The Last Mayor Box Set 3

by Michael John Grist

  By midday she saw enough to see the precise lines of the red bridle encircling her. Witzgenstein held it there, and it in turn led out to Witzgenstein. Any brute force moves across the line, any movement in the real world outside a certain parameter, and Janine would know. The bonds were strong, but even after a morning of focus Lara could see their low resolution. There were gaps, and weaknesses, through which she could slip out her thoughts and her influence. Through those gaps she reached back along the red tether to Witzgenstein.

  Out there she was a hot red sun surrounded by a whirlwind of control and change. Near her were others, amongst them the blips for Cynthia, Alan, George, Frances, each in their own pain from the previous night's beating.

  She reached wider afield, and found Crow. He was a purple spark in a fuzz of gray, held tightly in his own bridle of red. She tried to pick through it, to get a message down to him, but the bridle was too tight.

  She found her children. They were separated from each other in tight, confined spaces; frustrated and sad, and the sadness that brought forced her back before she bulged through the bridle too much.

  Through the long afternoon she dug deeper, drilling into the line like she was a builder in one of Amo's Deepcraft worlds, avoiding the thick seams of Janine's control and erecting new concepts and signposts to help her find her way. Hour by hour she forced back the fog until the whole of the White House hung around her in clear, sparkling relief.

  There were levers she could pull, enough to bring Witzgenstein down from within. Support she could co-opt, minds she could turn, with time. The evening flew by as she planned. Perhaps after one more night spent worming her way tighter into Witzgenstein's heart, through kisses and whatever else she had to do, the keyhole would be open and the key would be ready to slot in and turn.

  She didn't get the chance.

  Around midnight Witzgenstein came back, placed a cold hand round her throat, wrapped the bridle tight around her body, and accused her of being a witch.

  * * *

  Lara looked up into Witzgenstein's eyes, while the bridle crushed her body as surely as the demon's hand ever had.

  "I saw the others," Witzgenstein said, her voice calm but a ball of fury rising behind it on the line. "You wouldn't believe what happened to them. Frances, Alan, George, Nancy, Cynthia."

  Lara tried to speak, but Witzgenstein tightened the bridle, choking her flat. The lines of it were imprecise, but precision didn't matter when you had brute strength. With her left hand she squeezed Lara's throat, with her right she pressed down on her swollen left temple.

  The white pain in her eye exploded.

  "Bruises all over them," Janine went on, feigning calm, "as if they beat each other rather than you. I don't know how that might have happened." She paused and looked into Lara's terrified eyes. "Unless it was witchcraft."

  Lara couldn't get a breath in. The panic bulged and there was nothing she could do to calm it. Janine kept pressing down on her temple while squeezing with the bridle, so hard that Lara could no longer even wriggle, could only lie prostate and gaze up at her cold blue eyes.

  "You're not a witch, are you, Lara?"

  She tried to gasp 'No', but it came out hoarse and breathless. Silver dots flashed across her one good eye as the lack of oxygen started her toward unconsciousness. In some silent, calculating part of her mind she recognized the enormous power Witzgenstein held, even as she recognized again how crudely she used it. The gaps were still there; too slim to slip through right now, but with the right time, with the right practice, perhaps she could-

  "No more," Witzgenstein said, giving her a firm shake; like her body was a baby's rattle. "I am a Christian soul, but my patience has bounds. I accept that it's possible they struck each other, but so many times, and with no memory? I inspected your injuries last night, Lara. They each have as many as you. How could that happen? Tell me!"

  Lara felt her eyes bugging. Her face grew hot and purple.

  "Answer me with your witchcraft," Janine hissed. "Do it now, or I end our little experiment right here."

  She was angrier than Lara had ever seen. Magenta lines burned off her like New LA on fire, and all that anger poured into the bridle, burning Lara's skin where it touched. Up close it was both fascinating and terrifying, and it was going to kill her if she didn't act now.

  So she acted on the line.

  What she sent out was crude, a push against the bridle that didn't budge it, that accurately represented her own strength, but not her precision. Witzgenstein blinked, looked at Lara with new eyes, then at once pulled back.

