Other Places 3: Detours

by P. S. Power

  "Did any of them live?"

  He nodded, and then waved them inside, "yes. We need to find the rest of them, but we have the leader and one of the bomb makers here. I..." He looked at Keeley and then Ann, ignoring the rest of them for a bit. "I think we should leave Festus here alive. Maybe let Keeley take him over and then make him offer himself to people in prison?"

  That didn't go over too well, since people were waking up, including the man himself.

  "Heathens! Devils!"

  Ann nodded at the man and moved in close, her face shining happily.

  "Closer... Keep going... Devils and..." She looked at him, and the man grimaced his head clearly having met with a solid object while Zack was out of the room. It didn't make him bleed, much. It was hidden by his hair too, so he was going to guess that it was either Richard or the floor that had done it. Gregor wouldn't have made a mess like that.

  Then again, he might be a little bit pissed that the religion he'd invented to control people was being used so poorly. If so, that was probably fair. No one wanted their work being taken over and claimed by evil people, did they?

  Festus, the bigot hate leader, made a face and turned a nifty color of red about then. In part, Zack figured it was that Ann was choking him, but it could have been his rage. It was hard to tell.

  "Come on... Devils and...." She led again, smiling, and then let the man go suddenly.

  "Fags! Devils and fags... sodomites, all of you!"

  Zack looked around the room then and finally settled on Darla.

  "Does a blowjob count as sodomy? Because I've done that. On purpose, I mean. Or does rape count? I mean, when people are doing you in prison, will that taint your soul, or just the rapists?" Normally that would have been a real philosophical debate, but he was just making conversation. The man on the ground didn't answer, but Keeley raised her right hand slightly, which was out of place and kind of cute.

  "I've never done anything like that. So, do I get into heaven? I even go to church regularly." She didn't mean it but the man finally spoke, shaking his head weakly.

  "Only the elect will be allowed behind the pearly gates. Only the elect! Only those that have followed my words and leadership are holy enough to be in the presence of God Almighty! Praise the Lord!" He seemed a bit desperate, but then he'd worked the bible around to allow himself and his family to eat human flesh, so he probably had to be.

  Keeley took him over, stealing his will after a few seconds, and then set to the others, only to find that Ann was helping. She killed the younger five and after a few moments brought them back, leaving them at least as under her control.

  Edom and Lenore looked on blankly, but Richard sighed.

  "I have some contacts. They'll confess to what they've done? All of it? As well as forget that we were here?"

  Zack didn't know for certain, but the two women agreed, and didn't even ask to be paid for their work. For his part, he waited, and then set things up, so that the family and their bomb would make it to Washington D.C. After all, if they confessed, no one would believe it, but if they did that, on television and then set off a small nuclear device, that would pretty much seal the deal in the minds of most.

  They were guilty, so it seemed fair to him.

  The rest of the family was still out, on their holy mission of death and slaughter of the infidel. They wouldn't take long for him to find. The trick would be making them all seem like they'd killed themselves. It didn't take long for the division of labor to be set, and it was decided, in the end, that he and Gregor would take care of that part, while Keeley and Ann handled the press portions with the Vampires.

  He had to get everyone into place, but it really didn't take long, and then they started hunting, since the others needed to die before the family's little event in D.C.

  Zack waved to his new partner for the day and smiled.

  "We can work from the Nexus at Westfield? I should be able to find them all from there, and spy on them. Then we'll take care of things?"

  "Excellent, Line Walker. Then I must see to fixing the damage done, as best I can. Radiation is such a problem. Humans never think long term though. Why bother, if you'll leave a mess for others, and not yourself?"

  Zack shrugged and opened a direct entry point into the node room of his shop. He made it glow again, going with faint purple.

  "Don't fight it, just want to be in the store. No... Don't add any power, I already took care of that." The man still struggled for a bit, but then seemed to trust him and stepped through, easily enough. It worked pretty well, he decided. The other Demon didn't even scream at him for making it an order.

