The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) Read online

“Why did you bring me up here?” She thought I planned on sleeping with her, but I hadn’t yet.

  “There’s a little problem,” I said. The short day had progressed to evening, Gail was in the Dreaming, guarding my mind, and the room was comfortably dim, blurring the harshness of my bedroom into softness. I worried attack plans in my head, juggling numbers and contingencies. I also worried about Rose and Giselle, who should have snagged Keaton’s student Arms by now. They hadn’t reported in, and nobody answered at Keaton’s place. Trouble, yes, but what sort of trouble?

  I pulled a pillow under Cathy’s head, so she could be comfortable. I had let her shower and change, and her odor was of fresh soap now instead of fear. She wore one of my extra shirts and a pair of jeans. Both hung baggy on her. She was beautiful, with rich blonde hair that shimmered as she moved, deep blue eyes, and a juice structure laced with old scars. No, she had no personal capabilities besides her charisma, not with a juice structure so ill-used.

  Why did Focuses always have such beautiful hair?

  “Problem?”

  “Problem. You’re still wearing Patterson’s tag and we need to get rid of it.”

  “What?” She frowned, and some of her hard edges showed, the immensity of her charisma now peeking through. “She has a tag on me?”

  I nodded. “It’s probably been there for the last fourteen years. The tag’s well hidden, but I’ve seen Patterson’s tags before, and it’s real tough to hide tags from a knowledgeable Arm.”

  Cathy grimaced in disgust. “Yes, let’s get rid of it. How?”

  “Tags on Major Transforms need to live in the subconscious to last, but in most cases you can remove them by willing them away. Patterson’s tags, though, aren’t ‘most cases’. They fight back. Removing the tag is going to be painful, and will leave you feeling miserable.”

  “I don’t care. I want it off.”

  “That’s a good start. Lay here and focus your will and let’s see if you can shuck the tag without my help.” As I suspected, she failed. We shared metasenses and tried, together, and failed, even with me burning juice into my tag on her. Nothing.

  “Are there moments when you feel like you’ve forgotten something, a missing moment or two?” I asked. Tonya’s forgotten phone conversations. My lack of memories of Gail and Van’s warnings about Patterson getting to me in the Dreaming. I suspected something along those lines.

  Cathy blinked in surprise. “How did you know?” She sighed. “Most of the time, it’s just a few minutes here and there, but sometimes…” she paused “days.”

  Days. Fuck. I sensed Gail banging around in my head, through the Dreaming, and I followed her hints, which led me and my metasense to a place inside Cathy’s brain, where I found a feedback loop preserving the tag, a devious construction down in Elspeth’s subconscious, short-circuiting her attempts to shuck the tag.

  Hell and damnation. Even with Gail’s help during the Haggerty challenge, I had needed to burn twelve points of juice to shuck Patterson’s tag on me, and that one hadn’t been put on me in person, but long-distance, piggybacking on top of Bass’s false Arm tag.

  And this one had sat on Elspeth for nearly fifteen years. Still, I would be damned if I would let one of Patterson’s foul tags beat me.

  I sat cross-legged on my bed and leaned forward with my elbow on my knee and my chin in my hand. Elspeth sat against the headboard and looked about ready to tear her hair out.

  That would have been sad. Her hair was such a beautiful dark gold.

  “I’ve got an idea if you want to try something risky,” I said.

  “Anything.”

  “The tag is too deep into your will. You can’t fight it, but I can. To do that, you need to hand your will over to me.”

  “How?”

  “Right now, I’ve got a full tag on you. If you let me give you a stronger tag, I’ll take over more of your will. In that case, there’s a possibility I can fight off the tag.”

  “So I lose my own free will? Forever?”

  I hesitated. “I don’t think so. I should be able to set the tag back when I’m done, but no one’s ever done this kind of tag before. It’s a risk.”

  She leaned her head back against the headboard and closed her eyes. Her hair fell in waves around her.

  “Do it.”

  “You ready?”

  “I’m ready. You should do it before I change my mind. I’m yours, a lot more than I am already.”

  I fiddled with the tag for just over a minute before I found a way to up the amplitude. The juice moved and the double tag took.

