In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6) (5 page)

Enkidu: August 14, 1968

Enkidu smiled.  The First National Bank looked perfect for his plans.  Their security sucked and they hadn’t been hit by anyone for years, not even by the goddamned Talking Arm when the bitch had lived in Chicago.  All he needed to do was to go back to Chicago, do his daily hunt, run Urine through his lessons, then collect Cleo and the Gals.  He would be back in Indianapolis by tomorrow evening for the job.  He would be set for another year, and wouldn’t have to worry any more about cash when his Master came up with another of his screwy and expensive plans.

Before then, though, he had to eat.  In his man form, Enkidu might be able to pass as a normal human, but he still had to eat like a beast.  He still had all his mass and his muscles, which meant a hell of a lot of food.  A good steak dinner would hit the spot.  Two steaks.  Perhaps three.

The good joints wouldn’t be open for business for another twenty minutes, though.  Perhaps he would get some burgers as a snack first.

Then he picked up a dim metapresence flash, driving by on the freeway.  A Crow!  Driving a vehicle!  Too bad he couldn’t chase down Crows in his man form or he would bag one for his Master.

He waved, and of all things, the Crow waved back.  Enkidu blinked in shock as he metasensed the Crow.  Gilgamesh!

Now this would be fun.  He had always thought that if he ran into Gilgamesh again he would be able to convince the young Crow to join him, linked as they were by his transformation.  Gilgamesh would certainly make a better Crow companion than Urine, and Enkidu doubted his master would need to rip the Law anywhere near as deeply into Gilgamesh’s mind as in Urine’s.  He waved again and pantomimed joining him for dinner.

Gilgamesh vanished.  One second he was there, one second he wasn’t.  Oh ho!  So Gilgamesh had become one of
those
Crows.  How dangerous was he?  True, in his man form Enkidu couldn’t run down a Crow, but he could think better and fight off Crow dross attacks better in this form.  And, even on his best days, a Crow couldn’t beat a Hunter in any form of a physical fight, even if the Hunter was in man form.  Enkidu was as tall as a basketball center and built like a middle linebacker.  A Crow would be quicker and better with firearms, if any Crows could shoot firearms, but Enkidu’s healing abilities would more than compensate for this theoretical advantage.

Enkidu waited outside Calloway’s Steak House for Gilgamesh to show, but he didn’t.  As soon as the restaurant opened Enkidu gave up on the flighty Crow, went inside and ordered some steaks.

“So you can pass for human these days.”

Enkidu put down his fork and knife, and looked up.  Gilgamesh was sitting across the table from him.  He hadn’t heard or metasensed the Crow approach.

“Well, well, well,” Enkidu said.  “I’d thought you’d panicked and ran.  Glad to see you again.”

Gilgamesh stared at him and didn’t say a thing.  His old companion had changed for the better – leaner, more muscular, much better looking, better dressed, and he had picked up the do-not-mess-with-me aura Enkidu had seen with Athabasca and the other Judge Crows who occasionally came by to consult.  Gilgamesh also carried, of all things, two tennis balls in his right hand.  The Crow was scared, perhaps even terrified, but as far as Enkidu knew, fear was the natural state of all Crows.  The good ones, like Gilgamesh, just lived with the fear.

“I wanted to apologize for my behavior in Philadelphia,” Enkidu said.  “My Master hadn’t brought my mind back to full humanity, back then.  There was still too much of the beast in me.”

“I understand,” Gilgamesh said.  “Save for the all-body five o’clock shadow, you look fully human, now.  Your Master has indeed done well for you.”

Hmm.  “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here.  Gives me a chance to talk you into joining me.  I wanted to do so in Chicago, but I wasn’t able to run you down and have a quiet conversation.  So to speak.”  Enkidu sliced up some steak and wolfed it down.  Planning large robberies always made him extra hungry.

“What, pray tell, do you want me to join?”

