In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6) (44 page)

“I may not be able to succeed,” Tonya said.

“You will if I give you a little help,” Patterson said.  “Shut your eyes and listen close.”

Tonya did.

“Tonya?”

She opened her eyes and blinked.  “Lunch time already?  Sorry, Delia.  I haven’t been getting enough sleep recently.  I must have fallen asleep.”  She couldn’t even remember what she had been doing before she dozed off.

Carol Hancock: December 10, 1968

“Wow,” I said, after Gilgamesh returned to Houston with a van-f of Lori and her bodyguards.  I had been home for days, the benefit of being willing to take an airplane.  “You weren’t kidding about pregnant Focuses being different, were you?”  I was still high from the Nobles’ presentation, and in a far more tolerant mood, at least to people who were currently or had once been my friends.

Lori’s cold eyes glanced at me, and my heart fluttered.  We locked eyes and metasenses in my entryway, as we had in the bloody park in Wisconsin, and her ice melted, and my annoyance over the games she had been playing with me since she cut off contact with me vanished as well.

Her baby had dropped, and the late stage pregnancy on her slight frame had altered her balance and her poise.  The bigger change was to her metapresence and to her
aspect
, Gilgamesh’s term for someone’s background charisma.  I found myself ready for a fight, against any enemies who might threaten her; I don’t think I could have avoided giving up my life to protect her.  Even Lori’s Inferno bodyguard crew radiated love and protection, which had to be a first for them.

“Gotta pee, gotta pee,” Lori said, breaking the spell, as she rushed off on her tiptoes to the nearest bathroom without having to be told where to go.  Tim Egins, bodyguard, Inferno executive, and
mine
, shook my hand warily.  I had tagged him back in June.  Terry Bishop, the bodyguard group’s only non-Transform, followed Tim’s lead.  I noticed on her the results of Inferno’s most recent advancement, advanced training techniques for normals, using juice tricks to sense how best to train an individual instead of the Transform ‘juice amplification of training itself’ trick.  Tina Williams nodded to me and didn’t shake my hand, burying her hostility behind as blank a face as she could manage.  She had changed the most since our last meeting, physical training piled upon more physical training.  As a tall woman she had always been a bruiser; now I was sure she could have plastered me
as an Arm
at any time before Keaton started training me in Philly and likely for a good while after.

“So, is my name ‘mud’ in Inferno for dragging the Focus to Houston for this?” I said, asking Tim.  Not too long ago, according to Gilgamesh, they had been furious at me because of the rape.

He shook his head.  “Not if you and the Focus make up.”  They wanted their Arm back, badly.  Quite a change from a few months ago.  Amazing what the passage of time and an inundation of other problems will do for one’s perspective.

“Well, we’ll need to see about that,” I said.  “First, a treat.  Dinner.  My cooking.”

My ersatz apology even got Tina to smile.

---

“Of everything you’ve encountered, your various captivities, all the fights you’ve been in, you’ve never faced danger like this,” Lori said.  “If Tonya comes in thinking betrayal, we’re all doomed.”

I looked across the dining room table at Lori.  I had already outlined what I was going to do to Tonya to reduce the danger.  “What aren’t you telling me?”

She sighed.  “Physically, I’m twice the woman I once was,” she said, patting her belly.  “I’m about half the Focus I once was as well.  From what I learned this time, I won’t have any trouble next time, but I’ve got to put together a whole new bag of tricks for the changes caused by a Focus pregnancy.  The worst is that my old tricks to prevent low juice problems aren’t working as well.”  She tapped the side of her head, indicating memory problems and perhaps IQ problems.  “And big emotional problems,” she said, reading my mind.  “Some of my anger at you over what you and Sky did to each other comes from this.”

Did to each other?  I smelled a mental compromise in action.  “Rape is something I normally reserve for my enemies.  But I’m not ruling it out for other situations.”

Lori frowned.  She expected me to cave, filled with Focus love.  “What sort of situations?”

