The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1) (15 page)

Hoskins looked so human on the outside.  Big and broad, he was almost seven feet tall, twice as wide as Gilgamesh, and heavy with muscle.  With his thick beard, Gilgamesh thought he looked like some Norse God out of the Elder Edda.  Give him a hammer, and he would make a good Thor.  While Hoskins had been out with his people, Shadow had told Gilgamesh to be polite to the Noble who no longer felt Noble.

Polite
would take work.

“Can you tell me now what’s wrong with Master Sinclair?” Hoskins asked, his voice an authoritative baritone.

Shadow refused to meet either of their gazes.  “Sometimes, under very rare circumstances, a Crow goes astray in such a way that he poses a danger to the other Crows.  The senior Crows can use a dross construct to cast out the dangerous Crow by disabling his metasense.  Usually the affected Crow dies shortly thereafter.”

“Hell,” Gilgamesh said, shivering.

“I didn’t kill Master Sinclair like they wanted, I saved him,” Hoskins said.  “How do we fix this?”

“There is, unfortunately, no known way to fix a casting out.  This isn’t something meant to be undone.”

“What do you mean?” Hoskins said.  “Are you saying this is permanent?”

“There’s no
known
way.  If there’s any way to fix this malady, we’ll have to discover it ourselves.”

Hoskins snarled, and Gilgamesh shivered, but the former Noble stopped after a moment, and they sat silent.

Gilgamesh shook his head.  “Who decides this?  Aren’t there any rules?  Sinclair doesn’t deserve anything like this.”

Shadow looked away.  “The decision is the responsibility of the Crow’s Guru.”

“What?  But you’re Sinclair’s Guru.  Why is Chevalier involved?  Did they do this without you?”

Shadow nodded.  Hoskins’ eyes narrowed.

“This is an attack on you, Master Shadow,” Hoskins said.  “Just as with Gilgamesh’s letter.  Or the letter to the FBI leaking the location of the Commander’s lair. Or the letters exposing Focus Biggioni’s allies.  Our Crow enemies are going after your associates.”

“I’m very much afraid you’re correct,” Shadow said.

“Wait a minute,” Gilgamesh protested.  “I’m not following this.  Why is all of this an attack on you?”  Hell, this sounded like politics.  Gilgamesh despised politics.

Shadow sighed.  “I was going to cover this with you eventually.  I suppose now is the time.  There are three major ranks among the Crows.  There are normal Crows, the Crows you meet all the time.  Then there are Gurus, which you already know about.  Gurus are older Crows that other Crows follow, more experienced, and more capable with their abilities.  As you’ve long suspected and long tried to squeeze out of me, there’s another rank above the Gurus: the Mentors.  Mentors attempt to work behind the scenes, to the point where normal Crows think they’re nothing more than Gurus.  Mentors are the most senior Crows, and they have Gurus as followers.  Innocence was my Mentor, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now.”

Shadow’s explanation answered several years’ worth of mysteries and questions.  “But Innocence is dead,” Gilgamesh said.  Innocence had gone bad and turned into Wandering Shade, and Tiamat had killed him in the Battle in Detroit.

“Yes.  For the last three years, I haven’t had a Mentor.”

“So wait a minute.  You’re a Guru, and yet you’re teaching me to be a Guru.  What happens if I become a Guru?”

Shadow smiled a slight smile.  “If you become a Guru, then I become a Crow that Gurus follow.  A Mentor.  I believe these goings-on are an attempt to stop my ascension to Mentor.”

“Oh ho,” Hoskins said.  “The senior Crows play rough.”  There was a note of respect in his voice.  “So we can assume some of the Crow Mentors are your enemies?”

“Yes.  I’ve always sponsored some of the most daring Crow activities.  Research into our abilities, cooperation with Focuses and Arms, the raising of Noble households, support of the Cause, just to mention a few.  There are quite a number of Crows who’ve always been deeply offended by my activities.”

“Not to mention the slaying of Innocence.  Does that cause problems?”

“Of course.  Now that Innocence is safely dead, there are several senior Crows who have decided they disapprove.”

“So how do we respond to this challenge?” Gilgamesh asked.  Shadow had warned him the path to Guru might be dangerous, but this sounded a bit beyond the ordinary.

