On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3)

by P. S. Power

  Not knowing what else to say Kate bowed back and looked the Vampire in the eye as she spoke.

  “Please convey our sincere thanks for this aid in time of need. We don't know if the man needs to be killed or not yet, so if he can indeed be brought in alive, that would be best. As it is, even if your people do manage to save his life, I'm not absolutely certain that all of ours have gotten the word not to kill him yet. It's a new organization problem. We don't know who is supposed to really do what yet. For right now I'm just focusing on taking care of Don and his family. The rest will work itself out.” She touched his arm lightly, indicating a shift in subject matter.

  “You're coming to the party tomorrow though, right? It will be good to have as many friendly faces there as possible.” Her right hand stroked his left arm, even though he couldn't feel it as more than pressure, she could tell.

  He told them that he wouldn't miss it and had already arranged for a flight later that day from home. Since he planned to bring guests. He had to go back that night, but this party was the most important thing on his schedule for the next day. Kate liked hearing that, because it meant he was at least willing to pretend that they were all an actual thing already. That, or he really liked to party, which was also an acceptable answer.

  After making sure he didn't have anything else he needed to do and checking the node carefully, she dropped him back through quickly, so that he could shield her with his body if it came up. The room looked a mess, from where holes had been punched in the walls, but she didn't linger to find out how much damage had been done.

  She called Don again and suggested that he come back and get some people from there to sit with his mother and Chris, or even bring them back to Zack's for the evening. Don didn't want to lose the evidence of the beating, which sounded worse than she'd been originally told, once he recounted the story away from his mom, but he still obviously didn't have the whole tale yet.

  “Screw that Don. You've got a bunch of Vampires looking for your dad and all of them are going to be plenty happy to do whatever you want or the court decides. Real court, you know, ours. The hard part is going to be keeping him alive if that's what you want. I wish Zack were back already... and Claire. Then I could just come and get you all. Or stay there with you. I feel like we're just leaving you there all alone right now.”

  This got a soft snort over the phone, “Right, there's half a dozen people here standing guard. They're not even being covert about it. One's literally standing in front of Chris's door and keeps following the nurses in when they go to check on him. I told my mom that one of my friend's mother is an Ambassador, and that these people are here because she sent them, but I don't think that's going to hold out for very long. She's trying to sleep now, but I need to have something better by the time she wakes up.”

  Kate sat in a hard metal chair, just waiting for a while, focused and ready, but not actually doing anything, since there didn't seem to be a lot to do at the moment that would actually help. At a few minutes past midnight, Zack, Claire and Libby ran out of the back of Something Wonderful, calling her name. She'd been sitting in the food court with Merri and Xan. Hawk hovering about five feet from her, watching everything as carefully as he could manage. When the trio ran up he moved in front of Kate again, ready to fight these people if they were attackers. Xan raised a hand and actually called for them to halt.

  “Friends!” The copper haired Alfric, tall for their people, called to them his hand raised palm out. “Please move slowly. There have been two attacks already this day, and young Hawk stands to protect your Kate, but I do not believe he's had time to learn that you are all friends yet?”

  Claire stopped and looked at Hawk questioningly, “He knows me though. What's the situation?” This she spoke softly, almost below Human hearing, Kate got it, but the Alfric and Zack probably didn't.

  “The first attack was on the younger brother of Donald the other Line-Walker. The second came as I guarded Kate when we went to pick up Vaun in Houston. He's fine and so are we, three of them are dead, the last being questioned.” This came out without inflection, fast enough that it seemed almost hard to understand even when she focused on it. Claire seemed to get it all though.

  It took a few minutes to fill them all in and then get Zack to find Don and take them all there. Hilda and Troy insisted on going, along with Claire, Libby and Hawk, who related how he'd promised Kate that he'd beat up this man that hurt the child, if she decided she wanted him to.

  “Beat, or kill?” Claire asked him quietly.

  The boy gave a slow smile that almost didn't count as one in Kate's book.

  “Oh, I specifically said beat. I know that you don't want us killing people without good reason. I think this may be a good enough reason, but I was very careful about what I said.”

  Claire looked at Kate kind of coldly until the other girl realized she was checking the kid's story. What you promise someone exactly meant a lot more to Vampires than Alede, she'd realized a long time before, so of course Claire, his...boss? Master? Would check out what he'd said. She told them all that was precisely what he'd offered, and had left in the caveat of her will too, so she could pull him back that way if need be. Plus, he did save her life earlier and help directly capture one of the attackers, after coming up with the idea of being her body guard on his own.

  He shook his head, “Not exactly true, that incredibly good looking blonde girl said something that made me think of it, when she'd run over at first. Blaine? I think that might have been her name.”

  Zack thought for about ten seconds then took them all, holding hands first, to his house, their house now, then to Kate's now empty dorm room. From there he worked out where Don was, backed off from the hospital about a quarter mile into an abandoned building and built a new rift directly there. They had to walk, and it was cold, at least for Kate, but they managed it quickly enough she didn't freeze. In the hospital Kate just followed the line to where Don sat, dozing, next to a slightly older looking woman that must have been his mother, and a man that stood with military bearing, watching them approach with a hand underneath his jacket. He whispered softly to them, his voice holding no menace, but no warmth either.