  The bridle retreated. She rocked back.

  "What was that?"

  Lara choked. She gasped. Her body trembled as sensation came back. For a moment shock overwhelmed her, as she grasped just how close to dying she'd come.

  "That was something," Witzgenstein muttered, puzzling it through, confirming for Lara that she'd never consciously wielded the power. "You did something to me."

  Her eyes flared, and before Lara could throw up some kind of protective screen, she lunged in again, pressing her body close against Lara's quivering skin and bringing the bridle with her. It was not as tight as before, more imprecise still, but a firm clasp like a strong hand looped around her neck. In Witzgenstein's eyes the anger was shifting.

  "Show me," she hissed, "show me how you do it."

  The bridle tightened, choking her again, so Lara acted.

  Not with grace or finesse, because those things wouldn't help her now. She didn't have the skill to weave through the gaps, not so early in her exploration of the line, not pressed beneath a passion so strong. All she could do was throw what little power she had against her bonds, like throwing her body against a brick wall, but each time she threw herself Witzgenstein relented a little, even gave a little gasp as if of pleasure, before pressing in again.

  "Is that?" she gasped, feeling each attack, pressing back. "You're doing that. How?"

  It was a lesson for her. Lara didn't want to teach it, but each time she stopped Witzgenstein just pressed in closer, firming up the bridle in response, consciously taking control.

  Lara saw her chance fading away, and threw everything she had at the bridle, diving for the gaps, lunging for a way through, but Witzgenstein learned incredibly fast, becoming nimble as well as strong. She lapped everything up and demanded more, taking Lara fast to the point of exhaustion.

  At the peak, she stole a kiss. Lara couldn't breathe while Janine's lips covered hers. With one hand she worked at Lara's hair, while she cupped the other under her back. She groaned, and pushed her face into the crook of Lara's neck, and began to weep, and her body shuddered as if she was the one crushed in the bridle.

  Then the pressure relented abruptly. Janine pulled herself away, and slumped backwards onto a chair, where she struggled with tears and a jerky kind of laughter, while Lara struggled to breathe.

  Perhaps a minute passed.

  Lara didn't understand, and that scared her. The bridle was still there, but laid lightly across her chest like a cautioning hand, more finely spun than before.

  "It would be rape, wouldn't it?" Witzgenstein said, breaking the silence. "I know that. Even with whatever this thing is." She waved a hand in the air between them.

  Lara's jaw opened, but she couldn't think of a thing to say.

  "Forcing myself on you. That's your trap. Making me no better than Drake."

  Lara lifted one hand, and Witzgenstein shifted the bridle to let her. She rubbed her throat, trying to ease the flow of breath. She touched her burning temple. She probed the line, and was swiftly guided back.

  All her work, gone. She panicked. She clamped the panic down. There had to be a way.

  "You were angry," she said, sounding exactly like Indira had after one of the arguments she'd had with Julio, making excuses for her oppressor. "I gave you good reason."

  Witzgenstein looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time, then gave a short, sharp bark of laughter. "You do thi
nk I'm a fool. You think you can work circles around me, in this." Again the hand wave. "But I'm no fool, Lara. You think I didn't know about this power? Maybe not like you. But since New LA, when you touched Drake on the stage, I've felt it." She turned her hands before her, regarding them with awe. "Witchcraft. I have it too, I suppose. I've used it, and that makes me as bad as you I suppose. The things I've done."

  "I can teach you more," Lara said, no longer confident which path to take. "If that's what you want. Wield it better."

  Witzgenstein smiled. "Silver tongue. They say the devil comes in all guises. So you are sent to tempt me from the one true path, but oh, child, if you knew the things I've already done."

  "It's nothing," Lara said, choking the words past a knot in her throat, not even knowing what she was excusing. "It's not too late."

  Witzgenstein just sighed, and smiled. She seemed to be settling into herself, now, into a new role. The passion and rage from before went away, replaced by the chilly exterior she'd always presented to the world.

  "You don't know about Drake, do you? About what he did."

  Lara frowned. Drake? "He was guilty, a true sinner. You're not the same as him."

