On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3)

by P. S. Power

  He shook his head to the surprise of the new comers, “Nope, not at all. I've played some shooting games, but that's the extent of my knowledge.”

  Libby looked shocked and pulled the weapon back a bit, “Willet said he'd need a gun...”

  Don chuckled and took the weapon from Libby, popping the magazine, clearing the chamber and asking if there was an empty one around so he wouldn't have to empty the one that had been in it. There were others, but all of them were fully loaded and ready to go, so he pulled the bullets from the one in his hand, put it back in the weapon and handed the whole thing over to Hawk who stood waiting, watching everyone in the room.

  Don shrugged at Libby and winked, “He's a Vampire, he only has to look like a Human bodyguard. For that matter, it may be illegal for him to have a weapon here anyway. We need to check on that. I don't want the cops called on him for carrying if we can help it.”

  Libby looked at the man Hawk had become and eventually put everything together, her eyes going wide, then melting into something a little more appreciative.

  “So... Looking good there Hawk. We should go out for drinks or something before they make you give that back.”

  The other men didn't get what they were talking about and thought she was being sarcastic about him not knowing how to use a gun it seemed, from the looks they all gave Libby. Kate smiled and offered to take them all over to Willet then. Except Chris, who didn't look like he'd fit in on campus at all, and really wouldn't be able to pass as a security agent. He looked at Hawk and raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, unless...” He started, pointing covertly at the Vampire boy.

  Kate shook her head and gave him a kiss on the cheek, pushing him toward the rift. The throw rug bunched a little under his feet when he stopped suddenly and twisted to catch his balance. He reached out and steadied himself using her arm. Managing to brush against her breast as he did so. He blushed and apologized, after righting himself and kicked at the carpet, looking down, until it flattened again.

  Kate grabbed him about the neck and pulled him into a half headlock, kissing the top of his head then pushing him into the rift, which he managed to walk through, even starting off balance. Kate felt a twinge of envy over that, but didn't let it bother her. She could change people's shapes after all and while not as handy and being something that took cooperation from others for, it was still pretty cool.

  Everyone went with her to find Willet, and being that they called first, he stood outside Jelly's room waiting for them when they arrived. He didn't recognize “Mr. Hawk” so shook hands with him, a troubled look on his face when he felt how cold the hand was. He explained the situation, which girl, the Human Gretchen he was there to guard and the uncertain situation.

  “We don't know if she's in any danger. There have been murders on campus, but the cameras were everywhere and we have reason to believe we haven't found them all by any means. Keeping an eye on the girl won't hurt of course and will make her feel safer. Um... Will you be all right alone with her?”

  Hawk nodded and told the man that wouldn't be a problem. He sounded so certain when he said it that Willet almost didn't believe him at first, but Kate and Don both told him it was true from where they stood in the hall behind him. A clutch of three students, two boys and a girl tried to walk by, staring at the men a little suspiciously. Willet turned to them and gave them a frank and open look.

  “Right Key Security, we're checking out the electronic devices uncovered earlier today in this building and seeing to the security of students in this room. If you have any questions, please ask your R.A. or campus security. If you see anything strange or out of place, please contact either us or security immediately. Thanks folks. We'll do our best to get this taken care of as soon as possible.”

  The other men all stood doing their best to look like they belonged there, which they actually did. It was probably a first in their careers, the school having asked them to do all this. Kate decided to let Willet go over all that, if he hadn't.

  The students thanked them and walked past, looking back only a couple of times. Apparently murders and strange spy cameras in the rooms would get some attention, even from college students.

  Willet knocked on the door, which brought both the girl's front and center. Gretchen saw Hawk... and went blank, then she flushed and moved her mouth like she wanted to stammer, but forgot how her vocal cords worked. She stood straighter and pushed her breasts out firmly. B-cups, Kate noticed, but respectable given her fairly small frame. They fit her in proportion at least. Kate could smell the pheromones coming off of her strongly before Willet even finished explaining the situation.

  Gretchen looked at Hawk and stepped forward, “Has anyone ever told you that you look a bit like Gavin Stipes?” She asked, touching his arm and standing about two feet closer to the man than any Human normally would have. It normally worked, when you considered that most men that let a woman get that close had already mentally accepted that they'd be willing to have sex with them. So for a woman to boldly move that close jumped a bunch of steps, but could also speed the whole process up a lot. It was pretty much Alede 101 and something Kate had used herself thousands of times.

  Not recently enough for her taste, but it was still a good trick to remember.

  Hawk didn't have a sex drive, but he remembered how it had felt to have one, and had been told by Kate to get the girl to accept him. If that meant having sex with her that would work. If it meant standing in the middle of the room, facing the door while she slept, that would be fine too.

  Gretchen gave Jelly a look and made a motion with her hand, telling the girl to go away and then pulled the Vampire into the room with her. Jelly smiled, hit the door with her palm before it could close and grabbed her overnight bag, a brown canvas tote that had been written all over with what looked like arcane symbols. Given whose bag it was, they might actually work, too. Kate looked at them closely then and realized that she'd seen a lot of similar markings on things over the last year.

