Shield of Innocence (Alternate Places Book 4)

by P. S. Power

  At least that was how he was presenting it to himself.

  The truth was, deep down, that he really did want to have sex with her. The basic biological urge was there, her form perfect for calling to him that way. That was just what she was, however. There was an innocence there too however, that drove him away. It felt like he'd be defiling her, in some fashion. Even if she'd had more sex in her life than he probably ever would.

  So he snuck out, feeling a bit too pleased for having managed not to be caught by Britney, and walked a moment later into Jennifer's room. She however wasn't sleeping. The girl was in bed however. Working with something that vibrated under the covers.

  Worse, unlike Brit, she looked directly at him, her eyes going wide. Her inner self panicked, but Zack waved at her, pretending he didn't get what was going on.

  "God, I'm so embarrassed." She started to turn red, even as he shook his head.

  "Nope. You're fine, I'm the one that didn't knock. Anyway, food? Also, can you get away later?"

  The girl took a deep breath, and then turned the vibrator off, but didn't pull it out.

  "Um... Sure? What for?"

  Zack nearly said for sex, but that would be a bit mean at the moment. She was cute enough, but like Britney she was too innocent for him. The kind of person that it would feel wrong for him to be with that way.

  "I want to take you to meet someone, then, if we can, I'd like to take you into the void for a while. We seem to have a really good way to train line walkers now. It might not work, but I think mages should be naturals at it. Someone needs to go first, and out of all your kind that I know, you seem the best suited to get the job done. It will only take a few hours. Even if it doesn't pan out, it's a good thing to try. People tend to benefit from it."

  She didn't get up, looking nervous, but nodded.

  "I have a class at four? I can be around at six, I guess?"

  "Great. Now, I'm going to get out of here. Later." He nearly told her to have fun, but that, again, would be mean. Especially after throwing her off like he had. That was his fault, for not looking first.

  Instead he went back to the house, then got off to work, taking everyone with him. There wasn't anything all that new or interesting, except that at about noon, he got an hour off, and didn't have to run off to have sex for once. That meant he was able to get away into the void, and try to find his pal there.

  Big Shadow.

  It wasn't that hard, since his friend was there, waiting for him, or so it seemed.

  Little friend. You have questions? It is getting close to the beginning then.

  Zack smiled, or at least set that general idea, not knowing what to say. After a while he just went, and asked the stupid sounding things first.

  Are you... Me?

  There was a sense of something like mirth that spread through him, infecting the void itself with its power. There was no derision in it however.

  I am not. I am simply the Gatekeeper. That is not meant to confuse. I was never you, little friend. Nor any that you know. Other than myself, that is. Why do you ask?

  That started a conversation about many things, including the nature of Tricksters, time, and the prophesies of the Elth.

  Ah! Right. I recall that portion. It isn't what it seems. Your Merry will kill none in that event, and what she is to say is not meant for you, or any living or dead being. Only me. It was what told me my true task. Now, I will go and likely not see you again as I am now. You will meet me again, but... Well, I won't ruin it for you. If you see a being that is me, but isn't, then run from the void. You have met him before.

  He had. The being had tried to kill him at the time. That got him to cast around then, as well, but there was suddenly nothing but void around him. It was peaceful, and a temptation to just stay for a while, waiting.

  Still he got back and went straight to work, having been gone longer than he would have thought, in real time. Most of his lunch hour.

  Lisa came out of her office, hearing him it seemed.

  "Hey Zack. We have a rather big transfer coming in? Eloise asked me to set it up. The Mythelion Coalition needs to send a lot of their people to the Renthel lands, for a pilgrimage. Normally it takes about sixty-three years for them to do it, but the travel isn't the point, just the destination. We won't be paid much for it." She looked apologetic for that part, but he had gold, jewels and cash.

  "How many?"

  That got her to look down, and whisper.

  "About twenty thousand? We can do it over the next year, but..."

  He shrugged, making it a quick thing. There was no reason not to do it, other than it being hard.

  "I need to be done by six today. Let's see what we can get done before then?"

  The Mythelion were, it turned out, snake people. They were a pretty iridescent pearl color, but didn't have arms or legs. It made the transfers interesting, but they didn't have luggage, in the main. They could float in the air however, and did as he touched them, to get through the lines.

  That let him get about five hundred done, worked into his regular schedule. That made for fifteen hundred transfers in about six hours. Then he called a halt to it, gave Lisa a kiss on the cheek, which was returned, and moved back to Jen's room.

  This time there was just a girl sitting there, dressed to travel, in jeans, a white blouse and a tan corduroy jacket. She was sitting on her bed, which was made, and looked embarrassed.

  "Hey! We should go, since I don't know the schedule where we're going, so we might need to look around for a while."

  The girl looked worried, her shadow wondering if she needed to change into something nicer, but he wrinkled his nose at her a bit.

  "No worry here. It's just a mall."

  Jen smiled then, "I can do that. I thought it would be some kind of big thing. Ambassadors and all that."

