The first up from the explosion was the young Inferno bodyguard, Antonia. “Basement evac, people.”
She would need to leave John.
“Wait!” Autumn said. “The Focus is close. She just re-tagged me!”
Gail metasensed, and, yes, Autumn wore two tags. Lori had somehow managed to re-tag Autumn from far beyond her metasense range, in some way that didn’t replace Gail’s tag. This was a cute trick, far beyond Gail’s capabilities.
Through the tag, Gail picked up a ‘to me’ order. Lori wanted her people by her.
Where was Carol?
Gail refocused her long-range metasense cone out and found Carol’s damped down metapresence out in the parking lot behind the building, almost at the street behind Littleside. Near death, juice-sucking Lori.
Lori, who didn’t know the safe method of giving juice to an Arm.
Shit! Gail ran, faster than she believed possible, toward Lori and Carol, heedless of danger, not thinking at all. She had lives to save.
Lori turned and grabbed Gail in her arms, when Gail reached Lori and Carol.
“Yaaah!”
“Calm. Calm,” Lori said, hitting Gail with as much charisma as she could. Lori wept blood tears, her eyes fully dilated, and she sweated blood from her skin. Her hair was scorched, and her skin red with burn. Her juice structure was a twisted wreck, torn and mangled.
Carol lay on the pavement of the Littleside rear parking lot, charred head to foot. The sporadic snowflakes disappeared as they landed on Carol’s body, burned away to vapor. Beyond Carol was a huge burning wreck and burn mark, right where the driveway entered the parking lot. Someone had tried to drive a gasoline tanker truck up to Littleside, and Carol had stopped the tanker single-handedly, but not before the tanker blew.
Technically, Carol was dead…but only if you didn’t know the capabilities of mature Major Transforms.
“Calm, Gail. Think. Think. React later.”
Gail managed to take a breath and gain control of her heart and her adrenaline. Barely. For the moment. “You’re dying. I need to save you! Carol is juice-sucking you!” Her voice came out as an adolescent squeak. “Or was.”
Lori fell against Gail, letting Gail take her in her arms, fear of Gail turning to relief. Gail didn’t understand why.
“You took Autumn and Karen, then you came running after I tagged them back.”
Gail blinked. “You thought I was attacking you. Oh, no! I didn’t know you were around, and they were wounded.”
“Thank you for supporting them. It’s hard to think in a crisis, sometimes. I was rather occupied by Carol.”
“You didn’t kill her for juice sucking you.” Gail was amazed. Lori should be dead.
“I don’t know what happened,” Lori said. “She just stopped. Saved my life. Sky’ll get me fixed up in no time. I’m not that bad off.” She staggered, almost fell, and grabbed Gail’s hand to catch herself. She squeezed so tight that the bones in Gail’s hands shifted. Blood sweat dripped off the back of Lori’s fingers. “Gail, please, a favor. I can’t bear to check on my baby. Did she come through this?” Lori’s breath was ragged, now. Healing trance coming.
“Your baby’s fine.” Hell, Lori’s baby was healthier than the last time Gail snuck a peek. Lori was just so protective of everyone she loved and cared for…and too embarrassed to admit any of it. Gail’s words were what Lori wanted to hear, as Lori became limp in Gail’s arms, unconscious, letting her healing trance take her. Lori would rather be unconscious as she waited for the Crow repair crew to show up and fix the damage to her juice structure. If such a fix was possible. Gail stroked Lori’s singed hair away from her face and shook her head, marveling that both Lori and Carol were still alive after Lori found a way to give Carol juice. It said something about how much Lori loved Carol that she was willing to risk herself like that.
Gail turned, and found the entire Inferno contingent, at least those able to walk, standing around her. They didn’t seem anywhere near as hostile as they felt, before.
Two of Lori’s young Transform women, ones Gail had never been introduced to, gently took Lori from Gail’s arms, laid her on the pavement and held their Focus’s hands. Probably another damned Inferno household formal ritual. The ring of Inferno bodyguards, so precisely placed, all facing out, appeared ritualistic as well. Ann Chiron, who Gail considered one of the more decent people in Inferno, now held an M16 competently in her arms and murder in her cold eyes. Tim Egins appeared ready to kill anyone who crossed his path. Amy Cizek, all of seventeen years old, didn’t wear a coat, and she shivered in the cold, but showed no other sign of human weakness as she scanned the surroundings for targets. Shelly Darcie. Rose Marie Darrell. More who Gail didn’t know. Gail was glad she was on the inside of the ring. She was also glad Gilgamesh and Sky had bound the two households as one and she and Lori shared tags.
