The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) (32 page)

The problem here was obvious.  Just looking at their juice structures, and realizing how they sort of merged seamlessly one into the other, Gail knew that this was Sky’s fabled true love match.  Ellen something or other.  She wasn’t sure Gilgamesh had mentioned her last name when they had talked about the situation.  Sky first met her when she was taking her training from Rizzari.  This Ellen was an old friend of Rizzari’s, someone Rizzari had mentored after her transformation.  Gail hadn’t been able to entice any further information out of Gilgamesh about this Ellen.

Gail waited, corralling her anger and forcing herself not to act.  This wasn’t what Sky should be doing on his wedding night.  If the term wedding was appropriate.  Carol had invited Gail and Van to be witnesses in the ceremony earlier this evening, where Carol and Lori exchanged tags with Sky.  The ceremony had been wondrous and numinous, and not the least bit religious – or so they said – but why else would they hold it in a chapel?

Sky turned and left the Focus, his mood darker than before.  The Focus didn’t move, but stood, statue-like, in the cold.  Gail couldn’t resist, no more than she ever could resist.  She wandered over, not sure whether she intended to comfort the other Focus or rip her head off.

“Hello,” Gail said.  “We’ve never met, but I’m Gail Rickenbach, and…”

The other woman turned to Gail as Gail walked up.  “Ellen O’Donnell.”

Cold eyes.  Such a beautiful juice structure, of the sort Gail knew Carol wouldn’t be able to resist, but such cold blue eyes.

“So you’re the prodigy who figured out how to transfer juice to an Arm,” Ellen said, far beyond frosty and well into glacial.  Back here, the kitchen odor was of garbage.  Inside the tent, a kitchen crew prepared the late dinner, the second dinner of the evening, for those Transforms who needed more than three meals a day.

“Yes,” Gail said, answering the frost with the muted warmth of an early spring day.

“You must know what’s been going on with Sky, then.”  Ellen didn’t turn away or grow hostile.  She continued to stare coldly at Gail.  Gail nodded, inside her head.  This was a Focus witch with damned impressive self-control.

“He and Focus Rizzari exchanged tags tonight,” Gail said.  She hoped her sympathy wasn’t out of line.  She buried her urge to strangle Sky, for many reasons, deep in her mind.

“So Sky said.  He seemed to think the exchange made the pairing official, but I’d known it was official when I learned about Gilgamesh moving in with you, Focus Rickenbach.” The story of the two households in Chicago had made the rumor mill, much to Gail’s chagrin.  She thought the stories about their fighting and reconciliation more than a bit overblown.  Nor did she like the way they portrayed her as a shrill, overbearing hussy, the primordial Focus bitch.

Ellen gave her a perfect opening.  She modulated her voice to implied sympathy.  “Call me Gail.  Please.”

Ellen took a deep breath, and looked at Gail anew, her blue eyes softening.  “So, are we supposed to be friends or enemies, Gail?  How is this supposed to work for Focuses, when you start adding in juice-muddled personal relationships and juice-fractured love into the equation?”

Perhaps she wasn’t that cold.  Ellen was tall, in her boots a little over six feet.  Gaunt, thin, but now that Gail was close enough to see, she could see the effects of Lori’s training on Ellen’s body.  Ample muscle and little fat, over a bird-like bone structure.  Ellen’s red hair hung in a single long braid that went down nearly to the hem of her skirt.  Her face was dominated by a turned up nose that would inevitably draw attention to itself as perky.  Ellen’s cheeks were dotted with freckles, and her eyebrows and eyelashes were so fine haired as to be nearly invisible.  Ellen’s clothes were refined, a skirt, blouse and shawl, not suitable for the cold weather.  Her bodyguards were as well trained as Gail’s, knowing not to be intrusive in a situation like this.

Viking woman.  Or, at least, that was Gail’s impression.

“I don’t know, either,” Gail said.  Even with her many tag linkages to other Major Transforms, Gail still couldn’t figure out how this new brand of Focus really worked.  “How did you get pulled into this fracas?”

