The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) (41 page)

A doorway appeared in front of Tonya.  Of all things, it looked like the doorway to her office.  Mental illusions.  Tonya’s own mind had made the door for her.

“Go through the door, Tonya,” the glorious Focus said.  “In it, you’ll find your past.  You’ll remember.  Find a way to do things differently, this time.  Don’t make the same mistakes you once did.”

Tonya obeyed the glorious Focus and stepped through the door

Tonya found herself in the backyard of a small suburban home, just outside Washington, DC. She remembered the place.  Her first meeting with… with…

A cat yowled, and ran through the low evergreen bushes.  Her bodyguards at her side, she walked forward, up to the house.  She smelled blood.

“Wait here.  There’s nothing you can do to protect me from the Arm,” Tonya said.  These were the words she had spoken!

How could she be here!  This was years ago!

She stopped at the door and hesitated.

No, this is what the glorious Focus wanted.  She opened the door, and walked in.  The inside of the small house was an abattoir, a reeking, rotting mess, strewn with gore, intestines draped over the doors and furniture.

“Biggioni.”  The voice was hoarse, and rough, as from someone no longer used to speaking.  Someone who had nearly gone animal.  A female voice.  “Help me.”

Begging, or a command?  Tonya wasn’t sure.  She followed the voice, to a bedroom, trying not to step in the gore.

Why should she help this Monster?  What had she done, before?  Had she helped?  Yes.  She remembered helping.  The glorious Focus wanted her to do it differently this time, though.  What could she do differently?  Many talents were at her disposal, none strong enough.  That had been her decision, from before.

Tonya walked into the bedroom.  The Monster Focus, who some called an Arm, sat on the floor.  Her lower left leg was missing, and bone showed, below the knee.  Shattered, exposed to air.  She looked different than Tonya remembered – memory of a more current version of the same Monster.  This one looked less human, with too many misshapen muscles.  Some were way too big, others way too small.  Her head was shaved, and she held a blonde wig in her hands.  Knives and guns littered the floor.  Tears rolled down the monster’s face.

On the bed was another, a living man.  Dr. Henry Zielinski!  What was he doing here?

Oh, yes.  He was here, supposed to be here.  Tonya had suckered him into this situation.  She had convinced him to be bait, knowing the Monster Focus had dealt with him before.  He looked in bad shape, bleeding from a cut on his forehead.  He had a black eye, and one of his arms hung funny.  He looked so young!

“Fix the doctor,” the Monster Focus said.  Trying to be commanding, and failing.  So dangerous, so predatory.  So young.  “I’ll do what you want.  Please.  I’m dying.  Don’t let me die.”

The Arm was at her last wits, just as Tonya had arranged.  All so Tonya could break her, roll her with her charisma, and make the Arm hers.

What had she done in the past?  Right.  She had taken Dr. Zielinski to a hospital, and given the Arm the address of a nearby building to use as a safe house.  Tonya had altered her original plan, shamed by what she had done to Dr. Zielinski, not wanting his death on her conscience.  The choice had been to take the Arm captive or get help for Zielinski.  She hadn’t been able to do both.

Her former choice wasn’t open to her.  The glorious Focus wanted her to do things differently this time.  The obvious choice would be the second alternative, to take the Arm captive, but the nagging sense of wrongness made Tonya suspicious of obvious choices.  What tools did she have available?  Well, she knew a lot more about Transforms, now.  She could do some things that she would have never thought of back then.  Things she had once thought impossible.

“I’ll help,” Tonya said, echoing what she said in the past.  “But I want something from you.”  This was new.  This was her real self, speaking through.  “You need to be under my protection.”

“How?  How can you protect me?”

“Accept my protections.  Become one of my Transforms.”

“Juice?  You can give me juice?”

“I can give you unwanted Transforms,” Tonya said.  Yes.  This could have worked, even back then, if she had the will, back then, to force it.  “Let me touch your juice, make you part of my household.”

“No!” the Monster said.  “You’ll kill me.”

“Focuses can’t kill their own Transforms,” Tonya said.  Lying.  Most Focuses couldn’t, unless their own Transforms turned on their Focus.  Tonya was as much a Monster as the Arm, though.  She had killed her own.  Back then, in this time, she had only just started to become uncomfortable with her personal Monsterhood.  If she had said this back then, her statement would have been a transparent lie.  Not now.  “I promise I’ll protect you.  You have no other choice.”  Charisma.  At the time, Tonya hadn’t known how to tune her Charisma to affect an Arm.  Now, she knew how.

“What do I do?”

