On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3) (23 page)

In all the time she'd known him, Zack had made what, three
jokes? Two of those were knock-knock and on one he messed up the punch line on
so badly that she'd laughed at his delivery more than the joke. Orange indeed.

With that he took Keeber and then Hilda through the rift,
leaving the six of them alone, it freed up space in the room, which was only
ten by twelve. Nikki and Rebeca kept standing, not knowing what to do. Kate
looked at them and walked over slowly, taking Nikki in her arms and holding her
for a while. The Vampire hugged her back, finally tucking her head on to the girl's
shoulder and relaxing. Then Kate moved over to Rebeca and repeated the process,
surprised when the Vampire, normally a little stand-offish, returned the
embrace fully, even touching the length of her cool body to the other girls.

Kate turned to the room, remembering that not everyone would
know everything she did yet. She motioned for the two Vampire women to take a
seat, Nikki taking the bed and Rebeca settling next to Blaine. She looked at
his cracked lips, cut and bruised face and leaned in to him, sniffing slightly
as she did so.

“OK, this may sound a little funny, but... Do you... want me
to lick your wounds for you?” She said this softly, almost as if embarrassed to
be making the offer. Blaine tried to smile, then winced and started to shake
his head, thinking it might be a Vampire in joke, or a way to get free blood...
Not that Alede blood did anything for Vampires. Kate thought about it for a
second and suggested he reconsider.

“Blaine, Rebeca can produce an analgesic from her mouth, it
has coagulants too, if she's willing to do it, I think it will help with the
pain. This looks like it's over now, but people may be watching. Police, or the
people of those guys that attacked you, so we need to leave the wounds for a
while, which means no shifting for the time being.”

Blaine looked at Rebeca who had moved to just a few inches
from his face. For her, Kate knew, it was in preparation for action, for an
Alede it was just good conversational distance. He moved a little closer and
let the woman kiss him gently, first on the mouth, slowly working over each
gash and swollen bit of flesh on the outside, then she kissed him, tongue
clearly going into his mouth, search for any wound there that she could possibly
reach. After a few minutes, she started kissing the wounds on his face, going
over the worst ones first, then the others, finally hitting the bruises.

She pulled his shirt loose and licked his chest, moving down
his stomach until she reached his waist, where she stopped.

“Um, I'm sorry, but if you have any wounds lower than
that...” Looking down she saw that he had an erection, and pulled back
slightly, but didn't jump away.

“Not really, they mainly got my face and the left side and
Kate already healed the broken ribs. This is great though! I can hardly feel
anything now. Thanks Rebeca.” He buttoned his shirt up, seeing that they were
done, and not wanting to push his luck. Nikki looked at the other Vampire girl,
almost as if in awe.

Reaching out she put a hand gently on Rebeca's arm and then
moved back slowly as if trying not to spook her.

“Great job! Really good... I'm proud of you.” Nikki said this
with real warmth in her voice. No one asked what this was about, but Rebeca,
taking a very Human looking large breath explained anyway.

“When I was, before I was a Vampire, I was taken prisoner by
two men that kept me in the woods, in a hole in the ground. Literally just a
dirt hole, for about two years. I don't really know how long exactly, it could
have been longer. They raped me daily... more than daily, the whole time. If
you can imagine it, they did it to me. I was almost dead by the time I managed
to escape. I burrowed through the ground with my hands, it ripped off most of
my fingernails. I was covered with blood and dirt, naked. I ran through the
woods, the men chasing me. I was weak. They'd barely fed me the whole time and
I must have been down to about eighty pounds. Just skin and bones. I kept
going, but they caught me and were raping me again, putting things in my, in my
ass, sticks and branches, nothing smooth or anything you'd actually want in
there. They were trying to make me beg for their dicks. It was a game to them.
They'd hurt me, so much
...
and then tell me that if I begged for them to
do something else they would, I just had to
beg
. Eventually I would,
just to end the pain, then they'd laugh and call me a whore.” She looked around
the room, putting obvious effort into keeping her head high.

