Shapechanger's Birth Page 18

  Jane continued. "Some women won't be able to handle a revolver. Or be able to conceal it. For them we have this. It's called a Derringer."

  She held up for everyone to see a small handgun with two barrels, one over the other.

  "You can also carry it as a backup gun. "

  A woman with dramatic dark eyebrows and eyelashes, highlighted by her pale skin, spoke up.

  "All this is a major expenditure."

  Edith said, with a grin, "Congratulations. You have just been selected to solve this problem."

  The woman, Sandrine, looked annoyed, then interested. The every-other-Sunday meetings of Mary and her most ambitious Whores had established the practice of giving objectors the task of answering their own objections.

  Mary said, "Arming and training everyone can't be done in a day. It will have to be a phased process. And Edith will be solving that problem."

  Everyone laughed at that. Edith smiled. She had been expecting to do so.

  Jane took up the rifle that had been lying on the table, lifting it high to show it to everyone. It had a revolver cylinder to make it multishot weapon.

  "This is made by Colt, too. It will be our standard rifle. We won't get many of these because most of us usually will need concealed weapons. But notice its stock." The wood had the same tiger pattern as the pistols.

  Jane laid the rifle down. "These are all made at the factory that Colt has in England. They've already made and delivered most of the guns they were contracted for to our troops in the Crimea and in India. In the next few years they'll close the plant. But meanwhile we can get guns from them very cheaply."

  She turned to Mary. Mary said, "Go on."

  Jane put the rifle back on the table and picked up two knives. She held up one. It was perhaps nine inches long and narrow bladed with a rounded handle flattened to fit well in the palm of a hand. Its handles had the tiger stripes too.

  "This is our standard knife. It's mostly for the whores. We'll have lessons in its use. And this one."

  She held up the second knife. It was several inches shorter than the first, had a broad leaf blade, and its handle was leather wrapped around the flat of the blade.

  "You can see that it's flat and small. That way you can hide it easier. If they find the first knife they may think you don't have another. And this one has an extra use."

  Jane twisted and threw the knife at the nearest wall. It made one complete revolution in the air and stuck blade first in the wall, vibrating for a few seconds.

  Mary nodded at the young woman who she had elected runner and retriever. The woman needed two tries to get the knife out of the wall.

  Jane turned to Mary. "You still want to do this?"

  Mary nodded and went to stand further from the group, motioning them to get further away from her. Jane took a half-dozen throwing knives by the blades, fanned the handles out so that she could grab them easily, and walked off in the other directions. Suddenly she turned and began to throw the knives one after the other in Mary's direction, as fast as she could.

  With her superhuman reflexes Mary would not have needed any warning. Knowing what was coming, with her perception turned up to its most efficient, the knives seemed to float in the air toward her.

  Arms whirling in circular motions she swatted each knife aside and, as the last came spinning lazily through the air, grabbed it out of the air by its handle.

  The onlookers were silent as she held it up so that they could see what she had done. Except for Jane and Edith their eyes were wide. It was one thing to guess that Maggie was the cat lady. It was quite another to be certain.

  The pistol and knife demonstrations seemed to have served their purpose: to remind these people who and what she was — an unbeatable extranatural force.

  Not that she really was. But these were the top-level managers of her Organization, or were being groomed to be. They were all able and not a little arrogant. She wanted none of them to think they could take over the Org, in whole or in part.

  Mary turned to Jane. "Thank you, Jane. Good job. Now, what was the last thing you wanted to show us?"

  "Monsieur Lecour and his people are experts in a French way of fighting called savate." She pronounced it suh-VOT. "They mostly use their feet. They are traveling around educating people in it, first by giving a demonstration. Sometimes they do it to music, which is what they'll do tonight."

  This would be early in the evening, before the really sexy stuff began, and they would leave before the orgy part of the evening. The two women were not prostitutes but athletes.

  "We are all going to learn to fight this way," said Jane. "Men's arms and shoulders are a lot stronger than women's. But our legs are pretty much equal. Every one of the Org's women is going to learn how to fight this way."

  "Of course," Mary said, smiling, "The best way to fight with your feet is to use them to run away. Or better yet, to sneak away." There was a bit of laughter at that.

  "But if you have to, ladies," Mary continued. "I want you to be able to fight."

  Jane took over. "Monsieur Lecour will first teach you the easiest and best ways to make a man leave you alone."

  Someone spoke up, "Kick 'im in the nuts!"

  The two Org men smiled ruefully and nodded.

  Lecour stepped forward. Expert showman and teacher that he was, he could recognize a cue even if it was accidental.

  "Actually —" His accent was pleasantly exotic but his English was good. "The best way is to SQUEEZE his 'nuts.' After all, your feet are way down there." He pointed at them, then made a grabbing motion with his pointing hand. "And your hand is right up here."

  "If you want to use your feet," he nodded to one of the young women in his company, who came forward. He moved toward her, hands raised menacingly. She cringed, then stepped on one of his feet with both hers, trapping it, then pushed on his body with her hands. Lecour unbalanced comically and fell with a great look of dismay on his face.

  He rolled onto the floor then up onto his feet.

