The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) (5 page)

“Ma’am, my closest Focus friend, Gwen Larson, has been humiliated repeatedly by Focus Adkins of Detroit.”  My number one target.  “She seeks vengeance for the pain she’s suffered over the years, although she doesn’t state her desires in words, just in her heart.”

Debardelaben didn’t consider the Madonna her closest ‘friend’, eh?  That made clear who dominated whom in their relationship, now didn’t it?  Not at all surprising.

“And?”

The fact I pierced her minor lie by omission, and so trivially, made her shiver.  “Ma’am, the Hunters are going to attack soon, both here and in Canada, and I want in on the Hunter fight.  I want to, need to, prove my worth to you first.”  Someone had warned her I would take her apart, piece by piece, if she pulled anything.  Her Arm instincts, though, fought back.  The stupid Arm part of her wanted to balk, and I read her as she forced down the challenge in a way that reminded me of my own internal struggles.

“Why not fight at Armenigar’s side?”

“Certain aspects of my personality bother her, ma’am.”  She carefully touched her trophy belt, her hand moving slow enough to make clear she wasn’t issuing a challenge.  “We don’t work together well.”  That I understood.  Armenigar didn’t think of herself as a predator but as a force of nature, and showed as little sadism as my former boss and current number two, the Arm Amy Haggerty aka the Hero.  Debardelaben’s dark predatory beast appeared to be more toward the center of the Arm behavioral curve.  Of course they didn’t get along.

“Meaning she would need to tag you to work with you.”  Debardelaben nodded.  “I am going to require the same.”

Her face went stony.  “Ma’am, I would rather not go forward in such a fashion.  Is there something else I can do for you to fix…”

Definitely too much training from the Focuses.  “Shut up.”  She shut up.  “I like you,” I said, almost surprised by my own words.  I did like her, the first Arm who I instinctively liked.  I could deal with her without a tag, as I was naturally the dominant Arm here, again something new to me.  “I don’t trust you, though.  The current conflict’s filled with too much treachery, much of which I’m going to need to tell you about.”  And she
was
a spy, that much was clear.  “You’ll also be dealing with my Arm organization, of which you’ll be the sixth Arm under my command, and you’ll need the tag to get along with them.”

“Sixth?” she mouthed, politely soundless.  “Ma’am, my information on your organization appears to be out of date.  I will accept your tag.  I am yours.”

And you are mine, I thought, mentally planning out a quick tagging ceremony for later today, such as after the sun rose.

The juice did its thing and created the tag anyway, without a ceremony, based on my mental acquiescence.  Goddamned juice.  I sighed and covered my slip as best I could.  “Welcome to my organization,” I said, now filled with the love and power of ownership a new Arm tag always created.  Yes, this was an Arm tag to make me smile.  This was an Arm I would in time be able to trust.

I signaled for Gilgamesh to come over.  “Here’s the deal.  I get to edit all the reports you’ll be giving to your spymasters.”  She nodded, relieved not to need to explain the obvious to me.  “You’re going to be dealing with Transforms and normals of all kinds, in large numbers, and you’ll be polite when you do, to all of them, unless I order otherwise.  Let’s start with Gilgamesh here, the Crow I work with.”

Giselle didn’t pee her panties when Gilgamesh appeared out of nowhere, but it was close.

---

I sparred with Giselle for three hours before introducing her to my basement, where I got to critique her technique while she picked apart a normal merc spy working for, our guess, Crow Echo.  She enjoyed the work, but was a little weak on Keaton-style interrogation techniques.  I promised to train her in them, which she appreciated.

