Living Proof (Tyler G Book 2)

by P. S. Power

  Now it was being kind of plum colored in places. Bits of flesh that were puckered and pink showed underneath. The red was gone already however.

  Eve was right. Even blaming people for what they thought wasn't going to help anyone. The Christians would still do what they did, which would seem like hate to some people, and the feminists would do their thing. Which would also seem like hate.

  Anyone speaking out against them on the matter would probably be labeled a hater as well. It was, he decided, enough for him just to forgive and try to get along in the world. That, and dodge better.

  "It would be so cool to have super powers."

  Eve laughed, and rolled her eyes.

  "No doubt. But here we are, stuck with the tiny bits of things that we can actually do."

  The police officer that clearly wanted to bang Eve came over, asked for her phone number, which she gave him, and then did the same with Tyler, though that one was probably about the case, since he looked like crap at the moment. Then they were all allowed to leave. Eve carried the new keyboard for him, to the car. Then she looked at him closely, and smiled.

  "You should run home. Otherwise you'll make a mess in la auto. We can hose you off in the yard. Ginger, you can drive, right?"

  That got a funny look, and rolled eyes.

  "Of course I can. You taught me, as you know. I even have my license, Calley. I hardly ever crash anymore. Vampire senses and reflexes. Come on." They got the keyboard into the trunk, and closed it with a pat on the top from Eve.

  Then she turned to him.

  "I'll race you. Ready? Set... Go!"

  For all she claimed it was a race, they dashed along at speeds not too much faster than before. She moved ahead of him, and kept speeding up, but only enough to get him to try a little harder. It didn't take long for them to get back, but the car was already parked, and the other girls inside, when they got there.

  Eve looked at him and shook her head.

  "Pitiful. Barely thirty miles an hour. It's like you just have to be the turtle, from that story, isn't it? Well, news flash, in real life the rabbit always wins. You should get a car, given that. Maybe a van, so you can travel around and sleep in the back? Or, you know, do other things back there, since you don't have to waste time like most people anymore." She kept talking until they got inside, to find that Calley was naked again, and not herself at the moment. In fact, she was shorter, by at least a foot, had big pointy ears that were filled with very short fuzz, the same color as her own head hair normally was, and had turned nearly solid black underneath. Her nose was flat and wide, and in every way that counted, including wings, she was a Bat.

  It was impressive.

  For one thing it was clear that having changed meant her arm was all better. The bandage had been taken off first, and was lying on the ground, near her clothing. Her legs were short and awkward looking, but her eyes were a nice solid black color.

  Ty nodded at her.

  "Looking good! Give us a twirl?" He was teasing, since it was the kind of thing that might be said on a television show, but she did it, and then stretched her wings out, nearly touching the walls on either side of the room before drawing them back. That was nearly twenty feet, which was incredible really.

  He clapped a bit, as she started to stretch upward and shift back. Her skin lightened first, but the whole thing was silent, and seemed like clay being molded, rather than the painful cracking that some movies tried to present it as. Easy by comparison.

  It was fascinating, but also a lot faster than he would have thought. About a minute, maybe two, later, she was standing there, looking her normal size and color. The cool ears were gone too.

  She rubbed at her middle.

  "Okay, that's a secret. Most Shifters need at least an hour between full form changes like that. I need to eat now. I'm freaking starving."

  Ty jogged to the kitchen and started looking for something quick and easy to make. They had barbeque chips, so he put them in a bowl and set them out for Calley, who'd gotten into her sweats again, and settled on the sofa with the big green plastic bowl.

  Ty started back out, figuring she'd need a lot more than that. Then he stopped in the doorway.

  "So, it isn't enough to be a Bat Shifter, you're a super one? How unfair is that. All I can do is be shot."

  Ginger giggled at him, but got up to follow him into the other room.

  "Well, I hear that you can play music, too. That's nearly as neat. Let's make some grub for our girl, and then you can play for us? Or would that be too embarrassing?'

  That got him to stick out his tongue, which was quickly put into the Vampires mouth.

  When she broke off, he nodded.

  "Okay, I walked into that one. I can do that. Play for you. I need to start working on some new things anyway. It would be lame to go audition and have to play 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' don't you think?"

  Food had to come first though, he knew. Or guessed, to be more exact. Shape Shifting wasn't a thing he knew how to do, himself, so if Calley said it made her hungry, he was just going to have to go with that idea for now.

  They made pasta, with garlic bread, and a small salad. All of it was for Calley though, even if it smelled good. Then, before anyone mentioned it, he ran off to shower. It was the food that reminded him, since two of the people in the house probably thought he smelled a bit like cake at the moment.

  The amazing thing there was that he was totally healed, when he got out from under the hot water.

  For all his whining about not having a super power, that one had to count.

  Feeling pretty good about the whole being dead thing at the moment, he got dressed and then went to set his new keyboard up. That felt good, even with the rest of the evening having taken place.

  Like he was whole again.

  Chapter fourteen

  The rest of the night he played, and tried to write songs. He had a good start to three different pieces, but wanted to go into the meeting with more than that. New things that were the kind of stuff that would be played on the radio. He wanted to play with a few different sounds at the same time.

