Ilona Andrews own the kate daniels series.

A/N: Here comes the Beat Lord...

Un-beta'd

Chapter 5 - Preparation

Seleyda stood before me, the golden twin of Angelique Maitland, the woman I thought I loved. I saw her in the waves of Seleyda's hair, the arch of her brows, the stubborn way her chin stuck out, and the stunning shape of her eyes. She was five six, and only fourteen. The same age as Julie. I could tell she would grow taller, become even more stunning. Perhaps even more than Angelique had been. A light lit her grey eyes. A touch of green tinted it; a memory from a mother she may never know again. I felt sorry for her, and at the same time, angry. At least I'd known my mother's love. Seleyda Medrano Farrer's live was already broken before she'd even known it was.

"I have a proposition to share with you," Seleyda said. Her voice was on a slightly lower register, soft with a husky undertone, and resonated with the regal elegance of her mother. In a few years, she'll learn how to use it as a weapon of mass destruction.

"And what's that?" I asked warily. I knew that look in her eyes; her mother had had the same look whenever she decided to make me do something I would prefer not to. And it didn't hurt me; the idea that Angelique had moved on all these years and had a baby. It was easier, in fact, because I was looking at something that held a part of the amazing woman that changed me. For the better, I hope.

"When I win this war with no casualities on the Pack's side, you allow Ana and Drew to enter your Pack and appoint me Friend of the Pack. This way I won't be too much of a thorn in your side and the messy process of background check can be skipped. From how I see it, it's a win-win situation." I considered with ramifications of this proposal.

True. I've always found the whole background checks and cross-checking process of admitting new shapeshifters a hassle. But it was a neccessary evil. Unfortunately, the longer it took was directly proportional to the number of meetings I'll have to sit through. Seleyda would be close enough to watch but not enough to drive me out of my skull with frustration, albeit in a slightly more unconventional way. In addition, with the recent battles we've been through our ranks have been thinned out quite severely. Any extra shapeshifters would dearly benefit the Pack. Plus Beatrice would get to have her grandniece nearby to spoil, provided that Seleyda allowed her to. Knowing Angelique, her daughter would be...unwilling to be given any special treatment.

But what were the conditions? And her confidence in killing all of these freaks of nature, as she'd so aptly put, with the use of 'when' and not 'if'. Like she was completely certain she was capable of taking all of them down. Where did this confidence come from? This girl, Seleyda Farrer, was hiding a lot of skulls in her closet.

"If I agree to this, what will you need for the fight? As you've so succintly pointed it out to us, you're just the prototype and they've had five years to improve on the treatment." The word burned like acid on my tongue. This wasn't a treatment, it was torture of the highest degree, but I digress. "There must be some plan you have cooked up in just-" I made a show of looking at my watch. "-a couple of seconds." She laughed, a rich loud sound that was filled with amusement, and reverberated within the room. I closed my eyes for a moment, enjoying the sound. Angelique's laughter was lighter, but just as beautiful.

"Curran!" Kate hissed. "We're supposed to be leading." I quickly opened my eyes. The smile on Seleyda's face was blinding, the equal if not better than her mother's.

"How very astute of you, Your Majesty," she drawles with a florid bow. "I'll need to veto your orders, sir. All of them. This needs to be executed perfectly or everyone in this fort of yours will cease to exist. First of all, may I tale a look out at a map of Atlanta?

"Re-introduce me as a specialist in warfare. Throw in a couple of hints that I'm from overseas war-torn countries and the like. Just make sure they don't write me off the second I enter the room as a wannabe badass. I'll be back in fifteen minutes," Seleyda instructed Kate, pulling off articles of clothing. "I left most of my hardware at the rental house. Time is of the essence."

"Wouldn't you be wasting your shifts?" Kate asked, curious.

Seleyda sighed. "I've already told you; the limitations of an average shapeshifter and vampire do not apply to these things. Including me. One of the extra gifts of this treatment is that we can shift however many times as we wish, as long as our body can withstand it. We can even go without napping." Kate didn't look convinced. "My record was twenty-eight times within a twenty-four hour period." She looked stunned. "Please relay this to the Beast Lord. Make sure Ana and Drew do not leave the castle under any circumstances. Don't be too surprised if they choose to fight in warrior form then shift into human the moment you least expect it." Kate caught a flash of scar-riddled skin before meeting a pair of ruby eyes in a completely hyena face.

Kate blinked. The hyena-that-was-Seleyda vanished.

Grey. She thought. Her beast form is slate grey. How the hell do you produce a slate grey hyena?

The double doors opened just as Curran finished convincing everyone that fighting was their best option for survival. Seleyda walked into the room with the liquid grace that was trademark of most shapeshifters. She was dressed to kill, in head to toe black leather that conformed to her every curve, which shimmered under the feylanterns and hinted at some sort of extra trick to the armor. Her hair was hel away from her face with a military-style braid. A gasp came from Aunt B, who glared venomously at Curran. She'd known about Seleyda, since Curran had filled her in about her grandniece, but actually seeing her was a different thing.

"This is the war specialist we managed to hire. Seleyda Farrer. She's one of us, and will be fighting with us today," Curran explained as Seleyda got closer. She inclined her head, and turned to face the room full of shapeshifters ready to shift into claws, fangs and fur at any moment.

