Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (50 page)

The White Witch had hit Gail hard enough in the Dreaming to force Gail’s real-world body to split open with self-induced wounds.  Lori tagged Gail, something quick and dirty, and began to pass juice to her, one juice buffer to another.  Lori’s juice buffer could hold nearly four times the juice of Gail’s, one of Lori’s tricks, and Gail’s hovered near empty.  The tag was about the most disgusting juice effect she had ever suffered through, making her want to vomit.  Gail healed herself as fast as she could without going into a healing trance.  “This insanity turns you on,” Gail said, metasensing Lori’s arousal.  Lori had already healed her own wounds.

“Of course it does.  I was
made
for combat like this, for combat against evil,” Lori said, uncharacteristically emotional and proud.  “Patterson’s our enemy, the bane of the Cause.  We hurt her, she hurt us, but we freed Carol from her.  Metasense our spilled blood.  The blood carries Patterson’s taint, making it her blood, allegorically, from her wounds.”  Lori wiggled around in Gail’s arms to face her, and kissed her.  Gail didn’t back away, but she didn’t respond, either, save to the joy of victory and the power of the juice.

Lori backed off and kissed Gail on the forehead.  “Yes, I’m Polaris.  Yes, I
want
you.  To keep your household and Inferno from destroying each other, we need to find a way to love each other.  Sex is one way, but not the only way.”

Gail didn’t mind Lori’s physical attention, though she wasn’t sure what to do about it.  Unlike Carol and Gilgamesh, even with her current high juice count, she had never thought of Lori in a sexual manner.  Gail decided to hug Lori and put Lori’s head between her breasts.  “Who are we to challenge Patterson this way and get away with it?”  The figurative Major Transform gods would smite them all dead for such hubris.  If not today, surely tomorrow.

Lori ran her left hand through their blood, the Patterson tainted blood, raised her hand, and let the blood drip onto Gail’s face.  “We’re the Cause, Gail.  You, me and Carol.  We’re the Cause.”

---

“Do you still love me?  Even after all this?” Gail said.  She and Van had retreated to the bathtub, sitting, the shower raining down on both their heads.  He wielded a washcloth and a bar of soap; Gail and Lori’s blood was long gone, but she still felt the stain.  Steam filled the air, hiding both of their tears.

Van hesitated for a moment, his eyes focused on the top of her head.  “Of course,” he said.  The pause brought another round of tears to Gail’s eyes.  “I’m just having trouble with all these changes.  Too much the normal, I guess.”  Another pause.  “I won’t stop loving you, though, just because I’m being tossed around by events out of my control.”

The tears came faster, and Gail hugged Van, hard.  “Are you ready for me to be another Lady Death, Van?”  That’s what Lori’s blood marking meant.

“Uh, no,” he said.  She felt him redden.  “I thought you had, ah, resisted that.”

“Carol’s mix of darkness and love is incredibly seductive.”

“I’ve noticed,” Van said.  He fidgeted and eyed the bathtub ceiling through the steam, a sign of his discomfort.

“Keaton was all business, and her business is death.  Bass is a monster.  You’d have to be mad already to join them of your own free will.  Carol, though, she’s filled with love
and
darkness.  She managed to shuck and hide most of the darkness she learned from Keaton, back before she went public in the buildup to the Battle in Detroit.  For years, since then, she’s just been Carol Hancock, the Arm, the Commander.  She’s always had a charismatic personality – don’t say anything, Van – and her seductive nature turned toward other things, such as building a case against the Hunter civilization and pushing for extensive training of everyone she dealt with.  Teacher.

“Now, Patterson’s influence and the conflict with Keaton and Bass has ripped open her old scars and let her inner beast out.  Unfortunately, she’s not hiding in some Arm lair torturing a few lowlifes.  She’s out in the world, interacting with dozens of Major Transforms, including us.  Influencing our lives and infecting us with her passions.  Love and darkness.  This is a mix that’s blindingly seductive to any Major Transform.  Turns into us versus them, where the them become objectified. 
Our enemies become non-human.
”

Van’s eyes turned to hers, open wide and in shock.  “Adolph Hitler.  Love and darkness.  The right to exterminate your enemies because you love your friends.  So that’s what’s been bugging me about this.”

