The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Six (9 page)

“Hrrr.  Yes!  It takes work to get anything real out of your crazy long-range metasense, but yes, they’ve got juice patterns on them.  Get me within range and I’ll be able to tell you the Focus.”

“Battle range?  Good,” Sellers said, suspecting Brick was limited to the piddly metasense range of Focuses.  “That’s enemy juice they’re carrying.  They must be destroyed.”  His battle hunger grew strong; he hadn’t had a chance to kill anything in battle for weeks.

“Captured,” Brick said
, a little exasperation leaking through his dead flat voice.  “If possible.  Deaders don’t talk, and we need to learn their plans.”

“Yes, good point,” Sellers said.

They caught up to the enemy a mile south of Inferno, on the parklike shore of Jamaica Pond.  The enemy was trotting north, and there were eleven of them, three of the juice-pattern-carrying male Transforms and eight normal men, and they were all heavily armed.

“Subdue if we can,” Brick
said, with a penetrating bellow, to the other Nobles.  The Duke gave Brick a dirty look, a ‘who put you in charge’ look, but didn’t countermand the order.  Sellers decided that the Duke had been about to give the same order.  Either that, or Master Occum’s insistence they give deference to older Transforms had kicked in again.  “These are Focus Teas people, or at least set up by them.”

“One of the Great Enemies, then,” Sellers said, and at the Duke’s signal, began to bark his Terror.

“I’m beginning to like you guys, you know,” Brick said, before momentarily freezing due to their Terrors and then leaping off Sellers.  To Sellers’ surprise, Brick sprinted forward faster than he believed possible, faster than even he could sprint, leaving behind the foulest dross Sellers had ever smelled or metasensed.  The Sport reached the nearest Terror-discombobulated opponents in a quick moment, and laid into them, disarming, breaking bones, and knifing legs.  Sellers followed the impressively fighting Brick, grabbed one of the enemy soldiers with his teeth, lifted him up, shook him until he dropped his firearms, and smashed him to the ground.

Combat.  Nothing was a
s pure in life as real combat, with your life on the line and tasting the blood of an enemy.  Combat became a whirling painting of bright primary colors, a wild sexual dance where the release in the end was death.  The more deaths, the better.  Sellers allowed himself to lose part of himself in the fight, letting loose the beast as the Duke called it, losing the part that kept him polite and Noble.  His combat training, though, didn’t allow him to lose the part who knew friend from foe, even their new friend, Brick.  The world whirled kaleidoscopically around him as from his perspective he stayed still, all in one place, and meted out swift damage, one bite at a time.

All too soon, the fight was over.

None of the enemy got any shots off before they were all subdued, or dead.  Sellers sighed.  Too quick.  He had barely got into the spirit of the fight.

“Huh.  Only two dead, and of them, none of the three Transforms,” Brick said.  He turned to the Duke.  “So, since this is your home turf, I’ll let you decide what to do with these yobbos.”

Sellers didn’t understand the ‘home turf’ statement, but he did have an idea.  “Boss,” he said, to the Duke.  “We’ve been looking for an auspicious opportunity to properly meet Focus Rizzari.  We should present these traitorous enemies as a gift to her, my Duke.”

He swore Brick covered up a snicker.  “I agree, Viscount,” the Duke said.  “These shall make a wonderful introduction.”

Brick cleared his throat.  “From my dealings with the Focus, I suspect you might want to leave the dead ones behind.  As far as I know, the only corpses she
’s interested in are Monster corpses.”

“Stop here,” Brick said, when they reached a back parking lot of the corner dry cleaners, three blocks away from Inferno.  The Sport waved and pointed.

“That won’t work,” Hoskins said.  “The Crow
who used to live there vanished a few months ago, and the strange new powerful Crow who visited last week didn’t stay in town.”

“The Focus has tricks, and is
fucking touchy about people violating her territory,” Brick said.  Sellers dumped the Transform he carried onto the asphalt parking lot and scratched at his flea-bitten ear again.  Territory.  This strange Sport was far too worried about territory.  However, Sellers did metasense activity in the Inferno palace.  Within five minutes, a half dozen Inferno Transforms, and the Focus, were on their way to them, all wary.  He expected a similar number of normals would be with them.  He hoped Focus Rizzari wasn’t too upset at what they had done.  He didn’t want to fight them.  They were his friends.

