“Hunters don’t share,” Joshua said. At least his voice sounded humble.
“Hunters do trade,” Wandering Shade said. He turned to Enkidu. “Joshua needs to learn your élan drawing tricks.”
“What am I offered?” Enkidu asked, following the Law.
“My method of élan drawing,” Joshua said. “It’s usable on any Transform at any time, including Monsters.”
“I will accept.”
Now he understood Joshua’s problems. Joshua’s trick involved drinking Transform blood, like a vampire. He preserved the humanity of male and female Transforms in his pack, but his trick was otherwise worthless as it generated so little élan. His pack women weren’t Gals and his pack men weren’t Zombies. He couldn’t even mark them with the Law!
“Master,” Enkidu said, after the lessons were over. Joshua had wandered away to sit by himself and think. What the other Hunter had learned today had humbled him greatly. “Where did Joshua come from?”
“I work with other Beast Men from time to time,” his Master said. The drizzling rain had passed and the overcast clouds showed the first hints of dawn. Enkidu leaned against the giant oak while Wandering Shade sat on top of a cooperative Marcie, who lounged with her scaly back against a hickory tree. “I found Joshua in Texas several years ago. Like you, he could maintain his mind without the Law, and he had already developed his blood-drinking method of obtaining élan. I wanted him to be a Hunter, but he wasn’t interested. He only gave in after he heard the many stories I’ve told him about Hunter successes with their packs.”
“You told me I’d lose my humanity without the Law,” Enkidu said. He scratched at his fleas again. Damned things. He would have to spend some time in man-form to lose them.
“You would have. So would Joshua, if he had refused the Law.”
“So he was under the Law, even while working alone, not a Hunter?”
Wandering Shade nodded. “How goes it with you, these days?”
Enkidu gave his Master his spiel about his improvements and his pack’s improvements.
“In my terms, you’ve discovered how to do limited guided shape-changing to your Gals,” Wandering Shade said. “I’ll pass your discovery along to the others and see what they can do with it.”
“In payment I want another crack at the Talking Arm,” Enkidu said. The concept of a talking Arm disturbed him. Arms were just the Monster form of Focuses. How had one of them managed to maintain her intellect?
“No,” Wandering Shade said. “The Arms know you and your tricks. You’ve had your chance.”
Fuck. “Odin has a scheme, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” Wandering Shade said. “He thinks he might be able to negotiate with the Talking Arm.”
“I wish him all the luck in the world,” Enkidu said. “I don’t believe it’ll work, though.”
“He deserves his chance,” Wandering Shade said. “If he doesn’t succeed at negotiation, we’ll try more violent means.”
Enkidu sighed, which came out as a wolf whine. “There are more Beast Men than Arms,” he said. “We can afford to lose a few of us, if in the process a few of us are able to prove ourselves as full Hunters.”
“Indeed. There aren’t that many Beast Men, though.”
“There’s another path we could take, Master,” Enkidu said. “Because there are so few Arms, we could ignore them for now. Put work into increasing our numbers and our skills. Eventually…”
“The Arms are too dangerous to ignore – they’re your competition as predators,” his Master said. “They must be neutralized or destroyed, as soon as possible. I’m counting on you Hunters to do so, but if you can’t, I’ll have to do it my way.”
“Master?” His way? That didn’t sound good.
“I can’t tell you the details, but understand ‘my way’ is dangerous to all of us. We would be declaring war on the Transform community. If I’m forced to go that route too early, there’s no telling what might happen.”
Carol Hancock: November 18, 1967
I loved this town.
Middle November and snow. The cold north wind. The smells, the stenches.
The dumb as horseshit Focuses. After dealing with the impressive Focus Rizzari I spent a day or two studying the five Focuses of the Chicago area. Two housewife clones, an aluminum foil goddess, a business woman and her ‘volunteer’ labor supply household, and a piece of juice moving machinery her own Transforms wheeled out of the closet and fed three times a day if they voted she did a sufficiently good job moving the juice. The latter I was tempted to rescue, but I suspected I would get in deep shit with the Network again if I did so. Not worth the grief.
Those Focuses seriously tempted me to move to Boston.
