On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3)

by P. S. Power

  Hilda came in with a roll of duct tape and wrapped up the eight monsters in the house securely, Troy stepped forward and took command almost instantly, everyone deferring to him. It made sense. He'd done this before, after all. More times that any of the rest of them knew, she didn't doubt.

  “Zack, get information from them, you know what we need. Names, numbers and other crimes they've committed. Claire, write that down please? Hilda, you're on guard. If they try to struggle knock them out. Blaine, Britney, see to Don please. Kate, scary man and first aid boy, you're with me.”

  He walked them all outside, moving quickly.

  He looked at Kate and Cavendish, then toward kid next to them who looked back at him harder than he probably meant to. Troy leaned forward and hugged Kate and clapped the boy on the arm.

  “I need the story here. We have to know everything, don't leave anything out, all right?”

  Kate explained everything from her perspective and Cavendish added no more than a line, mostly about having disarmed the three that had weapons when he'd gone in. Troy didn't even ask for clarification, having seen him fight several times now. The boy next to them went next, eying the smiling bald man next to him while he spoke, looking very uncomfortable.

  “I'm Ken Morley, those people killed Rachel Mills, she was my... really, I doubt she even knew who I was. We had a chem class together and I had a crush on her. I know that I probably don't have a real reason to be here, but... Somebody has to speak for her, too. I know she didn't have a lot of people...” He looked ready to argue the point with them, or even fight, as ridiculous as that seemed. No one laughed at him, or told him that he had to leave. Troy just thanked him for saving Don's life and Kate turned to him, hugging him for a long time.

  Just because his loss was of something he never really had, did that make it less important? Kate didn't know, but she hoped that if she ever found herself in the same situation as Rachel, someone would stand up for her when the time came.

  Zack called them all in, his voice sounding sad. Tired too, but the battle of the last night may have had something to do with that. Humans needed to sleep, and none of them with her could have for a very long time.

  “I've got the information. It isn't nice...” He laid the whole thing out for them, not holding anything back, even as people stared uncomfortably.

  “They watched who came in to the bar and looked like they could be taken without too much trouble. So people that used the hole in the bathroom mainly, especially if it looked like they were drunk or lonely, people easily drawn away later.

  “Then they brought them here and... abused them, the normal stuff you'd assume, sodomy, rape, some torture and beating, choking them repeatedly, they were producing snuff films, real ones, because they thought it would make more money than anything else they could do in porn.

  “They dumped the bodies under the same bush each time as advertizing. So that people would know that their films were real.”

  He took a deep breath and continued for the people that weren't there before.

  “Riley's aunt, Kassandra, had Don turn into a woman, and go to the bar, to get their attention, knowing they would want one last score here, before picking up and moving to someplace new. She did it, and they slipped something into her drink, after a staged fight with her 'boyfriend' Dwayne, for... um, sucking off a bunch of guys in the bathroom. Then they brought her here and did things to her, raping her over and over again until she woke up enough to scream entertainingly, for the movie.”

  Kate felt sick when she heard it, she could hardly stand to listen, but there was more. She had to fight not to cover her ears with her hands, but she owed her friend more than that.

  “They kept almost killing her and then letting her come back, over and again. Even when she begged for death, they kept doing it. The woman, the one from the bar, she isn't their prisoner, she's their leader. It was all her idea in the first place. She did it for money. Just that. She isn't even a psychopath or mentally ill in some other way. It was all about making money, the whole time. For her.”

  Kate formed a blade around her hand and no one in the room stopped her when she cut the woman's head off. She could wish her to suffer more, but that wouldn't help anyone now. No, the only thing to be done now was make sure Don knew she was safe. She moved to the next one, but Britney ran over, looking around for something to kill with, Troy finally handed her a large, very sharp looking knife with a metal handle that looked like it was part of the blade. It had writing on it, but Kate couldn't read it from where she stood.

  Britney, sweet little thing that she was, stabbed the man in the face over and over again until he died. That was an Alede thing. They didn't often kill, but when they did, it wasn't uncommon for them to destroy a person's face like that. It took away their power. Right now it seemed fairly just to her, but she'd just spent the night before killing things. It was, most likely, that her thoughts on the matter might be a little off at the moment.

  The men next to him started screaming after a while, realizing they'd be next. When Brit couldn't stab any more, Troy walked over and slit the man's throat, making sure he was really dead.

  Blaine took the next one, making it last longer and hurt more, a lot more. His face didn't survive either, but he lived through it being cut off.

  Hilda went and looked through the viewer of the camera, watching the video for a while, a scent of burnt toast came off of her as she walked up to one of the men in particular, who was sitting near the end of the line if they were going along the direction they had been. She grabbed the man with her left hand by his right arm, near the shoulder and picked him up off the floor all together.

  “You hurt my friend. You hurt other innocent people that never harmed you or yours.

  Death is too good for you. Suffer first.”

  The she pulled his arm from his socket, broke the arm with a twist and repeated it on the other side. When she finished she reached between his legs and grabbed, finally making a ripping motion. He bled from the crotch, inside his jeans. The man whimpered piteously. She set him on the ground and stomped his right knee, then the other as he screamed for mercy.

