On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3) (39 page)

“I know this probably sounds like a crap job, but it's
important
.
You'll basically have to vet all the people coming through and make sure they
get used in the best position possible and are given the best training they can
take. I really don't know where to begin on it, to tell the truth...”

She looked at the others.

She expected someone to have a problem with this appointment,
but no one did. Willet just nodded at the boy sagely, and made some suggestions
as to what to look for in Mages and who to ask about fighters for the military
from his people and oddly, the Weres.

Hilda held her breath, and gave the boy a hug. It was kind of
obvious that she wasn't breathing, but she didn't wince or anything about it.
That showed real effort on her part. She knew he was an Alede, so reassured him
with physical contact, even though it had to be really hard for her at the
moment.

Zack looked at him appraisingly, and then at the others.

“Hilda, you've already been in the void so can tell others
what that's like. I think Willet and Blaine should give it a try too. We can go
now if you want. Willet will need to know what it's like and try to hang out
there as long as possible, because, no offense, you need the self-discipline.
Blaine needs to try it to see if he can be a potential Line-Walker. I don't
know if he can do it, but something there seems right, or at least like he'd
benefit from trying.” A half of a shrug started and stopped as he regarded the
boy.

Willet went first and came back a few seconds later. Zack
pulling him from the line laughing. The Mage shook but Zack clapped him on the
back and congratulated him on surviving that long. Zack told them it had been
about a year's time for them.

Then he took Blaine and stepped into the line. They didn't
come back.

After half an hour they started to grow concerned. An hour
after that everyone, including Willet wondered if something had happened to
them. Four hours after
that
, when Don was about to step into the void to
search for them, they came back out.

Blaine looked different. Still. Like age had worn him down or
something. He didn't move either. Zack clapped him on the back, and watched the
boy for a few minutes. After a while, his voice flat, Blaine explained that
he'd
never
be able to walk the lines. It just wasn't something he could
do. But he did feel mentally more focused after his time there.

Over the next day's something strange happened. In that
Blaine didn't stop by to have Don feed him. He came to visit, but he didn't do
anything that harvested energy as far as Kate could see. Concerned, a few days
later she cornered him in the back of Beautiful Plus and asked him about it.

He just shook his head.

“I don't... really know, honestly. I just don't need to eat
right now. I haven't even had to have regular food yet. I've been checking my
weight and it's stayed the same. I've changed form a half dozen times, but it
doesn't make me hungry.” He shrugged, looking a lot like Zack to Kate.

She had him have sex with Charli, who seemed grateful for the
attention, to tell the truth. Only after shifting his gender back and forth a
dozen times. He didn't absorb any of the energy that came off her at all
though. He didn't leak
any
energy at all, either, but he could still push
it out when he wanted to. It just seemed to instantly replenish somehow.

Interesting, but nothing that Kate had to worry about, as
long as her friend felt fine. She hoped that would be the case at least. He
didn't seem
that
much different, just more focused and a little quieter.
He did keep running off to use the phone every night when they were at home,
that could just be him keeping touch with friends though, or even his mom.

Britney seemed stressed, and snapped at everyone for about
three days, since she'd put herself directly in charge of putting the big party
together. Like all Alede, when she got stressed, she got clingy and
this
it turned out drove Merri to distraction.

“She's a wonderful girl, Kaitlyn. Things might go a little
smoother if she'd stop groping me at every turn, I think. I tried throwing Xan
at her, but she exhausted him and came back within a few hours, still hanging
on me all the time.” Merri seemed truly troubled about the whole situation as
well as being more than a little stressed about the whole thing herself. This
didn't have an easy solution, as far as Kate could tell. The party would be
happening in a few days and everything the two women were doing
had
to
get done. She didn't even have the skill set to begin to help them.

Finally when Merri, who seemed about ready to pull her
beautiful red hair clean out of her own scalp, asked him, Don suggested that
they get some help from Claire or Patty. Maybe Betty, who, as the new Secretary
of State had to sign off on everything they were doing anyway.