Chicago held a lot more than Transforms, though: money to make, deals to complete, minions to recruit. The place overflowed with wonderful people of all colors and stripes.
I inhaled smoke filled air and the reek of too many sweaty bodies as I took in Bunny Bileki’s performance at the Stratos Lounge in my Chicago home suburb of Skokie. Bunny, a popular local comedian, was about three quarters of the way through his hour long set when I metasensed the odd presence. He had the mostly tipsy patrons rolling off their chairs and under their tables. Moses, Jesus and Moshe the Tailor arguing in heaven. Now this.
“The woman comes down the aisle of the church, all done up for her wedding. Oh, her mother from the old country says, ain’t she done up pretty. Ah, it’s going to end up bein’ nothing more than a game, her aunt says. A game? the mother responds. Well, the aunt says, consider who she’s marrying. Not anyone from the old sod. No, she had to go and marry some continental guy, not a proud Irishman. It’s all going to be some sort of game. When they see’m comin’ down the street, it’s going to be like their announcing the end of that game our men play down at the Rotary hall. You know, when they say Czech, and mate!”
Howls of laughter.
Only in Chicago would that sort of crap count as a joke. I just loved this town.
That’s when I metasensed the Chimera, right out there, a quarter mile away.
That, I didn’t love.
I excused myself from my normal date. Carl Oldman, a widower in his early fifties. I had put a lot of work into getting to know him and his ample bank accounts. He enjoyed the show. Hell, he was the one who had introduced me to the entire concept of borscht-belt comedians. He owned a successful tool and die shop, and he was ugly beyond compare. I was the first reasonable woman interested in him since an ambulance ran over his wife. Ugly didn’t bother me.
Carl grew a delicious darkness within him. It reminded me of Keaton’s darkness and I wanted it for myself. Carl wanted to get back at society and needed me to help him. He wouldn’t have to hire any more dominatrices when he needed to get his rocks off. He now had me. Unfortunately, I wanted more than his money. I wanted his soul.
I recognized the Chimera’s location, dammit. The upper west side, my own home turf, a ten-mile square area of Chicagoland centered in Skokie. I lived it, breathed it, felt every heartbeat in my bones. Nothing went on here without my knowledge. So I thought. The Chimera nosed around at a kill site, where had I killed a new Monster only three days ago, my attempt to be a good member of the community.
The Chimera didn’t notice me.
I couldn’t go anywhere without stumbling over the damned things, or their traces, now that I understood what to look for. Or their stench. Chimeras weren’t hide-in-the-bushes stealthy creatures, like the one Crow I encountered. The bastards stood out up close, up front, personal and nasty.
After my fight with Enkidu in the Quad Cities I had encountered an ape Chimera in Milwaukee while I checked into Focus Warren, my Focus contact with the Apostates. He roared at me, I sought him out, and he and I had made threat displays to each other before we walked away without a fight. I found piles of Chimera shit outside the Springfield Illinois Transform Clinic, the large state Clinic. I found a Chimera’s graveyard in Battle Creek, Michigan. This w
as my first sighting in Chicago proper.
This Chimera was ugly and large. Think black bear, but instead of fur growing out of his skin, he had fur growing out of thick bone plates. Instead of a short stubby bear tail, he had a lizard tail with a hammer on the end. He lurked down in the undergrowth by a small creek winding through a subdivision of little boxy homes.
I was pissed. This goddamn Chimera was on my turf! Neutral turf, well, I could show a little tolerance. Not here. I would kill the fucking thing or die trying. I parked my car a block away, in front of a pink house with a single baseball bat left forlornly on the front lawn. Few lights shone from the quiet homes, and the only noises came from crickets. I popped the back of my trunk, extracted my two cut-down M-16s, my fifty pound pack of magazines, and off I trotted.
The Chimera ignored me. In a non-threatening manner he continued to paw around in the overgrown brush where I had killed the Monster. Almost as if he fed.
“You. Get the fuck off my territory!” Then I snarled at the Chimera to get his attention, in case he no longer understood words, like the ape I met in Milwaukee. “Now!”
