Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (3 page)

“You’re faking the lust, but Ma’am Keaton isn’t fooled,” Del said, this time a man’s voice, echoing a different set of thoughts.  Del shifted positions as the woman tossed her again, and the woman slipped.  An idea popped into her head on its own, how to make the shift and
produce
the slip.  A gift from one of the voices.  Del fell, but gently.  “I’m hungry,” Del said.  Thoughts about architecture ran through her mind.  An early TV actress once owned Ma’am Keaton’s mansion, someone not smart enough to realize the people building her house had been robbing her rather than building for her.  The place slowly collapsed on itself for lack of sufficient internal supports.  “Agriculture and brush clearing have accentuated the drought cycle,” Del said, in a different voice.  The woman recovered from her slip and returned, kicking at Del.

Del rolled.  The woman grabbed and tossed her again.  Del hit the concrete wall with a jolt, knocking the breath out of her.  The pain of her dislocated arm made even partial control over the thoughts and voices utterly impossible.

She would die.  Today.  Unless she
snapped out of it
, whatever that meant.  The other damned women who lived in this house knew how to keep silent.  They spoke with only one voice.

Ma’am Keaton stood to the side, eyes hooded and arms crossed.  She was the judge of Del’s life.  The nameless woman rushed at Del again, aiming to slam her shoulder into Del’s midsection.  The blow would stun Del’s heart, and if successful, well, that would be the end of that.  Del rolled toward the leaping woman, enough so that the shoulder blow only glanced off her ribs.

Exhaustion sapped Del’s will to move and to fight back.  Exhaustion, low juice, and the voices.  The never ending voices.  The woman, behind Del now, kicked at her, and Del went flying, heels spinning over her head in a full circle, to land on the small of her back.  Ma’am Keaton remained quiet, always so quiet.  Where were Ma’am Keaton’s thoughts, her voices?  Could Del be like her?  Quiet?  Would being quiet save her life?  Would being quiet count as
snapping out of it
?

The other student, not the nameless woman Del fought now but a different one, a student only a few months farther along than Del, had said Del was too smart.  Too many thoughts, too much of a good thing.  Del couldn’t disagree.  Nearly twenty years teaching politics and social studies to high school students had engaged Del’s mind, kept her thoughts from falling back into the mush of mindless entertainment and housewife worries plaguing the minds of her three sisters.  Del considered her brilliance her edge, and held on to her thoughts the same way a dog worried a favorite shoe.

Her thoughts now came in torrents.  Each took a voice of its own and never stopped.  The voices took over her mouth and her mind.

By any definition, she was insane.

Ma’am Keaton’s quiet was the only way.  Nothing Del tried stopped the voices.  Nothing.

Pain, death and insanity approached.  The nameless woman snapped Del’s left arm as she tossed Del across the pit again.  Bodily exhaustion threatened to use up the last of Del’s juice, threatened to send her into the horrible place without juice.  More, unless she stopped the woman, she would die from this beating.  Worst, unless she stopped the voices, she would die whether or not she survived the next five minutes.  Soon, Ma’am Keaton would make her hunt on her own, and with the voices, she would fail.

The woman ran at her from across the pit, as Del lay prone, exhausted.  The woman was her death
now
.  In desperation, Del screamed at herself, inside, for quiet.  Screamed for deliverance from her attacker.

Inside herself, inside her panic and desperation, Del sensed something new.  Something akin to a lever, or a dial, on the juice itself.  A way to use the juice directly, to do what needed doing.  “Burn juice,” a voice murmured through Del’s raw throat.  With an extra bit of juice, she could quiet the thoughts.

Juice she had little of now.  Her instincts forbid its use.

Instincts be damned.  Juice wasn’t everything.  In her mind, Del twisted the dial, and in her mental hands, she metasensed power.

“Quiet!”

Del visualized the quiet as still pools of water and, with the juice, built the pools in her mind.  She
became
the quiet pools, and the thoughts and voices vanished.

