Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (30 page)

“Success will give us more options to work with.”

I nodded.  “True.”  I would flip dominance on Haggerty as soon as I got juice from a Focus.  Success in the ‘juice from a Focus’ project mirrored nicely the Eskimo Spear quest success, in that we had both ordered our underlings to attempt the impossible, and the status from completing the impossible was too large to ignore.  My new combat methodology would be ready for that day; I was already way past the point where Webberly could clobber me while I tested out various pieces of my new method.  I counted on Haggerty not noticing how Webberly edged toward the paper-thin-skin look common to all the senior Arms, because of their mutual dislike.  The rest of the world would need to watch out for Webberly when I finished with her.

I didn’t hate Haggerty the way I hated Bass.  With Haggerty my conflict was professional, an argument Arm style about who got to drive the car and who got to read maps and navigate.  In the end, we would both be in the same car.  In some screwy fashion Amy and I were family.  Bass?  If I got her, she would die, but before she died, I would go overboard.  I fantasized about this constantly.  Could I torture her and make her scream forever?  I wanted to try.

“One other thing,” I said.  “I know where your loyalties are, and I can see you thinking about the possibility of passing a quiet warning on to the Focuses.  Such contact would
not
be wise.”

“Carol?” he said, startled and innocent.  His comment would have fooled anyone besides me.

I shook my head.  If I didn’t stop him, he would be on the phone with Tonya and Polly as soon as I left the building.  “Keaton threatened to take you and Littleside. You will
not
stick your neck out.  The risk of exposure is high from both ends, and I don’t think either of us wants me to receive an order to kill you.  Neither do I want to stand there and
follow orders
while Keaton does you herself or drags you back to Los Angeles as a slave.”  Bass would make sure you died accidentally within a few days, I didn’t say.

“Of course,” he said, and I didn’t believe him.

“Hank,” I said, “this isn’t your call.  I’m the Commander, not you, and this decision is mine to make.  Let me make the call about the Cause Focuses.  This is
my
strength.”

He sighed, and nodded.  This time, I believed him.

---

I sat in what passed as a pew in the storefront that served as the mother church of the Church of the New Humanity.  I wore my Angela Sebesta disguise.  Angela was a woman Transform and a bit of a religious flake.  Through her I had planted the seeds for the Church, but I wasn’t here as the manipulative Angela, but as a penitent and to sniff around for the FBI.

Larger questions than the Church’s problems bothered me.  What was I doing by following orders?  Why was I starting a war I didn’t want to start?  Why was I torturing people who didn’t need to be tortured?

I prayed for something, anything.  Willpower.  Guidance.  Bolts from the blue.  A way out of this mess.

At least I found no trace of the FBI in this church.

I opened a Bible and leafed through it, searching for inspiration.  Someone had left a donation envelope, um, not to this church, inserted between two pages.  Where did the Church of the New Humanity get its Bibles from, anyway?  Someday, we would need our own scripture, but that day was not today.

Someone had underlined a passage in pencil on the page marked by the donation envelope.  “Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ And the Lord said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these your prophets. The Lord has declared disaster concerning you.”

Yah.  Right.  Life sucked.

---

“Are you completely confident your phone isn’t bugged?”

“Yes.  What’s this about, Carol?” Lori said.

“Listen closely,” I said.  “First, I’m cutting off contact with you and the other witches.  I have other business and my other business takes priority.”  She was the other side now, and I didn’t dare keep up contact.  Not the least because I suspected Keaton would find a way to use my connection to her against both of us if I didn’t cut it off.

“Carol?”

“I said listen.  Second, I’m moving back to Chicago and taking Gail with me.  She’ll contact you when she finds a new home.”

Lori didn’t interrupt this time.

“Third, the project with Gail has been moved to the back burner.  I have other priorities, and won’t be able to spend more than a few hours a week with her.  If you want to continue working with her, feel free, but I won’t be involved.”

