The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1) (14 page)

This evening’s draw had gone well.  Between him and Sir Randolph, they got nearly all the élan formed when Anne went over.  Sinclair suspected they had stabilized another commoner, partly due to Jane’s work, teaching Anne the difficult parts of the mental strengthening that Anne hadn’t been able to learn before.  He was beginning to wonder how the Barony had gotten along without Jane.

This was a Crow’s flicker, and the Duke didn’t notice.  Sinclair frowned.  Some unknown Crow had come to the edge of his metasense range and then disappeared again.

Five minutes later, the Crow appeared in range again, and stayed for almost five minutes before he retreated.  This time, Sinclair recognized the Crow as Chevalier, an older Crow that he had met a couple of times.  Guru Chevalier lived in San Francisco.  Sinclair wondered what he was doing here in Long Island.

By the third time he appeared, the message was clear.  He wanted to talk to Sinclair, and he had no interest in coming near a Noble household.  Sinclair sighed.  So few Crows tolerated Chimeras in any form, even the very respectable and civilized Nobles.  Someday he hoped to break through this stupid and pervasive prejudice.

“I think we have a visitor,” Sinclair said.

The Duke frowned, instantly alert.  Sinclair jumped, always a little startled by the air of danger the Duke could put on like a coat.  The Nobles seemed so civilized most of the time; it was easy to ignore the fact that they were predators at heart.

“What kind of visitor?”

Sinclair shook his head.  “A senior Crow.”

The Duke relaxed a bit, but not completely.  “He’s coming here?”

“He wants me to come to him.”

The Duke grunted.  “Not with what’s been going on with the recent Crow annoyances, you’re not.”

Sinclair shrugged.  “He’s a senior Crow, and I need to be polite.  If he’s associated with the letters, the last thing we want to do is give him any more incentive to harass us than he already has.”

The Duke sighed, and put his book down.  “Well, if we have to, we have to.”

“No, it’s all right, you don’t have to come.  It’s only another Crow.”

“When you leave the household, you require a Noble guard.  It’s a Rule.”

Sinclair gave up.  He always thought that particular rule was a little overboard, but the Duke had insisted on it two years ago, and he couldn’t fight it now.  It was a Rule.

The east end of Long Island was rural farmland, with stone fences and wide fields.  Sinclair and Duke Hoskins jogged along the narrow roads to where Chevalier waited for them.  At first, Chevalier had retreated from their approach, and Sinclair knew he objected to the Duke.  Sinclair had had a short argument with the Duke, attempting to convince him to go back to the house, but had gotten nowhere.  Guarding him was a Rule, and Sinclair might as well have tried to turn the tide.

After a few minutes, Chevalier stopped retreating, and now waited for them in a small grove of trees at the edge of the Cadwallader farm.  Sinclair sniffed the July night air, and decided he ought to go out running more often.  The peaceful rural back roads, with no lights but stars and the small sliver of the moon, the odors all fresh and clean, all calmed him.  He almost regretted the end of his short trip to the waiting grove.

Chevalier waited near the center, his form hardly more than a shadow among the trees.

“Sinclair,” he said.  The voice was no more than a whisper.  Sinclair stopped, and the Duke stopped beside him.

“Guru Chevalier,” Sinclair said.

“You shouldn’t associate so closely with Focuses,” Chevalier said, and Sinclair sighed to himself.  This would be yet another lecture, this time in person, on his many sins to Crowdom.

The first hint that Chevalier’s visit might be something entirely different came when four other figures stepped into view.  Four senior Crows, the only entities able to hide from Sinclair’s metasense.  This didn’t look good.

The Duke reacted immediately, driven by the instincts of a fighter to instantly recognize enemies.  He roared and charged the nearest one, off to the left.  Sinclair wanted to shout to him to stop, that Hoskins couldn’t possibly attack a Crow, except his instincts said the Duke was correct.

Sinclair metasensed a flicker of dross, too fast and too complex to comprehend.  The Duke gave an aborted scream and dropped like a stone.

Silence fell on the little glade.  Sinclair stepped back.  Inside him, the panic began to grab hold.

“What do you want?” he said.

“You are cast out,” Chevalier said.  “For the crime of consorting with Beast Men, and…”

“They’re not Beast Men, they’re Nobles,” Sinclair said.

“And for the crime of consorting with Focuses, and for the crime of ignoring the instructions of your elders, you are cast out.  Sinclair the Crow, you are Crow no longer.  You are cast out.”

