The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) Page 17

  Now they were in the nightmare of the rebellion, with no warning. They would need to win before Tonya relaxed enough to hold the victory party. With Hancock’s dormant bloodlust and Lori’s not so dormant kill lust awakened, they were in grave danger of the rebellion turning into an orgy of death. Tonya had her suspicions about Gail, as well. And herself. Would she be the next to turn into a blood-soaked monster?

  “Patterson may not be your only problem, Commander.”

  Carol stared down Tonya. “What?”

  “Keaton sent Bartlett, a bunch of normals, and Focus Mann and Mann’s household against Michelle Claunch. They hit air; Claunch fooled them somehow and has been gypsy for over a week. I talked to her today. Claunch thinks the rebellion’s started, Commander – and Lori – but doesn’t know anything about what Keaton’s been up to, or the debacle with Patterson.”

  Carol shook her head. “Interesting. Claunch didn’t warn any of the other firsts, at least the ones on my target list. Your earlier supposition was correct: she did know about the Cause and its likely segue into rebellion and chose not to do anything about it. What does she want?”

  Tonya nodded. She, Lori and Carol had been worrying about Claunch for two years, ever since they realized she wasn’t doing anything to interfere with the Cause. “She wants to talk to you. I think she wants in.”

  “I’m open for that. Set it up.”

  “Despite your best intentions, you would kill her.”

  Carol raised an eyebrow and amped her predator. Tonya didn’t waver in the face of the Arm’s blood lust.

  “Claunch is no hidden ally in waiting. She thinks of herself as an independent power, and she’s been behind some of your troubles before you and Lori went public with the Cause. Remember when I dropped a Transform on your doorstep? Claunch helped me plan that and helped with the details as well. I’m sure there’s more.”

  “You don’t trust her.”

  “No, I don’t. Let me deal with her, at least to start with,” Tonya said. “She intimated she has things to offer the rebellion, and that she shucked Patterson’s tag, the same way that I did in your living room before Detroit. She also gave me the name of a Crow I need to talk to Shadow about.”

  Carol thought for a few moments, studying Tonya intently. “You’re right. I would kill her. She doesn’t get in until she submits to one of my mind scrapes. Feel free to dig any information out of her that you can, though.”

  Tonya nodded.

  “In a few days, I’m going to be mounting an attack on Shirley Patterson,” Carol said. “Will I have more than two Focuses in my army?”

  Tonya eyed Carol thoughtfully. “I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m in, as is Gerry. I assume you’re going to want her running your logistics?”

  “I do, but I decided to start the new era off right by going through channels,” the Commander said. “How many more can you get?”

  “There’s a problem. Keaton’s attacks ruffled some feathers that shouldn’t be ruffled. You’re going to need to make nice with them.”

  Carol shook her head. “I don’t have time to make nice. To take down Patterson I’m going to need at least a half-dozen top quality Focuses and their households. I expect them to follow my orders, and to contribute their full efforts, without sidetracks and private agendas.”

  Why the arrogant bitch! “You’re overplaying your hand,” Tonya said, dismissing Carol’s argument with a flick of her eyes.

  “I don’t think so. I’m about to lead a multi-Major Transform effort to take down the feared and hated leader of the first Focuses, in her lair. You, Lori and your households will be on the front lines. Gail and Gerry and their households will be running logistics, cleanup, and screening us from the authorities. Patterson will have Keaton, Bass and Rayburn, so this isn’t going to be simple or easy. The rest of the witches need to prove to the Transform community that they aren’t the bad guys, if they want any political viability after all this is over. They ought to beg me to participate.” Carol’s smile turned feral. “This isn’t going to be a replay of the Clearing of Chicago. I don’t need anyone who won’t follow orders. It’s necessary for the survival of all of us that all the Major Transforms be able to work together. The rebellion happens now. My way. The remaining witches need to make a choice. Join me, oppose me, or attempt to stay neutral.

  “I don’t see a good future for them unless they join me.”