“I’m here to offer you a deal, Arm,” the Chimera said. His deep voice sounded erudite, calm and wise, and his head brushed the lower branches of a young maple as he stood. A lonely brown leaf came loose and drifted to the cold ground. “I will agree to only take Monsters if you agree to never take Monsters. If that works, perhaps we can come to further agreements.”
“I understand you can feed on anything,” I said. “Even me.” I leveled the two M-16s at the creature and squeezed off a shot from each, parting his fur. “Leave.”
“I want to negotiate, not fight,” the Chimera said.
“Coming here is an attack,” I said. This was my territory! “Get the hell out of my town!”
“Very well,” the Chimera said, with an exaggerated sigh. “My Master, the Wandering Shade, warned me that nobody could reason with you, even though you can talk. I should have listened. His word is the Law and he is never wrong.” Even though you can talk? What the hell?
The Chimera sank back down on all fours and slowly lumbered off, following the creek downstream. He wasn’t going to fight. Damn, a fight would have almost been fun. I stayed behind him, close enough to shoot but not to touch.
Normals didn’t see him.
That scared me. Normals certainly saw me.
“I claim all Chicago.” I didn’t put as much Arm into that statement as I should have. Perhaps I should repeat it? Nah.
“I claim wherever I stand and I go wherever my feet tell me to wander,” the Chimera said, turning his massive head to look back at me through the brush. “You may call me Odin. I am a Hunter.”
The farther I trailed him the less angry I got. The more worried I became. Odin’s comment ‘his word is the Law’ bothered me. It reminded me of a certain Officer Canon who had tried to recruit me in Philadelphia. Fought with me, as well, the evil SOB. His Master?
“I am the Arm known of as Hancock,” I said. “Has your Master ever spoken of me?”
“Why yes, Arm known of as Hancock,” Odin said. “My Master says you’re as foolishly stubborn as all the other Arms. Now, I have evidence my Master is correct. If you continue following me once we reach the edge of town, I will fight.”
I followed from farther back from then on, disquieted by Odin’s ‘all the other Arms’ comment. My ignorance bothered me a lot.
The closer he got to the edge of my claimed turf, the less interested I became in fighting him for the sake of fighting. When the city turned to corn and wheat fields, I stopped. Odin plowed on, oblivious to me and the rest of the world.
This was goddamned aggravating. When the world turned aggravating, I went hunting.
Gilgamesh: November 19, 1967
Gilgamesh metasensed Tiamat kill the forklift driver and shuddered. After a year, the fierce abandon with which she killed still unnerved him. Yet, that’s what he had been searching for the last two months: her fierce abandon.
The wind whipped fresh snow by him but he didn’t shiver, old enough as a Crow to be oblivious to the cold. Gilgamesh had found Tiamat, but no Crows, as Sky predicted. Unfortunately, with the Crows gone, the riff-raff had moved in. Beast Men. Bad for the neighborhood, drove down property values, the works. He found enough Beast Men traces to give him nightmares. He wanted to weep. Chicago remained a horror and didn’t show any sign of getting better.
Last week, after Gilgamesh arrived in town to huddle near Tiamat’s home, he had spotted two Beast Men nosing around at night to the south of Tiamat’s place, near Cicero, deep in the Chicago urban area and at the edge of his metasense range. They didn’t stay or come close. Gilgamesh found it strange to metasense Beast Men avoiding a fight.
He found Carol’s confrontation with the Beast Man yesterday even stranger. While hiding under Tiamat’s glow he had drawn close enough to hear the Beast Man’s chat with Tiamat. He called himself a Hunter, named himself Odin, and claimed a Master named Wandering Shade. His master’s name sounded vaguely familiar, but Gilgamesh couldn’t place it from his studies. He wondered if Odin’s master was the same as Enkidu’s, since Enkidu also referred to himself as a Hunter. Enkidu had never named his Master.
After Odin left the area, Tiamat hunted. Now, after nearly a day of relatively good fun trailing the oblivious Arm, Gilgamesh curled under a railroad bridge, three miles away from Tiamat, keeping company with old trash, broken glass, and the grimy remnants of several heroin parties.
