Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2)

by Randall Farmer

  “So now you tell me,” Tonya said. “How tough was Suzie?”

  Keaton grinned and didn’t answer. She picked up another piece of summer sausage by its toothpick and popped it in her mouth.

  “Oh come on. Out with it. Did you go in yourself?”

  “Nope. I watched from a distance,” Keaton said. “Bass did the snatch.”

  “Holy cow,” Tonya said. She didn’t show her true reaction, fear, the result of too much time spent listening to Hancock’s endless phone complaints about Bass’s treachery. “Bass got into Suzie Schrum’s lair and drained one of her people?”

  “Yup.”

  Tonya shook her head. “Wow!” Bass. Shit. How much of a danger to them was she, anyway? Given both Bass and Keaton’s hostility to the Cause, this threatened the Cause Focuses as well. “If you don’t mind me asking, how tough was the caper? What kind of defenses did Schrum have?”

  “Plenty. Alarms, booby traps, and heavy weaponry in the hands of well-trained people. There were even a few juice-based traps. A normal wouldn’t have stood a chance, and I don’t think Lori and Inferno, or a single junior Arm, would have come out alive. Although Bass did sneak in and do the dirty deed without any problems, she got badly shot up on her way out, and almost didn’t make it.”

  No information on how Bass could drain a Transform in a short amount of time without fainting in ecstasy, though. Or even if she actually did.

  Stacy smiled her best predator smile. Then she snapped her fingers and another Arm appeared, this time at the stairway that led to the bedrooms upstairs.

  Tonya didn’t recognize Arm Bass. She was short, almost as short as Keaton, barely more slender, and possessed the muscles and grace of a mature Arm. She limped, carried numerous wounds, and stank of blood and death. Her emotions, though, gave her the aura of a Noble who had just completed an arduous proving quest.

  “Arm Bass,” Tonya said. The Arm nodded, but didn’t give Tonya her full attention. Mostly, she studied Keaton.

  “The Focus here wants some answers,” Stacy said to Bass. “Tell her the story.”

  They didn’t finish until the afternoon turned to evening. Tonya was pleased with the information she learned about Schrum’s defenses.

  “Excellent,” Tonya said, sipping on a glass of milk. “You did a fantastic job with this.” Stacy loved approval. Buttering her up never hurt, and she deserved the praise this time. “We need to hold off on any further experiments along those lines, though. Right now, the first Focuses are all worked up, and we need to let them settle down.”

  Tonya was at her most gently persuasive with those two sentences. After three hours of well-earned bragging about her success, Stacy should be open and persuadable. If Tonya convinced her to back off, Patterson’s demand, this would not only save her own skin but also give the Cause valuable information. A success all the way around.

  She didn’t expect any problems, as Stacy always saw reason when Tonya turned on her charismatic charm. Subtle persuasion was Tonya’s specialty. Oh, Stacy would probably refuse at first, bargain a bit, extract something nominal from Tonya, but Tonya always needed to give ground when doing business with an Arm.

  After only a couple of words of Tonya’s command, though, Stacy grimaced slightly and kicked on her full predator effect. Something made Stacy angry enough to be beyond the control of any Focus’s charisma. Angry enough for the Arm’s emotional control to crack, an extreme rarity. Tonya studied Keaton’s reaction carefully, as Stacy Keaton was one of the most dangerous people on Earth, a sadistic serial killer with a torture chamber in her basement.

  Normally, Stacy kept this hidden away from Tonya, but something brought out the Arm’s old darkness and demons today. This stank of the political, some purely Arm-level loss of face. Not good. Arm politics was deadly serious.

  “Stacy?” Tonya said, as soothing as she could be. What did I do wrong? How can I make this up to you? She didn’t hide her thoughts from Stacy now.

  Keaton didn’t respond. Instead, Bass began to radiate her predator effect, in some odd echo of Keaton. The entire room seemed filled with predators, all focused on Tonya.

  Seconds later, a dark-skinned Arm Tonya didn’t recognize walked in, joined by the food-serving student. They, too, echoed and amplified Keaton’s predator effect. Tonya’s emotions screamed in horror.