  He nodded at her, and put a hand out to help her up. It was soft, warm and oddly pink. A little moist too, but from lotion, not flop sweat. It was, most likely, due to the girl feeling far more worried about him having walked in on her in a private moment rather than the fear of being alone for centuries. It was hard to know how that was going to go, from the outside however. It was really different for everyone.

  He didn't speak until they were through the shortcuts, and standing in the back of Something Wonderful, where Charli was once again assembling the baskets. She worked quickly, without wasting a lot of time on anything other than what she was doing.

  Zack called out anyway.

  "Hi, Charli. Jen and I are going to Westfield. Then into the void. We should be back in a few hours, tops."

  The other woman looked up, her face smooth, perfect and pleased.

  "Neat. Hi, Jen!"

  Then they moved into the node, since telling her all about being in a different reality first wasn't going to help anyone. He didn't think. They came out in the back of Yoghurt World, to find that Nikki was working behind the counter, her face cheery.

  Eve was there too, but in the back room, doing paper work. She was behind a nice desk in an office that was smaller than the one Claire used by about four times. Looking up, she smiled, and looked at the girl with him.

  "Hi! Um... You're with Mr. Hartley, so... Alternate Jennifer Stone? Or is the name different? You look a bit younger."

  Zack had to fight a wink, but leaned toward her just a bit.

  "Jennifer Stone. Jelly. Mage, and college student. Jelly, this is Eve Benson, who's also a line walker. As you might have guessed, this is a different reality. Don't let it bug you, most of the people here aren't too bad."

  He expected the girl who was young still, to freak out a bit, but she just smiled hugely.

  "Kaitlyn and Don both mentioned you. I didn't think I'd get to come here though. I feel special now."

  Eve winked at her, in a cute way that didn't promise anything, but was friendly none the less.

  "You are. You know, I think you're going to do really well at this. Mages are good at focusing, right? They have t
o be in order to use their abilities. That's all you really need to do for it. Concentrate and keep doing it." A trickle of magical force left the vampire, which was a lot different than compulsion. After about three or four minutes there was a bit or a shift in Jennifer, which coincided with Eve being done with her part in the process.

  "Good luck. We can use you here, on our side of things? I have all these important yogurt related duties to see about. That and embassy stuff. I can't let taking people places get in the way of all that. We can get you in here a few times a week to take our people around? Once you get good at being a line walker?" She licked her lips a little, but they stayed dry.

  Jen snickered a bit.

  "Right. I'll be back in about five minutes, weeping, rocking, and holding myself." She didn't really seem to feel like that however, inside. In fact her shadow was confident that she would do pretty well. Maybe not perfectly, but enough so that she wouldn't have to feel bad about it later.

  Zack did his part, quietly, and nodded. There was much aggressive shadow shouting to that part, but it really didn't take very long, the girl already being a bit scared of him for some reason.

  "We'll go in with a rapid time frame involved at the very start, so yeah, five, ten minutes here." He wasn't certain if he could do that, himself, but it made sense not to take days on it, if they could.

  Once in the line it went... Well enough. She wasn't the easiest person to hold in the void ever, true, and she was a bit weak internally. To start with. After a while she grew to be more though. It wasn't just her focus altering and becoming more powerful, but also a sense of maturity that the others hadn't really developed there. She was simply more peaceful after a while, and when it came time to let her hold herself in the void, after about twenty or thirty years, she did it without the initial panic that most had shown to begin with. It was a lot different than how she'd started.

  The girl didn't even become scared when they came under attack.

  The large shadow that moved toward them did it slowly, thank goodness, and cast a beam of death and destruction that made space itself boil up around them mainly toward Zack first. He was glad of that, since it meant his friend would have a chance.

  DIE!

  It was a booming sound, and Zack knew what to do about it, which was to flee. The problem there was that he couldn't do that until he had Jennifer with him, and while he was able to smooth the disruption of space as it boiled, before it harmed him too much, she couldn't. That meant moving away, to draw the being off.

  Sending a tendril of focus out, Zack sent a single thought.

  Why?

  It got the thing to follow him, if no real response. A big part of that was how much faster he was moving that the other thing was. There was no attempt on the part of the slow motion shadow, which was huge compared to him, to do that too. It just tried, and failed, to follow him. A wake of death and destruction behind him. Where it got too close to Zack, he smoothed the flow of energy easily.

  After all, Big Shadow had taught him to do that so that the void wouldn't become messy. Now it was saving his life.

  The creature, the giant looming bit of black that couldn't be seen, and could barely be registered even by him, screamed after what seemed like a few hundred years of their game.

  It was so long in fact, that Jennifer, probably feeling bored, simply found a node, and left. That meant he could, too. It was getting tedious anyway, the raging monster trying to simply destroy him, looking too much like his old friend. Big Shadow.

  Then, it was really clear that it was his friend. Just an earlier version of it.

  Ah. I see.

  He sent this to the being, making a point of finishing the thought before he left the void.

  I am not your enemy, and you will not kill me, or I you. We need to be friends, and will be. Later. Earlier too, I think.

  Zack winced, knowing that he sounded cryptic. He hated that when people did that to him, and here he was returning the favor. He felt a bit like a jerk, and would have felt worse if his future friend tried to make him boil away into nothingness.

