Between (Alternate Places Book 2)

by Power, P. S.

  “Ah, no, some...Old memories came up. I need to work on those right now, it seems. Nothing major.” He quickly told her.

  She looked at him strangely though.

  Leaving them to their girls' night, he laid down on his bed, left over from when he used to need sleep. Then with a deep breath, used to stall more than get the work done, focused his mind, moving inward, into the void within. Doing it until everything, almost everything at least, seemed still. It didn't take him long to realize that his issues with Patty and sex as a female didn't have anything to do with childhood trauma. It had to do with how he thought of himself. Now, as an adult.

  Since vaginal penetration couldn't work physically for him, being a guy, it stood to reason that when it had started to happen, his nervous system had determined it to be a threat, and caused him to panic.

  He focused on the idea intently for a while, rehearsing what he'd need to do next time in order to adapt. Within half an hour he felt certain that he could perform that way now. If not well, then at least enough to get the job done without lashing out at Patty.

  Claire came in after a while and sat by him on the bed. She didn't say anything, though she did lean over and kiss him gently for a while. Then a little more playfully.

  More than a bit turned on, he looked at her and screwed up his courage. It wasn't that he thought she'd say no, really, but it was still embarrassing to ask for things.

  "Um... Would you... give me a blowjob?" He wanted to wince at how weak he sounded to himself, practically begging like that. He had to ask though, since Claire, all Vampires really, didn't have a sex drive, and couldn't feel anything when they did stuff either. A bit of pressure, which was, he'd been assured, very fine and sensitive, but no pleasure. Or pain.

  Her look went playful, but she didn't pop her fangs like he expected. Instead she looked down, a little shyly.

  "I can do that. Here, let me get some lubricant." She left, to go to the bathroom, and came back so fast that Zack only knew it had all happened because the door had clicked.

  "I don't salivate, and since the only things that my mouth produces are analgesics and coagulants, we'll use this. Mineral oil." Her Shadow filled him in on the rest. She could make her mouth wet, on demand, but him going numb from it wouldn't exactly help promote her place in his life. Hence taking a swig of the oil she had first. It worked pretty well, and some men actually preferred it, her inner self assured him.

  Just as she lowered her hands to his belt to loosen it, he saw something fly into the room. Through the wall, which probably meant it wasn't really there.

  It was the Shadow of a bat, not just any bat, he realized, but Libby's Were form.

  Screaming in pain. It begged for help, pain rolling off of it, reflecting the pain that Libby must be in at the moment, he knew.

  Without thinking he jumped up and started running out the door. He yelled something, even though he didn't really know what he'd said, which caused Claire to follow after him as fast as he could move.

  Zack turned left outside the door and ran, half in a panic. He found a shortcut and reached back for Claire's hand, which she placed in his perfectly, her superior speed and reflexes making it simple for her to match him. He jumped and twisted in mid air, pulling her along with him to the other side, where they landed and kept moving at Zack's best speed.

  Being half moron, he realized, Zack focused for a bit, then pushed his internal energy out in front of him, forcing himself to move faster than was Humanly possible. Pushing the limits of what he could do this way and not die, he realized. If he pushed his energy forward more, he'd run faster, but getting it too far away from it meant his body would simply stop functioning and die. His feet blurred a little as they hit the road under them, shoes straining to hold together, being pushed near to the limits of what they could take, too.

  They did this again, twisting through a rift in the air, a few seconds later. In the distance they could see something burning and several men standing around it, kicking at the thing on fire. Claire let go of his hand, realizing what the burning thing must be seconds before he got it. She raced ahead using all of her speed, making her disappear as far as he could tell. He followed as rapidly as he could, pushing his energy forward until he felt it as a physical strain.

