To which Gilgamesh didn’t say a thing. If his feelings toward Lori weren’t complicated and confused, he couldn’t imagine what she ordinarily dealt with.
While Lori luxuriated in his embrace, he absent-mindedly picked dross off her and did a detailed examination of Inferno. Today was Saturday, meaning Lori was possibly in the dumps from Inferno’s Friday night fling. She normally recovered by noon, though, and it was late afternoon. Of the 32 Transforms currently on site, eleven of them appeared recently re-tagged and all of their glows metasensed cleaner than he remembered. Ann’s looked practically pristine. Hmm. Without much work, Gilgamesh identified two other women Transforms, one he recognized by her glow (Eileen) and one other, who were similarly clean. These were Sky’s lovers. He also figured out how Lori was fooling Sky, with a staged set of juice patterns in the hallway that first played with his metasense and later tweaked his memory so he wouldn’t remember being in the hallway. Nasty. He also identified three Chimera traces around the poolside cabana, six days old, which belonged to Hoskins, Sellers and Knox. Occum’s Nobles, which Gilgamesh knew far better than he liked. This was new. When he last visited here, before the Rogue Focus takedown, Lori had said she had never met any of the Nobles.
Lori giggled and put Gilgamesh’s hand on her lower belly. Kick. Kick. Gilgamesh smiled at the faint baby movements. “You’re over half way through, aren’t you?”
“Uh huh. Almost five months along,” Lori said. Her voice was low and dreamy. Relaxed. “The pregnancy is behind a bunch of the problems I’m having. The hormones are playing with my juice control. Last Tuesday there was an emergency I had to defuse – Flo got a cow heart delivered to her in the mail with a warning that if she didn’t break with me the next time it would be Sammy’s.” Sammy was one of Focus Flo Ackerman’s household leaders. “I was at the lab, refusing to answer the phone, so Connie sent a team over to deliver the message. I didn’t even come close to losing my temper, but I shorted the lot of them by accident when they showed. I never do that.”
“Let me guess,” Gilgamesh said. “There’s going to be a fancy paper coming out someday about Focus pregnancy hormone changes and their effects, isn’t there?”
“Yah. If I don’t go completely off the deep end first.” She sighed. “I probably should have told someone what I was doing for the past few days so they wouldn’t panic. I only showed up for the beginning of Friday Night; once the festivities started I came up here because I had some juice patterns set up to help me figure out what I’m doing to myself. I hope they didn’t notice I ended things about a half hour early.”
Gilgamesh made encouraging noises. He and Lori hadn’t dated, or kissed, or engaged in any activities more intimate than what they were doing now. But they were in love. If he hadn’t experienced Carol and his feelings for her, he would have thought he had lost his mind, as the depths of his feelings for Focus Rizzari were so overwhelming. He knew now that what he felt was only normal for Major Transforms in intimate relationships. Like all Major Transform emotions, affection, love and lust went to extremes. As always, he vowed to hold on tight and just see what happened next.
“I’m also having trouble with what Carol did in the fight,” Lori said. “I’ve seen bad before, but I’ve never had a ringside seat for anything so violent.” Lori, who the Crows referred to as Gymnast, was one: a hair under five feet tall, all bone, muscle and bounce. She had been riding on Carol’s shoulders when Carol had taken down Rogue Focus. Because of one of Rogue Focus’s attacks, Carol’s mind had flipped back to the more primitive instinctive state she had learned to deal with during her withdrawal recovery. She hadn’t lost her effectiveness, just her normal humanity.
“It’s both bad and good,” Gilgamesh said. Lori tensed. “She had to learn to ride her instincts and think magically, her term, while she was recovering from juice withdrawal. What Rogue Focus’s attack should have done was throw Carol into the same completely mindless state she’d been in after her Enkidu fight, when she killed Kensington.” The only time she had ever killed a tagged Transform. “According to the Good Doctor, she’ll become ‘magical instinctive Carol’ any time she gets similarly low on juice. That’s the good news. The bad news is that when she’s in that state she’s not very safe. It’s enough to panic me at times.”