“Accept that you’re mine,” Tonya said, and applied the tag.  The Monster obeyed Tonya’s charisma and didn’t fight off the tag.  The Monster Focus was hers.  Not a captive.  Hers.

Pleasure filled Tonya, along with a feeling of buoyancy and pride.  She had succeeded in the glorious Focus’s task, by taking the non-obvious path.  Behind her, the strange doorway of light reappeared.

Calling her.

She couldn’t stay here, back in the past.

Tonya turned, and stepped back through the door, back into the embrace of the glorious Focus.

Back into the present.

“Did you find a different path?” the glorious Focus asked.  Time continued to stand still.

“Yes, my lady.”  Tonya said, and bowed slightly.  The idea was so simple.  She wondered if she had done the right thing.

“I can see in the light of your face that you found a better solution,” the glorious Focus said.  “Now, I must go to tend to other business, but I have a special task for you, a personal task.  I captured the person you saw in the past, and she is under my control, here in the holy halls.  We need her to serve us in this fight.  Use what you just learned to bring her into the light.”

“Yes, of course, my lady.”

“She sits in the far corner of this chamber, chained in holy light.  Bring her into the true light, Tonya,” the glorious Focus said.

Time resumed its stately march, throwing Tonya back into the noisy battle to defend the holy halls of the glorious Focus.

Tonya looked across the throne room of the holy halls, past the many defenders, Focuses, Transforms and the others, the dark ones.  The Monster was, indeed, chained in holy light.  Tonya leaned on Danny and slowly walked across the expansive throne room, the noise of battle at her back.

“Keaton,” Tonya said.  The Monster’s name.  This Monster should be one of the dark ones, defending the holy halls, as the glorious Focus said.  Instead, she was rebellious and unwilling.

No, that wasn’t right.  Images of elsewhere filled Tonya’s mind.  Other places, other times.  Memories of voices, her own voice saying ‘I will never sell my soul to you’, while looking at Keaton.  Another image, helping Keaton after Keaton had rescued another Monster from a place much similar to Hilltop.

Was Keaton a friend or an enemy?

This whole situation was wrong.  This whole
place
was wrong.

Tonya reached out and touched the chained Monster named Keaton, and woke her up.  The poor thing was suffering and in pain.  Just as in her vision.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Biggioni?” the Monster said.  No, this wasn’t the misshapen pitiful thing she had encountered so many years ago.  This Keaton wasn’t a broken half-Monster, but a severely damaged and yet still dangerous fighting machine.

Biggioni?  “Yes, that’s my name, isn’t it?”

“Fucking crap,” the Monster said.  “Tonya!  Snap out of it!  Patterson’s playing with your mind!”

Mind?  No, her mind and will was inviolate.  Her own.  She had said it so many times it must be true.

Why then did she remember Focus Rizzari helping her remove the tag of the glorious Focus?

“The glorious Focus needs your service, Stacy,” Tonya said.  “I must save you from the demons plaguing you.”

“Shit!  Take my tag, Tonya!  Now!  Come here!”

Tonya reached out and hugged the Monster, her will following the lead of the glorious Focus.  This was the moment when she needed to put to use what she had learned in her vision of the past.  Time to claim the Monster Keaton.

“You are mine,” they both said, bending their wills to the task.

Together.

The juice moved.

The distant auroras danced brightly and newness began.

Interlude, in French:

“I would like to speak to the Madonna,” he said, over the phone.  His head was nearly soaked from the fine mist leaking from the sky, but the phone booth was at least covered, although the concession stand beside it had been padlocked for months.

“Sir, may I ask who is calling?”

“The code word is ‘collapse’.”

Pause.  “I see.  Can you please wait?”

He waited.  This was a long shot, but it was the best he could think of on short notice.  His gut said that this might be his only chance.  Things were about to spin out of control, perhaps permanently.

“Hello?”  The voice of the Madonna of Montreal.

“Yes, it’s me,” he said.

“I hadn’t expected to hear from you any time soon.”

“I had a sudden inspiration.  I have a problem…”

“Yes, I know.”

“I just realized that unless the problem’s solved, now, today, it might never be solved.  I was wondering if you had any ideas on
how
.  Surely there’s a way.”

“You might be right about the timing.  Her speech was powerful today, wasn’t it?  There are many solutions, though.  Potentially.  All cause their own problems.”

“I need a cure.”

“In what way?  Removing the problem entirely is possible, but the consequences would be horrible.  One must use the weapons one is presented with.”

“I figured that removing the problem would harm our cause.  Is there a way to bring the problem under control?  To have it as an option, when needed?”

“Yes.”

“Great.  How?”

