The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) (10 page)

“You present me with something of a problem, though if I’d been thinking, I could have predicted this.”

“Ma’am,” Lori said, head bowed, just like an Arm.

“Why aren’t you my prey?” Keaton said, leaning forward, voice harsh.

“Why aren’t the other Arms your prey?” Lori said.

“The other Arms don’t have nice juicy Transforms ripe for the picking.”

“Neither do I.”  As polite as Lori was, knives hissed in Lori’s voice.  She and Keaton had been sparring for years, almost friends but never quite.

“You dropped Inferno?”  Keaton drummed her fingers of her right hand on her easy chair.  She showed Lori more tolerance than she ever showed me.  Keaton always had.  Tolerance for talking and insubordination, at least.  I couldn’t remember Lori ever actually talking Keaton out of anything, at least not when I was around.

“No.  Just that the Inferno Transforms aren’t ripe for the picking.”

“I could break you, Rizzari.  I’ve got the Arms to do it.”

“My tag from Hancock prevents that, the same way Hancock’s tag from me, and her tag from you, prevent me from going after you with charisma or juice patterns.  You wanted a handle on the Focuses?  Well, here it is, in the flesh.  Mutual tagging.”

“That isn’t the solution I wanted, Rizzari.  Hancock disobeyed me, taking you.”

“No,” Lori said.  “I volunteered.”

“Tell me why.”

Lori paused…and in a moment her aura was pure Lady Death.  “You’re offering me freedom from the first Focuses.  Polly can’t, and neither can Tonya.”

Keaton leaned back and thought.  “Where’s Sky in this?  Why don’t I see his tag on the two of you?”

“He’s a male Major Transform,” Lori said.  “And you never trained him, unlike myself.”

“You’re looking for my permission?”

“Yes, ma’am, if you’re offering,” Lori said.

“Why?”

“We’re in a fight against the first Focuses, ma’am, and you’re the supreme leader.  Until the fight is over, my instincts say the decision is your call.”

“Cheeky as always, Rizzari.  What about the other witches?  Any other volunteers?”

“Not as of yet,” Lori said.  “However, if I walk away from this meeting no worse than when I walked in, they’ve indicated a willingness to at least talk to me about alliance issues.”  Lori and I could enlist Gail simply by offering a place on the Adkins takedown.  Tonya’s participation in Schrum’s demise, Polly’s in Patterson’s destruction, and Connie Webb’s in Fingleman’s fall would barely cost more.  Lori and I agreed, though, that we weren’t going to offer any such thing to Keaton
for free
.

Keaton thought again, and looked at Bass.  “Break her,” Bass said. “Wipe her fake obedient expression off her face.”

Lori looked up with Lady Death eyes and shot Bass a single quick glance.  One impolitic twitch and Bass’s brains would decorate the floor.  Hell, if Lady Death decided she no longer cared about preserving her life, nobody in this house would survive.  Bass didn’t respect Lori’s power, but Keaton sure did.

“Why should I destroy someone who’s volunteering to fight for me?” Keaton said.

“Will she fight?  Against Focuses?” Bass said, a slight catch in her voice.  She had seen Lady Death’s glance.

Keaton’s answer was one word.  “Schrum.”

Both Bass and Rayburn quailed when they saw kill lust in all three of us, Haggerty, Lori and myself.

“Under Arm rule, Rizzari, we’ll demand the right to take any Transform from any Focus household we deem appropriate.  You have a problem with that?”

“What if the household itself is strong enough to thwart the Arm?  Or is the philosophy of
might makes right
valid only for the Arms?”

“Kill her now!” Bass said, in a sudden panic.  “She’s rolling us!  Tricking us!  Infecting us with her corrupt ideas!”  There was nothing worse to a bully than prey who fought back.  Her voice echoed with the moral umbrage of the racist against a civil rights leader, the anti-Semite conspiracy theorist against a Jewish professional, and men of power against any woman with the guts to succeed in the world of business or politics.  Bass wanted to be an unconstrained predator, but she wanted her prey constrained not to
fight back
.  To me, that made her no predator at all.

