In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6)

by Randall Farmer

  The Beast-Man took to his hind legs, strode forward fully bipedal, and roared. He pointed at the Monster, turned to Sellers, and made pawing-the-air motions.

  Sellers crept forward as the Monster woke. If he trusted his senses, this Monster stretched fifteen feet from nose to tail-tip, and weighed as much as Sellers and all his Noble peers combined. Subduing such a Monster would be a challenge.

  The Monster looked around, but her angry gaze didn’t fall on them. She couldn’t see them! Sellers still didn’t understand what was going on or where he was, save that this experience could not be real. Was he asleep, perhaps, and this some sort of dream? But he had never had any dreams like this, so vivid.

  The Beast-Man made a show of sniffing the air, and putting his paws to his head and concentrating. Sellers sniffed as well, in echo, and turned on his metasense.

  The Monster metasensed and smelled like the trap holding the captive they were attempting to rescue.

  Is this the trap? Sellers thought. This Monster doesn’t look like the trap the Arm and the Focus described.

  The Beast-Man shook his head. He was reading Sellers’ mind, the same way Focus Queen Rizzari could.

  Well, then, this does have potential, Sellers thought. He decided to try another mental question: If this isn’t part of the trap, then what is it?

  The Beast-Man brought his paws together, slowly.

  They’re connected, Sellers thought. Oh. The trap is powering this Monster, isn’t it?

  The Beast-Man nodded.

  We have to defeat the Monster, else it fall on our backs if we threaten the trap?

  Another nod, followed by several vicious paw swipes through the air. The Beast-Man fell over on its back, paws in the air.

  If this Monster gets the drop on us, we’re dead meat. It must be one of the older Monsters. Such creatures were a known danger.

  The Beast-Man got to his feet, nodded, and barked another set of ‘huh’s.

  Sellers blinked, and woke up in his own body, in his own tent, next to Hoskins’ loud snores that always sounded like ocean waves.

  “He was in my mind somehow, I tell you,” Sellers said. No, the ground here wasn’t covered by snow, and the sky above not filled with stars. In fact, it misted warm rain, warmer weather rolling up from the south. They gathered outside the tents at the foot of an esker, where the rocks dug uncomfortably into his rear as he sat on his haunches.

  “Has the trap gotten to him?” Sir Hoskins said.

  Master Occum paced over to Sellers, gravel crunching under his feet, shook his head, and paced back. “Nope. He’s telling the truth, and his glow is uncontaminated. Dammit! This sounds like the Focus Dreaming, what they get instead of the Pheromone Flow of us Crows, or your cloud visions. What was that thing?”

  Sir Dowling, still Yogi Bear, grumbled an interruption and raised his hand. “Sirs, Master Occum, I think I understand.”

  “Yes, Sir Dowling?” Master Occum said, teeth bared. This was not a good moment to be interrupting their Master. In a situation like this, Occum could be painfully brutal.

  Sir Dowling understood the danger, but finally showing something of a Noble’s true nerve, pressed on. “I remember the stories you’ve told me about those who have come before, and I thought – how did the Madonna of Montreal even know that self-stabilizing Chimeras existed? And who were the companions of the Canadian Crow named Sky, anyway, when he was a member of the Lost Tribe? A Focus named ‘Focus’, an Arm named ‘Arm’, and a Beast-Man named ‘Beast’? And where did the name ‘Chimera’ come from, anyway, unless it referenced the looks of the first Beast-Man? I mean, there couldn’t have been that many senior Major Transforms in Canada.”

  Master Occum froze, flooding the area with panicky Crow vibes. “Yes, the Madonna of Montreal was once named ‘Focus’, and Sky was once named ‘Crow’. And, dammit, what you experienced, Sellers, does fit the descriptions I’ve heard, of ‘Beast’.”

  “Then this was real,” Sellers said. Not a question, but now a firm statement of truth.

  “This is bad,” Master Occum said. “Beast isn’t a minor issue we can dismiss. He’s supposed to be the most dangerous of all the Major Transforms. If he’s anywhere around here, we’re in big trouble.”

  “Beast is boss,” Sellers said, his voice low.

  “What?”

  “Beast is boss.” Sellers met Master Occum’s gaze. “We do what Beast wants. There is no choice.”

