by Power, P. S.
They let Hilda explain as much as Jan wanted to hear, so the main portion of the meal got taken up with Hilda's version of what everyone did, what groups they were affiliated with and minutia that the giant felt most important about each person at the table. Which tended to stress their fighting prowess and bravery, or at least what she thought of as such.
Patty stopped glaring at Norris fairly quickly, her Shadow self remained livid though, causing his inner being to cower away from hers. She felt that he'd endangered them all by letting this woman, a mere Human, know their secrets. As a County Prosecutor the Human had enough power to be troublesome to them to, if things didn't work out. Being, her Shadow self told the room, that most relationships just didn't work out in the long run, especially for Alede, this could end up being a huge problem for them all.
Jan looked at Hilda. "What's Zack then? You mentioned everyone else nearly."
Zack spoke for himself.
“I'm just a Human, like you and Charli. Only not as good looking, of course.” Claire took his hand, not saying anything. The others all laughed a bit.
Hilda spoke up again.
“Yes... That's true, he's a Human like you are. But... He's not the same any more. He's really old, even though he doesn't look it. Thousands of years. He can read minds and walk the Nexus lines, and much other stuff he's learned to do over time. He's also a really great warrior and hero. He's saved a lot of people, most of whom don't even know it. Even if he did get beaten up by your ex-boyfriend. A sad day for Zack. A sad day.” She tried to look sad for a moment, head hanging, then spoiled it with a huge grin.
Laughing along with her he spoke up.
“Well, you're only as good as the last fight you didn't lose. Luckily Charli had my back. Thanks again for that, Charli.” The glass he raised to her held a light fruit juice that matched the color of white wine. Merri knew he didn't drink alcohol so had rigged it up for him, so he wouldn't look out of place.
Everyone else took a sip, as if it were a toast.
The Trolleinkein didn't stop there though.
“He has a lot of titles and stuff too. He's sometimes called the Line Walker, and my people call him 'The Little Chief' because he's important, but, you know... short...”
Sitting next to Kaitlin, who had scooted closer to him as the evening progressed, Keane added what the Vampires called him.
“We, my kind, call him 'The Woodsman', this comes from the way he chopped down the six hundred year old Vampire known as Forest...” The Vampire's eyes twinkled when he said this.
Kaitlyn grinned. "The Alede, and most of the other groups, just call him Hartley. That's his last name, but most of them don't know it."
Then people started calling out all the names they had heard.
“Since I'm trying to change the subject Jan, you're a County Prosecutor? That seems like an important job, what kind of things do you do?” She spoke for several minutes, with him asking questions to keep people distracted.
Merri came in and said something so quietly that he didn't hear it at all. The table went silent, Troy finally asking Kaitlyn, who he knew had heard what she said having really good hearing like all the Alede did. Keane answered after a minute when she didn't.
“She said that her people, the Alfric, call him 'The Shield of Innocence'.” He pretended to take a drink then, even though everyone at the table knew he didn't need to.
Later that evening, Merri found him, it being her night with him and followed him into his room. They spent a long while making love, then holding each other tenderly.
After a while she asked him if he wanted to know what the Alfric meant by calling him The Shield Of Innocence, surprised when he shook his head.
“No. Or at least not until you feel ready to tell me. I know it's the name of the sword you gave me, and that's enough for now, right?” He held her again, knowing that she feared the day when he learned what they really meant by that phrase.
He put it out of his mind and made love to her again.
As the new day broke, the attack came. There were four of them, all Arch-Demons without bodies. They passed easily through the walls, chasing him through the halls of the house, no one else could see them, he realized. Soon they hurled bolts of blackness at him, and he returned fire with streams of a similar substance.
Finally, he hit one, which knocked it back, but otherwise did very little to it.
The house shook as each blow hit the walls, theirs and his, with them closing in on him fast. Each time one of them released some energy another would try to move in on him from the other side.
In the living room he became pinned in place, with nowhere to go except the rift he had built to Lisa's living room. He'd tried to avoid it, but given no other choice he stepped through. Flinging black lines into the rift once he stood in her house, hoping it would keep them back for a while.
They didn't follow him at all.
Lisa's door opened and she called out.
“Hello, is someone there?”
He answered quickly.
“Lisa! I'm... Unfortunately being ambushed by four Arch-Demons, and I ran here trying to buy some time. They aren't following me, but I don't know if they just aren't, or if they can't. I need to lure them to the Nexus, if I'm going to do anything about it though. Sorry about disturbing you like this.”
Maryl came and stood beside her in the doorway. Looking frightened. That was all about how he'd react to her being there, not what she'd heard him say.
“Hi! Look, I've got to go now, who knows what they're doing to the house...”
Stepping back into his own living room, almost instantly, he ran as fast as he could toward the kitchen, at least one of them on his tail. He barely got the back door open when another, this time massive, blast ripped a hole in the wall big enough to ride a horse through. Merri was going to love that he didn't doubt.
As he ran he tried to grab at the creature with his hand, passing through it. He desperately sent forth a line of his own being, his Shadow and pulled it through the shortcut into the Node then into the void.
