All Beasts Together (The Commander) (10 page)

“I bound her with the Arm project.  She accepted it.”

“Without a Network contact, that’s meaningless,” Tonya said, annoyed.  She took a deep breath and forced her emotions off her body.  Johnny came through the door with a serving dish in his hands, took two steps into the room and retreated to the door, unable to hide his horror.  Battling Focuses spilled collateral damage on any Transform in the vicinity.  Tonya nodded and Johnny crept in and served lunch as unobtrusively as the circumstances permitted.

“Thank you,” Lori said to him, hitting him with enough charismatic thanks to humble the strongest Transform.  Tonya fumed.  Lori had instantly
recognized Johnny as one of Tonya’s projects and expressed her disapproval of Tonya’s methods.  Yet another of their heated disagreements of the last three years.  Lori disapproved of juice conditioning for some specious scientific reasons Tonya thought were utter crap.  Lori had tried to convince Tonya to use charisma-based positive reinforcement methods instead.  Tonya argued the superiority of juice conditioning because the conditioned Transform could sense what was happening to him, which wasn’t the case for charismatic conditioning.

Either method was cold and dark enough to send nine of ten Focuses screaming in terror from the both of them.  About the only thing she and Lori agreed upon these days was that Focuses had to be hard, mean and fair.  Neither thought the standard Focus operating methods
were worth spit in a bottle.

“I disagree, Tonya,” Lori said, turning back to her after consuming a deviled egg in two bites.  “Hancock is nothing at all like your description of Keaton.  She’s an Arm on the ragged edge, weak as
a kitten and farther up her ass in alligators than either of us at her age.  She’s also smart as a whip, good enough to challenge either of us on our better days.”  Lori locked her eyes with Tonya and pushed charismatically.  Tonya pushed back.  Their wills locked, and neither gave an inch.

“You roll her?”

“What do you think?” Lori said.

“You should have had her coming back to you every month or so, if she’s so weak.  Kept her where we could keep an eye on her.”

“I decided that wasn’t in her best interest.  Hancock needs to be strong and independent.”

“You’ve given her a license to poach tagged Transforms, then,” Tonya said.  The last thing the Network or the Council needed was a rogue Arm terrorizing the weaker Focuses.  Tonya wanted to take Lori’s arrogance and stuff it back down her throat.  What idiocy!

“I’ve done no such thing,” Lori said, lowering her chin as she continued to stare at Tonya.  “Hancock was so firmly abashed about taking the one tagged Transform she did take I can’t imagine she would ever take another, unless she ends up stuck in the situation she was in when she took Kensington.  She wanted punishment.  I actually had to increase the punishment we’d chosen to fit her expectations.”

“What else did you get out of her?”  Crap, Tonya thought.  Lori wasn’t telling her the full story.  Not even close.  There didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it, either.  “Are you positive she’
s taken just the one tagged Transform?”  According to Council President Keistermann three tagged Transforms had been killed and one, a woman, kidnapped, since Hancock’s graduation.  Then Hancock goes and admits to taking one.  Case closed, right?

“I can assure you Hancock is responsible for only one poached tagged Transform,” Lori said.  “I’m absolutely positive of that.”  Lori dropped her mask for a moment, allowing Tonya to read the truth of Lori’s statement.

So Lori liked the Arm, eh?  Interesting.  Tonya had met with Keaton several times before the bloodthirsty Arm got so deeply under her skin.  Arms were seductive, at least to a lonely hard-edged Focus stuck dealing with only motherly Focuses.  Tonya had worked hard to bring a little civility to Keaton early on, and once she had done so, an unexpected compatibility between them appeared.  Zielinski had reported that Hancock was bright and curious, and becoming an Arm had let loose her temper and given her some hard edges she lacked as a normal.  As Lori shared those traits, compatibility with Hancock made unfortunate sense.

At least Lori
made no mention of Tonya’s mystery letter writer’s threatened ‘number two catalyst’.  Tonya suspected the aforementioned catalyst to be a Crow, a former companion of her mystery letter writer, who she guessed to be the Madonna of Montreal.  She also suspected Lori, with her many Crow contacts, would naturally be the target of whatever strange bit of manipulation the Madonna had threatened.