“That's when
He
came. He killed them both, draining
them. Then he asked me if I wanted to live. I told him yes, figuring
he
was going to rape me too, because he looked wild. Huge, a giant, worse than the
men that had... done all that to me. He explained about the coagulants in his
saliva and the pain killers. He did
this
for me, what I just did for
you, even though he didn't know me and I'd probably die anyway. He had to... do
a lot more, than I did here, just to save me. I was bleeding out... rectally, I
guess I was dying really. Then he nursed me back to health. I don't know how
old he was, but he never slept and went out during the day, so
old
. He
brought me food, animals and roots at first, and he built a fire and showed me
how to cook it myself when I could manage it, how to make a fire and how to
survive in the wilds. Later he came with new clothes and canned food from a
store. I don't know how he got it. When I was strong enough, he turned me and
sent me to Claire. He never gave a name. I asked, but he'd always just shake
his head at me.” She went quiet then.

Nikki sat, unmoving.

The older Vampire, shook her dark pony tail behind her and
didn't break her gaze on Rebeca who had finally looked down as if ashamed.

“I... I didn't know that. I knew something bad had happened
to you and that it was bad enough that Claire wouldn't let anyone order you to
have sex, but I didn't know. I'm sorry I let David tease you so much now. Well,
if we ever get to go back home. I'll make sure he doesn't, at least not about
sex. You're still on your own about everything else. Take teasing away totally
and he won't have anything left to say.”

Rebeca gave her a weak smile and mouthed “thank you” so
softly that Kate couldn't hear it so she figured that no sound had actually
been produced at all. Instead of carrying on this conversation, which they
could go back to any time Rebeca wanted as far as she was concerned, she asked
why they might not be allowed to go back home.

Nikki sighed, “Well, you know George Penbroke, right?”
Glancing around she saw that Kate did, but the others had no clue who he was.
“Uh, he's the nephew of the Mages' world leader, and the father of Zack and
Kaitlyn's boss at the embassy at Underwood. Bit of a prick, to tell the truth.
He wanted to spy on Zack and his daughter, so he kidnapped me and used magic to
turn
me
into an agent for him. Against my will.”

She paused and didn't say anything for almost a minute,
collecting either her thoughts or courage. Finally she continued.

“Zack found out and fixed it, but still. I was like that for
a long time, basically going through the motions and doing his bidding. Unable
to
not
be his spy. I had to do everything he said, without question. I
couldn't help it. Luckily he didn't get too creepy about it, but it... I felt
pretty badly about the whole thing. I waited, until everyone kind of forgot
about it, then I, we, kind of kidnapped and tortured him for about a week. So,
you know, there's a
bit
of an uproar now.”

Don raised an eyebrow at that.

“Isn't
kind
of torture like saying 'a little bit
pregnant'? How do you
kind
of torture a person? Please, explain that
one, I'd actually like to know.” He looked at the women skeptically, then at
Kate, giving her an expression that she took to mean something like “what did
you bring us here?” Not that
she'd
brought them, but she understood the
sentiment.

The thin, pale brunette woman seemed to realize that her
story had better be pretty good, it seemed. After all, her food supply was on
the line if Don didn't like what she said.

"Well, I started by watching him. I knew where he lived,
since he used to make me go there regularly to report to him. So, one night
Rebeca and I sort of knocked him out when he was going to his car. After dark.
No one saw us or anything. Then we stuffed him in the back of it. Luckily he's
rich enough that he has a sedan. Those have a lot of room in the back."
She watched Don so carefully that it seemed almost like she was waiting for a
physical attack. He didn't look away either, which could be hard to do when a
Vampire was involved.

Taking another large breath, she went on.

"Then, because we're both incredibly sweet gals, we left
his car in long term parking at the airport, so no one would steal it. After
that it was simple enough. We'd borrowed one of Claire's cars, to run some
errands in, and then borrowed Zack's old house. In the old Vampire room in the
basement. It's actually pretty nice. I did some renovating first."

Don did not seem to think that was enough of an explanation,
and he tilted his head at her, making her bow her head a bit, in shame.

