No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) Read online

  From the quality of his metasense shields Gilgamesh decided this unknown Crow was a recently trained Guru. He was a stout young man, about five nine, heavily muscled and weather-worn. Nothing like the statue. He wore his black hair in a ponytail. “I’m Hephaestus,” the Crow said, in a more normal tone of voice, “and no I don’t walk with a limp, at least not any more. What can I do you for?”

  Gilgamesh took an immediate liking to this particular Crow. “I’m doing research for another book, sir,” he said, guessing his book had made its way through here, or at least some of the Gilgamesh tall tales. “It’s to be on Crow life. How Crows live. Completely non-technical and anecdotal.” He needed to stick in the last. The explanation saved panicking his listeners.

  “Well,” Hephaestus said, coming closer across the scrub grass and packed dirt. “I guess you’ve come to the right place. My Guru, Arpeggio – yah, that’s him right there in the dross – has me paying off my Guru training by showing baby Crows the ropes. Only I seem to be stuck with the most cowardly excuses of Crowdom who’ve ever transformed. There’s got to be a better way. There’s just gotta.”

  “Oh,” Gilgamesh said. Hephaestus was forceful as well as humorous. Hmm. “How would you like a challenge?”

  “You’re challenging me to what, a duel?”

  Gilgamesh shook his head. “No, no, no. Certainly not.” He shivered a moment, realizing Hephaestus was serious and Crow duels did indeed exist. Unbelievable. ‘Duels’ had to go in his book. “I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on many topics, including the Arms. Arms need Crow companions. I think it keeps them saner and certainly more juiced up. Which keeps the temper down.” He had used every wile he possessed to make sure the Skinner never went below her juice optimums. “You have the power and presence to do the job right.”

  Hephaestus backed off. “Are you insane?”

  “Aren’t we all?” Gilgamesh said. He had been on the other end of one of these Crow conversations not too long ago, but he never imagined he would panic a Guru. “My idea sounds crazy, and I once thought so as well, but after I spent a little while with probably the worst Arm of all I realized Crows and Arms are a perfect fit. Arms have a bad reputation because they have this unquenchable urge to be in charge. Since us Crows never want to be in charge, the partnership really works.” Pause. At least Hephaestus didn’t run away farther. He didn’t laugh, though. “I mentioned this because you remind me of the Skinner’s former Crow follower, Wire. To start with, you wouldn’t even need to let the Arm know you exist.”

  Hephaestus took a deep breath. “Yup, you’re Gilgamesh. Sorry, but I don’t think I’m interested. Greatest apologies and all that. You’re more than welcome to stay and talk, but if you wouldn’t mind doing a favor for me, could you mute your presence a bit? My baby Crow charges seem to have a weensy problem with your glow.”

  “I’d be more than glad to,” Gilgamesh said. Mute his presence? Had he grown to where he naturally gave off that level of Crow fierceness? He would need to work on muting his glow. Scaring other Crows wasn’t the least bit polite. “A question, though. Why is the Transform Clinic back there unclaimed?”

  “Because of the damned Focus who lives practically on top of it, that’s why,” Hephaestus said. “She arrived here a couple of years ago, some sort of immigrant from Eastern Europe, and she’s flat out evil. Doesn’t even get along with the other local Focuses and refuses to join the national Focus club.”

  “Not a UFA member. Hmm. Is she a member of the ISF, then?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but that don’t matter. What’s important is she’s evil. As in she’s found a way to keep twice as many male Transforms alive as normal…by keeping them all right above withdrawal. They’re caged at night because they’re all crazy. Because of them, she’s got herself an army and she’s used it to make her point once or twice among the locals. Worse, she’s a Focus Shaman.”

  “A what?”

  Hephaestus sighed. “Let’s go back to my place. If the babies aren’t willing to play after all this time they can just walk back.” Gilgamesh followed, a smile on his face. Hephaestus might not be adventurous like Sky or himself, but at least he was active and had a spine, much like Wire. So few Crows showed even the glimmer of a spine. “I’ve met several Crows from down in the Valley” South Texas, Gilgamesh knew, “who say one of the strains of Mexican and Central American Focuses move juice by using symbols and deep psychological tricks. They’re Brujas, but because there’s another strain of Focuses who call themselves Brujas, based in the States, we call them Focus Shamans. This Focus Peshnak is another like them, but she’s of an entirely different tradition than our Latino Focus friends. She’s a Freudian.”

