The Living and the Dead (Tyler G Book 3) Read online

  Tyler G.: Book Three

  The Living

  And

  The Dead

  P.S. Power

  Orange Cat Publishing

  Copyright 2015

  Chapter one

  Sound was the first thing to return, which was odd to Tyler. He was, almost certainly, dead. After all, he'd taken the better part of a day to remove his own head, and that pretty much should have done it for almost anything. If you did things like that, it was, more or less, the last thing you got to do.

  Which was fair enough.

  He was gone. That had been his plan, at any rate. Dead, and if not buried, probably being eaten by the little boy that he'd been trapped in the cave with. There was water there, and air, but no food. Except for either him or the kid. Being that the boy had seemed very tasty to him, it had made sense that one of them stop existing. At the time. Now the annoying voices were speaking. Calling his name.

  One voice.

  His mother. Lucy.

  Calling for him to rise again.

  That made sense, after a fashion. She wasn't just his adopted mother. The woman who had protected and cared for him as a boy. No, she was, as it had turned out, the Greater Demon known as The Rotted. An insane being with so much power that, when her kid took the easy way out, and kicked the bucket for the final time, she apparently could just bring him back on a whim.

  Opening one eye in the bright room, he squinted a bit.

  "I don't wanna get up." It came out sounding just as petulant and whining as he meant it to. In a way it was the simple truth, however. He'd been resting, unaware, and now had to wake and face the world again. It was exhausting, having to do things like that. Not that he was going to be a little wimp about it. He was, if nothing else, a hard worker.

  That meant not lying around all day like a corpse. Even if he was one.

  The speaking in the room stopped then, and his mother, looking the way he'd last seen her, instead of the familiar face from his childhood, moved over him and touched his cheek gently.

  "There's my boy. Time to get up. There are things to do. Demons to hunt, and slay."

  That was probably just the truth, he knew. There would be much to arrange, and probably real Demons to kill. Or at least one or two to talk about, if no one else had figured out what was going on.

  The Storm, a rival of sorts of The Rotted, had kidnapped him and the slightly dark skinned boy that had been placed in the all stone cave with him. The idea had been to force him to eat the little guy, in order to remain alive. Then, every three days or so, another person would be dropped in for him. Until he broke on a level that no one could recover from. Shattered for all time. Left a slave of a different demon.

  Like that would have worked?

  His life was the property and power of The Rotted. At any time she could have let him go. Allowed him to rest forever. Sitting in a darkness that was the true finality. Even eating flesh to stay alive like The Storm had wanted, Lucy could have killed him forever on no more than a thought. He knew that now.

  Just like how she could call him back, and nothing he said would change it. Her slave, for all time, with no way to get around the idea. Even death couldn't save him. That was fine, for the moment, since he'd died for a reason, and given that he was out of the spelled cage of a cave that had starved him of whatever power had animated his form.

  So, his first words to the young looking girl, one who seemed cute, had glasses, and a bookish style were a joke. Because that was how the really cool undead kids rolled.

  So he made his second a bit more stable seeming.

  "The boy?" He wasn't going to ask the particulars. If it had been six years in that pit, then the kid was gone. There was no way to tell. The only thing he knew at a glance was that the place he was at the moment wasn't tan stone with artificial lights above. There were no spells on the wall either. It was, at a glance, a meadow somewhere. One with pine trees. Checking upward upward he noticed that there was also two moons in the sky. The regular one everyone knew from back home, and a lumpy yellow thing. Right there above the green, over the dark haired Demon's shoulder.

  Turning his head, a thing that worked easily, he noticed that The Line Walker, Zack, was there as well. The half Japanese looking guy winked at him, and moved in a tiny bit. It was no more than his right hand coming up a fraction of an inch.

  "He's fine. I took him back to his family already. He'd been beaten, and shaken up, but that was all. It seems that someone stole The Storm's little victory dance from her."

  That would be, Tyler knew, God.

  As strange as it seemed. In the end, about to eat the child, or at least gear up for it, not able to help himself in a day or two thanks to the growing hunger, he'd prayed to the being. Asking that the kid be saved, and rescued. It took everything he had, in some fashion, but there had been an effect.

  In answer the wall of the cave, a thing so deep and vast that there was no reasonable escape from the place in the time he had before he went wild and started munching little boys, cracked a tiny bit. From the line on the wall there was a trickle of water. That, and a stone. A jagged and ragged thing about the size of his hand. Other than that, there had been nothing in the place to save the child with.

  So, while it might have been a douche move, giving him only a jagged bit of stone to kill himself with like that, leaving only his body for food, it seems that the guy, God, had done the rest of it somehow, and gotten them help. In time. Greater Demons, too.

