She also thought she would be able to help me control my juice and never mind the risk to her. She assured me she was a good enough witch to handle the situation. I hoped she knew what she was talking about, because this terrified me.
“Tie me up and let’s do it.”
We decided the best arrangement was a spoon position, Lori’s back to my front. We stripped down to our bras and panties. She wanted as much skin contact as possible, which surprised me. I had thought the skin contact thing was an Arm fetish, but Lori said the juice patterns she used to enhance her metasense would work better if she had more skin contact.
Was I scared shitless? Not quite, but close. Sky wasn’t willing to take any chances, at least until after I was fixed. The only truly brave person here was Lori.
I lay down in stark terror and delicious anticipation and Lori cuddled in, in front of me. I wrapped one arm around her chest and the other protectively around the small bulge of the baby. The little snuggly body in front of me did give this whole process a lot more appeal. As we lay there in the cold basement, and Ann strapped us down, I sensed my juice changing and adjusting, fitting itself in with Lori. I helped the adjustment along and I metasensed Lori doing the same, as her own juice structure shifted. By the time Ann finished strapping us down, the odd adjustment was complete.
And, oh wow, was that an experience.
“My,” Lori said. “Mmmmmm.”
My breath caught at her words and I started to experience it as well. Pleasure, pleasure almost impossible to describe. The sensation felt almost like a kill, juice pulsing and flowing through me. My nerves tingled with heat and my mind hummed to the constant ecstasy. Better than sex, better than orgasm. Ann asked questions but neither Lori nor I answered. I wasn’t sure why the juice gave me such pleasure, but I loved it. I definitely wasn’t worried about being strapped down any more.
“What is this?” I asked, my voice low and distracted.
“Ummm, why ask?” Lori said, her voice even more distant. Whatever had happened to me affected her as well. “I think I understand it, though. You’re exchanging juice with my juice buffer.”
Juice buffer? I was exchanging juice with her household’s extra juice supply?
I peeked at the exchange with my own metasense, languidly, as pleasure sapped at my attention. My supplemental juice slowly went down, though at this rate, it would take days to deplete. A paltry cost to pay for such bliss. “You’re taking my juice.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said, shivering in pleasure. “Your entire supplemental juice supply is being cycled through my juice buffer, at about five minutes a cycle. Is this…”
“…what an Arm experiences when they take juice?” I said, completing her sentence. “Close. Real close, but not quite.”
“No wonder,” Lori said. “No wonder why Arms like to hunt.”
“Yes.”
“A Focus is a juice magnet…” Lori said, her voice dreamy.
“Lori?” I prompted, as she didn’t continue. I had heard some of this before, from Focus Teas.
“Mmmm,” she said, and brought her attention back. “One of the reasons why a Focus in constant contact with her people has to move juice all the time is that unless she figures out a way to gain control over the process, she unconsciously does the juice magnet routine and all her people’s juice gets slowly sucked up into her juice buffer. I’m slowly depleting your juice supply with this.”
“Is this the answer to the Arm problem? Reverse the flow? Run it the other way?” Ooh. Love. I could get used to this.
“A potential solution. Mmm. I just don’t understand how, and I’ve got a lot of training handling juice. I’m missing too many pieces of an intricate puzzle.”
As I was thinking of a permanent love affair with Lori, reality intruded and showed the situation to be much more complex.
The lights dimmed to black and Sky entered the room. “Are you ready, my dear?” he asked.
“Yes,” Lori said, her voice lower. Muted sisterly love and open affection. I had definitely fallen into soap opera Focus-land.
I metasensed Sky examining my juice in the pitch darkness, moving it around, poking, experimenting. “Well, this is one way to filter the impurities out of an Arm’s supplemental juice,” Sky said, commenting on the juice cycling. He sounded far more forceful than when I had him under my control. “Don’t ever try this trick with a spud; their itty bitty brains and egos would pop.” It took me a moment to figure out ‘spud’ was a Canadianism for ‘low quality Focus’.
“To work. Tell me what feels abnormal, Arm Hancock,” Sky said. His voice echoed off the cinderblock walls. I let my eyes drift closed. In the darkness, they served no purpose.