Lucky for us, Keaton didn’t have this particular twist in her aberrant mind.

“She isn’t rolling us,” Keaton said.  “I can feel her tag through Hancock’s tag, and my predator and my tag to Hancock makes me Lori’s boss.  For once.  No, Rizzari has a valid point.  Nor do I have any answers on the subject.”  Keaton paused, and turned to Rayburn, and then Bass.  Neither said anything, and unresolved tension covered the room.  After a half minute, Keaton turned back to Lori.  “We’re going to speak again on this subject, Rizzari.  Later.  Say, after the first Focuses fall and the Focuses are mine.  No tag with Sky until after our negotiation.  Either of you.  I’m not in a trusting mood regarding Crows.  Spend some time thinking about what you or any other Focus who’s joined the Arms voluntarily are going to be tithing to us.  I will be expecting an exceptional offer, because otherwise, I suspect I’ll soon possess all the blackmail material I need to enforce my desires.”

“Ma’am,” Lori said.  “I will think on the subject, as you desire.”  Her fists clenched and unclenched in anger, but she didn’t say anything further.

“Hancock,” Keaton said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re my number two again, or do you and Bass need to go to Nevada?”

I looked at Bass and she glared back.  Stature wise, I matched Keaton now.  Bass’s crazy games gave her success in other areas, but she still lacked stature, and I was beginning to think stature might be the most important component in Arm dominance.  Giselle’s abnormal stature, entirely from Focuses, supported my theory, and, no, I wasn’t going to even mention Giselle in front of Keaton.  She was yet another surprise weapon of mine, waiting for
the day
.

I didn’t avert my gaze from Bass.  I would take Keaton’s offer and destroy Bass, if Keaton let me.  I even wore my combat boots with the platinum inserts.

Bass bowed to me, giving me rank.  Crap.  I hoped the gesture burned in her blood.

“Okay,” Keaton said, eyeing the both of us.  Nope, no trips to Nevada.  “You prepared to take down some Focuses?”

“Yes, ma’am.”  I had studied the Focuses assigned to me and no longer had any qualms about the operation.

“Good.  Then pay attention.  I want to do some legwork first, so let’s give it a few days.  On Tuesday night – no, Wednesday morning, December 20
th
, at three in the morning eastern time, that’s when you make your attack.  Take those Focuses down and take them down hard.  Can you do that?”

“Absolutely, ma’am.”  I don’t know what changed Keaton’s mind, likely my overwhelming takedown of Haggerty, but she had conformed to my insistence that we hit the leaders of the first Focuses simultaneously.  Save for the fact I would have gone after Patterson first, not bozos like Morris, the mistake level was dropping by the hour.

“Good.  I want daily reports at a minimum.  Don’t fuck this up.  Feel free to reel in any of the other witches but Biggioni to our cause, under your command.  If Biggioni volunteers,” lust, “send her to me.”

“No, ma’am, yes ma’am,” I said, so carefully obedient.  “Ma’am…”

She stared at me, and I stared back.  I had a verbal report prepared on the missing baby Arms and the Chrysanthemum connection (and from this, my fear that Fingleman had a baby Arm bodyguard detail), Patterson’s ability to infiltrate my mind (and the when and the how), and how to fight off Patterson’s influence.  I gave a spoken synopsis of the report in my mind, letting Keaton read it in me, and offering to give the report aloud.  I felt this was critical to our chance of success, but even I wouldn’t have tolerated a subordinate bringing this up on her own.  Keaton would need to ask.

She didn’t.

I changed what I was going to say.  “Ma’am, I need to let you know that Gail Rickenbach gave me juice before I left Chicago.”

