by P. S. Power
He had to block out everything then, his worry for his friends, the pain and weakness he felt, everything. He wobbled a little as he stood, Hilda handing him something that tasted like sugared cardboard with strawberry jam inside. He saw it came from a box of Pop-Tarts. He ate it anyway, then four more. His mouth felt dry after that, so he fought down a little water.
He knew he wouldn't make it if he let anything in, so he narrowed his focus to only what lay ahead of him. He lost track of the room, and when the signal came to began taking people out, he almost missed it. Vaun shook his arm several times.
“Mr. Hartley! Can you hear me? We need to get everyone out now. The Human authorities are about to send in troops, police, SWAT or CERT I don't know what they call them there...”
Zack got up, almost falling, a hand steadied him from outside the range of his focus. He stepped into the line, someone with him. The hand on his arm, he instantly wrapped them inside himself, being habit by now and finished the step.
He heard a voice yelling, female, telling people to move. She told him where to take people, so he did. Over and over again.
Finally, after too long, she told him to go home. So he did that too.
Later he woke up in Patty's office on her fainting couch. Merri tried to coax him to drink some water, if he could.
“Hi...”It sounded croaky still and groggy. She jumped.
“Oh! You're awake! Let me tell the others.” The door opened quickly and several people came in.
“Good man, Mr. Hartley!” Vaun stepped to his side. His experience must have given him some insight into what people wanted to know when they woke up in a situation like this, because he started giving Zack information instantly without making him ask.
“You've been out for around ten minutes. Claire's feeding right now, to try and bolster your energy from that side of things. We honestly didn't think you'd be awake so soon. The operation was a success, due in no small part to you.” The Vampire looked at him, checking for a response, Zack finally realized.
“Good. Did everyone get back safe? Libby and them? I don't remember...” His voice sounded better than it had before, still like a frog though.
“Yeah, you got everyone out. The Bat girl's fine. Her friend the bear was hit, but he transformed and is better now. We didn't lose anyone. Not from here. The closest we came to that was you.” The gray-haired man that spoke had a sword in a sheath across his back. Zack couldn't place him at first, but then the thing with Daryl came back. The Knife and Sword shop guy.
“The Vampire lass, your Claire Hawthorne, she battled death for you giving of her own life's stuff to keep you going. When she started to falter, she sought to feed. The only Humans in the complex were the women at Princess Pretty Nail. Once we explained, they volunteered. Apparently the girl, Charli Walsh, wanted to help you, it swayed the others.”
Having finished saying this, he turned and left.
He tried to work on his energy flow, so that Claire wouldn't have to drain Charli dry trying to save him. In a few minutes he did feel a lot better. In twenty he got up and went into the walkway of the Mall, feeling sore and heavy, but better.
Hunger stabbed at him, so he went over to the food court and tried to order some Chinese food. Mac, told him to sit down in a gruff voice and loaded several plates with food and brought it to him, handing him a fork. He started eating with a will and finished everything in front of him. Xan and Glen came over with food almost instantly after that.
Then, just as he finished those dishes, the medium sized woman from the Italian place came over with some cannoli.
“You're Mae. Right?” he asked, making sure he didn't thank her for the food.
“Aye. Eat and then recover your friends from where they're scattered. You all did wonderfully today. It will be good practice for later, when things get bad. Eat.” Without explaining those cryptic remarks she went back to her shop, frowning a little.
When he finished, he decided to take the advice the small woman had given and went to find everyone. Claire first.
He found her in the center of the mall, next to Kaitlyn, who sat on the ground.
“Hello, how are you two doing?” He croaked. Claire tackled him, but gently. Holding him as tightly as she dared given his wounds. “You scared me! It shouldn't be possible for a person to push themselves to death, stop trying to prove that wrong.”
Wu-Li walked over and started checking his wounds. Finally telling him to focus on energy building for a while and to not do anything strenuous. He nodded, trying to do it in a slow and lazy fashion, so as to not anger the old healer.
