No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) (18 page)

Sam paled.  If anything, he tried to melt himself into the cushions of the couch.

“Call the Focus,” Zielinski said.  “If there’s any explaining to do, she should be the one to do it.”

“Perhaps another day.”

Sam readied to run.  I put a hand on his left biceps before he as much as twitched.  He looked at me, terrified.  “You’re endangering yourself needlessly,” he said.  I ignored his nonsense and concentrated on him.  I read complete shock at my speed.  I wasn’t conforming to his manual on Arm capabilities.  Tisk tisk tisk, Focus Rizzari.

I demanded control, as always.  “You have a choice,” I said.  “Either I physically restrain you or you give your word not to run.  Your choice.”

“Ma’am,” he said.  “May I ask why?”

“You’re a Crow, right?”  Nothing else made sense.  Why else would my instincts consider him a threat?  Without the Raindorf thoughts I could at least depend on my instincts again.

He nodded.

“Your name is Sky, right?”

He nodded again, barely keeping himself from peeing his pants.  Lori’s former Crow, the father of her unborn child, if I believed Gilgamesh’s letters.  Older than Gilgamesh and just as adventurous.  Likely able to read me if I let him, which I did now.

“You know full well what happened to me, why I needed to be rescued?”

Another nod.

“I haven’t fully recovered.”

“Ma’am,” he said.

“I also owe you.”  Hell, I owed everyone on that rescue my life.  “I pay my debts.  I don’t break agreements.  I will let you go.  I won’t make you my pet.”  Gilgamesh wrote that Sky was deathly afraid of being turned into an Arm pet.

“Mademoiselle Arm, what possible use can I be to you?”

“Don’t hide your reactions.  Let me see you thinking.”

Sky didn’t understand.

Zielinski did.  “She’s augmenting her intelligence by reading our reactions.  That’s the reason she had to, um, humble Fred.  His stupidity gave her bad information.”

All of a sudden Zielinski was far easier to read.  He had an interesting mix of total exasperation, intense curiosity and adrenaline fueled exhilaration; the old fool lived for these moments.  Like Frances he was a junkie, but instead of drugs, he was addicted to the dangerous game of Transform politics.

I planned to cure him the same way, filling up his addiction with me.

“Then by all means let me stay and help, Mademoiselle Arm,” Sky said, and let me read him as well.  Hell.  Well, if I was going to use him I guess I would have to put up with his internal sarcasm, deep-seated condescension and crazy Crow sideways thinking.

It
was
a hell of a lot better than Raindorf.

“Come here,” I said, in a relaxed tone of voice.

Zielinski struggled to his feet, still stiff and awkward from the days in the car, and came towards me.  He stopped several feet away.

“Closer.”

He took a step closer.

“Don’t make me tell you again,” I said, my voice growing colder.

Zielinski didn’t look happy, but he walked toward me, slowly but steadily, until he stood right next to me and I signaled him to stop. I looked over the damage Fred and I had caused.

His wrists were raw and bloody from the cords that had bound him.  His neck was swollen and covered with bruises, he limped, and he showed other bruises. The fingers of his right hand were swollen and red.  Fred’s work, mostly.

He started to ask a question, but I glared him quiet.  “Speak only when I ask you to.”  He took a breath, hoarsely through his throat, and then nodded.  “We’re going to talk.  But first, use the toilet.  Get yourself a drink, your voice irritates my nerves. I’ll save you a sandwich.  Go.”

“Ma’am,” he said, warily, and did as I asked.

I turned to Sky.  “Those were dross constructs making me think you were a tagged Transform?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why can’t Gilgamesh do anything like that?”  Gilgamesh was mine and I didn’t have to tag him to make him mine.  Gilgamesh I wanted to help.  It ached that he wasn’t here with me.

“He’s too young, ma’am,” Sky said.  I followed his buried terror around in his mind, his fear of being an Arm pet.  I knew far too much about Crows for his taste.  “The tricks I use take years of practice.”

