No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) (33 page)

I said she sounded years ahead of the other Focuses, and she just laughed.  “That, my dear Carol, is one of the big reasons I’m rebelling,” she said, sotto voice.

This scenario left open the question of how Lori pulled off all the trading, which Connie later answered.  “We’re just a bunch of troublemakers, freaks and weirdoes, unwanted by our former Focuses.  The rest of the Focus community considers Lori’s penchant for taking Transform freaks a public service.  As long as Lori isn’t flaunting her capabilities or preaching the Cause, they love her to death for taking people like me off their hands.”  Lori supported forty-two Transforms now, one of the largest households in the nation.  Race, color, creed, nationality and profession didn’t matter.  Only brains and devotion to the Cause mattered.

The place was a big hippie commune, save that the prevailing philosophy inside the household seemed more Ayn Rand or William Buckley than Jerry Rubin or Dr. Timothy Leary.  For instance, the household was extremely anti-drug.  They weren’t all anti-violence, despite the number of Buddhists in the place.  They had the best gym I had ever seen, a decent armory (I smelled it) and a small obstacle course, as well.  Physical exercise was mandatory for all Transforms, bodyguard training for everyone physically able.  Buddhist meditation and worship was optional; there were atheists and Catholics in abundance.  Very few Protestants; the mystical nature of Inferno drove many dedicated Protestants away screaming.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said.  Lori promised to let her people tie her up with me, so I could hold her and sooth my absolute stark panic and help steady Sky.

I looked around at the cold echoing basement, with medical instruments and autopsy instruments lining the walls like Keaton’s instruments of torture.  The cinderblock walls reminded me far too much of the walls in the CDC.  Why is Hell lined with cinderblock walls?

“It’s also a gift.  Our metasense will synch up.  You won’t believe how good that is.”

She also thought she would be able to help me control my juice and never mind the risk to her.  She assured me she was a good enough witch to handle the situation.  I hoped she knew what she was talking about, because this terrified me.

“Tie me up and let’s do it.”

We decided the best arrangement was a spoon position, Lori’s back to my front.  We stripped down to our bras and panties.  She wanted as much skin contact as possible, which surprised me.  I had thought the skin contact thing was an Arm fetish, but Lori said the juice patterns she used to enhance her metasense would work better if she had more skin contact.

Was I scared shitless?  Not quite, but close.  Sky wasn’t willing to take any chances, at least until after I was fixed.  The only truly brave person here was Lori.

I lay down in stark terror and delicious anticipation and Lori cuddled in, in front of me.  I wrapped one arm around her chest and the other protectively around the small bulge of the baby.  The little snuggly body in front of me did give this whole process a lot more appeal.  As we lay there in the cold basement, and Ann strapped us down, I sensed my juice changing and adjusting, fitting itself in with Lori.  I helped the adjustment along and I metasensed Lori doing the same, as her own juice structure shifted.  By the time Ann finished strapping us down, the odd adjustment was complete.

And, oh wow, was that an experience.

“My,” Lori said.  “Mmmmmm.”

My breath caught at her words and I started to experience it as well.  Pleasure, pleasure almost impossible to describe.  The sensation felt almost like a kill, juice pulsing and flowing through me.  My nerves tingled with heat and my mind hummed to the constant ecstasy.  Better than sex, better than orgasm.  Ann asked questions but neither Lori nor I answered.  I wasn’t sure why the juice gave me such pleasure, but I loved it.  I definitely wasn’t worried about being strapped down any more.

“What is this?” I asked, my voice low and distracted.

“Ummm, why ask?” Lori said, her voice even more distant.  Whatever had happened to me affected her as well.  “I think I understand it, though.  You’re exchanging juice with my juice buffer.”

Juice buffer?  I was exchanging juice with her household’s extra juice supply?

I peeked at the exchange with my own metasense, languidly, as pleasure sapped at my attention.  My supplemental juice slowly went down, though at this rate, it would take days to deplete.  A paltry cost to pay for such bliss.  “You’re taking my juice.”