Indeed, when Sellers saw the Focus and her people coming toward them, there were ample numbers of normals among them, and all of them, including the Focus, were well armed.
  They exuded wariness, but not overt hostility.  Good.

Hoskins stepped forward
as the Inferno party appeared around the corner of the dry cleaners.  “Ma’am, I’m Duke Jeremy Hoskins.”  The Duke introduced the rest of them, including Sport Brick.  “We’ve subdued some of your enemies for you.”

“Brick?”  The Focus, who was rapturously beautiful, both in her glow and her looks, didn’t appear happy with Brick.  “What were these idiots of Teas doing, anyway?”
  Sellers’ knees shook to be around such a wondrous Major Transform.

Nothing escaped
the ancient and powerful Focus Rizzari.  She was truly their queen, naturally assuming command over all of them.

“I believe they were moving into position for an attack on your palace,” the Duke said.

Master Occum appeared without warning in Sellers’ metasense, three miles distant.  He was agitated, and signaling.  Run.  Dangerous Arm.

Strange.

“Noble Peers,” Sellers said.  “Our Master is signaling us to run.  He seems to think there’s a dangerous Arm in the area.”

“I don’t metasense any Arms around,” the Duke said.  “
Do you?”

“Not I,” Sellers said.  He turned to Brick, and to Focus Rizzari.  Brick had gone cold and distant, and Focus Rizzari appeared to be amused.

“Don’t worry,” the Focus said.  “If any dangerous Arms show up, I’ll make sure they behave.”

Brick cracked his knuckles.  “No need to worry on my account,” he said.  “Arms are tough, but I’m tougher.  Fighting Arms is my specialty.”

“Just perfect,” Focus Rizzari said.  “Anyway, back to our real problem.  Why don’t we find out what these idiots know?”  She, along with two of her bodyguards and a woman Transform, stepped forward, to inspect one of the three juice-pattern carrying male Transforms.  The Transform froze, watching her with wide eyes.  “Nasty,” she said.  “Although not tagged, Teas found a way to supply them with juice: that’s what the juice patterns are for.  They’ve got about two weeks left, unless someone disrupts the patterns.”  She touched the male Transform, a slender index finger to the forehead.  “What did Focus Teas order you to do?”

To Sellers’ shock, the Transform answered, without having to be tortured in any way.  “I
don’t know any Focus Teas.  The Focus who recruited us, from the Clinic in DC, didn’t give us her name.  She wore a dark cloak, and kept her face hidden.  She promised us that if we did this mission, and survived, she would make us a part of her household.”  The Transform paused, agitated.  “Our mission was to kidnap a woman Transform.”  He reached into his jacket and pulled out a photo.  “Her.”

“That’s me, dammit,” the woman Transform on Queen Rizzari’s left, said.  Sellers didn’t see the resemblance.  The hair was all wrong, as was the face.  He gave this puzzling comment some thought, and realized the woman Transform at the Focus’s left was wearing an artful disguise.
  He had seen her before, appearing different every time.  She did have one consistent trait, though – she agitated Master Occum the most, every time she appeared.

“Anything else?” the Focus asked the captive Transform.

“We were supposed to do the snatch in the daytime, when the woman was outside your household, and kill anyone from your household who got in the way.”  Pause.  “Nothing else.”  The rain, which had dwindled to a drizzle, now stopped.

“They need to die for their temerity,” the Duke said.
  In the distance, Master Occum gave up on his signaling, sat down, and buried his head in his hands.  “Attacks of this nature are not allowed.”

“I agree with your sentiment, but I’m afraid killing these idiots will give my enemies far too much information.”

Brick elbowed his way forward, pushy and unstoppable.  “You seriously can’t be thinking we let them go free, Focus,” he said.

