by P. S. Power
She found Troy standing next to Hilda and waved to him, the room having gotten pretty crowded over the last hour, with nearly two hundred people in it now, some being far more exotic than what they normally saw at Underwood. They both put and arm around her when she walked over, Hilda holding a small plate of hors d'oeuvres with her other hand.
She looked at Troy.
“Um, Troy, it was suggested that you might introduce me to Luthor? If you think that's all right, of course.” He kissed her cheek and turned doing the same to Hilda.
He led them both over toward the interior corner of the room, where a small clutch of Vampires stood, an empty space around them that existed in only two other places in the room. In one the Demons all stood together, looking out at the room as if they feared attack.
In the other a nice looking man stood, glancing around pleasantly. He wore a neat suit of gray material, seeming about like everyone else in the room, if a little more normal. His head looked bald, but it was mainly that his blond hair had been cut so short, she saw after a moment. As she watched at least three people moved toward him, got into the ten feet, and moved out of it within fifteen seconds each time. No one looked at the man in more than passing, they just didn't seem to want to be near him for some reason. Maybe he smelled bad? She doubted it though. He looked clean and tidy to her, not like someone that would fail at basic hygiene.
As they walked past, she focused, trying to understand what the deal was. It took looking deep within herself but at about ten feet from him she understood. Within that range, he could kill you. It wasn't any kind of magical threat, it just felt like the second she got within that range, he'd planned out dozens of ways to dispose of her, depending on what she did. He'd assessed her, knew her and her patterns and made ready for battle. The sense of this was powerful. She'd been close to some other creatures and beings that had felt a little like this. Hungry Vampires. An enraged Djinn. Merri if you tried to thank her... but this blew those out of the water. It wasn't even a sense of anger, but rather one of... peace. The man was totally calm, relaxed and even happy about everything. Also totally ready to kill them all at an instant's notice.
She smiled up at him, trying not to back away. She caught his eye and saw him smile back at her, a genuine and kind thing that reached his eyes. Swallowing, she walked toward him, Hilda and Troy both obviously uneasy, followed her, trying to cover their discomfort, Troy began to shake slightly as they came up to the man.
“Um, hello,” Kate began, “I'm Kate. I don't think we've been introduced, or met before?”
The man gave her a big smile, “Hi Kate! Finally someone here talks to me! I'm nobody important. I hope it's OK that I'm here? A man appeared out of thin air, and gave me an invitation and told me that I may be needed here tonight, but didn't say why. I can't imagine the reason myself, unless you need more people to pass out drinks or something? I thought at first that maybe you'd need help in the kitchen. I have some training there, but that seems to be working flawlessly. After cooking and basic carpentry, I'm afraid my relevant skills kind of fade pretty quickly...”
Everything about his words and demeanor claimed him to be exactly what he seemed. She asked about the man that appeared to him, and he described Riley the Trickster perfectly. She told him that she didn't know what he was there for either, but that he should enjoy the party and if anything came up, she'd come and get him, if that was all right? If there was a trickster involved, she informed him, something would probably happen. He nodded and stood looking around in his little bubble of personal space in the crowded room.
Kate didn't shake her head, and tried to reconcile how nice the fellow seemed on the one hand and how very terrifying he felt on the other. As they walked away Hilda looked at them, and then back at the nice man behind them.
“I don't know why, because I think he's a Human. Just normal, at least his scent is, but for some reason, I think that if I fought him, it would be the last thing I did. That fight wouldn't even last very long.”
Troy didn't speak, he just led them to Luthor, the ancient Vampire leader. He looked reptilian after a fashion. His skin didn't have scales, but it felt like it should. The head Vampire's face looked flat and smooth somehow, but it was hard to pin down. He stared at her boldly as she looked up, but kept himself from staring too long, just long enough to make sure she didn't pose a threat directly. The man moved to pull his jacket into place, something that had probably cost five or six thousand dollars in Europe, by the way the cut fell on him and the style.
His cold hand, hard like stone and white like marble came out at her, it wasn't held out, it hovered somehow, as if floating in the air rather than supported by anything like a body. He gave off a baffling sense of both being more solid than anything around him and not being there at all. She took the hand which closed on hers delicately, as if he treated her hand like a butterfly, trying to make certain he didn't crush it.
“Miss Swanson! I've heard wondrous things about you. The tales of your beauty did not do you justice, and your ability to walk the lines is amazing. My people did not think that any but Hartley, or perhaps a relative of his could do such a thing. Do you know how you've managed it?” He asked this with a smooth voice, it didn't order her to answer, but made her want to. She smiled and told him what she thought, even though she hadn't really planned out the words in advance.
“I spent the better part of half a millennium in the void, with only Zack for company. No bodies, nothing but thought. I think that, along with skills learned while doing that, I also became a lot like him. On a deep level I'm very nearly Zack Hartley. Not perfectly so. I still think of myself as Kaitlyn, but it's there. These abilities are mine and aren't at the same time. That's just a guess. It could also be something else.” She looked the Vampire in the eye and smiled.