Carol was inside the circle, too, sprawled out like a corpse. Gail walked over and slapped her awake, scattering charred skin and seeping fluid. “Rise and shine, little Arm. You’ve done enough self-healing for the moment, and your magic tongue has a broken neck to heal up.” Carol ran a juice count of about 140, with perhaps another five points of lung to fix, and another twenty points of skin and near-skin muscle to heal. Soft tissue could wait, though. For an Arm, she had already healed herself from everything except the superficial damage. Seeing what little remained of Lori and her juice buffer, Gail didn’t want to know how bad off Carol had been before she sucked down Lori’s juice.
“Bitch,” Carol said, as her eyes opened. Her voice was hoarse from smoke inhalation. “You’ve been sitting on that one, just waiting, haven’t you.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know, I know.” Carol stood. She wobbled, but didn’t do too badly, except to Gail’s metasense. Carol had beaten the ability to estimate damage into Gail to the point she could nearly direct Carol’s healing herself. She couldn’t, though. Carol saw what Gail haphazardly attempted and what she thought. “Next time we get a moment of free time, let’s get Hank to figure out why Focuses can’t heal others like Arms can. I suspect something interesting is down that line of inquiry.”
Gail winced. According to Zielinski, Carol’s most important insights always came during her far-too-frequent near-death experiences.
“Later,” Carol said, with a ragged sigh. Then she straightened her back and headed through the circle of Inferno defenders, toward the main building, walking as smoothly as if she wasn’t hurt at all. The only sign of her pain was a tightness in her jaw. Gail didn’t like to think about what the Arm’s pride cost her.
After the long walk and a short shared sneer at the snow drifting down from the sky, they entered Littleside through the open loading dock door and beheld the mess. Blood in the loading dock, more blood in the main halls. Carol walked along like a blackened demon fresh from the fires of hell, slowly inspecting people, until she came to one of the Inferno shooters. She knelt and healed something small inside the woman, and then stood. The woman no longer bled to death.
“Fine,” Gail said, finally realizing Carol smelled the wounds instead of metasensing them. “Over there,” she pointed. One of Beth’s people, nearly dead from blood loss. Carol grabbed a bandage from a supply wagon, and went over to the man.
“Taught myself this trick after the fight in Detroit.” Carol spat on her hand, slapped the wound on the man, then spat all over the bandage, and put that on the wound. “Looks half-assed, but it works for wounds of this type.”
Slowly healing their way down the corridor, Gail and Carol took another minute to reach Lab Two and John Guynes, who Gail still stabilized.
“I’m going to need to cut him to get at the real damage, Focus,” Carol rasped.
“Focus?” Gail said, her voice up a half octave. The time for formality from Carol was long over. “Cut, dammit, cut.”
Carol turned John over, and sliced. Yikes! Gail twitched with a sudden, burning desire to attack Carol, with juice and with her k
nives, but she stopped herself by force of will. She hadn’t expected her reaction, but once she felt it, she understood. This was something she was supposed to be doing herself. But how?
“Become an Arm,” Carol said, as she knelt over John and licked along his exposed spinal cord. Gail wasn’t doing much now to hide what she thought.
Wincing, Gail turned away from the gruesome figure of her bodyguard. “I see the outlines of the juice music that would allow that. We’re talking significantly more difficult and complex than what Lori can do. My instincts wouldn’t be kicking in for something so insanely difficult. We’re missing an easy trick.”
Carol mumbled something lost in the bubbling blood and flesh of John’s neck. Gail translated Carol’s intent as ‘put Zielinski to work on it’. Gail just shook her head. Nobody could be that talented, even Zielinski.
Screaming and yelling came from behind Gail. Gail turned to find Beth backing into the remains of Lab Two, her arm in a sling, fresh from the infirmary. This was a hospital, and immobilizing a Focus’s broken arm was a trivial procedure. Beth, though, was terrified out of her mind.
Lady Death stalked her. Gail hadn’t known Lori could create her death presence without her props, but even without the black cloak, Lori was a nightmare figure as she stalked through the door. Sky trailed after her, and he too was beyond livid.
