“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 aske
d. 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.
A flying body leapt over the lab bench, a woman an inch taller than Gail and more muscled. She sliced at Karen Cooper’s throat, not a clean blow, buried a knife in Autumn Maybray’s belly, took a bullet from John Guynes, and then kicked John’s head, snapping his neck. Gail automatically pumped John nearly into Monster and disentangled herself from Melanie. She drew her own knife, defending Zielinski and Beth, and cut. Nothing. The Focus tried to grab Zielinski and got to suck up the sole of Gail’s foot on her left hip. Gail attempted to tag the attacking Focus, the only thing she could think of that might be useful as a juice attack.
The tag attempt utterly failed.
Slice, slice, slice, went the attac
king Focus, short knife thrusts to force Gail to back away from Zielinski. Only one slice struck, a deep cut in her right arm. Gail countered with a belly thrust from her knife at the Focus, and a kick at her attacker’s right knee that landed with a rifle-shot crack. For her efforts, Gail picked up another knife wound, painful, around her shoulder somewhere, a bad one, and an abdomen kick that knocked her away from Beth and Zielinski.
However, Gail had slowed down the attacking Focus, exactly as Rose advised for fights like this. While Gail flew through the air automatic gunfire from Autumn, Melanie and Antonia, one of the Inferno guards from the hallway, shredded the Focus and sent her far beyond the salvation of a healing trance. Gore from the remains of the enemy Focus struck Gail, splattering blood, bone and brains across her face and chest. Gail landed on her ass, bleeding from more wounds than she refused to acknowledge and healing like the witch she was as she rolled back to her feet.
The world quieted, save for the clatter of a few more spent shell casings falling to the linoleum. Even the sirens finally went silent. The attackers were all down.
“Status!” Dr. Zielinski said, from the floor, with his command voice.
“Wounded, not bad,” Gail said, lying like a used car salesman.
“Broke my arm,” Beth said. The feet of the attacking Focus had landed on Beth after her leap.
“Need help, badly,” Autumn said, voice gurgling. Gail tagged her, hoping Lori wouldn’t mind too much. She gave Autumn juice. Gail tagged her housemate Karen, too, when she didn’t answer. Out cold, possible concussion. Bleeding a little from the throat cut, nasty looking but not immediately fatal. Gail pumped her, as well.
“I’m fine,” Melanie said. “John isn’t.”
Gail nodded. “Broken neck, but I’ve got him…”
A massive nearby explosion drowned out Gail’s voice. The lab window, of metal-reinforced safety glass, bowed into the room, held held held and shattered.
The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) Page 9
