Other Places 2: Road Blocks

by P. S. Power

  Eve, it seemed, was up on what was happening however. Knowledgeable even.

  "Hey, nice to meet you. Keeley said I should call you some time? See if I can get a job as your intern for the summer? Anyway, we have containers of ice for each of the four bottles of blood. That will keep it fresh, but you have about four days before it will go bad and lose the energy links. Which sucks. Most of the Vamps like it heated a little, but a warm water bath for a few minutes works best for that. They'll be tempted to microwave it, but that damages the energy too. I hear it also tastes horrible if you let it touch anything metal. It will react to the compound used for preservation." She handed it to him with both hands and smiled.

  He dug through his pockets, to find his wallet, which he didn't have. It wasn't for a tip, thank goodness, though they deserved one for the presentation. Zack just wanted a card. Finally he wrote the store number, and his new home one on a piece of paper for them to have around.

  "I didn't know I needed an intern, but if Keeley suggested it, I'll try to see what she has in mind. Give me a call and we'll look into it?" Then he turned to Sherri and smiled, even meaning it. "As for you, call whenever you like. I think I should mention that I have a girlfriend, as well as a split personality, but she's a Vampire and won't care if we date, and the alter is the one that asked you out, so, you know, we both like you." He managed to make it sound sane and charming, like a joke, but it was all true. She smiled about it and touched him again.

  "Oh? That's nice to know in advance. Most people keep the mental health problems for the breakup."

  He nodded, since it was just the truth and waved to them both as he walked out. The trip back was longer, but he could route through the Paris Node, using shortcuts that weren't as good, but still got him where he needed to go in about fifteen minutes.

  Then he took the gift basket to his girlfriend. And the other Vampires that were suddenly in the building. It was late, and apparently they came in for things like this. It wasn't a lot of people, but there were eight of them. Most were avoiding the place now, it seemed, since Bey had come to visit a little over a month before. Generally that meant a whole lot of Vampires would be dying, but he'd only taken out a few, since it was part of the new plan.

  The one that, oddly enough, involved the kind of preserved blood that he was holding out to Lenore. She didn't have a phone pressed to her ear, but the Vampire woman in front of her growled, her eyes red. Pure red, with even the whites being hidden. It was a sign that she was about to eat someone, or fight, and since she wasn't clenching a fist, but was eying him, he had to figure it was the first one and that dinner was about to be him.

  "There should be enough to share? It's the good kind." He tried not to seem nervous or afraid, since that could set a feeding frenzy off, he thought. Lenore snagged the basket and smiled, then opened the colored cellophane enough to see the four glass bottles inside, sitting, as promised, in containers of ice.

  She popped the top of one of them and sniffed it, her own eyes showing more red than earlier, but handed the bottle to the woman, who, Zack realized, was the Chief of Police. Sims. That was her last name at least. She didn't hesitate, drinking the whole thing as if it were water and she was in a desert, which might actually be the case for her, after a fashion. When she finished, her eyes closed, she held the bottle out to hand back and then waited as everyone watched her.

  "That..." She said, eyelids going up, to show very normal brown instead of blood colored irises, "Is really very good. At least six links in each bottle? It feels right. I've gotten the ads for it, but hadn't tried it yet." She looked at Lenore and smiled. "Thank you."

  Then, surprisingly, she said the same to Zack.

  "I hear we have you to thank for today?" The words sounded bland, but a little accusing, which got her to shake her head. "I mean preventing the worst of things for us. This isn't great, but we should be able to figure it all out. If we get enough time."

  Lenore drank hers cold too, but he explained what he was told which got the other two heated that way. Soaking in a pan of warm water for a bit, Vaughn got one and rather politely the last was put in sample cups for the others to have a few sips of each. The general consensus seemed positive about it.