I knew how to keep Crows happy, though.  “Show me the night sky illusion,” I said, in my best humble whisper.

Sky smiled and showed me.  I smiled back.

When Zielinski came back he found Sky and me shooting the breeze under starry darkness.

I dismissed Sky and turned to Zielinski.

“Let me tell you how it’s going to be,” I said, after he settled himself in his chair with his sandwich and iced tea.  I would rather he was sitting on the floor.  Something about having him in the chair next to me irritated me.  I controlled my irritation and let him sit.  “You work for me.  I own you.  You belong to me, I expect your loyalty and obedience, and I expect you to work for my interests.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Exasperated.  He thought my comments redundant.  “What do you need me to do, ma’am?”  His voice was better for the drink, but not much.

“I’m counting on you to find a way to fix my lingering mental problems left over from my trip into withdrawal.  Also, Keaton and I need to hear your report on what you found out from the West German Arm.  Afterwards, I want you to run a research organization.  I’m going to recruit specialists in Transform Sickness and I want you to take charge of the research effort.  As always, you won’t be able to publish, but you’re going to have two Arms and whatever Focuses and Crows us two Arms decide to share the information with counting on you to do your magic and come up with earth-shattering results.”

Sky whistled.  He didn’t have to say it out loud, but inside his head he said “Lori was right, this Arm is radically different than the other two Arms I’ve dealt with.”  Of all things, I had seduced him into my service without even trying.  I had no objection to him serving me, not at all.

“You want me to run a research organization, ma’am?” Zielinski said, dumbfounded.  Bitter words spewed forth: “I’ve lost my medical license, one FBI faction wants to kill me, another wants to lock me in prison for life, the first Focuses have a contract out on my life, and you want me to run a research organization?  Ma’am, I arranged to get put in that prison as a way of
protecting
myself!”  Zielinski dissolved completely into laughter.

I didn’t think it was
that
funny.  I decided to be lenient.  I had seen this flaw of his before and it was harmless.

“Ma’am,” he said, “Do I have permission to speak with you clinically.”

I nodded.

“I’m a good observer of people.  I look at you and see someone who…” he paused.  “Someone who has had most of her personality scraped off.  Ma’am, I talk to you, but there’s almost no ‘you’ there.  How much do you remember of me?”

I wanted to kill him.  His question was too personal.  I stopped myself, as he backed off an inch or two.  Clinical, I thought.  A random memory caught me, something Keaton said once, during a torture session, describing one of her contacts.  “When you hire the expert, you hire their advice.”  Of course, she was describing how she learned to torture, but still.  I broke him out of prison to do just this.

“My memories are perfect up to the time they turned off the lights in the Detention Center.  I have some memory gaps from then on, until I fell into a coma during my interrogation.”

My answer bothered him.  “Why are you so angry with me, then?  We’ve been partners, allies, since Philadelphia.”

“Someone else owns you.”

He slapped his forehead.  “Dammit, I’d forgotten,” he said.  “Erica Eissler tagged me in some screwy fashion, or so I’ve deduced.  Only she said it wouldn’t bother you.”

“Tagged?  Eissler knows the Arm tagging tricks I discovered?”

He boggled and nodded.  “You’ve figured out how to tag people?”  Zielinski was impressed.

“That’s how Keaton and I get along these days,” I said.  “She has me tagged and I work for her.  I have several normals tagged as well, including Raindorf.  It’s a very useful juice effect.”

Both Sky and Zielinski froze.  “Juice effect?  I don’t think that’s what Erica did to me.”

Sky muttered something in French, nasty and excessively profane.

“To get the reaction I’m having to you, Eissler’s tag must be a juice effect,” I said.  “I need to tag you to establish precedence.”