  “Identify yourselves.”

  Claire stepped forward and listed off who they all were, from least important to most. She had to hesitate when she got to Libby and Hilda, but finally put Libby's name first, then continued without pause putting her own name before Kate's or Zack's. Zack made sense to her, but the idea that Claire would feel less important than Kate seemed new and a bit strange to her. She wondered for a moment if this kind of feeling would be what Zack always worried over. A sense that real importance held more weight when it came to other people.

  She tried to smile at the Vampire and look encouraging, which seemed to work. It could have been the names, or maybe the guy was just getting anxious for relief to come, since morning would arrive in a few short hours. Regardless he looked at Hilda and told her that she had the watch. Hilda just nodded and took his position, her hand going inside her own jacket. Something new she'd gotten to hide weapons in. Kate knew this because Hilda had asked for her and Blaine's input into the purchase.

  The Human woman, Don's mom looked at them, a little worried. Her mouth had the set of someone with long term stress, a spider web of lines, many vertical from either holding a cigarette in her mouth all the time or from a look of severe disapproval that she wore nearly constantly. Around her eyes deep lines scored her face, as well as grooves between her eyes. Kate knew she couldn't be even fifty yet, no older than her late forties, but she looked nearly sixty.

  Her hair had a bottle red-head look, probably to hide the premature gray, and her clothing looked respectable enough, but cheap. Kind of like what happened when a person with decent taste had to shop at Wal-Mart for the bulk of their clothing. A look that couldn't manage chic, or even class, being too generic, yet still told anyone paying attention that care had been taken in the selection, and even tho
ugh it took effort, the person did indeed have style.

  Kate smiled at her and put her right hand forward, standing in front of the woman, but keeping her distance, so the other woman had to lean forward slightly to shake with her. Her eyes opened fully when she saw that the very pretty girl that had walked up seemed to be there for a reason and wasn't just there to visit someone else.

  “Mrs. Karver? I'm Kate Swanson, we talked earlier on the phone?” Voice soft and gentle she waited for some sign of recognition or at least a sign that the woman hadn't fallen asleep with her eyes open, being that at the moment, she stared at Kate without blinking.

  It took about ten, maybe fifteen seconds, but the woman finally shook herself slightly and managed to talk, her voice sounding dreamy, as if slightly drugged or hypnotized by the events of the day. It gave the feeling that she already didn't really understand or believe what had happened, maybe she even thought she was dreaming and waited to wake up. Kate stored that fact away, because this woman could easily go over the edge right now if not handled well, at least it seemed that way to her.

  “The woman that called for Don on Chris's phone earlier?” This came out without particular inflection, sounding very lost and innocent, almost like it came from someone simple minded.

  The woman realized that Kate's hand still hovered in the space in front of her and shook it, a weak motion that barely touched finger tips, as if wanting to avoid contact with anyone else.

  They started talking to her slowly, asking what had happened, and getting a story that sounded almost word for word like the one Don had given Kate earlier, though the extremity of the beating sounded a lot less in her version. The woman, who gave her name as Marcia after having talked for several minutes, didn't have a clue what she should do now. She had to protect her boy, but she didn't have a job and didn't even know where to go for support. She shook her head, tears forming, but she didn't let herself sob or make a sound beyond slightly hoarse breathing.

  Looking around, Kate saw that Zack had gone into the closed room of the boy, glancing in for nearly two minutes, probably examining the situation or getting information from Chris's mind. Not wanting to interrupt, she waited for him to turn and come back then.

  “Kaitlyn... He needs to be healed. They have him in splints and have him heavily sedated, but there's some internal bleeding still. Also, he's missing about half his upper teeth and a few lower on the left side. I don't think this was a spanking gone wrong at all, someone tried to kill him. I got the reason... We should wake Don up for this.”

  Kate shook her friend softly, until he jumped, a single overhand blow aimed at her, which she stopped easily and held in place so that he wouldn't think he was really under attack. He leaped to his feet when he saw her, holding her for a minute, then gave a similar hug to Claire. Hilda nodded to him professionally, keeping her senses alert for attack and mind on the job at hand. Zack walked over and clapped him on the back, recommending that they get some coffee for the people that drank it before they went over what had actually happened.

  Don showed them where a pot of coffee sat on a small table with pink and blue packets of artificial sweetener, sugar and fake creamer that made Kate glad she'd learned to drink the stuff black if she needed to. They got four cups, dingy Styrofoam that looked suspiciously dirty to her, but came from a stack that claimed to be clean. She filled them with the bitter smelling brew and they brought back flavorings and sweeteners for everyone else.

  Zack, Marcia and Don took the other three cups, leaving her one, which she sipped at, glad for something to do, but having to fight shuddering a little with each swallow. Maybe later, as a pet project, she could have this hospital set up with decent coffee. A massive coffee of the month plan? Before she left she decided to make a pass by the coffee machine again to see what brand of coffee this was, so she could boycott it from this point on. None of this came out loud, since Zack had started to speak, telling them what had really happened, if in brief and leaving out most of the details to spare Chris's family members.

