All Beasts Together (The Commander) (6 page)

The Transforms followed, well back.

Ten minutes of walking later, a third Transform came into range to the east, about six hundred feet to the east of the Nadine street intersection.  At least Nadine led away from the river, though I would be in for a climb.  I turned on Nadine another five minutes later and started up the hill.  Once away from the river the light industrial buildings changed to an area of well-off homes.  Behind me, one Transform followed my trail, while the second one cut off to my left through a country club, and the third, the first one to start trailing me many miles ago, followed me on my right, walking briskly through alleys behind some older industrial warehouses.  A few minutes later I crested the hill and stopped cold.  At the edge of my range to the south, in the well-off residential district, I sensed something bad.  Dozens of Transforms, no, almost a hundred Transforms.  They sat inside something that felt like the gut of a Monster, bad juice beyond measure.

Waiting.  Hungry.

Ah.  This was the lair of Keaton’s Focus-from-Hell.  Not a place I wanted to be.

Two more Transforms appeared to my senses, one to the east cutting across the country club and one to the southeast
of my current road.  They had me surrounded.  I would have to fight.  I weighed my options and decided the best fight lay to the east.

“Not that way, Arm,” a voice said behind me.  I turned
and saw nothing.

“Through the warehouse,” the voice said.  “Double back to the west.  I’ll help you.”

The voice was male, quiet, very quiet, and surprisingly calming.  I turned and headed back into the light industrial area toward the voice, along a narrow driveway, and then into the warehouse.  The Transforms started to converge on me.

“Out the back, down the alley toward Lincoln,” the quiet voice said, ahead of me.  I followed, worked out a path in my head.  Unless other
s tailed me, I would only have to face one of the Transforms.  Probably out on Lincoln, if the voice told the truth about the road ahead of me.  Lincoln must be paralleling the road I had been on, and once on it, my way to the west and out of the trap was clear.  I would face only one male Transform, who stopped in recessed entryway ahead of me, waiting for me to pass.

“Cross the road,” the voice said.  “I’ll
handle the Transform.”

A foul drenching of Monster juice arced across Lincoln as I jaywalked across the road,
the Monster juice dropping on my Transform pursuer.  My pursuer stopped cold.

“Run,” the quiet voice said.

“I’m too injured to run,” I said.  Quiet.  My rescuer had to be a Major Transform and I guessed Crow, based on Zielinski’s description.  I had never met a Crow before.  So far I liked what I saw.  Or didn’t see.

“Damn.”  Pause.  “Keep walking.  I’ll stay with you.”

I walked.

Funny thing, my pursuers decided to stop pursuing when they trailed up to where the suspected Crow had flattened the one Transform.

“You’re not going to show yourself, are you?” I
said.  Some predator I was.  With every step, something soft and squishy shifted inside me, sending electric blasts of pain through my body.  One foot in front of the other, keep the fancy banter in my voice, navigate by sense of smell since my eyes overflowed with tears of pain.  I wanted to run this guy down and get some real answers.  Fifteen blocks and he still paced me, not giving me a word.

No answer.

“I can’t even metasense you,” I said.  Not that I metasensed much at the moment.

“Look.  I
’m where you hear me, not more than four hundred feet away.  I’m not even trying to hide.”  I didn’t know how he did the voice trick.  He whispered but he somehow directed the faint sound to me.  My ears were good, but not that good.  He heard my whispers; his ears were better than mine, assuming he used ears and not some juice trick.

Turn
ed out if I had kept walking through the park on the path I had been following, I would have come to a bridge over the Allegheny.  We were both on the far side, and no, I had no idea how he got across the bridge without letting me see him.  My nameless friend had a lot of talent.

I wanted to get in his face and scream.  My negotiating position sucked and I hated it.  He
didn’t press me, though.  Not taking advantage of me when he could.  What did that say about his personality?  About the personality of Crows?

I looked.  Actually put work into
my metasense.  There he was, indistinct and fuzzy, but intricate as all get out.  I caught the analogy immediately: he was to a Chimera what a Focus was to an Arm.  He wasn’t my prey, not even slightly.  I would choke on him as easily as I would choke on a Chimera.