  “Mercy? You want mercy? It's too late to have thoughts for that now. Here is your mercy then, when you beg for death, I will give it to you. If you beg hard enough!”

  Eight minutes later the man began to beg to die, three minutes after that she grabbed his head and crushed it. Kate was happy she'd done it, but knew that she'd have nightmares about that sound for a long time. It had resonated in her chest and her stomach, a dull cracking sound, she could make out the different breaks in her mind when she thought about it, a creaking followed by distinctive pops.

  The boy, the man, Ken Morley stepped forward to take his own turn. Surprisingly Cavendish stepped forward and put his hand out toward the boy, stopping him.

  “Your friend is gone. It will help Don to know that she isn't alone, but your Rachel is beyond care for that. I won't stop you if you really need that vengeance, but it won't help you, and it won't help your love.”

  Ken teared up and shook his head, then put his hand out. Troy handed him the same knife that Britney had used earlier, that he'd cleaned carefully in the mean time, watching the events unfold. He stepped forward to the closest one and looked at Cavendish, swallowing his fear, then he looked at Don who sat, crying still.

  “I know this won't help Rachel, but I'm Don's friend, too now. Besides, if I let everyone else do the hard parts, how could I live with myself later?” He didn't torture the man, but did take his head off. It took about twenty seconds and the man screamed for most of that time, but he got the head all the way off, then dropped the knife, staggered to the corner of the room and threw up. Retching for about a minute then turning to the room and apologizing sheepishly.

  Britney and Blaine both moved to him and held the man between them, moving over to where Claire held Don steady. They let Ken go and looked over at Claire, who stood and walked to one of the remai
ning four.

  She punched him in the head, the move so hard and fast that it looked a bit like his head exploded. It wasn't fast enough to turn his head into a mist, but there was no doubt that he was dead before his body could slump back away from her. She borrowed his shirt to clean her hand on.

  Kate hadn't even realized that Libby had been in the room until she moved on one of the men. She used a knife, but she made what Hilda did look gentle. If it lacked the savagery that Britney had shown it was only to try and keep the man alive longer.

  Walking over casually, what must have seemed like slow motion to him, Zack, clearly focused into a hyper fast state, kicked one of the remaining men under the chin. He'd been a dark skinned man, with short hair and a nice clean shave. His head came most of the way off and flopped backwards. Kate had barely even seen his foot move.

  The last one sat whimpering and begging. Don got up, surprising everyone one and staggered over to the man. She grabbed his chin and made him look at her. He tried to look away, sobbing, but she didn't let him.

  “Why?” She asked him, her voice flat and sounding dangerous. “Tell me why you did it and make me believe you won't do it again and we'll let you go.” The promise sounded... not sweet, but pure, innocent.

  “Why?”

  The man just shook and cried, he finally spoke sounding hoarse.

  “Because no woman would have me. No matter what I did, they always said no. I couldn't take it anymore. That's why. Now just kill me or not.” He closed his eyes. Zack shook his head at Don, who actually looked sad.

  “OK. I understand.” Don looked at the man and focused, head clear now from the drugs, at least enough it seemed. The man just... stopped. He wasn't alive any more. Kate couldn't tell what Don had done, but it seemed to work pretty well. Troy cut his head off too, just to make sure the job had gotten done.

  Taking a deep breath Troy organized a cleanup, Zack carried the bodies through the rift and took them away. Willet and his associates took the video equipment and destroyed the video itself. They left in the van. Willet asking them to tell Jelly he'd be in touch within twenty-four hours. Don got turned back into a guy, which shocked Ken a bit, but he didn't freak out like everyone had thought he would.

  “You know, I think we've all been told for so long that Humans can't handle the truth that we keep not noticing how easily they all keep accepting it when strange stuff happens.” Kate put an arm around the boy for a moment, then realized that both of them were covered with blood.

  Don still seemed like he was in shock, as would be expected, but he stood up when they left the house, wearing Blaine's shirt, and Cavendish's pants, since he still wore exercise shorts underneath. Leaning in, Don looked through the rift without being asked and started pulling everyone through one by one, into Kate's room. When he got there he sat on the bed, and simply cried. Cavendish moved to the far side of the room, which seemed to help a little, easing the sense of panic that had crawled up inside the boy.

  Britney held him close, "It wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything wrong. They did. Those things."

  "I know." There was more darkness in the words than was comfortable to hear

  Britney moved to hold him, since it was what she would have wanted if those things had happened to her.

  "You couldn't have known this was going to happen. They were bad people, and we stopped them."

  “I did know. Kassandra, her inner self, told me. I knew... It was the only way for us to catch them.” He cried for a while then, everyone holding him, except Ken and Cavendish, almost piling people on the bed. Luckily most of them were pretty light, or the whole thing would have collapsed Kate thought. It didn't get her to move at all, of course. She could feel how solid it was, made stronger by the box below where the Vampires slept.

  Zack came into the room after a while and started taking people away, back to the mansion. As the room started to empty, Ken said he should get back to his own room, which wasn't too far away. Kate jumped up and hugged him again and had him change into different clothes. She had some for Kyle that fit decently enough for him, though they were sweats, not real clothing like he'd been wearing.

