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pickup to the farm. Socket had been there;
she had been the woman that carried Kittanning. Ukiah found Hash's footprint
pressed in the plaster dust of the farmhouse, and Ice's scent lingering in the
second floor. Ukiah guessed that Core would have made the third man, the
possible wielder of the axe. Who had been the fourth? Parity? Dongle, who even
now chased after Kittanning?
"We thought he'd fallen, but we were wrong. We did absolution and cleansed
ourselves afterward."
The pain made it hard to think. Fallen as in made a Get? Sudden suspicion sent
Ukiah searching back through his memories. Had he touched them all? Yes, he
had made skin-to-skin contact with all of them during the brief tussle. No,
none of them were Ontongard.
"Is that supposed to make me feel better? Bad Adam was only supposed to take
Kittanning, not try his best to kill me? And you killed him for it. Trust me,
if Goodman had tried taking my son without taking me down first, I would have
ripped his throat out."
"We don't know how the baby ended up with you, and it's a shame that you got
so attached to him, but he's not your son, and he was never meant for you."
"He's my son," Ukiah stated firmly.
"Just because your father found you and adopted you as his son, it doesn't
mean finding a child makes him yours."
It hurt Ukiah's head to work through that statement. With only his public
records to work with, the cult must have decided that Max was his adopted
parent. They were equating his finding of Kittanning at the airport to Mom Jo
finding Ukiah in the woods, not realizing there was a blood relationship
between
Kittanning and himself.
The truck turned sharply and climbed, spilling Ukiah sideways onto his side.
He groaned with pain, and for a moment wavered in and out of unconsciousness.
The truck stopped and started up again, and as Ukiah struggled to stay aware,
he realized they had exited the turnpike.
"You okay, Wolf Boy?" Socket asked.
"My name is Ukiah!" He wanted to sit up, but moving hurt too much.
"I'm Socket."
"Socket isn't your real name."
"Yes it is. The name our parents give us are just names they make up, usually
before we're even born. But that's not who we are. Core says that when we
choose screen names for ourselves, we're reaching in and finding an echo of
our true names. Just like people didn't have words for computer stuff until
the computers were created, we don't have the words for our true names, so we
just use the echoes.
Socket might not be what my parents called me, and what the government thinks
my name is, but it's the closest to my real name that I've gotten."
Ukiah grunted. Magic Boy could see the reasoning, but Ukiah didn't want to
understand these madmen.
"Me using my birth name would be like you using Ukiah Oregon," Socket added.
"Ukiah Oregon is a town, not a boy raised by wolves."
He snarled, furious at this woman, calmly denying him his own name.
"See, the wolf is your true nature."
Ukiah tried shifting to take the stress on his shoulder, and hissed as a bolt
of pain flared out of the shattered bone. "At least I don't chop my 'friends'
up in cold blood. I don't steal babies, torture them to death, and then throw
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them out in the trash."
Socket had started to sputter out a defense, and then fell into shocked
silence. Finally in a quiet, hurt tone, she said, "We didn't hurt the babies."
Did she even believe her own words? "We only needed a little bit of blood to
test them; a simple finger prick."
"I've seen the FBI photos. Kimmie and Isaiah were tortured with burns all over
their bodies and dropped in Dumpsters like so much garbage. Are they all dead,
and we just haven't found all the bodies, or are the other two still alive?"
"They're dead? No! No, they can't be! They were supposed to go back home none
the worse."
She seemed very rattled by the news. "God damn his soul to hell. Adam must
have killed them. Core gave them to Adam to return, but he must have killed
them for his own sick fun. He was a monster, even if he wasn't fallen. Core
said God had brought them together and he would not lightly turn away God's
tool."
"Goodman wouldn't join the cult, would he? That's why he's Adam and not some
silly computer name."
"We're not a cult," Socket snapped. "The word cult has lots of negative
connotations to it. We're warriors of a religious order, like the Knights
Templar; the ancient ones, not the modern ones they're just a bunch of
Shriners."
"He wouldn't join."
Socket was silent for several minutes, and then said quietly, "Adam had an
attitude problem. He
refused to attend Ice's kendo lessons, saying he learned whoop-ass in prison.
Ice tried to get him to spar, and Adam waited until Ice turned away and hit
him with a cue stick. Ice beat the shit out of him then, and
Core nearly threw Adam out then for hurting Ice."
"Why did Adam stay?"
"Adam stayed for the sex. He liked the Blissfire, and he liked hurting & " She
fell abruptly silent.
"He forced you," Ukiah guessed. Socket was, after all, exactly the fair hair,
doe-eyed type that
Goodman preferred. "Did he hurt you?"
There was a sound like a sob from Socket, and then a soft, hoarse, "No." She
cleared his throat and said, "Core wouldn't let him do everything he &
Blissfire makes it all & feel & great & Core stopped him."
As with Eve, Ukiah wasn't sure whether to pity Socket or be angry with her for
staying in the situation.
"Adam wouldn't do the mental training either." Socket continued in a ragged
voice. "We're God's warriors; our minds are our greatest weapon, and must be
honed. Adam refused to do the purification ritual in the waterfall, or keep
night vigils, or do the fasting."
Ukiah was partially tempted to ridicule the training; Max had told him that
cults used such tactics to brainwash their members. When Max talked about it,
it seemed so clinically cruel. Yet now, Ukiah could remember times in his life
that Magic Boy sought the spirits, fasting and keeping vigils in the same
manner. The difference was that when he stripped away all his defenses and
opened himself, it was in solitude to receive God's touch; the cult used that
time of defenselessness to their own ends, molding the person to their own
needs, supplanting God.
A growl rose in his chest. "Why do you stay with them? They're just using you,
keeping you ignorant. Is it sex? As long as Adam keeps away from you that is."
"I'm making the world a safer place," Socket said.
"By killing babies."
"We didn't kill any babies!" Socket shouted. "Adam did! He was a monster only
interested in serving his sexual appetite. We're saving the world. We put our
lives on the line to fight the spawn of the devil! We're like Buffy the
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vampire slayer and the Scoobie gang. Evil walks among us in the guise of
humans, and we're the only ones that know, that can stop them."
"You've been killing vampires?"
"In a way. They're demons." Whatever anger had been carrying her fled, and she
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