“They both wanted the same cat.”
“Bloodydamn.” I looked around for Spy, but she was suddenly nowhere in sight. I muttered, “Cats do not have magic. They cannot make humans fall in love with them.” But I remembered the circle of circles, six groups of cats, and the queen in the center. That could be construed as a metaphysical seven and the use of magical power. It could also be an indication that the cats wanted me to make a bigger nest, just as Tuffs had.
I was pretty sure I was slipping off the road into some form of delusional insanity.
“Cupcake, get the vids ready. Now that the thralls are weeded out and the club leaders have seen the trade stuff”—and the blasted cats are causing trouble, I added to myself—“we need to tell them what we want and let them see the cats in action.”
* * *
There have been times in my life when my worldview broke, fracturing into millions of sharp, cutting, jagged edges that left me bleeding. The first time was when the first Mama-Bot crawled out of Possession Sound, Washington, and began destroying everything in its path. The second time was when Little Mama, my mother, took a hit while riding sidecar next to Pops. One minute she was firing at enemy troops; the next she had rocked back in the sidecar, dead. I had never told anyone, but I’d managed to steal the video of her death from Pops and had watched it over and over, bits of me dying along with her each time I watched. The third time was when the bicolor ants swarmed me and I should have died. The worst time of all, when my worldview broke and fell apart, was when I tried to heal and save Pops by transitioning him, and he died instead. There were more, but, to me, a shifting worldview always meant trauma, pain, and death.
When I watched the leaders’ faces as Cupcake narrated Spy’s and Maul’s reconnoiter of Warhammer’s bunker, I saw another way for worldviews to change.
Pulling a rabbit out of your hat doesn’t always mean doing magic, finding a rabbit, or even having a hat. It means making others believe you had done what you claimed they were seeing. And the cats were seemingly taking orders, working as a team, and using rational thought processes to solve problems, which went against a human worldview.
Worse for them was watching rats walk in lockstep, attacking the cats.
The Boozefighter Henry Thibodaux, AKA Bengal, said, “Them rats. They workin’ together.” Despite the name, I hadn’t known he was Cajun until he let down his guard and his childhood accent came flooding back. His dark eyes were on the cats, watching them run away from the rats, which were attacking in a near-military line. “Big as nutria, they is.” He shifted his eyes to me, where I stood in the corner of the poker room in the fortified, repaired house. “That ’cause they infected too?”
I jutted my chin. “Yes.”
“That all got to die. I’m in if we kill all them rats.”
The Black Sabbath leader, J’Ron Walker, AKA Mama-Killer, said, “I seen things big as that in the old subway tunnels. But rats walking like troops is fucking bad.” He looked at Bengal and then to me. “I want to hear the plan, but unless it’s fucking nuts, I’m in.”
Whip, of the Hells Angels, made a cutting motion with one hand and the vid froze on a closeup of Spy’s odd eyes in Maul’s camera. He swiveled in his chair to me. “The cats are working together too. Why? Cats never work as a team.”
I let a bargaining look enter my eyes; it was a combination of knowing more than I was telling, and being willing to share some.
“The rats were turned by Warhammer.”
“And the cats?” Whip asked.
“Theirs is a unique mutation,” I lied, then added a bit of truth. “They eat toxic rats and bats. And they also ate a few of Warhammer’s members.” I shrugged at the expression on Whip’s face. “But the cats don’t answer to her. They don’t answer to anyone, hence the unique mutation. They do, however, work with a team if they feel like it. Cats view their providers as servants and their enemies as protein. It’s efficient.” They also considered their servants, should they pass away, as protein, but I was too canny a bargainer to say that.
“The cats’ mutations left them more like a pride of lions than housecats. It also gave them the ability to understand English, and I’ve been talking to them. A lot. The cats are still independent, like all cats, but if the bargain is good enough, they’ll work with, and as, a team. What you’re seeing is the cats’ willingness to understand a problem and work together because the bargain was good enough.” I grinned just a little. “Bargains with cats always have a protein component. But this time, they want the rats destroyed too, so it’s a win-win for them.”
“The cats talked to you? Told you that?” Whip asked, amusement in his tone but speculation in his eyes.
“Not with words, no. Remember the rat Spy dropped on the table when I first got here? That was her . . . call it herproof of status. Best hunter in the pride. Proof she can take down huge rats. In biker terms she’s the president’s heir and runs her own chapter house.”
Whip studied me for a little too long before he swiveled his chair to Cupcake and pointed at the screen for us to continue. When the vids had been studied long enough for the leaders to all understand the need to take Warhammer down, see what prizes were on the table, and get a feel for the layout of the bunker, Marconi ordered the food be served and we got down to bargaining. I couldn’t take off my gloves and eat, for fear of infecting someone with my nanobots, so I made an excuse, and Cupcake brought me warm broth to sip, which I could do with my gloves on.
No one cared that I didn’t eat. The leaders ignored me, which was fine by me. I didn’t have to offer much, not after they watched the vids. Their own people turning against them and the lockstep of the rats was enough to create a temporary alliance. The potential spoils in the bunker cemented it. All I had to do was throw in some Dragon Scale armor and some of the blasters from the containers I got from Marty’s foundry when I discovered his part in Harlan’s death.
The only sticking point for agreement to attack the bunker was the lack of heavy artillery.
“I am not attacking a war bunker with handguns and blasters, and without military backup,” Whip said. “And if we do bring in the military, they’ll just take their bunker back when we’re done. We’ll have nothing. This meeting is a waste of time.”
That one point—admittedly a pretty major one—also had Mama-Killer standing and ready to ride off into the sunset.
Jagger looked at me, amusement on his mouth.Bloody damn, there was so much I wanted to do with that mouth. And the rest of him. My nanobots stirred.
Unless Jagger had told McQuestion, no one knew about the Simba or the warbot. I had to assume that all of Jagger’s memories had returned, and that my mind-wipe, when he was transitioned, had fallen apart. Yeah, he had probably told his boss. Which was why McQuestion was still sitting. And Marconi probably knew about the Simba from witnesses at the camp where we salvaged it, which meant that Whip knew.
“Stop,” I said. “Wait.” I slipped my comms back into my ears and tapped a small depression. “Now.”
“Nowwhat?” Marconi asked, too knowingly, his expression sly.