“They won’t listen to you.”

“Oh.  Well, there is that.  I’ve gotten some respect, but not enough, yet, to push a solution on a topic of this importance.”

“You must accept the alternative, then, and let things go on as they are.”

He shook his head, and looked out over the wet fields.  Disaster.  It would be a disaster to let this continue, uncontrolled.

“Could
you
tell them?”

“How?  I am here, they are there, and only a few know me enough to come to visit me.”

“Can you come here?”

“I wouldn’t arrive in time.”

“I can give you a credit card number.  You could charge a plane flight and taxi trip on it.”

“A credit card number?  You don’t have resources like that, young man.  I will not deal in theft.”

“This was given to me, for emergency use, by the Commander.  She trusts me.”

“Hmm.  That would be acceptable, but the consequences for the use of this credit card would be on your shoulders.  Arms aren’t frivolous, any of them.  The Commander less than most.”

“I’ll accept the risk.”

“Then, young man, I will pay you a visit.  Expect me there before sunrise.  Don’t assume they will listen to me, though.  The Commander, I’ll have you know, is a most stubborn Transform.”

What The Fuck Did We Do To Each Other?
December 24, 1972 (Continued)

Eilene Cash – Focus #16 – June 1957.  Focus Cash was not invited into the first Focus leadership circle or the UFA (until 1963) because of racial issues, as she is the only black first Focus.  Involved in the Transform rights movement and organization since its inception in 1964.

“Lives of the Focuses”

Carol Hancock:

I attempted to stare down Patterson’s polluted yellow glowing thing with my predator and got nowhere.  “How do we take that thing?” I said.  We huddled against the wall of Patterson’s warehouse and the yellow ick still had us pinned down.  The rest of the fight slowly fell apart as well.  Tonya’s remaining Transforms dragged her to a warehouse entrance barely fifty yards from us, all under Patterson’s spell, worst but by no means all of the disasters.  “We can’t just sit here and let the fucking world go to hell.”

“It’s the compound,” Rumor said.  He remained invisible, but stayed close to me, his hand on my shoulder.

“What is?  That thing?  The compound?”

“Focus Rizzari refers to this as the household superorganism.  Here, as young Arm Sokolnik said, it’s become élan corrupted and alive.  The compound thinks, using pieces of everyone’s mind.”

Sick.  No, beyond sick.  Surrendering control of the unconscious part of your mind to something so powerful?  Utterly fucking insane.  My urge to own one of these vanished.

“Can we fight this élan beast?” Haggerty said.  Blood dripped from her face from miscellaneous wounds, and she exuded the deadly danger of a mature Arm in combat.

“Not physically.  A Noble can eat an élan beast, as you name it, though.  I suspect an Arm could, as well, at the cost of her life.”

They both turned to Dowling, who attempted to create a defensive position out of two tricycles and a couple of concrete blocks.  Dowling shrugged.  “I can metasense the élan beast, but it’s too big.”

“Too big?” Haggerty said.  She kept close to the warehouse wall and the knife in her hand twitched, channeling her desire to kill something.  “What the fuck does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Dowling said.  “Instincts.”

“All three of you, together, then,” Polly said.  Referring to the three remaining Nobles.  She stayed close to Haggerty, practically touching.

“The élan beast’s still too big.”

Impasse.  I stared at the yellow thing, wondering if I should destroy the élan beast myself, despite the consequences.  It loomed just feet from us, overhead, pulsing and singing its deathly song.  What if the élan beast walked off with me instead?  That would be much worse than taking the élan beast down and dying in the process.

“How about all of us working together?” Sokolnik said.  Her face dripped mud and blood as well, christening for a young predator.

I glared at her.  Damned two-bit student Arms are supposed to keep their traps shut, and this was the second time she had interjected.  For a mere instant, an instant noticeable only to another Arm, she glared back – she thought she was right – then she became abashed and horrified at her challenge.  Very strange, this Arm.

“The student’s correct, there is a way,” Rumor said, from behind me and next to Sokolnik.  “This goes against all of our conventions, and yours as well, Focus.  All the Major Transforms, together, feeding.  It’s been done before, but the participants were declared an abomination, and forbidden from ever doing so again.”

Polly nodded.  “Sky, Armenigar, Beast and the first Focus.  The Lost Tribe.  A long time ago.”

“What the fuck is the first Focus?” I asked.  “Are you talking about the Madonna of Montreal?”  That’s who I thought ‘Focus’ was, from the Lost Tribe.

