Gathering Storm (19 page)

When Kay reviewed the incident through a
filter of reason, he had to admit that Katrina had been frightened
but not harmed. Not really.

While Kay was mulling it
over, Litha turned to the demon and said quietly, “Dad. I need you
to work with us on this.”

He looked at Litha for a
few beats, then shrugged his shoulders and returned his attention
to Kay. “Okay. You can pinch me back.”

One thing that could be
said about Deliverance. He was not predictable.

The offer of a retaliation
pinch seemed to completely take the wind out of Kay’s sails. And,
as much as Kay might despise the incubus for the scare he’d been
put through, he didn’t think pinching would make him feel any
better about the thing. He glared at Deliverance.

“First, you took my girl.
Now you’ve lost my partner. When I look at you, I see bad news
walking. I will leave you alone, but just stay the hell away from
me.”

“Fair enough. Your loss,”
Deliverance said cheerfully just before he winked at Litha and
popped out.

Glen flopped into a chair. “Who wants
cookies?”

Ram raised his hand. “I do.”

Kay gave Ram a shoulder bump greeting.
“Sorry about that.”

“Pffft. We’ve all come to
be quite fond of your high strung, extra sensitive
side.”

“Still funny, Rammel.”

Glen stood up with a mouth
full of chocolate chip cookie. “Okay, B Team. Enough with the
reunions and high drama. Hugs all around and then let’s get back to
it. We’ve got work to do.”

Kay looked at Ram and
pointed at Glen as if to say, “What is that about?”

Ram grinned and shook his
head. “The long of it is, ’tis a story. The short of it is that the
kid’s in charge.”

“Of Jefferson Unit?” Kay
gave Glen a thorough once over. The astonished tone in his question
might have been insulting to anyone besides Glen. But he knew the
situation was astonishment-worthy. So he just smiled as he munched
down an enormous chocochip cookie. “Want milk with
that?”

Back to Ram, Kay said, “I
can’t have been away that long. Where’s Sol?”

“On a sexy vacay with our
very own Farnsworth. Whom he’s marryin’.”

Kay looked dubious. “Now I
know you’re shitting me.”

“On your own time,
gentlemen. Take a seat if you will,” Glen interrupted. “What we
need to accomplish today is twofold. We need to assess our subject,
identify bullet points, and assign duties. Let’s take it one
category at a time. We’ll start with his body.

“Storm. If you would be so kind as to stand
up and remove your shirt.”

“What?”

“Take off the tee.” Angel
made no move to comply. “Is there a problem?”

“Yes. There’s a problem.
I’m not auditioning for pinup.”

“That’s okay because no one here is
interested in photos.”

He got to his feet slowly
and hesitated before pulling his shirt over his head. Standing
there being ogled he felt vulnerable and self-conscious to a degree
he didn’t know was possible. The collective murmurs of disapproval
had him blushing and turning shy.

“Great Paddy, man. Where is your pride?”

“It’s a good thing he’s
not auditioning for pinup,” Kay snickered to Ram.

“What are we going to do
about the ink?” Elora asked Glen without taking her eyes away from
the dragon tattoo.

“Make sure he keeps a
shirt on.”

Glen cleared his throat.
“Thank you, ah, Storm. That told us what we need to know. Please
feel free to get dressed.”

He’s ten pounds over and
belly dancers have better def,” said Kay. “I’ll bet he can’t even
run an eight minute mile.” Ram and Elora nodded in unison. “I’ll
take on getting him in shape.”

Angel pulled on his tee and started to sit
down.

“Not so fast.” Elora was
up and moving toward the end of the table. She pushed his chair out
of the way with her foot to clear some room, then asked, “Ever done
any fighting?”

“Like in a bar?”

Elora heaved a sigh. “I’ll
take that as a ‘no’. Alright. I’m going to try to slap your chin.
Not hard. I won’t hurt you. I just want to get a look at your
reflexes and counters.”

She flicked out a jab that
glanced off his jaw. It was over before Angel knew she’d
moved.

Walking back to her chair
she said, “My
fourteen-year-olds could
permanently disable him in two seconds. I’ll take martial arts.”
Then under her breath, so only Ram could hear she said, “For all
the good it’ll do,” as she sat back down.

“Okay. Moving right along.
I’ll take Black Swan history and make sure he knows who we are,
what we are, what we’ve done, and what we’re doing.” He looked at
Ram, Kay, and Elora. “I’ll throw in some B Team fun facts, but the
three of you will probably want to fill in the color. Also, as
friends, you will catch it and bring it to his attention when he
does or says something that is un-Storm-like.” They
nodded.

“Litha, same thing. I want
you to work on the subtleties. You don’t need to schedule extra
time. You can do it at the vineyard over dinner or whatever. Facial
expression, body language, tone of voice, verbal inflexion. Correct
anything that’s off.

“If we don’t get it right,
people will start to be uneasy. They may not know
what
is wrong, just
that
something
is
wrong. I also want you to work with him on people he knows. I’ll
help you pull together photos and fill in names, dates, and so
forth.”

Half to himself, he said,
“It’s a stroke of good luck that the Hunter Division was just
transferred out or we’d be in trouble trying to recreate the
relationship he had with every one of those knights.

“Sir Hawking. You’re known
for being good with stories and that’s what I want you to do. Give
Litha a few days to work with him on people and then I want you to
make up scenarios and role play with him.”

Ram nodded. “Sure.”

Glen looked at his watch. “Questions before
we get started?”

Elora spoke up. “We need a
place for Kay to stay.”

Glen grinned. “Not a
problem. With almost all the knights shipped out, we’ve got a lot
of vacancies. Anybody else?” He paused. When no one else spoke, he
said, “Let’s get started on a schedule.”