  “Interesting.” A Freudian Focus from Eastern Europe. And he thought the world of Transforms couldn’t get any stranger. Silly him. “Do you know of a Crow by the name of Occum?”

  Hephaestus shook his head as he walked. Gilgamesh swatted mosquitos. The Houston evening brought them out in swarms.

  “He doesn’t use those terms, but he’s definitely a Crow Shaman.” In fact, Gilgamesh suspected Occum would love to learn about any other Major Transforms who worked in the same way he did. “Any other dangers I need to know about? Crows going missing?”

  “Not down here, save for some occasional Beast traces out north and west of Houston. However, the Crow attacks were why I moved my operation down here from Dallas. There’s these Beast Men based, we think, out of the Kansas City area, who call themselves the Patriarchs. Whooo doggies they’re dangerous, always raiding into Dallas and Fort Worth after women Transforms, and several of us think they’re behind the Crow kidnappings and murders, at least the local ones.”

  “Patriarchs, not Hunters?” Gilgamesh knew of the Patriarchs and their depredations from Pokeweed in Oklahoma City, but Pokeweed had thought the Patriarchs lived to the west of him, not to the east.

  “Never heard of any Hunters.”

  “Their Master is named Wandering Shade?”

  “That’s the rumor. Some say Wandering Shade’s a Focus, others say an Arm. I think Wandering Shade’s a Sport and stabilizing Beasts is his big trick.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that idea,” Gilgamesh said. Progress. This stop was worth a hell of a lot. Too bad this was, as always, just speculation without data.

  Chapter 7

  On May 10, 1968, at 9:00 PM, I was dispatched to a Violent Domestic call at 322 111 th Street Apt. #4, Chicago, Illinois. Upon arrival, I met a White Female {name redacted} DOB, 02/07/1930. She was crying and had five large cuts on the right side of her face and was bleeding. I immediately requested rescue and an ID-Unit to respond for photos of the injuries. She claimed that a Transform Monster appearing like a bipedal wolf assaulted her and kidnapped her sister…

  “Hunter Activity Near Chicago and Media Responses”

  Henry Zielinski: May 29, 1968 – May 30, 1968

  The next morning Carol still prowled her borrowed house like a wild tiger, dangerous and unpredictable. Even the Arm tag he now wore didn’t quiet Carol or his nerves. She was as far around the bend as he had ever seen an Arm go, and he had seen them all. He had long ago deduced that non-Transforms had as many instincts built inside them regarding Transforms as the Transforms did with each other. At no point in the past had the Transforms ever become 100% of a tribal or regional population. Normals survived them and lived with them. They had gained instinctive responses to Transforms, the same way they had to other wild animals.

  He found himself enjoying the situation. He always did. This was why he loved working with Arms and why working with the backbiting bitch Focuses always drove him crazy in the end.

  “Ma’am, if you have a moment, I’d like to examine your physical changes,” he said. Although noon approached, Carol hadn’t done much besides pace and cook, and make a trip to a gym and the grocery store. Zielinski decided he needed to push the issue if he wanted a chance to examine her.

  Carol ignored him. H
e remembered what he had seen Transforms do with their Focus, pitched his voice higher, and concentrated on the Arm. “Ma’am, this is important.”

  She turned to him as if she was a dog and he had yanked hard on her choker chain. She stalked over and stared at him. “Will this help my mental problems?” She had no idea what he had done. Point to him!

  “Perhaps.”

  “Fine. Can you do your exam while I’m thinking?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He didn’t have the equipment he needed, but a sewing box provided a tape measure and a bathroom scale Carol’s weight. His memory provided the rest. Her muscles were well balanced and symmetrical, although different in size and shape, in some cases dramatically. She was a hundred pounds lighter, had faster reactions and walked differently. Half way through he asked Sky to check him on one observation, and Sky concurred. Carol now possessed an Arm’s version of Focus Rizzari’s physique.

