In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6) (24 page)

Well, this had just gone from annoying to unprecedented in a hurry.  “Why
are
you talking to me, then?” Tonya said, gentle but demanding.  This kind of pushing was far outside of Beth’s normal comfort zone.

“I like Gail and think what Focus Adkins is doing is manifestly unfair,” Beth said.  Hah.  Give Gail another couple years and she would have a half dozen Focuses or more slavishly following her every whim.  Tonya would make sure Gail was a firm ally by then.  “And, ma’am, I’d like to think your setting me up as Gail’s official Focus mentor counted as orders from a superior authority.”  Beth sounded far surer about her first statement than her second.

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t,” Tonya said.  Beth could have handled this herself if she had the political skills and the self-confidence.  Ah, well.  Time for a little teaching.  “Which means you’re on the hook for this phone call.”

Tonya’s comment elicited a telling gulp from Beth.  “Ma’am.  Although Focus Adkins didn’t explicitly threaten me, there was an implied ‘or else’ involved.”  Meaning Focus Adkins would destroy any Focus and her household if the Focus didn’t obey her.  That’s how the first Focuses ruled.

“The ‘or else’ is to be expected, but that’s not what I’m getting at,” Tonya said.  “Beth, what does Focus Adkins want?”

“She didn’t say.”

Tonya didn’t respond.

“Ma’am, uh…”

“Gail told you about her short meeting with Focus Adkins, yes?”

“Uh huh.”  Pause.  “Oh.  Focus Adkins wants Gail to apologize.  Uh, and humbly beg for forgiveness.”  Finally, a little rational-for-Focuses thought.  “But Gail’s never going to do
that
.”

Tonya wondered if she was going to have to draw Beth a map.  She sighed.  What she found so easy and obvious seemed so difficult for so many other Focuses to understand.  Never knuckle under.  Always negotiate everything.  “Go to Wini and tell her that as Gail’s mentor you can’t obey Wini’s order, but promise that in time you’ll have Gail make up with her.  Wini will negotiate a time limit; you should be able to buy yourself at least four months to get Gail to come around.  If Wini refuses to negotiate at all,” which wouldn’t happen, as Wini was always open to negotiation about anything and everything, “you can then, and only then, tell her of my support.”  Wini was the one who snagged the Transform volunteer who was supposed to go to Hancock, which caused Hancock to go into withdrawal.  If Tonya told Hancock about the interference, Adkins was as good as dead.  Tonya, however, predicted things would never go that far.

“Ma’am!  I can’t risk my household like that.”

Everything always came back to protecting the household.  “Yes you can, Beth, because you already have.  Consider, for instance, what are you saying to Wini by giving in without a fight?”

Beth thought for almost a minute.  Tonya waited patiently.  “Oh, crap.  I’ve given in to the lunch money bully.”

“I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yes, you have,” Tonya said, amused by yet another Focus who reminded her of her daughter.  Finally, though, some good analysis by Beth.  “If Wini decides you’re an easy mark, then there’s no telling what she’ll ask of you.  You don’t want that.”

Beth paused loudly enough Tonya almost heard her think.  “You’re right, ma’am.  I’m on it, ma’am, right this instant.”

“Very good.  Make sure and tell me how it goes.”

Viscount Robert Sellers: October 28, 1968 – October 31, 1968

“Failing a quest on the first attempt isn’t the end of the world,” Master Occum had said.  “Fix the problem, and try again.”

The Dragon had indeed followed them when they fled back to their camp, but hadn’t come closer than three miles away, as if she had a three mile metasense range.  She kept one of the local lakes, a mile long, a quarter mile wide and shaped like a comma, between her and their camp at all times.

Even Master Occum didn’t think a Monsterish metasense was possible.

Sellers, full up on juice, stalked the edge of the well-forested camp, circling and thinking.  The Count had just finished his last juice draw, finished his healing, and now entertained Pam behind a clump of fallen pines.  The plan, as the Duke had drawn it up, was simple – a direct charge, a fight, and a kill.  Even the Duke had decided there was no way they could subdue a Monster of her size.