It felt funny to Kate, but out of all of this, innocent
seeming Betty seemed to be the one person that everyone went to for real
information or to make contact with their new government. Everyone except her
own people, who went directly to Claire instead, since in their power
structure, Betty was still just her minor child.

Together, doing the work well away from Kate or Don, they
managed to get the whole party set up in good time, with nearly twenty-four
hours to go before Zack got back. Kate held her breath a lot, waiting for some
emergency to come up, war to be declared, or for someone to have a major meltdown
and try to kill either her or one of the people working on the whole thing.
Nothing bad happened though.

Until the night before.

It wasn't exactly a
major
catastrophe really, but it
annoyed the hell out of Kate that it had to happen
right
at that time.
Any other day, she probably would have handled the situation better herself,
and maybe could have helped the others do the same. As it was, she had to
recall Hilda, who'd put together a hit team and sent them out for an
assassination.

Luckily she managed to catch the new war chief on the phone
before anything happened.

“Hilda! For one thing, I'm almost one hundred percent certain
that
Willet
is in charge of assassinations, which, as a rule, we
shouldn't be doing anyway. So, get them back now please! Second, who are we
trying to have killed?”

The target turned out to be one Mr. Roger Karver, Don's
father.

Tracking things down took a while, since the people that knew
what had happened were all busy at the moment, planning a party for heads of
state and using that to keep her out of the loop. This worried Kate to no end.
What could Mr. Karver had done that would cause her friends not to tell
her
about it?

She couldn't find Don at all. He'd vanished and not come back
earlier in the day, leaving her to handle Lesser Shia alone. Kate had
thought
that she'd respected the work Zack did before, but what he did in a normal day
boggled her mind now. He moved about a thousand people and tons of goods each
day without even seeming to notice it. She did half of that, and nearly felt
like collapsing. Hathe came and patted her on the back, metaphorically
speaking, sending her home at Zack's regular time, even though she hadn't
cleared a big part of the work that waited.

The whole time she worked she'd worried about Don, Hilda and
what Mr. Karver could have done. Not having a lot of imagination to work with,
she assumed it would be something pretty normal, a fight maybe. Perhaps he'd
slept around on Don's mom? Don would go and visit her if she had some kind of
problem like that, or at least Kate thought he would. He didn't like his dad
much, but he seemed to love his mom.

She got home, which took her longer than she liked, because
she couldn't
see
the rift in the back of Something Wonderful at all and
had to go into a deep trance state and reenact going through with Zack. The
rifts were always there, you just had to hit them exactly right, which she
guessed was a lot easier if you could see them.

After five tries it actually worked, to her utter amazement.
Then she started looking for answers about what had happened, but couldn't find
any. In desperation she went through Don's room until she found his cell phone.
It was a plain black phone, kind of cheap, but the layout seemed pretty
standard, so she brought up his lists of personal numbers and not knowing what
else to do, she tried calling his mother, who didn't pick up. She looked at the
numbers on the phone and mentally crossed off the ones that she already knew.
Britney, Blaine, her... to her amusement Libby's number was there as well.
Under all of those a single name remained. Chris. Having nothing else to go on
at all, short of going to the Djinn or Demons, she called it.

“Hello?” The voice sounded tired or drugged, mushy sounding,
like a person that had recently had dental work done. Young, a teen male by the
sound, but younger than the college age people she'd gotten used to lately. She
almost froze, but managed to keep talking after a moment, before the person had
say hello again.

“Hi! This may sound strange, but I'm trying to find where my
friend Don has gotten to? This was the only number I didn't recognize on his
phone so I called it, I hope that's OK?” She knew she sounded uncertain, hoping
that Chris could give her a hint as to what the situation was.

Over the phone a single breath wheezed a little, “Yeah, hey,
um, let me see if I can find him. We're at the hospital and they only let so
many people back here at once. I'll ask my mom...”

A discussion started on the other end of the phone and after
a few moments a woman's voice spoke, sounding confused.

“Hello, who am I speaking to?”

