Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (36 page)

“Beth!”  Gail sighed again, and shook her head.  She grabbed another cinnamon roll and turned to Lori.  “Okay.  Hit me.”

“First, think of…”

Gail paid strict attention as Lori started to explain the first of the three intricate juice buffer-based meditation techniques Gail needed to learn.  She suspected this would be a long day.

Carol Hancock: November 10, 1972

“What do you have for me, Mary?”  I said.  Her red clothes faded into the darkness but her bright smile didn’t.  I tried to shake the rust out of my mind.  Mary Sibrian had somehow found me while I cased Adkins’ place.  I enjoyed Adkins’ twists far too much; one of her people had screwed up horribly, sending the wrong bribe to the wrong city councilman, and Adkins hammered the poor schmuck unmercifully.  Mary had arrived in Detroit at about 10:00 in the evening, prostrated herself at the edge of my range, and waited patiently until I showed.

“There’s someone I think you might want to meet, over in Inkster.”

Inkster was less than ten miles from my current location, so we ran.  I picked up the prize on my metasense a quarter mile out, but when we reached the underpass where the prize was stored…

“Hey!  He’s not restrained!” I said, knives falling into my hands.  Chimera, or to be more technically appropriate, Beast Man.  Not a Noble or a Hunter.

Mary was unfazed.  “Commander, meet Hector, Hector, meet the Commander.”

“I abase myself before you, ma’am,” he said.  He knelt on the concrete, mostly hidden in the shadows of the underpass.

The damn thing wore Mary’s tag.

“How in the hell did you do that!” I said, referring to the tag.  Four months ago, Haggerty assigned her my long running task of capturing a Chimera for Zielinski and crew to take apart.  That is, a bad guy we wouldn’t feel remorse over killing.

A car passed by us, oblivious.  Mary’s doing.  “They’re people, too,” Mary said, catching my mood and not answering my question.  “I’ve already worked out a deal to send Hector here to Occum once you and the Doc are done with him.  The old Crow’s going to owe us a big one.”

“Humph.”  Mary was supposed to be working on Keaton’s crap, but knowing Mary, she got distracted when she scented junior and hunted him down.  I metasensed him again, noticed some puzzling things, and then rubbed my forehead, hard.  “Say, Mary, is it my imagination, or is Hector here a little different?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mary said, and smiled.  “He’s only a little over two weeks into his initial transformation.  My tag is helping him preserve his humanity.”

Zielinski would be ecstatic.  “Good job.”  I would be paying Mary off for years.  Every time I assigned this disaster of a project to someone, the potential reward went up.  “Take him to Chicago for me, won’t you?  Then don’t you have some investigating to do?”

“Done,” Mary said.  “There’s nothing to either Teas or Elspeth besides household bodyguards and low-rent mindbent hirelings.  Taking down Gail and her people would be harder.  Plus I extracted a baby Arm out of Bakersfield last month.  I’ve started to do some backup work on Focus Schrum, just in case Amy misses…”

I cut Mary off with the wave of my hand.  Amy would shit kittens if Mary started to investigate Schrum, but that was pure Sibrian – if you didn’t keep her busy, she would try and help you with your job, too.  Always so eager to please, but Amy’s tolerance didn’t run that way.  I reached into my pack.  “Here’s some more Network idiots to investigate.”  Investigating the Network ate up too much of my time.

“No problem,” Mary said.  She kept a close eye on Hector, a real close eye, far too friendly.  She didn’t have any of the natural fear I had developed of Chimeras of any stripe, and she regularly hung out with Nobles, which I thought strange.

I nodded to Mary.  I was sure the extra work wouldn’t be a problem.  If she could keep her mind on the assigned tasks and not get distracted, that was.

Tonya Biggioni: November 12, 1972

“Focus Biggioni,” the voice on the other end of the line said.  Tonya took a moment to place the voice, and then she caught her breath.  Shadow.  Why would he be calling her?

“This is Focus Biggioni,” she said.

“We should talk.  Meet me at the Marix Restaurant in an hour.”

“What?  Why?  I’m not exposing myself to Schrum’s spies without a reason.”