  The next days went by far more smoothly. Hawk spent each night with Gretchen, who had actually waited several days to ask him for sex. He'd done well enough that the girl told Jelly that she was in love, but Willet warned her that men like Hawk couldn't afford to settle down. Fighting a grin the whole time. The whole thing sounded like a bad movie plot to her, but Kate understood that Gretchen was one of those Humans that always fell in love, but only for intense, brief time periods. If he stuck around, she'd probably end up being bored with him in three weeks time or thereabouts. So it was just as well that he got “called away” overseas to save an undisclosed member of a royal family. Kate smirked, but Jelly swore that Gretchen actually bought it.

  Who ever had put the cameras in had been careful. Maybe too careful, Willet told them after a week of investigation. He ran down everything with them.

  “They haven't made a lot of mistakes here. The cameras are clean and untraceable. We know what company made them, but we don't even have the model numbers. All identifying marks have been disguised carefully. There were transmitter arrays, but they were broad spread, so while we know that the signals only went about a mile, we don't know where within that mile the receiver would be. It could even be in one of the buildings here. They need receiving equipment, but that doesn't take a lot of space any more. A big closet and some recording devices would be enough.

  “The masks threw us at first, until we looked at the security records. Over the last five months, four incidences have been recorded on campus of masked men running out of someone's room. Nothing had ever been missing, so everyone figured panty-sniffers or something and wrote it off. But none of them were ever caught either, if it was more than one person.

  “That's what led to the mistake though, that bit of care there. It was a good plan and worked as far as that went, but it left a trail...”

  Kate pulled one of the wooden chairs Claire had picked out for her, that had thickly padded seat cushions on them, around with her foot. The carpe
t ruined the effect, muffling the sound and almost making the chair tip, but when she got it into position in front of her she waved a hand at it smiling, indicating that Willet should sit, which he did, if uneasily.

  Tilting her head she gave him a look that she hoped would seem serious and questioning.

  “Spill it. Stop with the detective novel break down and give us the results. Please.” The last added to help keep them all on good terms. After all, a good working relationship had to be built on more than just sex. For some reason.

  Jelly's uncle nodded and smirked a bit, proud of his work it seemed, “Right. Both of the dead kids? Their dorm rooms were two of the places the masked men were seen running from.”

  The room went silent, after a full thirty seconds Don finally spoke.

  “Well... Fuck.”

  Willet's eyes had gone dead, showing no emotion at all. Kate had seen him look weasel-like before. Also furtive, fairly frequently. Even cute a time or two. This was the first time their new spy chief had ever looked deadly that she could recall.

  “Exactly.”

  Something in all this resonated with Kate, but she couldn't figure it out. It was like something there on the tip of her tongue, waiting to be spoken, but staying just out of reach. The whole thing left her feeling breathless after a bit, and soon everyone was looking at her as she sucked in air desperately. She just held a hand up and stood, pushing the fairly light chair she sat in backwards until it hit the wall, about four inches behind her. She walked quickly toward the rift, catching her foot on the rug.

  This new rug just wasn't going to work out, she decided. She'd ask for a new one, or an old one out of storage, not needing to spend money on it personally for any reason as long as she could get something that wouldn't keep trying to kill people in her room. Standing in front of the rift she focused, trying to see it. Nothing came, but she remembered what Chris had done when he stumbled through it a few days before and found her way through on her own, Don followed, but she asked him to go back and see to the needed things on the ground back at the school.

  “Someone has to be in charge now. Willet's good, so let him do it, but try to steer him away from anything that will overtly break the laws of the area. I'll be back as soon as I can.”

  She left him still standing there, in the living room of the mansion and headed first to the back door, where she fought with the rift for about five minutes and then into the void itself from Something Wonderful. That part, going in to the void took about three seconds. She was decently good at that part now, which was heartening, if nothing else.

  Once there she focused, holding herself together, and trying to find the memories inside of her that needed to come to the front. There were lines between different thoughts and ideas, she knew. She'd seen them before, thin threads that barely existed, but they were there. In the nothingness she could find them, however. Kate could, with enough focus and time, do anything. Here she had both of those things.

  She went back in her mind, to the conversation with Willet earlier. Something in it had plucked one of those lines, trying to form a connection with something else. She narrowed her focus until she found it, sitting in the middle of the conversation. The thing she sought was there, in the description of the electronics in the rooms.

  No.

  Not the electronics in the room at all. The receivers needed. Something with monitors. Cameras being received... The back room at McC's. Their cameras had been wireless and they had all that equipment. That didn't mean they were the guilty parties, but it would give them someplace to start. They had already set things up to watch people having sex, so why wouldn't they be more involved?

  If they were, then it meant that these people, locals most likely, were killers as well as everything else they'd done. She felt the connections sink home. That was it of course. The links were coming together. There was one missing though, one from the beginning of the problem. She didn't know what it was, but it had to be there, she could feel it.

