In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6) (41 page)

“Arm Keaton, ma’am, may I ask what you’re protecting me from?”

Keaton didn’t answer.  Instead, she sniffed the air around her, and felt out with her hands, as if to touch invisible walls.  “One of them is out there tonight, possibly the same one who rampaged through Detroit three weeks ago.  The fucker has me on range, dammitall, but I have him on the linger – Chimeras leave a juicy scent trail.  One came by, on the road outside, about twenty five minutes ago.”

The Monster who had rampaged through Detroit was a Chimera?  A Male Arm, as the media called them?  After the rampage, the papers said the creature was a Monster.  “What’s someone like him doing here?  What do they want with me, ma’am?”

“These Chimeras already possess at least two captive Focuses.  We wouldn’t want to give them another.  Plus…” Her lips turned up in a predatory smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “Why aren’t you petrified, little Focus?  You didn’t call your bodyguards, you didn’t freeze in terror.  You’re not petrified, and you should be.”  In an instant, she stood beside Gail again.  She bent down to where Gail knelt and stared into her eyes. “What’s so different about you, little Focus?”

Gail shivered, the Arm too close to her.  “If this isn’t afraid, ma’am, I don’t know what is,” she said, and held out her hand, which shook.

“I said petrified, not afraid.”  Keaton leapt up to the window above the chancel, looked around at the streets below, then leapt back down. “Fear is normal and keeps all us Major Transforms on our toes.  I’m afraid of the damned Chimeras.  They’re fucking dangerous, even more so when they’re not doing their charge and fight routine.  But I’m not petrified.”

Keaton whipped around, trying to sense…something.  Gail cleared her throat.  “Ma’am?”

“Shhh.”  Keaton’s hand covered her mouth, and Keaton’s other hand and arm went around her waist.  They leapt to a ledge next to a partly open window, and Keaton carried her through the window and up to the icy roof.  Two more leaps deposited them on a flat area next to the steeple.  The air was frigid cold and a few lonely snowflakes drifted down from the dark sky, but Keaton’s arms were warm.  Gail found this the oddest thing, comforting, having this dangerous, terrifying creature protecting her.  She recognized she couldn’t fight the Arm, but then, she couldn’t fight a Chimera either, and so she found the evidence of Keaton’s power reassuring.

“Look.”  Keaton whispered and pointed.  “There.”  In the distance, a car slowly drove down Beech St., four blocks away from St. Luke’s.  Normally, Gail’s metasense barely covered St. Luke’s, but here on the roof by the steeple, she could metasense forever.

“The bastard’s taunting me.  He knows my metasense range.  I’m well inside his range, and he’s just hitting the edge of mine, to attract my attention, trying to trick me to come chase him.  His goal, his trap.  Now do you understand why I don’t want you wandering alone at night?”

The feel of the creature touched Gail’s expanded metasense like a chill reek of rotted sewage.  Death, rot, twisted poisoned things.  Her stomach churned and she wanted to gag.  “Yes.  He’s evil.”

Keaton turned Gail in her arms so Gail faced her, and took Gail’s chin in her hands and looked into Gail’s eyes.  The Arm’s grip was like a vice and Gail suspected she would have bruises.  “Say that again.”

“The creature is evil, ma’am.”  She had to be getting the extra metasense range from Stacy Keaton.  Borrowing Keaton’s metasense?  An Arm’s metasense was about a quarter mile, and this seemed to be the new limit of her range.

Keaton blinked.  “Focus Rickenbach, you just earned yourself a free lifetime membership in the Stacy Keaton fan club.  Even if you do have a problem with respect.”

“What? Ma’am.”

“You sensed emotional state, at range.  That’s a Focus trick, but using my metasense. A real fucking synergy, one I wasn’t able to tease out of my other goddamned experiments along this line.  Hancock was right.”

Gail studied the creature with their combined metasense.  The creature’s juice was diffuse and just plain different from any other Transform she had ever metasensed.  Some of the difference came from using an Arm’s metasense, but most had to be because this was an unknown form of male Major Transform.  As she metasensed, the diffuse glow resolved itself into three male Major Transforms, a Crow and two others.

“Ma’am?”

