Shield of Innocence (Alternate Places Book 4) (36 page)

It had clearly happened in the
afterlife, and there she was, honestly crying about what he was going through
at that moment. Warning him. If he ever saw her again, a certain Alede was
going to have to be apologized to. She'd mentioned that her very horrible death
was a thing that she would have gone through herself, a thousand times, to save
him from
this
.

Now he got it.

Then, all he could do for what
felt like the rest of time, was move. The whole thing was beyond even his own
ability to understand, and eventually Big Shadow, whose job it was to try and
destroy him utterly, started to scream inside of him. It wasn't from his own
pain, since the being didn't have that, Zack knew.

No, it was that the creature was
starting to understand what
he
was going through.

Zack, sending the thought so
slowly that it took longer than he'd thought was possible, even as the world
warped and didn't move.

I. Will. Save. You!

Then for longer than he could have
possibly guessed at, he walked through a smear of something that his brain
didn't understand in the slightest. To be totally fair, he wasn't really
certain that he had a brain left. It might have melted, or gone away in some
other way, long, long before. When he got to Underwood, which was only about a
hundred and thirty miles away from where he started, Zack didn't remember what
he was doing.

The only thing that was there any
longer, was the desire to save the poor, screaming, thing that existed inside
of him. That was all his life had
ever
been about, he was nearly
certain. Still, he moved, walking past people, and not stopping until he was in
front of a glowing blur. It wasn't pretty, since nothing had been in so long
that he didn't think that sort of thing could exist for him any longer.

Still, there was a thing he had
to do.

That thing, that had made him
move in the first place, before the beginning of the world. That part wasn't
literal
,
Pain Beast knew. It just felt that way. The thing there was that, to him, it
was the simple truth. Pain Beast was, now, the oldest thing in existence. Even
the universe was his junior in a very real way.

He sent a thought, since he'd
done that for a very long time, to try and calm the poor Sufferer. It had a
name, but he didn't recall what that truly was now. He was just the being
within, or the Sufferer. Carried inside the Pain Beast. His friend and only
companion. The other half of what
was
.

The glow in front of him didn't
move, because the world didn't. It hadn't for... The only thing that acted
was
him, after all. Once, before a time had stopped, that had been different. He...
Thought
. The agony wasn't even pain now, having gone so far past being
something that simple that soon the name he'd given himself at the door of the
new place he'd entered was probably going to have to change.

Standing still, he waited, not
certain what to do next.

There was a single thing he did,
with his pain form. The container in which all agony exist. He said, without
end, a single thing.

"Now." At least that
was his plan. Pain Beast didn't know why that was, but it seemed like a thing
to do.

Finally, over the course of what
seemed to be forever, all over again, the glowing blur moved behind him. Then,
in a rush that took him by surprise, his head rolled from his shoulders, the
pain leaving at once. Leaving him straddling where he was, and the node to
everywhere else. The relief of it snapped reality so hard that a piece of it
nearly broke open. Letting other things in.

Hanging behind and over the form
of his body, he watched it all.

Merry, the tiny glowing thing,
whispered to the air.

"You are the
Gatekeeper!" There were tears to the words, but that stopped as Zack
wrapped his shadow around his friend, and used the nearest node to slip into
the void. Thankfully,
that
allowed everything to come back to him. First
he remembered that he was. Then, over time, a long while, the rest came back.

He was Zack. The Gate that never
would be. To that end, he had won.

There we go. Now, you and I need
to go and do some things. Hang on, friend. All will be well.

There was an answer, that sounded
normal really. They existed in the same time stream now, it seemed clear.

What are you? The masters said I must
come and kill you, even at the cost of my own being, but I
cannot
. You are more than I
am. They made a mistake. We should have sent an army.

Zack smiled, and projected that
to the creature he was holding, inside of himself still.

I am now, and always have been,
your friend.

That got him to laugh inside,
since he recalled the line having come from a movie. Then he sent a vague
feeling that the thing inside of him needed to hang on. After all, Pain Beast,
Zack, only knew one way to slow time, and did that again. It was a lot easier
now, without the pain. He'd practiced that for so long that he was a master of
it. In a very real way, time itself flowed through him, and was a part of what
he was now.

Then, without half trying he
unwound the stream of
everything
that had ever been, stepped behind the
void itself, and moved to a time before he'd been born. Zack, carefully,
unwound all that had happened, going back to a place before anything about him
had existed. Just floating in the void with his friend. Tens of thousands of
years before the consciousness that was him came into being.

 Then he slowed time, and stayed
there, for a short time, teaching his new friend, who had been with him
forever. The being had suffered for him, hence the screaming when he'd
understood what had been going on. That was the thing that made it all
possible.

The arch-demon had learned to
care about something else. A thing that was nearly impossible for his kind.
Empathy. To feel the pain of another.

It wasn't enough. Not to fix all
they had to for the being to become the Big Shadow. So Zack stayed with him,
through the ages, teaching him all that would be needed to make things right
again. Until a time that wasn't even worth counting, given what had happened.
It was nearly as difficult for the first thousand years or so as the walking
had been. The Sufferer, Big Shadow, was hard to deal with. Annoying, really.
Over time he learned, and became better. Something more than what he had been.

Finally, Zack was able to let the
being go. To be free.