Off to the left, the Duke stirred restlessly, shaking off the dross attack of the four senior Crows.  Sinclair backed up another step and tried to protest, but his voice stuck in his throat as the panic pushed forward.

An indistinct flicker of dross flew at him.  Sinclair attempted to stop the dross attack, but the too-complex pattern slipped through his metafingers, settled onto his head, and disappeared.

For an instant, Sinclair thought the attack failed.  Just for the barest instant.  Then his metasense shut down.  He couldn’t sense the Duke, he couldn’t sense the Crows around him, he couldn’t sense anything at all, and what’s worse, he couldn’t even try.  He lost track of his juice and his dross, instantly helpless and vulnerable.

He screamed, a throat-tearing sound of pure terror, as the panic grabbed his mind and pulled him down, drowning in fear and madness.  He fell to the ground, still screaming, while writhing and clawing at his face and neck.

“Beast, you are now free to do what you always wished but were never free to do before,” Chevalier said, speaking now to the Duke.  “Let this fool Crow suffer the consequences of his folly.”  The five Crows left, leaving nothing but one Noble, groggily shaking his head and rising to his hands and knees, and one mad Crow, Crow no longer, trapped in the panic and madness of his lost metasense.

The Chowder of Life

“Other artifacts of the Progenitors exist in northern Canada and Alaska, and they are active.  What activated them, and when?  What are they doing?  Is this something we should be messing with?” – from Arm Haggerty’s Speculative Projects List

Gilgamesh: July 5, 1972

“No, shift this thread here up a bit and link it to the fourth derivative tie.  Sense that?” Shadow said.  Gilgamesh shook his head and tried to pick out the thread Shadow mentioned.  The long hours and days spent learning to master Guru-complex dross constructs wore on Gilgamesh.

Ah, now he metasensed the issue.  Of course, the fourth derivative tie would propagate the echo from the second transposition, and the entire effect would be both stable and dramatic.  Gilgamesh breathed a sigh of awe and leaned forward, carefully adjusting the last thread.

For a moment, he thought he spanned the correct adjustment, but he missed on the link, and the delicate dross construct shivered.  Gilgamesh reached out with his metasense to damp out the vibrations, but instead his nudge destabilized the entire construct, and the dross structure collapsed into a pool of undifferentiated dross.

“Hell,” Gilgamesh said, disgusted, and sucked up the dross as he leaned back in his chair.

They were in the living room of Shadow’s apartment, a tiny two-bedroom affair over Shadow’s twice-rebuilt stationery shop.  Outside, the constant noise of New York City streets bothered the night, busy even in the small hours of the morning.

“The construct was a good one,” Shadow said.

Gilgamesh shook his head.  “I almost thought I succeeded.  I even thought I understood.  Then the damned thing fell apart.”

“Don’t be too disappointed,” Shadow lied to him.  “You’re making excellent progress.  You’ve mastered the basics, and all you really need now is practice.”

“Lots of practice.”

“I never said this was going to be easy for a Crow of your mental strengths,” Shadow said, reminding Gilgamesh again of his analogy of teaching a butterfly to swordfight.  “Would you like some tea?”

Gilgamesh glared at the spot where the dross construct had been, frustrated.  “Mm hmm.”  He willed himself to relax, and when he did, he understood his mistake.  He should have anchored the third and fourth derivative before he tried to move the thread.  Then the construct wouldn’t have destabilized on him.

“I want to try again.  I think I can get it this time.”

“Maybe later,” Shadow said from the kitchen.  “You aren’t going to get anything until you’ve rested for a bit.”

Gilgamesh shrugged in agreement.  He had been living and breathing dross constructs for five months now, slowly improving his skills.

Dross constructs could do so much!  Many of the senior Crows used them for beautiful dross art, but beauty had never been Gilgamesh’s interest, philistine as he was.  Gilgamesh wanted dross constructs for their functionality.

The construct he worked on, iteration after iteration, would be able to stabilize fresh dross.  If Gilgamesh created the construct correctly, and applied the construct to a collection of fresh dross, it would act as a preservative.

Every one of his little rotten egg tricks might be done more effectively with the appropriate dross construct.  More precise, longer lasting, and more effective.  There were tricks applicable to his housecleaning business as well, such as ways to loosen gristle dross.  Oh, and he couldn’t discount the other uses for dross constructs he had invented, some of which scared him.  Slow poison was easy, for instance.  Just infect some poor soul with a dross construct that slowly leaked dross into their system.  That would kill a normal over time.  Tune the construct slightly differently, and it would corrupt a Transform’s juice structure.  Death just as certainly.

