On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3)

  Alternate Places : Book Three

  On the Line

  P.S. Power

  Orange Cat Publishing

  Copyright 2014

  Alternate Places is a completely new series that takes place in a unique universe. It is similar in some minor respects to Other Places (the series) but takes place in a different reality scheme. No matter what you're thinking this is, it's different than that. It contains adult themes, sexual conduct and violence. This series is not recommended for those under fourteen or people that are sensitive to adult material. Reader discretion is advised.

  Chapter one

  The dining hall at Kaitlyn's new school left a lot to be desired. Oh, it looked all right, she figured, the tables being pretty standard with their Formica tops. A fairly tasteful off white color in this case, though that wasn't true for the entire campus. Some of the other dining halls were a bit less tasteful. They did manage to have actual chairs instead of benches like a high school cafeteria, but the food wasn't all that good.

  In fact, it was pretty horrible. It left a scent in the air that reminded her of slightly watery spaghetti sauce, and waffles. No matter what was being served, or what time of day it was. Grabbing a salad with a clear dressing, supposedly Italian and a piece of plain bread, whole wheat the label claimed, she worked her way toward the small, separate room that looked to be mainly inhabited by geeks and drama students.

  Her chosen people. More or less.

  It had glass walls on two sides, so it wasn't really private in any way, but the sounds of the main area should be cut down by a good percentage. A good thing as far as she was concerned. Her hearing was far more than a few times better than a regular person's, and it looked like the people inside were still thinking that it was too loud on the main floor. The lighting in the whole place was fluorescent, so it washed everything out, just a bit. Enough that nothing looked quite like it really should. The glare off of the tables could be mistaken for cleanliness, given that. If the food was a little more believable. Given the quality on that issue, the real cleanliness of the place had to be in doubt.

  She approached the small side room cautiously. Actually trying to be watchful, instead of just being another pretty airhead like most people would have thought she was.

  That's where she'd seen them both go the day before, the two blonds that leaked sex and lust all over the place. Turning half the heads in the room with their passing. Both had looked young. No older than she looked, so about seventeen. Mature for their age, which could mean they were actually older people just slumming it. Though either of them probably could have gotten a job in Hollywood based on their looks alone, so that might not be the case. Or in porn, though she doubted either of them had gone that route yet. Not because they wouldn't be interested, just because college generally came first for their kind. Alede. The Succubi and Incubi of the world.

  Kate smiled to herself, knowing that the idea sounded way more cool than the actuality. Getting to have sex six times a day was a fun treat, sure. Having to have it though, left most of their kind resting on a knife's edge of desperation all the time, grasping at anyone that would give them attention in hopes that they could score, and harvest just a tiny bit of energy from the transaction. Of course, on a college campus like this, sleeping with a half dozen people a day wasn't that hard to pull off. Not when you'd have to literally tone down your looks to become an actor or actress. Add to that a natural tendency to pour sexual energy into a room and you had an instant smörgåsbord ready to go.

  Yum. College kids.

  She spotted them sitting at a small round table, that had room for four people to sit comfortably, or eight to crowd their silver and black chairs around, if they didn't mind being really chummy. Her current targets were both just as obvious about what they were as the day before, naturally. They sat with a young man that instantly caught her personal attention, however. It wasn't his looks, which were just a bit past average, maybe a seven on a scale of ten. If she were being generous and didn't admit she kind of had a thing for skinny guys that looked a little geeky. His brown hair and blue eyes didn't call to her in particular. No, it was something else entirely that did it for her. The other two sitting with him both managed to keep their hands completely away from him.

  That spoke to her. It was so rare and unusual that she honestly had to wonder what, exactly, this boy was. He sat hunched over his tray, munching a little despondently at a French fry, obviously eager for attention, but the two blonds both... ignored him, at least when it came to sexual signals. Honestly that should have been nearly impossible for them to manage. If he'd been a trollish one and a half on that scale of ten, they still should have been all over him. He looked Human, and that meant food worthy.

  She looked at him more closely and thought that he looked a little familiar, but couldn't place it. His face had a certain shape to it that called something to mind, but it just didn't come to the front yet. She'd probably just seen him around before. The campus was decent sized, but you still ran in to people, out walking around and stuff, right? They both ate in the same dining hall, which might just be it.

  Both of the others cast their gaze out to the room, using the complicated Alede hand and body posture signals to alert one another to possible partners. A casual flick toward a thin young man with a blue beret in the corner of the room for instance, or a vulpine smile and hooded glance in the direction of a dramatic looking young lady wearing a tan corduroy jacket and a teal scarf. They kept their interactions hidden and well timed. Probably born of long practice, since they appeared to be brother and sister to Kate.

  Twins, in fact, if she read the faint lines of energy that ran between them correctly. A solid connection ran between them for sure, one closer than that of mother and child. Which for an Alede meant something. They were literally dependent on their mothers for energy until they were at least ten and usually longer than that. She'd never met an Alede that wasn't close to her parent.