“Me?  You don’t need…  Hell.  Juice effects are dangerous, ma’am, especially for someone in my condition.”  FBI operatives had injected him with Monster juice after my escape from the St. Louis Detention Center, an assassination attempt.  The attack nearly killed him and he acquired a partly transformed adrenal gland in the process.  “Can’t we do this some other way?”

My lust rose.  Did he understand what he asked?  Arm tags were only a shortcut, and the old way still worked.

“What…” he started to say, and then paused.  He had to look away from my face, disturbed by my anger and lust.  “Ma’am.”

I smiled and waited.  Yes.  Invite me to hurt you.  I will comply.

He looked down at his hands and didn’t say anything for a long time.  “Ma’am, how do I convince you not to be angry with me?”

“You don’t.  Live with it.”  I willed the anger and lust away, and they began to recede.

He shook his head. “What would you do, if you were in my position?  How would you ease the anger of another Arm?”

Memories of Keaton rose in my head.  I stood and paced away from Zielinski.  Filled with Keatonic anger I fugued on the things I did for her when she was angry.

“You don’t want to know,” I said, my control slipping out from underneath me.

“I have to,” he said. “I don’t know you anymore.”

I paced, stalking on the tips of my toes. “Do you really want to cure my anger?” I said, softly.

He didn’t answer my question, but I could see the answer in his eyes.

“I’ll cure it for you,” I said, my voice husky. “Get down on your knees and crawl.”

“What?” he said, astonished.  Sky vanished, but I had been around Gilgamesh for long enough to know that he had just moved to somewhere safer in the room.

I lost my composure.  I pinned Zielinski’s neck to the back of the chair and straddled him, my face inches from his.

“I SAID CRAWL!  You have a problem with orders?  Get down on your fucking knees and
crawl!
”

He crawled.  I walked over to near where Sky had to be, reached around my back and grabbed his shoulder without looking.  I twisted him around to in front of me and got nose to nose with him as well.  “GET ON THE FUCKING FLOOR AND CRAWL.”

He got.

My breakdown of control continued for a long time, and I’m not going to say exactly what happened in that room.  I’ve never described exactly what I did for Keaton and I’m not going to describe what I made Sky and Zielinski do for me.  I only gave them a taste of what I had given Raindorf.

Sky didn’t respond the way I expected.  Many minutes in, as things began to get ugly, whenever I turned my attention to him I felt the particular toxic mix of aggression and lust that in the past led me to rape.  A few moments later, I realized Sky did this to me on purpose, thinking that if I raped him, the violence of rape would quiet my darker lusts.  A hard choice, but this was a hard scene, and he considered me sufficiently out of control that he needed me to rape him.  He was right.  I was out of control.  I took him without hesitation, right there in front of Zielinski.

Funny thing, his plan worked.

“Go get a shower and get cleaned up,” I told Zielinski after I finished with Sky and my beast fled back into the bowels of my mind.  “Come back when you’re finished and we’ll talk.”

He looked at me, numb, barely able to understand me.  I had shown him things about himself he would rather never have known.  He hadn’t moved since I turned my attention to Sky, rightly afraid that if he attracted my attention, he would be dragged in also, and too stunned by what I had done to him to be able to think.  After a moment, the message got through.  He stood, walked away, and found a shower.  He did not return quickly.

I hoped I hadn’t fucked him up too badly.

Sky, of all things, cuddled up to me.  He had the shakes.  This hadn’t been easy for him, but at least for now he considered me safe.  He had taken one for the team, I hadn’t injured him in the process, and for some reason, rather than holding my behavior against me, he considered what I did reasonable for an Arm.  He even cared for me a little, although he still wanted to run away at the first real opportunity.  I might be decent for an Arm, but Arms as a category terrified him, and I had just rather effectively proved why.  Except of course, right now I was safe.  As I had started to understand with Gilgamesh, Crows had severe head problems.

“How’d you know that was going to work?” I said, in a reasonable facsimile of a Crow whisper.  He had successfully kept himself hidden from Keaton on the rescue.  It couldn’t have been her.