by Power, P. S.
Looking disappointed one of them finally told him that they'd hoped they could learn his shape and ways, opening their own lines, but it didn't seem likely, not without a lot more study.
“Really? Well, if you want to try or to study me more, just ask. I'll tell you what I know and help you out in this however I can. If your people can learn to walk the lines too, we could open up so much more than I can do alone and get the costs down! Let me know if you need anything from me, all right?” For some reason, the shape shifters all seemed excited by this, though they didn't ask for anything right then.
He felt pretty good when he walked out of the Node into Candles and More, only a little surprised to see Claire standing there, waiting for him. She'd taken to doing that when they got to spend the night together, wanting as much time as possible with him.
Today though, he remembered Merri telling him, Sarah had requested the evening.
“Zack, some of our people, my people, found something... Vaun asked if you might help us. We have to get information about a child for a... client and the man we have seems to be resistant to our, information gathering techniques...” Her Shadow filled him in to what she hadn't said.
This man, he's a pedophile and probably a murderer. He's stolen the child of an important person, who has contacts. They hunted down the man, using his scent, but couldn't find any evidence, though they searched his whole house carefully.
Dreading this, Zack knew he'd help anyway. If this kid could be saved, if any child could, he needed to at least try. If he couldn't help this child, maybe he could at least stop this man from hurting the next one.
“I see. Where is it, this man and his house?”
Claire didn't sigh in relief, instead she got back on the phone and told Vaun they were coming.
An hour later, after a quick meal, Zack and Claire walked into the mid-sized, somewhat isolated, dwelling. It looked old to him, cared for very well, though. No cracked paint, or dull colors on the exterior, which was white and beige. The garden had greenery, some evergreen trees creating a break between the house and road, trimmed, at least enough not to call attention to the place. The lawn was short and uniform, and there was no trash around. In all it seemed fairly innocent and bland.
Not that looks mattered in a case like this.
Zack let Claire lead him inside, dropping his filters, letting himself take in everything as it came to him. Just to be safe, he locked down all of his emotions. All sense of pain too, just in case something violent happened. Though he'd been brought in to try and find some answers, not fight, he'd started to realize that being ready for anything kind of worked for his life as a whole. Really dressing for a fight would have been better than what he wore. The slacks and soft soled dress shoes he had on weren't exactly combat ready. At least he didn't have a tie on. Just a loose button front shirt. In purple. It was silk and had been a gift from Sarah, who thought it would look nice on him.
In the living room the man had been tied to a kitchen chair securely. It brought back memories of something similar that had happened to him once. The only difference, Zack thought, is that this man had probably felt it when they beat him, lacking the ability to turn pain off on demand. His Shadow screamed even now, while the man, who was balding, a bit pudgy, and clean shaved, only muttered some curse words occasionally, most of them directed at the tall Vampire with black hair in a conservative business cut that greeted them. He was very pale however, and had on jeans and a lumberjack style shirt. The shoes were combat boots.
In all he looked a lot more ready than Zack did.
Claire had mentioned not to use names, just in case the man in the chair ever had a chance to talk to anyone else. They probably should have had masks too, he realized, but it was too late for that now, as the man had looked at them directly for a long time when they came in.
The tall Vampire looked at them too, nodding to himself as if matching their description to what he'd been told on the phone expect.
“You the expert interrogators then? So far we couldn't get him coerced enough to tell us anything, and physical... Inducement, hasn't worked well either, as you can see.” A head jerk toward the tied man conveyed how very annoyed the Vampire felt about the whole thing.
Claire didn't speak, she merely stared at the man. Her beast rose up, screaming at the pedophile to comply, and though his Shadow cowered in front of her, it wasn't willing to buckle to her will. After a few minutes of this, she looked at Zack and shook her head.
Instead of trying to make the man speak openly, Zack decided to simply get around whatever he had been doing to resist the Vampires.
Turning to the tall Vampire, he asked what questions they needed answered.
“We need proof that this guy is a short-eyes. A pedo, if he is, we need to know where the kid is and what the situation is around him if he's still alive.”
Without responding, he hunched down in front of the tied man and began speaking.
“Are you a pedophile? Do you like to have sex with children?” His voice soft, not cajoling or pleading, not demanding, just asking.
The man's Shadow self responded instantly. He went on and on about how he loved children and what he liked to do to them. It was sickening. At least the man's inner self thought so too. He did it and couldn't help himself, or so he claimed, but it was only a normal level of desire. It wasn't as if he truly had no choice, he simply didn't bother fighting against it.
“All right then, where do you hide things that would prove this?”
This time the man tried to fight thinking about it. He started chanting something in his head. Over and over again.
“Okay.... he's thinking 'M... I... C... K... E...Y M...O... U... S... E' and singing a little song with it. I don't know it.” The man's eyes bulged and he started to hyperventilate.
Looking around Zack tried to see if anything in the room would give them a clue. Once he bothered to try, it was simple to see that the leg of the table had a hallow space in it, complete with something inside. He spun and pointed to it.