  That skill, seeing the lines of connection between things, wasn't a trait they would share with her. The faint blue lines between friends. The rose color of people loved and the black of hatred, those lines of energy, or at least her ability to perceive them, had developed over the years she'd spent practicing intense meditation. Drifting in the pure black of the void between worlds. It had taken most of the year since she'd returned to figure out what the lines themselves really meant, and there were other lines that, even though she saw them clearly enough, she still couldn't exactly figure out.

  She walked slowly toward the table, giving the two Alede a chance to see her coming. Not that they took it. She carried her tray with both hands. It was a brown plastic thing that would have cheapened the effect of even really high quality food. That limited the hand signals she could use with the two in front of her. Normally they'd be able to feel her presence. Unless their own sexual noise drowned hers out, which was currently unlikely, but might be just possible, sitting close to one another like they were. Really, they'd probably do better in there hunting if they gave each other another foot of space or so, since their distancing probably looked a little romantically involved to the subconscious minds of everyone else in the room.

  The only one at the table to look up at her approach turned out to be the brown haired guy, whose pupils widened a little when he saw her. His chest pulling in on itself, instead of puffing out slightly like she'd normally expect. It was the common sexual display for Humans, puffing up to look better and larger than your competitors. That he didn't do it, even on a subconscious level... well it wasn't good. His body told her volumes about the situation he'd found himself in. She'd need to check to make sure her take on things was
actually correct, even given that. It was possible to make mistakes after all, and that could cause problems, depending on how the twins here wanted to play things.

  Standing there, holding the ugly tray, which was filled with hardly enough calories to make the trip to the dining hall worthwhile, Kate waited for someone to acknowledge her presence verbally. After about fifteen seconds, seeing that the other two Alede didn't even notice her yet, being too involved in what they were doing it seemed, and the brown haired boy wouldn't speak first, she simply sat down. Waiting to see if that would work up any attention. The Alede at least should have looked over to see if she was food or someone coming to steal their people from them.

  It wouldn't be fair, she knew, to say that no one noticed her. Even sitting at a table with the wonder twins, she gathered her share of admiring glances, especially in that room, since her own chosen look of “hot geek girl” spoke to about half of the people particularly loudly. The fake glasses on her nose, brown hair, dyed to a less lustrous color than nature provided her with, and the plain green and blue t-shirt and jeans she wore didn't hide the d-cup breasts or perfect figure much. In fact, a few people, both men and women, had turned their covert attention away from the blonds and focused on her instead.

  Smiling, she glanced at everyone casually, as if sitting down at a table of strangers was natural for her. Which it was, of course. The chairs here weren't comfortable, designed to get people to leave quickly no doubt, so that people wouldn't eat as much probably. She should go talk to someone about that. Zack was paying restaurant prices for her mandatory meal plan after all. They could afford to let her have a few hundred calories per day, couldn't they? Especially if they were going to feed people the crap they were trying to pass off as nourishment.

  No member of her species had ever mastered the ability of actually being shy, however. So there was no hesitation about joining a group of people she didn't know yet. Distant? Sure. Cold? Occasionally Alede could manage that one, with practice. Probably not as often as other people might have imagined, even if they were all good looking. Pushy when it came to sex? Definitely. It was, after all, their defining trait. Never all that retiring, however. It could be an issue too, since that kind of thing was more normal than not.

  “Hi.” This directed toward the dark haired boy in the slightly rumpled looking red t-shirt with a half worn off logo for some band on the front, that sat next to her. “Is it all right if I sit here? I just transferred in and don't really know anyone yet...” She made her voice sound innocent and a little lost, on purpose. Begging him to take pity and help the little lost girl. She leaned toward him just slightly and licked her lips. Not enough to start a war with the others at the table, but enough to get her noticed.

  The man straightened a little with interest, but apparently had been around the blonds long enough to know that hot women talking to him were usually just interested in getting closer to his companions. He didn't frown at her, which was nice given what he had to be thinking. He just looked a little defeated by the whole situation. Natural enough, Kate thought, hoping that he'd have enough will left to answer her, since talking to someone that just sat and stared at you would be creepy.

  “Uh, hi...” He finally managed, as if trying to not really commit to anything with her, not even basic pleasantries. “Yeah, sure. Really, you can sit anywhere if you want. It's not like the seats are assigned, right? But, I mean, of course you can sit here...”

  He ate another fry, carefully not making eye contact with anyone, especially her. He could have been trying to seem cool or unconcerned, but if so, he wasn't pulling it off very well. Really he just seemed... tired of it all, she guessed. Just because he seemed a little shy, she focused on her own food for a bit, taking a few bites without really tasting anything. Except lettuce that had a rusty, slightly iron flavor to it and vinaigrette that had been made with way too much white vinegar to be pleasant and had been mislabeled. Still, a fairly thin, attractive woman would look out of place snarfing hamburgers and fries all day long, even though she could without it ever affecting how she looked. In fact she'd have to dig into some snacks when she got back to her room, since she needed about five thousand calories a day just to feel normal. That or a whole lot of sex. Even as well fed on energy as she was, there were things she needed to feel good. Enough food or bunches of sex rounded things out for her, but it had to be one or the other at least. She'd gone without either for a while and it had sucked. Big time.