“I am, but only after I play with their minds,” she said.  “None of them are going to remember reaching Boston, or running into you or the Nobles.  The three Transforms will believe they got attacked by an army of Monsters, say, near the Philadelphia area.  I’ll send these three back to Teas, and let her cope with the results of her little experiment.”  True.  Focuses were supposed to care for male Transforms by tagging them and supporting them with juice.  What would Teas do when these returned, anyway?  Sellers didn’t have any good guesses.  “The goons I’ll just memory wipe and scatter.”

“You can do all that
now
?” Brick said.  Sellers didn’t get the feeling that Brick and Focus Queen Rizzari were friends.  They had worked together in the past, and had their difficulties.  They needed some naturally polite intermediaries to help them through their problems…like them, the Nobles.  Alas, both Major Transforms were years older than them, and it would not be right for them to interfere.

“Certainly not.  Doing the three Transforms is easier, because they
’re Transforms, and I can do them now.  The rest, if you don’t mind, I’ll take back to Inferno and send them off at my leisure.”

“Dumb, real dumb,” Brick said.  “You don’t want them anywhere a cop with a search warrant can find them.”

“Do you have a better idea, then,
Brick
?”

Sellers’ tail curled, and he fought his anger. 
Brick and Queen Rizzari looked ready to fight each other at an instant.  He looked over at the Duke for instructions, and the Duke signaled to keep quiet.

“Kill them.”

The Focus sighed.  “Unacceptable, and you know why.”  She paused and rubbed her chin.  “However, there may be another way to handle this.  If you do your, um, scary trick, their minds will be suggestible enough for me to do the memory wipe.”

Brick looked at the three Nobles, and turned back to the Focus.  “That might not be wise, given the circumstances here.  However, your Noble allies have a similar scary trick that
you need to experience, that might accomplish the same thing.”

Focus Queen Rizzari turned to the Duke.  “Can you do this?  If I’m intruding on something private, forgive me for asking.”

“No, this isn’t private,” the Duke said.  “However, when aimed at a single creature at short range, they may not be at all functional afterwards.  Also, even when not aimed at you and your people, you might find it discommoding.  Your people are well armed, and I wouldn’t want to accidentally start a fight.”

“I can make sure there is no accidental fighting,” she said.  “You might want to drag your first target over that way a bit, though.”

The Duke followed the Focus’s suggestion, and dragged one of their normal captives five paces away.  As he did, the Focus said a few quiet words to her people, calming them.  Sellers metasensed a Focus trick in use; he thought about it, and realized he had metasensed the Focus’s charisma.  Master Occum’s lessons said it wasn’t possible to sense Focus charisma in use.  Sellers wagged his tail and grunted a low bark.  One for him!

The Duke’s Terror sawing, a combination of vocalization and scratching his claws on each other, instantly knocked out the captive.  This was somewhat unfair; the poor captive, a normal, didn’t stand a chance against the Terror from short range.
  The poor captive also let loose his bowels and peed himself.  The Duke’s Terror also startled the Focus’s people, but not as much as Sellers expected.  Several of them even knew what was coming.  So, where had they run into Chimera Terror calls before?  Probably Hunters.

Yes, Focus Queen Rizzari and the Inferno household were dangerous.

“Interesting,” the Focus said.  She walked over to the fallen captive.  “Definitely easier to command now.”  She whispered into his ear, and he regained consciousness, but with vacant eyes.  “Perfect.  He won’t remember a thing.”

“You want to join us for the rest of our patrol?” the Duke asked Brick, once the Inferno mob bundled off the captives for the Philadelphia area.  “We have three hours left.”  Master Occum was still present, in the distance, now pacing and, Sellers guessed, cursing.

“Nah, I have other business to attend to,” Brick said.  He did look and feel a bit peckish, to Sellers.  Despite being a Major Transform, Sellers guessed one of Brick’s detriments as a Sport was being a
heavy-duty juice consumer.  He likely needed to get back to his Focus and pick up some more juice.  Sellers could sympathize; he needed some snuggle time with his Commoners himself.  “So, why are you guys doing so much patrolling, anyway?”

“We need to prove ourselves as allies in the Cause,” the Duke said.  “To our Master, Occum.  To Focus Rizzari, of course.  And, lastly, to the Commander.”