“She,” Wu-Li gestured at the girl on the floor, who looked up. “Did amazing things today. Kaitlyn saved at least three lives that we would not have without her and aided a half dozen others. You should all be very proud of her. A remarkable healing talent.” He bowed a little and went back to his patients.
Zack looked at Kaitlyn and smiled.
“So, you seem to have figured that problem out,” Zack said, sounding tired even to his own ears. “How did you do it?”
It came down to her nature, she told them. As an Alede she already had the ability to transform genders from one to another, at least in potential. Major transformations like that always wiped out injury. Weres and other shape shifters did the same thing too. All she had to do, she said, was figure out how to limit the scope of the change, so that she didn't burn out all her energy trying to change the whole person at once.
“So really, any Alede should be able to learn to do this. It's mainly an energy problem. Well, that and focus. I wouldn't have been able to do it without all the practice I had in the void. So, uh, get better soon and feed me. Okay? As it is, I'm going home with you so I can have sex with your boyfriend, Troy.” Standing took some effort for her.
“Troy's not my boyfriend, he's my roommate,” Zack chuckled.
“Good. Then you won't mind if I borrow him?”
They all laughed.
Cars came to pick them all up, driven by Vampires. Those big black cars that movie stars seem to like. Vampires, it seemed, liked them as well.
Kaitlyn made good on her statement, grabbing Troy within a minute of them all getting inside and taking him to his room. Zack started to have a problem with that, the girl being under age as she was, then remembered that she'd experienced an extra nine odd years in the void over the last weeks, possibly more. Technically she was now older than his roommate by almost a year. Or two years. He couldn't remember. Still... legal. He let it go and made himself not think about it.
They sat him on the sofa and packed pillows around him. Merri kept bringing him little snacks. High calorie things mainly. He ate them, noting that they were all more tasty than Pop-Tarts. He mentioned this out loud, starting a playful debate with Hilda as to the merits of that supposed food stuff.
The lovely giant won the argument, based on her premise that they made a handy food for emergency situations, being self contained, calorie dense and dry enough to not make your hands too sticky for battle. Plus, she added, “Yummy!” He couldn't find an argument to trump her enthusiasm.
Claire sat next to him and Hilda kept hugging her, because Zack had too many wounds.
Libby came over after a few hours and sat anxiously next to him. She seemed worried and stressed. When he asked her, even her Shadow self told him that she couldn't say.
It's a secret.
He told her how glad he felt that she didn't get hurt.
“Not a big deal really. Everyone else had done everything by the time we got there, we just had to make sure that no one crept up on us while you evacuated everyone. I just guarded a node. Nothing much happened.” Her Shadow self pushed forward though, saying, scary, the scary man told me bad things.
Her Shadow didn't say more, so he didn't push. She'd tell him when she felt ready, or she wouldn't. He'd learned a long time ago that when people's Shadow selves didn't want you to know something, it was generally better not to know.
He put his right arm, the one that hadn't been shot and closest to her anyway, around her and squeezed her shoulders a bit. Whatever happened that scared her, she should know he was there for her, he told her on a deep level.
He managed to get his energy level high enough that he could feed Kaitlyn again, about a day later, though she kept sleeping with Troy. Her biology required contact with other people, she told him two days later, unasked. He waived this away.
“You're both adults. Do what you want. Just try to be sensible and careful about things.” This made her smile a bit, since everyone else still treated her as a child.
He commiserated with her for a while, since he looked closer to her age than not, himself.
“But we'll live,” he finally summed up.
The third day he went back in to work. Kaitlyn and Lisa had straightened the store up, since the Mall and even embassy operations hadn't reopened yet, not anywhere in the Continental United States or Canada. As they spoke in Lisa's office he suddenly realized who the voice that had guided him through at the end belonged to.