“Err,” Lori said, squeezing his left hand. “That does help. Nevertheless, seeing Carol rape that defenseless Focus with a metal street sign pole…it just won’t get out of my mind. I knew in theory that Arms could be brutal, but seeing it close up was disturbing.”
Ah. “I know that problem,” Gilgamesh said. “It calls to you and you want to join in in the mayhem – as much as it repels you. There’s a part of me that would like to cut loose with that level of violence, too. Later, I want to throw up for even feeling those emotions.”
Lori nodded. “What is Carol doing to us? That isn’t the direction I want to be going with my life.”
Pain filled Gilgamesh. “I’ve seen Focuses do equally bad things to their Transforms. Other Focuses.”
“Oh, I did them, too, when I was new. I’m past that, now. I certainly don’t want to go back.”
“Occum does the same to his Nobles. To quote Duke Hoskins: ‘Without pain you don’t have the incentive to gain control over yourself. I hate it when it happens, but I love the effects of it later.’”
“Point made. We’re all nasty monsters deep inside. However, I was making progress walling off the monstrous part of myself. Carol’s leading me back the other way.”
“I’m not sure it’s wrong, Lori.” Gilgamesh gave her a supportive hug.
“You can’t say it’s right, either.”
“True. We are what we are, both of us, and I think we can help Carol overcome her darker urges. Over time.”
She turned toward him and met his eyes, warmed by his suggestion. Her eyes were inviting, aching for distraction and affection. He leaned toward her, slowly. She didn’t back away, even as their lips met.
“You’re fighting your own terror, today, aren’t you?” Lori said. They had shucked shirts but hadn’t gone farther, simply allowing the slowly waxing tide of extra Transform emotions to wash over them as they touched. His response to Lori was so different from his response to Carol that he, too, felt skittish about progressing any faster. It didn’t help that in his last visit, less than a month ago, Ann had cornered him and told him about a bit of bio science called the Bruce Effect: in certain mammals spontaneous abortions happened after exposure to and after sex with other males.
Ann’s nasty veiled warning wasn’t the only reason he fought terror. He blinked and looked up from Lori’s belly, where he lightly rested his head listening to her baby move. “It’s time for me to visit Shadow and tell him about what I’ve figured out about Rogue Crow.”
She nodded, slowly. Worried. “Watch out for me in your Dreams,” he said.
“There’s more,” she said.
“I can’t just stay in Houston, under Carol’s shadow,” he said. “Some Crows look up to me, Crows I have to deal with, and they won’t respect me if I’m nothing more than a Crow in hiding, an Arm Pet. The tenuous influence I have among the other Crows requires me to be active. I’m thinking I’m going to have to do another of my own personal adventures.” Even thinking about another leap into the glaring bright lights made him want to find a place to hide. His instincts wanted him to settle down, and his instincts had become very strong after the Rogue Focus fight.
Lori raised her eyebrows with an idea. “Do you have something in particular in mind, or are you looking for suggestions?”
Gilgamesh shrugged.
“How active are you thinking?” She glanced up at the ceiling. “I can’t believe I’m suggesting this,” she said, her voice a whisper. “When I asked Sky and Inferno, they thought I’d gone crazy.”
“Sounds quite iffy, then,” Gilgamesh said. He had a lot of respect for the nerve and courage of the Inferno household. “It’s probably appropriate. Go ahead and gi
ve me the presentation. I won’t panic.”
“It’s my Dreams,” she said. “Did you hear the story about the new Focus in Chicago who vanished from the Clinic?” He nodded. “It’s obviously a kidnapping, but nobody’s taking it seriously. Especially not the Council, who are more interested in covering up the event and soothing the ruffled feathers of the established Focuses than investigating the crime. Focus Frasier’s disappearance has the older Focuses edgy and trigger happy, but even after a short firefight between Teas and Schrum’s bodyguards outside the Raleigh Clinic two days after Focus Frasier vanished, the crime still didn’t make it on the Council’s agenda. Or at least the public agenda.” Lori scratched her forehead. “Oh, right. Dreams. In my Dreams the kidnapper was Enkidu.”