  “Stacy, stop!” Tonya said, her voice at its most commanding. A voice demanding obedience, forceful enough to elicit an instinctive response. Normally.

  Instead, in the face of the four predators, Tonya’s charisma fell apart and her command became a plea without force.

  Tonya wanted to tear her hair and scream at the madness eating at her mind, but she had faced mind-numbing fear many times before. She did what she always did in this situation and focused her charisma on herself. “Stacy, you won. You can stop now,” Tonya said, in a low calm voice.

  “Well, well, well,” Keaton said. The Arm’s voice triggered panic in the deepest parts of Tonya’s mind, the predator on the prowl in the darkest part of the jungle, standing over its helpless prey. “So we can finally stop your mind tricks? How does it feel to be on the other end? Getting a little nervous, maybe?” Keaton stalked close to Tonya, pure hunter. “Don’t run,” she whispered in Tonya’s ear.

  Tonya shrugged. The youngest of Keaton’s fledgling Arms could shred her like a piece of lettuce, if Keaton so ordered. Her physical responses weren’t relevant.

  “You’re getting better, Stacy,” Tonya said. “This is a good trick. So what now?”

  Keaton laughed, arrogant and dangerous. The other Arms echoed her. “You’re a steel-nerved bitch-cunt, aren’t you? You shouldn’t have tried to force me to obey you, my old friend. Now, we negotiate. Only this time, we negotiate with the mind tricks on my side. What did you really come here for?”

  Keaton remained too close, using her aggressive Arm invasion of other people’s personal space and her strong predatory odor as a weapon. Tonya ignored this attack as well.

  “I need the Arms to quit poaching on the first Focuses’ Transforms.”

  Keaton laughed mockingly. “Oh, you do? What, they got your ass in a sling? Whatever happened to the Cause? Aren’t the first Focuses our enemies? The ones trying to stop us? Or did you switch sides again, bitch?” Buried in the last question was a literal death threat, a question Tonya couldn’t afford to answer. Tonya’s loyalty to the Cause, with respect to the Arms, went through the Commander, not through Keaton or Amy Haggerty. Keaton remained Hancock’s nominal boss…but not Haggerty’s. Deadly Arm politics indeed.

  “The first Focuses hold me and my household responsible for the behavior of all the Arms,” Tonya said.

  “Well, sounds like you have a little problem, then, since I hold you responsible for the behavior of all the Focuses, and the firsts aren’t behaving.” What did the first Focuses do to you to piss you off so much? Tonya held the question in her mind, not hiding her thoughts. She had been focusing so much on the Chevalier problem she had missed whatever the firsts had done to Stacy.

  Stacy didn’t answer, continuing with: “What are you offering?” Crap. For years they had been close allies, until the Council got cold feet and pulled their armies out of the pursuit of the Hunters after the victories in Chicago, Madison and Minneapolis. The unexpected pullback was a strange bit of groupthink decision-making Tonya still didn’t understand, and she had been at the meeting. The Council’s pullback order had poisoned the relations between the Arms and the Focuses.

  None of her old bargaining chips would work. Juice, information from her second-rate researchers, political connections, law enforcement information – worthless. Back in the old days, with just a single Arm or two, the Arms couldn’t support all their own needs. She had once paid Keaton off by running a newspaper clipping service for her out of her household. “I have nothing to offer you that you don’t already know about, Stacy.”

  “Bad for you, now isn’t it?” Keaton said. A wide smile grew on Keaton’s g
aunt face.

  Sweat began to pool under Tonya’s dress. She had fallen into someone’s trap by not behaving up to Keaton’s high standards, and her chances of getting out of this fracas alive diminished by the second.

  “Something new, then?” Tonya asked. “Your baby Arm teaching occupies a lot of your time, and there’s only going to be more baby Arms. What if you let the Focuses take over training some of them? You keep a few that you want to handle personally, and give us some guidelines, and we can handle the rest. The older…”

  Keaton held up a hand, and Tonya stopped talking. “I can see some advantages to your idea. Problem is, I see one big problem.” She leaned forward until she stood nose to nose with Tonya. “How do I keep control of you bitches? I’ve got no fucking leverage over you, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give you a bunch of pet baby Arms to teach, just so the first Focuses can grab them and use them against me. Especially since every time the firsts bark, you roll over and stick your belly in the air. Try again.”