“Lori recommended me to Focus Keistermann, and Polly agreed to teach me the juice buffer access trick.  But only after she and Tonya ran me through the wringer to make sure I wasn’t Focus Schrum’s controlee.  I was going to help them defend Polly’s New York stronghold from the Arms.  After I learned the Commander was taking over, I volunteered my services to her.  The Commander said I wasn’t up to her standards for the battle, and she assigned me and mine to do public relations and cover-ups.”  Ellen made a wry face.  “Are you going to be involved in the fight, Gail?”

Gail shook her head.  “I’ve gotten sucked into Crow politics, Focus O’Donnell.”

Ellen took another deep breath and then plastered a false smile on her face.  “Ellen, dammit.  We’re all Focuses together in the Cause and all that.”  Ellen paused, and thought for a few moments.  “I don’t envy you your part in this.  Crows are, well, impossible.”

“I’ve heard that.  Often.  I take it you’d like to strangle a few?”

“Just one in particular.  So far,” Ellen said.  She laughed.  “I envy Lori.  I’d have loved to dance on Shrummie’s dead face.  The bitch had me practically enslaved.”  Ah, she
was
human under all that reserve.  Then again, any Focus under the thumb of one of the Firsts’ leadership clique needed to keep her emotions damped for the sake of sanity and survival.

“How’d you get permission to get Lori to teach you witch?”

“I didn’t.  Schrum was too pathetic to realize or care.  She had the loyalty of about half of my people, and that was enough to normally keep me in line.  However, with a little help, I was able to do a few important things for the Cause behind their backs.”

“That’s awful,” Gail said, and gave Ellen a quick charismatically fortifying hug.  “A divided household?”

Ellen nodded, a slight blush of temper on her pale cheeks.  “I don’t recommend it.  Even the ones who were mine
weren’t
, because we were all stuck doing Schrum’s work as lobbyists in the New England state legislatures.  Save for my real eight, the ones who would cover for me when I needed cover, I’m ditching the lot of them as soon as I can find some pliant newbie Focus who’ll take them.  I want my life back.”  Ellen’s eyes went cold, again, at this last.

“What’s your opinion about the Commander?”

“I would follow her anywhere.  We seemed to get along quite well,” Ellen said, her lips turning up a little as she reminisced.

I’ll just bet you did, Gail thought.  “I know the feeling.  Say, there’s a problem I would like to talk to you about, Ellen, but it’s a little personal.”

“Go ahead.”  Ellen’s ice returned to her eyes.

“You know that the Commander is gathering up a bunch of Focuses to stick in Chicago, to be hers?”

Ellen relaxed.  “Oh, that problem.  If Sky’s in Chicago, I’d best not live there.  Too tempting for the both of us, and I, for one, would rather Lori remained my friend and I didn’t get any visits from Lady Death.”

That’s the truth, Gail thought, but didn’t say anything on that subject.

“There’s someone I need to introduce to you, then,” Gail said, instead.  Back to Focus politics, and interfering in other Focus’s lives, her appointed lot in life.

“Who?  It had better not be a Crow…”

“No.  Arm Webberly.”

“We’ve never met.  Why?”

“Arm Webberly is looking for a top Focus or two to associate with.  Save for one tiny problem, I think you and Arm Webberly are made for each other.”

“One tiny problem?”

“She’s black.”

Ellen nodded.  “Big differences always make relationships more difficult.  Why do you say we’re made for each other, though?”

“You both have ice water for blood.”  Gail made sure she projected this as a ‘very good thing’.

“I see,” Ellen said, raising an eyebrow.  “You think you would be reacting a little different if Sky told you ‘it’s over’ and that ‘I know some nice Crows you might want to meet’?”

“Yah.”  To put it mildly.  Gail envisioned strangling Sky, again, for treating any Focus the way he treated Ellen.

Ellen clearly knew her by reputation.

“Well, I’m game,” she said.  “Does Arm Webberly do Arm style training?”

Gail nodded, and motioned for Ellen to walk with her.  “The best, and I’ve been trained, off and on, by all the senior Arms save Bass.  So, what are you interested in doing with your life?”