  He came in right behind the man and then cleared his throat, gently.

  "Sorry, I'm not trying to snap. It's just that everyone always makes a big deal out of this, when it's really easy."

  "Which is why you are the Line Walker. I imagine that The Rotted would say the same about reanimating the dead, and that the Mistress of Souls baffles over how the rest of us fight and struggle to do what she does with but a thought. I have had long conversations with Tarsus about how simple it is to gather information from all sources, you know. Well, each to their own talent." He smiled, seeming peaceful and calm, but didn't bother to share what he, personally, found to be all that easy.

  Zack, being clever, didn't ask. It was probably in his memories, if he bothered to check. That library at least.

  Working fast, he located the two that still had bombs first, and simply killed them, outright. It lacked in elegance, but he simply made their heads explode with a single rapid punch each, using Bey's trick. It really wasn't just hitting them, naturally. You drove a fist inside their heads, and then, once inside, you rapidly opened your hand so fast that the pressure caused nothing but a shower of red mist and bone particles.

  Of course when Bey did it, he always managed to get out of the way of that part of things, which Zack didn't manage half as well. He had a fine coating of red all over his right hand side, and his clothing was probably ruined.

  Then, being careful, he wrote a note using pages from the bibles they had with them, and carefully tossed the bodies out of the windows of their hotel rooms. Each one just said, 'Bomb in hotel room.' Along with the room numbers. He was helpful that way.

  Gregor did the rest, probably thinking that Zack's idea of what looked like suicide was a bit warped, after that. At least he wasn't insisting that them being tossed out of a window counted as them jumping. The older Demon seemed to think he might, or at least kept acting as if he expected an argument.

  It still wasn't pretty, since they were forced to list their sins first, and write them down, in notes that begged forgiveness. Since, to a person, they had to put in things about munching people that they'd kidnapped from around the country, that had to be hard. Then they slashed their wrists.

  With a bit of help.

  Even not being the one doing it, Zack managed to find that he ended the day, or night now, it being about three in the morning when they finished, covered in blood. Gregor wasn't, his black outfit being free of anything like that at all.

  Maybe that was his ability? His special talent? If so, it was kind of cool.

  Standing in the back of the store again, the head of North America for their kind... bowed. Zack did it back, making sure he did it right.

  "Thank you, Line Walker. If the need arises, in the coming days, may I seek your assistance in this matter further?" There was a sly look to his eyes. A thing that was hard to trust.

  Zack hedged then.

  "If I deem it needed, and agree to what is being done of my own free will, then yes. I may insist on making a trade with you for something however. Right now... Actually, I should change and shower, then eat and go see about that shipment for Tarsus. Keeley said that you asked her to do it? Is it a trap, do you think?" That was blunt, but the other man didn't act hurt by the question.

  "I think so. Tarsus doesn't need aid in doing much at all. Technically he's set this up so that he ha
s a reason to engage The Mistress of Souls, rather than yourself. You are, I believe, just the end of the chain. What did you ask of her for the work?"

  Zack shrugged.

  "Some cash, a favor. Oh, and she has to start sleeping around. You should drop her a note, actually, since at least one of those people needs to be a Greater Demon."

  That got a chuckle.

  "I think I understand. She's younger than you are, after all, so don't think too harshly of her. What Tarsus was thinking, putting her forward at such a young age, for her testing... I really just believed that he wanted to kill her, at the time, but then he held his hand very carefully at the end. It probably means that he's at least part of the current problem we've been having. The less ordered of our kind have been too well disciplined for a while now. Working together and behaving themselves, nearly. To what end, I don't know."

  Zack didn't react at all, but that had the ring of truth to it, didn't it? Tarsus was one of the most powerful, and clearly close to the top in access to knowledge, if not the most informed being ever. Of course, that didn't mean much to him at the moment, he decided. It was sort of like the reason why he was trying to tolerate Xenses, even after the horrors that had been done to him at the being's hands.