  “You're going to have questions and stuff. About what you saw today. You can come here any time. I don't sleep, or find one of the others. Don does sleep, but we'll be around when you need us. As someone once told me, once you help bury the bodies you're pretty much part of the group. The same goes for getting rid of the enemies I guess.” She kissed him, hard enough that he stiffened a little. She let him go then, hoping he was one of those people that could handle things like this. It could be hard to tell. But if he needed help with it later, she'd make sure she was there.

  The numbers in the room dropped a lot after that. Finally Zack came back and didn't leave, holding Don closely for a while. Chris found his own way through the line, having heard about what happened, coming through in a blood rage that Kate hadn't even considered possible. After all, when he'd been beaten nearly to death he just accepted that he was dead. Right now he looked so intense that she was kind of glad the bad guys hadn't survived. She didn't care about them, but Chris would have killed them all and who knows what that would have done to his mind.

  “They raped her? And killed her? Why didn't you tell me about this?” He didn't look at Kate or Don then, but directly at Zack. He stared at the head Line-Walker in a way that made her wonder if the boy was going to attack him. That gave her pause, because she had no clue what tricks the kid had picked up. There really wasn't any knowing what he could really do. There wouldn't be until he learned how to do it. They were all too different for anything else.

  Zack swallowed, but didn't look away from him. There was actual reluctance to his words when he spoke.

  “Because I knew that if I told you, you would have killed them all, and too many other people needed to kill them too.”

  The room went silent as the boy broke into frustrated tears, his skinny frame reminding her a lot of Zack. The hair color was similar. Even the bones in his face, and the way he shrugged. For that matter, now that she thought about it, that was who Don looked like too. Zack. Sitting right there it was pretty clear.

  After a while they all walked Don back to his room, though everyone traipsed along. Claire asked Cavendish what he might be as they walked. The man smiled still, having only stopped when Don discussed how he felt. It wasn't a mocking thing, just a habit, Kate guessed, to try and convince people that he wasn't a threat. A bit like a lion wearing a tutu she thought, but then realized that a lion was a lot less dangerous. He answered sounding friendly enough though.

  “I'm just me. To claim anything else would just be pretension.” He kept smiling as everyone, but Kate subtly moved further away from him. She still felt the awareness that he could mean death at any time, but she didn't associate him with a direct threat to her any more. Maybe they just had to hang out long enough with him to get past that? She touched his arm briefly, letting go only after he smiled at her directly.

  Better, she thought, only shaking slightly.

  In the room they all talked for a while longer, Zack not wanting to leave until he knew for a fact that Don would be all right. Kate had a feeling that might take a while, but understood the sentiment. Cavendish stayed near her, since she was the only one that would stand by him at all, which meant they were both near the door when the knock came.

  Standing to open it Kate got pushed to the side suddenly.

  “Armor.” The very scary man told her. She called to the black ooze which formed very quickly again, maybe even faster than before. Cavendish did the same, and grabbed the door handle and pulled.

  The shooting started before the door opened. Kate focused, slowing things again, steeling herself. She realized that she had to get in front of the bullets to give everyone else a chance to react. She moved into the center of the door, Cavendish moving in front of her, taking the most direct route that the gun wasn't pointing in. The man firing looked surprised that two latex
wearing freaks were darting at him, from his expression, but he didn't stop firing. He got three shots off before he was disarmed. Zack called out to the Cavendish to not kill him, if possible.

  Instead, a single blow, barely a tap, rendered the man unconscious. Then the scary seeming man pulled the shooter into the room before anyone noticed exactly what happened.

  Don looked at the man on the floor and kicked him with his foot, getting a small sound from him as he laid on the black throw rug with its multi-colored squares.

  “Dad, everyone. Everyone, my father. Robert Karver.”

  Claire grinned and picked him up with one hand, having grabbed his thick leather belt. She walked with the man to the rift, which would go to Don's room at the house and waited for Zack, who stared at the man strangely for a while. Finally he took them all to the mansion, saying that he didn't want the specifics of the shots fired to be known, if they could help it.

  Claire carried the man to the living room, then called everyone to join them. Kate boggled for a moment, since there were a lot of people in the room, suddenly. Twenty-four of them, and she thought a couple of them were still missing. That didn't even include the jerk waking up on the carpet.

  Standing, Zack moved to the man and looked at him hard. Then he looked at Don and Chris.

  “Well... that explains a lot.” He said to no one in particular.

  Kate turned to him and put a hand on her hip, a move that was more aggressive than she'd normally get with him. Beatings and sexual advances aside, of course.

  “Zack... use your words.”

  He shrugged at her and looked like he was searching for words to explain what he thought.

  “Well, two things really. First, as I'm sure Claire and Hilda already know, he has a demon inside him. It's how he avoided the Vampire's. I'd guess it hasn't been there that long, a few months at most. Second, I don't know this for certain, but I think he may be my dad's brother.” He dropped that on the room and went to the phone, tried to dial and finally had to ask Claire if she had his grandparents number.