“I don’t know,” Ellen said.  She juice signaled to her bodyguards to follow her.  No, Ellen was no newbie witch, as Gail was.  “Something besides lobbying.  I’m open.  I was ABD in mathematics – all but dissertation on my PhD – when Focus Schrum decided to ruin my life, and…”

Tonya Biggioni: December 23, 1982

“So did you solve whatever you were working on this afternoon?” Tonya said.  Shadow walked her down to the early evening chow line.  Not exactly an elegant dinner date, but he did come to her door and provide an excuse to get away from the tyranny of the telephone.

“I think so,” Shadow said.  He was an attractive man, and a gentleman besides.  He also smelled nice, in a clean, masculine sort of way, with a pleasant and intriguing juice structure.  Subtle, not garish or overdone, he would fade into the background if she wasn’t paying attention.  “Commander Hancock has a devious mind.  I think Gilgamesh has as good a chance as we can give him.  The only thing we can do now is wait to see if our help and his grit is enough.”

Down by the chow line, the camp was a bustle of activity in the darkness.  There were lights all over for the normals, and people running back and forth tending to a thousand different things.  The scent of sweating bodies, metal weaponry, ammunition and explosives overwhelmed the clean odor of winter.  A pickup truck filled with groceries for an army rumbled by and splashed mud in Tonya’s direction.  She dodged most of the splash, but Shadow caught her around the waist to steady her.

She was a Focus, she didn’t need steadying, but she allowed the touch anyway.  So odd, to let herself rest so close to a man.  The touch made her remember that she still needed a solution to her body’s new urges.  Shadow, maybe?  She gazed into his gentle smile and thought he might be a wonderful person to spend time with.  He would be a gentleman, and it was clear enough by now that he was interested in more than just a little business conversation.

A Crow.  She wasn’t at all sure how smart it would be to fall for a Crow, despite Carol and Lori’s proselytization on the subject.  Letting her body’s needs rule her thinking wasn’t at all smart, but her body approved of Shadow, and her mind was at least open to the idea. Perhaps he offered some possibilities worth exploring.  She smiled at him, and he smiled back.

“So how did your day’s phone calls go?”

Tonya shrugged.  “Some good, some bad.  I can’t say I approve of Keaton ordering the Arms to take down the first Focuses, but it’s too bad she didn’t manage to take down Donna Fingleman when she got the rest of the inner cadre.  The woman gives female dogs a bad name.”

Shadow smiled, and Tonya felt a different arm around her shoulder.  She jumped, shocked at the intrusion, and at whoever had the nerve to sneak up on her.  She turned to find herself staring into a broad chest.  Her metasense said Chimera, Noble in particular, and her nose said male.  Very male.  Extremely attractive male.

“This is a private conversation, your grace,” Shadow said, in a cold voice that would have done Keaton proud.  Tonya tried to pull out of the strange Noble’s grip, and he didn’t react to her efforts.  She looked up to see a big man with a strong face, his blonde hair tied back in a ponytail.  He gave off an air of raw male sexuality so strong it made her knees weak.

He turned to her and smiled, with beautiful pale gray eyes.  The look in his eyes said he knew exactly what she wanted and knew exactly how to give it to her.  Tonya caught her breath, as her body responded to that invitation.  She found herself pulling closer to him, wanting the touch of his body against her.

“She’s not a Barony member or wearing a Crow tag, Master Shadow,” the Noble said, but his eyes never left hers.  “Until then, she’s fair game for anyone who wants to make a try for her.  And she finds me intriguing.  Yes?”

This wasn’t right, Tonya thought, with the dwindling remnant of her rational mind, shocked by her answering nod.  Yes, she had been a little frustrated over the last several days, but she shouldn’t be responding this much.  And he was intriguing, calling to the side of her the Arms had christened ‘safari Tonya’.

“You’re using your charisma on me,” she said, still gazing, rapt, into his deep gray eyes.

“You, of all people, could break free if you wanted,” he said.  His deep voice rumbled along her nerves and set them on fire.

“Your grace, this isn’t appropriate behavior and you’re intruding,” Shadow said.  His arm still encircled her waist, but she barely felt it.

The Noble didn’t answer and his gaze never left hers.  With his other hand, he drew a line from the bare skin at the base of her neck, slowly down between her breasts.  Down, down, over her stomach and down further.  At her belly button, he hesitated, and Tonya caught her breath, but then he kept going, farther down, slowly, inch by inch farther down.