  The young woman laid herself down on the floor on her side, grimacing a little at the dust on the none-too-well swept floor. Lecour walked toward her, hands menacing as before. Slowing down to an exaggeratedly swimming walk he pointed at his feet.

  The woman on the floor just as slowly hooked one of her feet behind one of his ankles, crooking the top of that foot to wrap it around his heel. Then she used her other foot to push on the front of his knee. Again Lecour fell comically.

  "These are called, in English, 'captures.' But there are also 'strikes.' "

  He nodded at the second young woman, who came forward to be menaced by him. This woman kicked him in the knee hard — or so it looked. Actually, they must have practiced this a lot to make it look authentic but not be authentic.

  He fell, holding onto his knee while he mimed saying Oww! Oww! Oww!

  "THEN you can 'kick 'im in the nuts'," he said from the floor. The woman who had kicked him in the knee ran to stand near his crotch, then started to comically jump up and down as if doing it on his crotch.

  The French savate master stood up in front of them, motioning the two women to stand on each side of him. Then all three together gave a deep bow.

  Jane came forward as everyone's clapping died down. "That's all for now. Thank you very much."

  Mary nodded and everyone filed out of the recreation house, leaving the box of guns and other material behind for one of the enforcers to gather up and store for transportation later.

  A bit after dark everything was ready except for a few minor items which had a few people still scrambling to complete. Including the two doormen who were scrambling into their harem guard outfits, cursing the sizes of their curled-toe shoes until they realized that they had accidentally swapped them.

  Then the first of the guests showed up, three men in a carriage with a very young woman with them, all four in masks. Apparently the men were bringing some entertainment of their own. Or so Mary thought, until she recognized the absurdly ric
h French comtesse in exile and remembered her voracious and somewhat twisted tastes. One of her managers had brought in two male prostitutes for the comtesse . Apparently they would not be needed.

  For a quarter of an hour the comtesse and her men were the only guests. This did not bother the young woman. She was quite able to amuse herself.

  Then three carriages arrived together, filled with a baker's dozen of young men. They got wine and a couple of them made the acquaintance of the comtesse . Mary duly made (mental) note of who they were, though her staff was doing the same just as capably .

  Another carriage came in. It carried a high government official in Cork, allowed in for 250 pounds, an Anglican cleric for 100 pounds, and a viscount for 1000 pounds. All had prepaid a fourth of their entrance fee and now paid the rest in a small bag or large envelope.

  Mary had decreed that the fees would be as secret as possible, thereby allowing the Organization to charge what the traffic would bear. She was not worried, however, if secrecy was not perfect. Her theory was that if anyone found out what someone else had paid that they would either be too elated at getting a bargain or too ashamed at paying too much to tell what their own fee was.

  Soon there were enough guests for the programs to begin. It included singing, dancing (include Lecour and his savate group), and jokes by the master of ceremonies. He was dressed in a very colorful and majestic Arabian major-domo outfit which included a long feather in his turban that kept falling off to great hilarity.

  Drinks had been available early and small snacks. At 9:00 the feast began, served at tables low to guests on cushions by scantily clad servants, mostly female but with a few males, and on normal tables to guests on normal chairs. The courses lasted well past an hour.

  Two and a half hours after beginning the party was officially over and three-fourths of the guests urged to go home. Slowly they began to do so. Some of them had to be helped along (or carried unconscious) to the waiting carriages where they would end up with their own transportation waiting in West Passage. Or to pre-arranged transport put on by the Organization, including an unprecedented midnight passenger train back to Cork City from West Passage. In later years rumors would still be passed around about the ghost train of 1858.

  So far none of the guests had had sex with anyone, except for a few in private rooms. The party had been scandalous enough so that most of the guests would keep their participation secret, but innocuous enough to tempt them to slyly pass on delicious rumors. The rumors would be many, few believed, but passed around the way children circulate their favorite stories.

  Now the real orgy began, for which those who remained had paid a whopping fifty percent surcharge.

  So far Mary had been wandering around mostly inside, keeping tabs on the guests only incidentally, because that was the job of her managers. Instead she was keeping tabs on the tab-keepers, judging what they could and could not do and how she could use them in the future.

  Eventually she wanted to be able to leave matters to her people to handle everything without her help. Maybe someday soon she could make a few short trips to London or Paris or Rome.

  Finally, certain that her people could competently put on an orgy without supervision, Mary got a ewer of water from the kitchen and retired to an empty room on the top floor of the mansion. There she undressed completely, including shoes. She wetted the hair on her head and her pubic hair. This turned her flame-bright hair dark auburn and straightened it. Hair was dead except at the roots so her esoteric body control did not work on it. She bound her mane of hair into a loose ponytail with cords around the ponytail's tip and middle and very close to her skull.

  Lastly she willed her skin to take on an orange color. Then she added the dark-brown tiger-stripe pattern she had chosen for her cat lady persona, very narrow stripes beginning around her eyes and widening as they swept away from her eyes and down her body.

  She went through the door and padded down the hallway to a stair that led to the rooftop. Outside she walked to the edge of the roof and leaned on the rail there, looking at the land spread all around her.