“First, interactions with other Major Transforms,” I said.  “That’s a case of not knowing what might be needed.  Lori, from the way I see things, Major Transforms have grabbed more rights of action as individuals than other people.  By grabbing this right, we also forfeit the right to complain about how other Major Transforms treat us.  Look at Focus politics.”  Which I was more than tired of doing, thank you very much.  “You Focuses respect no limitations about how you behave toward each other, other than ‘might makes right’ and the perils of social ostracism by other Focuses.”

Lori nodded.  “Day to day Focus politics is illegal and disgustingly immoral, and what we do when we get nasty with each other is always unconscionable.  Other situations?”

“Training, lessons, punishment,” I said.  “If someone gives themselves to me to be trained, I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to do the job.  Including rape.  Hell, including killing them, which I’ve learned for Focuses can be, um, recovered from.”

“I’m beginning to understand the formalisms needed for this,” Lori said, shifting awkwardly in her chair with a sigh.  “The boundary is this: if you’re a guest in my household, physical or implied, rape and other extreme forms of violence are off the table, as far as Inferno members are concerned, unless prior arrangements have been made.  Even if you’re training them or disciplining them.”

“I can agree to your restrictions.”

Our eyes met with a small war of wills.  None of the others at the table, including Gilgamesh, bothered to breathe.  “I reserve the right to react badly to violence of any form, though,” Lori said.

I snorted.

“This isn’t personal,” Terry said, the lone normal at my table, and not in the least bit intimidated by the rest of us.  “The Focus reacts badly to violence even when she does it.”

“Ah,” I said.  Now I relaxed.  She wasn’t being a hypocritical bitch, she was holding to her own ethical core.  Even if I thought her reactions were misguided.  “Your real problem is what I did to Rogue Focus, isn’t it?  You were right there on my shoulders.”

Lori froze, and then nodded.  “Was it
really
necessary for you to do what you did?”  She had never asked before.  From the way she asked, I knew she was well off her game, despite Gilgamesh’s insistence she had received some recent Crow help in that area.  I took mental notes, just in case, heaven forbid, I ever got pregnant.

“Instincts.  Magical thinking.  I knew what Enkidu had done to me when he raped me and nearly killed me, and I knew I’d survived.  I also remembered comments you and Ann made implying Focuses could survive as much damage as Arms.  So I replicated what Enkidu did to me as best I could with the tools at hand.”

A small smile skittered over Tina’s face.  The Focus glared at her.  “Okay.  When you’re working at the instinct level, I need to expect extravagances,” Lori said.  “With a little warning, and once my pregnancy’s finished, I can cope.”

I needed to give something.  For one thing, Gilgamesh twitched in a way that I knew I would hear about in private if I kept being the stiff backed Arm.  For another, her comments echoed many of my thoughts from when I was adjusting to being an Arm.  In addition, I was feeling frisky, both from the fact the Nobles thought they had to obtain my permission to get involved in the Cause’s fights, and because, ick, they too thought of me as The Commander.  I had stature from this I didn’t possess before, extra strength for my conflict of wills with Biggioni, strength which I now believed I needed.  As Keaton had intimated, the Noble boys were fun, though I did refrain from taking any of them to bed.  Those boys were as naturally dominant as I was, and I foresaw bedroom issues with them.  Big bedroom issues.  “I don’t think you’re supposed to like it, Lori.  There are going to be many times when these extravagances become necessary.  Let us Arms handle this.  Consider this a gift from us Arms to you Focuses.”

Lori laughed.  I didn’t join in.  I didn’t think my comment was that funny.

The conversation moved on to other extravagances, such as the pecan pie I served for dessert.  Of which I took only a sliver, damn it.  The Eissler diet was already showing some positive impact on my muscle problems, but desserts were going to be hard to give up completely.  We talked about my meeting with the Nobles; they had given the same presentation to her, and she had gotten to meet Crow Occum.  I was sorry I had missed the meeting, and whatever strange Crow mental help he had given her.  I also talked about my organization in Houston, including how the Crows had turned my Crow cash barrel idea into the 1
st
Crow Savings and Loan (and how I was having to invest the excess money I was collecting).  Lori talked about her life, the reborn rebellion, and her problems with the Young Focus League’s current leader, one Linda Cooley of Chicago.