“Yes, they’re one and the same,” Polly said and gave me a conspiratorial grin from her own bloody face.  “Anne-Marie Sieurs, the first Focus to survive.  She fled Europe in the early sixties, barely one step ahead of the Purifier.”  A dream image of the Purifier’s black-cloud-with-eyes combat disguise flashed in my memory.  Was this what the Madonna tried to send to me?

I hated blundering into the nasty deep waters where nothing made sense.  I hated myths and magic.  If I wasn’t caught in a battle, I would have staged an Arm-quality hissy fit.  “Sieurs is supposed to be dead,” I said, likely a little beastly.  That’s what Van put into his book.

“You think only Arms can do identity changes?” Polly said, with a harsh laugh.  I wasn’t sure what to think, save that the idea of group feeding sounded strange.  “I studied the trick, so as with all the other forbidden tricks, I could use it in a crisis.  I assume you know it as well, Rumor?”

“Yes, Focus.”

Polly turned to me.  “You, Haggerty and Sokolnik juice suck it.  Rumor and I take the extras from you so you don’t die or go Monster, and feed the waste to the Nobles.”  Arms couldn’t go Monster from juice sucking a Transform.  This process, though, apparently put us at risk.  I grew more unhappy.

“There’s élan in that thing,” I said, snarling.  Enough to register as a Monster to my Monster amulet.

Élan could turn anyone into a Monster.

“Yes.  You’ll have to let us take the élan from you, so the élan doesn’t corrupt you.”

“This is worse than Monster élan,” Haggerty said, the Arm master at surviving off Monster juice, if she had Crow help.  Even she had problems doing so.  “Won’t it corrupt all of us?”

“Keep it moving,” Dowling said.  “Don’t let it settle.  It’s like taking juice from an old Monster; you take in the élan, puke it out, then take it in…and repeat several times, or you’ll pass out like a young Arm taking her prey.”

Nobles knew the strangest things.

“Tighten the tags, Commander,” Haggerty said.  “All the way to double tags, but allow it to go both ways.  Make us one.”

“You’re crazy.”  There were a thousand ways this could go wrong, and the bad possibilities filled my head.  The whole concept of mutual double Arm dominance tags itself was wholly unnatural.  What, each of us were going to get to order the rest of us…

“Do it.  Trust me, dammit!”

This was Haggerty.  This was a battle situation.  I had to trust her.  My tactics in battle didn’t measure up because I thought too fast and got lost in my own mental bunny trails.  Battle lust.  I needed to keep my focus on the big picture, not just the squad I was with, or I would overthink everything.

Haggerty had good combat instincts.  She studied crap like this for fun.  She had lived off Monster juice on her Eskimo Spear quest, aided only by a single mid-rank Crow.

I looked at my Major Transforms.  They all nodded, giving me permission.  So I did as Amy asked and tightened the tags.

We became one.

Amy, Dolores and I leapt and grabbed the yellow mess, and started to suck juice.  In the back of my mind, Rumor worked his magic.  There was over nine hundred points of juice in this thing, and about eighteen hundred points of dross, whatever that meant, since I knew of no way to measure dross.  The rest of the Major Transforms siphoned off the juice and dross.

There was no pleasure in this draw; this was worse than taking juice from a Monster.  The thing fought back, but against me – no, against our oneness – the élan beast fell.

Time passed, and eventually, we finished dissipating the yellow ick.  The double tags evaporated as well, as none of us had the will to support them when we finished.

Big smiles grew on each of our faces as we recovered.  We were all full up on juice and dross, including Polly and Pearl’s Transforms.  An incredible icky sea of fresh dross surrounded us, the mess we couldn’t use.  Juice trace strings radiated away from us, lines of blood from a fresh kill.  I raised my hand and made a fist, not holding back my feral snarl.

“Charge!” Dowling said, with a bear roar.  We roared with him, and charged.

Henry Zielinski:

His eyes opened to incredible brightness, and he closed them again.  Head aching and hands shaking, he stumbled to his feet.  Somebody helped him up.  Female.  Terry?

The area around him was a chaos of bodies and disaster.  People collapsed, others bleeding.  Bodies covered the street and spilled onto the small urban lawns.  People wove their way among the bodies, tending and attempting to bring sanity to the chaos.  “Man, you’re a mess, Doc,” Terry said.  She didn’t look so healthy herself, all torn clothes, blood and bruises.  She reeked of sweat and gun smoke.

What was he doing mixed up with the Inferno people?  Wasn’t he supposed to be with group four?

“What’s going on?”

“We’ve finally disabled the last of the Crows Patterson set against us, and we’re getting our shit together to advance.”

Zielinski bent over and vomited.  “Feel better?” Terry said.  “Three of them skunked your group but good on your way over to help us.”