  The point wasn't to make himself look good however, or to push the boundaries of reality, but to be popular and make money. They were different things, and while he had to be good, it made sense to try and write songs that people would want to hear. That meant being close to what people were used to, while pushing their emotional buttons and calling to them at the same time.

  For him anyway. For all he knew that wasn't what anyone else would have in mind. The rest of the new band might want to try Celtic Rock or something, which was pretty and would showcase Rebekah well, but probably wouldn't sell.

  The girls all stayed with him, which was a little bit strange. Calley and Ginger lived there, and while the schedules hadn't matched up all the time that wasn't too unusual. That Eve remained didn't make a lot of sense. Not at first. It wasn't until he went off to work in the morning that he got it. She was his bodyguard.

  Because that was reasonable.

  Without asking if that was her real plan for the day, he nodded at her.

  "This way you can protect me against kidnappers, errant bad guys and politically challenged individuals? Or jump in the way of bullets, if little old ladies are going to be hit? Cause I'm pretty sure I don't need a bodyguard in particular. Not really." Looking down again, Ty indicated the fact that he wasn't all messed up, even after everything. The pristine and untouched dead.

  "Yep. That's the plan. Edom suggested it. I won't be around all day, having a real job. But until we can hide you, we need to keep someone around all the time. Honestly, we should get you out of the area. I was thinking that I'd talk to Zack and see if he'd lend us his summer camp. Except... There are kids there right now. I wouldn't want to bring people down on the little ones like that. So, someplace else?"

  That just got a shrug, and a head shake.

  "How much of this can we expect to keep happening now? I don't know for a fact,
but I don't think that that cult has many more members out and about. Not that are going to be willing to be beaten up by Vampires and go to prison for the honor of ruining my clothing. As for the feminists... I... I don't want to be mean, but I think that they really only took action because they figured they wouldn't get in trouble for it. Which kind of shows that they're wrong, in the end. Scared, but not of me, or even the police. My bet is that they aren't going to keep coming at me, or the Alede anymore. That wasn't the best plan to start with. You'd think they'd have figured out that all they have to do to take power is to start doing things, as long as they don't infringe on other people too much. No one is stopping them."

  They were still walking, and Eve was watching the world like she really expected a fight, even as they got to the door of the mall, which she held for him, being there first.

  Then she grimaced at him, and seemed upset.

  "You, Tyler G. are far too kind to women in general. I get it, because as a group we're pretty sweet, and smell nice, but it will end up with you being in trouble if you aren't careful. Possibly with someone else being dead. Not you or me, so I suppose there's that, but some innocent person that doesn't ignore bullets like a mildly inconvenient rain storm."

  They were very near where he'd been grabbed by the van full of women, but he still stopped and stared at the pretty Vampire for a bit. The sun was beating down, so after a few seconds, remembering that it had to be pure torture for her kind to take, he walked inside.

  "That... I'm too nice to women? How's that again? I just treat them like anyone else, don't I?"

  "Oh, sure. But when a woman was trying to beat down Valerie at Pretty Plus you just subdued her as peacefully as possible and then let her go with two weeks of camping. What would she have gotten if she'd been a man? My bet is that you would have at least beaten him until he couldn't move anymore. But not a woman. In fact I know it, because when a guy had a gun you did exactly that. He ended up in the hospital." She reached out and touched his arm. It was just to get him to stop, now that they were inside, and not flirtatious. "You keep cutting those feminists slack, too. Okay, they're an extremist bunch, and most women aren't like they are, but they planted bombs and tried to kidnap you. They got that guy to try and kill one of your Alede. What do you do though? Try to understand them, and see that they're just scared? Laudable, but too kind by far. Because they're women."

  That got him to blink. Not that it wasn't all true, but that he'd been treating men differently than that. The entire time, his whole life, he'd seen men as being the ones that were responsible for themselves and their own actions, but had acted like women needed to be handled with kid gloves. Okay, they demanded that kind of treatment, but that didn't make it right, did it? They weren't made of glass or anything all that fragile.

  "It isn't just me though, is it?"

  "Nope. Let me tell you, it was a giant shock to me when I started working at Yoghurt World. I mean, I started out being hard working, and pulling my weight, even when I was a Human, but I didn't get how much other people were doing for me before I got there. A portion of my work was done for me without ever even noticing it happening, and it always had been. I didn't get it until that privilege was taken away." She smiled, her white teeth showing just a tiny bit.

  Like he was supposed to understand what she meant without her saying any more about it. Tyler didn't though, and gave her what had to be a baffled look in return. To his mind she was just her. Wasn't that the same for everyone else?

  "I don't think I..."

  She sucked in a deep breath and looked miserable for a second.

  "Right. You know that Classic Vamps, like me, we don't have a sex drive in the main? A few do, but it's basically a special power when it happens. Like my speed? So I went to work at the Yoghurt World, and suddenly I was around all of these guys that didn't cut me any slack for being a pretty girl. Most places a girl that looks like me, or even an average one... We have men to do part of our work for us. Constantly. No one admits it, and I think most women don't even realize it happens, but it was a shock to the system when I noticed that I was expected to do what the men were, all the time. It seemed like I had to do twenty-five percent more right off the bat."