  Tonya stared at Carol, took a good look at her. Short hair, overly pink skin, shadowed eyes, almost no eyebrow hair. Fingernails that didn’t look regrown. The Commander had been leading a hard life, doing lots of healing, but, importantly, not from being tortured. She stank of blood, as from battle, but not terror from torture victims. Tonya didn’t possess all the information she needed to be able to judge the Commander’s sanity, but she hoped she had seen enough.

  “Okay, Commander,” Tonya said. “I’ll run the politics and pass along your ‘request’. I must warn you, though: some of the ones Polly’s been training aren’t suited for stressful operations.”

  Carol nodded, and actually smiled one of her enigmatic half-smiles. “Got a few of those, myself. Remember Focus Hargrove? Don’t worry, I’ve got ample uses for such Focuses and their households. In any event, get ready to move. My people are already working on setting up a staging point.” She paused. “Be extra cautious about everything. The Crows say that fifteen minutes after Keaton and her people went in two unknowns came out, unknowns covered by Patterson’s best protections. The Crows suspect the two unknowns were Major Transforms, but they don’t know who, or even what variety of Major Transform. Tonya, Patterson is up to something, but we don’t know what.”

  ---

  “Tonya,” Shadow said. “I trust you understand the gravity of the current situation?” The phone line echoed with the tinny sound of a long distance call.

  “Yes,” Tonya said. “However, I recently learned of a side issue I’d like to talk to you about.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Does a Crow named Road mean anything to you?”

  Shadow paused. “A long time ago, he was cast out, as Sinclair was, if you’re familiar with the story.”

  Tonya did, having picked it up fourth hand from Lori. “Yes. Well, I think he got the problem fixed. He’s been in cahoots with one of the first Focuses, Claunch, ever since.”

  “I…” pause “…see.” Another pause. “He was an old friend and ally of mine.”

  “You don’t sound pleased.”

  “I don’t know what to think. I would like to contact him. Pardon me, but my trust level is not high regarding the former followers of Innocence. There are times when I don’t even trust myself.”

  The Crow said it so seriously, she wasn’t sure whether to laugh at his joke, or not. “I can pass along your phone number to him. He and Claunch are out with her household. She’s gone gypsy.”

  “I’ll await his phone call, then,” Shadow said. Wary.

  Carol Hancock: December 20, 1972

  I managed to hold myself together until Tonya got out of range, and then I told Lori and Amy to take a hike and buried myself in the bushes and lost my lunch.

  Damn, did I feel like shit.

  What the hell possessed me to think I could drop Keaton’s tag just like that? Keaton, my lord and master, my tormentor, my lover, my owner for six years. There was a hole in my mind like the black pits of hell, gaping wide to suck me down. She was gone, gone, gone, lost to me forever. How could I live without her? I had betrayed her, a betrayal of necessity, a betrayal after her many betrayals of me, but a betrayal nevertheless.

  I lay under the bush and curled my knees to my chest. Why could I imagine this wouldn’t hurt? I loved her, I needed her. Come and own me again, I wanted to cry.

  I was so lonely.

  I dreamed of Keaton as I lay there. I dreamed of kneeling at her feet while she ruffled my hair, and the love I once felt, and the easy comfort of obedience. The warmth when she approved of me. The well-o
iled cooperation of those long years before Bass’s power play came to infect our love.

  I dreamed of the times she had disciplined me. The pain and the fear, but also the joy of her approval afterwards, and even the pleasure of knowing she got pleasure from my pain, that even at my worst, I still had something that could make her happy.

  The comfort of knowing my place, and of always knowing that there was someone above me. To protect me. A pleasant partnership of unequals.

  A partnership no longer. I had rejected this, and I couldn’t understand how I could have become so terrible that I would reject my own master. What kind of horror had I become?

  I shivered on the cold ground, and threw up again, trying, I think, to purge whatever internal corruption led me to betray my master.

  “I’ve been bad,” I whispered, miserably. “Please punish me, ma’am.”

  I was so lost.

  There would be no more punishment. No more affection or love. If I ever met Keaton again, she would see me as a competitor. A competitor and a betrayer. I would have no protection against her tortures.