“That was gutsy. It made all the difference though, I'd have been lost without you. What made you think of it?” Lisa wasn't a coward, he knew, but going into a fight with so many heavy hitters really pushed the bounds of what anyone would ever expect of her.
“I realized you were in that extremely focused state thing you do sometimes. I figured you might be able to follow along though, if I could get through. I felt bad about slapping you like that, but I had to get your attention. I got blood all over my hand from your wounds.” Wiping her hand on her leg she continued.
“Then I just stood there yelling at you until you did what we needed. You picked up the idea pretty quickly. I thought you'd pass out trying to move those big winged guys, but they turned back into regular people when I explained how hard it was on you. They seemed nice.”
They all went to the food court for lunch, Claire joined them, but brought her cell phone. Val saw them pass and waved to them, he went over and gave her a hug, then searched for food.
He still ached and had trouble lifting his arms, past his shoulders, a decent limp too. He walked slowly and carefully, blocking out about half the pain, so that he would have some warning if he started to really re-injure or hurt himself. He knew that because of the qi-gong and his link to Claire, he healed much more quickly than he would have otherwise.
With everything closed down, people either sat in their stores or milled around, a little aimlessly. There seemed to be a sense of emptiness about the place, not that it ever felt all that full of life.
Rose came over after his second full plate of food. So far his metabolism hadn't slowed down at all. It seemed like he had to eat just as much now as on the first day. No one knew what that might mean, though Patty had wondered earlier if it had to do with the extra energy demands the Alede placed on him.
“Maybe we should start harvesting our own energy again?” Guilt covered her face, though he just laughed.
“Well, I just need to understand it. If that's all it is, then no problem. Food's easier to come by here than lovers for five people.” That seemed to make her happy enough, because she kissed him and left smiling.
Rose looked hesitant, and spoke softly, as if he might be fragile.
“Do you remember that passage to the Alfric lands we spoke of a while ago? Well, everything is ready...”
Nodding he told her they could go as soon as he got back from lunch if she liked.
“How about three? I need to get Glen and some gear from home. Meet you at your store?”
The whole day went kind of like that. Quiet, slow and fairly peaceful. The transfer for Rose and Glen to the Alfric lands only took longer than normal because he walked to the back room so slowly. They asked him to check the Alfric hub for messages as to when they might need pick up. He set a schedule for it with Lisa, so he wouldn't miss them by mistake.
That night Libby came over and watched movies with them, mocking the new Star Wars movies unmercifully as they watched, making everyone laugh, except Hilda who said it might be being disrespectful to those that lived the tale to mock them now. Even though she did feel that the boy in the movies needed a good talking to.
“He's still a child in the second movie, but he complains because his elders won't hand him power? That's silly. He must not have been too bright...”
Libby called him into the bedroom with her, where they made love. When they finished, she rolled over, not looking at him for a moment.
“I do love you, you know. I have for a long time. I just thought I should say it,” she whispered.
“I love you, too. But you know that.” He cuddled her close to him and felt her sobbing. It went on for a minute and he finally asked what was wrong.
“Nothing... just, no one has ever loved me before. Not really. But you really do, don't you?”
He tickled her side and kissed her neck when she curled into a protective ball.
“Of course I do. Why wouldn't I? You are, after all, awesome.”
Comforted, she rolled over and fell asleep with him holding her.
Chapter forty-two
A young man Zack had never seen before, stood in front of the store when he got to work the following Tuesday morning. He held a large box of bakery donuts and three cups of coffee in a holder, resting carefully balanced on top of the pink box. The boy looked decently muscular, had clear, pale skin, and sandy blond hair. His clothes looked new, and in the kind of style 'the Chasm' carried.
“So, uh, Kevin, is it?” Zack ventured, noticing how good the donuts smelled from here, his mouth watering a little bit. He hoped that the boy had remembered to get some jelly filled, those being the best ones.
“Kyle. Pleased to meet you.” The boy, Kyle, followed him into the store.