  If the man had been, well, a man, Zack would have gotten a gun and shot him in the head, then buried the body somewhere. Even if it meant spending the rest of his life being some large inmates bitch, he would have done it. No questions asked, no defense even bothered being given.

  The thing was, if he tried that now, on his own or even with Darla and Keeley's help, he was simply dead. Worse, it wouldn't even impact the Demon at all. There wouldn't be regret, or hard feelings, just Xenses moving on to the next thing, not impacted at all.

  Tarsus naturally, was so far beyond that it wasn't humorous. If he was behind anything at all, even Zack being raped and tortured like he had been, the only thing he could do was grin and hope he didn't want a blowjob before he took a shower, after the painful anal. It was that simple. If he was going to be used from that quarter, it was just going to happen. Zack doubted he could even escape the creature by dying, if he was on the radar at all. So the best thing for him to do there was to not play the game. If possible.

  That shouldn't be too hard at least. Tarsus didn't seem to have any plans for him at all.

  Apparently it was Keeley on the menu, not him. If that held, at least. Of course, being that he was stupid and too good to survive, he needed to find a way to warn her, if she didn't already know. It really shouldn't be his job, but there it was, him with the information, and her not having it at all.

  That meant...

  Well, he'd need to guard his thoughts a lot better, for one thing. The little trick he was using, warping time to swallow what went on inside his mind needed several layers more just to be safe. Different things, with at least one of them being truly new, if he could manage it. Everything in the data he had, Tarsus would too.

  Probably a lot more.

  Then he'd have to find a way to get Keeley alone, and in a place so far away that even Tarsus would have problems finding them. Long enough to talk. Even if he wasn't believed. His job wasn't to convince her of anything, after all. Just let her know the score. Or, more accurately, his job was to sell books, and collect a power base.

  The thing there was that he wasn't sane, and this kind of thing showed it. No reasonable being would go against Tarsus, after all. Would they? Not just for some girl that was at best a bit creepy, and a tease. She got the power to change shape and the first thing she did was make herself into a woman so hot that she nearly didn't seem real? That was fine, if your goal was getting people into bed, like the Alede, but she was, as far as Zack could tell, still a virgin. Or at least she faked it pretty well.

  He thought as he walked to the node, stripping naked, very carefully, and then setting his soiled and bloody clothing on the bank of a river, very far away. It was near a waterfall, but that was too strong to use as a shower. Instead he made himself remember what it felt like to be warm and scrubbed for a long time, using handfuls of pebbles from the bottom of the river, with a little sand mixed in, to make certain he was clean.

  Then, he just waited to dry. Leaving the clothing, he went back home then, directly to his own bedroom, to find Lisa there, sleeping. Since waking up with a mildly damp naked man next to her would probably not help at the moment, he just dressed, in the dark, wearing casual clothing, because he had work to do, he didn't doubt. Lifting and toting. Carrying and shifting things around. So jeans, a light shirt that he thought was a plain blue, and running shoes.

  After that he spent an hour in the kitchen, making food and eating it, until he didn't want anymore. That took a lot, since without meaning to, he'd been burning through energy the whole time, suppressing the rage he felt. That and the fear. He was making his fifth round of waffles when Troy came in, his face a bit sad.

  Zack blinked. Right, massive terrorist attacks. He'd stopped thinking about it.

  "Zack... D.C. It was hit by a dirty nuke. An hour ago. I was at work, no one came in really, so... You know, we were just hanging out, really. Some of us don't have a lot of people, and you weren't around. Barb and I, Kevin... You know. The gang from work. It doesn't sound as bad, but yeah. Another bomb."

  Zack, being a nice person, on some level, he knew, pulled a clean plate out and put a round of waffles on it for his friend.

  "We should watch some television soon. There's a punch line here. Some of us, Edom, Lenore and some of my, um, relatives? Took care of things. The Terrorists?"

