All Beasts Together (The Commander) (45 page)

I turned the tables on him and smiled a hint of a smile.
“What do you want from me?”

I knew the answer already.  But he needed to tell me.

He looked up at me, leaned his head back against the headboard, and wrapped the comforter tighter.

His answer
surprised the hell out of me.

“I want to be somebody.  As yours, obeying you, loyal to you, and under your power,” Bobby said.  Hell.  My eyes misted up.  “Oh, and I want you to fuck my brains out.”

I chuckled, a low, evil sound, with a hint of steam in it.  Bobby’s breath caught.  His little soldier hid under layers of comforter but I didn’t have to see it to know he was waking up.  I had expected the last part of his statement.  The other?  He gave me the bright future on the distant horizon: people who were mine who wanted to be mine.

I wanted
people who wanted to be mine, I realized.  I wanted lots of them.

I let that steamy heat enter my smile and leaned slowly forward to Bobby.

---

As the morning crept on into noon, Bobby slept again.  I curled around him, filled with
a post-sex happy glow, and drifted back to sleep, only to be awakened by yet another nightmare.  This one featured three Chimeras, along with their harems, who appeared in my dream as intelligent Monsters.  At least I understood where the Chimera nightmare came from!

I
gazed over at Bobby, smelled the ripe scent of drying sweat and sex and loved him completely.  I thought I had finally fixed the harm I had done to him.  Now I had the opportunity to make up to him for the pain I caused and give him the life he dreamed of now.  Not a normal human life, but a life we both wanted.  What more can a person ask for than that?

For months, I
had been wondering what I was.  I had rejected human morality, both good and evil, sure, but I had to replace them with something.  Now, I had discovered a tiny piece of the puzzle.

Ownership was obligation.

I suffered no guilt over what I did to my normal prey, normal human or Transform.  Those people meant nothing to me.  Bobby was mine, though, and
mine
was different.  I held an obligation to him, to all the people I claimed.  It hurt me to hurt them.  I felt terrible when I hurt them, and doing so tied my head and heart in knots.  Hurting people I owned was wrong, a clear moral judgment
at the Arm level
.

I felt better for that realization
, a little less lost.  Perhaps I would find my way out of the darkness and find the redemption I hungered after.

Even better,
my plan to deal with those damned Chimeras was in motion.  I had a new and more defensible residence under construction.  I had also acquired some more powerful weapons, and some people ready to act when I called.  I even left a message for Keaton explaining what the Chimeras were doing, my response, and how I wouldn’t mind if she did a little hunting outside of Chicago for Chimera nests.  She would handle the timing herself; I was sure she had normal spies spying on me, as that’s what I would do in her shoes.

The next Chimeras to show up weren’t going to like my little surprise party.  Not at all.

Henry Zielinski: February 21, 1968

“We do have a chain of command here, Zielinski,” Dr. Bob said.  Dr. Bob Masterson was the head of the Inferno engineering team, a top-notch engineer and inventor, as well as an amateur Transform researcher.  Unlike many amateurs, Dr. Bob didn’t spout random ideas on the subject, at least around Hank.

“One of my many sins is going around chains of command,” Hank said
, trying not to think about how many layers of lies he spoke in this one simple sentence.  Although he wasn’t in charge of the training any longer, he still liked to study the results.  Dr. Bob had found him in the gym, watching Tim Egins run the new crop of adult bodyguards through their warm ups.  The gym was a busy place now, and even Lori had showed up this evening, sitting silently on the balance beam in her shorts and halter top.  He wrapped his jacket tighter.  The cavernous room seemed colder now that he was no longer involved.  “I’m sorry.  I only do it when it’s necessary.”  Unfortunately, Connie, the head of Inferno, hadn’t been able to cough up a suitably lofty position for him.  The Focus had scotched her proposal, according to Connie.  Connie thought he should be on the household leadership team, but the Focus couldn’t cope with normals as house leaders.  Dr. Bob had it worse; he led the most important money-making part of the household and he wasn’t on the leadership team, either.

G
oing around the chain of command became a necessity, not a sin.

“I’ve met quite a few arrogant SOBs in my day, but you take the cake, Zielinski.”  Dr. Bob shook his head, disgusted.  “I’m talking about this so-called Monster hunt you talked the Focus into.”
  The two of them backed away from the basketball court, to avoid disturbing the training Transforms, and huddled by the dumbbell rack.

“I understand,” he said.  “Unfortunately,
there is no chain of command for Major Transform political issues.”

“That’s because nobody at your level is supposed to be involved in Major Transform politics.”

Hank shrugged and gave Dr. Bob the eye.  “I’ve been involved with Major Transform politics since the Eisenhower administration.  Connie and the Focus pretending otherwise doesn’t change that.”

He
had dropped his final report and first edition of his Transform training manual on the Focus’s desk Sunday morning.  His part of the Transform training project was now officially finished; now the household, in preparation for the Monster hunt, implemented.  Ever since he started to make progress, Lori had been renewing the juice patterns on him that enabled the training, every Sunday afternoon.  Last Sunday she hadn’t; instead she reset the juice pattern keys so Tim and Shelly Darcie would take over as the official trainers.  Shelly already controlled one of the keys.  Tim now held Zielinski’s former position as official training head honcho.  Lori did the switch-over in person, changing things around, to support more trainees, a large enough shake-up in the household’s juice to make everyone edgy.

Dr. Bob leaned forward, to close to his ear.  “Connie’s
wants you on this crazy Monster hunt.  I’m not going to put up a fight, so you’re going.”

Hank chewed his lip
and decided not to say his first response: if Connie hadn’t invited him he would have gone over her head to the Focus.  “I understand the costs of my actions,” he said, instead.