  And oh, damn was this good. She was mine. Not just a little mine, but mine. This would be real tough to give up.

  I recognized the double tag, though. The double tag was what Gail slapped on me in the Fight in Detroit, a double Focus-Focus tag. No wonder she had been able to cobble together an instinctive juice pattern to give me access to the juice in her juice buffer. Crap. All our work, for nothing. If I had known about double tags, I could have solved the mystery in a week. Save for one thing: what Arm, in her right mind, would submit to being double tagged by any Focus? Some things the world doesn’t need to know about…

  Elspeth stared at me slack-jawed. Love, I sent down the pipe, the beautiful wide pipe able to convey so much. We didn’t need words. Elspeth crawled over to me and held me tight, happy as a baby in the bliss of her mother’s arms. I held her gently and kissed her head, this child I loved so much.

  Too intense, even for me. I wouldn’t be able to maintain the double tag for long.

  “All right,” I said. “Are you ready?” The weathered strain on her face vanished and the muscles on her face relaxed into peace.

  “Yes.” Of course she said yes.

  “Shuck the tag,” I said, and added my will to hers. She had such an impressive will, such an iron self-control, and when Patterson’s tag was gone…

  Damn, this was one nasty tag. I metasensed the tag clearly now, twined deep into her juice structure, and recognized the mess as a more primitive version of Patterson’s long-distance parasite tag, set up to reinforce itself instead of demanding love and responsibility from the tag-holder, the same as Bass’s false Arm tag. That stunk.

  I burned a bit of juice into my metasense to understand the details, as something about this felt familiar. But what? I searched my memories until I made the connection – this resonated with the tricks Focus Peshnak had used, the Focus I once gleefully renamed ‘Rogue Focus’ before I captured her and removed her from Houston four and a half years ago. This parasite tag didn’t use witch techniques, but Focus Shaman technology, the same damned technology that had turned me into ‘magical thinking Carol’ in mid melee. Shitfuck! Patterson possessed the Focus Shaman technology in fucking 1958, in addition to her juice pattern mastery! No wonder she beat Keaton. Even with everyone at my disposal going in with me, I was going to lose, because I was going up against something different. I needed more. I needed my own different.

  “Carol, there’s something I need to tell you,” Cathy said.

  She rested in my arms, both of us drenched in sweat, both of us skating far too close to periwithdrawal for comfort. I felt Gail in the back of my mind, still in the Dreaming, and probably down as far on juice as the two of us. Cathy and I had taken a full half hour to pry out all the tendrils of Patterson’s parasite tag, hashing up Cathy’s juice structure in the process, and likely doing a number on my own. Gail and whoever else she had recruited had spent the entire time in the Dreaming, guarding my mind from the expected pokes and prods.

  We all succeeded, though.

  “I suspect there’s a lot you’re going to need to tell me,” I said. I would save the necessary mind scrape until after Cathy recovered. She might not have been part of the ruling circle of Firsts, but she had been their Council rep and catspaw for years. She knew nearly everything.

  “Arm Bass isn’t what you think she is.”

  The world froze around me at Cathy’s unexpected words. Gail scre
amed in my head, assaulted by Patterson in the Dreaming. I banished my momentary terror and did what I could to will the panicking Patterson away through my tag link to Gail.

  “Tell me.”

  “She isn’t Fingleman or Patterson’s victim. She’s Patterson’s student.”

  Oh holy fuck. Now everything made sense to me, all my darkest fears and worries, and Bass’s impossible tricks that never made sense to me before.

  Bass wasn’t just a traitor, she was a Shaman-style Arm.

  Cathy laid it out for me, a chilling tale beyond my darkest nightmares. I took the precaution of calling Van and Daisy, and getting our two Major Transform groupies and safely normal and non-Transform types over to my house to take notes. Gail survived Patterson’s attack, and with me half-asleep I recognized some of her helpers, including Lori, Rumor, and the Madonna’s bear, along with several other unknowns. Privacy? No, not for me, not now. They hung around and listened, with my blessing and active help. We absolutely needed not to forget this.

  The only one happy to be in my warehouse bedroom right now, though, was Daisy, distracted by the various tools hanging from my walls.