“Okay.” I dragged my attention away from my pleasure and concentrated, trying to metasense what he did. No such luck. Whatever Sky did lay beyond my metasense capabilities, despite my ability to metasense some kinds of dross. Sky poked and prodded, and eventually, I metasensed something in my juice. “There, Sky. What you just did.”
“Ah,” he said. “I recognize that. This bit of contamination has the same signature as the foul gristle we found in the CDC’s Transform Detention Center.”
“Can you get rid of it?”
“Hmm,” Sky said, and then paused. “Arm Hancock, I’m going to try something. I’ll be extending my Crow capabilities inside of you to extract the gristle dross. Please don’t fight what I’m about to do.”
He pulled my juice. Instinctively, I pulled back. Wrong-o. I didn’t want this bad juice.
“Sorry. My instincts got the better of me. Could you try again, please?”
Five attempts later I finally learned not to fight Sky’s extraction. Whatever he did hurt like the dickens and was freaky strange, too. He wasn’t actually pulling my juice. He was pulling something else, the bad juice he termed gristle dross and doing so caused my juice to, what, slosh around painfully?
“There are layers and layers of this horrid gristle dross,” he said, after a few minutes. “Unlike what I normally consume, this is unusable. I’m exhausted.”
“What can we do?” I asked, ignoring the fact I had no idea what he said. I had expected Lori to lead here, but she had zoned out completely, lost in the overwhelming pleasure of the cycling juice. Every few seconds, she would twitch violently. I bet I knew what she was experiencing, something I suspected she would never talk to me about until she was mine and I was hers and all that.
“Burn juice. Do the Arm trick of burning juice. I can recharge myself off of your waste products.”
Hmph. He meant what Gilgamesh called ‘the good stuff’. Carol Hancock, the gourmet dinner. “I can burn juice without a physical trigger, but the amount is insignificant.”
“An Arm I know once burned juice while healing,” he said. Keaton, of course.
“What, I’m supposed to let you slice me up?”
“What alternative do we have?”
Sky had definitely become more serious and stern. “Fine. Need a knife?”
“No. I carry my own, thank you, mademoiselle Arm.” He paused for a moment. “Back of your right calf okay?”
“Yes.”
Slice. I burned juice to heal. I finished healing.
“Okay. Now what?”
“This will take me a few moments. I do this slowly. Meditate. Lose yourself in whatever pleasure my gracious lady has found in this.”
Sure. Noooo problem. I worshipped the movement of the juice and lost myself in its flow. I saw God, and she blessed me many times. Somewhere in there I meshed with Lori’s metasense. Oooh, acid trip time. How did Focuses keep track of all this craziness!
Some undefined time later, Sky tapped me on my shoulder with the knife hilt. “Might I have a moment of your assistance, Arm Hancock?”
“Sure,” I said, slurring the word. I brought myself back.
“I’m going to try to remove the gristle dross again.”
This particular cycle repeated itself for hours. I later found o
ut Lori and I were strapped together for about twenty hours. By the time Sky finished, I was beyond famished, my muscles were screaming agony, Lori was out cold, and my juice was down to near danger levels. Sky lay flat on the floor of the room, muttering something about butcher knives and dross. Save when he was drawing dross, he never stopped talking. Certainly more entertaining than his Sam persona. I understood why Lori was attracted to him. I think Sky went through about as many scrapes a year as I did. I actually started to feel bad about raping him.
“Are we done?” I asked.
“I’ve gotten about as much as I can, mademoiselle Arm,” Sky said. “The rest of the foul gristle is beyond my meager capabilities to manipulate.”
“I’m still cursed?”
“I think I got about ninety percent of it, perhaps a little more. At least you don’t sense like some cross between an Arm and a Monster. I don’t know what else to say, save that I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Ninety percent better is wonderful news, Sky.”
“Glad to be of service, mademoiselle Arm. Remember, if you think in the terms of the Cause, there are things Crows can do for Arms. I’ve met three Arms, and each found a way to get herself dripped in gristle on regular occasions.”