“Ah, my apologies, Focus Biggioni.  I didn’t realize you hadn’t negotiated your way out of your troubles yet.  My condolences, then, and I will contact you another day.”

“Wait!”  Oh, hell, he knew about what was going on.  If he had even the slightest willingness to help, she needed to talk to him.

“Yes, Focus Biggioni?”

“I’ll be there.”

“I look forward to it.”

Tonya laid the phone down in the receiver, carefully and gently.  A friendly contact from a senior Crow Guru wasn’t something she encountered every day.  Or ever.  Despite the danger, she would come running.  The edge of desperation was making her rash, an unfamiliar feeling.

“Focus Biggioni, I’m so glad you could make it.”  Shadow took her hand in his and sniffed it, and she politely sniffed his.  Crow courtesy.  He was seated in the dimly lit booth with Earl Sellers and a Crow she didn’t recognize.  Oh.  The Crow was Occum, and he hid under at least two layers of disguise.

“Crows Shadow and Occum, Earl Sellers,” she said, exchanging a sniff of the hands with Occum and Earl Sellers also.  The Earl exuded a wild masculine and predatory odor.  It was a jolt to see him sitting quietly in a restaurant.

“Have a seat,” Shadow said.  His voice was gentle and non-threatening.  “I ordered a few appetizers.  Try some of the stuffed mushrooms, they’re quite good.”

Tonya glanced around at the restaurant.  “This hardly seems the place for a private meeting.”

“The patrons will hear only the sounds of mundane, everyday conversation.  You don’t need to worry.”

Crow tricks, what the Crows termed dross constructs.  If not for the fact that both Lori and Gail had taught themselves to sense them, she would have denied their existence.  She wasn’t a Crow expert, she couldn’t sense dross, and didn’t understand how to judge the potency of such things.

“Sit,” Shadow said.

Tonya sat on the other side of the oversized booth, with Danny on one side and Ben on the other and ate mushrooms with two Crows and a Chimera.  They made small talk.

Small talk!  The world was collapsing around their ears and Shadow wanted to make small talk.  She wasn’t sure if this was some Crow courtesy, or an attempt to emulate Focus courtesies to put her at ease.

She made small talk.  In the politics of the Cause as well as in the non-rebellious politics of the Council and whatever passed as such for the Crows, she was in the position of weakness, outranked by Shadow.  She followed Shadow’s lead and stayed attentive.  Although Shadow remained as reserved and polite as he always did in his observer status at the Council meetings, the other two radiated unease.  Crow Master Occum, always garrulous, disliked any Focus not named Rizzari and he felt like a Crow about to flee in terror.  She had met Earl Sellers only once before, at the Battle in Detroit.  Although the second ranking Noble, he wasn’t a politician nor used to being out in public.  She caught him eyeing the restaurant’s silverware with a puzzled expression in his eye.  Based on her conversations with Duke Hoskins, the Noble politician and Council observer, she suspected both Occum and the Earl were on a proving quest, to prove they could deal with a high-ranking Focus without causing a scene.

“Will you listen to a business proposal, Focus Biggioni?” Shadow said, eventually.

“Of course, Crow Shadow,” she said, carefully gracious.

“Recently, my faction of the Crows decided to become more active, for reasons I won’t go into here but suspect you can figure out.”  Ah.  This was part of his opposition to Chevalier’s Crow faction.  Tonya nodded, pleased.

“As such, I’ve decided to work more closely with the Focuses, or at least a subsection of the Focuses who seem to be more reasonable and well inclined to Crows.”

“Now?”  Tonya couldn’t help but ask.  They were either in or edging toward a Major Transform civil war, and the Crows had decided this was the time for business negotiations?

“Yes.  A coincidence, but a well-timed one.  Your recent difficulties make the younger Focuses much more attractive as business partners.”

“Make us
more
attractive?”

“Less like the pawns of the first Focuses,” Shadow said.  “The Firsts are too dark for us to deal with in a rational manner.  I will admit that I find you considerably easier to deal with when you are outside of the darkness of the Firsts.”