  It took a second, but Troy nodded.

  "You should have come and gotten us. We would have helped. Everyone would have." There was venom in the words, but it wasn't a thing that he would have ever doubted from Troy. Or Barb. Even Kevin the bouncer. They all would have handled things, if they could have.

  "I know. An oversight on my part. As it was poor Edom and Lenore ended up just standing there. Richard Swerlin went in with us too. Today should have some interesting confessions at least. I don't want to give it away, but I bet you'll love it, after a fashion."

  No one could love all that death, but there was something satisfying about people that claimed to be the holiest, being shown to be the worst imaginable. They always were, in the end, weren't they? It was probably due to the fact that people that pretended to religion had the most to hide to begin with. That wasn't to say that some just believed, but it was a system that was too easy to abuse, and, he suddenly understood, humanity, as a whole, was even more insane than he was.

  Religion without proof was just one sign of that.

  They wanted the comfort, but too many of them allowed that to become a reason to hate, or even despise, other people that were, in the end, no worse than they were.

  It didn't leave him any better off, so he just sat for a while, with his friend, and ate waffles. Then he needed to see to some things.

  A lot of them.

  Chapter sixteen

  It was tempting to just camp out on the sofa, the new one that had magically appeared one day a few weeks before, which was a tasteful burgundy color, if that was possible when there was that much of it, but he really had things to do. One of them was getting a no doubt exhausted Rowan and Roland from the store. Then he had to find someone to watch Lisa, and obviously, get off to see about making that delivery that he'd agreed to, for Keeley.

  It didn't take long, at least, and Lisa was ready to be gone from his house, which meant finding out where the needed retreat was, and signing her in before heading to the Hireesie lands to find out what it was that Tarsus wanted moved. It sounded simple enough, and was mainly just dotting t's and slashing i's, until he saw what he was supposed to get into place.

  It was his fault, of course, for being stupid and not finding out before hand. Anyone else would have checked that part out. Then again, no one in the world would have really expected to take four giant statues, each the size of a small house, from the
Hireesie lands to Greece. The bird people seemed excited to see him, and knew exactly why he was there, at least, since Tarsus, or an agent of his at any rate, a dwarf woman named Grettle, was standing by to help him with it.

  After a fashion.

  She, at least, was very sweet, and so really were the brightly colored bird people. They pretty much looked human, but had feathers instead of hair and big noses. Not so much so that they couldn't pass in Human lands, as long as they either covered their hair, or like Rebekah did, wore a shirt proclaiming they were the bird people. Then no one would believe it and probably leave them alone.

  The tiny and thick bodied woman clasped her hands in front of her stomach, her hair a blonde, mixed with gray or silver. It was hard enough to tell that the honest answer was probably a bit of both. Then she waved up at the statues.

  "These two will need to go in first, we have limited space on the grounds for them, so it will be hard to move them, if we do it wrong. Can you take two at once? I don't know if that's the best plan, but I was assured that wouldn't be a problem, for one such as you?" She sounded doubtful, but not in a mean way, just like she was pretty certain that if he dropped her statues, he'd end up minus a few parts himself.

  That made sense. Not that they were hers, but her people took their work a lot more seriously than Humans did. It was what made them a different species. At least that was what he thought the case was. She had a look about her eyes that fit for it. Rounder than was normal, at least where he was from. She was cute, regardless, and not old looking at all, with pretty green eyes. Also a dress that made her form underneath a thing to guess at, more rather than less.

  She caught him looking and nodded.

  "I'm not wed, if you're interested?"

  Zack nodded.

  "For sex at least, if that's a thing for your people? You're very attractive. Still, I'd better impress you with my ability to move things, if we're going to be talking like that. Don't you think? Me standing around for two days and then admitting that I have no clue as to what to do won't work at all." He ignored her then, even though she spoke, which was probably rude, but she didn't stab him, so hopefully he hadn't been all that mean, in the way he sounded.