I wasn’t up for a theoretical discussion like this right now. “I have a big problem.”
“Eh, yes. You’re low on juice. I’ve seen this before. How out of control will you be when you get released?”
“Not too bad, but I think I need to go find me some juice in the standard Arm fashion, before I make a big mess of things.” Meaning: poach one of Lori’s Transforms.
I didn’t need to worry. Someone bright had thought ahead, and the house was deserted of Transforms when I came up from the basement. The same non-Transform who had driven me in from the airport had released me from bondage. He cold-bloodedly handed me a list of the nearest clinics with unclaimed Transforms and the keys to a rental car. Within a few moments, I was on my way to Providence. Rhode Island, that is.
I found Gilgamesh in the back seat of the rental, quiet and happy. He had the same gooey look in his eyes I had whenever I stared at Lori. I smiled back. Getting my Crow back filled a big aching void in my mind and heart. I had missed him so much. I would no longer have to keep myself Arm-busy to keep from drowning in sorrow.
“I’m going to take juice soon,” I said. “You ready for what happens?” Normally he didn’t want to be anywhere near me after I took juice and got lusty. I had panicked him once on that issue and he hadn’t been over it, last time I checked.
“After three days of dealing with Inferno? I can’t think of a better getting-back-together celebration,” Gilgamesh said. Awwwh. I was cuddlier than Lori, Sky and 42 overly pushy overtrained Transforms. Well, so were Great White Sharks. “I’ll even let you take the lead.”
Gilgamesh had caught my sense of humor.
Gilgamesh: June 21, 1968
This time he had no problem letting Tiamat drive. She understood what panicked him a lot more than before. He spent a moment reminiscing about last night; Lori had said Major Transform sex was transcendent and she hadn’t exaggerated. Whatever worries he once had about Tiamat had vanished in the long sleepless night, lost in her unending sexual power and comfort.
They had to travel by car because Gilgamesh couldn’t fly. He had expected Tiamat to challenge him on the subject, but she just shrugged. “It’s impossible to have a proper fight in an airplane,” Carol had said. “Any excuse to avoid flying is fine by me.” Not to mention the risks involved in having some normal fly the plane, with a normal’s reflexes.
“Something’s bothering you,” Carol said, several hours later, in Ohio.
Gilgamesh nodded, staring morosely out the window at the other cars they passed on the highway. “I can’t figure out why Crow Killer is being so patient and selective,” he said. “Any Major Transform with Crow Killer’s talents and desires should be able to kill and kidnap more Transforms than he has. I can’t believe a Crow of his talents is running short on dross.”
Tiamat’s head bobbed up and down, slowly. She understood strategy, and was someone he could talk to at this level. He needed this. Even Shadow seemed woefully ignorant of complex strategies.
“Consider this,” Carol said. “How many Focuses has this idiot gone after personally?”
“None that I know of,” Gilgamesh said.
“Exactly,” Carol said, tapping her left hand on the steering wheel. “He’s not going for quantity or quality. He’s manipulating the rest of us. Getting us to move to where he wants us for whatever plans he’s working on. I’m convinced Crow Killer moved me out of Chicago to allow his Beasts to harvest the Transforms there.”
“He has a plan, then,” Gilgamesh said. “A long term plan he’s been working on, even before Philadelphia.”
“Yes. He’s not doing this to cause random mayhem or something simple like trying to exterminate the other Transforms.”
“He wants to take over.” He had feared this for months.
Tiamat nodded.
“Carol, the reason why I was so panicked when I showed up at the China Garden restaurant was that Crow Killer was there, way back then in Chicago, directing the Chimera. The Beast Man got within a mile of me before I picked him up at all. I only caught anything because I had trained my metasense to look outside the normal Crow sensory envelope, and even with my tricks all I picked up were flashes from the Beast Man. Crow Killer stopped masking the Beast Man from me once I started reacting to its charge. Later, the masking flavor changed to mask against Arms.”
