Scales (Avery Rome Book 1)

by P. S. Power

  Edom frowned, shaking his head.

  “Avery is here, but she needs to get the Council to D.C. Vaughn’s offices there. I don’t know if that’s less important, given an attack right now.”

  He looked up, which got Avery to stand. More work was just a thing that happened at times. She called out, moving to the back.

  “I can go and move the Council members first? They’re driving to the Residence?” It wasn’t until after she spoke that she recalled that it was called the White House. She’d grown up in the states, off and on, but hadn’t been taught about things like that very often. Human affairs weren’t that important to The Gray, for some reason.

  Over the phone, she heard Bey, speaking up.

  “Wonderful! I shall have them stand by at once. Thank you, Miss Rome. I would complain as to our missing Vampires, but I know already that they seek to find the culprits here. It is not their part in this, but telling the Line Walker that he may not protect his friends won’t sail finely. I need to see to that? Five minutes?” The line went dead then.

  There was an order to the pickups, but all of the different Vampires were at node locations. A boy Vampire, who felt ancient, but looked to be about ten. A woman in a nice dress who was, interestingly also a man, being both at once and a large chalk white being with hundreds of sharp white teeth and blood red eyes. There were no blacks or whites to them. His hair was a creamy white as well. It was frightening to her, though Avery knew that her role in things meant she didn’t have time to be that way. Like in battle, you did what was needed to prevent failure. Feelings weren’t important to that.

  All of them were dressed up very nicely. Which made sense, if they were going to meet with a President.

  Avery wasn’t doing that part herself, thankfully. She was busy for one thing. Also, it had never been the plan for her to sit in that way. There were four people going, the three that were being brought in, along with the Ambassador for the United States. Vaughn. He seemed nice enough standing next to the node like he was. Normal looking. Like a dapper, if shaved, mature man.

  She needed to go rapidly, without pleasantries being seen to. Whatever was happening on the ground in Las Vegas was important sounding. Hopefully no one would be hurt, but that hadn’t been added in to her information yet.

  “Um… We need a fall back plan. For when you end up being ambushed? Really, I should stay for that, but… I don’t suppose anyone has a map? Of the city here?”

  The Vampire who worked there ran away, moving very fast, like Bey did at times. Not as quick, perhaps, but they were indoors, if underground. A few moments later he came back, holding a folded map out, listing off landmarks that Avery vaguely recognized from books. Helpfully there were several nodes marked out with hand drawn red stars. A pale finger tapped the location they needed to get to for the meeting.

  Interestingly, there was a star right there, inside the lines of the palace. The White House.

  Feeling the location directly, by looking through the node, it seemed to be above the ground, on the first floor of the place. Near the center.

  Avery tapped it, making sure everyone else could see what she was doing.

  “Fine, then. If anything happens inside, we meet here. If outside, when leaving… Head over to…” There were three choices, the whole city being incredibly rich with bent space for some reason. She had to nearly touch the cool hand to indicate what she wanted, but did it, since she probably wouldn’t taint anyone already dead with casual contact. “Here. Other than that, if you can’t get to either location, then run out of the city in different directions and I’ll try to find you. That won’t work as well, but…” She didn’t know what else to do.

  Interestingly Gene, the boy, smiled at her. No teeth were visible when he did it.

  “But it is not your duty to protect our lives. Indeed, that you make these plans shows a grand sense of duty. Hopefully we will be fine, meeting back here inside a few hours. Do you have a phone on you?”

  She didn’t, but the bone white man simply passed his over to her.

  “It has a decent service area. You’re off to Las Vegas now to see to that situation? We’d best allow you to leave quickly then. Be most careful, Miss.” The Vampire seemed to really mean it, but Gene giggled, like a child.

  “Always flirting with the ladies… You aren’t wrong however. The emergencies of life often come first. I urge you to caution and care as well.”

  With that Avery moved, walking into the node to her left. It was just traveling from one large tear and joining in space to another, so took very little effort to find. When Avery stepped through, instead of a bombed out clothing store, she found one that was very nicely presented at the moment. With armed men and women all over the place, even in the node space, which was clearly used for storage. Of trendy clothing, like many of the other embassies did.

  That meant she smiled as her hands were put up. She tried to look innocent.

  “Hello? I was told there was some kind of explosion here? It looks all right.”

  That got a snort from a rather lean and hard looking woman. She was in fatigues, but they were an ugly gray and black, with regular combat boots on her feet. Her hair was a rather unnatural blue shade, which would have looked fine on a woman of nineteen, but seemed off on one over thirty. That was in a long braid down her back.

  “Our cars. The fuckers blew up all of our POVs. Hit with an RPG. Rocket propelled grenade… Say, I couldn’t help but notice that you came through the node. We aren’t being raped or eaten, so are you the Vampire line walker? The Snowflake?”

  The others held their posts, but people were running around outside the store. Groups of people in boots. About fifty of them were moving at Human jogging speeds. She could pretty much see all of them as long as anyone was moving around. After a bit there was screaming. Yelling, which was faint to her ears, being higher pitched like it was. It sounded like they were claiming to be police.