“As to what else I got out of her…”  Lori paused and with her hard eyes led Tonya’s eyes around the room, to all the normal places electronic bugs might
land.  Tonya signaled the room was clean.  “I got her story and the hand she severed from a Chimera during the fight that dropped her to the edge of withdrawal.”  Lori reached inside her portfolio and passed her a Polaroid of the hand in question.  “I’ve preserved it cryogenically for Zielinski to look at if he can ever get his posterior back from Germany.”

“I’ll expect a report,” Tonya said, covering up her indignation and horror. 
Lori didn’t usually deal in lies and possessed no patience for nonsense.  If anything, she was too blunt in her political assessments.  Still, a severed hand from a Chimera strained credibility.  Tonya thought for a moment and a horrible possibility occurred to her.  “Hancock didn’t give any hints she may be working with the Dreaming, did she?” Keaton had never shown any sign of it, but then, not all Focuses could access the Dreaming.  If Hancock had stumbled on the Dreaming, that might explain a whole host of odd behaviors, as well as make her considerably more dangerous.

“No, not at all,” Lori said.  Tonya relaxed. 
The Arms’ blunt and brutal nature gave them natural limits.  Tonya had an occasional flash of worry there might be more to them than she knew.  But just an occasional flash.

“I
also want a report of what happened to her, and her capabilities.”  Now there was a hopeless request.  No matter what Rizzari discovered, she wouldn’t pass on anything Tonya didn’t already know.

“Of course,” Lori said.  “I’m not going to give you the entire story, but I’ll pass along the basic outline.  Hancock was hunting and got jumped by a Chimera just after taking a Transform.  The Chimera was indeed a shape-changer,
a wolf-man.  He showed the properties I previously predicted and matched the description of the survivor of the events in Philadelphia.  Hancock barely got away with her life and climbed into the back of a camper to escape.  When she woke next and got out of the camper, she was in a strange town, near withdrawal, and found herself in some new Arm near-withdrawal state we never suspected before.  She was without volition, similar to the psychotic state male Transforms can fall into during periwithdrawal.  When she came back to herself she found herself standing over the Transform, Kensington, having drained and killed him.  She grabbed Kensington’s wallet and fled.  Later, she managed to figure out she was in Pittsburgh and in trouble, because Keaton never hunted Pittsburgh and had forbidden Hancock the same.  Hancock tried to get out of town but ended up chased by Focus Patterson’s Transform soldiers.  By the way, she sensed the juice patterns Focus Patterson uses to enhance her Transforms but didn’t recognize them for what they were.  All she knew about the juice patterns was that her instincts told her the enhanced Transforms were dangerous.  Patterson’s soldiers boxed her in and almost forced her into Focus Patterson’s compound, but a Crow named Rumor rescued her.  That matches what I already knew from my Crow contacts, that a Crow named Rumor haunts Pittsburgh, warning other Crows to stay away from the place because it’s too dangerous.  Rumor rolled her with Crow charisma and chased her out of town, but not before grabbing a brain-nulled and recently untagged Transform out of another trap Focus Patterson was running and feeding it to Hancock.  Then she came to me.”  Lori paused, before continuing with a shit-eating grin.  “I’d like to see how you’re going to write that up for the Council, Tonya.”

Tonya fumed. 
Much as she would like to believe Lori had made a trip into Lori-land and now fed her some improbable bit of theoretical nonsense, Lori had let down her defenses enough for Tonya to read, charismatically, the truth in her story.  There was no way in hell Tonya could ever tell anyone on the Council the story.  Passing it along to Focus Patterson, Tonya’s main political ally among the first Focuses, would mean the end of her and her household.

“…and so Rizzari assured me Hancock wasn’t behind the attacks on the other tagged Transforms,” Tonya said into the handset.  The afternoon sun shone through lace curtains to illuminate piles of paperwork on her desk.