“The Hunter Empire.  We’re remaking the world.  It’s time for all the Transforms to have strong leadership.  Hunter leadership.  Not the candy-ass bitch Focus leadership the rest of the Transforms are simpering after.”

“I think I’ll pass.  Living with people who consider me to be prey would be quite disconcerting.”

Enkidu laughed.  “But to a Hunter,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper, “the whole world is prey.  Even other Beast-Men.  But we’ve got it set up, now, so we don’t have to hunt for our élan like we used to.”

“How so?”

“Transform women, Gilgamesh.  Tamed Monsters are an endless source of élan!  They don’t even die in the process anymore!”  Enkidu smiled, as always proud of his pack of Gals and his skills with them.

Gilgamesh nodded.  “I’ve heard stories the Focuses pass along about many unsolved Transform kidnappings.  Someone even nabbed a Focus earlier this month.”

He knew.  The rat-faced bastard knew!  The Focus grab was supposed to be a secret!  They had supposedly laid down so many false trails that nobody should be able to figure out what happened.

Enkidu pursed his lips and wondered what he was supposed to do now.  No outsiders lived to tell any tales about the Hunters’ secrets.  That was the Law.  Unfortunately, Enkidu’s weapons were in his car.  All he had was a steak knife.

One twitch, though, and the Crow would be gone.  On the other hand, Enkidu thought, maybe he could box the Crow in if he sealed the exits of the restaurant.  Perhaps he even knew how…

“I wonder what Wandering Shade would think if he knew you were here talking to me.  I’m convinced Wandering Shade considers me one of his enemies,” Gilgamesh said.  “Wouldn’t this worry him?”

“What Wandering Shade thinks about my dealings is none of your business, Gilgamesh,” Enkidu said.  He snorted.  “You’ve become as devious as all the other Crows I’ve been forced to deal with.  None of you Crows will listen to reason.  Hunter leadership is the future!  It’s logically irrefutable.”

Gilgamesh’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.  “You don’t know, do you?”

“What?”

“Your Master, Wandering Shade, is a Crow, one of the real old ones.  You didn’t realize your Hunter Empire is led by a Crow?”

Enkidu stood and growled.  “You lie!”  His stomach sank, though.  Gilgamesh’s words had cut through the clutter in his mind with the weight of truth.

The world burst bright around him, overwhelming his metasense with light, colors and shifting patterns.  For an instant, he couldn’t even
see
.  Enkidu blinked and tried to ignore the dazzle.  Ignoring the dazzle took him a moment, and in that moment Gilgamesh vanished.  Enkidu stood and roared the Terror.  Everyone in the restaurant fled.  He concentrated his metasense and found one of those fleeing who wore a crude disguise, a male Transform.  Enkidu roared Terror again, targeted at the disguised Crow, and threw him to the ground.  No damned Crow would be able to use his speed in the midst of a crowd like this!

Enkidu made ready to immobilize Gilgamesh by slicing his hamstrings, but he stopped.  The pinned man smelled like a normal human and he was overweight, besides!  He wasn’t a Crow, as Crows didn’t smell like anything at all.  Fooled!

He roared.

Fooled twice, he realized.  Gilgamesh had used his Master’s name, Wandering Shade, first.  Not him.  Then he had answered, acknowledging the truth.

Enkidu roared again and killed the man he had pinned.  The veneer of civilization was thin on him and he lost it completely, slaughtering every human he was able to reach with his steak knife.

The sound of sirens brought a semblance of thought back to him.  He fled.

Chapter 3

Never interrupt a Crow.

“The Life of Crows”

Carol Hancock: August 15, 1968 – August 18, 1968

I toweled off from my shower, reviewing my latest set of recruits.  The Brickman family, I decided, would be perfect fronts for my nascent car dealership project.  They owned a cheap dingy thirty parking space suburban used car lot and the only thing keeping them from expanding was lack of credit, due to a decade old bankruptcy they suffered during the Eisenhower recession.  I would supply them credit, now, on my terms.