  Somehow, I would need to be strong.

  I could see her in my mind, the stalk and the belt. A figure of nightmare. Old terrors filled the emptiness of the pit left by the vanished tag and I shivered in fear. I could almost hear her steps as she approached me, to take her vengeance for my betrayal. I could smell her basement, and feel her knives as they dug into my fingernails, her fishhooks into my cheeks.

  My lord and master no longer. She would show me nothing but the demon in the future. The demon, who loved my pain, who hurt me so many times.

  I didn’t much care for the demon.

  Even when I served her faithfully, she still sometimes brought out the demon.

  Keaton. After six years, I was free of her. I belonged to myself, and some treacherous part of myself wondered if maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  So what if I defied Keaton? Was this really such a betrayal? She owned me, but she hadn’t been a kind master. The more I thought about it, the less I liked the thought of having any master. I remembered the tortures again, and the humiliations, and the minor mistakes which brought them on. I remembered the betrayal of not letting me present my successes at following her orders. I remembered groveling for Bass at her behest. Letting Bass humble me because of the off chance my preparations to flip dominance with Haggerty might be aimed at her.

  Keaton had never used me well. I owned Arms of my own and I used them far better than Keaton ever used me. Their relative independence made me stronger, even considering Haggerty’s occasional forays into the dominant position. Amy at her worst was a hell of a better boss than Keaton at her best.

  Hank had called it, exactly. He knew Keaton too well, and he had expected Keaton to fail in the greater game without me there to manage the strategy and the politics. Keaton did exactly as he expected and fucked up in her attempt to take down the first Focuses. I had warned her not to telegraph her moves ahead of time. In her arrogance, she dismissed all my worries, and despite my best efforts, she got bit hard by the unexpected anyway.

  Why had I tolerated Keaton’s goddamned abuse for so long?

  I uncurled from that fetal ball and stood up. I was strong. I was free! I was my own master, and when next I faced Keaton, I would own myself. Maybe I would even get a chance to return some of those unpleasant lessons she once taught me so eagerly.

  Yes, I thought I might enjoy that. After years of pain and degradation, I was finally in my right mind enough to resent her idea of proper ownership.

  To resent it a lot.

  I left Fairmount Park with a bounce in my step, and feeling as if I had lifted a huge weight from my shoulders. I kept worrying that hollow spot in my mind the way I would worry a missing tooth with my tongue.

  I was free! Such an odd sensation. I knew little of freedom. I had gone from a junior partner wife to a captive of the CDC to Keaton’s slave, with never a moment of freedom in-between.

  I was free, and if I wanted to stay free, I had a hell of a job to do. Patterson needed to go down. Second, I needed to dodge the expected Hunter and Crow attempts to exploit our weakness. Third, I needed to do something about Keaton. She needed fixing before I would accept her in a subordinate leadership position.

  The third item drew most of my attention. Strategically, Keaton’s death wouldn’t be much of a tragedy. When I thought of her death, I imagined myself killing her, and a heat rose up in me so fast and hard I gasped.

  Wini Adkins would be good.

  Keaton would be better. Of all the people who had tormented me, the one I never thought I would get a chance at was Keaton.

  Being free of Keaton didn’t put my beast back in her cage, any more than freeing myself from Bass did. No such luck. Not that I wanted to cage my beast overly much. I needed her for the slaughter, not the slaughter of the Arm basement but the more bloody slaughter of the battlefield. Basement thoughts were a luxury I couldn’t afford right now, and if I wanted a chance at any of my dreams, I needed an army.

  A large army.

  Patterson with Keaton, Bass and Rayburn defending her lair was far beyond any of the worst-case scenarios for which I had ever planned.

  Dolores Sokolnik: December 20, 1972

  When Del entered the communication room, she found Mona huddled in the corner and shivering, Dottie sweating through her shirt, and Merry with her feet up on the folding table and well into Dottie’s personal space. Del’s adrenaline hit the danger zone immediately. She had thought humbling Merry Bartlett would buy her at least a few days before she needed to deal with a challenge.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t have any good tricks ready, and Merry was a legitimate mature Arm, more than six months past her graduation. Del felt the sinking in her stomach telling her she had over-extended herself.

