Mr. Hartley (Alternate Places Book 1)

by P. S. Power

  She looked at the new girl for a bit, had her turn around in place and touched her skin.

  “I think I'm jealous, to tell the truth. You look fabulous. Do all your abilities work the same way? That's kind of essential to the plan.” Right to business, she had her demonstrate every ability that she could.

  “I can see your Shadows just fine, and there's a shortcut over there that comes out in the desert, I went through it earlier. I haven't ever had a shortcut to anywhere inside my home before. I know it can happen, the Mall has some, but I've never bothered using them. Um, let's see,” She gestured for Patty to stand up and brace herself, when ready she hit her very lightly with empty force, causing her muscles to spasm and make her stumble backwards a bit.

  Looking around she found nothing to hit with a more concussive force. She got up, in bare feet and went in search of something to destroy. In the back yard there turned out to be a boulder about the size of Claire's bug. Part of the landscaping, it had a small pond on the right hand side. There were no fish in the pond though. She hit it full force from about twenty feet away, holding her hand up, palm out, not hitting at it with her fist. Wu-Li let this slide as a minor stylistic difference between them, even though it drove Dan crazy. A large chunk broke off and fell to the Earth. She hit the smaller piece on the ground about the size of a hub cap, three times, breaking it to much smaller bits.

  She hid, as if from a Demon, but no one noticed anything, which would be normal, given this crowd. Claire now having a link to her as she did, bypassing that ability.

  “Everything seems normal. Now I just need to test the Nexus stuff, but I doubt there will be any problem. Oh, well, I should try this I guess...” She focused her will and changed the shape of her Shadow to mimic that of a Demon.

  Claire moved back suddenly.

  “I forgot you can do that. This... really seems like a Demon is standing here. It's a little off putting actually.” The Vampire held her ground now though.

  She decided to try her other new disguise out to see if it worked.

  “Okay, how about this...” Her will focused tightly and she projected lust and pleasure from her Shadow, striving to hit the level that Val normally did if she found someone interesting. She licked her lips a little and stared seductively at first Claire and then Patricia. Or at least she tried for seductive, realizing she lacked a good idea of what her face looked like when she tried to make an expression. Maybe she should practice in front of a mirror?

  Reaching out she pretended to notice a wrinkle on Patty's blouse, just below her shoulder, and smoothed it out with slow grace, then patted it gently as if to keep it gone. At the point of contact she projected tiny flares of pleasure, attempting to mimic what he had noticed from Val in bed.

  “My god! That's great! If I didn't know you were you, I would have thought an Alede had just entered the room. You'll definitely need more lessons to pull this off in bed though. Still, as a fall back it's good. I'd buy it and I'm pretty much an expert... How are you doing it though?”

  Explaining took a few moments.

  “Basically it's a kind of subtle compulsion, rather than the actual energy being sent out like you do Patty. I'm making suggestions to your Shadow self, convincing it to perceive me a certain way.”

  She stood and stretched, dropping all pretense for a moment.

  “All right, I need a name. Something that sounds normal, maybe even a little old fashioned. Also it needs to have nothing to do with me or my way of thinking. I don't know what kind of data the Demons have on me, but calling myself by something predictable to them could create greater scrutiny. I mean, obviously 'Zacharina' is totally out. So any ideas?” She looked from one woman to the other and back again.

  They talked about it for nearly an hour when Claire suggested they open a phone book at random, point at the center of the page and run a finger down until they hit the first female name.

  Claire looked at her with a teasing set to her features.

  "It may not be a great name, but it's fairly close to being truly random. It's better than anything we could pick for you, on purpose that way."

  Finding a local phone book someone had conveniently left in a closet, they had Patty open it and point, not having any stake in the matter, the name she came up with was Maria.

  “Hi, I'm Maria. Maria. How do you do, I'm Maria... I can work with that.”

  They all agreed that it seemed a fine name, especially given the skin tone, though Patty thought that she looked a little more Middle Eastern than Latino.