“Uh huh.  That’s where we’re going and I don’t see any way to stop.”  Gail paused.  “I’m not sure I even want to, Van.  Me!  Despite the implied evil, the path of love and darkness may be the only way to preserve some manner of civilization.  I don’t think I can resist Carol in
anything
.”

Gail fell silent, and let the shower rain down on their heads.  Van closed himself off, his mind elsewhere.  Gail couldn’t tell if he was sufficiently appalled or not.  She knew she had passed beyond the point where she could save herself.  She wondered if Van would be able to come up with anything.

Gilgamesh: December 7, 1972

“It’s what, fucking 0 degrees out here?” Tiamat said.  “What are you doing up on the roof, anyway?”

Just what he didn’t need, an Arm in a mood.  He didn’t mind the cold up here on the roof of the Branton, able to use Guru tricks to increase his metabolic rate and keep warm.  The sky tonight was beautiful and clear, the wind from the northwest barely moved.  No moon, and the stars shone bright overhead, though if he wasn’t a Major Transform, the bright city lights would have drowned them out.  To the south, the Loop slowly turned itself into a Christmas wonderland.

“I expected you home earlier after the fight.”

She walked over to stand beside him, and he picked up from her the scents of Gail’s perfume, Van’s cologne, Lori’s spicy dross and, of course, nothing from Sky.  “I felt a call for help from Inferno when I was passing Lake Erie.”

“What was Inferno doing up by Lake Erie?”

“Inferno’s main attack team was helping Dowling track down some Monster in the lake.  Except a Hunter interfered, running a trap with the Monster as bait.  Unfortunately for him, the Monster turned out to be a whole lot stronger than anyone thought.  Mostly the Monster beat up on the Hunter, but Dowling and the Inferno team got pretty chewed up, too.”

“What would the Nobles do with a marine Monster if they got one, anyway?” Gilgamesh asked.  The Blue Ridge Barony wasn’t anywhere near water.

“The Monster was some sort of snake and breathed air as well as water.  Dowling had some mystic vision she was important.  Now he thinks the Monster is actually left over from when the Progenitors were alive, and that’s why she turned on the Hunter.”  Tiamat shook her head.  She had become more tolerant of mystic theories, but not enough to believe in thousand year old lake Monsters.  “You didn’t answer my question.”

He turned away from Tiamat to watch the cars buzzing by on the Loop.  “I’m thinking,” he said.  “I assumed when you flipped dominance with Amy and shucked the Bass tag, you would break with Kali and stop this uncivil war before things got worse.  You’re not, though.”

“Hmm,” Tiamat said.  “You’re thinking of taking Enkidu up on his crazy offer, aren’t you?”

“Not really.  Just making sure I didn’t see any holes in the logic behind my rejection of his offer.”

Tiamat shrugged.  “I see,” she said.  “No, I’m not breaking with Keaton.  She won her tag on me fair and square, years ago.  Just because I think she’s wrong isn’t grounds for a challenge.  If I come up with some real evidence she’s wrong, that’s different.  Otherwise, all we have is a difference of opinion.  She’s the boss and so she gets to make the call.”

Tiamat turned and joined him in watching the cars.  “Keaton’s treating me fairly, at least for the moment, and not giving me any grounds for a challenge.  Giving me and my Arms first Focuses Schrum and Adkins as targets is huge, especially given Keaton’s own desires for revenge on Adkins.”  She paused.  “I called her after I beat Haggerty, as the Haggerty challenge had been part of her orders.  She
congratulated
me, Gilgamesh.  Then she confirmed the Crow reports about Bass’s loss of status by ordering me to postpone, in her words, ‘Bass’s day of reckoning’, until after the fight with the first Focuses.  Otherwise, I’m to keep following my previous orders.”  Tiamat took a deep breath.  “I still think Keaton’s overall plan is crazy stupid.  That hasn’t changed.  But I can’t challenge based on a bit of stupidity.”

“Kali’s playing the two of you against each other.”

Tiamat nodded.  “The same way Bass is playing Keaton and me against each other.  Standard Arm politics.”

“The
push the Cause
project is over?”

“We’re going to finish the tagging project and household redefinition project, and put everything else on hold until after the fight with the Firsts is over.”

“And Arm Haggerty?”