“Under the circumstances, I think a little more caution might be in order.  We may want to take cover for a little while to let things cool down, and then try again more cautiously.  I’ll need to warn…”

“You attack,” Hoskins said.

“Excuse me?”

“If you’re in a fight, you attack.”

Gilgamesh shook his head, offended by the animalistic reflexes.  “Shadow knows what he’s doing.  This is Crow business.”

Hoskins gave Gilgamesh a brief glance of dislike, the first time Hoskins had acknowledged Gilgamesh’s existence.

“If you’re in a fight, listen to a fighter,” Hoskins said, turning back to Shadow.  “If you want to win this fight, figure out your plan of attack.  Then worry about defense.  If you’re going to surrender, then fine, surrender, but if you’re going to fight, do it right.  Master Shadow, you don’t win a fight by withdrawing from the field.”

Gilgamesh was going to say something more, about planning and organization, but Shadow raised his hand.

“I’m afraid our friend the Duke may have a point.  Listening to my instincts isn’t always the wisest path.”

Gilgamesh shut his mouth.  He needed to do a bit of careful thinking before he responded to Shadow’s statement.  His instincts were also to attack.  Stealthily.  Arm-style.  He hadn’t imagined Shadow would even consider such a thing.

“So what do you think we should do, Gilgamesh?” Shadow asked, putting him on the spot.

“What’s the choice? If we decide to surrender, what does that mean?”

“It means that we obey the dictates of the other senior Crows.  You don’t become a Guru, Sinclair stays the way he is and dies, we give up the fight.”

Gilgamesh flickered his eyes toward the bedroom where he metasensed the unconscious Sinclair.  The implications were chilling for all of Shadow’s associates.  Gilgamesh would have to go back to being a solitary Crow without contact with the other Major Transforms.  They would shut down Occum and the Nobles, and the Nobles would decay back to Beast Men.  Sky would have to leave Inferno.

The end of the Cause.

Crap.

Gilgamesh thought for a moment.  “The attack on Sinclair is as much an attack on the Cause as it is on you, Shadow.  Do we even have a chance, though?  One Guru, one Guru in training, and one Be– Noble, against all the most senior Crows.  This doesn’t sound like good odds.”  He heard Tiamat’s predictable response to this prospective fight in his head: ‘Senior Crows?  I’d have more luck fighting a fog bank.  Count me out.’

“We do if the rest of those senior Crows have the same sort of fighting instincts you two have,” Hoskins said.  “With all due respect, Master Shadow.”

“Seriously,” Gilgamesh said.

“I’m serious.  Attitude matters a lot.  Also, I doubt we’re facing all the senior Crows.  I can’t imagine Guru Thomas harming Master Sinclair in any fashion.”

Shadow nodded.  “Most will have no interest in this sort of business.  We’re facing Chevalier, a few of his senior friends, and all their followers.”

Guru Arpeggio came to mind.  Which saddened Gilgamesh.  He had tried his best to befriend the touchy older Crow, but never succeeded.

“Against you and all your followers,” Hoskins said.  “Plus the Nobles and all their followers.  Don’t forget that I’m the war leader of the Nobles, and can draw on every one of them in a fight.  Plus our Focus and Arm contacts, who owe us a lot.  Plus whatever else you’re doing that has them so angry in the first place.”

Hoskins was right.  The fight wasn’t hopeless, despite Gilgamesh’s initial gloom.

“I fight,” Gilgamesh said.

Shadow nodded.  This was Shadow’s decision, Gilgamesh knew, whatever he and Hoskins might say.

“Then we have a fight,” Shadow said, much faster than Gilgamesh expected.

“You’d already decided,” Gilgamesh said.

Shadow nodded.  “I would be abandoning my responsibility if I didn’t fight, but I didn’t want to force either of you into this danger.  Since you have volunteered,” he smiled slightly, “I am very glad to have you.”

“Good,” Hoskins growled.  “Let’s start planning.”

“We’ll plan in a minute.  First, we’ll have lunch.”