He asked her a half dozen more questions, most of them pretty normal. If he wanted to date her at some future point. Her favorite season, what holidays she preferred, who she might be seeing at the moment. Then he asked her, almost subtly, if she'd been telling him the truth and if she could lie to him right now.
“I could, but I admit that I don't want to. Whatever you're doing is great that way. Subtle and very refined. I think that I wouldn't answer if it were something I didn't want to, but I can't think of anything I can't tell you anyway. Should I try to fight it? Go ahead and ask me something.”
He asked her what her name was again and she told him Glenda Goodfellow, she felt surprised herself that she'd come up with something that wasn't a person she knew of, or a fictional character. Hanging out around Don must have rubbed off on her a little. Luthor blinked, then smiled, giving her a single nod of the head and faded back into the center of the group of Vampires, obviously signaling the end of their interaction. Just as she got ready to turn and walk away, Vaun stepped forward and bowed to her, so she bowed back, guessing that would be protocol here.
The Vampire looked at her and grinned.
“Luthor is very impressed and wishes you to know that he would like to pursue a treaty, if possible between your people and ours. There is no time schedule for this, but if at any time you wish to do such, please have Claire get in touch with me and I'll pass the information directly to the top levels. Thank you.” Before he turned to leave he added something. “The attack the other day? According to the one that survived, a Vampire sad to say, it appeared to be a kidnapping attempt. They thought to grab one of you before any treaties were in place. It seems to have been a small faction, most of which are dead now.” He bowed again and floated back toward the cluster of Vampires again, walking backwards carefully, not turning his back. Since she probably wouldn't be the reason he did that, she looked around and noticed that the kind seeming man from earlier had walked over to her and stood about three feet behind her, smiling still and looking at nothing in particular.
“I'm sorry to bother you like this, but, is there a restroom available? A little too much punch earlier...” She pointed the way and as
ked if he wanted her to show him the way, shaking his head he told her that probably wouldn't be needed and thanked her for the help.
As the man walked across the room, he suddenly struck the air in front of him, then twisted, kicked twice, very fluidly and skipped to his right, everyone else backed up, not knowing what he did, but Kate could hear the sounds of impact, as muted as they were when he struck. Hoping that Riley wouldn't send her a crazy person unless it was needed, she called out for security, as they arrived seconds later, she told them to stop and watch.
“I think we're being attacked and that man is protecting us. I can't see the attackers or hear them! But I can hear the blows landing... Vampires and Alede act as spotters. Trolleinkein, where they point, hit as hard as you can! Weres, to your best ability, if you can't find them, guard the others. Walkers... To me!” She rolled this off as fast as people could hear it, focusing as tightly as she could, finally she could see lines out of the air, right now a dozen of them focused on the man that danced in the middle of the room.
Focusing tighter she looked at the scene, trying to figure out what to do.
It turned out to be Zack that made the next set of moves. He seemed to go totally still for a few moments, then blurred out of existence appearing where the man pointed suddenly, grabbing one of the invisible creatures causing half a dozen Vampires to hit it at once. Whatever it was, they couldn't hold it for long. It shook them off and moved again, invisible the whole time.
The man in gray wove around, moving quickly, but without pausing, flowing from one thing to the next as if it were a dance or something. He made a flowing movement with his right arm, turning in place on the balls of his feet and kicked suddenly at the air, causing a sound of impact about five feet away. Everyone in the room started scattering.
“Hilda! Can you catch the scent?”
The big woman bellowed a loud “no!” that filled the room. Nothing attacked anyone but the smiling man, who still, eerily enough, smiled. After a moment he pointed again. Zack moved without hesitation and the Vampires moved in again, this time Hilda was close enough that she could grab it and start hammering on it with her right fist. The blows rang out, sending shock waves across the room that Kate could feel in her chest. Soon three of the giants were on the invisible thing, all holding it, pulling and striking with everything they had.
The man in the middle of it all did something. It looked like a simple punch and made a dull thudding sound, like someone being hit with a meaty steak rather than a fist. The creature screamed and one of them finally became visible. It was big. Too huge to have gone undetected in a room so full of people, even though it had.
It had a vaguely Human shape, but looked wrong at the same time. The arms were huge, as big as the legs, thick with muscle and covered with fine scales of armor. Once visible they shone a slightly iridescent green, a slight pearl luster to them. They'd be pretty if the creatures didn't look so scary, Kate thought. The head looked broad and flat across the face, almost like it was made of solid bone rather than flesh at all. The creature moved and one of the Weres shot it, but no hole appeared, the bullet bounced off the scales.
“We need to take them here, in this confined space. Extra room benefits them, not us.” The man in the gray jacket and pants said, his voice sounding cheerful and barely breathless at all. Pointing at another spot in space, while he engaged two others, or so she guessed, there were two lines of intent.
She thought hard about what she could do, and finally remembered cutting the cement blocks with Wu-Li. She focused and created a wire thin whip of energy from her right index finger. That was too small, so using more focus than she thought she could while being attacked, she extended it out as far as her mind could without losing track of it when she moved. In the end she had a blade of sorts about three feet long. Without breaking focus she walked to the creature in the middle of the room and cut its head off, just moving her hand as if it had no weight and met no resistance. Her cut turned out to be far from perfect, leaving part of the jaw and taking part of the shoulder, but it worked.