  Witzgenstein just smiled, on the surface only, and that disconcerted Lara. She wasn't reaching through any more. "Really? Already I've started up a eugenics program more rigorous than his. Your people, Lara, I'm afraid you'll be bred out of existence, in time." She made a slightly sad face. "So the Lord dealt unto the Philistines and the Hittites and all those others, so that they would be ground under the great heel of history. Genocide of the blacks, the Hispanics, the Jews, the homosexuals." She shrugged. "Call me a small-scale Hitler, if you like, but I know it's the one true path to peace. Americans. We all have to look the same, be the same, believe the same. Only then can we survive."

  Now Lara stared. This was new. Hitler, genocide. She'd always assumed that Witzgenstein's cruelties were genuinely unconscious. She said racist, sexist bigoted things because of inherent biases, beliefs she wasn't even really aware of, while she truly thought she was being fair.

  This wasn't that.

  "You're judging me," Witzgenstein said happily. "It's all right. Get angry if you like, Lara, because it will be the fate of your children too. They'll have few children themselves, and fewer with each generation. It is cruel, but Drake taught it to me, and its true."

  "Drake was mad," she persisted, trying to pull sense out of this. "You're not. What God would want this? Jesus wouldn't want this."

  Janine nodded sadly. "You're right. Jesus would cast me out, and that pains me, but Jesus was for a different time. Jesus was not a sinner himself, as I am. Jesus never lusted after another man."

  Lara shook her head as if she could shake that off. "We haven't done anything."

  Janine just smiled. "Sins of the mind, Lara. I would, in time, just like Drake. I know that about myself."

  "Why do you keep talking about Drake? He's dead."

  "Not really. He's with me, still." She touched her heart, then her head. "In here."

  Lara racked her mind for something meaningful to say, something to crack through this façade of seeming madness before the deal was struck and history moved on, following Witzgenstein's direction.

  In the end it was Janine who broke the silence.

  "I thought he was the prophet," she said. She didn't look at Lara, but away now, out through the White House windows over the dark South Lawn. "When he came to us first in the Willamette Valley, I was sure it meant something. He didn't go to you, or to Amo, but to us, bringing his host of angels." She smiled, and looked briefly at Lara. "His children. I didn't know about the bombs then. He talked using scripture. He could hold forth for hours, and we were all besotted. I was his from the moment he arrived until the moment he died. I gave him everything."

  Lara could feel the moment starting to sour. Anger was coming back into Witzgenstein's presence on the line, tinged with the dark burr of shame.

  "He made such promises. He quoted prophets past, writing us into those legends along with him. I suppose it's how cults begin. A powerful, charismatic figure, a conman, and we wanted to believe. We wanted to be special, and he made us that way."

  She lapsed again. Now there were tears in her eyes. Lara reached out, taking Janine's hand in her own. Perhaps this was the moment. Janine squeezed it, smiled, then let go.

  "The first time was beautiful. He gave me everything, all of his attention. Just the two of us beneath the holy tabernacle, moving with the spirit. Would you believe it was my first time, Lara? I'd never done it before, and to do it with such a man as he?" She leaned back, ashamed even in the pleasure of the memory. "It made me special. You can understand that, of course. From Amo's loins came your immunity to this world. Like Eve from Adam's rib, so was I re-made too. I began to feel my own power even then. I began to see his power, and the trails Amo had left upon us all. The devil's work."

  She sighed.

  "What happened?" Lara asked. It felt like her future, her life, was teetering on the knife-edge of Witzgenstein's madness. She just had to tip it in the right direction to return the world to sanity.

  Janine patted her hand, amused and regretful at once. "So hungry. You wouldn't be, if you knew what I've done. You'd tear out my eyes right here, if you could see. But for now, let's have this moment. I can't tell anyone else, not ever again, so why not to you? Lara, he changed."

  She shuddered. It went on for seconds, like an earthquake beneath her skin, as she remembered whatever horrors lurked in the past.

  "He changed me. I thought I'd found my Amo." Another shy smile. "In truth I found a cruel master. Twelve years, Lara, can you imagine that? Twelve years of absolute power he'd held, over his people. Owning their minds, their wombs, their bodies, and the children they produced." The tears grew stronger. "So he owned me. Gently at first. Roughly later. He brought his wives in."