“I’m not surprised,” she said, shivering in pleasure.  “Your entire supplemental juice supply is being cycled through my juice buffer, at about five minutes a cycle.  Is this…”

“…what an Arm experiences when they take juice?” I said, completing her sentence.  “Close.  Real close, but not quite.”

“No wonder,” Lori said.  “No wonder why Arms like to hunt.”

“Yes.”

“A Focus is a juice magnet…” Lori said, her voice dreamy.

“Lori?” I prompted, as she didn’t continue.  I had heard some of this before, from Focus Teas.

“Mmmm,” she said, and brought her attention back. “One of the reasons why a Focus in constant contact with her people has to move juice all the time is that unless she figures out a way to gain control over the process, she unconsciously does the juice magnet routine and all her people’s juice gets slowly sucked up into her juice buffer.  I’m slowly depleting your juice supply with this.”

“Is this the answer to the Arm problem?  Reverse the flow?  Run it the other way?”  Ooh.  Love.  I could get used to this.

“A potential solution.  Mmm.  I just don’t understand how, and I’ve got a lot of training handling juice.  I’m missing too many pieces of an intricate puzzle.”

As I was thinking of a permanent love affair with Lori, reality intruded and showed the situation to be much more complex.

The lights dimmed to black and Sky entered the room.  “Are you ready, my dear?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lori said, her voice lower.  Muted sisterly love and open affection.  I had definitely fallen into soap opera Focus-land.

I metasensed Sky examining my juice in the pitch darkness, moving it around, poking, experimenting.  “Well, this is one way to filter the impurities out of an Arm’s supplemental juice,” Sky said, commenting on the juice cycling.  He sounded far more forceful than when I had him under my control.  “Don’t ever try this trick with a spud; their itty bitty brains and egos would pop.”  It took me a moment to figure out ‘spud’ was a Canadianism for ‘low quality Focus’.

“To work.  Tell me what feels abnormal, Arm Hancock,” Sky said. His voice echoed off the cinderblock walls.  I let my eyes drift closed.  In the darkness, they served no purpose.

“Okay.”  I dragged my attention away from my pleasure and concentrated, trying to metasense what he did.  No such luck.  Whatever Sky did lay beyond my metasense capabilities, despite my ability to metasense some kinds of dross.  Sky poked and prodded, and eventually, I metasensed something in my juice.  “There, Sky.  What you just did.”

“Ah,” he said.  “I recognize that.  This bit of contamination has the same signature as the foul gristle we found in the CDC’s Transform Detention Center.”

“Can you get rid of it?”

“Hmm,” Sky said, and then paused.  “Arm Hancock, I’m going to try something.  I’ll be extending my Crow capabilities inside of you to extract the gristle dross.  Please don’t fight what I’m about to do.”

He pulled my juice.  Instinctively, I pulled back.  Wrong-o.  I didn’t want this bad juice.

“Sorry.  My instincts got the better of me.  Could you try again, please?”

Five attempts later I finally learned not to fight Sky’s extraction.  Whatever he did hurt like the dickens and was freaky strange, too.  He wasn’t actually pulling my juice.  He was pulling something else, the bad juice he termed gristle dross and doing so caused my juice to, what, slosh around painfully?

“There are layers and layers of this horrid gristle dross,” he said, after a few minutes.  “Unlike what I normally consume, this is unusable.  I’m exhausted.”

“What can we do?”  I asked, ignoring the fact I had no idea what he said.  I had expected Lori to lead here, but she had zoned out completely, lost in the overwhelming pleasure of the cycling juice.  Every few seconds, she would twitch violently.  I bet I knew what she was experiencing, something I suspected she would never talk to me about until she was mine and I was hers and all that.

“Burn juice.  Do the Arm trick of burning juice.  I can recharge myself off of your waste products.”

Hmph.  He meant what Gilgamesh called ‘the good stuff’.  Carol Hancock, the gourmet dinner.  “I can burn juice without a physical trigger, but the amount is insignificant.”

“An Arm I know once burned juice while healing,” he said.  Keaton, of course.

“What, I’m supposed to let you slice me up?”