"Are you trying to work us up into a frenzy with your clothes or do you always work in that?" asked a male bouda. Alejandro. He leered at Seleyda. "Because it's working." Several others followed with laughter. Curran moved to punish the boy, but stopped.

The tips of Seleyda's mouth curved into the coldest smile the shapeshifters of Atlanta had ever seen. In fact, history was made that day, as decades from them, whenever someone said 'did a Seleyda' to the shapeshifter community, everyone within hearing distance shuddered in cold fear. Alejandro's face was wiped clean of his leer. His face had gone dead white beneath his tan.

"If you can still joke at a time like this," she said in a normal voice. It carried across the room," then you haven't fully understood the ramifications of this situation." Her left hand twitched ober the hilt of a sword by her hip. "The shapeshifter you are about to face will not hesitate to plunge their claws into your chest and rip your heart out, possibly shattering your ribcage in the process," she added as a side note. "They will bre stronger and faster than you, and you will be very well-acquainted with the stench of loupism by the end of it. The People cannot afford to dispatch vampires, because they know that they will be eaten and the shifters will only get stronger because of it."

"How can you know that?" Thomas Lonesco asked. "How can we trust you to tell us the truth? I don't mean to disrespect you, Your Majesty." Curran inclined his head, happy gold sparks dancing in his eyes. " I know that you trust this person to help us, but I can't help feeling uneasy at handing the lives of the two thousand shifters living in this castle to a child we barely even know before today."

Seleyda raised one blond eyebrow. "Touche." The shadow of a smile crossed Thomas' face. "Do you want kids, sir?"

Thomas blinked. "Yes." He shared a tender look with Robert. "We'd like to adopt a few in the near future." He frowned. "What's this all about?"

"What if I told you that most of the shapeshifters you're about to face are mostly minors?" Gasps sounded across the meeting room. Thomas' face went pale.

"Minors as in...," he trailed off.

"The youngest being six and the oldest seventeen." Sounds of outrage rapidly spreaded across the room. Seleyda spoke louder against the noise. "Imagine your youngest daughter, your niece, your sister, all in the throes of going loup and multiply it by ten. That's one shapeshifter." Instant silence. Everyone could do the math. Multiplied by even five was a massacre. "My childhood best friend was one of them. She was fourteen. A very beautiful girl, with the most amazing smile in the world. She'd killed everyone in five consecutive families. I'd broke her neck and burned her body when I was ten." Seleyda's glassy eyes turned fierce. She surveyed the crowd. "Every single shapeshifter out there on the battlefield had been someone's sister, someone's daughter, niece and best friend. The People made them into monsters, and I'm here to ask you all to avenge all the missing shapshifter children around the world. I have just as much as stake as the rest of you." She stared at Ana and Drew, her eyes burning with an indescribable emotion.

Seleyda looked back at the Lonescos. "Does that answer your question?"

Robert gave her a long look. Curran tensed in his seat. "You are hyena."

"Yes."

"Hyenas don't forgive easily, do they?"

"Some don't ever." Robert chuckled.

"I like this girl. Yes. This answers our question. Please proceed." Seleyda bowed.

Her grey eyes scanned the crowd. "I can't tell you how these shapeshifters can get stronger by eating vampires. It's too complicated and you don't need to know." There was some grumbling. "All you need to know is none of them shall stand by the time the next tech wave comes. We will fight within this magic wave.

"We are the biggest congregation of shapeshifters within this country and perhaps the world. The Alaska Pack is too far away to send us any help on time. The rest will be too scared to even try. If the damned assholes on that iceberg can even look past their egos and inferiority complex to consider such an outlet." A lot of the shapeshifters started snickering. Mahon chortled under his breath. "This is not like fighting a god, and it is not like fighting the undead. This will be a war against your own morals and beliefs. You will be fighting children, and they will be able to maneuver, hit and think faster. Not to mention being excessively reckless." That garnered a few laughs. "They are also what the human race views us, and why they fear us. Why there are anti-magic extremists who would slaughter us with great pleasure and the highest level of prejudice. We must stop this, or there will be hell to pay."

The silence was so vast a drop of water could fall and it would seem as loud as thunder.

"We are all products of nature. It was decreed by this land that we should come to be. What we are about to face is not by this land. Nature does not approve of its existence. That is why we, as her children, must end this. If the People, our allies, cannot help ua, we will find the fierce fires of our hearts and forge our own weapon from it. That is nature's gift to us. To never back down when faced with the enemy. To forge forth when we have nothing to lose, except everything that we have." Seleyda surveyed the room, a fierce light entering hers and every other shifter's eyes.

"Men and women in this room, will you join me on the battlefield? Willk you join me, even though the odds are completely against us? I vow that every human who stands by me, I will make sure they shall not die. For in this battle, it shall be our enemies that will fall. Will you listen to my words and let no doubt shadow your actions? Answer me!" Seleyda roared her last words.

The room exploded with shouts. "WE WILL!"

"Then let us proceed, for there is no time to spare."

Curran sat back on his seat, completely stunned.

A/N: 2000+ words. Not bad. Half of the last one, but above average compared to the rest. Hope you guys enjoy! R&R please!