  Occum put his head in his hands and moaned, sinking down onto a particularly large rock.

  “Sir Hoskins,” Sir Knox said. “I think you need to be our Duke again. I think we’re going to have to find and subdue this Monster. We’ve been warned, and it’ll attack us while we’re doing the rescue.”

  Hoskins stood up straighter and smiled. His demeanor changed from that of a quiet woebegone rat to brimming with confidence in an instant. “With pleasure, Count Knox. As soon as I change into my combat form, we’ll go subdue this Monster. With any luck, we’ll have a new member of our Noble household when this is all said and done.” The Duke turned to Master Occum. “This is our real proving quest, not the trap. The trap is going to be as much yours as ours, as we’re going to need Crow wiles and metasense to crack it. However – this is just a fight. I’m claiming it as our fight. You stay here with the Commoners. Pam and Suzie can protect the lot of you, if danger comes your way.” Hoskins cracked his knuckles. He had patently ignored Sir Dowling’s ability to protect Master Occum. “We need to do this alone.”

  “Okay, then,” Master Occum said. He took his hands off his face and stood. “You’ve made your point, and I must agree. Now go prove yourselves.”

  Gilgamesh: October 17, 1968

  “Just my luck. Houston, ungodly warm for October, is enough to make my feet sweat. I can’t metasense a single interesting Crow to visit, save the one I’m already talking to. No Commander to show my progress to. Not a single anything worth being here for.”

  “At least we’re out of Lori’s hair,” Gilgamesh said, steering the car around an oversized pothole in the middle of his lane. Houston rains and Houston gumbo soil combined to do bad things to the Houston streets. Sky rolled his eyes. “She even yelled at me for putting a wet glass on one of her fancy tables without a coaster.” Lori was early into her third trimester and already as big as a house, late pregnancy not settling well on her small frame. The unborn baby gave her temper issues. Nasty temper issues.

  “She tried to keep me out of my woman-friend’s beds again, an old settled dispute,” Sky said. “Then when Inferno pulled rank and supported me, she went into a song and dance about how she was their Focus, sniff sniff, and worn out and pregnant and not getting all the love she needed. It took me two days to convince Ann and the rest that the Focus had gone and frowned at them.”

  Gilgamesh pulled up at the decaying professional building where the Good Doctor worked, and parked. Sinclair and Midgard were already here. This meeting was Sinclair’s doing, and Sky wasn’t being the least bit cooperative. Gilgamesh had needed to chase him down twice, the first time suffering through an extra lunch at a place serving only bland vegetarian Chinese food. Finally, after an hour worth of ridiculous delay, and a firm grip on Sky’s absurd oversized flower-print shirt, he managed to drag Sky into the Good Doctor’s tiny research center.

  Past the waiting room and into the office proper, he introduced Sky to Ila Abbot, Zielinski’s newish nurse. Carol’s crew had a betting pool going about how long the workaholic Good Doctor would take to wear out Ila and his first nurse, Jeannie Zimmerman, and demand a third aide. Ila always liked to meet new Crows. She had improved her looks greatly since Tiamat recruited her, enough to attract Midgard to her bed in what looked to be a friendly short-term affair. Ila liked Crows. Crows were safe. Crows liked children. Ila tried to be friendly to Sky, but he would have none of it, distracted by something. Gilgamesh doubted Sky would even bother to remember Ila’s name.

  “What do you have for us, Doc?” Sky said, after
they got to the actual lab. It was the biggest room in the small center and overflowed with microscopes, beakers, slides and numerous medical machines of unknown purpose. The linoleum floor was already stained, the walls needed a fresh coat of paint, the lab tables were chipped, and the bright light from the afternoon sun shining in through the windows didn’t do the place any favors. The machinery and equipment itself was pristine, though.

  Zielinski was all smile. “Progress. Small but important progress.”

  Sinclair, already wearing a corny white lab coat over his normal fancy suit, waved them over to a large piece of lab equipment. “See this strand?” he said, pointing at a tiny television-set style display attached to the large device.

  Sky and Gilgamesh nodded.

  “It’s a polypeptide chain, a rope of between six and twenty four strands of polymerized polypeptides,” Zielinski said. “Invisible to the eye, of course.” He paused, dramatic. “This is what sludge dross looks like at the nanometer scale.”

