On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3) (46 page)

“I can cut them, but I don't know where they are. Can you get
me to them?” She asked the man, who still fought, not slowing in the slightest
while he listened.

He didn't move with superhuman speed, or distort space around
him either, not that she could tell. He just did the right thing, at the right
time, over and over again. He started calling out what she should do and she
tried to follow his instructions. That was more than a little awkward. After a
minute she cut one of them in half, then spinning she took another, though she
had no clue where it had been when she hit it. Over and over again, the man
called moves. They didn't all connect, but about half of them cut the things to
pieces.

Everyone else stood and watched, amazed as the normal looking
man fought without stopping and without error. When a major error finally did
come, it was Kate's. It wasn't so much an
error
as an accident. She ran
into a creature, invisible as it was, and bounced off of it, slipping a little
as she did, spinning to keep her balance, the line she built lingered, even
without complete focus on it, so as she spun, left arm outstretched for
balance, the invisible blade hit the smiling man in the arm, severing it,
sending a gush of blood pumping into the room.

“Oops!” He said, then gasped in pain, trying to hold the
blood in with his other arm. Though filled with pain, his voice kept calling
out directions, speaking in a ragged tone that got weaker and softer over the
next minute, but steered her to two more of the things. His voice went silent
and she search for the lines of intent coming from nothing, hoping that something
would give her a clue as to where to go. She could only see one, so she waited,
then pounced, slashing wildly. It took time, but she eventually hit it, sending
and arm and half a shoulder sliding away from its body. Two more strokes
finished it.

The man lay dying on the carpet, surrounded by bodies of dead
creatures. She'd actually killed them, she realized, but so had he, if with her
hands, somehow. She ran to him and called to Zack and Don. “Clear the room.
Energy
!”
She ripped her dress open, breaking a nail trying to do it, because the fabric
turned out to be tougher than she thought it would be. The pain made her pause,
but she continued and tried to transform the man in front of her. He shifted
easily. As easily as anyone ever had. She didn't even have to push her energy
reserves. The woman he turned into was pretty, like all the people she transformed
lately. She had thick red hair, and looked familiar to her, but not exactly
like anyone she knew personally. She was hot enough to be an Alede, which probably
meant generically good looking, too. That was probably why she looked familiar,
since a lot of Alede looked more than a bit similar to one another.

Shifting him back, she expected, well, she expected something
to go horribly wrong. For him to be some other kind of creature or for him to
be dead when she got him put back together. What she got was the same man,
but
different
. He looked a bit younger, a bit darker of skin, but still very
light. The eyes looked the same, but something about him was off. The lines.
The lines coming off of him were broken and jangled, she'd seen this before.
He'd died. And come back. Zack had done this before too.

He looked up at her and smiled.

“A woman named Courtney said to tell everyone hello and that
she loved them? Oh, uh, then she said you all totally have to put out for me
now, but I think she was probably kidding.”

He stood up and stretched, looked down at his body and the
old severed arm on the floor, nodding.

“You do good work, you know that? Thanks.” Then he stood up
and started to walk away. Then stopped and turned back to Kate.

“Before I leave...” His glance was serious, calm and deadly.

“Yes?” She replied, hoping he would just ask for money or
favors, maybe sex and not one of their lives or something too costly to them,
even though he probably deserved it, if he wanted it. No one there would be
alive without him, after all. It was the kind of thing that could have a
massive price.

“May I use your restroom?”

Half the people in the room laughed, and the other half
looked around mortified that anyone had dared laugh at this being.

Kate just told him yes, and pointed the way again.

On his way out he was handed a half dozen cards. Kate gave
him one too, and on the back wrote, “For a good time call...” with a little smiley
face next to it. He may creep people out, and scare people hardened to battle instinctively,
but Courtney had been right, if Zack had actually seen Courtney and it wasn't
something else that met him.

Either way.

They owed this man, whatever he was. If they could get it for
him, he'd have it.

She just hoped he'd call.

The party got cleaned up then, everyone being taken home
through the lines, since it would be harder for anyone to stop them that way.
She took Cerise's party back to Europe herself. London didn't speak to her,
simply looking livid over something. Which no doubt made great sense inside her
warped and chaotic mind. Not that she knew that was the case, but the woman had
to have something wrong with her, didn't she? As they left she turned and
pouted at her openly.

“You could have told me you were the Alede Line-Walker! I
made a fool out of myself...” Spinning on her heel she tried to storm out.

“It doesn't take a lot of information to figure out that
being polite to strangers is a good idea. You
never
know who they really
are, no matter what they seem to be at the moment.” She waited for an outburst,
but the haughty woman just kept walking instead.

Cerise started to apologize for any insult and got a hug
instead, followed by a friendly parting kiss. She groped her enough to keep
things friendly and got a bit of a grope back.

“Don't worry about it. She'll be fine, and I'm too old to
bother holding grudges over words. I have been for, oh, months now...”

Cerise bowed then and told her she'd be in touch soon.

It took about an hour to get all the leaders back where they
belonged, even with four of them working. When they got back Claire declared
the whole night a
huge
success. Everyone thought she was kidding until
she explained her reasoning.

“Everyone was nice and polite, until a lethal threat came,
then we pulled together and repelled it. Even though it was clear that no other
power in the room could, one of our people, killed
all
of the attackers.
I admit, the man that aided us was an anomaly. A person we should find if we
can. I'll look, but such things don't make us look
bad
, just very
fortunate. Almost as strong a position as simply being that good. No one left
here thinking we were weak or to be easily attacked. I can't think of a better
outcome, can you?”