Keaton blinked, as this wasn’t what I showed her in my mind.  Lucky for me, she was used to me playing this game with her, always with good news, never bad.  “Repeatable?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Using Hank’s codified juice pattern system?”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Neither of us needed to say ‘thus proving Hank’s codified juice pattern project is a success.’  We both understood the significance of this proof.

Bass sucked air in response and Rayburn whistled.  Three months earlier Keaton might have done to Bass what she had done to me after learning this.  She still might, as this was the breakthrough she had set me out to find back when I was magical-thinking Carol and wearing hippie garb.  If she wanted details, I had them.  If she wanted science, I had a scientist with me, Lori, to explain everything.  If she wanted analysis, I had Haggerty, our best analyst, primed and ready to talk.

Nothing.  Just the great stone face.  Today I could see through it, though, with the weight of two households behind me.  Keaton was angry.

I hadn’t expected anger…unless she thought I hadn’t been putting my full effort into her orders regarding the first Focus attacks and Network subversion, thus cheating her out of my time.  “Hank, Gail and Gilgamesh did all the work, ma’am.  The only thing I did was lay back and receive juice.”

“Can she teach some other Focus?” Keaton said, several moments later, at least somewhat mollified.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.  Sweat beaded on Bass’s forehead.

“Can you do this trick, Rizzari?”

“No, ma’am.  Not yet.  Soon.  Within a week.”

Keaton thought for a little while longer, keeping track of my every move and breath.  I kept both eyes on Keaton, but my peripheral attention was on Bass.  She looked like she was ready to do something or say something herself, but for now she held back.  Did Bass think she could challenge Keaton?  Here, in the Boss’s lair?  Insane.  I couldn’t see any way she could succeed.

That is, succeed at a normal Arm challenge.  I knew I would need to explain later, but I signaled to Lori and Amy to move to defend Keaton on my mark.  I wasn’t about to allow Bass, or Bass and Rayburn, to
steal
leadership of the Arms away from Keaton.

“Perfect this, Hancock,” Keaton said.  “This will be a good use for the enslaved Focuses we’ll be acquiring.”  Keaton turned to Lori.  “Tithing juice isn’t a good enough answer for the problem I’ve assigned you, Rizzari.  Prove to me you’re better than someone like Denise Pitre, who’ll find being a milk cow a challenge.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Keaton wasn’t going to change her plans.  When Bass realized this, she relaxed, and I knew Bass’s scheme went back in her little mental storeroom of evil.  Without tipping her hand.

Damn, I swore to myself.  Bass had some kind of hidden edge, one of those damned hypotheticals Gail’s household came up with.  I
needed
to know which one it was!

Keaton turned back to me.  “Feel free to train up a few more Focuses to be our milk cows if you get a chance, but once you’ve got them trained, pass them over to me.  Most important, make sure this tech
doesn’t
escape our control.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.  Milking enslaved Focuses for juice. The thought was an abomination.

“Good. Dismissed,” she said, and then smiled sardonically at Haggerty, Lori and I. “Enjoy your revenge.”

Crispy Carol

Shirley Patterson – Focus #7 – April 1956.  Focus Patterson, known for being an instinctive leader and for possessing a magnetic personality, became the leader of the first Focuses during the Quarantine period, and was the one who led the other Focuses out of captivity in October of 1958.  After that, she coordinated the successful underground livelihood of the first Focuses until February of 1961, when the federal government officially ended the Focus Quarantine.  Although still active in Focus politics to this very day, Focus Patterson retreated to the seclusion of her Pittsburgh home in 1963 after the assassination of President Kennedy, who she greatly admired and idolized.  “I thank God for my deliverance and the deliverance of the other Focuses from immoral bondage, and since my retirement, have spent my life in prayer and contemplation,” she told this author during a telephone interview.

“Lives of the Focuses”

Gail Rickenbach: December 14 - 17, 1972

“Focus, can I have a moment of your time?” Bart Wheelhouse said.

