Other Places 3: Detours (33 page)

It
was simple really, since Bey had used his Vampire persuasion ability to get him
not to think there was anything to Vampires at all. No one had bothered with
McKenzie yet, other than making certain he never saw anything too good.

Which
meant he didn't have anything on Zack at all. He knew it, too.

Not
that lack of evidence was going to stop him. He'd come ready this time, with a
baggy of crack to drop in Zack's pocket, if he could make up a reason to search
him. Normally it wouldn't be a problem, but for some reason he couldn't
understand, the skinny geek hadn't responded to his provocation tactics at all.
Yet. The next trick would be to spray spit in his face, and then pretend Zack
took a swing when he tried to wipe his eyes.

There
were a thousand ways, after all, if the police wanted a man.

Instead
Zack nodded.

"That
isn't what's going on here, but clearly, it isn't normal, either. Would you
like to really see what is? I can prove it all to you, but knowing about it...
You might not be able to understand. Some people can't."

Thinking
that he'd just won some kind of minor victory, the man smiled himself.

"Try
me. You might be surprised."

One
of them would be, at any rate.

It
was tempting, Zack realized, to simply get rid of the problem the easy way.
After all, the man next to him, Terry McKenzie, was unpleasant to be around,
overly aggressive, and smelled bad. Dumping his dead body a few hundred
thousand miles away would have taken a lot less time than doing almost anything
else would. Worse, at the moment, he was actually busy, trying not to let his
mind fly apart.

It
took focus to keep himself from simply acting and taking that easy and simple
way out of things. Real discipline too. In fact, he had to search through the
memories he had for a way to manage it all. There was a lot of information in
there, but finally it was something pretty simple that caught his attention.
What he wanted to do was to acknowledge the problem and hold it fresh in his
mind, while relaxing and not letting the emotional content make any
connections. If he did that long enough, he wouldn't develop new pathways for
it.

Or,
with time, he could remove any old ones.

For
him that meant using magic, like he was, but bringing those old and horrible
thoughts to the surface in a concentrated fashion, while removing all their
damaging power. Simple, but different than what he'd been doing, which,
naturally, was mainly hiding from what was there. That was what Mirror Him had
decided to do, all those years ago, and that part of him had kept that up, even
after they integrated. Now though, he had the ability to really make the pain
go away.

In
theory.

He
worked on that, starting slowly, as he waved the Detective along to the node
room. The man actually was aware enough to look at the door to it, with all its
owls and books on either side.

"Yeah,
this
fits. So..." He looked around the almost empty store, just in
time to see Claudia come in, holding hands with a man that looked to be about
old enough to be her grandfather. He tried to spin, in order to follow her, but
Zack moved forward.

Holding
the thought of being repeatedly sodomized in his mind, as if it were happening
at that moment, while using all the magic he could to strip any emotion from
the scenes that came at all. It was no worse, mentally, than what he'd been
living, but meant that he was slightly annoyed with the man next to him, for
being that easily distracted. If one of them had a right to that sort of thing
in the moment, it was
him
, darn it.

"This
way, we need to make a phone call first, I think."

That
got the man to glare at him, mainly by the virtue of not knowing what was going
on and being too impatient to wait, or slow to figure it all out. He was bright
enough to follow along and not make a grab for Zack, even as he looked around
the marble floored node room. It was a nice space after all, but so out of
place that even a regular person had to notice it.

The
man seemed almost relieved when they got to Zack's plain and white walled
office. It was almost boring, compared to the rest of his life. Familiar to the
man, most likely, since it was like all new work spaces everywhere in the
Western world. Lacking any imprint of being owned at all. Crisp and clean, but
not really interesting yet. No pictures of cats with funny captions, or of his
wife or kids. He was young still, so he could get by with some pictures of his
friends, possibly climbing a mountain or something?

Zack
gestured at the phone.

