On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3)

by P. S. Power

  It took a while, but once he had them, they were able to confirm that his father did indeed have a brother. One they didn't adopt because he had already been taken in by a family named Karver when they'd been going through the process or they would have taken him in as well, of course. Both of the orphaned boys had been more than a little troubled after their parents died, under strange circumstances that no one ever quite had the guts to call murder.

  Kate raised an eyebrow thinking things through. Several things occurred to her at once, but Hilda voiced them out loud before anyone else could speak, as always just a few steps ahead of almost everyone.

  “Don and Chris are your cousins? Then it may be that not every Human that goes into the void will be able to be a Line-Walker still. All right. Is this a demon or an Arch-Demon do you think? And what do we do with him? Has he actually killed anyone that we know of, or has he just tried and failed to so far?”

  Zack didn't know and Kate shrugged.

  Don looked at them all but didn't speak, just shaking his head. It was Chris who answered for them all in the end.

  “He killed my father and took his place, then tried to kill me. Then tried to kill a bunch of my friends and my brother. Let's see... I'd have to say that's bad enough. How do we kill it? Merri told me Demons were really hard to kill.” He looked at Zack and then oddly Cavendish.

  Kate guessed that might make sense. The strange man was pretty good at killing things. Still, they knew for certain that Zack could do it.

  The whole thing seemed to take about an hour to her, but Zack told them it hadn't taken much time at all in the void, since it was just a regular Demon. Easy to kill in the nothingness between worlds, where they could survive, but not fight back. Unlike Arch-Demons which could and often took centuries to kill, if they were good fighters, and that provided they didn't escape.

  Libby whispered something to Don, but he shook his head and told the Bat woman that he didn't want to talk about it right then. She nodded, looking hurt, but backing off.

  Don shook his head and rolled his eyes at her.

  “Hey, silly! I said I didn't want to talk about it right now, I didn't say you should go away. Come here.” He held the thin woman close to him, wrapping her in his arms as if she were the one that had been hurt, not him.

  Cavendish yawned, “I need to get home soon, but does anyone have any idea who attacked that place, Lesser Shia? They looked the same as the ones that attacked here... I think the silver ones, the ones that looked like a cross between monkeys and dragons with a metal exo-skeleton? I think those were the young ones. The teens had a green tint to the scales and only the adults really could go invisible, and were the biggest. It could be different, but that's my guess. Anyone recognize them at all? If we have to fight a war, we need as much intelligence as we can get. So far we know that energy and energy weapons effect them, so we should make provisions for people to be outfitted with weapons that can actually do something to them, and we need some way of finding them that everyone can use. I don't really do tech stuff myself...”

  Hilda nodded and made notes.

  Betty, putting on her Secretary of State hat, addressed the room very officially.

  "This is bigger than one government. Especially a new one that has most of their people sitting in a single room at the moment. We need to get things set up, and work as a group. Anyone willing to go after Lesser Shia is probably willing to go after the rest of us too."

  Chris stood and asked Cavendish if he could stay awake for another couple hours.

  “Yes. Why?”

  Chris stood and gestured for him to follow, explaining on the way.

  “Lesser Shia is like the place to get the weapons and tech we need. It may even be why they attacked there like that. We need to get with the leader guy there, Hathe, and see if he can arrange for people to come up with and provide what we need. I want to take you along because it sounds like one of those things would kick my ass if I met it. So, you're about perfect for the job, you both know what we need and can keep me alive.” He grinned weakly at the man.

  Cavendish just followed him. He didn't even look at anyone else in the room. He just went, trusting that Chris knew what he was talking about, even if he did look fourteen.

  Kate stood and looked at everyone, all of them, Vampires, Alede, Humans and Were. Alfric, Trolleinkein and Mage. All part of her world now. A lot more than she ever dreamed she'd have listed as personal friends. There was even a Cavendish, whatever that was.

  She didn't know why they were being attacked, or if the attacks even had anything to do with them, but if someone was targeting them or their friends, they were in for a fight.

  She took a vote, a show of hands, of everyone present. The vote wasn't unanimous, in fact several people abstained, not knowing what they thought yet. One argued against it with all her heart, surprising everyone. That was Nikki, but the final vote stood. Twenty-one to one.

  The Nation of Line-Walkers, not even a month old, was going to war.