“This fits with what I saw Officer Canon do with his masking. I don’t understand his tactics, though. I wasn’t hard to disable back then and I’m not that hard to disable now, either,” she said. “Why just one Beast Man? Why not a half dozen? Why doesn’t Crow Killer sneak up on us and shoot us?”
“Those questions bothered me at first,” Gilgamesh said, “but I worked that out. Guns? Guns scare Crows. The only Crow I’ve ever heard of who can shoot a gun is Sky. About the Beast Men? Occum’s progress with his Beast Men is slow. I don’t think Crow Killer had any spare Beast Men at the time, and from what Occum has said, the Beast Men, even Occum’s Nobles, don’t work together well.”
“Enkidu and Grendel teamed up against Keaton in Philadelphia,” Carol said.
“They didn’t fight as a team,” Gilgamesh said. “It was closer to two independent simultaneous fights, each of the Beast Men trying to one-up the other.”
“We have an advantage, then. We being the Arms. The Arm tag sets up a clear hierarchy. In a fight I would defer to Keaton.” Despite what she said, she didn’t sound happy. Gilgamesh waited her out, gladly sharing the front seat of the car with her. His Tiamat was back. He could no longer tell the changes from the problems.
“Wandering Shade’s building both an army and a civilization,” Carol said. “He wants to remake all the Transforms in his image, with male-led Chimera harems instead of female-led Focus households.” Her juice structure roiled, its beauty lost, the dark Tiamat showing through. The butcher knife. “I wonder what his political philosophy is. Control by main force, perhaps? Or blackmail and subtle intimidation, like Focus politics?”
Gilgamesh didn’t want to go there. His inability to understand Focus politics annoyed and embarrassed him. “He won’t be out in front leading any armies. He’ll be the politician organizing things. My biggest fear is that he already has a sizeable number of Crows in his pocket.”
“Uh huh. He needs his army to fight the Focuses. He’s not going to wait and he doesn’t need much of an army. Given how the Focuses reacted to the Transform kidnappings, all it will take is one good hit on a Focus or set of Focuses from unknown attackers, and the Focuses will start going after each other. His target won’t necessarily be the strongest or weakest of the Focuses, either. Once the Focuses weaken each other, he’ll take over the fight with his army of Chimeras and harems.”
“So what we’re planning in
Houston is going to throw down the gauntlet in front of him,” Gilgamesh said, shivering. “Taking down this rogue Focus will be revealing our strength to Crow Killer as much as it will reveal our strength to the ruling Focuses.”
“This bothers you.”
Gilgamesh nodded. “He may need an army to go after the Focuses and their households, but he doesn’t need one to go after us. He can pull another Chicago and involve the government. Or worse, he can strong arm some older Crows into helping him and take us out directly.”
“Keaton would declare war on the Crows,” Carol said, her voice a growl. “She might declare war on them on the possibility they might try such a trick.”
“That would be bad,” Gilgamesh said, remembering Keaton’s reaction on the phone when he had revealed his discovery of Wandering Shade. She was becoming steadily less fond of Crows. “There are already too many Crows who dislike the Arms. If the Crows organized against the Arms, they would be able to do a tremendous amount of damage to you.”
She thought through things for a few minutes, the car continuing its effortless glide down the freeway while Gilgamesh avoided looking at the speedometer. Tiamat’s cold stone face returned. “I think I’ve figured out how to handle Keaton.”
“What can we do?”
“She’s paranoid, but if we follow your naming convention and rename ‘Crow Killer’ as ‘Rogue Crow’, that ought to solve the problem right there.”
Hmm. Rogue Focus and Rogue Crow. “You really think he’s rogue, not part of the old Crow leadership?”
“I don’t have a clue. But if we want to keep Keaton from going after the Crows as a group, this must be our new assumption.” Carol paused. “The other thing we need to do is get more Crows involved in the Cause, get them on our side. Crows and Arms work together extremely well, even without face-to-face communication. Perhaps I can even get them involved in the attack on our Rogue Focus. I’d ask Lori, but I’m not sure involving more Crows in our soap opera Focus’s life would be a good idea. Not after you took Sky’s Focus from him.”
No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) Page 28