Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) (9 page)

The young man didn’t give Mary any trouble.  She told him what she wanted, and he did what she said.  Her words sounded seductive and raised Gail’s hackles.

“Sit, Focus.”

Gail nodded and sat on a couch in Teacher’s living room.  Mary smiled and sat on the far side of the couch, and directed the man to sit between them.  The Arm carefully didn’t touch the man.  Instead, the man squeezed as close to Gail as possible.  At his touch, Gail shivered even harder.

“What’s your name, kid,” Mary said.

“Mark.”  Pause.  “Mark Shardonofsky.”

“Do you know what’s going on, Mark?  Do you understand what I told you on the way here?”

“I’m a Transform.  You’re an Arm, and you’re going to kill me.  There’s no Focus for me.  If you don’t kill me, I’m gunna turn into a juice zombie guy and go on a mindless ranpage.”  ‘Ranpage?’  Rampage.  Gail licked her lips.  Mark here wasn’t very bright.

“I lied to you, Mark,” Mary said.  “The young woman beside you is a Focus.  If she can talk me out of killing you, she’ll take you into her household and you’ll live.”

What!  Gail flinched and almost flew out of the couch before she understood Mary’s trick.  More flinch training, except with words instead of weapons.

Arm Sibrian was doing an excellent job of showing Gail she had a lot left to learn.  Gail clenched her teeth and used her charisma to mute her temper.

“Oh m’God!” Mark said.  He turned away from Mary, though doing so made him sweat harder.  “Focus?  Ma’am.  You’re a Focus?  Please!  Whadda yah want from me?”

Gail could barely breathe.  Of course she wanted to save him.  Her instincts screamed at her to save him.

If she did, her logic answered, some other person would die.  Mary would hunt down somebody else today.  Perhaps at greater risk to Mary.  And likely to Gail, because Mary would make Gail go with her if she talked Mary into letting this man go.

“Please, ma’am.  Ma’am?  Tell me you’re going to save me!”  Pause.  The man’s face reddened with anger when Gail didn’t react.  He showed all the signs of wanting to take a swing at Gail, which would decide the question immediately, as Gail would deck him first and give up on him completely.  Gail suspected Mary was preventing him from trying to throttle Gail.  “Save me, dammit!”

“I…I...”

She didn’t want this man in her household.

But how could she even think that?  She was a Focus, and her responsibility was to save Transforms.  Any Transforms.  All Transforms.

This young man wasn’t right for her or her household.

“Gail, I don’t hear you making a case for this man.”

Gail turned away.  She couldn’t bear to look at the man.  Something about him wasn’t right, and she didn’t understand how she knew, or why.  She bit her lip and fought back tears.

If he died, a better man might live.  Or a worse man.  The Clinics worked on a first come first served basis.  So, was he a better or worse man than the men already in her household?  How could she judge?  Logic, here, sucked, and didn’t give her the answer the way it was supposed to.  This was impossible!

Gail’s self-control failed and her tears started to roll.  If she understood how to send
please don’t make me decide this
in juice singing to Mary, she would have done so.

“All people are born of woman and in the end pass away into the earth, Mark,” Mary said.  “Our lives are all the same in length, from the day we are born until the day we die.  Length of life is an illusion.  Choice is an illusion.  We choose neither when nor how we are born or die.  Normally.  Today, you do.  The Focus isn’t speaking on your behalf and my way involves no pain.  Letting you go, letting you die in withdrawal, involves an unconscionable amount of pain.”

Gail shook and the tears continued to roll down her face.

“What do you want, Focus, ma’am?  I’ll do anything!”

“Look at him, Gail,” Mary said.  Gail obeyed and turned her head.  “Can you say anything about this man?”

What could she say?  He was about to die, and saying ‘sorry, I’m not going to save you’ wasn’t exactly polite.  Saving him just to be polite would be, well, stupid.  Soft.  Cowardly.

And there it was.  Something rattled open inside her and Gail let loose a tiny inappropriate giggle.  Now she understood the Bitch Patrol, the older nasty stone-faced stone-hearted bitch Focuses.  When you saved someone, you owned them.  They were yours to do with as you pleased.  Focus Adkins’ women, working all day and all night on their sewing machines, doing piecework to help the household for a few pennies an hour, weren’t being abused or punished or tortured.  They were paying off the debt of life to their Focus.

