All Beasts Together (The Commander) (9 page)

“Who could possibly be after you?” Lori asked.

I told the two of them about my encounter with Officer Canon in Philadelphia.

Lori and Ann
exchanged gazes and shrugged.

“What, you don’t believe me?”
They didn’t.  Hell.

“I believe you experienced what you experienced, Carol,” Lori said.  “However, any Focus or Crow able to do that trick is powerful enough to have, um, taken you out.”  Lori did something with the juice, and without warning
another Lori sat in Ann’s chair and the lab held one less Ann.  A moment later Ann reappeared, holding a gun on me.  I glared at her and she holstered it.

A threat so blunt should have sent me through the roof with adrenaline, ready to slaughter any attacker.  Instead, I merely felt
edgy.  I tried for an explanation and guessed Lori had calmed me with her charisma, charisma I hadn’t sensed in use.  I took a deep breath.  I didn’t want to get hostile.  Really.  Fuck.

“So?”

“I don’t believe that was an attack.  Aggressive recruitment attempt, yes.  Attack, no,” Lori said.  “And no, it wasn’t me.”

I
had only thought she might have been the attacker, and only for an instant.  I was profoundly glad Lori approved of me.  I was severely overmatched.

“Who might have done it?  Why?”

“There’s at least one member of the Focus Council who believes you’ve been poaching Transforms on a regular basis.  Starting before you left Keaton.”

“That’s…”  I stopped myself.  I
had seen Lori’s elaborate security precautions.  The powerful Focuses were paranoid.  “You know I haven’t.”

“I do now.”

“Your powerful Network Focuses aren’t much into polite, are they?”  Lori didn’t answer; impolite, and on purpose.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Lori said, after a painfully long pause.  “You reject the Network, you reject the Network.  You’re on your own.”

“I’ll deal with you.”

Lori
frowned.  She didn’t believe me.  “You won’t even tell me where your lair is.  What your goals in life are.  What you can actually do as an Arm.”

“Would you, if you were in my position
, Focus Rizzari?”

“Lori.”

She let down her mask and let me glimpse into her mind.  Hard eyes, pain, twisted longings. Shit.  The autopsy table wasn’t for donated Monsters; she went out and bagged them personally.  Lori Rizzari, Monster hunter extraordinaire.  She got off on the thrill.  She was a virgin.  She really was as fucked up in the head as Keaton and I.  She was, as I suspected, far more powerful than I was as a Major Transform.  I was too damn young.

Lori’s mask came back up.  Ann hadn’t seen a thing.

I figured out why she revealed herself to me.  “Lori.” She saw the real me, saw right through my supposed talents at hiding my thoughts and emotions.  Hell.  I had never imagined any of the motherly Focuses would possess Arm-like mental twists.  Nevertheless, here was more data confirming my complete ignorance of the real Transform community.

“You’re going to die, Carol
.” Lori truly feared for my life.  “You realize the Crow, Rumor, rolled you?  He got you out of Pittsburgh by main force of his charisma.  We didn’t know Crows even possessed charisma like that.  The world is a dangerous place for a young Major Transform.  You can’t survive alone.  I was pathetic for my first two years and nearly useless the next two.  Without the other Focuses, without the Network, without a household to protect me, I’d be dead.”

Ann laughed.  “Every year you say this is the first year you’ve really got your feet on the ground, Focus.”

“Come up with another solution,” I said.  There had to be another solution.  I held control of my reactions by sheer blind willpower.  If I let my instincts get involved, I would have knelt and given myself up to Lori.  Permanently.

Lori thought for a long minute.  “There are a few Focuses who’ve rejected the Network.  They might be willing to lend you a hand if you’re willing to l
air in the northern part of the United States.”

I stayed noncommittal.  Ann hissed.  “The Apostates?”  She shook her head.  “They aren’t much use as contacts.”

“The Network is a United States organization,” Lori said.  “Back a few years ago, the UFA tried to take over the rest of the Focuses in the western world and failed.”