  Shit! She knew Keaton needed someone to help with the Arm training. She couldn’t argue with the first Focus issue, though.

  The thought of her household in Patterson’s hands, turned into mental zombies, crept into her thoughts. As did the thought of Delia in Suzie’s hands, screaming her days out in madness.

  “Me?” Tonya said. “I’ll give you myself, to use however you see fit. Time in your basement for whatever tortures you want. Just stop poaching on the first Focuses so I can preserve my household, and I’ll do whatever you want.” Tonya winced after she spoke her unguarded offer. She blamed her inexpert blurt on the multi-Arm predator effect.

  Keaton laughed, a darker thing carrying a note of lust.

  “Anything, huh? Oh, where did I hear that one before?” She tapped her fingernails on her belt knife, and grinned. “Right. Hancock’s offer, when I took her on as my first student Arm.”

  In Tonya’s mind, she heard Hancock screaming, in the CDC, explaining in graphic detail the horrific tortures she had endured at Keaton’s hands. Well, if Hancock could come through sane, so can I, Tonya decided.

  Keaton ran her hand down Tonya’s cheek, lingering. Tonya repressed a shiver.

  “I got the tapes from when you tried this trick on Hancock. You’ve got defenses against torture, and you can still play your fucking mind games even when you’re fucking dead. Try again.”

  Out of ideas, the panic almost consumed Tonya. “What do you want from me?”

  Keaton didn’t hesitate even a second. “Rebel. Order your Focus allies to attack the first Focuses. Go around the ones who refuse to help. Physically attack. I’ll even lend you the Commander, to lead you. The rest of us Arms will be there fighting with you. You won’t need to worry about the firsts’ blackmail threats because they’ll be dead.”

  Shit! Keaton might be improvising, but this was a serious offer. From Stacy’s viewpoint, she now possessed enough leverage on the Focuses to get them to stop dragging their feet. After the Crows’ attacks, though, Keaton’s plan wouldn’t succeed. The Cause no longer possessed the numbers needed to take down the first Focuses. They would lose. She snuck a peek at Bass, and realized Bass expected her to refuse, about to score another political coup.

  The Commander had been correct in her assessment, damn her. Bass had set this trap, and she indeed played a long game, one ending with the destruction of the Cause and likely far too many of Tonya’s allies and friends. If she trusted the Commander’s assessment, this also ended with Bass as the top Arm.

  “We’d fail,” Tonya said. “Chevalier’s information attacks have been too successful. Even Lori’s pinned down, having to spend all her time defending herself against fiscal impropriety charges at Boston College.”

  Keaton froze, her anger palpable now. Bass’s aura of success increased. Damn! Keaton had lost more face.

  “Let me tag you, then,” Keaton said.

  Tonya shook her head. “I haven’t sold my soul to the first Focuses and I’m not going to sell my soul to you.”

  “Yet. You’re going to be selling your soul somewhere to straighten out this mess.”

  “Something else?” Tonya asked. She wavered for a moment, almost ready to accept Stacy’s tag despite her words.

  Keaton straddled the arm of the couch Tonya sat on, with her leg across Tonya’s torso. “Well, well. Humility. I didn’t know you Focus bitches did humility.” Her hand kept stroking Tonya’s cheek.

  “Fine. I don’t do humility at all well. Stacy, what would it cost for you to stop poaching the first Focuses’ people?”

  “Oh, well, nothing you’re willing to give, apparently. Which first Focus is on your ass?”

  “Shirley Patterson.”

  “O-oh,” Keaton said, broadly. “Well, you are in deep shit, aren’t you? Think she’ll kill you?”

  “She’ll enslave me and my household.” You couldn’t want that, could you, Stacy?

  Keaton pulled Tonya closer with her leg and leaned closer. “How desperate are you?” she whispered.

  Tonya took a deep breath and attempted to ignore Keaton’s ripe predator smell. “Desperate.”

  “Well, then, since I’m such a warm and kind person, maybe, just maybe, you could convince me to let you owe me. One favor, unspecified. Redeemable at my discretion.”

