Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (2 page)

My instincts barked at me, attempting to convince me of lurking danger, attempting to convince me to leave.  I ignored them, attributing my gut feelings to fallout from Bass’s treachery rattling around in my subconscious.  I made my way down to the basement to pay my respects.

Keaton’s basement reminded me far too much of Bass’s basement for my comfort.  The free weights and weight machines were innocuous enough, but the blood and the misery was the same.  The baby Arm Keaton tormented was a hysterical wretch, forty-five years old as a person, and six weeks past her transformation.  She screamed and cried with a half-mad desperation as Keaton tore off tiny bits of skin.  Little remained of her mind.

This was part of Keaton’s standard training technique, perfected by trial and error and skull sweat during the training of the first five student Arms: myself, Mary Fouke, Amy Haggerty, Sylvia Bass and Peggy Svensen, two of whom were no longer among the living.  We all collected terrible mental scars from the process.  Bass and I picked up our sadistic impulses from Keaton’s early training techniques, and Haggerty and Svensen got warped in the head from the effort involved resisting these sadistic impulses.

Keaton first tried her current procedure on Florence Rayburn, the Arm after Svensen, and the method worked so well she used it on all the Arms who followed, starting with Rose Webberly.  Essentially, a baby Arm needed to shuck absolutely everything from her former normal life before she could learn how to be an Arm.  Rayburn and the following new Arms came out of their training significantly saner than their predecessors.

Not that it took much.

I read Keaton’s juice count as mid-high, maybe around 120 or so.  Mine was a bit on the low side, due to the juice I used in the New Orleans fight and in my five frantic days of fruitless Bass fishing.  I came in close enough to let the tag do its work, and felt my nerves relax and the calm acceptance of Keaton’s authority as it washed through me.

Keaton was a short woman, just a little over five feet tall, and the lack of height was always surprising given her power.  She kept her brown hair in a crew cut, and her build was blocky with layered muscle, more male than female.  She flicked her knife to me as I knelt on the floor to make my obeisance.  I snapped the knife out of the air, scattering little droplets of blood.  Over to the side, the other student did chest presses, stubbornly pretending ignorance of her surroundings.  This one was just a kid, no more than fourteen years old.  Children didn’t transform, so she must have been just past puberty when she caught the Shakes.  I was surprised she had survived this far, but her eyes held cold murder, and her nerves were steady enough to work out during one of Keaton’s torture sessions.

“You help,” Keaton said, indicating the shattered Arm strapped to the table.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, without hesitation.  I didn’t like this odd order.  Keaton was playing games.

Motherfuckingshit.  I had been trying to keep my inner beast under control, and now I fed her twice in less than a week, adding to the dark lust I picked up during the New Orleans fight.  All on top of my breaking Bass and Duval, both in the last six weeks.  This wasn’t what I wanted to be doing, especially to some baby Arm I barely knew.

No question of disobeying, though.  Keaton knew she fed my beast, but the order was legitimate.  It didn’t even occur to me to refuse.

Two hours of my work reduced the baby Arm to little more than burbling imbecility.  I had few hopes for this Arm, having learned this was the fourth time her former life had been tortured out of her.  The kid doing weights was long gone.  Keaton played statue, admiring the blood covering me, letting me handle the breaking on my own.  Under other circumstances, I would have even enjoyed my work, but not with Keaton standing over my shoulder.  The beast liked her privacy.

“So,” Keaton said, after I finished, “you have a problem with this?”

“No, ma’am,” I said.  I could have said ‘of course not’ if I was being polite, or ‘are you shitting me’ if I wanted to challenge, but given the strangeness of Keaton’s orders I decided to just let her read my unvocalized answer on my body.  This was her turf, and her student, and if you don’t understand how important those
her
s are, you don’t know Arms.

“Hmm.  You don’t have a problem with this yourself, but it bothers you when someone else enjoys herself?”

Oh crap, she was pissed about what I did to Bass.  I went down on my knees to emphasize my subservience.

