Friends and Enemies (Gwen Farris Book 5) (6 page)

The trick there was that the Westmorlands learned to rift as a specific discipline, being trained in a way that only let them do it under orders. She needed to get around that part, somehow. Basically she had to beat the safety net, if it was all going to work.

She sighed, and let her breathing come back to normal. One great thing about this world, there was nothing to do most of the time. That meant she worked out, and studied a lot, day to day. Gwen was in fantastic shape, which would let her do some of what she needed, hopefully.

"Can we get Rhonda and Pete to heal me some more first? Then get... Mona in?"

Gwen hated that old bitch, Mona.
Loathed
wasn't too harsh a word for how she felt toward the woman. In fact, there were standing orders for the lady to be physically removed from any place that Gwen was going to be, if it could be managed. Not that she had
conscious
plans to harm the woman, who was tiny, thin, and so wrinkled that it felt almost criminal for her not to be baking cookies. The fact was no one could guarantee that Gwen
wasn't
going to lash out at her anyway.

Probably in fear. The old witch had
hurt
her. More than anyone in the entire world ever had. In
two
worlds, and that included beatings that had nearly killed her, and decades of surgeries.

The thing there was that Mona, as hated as she was by Gwen, was needed. Someone had to get her to be willing to do the work needed, no matter how hard it was, and having someone else do it was just asking for her to hate, and fear,
two
people that much. Even thinking about her coming made Gwen feel physically ill. Like she was going to foul the floor right then and there.

Pete raised his left hand, about six inches.

"On it, Miss Farris. We should find some place for you to lay down. I can do a basic healing set. Really, Rhonda should go first, so that we make sure everything is going to knit right. This could take a few hours, but we need to hurry, so you don't have enough time to think about it all. Mr. Winslow? Would it be possible to have something brought in to cover that fainting couch? Gwen is a little messy at the moment. Not that it doesn't serve you right. Letting yourself be stabbed like that. What were you thinking?" The kid was being cute, which was a real skill of his. Charm, which in this case was mixed with an honest sense of rebuke.

She got it.

Half the room glared at him. It was mixed as to who did it, too. Robert did, as did Ethyl, and so did Beth, but Winslow and Heather both
nodded
. Billy wasn't in the room for some reason, or he would have been doing the same thing too, she didn't doubt. Merely being asleep wasn't an excuse as far as they were concerned.

It was one of the things they kind of needed to talk about, some day, Billy and her. His history, and the kind of training he'd had as a boy. Not that she wanted to. It had been a long time ago, and so far away. Then again, it was clearly worked into both of their lives, and in a way that wouldn't be easily escaped. Their crazy mother had set a whole lot of things in motion, and had managed to do it in more than one world. Both of them had paid for it, too, as had their little sister. Heather's little sister, to be more exacting, though no one had spoken about that part either. People hid from their feelings here, as a rule. It was a thing that Gwen liked about the place.

Gwen didn't think the girl had a counterpart in her own reality. Erin Debussey had produced her just to sacrifice to the Elder Gods. It just showed what kind of a psycho she'd been. Really, the only saving grace for the woman there was that she'd tried to steal Gwen, her daughter from a different world, to kill instead. That had been about the best thing the woman had ever done, as far as she knew.

The thought, of the hole in space, the rent in the fabric of the world, that she'd once seen caused her to flash back then. It got her to gasp, which had most of the room staring at her.

Robert reached out, but didn't touch her.

"Dear? You
don't
have to do this. I'm sure that Adam Westmorland won't force you to-"

 She made herself breathe, doing it slowly, as Winslow walked quickly from the nice, and light colored, space. To get that protective coating for the furnishings, no doubt. It was a good plan, since there was no need for her to rub half dried blood all over the place.

"Sorry, flashback. Um, to what happened with Erin. In the cave?" She didn't add more, since both Heather and Beth had the same kind of thing going on. There was no need to cause them to trigger by talking about it. It wasn't just them either. Everyone that had been in that cave could feel it, constantly. It was burned into them, like a scar, it didn't really heal. Not so far. Nothing anyone had done worked either. They just had to live with it, feeling like they were about to die at random times. Fear coming out of the hole that followed them around, leaving them stressed and uncomfortable.

That
all
of the world's leaders had been there too suddenly left her feeling a lot less than secure. Ferdinand was a great guy, and the Marduk was kind on a level that had left her feeling hard and angry when they'd met. It had been so wrong of Debussey to bring either of them into her plan. They were good people.

Which didn't mean they'd stay that way over time. Not with constant fear and stress beating them down, on top of their actual duties. All of them were in their positions for life, too.
Except
the Premier of Europa. He could get out of his job at any time, just by resigning. Hopefully he would.

Gwen didn't know the man at all, but no one that had to live through what they had should be given any sort of power, she didn't think.

Which made what she was doing just then nearly insane. That wasn't lost on her, but Gwen didn't know what else to do. The Westmorlands needed to be free. That couldn't happen as long as they were needed to blow themselves up. No one else that had the power to learn what was needed was going to be willing to do it. That meant it fell to her.

The idea was just too hard, for the moment.

So she waited, then laid down and let Peter and the now jump-suited Rhonda work on her, until Mona got there with a little box.

It was all she could do not to run away.

Then, after the others left, she hashed out what they needed to do. To her surprise the old woman nodded along.

"That sounds like an ambitious plan. I will make this harder on you. Are you certain you want to try it?" There was pity in her words, and pain. It shouldn't have been there, but it was.

"Nooo. I
want
to go and sleep, then find the people that set up the hit on Ethyl and deal with that, so she'll be safe. I just... I don't think I can do this again. Not on purpose. I can't take it, so we have to do this all now. No one will make me do it, if I can't get myself to, and... Even now I want to Teletransport away." She meant it, but instead of slapping a pain device on her, the woman looked away, her face wrinkled and hard.

