Troy Ounce (Lopez Time Book 1)

by Phillip S. Power

  Troy winced.

  “Freaking great. So, I need to get out of here?”

  There was a small nod.

  “That, or learn enough magic to handle the issue. Since that will probably take you a year or two, you might want to crash someplace else for a while. On the nice side, you know two of the places that will be set aside like this. You should be able to use that to work out what’s going on. That might not give you enough of a clue to work with, but it can’t hurt.”

  He sighed. All he needed was his clothing and toothbrush. That and his hair care stuff. It would take him about fifteen minutes to pack up everything he needed and leave forever.

  Troy started to shift but was waved back down before he did more than raise half an inch.

  Zack winked at him.

  “No need to freak out. This is clearly building up. You have at least a week. Really, you should be able to work it out and break it in that time. If not, then… Well, not being here is probably the best plan, after that. It can’t be good if someone is going after a greater demon. A master vampire like you, as well. I doubt that anyone could hold you. Not for long. That means it probably won’t be about that. Some kind of total death thing.”

  The guy, who looked a bit Japanese around the eyes now and had slightly golden skin, sipped at the bottle again. It seemed like he was savoring what he had. Appreciating it obviously enough that it was supposed to be a message to his friend.

  When he spoke again, Zack sounded like the old version of himself, nearly at least.

  “Oh! I was chatting with a guy from a different world the other day. We need more line walkers to help out with some transport in about a month. Can you get away for that? I get the thing with your cover operation here, but it really isn’t working. Too many people know you as Troy the vampire line walker. Even my government sources call you that. Well, Mr. Lopez, the vampire line walker, because they don’t want to piss you off. Nice and polite people, in the main. You wouldn’t think so, but there it is. I should get you some numbers for them. Now that you’re all working in the same field, I mean.” There was an undertone to the whole thing, that spoke of him being sly about it.

  Which was going to be on purpose.

  He was too smart not to use every moment for some effect or other. It was, oddly enough, probably about helping Troy out. Which… He had to meditate on the idea for a bit, then grinned at the man.

  “Wait… so at least one of these people wants to talk with me, so you’re planning to give me a bunch of contacts. Some kind of bargain with them? Something that Darla put you up to, because otherwise you’d just have them call me. It isn’t like I don’t answer my phone.”

  “Ding, ding, ding!” His friend lit up then, smiling hugely. “Exactly. Perfect, Troy. It really isn’t a big deal. I do have a list of people for you though. Some good men and women. I’m holding the asshats back for now. I need something to give you for Christmas, after all.”

  That was a good point.

  “Nifty. Well… They can come to the community get-together in a few weeks? At least you can. That… It’s here, can you work that out with The Technician? It’s not worth millions of dollars or anything like that.”

  Greater demons charged each other through the nose for almost everything. At least that had been what he’d heard over the years. Even things like the right to be friends with a given person might be worth hundreds of millions.

  Zack didn’t deny it.

  “Sounds like. Still, she’s my mentor. We kind of get a pass on that as for visits between areas. It would cost too much otherwise. I can ask. She might say no. I doubt it. After all, she’s in on this, from the sound of it. Getting free backup can’t hurt anything.”

  Troy could see that.

  “It’s just a picnic. Music, food, that kind of stuff. At least I’m not using it to set a trap or anything. So far.”

  Instead of answering immediately, Zack looked away and tilted his head. After about ten seconds he nodded.

  “That’s not wrong. It’s a big deal, though. No one has really tried to bring the different groups together for the regular people. We have Sparks and what Tyler is doing, but the average person can’t relate to that any more than they could the U.N. It’s important, and has nothing to do with people’s real lives. This, your little picnic, is the first time that mom and dad can pack the kids in the car and mingle with shifters, vampires and mages. Actually, going to a thing where they know it’s going to happen. If anyone wants to make a mess of things, it would be a great place for it. Probably not though, being put together by the police like it is. It’s a good idea to stack the deck.”

  “Yep. Still, I think it will be all right. Things are changing in the world. I mean, it’s not perfect. I get that. People seem to be coming around though, after the stuff last year. Regular people don’t want me dead for… Being dead. I guess some will, but if we won’t show up in public as ourselves, then that momentum will stop.”

  It made sense to him.

  Zack laughed.

  “It doesn’t work that way. It will go back and forth for a long time. Maybe thousands of years. For now…” He looked up, then dug at his collar.

  After a moment, he pulled out a small white stone. It was kind of square and had a tiny glowing man on it in green. Several shades of it. It was on string, but had a hole in the top. It was held out for Troy to take.

  “This is a healing amulet. It works on humans. It won’t do much for you. Tap it, holding the idea that you want it to turn on and it will. Have Denise hold it for about five minutes and it will fix any problems she has, health wise. I need this back, you just get to use it the once. It won’t fix the underlying issues, so in fifty years whatever problem she has now will come back. Anything else she has will be repaired at the same time. I got it from Tor. You know him?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not personally. I… He’s… Dareg’s dad? I know him.” That sounded right to him, anyway.

