Shield of Innocence (Alternate Places Book 4) (13 page)

As the options collapsed for each
person, they would all keep going on, surviving until only they lived in their
own reality. That sounded lonely to him, but it would be a ways off, so he
decided not to worry too much about it. Not until he was about to be the last
thing in his own reality.

Then, at any time before that the
dark beings could invade, and taint that end point. So there was a bad option
at the end too, not just whatever would happen if they did nothing.

Nodding to himself he finished
eating, and then stood up, watching the people around him for a while. All that
had been said left him wondering, for a moment, if this reality was his, or if
it was a thing that belonged to someone else. Perhaps the teen boy across the
way, who was contemplating the wonders of a vegetarian hamburger. It could be
the Elth behind the counter, his copper hair shining as he moved quickly, to
make sure the customer had what was needed for the day. Xan. His friend.

It could have been anyone else in
all of that universe too, including an alien, or, perhaps an animal. Maybe even
a machine that had yet to be built. Infinite meant
everything
after all,
which was a lot to take in. Zack decided that it probably didn't matter really,
in the end.

He had to try and do the right
thing, but that was all. The rest would either take care of itself, or not.

So, cleaning up after himself, he
waved to Merry, and then went to collect up the rest of the women in his life
that needed to go home.

After that he had an entire life
to get into some kind of order before it ended. That was enough for him to
worry about for the time being.

Zack wondered, for about ten
minutes, if he should go into a long winded, and probably futile, existential
crisis about then. The information he had was so weird that even
his
mind didn't really want to consider it all. Then, almost as if something
clicked in his head, it really hit home that he didn't have to bother with
that. He existed, and that, for the time being, was enough.

Taking a collection of women home
with him, he wondered what should come next, and knew that it was really three
things. First, he had some vampires to get fed. Alede too, though he was going
to pass that duty off to Eve again, if he could. She didn't seem to be
influenced by the extreme sexual feelings that he was after feeding them, and
having had a few days off, Zack was finally feeling almost normal again. That
meant he
wanted
sex, but it was just a normal thing, not a constant
screaming from his loins.

Charli was still at work for the
evening at Something Wonderful, but he hadn't been kidding about her giving
things a try. Then he needed to find someone else that hadn't gone into the
void already, and have Troy take them in, watching them the whole time.

First his friend was going to
need to be a bit more seasoned though, which meant going to find him, since he
could be literally anywhere now. It was a problem with teaching people how to
travel instantly to anyplace that existed. Eventually, they would do it. Taking
a deep breath, Zack plunged in, feeling the people and activity in his own
home, rather than seeing it directly. The shadows were always there, speaking
to him about things, but that normally got blocked out. It would be hard to
stay sane if he didn't, or at least that had been his personal experience. Ever
since he was young that part had kind of made sense.

Now, for the first time, he didn't
let that happen. Wanting to remember them all the way they were. Angry, hungry,
sad, chipper, and worried. Normal and strange in their own ways. Perfect beings
all.

"All right. Vampires with
me? Alede... Eve will you handle that part?" Chris was there, still awake,
through force of will, even though he didn't need to be. He was trying to get
his homework done, writing on a tablet that he held on his lap. More correctly
it was a laptop computer, and on a pillow to keep his lap from roasting. It was
plugged into the wall however, and he typed away more rapidly than Zack could
have managed, unless he slowed time down a lot. Touch typing, which was a magical
seeming skill, now that he got to see it happening close up. Using all the
fingers instead of just two like he would have probably been forced to.

It wasn't late at all, being
about five in the evening there, so it was only a bit shocking when the kid looked
up from what he was doing and spoke to Zack directly.

"I... Invited some friends
over. To study? I don't know if they can all get rides, so it might not happen.
That should be about six? I told them we'd be going late." His shadow
didn't tell on him, but even Zack understood what was going on. What nearly had
to be. He'd invited a girl over.
With
some other people to make it seem
safe and normal, but there was, at the heart of the whole thing, a special
person that he wanted to spend time with.