"Sensible. We'll do it then. I just hope we can both survive it. It's an ambitious plan, Miss Farris."

She nodded. It was also foolish. There was a time schedule though, since she didn't know how long Kate was going to leave her in charge of the body. Someday she'd decide she was bored, or lonely. Maybe just hungry, and take over for good.

On that day, they'd both have to die.

There was no way she was leaving the snotty brat of an heiress walking around with the power to rift in her head.

Chapter three

Five days later, Gwen was seriously considering killing herself.

Mona had done her job, and done it proficiently enough that Gwen could now teletransport with not just one, but
two
extra people. It was awful each time, but could be done, if she had ten to twenty minutes to lay around recovering once it was over. That was just a thing though, compared to how she felt about Mona now.

It was a combination of pity, real and heartfelt, and desire to kill that nearly overwhelmed her. Hence the thought that killing
herself
might be a good plan. She was
going
to hurt the bitch, if she could. The thing there was that now she doubted anyone in the world could really stop her, if she wanted to get the job done.

Almost as an afterthought
Heather
had suggested that the woman have Gwen learn to move people from other places, shifting them around at a distance. She had the power for it, and it was potentially useful, since she could do some great things as far as rescue missions went that way. It also meant she could do other objects, and since what she'd been working on was doing several at once, to different locations, that meant she could rift now.

That part wasn't lost on her, either.

If she could move herself in three directions at once time, then she could rip space and time open catastrophically. In short, she was incredibly lethal now, and even though no one seemed to get the idea, not only could she rift, Gwen could do it at a distance from her own body. In theory. She was never going to try it, but even without the proper Westmorland training for it, she knew, deep inside that she had the power now.

It was another reason not to live. She needed to think about it.

There was danger if Katherine, the horrible troll that lived in her head, managed to take over. What she could do with that kind of power boggled the mind. True the girl had managed to stay pretty quiet over the last month or so, mainly thanks to the fact that Gwen had told her flat out that if she even
started
to get the upper hand, they were both going to die.

Worse, they'd kind of done things out of order. Gwen could see why that was, it having been her own plan, as she sat in her bedroom. Resting finally, after her ordeal. The being stabbed one, not the actual trial, which had been the sudden and unexpected training. Everything inside had been replaced, so that she wouldn't have to look at the same flower vase that had failed to defend her, or something like that. It had shifted while she was off working, from a pale white and cream theme, to a peach colored one that was cheerier. Better for healing and staying upbeat.

The walls had even been re-papered in silk that color, making the walls shine just a little under the white light of the glow lamps. There was just enough difference in the various shades to keep the whole thing from becoming truly oppressive on her. Thankfully the new desk and chair were wood, since that helped to break things up a little. Not that there had been anything wrong with the old ones. They hadn't even gotten blood on them. It was because she'd trashed the poor and noble nightstand that the rest had been altered. May it rest in peace.

It was light out, and had been for hours, so she stood up, not really wanting to.

They'd made a mistake, and given that she'd been in training, she couldn't tell them no at the time. Gwen was dangerous now.

Okay, she'd been
pretty
bad-assed before, but now she, in her own person, could take out most of the world, if she wanted to. She
didn't
, and never would, but the constant fear inside her still niggled a bit. Gwen had forgotten that Katherine was part of the equation. The stupid little girl in her head had
tried
to take out the whole world once already. Now she had, in her own person, the ability to do just that. Just grab a person at a distance, or even an object, and put it in three different places. Then...

Boom.

The world ended.

In a local space, at any rate. It was too much for one person to hold, if they didn't have to answer to someone else. Even a good person. The thing there was that, on overview, Gwen had two problems. The first was the mistake the others had made, trying to condense the training for her. Allowing her to move people at a distance. That would have been fine really, if she were a normal person. They also hadn't taught her to make radiatives
first
.

If they had, she could have, possibly, produced the new devices they needed right then, that very day, and figured out how to part the manufacturing of them out. Then the Westmorlands could be freed, and she could stick the business end of a crin in her mouth and end the threat.

She didn't have that option though. Not if she wanted to make it all pay off for her friends.

The second problem was that she really didn't think she was going to be able to learn to make radiatives the speedy Westmorland way now. If she ever saw Mona coming, she'd escape now. Possibly doing it using precognition, so the old lady couldn't close with her. It had been so horrible, the pain so great, that she was pretty certain that she'd nearly died from that part alone. More than once, too.

That meant that Gwen had a
real
problem. One that she was either going to deal with right then... Or that she'd deal with... Right then. There was a crin in her new wardrobe. If she needed to, she could make it so neither she nor Katherine left the room they were in.

"So, Kate, you see the problem here?" Gwen was talking to herself, her new nightgown, which was clean still, having been slept in only once, and not having a hole from an ice-pick, draped nearly to the floor. It was a lousy way to sleep, but everyone here insisted on it. Even the men wore baggy floor length gowns to sleep in.

It made them all look like Ebenezer Scrooge.

For a long time there was no answer, but her mouth finally moved, smirking a bit, she thought.

"I don't think it's as large of an issue as you might imagine, Gwenie." The words were slightly British sounding to her, as far as an accent went. A lot like Ethyl and Robert, which made sense.

Arching an eyebrow, she winced. "Gwenie? That's not even a word, I don't think."

"Well, you can't stop me from calling you that. Not short of killing yourself.
Both
of us. Like an idiot. I didn't ask you to come here and steal my body, you know." She sounded snotty and entitled. Not just a little either.