Hell, In a Troy (Lopez Time Book 2)

by Phillip S. Power

  That was better than Troy had really figured would happen. It occurred to him that he didn’t really care about the job at all. Oh, doing well at the individual task but keeping it long term wasn’t a huge thing in his life for some reason. It probably meant he was the world’s worst cop. At least one of them.

  There had to be other people that kind of didn’t want the job they had. He smiled at the idea, which got the Chief to do it back. Neither of them probably seemed all that pleased to be there. Thinking about it, Troy realized that one of them didn’t have to be. He could walk away at any time. It would be admitting failure to do it too soon. That was all.

  They got to break up then. Once the men were cleared, with Leslie and Marks doing that part for them, rechecked by Troy, as if he had any real insight into the whole thing, they were able to let them all go. Before he left, Troy waved Morgan over.

  “Mr. Bauer. Not bad today. Have you been keeping up with Ty Gartner?” He nearly added who that was but they all knew. Even the Chief was up on that much. The man did things on television and radio, as it turned out. Even outside of his band stuff. When Roy Benson had time to watch that kind of thing, Troy didn’t know. Somewhere along the way, T.V. had fallen by the wayside in his own life. He had one and even paid for cable but turning it on didn’t happen most days. It was a mistake, he was starting to realize.

  People were starting to live on the computer but enough of them still watched the tube to make it worth doing. At least if he wanted to understand what they were getting up to. It was silly not to do that. At least if he had a choice still.

  The bat kid shrugged.

  “A couple of times. We all need to get together. Everyone that’s working on this and make sure we have it all planned out. Mr. Gartner said that. How we get that together, I don’t know. This Saturday? I have that off and school will be out next week. I go to battle camp in July.” He looked a bit goofy then. “That part is me whining about not getting a real break. That’s punishment for you, though. Plus, this beats being stranded, hands down. Calley said she’d been going to do that to me all summer and then ride me to do camp over the rest of my breaks for the year. That would suck. This is better. So far only one group of disgruntled villagers tried to slay me.”

  Troy felt a bit bad on that score but the boy actually looked alive and not that put out.

  “Then people got me away in time and it turned out that the people who were after me weren’t. Not on their own, anyway. That could be worse. Why would mages come after me? I mean, other than hating shifters? We all kind of expected those problems to come from the humans. Even then, only some of them. Most people are either good with us, or don’t care much.”

  Santos, who was still there, even if it was approaching the end of her shift, shook her head. Her hands went to her belt. Holding it, in a kind of power stance. It really did make her seem bigger, or at least more dangerous.

  “My understanding is that they were sending a message to all of us. You were just today’s news story. We need to make sure that isn’t wrong though. Have a car swing by your house a few times tonight?”

  That was given the green light, almost instantly. Then the Chief nodded, looking at Bauer directly.

  “Call if anything seems off at all. Also, I’ll free Saturday for the planning session. Are we holding that here?”

  The man didn't look away from the shifter kid, like he’d know the answer.

  Troy spoke then.

  “We might have to relocate, depending on what travel is available. That or do it over the phone. Conference calls are a thing. We should plan it for here. Just in case we need to look at potential picnic sites. At the station? Call it noon?”

  That seemed like as good of plan as any. Everyone else seemed to more or less agree. They all left about then. He and Tran going back to the station.

  His partner was driving. That meant her eyes were locked on the road as she spoke to him.

  “I shouldn’t have let those kids be there. My bad, as the kids say.”

  “About five years ago. Maybe ten.” Troy thought that was correct, anyway.

  “Sounds right. So, if we don’t end up leaving the force, we have to give up part of our hard-earned weekend to this thing? Hardly fair. I mean, sure, I don’t have a life. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t get one, if I had some free time.”

  There was truth to that.

  “I’ll keep that in mind, next time. This… that thing out there today. It’s a bit messed up. I need to see the video, if there is any. Not that it will mean much. Whoever did the spell casting had to be here though, didn’t they? If it was someone just shooting blind, they would have used random students, or tried for you and I. Maybe Santos, the obviously armed officer on the scene. Instead they hand-picked soldiers but had them arm up with sticks. That doesn’t feel right. If you have people with weapons knowledge, why not get people who could use it. Police, for instance. That would have made a much better threat.”

  There was a beat taken by the woman. Then, glancing at him quickly, she made a very tight face.

  “It’s really hard to know. We probably can’t, without more information. Psycho freaks are gonna psycho. It’s probably even worse if they have power. These folks seem to want more than their share, on top of everything. Tantalizing but also insane. All they had to do was take the time to work out how to get things done. If the mages can do almost anything, if they can get the power and have the time, then there’s no need to ruin things for everyone else to get what they want in life. Even that seems kind of easy. The power thing?” She wasn’t stressing any of the words at all. It all came out being bland.

  “It is?”

  “Sure. Think about it. All the mages keep pulling out crystals all the time. Charged with power. That takes time but they tend to lock them into doing a specific thing each time. That’s great, for a fight. I mean when you’re about to pee your pants, you don’t have time to chant what you want a hundred and seven times or however that gets done. But they could bank power that way and then just hook it up to whatever they wanted powered, right? Like super batteries? That way they could whip things out a lot faster, I bet. It makes sense to me anyway. That’s probably because I don’t understand parts of it.”