  Gilgamesh froze. Sludge dross was real? He thought sludge dross was a Crow psychological quirk.

  “Say what?” Sky said.

  “Take a look with your metasense,” Sinclair said. “Pick it up. There’s some beside the electron microscope.” The unknown lab equipment, then. So this insignificant molecular rope was sludge dross? That didn’t seem possible.

  Sky picked it up, and then Gilgamesh did. Not much sludge dross; it felt, in Crow dross manipulation terms, as if the sludge dross weighed about a pound.

  “What you’re saying is that sludge dross is hard to move dust,” Gilgamesh said. “The crap should be amenable to cleaning solutions or simple dusting, then.”

  Zielinski shook his head. “For one, it’s toxic, and bleach-based cleaning liquids will make it more toxic. Focus Casso, of all people, told me this about a year and a half before she vanished from St. Louis, and I’ve only recently confirmed her anecdote. Second, this sludge dross sticks to nearly everything, especially other organic polymers. Third, it’s attracted to itself, and although easily broken into micron-length strands, it recombines easily with any other bits of dross around, forming more sludge dross. Your proposed trick might work in an old stone castle, but you’d have to use a hydrochloric acid wash on the stone on a regular basis.” He paused. “A mere microgram of sludge dross, sprayed across a room, would be able to stop a Focus from moving juice. A gram of this stuff is enough to react to a Transform’s juice, and for those Major Transforms who carry around a lot of juice, enough to cause what is commonly termed bad juice problems.”

  Interesting. Sludge dross was a weapon, as well as an obstacle. “I strongly suggest you don’t publish that,” Gilgamesh said.

  Zielinski laughed. As always the Good Doctor thought Gilgamesh the master of the understatement. “This goes to Carol, Stacy and my private safe. You Crows get to know because you’re the cure.” He smiled. “Now that I’ve isolated this, I’m positive I can teach you how to move the stuff and neutralize it without wearing yourselves out.”

  “That’s excellent,” Sky said, sarcastic. He turned to Gilgamesh. “As a faux-Guru to my sometimes faux-student, this one’s yours. For both practical and battle reasons. You figure it out.” Stomp. Clump. Sky stared out a window, still annoyed at the world.

  Right. Sludge dross, set up with the Good Doctor’s new trick, would make a good amplifier to his rotten eggs. If he worked carefully. Mistakes sounded painful. “Thanks,” Gilgamesh said.

  Sky didn’t answer. He clumped out of the office and leapt up to the roof, where he sat and glowered, alone.

  ---

  “So our favorite Focus is still ticked off?”

  “At the moment, most puissant Commander, our most gracious Lady is pregnant out to here,” Sky said, holding his hand a foot out from his belly, “and not speaking to me, or Gilgamesh, or Ann, or the half dozen of her Focus friends who’ve quietly left the rebellion. She’s already bought enough baby clothes to swaddle an orphanage, and only fool luck kept her from converting Bob’s Barn into a children’s playhouse.” Luck named Connie Yerizarian, the Inferno house president, who had been shadowing Lori like, well, a shadow, watching out for Lori’s next screwy behavior.

  Carol leapt across the house’s two-story converted piano room, climbed hand over hand up a rope, and spider-like crept across the ceiling. She learned new tricks, but wasn’t telling anyone how she did them. This wasn’t a juice trick, so far as Gilgamesh could tell. Instead, this was something physical and likely sleight of hand related.

  “Well, the rest of the world may be stalled in neutral, but I’m doing just fine,” Carol said. “I’ve got recruits coming out my ears, I’m making money by the armored car-load, I’ve got local Crows and Focuses cooperating with me and my organization, and Focus Goddamned Biggioni has given up harassing me. The Hunters are off picking their noses and bothering nobody – I’ve heard their Transform kidnappings have practically stopped – and I’ve even made ‘friends’ with Focus Teas by trading her my dirty information on Biggioni for her dirty information on Biggioni. We’re on schedule to be able to march on Chicago at Keaton’s appointed time, whenever Keaton gives the order.” Which would be sometime next year, if Keaton’s schedule held.

  She leapt down the wall, to the floor, then rolled, cartwheeled, and leapt over to them. “So?”

  Sky signaled Gilgamesh, and turned on his area metasense shields. Even to Gilgamesh’s finely tuned metasense, the three of them vanished.