  One of the men, who looked younger than the others, physically, gestured at his cup, which was just a paper one from the shop. "If we could do some tastings like this soon, perhaps we could prevent any more events like today's? Or at least slow them down a bit." He knocked gently on the orange Formica of the booth he sat at, and looked around at the others, including Zack. "When are they going to be producing in full swing?"

  That got answered by Lenore, who was washing out the bottles and the cups, before tossing them. She kept the bottles actually, since they were nice, being glass with glass stoppers. She was from a time when you just didn't waste things easily.

  "Three months, I hear. That will be the first hundred locations. Then there are plans for many more across the country. I don't know that we can get enough for wide spread testing by our people, but perhaps it could be arranged for the leadership in most areas? I'll put a call in and see, in a few days. Right now..." She looked at Zack and then the others, "Mr. Hartley needs to go and answer his telephone, I believe."

  He jogged over, but had left the door unlocked, so got to it in about four rings. It might be more than that, if it had taken time for Lenore to let him know about it.

  "Candles and More, here to help you with all your candle needs." It wasn't an inspired slogan, but no one had ever said anything about it yet.

  "Zack? Bob Millhouse here. Good to see you're on site. I've been getting calls for half an hour from the Council and every Mage that has CNN or Fox news. What can you tell me about the situation in New Mexico?"

  It took him a bit, the story being longer than he thought it would be, but at the end of it, the man on the other end of the line, the Mage Ambassador for the area, just grunted.

  "We'll be in shortly. I hate to do it, but we need everyone on this. For the time being the whole staff needs to be on call."

  "I'll get in touch with everyone." Without warning, the phone went dead in his hand, the line buzzing. Apparently shortly meant no time for saying goodbye that night?

  He got on with Lisa first, since she was the second in command of the whole thing. She sounded sleepy when she spoke, like he'd woken her up. Which made sense. She was still trying to recover from the drug addiction she'd developed trying to handle the place on her own.

  "Hi Lisa. Everyone needs to come to the store. A bit of... Um, possible wide spread war, and mayhem? Don't do any drugs for this. You can sleep in your office if you have to or whatever."

  "Thanks mom, I'll be right there, along with my pillow and teddy bear."

  "Good. See you in a bit."

  Then he had to find Hiram, who wasn't sleeping at all, from the sound of the woman's voice that was next to him.

  "Hiram?" He explained and waited for a response, which was a murmur that sounded... erotic. "Dude, you are not getting a blowjob while talking to me on the phone."

  There was a bit of heavy breathing and a sigh.

  "I'll be a bit. But I'm coming." Then he stopped... and spoke to the other person. "No, keep doing what you were, I just meant that I'd be in to work. Yeah, that's it..."

  Zack cleared his throat, but Mirror Him chortled inside his head.

  'Jealous? I bet she's a washed up crack whore with no teeth, but hey, that might be interesting. Better suction that way I bet. Plus, no accidental biting.'

  "As soon as you can please." Then he hung up and debated calling their intern. It wasn't a school night, and someone would have to keep them in coffee and donuts.

  He actually had to talk to her parents, to let them know she wasn't secretly planning to run out and do drugs or have "the sex" with strange men in a parking lot.

  "No, it's a real emergency. Her newly reformed Uncle will be here, as well as many responsible adults. I promise she won't have any fun at a
ll." That convinced them well enough that they offered to drive her there. It meant they wanted to check things out for themselves, but that seemed reasonable to him. What did real parents do most of the time anyway? His had sold him to a Greater Demon, which hadn't gone well for Zack at all. It was why he was so broken, most likely, not that he could remember it. From the sound of it, that was a blessing.

  The Mall was always a bit more busy at night than during the day, at least the few times that he'd been there to see it, working nine to nine. Tonight it started to actually buzz a little, with people running past the store occasionally. Most of them looked vaguely familiar, but some were new to him. Like the strange fishlike man that stopped at the window and looked in. He was really more like the creature from the black lagoon than anything, but had on pants, a loose shirt and shoes. He didn't pop in to visit, just walking deeper into the Mall, where most the shops were.