The Arm let go of Gail’s chin and looked out toward the odd Transforms, still holding Gail close with her other arm.  She continued to whisper.  “Focus Rizzari’s got one of her theories about metasense sharing.  Chemical messengers instead of perceptual illusions.  I wonder if I can squeeze her enough to get named as a contributor on one of her fancy academic articles.  That would sure hack off the fucking FBI.”  The foul-mouthed Arm paused.  Gail had the urge to shout ‘why me?!’ at the top of her lungs.  She wanted nothing to do with any sort of fight between the Major Transforms.

“Bullshit, Focus. You already know ‘why you,’” the Arm said, almost as if she had been reading Gail’s mind.  “You’ve got too much potential for your own good.  You have a hell of a metasense, better than any other Focus I’ve tried this trick with, even Rizzari.  I already knew you were potentially one of the top Focuses.  So does Tonya.  More dangerously, so does Adkins.  Most dangerously,
so do our enemies
.”

“Ma’am, may I ask, if the minimal history the press prints about you is remotely correct, then why don’t you feel evil, and they do?”  Gail wanted to kick herself for her insatiable curiosity.  Here she was in the arms of a serial killer, and still she asked probing personal questions. Except, somewhere in her heart, Gail’s terror had faded enough for her normal insatiable curiosity to rise to the front.  She was sure she had been in stranger situations in her life, but she certainly couldn’t remember when.

Keaton chuckled, an evil sound.  “We’re not the good guys, we’re the better guys,” the Arm said, definitely a quote.  “This Chimera is the ‘other side’.”

The Arm paused, looking out. “You said ‘they’.  You meant it, too.”

“Yes, ma’am.  I’m metasensing three of them in the car, one Crow and two others, presumably Male Arms.”

It seemed like they flew, but this was only Keaton’s leaping.  In a blink of Gail’s eyes, Keaton returned them to inside St. Luke’s, just down the hall from Gail’s bedroom.  She tried not to think about what the location implied.  “We’re going to talk again soon, Focus Rickenbach.  Don’t forget to tell your bodyguards not to shoot at me.  And stay fucking protected at night! 
This is no game!
”

Keaton vanished.  Gail smiled.  As terrifying as the encounter was, she enjoyed it, like one of the dangerous roller coasters at the Cedar Point amusement park.  Now that she was back safe, she wished for a chance to ask a hundred more of her questions.

What did it all mean?  What could she afford to tell to anyone in the household?  Or to Beth or Tonya?

---

“Gail?” Tonya’s voice ached sleep.

“Tonya, I’m sorry,” Gail said.  “I told your people this wasn’t an emergency and they shouldn’t wake you.”

“I’d fallen asleep in the kitchen,” Tonya said.  She sounded upset.  “It’s been one of those days.”

“Oh, have I been calling you too often?” Gail said, confused.  She would pay for the all-nighter tomorrow.  Well, actually, later today.

“Uh, no.  You called earlier, didn’t you?” Tonya said.  The older Focus sounded out of it.

Gail repressed the urge to order Tonya to get some sleep.  “I just had an unexpected night-time visitor,” she said, pressing on to the reason she had called.  “Arm Keaton.”

Tonya groaned.  The sound of an angry grunt and the crash of crockery followed.  Tonya had just thrown a coffee cup across her office, or kitchen, Gail guessed.  “My official position is all contact with Arm Keaton must go through Focus Lupe Rodriguez.”

“Official position?”

“The position of the Focus Council.”

“Oh.”  Gail made an ick face, and gave back the juice she had taken from her nearest Transforms.  “What am I supposed to do when an Arm shows up in my household, then?  Quote her that position?”  Tonya didn’t answer.  “I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine saying that to someone that, um, forceful.”

“Hmm.  This wasn’t a bad encounter?”

“Nah, just the usual ‘check out the weird out-of-control overpowered Focus’ meeting,” Gail said, bitter.  “This is right up there with the incomprehensible phone calls and letters I’ve been getting from these supposed Crows.”

“Crows?” Tonya asked.  “Did they give names?”

“Uh huh.  Gilgamesh and Whisper.  My people are convinced they’re stalkers and want to screen the contacts for me, but I put my foot down.  These supposed Crows know too much, and their names sound like Crow names to me.”

Tonya moaned.  “What do these supposed Crows want?”