I decided to blow off McMillan Security.  Outwardly, the merc company was a perfect place to recruit and suborn for Keaton’s army, but something about the Dallas security firm made me twitchy.  I wasn’t sure what triggered my reaction, but Keaton wanted me to trust my instincts and to back off based on any suspicion at all.

Ying politely knocked on my bedroom suite door.  “Here,” I said.

“Ma’am, phone call from Gilgamesh.  He wants to talk to you in person.”

Uh huh, it was about time for one of his calls.  That is, after ten at night.  I smiled, settled into the chair by the bedroom phone and stretched my legs out in front of me.

“Hey there,” I said.  Relaxed.  I worried about Gilgamesh when he wasn’t here in Houston with me.  Crows were just so fragile.

“Carol, I’ve got some interesting news.”

He had been on his way to case the Chicago area, on what I suspected was a fruitless kidnapped Focus hunt.  His voice trilled of success.

“You found the lost Focus?”

“Yes.  As Lori and I feared, the Hunters have her.  She’s part of Odin’s pack now, as withdrawal scarred as his other pack members.”

Damn.  The Hunters were getting better if they could kidnap a Clinic Focus and make it look like backstabbing Focus politics in action.  This was not good news.

“Worse, Joshua has one as well, a Focus with at least five years of experience on her.  I have no idea who she is, or was.  I also managed to have a sit-down talk with Enkidu, in Indianapolis, while he was eating at a restaurant.”

I bit my lip, wanting to interrupt.  I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to praise Gilgamesh to the heavens for his courage or chew him out for unnecessary risks.  Enkidu!  In a restaurant!  I certainly couldn’t have done any such thing.

“I know,” Gilgamesh said, answering my unsaid comment.  “I hadn’t planned on talking to him, but after hearing you and Keaton going on about not wasting unexpected opportunities I couldn’t resist.”  His words brought a smile to my face.  “I did manage to upset him by pointing out to him that his master is a Crow, which he hadn’t known.  He didn’t take it well, giving me a chance to prove to myself that my rotten eggs are good enough now to distract an angry mature Hunter.  I’ll give you the full report when I get back.  When I found Enkidu’s farm camp, I learned he’s got a talented student I’d say is no more than three months away from becoming a full Hunter.  Worse, I found out he’s got a Crow captive.”

“That’s not good at all.  What kind of Crow?”

“Messed up.  He’s old enough to do rudimentary dross constructs,” which meant older than Gilgamesh, “but his withdrawal scarring is extensive enough to reduce his metasense to worse than Beast Man capabilities.  Enkidu has this captive Crow cleaning dross off his pack Transforms.  This sounds stupid, but unlike the Nobles, Enkidu’s able to maintain a Focus-like two to one female to male Transform ratio, if you neglect the cost to the minds of the captive male Transforms from the rough treatment.  There isn’t much left in any of their heads.  I’m afraid, though, his pack women are in far better shape than the Noble’s Commoners.”

“Incredible job, Gilgamesh,” I said.  He had done well, despite my misgivings over the insane risks he took.  “Terrible news, though.  I’m going to have to think about the ramifications.  Where are you heading next?”

“Back to Houston.”

“I’m going to be out east for a few days but I’ll be back by the beginning of next week.  See you then.”  I had to check in on Hank and tell him to get his workaholic ass into bed before I took off.  I had a Biggioni to bother in Philly.

---

More than four months had passed since Biggioni destroyed me in the CDC, four months I spent recovering and getting my life back under control.  Only now did I finally find time to deal with the necessary payback for what she had done.  Her actions demanded recompense, and the need screamed at me from my toes to my short cropped hair.  I dreamed sometimes about what I would like to do to the bitch.  I still suffered nightmares from what she had done to me.

Now, finally, my life gave me a chance to deal with her.