Gail had hidden herself in the Branton pool room, floating against the edge of the pool while she waited for everyone to leave.  She wanted to try a trick involving the pool and the Dreaming, and she needed to relax after the events of the day.  Giving juice to an Arm wasn’t a simple thing.

Nothing would ever be the same.

She was afraid to even speak about the experience.  She thought cycling juice was intense, almost like sex.  Well, it was, and ‘almost like sex’ was a good term for it, especially when you combined it with actual sex.

Giving juice to an Arm went way beyond sex.  Five points.  She had given only five points to Carol, and the giving almost overwhelmed Gail.  Not immediately, but afterwards.  She couldn’t imagine what giving Carol twenty points would be like.  She would pass out, just like a baby Arm taking a kill.

That’s what this was.  The same pleasure as an Arm kill, only nobody died.  One time, and she was hooked.  She wanted it, badly.  Oh, she wanted it.  This was the sort of thing that warped people’s personalities.

Take the Arms, for instance.

Doomed.  Doomed and more doomed, on top of the pleasures associated with her juice buffer access.  Gail wasn’t sure how she could live with all this pleasure.

Nor was it a hundred percent true that ‘nobody died’, as Gilgamesh had so carefully reminded her.  A male Transform used 2.5 to 3.5 points of juice a week, depending on his activity level.  An Arm ran through two to three times that much, depending on her activity level.  An Arm cost the lives of two to three male Transforms, long term.  Not perfect, but significantly better than having an Arm hunt down and kill Transforms for juice on a bi-weekly basis.

Despite the moral issues and intensity of the experience, Gail ached to give juice to Carol again.  Only Carol wasn’t here.  No, Carol and Lori had gone off with Amy Haggerty to visit Keaton, and hadn’t returned.  That just wasn’t fair!

Which was an absurdly stupid thing to be thinking, as presenting Lori to Keaton as Carol’s tagged equal could easily start a war.  Get any to all of them killed.  Telling Keaton that Gail gave Carol juice could also get Gail kidnapped by Keaton to be a juice source.  Carol might never come back.  Lori might never come back.  Keaton might order Gail’s death to prove Carol’s loyalty.  Or order Carol to give Gail to Keaton as a gift.

Thinking about that almost brought Gail to tears, and gave her a hollow aching feeling in her stomach, of incompleteness and longing.  The thought almost made her nauseous, as well, but that was just from her as yet unannounced pregnancy, and she could use juice to heal that.

She couldn’t use juice to heal love, though.

Van, Gilgamesh and now Carol.  She had denied the love before, but she couldn’t escape it, now.  She was in love with an Arm.  What had she done to herself?

Love, though, went both ways, love echoed in Carol’s eyes and on Gilgamesh’s face.  Love was the only anchor holding them all from going as dark as Keaton and Bass.  From drowning in blood.  Was love strong enough to hold back an Arm’s animal nature?  Gail wasn’t sure.  Love wasn’t a supernatural force, but it still did the impossible.  Love changed people’s motivations, their desires, and their lives.

“Go ahead.”  She couldn’t remember seeing Bart Wheelhouse in a swimsuit before.  She practically smelled his desperation as he sat on the edge of the pool, dangling his feet in the water.

“I know you’ve been trying to trade out the Attendales, Focus.”

She nodded, wondering how Bart knew.  She would have traded out Betty Attendale long ago, successfully, but Betty the almost reasonable Transform came attached to her husband Buddy, the real problem.  It figured one of the few marriages to survive Transform Sickness would be the Attendales.  None of the other Focuses she knew of were desperate enough to want them.

“And?”

“I know part of this is because of their tendency to bicker with anyone they’re forced to bunk with, and another part comes from the fact that neither of them are happy here.”  He paused.  “I wouldn’t want you to think that Isabella and I have any problems staying here in your household.”

