All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) Read online

  Sylvie went over to her purse, scrabbled around, took out a couple of pictures, and shoved them under the wooden edges around the oval floor-length mirror. Gail shrugged. They were some pictures from their trip to Cedar Point amusement park last summer…no, the summer before last, from before she transformed. From the infamous ‘pencil twins’ set. “Stand sideways and look at yourself in the mirror,” Sylvie said.

  Gail did. The juxtaposition of her current appearance and the Cedar Point pictures jarred her. Sylvie, the ratfink, had put up one of the ones proving Gail could hide, standing sideways, behind Van when he stood sideways.

  “The old Gail was rail thin, no hips, no tits,” Sylvie said. “Look at you now!”

  Gail bounced and sighed with exasperation. “C cups. They’re only C cups.” The change to her rear end was far more noticeable. She didn’t want to mention her derriere.

  “Even ignoring the cup size, your chest is larger.”

  “Your point?”

  “You’ve become stereotypically feminine. Most movie starlets don’t have a shape as good as yours.” She tapped the second picture, one of Van standing behind Gail, resting his head on the top of her head. “Even with makeup, your old face wasn’t going to launch a thousand ships. It does now.”

  “Hey!” Sylvie was right, though. Gail did look better these days. And she had grown enough so Van couldn’t rest his chin on the top of her head anymore. “How does a face rearrange itself, anyway?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Sylvie said. “Look. You’ve become another drop-dead gorgeous Focus, just like the rest of them. How many people are going to dismiss you as ‘just another woman’ because of your looks? Given our society, a lot. You’re…”

  “Sylvie,” Gail said. “What’s bothering you?” Gail understood her friend’s emotions quite well these days, but still had a hard time with the details. “Tell me.”

  Sylvie turned away and didn’t speak for nearly a minute. “It’s Gilgamesh.”

  “Huh?”

  “I like him. As a man.”

  Gail’s eyes opened wide in shock. “Gilgamesh?” she said. Of all the men she knew, he showed the least reaction to her as a woman. Hell, she picked up far more interest in her that way from Arm Keaton. “But, but…”

  “You don’t feel it at all?” Gail shook her head. “He’s smart, good looking, and I can’t help but want to cuddle him whenever he’s around.”

  “Sylvie? I think if you did try and cuddle him or make a pass at him, he would run away and never come back. He’s skittish.” To her, he radiated strong ‘don’t touch me’ vibes. How had Sylvie missed that? “How much do you want him?”

  Sylvie shrugged and turned away. “The attraction doesn’t make any sense. It isn’t as if I’m having any problems with Kurt. Much the opposite. Since you forced me to join in with the bodyguard training, I’ve been far more, um, interested than I used to be.” She had also lost at least ten pounds of weight and lost far more body fat. “It’s like something else inside me is doing my thinking for me. I never had it this bad even when I went through puberty.”

  Oh, crap. “Sylvie?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m familiar with this problem. It happens every time one of those crazy extra Focus emotions shows up and starts yanking me around.”

  “You’re saying this is juice related? This is something he’s doing to me?”

  Gail shook her head. “I think ‘doing’ is too strong a word for what’s going on. I believe this is a juice level attraction, at least from your end. I don’t think the same thing’s happening on his end, but I could ask if you wanted.”

  “NO!” Sylvie’s eyes went wide. “No, no, no! I would die of embarrassment. I. Do not. Want this.” Sylvie balled her fists and radiated anger. “So this insanity is what you’re always going through?”

  “Uh huh,” Gail said. “The juice has a mind of its own. Well, not really, but it sure acts that way at times.” She paused. “You’re supposed to feel sympathy for what I’m going through, now.”

  “I’ll schedule it for later, dammit.” Sylvie reached over, grabbed a pin-cushion, and tossed it at Gail. “Now, since you chased away Betha and Vera, why don’t you do their job and pin up this hem. We have less than a week before your wedding, remember?”