“What alternative do we have?”

Sky had definitely become more serious and stern.  “Fine.  Need a knife?”

“No.  I carry my own, thank you, mademoiselle Arm.”  He paused for a moment.  “Back of your right calf okay?”

“Yes.”

Slice.  I burned juice to heal.  I finished healing.

“Okay.  Now what?”

“This will take me a few moments.  I do this slowly.  Meditate.  Lose yourself in whatever pleasure my gracious lady has found in this.”

Sure.  Noooo problem.  I worshipped the movement of the juice and lost myself in its flow.  I saw God, and she blessed me many times.  Somewhere in there I meshed with Lori’s metasense.  Oooh, acid trip time.  How did Focuses keep track of all this craziness!

Some undefined time later, Sky tapped me on my shoulder with the knife hilt.  “Might I have a moment of your assistance, Arm Hancock?”

“Sure,” I said, slurring the word.  I brought myself back.

“I’m going to try to remove the gristle dross again.”

This particular cycle repeated itself for hours.  I later found out Lori and I were strapped together for about twenty hours.  By the time Sky finished, I was beyond famished, my muscles were screaming agony, Lori was out cold, and my juice was down to near danger levels.  Sky lay flat on the floor of the room, muttering something about butcher knives and dross.  Save when he was drawing dross, he never stopped talking.  Certainly more entertaining than his Sam persona.  I understood why Lori was attracted to him.  I think Sky went through about as many scrapes a year as I did.  I actually started to feel bad about raping him.

“Are we done?” I asked.

“I’ve gotten about as much as I can, mademoiselle Arm,” Sky said. “The rest of the foul gristle is beyond my meager capabilities to manipulate.”

“I’m still cursed?”

“I think I got about ninety percent of it, perhaps a little more.  At least you don’t sense like some cross between an Arm and a Monster.  I don’t know what else to say, save that I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.  Ninety percent better is wonderful news, Sky.”

“Glad to be of service, mademoiselle Arm.  Remember, if you think in the terms of the Cause, there are things Crows can do for Arms.  I’ve met three Arms, and each found a way to get herself dripped in gristle on regular occasions.”

I wasn’t up for a theoretical discussion like this right now.  “I have a big problem.”

“Eh, yes.  You’re low on juice.  I’ve seen this before.  How out of control will you be when you get released?”

“Not too bad, but I think I need to go find me some juice in the standard Arm fashion, before I make a big mess of things.”  Meaning: poach one of Lori’s Transforms.

I didn’t need to worry.  Someone bright had thought ahead, and the house was deserted of Transforms when I came up from the basement.  The same non-Transform who had driven me in from the airport had released me from bondage.  He cold-bloodedly handed me a list of the nearest clinics with unclaimed Transforms and the keys to a rental car.  Within a few moments, I was on my way to Providence.  Rhode Island, that is.

I found Gilgamesh in the back seat of the rental, quiet and happy.  He had the same gooey look in his eyes I had whenever I stared at Lori.  I smiled back.  Getting my Crow back filled a big aching void in my mind and heart. I had missed him so much.  I would no longer have to keep myself Arm-busy to keep from drowning in sorrow.

“I’m going to take juice soon,” I said.  “You ready for what happens?”  Normally he didn’t want to be anywhere near me after I took juice and got lusty.  I had panicked him once on that issue and he hadn’t been over it, last time I checked.

“After three days of dealing with Inferno?  I can’t think of a better getting-back-together celebration,” Gilgamesh said.  Awwwh.  I was cuddlier than Lori, Sky and 42 overly pushy overtrained Transforms.  Well, so were Great White Sharks.  “I’ll even let you take the lead.”

Gilgamesh had caught my sense of humor.

Gilgamesh: June 21, 1968

This time he had no problem letting Tiamat drive.  She understood what panicked him a lot more than before.  He spent a moment reminiscing about last night; Lori had said Major Transform sex was transcendent and she hadn’t exaggerated.  Whatever worries he once had about Tiamat had vanished in the long sleepless night, lost in her unending sexual power and comfort.