The woman continued to run at her, to deal her a final fatal blow.  The power of the juice had other uses, Del realized, and she willed the juice into her muscles.  Del stood, moving quicker than before, and jumped out of the way.  Her opponent hit the side of the battle pit, attacking the wall as she meant to attack Del.  She fell back in agony.  Del twisted the mental dial back to its previous position before she exhausted her juice.  In her quiet pools, she sensed only a few points of juice remained before she went into withdrawal.

The voices didn’t return.  Her broken bones and dislocated shoulder didn’t pain her.  The pain sunk out of sight in her quiet pools.  Only a single
self
remained.

Del turned to Ma’am Keaton, and nodded.  Speech was unnecessary.  Ma’am Keaton nodded back, leapt to Del’s opponent, and kicked her.

“Ma’am!” the woman said, as she landed on the far side of the pit.

“Congratulations, Arm Kent,” Ma’am Keaton said.

Arm Kent was Del’s former opponent’s name, now.  The Arm, no longer Student Kent, stood, looked at Del, and then at Ma’am Keaton.  She bowed in full, touching her head to the ground.  “Ma’am,” Kent said.

“Your official graduation ceremony is tomorrow evening, at seven.  I expect you to be fully presentable.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kent said.  She stood, backed three steps away from Ma’am Keaton, bowed again, and then nonchalantly climbed the rusty ladder out of the pit.  Del sensed the fierce pride in Arm Kent, pride over her success at yanking Del out of her madness.

Ma’am Keaton turned to Del.  “Juice count?”

“93, ma’am.”  Dangerously low, and painful.  Del’s voice echoed through her quiet pools and vanished alone, raising no other voices in return.

“Huh.”  Ma’am Keaton looked Del over for quite a long time, unreadable as always.  “This is your last free Transform, Del,” Keaton said.  “Next time, you hunt.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The thoughts and voices still did not return.

---

“Would you like to explain your hunt to me?” Ma’am Billington said.

The passionate heat of the post-kill lust flooding Del’s body vanished into her quiet pools, as did all distractions since her discovery of the quiet pools a week and a half ago.  Her left arm ached from the still-healing break, but her other injuries had healed.  Nothing disturbed the quiet peace of her mind.

They returned to the school past cast-iron fences hiding expensive homes.  Del wondered why Ma’am Billington had shadowed her on her first hunt.  She assumed she would succeed or fail on her own.

“Ma’am, I located my assigned territory, found a Transform, approached him in his car, persuaded him to drive me to a secluded location, took him, and then drove his remains to the student graveyard.  I then entertained myself for the allowed eight hours.”  Del paused, savoring the stillness in her mind.  So quiet, so controlled.  “Did I do anything wrong, ma’am?”

Ma’am Billington shook her head and stopped by the cast-iron fence hiding the extensive grounds of Ma’am Keaton’s Arm school.  “Follow your routine until I call for you, later.”  Ma’am Billington was a medium-tall heavily muscled woman, about five-seven, with light brown skin.  She didn’t approve of Del.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Del exercised, careful of her newly healed left arm, ate, attended a lecture by Richard Kerwin, a normal, who spoke today about police procedures.  After the lecture she exercised some more, ate again, and then went to the library to study.  She signed the reading logs, took down some books on military organization and began to read.

A half hour later, the other student Arm, Student Maynard, walked in and hissed at her.  “Ma’am Keaton wants you in meeting room two,” Maynard said.  Maynard was the only other Student Arm in Ma’am Keaton’s school after Arm Kent’s graduation, and she progressed slowly.  The techniques and knowledge Ma’am Keaton required took Maynard extra work to master because of her calendar age, 14.

“Thank you,” Del said, voice flat.  She stood and walked to the door. She carefully avoided coming within Maynard’s reach on the way by.  Maynard delighted in hurting Del, and Del found she couldn’t remain in the same room as Maynard without becoming aggressive herself.