Major Transforms were harder to affect, but juice structure was juice structure.  Disable metasenses, confuse normal senses, all the horrors a sick-up could do.  All were now under his control.  Many of those dross constructs could affect him just as easily as any other Transform, and he didn’t like that much at all.  Shadow also taught him how to destabilize an attacking dross construct before the construct affected him, but the trick required speed.  Gilgamesh, alas, was painfully slow.

“You need any help with the tea?”

“No, no.  You just sit there and rest.”

Gilgamesh leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes.  Off in the distance, he metasensed two Focus households and a few night-working Transforms out at their business.  Peaceful enough, he thought, but worry nagged at him.  His dreams hadn’t been good over the last few weeks, dreams of conflict.  Wars, fighting, attacks and treachery.  The echoes of reality.  Bad things swirled around him, growing ever closer.  Hostile judging eyes glared from the north.

“Hey, Shadow?” Gilgamesh said.

“Hmm?” Shadow said, on his way from the small kitchen with a tea tray.

“You never told me why the senior Crows are so upset about Focuses.  I’d expect them to be upset about Arms or Chimeras, but not Focuses.”  He had heard stories, but wasn’t sure he believed them, considering the source had been Innocence.  Rogue Crow himself, in Wandering Shade’s daytime identity.

Shadow didn’t say anything while he put the tea tray down on the small coffee table.  He poured tea into the two cups and added sugar to both of them and cream to his own.  Then he settled himself into the chair opposite Gilgamesh and sipped his tea.  Outside the window to the small room, Gilgamesh noticed a local cat rub up against the glass and look him over, before moving on.

Gilgamesh waited for Shadow.

Shadow sighed.  “Once, a long time ago, back in 1957, there were two Crows, named Joseph Dellinger and Stanley Hardy.  This was long before the first predators transformed, or at least any we knew of.”

“Names,” Gilgamesh said.  Crows didn’t use their given names any more.

“Names.”  Shadow nodded.  “Joe and Stan worked with the CDC, in the Transform Program.”

“The Quarantine.”

“Yes.  Back then, the Focuses didn’t get on well with the CDC.  Neither the Focuses nor the doctors knew what they were doing and both made plenty of mistakes.  Joe and Stan were FBI employees.  They cleaned up the dross around the quarantined households as best they could, and tried to clear up misunderstandings as they arose.”

Gilgamesh leaned forward attentively.  “So the original Crows worked with the FBI, too?”  Shadow worked with the FBI on a regular basis.

“Joe and Stan were the only Crows the FBI knew about.  Back then the Focuses weren’t always a hundred percent reliable about keeping their Transforms from going Monster, and the reasons for the quarantine were good ones.  Also, dross was rare back then, and those quarantined households were one of the few reliable supplies, so nearly all of us were involved peripherally.”

“What happened?”

“Treachery.  The original Focuses stopped at nothing to get their way, and despite the quarantine they gained as much control over their supposed captors as they had over their repressed households.  We didn’t interfere, because we knew of no other way for Transforms to survive.  One day Focus Marla Rhodes attempted to escape with her household.  She lied to Stan about her plans, and used him to vouch for her honest intentions.  Stan sensed her escaping, realized he’d been used and turned her in; remember that he was at that point in time functioning as an official FBI employee.  But she had the help of several Transform Program members, and they tried to protect her.  In the confusion the FBI agents killed Focus Rhodes.”

“Oh, hell,” Gilgamesh said.

“Yes, hell indeed.  A year later, the Focuses all escaped.  The day before their escape, Joe and Stan were assassinated.”

“The Focuses?”

“The Focuses arranged the assassination, certainly.  We never learned the particulars.  We suspect the Focus’s trusted FBI contacts hunted them down.”

Gilgamesh sipped his tea and thought.  A lot of odd behavior suddenly became clear.  “There’s still hate,” he said.

“On both sides.  The remaining original Crows made a very wise decision back then when they decided not to continue the fight with the Focuses.  We retreated to the shadows to grow, and ever since, the official policy of the Crows is not to interact with Focuses.”

“But you do.”  Gilgamesh hadn’t missed the ‘we’.  Shadow had just admitted to being one of those original Crows, just as the rumors said.  Gilgamesh had been trying to squeeze this information out of Shadow for years.

Shadow shrugged.  “The first Focuses proved themselves treacherous.  I won’t interact with those Focuses, but as you know I think the younger Focuses deserve a chance to prove themselves.  I’d like to think that we can move past the mistakes of those early years, when we were all so young and ignorant.  My interactions are a risk, and we have to be wary and careful, but I think we should explore the possibilities.”