“Yes,” Zielinski said.  He should be helping the wounded.  Dammit, his head still ached.  “Where’s Lori?  How badly hurt is she?”

“Doc?” Terry said.  “She’s fine.  You should see the other guys, though.”

Zielinski heard Lori’s voice, and tugged at Terry, who helped him over toward where The Focus stood among a cluster of wounded but functional combatants, despite his shaking legs and arms.  “Terry, you’re wounded.”

“That’s why I’m back with you.”

“Let me examine you,” he said, instincts at work.  Terry showed him the shoulder wound, an in and out.  “Let me patch that,” he said.  “Why are you still up?”

“Uh, I don’t know, Doc.  I was down for a while.”  The wound had stopped bleeding on its own.  No, someone had stuck a rolled up piece of cloth in it, a Crow trick.  Had to be Sky.  No one else came up with idiotic tricks like that.  Zielinski decided to patch over the wound, for now.  He claimed his black bag from Terry, who carried it for him.

“Hank!”

Connie Webb’s voice.  “Over here,” he said.  Connie and two of her Transforms ran up, dodging wounded as they ran.

“Stay down, dammit,” she said.  Zielinski shook his head.  “You’re impossible.”

“Lori?” Zielinski said.

“Figures,” Connie said.  “Let’s go.” She led him through the crowd, to where Lori gave orders to the now combined groups two and four.  “Viscount Nash got a leg blown off, and he’s over there, sewing it back on,” Connie said, her mouth puckered in distaste.  Chimera healing techniques weren’t for the squeamish.

Too many of the dead and wounded around them were from Inferno.  Way too many.  No shortage of Patterson’s fallen, either, and with many of the fallen visibly untouched, Hank suspected Lady Death had done her thing again.

“Billington,” Lori said to the Arm in front of her.  The Arm’s eyes were wide and wild, and Hank would have considered her too dangerous to approach, but she nodded and obeyed Lori.  “As soon as Sky finishes cleaning that crap off of Armenigar, I want you to get the other Arms together and do the group predator thing.  I want you to scare off the chaff between us and Patterson’s warehouse.  We need speed.  We’re behind schedule.”  She turned to Hank as Billington jogged back into the combat.  “Shit.  Let me fix that.”

The urge to vomit went away and the world didn’t seem as bright.  The pain receded, and he practically bounced with health.  His mind cleared, and he blinked twice.

“What did you do to me, Lori?” he asked.  “I thought Focuses could only help with Transforms…”  His voice ran out of gas.

Oops.

“Let’s go,” Lori said, and pointed in the direction of Patterson’s warehouse.  She picked up her bullet-riddled black cloak, and slung it over her shoulders, Lady Death again.  “Hank, I think you’ve just suffered a midlife crisis of epic proportions.”  Pause, deadpan.  “Welcome to Inferno.”

He had transformed.  He was now a Transform.  For once, Hank was speechless.

“Run, you people!” Lori said, with her Boston fishwife bellow.  Everyone still functional stood up to follow.  “The poo’s about to hit the paddle!”

Gilgamesh:

Even as a child he had hated to perform.  Nothing matched the terror of public speaking, even before he became a Crow.

As a Crow, performing was a nightmare.  His legs and hands shook as Shadow directed him to the dueling ground, and Thomas read the rules, such as they were.  No this, no that.  Everything stays in the marked area, including the duelists.  Nobody from outside the marked area could interfere.  In this duel, all he needed to do was last a minute.  He didn’t even need to defeat Phobos.  He didn’t even need to speak.

That was good, because Gilgamesh could barely breathe.

His fight against the ogre Hunter, Jack, had been easier.  Too many eyes stared at him.  He would even have a hard time panicking efficiently, not with over fifty Crows in metasense range.  Even hemmed in by crazy restrictions no Focus other than Gail would have stood for, many of the visiting Crows were too wary of Gail to step out of the shadows they hid in.  Arm Debardelaben sat in her wheelchair, beside Gail, barely holding in her anger.  None of the Crows but Shadow would even acknowledge her existence.

Gail’s eyes on him were the worst.  This was like performing for his mother.  Or wife.  If he blew this, he doubted he would be able to face her again.

The maternity section terrified him more.  How had Tiamat talked him into allowing all of them to come?  They had all slept with him, and he loved them all, in a strange and new sort of way.  Well, realistically, the reason he let them come was that when the Commander said jump, he jumped.  He would feel a lot better with Tiamat in the audience, because at least Tiamat understood the risks of combat, and knew you didn’t have to win every battle to win the war.