“Well, they also think I’m a target in some crazy Major Transform conflict, and they want to help me by arranging for one of them, the Whisper fellow, to remove the bad juice from my household.  But since they won’t agree to meet me in person I’m still, um, negotiating with them.”

“My official position is that Crows are a myth and do not exist.  There are no male Major Transforms.”

Still?  Stupid Focus Council.  Gail, who had been pacing around her office, sat down.  What had been an attempt to quell her fears for her household by talking to Tonya had turned into a mystery.  She wasn’t asleep on her feet, now.  The game was afoot!

“I metasensed both varieties.  Tonight.  With my metasense linked to Arm Keaton,” Gail said.  “Do you have an official position on metasense sharing?”

“With or without a tag.”

“Huh?”

“Did the Arm tag you?”

“What?  No, not at all.  This just worked.  I had a queasy moment I made go away by adjusting my juice when she grabbed me, but no tags.”  Major Transforms could tag each other?  This tag stuff would be interesting to investigate.  Van definitely needed to know.

More crockery breaking noises came through the phone.  “Gail.  I know you can’t help being the target of other Major Transforms’ interest, but there’s a trick you need to use when dealing with this, if you want to protect your household:
lying
.  Don’t tell anyone about these things. 
Ever.
  Focuses can lose their households this way.  You’ll even need to lie to yourself at times, at least in your outward thoughts.  Your actions and reactions reflect your outward thoughts, and far too many Major Transforms can read your outward thoughts through your actions and reactions.  I’m sure you’ve noticed you can do such things, at least a little.”

Of all the conversations Gail had expected to have with Tonya tonight…  Hell.  “I can,” she said.  She fought to keep fear out of her voice, and managed not to continue with a ‘more than a little’.

“Keep your real motives and real plans hidden away deep inside,” Tonya said.  “I’ve never given this advice to a Focus as young as you are, but since the problems found you, you have no choice.”

“That’s awful, um, Orwellian.”

Gail hadn’t expected a chuckle.  She got one.  “Yes, indeed.  Out here in the East Region, we call this Transform Doublethink,” Tonya said.

What she implied was: ‘Gail, I’m afraid you’re on your own about all these problems’.  “But, why?  Being forced to work and think that way can only weaken us Focuses and endanger our households, in a world that’s actively against us.”

“Yes.  By design.”

Crap.  “You sound stressed,” Gail said.  She hadn’t imagined Tonya the crockery-throwing type.  Besides, if one avenue of questions didn’t work, try another.  Reporter instincts.

“It’s the Arms,” Tonya said.  “They aren’t doing what the Council wants and I’m stuck with the responsibility to clean up the mess.”

“Uh huh,” Gail said.  If she prodded Tonya discretely enough, she might get the older Focus to vent.  She sounded unguarded enough to do so tonight.  “Sounds bad.”

“This has been going on for quite a while,” Tonya said.  “You heard of the Arm Flap, I’m sure.”

“Uh huh.”

“I was acting under Council orders to help the Feds, and needless to say, the Arms blame me for what happened to Arm Hancock.”

Gail frowned.  The Arm Flap had been a nasty business, from everything she had read.  She repressed her urge to say something critical, and concentrated on squeezing more information out of Tonya.  “Sounds difficult.”  Transform Doublethink in action.

“Uh huh.  Worse, the Council ordered me to keep working on the Arm problem, and everything I try to do to bring them in line just gets the Arms angrier at me.”

How Nazi of you, Tonya, Gail thought.  Using ‘I was just following orders’ to excuse bad behavior just doesn’t fly.  “I got the letters,” Gail said, non-committal.  If she told Tonya she was being the bad guy, Gail would end up apologizing to the older Focus again.  Once with that error was enough.

“The letters aren’t the half of it,” Tonya said, ire in her voice.  “I’m backed into a corner, where every action I take will damage my household, including inaction.”

Almost too much, there.  Without the proper prompt, nearly any source would clam up after saying something so personal.

“Isn’t this the same dilemma I have with Focus Adkins?” Gail said, reaching for anything to say, and, alas, summoning forth a bit of likely unwanted Rickenbach ‘wisdom’.  “You strongly hinted I need to make peace with Focus Adkins, even though facing her down will endanger my household.”  Tonya didn’t answer.  “Both you and Beth say that when things get rough, negotiate.”