“Something in the table leg, there” He kept looking while Claire snapped it off easily and broke it open. It seemed to be a thumb drive for a computer she told him, since he didn't recognize the little black rectangle himself.
Searching he noticed that the wall had a loose spot, hidden by wall paper. Behind that, hanging by a thread or thin rope, something dangled inside the wall. It turned out to be a bundle of pictures, documents and cash.
The tall Vampire noticed where he pointed on the wall and simple knelt down, punching just below the bundle, reached up slightly and pulled it out.
Then Zack pointed at the floor, about ten feet away. "There, under the carpet, in the middle of the room, there are some loose floor boards, and under that there's a small compartment."
Claire borrowed a knife and cut the blue shag flooring open.
The man started panting loudly, distressed by what they were finding, and how easily they retrieved it. He'd thought they'd never find any of this stuff. In fact his Shadow roared at them to get away from it, to leave his things alone.
Trying to be dramatic, Zack spun toward the man, ending up inches from his face.
“Where's the child!” He yelled at the man, making him wince.
Buried and gone, below the stairs.
“Which stairs?” He asked, suddenly sounding relaxed and reasonable.
The man cowered away, unable to keep from thinking about the basement.
“The child is under the basement stairs, apparently. Here or somewhere else?” Glaring now, though he felt no emotion, trying to unnerve the man.
Here.
“Under the basement stairs here, then.” He turned to the tall Vampire. “Got that?”
Not speaking, the Vampire ran outside, and came back with a shovel and a pickax. Then headed for the basement.
“If you could watch him, I'll check. Be just a bit.” He vanished into the basement, something crashed several times, then a yell c
ame.
“Got him! He's alive, there's a hidden room here. He seems drugged, but breathing.” Suddenly the Vampire came up the stairs, a small boy in his arms.
It took some time, but they worked out what the drug had been from the man in the chair, and found out, after a few phone calls, that is would wear off on its own, as long as the kid kept breathing.
Noticing something that the man tried to hide from his thoughts, but his Shadow kept repeating, now that he'd been caught, Zack headed down to the basement.
There, in the far corner, the ghost of a boy stood, pointing downward, at the dirt beneath his feet, that looked packed and hard. He looked very young. About six.
"Claire? I think we need to dig over in the corner down here." Zack didn't shout, but both Vampires ran in and the man had the shovel and pick ax again. It didn't take him long to start finding things.
Together they uncovered not just the boy who pointed the way, At least the tiny corpse had on the same blue pants and gray shirt, but seven other small bodies.
It took all of his control to not simply go up the stairs and kill the man.
"Will you both come upstairs with me? We need to get any information he has. I... Might need to be stopped, if I start to kill him."
“Please...” He added, catching both of the Vampires off guard with that single word.
Standing in front of the balding man, who reeked now of sweat and desperation, Zack asked if anyone else had been involved in all this. Slowly, carefully, he worked the names, phone numbers and addresses of each person that had been even remotely connected to anything child related that the man knew about.
When he'd finished, and gotten all that he could from the man, more than torture could ever have produced, he indicated that they didn't need him anymore.
"We're done here. Let's finish this."
Without hesitation, the male Vampire moved, breaking the man's neck with a quick movement Zack couldn't really follow. A blur and a pop, then the chubby man in the chair died and didn't move again.
Before they left, the other Vampire asked if they would be available once the other names were tracked down, if needed.
“Yes. I think you can contact us the same way you did last time.” Checking with Claire on this point, she nodded.
Then without ever asking what any of this meant, they left.
A day later the news had a picture of the boy, who'd miraculously been found, wandering on the side of the road. He had been drugged and abused sexually, but he lived.
Two days after that a news story broke about a house found with eight bodies in it. No more information than that ever made it to the press. Claire told him that it was related.
Weeks went by and Zack put the whole thing out of his mind, being too gruesome to think about. Then, late one night, Claire came to his room where he'd been spending time with Libby, just holding her while she slept. The Vampire girl signaled for him to follow her, moving silently, not speaking at all.
She led him to the shortcut he'd built to the mall in the back of the house, and held her hand out, so he walked through with her, ending up in Something Wonderful. Then she pointed toward the Node.
He took her meaning, her inner beast growling and hissing, told him to take her to someplace secluded, where they could talk. Unheard by anyone.
They ended up in a remote desert, so far away that no one would follow them, even if they knew where they went.
She spoke to him urgently.
“We need to get to the Paris Nexus. We've been asked to aid a special branch of Interpol in taking down a massive ring of child pornographers. This is what that list you retrieved has uncovered. They've the man power for the work, but our source thinks Demons may be involved. I can't tell you who the source is, as it could mean their life if anyone found out they were doing this...” She looked worried.
“If you say they're worth listening to, then I'm in... Let's go.” He made a point of locking down his emotions, all sense of fear, or anger, and holding them at bay, keeping his mind clear.
In the Paris Nexus it looked to be about one in the afternoon or so, though he wouldn't have been able to figure it out, not exactly, even if he had a watch. Zack just didn't know how many time zones away it was from Underwood.