  Then the phone rang, before Avery could process what was going on.

  The military looking woman tightened the grip on her rifle, searching the room, high up. That got Avery to do the same, seeing that there were indeed people crawling over them, above the ceiling. Planting something solid between the support beam.

  “They’re going to attack. Bombs first it looks like. Come on, through the node! Everyone…” They weren’t moving, so Avery growled at them. “Move! Now! We probably don’t have long.”

  Stuffing people through the tear in space, a bit roughly, she managed to get the seven working the store to Colorado. That meant tossing a few of them over the others, since they weren’t very good about getting out of the way quickly. It was messy, but on the last trip things started to blow up as Blue Braid Lady and Avery left. It wasn’t enough to cripple her, but her ears were left ringing when she was finally finished. It was hard to hear from the left part of her head. Also, the room smelled of burnt meat suddenly. Like pork, Avery thought. It was probably Human shaped Dragon scent. Slightly charred.

  The other woman, blue head, yelled, loudly.

  “They fucking blew up our store! We barely got out in time! Where are we?”

  That one was made clear when Lang Peterson ran in, holding a handgun, with the President directly behind her, carrying a rifle. It looked funny, given their nice clothing. No one pointed anything at them in return, picking up what was going on faster than Avery would have if she didn’t know the people involved, personally.

  Jahn moved over to her directly.

  “Ms. Rome?” He didn’t ask about anything, picking up that the room was filled with his own people, if nothing else.

  She explained anyway.

  “Bey mentioned that there had been an attack at the Las Vegas node. They were coming through the ceiling at us. I need to go back. There are others... Vampires and… Innocent people.”

  There was no way to get them all, but even saving a few was better than not trying. Even dying without being successful at all was better than th
at.

  She got a wave from the man, which she took to mean she was allowed to go and see about that kind of thing. Thankfully the other node spaces weren’t under attack yet. The Vampires were about to be, but she went to their place first, nearly dying as three women and a large, very muscular man came at her. Fairly slowly, for their kind. Just past a Human running hard.

  Avery held up her right hand.

  “Stop! I’m your escape. Urk.” She was tossed backward into the wall behind her, hard, by one of the women. They were about the same size and Avery could tell that she was probably stronger, by a lot. If she wanted to start fighting, instead of doing some sensible running away, Avery would probably win pretty easily.

  Thankfully they all stopped, seeing her annoyed look as she stood back up.

  “Like I was saying… I’m your trip out of here? They’re setting up above us… Hurry, to the node. Back here.”

  She pointed up, not explaining. It didn’t take much, since the big man came over first, looking more than a little panicked. He also seemed to be barely awake. None of them did, other than the woman that had tossed her around. She was doing better. That probably meant they were old, but not normally up during the day. That was how most Vampires were. They slept through the light, being awake in the dark times.

  It took picking them up, as they fought against the move on her part, struggling weakly but she managed to get them through the node quickly enough to start moving from place to place, before people could be attacked. Thankfully the folk doing that weren’t hitting everyone. Just the Shifters and Vampires so far. Even the Mages were being left out, though they were happy enough to be switched over to their Vancouver location when given the chance. Things were being attacked, so it made sense.

  Most of the beings wanted to leave, though that took doing some damage to the shops. Kicking holes in the walls, since most of the places didn’t have a node in them. That took work, which was what she was doing when the phone that she’d forgotten about rang at her.

  She slapped at her pocket at first, then grabbed it out, scrambling, while she kept kicking the wall down. There was a family of lizard like people following her, clutching their few belongings in cloth sacks. Pillow cases, it seemed.

  Before she could do more than turn the thing on, a voice started speaking to her. Screaming, loudly.

  “We need extraction! From the lobby. Now!” There was a sound that seemed to be shooting, as the cell phone cut out.

  Avery tightened her face.

  “Come on!” Without thinking about it she slammed through the wall, to get to the rift on the other side of the drywall. The others followed her at a run, even if they didn’t know what was going on. They might, or might not have heard the message she’d just gotten. She had to protect them first, since the place was crawling with running, armed and armored bodies now. Most of them holding rifles. She could feel the sound of their passing, even though it was confused and warped on the left side. That was due to hearing damage from the explosion earlier, she was willing to bet. Her face hurt, but she ignored that for the time being. It wasn’t bad enough damage to force her to change, so it wasn’t lethal.

  Not thinking about it, she dropped the strange people off at their own home, their leader going first, then moved directly to the White House. The scene there was very different than she expected. The bullets and explosions were all coming from outside and no one else was there with her pick up. She kind of thought that the President would be trying to kill them himself, for some reason. The man was Human, after all. They were good at clever ruses and tricks.

  That didn’t seem to be the case at the moment.