  At first the landscape was all dark, the cloudy sky only a bit lighter. The lights at the front of the house and the stable off to the side lit the packed-earth roadway and the approach to the stable with a dim orange light. Then she adjusted her retinas to boost color vision and widened her pupils to take in more light. The landscape took on the eerie faery sight of half-day half-night just at the point where day vision gave way to night vision.

  The air was frigid and wet and stirred by a slight breeze. To her it felt refreshingly cool and she liked the way it caressed her body. Her ears, when she made them supersensitive, caught the sounds of horses stamping, owls in the forest, foxes muttering to themselves. She pulled in deep lungs-full of after-midnight air, catching the odors of grass and trees and animals: horses in the barn, guards stationed around and just inside the house, rabbits in the forest, birds.

  And she smelled blood. Human blood. Down below.

  Mary paused a moment, calling up her memory of the front of the house, where the windows and other projections were. She glanced over the edge of the roof to be sure her memory was correct, climbed over the railing and turned to face the house. She stepped off the roof, pushing away from the house just enough to clear the edge of the roof.

  Her time sense speeded up and she seemed to fall slowly. She caught the ledge of the first windowsill with her toes and flexed her legs to absorb momentum and slow herself down, stepped off the ledge, caught it with her hands as she fell past it and used her arms to slow herself again.

  Twice more she did this, thankful that the wood in the windows of the old house was still sound.

  Mary landed on the ground in a cat-like crouch, listening, looking, and sniffing the air. She smelled a guard named Mathew and a strong odor of blood and crap and urine. Yes, there he was, crumpled beside one of the doors into the house. His throat had been cut, it appeared, and no one else was around. She bounded to him, touched the side of his head, probed his brain.

  She sat back on her haunches. Shit! He had been dead too long for her to revive. He was permanently dead.

  She leaned down nose near the ground and scampered around sniffing. No one had gone into the house recently, and she smelled a recent track of a new guard, Josiah, leading away from the house. He must have killed Mathew. She guessed that Mathew had caught Josiah in some serious indiscretion and Josiah had killed him to keep him quiet.

  She ran around the house, calling out to the guard ahead of her. "Have you seen Josiah? The new guard back there?"

  "No, boss! What's the matter?"

  "I think Josiah killed Mathew and deserted. Maybe to bring a gang back with him. Get inside and bar the door. Go warn the other managers and enforcers and come back to guard the door. Tell them to arm any of the girls who know how to use a gun. But keep it quiet. If we do it right our guests will never know."

  Then she was gone to warn the other guards, running back toward the door guarded only by a corpse and shutting it. She extended an esoteric hand inside the lock. It was well-built and -oiled but had a few rusted spots that kept her weak esoteric fingers from turning it. She dissolved the rust and then was able to tease the lock shut .

  She paused to scan the countryside to ensure there was no one there, then raced toward the next two sides of the house and the guarded doors in them.

  Minutes later all the managers and enforcers were alerted. All not occupied with the entertainment were in a vacant room close to the front of the house that was being used as a coatroom.

  "Jane? What have you done about arming the whores? The ones not working right now."

  "I've got the word spread and the ones with weapons training are being armed. A couple of others are loading all the extra revolver cylinders. Knives are spread around where they'll do the most good."

  Mary looked around at the men. She saw three faces she did not know. She pointed them out. "Come here."

 
With them standing in front of her where she could cut them down if needed she said, "I don't know you. Who here knows these men?"

  They were all known and trusted, but Mary made sure. She extended an esoteric hand into them so that she could read their bodies and said, "Tell me the truth. If you're in on this with Josiah, tell me now and I'll let you live and let you go. Lie to me and I'll slice you into cutlets."

  All three of them, though rightly frightened, truthfully denied any betrayal.

  "Good. You are brave men. Welcome to the Organization."

  Looking around at everyone she said, "Our first job is to protect our guests. If we let any of these important men get killed we might as well slit our own throats. In a last resort throw all the money we pulled in outside the door and tell whoever's coming to take it.

  "Also, some of the guests are fighters. If you can't keep our problem secret, enlist them.

  "If you have to fight inside the house, find a good spot to do it. I'm going to leave you six of the enforcers.

  "I'm going to take five of you and try to intercept whoever is coming up the road.

  "Enrico, you stay here and command the forces." The big black-bearded Italian, a former soldier and pirate, was a fierce fighter but not light on his feet. He understood that she would have to take men who could run fast.

  "Jane, what shoes are you wearing? "

  Jane kicked a foot free of her dress and showed that she was wearing the comfortable half boots that she favored.

  "Good. Got your guns and knives?" Jane replied with a grin and a pat of the jacket she was wearing in this cold unheated part of the house.

  "You're one of my five then. Cut your dress off at the knee." Jane nodded, eyes shining, and began slicing away at her dress. This went quickly as Jane's knives were always sharp.

  Mary pointed out the four men she wanted to come with her. "I want each of you to carry four loaded cylinders beside the one in your guns." She glanced at Edith, who had been supervising that loading even as Mary was talking. The grey-haired woman nodded.