  Lara blinked. Wives? She could imagine, but didn't want to. She'd never seen it, but she'd felt Drake's power, and their blank-eyed devotion. "He forced you?"

  "I wanted to," Witzgenstein answered fiercely. "My body betrayed me in ways I never could have believed, as it has betrayed me with you. I lay with him and his women, night after night in a sham of holiness, worshipping not God but him, the idea of him. A false idol. No prophet should ask for that, Lara, and believe me, I will not ask for it. Still, I gave my worship easily, because I loved him, and his gaze wrapped me up in a shadow of love returned. So his fate merged with ours, and my people merged with his, until I had known them all."

  Lara's mouth was dry. Was she really hearing what she thought she was? "All the women?"

  Witzgenstein turned to her. She wiped her cheeks, her tears dried up, and the chill was back.

  "All the men," she said, her tone utterly cold. "All the women. Orgies, Lara. Despicable, base, but I reveled in them. And when he became cruel, I indulged him. I broke my people against his will, and I only loved him more, as if transgression was the holy order, a means to mortify the flesh. I subverted all God's natural laws, for him, and throughout I believed I did it for God. 'This is my will,' he would say to me, 'and so the will of your God'. I swallowed what he gave me to swallow, child, and forced the same decision onto others. So you see, I am no stranger to such things. I have been his rapist. I will not do it again."

  Lara was dumbfounded. She thought of the people from Willamette Valley. Cynthia. Greg. Frances. Alan.

  "All of them?"

  "All. Some resisted. None could withstand the firebrand of our wills combined. So my powers developed. Then-"

  She faltered.

  "What?"

  Her eyes blazed again. "Then we came to New LA. He saw you." She said 'you' like it was a foul word, something distasteful in her mouth. "He turned the glow of his love from me, to you. One night, then the next, while he kept you in his tabernacle."

  Lara frowned, casting her mind back. Drake had locked her in his Winnebago Airstream. Was that the tabernacle?


  "We didn't do anything."

  Witzgenstein sneered. "It doesn't matter. He was besotted with you. He turned from me and mine, and his thoughts were on you at all times. His lust was unseemly. His rejection of me, and the one true path I had offered, made him baser than ever. After that there was only one eventuality. If you had not killed him on that stage, I would have done it myself."

  Her rage was back, hot and trembling.

  "So he-" Lara began, trying to slot the pieces into place with her memory, "he sent you to me in the RV? The tabernacle? Before Amo was to die. You were cruel then, and that was just because, I don't know, you were jealous?"

  Janine laughed. "Jealous. Yes. Of a dead woman. But of course, he was going to spare you then. He forbade me from talking to you, but I came anyway, risking his wrath. I poured poison in your ear, to press you to turn on him in public, and force him to make an example of you as well. So it passed."

  Lara buckled under that, feeling like she was drowning off Venice Beach again, already exhausted from the stream of revelations. Each one burst over and changed her.

  "You wanted me to do that? To turn on him?"

  Janine shrugged. "I thought you would die. I couldn't foresee the alchemy of the Antichrist, that you would touch them both and Drake would die. But it only accelerated my plans. He was gone, and in our flight from Los Angeles I hatched my exodus. The rest you know, until the moment you knelt for me. Sweet Lara, that was such a gift."

  She reached out and stroked Lara's cheek. Lara tried to recoil but the bridle stiffened instantly, holding her in place.

  "Are you satisfied now, child? Is there anything else you would like to know?"

  Lara tried to think of something, anything, to prolong the moment and wedge a crack into Janine's thinking, but she was too drained to come up with anything. The things Witzgenstein had done were beyond her understanding. She was not the woman she'd believed her to be, and she didn't know what lever to press any more, what argument to take.

  "Very well then," Witzgenstein went on briskly. "You and I have had our dance, and the moment is over. It is time to put childish things away, and bring about the civilization God always promised. Drake was a false prophet, I see that now, an obstacle sent to test me, just as you have been. But I know what to do with you now. With a witch."