The UFA
, the United Focuses of America, was the umbrella organization of Focuses behind the Network.

“The US Focuses have a harsh reputation and we aren’t trusted,” Lori said.  I couldn’t imagine why…  “The Canadian and European Focuses rejected the UFA and put together a rival group, the International Sisterhood of Focuses.  The ISF is a looser organization, more like a labor union with local groups holding the power.  There are four locals in Canada and one of them, the Ontario Local of the ISF, has eight US Focuses as members.  These eight US Focuses are sometimes termed the Apostates, because they rejected the UFA and the Network.  One of my Network jobs is to liaison with them.”

“I’m interested,” I said.

“For historical reasons the Ontario Local Focuses aren’t too keen on Arms,” Lori said.  “But they should be willing to talk to you over the phone.  I can give you
some contact numbers.  You’ll officially be a member of the Network, but your contact will be through them to me.”  She took out a piece of paper and wrote down some names, locations and phone numbers.  She handed me the list and I scanned it. One of these Apostates lived in Milwaukee.  That would do.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I do want you to get back in contact with me directly, later, when you’re ready.  You still owe the Network, and…”

“I’ll think about it
.” I didn’t like being pushed, and Lori had been pushing me the entire visit.

However, I
did agree to take on this debt, this project Lori had given me.  Dealing in person with Lori again would have to wait until I got my feet on the ground.  I would fall too easily under her sway.  I had no desire to become someone’s flunky, even someone I liked.  She had showed herself to me, though.  I owed her, personally.  “No.  I can promise I’ll get in touch with you later, once I get my life put together.”

“Fair enough.
”

Lori
gave me another touch of the hand as a goodbye and I got out of her lab as fast as possible.  If I stayed around her any longer I would never leave her side again.

I needed to get back to Chicago.

Enkidu: September 30, 1967

“Yes, it’s punishment,” the Wandering Shade said.  The light from the dusty window of the farmhouse illuminated him like a halo.  Enkidu stood before his Master in the unfurnished living room and bowed his head, ashamed and humiliated in front of the living Law.  Twice, he had fought Arms.  Twice, the Arms had survived him.

Both Arms knew who he was.  The other Transforms knew about Hunters now.  All these failures were his responsibility.

The world shat on him so much his conniving trainee, Horace, had beaten him in a challenge fight.  Now, taking the name of ‘Odin’, he had become the chief Hunter.

Enkidu could no longer stand to be in Odin’s presence.

“What’s the punishment, Master?” His Gals gave him no support.  They had fled to the basement the moment Wandering Shade appeared.

“You’ve become worthless to me, Enkidu, a Hunter too humbled by his flaws for true glory.  Instead, you’re going to serve me as a subject for my experiments.  In addition, I’m banishing you.  No longer will you be a Hunter among other Hunters.”  Enkidu
fought with Odin whenever he encountered the usurper, and with Odin’s newly transformed Hunter trainee as well.  “From now on you’ll live in eastern Missouri, your territory reduced to eastern Missouri and southern Illinois.”

Enkidu held up his hands, the one the Arm had cut off pink and freshly regrown.  “Master.”

The punishment was just.  He would have to prove his worth to his Master, the Wandering Shade, starting from scratch.

“It’s also opportunity, Enkidu,” the Wandering Shade said.  “Now that I
’m the Law, I see the Hunter Law is not yet complete.  Help me find these new Hunter Laws.  Make them work.  Make suggestions.  Help me figure out things.  Perhaps you can win yourself back some status.”

Enkidu looked up in shock. 
“Master?  The Law isn’t perfect?”  The thought brought tears of distress to Enkidu’s eyes.  The Law had to be perfect!

Tears.  Of his three forms (his beast form, his half-man half-beast, and his man form) the half-form was his least favorite.  Yet, it was the form his Master had demanded he use.  He couldn’t cry in his beast form. 
Enkidu liked that.