Carol Hancock: June 30, 1972 – July 6, 1972

The clink of glasses and the low buzz of conversation filled the air, gently muffled by expensive carpets and brocade-lined walls.  I reveled in the smells and sounds of my city.  I had come to care for many people over my years as an Arm, but nothing compared to my love of Chicago.  This was my
territory
.  Territory was fundamental to an Arm in ways normals aren’t equipped to feel.  Ann Chiron, Lori’s household anthropologist and pest to all Major Transforms with an interest in privacy, theorized that territory was even the force behind the Arm dominance hierarchy, and dominance fights were at their roots just fights over hunting rights.

I didn’t worry about hunting rights.  I just enjoyed my city.  Around me, the cream of the Chicago Democratic Party circulated among the rich and the important, all of them feeding off the endless economy of money and influence.  A judge leaned on the bar half listening to a Congressional candidate making his pitch to a couple of CEOs at the table next to him.  Several city Councilmen circulated and shook hands, and the Mayor himself had showed up for an hour or so.  A heady mix of smoke and liquor and power and money filled the air.  This was a $1000 a plate Democratic Party fundraiser at the Ritz in downtown Chicago, and anyone who wanted to be a player in Chicago needed to attend the local stop of the rubber chicken circuit.

Including me, although my presence would have disturbed most of the worthies in the room.  Despite my recent um
issues with free time
um, I planned to become a player in the Chicago political scene.  They knew me as Catherine Quells, an heiress just recently moved into town from the West Coast.  The Quells identity was bulletproof.

Crystal chandeliers hung over the magnificent ballroom’s round tables and an empty dais.  The speeches and the dinner long over, the attendees now collected what they paid their money for, access and influence.  I remained seated at the table where I had eaten, with my escort, Frank Russo, next to me sipping a Jack Daniels.  I would circulate in a minute, joining the crowd and marking my presence in everyone’s minds, but right now I made use of my Arm-enhanced hearing and listened.

The CEO of a garbage company commiserated about the Cubs with a high-priced corporate lawyer a couple of tables away.  A union boss opined about the war in Vietnam to a Congressional staffer one table over.  A lawyer and a political hack bemoaned the futility of McGovern’s presidential run.  All mundane tidbits of conversation, and useless.  Several tables farther away I caught one of the city councilmen growing a little more intense with a party bimbo than I suspected his wife would care to see.  Over by the flowers and ice water a trucking magnate employed delicate euphemisms to let a Congressman know what changes to the laws he would find helpful, and how much money he could contribute to the Congressman’s campaign.  This sort of thing was information I needed.

As I watched the Congressman, his staffer slipped in from one of the side doors and pulled him aside, to a flurry of whispers where I made out the words ‘Arm’, and ‘car dealerships’.

I swore to myself.  My current set-to with the FBI was a lot more important than my minor political schemes.  I signaled to Frank and started my stately progress through the crowd, trolling for information.  He took another sip of his whiskey and followed, not thrown by anything I might do.  He was a high-priced lawyer with closer ties to the mob than he liked to admit, and the steel nerves expected of one of his persuasion.

The crowd made way for me without noticing, as I used a few minor tricks to impress their instincts with my importance.  Later, the more sophisticated of them would wonder what it was about me that made them give ground so easily.  Zielinski said I did the trick with pheromones.

In any case, I slid easily through the crowd, listening in on conversations and attracting attention as I went.  Conversations stopped as I glided by, and people stared.  I wore three inch heels to accentuate my natural height, and a navy blue long sleeved sheath dress slit up to the hip and down to the breast to attract their eyes away from my muscles, created especially for me by a very expensive designer.  If I had an ounce of fat on me or if I was one of the heavily muscled Arms, I couldn’t have pulled this off.  Wearing it, I created one hell of an effect, and the fact I was barely a day past my last kill made my every movement give off a heady undercurrent of sexual heat.

I left the gaping men and fuming women behind me and headed toward the cluster by the dais, where I heard whispered murmurings about one Philip Cazort, my supposedly impregnable chief business identity.

“Is there some news?” I asked.  My voice was low, but everyone in the little group stopped talking to hear me, even the judge.  Politicians regularly resisted my tricks, but today my subtlety slipped below his notice.  Several people attempted to answer at once, understanding immediately that I was someone important, but the judge won out.