Gilgamesh sipped some more tea.  “So, how many…” He stopped in the middle of his question.

Five miles away, coming in quickly, he metasensed a Chimera.  An actual Beast Man, not a Noble or Hunter.

Gilgamesh stood up in panic.  How close was Sumeria, his RV?  Could he outrun a Beast Man?  Memories of the Philadelphia Massacre ran through his mind: Enkidu chasing him, cutting through his hamstrings to bring him down.  Weeks of miserable captivity.  The slaughter when his captors killed Wire and Tolstoy.  He remembered the Battle in Detroit, when Wandering Shade attacked with his Hunters.  Of all of Gilgamesh’s nightmares, the worst featured Chimeras.

“Wait!”

Shadow conjured up a maze of dross constructs so complex Gilgamesh couldn’t even begin to understand them.  They danced over Shadow in agitated eagerness, ready for use, almost leaning toward the incoming Chimera.  He and Shadow wouldn’t run.  Any Chimera foolish enough to attack Shadow would regret the day he transformed.

Gilgamesh’s panic faded a bit, as he realized he wasn’t doomed, and he felt a little foolish.  His faded panic turned out to be a good thing, because the Chimera wasn’t alone.  Gilgamesh metasensed a couple of Monsters, a woman on the edge between human and Monster, and then another Chimera.  Then more Transforms in various states of Monsterhood, and yet another Chimera.

One of the women he recognized as Jane, Sinclair’s Warden commoner.  He took a closer look.  With the closer look, he spotted a Crow, Sinclair, hidden in the much brighter metapresence of the lead Chimera, Duke Hoskins.  Hoskins appeared to be carrying Sinclair.

“Something’s wrong.  Hoskins doesn’t feel Noble anymore.”

They were all coming here.  Shadow watched as they approached, calm, yet poised for a fight.

“Patience” was all Shadow said.

“How many police are on their way here?” Shadow asked, frowning at Duke Hoskins.  Duke Hoskins, carrying Sinclair, stood in the doorway to Shadow’s living room.  The entire rest of the entourage squeezed in downstairs in the shop.  Gilgamesh couldn’t imagine how they would all fit, or how much damage they would do.

“None, Master Shadow,” Hoskins said.  Six foot eight, red-brown hair and beard, broad shoulders and muscular power.  He was snarly and angry and threatening and every inch a predator, but he didn’t appear to disturb Shadow at all.  “I’m perfectly capable of managing a household on the move without alerting the authorities,” Hoskins said.

“Come here and tell me exactly what happened.”  Shadow’s voice remained calm, but the charisma imbued in Shadow’s voice nearly dragged Gilgamesh over to Shadow.

Hoskins stalked into the room and sat on the couch, which looked about three sizes too small for him.  He never let go of Sinclair, and the muscles in his hairy arms bulged against the confines of his shirt.  Gilgamesh’s nose itched from the powerful odor of sweat, storms, wet fur, and male rut, barbaric scents in the civilized confines of Shadow’s apartment.

Sinclair’s metapresence bent in some screwy fashion, and the older Crow Master acted as if he suffered from the worst case of the panic Gilgamesh had ever seen.  He clung tightly to Hoskins, shivering and weeping.  Every once in a while, he let out an abbreviated terrified shriek.  Gilgamesh’s heart ached to see his old friend so hurt.

Hoskins looked up, and there was an edge of desperation in those dangerous eyes.  “Please help him, Master Shadow.  He needs you.”

Shadow nodded, came close, and knelt beside Hoskins and Sinclair.  Gilgamesh came closer, but stayed well away from Hoskins.  Shadow probed for a moment with dross constructs, and then did something inside Sinclair.  Sinclair dropped into unconsciousness.  Shadow looked up at the wall, momentary anger in his gaze, but the next moment he returned to his phlegmatic self.  “Sinclair will stay here for the moment.  Let’s get your people somewhere safe.  Arm Haggerty has a place just outside of Bridgeport, Connecticut she’s not using at the moment; you need to take them there.  Then we’ll talk.”

---

Hoskins finished his story, and Gilgamesh shivered.  As with the threatening letter that led Gilgamesh to seek shelter with Shadow and learn to be a Guru, this was the
official business
of the senior Crow establishment.  Gilgamesh wanted to find some place to hide and panic – instincts – but intellectually, he knew he was safer here than any place else.