  She popped out of the node and went to Frozen YoGurt, not knowing why. She just followed a line that was in front of her, a color that she couldn't have explained if asked, but that she could see anyway. A rich electric flesh tone. It sang to her, inside. Honestly it was a wonderful thing, though not loud or pretty really. When she walked into the store, Claire stood standing next to the Vampire she didn't know. The tall one that she'd seen before. With Troy.

  Kate gave both blank stares, looking at the connections between them. Like parent and child, she saw, the links deep and old, the array of red over the head of the tall Vampire much larger and complex than the one over Claire. Seeing so much more now, Kate wondered how long she'd sat in the void this time. Longer than she'd realized. Much longer.

  “I think that there's a tie between McC's bar and the murders on campus. I need someone to find all the internet video that's come out of there, if possible. Who could find something like that, do either of you know?” Kate knew, before she said it, that the tall Vampire could take her words to mean that if he knew a name and gave it to her, he could discharge one of the favors she was still owed, but she didn't care. She decided at that moment to leave the Vampires to their own politics. As long as it didn't get in her way... fine, but she'd do whatever made sense to her, not worry about little things like that if she could help it. They had reasons for being what they were, but they weren't hers. It was an important thing to keep in mind.

  You had to let people be what, and who, they were.

  The tall Vampire spoke to Claire for a bit, asking if she knew the bar, the spelling of the name, the location and what was being looked for. Then, he spun, his feet covered in black shoes, his legs in tan canvas pants. His shirt simple and loose on his frame.

  Looking at the lines that came from him and how they meshed with the ones in her head, Kate saw how some things might be connected. She didn't know if any of it mattered, but she decided to ask anyway.

  “Claire, your friend... Is he the one that turned you into a Vampire?” Kate knew her voice seemed flat at the moment and couldn't spare the focus to change that, not wanting to drop her observation of the various interconnections yet.

  The Vampire took a deep breath and winced, for the first time Kate could remember the move didn't seem fake or preplanned. The question just shook Claire that much. She didn't answer, so Kate decided to try her next question.

  “Did he also save Rebeca?”

  The Vampire took several steps back as if ready to flee, but not taking the action. Finally, she looked around, and nodded silently.

  “All right,” Kate told her, letting her off the hook. “For some reason you don't want to discuss the topic. I can deal with that. I was just wondering what the lines meant. How are you doing?”

  She turned the discussion for a while, then made her way, still a little clumsily, through the rifts to her dorm room, which sat empty. She hoped she hadn't been gone too long, because she had work do and had only missed a few classes so far this semester.

  The room seemed still, but she could see the lines that ran beneath the bed to the Vampires, both linking with her, like the links to and from all her friends. She found Don's link and followed it to his room, deciding to just walk over. It was dangerous, after a fashion, but she didn't feel too worried. Not for herself. Anyone coming at her would probably die, if they weren't just out jogging.

  The campus seemed empty. The few people she saw were mainly men and they walked hurriedly, with a sense of purpose. Left feeling afraid and like they were possible targets, even though most of them were larger than average and not that great looking. If this was tied to people that wanted images of sex, they were probably safe enough.

  When she reached the door she knocked firmly only to have the door open almost immediately. Don grabbed her in a hug, and pulled her into the room. He'd been crying and so had Blaine and Britney who sat with him. Kate swallowed, dreading the answer to the question she had to ask.

  “What happened.�
�

  Don shook his head, but spoke anyway.

  “We... we messed up bad Kate. We didn't pay enough attention to Gretchen and... They killed her. She went out one night at about night fall, three days ago and she never came back. They found her body, in the same exact spot in the commons, under those exact same bushes.”

  He sobbed clutching at her for a bit, she stroked and petted him by rote, not knowing what else to do at first. Finally, sitting next to him on the bed she asked if anyone else had figured out the possible McC's connection yet?

  She no sooner mentioned it than Zack and the tall Vampire both stepped into the room. The Vampire handed her a thumb drive and walked back to Zack who waved somberly, but didn't say anything. It was clear that the Shadow selves of everyone in the room had already told him about their failure. She looked down at the black thing in her hand, afraid of what she'd find on it.

  She put the thumb drive into Blaine's computer without asking, but he didn't protest, coming around to see what the file held himself. When the window opened she found twenty three video files. Not knowing what else to do, they decided to click the first one, the largest file, which showed Britney on her knees at the Glory hole in the bar.

  “Right, so he found the right bar at least. I guess we should check out the others?” Kate looked at them all eyes tearing up a little.

  Blue Beret guy was there, doing some guy he was obviously with, playing at being naughty it seemed. Britney identified the liberal arts student that had died too. Near the end they found Gretchen, who rather drunkenly serviced about four guys before puking and making a mess all over the room.

  They didn't recognize any of the others as students, but a few of them could be, looking young enough.

  Don looked sick, “That's, well, there's a real connection there. I guess we should do something, but what? Do we call in someone better suited to this or burn the place down? What?” There was a slightly lost tone to the words. Kate let herself nod slightly, still not feeling much of anything. That wouldn't help at the moment. Later however, there would be more than a few tears over it all. It had to happen. It was just too much for her at the moment.