  Cathy condensed what she had told me and repeated the sodden tale for Van and Daisy, starting with how Focus Julius earned her living – literally – these days, as Patterson’s front and cutout for Chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemum was Patterson’s.

  “Patterson found her holy tags” Patterson’s term for her parasite tags “didn’t work on Arms long term,” Cathy said, five minutes in. She snuggled close to me on the big bed and stroked my arm gently. “Arms are too stubborn and always find a way to shake loose from their tags, each in her own way. She’s possessed all of you, from Keaton on down to Bass, at one point or another. Never for very long.”

  Daisy frowned and shook her head. She came over to me, sat beside me, and rubbed my shoulders. I didn’t object, not from one of mine. I appreciated the comfort she radiated. Cathy watched her suspiciously, but relaxed when I didn’t seem to mind.

  When I tagged Bass in her lair, Bass and Patterson had done a shaman trick, allowing Patterson to use my tag on Bass to get past my normal defenses, corrupting my dreams and giving my nightmares power.

  I despised being anyone’s pawn.

  “When did Patterson tag Bass?” Van asked. He was all nerves, terrified for all our lives, most especially Gail’s. I didn’t blame him. When I ordered Gail to protect my mind in the Dreaming, it was as a contingency plan, not a plan for her to be the primary target of my enemies. Van was going to pay for this later, helping Gail cope and helping her put herself back together. “For the attack on Dr. Littleside in Denver?” Mere months before Van and Gail got married and served as targets in the Battle in Detroit.

  “Yes,” Cathy said. She shivered and clutched my hand in a tight grip, fearing that any second now Patterson’s parasite tag would return. Unlike with Tonya, she hadn’t regained any tricks or raw power when we excised the parasite tag. Too much juice structure damage for far too long. “I never learned why, though. After Dr. Littleside’s death, they discarded Bass, thinking her of no further use. After Keaton and Carol rescued Bass, and after Keaton’s training and Bass’s graduation, the tag was long gone, but enough of a connection remained for Patterson to call her to Hilltop in secret.” Using symbolic juice manipulation, a standard Shaman Focus trick. “There, Patterson used her charisma to entice Bass into staying and becoming her student. There, off and on, but to this day, Patterson’s been training Bass and forging her into one of her strongest allies.”

  Van shivered and went wide-eyed. I frowned and willed him to speak his new fears. “Focus Elspeth, was Bass behind the recent baby Arm kidnappings?” he asked. Oh. Of course. Bass had been a fucking knife in our backs ever since the Battle in Detroit. She knew about United Toxicol and the Chrysanthemum Corporation because she was part of them.

  “Bass was Patterson’s muscle,” Cathy said, nervous and leaning heavily on the double tag. “Patterson herself did the political dirty work, and, although I hadn’t realized until earlier this evening, I did the charismatic dirty work. All the kidnapped Arms went to Patterson.”

  On top of everything else in this steaming mound of shit, Patterson had her own baby Arm army, and enough time to train them up. Taking her no longer looked like an easy task.

  “Patterson’s hold on Bass was her training,” Cathy said. “Nothing of the juice someone might sense, but simple blackmail – Patterson could ruin Bass at any time by revealing the fact she was Bass’s teacher. Bass had no choice but to play along and deal equitably with Patterson, and take her suggestions as orders. What you told me about Bass’s philosophy of Arms as unconstrained predators came from Patterson, who wants the Arms to be the unholy evil monsters, a threat only she can stop. The same for Bass’s philosophy of power. Bass’s belief that ‘the Transform apocalypse helps us’ is Patterson’s teaching; Patterson opposed the Cause not because it was a rival power center but because Patterson wants the Transform apocalypse to happen. Aiding the Transform apocalypse is her holy mission. Everyone is to die except her holy elect.”

  Van leapt over to me, a bit of involuntary and pointless desire to protect me. I supposed he could stop a bullet or two, but only low caliber slow ones. Side effects of the tag he wore. “Commander! You said the Progenitors wouldn’t take sides between you and Patterson. This means they don’t care if the Transform apocalypse happens.”