  Carol stayed lost in her thoughts while he worked. At least she didn’t pace anymore and give off predator signals. He wasn’t sure where to start with her mental problems, which appeared to be voluminous. Her charisma had grown; he couldn’t believe that she hadn’t provoked Sky into skunking her. Her tolerance for the darker side of Arm-hood had grown as well: he couldn’t believe she would touch Raindorf, much less screw him silly.

  “Is there anything you’d like me to know, ma’am, to better serve you in helping you recover?” Zielinski said, when he finished his physical examination.

  She hissed. “You’re still here?” She turned and looked at him closely. “I’m having no physical problems whatsoever. I can get by with only two workouts a day to keep the muscle aches away. My metasense has radically changed. Gilgamesh is of the opinion that someone did directed withdrawal scarring on me, but the scarring remains a mystery because nobody was there who might have done it. I can’t read, write or process complex logic.”

  He blanched, as did Sky. “Directed withdrawal scarring?”

  She nodded. “Perhaps 5% of what the Chimeras of the Hunter variety have,” she said. She turned to Sky. “Can you see it?”

  “Ma’am, would you be willing to sit down and let me examine you from, say, eighteen inches away?”

  Carol shrugged and sat down on one of the Queen Anne chairs. Sky circled Carol, occasionally stopping and dropping into a trance. “Well,” Sky said. “I do see the scarring. If you ever get a chance, Mademoiselle Arm, you should thank whoever did this to you. Without this, the day of withdrawal would have left you akin to a newborn: no memories, no personality.”

  “Shiiit.”

  Both the Major Transforms’ comments gave Zielinski the shivers.

  “Sky, who could have done this?” Zielinski said. He had never heard of beneficial directed withdrawal scarring before.

  “My special Canadian friend could have,” Sky said. “Save that she never leaves home.”

  Carol snorted. “Does your special Canadian friend appear in dreams looking like the Madonna holding the Christ child?”

  Sky froze.

  “In that case, I think I may have invited her into my mind,” Carol said. She told a quick tale of falling into a waking dream and burning juice to help the Madonna figure chase a white-dressed evil princess with sea-green eyes out of her waking dream.

  Sky passed out, curled up into a fetal ball, surrounded by a miasma of juice so foul Zielinski smelled it.

  Carol had retreated out of the living room and into the kitchen. “He sicked up on himself. I didn’t know Crows had the porcupine reaction built into them.”

  “Sicked up?” Zielinski said. “I think the more common Crow term is ‘skunking’.”

  Eyeball roll. “They all have their own terms, according to Gilgamesh,” Carol said. “I think terminology confusion is one of the major ways the senior Crow leadership keeps the younger Crows in line.”

  This conversation just got stranger and stranger. “I think, ma’am, it’s time you called Lori.”

  She grunted and started doing one handed handstand pushups, one of the most appalling displays of physical prowess he had ever seen. Otherwise she ignored him. Working off anger and excess energy, he guessed.

  “If you want, I’ll call Focus Rizzari for you,” Zielinski said.

  “You don’t trust me to hold my temper?” She bounced upward on her hands and came down on her feet so smoothly she made it look easy.

  “You tortured Fred for fifteen minutes after he left the seat up on the toilet, ma’am.”

  Carol successfully fought off turning red. She wasn’t able to fight off the slight smile that crept across her face. “Some things are just a matter of principle,” she said. “Call.”

  Great. He didn’t expect to win the argument so quickly. He checked his wristwatch. Three forty five, four forty five in the eastern time zone. Dammit. Lori would be at Master K’s dojo now. Mnemonic tricks that got him through med school and his surgery residency allowed him to walk through his memory and retrieve the phone number of the dojo.

  Lori would tan his hide for this, especially since no one supposedly knew she frequented Master K’s. He didn’t particularly care.

  He found a phone hidden inside one of the end tables back in the living room. A ludicrous place for a telephone, but, well, new money and bad taste. He placed the phone call.

  “Cadaver collector?” Lori said, when she finally picked up the phone. “I can’t believe you had me paged as ‘phone call for Cadaver Collector, by Doc Pain’. Henry, you’d better be calling about the end of the world, or…”

  Yes, indeed. The Focus was angry.