Interesting place Biggioni had.  I contemplated arson for a few minutes and decided to save any Arm devastation for another day.  The Focus’s excuse for an office was deserted, the Focus herself asleep three rooms down.  Her current household was a construction zone and half of her people camped out downstairs, in unfinished rooms.  I smelled pulled pork barbeque, Carolina style, and my stomach rumbled.

I was here for information.  I read and snapped pictures with a noise-free spy camera I had lifted from McMillan Security.  Since she didn’t appear to want to roll over and play dead for me, I needed more information.  I figured the best place to start was her home office.

Biggioni had juice patterns all over her office.  They metasensed as not very complex, at best on par with Teas’s tricks and nothing as dangerous as Rogue Focus’s.  Focus witchery wasn’t Biggioni’s strength, but I still didn’t want to play with them.  Her strength was easy to find: I had never run into a Focus able to keep so high a percentage of her people employed.  This meant Focus charisma in spades, matching Lori and Hank’s predictions.

She wasn’t stupid, either.  She took voluminous notes, all well written, and they showed her to be highly intelligent, methodical and cautious.  Her Focus bosses had recently given her a new project to work on, mentoring newly transformed Focuses, and meeting Hank’s expectations she was doing a stupendous, albeit slow and complete, job.  For one thing she hadn’t made it to Focus Rickenbach yet, which she needed to, soon.  That overpowered walking disaster needed all the help she could get.

Biggioni kept a copy of her house accounting books in her desk, and they showed repeated transfers to the house accounts from her personal money stash.  About a quarter of the house take.  How in the world did Biggioni get the money for that?  Her background, which I had already researched, was firmly middle class.  I suspected a trick, so I looked harder.  I finally found her personal books in a locked hidden compartment in the back of a file cabinet.  I read them as I took pictures.  Jackpot.

A complex jackpot.  She brought in some money from various single-men’s-name sources reeking of organized crime, my sort of people.  She also brought in some money, but less than her mob jobs, from rents and other real estate deals.  I wasn’t amused to find out that the bitch had once owned Keaton’s warehouse, but sold the place after Keaton left Philly.  This wasn’t easy to put together, as most of the entries in her books were to and from Focuses.  At first I thought she was extorting the poor dears, but doing the math I realized her dealings with Focuses were well in the red.  The big money sink was one Focus Schrum, the first Focus Bitch and Region President of the Northeast Region.  Even if I subtracted out the Schrum payments, Biggioni was still in the red with the Focuses, but only slightly.  If I had put the pieces together correctly, she ran a goddamned
bank
for the local Focuses.

I put her private books down and took a moment to think.  Hank had told me that if I took a close look at Biggioni I couldn’t help but be impressed.  He had been right.  From what little I knew, her net worth was pushing three quarters of a million, with a high percentage socked away in tangible investments.  She wasn’t ostentatious, she didn’t have her people breaking their backs to keep her in luxury, she showed no signs of clinical insanity or Teas’ style Focus insanity, her Transforms were well adjusted and certainly slept well, and unlike Laswell, my closest Houston Focus ally, her guards had been a bitch to bypass.  If she had any obvious flaw, it was excess caution; hell, given my own history I would be willing to wager her excess caution had served her much better than my more moderate caution had served me.

I found nothing to hint that she was a rogue Focus who I needed to take down.  The evidence showed the opposite: under other circumstances, this was someone I would be able to work with.  I also had the uncomfortable sensation that a fight with her was more than I had the chops to win, not with a whole Focus organization backing her up.  The smart thing to do would be to settle our differences peaceably.  Unfortunately, according to Lori, Biggioni had no interest in making peace with me; according to Hank, Biggioni wanted to undo the Arm tag structure and work with me independent of Keaton.

Oh, and there was this little issue: a strong desire on my part for some payback for what she had done to me while I had been a captive of the CDC.  It took a lot of my will and effort to keep from charging into Biggioni’s bedroom and trying to throttle her while she slept.  Or shoot her.  I wanted to feel her neck in my hands and hear her squeal.  Sending her into withdrawal for a few days would have been even better.