Sellers thought the Duke’s plan was stupid.  He hadn’t said anything, because he hadn’t been able to come up with anything better.  He looked up through the pine boughs as a darkening sky began to drip cold drizzle on him.

“You seem worried,” Suzie said, coming up to comfort him.  Well, as much comfort as Suzie could manage right now, which consisted of an arm across his broad canine shoulders as they paced together.  She was worn out, from producing more juice than she had ever produced for them before, and from the afterwards activities.  Even her pointy pig ears drooped.

“I’m worried we’re overmatched,” Sellers said.  “Big old Monsters have big old nasty juice tricks, and we don’t know what tricks this Monster has, or how many.”

“Uh huh,” she said.  “I’ve read the same letters and reports you have.  Some of the old ones can even steal juice, Arm style.”

“Or burn juice, Arm style,” Sellers said.  “But what can we do?  We’re young Chimeras, and about all we can do is fight.”

“And change shape,” Suzie said, taking a flirty glance at his hindquarters and crotch.  “How far can you push it?  Can you grow wings and fly?  Or bulk up and armor yourselves?”

Sellers licked Suzie’s face.  “Nothing so useful.  Besides, ‘pushing it’ risks losing our mind, our humanity.  The last thing we want is to lose our humanity just to take out one old Monster.”

Wait a second, Sellers thought.  What about fighting this thing in something besides their combat forms?  Surely this old dragon had fought other Monsters of similar shape to their combat forms, and possibly standard humans, but an enhanced human, with Chimera tricks?  Highly unlikely.

A plan suddenly came to him.

“Duke, sir, a word?”

“No,” the Duke said, scraping his claws in near-Terror annoyance.  “We are not beasts of burden and common laborers.”  Sellers had outlined his plan, and the Duke hadn’t been amused.  “We fight, and since Knox is finally done satisfying himself, we fight
now
.”

The one problem with getting all the Nobles juiced up was they all got more aggressive than normal, especially in their combat forms.  More willing to leap at their problems without thinking.  Anticipation melted Sellers worries away, as he began to imagine the coming fight.

Adrenaline solved everything.  Right?

They strolled vaguely in the direction of the dragon Monster, about 60 degrees off a direct approach, until they were just under a mile away, and the path between them and the Monster no longer crossed a lake.  The day was now cloud-dotted, and pleasant for late October, well above freezing, but Sellers sensed a distant storm coming in the puffy white clouds. Snow and ice, a good cold snap on the way.  It was warm enough to rouse the late-season mosquitos, which hovered around them, clouds of flying hungry dust, as they slunk through the forest.

Duke Hoskins signaled, and they charged, straight at the Monster.  They immediately crossed a wide boggy stream valley, soggy enough to slow all of them.  A forested bank faced them, above the boggy valley, and they climbed the bank, only to find another soggy boggy stream valley below them.  Some speedy charge this was.

When they crested the last rocky rise, all of them muddy to their knees, they paused in mutual disgust.  The dragon had uprooted several dozen trees to create an open combat area, and dragged the trees to the side, in a line, almost a fence.  She roared and motored toward them, a crocodilian slither-charge, for that was the way of all dragon Monsters (all the dragon Monsters were altered gators, Sellers knew; most of the time they were even gator sized).  The Duke took point, the Count the right, and Sellers the left, and all of them loosed their Terrors.  Again.  And again.

Sellers lost himself in battle for a moment, before he realized that his eyes burned and he could barely see, and his claws and bites were doing nothing to the Monster’s heavy gator-plated body.  He howled, and he heard Knox’s howl as well.  Sellers turned, leapt up on the Monster, and over to Knox, who held his clawed paws over his demon face.  A few blinks and some concentrated healing allowed Sellers to realize that the Count’s scimitar claws hadn’t penetrated the thick dragon hide either, but the dragon’s attack had burned both his own and the Count’s fur.  His luxurious black pelt now showed yellowed burnt spots of nearly powdered hair and a few places where he was almost bald.

He dragged Knox aside, and readied another charge, looking for some place without those damned gator-plates.  He watched the Duke go at the Monster, while the Monster exhaled a yellow fog he could both see and metasense as she fought, what had to be the worst halitosis on the planet.  Ah, this had to be the corrosive that had damaged his eyes and fur.