“Ma’am, I beg you to let me explain.”

Keaton snorted.

“What’s your problem, Hancock?  Did Haggerty order you to be a girl scout or something?”

Yah, Keaton was pissed, but Arm on Arm fighting wasn’t forbidden, nor was interfering in another Arm’s interests.  How many of Sibrian’s katanas had Keaton taken from her, simply because she thought Sibrian’s clothing choices veered too close to her ‘Arms don’t wear costumes’ rule?  Dozens of other examples ran through my mind.

“Ma’am,” I said, stalling for time.  “I apologize.  I don’t understand.  What did I do to displease you?”

“What the fuck did you
think
you were doing, Hancock?”

“Ma’am,” I said, gathering my thoughts in a hurry.  “I learned, nearly a month ago, that Bass was the person behind the Phoenix Church massacre, an event that indirectly led to the deaths of two of my own, as well as the loss of my Chicago territory.  I confronted her in her lair to gain recompense, and discovered she held over a dozen people, torturing them, including women and children.  You know my feelings about child abuse, ma’am.  I took my recompense out of Bass, tagged her, and ordered her as punishment to cease her torture experiments and find a different way.  A week ago I fought off an attack on my life, and on the lives of those around me, by a company of thugs who I later learned were Bass’s twisted hirelings.  I now believe she’s playing a deeper game than simple harassment, and I also suspect she’s ditched my tag.”  In a sane world, this should be enough to justify anything, including Bass’s murder.  Keaton grunted but said nothing.  “I believe my actions helped preserve the reputation of the Arms, as Bass’s actions were harming the reputation of all Arms.”  Including you, boss…I didn’t say.

“What about the orders you gave her?” Keaton said.  “No more massacres?  No more torture research?”

“The tag holder always has the right to make such demands,” I said.  I didn’t know why Keaton forced me on the defensive, except for the obvious: because she could.

“Yes, but why?” Keaton said.

“Arm massacres are bad.  They alienate our allies, make enemies out of people who might otherwise be neutral, and cause friction among the Arms.  They hinder the projects I’m working on, including the projects you assigned me.  Bass is going down a bad path, bad for her and bad for any Arms she convinces to join her.  I believe she, if free, endangers us all.”

Keaton raised an eyebrow.  “A bold thing for the California Spree Killer to say, don’t you think?”

“Ma’am.”  The episode from my early Arm years wasn’t one of my more stellar moments.  “I like to think I’ve learned better over the years.  My old mistakes don’t make Bass’s actions any less of a mistake.”

“That’s a judgment call.  Seems like you made a lot of them over at Bass’s farm.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  I repressed all my speculations about the unknown – such as the reason why, on Bass’s farm, I hadn’t asked her about why she staged the Phoenix Church massacre.  “I believed the calls justified at the time, even more justified after her recent attack on me, her tagged superior.”

Keaton smiled a half smile.  “The latter wasn’t and isn’t true.”

I almost lost my poise and went for Keaton.  Before I got any farther than taking my knife out of its sheath, I buried it in my own arm, and twisted.  Self-punishment.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” I said.  “This has never happened to me, before.”  Now I understood: after I broke her and trashed her lair, Bass came to Keaton and signed on the dotted line, taking Keaton’s tag and dropping mine.  The shock of learning this nearly made me lose control, as Bass had been
mine
.  Now I would need to suck shit, big time.

I couldn’t see Keaton’s face, but I felt her smile.  Each of our tags reflected our own individual personalities, and Keaton’s tags allowed her to experience her sadistic jollies through them, in the appropriate circumstances.  Such as this one.

“Bass is mine, now,” Keaton said.  “The events in New Orleans she accepts as payback for the wrongs she claims of you.  The dominance issues between the two of you aren’t my problem.  When the two of you are working with me, here, they will
not
be an issue.”  At those words, my metasense cleared.  Bass was here, upstairs in Keaton’s library, under Keaton’s protection.  Visible now in my metasense, Bass gave me the middle finger.  Both hands.  Belying Bass’s ‘payback’ claim.  She still wanted a piece of my hide, or the damn thing intact without me in it.