Claire searched for something, it turned out to be a book store, the same place Zack had purchased her Christmas present the year before, in fact.
Inside, she spoke to the man behind the counter in fluent French. He glanced at Zack, but carefully kept any reaction off of his face. After a moment, the man answered in English, so that everyone could understand him.
“I see, now, why it was suggested we needed him. In case of Demons. I've heard the tales, some from people I trust greatly, of what you've done. I take it that the present worked out well?” His smile took in Claire, and added in a bit of lechery toward his Vampire.
Zack raised his eyebrows.
“Yes. I think we should prepare for the chance of Demons. I'll need to be in the void to destroy them, but I also need some way of knowing where they are. I can enter the Node at the same time, or wait for them, if I know where they'll be running from. From over here, all we can do is destroy the bodies. If it comes to that, capture is better, because then I can take them into the void, from any Node point, for execution. I've done this fifty or sixty times now.”
The bookseller told them to call him Roget, a different name than Zack had been given before. Not that it mattered to him what the man wanted to be called. For all he knew, the last name he got had been the false one and this one real. He doubted it though, because what kind of spy or secret agent would go around giving their real name?
In the end, though he waited in the void, nothing tried to escape that way, likely because too far away from any nodes. He went back to find that six Demons had been captured. Two more had taken their own lives in order to let their inner core escape, which had turned out to be a wise move.
The Demons were trucked to the main Nexus point and logged by the Demons that worked there by name. Then one by one, Zack took them into the void and destroyed them.
On the second to last one, things changed.
He took the average looking Demon into the void, where it suddenly turned on him, not a Demon at all, but something bigger, stronger. Larger than the Arch-Demon Cruxias had been by almost fifty percent, to Zack's perception.
It examined him, then said.
We are coming for you Line Walker and all who stand in our way.
It struck at him, fast and hard. The boiling of space hitting his left leg, eating the lower half of it into nothingness.
In response he countered with twin beams, catching the larger being by surprise, eating away a small chunk of it in return. As he readied the next volley, He thought he heard laughter.
Instead of fighting as Cruxias had, it simply turned and ran, disappearing into the void, or leaving it all together, he couldn't tell which.
It seemed a confused black mass, hard to see in the pitch black, leaving only a vague sense of motion to show him that it had even been there, once it started running.
Zack called for his friend, who either did not hear him or wasn't allowed to respond. Not knowing what else to do, he tried to recall the information that had made up the part destroyed, and slowly, very painstakingly, it reformed. Not perfectly, but perhaps good enough to work with later.
Without even a sense of apprehension, Zack went back, grabbed the last one and ready this time, destroyed it. It was just a regular Demon that perished easily, bubbling away in the wash of space, until it seemed like it had never been.
He tried to tell them what had happened, but only Claire actually understood.
Finding his left leg a fused mess, he headed for home, hoping that something could be done about it and that he hadn't made the situation with his leg even worse by trying to fix it.
Chapter twenty
When they got back home, Kaitlin managed to heal the leg. Regardless of the f
act that it was a giant mess. He could walk on it, but the gnarled thing had the bones in the wrong place, and bubbles in a few places. When she was finished, it was smooth and perfect. Or a little hairy, but his legs were. So that was normal. Though it felt very weak, like it would give out at any moment the instant he put weight on it.
Kate shrugged, "You should turn into Maria for a while and stay that way, only pulling Zack out for rehab and exercise. I can't promise that will work, but it feels right. Maria will be fine, at least." She didn't actually know any of that in particular, but her Shadow did let him know that it felt right.
She looked at him and smiled softly, trying to be encouraging.
Claire agreed though, for much the same reason, so he went with it, even though he knew he wouldn't be as comfortable as Maria as he would be as Zack.
After the transformation Maria stood there, naked.
Kaitlyn dressed him up in some of the "Maria Clothes" that Patty kept buying for her every time she went shopping and saw something that she thought would work for the girl. So far it had all fit perfectly, though she hadn't tried most of it on. Part of that was just a time factor, since she was seldom out like this. The rest had to do with the fact that there just hadn't been a need for all the lingerie she had yet.
Being almost time for work, she called everyone together, and explained the situation.
Her voice was soft and smooth, like velvet.
“So, I had a run in with something... Like a tougher version of Cruxias. Bigger and badder by far, though. I think I hurt it, but who knows if that will stick? My leg, Zack's left leg, was gone. I managed to rebuild the pattern, but poorly. Kaitlyn got me to about 80%, rebuilt, but weak, and suggests that I stay this way except to exercise and rehab the leg for a while. It's not ideal. It also looks like we still have some enemies out there still. Bad ones. I'd kind of hoped that after the last bit, destroying an Arch-Demon, we'd have been ignored, seem too tough to be worth bothering with maybe? If that was the case, I think I kind of blew it last night.” She shrugged, stopping because she felt her breasts drag on the inside of her top, it didn't hurt, though it didn't feel sexy either. It just kind of rubbed a bit.