  “Yes,” she said, fighting back the urge to vomit. Owing Keaton a favor? Nearly as bad as accepting Keaton’s tag. She hoped this would keep Bass from flipping dominance on Keaton and taking over leadership of the Arms.

  “One year,” Keaton said. “I won’t kill, and none of my people will kill, any Transform belonging to a first Focus for one year. After that, you’d better come up with some way of dealing with your little problem, or you’re going to need to choose between my tag and Shirley Patterson’s.”

  Tonya shivered. She would never choose Patterson. One year, and she would belong to Stacy Keaton.

  Keaton smiled.

  ---

  Lori, Polly, and Tonya sat in Polly’s private study in Polly’s household on Long Island. Lori was pregnant again. Four months along, and just beginning to show. Her fecundity would make up for the whole Transform infertility problem all by itself.

  “So what’s the big emergency we can’t discuss over the phone?” Polly said. She clenched her hands into fists, then back again. “I’ve got a meeting with my lawyers in an hour and a half, so let’s be quick about this.” Her catering business lay bleeding in the legal wilderness, disabled by seven breach of contract lawsuits involving allegations of food preparation by disease-ridden Transforms. Lori didn’t bother with the fist clenching. She appeared to be sliding into Lady Death, ready to massacre the Boston College administration if someone pushed her a tiny bit further.

  Tonya decided to be blunt.

  “Keaton just disabled my charisma using an illegal multi-Arm effect,” Tonya said. Not that the Arms ever cared about the first Focuses’ restrictions on ability use. “I went to her to talk about the attack on Suzie’s household, and the meeting turned out to be a trap.”

  “Heavens,” Polly said.

  “Oh, crap,” from Lori.

  “Yes, oh crap,” Tonya said. “The Commander’s warning about Bass turned out to be correct.”

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Polly said.

  Tonya did, starting with the Commander’s warnings and ending with Bass’s success and her favor pledge. Her detailed explanation didn’t make Polly and Lori any happier.

  After she finished, and they had asked all their questions, Polly leaned her head back in her chair, closed her eyes, and thought. Too many moments passed before Polly opened her eyes, moments made longer by Tonya’s nervous waiting.

  “Well,” Lori asked. “You have a decision?”

  Polly nodded. “Keaton’s given us a firm one year deadline, but for what? The clue lies in who she attacked – a politically important first Focus, someone every one of us in this room wouldn’t mind seeing dead – and in her other
offer, support for a physical rebellion. The subtext is clear: we need to wrest the Council from the control of the first Focuses in one year, politically, or the Arms will do the job for us, in typical Arm blood soaked fashion. I’m going to advance this a little: I want our political coup done before the fall 1973 Council session. August 1973. This should give us enough time to solve the Chevalier problem first.”

  “Excellent!” Lori smiled. “It’s about time. I’ll inform the Commander immediately.”

  “Now, you know to be careful,” Polly said. “No word of this to anyone outside of our little group.”

  “Polly, we’ve been playing this game for years,” Tonya said. “We understand secrecy.”

  Dolores Sokolnik: September 17, 1972 – September 19, 1972

  “Arm Bass, Arm Rayburn,” Del said, and bowed.

  “Student Sokolnik,” Rayburn said.

  Neither of the older Arms had ever acknowledged Del before. Of course, she had been a functional Student Arm for only one month. Her rapid progress, though, got her invited to various talks and meetings, including the humbling of Focus Biggioni. Ma’am Billington, in her visit that had coincided with Focus Biggioni’s appearance, told Del that Ma’am Keaton often favored certain Student Arms in this way, and she had similarly honored Ma’am Billington.

  Ma’am Keaton waved the other two Arms back in their seats. Del knelt at Ma’am Keaton’s feet; although invited to these meetings, she didn’t rate a seat at the meticulously polished teak table. The pattern the maneuvering generated among the tags everyone wore Del found quite interesting, in the quiet pools in her mind.

  “Ma’am,” Bass said, talking to Ma’am Keaton. “I put together a recommendation for your next move, as you requested.”

  Keaton nodded, and speed-read the documentation. After she finished, she passed the document to Rayburn. When Rayburn finished, she passed it to Del.