  “Well, whatever works. Right?” Maria said.

  Leaving Claire at the house for a few hours, Patty drove them into town to go shopping. Claire couldn't go, because that might, just possibly, link the new girl to Zack in some fashion. It would be less likely that Patty would be linked directly, even though the two women would certainly be noticed. Both men and women stared as they passed, even while they drove, Maria noticed. As Zack people didn't even see him stepping out of thin air most of the time. This could be hard to get used to.

  Patty insisted on buying clothes for all occasions that they could pack with them and stash at home. If she had to be Maria, she needed to look the part as well as she possibly could. Her weight had shifted downward a bit, by about thirty pounds, the Succubus guessed, trying to get an idea of her sizes.

  She got Maria four pairs of shoes, three skirts and dresses, new underwear, most of which seemed made of string and some of it partially see through and bras that matched the underwear. Then shirts, blouses, and a sweater. Everything she could think of. They got home four hours later to find Claire sitting in the living room talking on the phone.

  She covered the phone a bit and told them what had happened.

  “Vaun,” she indicated the phone “Called to tell me that there's been an attack on the Moorplank Center in Maryland. They killed almost everything in the place that can die and ran the others off. Everyone's going home to shore up their own local defenses. We need to leave within the hour.”

  She spoke on the phone for a few minutes then hung up.

  “Demons and Vampires were involved, along with a host of other things. It seems an odd hodge-podge of beings, but the survivors report that they simply found themselves overrun. No one can get in now, the whole place has been locked down.”

  Maria sat down, considering things.

  “All right, Patty, we need to get you a full charge, then you need to change me back. We haven't unpacked, so find bags to carry everything and I'll have us back within twenty minutes if we run. Come on, we should move quickly.”

  Patty moved fast and he was Zack again five minutes after 'Maria' finished charging her back to full. She told him that it would always be quicker to resume the original form, because he accepted it as normal. Then they grabbed what they could and ran for the nearest shortcut toward home. They actually made it in twenty-eight minutes.

  Within an hour, several phone calls had come in requesting his aid in retaking the attacked Nexus point. No one knew if anyone in the place had survived or not, though it seemed clear to Zack that waiting too long wouldn't help anyone if they had.

  He'd been to the Moorplank center a couple of times, and had even walked around it, searching for a transfer that had gone to the wrong node point. It was basically a Mall like Underwood, though they had more storefronts and the number of regular people that actually shopped there seemed a lot higher. Almost enough to keep a regular Mall in business.

  Since this attack had happened during daylight hours on the west coast, that meant it was early evening there, he reasoned. There had almost certainly been regular, innocent, people trying to shop when the Center had been attacked. Someone he didn't know told him that the news had been calling it a possible terrorist attack, and reported masked gunmen taking over the place and taking hostages.

  Lisa had collected a list of places where troops had been stationed from around the world, and some other very distant places. All at Nexus points he'd b
een to though. If he hadn't been there, they weren't going to spend the time trying to find it. Taking the list, he leaned forward and kissed Lisa, hugging her too for good measure. Then he stepped into the node and made his first stop.

  Stepping out into the back of the Vampire Collective office in the Toronto Underground, he was met by fifteen Vampires, men and women, all dressed in advanced, modern body armor. They looked like a supernatural Swat team, he thought at first, then he realized that they were probably more like special forces, given the situation.

  “All right, does someone have a phone?” An unarmored man in a suit, standing by the door held up his hand.

  “Good. This is a list of phone numbers. As soon as we begin, you'll need to call each number and tell them it's begun, in order. Understood?”

  “Yes.” He didn't say any more.

  “All right, form a line and start moving toward me at... A medium Human level speed, about one per second. Everyone get that? You're going into an empty node in the back of a women's clothing store. You've all seen maps?”

  The man in front, their leader Zack supposed, nodded and told him they'd memorized it as best they could in fifteen minutes.