Gilgamesh was forty-four years old and appeared twenty-two, with thick black hair and a lean, muscular build. He was clean and well-dressed except for the filthy trench-coat, which made him look like he belonged under the bridge. The trench coat didn’t keep out the cold, but Gilgamesh didn’t care.
Tiamat remained as beautiful as he remembered. Gilgamesh closed his eyes and concentrated on Tiamat with his metasense, looking to any passer-by like a drunken derelict. From three miles away, he metasensed Tiamat and her prey clearly. This time she hunted a male Transform forklift driver without a Focus tag. Gilgamesh doubted the man even realized he had Transform Sickness.
Tiamat took her prey to the alley behind the Twilight Massage Parlor and Lingerie Modeling Studio and stripped him down to his skin. Her movements showed a concentrated roughness Gilgamesh recognized as barely controlled hunger. Then she laid her skin against her prey and pulled the juice out of him with vicious brutality in but three seconds, spewing dross like blood all over the area, filling her up to overflowing with raging energy. Tiamat was both more powerful and less controlled than she had been in Philadelphia.
Tiamat dropped on top of her prey, lost in the grip of post-kill ecstasy as the rush of juice flowing into her overwhelmed her mind and senses with pleasure. She was vulnerable passed out like this; the Skinner, the mature Arm, had almost died in Philadelphia in such a trance. Gilgamesh sighed. Tiamat ignored her vulnerability. He waited. In a half an hour or so, Tiamat would recover sufficiently to deal with the evidence of her kill. All but the dross that flowed from her prey when he died, dross Tiamat couldn’t sense.
Gilgamesh lived on the dross, the same way Tiamat lived on the juice, except in much smaller quantities. He couldn’t take in dross this raw, but in a couple of days the dross would age, and he would come back and drink it down, in small sips over several hours.
This dross would be good, too, his first real Arm dross since Philadelphia. He had other sources of dross, but none as refined and uncontaminated as Tiamat’s kills. Juice draw dross was clean and sweet, not as spicy as the dross she produced during her normal juice use. When he managed to track down Tiamat’s graveyard, where she put her bodies, he would strike it rich. He would have dross enough to feed ten Crows.
An old feeling, shame, returned from where it had lain dormant since he fled Philadelphia. Tiamat was a murderous predator and he couldn’t avoid this truth as he metasensed her take the man. True, the man would have gone into hideous juice withdrawal if Tiama
t hadn’t killed him first. True, no one deserved that sort of death. Worse, some men in withdrawal went psychotic, turning into spree killers. If the man had been one of those, Tiamat probably saved lives.
Rationalizations. Tiamat was a killer, a predator, unfettered by morality or law. Innocence, a Crow he had met once long months ago in Cincinnati, had told him all Major Transforms were predators. Gilgamesh tried not to think about how correct the senior Crow had likely been.
Gilgamesh took a breath and tried to let go of his bleak thoughts. He succumbed to them every time he metasensed Tiamat kill and they hit him harder now since this was the first he had seen in Chicago. His guilt was nothing more than a futile exercise. He had chosen his path a long time ago and he wasn’t going to change now.
Carol Hancock: November 19, 1967 – November 20, 1967
For something as glorious as the kill, cleaning up was a bitch.
I came to on top of my kill filled to overflowing with juice, tight as a wound spring with energy, and stoned out of my mind. The wound spring was tightest between my legs and made me horny as hell. Flashes of pleasure still tingled along my nerves. My conscious mind floated just barely above the surface of a raging sea of passions and lusts. Every touch or motion stroked sensations along my nerves that threatened to swamp my mind completely, an annoying distraction on a bright November afternoon, behind the Twilight with a very incriminating body on my hands.
The glory was like this each time, perhaps a little better every time.
First things first, though. I dumped forklift boy’s body into the trunk of his car and checked the area for signs. None. I drove to the nearest No Tell Motel, where I called Luke and ordered him to come by.
Luke came into the room with a tense hesitation, eager and nervous both. He had cause. I could be a little frightening right after a kill, all passion and energy, with reason only barely in control. Even at my best I was more intense than a normal man was equipped to handle. I didn’t care, though, and let the wild rumpus begin.
All Beasts Together (The Commander) Page 12