Slave labor wasn’t what Gail wanted from her people.  She bought their lives so they could save others.

What rattled open inside her was the realization that her kind desires still counted as
ownership
.  She was one of the Bitch Patrol, just a little different, and not that much different.

Thanks, Mary, for showing me I’m just another piece of shit, Gail thought.  “Mark,” Gail said, her voice deceptively calm.  “Your girlfriends.  Which one would you marry?”

The Transform blinked at Gail, baffled and terrified.  “Ma’am?  How’d you know about m’girlfriends?”

Gail didn’t answer.  She gazed into his eyes, and bent her charisma toward making him tell her the truth.

He shrugged.  “They’re just girls,” he said.  “I wasn’t think’n about marrying either of’m.”  He shrunk back from Gail.  “But I’ll marry the one you want me to marry if that’ll save me.”

“Focus?” Mary said.  She wanted Gail’s decision, not that Gail’s decision would buy this man his life, just a chance for Gail to argue for his life.

Gail shook her head.  He would do well in Focus Adkins household, or in the household of any of a large number of Focuses Gail had mentored over the years.  In hers, he would be just another Transform she wanted to get rid of.

“You can’t!” Mark said, tensing, ready to run or fight.

Mary reached over and stroked Mark’s forehead.  “Relax, relax,” Mary said…and smiled as Mark’s juice slowly flowed into her while he still gazed into Gail’s eyes.

There, on Teacher’s couch, Gail watched, teary eyed, as a Transform died as she gazed into his soul, his juice slowly taken from him by an Arm.  Touching the young Transform, she felt him dying, and through him, felt the pleasure both he and Mary felt.

My life is in your hands
, Mary sang. 
The decision is yours.  Become what you will become.

Three minutes later, the young man died.  He felt no pain and died in pleasure.  Mary passed out on top of him, a smile on her face.  The Arm’s fate was in Gail’s hands.  Gail wiped away tears and used her charisma to fight off the urge to vomit.

Gail made her decision.  Her heart cold as winter, she stood, hunted down one of Teacher’s phones and called home.

Betha Ebener answered.  “Find me Daisy,” Gail said, her voice flat and cold.  She was going to catch hell from Van for this, and would deserve every clipped syllable and short stony glare.

The damned Arm was going to wake up horny as all hell, and Gail had no desire to sleep with a cold-blooded killer today.  Today’s lesson was
over
.

“You’re kidding,” Daisy said, when Gail explained the situation.  “Do you even need to ask?  Of course I will!”

“Fine.  Get a bodyguard crew here to take me home.  I want out of here, now!”

Carol Hancock: September 5, 1972 – September 8, 1972

“Hi, Connie,” I said, to Connie Webb.  I didn’t expect to see her here at this emergency meeting, all the way from California.  She was a tall women, as Focus beautiful as the rest, with short, ash-blonde hair and an expensive suit.  She and her household had given me some valuable training several years ago.  Thanks to her, I was an accomplished private investigator when I needed to be.

“Carol,” she said, and gave me a barely noticeable smile.  “Who called this meeting, anyway?”

“That would be me.”  I turned, and found Shadow sitting in some shadows, in the corner of the unlit room, right next to the fifty gallon coffee tank.  I didn’t jump, thank you very much, but it took work.  I had been sitting at the table and cogitating over my various problems for twenty minutes, under the assumption I was the first one to arrive at the Concord Best Western.  I hadn’t noticed Shadow, by his design, a particularly annoying but standard Crow trick.  Had he been here when I showed up, or did he show up later?  Hell, he was wearing his finest metasense shields as well, which I had only seen once, in the Battle in Detroit.  Disturbing.

At least this would distract me from my war preparations.  I now had two hundred goons ready for battle, if battle came my way.  I also had begun work on my new combat methodology and had bothered the crap out of Lori as we brainstormed Bass defenses.

“Crow Shadow,” Connie said, every inch the exacting corporate lawyer.  “Why are you geared for battle?”

“For the obvious reason,” Shadow said.  “My associates and I encountered some rather serious Crow political problems, and I thought I needed to fill in the other leaders of the Cause.”  Meaning we were supposed to pass this along.  Shit.  This I didn’t need.  This the world didn’t need.  I had hoped the Sinclair quest would have shown our Crow enemies the futility of their actions.