  “I’m not where I was last time we talked,” he said. She had visited him while he remained in prison, in the minimum-security visiting room, to check up on Sky. They had both haphazardly apologized for their previous behavior, but Lori still wasn’t willing to make him part of her household leadership team, so he politely declined a return trip to Inferno. The Focus hadn’t been pleased. “Sky is with me. With Carol. He’s had a relapse.”

  “Just ducky,” Lori said. “Is he curled up on the floor in a puddle of Monster juice?”

  “That’s it.”

  “What triggered the relapse?”

  He looked over at Carol, who signaled she wasn’t keeping secrets from Lori. He relayed Carol’s comments. Lori whistled.

  “Sky’s got a phobia about Focus Patterson due to something that happened during the rescue,” Lori said. “That and the stress of being held against his will by an Arm sent him into climax stress, as the Crows term it. That’s his climax stress reaction. If you get him out of Carol’s clutches he’ll recover. Tell her that if she lets him go I’ll owe her one.”

  Carol cursed silently, mouthing the words so that Zielinski had no trouble understanding.

  “Henry?”

  “Sorry, I’m waiting until she inserts something non-profane into her silent diatribe,” Zielinski said.

  Carol grabbed the phone out of his hands. “Dammit, I thought we were on good terms, Rizzari,” she said into the telephone. Paused. “I can’t wait to see you, either, except I need to get better control around tagged Transforms, or the visit’s going to turn into a disaster the first time one of them bumps into me. I’m suffering from bad mental problems.” Pause. “Okay, I see your point. Later.” Carol hung up the phone with a clack. “I can’t decide whether I want to strangle that woman or make love to her,” she said. Zielinski got out his notepad and wrote. Make love to Lori? Score one on the side of the predicted necessary Focus / Arm symbiosis.

  “Join the goddamn club, mademoiselle Arm,” Sky said. He remained curled up on the floor, although the feeling of bad juice started to recede. “I heard you are going to let me go.”

  “Against my better judgment,” Carol said. “I’m not sure I was getting anything useful out of borrowing your intellect, anyway.”

  “You aren’t the first person who’s had that humbling opinion,” Sky said. He slowly rose to his feet, shaking and unsteady. “Hank, ol’ buddy, y
ou’re on your own. And, yes, the sex does work to quiet down out of control Arms.” He vanished from Zielinski’s sight as he spoke the comment.

  No, Sky couldn’t resist getting in the last zing.

  Carol paced around the room, muttering curses and exuding angry predator. Zielinski couldn’t blame her one bit.

  “Focus Teas blabbed about Focuses being able to tag anything, and I eventually recognized her furniture tag as what I had done to Bobby. I didn’t take long to figure out how to do an Arm tag proper,” Carol said. She had commandeered the kitchen and was making chicken cordon bleu, a white and wild rice side dish, and a vegetable medley of fresh green beans and tomatoes. Fred chopped parsley. What Carol considered a proper dinner was rather elaborate. And large. “I sold Keaton on the idea and she tagged me. Among Arms, the tag sets up a dominance hierarchy.”

  “How does it work? Do you use a juice pattern to create the tag, like a Focus does?”

  Carol shrugged, and added a little bit of some herb or another to the rice dish. “Nothing so elaborate. We say the words and the juice moves on its own. For us Arms, it’s knowledge and intent.”

  Zielinski nodded from his place at the kitchen table. She wouldn’t let him anywhere near the food. “What does the tag allow?”

  “Well, I feel more comfortable around Keaton. I take her orders without fighting them. She doesn’t need to reestablish her dominance over me every half hour, like before.” Carol shoved the chicken in the oven. “Onto other things. If I claim Oklahoma City, can you set up your research center here?”

  He shook his head. “We need a large metro area with a good pre-existing medical community,” Zielinski said. “Boston. Houston. Chicago. New York City. Washington DC. Los Angeles.”

  “Well crap,” Carol said. “I was already starting to think of Oklahoma City as mine.” She paused. “Not Boston. Rizzari’s there and I’m not strong enough yet. What are the plusses and minus for the other places?”