  The phone calls started coming then, with people sounding a bit stressed, but not panicked.

  "War? Not yet. Everyone is on this though. Keep your head down for now and make sure that your doors are locked and you have wards up, if you can." He basically just repeated that same phrase, with minor variations until Bob Millhouse and a very pale and thin woman came in. She looked like she was still recovering from being mostly dead, so he figured that she was Evelyn, Bob's wife. Just as they got to the counter the phone rang, so he gave his little speech again.

  When he hung up the Ambassador, who looked to be in his thirties, but was likely much older, nodded. He was a trim white man, but Vancouver had a lot of those, so he blended nicely.

  "Excellent. Don't create fear, but get people to take precautions. Zack, this is my wife, Evelyn." He didn't go into the whole thing deeply, since it was an emergency. The phone rang again and Bob headed to the back to do something.

  This time the man on the line sounded cold and professional. That was a change from partly panicked and angsty, so it really caught Zack's attention.

  "Eric Weise here. Is Lisa in at the moment?" He didn't add the rest of what he was thinking, but it was clear in his voice. Was she there, or off having sex with some woman. The guy was such a jerk on the topic that Zack kind of wished he could imply she was off sucking some guy off, but couldn't say the words, and for once MH didn't do it for him.

  "She's incoming. If you leave a number, I'll see if she can call directly."

  "She has it. I'm at the office and will be all night. Thank you." Then he hung up, which was the treat of the night, it seemed. No one was being overly polite.

  Crises or not, Lisa didn't get there until the intern and her parents were walking in, even given that she lived closer. Of course she'd actually brought things with her, and carried a big bundle of bedding and a bag awkwardly.

  "Bob's in the back, and your father wants you to call him at his office."

  Jen's parents stood around awkwardly and didn't say much, since it was clearly a real emergency, and not some highschooler's trick to get out of the house to go clubbing. She was called to the back, where Bob had a folding table out with some chairs, along with several phones. That meant Zack had to learn to transfer calls, he thought, but was wrong. The ladies in the back took over, and he was supposed to run the front, not answer the phone at all.

  Forty minutes after the call went out Hiram came in through the front, his gait rolling and his face smiling a bit, content with how things were going for him, it seemed. He was put on phone duty as well, so that he could yell at anyone that got too mouthy with the others. That meant that Zack was just standing around after a while.

  Shrugging he poked his head in the back.

  "So, coffee run. Does anyone need anything else? Food or..." He had no clue what those things might be, but Evelyn nodded.

  "Tea? I'm not that picky, but it helps a bit."

  Jennifer looked over at her parents, but smiled at Zack and winked.

  "We could use some quartz crystals, with the best purity you can find, silver and gold wire, rubies if you have them and other precious metals, for trade. Then you should go around and see if anyone else in the Mall wants anything, so that they get the idea we're working together, which might help. It worked at the model U.N. in school." She went to a local one of those, not a special one at all, which meant she had to find most of her skills where she could and given that her parents were basically normal people, lacking a lot of talent that way, she'd gotten them mainly from her Uncle. It meant she wasn't great at healing, but could probably take down a master level Mage's Wards with a blindfold on.

  It was a thief's skill.

  Bob had popped his head out of the office, then hurried back in, made some noise, and came back with a full box of supplies, which he handed to her directly.

  "Your plan, Miss Stone?"

  She froze, probably wondering why the Ambassador even knew her name, much less why he was asking for her ideas, but she took a breath and rushed into it.

  "We should go and ward anyone that wants it. Everyone loves Zack, so he should really go and see if anyone needs anything. I don't know how involved we are in this, but..."

  The boss smiled at her and winked at them all. It was catching and seemed fake and forced, like that kind of thing always did.

