Hell, In a Troy (Lopez Time Book 2)

by Phillip S. Power

  Interestingly, the ones at the very top paid in more than they did in the human system. There were no loop holes. If you tried to cheat and were caught, you died. Even the very powerful tended to just go along with that rule, since it was easier than fighting a war.

  When the amount was had, he wrote out the check, very carefully. With his left hand. That was harder than it normally would have been but the whole thing was legible, which he hadn’t figured it would be. Harriet took it from him, when it was passed over. Then she got up and left, coming back with a receipt a few moments later.

  Just as Molly came with his drink. It was a red bottle of blood. The presentation was done so smoothly, no one in the whole place even bothered to look over at him. He drank it right down, signaling for her to stay.

  “Thanks. Can I get the check, please?” It would be expensive, he didn’t doubt. The drinks went for five dollars apiece in stores. This was a bar, so there would be a markup, he didn’t doubt.

  Molly didn’t have to go away to get that for him, having the paperwork on her.

  The bill was pricy for two bottles of blood but he didn’t bat an eyelash, just getting twice that amount from his wallet.

  “Keep the extra. Now, I need to get out of here and see about some things. Renting a new place and all that.”

  No one suggested that they knew just the place for him or anything like that. They probably had ideas but didn’t want to end up with him as a tenant or even buying from them. Houses and apartments all came with problems and issues. Worse, you could never tell what the renter was going to be like. It was better to not go down that road, than to end up in constant contact with someone who was always a problem.

  As he drove away, Troy looked behind him. After all, if anyone was going to go for him, tracking him from the bar made more sense than doing it there. A fight would make a mess if Harriet was the one behind it. If she wasn’t, then Troy might end up having backup, from the other vampires. It wasn’t that likely, being new like he was, but it could happen.

  No one was behind him at all. Not even a smoking cloud with a fire in the middle of it, or an invisible sense of urgent hunger that could destroy him on a level below where he normally lived. If it took him unaware.

  He didn’t go to Darla’s though. She’d said he had a space there, which was kind of her but was also strange. They weren’t close, after all. He’d told her that in person, explaining why it wasn’t going to happen. Then she’d offered again, clearly suggesting that he’d get lucky, if he did it. That also wasn’t going to take place any time soon.

  Instead, he thought for a bit, then headed to the station. The Chief knew what was up, so that part was taken care of. Mainly, he needed a safe place to sit for a while, while he tried to work some things out. A place with blood he could buy. Hopefully not at a hundred percent markup.

  The perfect spot for that would be at Yoghurt World. He had friends there after all, and they had a nice and consistently well stocked cooler, filled with bloody goodness. The issue with that was, well Barb was there. Possibly.

  Which was only a problem because he actually missed her. It wasn’t about her being a bad person or anything. They just had a history. It was awkward. Especially since he was kind of sure, now, that breaking up hadn’t been the right move. Except, maybe it had been. Both, at the same time. He’d needed the distance between them, and space to get his head around.

  “Like she isn’t dating someone else already?” Probably Phillip Hart, if she was smart. The guy was great looking, not a vampire and had cool powers. Including being a better than average line walker.

  Most of the time, when a girl broke up with a guy, it was hard for him to find someone new. That was one guy who probably wouldn’t have to struggle that way too much. It was a bit sad, for Troy but Barbara was right there, and a catch.

  If not him, then one of a thousand other men in the area. Sighing, he went in to his office, locked up the paperwork he had, or started to, then shook his head.

  “Just do it. Don’t be a lame-o.”

  It took about forty minutes plus a bit for him to open a bridge to the back room, thousands of miles away. Stepping through, he let the links go, taking them down cleanly, just standing there for a bit. Finally, paper files in his left hand, he moved to the front. There, behind the counter, was a girl that he didn’t know at all.

  A vampire, clearly. She smiled at him, instead of attacking, which was probably a good sign that she wasn’t that hot headed. He would have at least jumped, if it were him.

  She had nice red hair, and very distinctive amber colored eyes. There was a very standard set of links though and her body language was subdued enough to show that she wasn’t very old. It was night out but being young didn't mean that much, if you were working around Eve Benson. She was good at getting people past that kind of thing.

  “Hello! Did you come in through the back door? I didn’t hear you come in.”

  She glanced at his hand but kept her face smooth enough.

  “Nah. I built a bridge in space from Arizona to here. I, um, managed to halfway lose a hand, so I was wondering if I could sit in the back and run a tab on some cow’s blood for a while? No one should be looking for me here or anything.” He felt slightly bad about coming, until the girl smiled.

  “A bridge? That one is new for me. I… I came over, about six months ago. I’m from Sparks. Ginger Harris did my training but I was doing well enough that she got me in here. I’m Crystal.” She seemed a little hesitant but was being very polite, considering she didn't know him at all.

  “Neat. I’m Troy. I didn’t know Ginger was training anyone. She did part of mine. I’m from here, though. Nice to meet you Crystal. A bridge. It’s just a name I made up. Kind of like one of the Line Walker’s shortcuts, except that I make them by folding space. Teleportation, I guess. Except that it takes nearly an hour to set up. On the cool side, I can hold them and go back and forth, so there’s that. I have a tab here? In the blue book. Under Lopez?”