So much for my urge to capture Bass, torture her to death, bring her back to life and do it again.  A more deserving target had never existed…and now she had bought herself some protection.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.  “I still believe she’s playing a…”

“
She is not,
” Keaton said.  I shut up about my ‘deeper game’ fears.  Keaton would properly see my hypothesis as a dominance challenge.

“You’re missing something,” Keaton said.  She motioned for me to stand, and I did.  “You and your ideas.  You talk about the natural order and finding our ecological niche.  Our need to cooperate with the other friendly Major Transforms.  You organize wars against those who declare against us, such as the Hunters, with the other Major Transforms as allies.  You think Arms ought to restrain their darker urges.

“Has it ever even occurred to you that you might be wrong?”

I met her gaze and I paled in fear.  “Ma’am, you know I believe we have an important role to play, and how our role involves cooperation rather than unconstrained destruction.  You yourself told me no one gets to live without limits.  Has some evidence come up that this approach isn’t working?”

Keaton got in my face.

“How the hell do I know whether it’s working or not, when I don’t have anything to compare it to?  What makes you think your way is the only way?”  I felt her anger now, her unceasing anger over the Focuses’ treachery during the Clearing of Chicago, treachery that had kept us from wiping out the Hunters.  Something new added to her old anger, though, something I didn’t recognize.  Nothing I had done, or didn’t do, and worse, a something she wouldn’t be telling me.  “I didn’t train all of you just to fall for the first stupid idea that comes along.  For the first time, we’ve got someone with an idea for a different direction than yours, and you don’t get to fuck it up before it even gets started.”

“Ma’am,” I said, my fear edging over into panic.  Bass wanted to watch the world burn and rule over the ashes, or so she said.  “You’re giving Bass’s ideology serious consideration?  Going our own way would be a disaster.”

“Maybe it would.  Maybe it wouldn’t.  I don’t know, and
neither do you
.  I
do
want to see some other alternative than the one you’re trying to ram down everyone’s throats, and so you will damned well keep your hands off Bass and her operation.  It’s well past time we
probed
a few of our favorite enemy Focuses.  Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, automatic.  My agreement hurt like hell.  Keaton’s order was a mistake, a huge one, and it gave Bass cover for her lust for total personal freedom and general anarchy.  Worse, I feared for my boss.  I feared Bass had already gotten to her.

But Keaton
was
my boss, she held Bass’s foul and contaminating tag, and the price and benefits for owning and using Bass were hers now, not mine.

“If you want to claim your way is better, prove it,” Keaton said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.  What else could I say?

Dolores Sokolnik: August 25, 1972 –  September 9, 1972

The woman tossed Del across the pit, into a rough concrete wall.  Before Del recovered, the woman attacked her again.  “Worthless,” the woman said.  “Six weeks and you haven’t snapped out of it.  My goddamned graduation is tied to you, freak.  Die or snap out of it, dammit!”

“Motherfucking asshole, get me some juice!”

Kick.

“You’re going to die,” the woman said.  Del’s battle pit opponent was one of many, and her name didn’t matter.  Interchangeable.  Beating on her, torturing her, starving her.  Names didn’t matter in this circle of Hell, the one reserved for damned violent women.

“I see teeth littering the ceiling,” Del said.  The words came out of her mouth in a different voice.  The voices in her head, too many to count, never ceased clamoring, a constant chaotic cacophony.

Kick.

“Die, then.”  The woman wrenched Del’s left shoulder out of its joint and Del screamed again.  The woman tossed Del across the pit and she landed on her left hand, popping something.  Then the woman tossed her again.

The voices in Del’s head never stopped.  “Sexless reject,” Del said to her opponent, in yet another voice.  “No passion for life.  That’s why you aren’t graduating, not because of my issues.”  She no longer remembered which of the voices was her own.