"Dial
nine to get out. Can you call your Chief of Police directly?" The answer
was no, Zack knew, but he was making a point. McKenzie didn't have that number,
off the top of his head, and wouldn't need it day to day. He'd met the woman,
and talked to her hundreds of times, but he had a boss that he went through,
and when she wanted to hear from him, she called him in to stand in front of
her desk, like a naughty school boy.

"What?
Why would you..." He looked around, but the words just didn't make any
sense to him. Not really. To his mind that meant it was a trick, or trap. That
or Zack claiming that he knew the woman.

The
idea that there was some kind of insider corruption made sense to him, so he
nodded.

"I
can probably get a call through, if I use the right channels. Why?"

"Because,
I'm going to blow your mind, and I want you to hear that what I'm saying is
real, from someone you trust. Go ahead and get that all started. I'm going to
run and get a snack, from the cafe, do you want anything? A coffee?" He
wasn't offering treats, since the man needed to watch his weight, at least a
bit. If Zack had to put up with him, the man was at least going to survive
another year or to.

That
was a point, as well.

"Or
tea. I'll get you tea. You like that now." It was a strange way of putting
it, and the man looked at him as if he were an asshole and picked up the phone
to dial.

"You
going to make a run for it?"

Zack
nodded.

"Yep,
this is all a clever ruse to distract you from the absolutely
nothing
you actually have on me. Please, call Chief Sims and I'll get you something.
This will take a while. Try to be open minded."

Then
he jogged to the door, just so the man would have to wonder if he really was
taking off. Ten minutes later he came back in with a mug of mint tea, plain,
and having eaten about six thousand calories without stopping. They still had
to wait for the woman to pick up, since it was early in the day for her, and
she was going to be a tiny bit slow still. Vampires were like that, and she was
old, but only about Edom's age. It showed, around the edges.

Zack
managed to hit the right buttons to put the thing on speaker though, well
before the woman bothered to answer.

"Althea
Sims. You have something for me, McKenzie?" There was a tired and slightly
annoyed sound to the voice that came over the device, but the Detective spoke
anyway, sounding just a bit servile. People were, with their bosses.

"Yes,
ma'am. Possibly. I'm at Westfield Mall, and a man here asked me to get in touch
with you? Name is..." He looked at Zack, his eyes a little vapid and blank
seeming.

The
man didn't know who he was even. Great.

"Chief
Sims? This is Zack Hartley, The Line Walker?"

"Ack!"
There was a panicked gulp that came over the line, and the bald man next to him
made a face. "Sir! I, what can I do for you? We, what can
we
do for
you?"

That
got a slow reaction from the man next to him, at least, who seemed to be
understanding that at least something strange was going on there. Plus, Zack
had gone, rather suddenly, from someone to attempt to provoke, into a person
called
sir
, by his highest direct boss. It was out of place, which meant
there was no way for the Detective to really understand anything yet, but that
was the plan.

Zack
explained it all, out loud.

"McKenzie
here has been being a bit of a nuisance, for the last month or two. Nothing too
bad, and, really, he's
trying
to do the right thing, to his own way of
thinking, but today he came into my store and accused me of... What was that
again Detective?" Zack looked at him and actually waited, while silence
filled the air.

"Running
a prostitution ring?" At least he managed to sound uncertain of himself
this time.

There
was a gasp from over the phone and the Chief spoke, her voice soft.

"I...
Please, let me deal with the man? I know I have no right to ask, given our last
meeting, but I beg of you... He's one of my people, I... What do you require of
me?" It was far from an inspired speech, but Zack didn't care that much,
since he was too focused on thinking about far worse things than whatever she
had in mind. At the moment it was the cannibalism of babies. Living ones. Of
course, she probably expected to be raped with an armed sized penis. Which it
was clear, she was willing to take, in order to protect the jerk standing next
to him. It was pretty brave of her, really. Respectable.

