Free The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1) by Randall Farmer Page A

dross-encrusted rubber washer, tricked up to radiate juice to the metasense.
    Metasense exercises.  Bah.  I stood, stretched, and took a deep breath.  My bedroom overlooked a courtyard, surrounded on all sides by my house.  In the spring my people would plant and tend flowers.  Right now, the dark Chicago sky rained on old snow.
    Honing my metasense fulfilled my current work quota on the juice moving project.  I couldn’t do the next test until Gloria recovered, and the other item on my practice list, learning to interrupt my juice draw mid-draw, disgusted me too much to even contemplate.
    Somewhere in the house Gilgamesh shrieked.  My adrenaline shot up, I covered myself with my best defenses, and I ran toward him; my house was supposed to be his safe haven.  My scrumptious Crow had been driving himself batty with overwork, so much so that he had become nearly worthless in bed.  Doing dross construct training exercises.  Teaching Crows, in particular Newton, how to teach other Crows the intricacies of how to clean ancient dross from a Focus household.  He wouldn’t say, but his overwork craze kept him from thinking about what Lori and Sky were doing with the no-longer-secret tag tuning project.  He had been attempting to woo Lori, and we all knew if the project succeeded, our ever-indecisive Focus would finally settle on Sky.
    Gilgamesh, also covered in his best defenses, passed me in the hallway going the other direction.  We were so well defended we didn’t even noticed each other until we passed, which would have been damned stupid in a fight, and was also, unfortunately, typical.  He radiated terror and anger, and I couldn’t tell which would win in the end.  I turned around, as did he.
    “Read this!  This is crap!  Insane!”
    Anger.
    He handed me a letter.
     
    Gilgamesh,
    You have exceeded your position and authority as a Crow.  You have not earned the right to teach, and you spread forbidden knowledge and misguided information that endangers all Crows.
    You will cease instructing other Crows, you will cease all aid to The Cause, and you will cease all contact with any of the other Major Transforms, or you will suffer the consequences.
     
    The letter wasn’t signed.  “Someone’s cruis’n for a bruise’n,” I said, speaking Chitown Mobster.  Nobody messed with my Crow .
    “Although the letter isn’t signed, it’s from Guru Chevalier and his cronies,” Gilgamesh said.  “I’ve gotten warning letters many times, from many other Crows, but never an ultimatum of this nature.”
    “What can they do to you?”
    Gilgamesh didn’t roll his eyes, not wanting to disrespect me, but I metasensed the truth behind the non-eye roll.  “They could ruin me in dozens of ways.  The most obvious would be to grab me, take me to San Francisco, and enslave me.  Chevalier already has one enslaved Crow working for him, Hoptoad, and all Hoptoad did was, well, marry a Focus.”
    “All.”
    “All.  Whatever happened to the idea of freedom?”
    Gilgamesh knew better.  He was just angry.  “Chevalier could just say he was keeping Hoptoad from being killed by the first Focuses,” I said.  True, as well.  “What could Guru Chevalier do to you?  Is there any way around this?”
    “Carol,” he said.  “There’s only one way around this.  I need to become a Guru.”  Gain the rank to qualify him for what he was already doing.  Gurus earned the right to make such strategic decisions.  “This won’t be easy.  I’ll be gone for months, perhaps a full year, depending on how the training goes.  Shadow offered this to me at the North Tonawanda meeting.  I told him at the time I couldn’t desert you.”
    “Well, he did predict the discovery and presentation of the Eskimo Spear was going to cause a firestorm,” I said.  “I guess he was right.  Go.  Think of the Cause, Gilgamesh.  The more Crow Gurus we have on board, the better for all of us.”
    “I was hoping you’d say that,”