“How much can you tell us, Shadow?” I said.  The Cahokia Room in the Best Western wasn’t large, just a long table and sixteen chairs.  Since I thought I was the first one here, I had ordered room service.  Hell, the charges would all go on the Cause tab, which I mostly funded anyway.  I grabbed a doughnut (Zielinski wasn’t going to be happy at my food selection) and several slices of roast beef.

“More than I should.”

Then he clammed up, and waved his hands.  A moment later, a loud clumping announced the appearance of the Noble rep, as invisible to my metasense as Shadow.  Shadow probably had the Noble out scouting around for trouble, under Shadow’s substantial protections.

The Noble who walked in wasn’t Duke Hoskins, but a tall dirty-blonde man with his hair pulled back in a ponytail.  He exuded masculinity in a palpable ursine fashion.

“Count Frederick Dowling,” Shadow said, to us women.  Dowling appeared far buffer than in my last meeting with him, and far sharper mentally as well.  To Dowling, he said “Focus Connie Webb and Arm Carol Hancock.”

Dowling nodded at both of us.  “Focus Webb.  Commander.”  He was moving up in the world.  I kept a soft spot in my heart for Dowling, as I had been the one who captured him, as a Beast Man, back in my Houston days.

“Count Dowling is up for the next new Barony, and he’s been selected as Duke Hoskins’ primary stand in,” Shadow said.

I knew better than to ask how the Nobles made the ‘selection’.  I didn’t understand how internal Noble politics worked.  Yet.  Keeping track of their obscure title conventions was bad enough.  For instance, the Count title indicated that Dowling was a greater Noble, meaning in theory he was qualified to run a Noble household, these days termed a Barony.  He had been teaching young Nobles for years, though, stuck in Duke Hoskins’ doghouse.

Dowling took out a stack of papers and a pair of reading glasses.  They weren’t an affectation, which meant he could likely count the hairs on the back of a fly at a thousand paces.  “I regret to inform you that Focuses Rizzari, Biggioni, Ackermann, O’Donnell, and Caruthers are all under political attack,” he said, and flipped to the next sheet.  Okay, real big letters, there.  I knew about the hit on Lori.  She was back in Boston sorting out issues with the Boston College administration.  Damned bastards.  Both the administrators and the Crows who exposed Lori.  “They and their associates are in major trouble with their Focus superiors, federal law enforcement authorities, local law enforcement authorities, or other bureaucratic entities, tying them down and preventing them from attending this meeting.  We do know who is behind this, but we don’t understand why they are limiting their activities to this particular region of the country.  The victims of this heinous attack asked us for help, and to pass this information along to you.”  Dowling flipped over his seventh sheet of paper, took his reading glasses off, and stared at us.  No, smoldered.  Oh, this guy might be fun, I thought.  What a hunk.  Too bad he was a Chimera.  Nervous as all hell to be on display, thrown into the deep end like this, but a hunk nonetheless.  He tempted me to experiment, to see if I could unlearn my aversion to Beasts in bed.  I could see why a Noble of his persuasion got chosen as Hoskins’ number two.

I turned to Shadow.  “So.  Who’s behind this?”

“Chevalier and his associates,” Shadow said.  “Without a doubt.”

Connie cursed long and loud in Latin, and then took a deep breath.  “The oldest Crow is out after us, Crow Shadow?”

“The oldest surviving American Crow,” he said, and nodded.  “He wants to stop our work, and me in particular.  I’m afraid it’s personal, ma’am.”

Son of a bitch.  Bass’s attacks on me were also personal.  This wasn’t good, to say the least.  “What chance does he have of pulling off something like Wandering Shade did?” Connie said.  She radiated nervousness, quite unlike her.

Shadow laughed.  “Nil.  That particular problem is Chevalier’s worry, from me and my friends.  Here’s the problem: the other leading Crows convinced Chevalier to stop directly harassing Crows, and he’s now turned his efforts to other Major Transforms, and those who work with them, and especially those Major Transforms who work with Crows.”  He turned to me and met my gaze; he expected Chevalier to hit me again, and soon.