“When I lived in Chicago I classified her as a worthless Focus, a low-end dictator,” I said.  “She’s a leader?”

“When you arrived in Chicago she’d been a Focus less than six months,” Lori said.  “All young Focuses struggle with problems because we’re all so different from each other and there’s nobody to tell us how to get our feet on the ground.  Anyway, Cooley’s charisma came in soon after you left Chicago, and, yes, her charisma has made her a powerful leader as well as allowing her to change her household to the hedonist model.  Unfortunately, she’s recently discovered how to use her charisma in a way to allow her to get high by overriding her drug immunities, and in her off hours she’s fallen back on her hippie ways.  I’d been using the YFL as my backup support group, but with Linda high all the time the YFL’s mostly fallen apart.”  Lori was disgusted at Cooley, Inferno’s extreme anti-drug stance showing through quite brightly.

“Take it over and run the group yourself,” I said.  Lori glared.  “Okay, you’re already overbooked.  How about the Rickenbach kid?  Would a budding journalist work in that job?”

“Perhaps later,” Lori said.  “We don’t want to make her any more of a target than she already is.”  She groused about the lack of quality in the current crop of young Focuses, as well as a small but puzzling fall off in the number of Focuses transforming in the last year, as compared to what her theory predicted.  I repressed a yawn.

“One issue I’ve been worrying about has to do with Sky and his new name for me,” I said.  Anything for a subject change from Focus politics.  “The Commander.  When I was talking to Focus Caruthers, I realized this wasn’t just a bit of Crow nonsense.  You Focuses know something about this Commander bullshit as well.”  Or so I hoped.  With Focuses, I knew to be wary of assumptions.  I didn’t mention that the Nobles also used the same name for me, for which I naturally blamed Sky.

Lori nodded.  “I knew you were the Commander when we first met.”

My stomach did the dipsy-doodle, surprised by Lori’s comment.  “Fuuuck me,” I whispered, feeling much like my boss Arm did when the world served her a warm shit sandwich.

“Don’t get hung up on the name, though,” Lori said.  “The name is due to a bit of nasty politics I think I’ll let Tonya explain.”  She gave me a sheepish grin.  “Although most people who know of the, well, legend think of the Commander in supernatural terms, I don’t.  To me it’s obvious: the legend represents a particular strain of American popular hero, embodied by George Washington, Ulysses S Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, just to name a few.  Add in the Dreams we all share, and it makes sense that we were waiting for you.”  Pause.  “Or at least makes sense to me.”

I wasn’t ready to move on to another subject.  “What exactly is involved in this Commander archetype you all are trying to slot me into?”

Lori smiled.  “The Commander is supposed to be a military leader, a healer, and someone who overthrows the old order.”

“Surely you’re joking.  Patton wasn’t a healer, for one.”

Lori shook her head.  “This isn’t about the other people who’ve been popular heroes in the past, this is a description of what we need now.”

I frowned, massively unhappy.  “So there’s this premade slot, and everyone is trying to fit me into it because I’m at least close and some prophecy says we need it.  What the hell is this going to do to my ability to make decisions for myself?”

“This isn’t a prophecy, this is a legend, a gap.  Someone the Transforms need.”  She looked at me with a tilt of her head.  “There’s power there.”

Fuck!  Of course there was power in this insanity. 
And because of this legend, you now embody our dreams of salvation.
  I turned away, not sure where my last thought came from.  I realized now how this insanity was connected to some of the dreams I had been having since I transformed, the ones where I spoke before the giant throngs idolizing me.  My immediate instinct was to run away and never stop running.

Save for this little nagging voice inside reminding me that others were counting on me, especially a certain Focus from Montreal I had invited into my mind while incarcerated in the CDC.  Hell, I hated responsibility I didn’t agree to ahead of time.