“I see,” Gail said.  She and Bart didn’t get along, but his wife, Isabella, was one of Gail’s favorites among her Transforms.  “What do you see as your contribution to our current household?”  He was currently vastly underemployed, working as a gas station attendant until he could talk himself into a union job in one of the many Chicago area factories.  In the old days, he would have settled in as one of the household leaders, full time.  With Gail and Sylvie running the place, though, those days were long past.

“Because of seniority issues, I’ll never pull in as much money as before,” Bart said.  He slipped all the way into the water, hiding his beefy midsection, and approached a bit closer.  “On the other hand, I do know my way around unions and workers, and none of the Chicago households in your ‘corporate circle’ have anyone with similar experience.”

“So you’re interested in one of the multi-household jobs?” she asked.  The household’s volunteerism bug strikes again!

He nodded.  “Sort of a combination of job arranger, union boss and headhunter.  I find places with job openings for good jobs, and I get people from the household group matched to them.  It’s going to take a while to set up, but I know I can do it.”

Especially if he gets some successes, with the help of the local Focuses with decent charismatic skills.

“It’s worth the gamble,” Gail said.  “With one provision.”

“Yes?”

“I want Van along with you, part time.  For when you’re dealing with the other households.  He needs more experience with his household diplomat duties.”

Bart frowned, but nodded.  She hoped Van wouldn’t mind too much her ‘volunteering’ him.

“So, what made you change your mind?” Gail asked.  Not too long ago Bart wanted out of her household.

Bart turned away.  “You know my opinion of the other Detroit Focuses, but I blamed their lacks on the fact they were under Focus Adkins thumb.”

“Uh huh.”  He even thought Beth too overbearing, and his opinion of Focus Mann had been worthy of an Archie Bunker sexist monolog.

“Then I came to Chicago.  Focus Frasier’s a joke, and so’s Focus Korenek.  Focus Minton’s enslaved by her household.  Focus Cagle should be.  Only Focus Cooley’s a real Focus, in my mind, and even she has – ah, issues.”  He paused.  “All because I’m comparing them to you.  You’re a hell of a Focus, Gail.”

“Thanks.”  Hell had indeed frozen over, if Bart was doing the ‘butter up Gail’ shtick.

---

Gail stared dreamily at the walls of Lab Two, while Dr. Zielinski and Beth worked on simple but necessary juice patterns.  She had given juice to Carol.  Three days ago.  It still dominated her thoughts.  In her disorganized dreams, where the Dreaming came and went beyond her control, the Madonna told her that three wasn’t enough to assuage the beasts.  Three loves?  What could be a fourth?  The Madonna often made no sense at all.

Dr. Zielinski, the asshole, tried to disturb her moping in order to get her to do something useful, but Beth had saved her, of all people.  Beth was more useful to Dr. Zielinski than Lori and Gail combined for the grunt work of the juice music project.  Lori still played catch up, unable to master juice music because of her years as an instinctive witch.  Gail had been stuck on one big thing, moving juice to an Arm.  Beth, though, provided Zielinski with the dozens of normal juice patterns that would interest the average Focus.  Beth also took orders much better than either Lori or she, Gail, did.  Gail wasn’t sure whether she should be proud of that or not.

Beth was also getting good at a certain style of juice music, standard Focus juice patterns, even without knowing how to tap her own juice buffer.  That piece of juice music Lori had impounded, with Carol’s approval.  “No one becomes a witch unless I say they become a witch,” Carol said, redefining ‘witch’ to be a Focus able to tap her own juice buffer.

Arrogant, but correct.  At the moment, both she and Lori needed to treat Carol as boss, though they were technically equals.  What made the difference was Carol’s connection to Keaton.  Unless Keaton flamed out, as Carol was almost predicting, that would be…

Gwamp!  Gwamp!  Gwamp!  Gail stood in shock, reverie lost immediately, as the Littleside warning sirens began to honk.  John Guynes and Melanie arrived at her side in but a moment.  Sylvie and Vic Crawford rounded out her immediate bodyguard detail, out in the hallway, where they stayed.  Tony and Betty closed in on Beth, and Karen Cooper and Autumn Maybray of Inferno closed in on Dr. Zielinski.  Autumn’s young husband Parker led the Inferno bodyguard contingent that was out in the hallway, protecting the entrance to Lab Two.