“Did you remember to get some jelly filled, Kyle? You know that's my favorite kind.”
Setting the large box, two dozen it looked like, of donuts down on the cashier's counter, the boy shook his head in dismay.
“I can't even fool you by changing genders and appearance. You make it hard, man, you know that?” The young man grabbed a donut – a maple bar – and took a large bite.
“Being a boy always makes me hungry for some reason,” He said after swallowing then grabbing one of the coffees.
“Not to be snoopy or anything, but why the sudden change? I'm not sure Troy's going to be too happy about it, he told me he felt almost serious about Kaitlyn...” Zack selected a lemon filled first and started eating it while being informed.
“Norris. He's still worried that I could lose control, even after everything, so I told him to test me. This is the first of three. I have to be a boy for three days without problems. It's a little harder controlling your sex drive as a boy, you know... For us it's about three times stronger that way.” The first donut down, he selected a second and kept eating.
“The second test he hasn't told me about, probably something simple though. As for the third, I think he means to starve me for a couple of days and see how I react to having sex with a regular person. I overheard him saying something about it to my mom. No big. I can handle it.”
After finishing the current donut he drank his coffee, his Shadow showing the grimace he hid each time he swallowed.
“I like Troy. If I don't have to have sex with a half dozen people a day just to stay alive, I may just give this relationship thing a chance. It's hard though, I mean, they didn't cover real relationships with regular people in school. Anyway, this is just three days. I told him I'm going out of town for a bit and suggested he sleep with Sarah while I'm gone. I know she won't steal him permanently, especially since she's getting fed by you and doesn't need him for that herself.”
The boy shrugged, his Shadow saying clearly that he imitated Zack in that.
Lisa came in four donuts later for Zack and two for Kyle. She gave Zack a hug, then hesitating for a second, hugged Kyle too.
“Lisa, Kyle. Kyl
e, Lisa.” Zack mumbled past a coconut covered chocolate donut.
“What's with you people? I look nothing like I normally do. Different hair color even... This should make a great disguise!” The boy shook his head and drank his coffee, this time letting the wincing show when he took a drink.
“I even ordered my coffee black, so that I'd seem all manly.”
Lisa pulled out a list of names and locations, ignoring Kyle's complaints. They had a full schedule, she told them, the dip in business they'd expected after an attack at a Nexus point didn't come for some reason. If anything the number of bookings had increased by about fifty percent.
“Maybe people don't want the terrorists to win?” Kyle put in.
“That's as good a guess as any I have.” Eying the donuts, Lisa closed the box top and set them aside, showing Kyle the list.
“You're in charge of the traffic flow today, and new bookings. I have to go to a meeting with Gregory and some other high muckety-muck Mages. I probably won't be back today, so close up for me? I know this is last minute, but you two can handle it. If not, you have my number.”
She broke down and selected a cruller, and started munching it, then noticed the number of coffees. “I think Kyle's off to a good start!”
Zack paused, then asked who Gregory was.
“Hum? Oh! Right, well you saw him, but weren't really introduced. He's the Ambassador for Underwood. Ours. The Mages. He's on sabbatical, because his wife's been ill. He shows up for the meetings and I brief him on things. He sat with us at the meeting here, after the incident with the body in the walkway?”
Kyle looked at her and said that he had thought she held that position.
“Nope. I'm just his assistant. I have partial ambassadorial powers, but most of the big decisions I have to run by Gregory or the council. It's a bit of a hassle to tell the truth. Especially when you consider that of the hundreds of issues I've had to bring to them, they've only disagreed with me twice. And on one of those they relented almost immediately. When Zack first came they wanted me to fire him, since he wasn't a Mage. Gregory pointed out his work in the store and how he handled Willet's situation with the Were, Silas. They flipped so hard I think a few of them had sore necks for a week. Then saving Jennifer and walking the line without ever asking for anything in return...” Her smile lit up mischievously.