  "Not bad. Would you gentlemen be willing to give it a try? We might be rebuffed, but Jennifer has a real point. War is bad for everyone, in the main. If we can do anything at all to stop it from happening, we should."

  Zack just stood up, and Hiram, looking at him like it was all a trick, narrowed his eyes a bit.

  "That might not be such a great plan. Not everyone loves me so much."

  Nodding at the Mage, Zack thought for a few seconds before speaking.

  "If you don't reach out to them, they never will. It won't work with some people, but it's something to do." Then he walked out, leaving Hiram to carry the box, since it looked heavy. He headed directly over to Yoghurt World, to find Barb behind the counter, staring at them like they might actually ask her to make something for them.

  "Hi Barb. Free wards if you want them? We're making the rounds, but it would be a good idea for you to do it. It will remind people that we're working together."

  Those words had all the Vampires, and there were more of them now, about ten in all, including Cormack and Edom, so at least some he knew, pouring out of the back almost instantly. Vaughn blinked a half dozen times and smiled at Zack when he saw them.

  "Mr. Hartley. Am I to understand that the Mages are throwing in with us? That's good news indeed."

  Hiram nodded, as if it was the plan, but Zack couldn't do that kind of thing, no matter how much easier it would make the moment.

  "We're trying to get everyone pulling together. This was an act of terrorism, and some people will blame you for it, but that isn't right. You didn't do it, and punishing innocent people for this is going to just make things worse. So first step, we get you an early warning system. Then I go and try to talk to anyone that will listen here, so they can pass word back to their own people."

  It was what he was thinking anyway and while not a promise of total support, it was better than kicking them just because everyone else was doing it.

  The Vampire clapped Hiram on the shoulder and they let him do the work, smiling and pretending they trusted him, and that it wasn't about setting up some way to spy on them. It wasn't, but that would also be a good plan. After all, that's what they were doing there, wasn't it? Listening in to all the Mage business? They didn't even need bugs, just ears. Their sensitive and dedicated Vampire ones.

  It took about half an hour, but thankfully for Hiram only a few other places thought they needed that kind of thing. They mainly just went from shop to store, asking if the crews needed anything at all. That was mainly food and drinks, coffee or in one case, for the people in the sword and knife shop, a live animal. They said anything would do, if it had plenty of meat on it. It was less than perfectly fun, but at about three in the morning he managed to get them a wild pi
g. That took a large box, Hiram doing the actual hunting, and some help to move from Barb, but it seemed like it was a huge deal to the three that received it. They thanked them all, and kept smiling at least. Hopefully it wasn't how they signaled death threats.

  The Trolleinkein needed food, and a lot of it, being awakened at night, since for them it was eat or hibernate, and they needed to be alert. At least they were sensible enough to agree that the whole thing likely wasn't an attack by all Vampires on all people, but past that they didn't know what was going on. During the day they normally ate at the food court, but at night, or if they needed too much food, they had to make other arrangements for themselves. The problem was really just one of funding. They didn't use money where they came from, and had to actually earn what they used to run the embassy. Each of the giant men and women got a per diem, essentially, but they couldn't afford extras like this.

  It took a bit to figure out that they could eat almost anything humans could and that, while proud, they weren't stupid about it.

  He did two things. The first was first calling Bob and asking if he'd set up an account for them, so that the Guild would cover their food for the time being. It was such an odd request that he expected to be lectured, or simply told no, but the man put him on hold and got in touch with them a few moments later.

  "I set it up. It's active right now and the food court is expecting a call."

  "Thanks. That was easier than I thought it would be."

  Then he called Lenore, who was busy and had to talk to Vaughn instead. It worked though.

  "Hey, well, you said you owed me right?"

  There was a pause, and the man took his time in answering. It seemed like a habit of his. About ten seconds too late, he answered in an even voice.

  "Yes, what do you require?"

  Zack knew they wouldn't have a problem with it, but it sounded a bit strange, even in his head, so it was his turn to take a moment and blush a little.