“Well.”  Polly Keistermann paused.  Tonya
heard the faint clatter of carts, tinny over the long distance the phone line.  In addition to Polly’s job as President of the Focus Council and Tonya’s official boss, one of many, she also ran a household.  Polly’s Long Island-based catering service earned significant money, rare among Focus households, and kept her people fully employed.  “I’m not sure I trust Focus Rizzari’s judgment, Tonya.  She’s always taken a liberal and lenient approach to the other Major Transforms, and her reaction to Hancock follows in this pattern.  Do you have any idea why Hancock went to Rizzari?”

Tonya ruffled through the notes on the conversation, and her notes regarding Focus Rizzari.  “They have a common connection in Henry Zielinski.”

“Not him again.  Bah.” Another sore subject she didn’t want to discuss.  “Tonya, what do you think about Hancock’s potential culpability?”

“She still could be the one behind the Transform killings and kidnappings.  Despite Keaton’s assurances on the subject, I also suspect she set up that Monster attack on Keaton as revenge.” 
By Polly’s orders, Chimeras were Monsters.

“Revenge?  Whatever for?”

“Keaton didn’t want to let her go and wanted to keep Hancock around as a partner or some other Arm obscurity.  Hancock left Keaton immediately before Keaton was attacked, remember.”

“Ah.  The trusted flunky absconds with the family jewels or some such and sets up her former superior to be whacked.
  How Focus-like.  Tell you what, Tonya.  Since Keaton has relocated to the West Coast, your job as Keaton’s Network Contact has gone dormant.  So I’ve got a new project for you.”

Tonya cursed
under her breath.  She had been afraid Polly would spot her few minutes extra of free time.  Tonya knew Polly and the other Council members didn’t trust her, for various reasons.  They kept her busy as a result, with the most difficult jobs available.

“Polly, I’m not exactly wallowing in free time down here.”

“You’ll do fine, especially since I can hear your interest in your voice.  I’m assigning you the project of figuring out what’s going on with the Transform killings and kidnappings.”

Bad, bad.  The political implications of fail
ure were chilling.  Even if the project proved impossible, failure might easily mean an end to Tonya’s career.  “I’m going to need some cover, Polly.  I’m not about to do that one publicly.”

“I understand,” Polly said.  “This project is for my eyes only.  We don’t go to the Council until we get results.  However, I want results, Tonya.”

Tonya rubbed her forehead, her headache getting worse.

“One other thing,” Polly said.  “I’ve picked up some, um, chatter among the Transforms I find disturbing.  There’s a new power arisen among the Major Transforms.”

Tonya winced.  “One of the Arms?”

“No, I’m fairly sure it’s not them.”  Polly paused to write something down.  “It’s someone of our age or older, and someone who’s previously shown little power or interest in greater matters.”

“Is it someone we can recruit for the Council?” Tonya asked.  She wanted several of the weaker Focuses on the Council replaced.

“I’m not even sure it’s a Focus,” Polly said.  “More importantly,
this new power is extremely anti-Council.  This new power is a danger to us, and we need to keep our eyes open for problems.  And watch our backs more vigilantly than normal.”

Tonya shivered at Polly’s tone of voice. 
She had gained her information from the Dreaming, and it didn’t sound good at all.

---

“Tonya!  So glad to hear from you.”  The voice on the other end of the telephone came from Focus Michelle Claunch, the first Focus who ran the Focus Network.  Not one of Tonya’s friends.  Claunch’s voice was dynamic, trained and attention grabbing, as befit a Focus with a day job reading news for a Baton Rouge radio station.

“I saw the piece they did on you in Esquire! 
Fantastic!”  Tonya said.  The two of them went on to chat about the perils and pitfalls of magazine interviews.  Like Tonya, Claunch was a celebrity Focus.  Tonya thought a glamour spread in a men’s magazine was a bit tacky, but that was Claunch.  She did tacky glamour.

Eventually, they got down to real business.  “I have the information you requested on the new Arm, Hancock.  She’s associated with one of the following ISF Focuses…”  Tonya read off the list.

“Well, thanks for making things difficult,” Claunch said, after Tonya had finished.  She sighed.  “I suppose Focus Rizzari’s the one to blame.  Too bad you’re not up to hammering her, the same way you mangle those guest Transforms of yours.”