Gilgamesh sat up. “He’s taking Focuses now? That’s a major escalation.” He put his shirt on. “I can’t believe the Council’s looking the other way.”
“They do that; they certainly don’t trust their Dreams. This is one of the reasons why I’m rebelling. Don’t forget, to them you male Major Transforms don’t officially exist.”
He wondered for a moment if he needed to clear his plans with Carol first. He decided he was being ridiculous. Looking into this bit of insanity was part of the Cause. He would tell Carol Lori’s suppositions; he predicted Carol would gently suggest he look into them as well.
“Well, I have to look into it,” Gilgamesh said. “Enkidu’s my responsibility.”
Lori’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, darn! I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to arm-twist you. I really was just tossing out ideas.”
He believed her. Emotionally she was kicking herself, hard, for what she saw as a slip on her part. “It’s a good suggestion,” he said. “Don’t forget, I’ve gotten good at skulking around.” He would be careful, of course, but he had already tromped through the territories of all three mature Hunters on his ‘identify the Crow killer’ mission earlier this year, and neither they nor Rogue Crow himself had noticed. “Would you like to join me for some dinner?”
“You do have those Crow wiles working for you today, don’t you, Gilgamesh,” Lori said. She sighed. “I guess I should reassure my people that I’m still their Focus.” She put her shirt on, brushed her hair, took his arm, and let him escort her down to the Inferno kitchen.
Chapter 2
Never make threats to a Crow.
“The Life of Crows”
Tonya Biggioni: August 4, 1968
“Polly! It’s a pleasure to hear from you,” Tonya said. Young Stalker, her current cat, wound his way between Tonya’s feet while she talked on the telephone. She sat in what would eventually be her office, now nothing more than studs and construction materials. Her office currently took up a full suite in the Bridgeport, a turn-of-the-century hotel in downtown Philadelphia, and everything else remained a maze of dry wall and building supplies. She loved the place as much as she loved the location, near St. John the Evangelist. Within walking distance!
Her people expected to finish her office two weeks from now, but in the meantime, all she had were the bare studs and an old desk. At least they had finished with her bedroom. Finally, she had a place to sleep away from their old residence, the one Keaton had ruined with bad juice.
The construction went far more smoothly than it had in moves past. The construction business her people had started several months ago was showing results in the professionalism of her people. Now, if their business would start making money…
“Hello, Tonya,” Polly said. Her voice was thin and tinny over the long distance line. “Congratulations on your move. Is everything going well?”
“So far so good,” Tonya said. They made small talk for a while, households and families and living arrangements. Polly hadn’t called her to make small talk, though. Only a few locals called her these days to make small talk. This was business, and she suspected this was going to be bad.
Tonya used her own strong charisma on herself, to calm herself down, and ran her left hand through the waves of her black hair. Although, as all Focuses did, she appeared to be a beautiful nineteen year old, Tonya was in her fifties. She knew very well when the hammer was poised to fall.
---
“One last thing,” Polly said, many minutes later, hopefully with the last bit of annoying Council business. So far, no hammer. “As you suspected, the firsts and the Council weren’t pleased with the ultimatum the Arms gave to us after they took out Focus Peshnak in Houston, when they demanded all the Arm business go through Keaton.”
“Uh huh,” Tonya said. She had made the Arms aware of the Council’s easily predicted displeasure, through Zielinski. Neither Arm had bothered to respond.
“So, to prevent a range war between us and the Arms, several of us” meaning the firsts and their current Council favorites, which didn’t include Tonya “have decided we need to rein in Hancock.”
“We.”
“You, actually,” Polly said. “You have the most experience with the Arms, and you aren’t going to fall for Hancock’s charismatic blather the way certain other unnamed Focuses have.” Meaning Rizzari, Laswell and Rodriguez, all of whom said that if you wanted to deal with Hancock you had to go through Keaton. Everyone on the Council now realized the Arms, like some of the Focuses, possessed juice-powered charisma potent enough to sway even the powerful. Hancock, the Arm with the most noticeable charisma, was a grave danger to the Council, especially since she wasn’t the boss Arm. Such nonsense made a complete hash of the way the world worked, at least from the Focus’s understanding of things.