“Got it.  Like a Chimera in substance but a Focus in style.”

He stopped.  Put his hands on his hips.  “What does an Arm see when she sees a Crow?” he said.  First time he admitted to being a Crow.  From his voice, I realized he didn’t like being compared to a Focus.

“What does a Crow see when he sees an Arm?” I returned.

“Where did you see Beast Men?  Chimeras?” he said, question for question.

“Why did you save my life from the Transforms who were trying to capture me?” I said.  Wind blew through my hair and he flickered out of my metasense for a moment
.  He appeared on the other side of me about fifteen seconds later.  Did I make him nervous?  Well, too bad.  He made me nervous and in my current state, I couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

“Why are you in Pittsburgh?”

“Let’s sit down at a restaurant and have lunch,” I said.  “I’m starving.”

“You would be comfortable talking to me in person?” he asked.  No, I couldn’t get a name out of him, either.  “You’re as terrified of me as I am of you.”

“Fear?  Fear is a tool that keeps you awake when you have to pay attention to what you’re doing.”  Arm philosophy 101.  “The day you let fear rule you, you’re dead.”

“Perhaps as an Arm,” he said. 
He paused, hopped up to a fire escape fifteen feet above the ground, then swift as a monkey, climbed to the roof of the building.  “As a Crow, fear rules everything.  Everything is feared.  Some things are more fearsome than others.”

“Like myself.”

“Yes.”

We were trading information.  Sort of.

“You go get yourself food.  We can continue talking while you eat,” he said.  “My name is Rumor.”

“Carol Hancock.” 
Trading with Rumor might be damned stupid.  I weighed my options.  Not stupid, just a gamble, that he wouldn’t kill me afterwards.  That Monster juice spray of his could do it.  I knew the deadly nature of Monster juice.  Of course, he – Rumor –  always had that option.

I found a lunch place serv
ing Philly Cheese Steaks.  I would never admit it to anyone else, but I actually missed Philadelphia a little.  At least their yummy greasy food.  “I’m in Pittsburgh by accident.  As soon as I can get out of here, I’m gone.”

“Good,” he said.  I ordered three Cheese Steaks and four bags of chips, and for my efforts got a funny look from the guy at the counter.  I paid him an IOU and forced him to take it.  I wondered what the local detectives were going to make of the Jimmy Hoffa IOUs I
had been scattering hither and yon.  I collected my order and sat by the front window.

“I saved you for two reasons, young Arm.  The first was that I didn’t want Focus Patterson getting her hands on an Arm.  That’s the last thing the world needs.  She’s dangerous enough as it is.”  The monster Focus was Patterson?  The leader of the Focus
breakout from the Transform Quarantine?  The Focuses had big problems of the stomach clenching variety.  I ate a Cheese Steak and thought dark thoughts.

I spotted Rumor on the roof across the street, with a single Cheese Steak, bag of chips, pickle and a soda.  He
had gotten in and out without my noticing.  I was impressed.

“The second reason,” he said, in a whisper, around a mouthful of pickle, “is what you have in your pocket.”

I tapped Enkidu’s hand.  “This?”

“Yes.”

“
Mine!
” I said, grabbing it closer to my body.  I did realize how silly I was being and I didn’t care.  I could reign in my Arm possessiveness if I tried, but now, I had other things to reign in, such as pain, as my innards rearranged themselves.

“It smells of Chimera, as do your wounds.”

Sudden runnels of sweat dripped down my back under the torn sheets bandaging my non-existent tits.  Rumor’s observation unnerved me.  He sensed too much.  At my sudden mood shift, he flew – okay, leapt – to a building farther away, still with the Cheese Steak in his hand.  He settled at the edge of my metasense range, and ate.  Now we were too far apart to talk.  I thought as I ate.  I had gone predator at him, annoyed at the acuity of his observations.  I hadn’t gone very predator, but even what little predator I showed was too much for him.

Boy
, were Crows touchy!  Now I knew why none of the rest of us Major Transforms knew jack shit about them: they were all terrified of us.  Terrified of normals, too, I bet.