  DIE! MY MASTERS COMMAND IT! IT IS MY ONLY TASK!

  Zack opened the same node that Jen had used, almost right on top of her, and sent back a single line as he stepped through.

  Nope! Question why they want that. Why they sent you to this point in space and time.

  Moving into real space he had to fix a few problems, but they felt minor to him now. He'd lost his left foot, but built a new one, doing it correctly, by turning himself into Maria. That was really the first time he'd managed that on his own, but it made total sense. His form was only a thought after all. Just like everyone else. Now if he could get back into the void, and come out again, he could reverse it.

  His clothing didn't fit suddenly, but it was all too big, so didn't damage him. Her. That part was important. All the Alede said so. When you were a woman, you were a woman. A man was a man, and even while you were the same person, you were different. She guessed that if you were a lizard person you lived that too. That... Should actually be possible, he realized again. You were rebuilt each time you left the void anyway, after all. It was easiest to become yourself, of course, but holding a different pattern worked. That meant, as long as he could truly hold the whole thing, a being could become anything they wanted.

  Which meant he also could have just stayed Zack, only with a foot, but he'd done it differently, since it had worked for him before, if with help from Kaitlyn.

  Jennifer was just taking a step away from the node, making way for him, so he hadn't been in there for long after she'd left. Probably a few years, at most. They were in the back of Candles and More, but that made sense, even if they'd left from a node in a different world. She was a mage, after all. This was her rightful place.

  Lisa walked out of her office and grinned, seeing them, even before the girl in front of him realized Maria was there.

  "Jen! Maria! I didn't think to see either of you today. Zack mentioned... Nothing about this." The light eyed blonde woman locked with Maria's brown eyes, and then took in her form. Slowly, and with a bit of lust in her eyes.

  Maria was a lot better looking than Zack was, after all. Also the correct sex for Lisa to really enjoy.

  Jen spun half around, and smiled at her, nodding.

  "We were attacked by something in the void. It took me forever to find my way out. I... Honestly don't know why Zack is a female now." Her voice was really peaceful, and relaxed, considering she was speaking of a potentially lethal attack.

  Maria shrugged, and smiled in a way that would show her cute dimples off. She didn't truly mean it, but Lisa only looked curious, not afraid, which was good.

  "About that. It was an arch-demon. A really powerful one. I mainly handled it, but took a tiny bit of damage, so shifted to fix it. I can move back, as soon as the void clears. I figure that if I wait an hour, and go quick, it should be fine. It's hard to find people in the void if they don't linger for a while. Decades. It might make training hard for the time being, so for now Jelly here is the last one, until I get this taken care of."

  This didn't seem to upset anyone, thankfully. Then, it was clear that Lisa had figured out that the mages had their own line walker now. Not that they weren't both part of the Nation too, already. It made sense for her to help out her own people, and things did come up, so it was probably worth doing well.

  Lisa nodded however.

  "But it's safe to go and do things? The normal traffic and daily work?"

  Zack didn't really know, but nodded, because it seemed like it would be really. Just going someplace was so fast there that it was nearly impossible to track unless you were trying to hang out for a while. It could be done, if you slowed time enough, but so far this new threat, which he'd seen and fought before, wasn't doing that for some reason. Probably because Zack hadn't taught him how to get that done yet, and Big Shadow wasn't creative enough to figure it out on his own.

  "It really should be. We ju
st need to pass the word to everyone not to hang out for a long time. Even at that, it might only be coming for me. It said something like that, but I don't know for certain if it can tell me from say, Jen here, or Troy. So better safe than sorry and all that." Her voice was softer, and a bit more pleasant, as Maria.

  Lisa seemed fine with that, as long as the bodies she scheduled would be flowing through the nodes, and the people at Lesser Shia probably felt the same. Without explaining what was going on Maria clomped in her oversized Zack shoes back to the line, and went as deeply into slow time as possible, then looked around. Nothing was waiting there for her. So turning back, he stepped out of the line as Zack, and felt more himself. Taller, and with all the bits and pieces in the right place for his clothing.

  "It seems fine now. So, let's um, get Jen back to school? She has finals soon. Over a node, to Something Wonderful?" He went in first again, but as soon as Jen followed him, he pointed at the shortcut, and had her travel to fifteen different locations, finding each of them from his thoughts, rather than getting her back to her room.

  In fact, he kept her out for nearly five hours, and they ended up in Kate's room, where everyone else had gathered to let off steam and eat snacks that had been brought in later. That meant it was crowded since there were four people already there when Jen walked through, and she couldn't really get totally out of the way as Zack stepped in. That meant he bumped into her in a way that made it look a bit like he was trying to grind up against her. Not one of the people, even with three Alede in the room, interpreted it that way.

  Instead there was a group hug, targeting their friend.

  Blain looked envious.

  "You did it? My god, I didn't even know you were going to try!"

  Instead of hanging out with them, Zack smiled, and then looked at Kate and Don.

  "There's an arch-demon in the void, off and on, which tried to kill me. I think it's safe as long as we don't linger there, so try not to stay for years. That means no training anyone else for a while, until this gets worked out."