  “So, I'm Kate...” She said, looking up, sounding a little hesitant, since no one had really paid attention to her here yet, not at this table. A girl sitting two tables over wet her lips and tried to make eye contact with her.

  The boy next to her pushed back in his chair just a little, making a high pitched screech against the smooth gray floor, as if about to run away or something. He held his ground after the initial movement, mainly by keeping hold of the table's edge. He probably didn't want to watch yet another girl get sucked in to the black hole that the two across the table probably meant for his love life. Luckily for her, social conventions said that when someone talked to you directly, you had to answer. At least if you didn't want to seem like a total jerk. That gave her an edge with this one, since he didn't really want to seem like that at all.

  “Oh, yeah. Nice to meet you. I'm Don. Don Karver. The two over there are Blaine and Britney. You may have noticed that they have a slight family resemblance, which they should, being twins and all. Don't worry, I'm sure that they'll look over this way any minute now.” He grinned at her then, a little knowingly, as if to indicate that he knew why she'd really sat down with them.

  In a way, he was right, of course. She'd come over to make first contact with them, so that they could work out the boundaries and rules of the situation. They were here first, so by Alede convention, they could do anything from dividing up the campus with her, introducing her to specific people they claimed as their own, or even asking her to leave all together. That last one would be really rude, since two Alede didn't really need twenty thousand people each to survive. If they couldn't survive happily on a couple dozen they needed to go back to school for a refresher course. Real school. Alede school.

  She casually started flashing introductory signs to them, though neither bothered looking over at her at all, almost as if they didn't see her. This could be due to how little lust she cast into the room, keeping her feelings locked down so tightly that she barely seemed Human, she knew, much less like the Succubus she actually was. Not to someone reading her from outside. After a few minutes of small talk with Don, flashing hand signals, body postures, dropping key phrases into the conversation and trying to catch their eyes while she spoke, without doing so in a way that might insult the man she talked to, she finally decided on a more direct route.

  Curling the last three fingers of her right hand down, forming a letter L with her thumb and first finger, she held it up toward them, her wrist on the table, as she kept chatting with her new friend. This was the very first Alede hand sign that any of them learned. At her school kids had practically walked around their first grade year making it constantly. True, it had been replaced over time with more subtle things, but when in doubt, make the sign. They'd always been told that, even as they got older. It was what they did instead of the pledge of allegiance most days. Get a little lecture that reminded them about proper communication skills. Not really, but still, they should have noticed she was there at least.

  It had made for some amusing situations back in the nineties she'd heard, when people had started making it on their foreheads. Meaning loser. In school it had been suggested to them that this may have come about when a few famous Alede were trying to signal people in a crowd and had explained it poorly. Coming up with good new stories off the cuff was not a strong point of her people, so she could pretty much buy it.

  “So, you're into computer programming? That is so cool!” She told him, actually meaning it. What she knew about computers ended just sligh
tly past checking her e-mail and surfing for porn. “Software or hardware?”

  This got him talking about his dream of making it big as a game designer, an area of computing that, if she didn't have a lot of personal experience exactly, she'd heard a lot about from some of her friends. Don was five minutes into a discussion of a game he wanted to design, which actually sounded pretty cool, when she decided to make an even bolder move, since her wrist had started to ache a little from the unfamiliar hand sign. When he finally stopped talking again, just for a moment, Kate made a point of noticing the t-shirt the girl across from her wore.

  On each breast a logo of a large red Valentine's heart had been emblazoned, cupping over nicely, the girl having about the same chest measurements as Kate. The letter I before the one on the right, Britney's right, an 'ly' on the outside of the other one. It took her a second to work it out.

  “I heart, Hartley?” She spoke the words aloud, not quite staring at the other girl's chest, but looking at the shirt fairly openly. It was a soft powder blue color, that offset the bright red hearts really well, and gave the girl a very soft look at the same time, with her light colored complexion.

  Both the Alede finally looked over, though neither acknowledged seeing the hand sign. Tapping her hand on the table didn't seem to help either. The girl's eyes had lit up when Hartley had been mentioned. That being the only thing that had gotten their attention so far, she decided to keep on in that vein, carefully, since almost all of their kind knew about the 'Line Walker', but only a few had met the man himself. That he'd be showing up in her dorm room three times a week would probably impress them, but wouldn't keep who she actually was a secret very well.

  Britney nodded and brushed the right heart with her hand, stroking her own chest pretty blatantly, not that anyone around her seemed to mind. Looking hard at Kaitlyn she smiled, as if just realizing that someone potentially tasty had sat down with them. Finally, Kate thought. Turning on the charm suddenly, a wave of potent sexual power flowed across the table at her. It didn't affect her, since learning to ignore such things had been the second lesson that Zack had taught her when they first met. A time that was a little over a single year and nearly forty years before, depending on what you counted as time passing. In the void they'd been together a lot, in the real world less time had passed.