"Nothing
much. I'm going to take McKenzie on a trip with me for a few hours, or weeks,
and when he comes back, I'd like you to make certain he gets a medical
check-up." He paused and looked at the man, smiling. "That sounds
bad, doesn't it? He has a heart condition, a preexisting one, and it needs to
be taken care of, that's all. He doesn't have the right mental character to
really handle things, but he needs to learn what's actually in the world around
him. So, just to start things off, would you tell him about yourself,
Althea?"

"I...
You mean what I am? He won't believe me. He
can't
. We've checked him for
the capability. Nicole, the local Proctor did."

Zack
looked at the other man and rolled his eyes.

"I
don't know, I think, with enough proof, he can do it. So, go ahead. We'll head
out from here, through the node, after that's done."

There
was another sound then, that seemed terrified, but that one at least was only
about the cost of what he was planning to do. As she pointed out, the man was
one of hers, and if Zack had to handle this, the way he planned, it wouldn't be
cheap. Surprisingly she didn't just offer to kill the man herself.

Instead
she spoke, almost gently.

"Detective
McKenzie, Terry... The world is a very different place than you know. Really,
in most cases, it's different than you
can
know. You simply can't handle
the truth. Not normally." There was a long intake of breath from the
woman, before she went on. It sounded like she'd given the basic speech before,
at least. "Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of sparing you that
knowledge now, since you've managed to come to the attention of The Line
Walker. You'll need to do what he says, and try as hard as you can to believe
what you see. It might not be enough."

Zack
nearly prompted her to get on with it, but she managed after another breath.

"I'm
a Vampire. A real one. I don't expect you to simply trust in that, but you're
about to see things that few ever do. Remember it, and try to accept that you
aren't insane. Can you do that for me?"

Without
waiting, Zack hung up on her, since the man next to him just seemed confused,
which was about perfect really. If they waited too long he'd start to make up
reasons for why things were being said. The people around him all being liars,
most likely, since it was the simplest answer. The easiest for a man like him
to believe, even if it was wrong.

"Good,
this way. Quickly then!"

Making
the node glow a gentle purple color, and linking directly to a place in a far
off land with purple foliage and two moons in the sky, one a small and
irregular yellow thing, the Detective was pushed through, a little roughly. It
took work to make it all happen while still holding his mind in the right state
for his other work, but he managed it, well enough. Following the man through,
he waited while he gaped.

The
Detective looked around at least.

"Some
kind of virtual reality?"

"Nope.
You're actually here. Your boss is really a Vampire, and Cheetos really do
stain your fingers orange. Now, I want you to stay here, and not wander off too
far, since I have things to do today. I'll be back in about six hours or
so..." It was mean, but he had no real love for the man and that would be
about enough time for him to start making sense of things.

Except
that, instead of gaping open mouthed in wonder, like a good little boy, the
large bald man pulled a pistol and pointed it at him. Because that made sense.

"You've
drugged me! I'm in fear for my life!" Then, even as he stood in a very
different world, the man started shooting.

Zack
simply stepped out of the way, tracking the rifts in space where the bullets
weren't going to be and staying in them, while the man waved the thing around
with one hand. It wasn't the way he'd been trained to fire, but he was so
worked up that he did it anyway, which didn't work too well at all. Then,
because it was something that everyone did, the man threw the weapon at Zack
when he was done. At least he'd done that one, himself, before.

Smiling
he shook his head.

"No.
Not drugged. This is just what it seems. So, hang out here and wait for
me?" Not giving him time to think, Zack just stepped back through the
line, into the store. It would take about four hours for the Detective to
acclimate to his new surroundings. Then he'd need to go someplace else and keep
doing that until he learned that the world wasn't what it seemed.

The
man just wasn't up to the task though, so he might go insane, rather than
figure things out.

Either
way, Zack won.

Then,
finally, he started making phone calls, since that's what real world grown-ups
did, wasn't it? The first one he made was to his grandparents, since they
needed to be dealt with. One way or the other. Hopefully without half the drama
as a certain cop had created that morning.

He
did it from his office, since, well, he had it and no one was there to see him
seem like a twenty-two year old goofball, which was a bit how he felt.