  It didn’t take her long to find the right book, which meant she wasn’t that new to the shop. Just someone that he’d missed somehow. He would have been suspicious about it but that was honestly possible. A certain Troy had gone off and done his own thing for long enough that things had simply changed on him.

  The cute vampire girl, who was wearing the green and white apron like she should be, nodded.

  “Here we go. You get an employee discount? With this location number. I don’t…”

  He smiled then, and winked at her.

  “Line walker. I used to work here, though. Then went off to the police academy and took a job in Arizona. I haven’t been around for nearly two years now. I don’t know if I get a discount now. If I were you, I’d say no to that, for the blood. I’m getting the cheap stuff but if it’s a problem, you want to err on the side of caution. That or pay for it yourself but that might run a good bit.”

  It didn’t matter that much to him but she seemed worried about the idea.

  “Okay, I guess. I can warm that and bring it to you?”

  That was nice of her. He nodded.

  “I’ll be on the sofa, in the back? Um… I’m kind of not appetizing right now, you know? For the public?” He waved his still healing, rather gross looking, right hand a bit.

  That got a grimace.

  “True. At least for some of our patrons. It… Really, it’s a bit delicious smelling. Not too much, thankfully. I try not to eat the customers, you know?”

  He chuckled, even if it wasn’t a joke. He still had that kind of thing go on. It never actually went away, you simply learned not to let the hunger show.

  “I do know. Thanks, Crystal. I can call you that?”

  “I can call you Troy?”

  He nodded, walking to the back, talking as he went. Not projecting much, since she wouldn’t need him to.

  “Yup. Even if you are higher in the power structure right now than I am. I’m just a cop, after all. You work at an actual embas
sy. That’s impressive, doing that in your first six months. You must be good. Have you had the day walker training yet?” That might not be allowed.

  Troy had noticed that one himself. He’d gotten in easily but the Council actually controlled who was allowed to get in with Eve. It wasn’t that no one else could slap a vamp in the head and get them to stay up for a day. It was that only she managed to make it stick. Others had tried. It was considered a special talent that only she had. Which meant that the Council only put their own people in with her. Ones that they could count on as being on their side. For the time being. No one could tell what would happen in a hundred years, of course.

  The girl seemed funny for a bit but looked very pleased. It was adorable, to be honest. She was one pair of heavy glasses away from being the lead on a sci-fi channel program.

  “I just got in. I started last week, so… It’s hard. Have you…” That was a risky question to ask but he’d done it first. If he was very old, then he might either be a day walker the hard way, won over centuries of work, or might be jealous of her getting a foot up like she was.

  “A few years ago. It’s handy but it leaves you with a lot of time to get things done. On the good side, I don’t have to be dead all day. My place, my apartment building, just burned down. A djinn seems to have been sent after me. We managed to capture it, using a magical device but well…” He waved his hand but she was up front and couldn’t hear him do it.

  “That’s horrible. I… Can get you that blood?” She started working on it. The scent wafted up from the front after a minute, followed by her bringing a white ceramic mug for him to drink it from.

  “Let me know if you need anything else? I’m here all night. Eve said she’d be back at six.”

  Troy drank, draining the whole thing. This time there were the ten links he needed, so he traded them all out, one by one, then handed the cup back.

  “Thanks. I need to do some rapid healing now. Some other things, too.”

  That part would be fun but he had time to sit, so it wasn’t like there was a better situation coming, if he didn’t do it then.

  Chapter twelve

  Crystal, the yogurt girl, was adorable for a vampire.

  Quick to make sure he had blood but also faking a sunny disposition that was hard to do in the first years of being one of them. Troy was, he liked to think, better than average that way, and he really didn’t meet the standard the younger woman was putting forth as a model. It was just shy of being cloying but probably worked well with the human customers. When vampires came in, she toned it back a lot, however. Not nearly as much for Troy, he noticed.

  Only in a vague way however.

  That was down to him working on healing for the first half of the night. While trying to figure out how to either send more energy past his body with each breath, or work out how to store some of it within him. The first part, getting more energy movement, wasn’t happening. Not that day. After a while though, in fairly deep contemplative meditation, he did figure out something interesting.

  Magical energy could be stored in glass. Not just crystals with wire wrapped around them. Also, and it was a thing that he’d sort of known from health classes, about a decade and a half or more back, his bones were, in part, made of silica. That was a fancy term for glass, if ever he heard one.

  Just pushing energy at his bones didn’t do much, of course. If that was going to happen, then just being near enough of the right kind of flowing energy would have meant picking some of it up. That was all he did with the crystal battery that he’d made, really. Send energy into the stone structure, where it was picked up.

  To be honest about it, the glass in his bones did actually try to do that, it just wasn’t clicking very well for some reason. It meant having to make a change, internally, to get that done. It wasn’t fast, since he wanted a hand on the right side more than he needed to be a super capacitor for mystical forces. At least at the moment. Over the course of time, he was able to keep the healing going, while also making slow changes to the bones inside him. That was probably dangerous but he was hoping that making micro crystals wouldn’t hurt the strength of them too much.