Otherwise he would have simply
slept, like a sane person. Though the kid's inner self didn't give all of that
away. It was, in the end, just him guessing as to the reason. In a way he sort
of hoped it was the case, since Chris deserved to have that kind of thing.
Crushes and dates. Regular human connections to average people.

Blinking, Zack nodded.

"Um, sure? That could be
cool. We need to make sure everyone is fed first, so there are no mistakes. I
don't
need an orgy breaking out in the living room. Especially an under aged one."
A bloodbath of feeding wouldn't do either. The thing there was that the
vampires took what they did, drinking from the living to survive,
very
seriously. Doing it wrong too often could have you killed by their rules. The
Alede kind of figured that everyone just liked to spend time with them, and
that sex was
always
fun.

So one group struggled a lot
harder to do the right thing, as far as that went.

Looking up he saw Eve and Lyn
enter the room from across the way. They were both wonderful, he realized.
Different, and out of place there however. Good, and pleasant, but there truly
was a sense of wrongness about them. Like they should be in a different world.
Which was simply the case. He'd broken, or at least bent, the natural order of
creation bringing them to his home. Not that reality was screaming about it
yet, as far as he could tell.

"Hey! So, I have a lot to
get to tonight. You two should get home soon. I mean, you can
live
here,
if you want, I'm not trying to get rid of you, but you need to work from there.
I'm only half trying to get rid of you, you understand?" It was a tossup
from their expressions as to what they were thinking, but Lyn looked relieved
inside.

Eve just shrugged.

"Good plan. I hear that
Chris has peeps coming in for the night? Late at least? I want to take him back
with me, when we go. Set up a regular meet. I'd get Don too, but he skipped out
on us. Education...
Man
..." She smiled, clearly playing about parts
of things.

Chris seemed a little uncertain,
but Zack could see it.

"If nothing else it's a
whole world where you can go... And not be thought of as fourteen. You should
do that. Maybe tomorrow? Right
now
, I need to see who's going to try and
be the first vampire line walker from here. Or at least who can last the
longest, proving that they're
worthy
of being Eve's new student."
That was a big part of the whole thing, he recalled. A test to see who got to
try
learning to last through the days alive.

Eve winked then, and noticed that
Chris had gone back to his rapid typing. He'd pause every fifteen or twenty
seconds, thinking of what to write next. It didn't take him too long to get
that part done, so it was just the barest of hesitation between words, normally
at the end of a sentence.

The fact that he was in high
school meant that whatever paper he was working on was going to be finished
soon, Zack figured. It didn't take long to write a five page report on the
civil war or whatever the topic was. Not if you could type that fast and
consistently. At least he thought that was right. He'd never gone to school
like that, having been in an institution for years, then kind of home schooled
after that, his clear insanity being a bit too much for most to understand or
tolerate back then.

His grandparents, who had raised
him after his parents had run off into a life of drugs, or as it turned out for
his father, being possessed by an arch-demon, hadn't really known what to do
about him. They were mages, as it turned out, but the things he'd described
seeing and hearing were just
too
different for them to credit at the
time. Really, they'd probably thought that he was a mage, by some stroke of
genetics they didn't understand, who'd accidently gone mad and was just not
understanding things correctly.

That had made things kind of
hard.

Lisa was back at her own home,
which she still kept even though there was a room for her at the mansion. She
and Maryl, Libby's aunt, were an item now. It even seemed to be getting pretty
serious. As in Maryl was thinking of asking Lisa to get married. Zack didn't
think that had happened yet however, and wouldn't talk about it, since it
wasn't his issue to deal with.

If he was gone soon, it wouldn't
even become all that complex for them, really. Lisa was, by mage law, married
to him. That was a paperwork thing however, and while prudish about sex as a
group, they
were
pretty open about what was allowable contract wise.
This way he wouldn't have to marry Maryl too however. Not that it would be
hellish to do that, but he was seeing, and not married to, Libby. That could
get complicated. Dying would prevent that from happening nicely.

So there was a silver lining, of
sorts.

Better, it wouldn't be really
dying like that. Just sort of moving on. Unless he screwed it up somehow. If,
of course, he understood what was needed at all, which, in the end, he almost
certainly wouldn't be doing until it was too late. You didn't, in life, most of
the time and the bigger a thing was the less understandable it would really be.