Afterwards, I hauled her over to Littleside and introduced her around, now that the morning shift had arrived.  After she met Gail, I got to hear Giselle’s explanation of why she wore so many Focus tags – they gained her both stature and trust, as the more Focus tags she wore, the less she appeared to be a pawn of any particular Focus’s political agenda.  Both Gail and Lori ended up tagging her, much to Arm Whetstone’s amusement.  That drew Giselle’s attention and ire, as well as a short trip outside to the practice yard, where Betsy got to learn about the true power of Arm stature and the benefits of Armenigar-style combat training.  After asking my permission, Giselle tagged Betsy.  Then we all got to watch Lori work out her frustrations regarding her lack of progress learning juice music by beating on the now limping Betsy, Tim Egins of Inferno, and Valerie Faulkner of Gail’s household.  I had Giselle study them instead of participating, as she didn’t yet understand the Transform training techniques that allowed Transforms to possess fighting skills similar to that of young Arms, far above what was normally humanly possible.  She was more impressed by Lori’s combat capabilities as a pregnant Focus (though not yet showing) and how she could paste all three, when they ganged up on her, without using her Focus tricks.

“So, Carol, have you read over the claims of Focus Juardiola?” Gail asked, after pulling me away from Lori’s frustration reduction session.  We stood by the heavy steel door that led out to the practice yard.  All the exterior doors at Littleside were heavy steel, and many of the inside doors as well.  Littleside took security seriously.  “It’s been over a week since we sent you our write-up.”

“Do you think this so-called Focus faith healer is at all real?” I asked.  I did
not
believe the claims.

“My guess is she’s a Shaman Focus and a charismatic, like you.”  Gail’s science directorate had recently learned of Haggerty’s suppressed research on Major Transform sub-varieties, of which Amy posited there were sixteen each per Major Transform form.  They took to it with glee.  Shaman types and charismatic types were uncommon.

“That doesn’t warm my heart,” I said.  “It also makes her claim that she can cure Transform Dystrophy more difficult to test.”

Gail tilted her head back and eyed clouds.  They threatened snow.  “I want to send Van and a team to investigate,” she said.  “This could be extremely important, as well as something to aid the Household Redefinition project.”

Van spoke Spanish.  I shouldn’t have been surprised.  “Not right now.  Far too dangerous, and you don’t want to think about the potential problems if Van, a known Focus-spouse, is on our government’s watch list and they grab him.”

“You’re kidding,” Gail said.  “Such things exist?  Even for those of us without criminal records?”

“Uh huh.  Haggerty’s been copying them and passing them on to us for years.”  I paused.  “Once this is settled, I’ll get one of the crew to get your team over the border and back without the government’s knowledge.  But not until then, understand?”

She nodded.

I still thought this was another insane time-wasting complication best handled by tossing it into that most wonderful of Bob’s Barn’s inventions, the small office document shredder.  But Gail didn’t consider this a waste of time, and that was enough for me.

---

“Phone call.  Tommy Bates calling back.”  Last week, after I beat Haggerty and humbled her, I ordered her to end the war against the FBI.  Her big public fight had happened two nights ago, and still we heard no word from her.

“Tommy,” I said, when I reached the kitchen phone, and suppressed a grimace when I realized I was leaving bloodstains on the receiver.  I had been working off my rage and frustrations in my basement.  “Where’s Haggerty?”  Tommy Bates was FBI, part of the Network since the Quarantine in the ‘50s, and one of Haggerty’s top people for the last three years or so.

“I don’t know, Commander.  She called me right after the firefight, said she was wounded but all right, and she would contact me in a few hours.”

“Nothing since?”

“Nada.  Not a thing.”

Haggerty must have followed her instincts and gone to ground to heal, a natural response.  I wished she had contacted me before she did so, but I couldn’t come down on her too hard for not thinking clearly when she was badly wounded.  “How badly is she hurt?”

“She didn’t say.”

So hopefully this meant she was all right, and I should just trust her to reappear when she healed enough so she wasn’t so vulnerable, or when she found herself in enough trouble that she needed help.

“You know what happened in the fight?”

“Nope,” Bates said.  “Those folks are locked up tighter than a Russian election.  I’ll probably get rumors in a couple of days, but nothing yet.  But you don’t need to worry much about the FBI Arm Task Force for a while.  Amy’s plan worked, and there’s virtually nothing left of them.”

