by P. S. Power
That was due to his own past however, which thankfully Chris hadn't lived through.
Eve, Claire and Luthor came back, with Rebekah, following behind by about ten paces. That was interesting, since she was taking the subordinate position, due to her age and lack of personal power there, but Eve, who was much younger, wasn't. For her part she moved smoothly, in front of the others, including the vampire leader. It wasn't the same as saying she was more powerful than he was, however, since it was the traditional guard location. Claire's shadow told him all about it, with the ancient leader nodding along, or at least his inner beast was.
Still, it was her pretty much indicating that, young or not, she was the best one to protect them if anything started in the other room. It also meant that whatever deal they had together, she was thinking of them as her people to protect now. That was a good sign that things had gone well.
He waved at them, not caring about the politics of it all.
"All right, I need to get you all back to your own world, and then get to my vacation. Is anyone staying?" He glanced at Eve, since she could get people back and forth, and so could Chris, who was trying not to look at Ginger, who he liked a lot more than she had enjoyed him. On the good side, he also knew that, and wasn't going to press the issue. Instead he was making eye contact with Eve, who was actually a lot more interested in him than the younger vampire felt.
Don and Kate had been standing to the side for most of the evening, watching everyone, but they could transfer people just as well as anyone. The thing there was that Eve and Chris were the ones kind of in charge of that sort of transfer. They all knew that too, so Eve winked at him, to show she got the idea he was going for.
"I think we're all going back tonight, so that the council won't freak out and try to go into hiding. I'll try to bring Bey for his visit tomorrow or the next day. I need to come back and help set some things up here, but that can be done anytime you want, Lenore." She looked at Luthor, but it was clear that she wasn't planning to be working with him directly.
The old vampire, his inner beast vast, standing nearly ten feet tall, bowed to the much younger being. Not everything was about raw power after all, and the man was intelligent enough to understand that.
"Wonderful. If you have need to contact me, please feel free to go through Claire? She has the needed information to do that." Then, as if it made any sense, he bowed to Zack. "Line Walker. Thank you for your aid this night. Would it be welcome for my people to send others to you, or yours, for such things in the future?" He meant the sex stuff, and rekindling that in his kind. It wasn't a thing that they'd all want, but enough would that it made a great prize to be handed out for services.
To that end, he waved to Kate.
"I think that Kaitlyn is going to be our go to person for that? I'm certain that something can be worked out, to that end. Claire, you're technically in charge of that, right?"
She nodded and smiled, since it was a big deal. After all, it was proclaiming her the go to person for the Nation of Line Walkers.
A short twenty minutes later Zack was starting to get things around, and wearing his nifty backpack, he took everyone to their correct worlds. Rather, he took Lenore and Ty back, with Eve and Chris doing Rebekah and Ginger. Chris, being smarter than he looked, made a point of paying attention to the chalk white and exotic vampire, rather than the younger one. The singer was far more impressed with him, understanding that Christopher was more important than she was already, and a good person to have as a friend.
Eve had kind of picked up on the interplay too, and as they stood in the back of Yoghurt World, she watched the others all leave, and held her hand out to him. For a moment he thought she was going to tell him something, but she just kissed him on the cheek, instead.
"Hey, have fun? I'll see you in a week or so. Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on your peeps. Things will go fine. If not, I'll get our Zack to handle it." She looked at him a bit wistfully, and didn't explain why, then pushed him toward the node, as if thinking he needed the help to actually get going.
Which, of course, he did.
Vacations were hard, and strange, to his way of being.
Chapter sixteen
The house seemed tiny to him, when he got to the sleepy seaside tourist town. It was, rather on the nose, called Seaside. Zack liked the name, since it reminded him of the food court names at the mall. Part of the sleepy feeling might have been due to the fact that it was about seven in the morning, and on a Sunday. Blaming the small city for not having a hot night life at that hour wasn't exactly fair.
The inside of the place, which had two floors, the upper one being essentially a loft area that could have been an attic in most places, was about the size of his walk in closet back home. It had six beds in it, crammed together with only a few feet between each one. The stairs came up into the wood floored place without any kind of announcement. There was no railing around it to prevent accident or disaster. It was a hole that had steps inside of it. That was all. A clear danger to any sleepy person that wanted to stumble off to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
There was a single lamp at the peak of the ceiling in the center of the room, unmoving, but dangling by a copper metal chain. It had a dingy green glass shade on it however, that needed to be cleaned up, but wasn't bad. There was no bedding, but there were mattresses, so with a bit of shopping he could fix that part of things. It didn't affect him, not needing sleep, but if other people ever wanted to use the place, and there was no reason for them not to, it would be ready that way.
The lower level had a kitchen, with some appliances, which was kind of nice. An old white colored stove that someone had scrubbed hard for a while was tucked into a counter that was made of something that was a color of blue that was probably teal, but felt awkward and out of place. It was a fake substance over plywood, but sturdy enough, if not great looking.