“Carol, did something bad happen?”

“Fourth, remind Tonya about her safe.”  This last statement wasn’t in my script, and I wasn’t sure what prompted me, but something about Tonya’s safe was important.

“What?”

“That’s it, Lori.  Good luck.  I hope the baby’s wonderful.”

“Carol!”

I hung up.

Hell.  I hoped I didn’t just fuck up.  I was one of the bad guys now, and given the dried blood under my fingernails, a truly evil bad guy.  I shouldn’t have given anything to a leader of the other side, but I gave little enough.

Now I would find out how smart Lori was.

I counted on her to be the good guy and defeat me.  The good guys always won, right?

---

“Carol?” Gail asked.  “What did you want to see us about?”  She had been calling me Carol instead of Teacher ever since the household tagging ceremony.  I didn’t think she realized.

Gilgamesh, Gail and I met in Gail’s office, with the door securely locked.  I had enjoyed myself a lot last night before my drive to Detroit.  Victims screamed in my head, bringing a smile to my heart.  I sat on the desk, and the two faced me in a couple of high wingback chairs that looked like they belonged in a living room rather than an office.  They remained casual with each other, not yet intimate.

Fuck!  Gilgamesh pulled the same crap that lost him Lori, him and his unbending emotional distance and his firm independence.  What did he think he was, an Arm?  And Gail?  She didn’t rate Gilgamesh any higher than anyone on her leadership team.  Idiots.  Their silliness would screw up the entire household redefinition project if they couldn’t figure out how to get inside each other’s heads.  I wanted to lock them both in a room with a couple of knives until one came out on top, but they weren’t Arms and the Arm approach wouldn’t work.  Shit.  They made me appreciate the brutal simplicity of Arm dominance hierarchies.

“I need to fill you in on a little problem.”  They looked at me attentively.  “You remember how I said my next visit with Arm Keaton was dangerous, and that I might not come back?  Well, the fact I’m back doesn’t mean all is well.”

I told them the truth about what Keaton did to me, and her plans.  Keaton would carve me to ribbons if she ever found out.  The hints to Lori were bad enough, but this was outright disobedience of orders.  I didn’t care.  The tags made them mine, and I also needed to give them a chance to put down the rabid dog.

I didn’t tell them anything about Bass.  I still couldn’t tell anyone.  I had run into this before when I went to Bass’s lair, shut down her projects and tagged her.  Bass’s mind control had made me ‘forget’ to ask why she did the Phoenix Church Massacre.  I wished I knew the limits of Bass’s trick.  They had to be large limits, or the situation would be far worse and she would already be world Empress.  One distinct possibility was that I was more vulnerable to her trick than anyone else.

I didn’t like that possibility
at all
.

“So the Arms are going after the first Focuses, and you get to take Adkins?” Gail said, reminding me of Keaton’s ‘gift’, giving me both Adkins and Schrum as targets.  It had been an attractive gift.  I
wanted
Adkins, and, unlike Bass, Keaton
wanted
my cooperation.  “You know, that might not be so bad…”

I winced.  “You don’t want Keaton as boss,” I said, reminding her of my Keaton stories.

Gail tapped her fingers thoughtfully.  “I’ll take your word for it, for now,” she said, unconvinced.  Damn, those first Focuses had set themselves up for a big fall, if a Focus like Gail was willing to think that Keaton would be better than the Firsts.  “So you think we need to move to Chicago?”

“Yes.  You need to be in my territory, and you need to be out of Wini Adkins’ reach.”

“Carol, we can’t afford to move.  You know how expensive this move will be?  I’m still working on getting new jobs for my people.”

“I’ll cover the move.  You’re a good enough Focus to brain-bend people into giving your people jobs in Chicago.  You’ll all get back on your feet soon enough.  Oh, and your man Kurt needs to drop his side business after your move.”