  Tyler shook his head, but didn't say it wasn't real.

  "I thought that women had to do twice as much to get the same results?"

  Eve laughed then, and started walking again. She didn't speak until they were in front of the bookstore. The front was opened up to the public, and Madeline worked behind the counter. She looked up and smiled at him, her eyes lingering on Eve for a bit.

  "You really think that? Who told you that? Oh, right, feminists. Ones that by and large don't even work for a living? The world, at least the Human one, is powered by the labor of men. We use them up, and grind them down. That's traditional though, and probably has some biology behind it. That isn't the problem. Most guys don't even blink about that, to be honest. The thing there is that women as a group have been told that they're just as good as men in all ways, without being forced to prove it. A lot of us are that good, but I've yet to meet a woman that did twice what a man did in any given situation. Doing as much normally gets them promoted over the guys."

  He shook his head then.

  "I don't know if that's right. Wouldn't it be kind of obvious if men were doing all of that work to cover for women?"

  There was a subtle move then, and a soft glance at Madeline.

  "It is. If you bother to see what's really going on. Like I said, it was a shock to me when it first hit. When none of the men around me were cutting me slack because they wanted to have sex with me. Even then, I think they kind of did. Help me out a little? Not that I'm not hard working. I am. It's a choice for me, that I made a long time ago. If you came in and tried to work like anyone else here, even like Kait, Zack would have fired your butt already. True, you pull the stops out, but no one thinks of that as special really, do they? Men are supposed to sacrifice everything for their job like that, so they don't even notice what you've been doing really. They will when you're gone, but then they'll probably blame you for taking off too soon."

  That got him to make a face.

  "So, you're saying that women are lazy and evil? That seems... A little over the top to me."

  "No. Not that. Like I said before, it's probably biological. It's just that men used to be honored for all they did. It was enough to be a good and hard working man. That got you a wife, kids, and a real shot at a happy life. Now that doesn't count for much. If you aren't a CEO, or a rock star, most women won't even see you. That, or the cutest guy around. You probably don't get that, since you've kind of been riding the whole star thing the whole time you've been here. Fighting Vampires and winning, getting in on that Coalition thing... Now becoming a real rock star, or at least doing bubblegum pop. That isn't normal. I mean, Ben kind of lucked out, since both Kait and I are different, but we aren't Human women." She sighed, and looked around, getting perhaps that a lot of people were listening to her.

  It was early still, but a Bat Shifter was going to practically be part of the conversation, and the Alede could hear things really well, too. Robert was right across the way, setting Pretty Plus up for the day. Passions. The sign said both, but no one called it that, even if it made a lot of sense given who ran the place.

  Ty didn't really get her point. While he could see that Ben, a slightly heavy, bearded and average looking guy that worked in a bookstore had sort of gotten lucky, dating the two hot women... Well, it really was odd. Even getting Ginger and Calley was special. For him to have scored one of them would have been a really big deal, he knew.

  Eve went on, taking a step back, to leave.

  "Not that it matters. You still have to work and slave away, to make the world work out right, and most women will still not be able to see all that you do. It's both the power and curse of being a man, I guess. The hardship though is that all that work doesn't really count to anyone anymore. Not unless you make it t
o the very top of the heap. Even then, if you ever lose your hold on things, you become nothing again, really fast."

  Then she left, not looking back. The Bat lady behind the counter saw him and wrinkled her nose cutely. She reminded him a lot of Calley. More than just the family resemblance of being her Aunt, too. It was probably that they were similar beings in a lot of ways.

  On the good side she didn't insist on keeping the same, rather awkward, conversation going. Instead she had rather normal things to say.

  "Hey, can you catch the side rooms for me? I haven't had a chance."

  "Sure, let me sign in first. We should do the whole place. Sweep and mop. Probably dust, too." He got to work, moving quickly.

  Madeline, rust haired and sort of average in appearance stood behind the front counter, watching him as he moved from one spot to the other. She wrote something, which reminded him that he needed to keep up with his notebook, himself. As he finished mopping, the yellow caution signs out, the woman, who was older than he was by over twenty years, folded the piece of paper, and held it out to him as he walked over.

  "Here you go, the secret to life."

  Unfolding the paper, which was yellow, and had been ripped from a legal pad, he saw what it said, and made a face.

  "Thanks for doing all my work for me." It took him a second to get that he had.

  The woman danced in place then.

  "And us Shifters aren't even bad that way. Then no Shifter man would have let me do that to him. It's something to keep in mind, for the future. You coddle your women a lot more than they need. It's made them weak, and dependent. That's your fault. Men, I mean. Not you in particular. Still, you should probably stop doing that, if you can. At least get something out of it, if nothing else."

  He didn't say anything, just going to straighten the front of the store. The Bat Shifter came along with him this time, having made her point, it seemed. In the end, it was like Eve had said. It probably didn't really matter, since he still had to be himself, and so did everyone else.