  When he got to them, Claire had the fire out and warded off a giant man that yelled something at her, saying that this wasn't her business and that she'd best move along. Zack got there, saw what lay on the ground and struck out at the closest man who stood ten feet away from him. Focusing his energy into a thick, solid black line, he extended his internal force, sending the man flying away from him, then slowly pulled his energy back, in a loop. This sent the big man in jeans and a leather jacket sprawling as if hit with a sledge hammer.

  Claire dealt with the second two while he hit the fourth, who'd charged him, with a smooth sweeping gesture that Master Dan had taught him. Using his right arm he swept it in a small circle to the outside until he contacted something, then he suddenly contracted his arm toward him with all his might, releasing all of this energy again in a straight line, hitting the man, who'd been pulled toward him, in the head, hard enough to stun, sending him to his knees.

  Then he kicked the man full force in the throat. As Master Dan had told him once, fair play mattered only when survival had been assured. Until then, cheat.

  All of the men, Weres he saw, lay on the ground, gasping for air, except one, that lay very still. Claire having hit him a little too hard it looked like, since the side of the man's skull appeared to have been caved in.

  They'd set Libby on fire. She lay unconscious next to them her Shadow self whimpering in pain, her breathing shallow and rapid.

  “Zack, we must get her to change now. If we wait until she recovers naturally, the damage may become permanent... Do you think you can wake her?” Her voice had become tentative, afraid of what his answer might be.

  “No. I don't think I can.” He told her honestly.

  Instead, he didn't try that at all. Wrapping her in his own Shadow self, he screamed at her on the deepest level, asking, begging, ordering her to change all at once not letting up until her bat woke enough to start the process. Then much like he did with the Alede to feed them, he circulated his qi even more strongly than normal, grabbing huge gulps of it from the world around him and pushing his life energy into the Bat girl, giving her strength. He didn't know if it would work at all. There was just no risk in trying.

  The amount of energy collected caused Claire to fall to the ground, writhing a bit, though he knew it wouldn't be in pain. Only a response to all the extra energy. Their link made it so that they shared things like that and some abilities all the time. Being alive fully, he produced a lot more life force than she did, for instance, and right now he gathered vast amounts of it from around him. Then stuffed it into Libby. Claire got a big jolt of it too, as a side effect.

  After a few minutes, Libby had become her bat self fully, and climbed out of the burnt clothing she'd been wearing, bits of burnt Human flesh sticking to the melted and scorched fabric. A few seconds later, still being fed energy by Zack, she turned back into her normal Human self.

  “Libby.” Zack looked at her, checking for wounds, using his Shadow senses, because it was too dark for him to see anything here otherwise. “Are you all right? Did you heal completely?”

  Reaching down with her hands, she checked her whole body for wounds. A very military sense came over her then, relying on her training to get her through the crisis, not understanding what had just happened yet fully. She turned around, so that he could check her back for her. He ran his hands over her lightly, since that's what her inner bat told him to do, checking for spots that might not be perfectly healed.

  “Good. I'm good. I changed in time. Those fuckers set me on fire!” Shock rang out in her voice. She reeled a bit, then stumbled a little, to one of the men on the ground and started kicking him. Claire stopped her.

  “Libby, no! Your feet ar
e bare, you'll hurt yourself. Here...” Going into the brush Claire found a stick about the size of a baseball bat and smoothed it out quickly with her hands, which were much tougher than a Human's, or even a Were, so the small nubs came off easily, making small popping sounds. Claire held it out to her.

  “Use this instead.”

  The Bat girl did for a while, hitting first one then another, of the men that had tried to kill her.

  Moving over to the unmoving man, Claire cleared her throat.

  "That won't be needed. He's already dead. It will just waste your time and energy."

  Libby grunted, but seemed to understand the general idea.

  “All right, that's enough for now.” Zack told her when she started to beat the man she'd started with again. Not because he felt pity for them at all. He planned to kill them himself. No, he wanted information from them first. It had taken some time, but he finally had gotten the lesson through his head how important good information gathering could be.