They decided that Kay
would be first up in the personal coach lineup. So he left the
conference room with Angel in tow muttering something that may have
included the words “ass” and “flabby”.

All parties involved in
the construction of the proposed elaborate ruse knew that it wasn’t
the clone’s fault, but it was impossible to not resent somebody
walking around with Storm’s face, when every one of them was
grieving the absence of the real Storm.

Before Litha left to take
her own search assignment for the day, she and Glen went over a
list of the people Storm would need to get up to speed on. Elora
went to her morning class on hand-to-hand with the younger boys and
planned to work Angel in between that and her afternoon
class.

Glen wrote himself into
the schedule “training lunch” every day. It was multitasking. They
both had to stop and eat. Glen could discuss the history of Black
Swan, and Storm’s unique place in it, while he was eating his
midday meal in the conference room, as he’d been doing ever since
Storm had gone missing.

Ram, Elora, and Kay were
pleased with that arrangement because they could lunch together in
quiet camaraderie without the unwanted shadow.

Two and a half hours
later, Kay dropped his charge off at Glen’s. Angel’s hair was wet
and he was wearing scrubs.

“Why’s he wearing scrubs?”
Glen asked.

“Because he worked up a sweat and nobody
brought him a change. This is the only thing we could find to put
him in.”

“Umm. Good
thinking.”

“Glad you
approve.”

“Come back after lunch and I’ll have your
temporary quarters ready.”

“Okay. So…” Kay looked
around. “How’s it feel to fill his shoes?”

Glen shook his head. “I respected him
before. Now I think he’s a god.”

Kay smiled and clapped
Glen on the shoulder. “The place hasn’t fallen down around your
ears. That means you must be doing okay.”

When Kay left, Angel, who
had been ignored to the point where he was starting to question his
visibility said to Glen, “You know I
can
talk.”

“What’s that?”

“If you’d asked me why I was wearing scrubs,
I could have told you myself.”

Glen stopped and looked at
Angel, really looked, for the first time. “My apologies. What would
you like for lunch?”

Angel was amused by the
breadth of that open ended question. “Twelve ounces of New York
Strip, medium rare, with Béarnaise sauce, broccolini still crisp,
two poached tomato halves, and French fries. Oh and dessert. Apple
pie with cheddar cheese melted on top.”

Angel wore the barest
suggestion of amusement while he waited for Glen to tell him he was
being ridiculous. Instead, Glen picked up the phone and repeated
the order word for word adding, “Two of those. I’ll also have a
Coke.”

He looked at Angel with eyebrows raised.

“Water.”

“And one of those big
square bottles of water with the tropical flowers on front. I’ll be
in my office. Leave the trays in the conference room and call me
when it’s here.” Pause. “Yes.” Pause. “Yes.” Pause. “That’s right.
Okay. Thanks.

“Let’s go in my office. We need to keep you
out of sight until you’re ready to interact.”

The office was only a few
feet away. Glen motioned for Angel to enter first and then closed
the door behind him. As he sat down behind the large desk, he said,
“How was the workout?”

“Hard.”

Glen smiled. “You work out
regularly?”

Angel rolled one shoulder
like he was testing to see if it still worked. “I walk a block and
a half to the garage where my car is parked. Sometimes I slow dance
with women.”

Glen looked at Angel like he was waiting for
him to get to the part where he described actual exercise.

“That’s about it. No point
in overexerting. I have better uses for that energy.”

Glen cocked his head. “Like what?”

Angel grinned. “Wine, women, song, and, in
my case horses.”

“You like riding
horses.”

Angel barked out a laugh.
“No, kid. I like to
bet
on horses.”

“Oh. So what work do you do?”

“Work?”

“What do you do for a living?”

“Are you listening? I said, I play
ponies.”

“You mean you’re a professional
gambler?”

“Yes. That’s it exactly. A professional
gambler.”

Glen stared at him trying
to imagine how Storm’s cross-dimensional counterpart could possibly
end up as a professional gambler. It was mind boggling.

“Are you married?”

“Again! Wine,
women
, and song. Not
many wives would appreciate my lifestyle.”

“No doubt that’s true.”

“I have a question for
you. How did somebody your age end up wearing the Pope hat to this
party?”

“You mean why do I appear to be in
charge?”

“Are you suggesting that you’re not in
charge?”

“I’m suggesting that,
while I’m filling in for the guy who really runs the place, we’re
always sixty seconds away from chaos, bedlam, and/or pandemonium.
Storm was overseeing to make sure nothing got away from me, which
was a comfort I can tell you. He was my security blanket. Now he’s
not here. As you know.

“As to how I came to be
the last one sitting behind this desk, it’s a long story and we’ve
got work to do on you today.

“We’re going to start with
simple stuff like what we are and why the other people you’ve met
care so much about the guy you look like.”

After lunch Elora came by for Angel.

“Do not speak to anyone on the way to the
sparring room. If somebody stops us and presses the issue, I’ll say
you have laryngitis. Got it?”

Angel shook his head.
“Look. Maybe your Storm is stupid, but I’m not. I believe I can
think my way through a simple instruction like keep your mouth
shut, without having you be such a condescending…” He wisely
decided the prudent thing would be to leave that sentence
unfinished.

Elora’s teeth pressed together, but she let
the attitude go. After all, it wasn’t as if he had volunteered to
work for The Order as the rest of them had. “Good. Let’s go.”

When they got off the
elevator at Sublevel 3, the open session time in the fitness center
for all personnel who were not hunters or trainees had just ended.
That meant they had to pass several women on the way to the
sparring room. Angel flirted up every one of them on the way by and
every one of them did a double take followed by a look of surprise.
When they reached the sparring room, Elora practically shoved him
inside.

She looked pissed. “I
really needed to include, ‘And don’t flirt with women who are not
Storm’s wife’ in my instructions?”