Gail frowned and shook her head.  “What’s your problem with Kurt’s side business?”  His side business involved moving illegal drugs in large quantities.

“He’s your blackmail handle.  You can’t afford those any more.  You’re going to be so clean you squeak.”  I paused and gathered their eyes.  “I’m talking as the Commander here.  You move to Chicago or you die.  I can’t protect you in Detroit.  I want you to finish your move to Chicago by November 15
th
, and the sooner the better.”  The 15
th
was my next planned meeting with Keaton, and the earliest time when Keaton could order us to start moving on her plan.

Gail held her head in her hands.  “Shit.”

---

“All right, everyone, we’ve got problems, so pay attention.”

Haggerty turned from some discussion with Sibrian about proposed tag nomenclature and glared.  I winced.  “Ma’am.”  I wondered briefly if Bass’s tag messed up my other tags, which should be keeping me from inappropriate dominance displays, and then decided I was just too damned cranky to pay attention to my internal prompts.  I suspected Keaton’s orders to challenge Haggerty, if she didn’t cooperate, didn’t help either.

My boss nodded forgiveness, fortunately, so I looked around my Detroit war room and gathered eyes.  I figured I would keep this place for the moment, as good a location as any to study Adkins and cover Gail’s household as they prepared to move.  Unless another Arm wanted to step up and piss on Adkins’ back, I would maintain two territories, one here and one in Chicago.

I smiled at them, thinking about the benefits of Keaton’s orders.  Years ago, when the FBI held me captive, Wini Adkins had arranged for me to go into withdrawal for twenty-nine hours and eight minutes.  Now, I would take my much-delayed revenge.

Haggerty, Webberly, Sibrian, and Whetstone were all there in my war room, along with Tom and Ila.  No Gail this time, no Gilgamesh, no Zielinski, no Tommy Bates and no Duval.  Duval might go everywhere Webberly went these days, but I didn’t want her hearing this.  She could stand guard outside for this meeting.

Haggerty left Sibrian and took her spot at the head of the table, and everyone still standing found a seat.  The fragrant odor of Tom’s coffee filled the air, and they all looked at me attentively.  I nodded.  “Last Tuesday I went to Los Angeles to visit Keaton and update her on our progress…”

The room grew quieter by the minute as I told the story.  I took fifteen minutes to finish the high-level summary, glossing over only one thing, Bass’s session with me.  No one said a word.  When I finished, nobody spoke for a full minute.  My boss broke the stunned silence.

“Is Keaton out of her mind?” Haggerty said.  “This is beyond stupid.  Why would we even
want
to go that direction?”

“Ma’am,” Webberly said.  “This is insane.  Given the successes we’ve already racked up pushing the Cause, abandoning it would be criminal.”

“Keaton’s made a call, and she’s the boss.”

Haggerty leaned forward.  “Forget these
orders
.  That bitch doesn’t give me orders, especially after the way she’s been treating me these last nine months.”  Something had happened between Haggerty and Keaton last February, not long after she flipped dominance on me and set up the
push the Cause
project.  Neither she nor Keaton would say anything about what happened, even obliquely.  I suspected a decent amount of what just happened to me in Los Angeles was due to Haggerty messing up her relationship with Keaton.  “Get our people together.  There’s one way to stop this nonsense, and that’s for me to take over as boss Arm.”

“You won’t win, ma’am,” I said.  I had given myself a 60:40 chance of victory if I challenged Keaton with everyone at my back, but that was before Bass tagged me.  I read the situation differently now.  “If you call her out or challenge her in any way, you won’t get a fair fight.  I’m not sure you would even
get
a challenge fight.”

Haggerty grabbed my shirt collar, I grabbed hers, we both rose to our feet, and we almost started our own inevitable challenge fight…except that Haggerty froze in place, her mind elsewhere.  I waited, and when I let go of Haggerty’s collar, she let go of mine.  A room full of people each did whatever method they preferred to wash the adrenaline out of their systems.