  Dare was a line walker from a different reality but had an obvious crush on Eve, so had been around for a while at the Westfield embassy.

  “That’s it. Good, you can get this back to him then? I want you two to meet. You’ll have to do it carefully, since your current rules say you can’t just go to him. It will be good for you to get it to happen. I think that a certain Eve is starting to view line walking as a hammer, you know? Her fix for everything is always to go and find some cheap and easy way to do it in a different reality. That’s smart, but also takes away from this world a bit. We need to do things here as much as possible, or we’ll hamper our own growth in the long run. Especially people like you and Eve.” He upended the bottle into his mouth, finishing it quickly, then placed the empty brown glass to his right. It vanished into a small and very tidy warp in space.

  “People like me? You mean the ones who ride the short bus?” Compared to Greater Demons, everyone had to seem like that.

  This time there was no humor at all, just a head shake.

  “Nope. You. Both of you, are potentially great forces in the world. Avery, too. Maybe even Phil, the new kid. The problem with that is one of focus. If you all spend too much time in other realities, then it will take away from what is created here. That isn’t your responsibility or job but it’s what will take place, if you do too much of it. Taking the easy way is more fun and no one will blame you. Certainly not the demons.”

  It was contradictory. Which was no doubt on purpose.

  Zack waved a bit, then started a step to the right, as a disk smoothly opened up in the air. Perfectly without form or visible aspect. If he hadn’t felt it, Troy wouldn’t have known it was there at all.

  “Think about it. Also, call more often? People worry about you. If you get in touch with me, I won’t have to spy on you as much.” With that, he finished the step and disappeared as completely as the soda bottle had.

  Leaving Troy alone.

  In what was essentially a cursed apartment. He didn't let himself
panic over the idea, because if it was needed, Zack would have told him to run. Even if it had been against some kind of rule or another. Instead he’d mentioned a time frame of seven days. That was potentially useful, of course.

  “Damn. I should have invited him to go shooting with us.”

  Not that they weren’t going to have enough of a showing from the greater demon community already.

  Holding the little amulet, he put it around his neck for safe keeping. A thing that could heal any human of pretty much anything was incredibly valuable. That was probably why the man from a different reality needed it back. Getting it to him was going to be interesting, if he was doing it without line walking. Regular Troy the vampire couldn’t even afford to pay for things like that.

  So, that meant getting a message across to this Tor and setting up a meeting, somehow. Dareg could bring him there, no doubt. That way it wouldn’t cost anything. At least he didn't think the man would charge him for taking his own father around.

  Normally he would have just asked Eve to handle that part of things for him, or possibly even have gone to Avery, since they’d met enough to be friendly, if not friends yet. She was a bit young and a little shy around men, or had been a year before. He knew Zack as well, but had to feel that there wouldn’t be a lot of line walking help from that direction.

  The only other line walker he knew personally that would take his calls would be Kait Swanson. Even that was a bit forced, he had to admit. They were in different structures and areas in life. She was nice, but a succubus. An Alede. That was the proper name for her kind of person.

  They loved sex, and like vampires, powered themselves off of life energy. The big difference was that Troy and his folk used it directly, setting up a tap into a living being. The Alede took the creative bit of energy that came out of people when they had sex but no child was being formed. It was a bit different. That also meant that Troy couldn’t trade sex with her in any meaningful fashion to get what he needed from her.

  What he could do was invite her to a picnic. Possibly even to come and shoot with them on Saturday. Given her life, and the kind of powers she had, being able to shoot things might be useful for self-protection at some point. He didn’t really need that, making it a hobby about precision and control for him. Alede didn’t have superior strength or speed though. They lived a long time and would use sex to protect themselves, but that didn’t always work.

  It was really late at night now, however. Thinking about it, he dialed Zack’s bookstore anyway. He could probably leave a message for her there.

  On the third ring, a man answered the phone.

  “Hartley and Co. Books. How may I help you?”

  Troy didn't recognize who it was. That didn't mean anything. If you left for a year, that could happen. He hadn’t really been up on what happened there even when he’d been at the mall all the time.

  “Hello. This is Troy Lopez. I was wondering if I could leave a message for Kait Swanson?”

  “Um… She’s here. Can I get her for you? It might be a bit. She has a friend in the side room. You know.” There was a slightly gruff sound to the whole thing. “Or not… It looks like she’s coming out now. Let me…”

  “Got it Rolan. Be there in a second.”

  “Yeah.” The vampire on the phone, who had a dry voice, meaning not a human, talked to him again. “You heard all that?”

  “Yep. Wait… Rolan… Didn’t you threaten to kill me once?” His tone was conversational, since it really hadn’t been about him at the time. He’d been there and would have died, except that Bey had come and handled things for them. Zack had been the real target.

  Back when they were both still human, more or less.

  Instead of freaking out, or acting like it was a big deal, Rolan laughed. It was fake, but done halfway decently.

  “You know, I think that’s right. Nothing personal. I hear that you’ve moved on to being a cop now? How’s that going?”