  Thinking about it, Troy didn't know if that was true for mages. The part about the hours of chanting to get things done sounded right. For them. That wasn’t how he was doing things at all. If he charged a crystal like that, if he could, then all he’d need in a pinch was the concept of what he wanted done. It probably wouldn’t work. For mages.

  He wasn’t one of those though.

  “Not knowing is the hard part. With most things. Anyway… Anything on the Denise train for the evening?”

  “Not really. I don’t even have a booty call on the line for a quick fuck. I was thinking I’d go home, veg for a while and then sleep away a third of my life. You?”

  “That. Without the sleep. When I waste my life, I have to know all about it. I kind of miss it. Sleep. It was a waste though. It’s just hard to keep all the time filled. Only, it isn’t really. That means I keep feeling like I do nothing but run all the time. No big thing. That’s the life of a baby vampire.” He was pretty young for his kind, after all.

  Enough so that a lot of the trouble he was having was down to that. Worrying about having too much time was idiotic, after all. You filled it. Then, bang, you didn't have a problem. He knew that one. There was even a lot to do.

  Like get some crystals and some silver wire. There was a shop in the area that sold it, if they were open. He should probably take them something. A casserole or some soup. They’d just lost loved ones. Then some asshat calls them out in their grief to handle police problems. It wasn’t what you were supposed to do with those in mourning.

  No. Even he, a vampire so new that it was a bit special for him to be able to consider the idea at all, understood that you were supposed to make their lives easier. Hence taking them food, so they wouldn’t forget to eat.


  Cooking wasn’t a skill of his, though. On the nice side, there were places in the world where you could pay other people to do that kind of thing for you. Generally, they were called restaurants. It lacked in the personal touch but so would taking a burned bowl of mac and cheese that no one could eat.

  Half of him expected a big production, complete with a dressing down when they got back to the station. After all, involving regular people had clearly been against the rules. Sure, it had probably saved innocent lives but the system was built to do one thing only. Stay the course. Asking it to change just because the situation did, wasn’t going to work in life. For anyone.

  So, he did the paperwork needed, going from memory. They had to do reports on anything that required an interaction with the public, in the main. He just included that there were several mages helping them, and named the ones that had done the work. Also, that he’d called some of them in, and that two were school students there, which was why they were on the scene.

  It took him about ten minutes to type it all up and then proof read it. That one had been talked about in the academy but almost no one really did it well. Then, real people had lives to get to, and limited energy to power themselves through the day. He just had to fight being too bored. Plus, he was decent at typing now. Vampire accuracy and reflexes meant that he could do somewhere around a hundred words per minute, without having to stop very often at all. The computer had spell checking on it, so he knew at least part of the time when he messed up. It wasn’t that hard.

  Tran finished about the same time he did, which meant they were both able to leave at five sharp that day.

  His partner smirked in his direction. She was skilled in that kind of thing. Nearly like a greater demon, actually. A lot of them smirked a lot, for some reason. Mainly Ann. Zack was actually more of a hapless grin type of guy.

  “See you in the a.m. Rookie. Hey… That should be your cool vampire name. The Rookie. I’ll have to shop it around.” There was teasing in the words but he’d heard worse ideas. Some of them from her.

  That one about the mage crystals wasn’t bad though. His biggest personal issue with magic was really in having enough power when he needed it. If he could make something like a battery and just carry it around with him, that could make a lot of it simpler. It wouldn’t be enough, of course. Ann had told him he needed to have a hundred times the power he did.

  By pushing, a lot, he was up to about six or seven times that level already. It wasn’t close to being enough. Mages did it though, all the time. There had to be a way. Just circulating more from the universe wasn’t working though. Not yet.

  He thought about that, as he walked to the Chief’s office and then tapped on the doorframe.

  The man looked up, and smiled. It was a bit wintery.

  “Yes?”

  He shrugged.

  “Eh. You know, if you need to yell at me for today, I might as well get it over with. Avoiding the punishments doesn’t really work. At least it never has for me.”

  There was a long look. It really was a bit withering but then he broke it with a sigh.

  “What were you supposed to do? If you charged in and fought those soldiers, they would have been injured. Possibly dead. If Santos had to face them, she would have been forced to shoot them. I love the girl but there really is a practical size limit for this kind of work. She’s so tiny. A hard worker and skilled but…” He shook his head. “The rules say we have to take anyone, if they can pass the tests. It’s how you got in, even if you don’t have a heartbeat. The difference is, if I have to send you into a bar room brawl, my worry will be in you hurting people too much. With Santos, I have to worry about her being killed.”

  Troy tilted his head.

  “Put her on with the Supernatural Division? She has a good head for that kind of thing, and really, any human we have with us will need to know better than to arm wrestle most things. She should have an aptitude that way.” He stopped then. “If there isn’t going to be my well-deserved dressing down, that is. I should have worked out something else. Like having everyone withdraw and just let them beat me until the mages got there.” There were flaws in that one.