Sky, the pacifist Buddhist, bloodthirsty. Oh, hell.
Lori’s Inferno defenders followed after, also with murder in their eyes. Broken glass from vials and beakers crunched ominously under their boots. Carol continued to heal John, not bothered by Lori’s display. Gail rushed over to interpose herself, but the combined charisma from Lori and Sky hit her like a wall and she stopped.
“What’s going on?” Gail said, barely able to choke out the words through the smothering intimidation.
Lori opened her mouth to speak, but no words came, just a grating gargle of fury and pain. Beth dropped to her knees. Small pleading mumbles slipped from her mouth, her voice nearly inaudible. Beth’s life was in danger. Gail needed to save her. But how? Balking Lori’s Lady Death presence was well beyond Gail. Even when Lori ran a forty percent juice metabolism and did the zombie shuffle, in an overridden healing trance.
Lori caught Gail’s mood and looked at Sky. Sky nodded, took a deep breath, and visibly brought his temper under control. In a moment, he cooled enough to talk. Lori certainly wasn’t up to much talking, not with the damage to her body and juice structure.
“Barring emergencies, my gracious lady Gail, I must give you a full explanation if anything I am going to say is to make sense.”
Gail nodded, sharply.
Sky’s eyes remained narrow in anger. “This afternoon, while I was spending time with a most attractive young lady of Inferno, I picked up the signature of an Attack Focus driving toward Littleside. Ah, you likely do not know what an Attack Focus is. Attack Focuses are a development of one of our targets, Focus Adkins. We thought her Attack Focus program shut down, her Attack Focuses ahem reprogrammed ahem into being normal Focuses, many years ago. Sadly, mademoiselle Focus, we were wrong.”
Gail stared at Sky, boggling at his long-winded explanation in the middle of a crisis. His eyes never lost their narrow fury as he continued.
“In any event, I hit the alarm bells and signaled to The Focus and Arm Hancock that Littleside was about to be attacked. They didn’t make it here in time to save you; no, gracious lady, you and your household managed to save yourselves from the Attack Focus and her thugs. Most impressive. Attack Focuses aren’t to be sneered at. All of you, and your people, stopped an Attack Focus leading thirty-some thugs, each with various juice pattern support. See? Advanced bodyguard training is worth it, after all.”
Lori snarled in impatience while Beth ignored Sky and watched Lady Death with a terrified stare, mumbling pleas for mercy. Sky nodded at Lori and brought himself back to the point. “On the other hand, there was a dangerous parallel going on, one you would need to understand Focus Adkins’s history to anticipate. A parallel to the Arm Flap, and the rescue of Arm Hancock from the CDC. Alas, my knowledge of Adkins is far greater than I would like it to be, because of many past, um, experiences, and I was able to find the gasoline tanker truck she planned to use to blow Littleside into ashes. Luckily, I found the tanker before it arrived. The tanker didn’t surprise Carol; the fact the enemy specifically torched Gomorrah, Carol’s mission RV, meant this was a revenge mission. The results of the tanker truck fight should be self-evident: the truck didn’t make it to the loading docks, but did make it to Littleside property and did explode.
“I thought the job too slick, and mentioned my fear to The Focus, just before she went to cope with what little remained of Arm Hancock. The Focus ordered me to scan for spotters and traitors, and low and behold, I found one. Someone who planned this attack didn’t take the Crow Sky and his ability to read deeply hidden emotions into account. To cut the story shorter than I would like to tell, I found one of Focus Hargrove’s tagged Transforms acting as a spotter. I apprehended the miscreant, knocked him out with Crow tricks I don’t advertise, and marched him back to The Focus. Sadly, by such time, The Focus was in her healing trance, but I knew the emergency code words to awaken her.
“As to the tableau in front of you, Madame Rickenbach-Schuber, I believe that my gracious lady Rizzari, Lady Death, suspects Focus Hargrove is a traitor. I have strong suspicions, myself.”
“She couldn’t be!” Gail said. “She’s my friend.” The room went deathly quiet except for Beth’s pleas, and Lady Death caught Gail’s eyes. Her word wasn’t going to be enough. “Please?”
Hell, if Beth was a traitor, Gail wanted to do the job, herself. She had never thought of herself as bloodthirsty, but there it was, laid out before her. Anger. Gail just couldn’t make herself believe Beth was a traitor. Beth’s pleading became even weaker, reduced to just repeating ‘anything’.