It
promptly
ran off.
Vanishing through a node so fast that it had to be warping and slowing time in
order to get it done. Zack laughed, and changed his own point in time,
wondering if all reality was going to be destroyed when he got back. There was
nothing to do now but trust the Big Shadow had learned enough.

He walked out of the node into a
little shop that filled containers with things that no being truly needed.
There was a red haired female there, and another, who
wasn't
the same
person, that had dark hair. They had clothing on, which was the rule in this
place. That was fine.
He
was in the same kind of thing, and always had
been. The trick, he was nearly certain, was for him to let the world around him
choose its own time frame. It was stuck in place still, at the moment, so while
he processed it all, Zack tried to recall what was around him, like the thing
beneath him that kept him from falling through the world. He wasn't certain,
but he kind of recalled it being called...
Floor
.

That could be
ground
.

It seemed a bit wasteful, having
two words for the same thing, but that was how things worked. There was a lot
of waste in this world. For instance, he needed to breathe, and go find the
physical form he used to have. That was out front, over by the glowing woman.
Merry. He'd made a new one when he'd come back, but it was the same, more or
less.

She didn't look at him, still
holding a two foot long silver blade in her hand, looking sad. Frozen, too,
since it was harder to let go of how he'd lived for longer than reality had
existed to that point than it seemed like it should be. He picked up the old,
worn out body, and gently took himself to the void again. There he let it go,
and settled the mess it made, it's dissipation having boiled the void a bit.
Putting a dead physical thing there had caused an explosion, which had made a
mess of space.

He hated that.

It was a thing that he'd taught
his friend, Big Shadow. Who, in turn, had done the same for him. It was a
circle, but a good and solid one. A lot of circles were like that.

Then he went back, and stood in
front of the tiny woman. She was an
Elth
, which meant that her inner
self wasn't the same as a human's. Also, she was short. Adorable, he realized,
that coming back too, as he finally managed to let her speed up, by letting go
of everything.

The whole thing still felt like
it took a while to manage, at least several weeks, of him remembering his old
life and letting himself relax now. Slowly, she spun, the blade coming up
first, then pointing at him, as if to strike him down. That wasn't a worry for
him now. Not there, where it was so simple to go into the void. Using his hand,
the right one, at a guess, though he wasn't totally certain of that, he reached
out and took the shining blade, pulling it gently from the wonderful being's
fingers.

She moved a bit, and yelled
slowly. Just as she finished, he got back to what he thought of as real time.
There was still blood on the floor, because it hadn't occurred to him to mop it
up yet.

"Hi! Sorry about that.
Things took a bit longer than I figured they would." It felt strange to
speak like that, using his words and voice. Zack watched the ripples that they
made passing through everything. Almost instantly the woman, who was a girl,
truly, for her people, froze. She looked youthful enough but was only in her
forties. For her people that was
just
out of school, practically.

She lunged for him after a few
seconds, but gave him a hard hug, her face damp from the tears that had leaked
from her eyes.

"Husband? You live?
How
?"

She wasn't the only one there,
and there was, in fact a bit of a crowd watching them. Some of them had
probably just seen something fairly strange, he was willing to bet. Him being
beheaded, and then vanishing, only to end up standing there. Hugging a little
person, while holding a long knife.

He managed not to sound too
strange. At any rate, the words were in English, and the order of them felt
about right.

"That, is a very long story.
Good work by the way. I had an arch-demon trapped inside me, and he had to be
let free. I don't know what happened with him, but I notice that we're all
still here, so that's a good sign." If Big Shadow hadn't saved him, then
that wouldn't have taken place.

Looking around, he nodded at the
floor.

"I need some cleaning
supplies. I haven't done this in... Forever."

Merry, who was his
wife
,
one of them, ran off quickly, the blade vanishing from his hand as she did. It
moved away from him instantly, but did that as a silver smudge in space and
time. A while later she returned and started to try and clean up his blood, as
if that wasn't
his
mess.

"I have this. Thanks! We
should talk later. I... How long was I gone here? I mean... What day is
it?" He nearly asked for the year, but the woman let him take the wooden
handled string mop, and the yellow wheeled water bucket. It had a clever thing
on it to allow him to strain the water, when it got bloody.

"Tis Friday. My Lord. You
were gone..." Her inner glow regarded him, tasting who he was now. "I
think you were gone long, and long." There was a soft awe to the words.

"Long and long and
long..." He sang it, having fun with the vibrations in the air, and
started to clean. It was harder to do than it should have been, because the act
of his death left a
dent
in the space there. That required him to
straighten that part up, unbending the ripples. The problem was that he didn't
know how, so he was there for whole minutes after he was finished mopping. Just
standing and thinking. Experimenting with the new idea.

It didn't occurred to him that he
was still on vacation until the vampire he loved, and was connected to, came
by. She seemed surprised to see him, but kissed him anyway.

"Zack! You came all this way...
To mop the floor? I'm
sure
we can find someone to do that for you?"
She seemed bemused by it all, rather than upset. Then, he'd done some good work
on getting the red up, and while she could smell the blood, in the water, it
wasn't all over the floor still.
Mainly
.

The part of her that was what he
used to call her beast, before he'd learned what a beast actually was,
indicated that she knew it had been there and even that it was his, but didn't
remark on it. He waved to her, and explained, slowly, so she could understand
it.