At the door to the meeting room, Del knocked and then knelt on the small oriental carpet at the entrance.  Procedures.  “Enter,” Ma’am Keaton said.  Del stood, entered, and then knelt again before Ma’ams Keaton and Billington.  Besides the chairs holding Ma’ams Keaton and Billington, five sturdy pale oak chairs and a cheap, thick rug smelling of old blood were the only furnishings in the spare room.  Ma’am Keaton sat in her chair, a swiveling rocker, and showed no expression at all.  Ma’am Billington sat on a low-backed chair to her right and attempted to conceal her emotions as well.  Del read her unhappiness despite the older Arm’s attempt at emotional masking.

“Stand.”  Del stood.  Controlled.  Quiet.  She stood in the precise center of the bloodstained carpet.  From the sound and feel of her weight as she stood, she sensed the presence of plastic sheeting underneath the carpet.  The sheeting would keep any blood from soaking through to stain the immaculate floor.

Keaton swiveled her chair and examined Del for nearly three minutes.  Ma’am Keaton had been doing a lot of
examining
for the past week, ever since Arm Kent’s graduation.  Ma’am Keaton hadn’t said anything, though.

“According to the log books, you picked up just over nine weeks of standard training in the past ten days.  I would like you to demonstrate each of these to me, now.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Del demonstrated.  Weapons handling, muscle control, breathing techniques.  Stretches, lesson summaries, speed drills.  She walked across the room on her fingertips, a technique she had mastered only hours before her hunt.  Del knew Ma’am Keaton’s judgment should terrify her, but without the fear only reason remained.  “Ma’am, several of these…”

“Require the use of the gym to demonstrate.  Yes.  Let’s go.”

Ma’am Billington’s jaw tightened with anger and her eyes followed Del with wary unease as they walked to the gym.  Del picked up nothing from Ma’am Keaton.  She never did.

In the gym, Del demonstrated the other techniques she had learned and signed for.  Tumbling, combat forms, balance.  Her knife throwing skills made her the most proud, as she could put ten knives into the center of the target at forty feet.  So soon after a kill, her pride expressed itself as an aching in her loins.  Eight hours of release after a kill wasn’t enough.

“Out back to the yard.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We did this once before, and I want you to explain the differences,” Ma’am Keaton said.  Keaton sent Billington out along the narrow road that wound through the back section of the estate grounds and left the estate.  Del recognized the exercise as one to measure the range and acuity of her metasense.  She followed the procedures, and listed Billington’s location and range at precise fifteen second intervals.  Billington flashed her metasense in the guise of a Transform, without any attempts to mask her presence.  Ma’am Keaton called Billington back after fifteen minutes.

“Explain.”  Ma’am Keaton handed Del a page from Ma’am Keaton’s notebook as Billington jogged back.  The page showed the results of Del’s first metasense test, from before Del discovered her quiet pools.

“Ma’am, I did poorly before, because I couldn’t concentrate.  Ma’am, I’m surprised I did this well on my first test.  I don’t remember calling out any locations.”  Del ignored the sweat dripping down from her sides and the burning heat of the sun.  Bushes and trees hid the estate’s boundaries well, in contrast to the open exercise area.

“Student, you didn’t call out any locations.  I picked up the data by reading your expressions.  You sensed the target, but at only a thousand feet.  Pathetic metasense range.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Her previous limitations made sense.  Before Del’s discovery of the quiet pools, she leaked her thoughts like a wet sponge leaked water.  No more.

“Do you understand what having a 2100 foot metasense range means, for an Arm?”  Ma’am Keaton perched herself halfway up the oversized monkey bars and followed Del with her dead expressionless eyes.

“No, ma’am.  I apologize for not having yet read the book in the library that explains the significance of metasense ranges, ma’am.”

Ma’am Keaton listed five journal articles on the subject for Del to read.

Del listened impassively, letting the five names settle into her quiet pools, where now she forgot nothing.  “Ma’am, I wasn’t aware I had permission to read the technical journals or peruse the unpublished papers file.”

“Student, you do now.”  Ma’am Keaton jumped down from the monkey bars and walked toward Del, capturing Del’s gaze with her eyes.  “What am I doing now, Student?”

“You’re utilizing your predator effect on me.”

Keaton stopped moving and just stared.

Del prostrated herself on the ground.