Kate could, most of them ending up involving drinking punch
and eating pie, but some involved cookies. None of her top ten involved killing
a bunch of unknown attackers. Probably an oversight on her part. If it had to
be done, better to win with no casualties than to have dozens dead. Especially
given the people that had been there. She brought that up.

“So, was this about starting a world war for some reason? If
so why? Who does that serve?”

It took everyone but Claire and Hilda a second to see her
line of reasoning, that killing all those leaders would make them all look
guilty, but would also make everyone else look potentially guilty too. Anyone
that disliked another group would use it as an excuse to go to war, or at least
could,
which was nearly as bad.

They had nothing to go on, just large, strange looking beings
dead on their floor, so they cleaned up instead. For all the fighting, there
was very little real damage, most of what there was involved cuts taken out of
the floor and one wall. A single table had been broken apart, by Hilda looking
for a weapon, but that could be replaced almost instantly.

All they had to do was an after party clean up like they
expected they'd have to anyway.

The real fall out didn't come until the next day.

Every leader sent an emissary to talk to them. Some looking
for business deals, most just hoping to solidify friendly relations. Several
wished for them to broker meetings with Lesser Shia, since they had the easiest
line of communication and transportation there and back, and most of them
wanted to avoid dealing with Demons. Questions came in about who attacked, but
no one had any information to offer and no one knew for certain who
specifically was being targeted or if it had been meant as terrorism. Several
groups requested contact information for the man in gray, but they had to beg
off on that one, not having a clue themselves. Most of the people accepted
that, but all seemed to think they were just hoarding him for themselves.

Kate didn't really get a chance to relax for the rest of the
week, or even have sex with anyone, but she remembered that she wasn't really
on vacation, there only because the school had been closed due to those murders.
On the day before they were going to go back, she called an impromptu meeting
with everyone. Jelly seemed surprised that she was asked to come too.

“I'm not really, you know, important or anything. Should I
even be here at all?” She asked that in the first moments of the meeting. She'd
been sat between Libby and Maryl for some reason, so found herself buried in
Bat women and being smothered by kisses from Libby until she started to giggle,
sounding a little desperate.

Chris looked at her and waved from across the table at her
from where he sat by Don, with Hilda on the other side of him, since, as the
large woman had announced to the room earlier, Chris
didn't
reek of sex
like so many of the others in the room did. Kate saw how the boy looked then. Embarrassed
and uncomfortable, so she added loudly that Hilda could probably have sat by
her as well, which made Blaine and Britney look a little sad when they realized
what
that
meant. Chris looked happier though. What with the shared
misery and all, Kate thought. He pointed to her and them himself, raising his
hand to his mouth and ear making a telephone out of it and whispered “call me?”
which got a laugh from the rest of the room.

Both Val and Merri leaned forward and told him that
they
were free that night, which made Don sputter for about five minutes. Kate knew
that Merri at least, didn't actually have sex in mind, but rather playing a
copy of Enigma Eight which Troy had gotten for her in early release on the
black market. From what she understood, it involved a shady vendor in Lesser
Shia that didn't understand copyright laws... or that time was anything other
than fluid. So the copy was a finished version, which wouldn't even be
completed for about six months yet.

She didn't say anything, since Don would get mad at her for
hooking Chris up with the older looking Alede. It was a muddy area in her mind,
since the boy was, true, emotionally and physically
just
a boy, but he'd
also lived longer, if in the void, than either Don or she had. So, what were
the rules here? If he'd been Alede, Chris would have gotten laid by half the
people in the room that night. If he was just a Human boy, well, honestly, he'd
probably have sneaked out with at least one of the Alede or maybe a Vampire, by
now.

She looked at the boy carefully, and noticed how perceptions
were ruling their thoughts on this subject, and how cultures could clash easily
here. Scanning the table, she considered what everyone would have thought about
the idea of Chris having some close friends.

The Alede would all be for it and probably wondered why Don
was being such a jerk, keeping his brother from something so fun and important.
Hilda, being a Trolleinkein, would consider the boy fair game and probably have
said yes if he'd asked her to have sex with him,
including
being willing
to have sex in front of the rest of the room. The Vampires worked differently,
the assumption being that you could do anything you liked unless someone else
stopped you. If they couldn't stop you or didn't want to, then they didn't have
a say in your life. Claire kept it hidden from Zack pretty well, but that
included forcing other people to have sex, or even enslaving them for most
groups of her kind.

Don as his brother, saw only his
little
brother. He
couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that his younger brother was nearly a
thousand years older than he was in a very real way, having lived through
millennium in what seemed a single day to people in the outside world. Even
though he'd done it himself, if not for as long, it just didn't mesh with his
real world experience of the boy.

Troy wouldn't keep the guy from getting some, but he didn't
feel invested in him either. The Mages? Well, oddly enough all the Mages she'd
met had seemed a little more shy about sex than Humans did. They'd come out of
their shell after a while, if you worked with them on it long enough, but until
then they were almost prudish.

So where did that leave Chris? She worked things through in
her head and finally nodded, having come up with something.

“Is Chris going to be feeding any Alede after Don and I go
back to school?” She looked at Zack, who looked around the table, seeing
everyone's inner reactions.

After a while he nodded.

“It hasn't been planned, but it's almost certainly going to
come up, so I think we have to figure on yes. He won't let them go hungry and
few of the Alede will be willing to hold back once they learn he can pass
energy to them...”

Don flushed and started to sputter, “But he's only fourteen!
I mean, sure all that time in the void, but that doesn't make him more mature
out here, does it? He's still a kid!”