“All right, tell her to call me when she resurfaces,” I said to Bates.  “You call me if you hear from her and she hasn’t ordered you otherwise, or if you hear any rumors about that fight.”  He wouldn’t disobey Haggerty to please me, but he would obey me otherwise.

“Will do.”

I hung up the phone and began to worry.  I had a meeting with Keaton on the 15
th
, and I needed to know before then if Amy was going to be ready to fight first Focuses.  If she wasn’t, I was going to be eating shit big time for ordering her to shut down the FBI’s Arm Task Force.

Damn.  Nothing to do for it but wait.

Henry Zielinski: December 10, 1972

“Doctor?” Melanie said.  It was eight o’clock in the morning, and Zielinski was just heading out to Littleside.  Melanie and Gordon Armelin were his bodyguards today.  Gordon was driving, and Melanie sat in the seat next to him.  Even while she talked to him, she constantly scanned for threats.  The day was chilly, and the gray sky threatened snow.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if, well, I’ve been feeling a little odd recently, and I was wondering if I could talk to you about that?”

“Certainly you can.  Odd how?”  The hazards of being a doctor in the family atmosphere of a Focus household. 
Everyone
wanted to tell him about their symptoms.  Given that he was a guest, he made a point of being gracious, and he would be gracious to one of his bodyguards in any case.

Also, Melanie wasn’t the complaining type, and Transforms seldom got sick.  She wasn’t one he would expect to come up with phantom complaints.

Zielinski noted a faint blush creeping up her cheeks, but she stubbornly continued her endless scanning.  “Well, it’s a little hard to describe.  It’s, ah, well, my breasts are tender, and starting a couple of days ago, I’ve been feeling queasy on and off.  Oh, and Kurt’s been giving me hell because he says I’m being moody.  He accused me of having a bad case of PMS, but my period just isn’t coming.”

“Your period is late?”  She nodded. “How late?”

“It was due more than a month ago,” she said.  In the front Gordon glanced back at their conversation with raised eyebrows, but then turned his attention back to the driving.

“You realize you’re describing the early symptoms of pregnancy,” Zielinski said.

“Well, yes, I know.  But I’m a Transform!  I can’t get pregnant.”

“I wouldn’t think so, no.”

“I thought it might be some other female thing.  Maybe you know?”

“I don’t know, but we can certainly check you out.”

Melanie sat on the examining table with a sheet wrapped securely around her torso.

“This,” Zielinski said, extending the lab report out in front of him, “is the result from a positive pregnancy test.”

“I’m pregnant?”

“That certainly seems to be the case.”

“But I’m a Transform!  I’m not fertile.”

“Well, you are certainly fertile.  Whether you’re a standard Transform remains to be seen.”

“All right,” Zielinski said.  Melanie was dressed and they sat in his office.  “To all our tests, you’re a completely standard Transform.”  That didn’t necessarily mean she was a standard Transform, of course.  That the tests read completely normal could easily mean only that she was something they didn’t know how to test for yet.  He had expected her to test positive as a Goldilocks, and was actually looking forward to all the information he would learn from a Focus Attendant Goldilocks, but she wasn’t.

“So if I’m a Transform, how did I get pregnant?”

“That’s a good question.  Do you mind if I ask you some personal questions?”

“It’s okay.”

“Good.  And I do apologize for the personal nature of the questions, but can you tell me about your sexual activity since your transformation?”

Melanie turned red again.  She shifted restlessly in his guest chair and the still new leather of the chair squeaked.  “There hasn’t been any until a few weeks ago.  Too many women in the household, and people outside the household don’t want to sleep with Transforms.”

Zielinski nodded.  “So it’s possible that you’ve always been fertile.  You say you became active a few weeks ago?  How many weeks?”

“It was mid-October, so almost seven weeks ago.”

“And when was your last menses?”

“My last period?  About two weeks before that.”  The sex happened in what would be a normal woman’s most fertile time.