  “Ready yourselves then, phone man ready? Fighters ready? Three. Two. One. Go!” They came at him faster than he told them to, nearly twice as fast. He managed to pass them all through anyway, though he nearly missed the second to last grab, a small quick woman whose build reminded him of Claire.

  Then he stood in Saudi Arabia, a group of beings, clearly not Human, dressed in black and green garb, loose shirts and full head coverings of what looked like cloth moved forward, haphazardly, bunching up at one point in their eagerness to get through to battle.

  He ended up translating five at once, which nearly dropped him to his knees, gasping for air, but he didn't falter. After less than a second he made the next grab then another, still not able to catch his breath.

  He looked at the paper of locations in his hand. Two in and he already felt like passing out. Not the start he'd hoped for.

  At the next stop, four massive beings that looked to be part dragon stood waiting.

  He paused. If he took them through the same node the others had all gone through, they couldn't get out of the room, or, more to the point, they probably could get out, standing fifteen feet tall, vaguely humanoid looking except for the wings and horns like they were, but they couldn't get out without breaking through a wall, which would create a bottleneck.

  He looked through the Nexus trying to find an empty node room. While he couldn't find an empty one, he did find one that held only one Vampire, though he had a gun of some kind, like a machine gun, Zack guessed, not even being as familiar with such weapons as most people are from watching television.

  “I don't know if you understand me, but we have to go through another node, because you'll have to get yourselves out of the room by breaking through. There are no other unguarded nodes, but I found one with only one Vampire guarding it. He has a gun of some kind, a big one...” He gasped this out, barely coherent, due to struggling for air like he was.

  Their Shadows flitted around for a moment, then the lead one stepped forward and told the others to follow him in totally unaccented English.

  “I'll use my body as a shield for my people. Come, we must go quickly.” They started to move toward him, ponderously, their bulk holding a great deal of inertia.

  The strain of taking this being through the void nearly caused him to black out. Shooting started instantly when they came in. His left arm blossomed with pain. He stepped out instantly and returned to grab the next dragon-man.

  His mind cleared in the void, but the lack of oxygen and the strain almost made him stop. The pain in his arm didn't exist here, which helped. No arm, no pain, he mused as he delivered this being, hoping the shooting in the room had stopped.

  It had. He fell down, gasping. He knew he had to shut down the pain, turn it off. He struggled to focus his mind for a moment, then two. Finally it all went away, even though he still breathed in great gulps. He got the next two and moved down the list to the next location.

  This went on for nearly twenty minutes, every time he caught his breath for a second, someone, either a huge being, or a group crowding the node would force him to transfer too many or take too much at once, never letting him really get his breath back. Still, he hadn't vomited yet, which felt like an improvement over the last time he'd done something like this.

  As he delivered one of the groups from the middle of the list he stepped into the first room to find it exploding. He felt the impact of a dozen pieces of something and instantly pulled out, taking the man with him back where they had started.

  Not pausing, he checked the node the dragon-men, whatever they called themselves, had gone in at to see if they had cleared it. A huge hole stood gaping in the wall, but no one seemed to be in sight. The pieces of the Vampire and his weapon lay on the ground though. They seemed to melt a little, the pieces of Vampire. The dragon-man, lacking a wooden stake, apparently decided to try ripping him into a half-dozen pieces. The head sat next to the body looking unreal, like a fake movie prop, rather than something belonging to a person.

  He tried to explain the situation to them, but none of them spoke English. So he just put them through and hoped they'd figure it out.

  Zack felt weak and a little sick. He held himself together and continued though. They didn't know what kind of forces they faced, so he had to get as many fighters to the scene as possible as fast as he could.

  Still sucking air so hard he sounded like a machine that was breaking, he finished the list, taking through about fifty Trolleinkein, all holding massive war paddles. This looked odd to him, but Hilda had said once that a war paddle in one of their hands could take the head off of another Trolleinkein. He didn't want to imagine what it would do to a regular Human.