All of a sudden, I knew I needed to continue talking to Rumor.  I closed my eyes and meditated, the way I did before an exercise session.  I visualized myself not as a predator, but luxuriating in a warm bath, letting my body almost float…

After Rumor finished his lunch, he came back to whispering distance.  “I apologize,” he said.  “I don’t know what I said to upset you, but I apologize for saying it.”

“Crows watch, don’t they?”

“Some Crows watch the Arms.”

I stood and left the diner, still munching down one last Cheese Steak.  “The Chimera paw in my pocket upsets you.  You don’t know why I have it there, do you?”

“It implies you defeated a Chimera.  Your wounds imply a fight with a Chimera.  Yet,” he paused, “why bother with a trophy from a mindless beast?  My apologies if you collect such things, madam Arm.”

“It wasn’t a mindless beast, Rumor,” I said, with a snarl.  Predator indeed, but
I didn’t aim my ire at Rumor.  Rage at Enkidu filled me, for the two hundred and thirty second time since the fight ended.  Rumor didn’t flee.

“How do you know this?”

“It talked in complete and occasionally intelligent sentences.  It wanted revenge for something my teacher and I did to him several months ago.  I think there is a distinct possibility it hunted me down…”

Rumor vanished.

Something walked close to me, hidden from view.  Something immensely powerful.  I ducked into an alley, backpedaled into the back doorway of an old German restaurant, and brought out both my knives.  I refused to be defeated without a fight!

“I still mean you no harm,” Rumor said. 
He
was the immensely powerful thing that approached?  His power didn’t come from normal juice, but something else, like tamed Monster juice or a derivative.  He had been holding back, just like I had been holding back on my predator effect.

“Come no closer,” I said.  Demanded.  With malice aforethought.  As the predator.

“I
must
see the hand,” Rumor said.  “I pledge to harm it in no way and will return it to you within a few seconds.”

The Crow, terrified of me before, was no longer terrified.  No,
I didn’t read him right.  He acted as he needed to while terrified nearly beyond his wits.  As he acted, he revealed the trick Officer Canon had used against me, only better: Rumor now hid from my visible sight and my metasense.  He stood close enough to me to be practically breathing down my neck.

“What’s it worth to you?” I said.

“I saved your life.  Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“I’ve restrained myself so you can talk to me and ask your questions.  Doesn’t
my patience mean anything?”  I gave him the full predator, tinged by burning juice.  He took two steps back.  I heard his steps.

He sighed.  “I don’t want to slip up and harm you, madam Arm.  Yet your threats move me to protect myself.” 
He paused and thought.  “I have money.  Information.  I can lead you to a Transform man who will soon be nabbed by Focus Patterson for a fate that makes the predatory kill of an Arm and the softness of a baby’s cheek seem indistinguishable.”

“I’ll take all three.”  I
would be willing to bargain down to just the juice but I wasn’t giving in without bargaining.

Another sigh. 
No bargaining. Interesting.  “Focus Patterson is the boss Focus of the Focuses in the United States,” he said.  So much for Zielinski’s belief in her retirement.  “She’s a witch.  She’s not to be trifled with.  I would say she’s evil, but all Major Transforms are evil.  She’s more evil than either of the two of us.  Her evil is different, unbelievable.”

I brought out Enkidu’s hand.  “I have a question to ask.  I’ve seen the trick you’re using now to hide from my vision and metasense before, from an evil Transform
who masqueraded as a police officer, trying to recruit me.  The question is: did I run into a Crow?”

I heard the faint whisper of
Rumor’s breathing as he studied Enkidu’s severed hand.  “It’s still alive.  It’s in withdrawal, but it’s alive.  In about ten days it will hit withdrawal death.  Only then will it decay.  Only the Major Transform metabolism of a Beast Man can allow his flesh to do such things.”  He paused.  “Any sufficiently skilled and mature Major Transform can arrange his or her own invisibility, each in his own way.  At the present time, in the United States, only Crows and Focuses are mature enough, and of Focuses and Crows, only a few are dedicated enough to learn such skills.”  He paused.  I cursed my youth and weakness.  The lone wandering Arm routine looked more dangerous by the second.  I needed to get back to Chicago, dig myself a hole, crawl into it, and
improve
.  “You sensed your attacker’s evil,” Rumor said.  “In your view, am I evil?”