  Exactly. I nodded to him; this was one of the reasons I invited him over, to see if he would come to the same conclusion I had. No, the Progenitors weren’t our friends, not if they thought the Transform apocalypse might be a good thing. They could easily turn into our enemies. I had been right with my initial paranoia.

  Van leaned over to Cathy, forceful enough to get her to shrink back into me. “Why did Patterson grab Bass’s family, then?”

  “Patterson didn’t. Fingleman did,” Cathy said. Van backed off and balled his fists in frustration at the typical Focus backbiting stupidity. Patterson was an unknown to him, one of the first Focuses who refused to let him interview her in person for his book. However, he had interviewed Focus Fingleman and because of the way she treated him, he wanted her dead. He had taken months to recover his full health after his Fingleman visit, and he still occasionally suffered nightmares. “Although Donna and Shirley often work together, Donna’s always trying to get a leg up on Patterson. Donna didn’t know the now mature Arm Bass was the same hapless tool she and Shirley used to kill Dr. Littleside until after the Clearing of Chicago. Or that Bass was Shirley’s secret Arm trainee. She needed to take steps.”

  “Then Bass is one of the two unknowns who left Patterson’s compound after Keaton fell,” Van said, shaky, speaking through shuddered deep breaths. “The traitor who arranged for Keaton’s fall, likely with one of the baby Arms as her thirty pieces of silver.”

  “My conclusion as well,” I said. I wanted to throw up in disgust. Spots danced in front of my eyes from low juice. “What’s worse, I sent Rose and Giselle out to corral Keaton’s student Arms and grab Keaton’s library, and they haven’t reported back. I’m now afraid I sent them into a trap, and Bass captured them.” Anger turned to horror in both Van and Daisy’s eyes, as they cared for both Rose and Giselle.

  I collapsed in exhaustion and let the double tag slip back into being a full tag, giving up my wonderful, terrible connection with Cathy. I returned from the mountaintop to the mundane normality of everyday life, visions of Patterson adding not only Keaton, Rayburn and Bass to her defenses, but Rose, Giselle and Keaton’s student Arms.

  Cathy screamed! Mad, horrible, wrenching misery, as bad as Adkins earlier in the basement. She thrashed and clawed at her face and I realized with a shock she wanted to kill herself. Van scrambled away, as shocked as myself.

  What the hell was this? I held her tight, but she fought me in her panic. As fast as I could, I put the double tag back.

  The instant I got the double tag back in place, she quieted. S
hivering, she nestled against me.

  I muttered obscenities to myself as I realized what was going on. She was using me and my double tag to fill the void left by Patterson’s powerful, miserable, ancient parasite tag.

  Shit. We had yet another problem.

  “Physically, she’s well enough, except for a couple of points of dross corruption in her juice structure,” Zielinski said. He was still as tough as my mother’s overcooked pan-fried steaks. Even after our little discussion earlier today, his hands were perfectly steady and his voice was calm and rock solid. I knew him too well, though, and easily sensed the little internal shrieks of terror and his desire to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  As soon as Zielinski finished with his examination, Cathy climbed down off the table and nestled under my arm again, kneeling on the floor next to my chair. “Mentally, it’s another story.”

  I nodded. I had seen the results as he tested her.

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Her condition isn’t one I’m equipped to treat, unfortunately,” he said as he folded up her chart. “My recommendation is many weeks of rest and the attention of a talented Crow. It’s possible that she’ll heal some of the mental damage over time and need less of your support. What are you going to do about her household, Commander?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing yet. I think she should have her household near, but I don’t know if the household would survive the experience.”

  “Well, unless you’re planning to take her with you into Pittsburgh, you’d better take the chance. She’ll need all the support she can get when you leave her.”

  I sighed, and absently hugged Cathy a little tighter. I felt her delight down the pipe, and resisted the urge to lose myself in her reactions.

  “I can’t hold this tag for much longer, because I need to cadge some juice. She’s going to need to spend some time with a full tag whether she can deal with it or not.”

  He nodded, and I resisted Cathy’s fear at the thought. “If you must, you must, but keep the stronger tag on her as often as you can. And for heaven’s sake, don’t lose the full tag.”