  They felt just as strong, when he tested the idea mentally. If that meant anything at all.

  He knew when morning came, due to the burning of the pain orb overhead. He was sort of locked in place, having a goal in mind for the day. Two of them, actually. Making changes to his innate being, as well as making sure his hand was totally up to speed. He also had work, at nine in the morning, so needed to hurry things along.

  At six Eve came in. Through the node, just stepping through. Looking at him. More closely than was normal. She looked good, of course. A bit too lean for perfect beauty but symmetrical through the face. Her shirt didn’t hug her body, though he knew that what was under the heavy canvas looking thing was nice. Even as a human she probably could have gone into acting or even modeling, and made a decent living doing either one.

  Instead she’d not only chosen to die but become one of the biggest bad asses of the lower vampire ranks. In a hundred years, the young vampires would probably fear that The Snowflake would come for them, not just The Bey. It would take time for that kind of thing to spread.

  Holding the healing pattern, which was also changing and charging his skeleton with magical energy at the same time, he smiled.

  “Hey, Eve! I figured that you’d miss me, so came to visit you and mac on the new girl. She’s wonderful, by the way. Kept me in a steady supply of warm blood all night. There was a fire. A djinn? The Technician had a jar for it but it didn't want to go in smoothly. She invited me to crash at her place but… That one pretty much has to be a trap. Even if she doesn’t mean it that way right now.”

  There was instant comprehension. Actually, of things that he hadn’t said at all. It was more than a little bit eerie. Like she was reading his mind. Though that wasn’t one of her skills, as far as he knew.

  “Well, you can always stay with me and Ed. Or Bey, I bet. You lost the whole schmeer?”

  She looked at his singed and carbon blackened clothing and understood what that had to mean. If he had other clothing, he would have changed. Even if it was hard to do with his hand still partially crippled. That was coming back though. Fast enough that the other vampire stared at it for a bit, then grinned.

  “That is not at all bad work. The energy collection is sweet as well. I can borrow that trick, right? With the bones?”

  Troy thought for half a moment, since it meant she could see what was happening. That was impressive. Then, she was, as a rule.

  “It isn’t copywritten, so, yes? Do you have any tricks to increase energy flow? If I could do both, then I’d be set.”

  There was a slow lowering of her upper lids, and a sly look on her face. Then she suddenly changed, and relaxed.

  “Really, I have a few things. They aren’t perfect but you have a good steady flow going already. It’s light so far. The first trick is a bit of a cheat though. Add some magical energy to the flow. It’s like priming the pump. You use a little energy to get at more. Do it a bit at a time. If you go too strong with it, then you’ll take damage. Also, be careful if you put it through another vampire or an Alede. It works for both, to keep them going but you need to change the flavor of the energy for best effect. I was just blasting poor Kait with energy for about a year, before Zack took me aside and hit me with the learning paddle. It isn’t hard to alter the energy type like that. You lose some of it each time though. It’s like any magic though. Hold the concept of what you want. It’s basically how you make light or fire, already.”

  There was a lot in that, dumped on him all at one time. Carefully, splitting his focus yet again, he added a bit of harvested magical energy to the flow pattern, then increased his focus on the movement of the universe.

  Which promptly slammed him into the sofa he was sitting on. That collapsed under him, and he was nearly certain that his back broke in the process. His legs weren’t workin
g at the moment, anyway. Unlike the hand re-growing, there was an almost instant snapping sound, then a crackle, as he sort of uncrumpled.

  “Okay, you warned me. I sort of thought it would take a lot more than that. Let me see…” It took a few tries to get it right, and then he had to siphon off most of the energy into being stored and healing. It meant sitting there for a while, on the crumpled couch. A thing he was going to be buying a new one of, he didn't doubt. He could do a little with wood working but had no clue how to reupholster things. That was a skill that he needed to learn.

  When he had a handle on things, he spoke. Eve wasn’t there, hovering over him or anything. Crystal was though. She just stared at his right hand. It wasn’t even with hunger. No, it was more like awe. He kind of got that. It had been better than half gone when he’d started six or more hours before. Now it was a hand. One that looked a little anemic and small but nothing that would be noticeable on casual observation.

  That meant it was time to rearrange his working pattern a bit. He tried to keep the rapid healing, pain control and greater energy collection and flow. While dropping the parts of it that weren’t going to be as needed soon. Like a particular focus on his hands. The left one was fine, it seemed.

  “Oh… I have my checkbook with me. I need to pay for the sofa here. Could you call around and find a replacement? I’d rather pay a bit more and have everyone be happy with the choice, than less and be thought of as the cheap guy. If that’s all right, I mean. We can do it however you think best.”

  He could do it himself, of course but he sort of didn’t want to step on Crystal’s toes, if he could help it. Vancouver had, once, been his city. He still lived there, as in he had a house not too far away from the mall. Being gone for a year, slightly more than that now, meant that he really couldn’t claim it as his territory though.