“Look, Polly, I’d love to take you up on this, but because of my experience dealing with the Arms, I need to tell you that your proposed course of action is more likely to cause a range war than stop one,” Tonya said, attempting to dodge Polly’s hammer. “Keaton won this round. If you want to avoid violence, take the hit and do things her way.”
“You’re not thinking,” Polly said. “If we do it Keaton’s way, we’ll end up recognizing the Arms as an independent organization. That’s not going to happen. There’s only one organization: the Focus Council. Period. End of question. So.” Polly paused. “You are going to rein in Hancock for us. Understand?”
Tonya winced at the obvious stupidity. “Are you making this an official order?”
“This is an official and public Council President order,” Polly said.
With Focus Schrum’s backing, Polly didn’t need to say. Not if she used the term ‘public’.
“So be it,” Tonya said. Hancock, again, who already thought Tonya was an irrational enemy. This wouldn’t be easy. These were Arms. Blood would be spilled. People would die.
The worst thing about this was that Tonya had a bad feeling Polly wasn’t done punishing her for her so-called transgressions.
Gilgamesh: August 12, 1968
Gilgamesh rang the doorbell at Shadow’s stationery shop and waited. He had put this meeting off as long as possible, but Rogue Focus was no longer a threat, and the time had come to finish his mission. He needed to make his presentation in person, as he didn’t trust the letters or even the phones for something so important. The risks involved here were immense. Shadow himself might be Rogue Crow.
Shadow opened the door and invited him in. Gilgamesh took a deep breath of the warm evening air and entered.
“How are you doing?” Shadow said, leading Gilgamesh down a dusty aisle to the back. The wooden floor squeaked and the shelves of staplers, tape dispensers and desk pads seemed to loom ominously. “Thomas the Dreamer and Innocence have been quite worried about you, down in Houston with your Tiamat. They’re afraid you might fall into her clutches, the same way you fell into Kali’s, before you finish your project.”
Right. Sure.
This conversation was never going to be easy. He meant to shake up Shadow, one of the reasons he had chosen to come by Shadow’s shop just a few minutes after closing, before any of Shadow’s other Crow students showed. “We’re sleeping together these days,” Gilgamesh said.
“We’re partners, allied against a common enemy we now call Rogue Crow.”
Shadow stopped cold, took a breath, and led Gilgamesh upstairs to his apartment. If anything, Shadow looked shaky. The Crow Guru did something with his dross constructs, outside the apartment. Protective.
Gilgamesh racked his brains for some crumb to throw to Shadow to quell his panic. “Carol’s taken me out clothes shopping,” he said, patting the fine lines of his current outfit as they entered the small living room. When he had been on the Crow killer mission he had only owned one suit, and he had worn his suit into scrap. These days he had an entire wardrobe of suits. “I’ve taken her to the local museums and down to NASA. She cooks for me. I trade for dross artwork to give her, and she’s taken to drawing things she’s seen, to give to me. We talk strategy and philosophy in the Philadelphia style. We’ve even gotten Sinclair and Midgard to join in.” Once. “It’s nothing like the relationship I have, or had, with Kali. Our main problem is we’re both working ourselves to the bone and we never get enough time together.”
Shadow closed the door behind him and turned to look Gilgamesh over, carefully. The older Crow lost the faint air of panic. “I understand,” Shadow said, and chuckled. “You’ve grown immensely, haven’t you?”
“I hope so.”
“You’ve solved the mission.”
“No. And yes.” Gilgamesh inspected what little of Shadow’s glow he could sense. He metasensed no indication of anything he and Tiamat had flagged as potential trouble signs. “So, Shadow, what can you tell me about the Crows you Gurus look up to?” At four twenty three in the morning, August 2nd, 1968, after just over ninety minutes of deep discussion, he and Tiamat had both experienced one of those eye-opening shared moments of discovery. Those Gurus of Gurus existed, and were real at the juice level. Nothing else made sense. The big question was whether Shadow was one. He guessed ‘yes’, based on power. Tiamat thought not.
In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6) Page 3
