Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) by Randall Farmer Page B

Mary said.  “Eight hundred and twenty feet away, driving down Sorento.”  Two o’clock.  Right.  Bodyguard-speak.  Mary turned off MacKenzie and onto Sorento.  This was the suburbs, an older suburb north of Dearborn, filled mostly with larger brick houses from the pre-WW II era, all with small city lots and garages in the back yard.  An upscale neighborhood back in the day, and not showing too much age.
    “Got him.  Uh huh, untagged and holy shit he’s just a day or two from periwithdrawal.”
    “Tell me what you’re feeling,” Mary said.  “He’s mine, now that I metasense him.  He’s my prey.  Do you understand? ”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Gail said.  Instincts brought out the ‘ma’am’, which she had never before given to Mary.  Her instincts also said ‘save this man’.  Gail wasn’t full up.  She had room in her household for another triad, two women and a man, a benefit of her recent Arm and juice pattern training.  She held off informing the Clinics she needed another triad until things quieted down, fearing Focus Adkins or one of the other Bitch Patrol Focuses would insert a ringer.  “I’m nervous, ma’am.  Worried.”
    She had never been, before, in a situation where she had an opening and needed to turn down a Transform.  The devious part of her mind started spewing ideas on how she might grab the man anyway, despite Mary.  Inside her mind, ‘No, I’m not going to do that’ mental comments warred with ‘why the fuck not’ instincts.
    She swore Mary was amused.  “Tell me about him,” Mary said.
    Gail focused on her metasense while Mary pulled closer.  “Male, early twenties, six foot one, lots of muscles, factory worker, lives with his parents, two girlfriends,” Gail said, nervously spilling more than she wanted to say.  Tagged or not, visible or not, Transforms were easy to read, especially now that he was within Gail’s normal metasense range.  Mary sensed as discommoded, which puzzled Gail.  “He’s tired, a bit shaky, doesn’t know he’s a Transform, and he’s a bit angry with the world because he’s suffering from low juice.”  New Transform, low juice, no Focus.  Never a good combination, in Gail’s experience.
    Poke!  This time Gail didn’t flinch.  Mary poked her again, in the same thin knife wound.  “Hey!”  Flinch.
    “Your predictability is worrisome.”
    Mary pulled her car in front of the young man’s car, cutting him off.  The man swerved up almost on to the sidewalk in front of a red brick house with a couple of wood sided extensions, and he leapt from his car, yelling, shaking his fist and stalking toward them.  “Take his keys and his car, and follow me.  We’re going back to the Boss’s place.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”  Right now, Gail wanted to smack Mary for her abrupt impoliteness, not that she would succeed if she tried.  She had sparred and lost to Mary far too many times to think otherwise.  Instead, she followed Mary’s lead and exited the car.
    Mary met the man’s gaze and did something with her predator effect.  The man froze in place.  Mary simply bundled the man into the front seat of her car, never letting her eyes off him, and drove off.
    The man had left his keys in his car, so Gail got in, adjusted the seat forward, and took off after Mary.  “Son of a fucking bitch!  What’s the lesson she’s trying to teach me, anyway?  How to deal with Arms when they get annoying and stupid?”  She gave the steering wheel a few pounds as she turned the corner to take the car back onto MacKenzie.
    Keep up close.  Don’t forget we’re committing a crime.   Gail nodded.
    Understood , Gail sang back.  Mary called this method of communication juice singing, a form of metasense signaling dependent on an odd, almost non-existent tag link Mary taught Gail.  The underpowered tag was fragile; Gail had accidentally removed it twice while practicing juice patterns; whatever technique Mary used was a long way