  Gilgamesh: May 13, 1969 – May 14, 1969

  Gilgamesh walked, anxious to see where his feet took him today. He had mastered walking zazen last week. Now he walked while his mind wandered elsewhere. So far his feet had taken him to all the Detroit Focus’s households, to the gristle dross-fouled Detroit Transform Clinic, to the Riverview hospital basement and some Crow graffiti written there by Guru Innocence some number of years ago (warning of Stalin, next to a Transform holding tank), to Tiger Stadium, to the Dearborn Hyatt, and to Ford’s giant River Rouge Complex. Today his feet led him north and west, through Dearborn Heights. Then Livonia. Then Novi.

  He squelched his feelings of panic and his righteous annoyance over the two letters in his pocket. This wasn’t Detroit, this was the suburbs. Every step took him farther north and west of his responsibilities. Was this right? Was this a trap? He was now so far from Detroit that he didn’t sense any Transforms; the last had been Whisper, well over an hour ago.

  A sense of freedom ran through him, though, now that his metasense no longer burdened itself with Transforms. Out away from the city he was able to sense more, as if he possessed an extra sense beyond his metasense.

  The true pheromone flow. He had experienced it, occasionally, on his trips across the country, in the rural areas, but he had never before trekked while meditating in such a fashion. Walking in a dream. He metasensed a few Monsters out there, dozens of them, not too far to the west, perhaps twenty or thirty miles. Not in a Hunter pack, but living in adjacent territories. Why there, and why nowhere else, and why clustered together? He had no idea.

  He also metasensed the distant presence of a Focus and her household to the northeast. She had to be Focus Claire Montclair. From Keaton’s records he knew Focus Montclair transformed in ‘65 and that she lived in a rural area northeast of Pontiac.

  Thirty miles or more away. Focus Montclair was so nondescript a Focus she didn’t even have a Crow nickname. He only picked her up in the pheromone flow because there was nothing else nearby.

  He let Focus Montclair seep out of his mind; he wasn’t headed her direction anyway. As the night deepened he passed Walled Lake, and soon walked into the town of that name to the north of the lake.

  Here.

  But why? No Transforms lived in this town. No dross, no nothing. No Focus would be able to live in a place so suburban ritzy anyway, unless they were named Lori Rizzari. Still, he continued. Shopping centers. Schools. Parks. Suburban houses. They all called to him, somehow.

  The call had nothing to do with the letters; the letters sent to him care of Gail and Watchmaker, with Battle Creek and New York City postmarks. The letters even made sense, if he let himself think about them rationally. This was something else, as if he followed the trail of someone’s life. People’s lives.

  One subdivision of large houses on large lots. A small medical building. A church. The latter almost ached in its call.

  This didn’t get him anywhere; he had gone as far as possible with his mystical meditation trick. He dropped out of his meditative state, found a small shopping center roof where he could lie down flat and hide, and did so.

  He wracked his brain for ideas about what to do next as the suburb woke up around him. He watched as the men drove to work, then as the children walked, rode a bus or drove to school.

  One high school student, a young man, pulled into the shopping center parking lot, got out of his car, and looked around. Another car pulled up next to him, a young woman, and got out of her car.

  Gilgamesh’s stomach did a belly flop into a sea of unease. Jenny! As she planted her lips on her boyfriend’s and then stroked his back, tears rolled down his face. His eldest daughter had a boyfriend. Jenny, who o
nce said she hated boys and never ever wanted to date, had a boyfriend. Of course, Gilgamesh hadn’t seen her in the three years since he transformed, which took her from the end of 8th grade right into her junior year of High School.

  Then it hit him: his former family lived here in Walled Lake. That’s what drew him to Detroit. The family Transform Sickness had ripped out of his life. The family he never could return to, could never acknowledge.

  His tears flowed in agony and loss.

  He couldn’t help himself. With not too much trouble he found his other three children, Greg, Eric and Roxanne, in their schools. Eric he wanted to thrash; he had grown into a bully. Around eleven he spotted Gina, his wife, driving to the grocery store for some Monday shopping, car window down, looking noticeably older than he remembered. She would be turning thirty-eight in two months.