It had a fridge too, and when it was opened the thing was warm. No light came on, but it told him rather plainly that it was in decent condition, and didn't need to be retired yet, if it was all the same. Old, but with years of life left in it. It had to be plugged in, but Zack told it that could be arranged, since the power had never been turned off. The cord was a bit greasy, but the plug went in with only a bit of work. Then he patted the side of the old chill chest. It was white too, and made a rather loud humming noise.
"There you go, boy. I think we'll get along fine. Let me know if you need anything?" The object didn't really understand him of course. Even on the shadow level it was an inanimate object. More or less. Most things were.
The floor was tile, and cracked in enough places that it was pretty tired and needed to be changed up.
Walking around he saw that there was a single chair in the living room, on another bare wood floor that had been scrubbed well, and smelled old, but not musty. He'd really thought that it would, so that was better than expected.
The bathroom even had a nice nineteen-sixties charm to it. That meant everything was old and heavy. It had a tub with a curtain around it, which was the cheapest kind, made of clear plastic with no decoration to it. The sink was pink, instead of white and looked newer, but had probably been put in about the same time he was born.
So not new in any way.
There was, by some miracle, a half roll of toilet paper, in case he needed to use the facilities before the store opened up, which would be a few hours, he was willing to bet. Not that he had to at the moment, thankfully. He was a bit hungry, but shopping was doable. He just had to wait a bit. Or, being him, he realized he didn't have to, if he wanted to be honest about it all. The point was to relax though, and not go off to the East coast, or worse, another world, to do basic things like that. That meant he had...
Nothing at all to do for a while. No place was open for food gathering, and it was just then starting to lighten enough that walking to the ocean might count as being a fair thing to do for a normal person. If they were an early riser and probably on dru
gs that didn't let them sleep. Maybe a serial killer.
If no one was there to see the body, then it didn't count, so he let himself nod a bit.
"Which is a plan. Why go to the beach if you don't go to the beach." He was speaking to himself, but he didn't answer, so Zack didn't have to worry about how damaged his mind was yet. There was some delicate fraying around the edges, deep inside of him, but honestly he wasn't that much worse off than most people were, inside. For all the tearing that living as long as he had pressed into his being, surviving in the void had taught him to hold himself as a single thing. Not perfectly, since to do that meant not really being a person any longer, but enough to leave him sane.
More or less.
He had the key in his pocket, and locked the front door when he left, since people did that kind of thing, most of the time. After all he was leaving most of his money inside. The cash at any rate. He had a few thousand tucked in his backpack, which was upstairs, near the back wall of the single room there. No one breaking in would find it easily, but again, people didn't take that kind of thing lightly for the most part. In his wallet, which was in his jeans back pocket, held enough to get a lot of food, and his debit cards, with which he could buy another house or two if needed. He had two of them, but mainly used the one, for some reason. Habit, of course. It was kept in front, so was the main account to his mind.
That was all. The beach wasn't hard to find, and only a short walk away. There were street lights, and they looked attractively old fashioned, being made with black iron, or at least looked to be. Starting about a block away from his new beach house they had decorations on them, for the holiday season. It was basically a tourist town, and the slow season, but the bits of gold, green and red plastic on the lights looked festive to him.
He had a jacket on, which was his heavy, but older one. Nearly three years before. Claire had gotten it for him, the first year they were together. Zack appreciated it now, the cold sea salt breeze would have stolen a lot of his heat otherwise. He could circulate his inner life force to create more warmth, and started doing that as he moved along.
Still, having a way to hold the heat to his body was useful and would save effort.
The path to the beach requires him to go to the promenade, which was a large concrete walkway, and then hop over it, to the sand about seven feet below. There were steps that went down, naturally, for the old and short, but that didn't really fit his outer form. A patter of rain hit him, but the gray of the beach was no more than moist under him at that point. Not wet and packed. It was all held in place by hardy grass.
That was, along with the wall behind him, what held the whole thing in place. It wouldn't last forever, obviously. There was clear erosion from the sea levels getting higher already. In fifty years, the promenade would need to be rebuilt, if they weren't going to lose it. Not because the ocean would be running in the streets all the time, but bad storms would be doing that far more often. He could see the patterns for that forming already.
Looking out over the water, he could see the sun, a brilliant golden color in a pale blue and black sky, just peeking over the edge of the world. There was a sense of force from it, the lack of energy behind him allowing the power of the orb that powered his world to strike more noticeably than normal.
The wind wasn't strong yet, but it was there and real. If he had a kite, he could fly it, he knew. No one was doing that, being almost dark still, and a bit of rain coming down over where he was. There was a nice break in the clouds, which would probably turn a nice pink and orange he bet, in about half an hour. Settling on a large log that had washed up, which was in a field of the things, Zack waited.
In front of him the ocean roared, making a constant rumble that was powerful and impressive. The water was about a football field away from him however, since he hadn't come to go swimming. That meant, at just about the time that the sun was really coming up, that he noticed the people coming out of the water. There were three of them, and they looked healthy. Lean, and kind of tight. Well, two of them were that. The other was larger, and seemed a bit fluffy, at a distance.