Wandering Shade sighed.  “If I’m going to get any use out of you I
need to remove that piece of the Law from you.  No, the Law isn’t perfect, as recent events have illustrated.  The Hunters need to be smarter.  Their man forms needs to be more man-like.  You need to be able to manage your pack better through their élan draws.  I suspect there are other changes the Hunter Law needs we haven’t even imagined yet.”

He
found himself breathing hard in barely suppressed panic.  The Law was perfect!  The Law made him perfect: only he, among the Hunters, had managed get himself an entire pack of Gals who talked.

H
e
had
failed with the Arms.  Perhaps he deserved only a broken Law.  He bowed his head again.  “Master.  I’m ready.”

“Good.  Let’s explore the Law together.”  Enkidu
grimaced in anticipated pain as he knelt on the rotted floor. Wandering Shade took Enkidu’s head in his hands.  An instant later, his supplemental juice vanished.  He gasped at the agony of the edge of withdrawal.  Cleo and his other three pack Gals howled from the basement in sympathetic agony.

Chapter 3

Success at one hard choice will always bring the Focus an even harder choice.

“Inventing Our Future”

Tonya Biggioni: October 2, 1967

“Focus Rizzari, I’m so glad you
could make it today,” Tonya said, clasping Focus Rizzari’s hand. “Would you like some lunch?”  Focus Biggioni was a tall woman, beautiful courtesy of her Focus transformation.  She was fifty-four but appeared nineteen, with a flawless olive complexion, unlined and framed by a cascade of black curls.  She stood lean and tall, showing the smooth curves and glowing energy of a strong body and excellent health.  Her household paused in late morning quiet, a quiet due to expire with the arrival of lunch and the trek of her people to the kitchen area.  She had been puttering around her office, starting her preparations for the day.  She had demanded Focus Rizzari visit her in person to discuss her meeting with the new Arm.  Tonya anticipated a difficult confrontation.

Rizzari nodded and followed as Tonya led Lori to her meeting room.  Like most rooms in the apartment building, the meeting room served double duty, in this case as a bedroom.  Shot and Johnny had
rolled away the cots and the room now supported a low coffee table and several comfortable chairs.

Lori
brought only two bodyguards with her, a little light for the justifiably paranoid Focus.  A compliment, indicating she considered Tonya’s household safe, or a backhanded insult, given the well-trained martial air her bodyguards, Tim and Tina, exhibited.  A social statement as well, pointing out to all who cared to notice that Lori trusted a woman bodyguard, while Tonya used only men.  Tina, as big as many of the male bodyguards, was a story in herself, a Transform woman who transformed in 1956 as a teen, one of Lucy Peoples’ household.  Focus Peoples, one of the first Focuses, died trying to pass juice to the first US Arm, Mary Chesterton, back before anyone understood the danger posed by Arms.

Focus Rizzari sat opposite Tonya and glared.  “I’m here.  Start grilling,” Lori said in her native clipped Boston Brahmin accent,
made much more noticeable by stress.  She didn’t want to be here and had been quite clear on the subject when they talked over the phone.  Even Lori, the severe academic, normally managed better courtesy.  In the corner, Rhonda Ebbs, Tonya’s aide, took notes in shorthand.

“Who’s Hancock’s Network contact, Lori?” Tonya said
, patient and polite.  If Tonya had walked into a meeting of this import sporting Lori’s attitude toward one of her own superiors, she wouldn’t walk out a free woman.  Lori, though, was more than another subordinate Focus.  As the current Vice President of the Northeast Region, both she and Tonya reported to Focus Schrum, the President of the Northeast Region, a politically powerful first Focus.  Lori might even be considered a peer, if one looked at it from a certain angle, which Lori certainly did.  She always did have a tendency to favor the theoretical over the practical realities.

“She doesn’t have one,” Lori said.
“She’s going through the Apostates to me.”

“You let her live?” Tonya asked.  Tonya had specifically ordered Lori to bind Hancock to the Network or dispose of her.  Killing a baby Arm should have been well within Lori’s capabilities.  Lori was plenty capable and she
had proved it repeatedly in the years since the Council had assigned her the responsibility of hunting Monsters.