  He couldn’t help himself. He broke every rule in the Crow book and stalked his former wife through the grocery store. She didn’t notice. She smelled the same, moved the same, and acted the same.

  She saw him and didn’t recognize him.

  The engagement ring and wedding band on her finger weren’t his. They were new.

  He pretended not to notice her. He certainly didn’t speak to her.

  Gina dressed nicer than he remembered. More expensive clothes. Better makeup. Dizzy with realization after realization, he left the store, found a dark place to hide, and composed himself. Or tried. This was worse than being Enkidu’s captive. Fate played football with his heart. He had already left scratch marks on his scalp. He had cried so much he wanted to vomit.

  He couldn’t help himself. Two hours later he found Gina’s car parked in the driveway of a two story colonial style house on a half-acre lot three blocks from the lake, surrounded by a yard dotted with old oak and pine trees. He had made good money in Miami, but he had never been able to afford a house like this. He broke in silently and gave himself a tour, avoiding Gina with ease. Of all the children’s rooms, Jenny’s room most resembled what he remembered. Roxanne’s was the most different. It was a mess, with a music stand, sheet music, and an instrument case with a flute in it. One of his children was musical? He found this the hardest to believe.

  He found no pictures of him on the walls or on the end tables. The house held no sign he ever existed. The man who replaced him? A senior plant engineer working at Ford, in the River Rouge complex. The man was a short and bulky fellow, years older than Gina, starting to bald on top, a man who in every picture looked like he needed a shave.

  He looked happy in all the photos Gilgamesh saw. Gilgamesh felt like he almost knew him. He knew the type: men married to their job, quiet men with a passion for their long hours of work and no time for dating. Ripe for the picking if any woman found them and plucked.

  Gina had plucked. This was her work.

  The worst heart-breaker of all was the newborn, less than a year old. He couldn’t imagine what Gina had been thinking, having another child at her age. Gina even had enough money for a sitter, a young woman of dubious intellect, who slurred her one and two syllable words. She did love Gina’s new child, though.

  Gilgamesh fled the house when the baby started to cry. He never learned her name.

  The rest of the day and into the night, he raged around the lake, frightening all who came near, and now understanding his Arms.

  ---

  “Ma’am, I want to speak to Carol in private,” Gilgamesh said. His hands shook. He barely held on to the pay phone.

  “I’ll send her out,” Kali said. “I need a break anyway.” She hung up.

  Now wasn’t the time for this, but Gilgamesh was out of time. Out of patience with himself, and the world. The Arms were stressed and angry, matching his mood. Tiamat had been sharing space with Kali for two days, doing fight preparations. Supergirl had shown up today, living out of a hotel room a few miles away. It took a lot to force the Arms to work together so closely.

  Tiamat walked out of Kali’s place and Gilgamesh started his approach. He knew how Kali had handled Newton ‘deserting her’; it didn’t matter that the Newt had been captured by Wandering Shade and turned into a weapon to use against Stalin. Only Newton’s failure mattered.

  What Gilgamesh did, leaving Carol so he could go off and chase windmills, had been far worse. That he knew. Now? Time to pay the price for his foolishness.

  He didn’t much care what Tiamat chose to do to him. Not after today.

  “Ma’am. I’m here,” Gilgamesh said. He came around the bushes to where Tiamat waited just outside the row of overgrown boxwoods surrounding Kali’s house.

  “What’s going on?” Tiamat said. “Quickly, now. I need to get back to work.” Ice cold. His Tiamat had no warmth toward him at all.

  “I’m here to apologize and explain,” Gilgamesh said.

  “I’m not interested in the former. Be quick about the latter.”

  This went worse than he feared. This was Tiamat at her most terrifying. No friendly Carol today. “Ma’am, may I approach?”

  “Huh.”

  She even sounded like Kali right now. Bad. Very bad.

  Gilgamesh crept up. “I have two letters to show you, ma’am. The first was sent to Focus Rickenbach’s household, the second to Crow Watchmaker.”

  He handed over the letters.