As he had before, he instantly set to boiling space around it, the space within it, making it churn and bubble before dissipating. Destroying it completely.
He tried again, catching another Arch-Demon as it raced toward him. It fought desperately and seemed faster than the other. He fought for a long time with it, finally winning, noticing that his self, what would have been his body in the other world, had taken great damage, almost enough to destroy him.
Working carefully, as Big Shadow had taught him, he put himself back together, carefully, one piece, one bit of information, at a time. It felt like it took a long time. He couldn't keep track of it at all, though he knew that his current focus would have time running much more slowly than normal for him in the void, so even though it felt like it took years to him, he realized he actually had that time. When he finished, he carefully stepped out of the Node again, and hit the rift taking him back home.
The other two saw that he'd returned and that the others didn't and instead of fighting, they simply left, vanishing into thin air. Inside, another being sat, blocking the hallway where everyone else had fled, trying to avoid being crushed by the devastating bolts the Arch-Demons had been throwing around.
Seeing that he'd come back, it imparted a sense of relief, and spoke to him.
The rules do not allow us to protect you from their kind, you are their equal, though bringing that much force to bear almost overstepped what is allowable. There will be discussions about this. They're not allowed to harm your friends, or anyone in this realm, directly.
Then it faded from being slowly and carefully.
Libby ran out in to the hall, having heard him enter, possibly knowing what his breathing sounded like, he realized. Hilda followed her, carrying the giant war paddle she kept in her room, ready to do battle, even if she couldn't see or smell the enemy. Everyone else came after that.
"I get that no one else saw most o
f that...:
Libby coughed, "Except for the holes being blasted into the walls? I think we get that it wasn't an invitation to an orgy. Or, well it could have been, but if that's how whatever it was has sex, I'd have to suggest a lot of lube." She sounded funny, as in humorous. It was a good response really.
"Yeah, I can see that. It wasn't anything that polite though. Four Arch-Demons, without bodies, tried for me. I killed two of them, but the others ran off. There was another of their kind... I think, that... well, he protected the rest of you. It, I guess, told me that those others aren't allowed to harm any of my friends or people. I assume that means directly. They could hire hit men or whatever, I'm sure."
He left out the part about nearly dying, not wanting to worry anyone.
Libby looked around and ran down the hall, calling for Maryl, panic in her voice. Zack tried to call her back, to explain, but she didn't hear him for some reason.
When she came back, Zack smiled.
"She went over to Lisa's. I just saw her and they were both fine."
This set her mind at ease, though she did call to make sure they were both all right.
The Arch-Demons came back minutes later, almost catching him from behind. It seemed like just the two that were there before though. When he tried to lure them to the kitchen, they didn't go. They wouldn't follow him at all. They just pumped out blast after blast of force at him.
The other one, similar in appearance, but clearly not working against him, stood guard again, keeping the others out of harm's way, he saw, much to his relief. It allowed him to focus on what he needed to do, which was... Using some of that Human creativity?
As he ran, he focused as intently as he could, slowing time around him as much as possible, until he barely felt like he could move, no matter how hard he pushed himself. Then he tried to build a shortcut from inside the house, near the stairs he would be at in a few moments, into the Node itself, in the back of Something Wonderful.
He punched it through, close enough that there didn't seem to be any physical backlash this time, unlike the last two he'd tried to make, and lashed out with a line of Shadow substance, reeling the being into the void with him almost directly. It felt odd, not like a shortcut, which most often felt like nothing at all or like Node travel, a strange hybrid it was a bit jangly and rough to his perceptions, though it worked.
This fight didn't take nearly as long as the others. Because this Arch-Demon wasn't ready for it at all. It just sat there in the void unmoving while being destroyed, the next one though, made up for it. It fought hard and didn't give him a chance to think, simply reacting to the attacks. Leaving him barely able to keep up. It seemed huge, a giant thing compared to the others. He tried to fight back as best he could, wounding it once, then again a while later, small bits of damage that didn't slow it down at all.
Finally, just when he felt it would destroy him with its next move it turned suddenly and fled leaving him alone.
The damage to him had to be fixed, though the earlier damage had been just as bad. It took longer to repair himself this time, so maybe it had actually been a lot closer than he though?
Big Shadow didn't come forward to speak, so he left it alone. There would be a reason for it, if it didn't show up after this, and no need to push his friend, knowing it would always do the best it could for him, even if he couldn't understand why at the time.
He went back, directly to the rift near the stairs.
Everyone ran to him again.
“Okay, I think this is done for now, but just in case it isn't, I need to hide myself...” He sat down with a tired thump on the stairs, his hand going to his head as he tried to make the changes that would be needed for this to work. He'd never done anything this completely different before.
Kaitlyn came over to him, and changed him into Maria without pausing to see if that was what he meant. She'd become so similar to him in the way she thought that she merely acted, knowing it was what he wanted.