  “Not bad. It’s mainly just about graffiti and dead chickens so far. You know, little stuff. Oh… We’re doing a community picnic here in a few weeks. Everyone from there is invited. A lot of it will be during the day. You’ve gotten daywalking training, right?”

  “No. Why would I? I mean, even getting on the list for that takes having connections. Then you have to work for ten or twenty years for the Council, directly. So far that seems to be the case from what I’ve heard.”

  Even at a distance, Troy shrugged. It was really obvious to him.

  “Well, yeah. You have to be pro-Council to get in. Aren’t you though? I mean, if they asked you to do something, you would, right?”

  “Sure. I don’t feel like dying for the final time yet, so, yes.”

  He smiled, sitting on his sofa, looking at the black screen of his television, which was turned off.

  “There you go. So, you just need to get in with Eve. You work with Kaitlyn, they’re still dating, right?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. I guess I should ask then, given all that. It’s hard though, isn’t it? Staying up like that?”

  “Oh, definitely. It hurts like a motherfucker, too. Every single day. If you want to be more than one of the little guys, that’s always going to be the cost though. Waiting two hundred years before you do it won’t help you at all.”

  “I’ll ask, then. I can drop your name on it? The Snowflake only knows me as some asshole that works too slowly at the bookstore on order night.”

  Meaning he worked with Eve directly, or had in the past. Troy would have shaken his head, but could really see that one. It was very possible that the vampire was freaked out by Eve on a deep level, after all.

  There was a noise and the phone changed hands to someone who sounded moist. Female and breathing constantly as well.

  “Troy! You finally decided that we should get together? I knew I’d win you over, eventually. We haven’t even had sex since you became a vampire.”

  It was really the most important thing for her people. That meant he smiled about it, meaning it or not.

  “I was wondering if you’d like to come hang out this weekend? On Saturday, some friends of mine are going to the range. Shooting? I can show you how, if you don’t know yet. It’s loud, but I’ll bring ear protection for everyone. I need to find out what you’d like, since I need to pass a message to a different reality and…” It was hard, trying to describe not doing it himself to a line walker who knew he could do it. Not without triggering the NSA big time.

  Not that they didn’t know. He was pretty certain on that one given the clues he’d been being given in the last day. Short of hitting him in the head with a hammer, it wasn’t very likely that they could have made it clearer to him. Still, the current job was to pretend he didn’t have that ability, so he needed to at least try and act like it.

  “We can work that out, I bet. Let me… I have Saturday off. You’re in Lincoln? I know where it is. I’ve been there. Really… I can bring a few friends? Becky is from there, after all. Krista, now. She changed her name for work. Plus, I can bring my grandmother? There’s a thing with guns coming on her show.”

  It was a lot of people, but he shrugged.

  “Sure? The more the merrier. Meet at… Do you know where the police station is here? I think everyone going will get that as a landmark. It’s right next to the city hall.” They could claim to be meeting there, to prevent anyone from feeling too uneasy about it.

  “Yep. When?”

  “Call it noon? It’s the worst time of day, but some people sleep I hear and don’t like to shoot in the dark.” As if that wasn’t when they’d need that kind of thing.

  “Got it. Neat. I’ll see you then. Thanks for calling. Eve has been gone so much that I’ve been getting lonely. It will be good to hang with some friends like that.”

  She hung up then, before he could suggest that she get with Eve about Rolan. The man would either work it out on his own or not. If he needed his hand held, then he wasn’t strong enough to stay up all day
. If you didn't want it on some level, there was no way you could force yourself not to die to get away from the pain.

  Which was coming again for him, in a few hours.

  Which meant there was time to play some video games. He settled on the couch and turned the console on. The game he had in was an RPG. He’d always liked those, but shooters lacked something now. So, did racing games. Once he learned the controls his reflexes were so fast that it was hard to lose. Turn based things were a bit slow at times, sure, but he could appreciate the strategy. The goal wasn’t just to win, but to do it the most efficient way.

  That one was strange, since in real life, he loved shooting now. It was more delicate and all about form and control, compared to the games. There you just lined up two points and blasted away. In real life, there were at least six factors. More if the target was moving.

  It was also a good way to kill time, since he was, for the moment, at a dead end on the investigation. He had new data and some ideas to work with, but that didn’t give him leads as to how to find whoever was doing it. At six he showered, then changed into some nice, but not too dressy, clothing.

  Making sure he had the file that he’d written up with the new data and the amulet for Tran, he took off at eight. He wasn’t due in until nine. The station wasn’t far, either. About a ten-minute walk, if he ambled. By car it nearly wasn’t worth it, since he’d be there before the thing had even really warmed up. That meant hoofing it was the order of the day. It was lovely out, if a bit painful.

  Hunger burned at his middle, but that was normal, so he let it go. Eve had learned to do without food all together. That was, she’d told him, a kind of magic. It was another reason for him to work on that. As it was, he was tied to seven cows at the moment. They were all alive and well, but if someone killed them, he’d be left scrambling for an energy source. It didn’t even have to be on purpose. One good lightning strike and he could be left severely weakened.

  Given that someone was trying to kill him with magic already, brushing up on that kind of thing wasn’t a horrible idea.