  Dear Gilgamesh

  It is with a heavy heart that I must state that the bad news we’d feared has been confirmed. Your old friend Ezekiel was apparently killed in Miami in either the first or second week of March. Extensive work was involved in ferreting out this information, but evidence of a Beast Man-cleaned dross explosion was found in an attic storage over a fire station, along with mundane items believed to have been Ezekiel’s. I don’t wish to disturb you overly much, but none of Ezekiel’s correspondence or his writings were found. Many Crows are going to be changing their mailing addresses because of this.

  I thank you for the draft paper of Focus Rizzari’s regarding the physical gift of Focuses, and I apologize for the delay in relaying my thanks. I hadn’t expected her conclusion, that the physical gift of the Focus is the ability to survive extensive wounds and keep her mind and juice handling abilities functional. It does mirror the ability of Beast Men to keep their physical bodies functional regardless of the damage they have taken; and the pairing does mirror the Arm and Crow pairing of inhuman muscle efficiency (all muscles for Arms; fast twitch muscles for us Crows). Tiamat’s comment that Crows should train their sprinting and leaping abilities matches what Sky and a few other Crows have reported. Perhaps someday I will train those muscles myself. I find it most intriguing that this also follows Arm Haggerty’s predictions. I’d say she’s an Arm we have to watch, save I’d be redundant, with Midgard on the case.

  I wish I was able to tell you what has been going on in my life, but I can’t. I am recovering. Be careful who you listen to and trust. Things have moved from words to deeds, and much that appears real is not. You are one of the few who’s kept faith with me, for which I thank you.

  I don’t want you telling anyone, Gilgamesh, but I’m going to be at this Focus wedding trap. Crow Killer is specifically targeting my people, which makes this personal (sigh; yes, I’m the one this psychological quirk of ours comes from). I also fear he was behind the attack on me (I’ll save the panic-inducing story for much later) and I know he’s behind the smearing of my good name. I’m going in disguise. Keep an eye out for me and try to keep the Arms from killing me.

  With best regards,

  Shadow

  Gilgamesh

  I’m doing this as a favor for the General. Don’t make me regret it. If you wish to avoid being turned into a test subject of mine and howl the remainder of your life away in endless agony, you must surrender to me immediately, in Chicago. The information you carry with you will buy you a new name and a new station, as a leading Crow among the Hunters. I know where you live and every move you make; you are mine, as you always were. If you do not surrender, I will hunt you down personall
y once this is over. Don’t make me do so. You will regret your choice for all eternity.

  Shadow

  Tiamat read the letters and handed them back to Gilgamesh. “Has this changed your mind about Shadow?”

  “The letters have made me more confused than ever, ma’am,” he said. She glared at him, and he moved a step back. “The handwriting is the same, as is the paper; the first was written with a ball point pen, while the second was written with a fountain pen. They are both scentless. Everything is consistent with the theory that Shadow is Rogue Crow and insane, as well as with the theory that Rogue Crow has stolen Shadow’s identity. I have one other bit of information you need to know.” He told Tiamat about Newton’s encounter with Wandering Shade, and how Wandering Shade visibly wore the Law in his glow. Which ‘Shadow’ did not, in the Dallas encounter.

  “Okay,” Tiamat said. “The letters do nothing for me, but Newton’s observation does. It says Rogue Crow does have the skill and talent to be masquerading as Shadow. It also says Rogue Crow has the skill and talent to be masquerading as you.”

  “If so, then why haven’t I attacked you?” Gilgamesh said, cheeky and uncaring as to the consequences.

  He probably shouldn’t have said such a thing, he realized, when, a blink later, he found himself with Tiamat’s hand around his neck, lifted in the air, Tiamat’s predatory eyes boring into his. “Urk!”

  Tiamat put him down and backed off, out of skunk range. He fell to the cracked pavement of the sidewalk. “I’m satisfied you’re Gilgamesh.” She still didn’t trust him. She had decided not to kill him, but it took work. She feared Rogue Crow had turned him to his side of the fight.

  “Carol, please,” he said. “I’m still your Crow.” His voice tailed off. “I am.”