"Anyway, the Vampire room has new sound proofing. I
added it myself. Also a new solid hardwood door, so I actually added value to
the property. Plus it makes a pretty good cell."

Kate nodded to keep her going, but that didn't seem like
enough, which had Don, clearing his throat like an old man hoping to book
passage to Lesser Shia.

"Go on. So far I don't like the sound of it, but... It
doesn't sound like torture. Just assault and kidnapping."

The Vampire smiled at him, trying suddenly to be a bit more
charming.

"Right. Well, we put in a special chair, one that mainly
supported his weight, but had a hole in it that emptied into a bucket. The work
on that is top notch. It wasn't just shoddily knocked together. I built it
lovingly and especially for him. So, really, it was a gift. It worked
really
well too. Take my word for it, we're talking high value construction. George
didn't get so much as a splinter in his hind quarters from it."

Don nodded, "And?"

“Then we surrounded him with television screens and played
non-stop recordings of 'Mr. Rogers Neighborhood' for six days and nights. The
volume up just loud enough that he couldn't sleep. A siren went off randomly,
and
if his head bobbed too much, to make sure he stayed awake. It took two of us to
watch him and we couldn't be there during the day, obviously, so we set up a little
water bottle thing like a hamster would have? It had Strawberry Kiwi flavored
Koolaid in it the whole time. Mainly because that's the one that smells worst
to me.”

Then, at the end of a full week, they let him go.

They'd expected a backlash, and got it, but they hadn't
expected George to finger Nikki
immediately
. After all the guy had to
have enough enemies that it
could
be someone else, right?

“The mistake there turned out to be leaving him among the
living. They looked at us hardest, because Zack keeps trying to keep everyone
alive. They even figured that if we acted like that,
Zack
must have
ordered it. Because, you know, Vampires are
all
blood sucking monsters
incapable of restraint. The Mages almost declared war on Zack personally for
it, so I confessed to having acted alone.”

The Mages of course, insisted on checking this story out,
using their truth telling compulsion, which forced her to out Rebeca as an
accomplice. The Mages were all calling for their heads, since George Penbroke,
prick or not, had a lot of high powered political friends amongst his own kind.

“They'd have killed us too, if a couple of people hadn't
stood up for us.” Nikki left that hanging, prompting Kate to guess, the others
stayed silent, letting
her
do the guessing, since they didn't even know
who the players might be.

“Um, Zack and... Lisa?” She hazarded, not knowing if Lisa
would let them get away with that or not. The man
was
her father after
all and her mother had died when she was really young, so George had been her
only parent almost her entire life.

“You'd think, right? But no. Zack couldn't say much, since
they all still kind of thought he may have ordered it. Lisa... Well, I know she
thought it was deserved and told me she was happy we hadn't hurt him, but I
don't think she really feels
happy
about the whole thing. Still, she
didn't call for our deaths either. It was Eloise Penbroke and
Troy
.” She
grinned at Kate's shocked expression, though the others just looked at them.

“I wasn't there, but Lisa told me that Troy came in and told
the whole Mage council that if they killed us over this, he'd go to war with
them
himself
.” She shook with laughter at this image. “Not much of a
threat right? One young Human guy against tens of thousands of Mages? But then
their phones started ringing and like, a dozen leaders from around the world
called and told them that they'd be most displeased, to the point of war, if
they harmed Troy. Even the
Demons
called.”

Troy told her later that he'd burned through every favor and
bit of blackmail he had to get that to happen, and warned her not to do
anything like that again, at least until he could build things back up. She
spread her hands and smiled at them.

“
Troy.
Can you believe it? I mean, not that Troy isn't
cool and all, but he went all out, for
us
. We're not even lovers or
anything. But he went in there, into a room filled with people, any one of whom
could have taken him out personally at any time, or ordered it done, and made them
let us go. I'm already in hoc to Rebeca here for her help. I hate to think
about what I actually owe Troy for all this. But still, it was totally worth
it, whatever that turns out to be.”