Zielinski turned to watch Parker and Autumn sparring in hand to hand combat.  Those two show
ed the greatest improvement of the bunch, though the youngster, Amy, came in a close third.  Amy had been developing her talents in an entirely new direction, involving subjective invisibility, wall climbing, lock picking, and sleight of hand, as well as the more normal sprinting, leaping, and gymnastics improvement.  When Tim challenged her for wasting her time on a potentially futile exercise, she had replied “You won’t know until someone’s tried and failed, and better a thirteen year old without any responsibilities than one of you elders.”  Tim was only in his mid-thirties.  Zielinski felt old.

The more amazing thing about Amy’s experiment was it
s success.  Amy developed her tricks, slowly piecing them together on her own, and ramped them up to post-human levels.

Lori strode up while he concentrated on the training youngsters, her face a tight mask.  She didn’t normally come by the gym on a Tuesday evening, but today they were preparing for the Monster hunt.  “Good job, Henry.  No,” she said, her voice radiating warmth.  “Amazing job.  You saved many lives with this.  Inferno lives.  I’ve been watching the sparring this evening.  The improvements are more than just noticeable, they’re awesome.”

Zielinski nodded. 
She had an edge in her voice today he didn’t like, which started him worrying again about her relations with her boss, Focus Schrum.  He needed to start some contingency planning on a fallback position if he needed to leave Inferno.

His first choice, Carol, was still off the table because of the Chimera problem, and he doubted the Monster hunt would
fix the situation. He found the interference exceptionally irritating, because he had been holding information in his head so vital to the Arms that the first Focuses had a contract out on him.  Worse, Eissler had used a Keaton-style Arm charisma trick on him, preventing him from telling anyone what he learned except the Arms, in person.

His next best choice was
Special Agent Bates of the FBI.  He feared Bates might not be willing to go out on a limb for him again, though.  Unfortunately, his best FBI contact, Paul Gauthier, had been yanked from his position of Special Agent In Charge of Transform Affairs and now ran some sort of white crime investigation in New York City.

“I still haven’t gotten any response from Hancock,” Lori said.

“You should let me try again,” he said.  Connie had cut off his mail privileges after Carol sent Inferno the Chimera corpse, and the Focus had concurred.  They both feared his independence threatened household security.

“
That’s not going to happen,” the Focus said.  “I have a question for you, though, Henry: how are we going to protect you on the Monster hunt?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said.  “I
know how to use firearms.”

“You
do?” the Focus said, surprised.  “This I’ve got to see.  We’re going to our shooting range later tonight, and you’re coming along.”

“I don’t have any problems with that,” he said
, hiding a smile.

His firearms skills would impress anyone but an Arm.

Tonya Biggioni: February 22, 1968

Tonya, flanked by her bodyguard entourage, exited the Philadelphia CBS network affiliate.  The new producers had wanted comments on far too many sightings (and dead bodies) of what the Media called ‘Male Arms’ or ‘Male Monsters’, depending on the reporter or editor.  She had carefully followed the Council’s party line while leaving open the faint possibility that those who examined the bodies hadn’t been mistaken.  She didn’t like being a celebrity Focus, not these days, but her ‘expert television reports’ did bring money into the household.  What she wanted to talk about was the sudden dearth of Monsters in the Northeast Region.  Rizzari’s household people had actually sent in a written complaint about it to Tonya, wondering if the reporting procedures had fallen apart.  However, nobody was interested in good news.

Her car rolled up
to the entryway and Ralph handed her into the vehicle, which accelerated with Tonya only three quarters of the way inside.  A sudden swerve to the right bounced her to the bench seat and closed the door shut.  Tonya got a look at the driver…who wasn’t one of hers.

“Keaton!  What’s the meaning of this?”

“Nice to see you, too, bitch,” Keaton said, her face blank, both hands on the steering wheel of the car.  “Time for a talk where there aren’t any prying ears.”

Tonya didn’t respond, fuming.  Kidnapped!  Well, not really.  She wasn’t being restrained and she could leap out of the car if she wanted to.  Damned Arm.

“Who hunts Detroit?”  Tonya asked.

“Who would bother hunting in Detroit?” Keaton answered.  “Unless you want to bag scraggly dogs and rat-hunting cats.”

Tonya clenched her fists, heat on her face.  “I’m talking Arms and Transforms.”

“So why do you want to know?”

“Council business.”

“Great.  Look, I’m here to warn you and pass along some information,” Keaton said.  “Not play jump through hoops with the growing-ever-more-useless Focus Council.”

Tonya tensed, annoyed, issue upon issue bubbling up inside her.  “No more than I want to play jump through hoops with a growing-ever-more-useless Arm.”

Keaton skidded the car to a stop, now at least a dozen blocks from Tonya’s likely deathly frantic bodyguards and canted sideways across a quiet street
of tall narrow homes built around the turn of the century.  “I’m here to help you, you motherfucking moron,” she said, leaning over the back of her seat and getting into Tonya’s face.  “You don’t know…”

“What I know is that…”

“…jack shit about what’s going on, do you.  We’ve got a huge…”

“…someone, likely Hancock, has been poaching tagged Transforms left and…”

“…fucking problem growing with the Chimeras.  They’re all over the place…”

“…right.”  Tonya’s voice was now loud enough to hurt her own ears.  She continued to talk over the Arm’s rant.  “Don’t you fucking swear at me, you uncommunicative paranoid…”

“…and your ass kissing Council needs to stop licking each other’s pussies and…”

“…deal breaking ballbreaker.  If I was following the Council’s orders I’d take…”

“…listen to someone besides yourselves.  Hancock and I killed two of the…”

“…you down right here and now, so don’t push it, dammit.”

“…cocksuckers already and encountered more of these fucking Chimeras in the past year than the total number of Arms who have ever transformed in the States.”