“And Bass?”
“She froze as well, but only until Patterson showed up. When Patterson freed her, Bass said ‘You’ve been improving St. Judith, Gloriana’ and ‘Keaton’s right there, invisible’, pointing at me. I tried to shoot them all, but Patterson did something to me to make me think my weapons turned to dust when I touched them, so I ran. I didn’t get ten paces before Bass activated some of her trick shit she had gotten into my body and caused one of my psychotic breaks. I charged her, she treated it as a challenge fight, defeated me in my addled state, and forced a tag on me.” She paused. “That tag! I couldn’t get rid of it, but it’s gone, now. Whatever we did with the screwy tags we just did got rid of it.” Another pause. “I don’t remember much after Bass traded me to Patterson. In return, Bass got one of Patterson’s hidden pet Arms and some élan-based upgrades Patterson had been apparently dangling in front of her for quite some time.”
“She set Bass free, afterwards,” Tonya said. “Along with one of her pet Arms. We’re considering her a traitor, now.”
Keaton smiled. “Bass is dead. We’re all going to be going after her.” Pause. “It’s done.” The juice-drained Transform fell to the side, dead. The Arm stood, flexed her incredible muscles and yanked. The chain didn’t come loose.
“Take ten points for yourself, Tonya. You stuck me too far above my optimum, and I don’t have time to burn it off healing.” Tonya took the ten points of juice back. Stacy yanked again, and the stay, where the chain joined the I-beam, parted from the I-beam with a loud metal groan.
Tonya turned to glare at Patterson, her eyes narrowed, and a nasty smile slowly covered her face as she contemplated Patterson’s defenseless back. Shirley turned to them, shock on her face…and hit them with a juice pattern that stopped both of their hearts.
Dolores Sokolnik:
“Don’t be bashful about your advice,” the Commander said, her words at odds with her ‘cheeky student Arms should keep their mouths shut’ expression when Del actually gave her advice. “I can always ignore it. That’s an order.”
“Ma’am,” Del said. She wasn’t sure what the Commander used for punishment detail, but based on what happened to Arm Debardelaben, it was likely paperwork and touchy diplomatic missions.
Every minute inside Patterson’s compound weighed heavier on Del, as if the place itself wanted to flatten her into a pancake. She hadn’t ever imagined a place so choked with illusions that she couldn’t tell with any certainty what was real and what was illusion. She had a bad feeling nothing she could see or metasense was real. For one thing, the gritty mundane reality she thought she saw was clearly an illusion, as at least half and perhaps three quarters of the devious bombs and traps the Hero and the Commander had them disarming didn’t exist.
They should be charging Patterson’s warehouse, but they waited, having drifted to the other side of the compound. The Commander wanted to grab more people for a charge, and far too many were scattered, and at least one squad of attackers had fallen for Patterson’s tricks and attacked another squad in the Commander’s army. They were all mostly behind Patterson’s front lines; Patterson’s numbers were caught up fighting group three, just as the Commander wanted.
Nothing else worked right. Nobody cared, and they all chattered about various improvisations as they moved, grabbed stragglers and pulled them out of whatever strange mental headspace they had wandered into. The worst was some Noble bipedal toad with a half dozen writhing sucker arms attached at each shoulder, who thought he was playing miniature golf. When asked, he couldn’t remember his name.
“Status? Anything?” the Commander said. “Or should we go back and try again to convince Viscount Nash the warehouse is that-a-way?” The Viscount was stuck going round and round a twenty foot wide circle, and without realizing, had partway changed into his giant anaconda combat form.
“I see the warehouse now,” the Hero said, and pointed. The wrong way.
“For the fourth time,” the Commander said. “I’m keeping count.”
The Hero rolled her eyes. “Gather up group four and charge. Our charge will draw everyone else to us, we don’t need to shake them out of these illusions individually.”
Del had never imagined anything like the Hancock – Haggerty team. They talked over each other, stepped on each other’s toes, and did all the wrong things – and didn’t get into dominance problems. The Commander was as heroic as the Hero, though even Del knew better than to say her observation out loud. And Arm Haggerty, the supposed loner Hero, turned out to be an excellent battle tactician. Neither bit of data had been in Ma’am Keaton’s books.
