hell hounds had picked up some conveniently timed new tricks in the last month, and now that wasn't seeming so convenient because it likely indicated that "Cerberus" had influenced the hounds in some way. It had been in ways that aided different situations, which would indicate he was indeed an ally.
If the hounds could be used to communicate things the Queen was saying to the King, however, the hounds could be used to communicate anything happening in those two's presences back to the wolf. Which meant their familiars were compromised assets. Vlad did not appreciate that one bit, particularly where his wife's hounds were concerned because they were a large part of her means to defend herself from threats. He was now having to call up every time in the last month a familiar had been summoned to consider what the wolf might have overheard and be able to use for any number of purposes. He was wondering just how much the wolf had overheard over the years when Mercedes called up her hell hounds just for the sake of their company; and what sort of PsyOps that unwitting personal information being leaked to the wolf with "special forces training" could be employed towards. There were now the considerations of whether hounds should even continue to be summoned, or if they should only be used in critical situations; and if the wolf proved to be a threat, how he was going to explain to his wife that it was too much of a security risk to continue employing the hell hounds until he could get his fangs or void power into that mist-shifting wolf and tear out his soul to eliminate the risks. Whether it was temporary loss or restricted use of the hounds, he knew his wife wasn't going to like it; and she'd like it even less if he ended up needing to kill yet another lover who was also still a supposed friend of hers to restore her ability to summon her beloved hounds freely.
There were questions as to why, if the wolf was telling the truth of his identity, Poseidon had failed to mention he had a son involved in matters. There were questions as to how and why the second eldest of the five sons of Poseidon, a rival King to Zeus even if the three Dragon Kings tried to maintain basic familial ties for the survival of their species, could have ended up serving Zeus and being assigned to protect the child Zeus was most fiercely protective of. There were questions of why the wolf placed Apollo as a greater threat than Zeus; and how and why the wolf had supposedly been the one to kill Zeus's first incarnation. There were plenty of guesses to answers, but nothing that fit completely enough with other known factors for them to feel comfortable declaring one to be a sound theory.
Even with so many unknowns tied to the wolf, that he was a significantly powered entity was indisputable from what they had seen of him over seventy years ago during the war. He was an entity who had survived with barely a scratch to show for the attacks Walter had unleashed him; and he had proven to be physically stronger than the Vampire King had been while in his Hellsing-bound state and had deftly evaded most every attack Alucard had made against him... As much as the King of Death didn't want to admit it, that interfering and infuriating wolf would be a very useful ally to have; and an extremely problematic enemy if he chose to be. And the wolf's willingness to be an ally against the Olympians was largely tied to his preoccupation with the Underworld Queen, and making whatever attempts he could to capitalize on the inter-incarnation fondness he had managed to weasel out of her.
While Walter had started a dossier on the Valentine Brothers, there wasn't enough known of them to do more than draft a list of known demons who shared some of the few characteristics they were known to have, and the basics of what was known of those demons' backgrounds and whose Kingdom they may have been aligned with in the past. They'd have to wait to find out who the Valentines introduced themselves as and draw conclusions from there.
Vlad was going into this parlay with not nearly as much knowledge of the other party or leverage as he'd like to have; and he knew he was going to have to once again employ the full extent of his diplomacy skills to not only get what he needed out of this meeting, but make certain that those three knew what their places were if an alliance was had.
That communique had tossed a lot of unknown variables onto the board, and given that slippery fucking wolf far too much of an upper hand going into this parlay; which was undoubtedly exactly what it had been crafted to do.
Normally, The Dragon could appreciate when an opponent gave him a run for his money in intellect or martial skills... Given the ulterior interest the entity in question had, Vlad was really wishing he could just rend the wolf demon's soul to pieces and call it a night.
If he wanted to craft the best possible options to protect his family, however, he had to tolerate the wolf to an extent, for a time... But it would be on his terms; and by the time the Olympians had been dealt with, he'll have figured out a way to get rid of the persistent interloper without inciting his wife's wrath for it and have the early phases already in motion. He just needed to keep his temper in check, bide his time, and beat the mutt at his own games.