“The Firsts know we’re coming.  Although Keaton doesn’t care, I do, and I want to make sure the Firsts don’t acquire themselves an army of FBI and dragooned police.  I ordered Haggerty to go make sure the FBI can’t do any such thing.”

Gilgamesh worried his upper lip.  Tiamat’s beast still hungered for blood, even after she tossed Bass’s tag and Focus Patterson’s malign influence.  The Hero’s hit on the FBI would be bloody.  “The beast is a problem,” Tiamat said, reading his internal dialog.  “It’s contagious, and I’m the contagion.  I’ve dealt with the problem before, though, and I’ll deal with it again.  At least I’m no longer under orders to feed the beast every night.  Keaton, unlike Bass, doesn’t give a shit about what I do in my free time.”

“Have you figured out why Patterson wanted you to be more beastly?”

Tiamat shook her head.  “It makes no sense.  I’m far more dangerous to her and the rest of the Focus community when I’m more beastly, far outweighing the damage done to my already bloody reputation.”

“Unless it costs you the Crows.”

“That could have been what she was aiming for.”  Carol sighed, her mind again filling with thoughts of torture.  “I’m not sure it outweighs the risk, though.”

Gilgamesh didn’t agree, but didn’t want to say his comment aloud, and covered his thoughts with a different question.  “What do we do with the evidence we’ve uncovered about Bass’s history?”

“You mean the evidence that Bass is a pawn of Chrysanthemum aka Focus Fingleman?”  Tiamat snorted.  “I don’t have the level of proof I need to make a good case.  Too many unanswered questions, such as ‘who is Fingleman’s partner?’  Keaton’s dug her own grave.  Let her lie in it.”

“You’re angling for a way to grab dominance from Keaton, then.”

“You said it, not me.  I’m certainly not thinking any such thing.”  Tiamat clapped him on the shoulder.  “I’m still hacked off at the way my boss treated me with the Cause presentation fiasco. 
Real hacked.
  I’m not challenging her at all, though.  I just don’t owe her any favors.”

Gilgamesh nodded.  Tiamat and Kali’s relationship had always been rough, with its up points and down points.  Now was one of those down points.  Way down.  He studied the stars and enjoyed the icy cold air of winter.  Tiamat didn’t leave, standing by his side in the cold.

“I have some impertinent questions for you, if you’re willing to listen,” Tiamat said, almost ten minutes later.  “If you took over the Law, could you reform the Hunters and make them part of the Transform community?  Allow us to make peace with them?”

“Those questions,” Gilgamesh said.  He had been wrestling with those questions for a week.  Stopping a war would be a good thing, right?  Even if it cost him more of his sanity than he would like to think about?

“Those questions.”

“Take out your Progenitor doo-dad and ask.”

Tiamat sighed.  “You trust them too much.”

“I don’t trust them at all.  We need to take them into account, though.  We did invite them into our lives, and they have helped.”  Tiamat growled.  “Yes you did, Carol, by allowing Amy to go on the Eskimo Spear quest.”  Tiamat didn’t stop her growl.  Gilgamesh waited, patiently, until she stopped.

“Fine.”  She took out the doo-dad, an ivory carving of a Monster.  “Amy’s quest changed everything, got that.  When the Nobles gave me this, we were still using the old Lost Tribe term for the unknowns of the north, ‘the predecessors’.  Now, Von Reijn even thinks they passed their version of Transform Sickness down to us.”  Gilgamesh had learned about Von Reijn’s theory from the Good Doctor.  Von Reijn based it on anthropological evidence and the mutation rate in the transmitting Listeria bacteria.  “Are you saying you can make this carving do something?”

“Only indirectly.”  He smiled and a golf bomb appeared in his left hand.  “Like calls to like in the pheromone flow.”

“Okay, let’s see what you’ve got,” Tiamat said.  She put her hand on the golf bomb, and his hand.  He activated it, triggering the complex dross construct that would open up the pheromone flow to an Arm, and incidentally, use the Monster carving to call in the Progenitors.

The flow was eerily quiet tonight, the game boards peaceful, a distant aurora dimly dancing in the north.  They entered the flow standing in Shadow’s mousetrap game.  Gilgamesh motioned, and they moved in the flow, out of the mousetrap game and into the great map.