“Ma’am, ma’am, we’ve passed the warning point for lack of progress,” Del said, carrying out her official responsibility for keeping track of things. Too much time had passed, and too many had fallen.
“We always do,” Haggerty said. “Carol’s always too optimistic.”
“You’re one to talk,” the Commander said. “You said we’d either be dancing on Patterson’s corpse or be dead by this point.”
“My feet are ready for the dancing.”
“I still think we need more dancing partners.” She put her hands to her lips and whistled. “Armenigar! Here!”
Del was also certain neither of the two would admit they even liked each other. They had to, though, to be able to ignore the dominance issues. It made Del wonder what else in Ma’am Keaton’s notebooks had been wrong.
How about the fact the notebooks implied that once a battle started the Commander became a mindless battle zombie? That’s clearly so not true.
The thought had been spoken in an effeminate but male voice.
Del almost tripped when she realized the stress of Patterson’s compound had frayed her quiet pools, freeing at least one of her inner voices.
Uh oh.
Gail Rickenbach:
“Fifty one, fifty two, fifty three…”
Gail had almost ripped a hole in her maternity dress with the fingernails of her right hand as Vizul Lightning counted the seconds. Gilgamesh and Phobos were so fast. Somehow, she had the impression Crows were slow and studious, that a one-minute Crow duel would see only a volley or two of Crow tricks go by.
She hadn’t seen the practice duels, afraid she would spook Gilgamesh. She should have watched anyway, just to prepare herself for this.
In their own way, Crows were just as fast as Arms and Focuses. Gail had lost track of what they were actually doing about five seconds into the minute.
“…fifty four, fifty five…”
Gilgamesh would win by standing up to Phobos and surviving the other Crow’s attacks. About half way through, he had almost won outright, but Phobos had finally figured out that the charge of Hunters from seemingly outside the dueling circle had actually been an illusion. Gail was impressed Gilgamesh would even think of duplicating the trees and rocks that lay outside the dueling circle. The trick had fooled her, for a moment, until she realized what he had done.
“…fifty six, fifty seven…”
Chevalier detonated a huge dross effect on himself, pulling Gail’s metasense away from the duel. The old Crow’s dross effect was almost magnetic in its intensity, spectacular and engrossing. Chevalier smiled and waved magnanimously to the crowd.
“Awwwh,” she heard Van and Kurt groan, along with a long and drawn out “Merde” from Giselle. She forced herself to look back at the duel, to find Gilgamesh pinned by illusions. He had lost.
Dammit.
“Cheat!” Gail said, standing up.
Shadow walked to Thomas. “Forfeit! Gross interference from the audience. The match must go to Gilgamesh,” Shadow said.
Thomas stood silent. They waited. In the meantime, Gilgamesh dusted himself off, and stood, angry, looking ready to fight Chevalier himself.
“Precedents have been broken,” Thomas said, a moment later.
“I did nothing to the duelists,” Chevalier said. “The dross effects of my dross construct stayed outside the dueling ring.”<
br />
Gail walked toward Gilgamesh, then thought better and walked toward Shadow.
“Curb your Focus!” Chevalier said, actually raising his voice.
Shadow ignored him. “I don’t know of a non-Mentor Crow, save perhaps Sky, who wouldn’t have been distracted by your egregious display.”
“Then it was fair,” Chevalier said, still trying to stare down Gail as she walked up to join Shadow. Giselle ditched her wheelchair and was now up on one crutch, and no longer dampening her predator. Chevalier took a moment to blanche, likely figuring out that a crutch in the hand of a one-armed one-legged Arm would almost certainly function as a deadly weapon. “Both duelists should have been equally affected.”
“Not if one had been taught not to fall for your trick,” Shadow said.
“Are you accusing me of cheating, dear Shadow?” Chevalier said.
“Damn straight,” Gail said, under her breath.
“Yes,” said Shadow. “That I am. You couldn’t prevail in an acceptable manner, and had to stoop to cheating, friend Chevalier.”