All of which left me trying to figure out what to do next.  My letter had won over some Focuses, but Biggioni’s return shot had likely won a few back and hardened the positions of some other Focuses.  I
was
a predator, and to quite a few overly womanly Focuses my predatory nature was enough to poison me in their minds.  All Biggioni needed to do was keep exposing my predatory behaviors and I would be sunk, even if I dealt with the Focuses on a friendly basis.  I wasn’t ready to let bygones be bygones, though.  Not with this bitch.  Not after what she did to me.  Her help in my recovery wasn’t anywhere near payback enough, and
I needed payback
.  Forget revenge – my self-respect demanded recompense.  No one did to me what she did to me without paying some sort of price.

Reality, though.  I had learned a long time ago the cost of letting my instincts lure me into stupid behavior.

I took out my incendiary bomb and put it on her desk, after removing the detonation mechanism.  I would try making peace with her Eissler style.  I wrote her a short note to explain my position:

Focus Biggioni

Kaboom!  Well, in theory.  I’m sure you can take the hint.  I like what I’ve learned of your operation so far and I’m willing to make peace.  What I want is a formal public apology from you and for you to drop your interference in my dealings with Arm Keaton.  She is my boss, which you and the Council must learn to respect.

I’m looking forward to meeting with you and chatting, someday.  With Keaton’s permission, I’m sure we can do business together.  PS  I like your ‘Focus savings and loan’ operation and I think I’ll follow your lead and set up something similar where I live.

Arm Hancock

Tonya Biggioni: August 18, 1968

“Lori.  I’m glad you could finally make it to a phone.”  Focus Tonya Biggioni, member of the Focus Council and experienced in all forms of politics, incendiary and otherwise, clenched her fist and forced herself to relax.

“What’s wrong, Tonya?  I’ve never heard you so angry.  Whatever it is, I assure you I didn’t…”

“Hancock was in my office last night,” Tonya said, interrupting a likely trip to Lori-land.  “She left a dummy bomb, stripped of its detonator, and a note filled with ridiculous threats.”  She wasn’t sure she had ever been so pissed in her life.  She had to clear all of her Transforms out of her juice manipulation range, just to keep from killing them by accident.  In her own household!

The past weeks had been Tonya’s worst since the horrors involved with the Julius Rebellion.  That extended incident had been the last time enemies broke into her household.  Of course, then it had been a small army, but still.  In the past three weeks, Council President Polly Keisterman had dumped the Hancock problem on her, exposed her as a liar at a Focus Council meeting, and, with the backing of the first Focuses, assigned her to run the Focus Mentoring program, in Tonya’s mind the worst of all the Focus Council-controlled jobs.  Then there was the forged letter found after the Focus Frasier kidnapping, tarnishing her good name, and Hancock’s inflammatory letter blaming Tonya for Hancock’s incarceration and withdrawal.  Lori had tried to blame the Frasier kidnapping on the Hunters and took the opportunity to lean on her, again, about convincing the Council to acknowledge the existence of the male Major Transforms.  Tonya, cornered, had promised to force the issue if Lori (read Hancock and Gilgamesh) came up with proof.

Now, Hancock had invaded her own home and she was furious again, but this time at Hancock.  She wanted to tear the Arm into shredded bits of hamster food.

“A dummy bomb?”  Lori snorted.  “You’ve forgotten what dealing with Arms is like.  If you don’t have any dead bodies, you got off easy.”

Tonya growled.  Lori did have a point.  Not too long ago she remembered a similar conversation with Lori that had gone the other way.  Hancock’s invasion disturbed her at levels that hadn’t been disturbed for years.  “My office!  She didn’t even bother putting anything back that she’d taken out of my private safe!  If she wants a war, then…”