  Nothing to do but deal with the challenge, however. She let her knives fall into her hands, settled into a combat stance, and tried to come up with a good trick. Unsuccessfully.

  Merry, however, instead of responding to the challenge, hit the floor in apology. Del snapped her fingers at Mona and pointed to the door. Mona fled the room. Dottie breathed a sigh of relief and watched the confrontation.

  “Ma’am,” Merry said, “I didn’t mean to offend.”

  Del stalked over to Merry, and Merry lowered her head farther. “Mona is mine,” Del said.

  “Of course, ma’am,” Merry said. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

  Hell, Del thought to herself. Of course Merry would impose her dominance on the junior Arms in the vicinity. But Del’s dominance of Mona, and Dottie for that matter, should take precedence. Del wondered how the hell an organization of multiple Arms was supposed to work in actual practice. Del would be dominant, but how was the next most senior Arm supposed to exert her dominance on the others without impinging on Del’s rights? This business of an actual Arm organization was far more complicated than Del had anticipated.

  Del nodded at Merry and allowed her to stand, but she still suspected she would be dealing with a challenge as soon as the current crisis passed. If Del wanted to keep control of an Arm as senior as Merry, she would need several really good ideas. Like some knowledge of how to manage a real Arm organization. Merry would find the current situation intolerable, and would challenge because she had to.

  Damn.

  “Any more phone calls?” Del said, turning away from Merry and facing Dottie. She pushed the impending dominance fight into her quiet pools, where she could hopefully come up with a solution without exposing her vulnerability beforehand.

  Del had delegated the rest of the phone duty to Dottie and put her efforts into lair defense. Since her last check-in, she and Theresa had rigged three more traps, even one in the escape tunnel.

  “Yes,” Dottie said, grinning with obvious delight at Del’s dominance of Merry. Del sighed internally. Merry would almost certainly make Dottie pay for that delight, and there wasn’t a damned thing Del could do about t
hat. “Billington called to report that she and Naylor took Julius. Julius was actually on her way out, but her people screwed up and left a map with a fingerprint on where they were going.”

  Now that was one dumb Focus and household, Del thought. “Did you tell them about the no-contact from Ma’am Keaton?” Now going on eight hours. Del wondered briefly how Ma’am Keaton would react to all of Del’s recently acquired subordinate Arms. Surely Ma’am Keaton wouldn’t take offense. Surely.

  “Yes. Billington said she was going to take Julius and lie low, and she said Naylor’s going back to her home base, but I think they both lied to me. I think I know why: Billington’s convinced Patterson took Keaton, and Hancock’s organization knows Patterson won, because they’ve gone quiet.”

  Del nodded. That’s what happened when you put a normal in charge of communications: you got someone who was unable to lie. Hancock’s people should have continued reporting as if nothing untoward had happened.

  Merry Bartlett, now back in her chair but with her feet on the floor instead of on the table, slapped closed the cover of the Chrysanthemum report and tossed it on the document stack containing all their information on Fingleman, Julius and Patterson. She cracked her knuckles and stood, already recovered from her brief humbling. A fully trained graduate Arm, Del realized, was going to be a bitch to deal with. “Keaton got set up, and, no, it wasn’t the Commander. The Commander’s people weren’t spending any time figuring out the details of what we were doing.”

  “So, what were they doing in their free time?” Del asked. She didn’t understand the mindset of the Commander’s Arms, save that most of the time it sounded as if the Hero was still the boss Arm over there, at least as far as philosophy was concerned.

  Merry closed her eyes for a moment, in thought. Making a decision about what to say. “Research and development, or, more appropriately speaking, exploiting the fruits of their research and development. You’ve heard rumors of the new trick allowing a Focus to pass juice to an Arm?”

  Del nodded.

  “That’s backed up by some ultra-secret juice pattern codification system, under the code name ‘juice music’. They’re already able to pass instructions for juice patterns in written form from one Focus to another, as long as they’re familiar with the system.”