“I find myself insulted by your insinuations, dear Shadow. I see that your manners haven’t improved since we had to take Mimesis from you, have they?” Both Shadow and Chevalier’s faces reddened, and they balled their fists and gave each other the stare.
“Stop!” Thomas said. He spoke with an amplified voice, and Crows flattened everywhere, including Phobos and Gilgamesh. Gail eased back a step, her respect for Thomas replaced by sudden fear.
“I declare the match forfeited, in favor of Gilgamesh,” Thomas said. “I formally recognize Gilgamesh as a Guru.”
Thomas lowered his voice and backed away from Shadow and Chevalier. “You two idiots can now rip each other into feathers without my interference.” Thomas continued to back off, and took Gail’s arm in one hand and Giselle’s single arm in the other. “I would suggest that the two of you get out of the way, and that you both turn your Major Transform capabilities back on.” Thomas turned to Merlin and Vizul, both just picking themselves up off the ground. “We need to talk about many things, my friends, at a safe distance. I am feeling enlightened, today. Pay attention to these two idiots. You might learn something from them. Not about tact and demeanor, mind you, but something.”
Gail and Giselle did as Thomas suggested. Gail found Gilgamesh at her side, along with about a dozen Crows, some of whom she recognized, such as Smoke and Sinclair, and many others she didn’t recognize.
“You see me now, don’t you,” Giselle said, to the Crows. They nodded.
“I don’t understand,” Gail said, crowded by Crows.
“You’re our Focus now, and your companions are no longer a danger,” Midgard said. The dark-skinned Crow, wearing a long black coat, still reeked of Amy Haggerty. “Now that Gilgamesh has proven himself, that is. We’re going to protect you from this mess as best we can.” He paused. “From a safe distance.”
One Crow stayed by Giselle and bowed to her. “I’m named Jigget, and I’m your Crow.”
“The note-writer?”
He nodded. “We need to move, ma’am. Those two are going to duel, and we don’t want to be anywhere nearby when they get going.”
They kept backing off, making sure Gail followed.
Then Shadow and Chevalier moved from words to deeds, lighting the night sky from horizon to horizon, and Gail and everyone with her began to run like all the demons of hell were after them.
Carol Hancock:
I raced over to Lori, letting Haggerty and the Nobles clear the way. “What held you up?” The warehouse kept trying to convince my mind it was somewhere else, but Lori, another master of illusions, knew the right way to go.
“Crow trouble,” Lori said, giving me a quick hug. She only carried a few wounds, nothing she couldn’t shrug off.
“Crow trouble? I thought with Sky the expert duelist protecting you, you of all people wouldn’t have Crow trouble.”
“There were five of them, Commander,” Sky said, with a grin. He looked like a demon, covered with mud and blood, and his hair stood out almost straight from his head. Static electricity from some sort of ongoing dross effect. “They took us apart but good, until I managed to get their attention.” Five, eh? That was good dueling.
“Hey, I helped too,” another voice said. A hidden Crow, but I recognized Nameless’s voice.
“I thought you said you’d panic in a fight.” The reason why I assigned him to the reserves.
“Nope, nope, nope, mastered the panic, I did. Don’t stop now, gotta keep going, fate’s stirring up a big set of surprises for everybody.”
Climax stress. Nameless was one Crow who was going to be hiding in a culvert for the next year unless we found him a Focus or Arm to cuddle with.
“Well, yes, Nameless, without you and your flailing around confusing everything, I wouldn’t have been able to finally defeat those Crows,” Sky said.
“The Crows are still alive?” I asked. We had found a few moments of peace in the fight, but I didn’t expect it to last long.
“Yes, alive and captured and defanged, at least for the moment, as per your orders,” Sky said, with a bow and a flourish.
“Good, because we’ve got a big problem. Patterson took Tonya,” I said.
“Shit,” Lori said. “That’s trouble.”
“No, no, no,” Nameless said. “Hera’s pure poison, remember, oh yes, she’s one big hairball the big fat kitty in there is going to have a real hard time coughing up.”
Shit. A mystic Crow in climax stress.