  It took about half an hour to get the whole story, mainly because Libby started beating them again at one point. Someone high up in the Were community, fearing reprisals against them, had put a price on Libby's head, hoping that her death would cancel out any hard feelings the other groups, especially the 'Walker' might still have. They had a name, though it meant nothing to Zack.

  Claire and Libby both recognized it immediately though. Just one name, Clyde. Like Cher or Madonna. Basically the President of North America for the Weres. If he ordered the girl killed, then the killers wouldn't stop until she'd died, or Clyde ordered them to. The second one made the most sense to him. The whole idea was so disastrously stupid that he nearly lost control for a few seconds.

  Libby, still reeling, crawled into some bushes, where she'd set up a makeshift shelter to live in. Made out of branches and leaves mainly. It had a piece of plastic that looked scavenged which covered part of the roof, but he couldn't tell what color it was, if it had any. Putting there the few belongings she'd been allowed to take with her, mainly clothes, when she'd been cast out of her community.

  Because that wasn't enough for people? They'd forced her to live in a... Looking around he thought it was the wilder part of a mainly deserted park. That was more than enough, wasn't it?

  She pulled on another shirt and some jeans, explaining that she didn't have any underwear left. Then she came out and just sat. Not knowing what to do.

  “Thank you. I don't know how you knew that they were trying to kill me, but thanks for coming to help.” Her voice sounded very meek and little just then.

  Claire got on her phone, then ran to the street, about a quarter of a mile away and came back after telling her people where to find them. In about twenty minutes four Vampires dressed in black showed up. Three men and a woman, though Zack couldn't make out their faces, he thought he recognized one or two of them from the party Keane had thrown for Claire and himself to celebrate their bond being established.

  They had shovels.

  Claire spoke loud enough for him to hear, but only just.

  “Bury them deep. Go ahead and drain them first. Here should be fine, if you compact the ground over them enough and camouflage it well. We don't want these bodies being found however, so go at least twelve feet deep and don't make noise. There are occasional police patrols through here.” She pointed at the smallest of them, the woman.

  “Rebeca, you're in charge, the rest of you, try to actually do what she says. We can't afford issues with this, being so close to home. Any questions?” One of the men raised his hand.

  “Yeah, boss, do we get overtime for this?” His smile made it a joke.

  Zack looked at Claire and nodded. She tilted her head, but her Shadow said he should speak, if he had an idea.

  “Yeah. I'll cover it. But don't get caught and make sure that this goes fast, all right? We have to leave now, make everything here that could possibly be tracked back to Libby disappear. Remember, that goes for scent trail too if you can make that happen. These are Weres, so anything that can be tracked might be. I appreciate you all coming out.” They all stood for a second, looking at him, then Claire.

  Rebeca finally prodded them into work, saying things that were too soft for him to pick up. They all blurred into motion, one of the men actually managing to disappear briefly he moved so fast.

  Zack put his hand out to Libby.

  “Come on. If there's a price on your head you can't stay here. We'll take you back home.”

  She just sat, not moving or looking at him at all. A single tear slipped down her face on the Shadow level, he didn't know if it did on the physical level too, because he couldn't see in the dark. He wouldn't have seen her at all, even as pale as she looked, if it hadn't been for his other skills.

  “I can't.” She said, looking hopeless and lost. “You all hate me now. The whole world hates me. I don't blame them. I should have died tonight. It would have been better. It just hurt so much. I...” They heard sobbing.

  Exasperated he reached down and grabbed her under the arms, picking her up. Never heavy, she seemed a lot lighter now, as if she hadn't been eating in weeks. Maybe she hadn't, he realized. She refused to stand at first, so he pulled her to him in a hug and told her bat to snap out of it and stop being silly.

  Then he spoke to her day self.

  “I love you, now stop being a moron and come with us.” He pulled her along by the hand, Claire taking her other one. They followed the same short cuts back home, though in a walk, reaching the front door in about three minutes. It turned out the park Libby had been living in had been less than a mile from their house.