Kate explained who she was, how she'd gotten the number and
that she needed to check up on Don, because he'd left work early and was
supposed to help some other people get home.

The voice, Don and apparently Chris's mom asked her to wait.
She heard sounds of movement and walking. About two minutes later Don's voice
came over the phone.

“Kate! I'm so sorry for leaving you hanging like that...
Look, there's been a
thing
here and, well, my dad kind of tried to kill
my brother, Chris. Some kind of a fight over a girl at school that followed him
home, and some kids threw rocks through the window or something. When my dad
started whipping him with a belt, Chris apparently told him to fuck off, so he
switched to an ax handle or something. I don't have all the details, but it's
not a good situation. Chris is awake now, but he's been beaten up pretty bad.
Arms and legs broken, teeth missing, he sounds almost normal though, for all
that. Tough kid in his own way...”

Don just tapered off, embarrassed and angry she could tell,
because a tendril of thought hit her from him, coming through the wall of the
room.

Nodding to herself, she answered quietly, in case anyone on
his side could hear her, “That would explain why Hilda put a hit out on your
father... I've called them back, but if you want, we can send them out again.”

Don snorted, sounding amused.

“He's gone, Kate. He took off and just vanished. I doubt that
the police will ever find him. I don't know what to do. My mom and brother, I
mean, my mom doesn't even have a job and the hospital bills...”

Kate blinked and felt her mouth open, then closed it before
she laughed, the situation not being funny at all.

“Don... You
have
money. You earned more today than I
can do the math on. Don't let
that
bother you. No, getting your family
to safety needs to come first. I can heal Chris, and we need to have the real
team on this, not us b-team kids... Wait there. I'm coming...”

She hung up the phone and tried to focus as calmly and deeply
as she could, sitting on the edge of Don's bed. When she had the single thought
as clearly framed as possible, she cast it out, willing the message to find its
target. A thick, heavy blue line moved out from her seeking Zack, she hoped it
would at least, not knowing his location at all.

Zack.

Her message only said that there was an emergency, and they
needed him and Claire. Now.

She walked to the living room not knowing if Zack had even
heard her, or if he'd come, even if he did. She shook her head and revised
that. Of course he'd
come,
if he'd heard it. Had he heard it? Had they
gone so far away she couldn't get in touch with him at all? She could see that
being a good idea if they didn't want to be bothered, but they were due home
soon anyway.

Not knowing what else to do, she called Frozen YoGurt,
looking for Keane, since he was Claire's second in command. He apparently knew
all about the problem already and had contacted people in Wisconsin.
Vampires
,
to go and stand watch over the boy and his mother, so that Don could come back
and feed his people at Zack's house. She thanked him and hung up, not really
knowing what to do next. When she turned around half a dozen Vampires stood
there, watching her intently.

Nikki put her arms up in front of her and droned, “Feed
us....” In a funny sounding voice, dropping her arms she continued.

“Seriously, we're
starving
here. Is anyone coming to
feed us or do we need to fend for ourselves tonight? Why don't you try it? The
worst you could do is waste our time, when we'd be waiting for Don to show up
anyway.” She lifted her shirt up and bent back, pushing her flat stomach out
toward Kate a little.

“Pleease?”

She started to explain how she couldn't do it, how Don could,
but that an emergency kept him away right now. If they could get him there...

She held up a single finger on her right hand and closed her
eyes.

Reaching out to Don this time, she sent him a single thought,
asking him to generate energy. She did it a couple times and tried to add in
what exactly she had planned, knowing he could get a lot more info than she
could this way. Telepathically or whatever it was they were doing. Then, she
used her own natural talent, harvesting energy, and cast a line to him, through
which she took in what
he
was gathering, at least it felt like it to
her, and after a few minutes, she began to orgasm. Hard. She put her hand on
Nikki's stomach and pushed the energy into her, the way she would have if she
had a child to feed. Nikki bucked and rocked in place, but held on, it took
about ten minutes, but after taking a step back the brunette Vampire grinned at
her eyes big, a sterling blue color.