“Beth, answer me!” Gail said. She had never hit her friend with her real charisma. Beth folded, instantly. “Were you working for Focus Adkins?”
“Nah nah, uh, no,” Beth said. Lori didn’t interfere, but instead gently grabbed Beth’s chin and held it up to meet Lori’s eyes. Just like Carol when she interrogated. To Gail’s surprise, Lady Death’s charisma felt just the same as Carol’s predator. Beth’s heart skipped beats, and she blubbered piteously. “No!”
“Did you know or suspect Focus Adkins had suborned any of your Transforms or normals?” Gail said.
“No!” Beth said.
“Has Focus Adkins suborned your people before?”
“Three normals, over the years. I check on all my people as close as I can. I got rid of all three, one of them just before I fled Detroit.”
Gail and Lady Death locked gazes. With a start, Gail realized that her own charisma was an image of Carol’s predator as well, to match Lady Death’s. What did this make Gail? She wasn’t sure. Lady Hard-to-Kill, perhaps?
“The tagged Transform who Adkins’ turned must die, of course,” Gail said. A part of her inside shrieked at her own words. The part of her that thought no one ever deserved death.
The part of her that faded fast.
“However, does Beth need to die?”
“Huh,” Lady Death said, her voice barely audible. “She’s just been soft and stupid. If I killed all the Focuses who’ve been soft and stupid in their careers, we’d have very few Focuses left, and I wouldn’t be one of them.” She took her hand off Beth’s chin, and Beth fainted, drawing herself into a fetal ball. “If she’s going to be part of this mess, we need to toughen this one up.”
Mumble mumble lick lick. Carol still worked on John’s spine. “I know, but you’re going to need to tag her anyway, Carol,” Gail said.
More mumbling. Lori giggled at Carol’s profane response, Lady Death gone from her face. Then Lori passed out again, into Sky’s arms.
“Gracious ladies, please. None of you are taking proper care of yourselves.” Sky frowned at Gail, plaintive
ly, as he said that. Me? Gail took stock of herself, and realized she had lost a bit more blood than was healthy, her heart beat funny, her skin was dead pale, and she hadn’t taken in any fluids or food to replenish her blood supply. There was more to healing than closing wounds and stitching together muscle. That would teach her about the consequences of lying about battle damage, as well as depending on her uncanny ability to function in a normal fashion while badly wounded. Lady Hard-To-Kill indeed.
“Here.” Someone shoved a cold meatball grinder into her hands. She ripped off the plastic wrap, and started to eat. Standard Zielinski refrigerator food. She turned to her benefactor, and saw the back of Dr. Zielinski, walking over to Carol with a tub of steaming raw hamburger. Yuck!
Perfectly good Arm food, though. Gail suspected some warm hamburger might do her some good as well.
Carol sat up and wiped her mouth, finished healing John’s neck. “That’ll do the spine. He’s going to need a transfusion, Hank.”
“On it,” Dr. Zielinski said, and rustled in a team to immobilize John and get him on a gurney. “You did a hell of a job, people,” Zielinski said. “No household deaths. However, we’ve got media and police, so if you Major Transform types could do me a favor and make yourselves scarce…”
“She doesn’t get to tag me,” Carol said, mumbling around a mouthful of raw hamburger as she shed blackened skin and walked into the tunnel system under Littleside that led to their emergency exits. “Not Hargrove. No way. Never ever ever. I don’t care how friendly you are to her, Gail…”
Carol Hancock: December 17 – 18, 1972
I didn’t bother with a disguise. The lack of hair and the crispy charred bits of skin still falling from my body, the oozing burn damage underneath, and the gasoline odor still clinging to me would be misdirection enough.
“People,” I said. They turned and saw me for the first time, and the lot of them backed away in terror. From their perspective, I had just appeared out of a seemingly magical invisibility. Luckily, none of them were armed, or this might have gotten stupid. “This place of yours, this storefront church, you’re using it as a mundane meeting room as well?” These were my Church of the New Humanity people, and they didn’t know they were mine, as I never appeared in front of them as an Arm, only as Angela Sebesta, a woman Transform and somewhat unhinged religious visionary. Angela appeared nothing like I did now. Angela slouched when she walked and dressed the way your immigrant grandmother did in the gay 90s.
The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) Page 10