He could tell all of that at a glance, since the two men and women were completely naked. The man on the left was still changing form as he came ashore, probably not expecting anyone to be sitting there, watching the sun come up in the rain. It was a bit weird, but he was enjoying himself, and Zack didn't care if shape shifters wanted to be out at that hour, too. It was a public space, so totally fair game. They didn't really notice him either, at first, and it was the decently busty young woman that saw him there first.
He could tell, because she went incredibly still, and the dolphin inside of her, floating in the air like it was swimming, spun in place suddenly to look at him. The men with her weren't like that, being a seal and what had to be a walrus, inside. Which was nice to see. That showed a lot more diversity than he was used to from their people outside of one of the embassies. Not that shifters didn't get along, but they tended to stick to their own type of being a bit. Kind of like how different racial groups did with humans.
The lady that had frozen was staring at him, from about fifty feet away, which got the seal, who was a man that seemed a bit older, and the larger one, who was kind of chubby, but younger, to do the same thing.
Zack went back to looking at the sunrise.
After all, swimming wasn't illegal there. Cold, but these people didn't seem to need medical help, so it wasn't his business. That didn't mean that they didn't respond to him being there however. They had to walk closer to him to get at their towels and clothing, which were, now that they pointed it out with their attention, hidden under a log, about twenty feet from him. After a while the seal man moved that way, muttering something which Zack couldn't hear.
Well, he saw what he saw. There's no screaming, so let's play it cool. He isn't even checking out your package, Brad.
That wasn't enough to get a laugh, even though the boy felt a bit self conscious about that part of himself. He wasn't exactly hung like a horse or anything, but other than being a bit heavy, he probably didn't need to feel self conscious about it all. After all, Zack didn't care how big his junk was, and neither did the shifters with him. Even the woman was unconcerned about that, though she did glance at the kid and smile.
They just sauntered to their things, and got dressed, trying to act like they weren't doing things that no sane person would have even considered. That was fine with him, so he watched a bird, a very large one, fly overhead. Then it landed by them and turn into a tiny woman with very light blonde hair.
"Hey all! Lovely day, isn't it?" The voice was high pitched, happy and slightly breathless. Probably because both flying and changing shape was a lot of work. The seal glared, and his inner self barked, a bit noticeably.
"We're being watched!" There was real anger, and some panic, to him now. He was in charge, more or less, being the oldest, and for Freya to just change in front of a human was a horrible problem. Now they would either have to go into hiding and scuttle the vacation, or kill the innocent human.
On the good side, the man didn't seem to think that Zack was the problem, so the running away part, even if it left him with a story that made the news, was preferable. The bird lady saw him, and turned, waving at him. It was cute and reminded him a bit of Libby. She was technically a little cuter, and had a tight, firm and very tan body, to contrast with her hair. She was still naked, too, but grabbed her clothing feeling cold once the feathers were gone, and as soon as she was dressed up in her warm clothing, marched over to him.
"Um, hello!" Her voice was bright, and there was fear underneath. "We were just out swimming and flying kites." It wasn't at all what had happened, but her idea was to give him something to put into place that made sense.
The shape changing part of things was kind of a big deal, but really, she could have claimed that her folding the thing up was what he saw. It was still sort of dark after all, and the bird inside of her chirped that he should believ
e her, even if it was a lie. That would be easier for her after all.
The others stood behind the woman, looking at him with expressions that seemed a bit cold, and decently worried.
Zack noticed that there was a man walking a dog down the beach now, since there was enough light for the first individuals to come outside, damp or not. Looking back, he smiled.
"Hi! I just got in. I have a house here, but this is my first time in the area. I'm kind of waiting for the shops and restaurants to open." It was all true, so he repeated it on the shadow level, which got the four people to relax a lot. The real point was that he wasn't screaming about freaks, or acting afraid. That could, no doubt, be worked with.
The dolphin, who was named Shay, took two steps toward him.
"We're just getting in, too. We're staying at The Tides. We have some... Family connections there, so get a good rate. Not free, but our friends and us here rented a few rooms. The others are still sleeping." Her chirping inner dolphin let him know that two of them were cats, and they had a minor dragon with them, who was cold blooded. He wasn't happy with the location choice, but most of the world in the northern hemisphere was kind of cold for him at that time of year.
The other people where a variety of things, and not listed for him at that moment.
He nodded at that, and stood up. These people hadn't really been planning to fight with him, and were less likely to now, given even one watcher. Stretching a bit he nearly just stood there, not knowing what to say himself.
The walrus kid, who was about eighteen, cleared his throat. He was light skinned, but had brown hair that wasn't too different than Zack's.
"I hear you, on the food. We have some, back at the hotel." It wasn't an offer, but the others winced, since it could have been.
Zack took it that way, but let them all off the hook, at the same time.
"Thanks for the offer. How about... Not to seem all pushy, but I'm here alone, so how about I treat you four to breakfast? We can cut the sleepyheads out, for being lazy? Sleeping the day away like that. Why, there's light out and everything already."