  He got back to Candles and More, collapsing to the floor, gasping for air and not talking for several minutes.

  “Is he... all right? He's bleeding...” a man's voice said. Several Vampires were suddenly on him, licking the blood and the wounds, which while not healed, did stop bleeding.

  Claire stroked his brow, not saying anything.

  Eventually he sat up. Vaun, the man who had spoken, listened on a cell phone to something. Every few minutes he would report on the battle and how their side fared.

  The huge Dragon-men had apparently turned the tide of battle, coming from an unexpected direction as they did. It didn't seem certain yet though.

  Hilda came and sat next to him, holding a package of food in her hand. Some form of sweet he hadn't had before. He ate it all not tasting it, after he slowly sat up. Kaitlyn brought him a drink of water. He croaked “Thank you”.

  Everyone but Hilda and Vaun winced visibly at his voice. Hilda's Shadow self shone with pride, being from a warrior people. She hoped he didn't die though.

  Vaun on the other hand spoke to him urgently, without words.

  We need you to pull out the wounded and those hostages that aren't Human. The authorities can't be allowed to see that anything other than 'terrorists' had a hand in this. There's no other plan. There is no one else that can do this. Don't fail now!

  He cleared his throat and looked at them meaningfully.

  “There are some recovered hostages and wounded that need to be moved quickly. I... Can you continue, Mr. Hartley.” Doubt in his voice, he stared at Zack, who must look pretty pitiful right now, he realized.

  Zack stood, legs shaking, but holding. He kept trying to increase his energy, just in case it might help, circulating the flow, taking in a little more to the pattern with each breath.

  “Are they at a node? Do they have that area secured for now? If I take another bullet or more shrapnel...Yeah, not good.”

  The old Vampire checked, speaking into the cell phone in his hand, like a regular person might have. “They have it secured, for now.”

  Limping painfully to the line, he closed his eyes
and blocked the pain again, then stepped through, into carnage.

  Chapter forty-one

  They had to move fast. He basically followed orders about who went where, only taking people to locations known to him. A few people were to be taken back to Underwood, where Dan and Wu-Li had set up a triage.

  “Kaitlyn. Lock down your emotions and go help the Masters with the wounded. You can do this. Just do what they say and try to use your new healing powers...” She closed her eyes and the worry and anxiety lifted from her. When she spoke her voice sounded flat, but calm.

  “I have healing powers?” she asked him, raising an eyebrow.

  “Actually I'm suggesting that you develop them now, it seems like a good time to discover you have that talent. Go...” He tried to smile, but his face hurt too much. He tried to lock down the pain again, though it seemed harder this time.

  Merri brought him food, and Hilda got the water this time. Libby, Ang the Dragon, and Brian the Wolf came in dressed in military fatigues and body armor, all carried complicated looking weapons.

  Behind them Keeber, the largest of their group came in with something that looked like a Gatling gun.

  Seeing where his eyes went the normally shy man said, “Automatic shotgun with flechette rounds. This is actually banned in modern warfare, because it's considered inhumane. I intend to be very inhumane though, so that should work out just fine.”

  Libby looked at him with tears in her eyes.

  “Are you...Okay?” she asked Zack, worry for him in her voice. She dabbed at her eyes with her hand. Hilda handed her a napkin from the stack she'd stolen from Frozen YoGurt.

  Ang looked at him and spoke gently.

  “We're the rear guard. It seems the battle is nearly done. Some resistance remains however. If you're able, could you take us to the battle?”

  Zack nodded, and passed them into the battle one at a time, a little more slowly than he liked. When he got to Libby he grabbed her, stopping her from walking for a moment.

  “Be careful. We need you here. I need you here. So don't do anything foolish. I love you.” Before she could answer, he moved her across. She had a real job to do and he didn't want them to lose because he'd begged her not to go. It was still hard to let her do it.