  On the good side, his clothes would have been trashed anyway, if he’d managed it. Looking down he felt a flash of anger. It wasn’t a big one but it had been a nice suit. His, as well. The emotion was controllable, without even using real magic. Just holding the concept of being calm did the work.

  The Chief stared at him… Then oddly, nodded.

  “All right. We need a training class. Not just for Santos. I want everyone to be in on it, if we can schedule the time. Cover the main things they’ll be expected to know, and come up with an action plan for them. I’ll feel out Santos and see if she’ll go for that one. I mean, it isn’t exactly a step up in the world.”

  That was the truth. Still he shrugged.

  “It needs to be done though. I can put together a program. Tell her that she was requested. We can lie and say Tran did it. That way she won’t think it’s just because she and I know some of the same people. She’s solid. Of course, that means that Detective Tran’s clever plan to give her the credit for everything we do will have to be changed up. It’s kind of clear that we’re being far too effective so far. We need to keep a lower profile for the time being, or everyone is going to want vampire officers. Pick someone for that? Whoever you’re grooming right now.”

  That got a laugh.

  “I do have a few we can choose from. Still, don’t keep Maria out of the loop on that. Good thinking there. The human population in the area needs to know that we have people that can handle things without their hands being held by… Well, someone like you.”

  Troy smiled. A thing that he wanted to do, even if there was no emotion to go along with it internally.

  “Good. Thanks.” He looked back at the empty door then. “For not screaming at me? I’ll come up with some ways to handle things. Also, a class for everyone. When do I need that by?”

  The Chief tapped his empty desk.

  “As soon as possible? Call it a month. Let me know if you can do it sooner than that?”

  He’d been thinking the next day, so it was a lot more time to work than expected. Given that, he could even do some research on things. Also figure out how to get the half of officers that couldn’t get themselves to believe in anything like the supernatural to have the needed skill set, when they needed it.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good. I’ll set that up with Santos. See you tomorrow.”

  That was a dismissal if he’d ever heard one.

  Troy walked home after that, looking a bit like he’d been in a fight. One that he’d won, since he didn't have a mark on him. His face was clear at least. Two of his pockets were torn, and he had blood on his right pant leg. It wasn’t his, since he didn’t really bleed. Not unless he was hurt a whole lot more than that. It would come out as a black trickle, if it happened at all. Ichor. Like what zombies had going on. It was just a part of being dead.

  There was no body on his front porch that day. The door was closed, though it was clear that someone was moving around inside the place. Katherine, his neighbor, was still gone. Having been taken to Canada by her daughter, Krista Hall. Who had been Santos’s best friend in high school. That meant they should be able to work together well enough for the picnic. Unless she refused to work with the new division. That could happen.

  “After all, they have a vampire on the team. That has to be strange.” He said the words out loud, trying to get the person inside to turn around. They didn’t. Meaning it wasn’t a vampire. There was too much moving for that, anyway. As he got to the door though, the person shifted, probably to look at the door. Before that handle turned, a female voice called out.

  “Mr. Troy? It’s Avery Rome.”

  That was helpful of her to call out, since it meant he didn’t have to be half as ready to fight whoever it was. She could be lying of course, since Avery didn't h
ave any real need to break into his place like that, most days. He probably should have been mad about it but the truth was, he was either pretending to be her friend or not.

  So, he opened the door, smiling.

  “Avery! What a pleasant surprise. Have you come to stay for a few days? Or weeks. You’re always welcome, of course.” He’d need to get some food in but that was just a shopping trip.

  Avery looked at him, her eyes going wide. That was because she was examining the state of his clothing. He faked a sigh for her, so that she’d know he didn’t just dress that way all the time.

  “I was the target for a beating. The men had a mage spell on them to control their minds, so we had to subdue them carefully. I was the distraction. It was a bit hard on the clothing. The humans were left unharmed though, for the most part. I think one bit his lip. He’ll live.” Troy glanced at his leg, so that she’d get where the blood had come from.

  Oddly, she smiled then. She was in a nice pair of slacks and a red top that showed her shoulders but stayed up well enough, even if her smooth brown arms were bare. It looked good on her.

  “That isn’t a problem then. I can make you something new to replace it. I’m running out of people to give clothing to, and Bente, my mentor, is insisting I keep in practice. That and with my cooking.”

  He smiled then.

  “You can cook? I need some done, if you want to help. Grieving friends. Mages. Their… I guess adopted kid and one of their sisters died yesterday. I was going to take them something.”

  That got a nod.

  “I can do that. I was also asked to take you to Minnesota? Bey mentioned that the taxes from the area weren’t what were expected but would like to send someone less threatening to begin with to check on it. I have a letter for that? This way you won’t have to run the distance tonight. If we hurry we can probably be back in a few hours.” She reached into her pocket, and pulled what was just a piece of paper.

  Folded a few times, to show it wasn’t that important to anyone.

  Still, that seemed like what the Council might need him for, so he nodded.