  Luckily there were only four of them and the building was stronger than it looked, not letting in any bullets that she could see. Not even the big windows did, until a rocket hit one with a shattering crash. The entire place moved, just a bit, under the sound of the blast. That got her to hurry faster, taking everyone with her back to Vancouver, kind of tossing them through the node, since to her mind that was where Vampires went. When you were storing them for later, or didn’t have any place else for them, you dumped them there. Like the odds and ends box that her mother used to keep in their trailer. Sometimes useful things didn’t have a specific place, but you didn’t want to dump them or toss them away.

  Which didn’t mean that the Vamps would love hearing she thought of them that way. The Shifters were kind of being treated the same way, except that to her mind those beings needed to be put away in the Colorado box. It was the other groups that were harder. That got fixed by placing each of them in their own spot, paying more attention to what they actually wanted.

  When they were in place, Avery reeled a bit, the room trying to jolt to the side again. There was no blast pressure but she had to step to the left in order to keep her feet. One of the Vampires with her, Marissa, grabbed her by the arm, preventing her from going down.

  The look on her face was tight, examining the side of Avery’s face closely.

  “You weren’t close enough to the explosions for this damage. You have burns… We need to find a hospital for you, immediately!”

  That was news to her, but Edom, coming into the room at a run, waved at the older Vampires.

  “She’s a Shifter. She needs to change… We have to get her out of here for that.”

  It was kind of clear that the others didn’t all understand what he meant, but Gene, the small boy looking Vampire opened the back door to the shop, checking outside before popping his head back in.

  “It’s clear. I’ve heard that Miss Rome is a Dragon? Is the parking area in the back large enough?”

  Avery nodded, which hurt a bit, but not all that much. Given what was going on as far as reactions, that probably meant third degree burns. Sniffing she did notice that she kind of reeked. Like burned meat. Talking was still possible though, not being all that wimpy or anything.

  “I can change into my secondary form. It’s smaller. Still, a bit big for in here. I…” She felt embarrassed, but looking down it was clear that her jeans were still viable. The nice top she had on wasn’t, being half gone on the left hand side. It meant her chest was showing there, which did have a lot of black on it, now that she paid attention. Skin charred to carbon.

  Edom helped her to the back of the building. Gene was the one that aided her in getting her clothing off, however. It was odd being touched by a boy like that. Even a young looking one. He was nothing except efficient about it, however, once he understood what her goal was. That meant she was naked a few minutes later, standing in an open parking lot, with half a dozen Humans looking on. None of them seemed to be coveting her flesh either.

  Then she let herself change, picking the shape she wanted. It was a relief, after a moment. Her body felt less cramped. Taller, stronger and free of pain. The change itself tickled a bit. Avery always thought of it like foam expanding as far as how it felt. It was silent, fast and perfect. The form she moved into looked down on the rest of the world, compared to normal Avery.

  The boy Vampire grinned up at her, the life energy he’d consumed was a brighter pink to her eyes now.

  “That’s rather impressive! This is the second form, you mentioned? Amazing. Everything is healed already as well.” Then the kid bowed to her. “Thank you, Miss Rome. Not everyone would go into a conflict zone to save those they’ve just met like that. Especially if already injured as you were. Your efforts will not be forgotten. Not by me.” His words seemed serious enough to be taken as being meant.

  Harland, the tall white one, moved in and touched her black scaled arm. She didn’t feel anything from the contact, being armored now. Avery made a point of not pulling away, even if the idea of a man touching her like that still felt inappropriate. She wasn’t working at the moment, so there was no need for it. She also wouldn’t look like food or wife material to the man, she was willing to bet, at the moment. Not unless he was far more open minded than most were.

  “I too, will not forget you
r efforts this day. Is there anything you need? Food? Weapons? To have someone contacted?”

  She nodded, since changing always left her feeling a bit peckish.

  “Foo’dwa?” The word was a hard one for her, but Edom ran off coming back with a large bucket of frozen yogurt. Just the plain kind that came out of the tap. It was the largest container that she’d seen of such a product. Ever. It wasn’t even a paper cup, but rather a metal pan, heaped with the stuff.

  Which was good, since that meant she had the ability, by being careful, of holding the thing without her talons totally destroying it instantly. They still did a lot of damage, which she felt bad about, leaving long scratches on the glittering metal. Even being careful she had to have purchase on it, or it would fall out of her big, slick scaled hands.

  Tilting her head back she drank the thick material for about two minutes. Unlike when she was in her Human form, there was no problem with brain-freeze for some reason. When she finished, most of the thing being empty, Edom took the metal back, running away. Going through the brown painted metal door to the inside. The other Vampires all stood there with her.

  After a bit she understood what was going on. She was their transportation out of the place. Vaughn had stayed inside, talking on the shop phone in the front. She understood that when he walked out to the back of the place, his voice cool and dry.

  “I’ve been in touch with Bey and the others. This was clearly an act of war on us by the Humans. It was suggested that we consider the fact that it was possibly also an attack on the President. He appears to be safe now, by the way. Removed via secret tunnel to a different location. Other than that we don’t know where the threat is coming from.” The dapper Vampire glanced at her, then shook his head slightly. “Can you travel in this form? Bey requested we meet him in Toronto, being that it is in a different country. We can hold here, I’m certain.”