“Any trouble with Patterson’s mental attack illusions?” Sky said. “She’s made one try for me already, but I used a trick Shadow suggested and beat her off. I’m real tired of the five levels of illusory reality this place has. Makes the CDC Research Center look like a clean Focus household.”
I shook my head. “I only see one reality, Sky, the one Patterson’s trying to keep hidden from me.”
“There’s a fairyland castle illusion here, as well,” Lori said. “I don’t see the deeper illusions.”
I sighed artistically, theatrically and well overblown. “Let’s save the doctoral dissertations for later,” I said, and yanked on Sky and Lori’s tags to get their attention away from the ephemeral Crow-crap. I motioned Lori ahead, and she led us toward Patterson’s warehouse, which stopped trying to hide from me when I got within a hundred feet from it.
“Together!” Dowling said, and charged the warehouse door, where we had seen Tonya disappear what seemed like hours ago. All the Nobles in the vicinity followed his lead and charged. The warehouse door boomed as the Noble front line hit, but they failed to ram it in. Gunshots ripped through the metal, and Haggerty waved the Nobles back.
“Where’s the rest of group three?” Lori asked me.
“They’re back on the perimeter, keeping Patterson’s horde pinned down. It’s a messy fight, but Patterson made the mistake I counted on, and didn’t order her main body of defenders to retreat fast enough. We need to get to Patterson before she can get her main body of defenders disentangled from what’s left of the ‘unstoppable’ group.”
“It wasn’t just the élan beast,” Sokolnik said, speaking with a different voice than normal. “The entire compound’s juice is alive.” I looked at her, and realized that whatever she normally did to keep the insanity at bay was failing, fading fast.
“It’s the household superorganism,” Lori said. “Alive and evil.”
Sokolnik laughed, in a third voice.
I met Lori’s eyes and we nodded to each other. Any moment now, Sokolnik’s eyes would be turning green and she would be fighting on the other side. Lori snapped her fingers and Sokolnik fell over.
“As I told Gilgamesh when he wanted me to fix Sinclair, I’m much better at causing mind problems than fixing them. Grab her, Carol.”
“No time for that now,” I said. Up ahead, I saw Haggerty arranging the troops for something more intelligent than a group of Nobles charging a locked door. “We’ve got
a fight to finish.” We left Sokolnik behind and ran over to Haggerty.
“Terrorize them,” Haggerty said, to the group of Nobles, as we stopped near the warehouse door. She worried about the people inside the warehouse.
The Nobles roared, and we joined in. The gunshots ceased, and I metasensed the Transforms in the warehouse falling back in panic.
“Stay. Out!” Patterson screamed. Something was coming. My instincts took my feet over to Polly, dragging Sky and Lori with me.
All hell descended on us, the remains of the power of Patterson’s multi-Focus household, on everyone save those of us huddled near Polly. Our cover came from Polly, Lori and Pearl, working together as a multi-Focus witch. Neat trick.
Our people screamed as they vomited, wept and sweated blood, and fell in convulsions from Patterson’s attack. From behind me, a blood-sweating freight train named Armenigar roared past and plastered the warehouse door. Weakened by the Nobles’ earlier attentions, the whole door assembly caved in, taking a good foot of the wall around it.
In she went, and in we followed, greeted by gunshots, body parts, knives, chaos, juice patterns, and dross constructs. A dead Transform shot a bazooka at Dowling and blew a hole through him. Lori’s death-projection killed a swath of Transforms right up to Patterson, including a Focus, and then failed and knocked Lori over in a nasty backlash. This was just the chaos I noticed. I got a shot in at Patterson but she de-juiced my right arm and paralyzed me, and I dropped near her feet, the knife in my left hand mere inches from her torso before I fell. I got to see Tonya and Keaton, both of them clinically dead, with non-beating hearts, will themselves zombie-like across the floor, each holding the other up, killing Patterson’s Transforms as they passed by, armed only with a chain.
I looked up at Patterson. She stood beside me as well as sitting on her throne, and the world no longer moved. Her charisma was weak, but the household élan she wielded more than made up for her lack of charisma. I felt myself sliding, my will ebbing. As predicted, she was sweetness and light, not a lie on her body.
The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) Page 36