Having spoken about feeding like
he had, using his indoor voice, the front room started to fill up rapidly, with
the vampires lining up in front of him, David getting there first. Looking
around he sighed and smiled at Chris. It held a sort of knowing and resigned
look.

"I don't suppose I could
blow you for a fill up? Otherwise I'll have to wait for half an hour while
everyone else goes." There was solid teasing to it, but the human boy
brushed his slightly floppy brown hair from his head, and then typed for a bit,
before answering.

"Sure, we'll just get Lyn to
turn you into a girl for that. You can do that, right?" He looked at the
Alede, who looked puzzled and shook her head.

"No? I mean, in
theory
it's possible, but I've never done it. No one has, that I know of."

That got the other Alede there,
Val, to look puzzled.

"They didn't teach it in
school? I can show you how, if you want. We can practice on Dave here. Vampires
are a little harder, but if we can get the energy for it?" She looked at
their dinner, Eve, who made a face and then tilted her head from side to side.

"Sure. Or one of us could
blow him instead, which would be easier, but this sounds almost worth the
effort.
I
don't have any other plans for the evening. Unless you want to
show us how to get home? Otherwise I'm kind of stuck here."

That was addressed to Zack, who
shrugged back at her and smiled.

"
Really
? You don't
think you can just
go
home? Back here, too. I'm half surprised you
didn't go back there in the first place, to be honest. On your first walking?
Lyn can already do it, so she could show you, but... I mean, it's home. Just
go
there. It's not hard or anything. Still, if you want to do all that stuff first
you should hurry, and get David changed? I can take her into the void in a bit,
after Charli goes." The gender change to the name wasn't done by mistake.
That was the Alede way, and they didn't have any issues with it. They were
whatever sex they happened to be at the moment.

Really, that kind of thing was
probably what you had to do with any shape change, if you wanted to be good at
it. Change into a wolf, or bat, and be that. Not a human with a funny shape,
but the actual
thing
itself. It was a good idea not to forget things
like that, just in case it came up. He hadn't always been a guy, or a human,
himself. That had worked well enough for him.

That, the idea that the vampires
were being tossed into the void, was news to everyone, and a lot of them clearly
didn't get that he was serious. Really, looking around, it seemed like no one
thought that the Charli was real in the slightest. The girl was too young, to
most of their minds. Except Chris, who just stood up, and started circulating
energy, for David.

The funny thing there was that
his shadow clearly didn't expect a payoff for doing it. Like the whole thing
was a joke. Eve and Lyn really wanted to see Dave be changed however, and
offering sex was how the vampires had been paying for blood for a long time.
That, money, or drugs. Chris didn't need either of those last two, so it seemed
fair to the others.

Honestly, Claire was pretty
certain that David was
badly
cheating the boy, in order to jump the
line. The rest of them were fine with it however, since it would be cool to see
the form change for them too, so a fight didn't break out.

Nikki came to him first, Claire
just not needing energy that way any longer. She got it from him directly,
which was part of why he had to eat so much now. He was, after a fashion,
eating for two. One of them just happened to be a master vampire, so the load
was kind of heavy at times that way.

Things went quickly, and Betty
went last in his grouping, which was just Rebecca, Nikki and her. She was the
Secretary of State for the Nation of Line Walkers, but today was dressed down
into jeans and a powder blue t-shirt. That probably meant it was her day off or
something. Being the youngest vampire there, she went last, in that case.

As soon as everyone had enough
energy to last for a good long while, Val moved on David, and took his hand. It
was done gently, but she clearly wasn't letting him get away, either.

"Come this way. Lyn, Eve?
You said you wanted to watch?"

Then they all left the room, just
before there was a knock at the front door. That part was handy, since it
lowered the number of people that would be greeting whoever had come. They had
a lot of people, and depending on the nature of the beings at the door, there
could be bowing, hugging or even singing, to be done. Not that he'd ever had to
do that last one himself, but it wasn't impossible, so it would pay to stay
ready.