  “Yes!” Carol said, punching the air with a short leap off the ground.

  Carol’s leap shattered Sky’s shields with a faint metasense flash.

  “You immediately see the problem, and why I need to practice covering an Arm doing Arm things, ma’am,” Sky said.

  “Well, let’s get on with it.”

  ---

  “There’s one other thing,” Carol said, after she exhausted Sky of his patience and a fair amount of his available dross. They had made some progress, but Gilgamesh envisioned many more days of practice before Sky mastered his new trick. These new shields did use up Sky’s dross like nothing Gilgamesh had ever seen before.

  “Yes?” Sky said. He leaned up against the wall, bleary and almost puddle-like.

  Carol sat beside Sky and tousled his hair. “I owe you for the event that has Lori pissed off at us.” She stared Sky in the eyes. “I think I know how to make it up to you.”

  “Ah, that,” Sky said. “There’s no need…”

  Carol menacingly lowered an eyebrow. “You would find working with me a lot easier if you didn’t hold a certain image in your mind, the one of me as I was. You know: unwashed, no make-up, dirty thrift shop clothes, no control over my emotions or my facial expressions, brains of a smart monkey, and the attitude of one of the smarter Monsters. I’d rather you thought of me in a more positive light.” She looked over to Gilgamesh and winked. “It shouldn’t take much.”

  Sky slowly licked his lips. “Might you be willing to listen to a few suggestions about deportment?”

  Carol laughed. “You want me to get cleaned up first? I can do that. I’ll even make you dinner.”

  “Mademoiselle Arm, you have a date,” Sky said.

  At this Gilgamesh smiled and exited the room, leaving the two of them to their privacy. Carol had tipped him off that she might try this, and he hadn’t objected. The date with Sky was appropriate, certainly far more appropriate than when she chose, ugh, Fred, for the evening.

  ---

  “You want what?” Carol put her fork down on the plate of waffles with a clank.

  Sky had held off his idea until morning, until after Gilgamesh had returned. Sky had mentioned it to Gilgamesh on the way to Houston, and hadn’t listened when Gilgamesh told him this was a bad idea. Repeatedly.

  “I want all of us to go grovel to Lori.” Sky hadn’t touched his own waffles, or vegetable juice, or omelet, or cinnamon toast. “You especially. The way to get to her is to throw ourselves at her mercy. Wait,” he said, as Ca
rol made to interrupt. “I have a theory. The trigger for this mess was a Crow letter to Lori, from a Crow I didn’t recognize and who didn’t exist, as far as any of my Crow contacts knows, until April. From when I was recovering from my exertions and you were recovering from withdrawal. I think the supposed Crow involved is actually Focus Biggioni, and she set Lori off on purpose.”

  “Do you have any proof of this? Is this wild speculation, here? Or one of your tall tales?” Tiamat said. Carol was gone. Sky faced the real Arm across the kitchen table, and the real Arm was pissed. Her set-to with Hera wasn’t something you wanted to talk about with Carol. Not unless you needed a little Tiamat action.

  “It’s a gut feel, plus logic,” Sky said. “I’m rarely wrong about these things, ma’am.”

  “It’s true,” Gilgamesh said, reluctantly. He grabbed a couple of pieces of bacon and a slice of the cinnamon toast, figuring his opportunity for breakfast was fast disappearing. “According to Shadow, Sky had Rogue Crow pegged for what he is, back when we were in Chicago changing each other’s diapers.”

  Tiamat rolled her eyes and snorted. “This thing between Lori and me would have come up eventually,” Tiamat said. “It’s her problem, not mine, since she’s the one who’s refusing to talk to me.” Tiamat growled and glared at Gilgamesh, before turning to glare at Sky. “Why don’t you two go and convince Lori of this. I’m willing to let her scream at me for hours on the subject, and after she’s vented herself into exhaustion she might perhaps be willing to listen to my side of things. But I’m not doing any groveling, thank you very much. Now…scram!”

  Yup, ticked off Arm. Gilgamesh boogied after Sky, not the least bit interested in dealing with a righteously angry Tiamat right now.

  At this rate he was going to wear out his truck going to and from Boston.

  And at this rate he would soon be unwelcome in both places. There had to be a way out of this mess, but so far he hadn’t come up with any possibilities at all.