She doubted that a simple physical change would be enough, and figured that Arch-Demons knew regular Demons well enough to catch on if she wasn't careful. Instead she tried her second disguise, that of an Alede. A Succubus. For this, she needed to finally, truly, become her disguise. No, not a disguise, she had to fully become herself now, down to the cellular level of being, she had to be Alede. With no hint of who else might live within her at all.
Reshaping her internal energy, altering her thoughts completely, allowing almost no information that Zack would normally use to come into play, she hid, well enough to make Kaitlyn gasp.
“It's you, but, I don't know you... You're like a totally different person.” She looked at the girl, moving toward her, slowly, hips swishing just enough to call attention to her, not enough to look like it happened on purpose. She touched the girl's shoulder with the flat of her hand, lowering it slowly as if she'd stroke her breast, just before she got there, she pulled her hand away, teasing lightly.
“Hi! I don't think we've met before? I'm Maria.” Licking her lips slightly, just enough to moisten them, she realized that this girl must be like her, an Alede. Incredibly locked down though, hardly showing at all.
Stepping into the girl, in a common greeting for her kind, she kissed her on the mouth, rubbing her breasts with her own, signifying that she'd be more than willing to partner up for harvesting with this new woman. This was clearly her territory. Her sign was all over it.
“I do hope we can be friends.” Her voice low and seductive, almost imperceptible on the Human level, since most Alede communicated this way, she knew that this girl, a bit younger that she was, would probably be comforted by it from her.
Everyone else in the room looked on amazed, realizing that this Maria wasn't Zack in a girl's body, or even just Maria, but a totally new being, different from either one in some fundamental fashion. Even Troy got it, the sense of his friend simply being gone from the room suddenly.
Kaitlyn understood what had happened, she thought, and tried to explain it to the others.
“It's a disguise, a total disguise though. She doesn't know that she's somebody else hardly at all. The lines coming off her are totally different than the ones that Zack or the other Maria have. I'd say for right now, she's literally not either of them. She is for all intents and purposes a Succubus...”
Claire raised an eyebrow, pondering the idea.
“That could be effective, I wonder how he intends to get back?”
Nobody knew at all.
Especially Maria.
Chapter twenty-seven
These new people seemed friendly enough to, Maria. She recognized them as a mix of different types, several being Alede. It was odd to see in such a large group, unless an orgy might be involved, a handful of Vampires, an Alfric cutie pie, and a couple of Humans or Weres. As long as they didn't change during sex, that last part didn't matter to her at all. They were all fun.
The Vampires were a little off-putting, but only because they couldn't meet an Alede's energy needs. Maybe they were the body guards?
“You know, we should all go somewhere. Somewhere with people. Especially since this place looks like someone set off a bomb. For real. What happened here?” Maria addressed the oldest Alede, a sexy blonde that radiated both sex and stability. If she got caught up on her energy collection for the day, she might give her a tumble just for fun.
One of the Vampires, who looked like a girl about her age, came over and took her hand. The girl seemed cute, maybe a seven on a ten scale, like a woman she'd seen in a very old movie once. She had pretty eyes. Just because she seemed nice, Maria stroked her hand with her own and used her eyes to flirt, just a little. Even if she wouldn't do much good for energy needs, no need to be mean, she figured.
The Vampire girl spoke, she had a good voice, soft and smooth.
“I know a place we can go, if you'd like. A dance club. It's Saturday, so a lot of people should be there. Does that sound all right?”
A small laugh left he
r, sultry and low.
“Oh yes! That sounds perfect.” Turning to the Vampire, she ran a hand down her arm with her free hand, just once, Lingering slightly before letting go.
“I love to meet new people.”
They rode in a limo, one driven by a cute male Vampire, who said his name was Blake. A shame he decided to go Vamp, she thought. Good looking, but nearly useless to her.
They sat her in the back, next to a giant blonde that managed to be gorgeous, even while towering above everyone else, which she knew to be rare and precious. The number of very tall, very good looking women, in the world tended to be small, because the bone structure of the face thickened in proportion to height. The entire skeletal structure did. This meant tall women had stronger facial bone structure, which most often looked very mannish.
Not this one. She seemed almost perfect. Somewhat shyly the woman introduced herself as Hilda. Maria tried to remember this. People liked it when you remembered their names. It made them feel like you'd taken a special interest in them.
On the other side sat a dark skinned man. Slightly darker than herself, she noted, with fairly clear skin and a light to medium build. Possibly Puerto Rican? He'd the look about him, dark hair, brown eyes. No facial hair, making him look a little younger that his real age most likely, she put him at somewhere around twenty-three to twenty-five. Not that it mattered. He'd be old enough to not cause trouble with law enforcement, and that's all she really needed from him on that score.
For some reason the man, Troy, seemed uneasy when she leaned against him. Aroused, that she could see, his breathing caught and increased in rate of speed, his heart rate increased and she saw other signs as well. Still, he also showed signs of hesitation that were out of character for a straight man, or even most gay ones when confronted with a female Alede. Maybe he just didn't want to upset his girlfriend?
She looked around trying to figure out which one of these women he'd be with...