  The story sounded simple, even if a little tragic in its stupidity to Kate. Chris had gone to the library about two weeks before, to get information for a paper on World War II reconstruction. Then he went home. All this a normal enough thing for him, since he tried to keep his grades up, not being into sports or video games. It gave him something to be proud of.

  When he got home, his dad started calling him a fag and screaming at him, something about having been with some guy behind some shops as he'd driven past. He tried to tell the man clearly where he'd been and even showed him the nearly finished paper as proof, but in the classic line of bullies everywhere, instead of accepting proof for what it was or the word of his own son, he accused the boy of calling him a liar.

  A few days after that, Roger, the dad, had confronted some boys that he thought were the ones he'd seen behind the shops before, hanging around and accused them of being gay, and told them to stay away from his kid.

  Zack shook his head and rubbed at his face then.

  “That was brilliant of course, since it meant that Chris would be targeted for harassment then, being tripped in the hall, called names and that kind of thing. The kids, while offended by Roger, didn't go as far as to attack the boy though, not past a few pushes and harsh words. Really, pretty decent restraint all things considered. Annoying, but it could have been a lot worse there.”

  Then the day before, the kids had found out where Roger lived and retaliated against the man directly, by throwing rocks through the large, fairly costly, front windows.

  “Roger flipped and accused the boy of setting it up with his little butt buddies. About that time, Chris seemed to have had enough of this and told Roger to go fuck himself and stop lying about him. That started the fight, if a full grown man beating a fourteen year old with various objects is a fight. Chris wouldn't admit he was gay and Roger wouldn't stop beating him till he did. He figured he was dead near the end there...”

  Then Zack stopped talking and looked at Marcia, waiting for her to finish the tale. She told them how she knew she couldn't stop Roger, he'd just hit her too, in a mood like that, so she'd gotten her neighbor, an older man, who called the police and then came over and confronted her husband, fought him for the piece of wood he'd been hitting Chris with and kept him from killing the boy.

  “Mr. Cooper saved him. Roger wasn't going to stop, I could see it in his eyes. It was like he wasn't even inside any more. I thought he was going to kill us all. He'd said things like that before, that if he ever went, he'd take us all with him. I wrote it off as him just blowing off steam, but this time, he just... went.”

  Don hugged the woman and looked at Kate, not knowing what else to do. She got up and patted him on the shoulder, then went in to see Chris, who laid in bed, his eyes open, if blurry, one of them, the left, swollen shut, the other had blood in it, even in the dim light of the room. He had his own room, because of his condition, so at least she didn't have to deal with a roommate.

  He looked at her and smiled, which looked like it hurt, though he didn't wince.

  “Hello.” He said simply.

  She smiled and walked closer to him slowly, “Hi Chris. We talked earlier, but you may not remember it, you sounded pretty out of it at the time. I'm Kate, a friend of Don's. I'm going to do some things to you, it won't hurt, but it will make you feel better, then we can all get out of here. Does that sound all right to you?”

  He made a strange sound that she recognized after a few seconds as laughter, “Right. Just like my brother, waiting till I'm beaten up and drugged to hook me up with a babe. Well, I won't tell if you don't...” The slurring from him seemed worse when he spoke that many words all together, so she asked him not to for a bit.

  The simplest thing to do would be to transform him totally and then turn him back. She considered it for a bit, and looked out in the hallway, signaling the others to stop any nurses or doctors from coming in, if they could.

  The boy didn't str
uggle, clearly not thinking that this situation overlapped with reality. She turned him into a cute teen girl, brown hair with golden highlights that nature normally wouldn't have provided and clear blue eyes that reminded her of Britney, as well as a soft face with perfect skin. She turned him back to himself, which not only had everything fixed, but left him without any drugs in his system. Or acne, which she'd have to remind him to thank her for later, his skin had looked a little rough there, under the bruising and lacerations.

  He sat up and stared at her.

  “I... don't hurt! Am I dead, then?” He asked this calmly, but seriously enough.

  Walking over to him she bent over and hugged him, so he could tell that he still lived. He melted into her embrace and stayed there for a while.

  “So, dead then. Well...crud. Died a virgin. Oh well. I don't suppose they have sex in heaven, do they?” He quipped.

  “You're not dead Chris. I just healed you. It's a talent of mine. I've come to get you and your mother away from here. Let me help you out of those splints. We don't really want to explain this to the nurse on duty, you know?” She got him free of the splints on his arms and helped him do the right leg, the left he managed himself. He didn't have any clothes in the room though.

  Wrapping a blanket around his shoulders, he got up and walked to the door, causing everyone to surge toward him, except Hilda who stood her ground, keeping watch. Don walked over and Marcia ran, grabbing the younger boy by the shoulders, then letting go, realizing that he could still be hurt. At least Kate suspected that as her motive. Her first move after that turned out to be chastising him for speaking back to his father.

  Hawk laughed out loud at the woman and told her that she might, just might, want to reconsider that as the first thing she said to the kid. She paused, gave him a hard look and hugged Chris.