“What is it?” Beth said, over the blaring klaxon of the sirens.  Around them, bodyguards faced out with guns drawn, searching for an enemy.

“I don’t know,” Gail said.  She muttered the juice music pattern that focused her metasense into a narrow cone, and scanned the area, section by section.  As she did, the phone rang, over on Zielinski’s small secondary desk, just a faint noise under the raucous sirens.  Gail reached over and picked up the handset.

“You’re under attack!”

“Who?”  She didn’t recognize the woman’s voice.

“Newton, ma’am.”  She had never heard a Crow so agitated.  “Sky’s on his way, ma’am.  Take cover, ma’am.  Squad of a dozen mercs, in your wing.  One’s a Transform, unlike anything I’ve seen before, ma’am.  I don’t know where Gi…”

Boom, and a roar, and the walls of the lab shuddered.  The phone cut out, and Gail instinctively crouched down low.  The explosion, her metasense told her, came from the beat-up snow-covered RV that lived, parked, at the edge of the Littleside parking lot.  Its explosion shattered car windows over a hundred yards away; what had been in that old beat-up RV, anyway?  High explosives?

Dust rose from the floor and fell from the ceiling.  Amid the roar from the explosion and the sirens, Gail heard screaming, gunshots, a closer explosion, and commanding voices.  Grenade?  Small bomb?  Gail directed her metasense to the corridor outside the lab.

There.  Just about to enter their corridor.  A Transform, partly shielded from her metasense.  “Newton says we’ve got a dozen attackers in our wing, including a Transform!”

The Transform was a Focus witch, and she was fighting and moving like an Arm.  Not a Lori-style gymnast, but a Focus who out-muscled Gail, a slower version of Arm Whetstone, reeking of years of combat experience.  Her compatriots were all normals, though.  Shielded from Gail’s witchery by juice patterns, but normals, nevertheless.

They didn’t attempt the Lab Two corridor, and the many bodyguards that stood between them and their attackers.  Instead, they went into Lab Four, moving quickly and without hesitation, as if they knew the place.

A locked heavy steel door separated Lab Two and Lab Four.  Against people with bombs, a locked door wasn’t much protection.  How in the hell did they know about the door?

“Back away from the Lab Four door!” Gail said, her voice reverberating with charisma.  In the corridor outside, gunshots.  One or more of the attackers pinning down the bodyguards in the hall.  Gail grabbed Melanie and ran her away from in front of the door to Lab Four.  Just in time, as an explosion shredded the door.

Reflexively, Gail reached out to grab the juice patterns of their attackers.  The Focus on the other end grabbed back, and Gail drew a breath in shock: the attacking Focus couldn’t access her own household juice buffer.  She wasn’t much of a witch at all.

Hell, she didn’t even
have
a household juice buffer!  What sort of a monstrosity was this?

A monstrosity without power, that’s what.  Gail had juice on her attacker, and she used her advantage,
now
.  In two heartbeats, she stripped all the juice patterns off the attackers and attempted her old body hold trick.  The latter failed.  She didn’t know any other offensive tricks.  She hadn’t been a witch for that long, dammit!  There wasn’t anything further she could do to the attacking Focus.

Except fight.

Melanie levered Gail to the ground, behind a lab bench.  Zielinski and Beth were down as well, covered by their bodyguards.  Gail took a deep breath, trying to tune out the gunshots whee-ing off the cinderblock walls, the tinkling of spent cartridges, and all the shouting as some of the bodyguards from the hallway rushed in to confront the attackers coming from Lab Four.