Trying to hold her focus steady, she walked to the center of the room, toward the man that still fought and directed the others, who had taken two more. Once he made them visible, and held them, she cut those heads off too. Troy had armor on and a sword out, but hadn't managed to hit anything, and Hilda stood beside him, the leg of a table in her hand. Zack ran where the man pointed, and then stopped and watched, waiting for the next indication of where to go. Rather than run over again, he raised his hand and sent out a single line of power, then drew it back, the thing it hit impacted the far wall, hard, caving it in under the force of the blow, as if a car had hit the wall, but it seemed to get up and rejoin the fight immediately.
Each time someone watching started to be attacked, the man in gray moved to them instantly and forced the creature to focus on him somehow, keeping anyone from being harmed that way.
Thinking of nothing else for a bit, knowing their new friend would protect her while she did it, regardless of the odds against them, she extended a line around her left hand in a similar fashion and moved to the middle of the room, focused as hard as possible on holding these cutting lines in place.
“I can cut them, but I don't know where they are. Can you get me to them?” She asked the man, who still fought, not slowing in the slightest while he listened.
He didn't move with superhuman speed, or distort space around him either, not that she could tell. He just did the right thing, at the right time, over and over again. He started calling out what she should do and she tried to follow his instructions. That was more than a little awkward. After a minute she cut one of them in half, then spinning she took another, though she had no clue where it had been when she hit it. Over and over again, the man called moves. They didn't all connect, but about half of them cut the things to pieces.
Everyone else stood and watched, amazed as the normal looking man fought without stopping and without error. When a major error finally did come, it was Kate's. It wasn't so much an error as an accident. She ran into a creature, invisible as it was, and bounced off of it, slipping a little as she did, spinning to keep her balance, the line she built lingered, even without complete focus on it, so as she spun, left arm outstretched for balance, the invisible blade hit the smiling man in the arm, severing it, sending a gush of blood pumping into the room.
“Oops!” He said, then gasped in pain, trying to hold the blood in with his other arm. Though filled with pain, his voice kept calling out directions, speaking in a ragged tone that got weaker and softer over the next minute, but steered her to two more of the things. His voice went silent and she search for the lines of intent coming from nothing, hoping that something would give her a clue as to where to go. She could only see one, so she waited, then pounced, slashing wildly. It took time, but she eventually hit it, sending and arm and half a shoulder sliding away from its body. Two more strokes finished it.
The man lay dying on the carpet, surrounded by bodies of dead creatures. She'd actually killed them, she realized, but so had he, if with her hands, somehow. She ran to him and called to Zack and Don. “Clear the room. Energy!” She ripped her dress open, breaking a nail trying to do it, because the fabric turned out to be tougher than she thought it would be. The pain made her pause, but she continued and tried to transform the man in front of her. He shifted easily. As easily as anyone ever had. She didn't even have to push her energy reserves. The woman he turned into was pretty, like all the people she transformed lately. She had thick red hair, and looked familiar to her, but not exactly like anyone she knew personally. She was hot enough to be an Alede, which probably meant generically good looking, too. That was probably why she looked familiar, since a lot of Alede looked more than a bit similar to one another.
Shifting him back, she expected, well, she expected something to go horribly wrong. For him to be some other kind of creature or for him to be dead when she got him put back together. What she got was th
e same man, but different. He looked a bit younger, a bit darker of skin, but still very light. The eyes looked the same, but something about him was off. The lines. The lines coming off of him were broken and jangled, she'd seen this before. He'd died. And come back. Zack had done this before too.
He looked up at her and smiled.
“A woman named Courtney said to tell everyone hello and that she loved them? Oh, uh, then she said you all totally have to put out for me now, but I think she was probably kidding.”
He stood up and stretched, looked down at his body and the old severed arm on the floor, nodding.
“You do good work, you know that? Thanks.” Then he stood up and started to walk away. Then stopped and turned back to Kate.
“Before I leave...” His glance was serious, calm and deadly.
“Yes?” She replied, hoping he would just ask for money or favors, maybe sex and not one of their lives or something too costly to them, even though he probably deserved it, if he wanted it. No one there would be alive without him, after all. It was the kind of thing that could have a massive price.
“May I use your restroom?”
Half the people in the room laughed, and the other half looked around mortified that anyone had dared laugh at this being.
Kate just told him yes, and pointed the way again.
On his way out he was handed a half dozen cards. Kate gave him one too, and on the back wrote, “For a good time call...” with a little smiley face next to it. He may creep people out, and scare people hardened to battle instinctively, but Courtney had been right, if Zack had actually seen Courtney and it wasn't something else that met him.
Either way.
They owed this man, whatever he was. If they could get it for him, he'd have it.
She just hoped he'd call.
The party got cleaned up then, everyone being taken home through the lines, since it would be harder for anyone to stop them that way. She took Cerise's party back to Europe herself. London didn't speak to her, simply looking livid over something. Which no doubt made great sense inside her warped and chaotic mind. Not that she knew that was the case, but the woman had to have something wrong with her, didn't she? As they left she turned and pouted at her openly.