Tonya shut her mouth, as it had fallen open at Shadow’s first statement.  She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or offended, but given her ‘recent difficulties’, she decided flattered would be a wiser choice.  “Thank you,” she said, and put a false smile on her face.  “The first Focuses are often difficult to deal with in any manner.”  She paused and nibbled a stuffed mushroom.  They were indeed good.  “So, how familiar are you with our ‘recent difficulties’?”  There were so many of them, as the Arms ate away at the foundations of Focus power.  She had been calling her contacts in the Network earlier in the day, only to find the best and brightest had decided to side with the Arms.

He smiled slightly.  “Enough to understand that they are difficult.  I wish you well breaking free of the first Focuses, and fervently hope what takes their place exhibits the wisdom you do in your dealings.”

“What do you want from us?”

“What do we want?  Why, a business relationship.  We Crows would like to make ourselves known to all the Focuses.  We offer services for a price.  Housecleaning, other cleanup of bad dross, finding of lost Transforms, household defenses, and Crows willing to ally with appropriate Focuses.  Among other things.  We’re looking for an agent among the Focuses.  Will you be willing to be our agent?”

Tonya shut her mouth before she said something stupid, and thought.  This was a response to Arm Haggerty’s
push the Cause
project, and, typical for the Crows, a bit slow.  However, even the mention of Crow-Focus alliances showed a lot of political progress.  The relatively recent announcement of Sky and Lori’s household tag tuning project’s success likely influenced the timing of Shadow’s offer.  She sensed levels of politics she didn’t possess the knowledge to understand.

She would agree.  How could she not?  Any link to a potential ally, however tenuous, was worth cultivating.  “Why me, though, and not Focus Rizzari?  She’s more familiar with the Crows of the Cause than I am.”

Shadow’s expression hinted at a smile.  “Focus Rizzari is a known quantity.  You are not.”

“A test?”  She eyed first Crow Master Occum, then Earl Sellers.  “I would say there’s a lot of testing going on at this table.  I’ll admit I’m not used to being tested.”

“It’s good for us to face new tests,” he said, including himself among those being tested.  “Do you like the brochures? I took the liberty of assuming your agreement and gave your name as a contact.”  He brought out full color mockups of several brochures, laid out by an expert and professionally done.  One was an introduction to Crows, another an introduction to the dross, but most were sales brochures.  Housecleaning, and why every household needed it, Crow consulting services, even a brochure for Focuses with an interest in art.

The Focuses duplicated the minutes from the Focus Council meeting on a hand-cranked mimeograph machine.  The comparison threatened to give her a headache.

“These are beautiful,” she said, gracious from long experience with graciousness when she would rather hit something.

Earl Sellers leaned forward and grabbed Tonya’s attention, as if he was in his canine combat form and his ears had pricked forward.  “It’s hard to fall from the mountaintop,” he said.  His voice carried deep masculine resonances of both wisdom and sadness.

Tonya drew herself up in offense, shocked at the personal comment, but the Earl’s eyes held sorrow, not threat.  The other two, Occum and Shadow, studied her with care.

She gave up her offended dignity.  “Yes, it is,” she said.

“Those who fall must find other ways,” the Earl said.  “I am the oldest and first Noble, yet I no longer lead my kind.  The Focus Council once led the entire Transform community, but no longer.  The appearance of the Eskimo Spear shattered both the Transform community and the tacit power of the Focus Council by showing too much truth.  We are all wondering what, if anything, will take its place.  I believe the later generations of Focuses are different than the first Focuses, and are worth allying with.  Without help from the younger Focuses I would either be dead, or a Hunter.  I’ve stated my case many times, the need for this alliance, and we are here now to see if I’m correct.”

“I thank you, then, and hope I can meet your expectations,” Tonya said, moved by the wisdom and kindness of the oldest Noble.  This one was far more than a mere beast.  “Unfortunately, this will only matter if I, and my peers among the younger Focuses, survive the coming conflict with any power left to use.”

“You speak of the threat from Arm Keaton,” Shadow said.  “I would hate to see Keaton attempt to take control of the Crows, and I would much rather the Arms return to being Crow allies.  To aid in these goals, we might even be willing to help you.”