Duke Hoskins’ upper body, his crab parts, weren’t bothered by the Monster’s halitosis, but his legs were, in parts burned down to the muscle, enough to slow the Duke down.  As Sellers watched, and charged, the fronds around the dragon Monster’s mouth his target, the Monster clamped down hard on the Duke’s larger claw-arm, and the Duke’s greater claw
cracked
with a shotgun retort.

Sellers leapt, and bit, and tore.  The Monster screamed, and fell back, covering Sellers with the corrosive vapor.  Keeping his eyes closed, Sellers grabbed hold of one of the Duke’s legs and pulled, scraping him back, away from the Monster.

Count Knox picked up Sellers with his weaker left arm, and grabbed Duke Hoskins’ greater claw with his other, and retreated with them to the nearest bit of dense forest, the Duke cursing violently in agony the entire way.  The dragon Monster followed, screaming and roaring, and exhaling her corrosive vapor, until the trees interfered and she could no longer keep pace.

They had failed.

---

“So, what, are you going to challenge me over this?” Hoskins said, disgusted and grumpy.  He gnawed on a haunch of moose, hunted down by Pam, Suzie and Sir Dowling, and followed the hunk of muscle with a thick slab of belly fat.  After they slowly dragged themselves back to the camp, everyone turned despondent over their second failure.  Master Occum started to mutter and grumble about having to move the camp to a more defensible location than this random pit stop in the north woods.  He expected Monster problems, soon.  The dragon Monster continued to hunt them, moving and waiting.

“No,” Sellers said, though the thought of a challenge did warm his heart.  He had come out of the fight less wounded than the Duke, who had already molted his greater claw, his way of healing his upper body.  The replacement, formed from the interior of the old claw, glistened in the moonlight, soft and fresh.  There would be no more fighting until the new molt hardened.  “What I want is my full title.”

Earl, that is.  Viscount meant ‘heir of an Earl’, dropped on him because of the still existing flaws in his man-form.  The criticism made him want to snarl.  Ear lobes.  All because the angle his ears made with the side of his head remained doggy, with nothing resembling an ear lobe.

Hoskins tore off a strip of moose flesh and swallowed it whole, hide included.  “If your plan works, you’re an Earl,” Hoskins said.  “You get to be the bait, though.”

Carol Hancock: November 2, 1968 – November 5, 1968

I huddled in the bottom of the phone booth and listened to the ring echo through the receiver, the receiver swinging freely at the end of its cord.  With my mangled hands, I couldn’t hold anything.  I had to dial with my tongue.  I was in deep deep shit again; Keaton had tortured me for the first time since I was her student in Philadelphia.

Answer, dammit, I wished at the phone.  Answer, answer, answer!  Outside the phone booth, the first edges of the sun peeked above the horizon.  The phone rang again.  Still no answer.  I shivered, and wanted to scream with frustration.

“Hello?” Tom.  I leaned back against the glass wall of the booth with a gasp of relief.

“Tom, it’s me.”  I adjusted my voice to force some semblance of my normal tone.  A quaver in my voice remained, beyond my control.  I couldn’t control much right then.  I wanted to cry with relief just to hear his voice.

“Boss, you sound terrible,” he said, puzzled and uneasy.

“I need you to pick me up,” I said.  “I’m outside the San Jose International Airport, but I can’t fly.  Get here as fast as you can.”

“Ma’am, what’s wrong?”  His voice sounded harder and more competent now.  He recognized an emergency.

“Just get here.  Bring Zielinski with you.  Tell him…” Oh, hell, my voice was shaking.  I started again. “Tell him this was a bad one.  He needs to bring supplies for setting bones.”  I told Tom to rent a car, and gave him directions to my exact location.

“Got it.”

“Good.” I thought of another thing.  “Whatever you do,
don’t
go into San Francisco.  Just get here.  Hurry.”

The day was absolute hell.  I spent it curled in a field behind a gravel yard, praying no one would notice me, thinking of all the instructions I should have given and forgot about.  The pain was miserable and I had to work to avoid burning juice to ease the pain.