  Taking her in, everyone looked a little shocked to see her.

  It turned out to be Merri that spoke first.

  “Libby! We all thought you'd be here sooner. You look wrung out. I'll get some food for you and we'll get you a shower and some clean clothes.” It had taken the small Alfric woman the longest to forgive Libby for what she'd done, though once she really understood what pressures had been used against her she'd relented slightly.

  What had really changed her mind though had been something Zack had said to her, after the trial. He told her that if it had been her family at stake, instead of Libby's he'd have expected her to do the same thing, because one life isn't worth a hundred, ever. Merri had cried when she heard that, though Zack didn't understand why. To him the math seemed simple enough.

  Libby sat dazed, as people gathered around her and hugged her, held her hand and kissed her. She started crying.

  “Why? How can you all forgive me? I'm evil! I deserve what I've gotten and more. You don't know what they did to him. They beat him and... and hurt him, while he couldn't fight back and said things that... Freak of a Vampire wants to do to you and Claire... Such things I... It's all my fault.” Her sobs continued for a while.

  Finally, getting something the rest of them missed, Hilda spoke up. The giant woman smiling a little as she spoke, her tone soft and her accent almost totally gone.

  “You don't know what happened to that Vampire that beat Zack then? No one told you probably. They had other concerns at the time, I'd guess.” Using all her story telling skill she related the story of the attack on the mall to the Bat girl, how Zack had come back and Val had healed him somehow using Alede Magic.

  “Then he went back into the lines and started killing all the Demons as they brought in fighters, he got sixteen of them before they stopped using the Nodes.” Then she related how they'd all fought, easily vanquishing the Vampires, until an evil arch-Demon showed up and protected them, keeping the bad Vampires and Demons from dying when killed.

  “Then the other Arch-Demons came, to prevent total war from breaking out, I think. They named Champions to fight for each side, they would battle to the death they said. They named the Vampire Duroc, known as Forest to mock him for his foolishness by the other Vampires, and Zack, the Line-Walker, even though Forest had gotten a special amulet of magic that made him untouchable to the kind o
f life magic Zack knows, so he had to fight him just using normal skills and the little magic that would work even with the amulet in place.”

  Libby's eyes looked scared for a moment and glanced at Zack guiltily again. Hilda noticed this, but kept on anyway, seeming proud.

  “They started to battle, the Vampire moved fast, so much so that we couldn't see him and then Zack turned himself invisible to the Vampires and Demons in the room, except Claire. The knife that Merri had gifted Zack with had been knocked away from his hand, but it turned out to be a special magical blade she'd had made for him, and him alone. As a special thing her people had tied special spells into, so that in times of need it would return to his hand.” She paused dramatically, finishing the story with a recount of the near hundred blows it took to chop off the Vampire's head, and how he then melted, as their kind does when truly dead forever.

  “So you see Libby, he can no longer hurt our Zack or threaten our Claire. For he no longer exists in these lands of the living at all.” Hilda smiled happily, glad to be the bearer of such good news.

  Charli spoke up from across the room, where she sat wearing a red oversized night shirt and nothing else as far as Zack could tell, not that he was looking overly hard.

  “He was pretty awesome. My mom thinks he should get a medal or something for taking care of that guy.”

  Libby sniffled and looked over at the Human girl for the first time.

  “Charli, what are you doing here?” Worried that they'd given everything away. Even after the rest of her world had thrown her out.

  “Well, we were having a slumber party, but now, since it sounds like people are trying to kill you, I guess we should deal with that first.” Looking at Zack and Claire then shooting a glance at Val, she asked, “So, what's the plan?”

  Around the room everyone nodded, they wanted to know too.

  So did Zack.

  "Not a clue here. I'm open to ideas?"

  They passed some ideas around, since they all sat in a squared off circle, the huge sofas taking up about half the wall space anyway, wrapping around the room in a light tan line. Everyone agreed that Libby should stay there, where they could guard her until everything blew over.