  Sitting up, the air smelling sweeter than a natural setting should, Tyler stretched, then felt his neck. It was nice and smooth. Probably having been fixed by The Rotted already. He started to stand, but noticed that he didn't have a right leg.

  Lucy, his mom, patted him on the arm.

  "It will grow back. The boy ate it. I can see that. There was nothing else, and you told him to do it. Rather firmly. That was brave. It also stole a victory from Glindlyth rather nicely. She should have known better than to mess with my people." The girl who he'd always known as being very different than she was at the moment patted his arm again.

  "Zack found you. It seems he really wants you to work order night this week?"

  Tyler, glancing at the ruin that was the gnawed stump of his leg, nodded. The pants he'd been wearing were ruined too, and there were tiny, very Human looking, tooth marks on his flesh. Just a hint of red blood poured out of him, seeping, since he didn't have a heartbeat to pump the blood out like a normal person would have. It was a thin leg, or had been. Muscular, and lean. Hardly a taste sensation. Hopefully filling enough.

  The Line Walker shrugged when he looked up.

  "I made him forget that part of things. He thinks he was just taken by some crazy woman that wanted a son, and doesn't recall the rest. I don't know if that's better than not, but having been there myself, after a fashion, I wouldn't want to remember it. Not if I had a choice. Anyway, it's been about three weeks. The Storm was... Occupied for a bit. It seems that someone had told Goethe that she was plotting to kill him, and that guy, apparently isn't all that stable. We don't know who did it, at least in public, but it gave me a chance to locate you.

  "Three weeks?" Tyler nodded. That meant he'd missed some work, and had been letting people down. His band mates, for instance.

  Just as he started to feel bad, his mother, looking about thirteen or so, smiled. It messed with his head a bit, but he could feel the line between them. No matter who was in front of him, he'd know Lucy. Even if she looked totally different.

  "Don't worry. Everyone has been upset about you being taken, but it will be fine. You didn't miss anything too important. Not yet. So, do you want to stay here while
you heal, or would you like to go home?"

  This was spoken to him, as if he were the person in charge. That wasn't the case. No matter how nice his mom was being, he was her slave. Like The Storm had said before he'd taken his own head off. A puppet. A complex one, made of meaty goodness, but that was, in the end, all he could ever be.

  There was no Pinocchio ending for him where the Good Fairy came down and gifted him with life, making him a real boy. What he had was it, as far as things like that went.

  So he could whine about it, inside his head, and lament not having it all, or he could take what he'd been given and run with it. That last one seemed the better option, since there was no choice anyway. Being a pain in the ass whingy little mouth breather was no way to exist, after all. It might well be that he didn't get to set the parameters of his life and world. No one did. It was a bit different, done his way, but the end result was close to the same. You dealt with what came at you.

  Complaining that he was too different, and given too many options was about as ungrateful as anyone could be, and he wasn't going to be that person. There had to be limits, if he was going to have to live with himself forever.

  "We might as well get back? Thanks for coming for me. I wonder who told that guy, if he is one, that The Storm was out to get him. That was kind of good timing, wasn't it?"

  Zack reached down and helped Tyler stand on his remaining leg.

  "It was Keeley. Not that she told me that, but it's kind of obvious. I don't know why, but it really did work out pretty well in the end. You feel all right?" There was a covert look at the red and raw, well chewed, stump, then.

  "Oh, sure. I don't feel pain, anyway. Pleasure, but not that." He pretty much imagined that part, the good stuff, but it was enough for him, really. It felt as real as what anyone had, at least as far as he knew. A gentle touch was a caress to him, and a punch to the nose was nothing. Just him moving back a bit, if it was hard enough. Maybe a sound.

  It was kind of awesome, when you got down to it.

  Lucy moved alongside of him, on his stumpy right side, and helped him walk, acting as a crutch and supporting him as he hopped a few steps. As it turned out they didn't have some kind of giant trek ahead of them. The Line Walker, looking as cute as always, waved his left hand a tiny bit, making the air glow in a disk. It was all purple, and meant to show them where to go.

  Then he glared a bit at Lucy.

  "Now, how about for once you don't fight it? Just go through? It's possible, so don't act like it isn't. Just go through and don't try to walk the fucking line for once?"

  That got a small, rather bell like laugh.

  "Oh, you. I bet you say that to all the Demons." She waved her left hand a little, the one tucked under Tyler's arm.

  For some reason the other Greater Demon smiled.

  "I do say that to all of them. They always screw it up, too. Really, all you have to do is walk. Like going across the room."

  The girl gave him a look that seemed bossy and entitled then, and helped Tyler hop along in to the disk of faint purple light that floated in the air. That brought them out, not in the room off of the books store at the Westfield mall, but in front of a large mansion in Nevada. A place that Ty recognized, being that it was, more or less, his home now.

  A place that he'd kind of lived in for two whole days before being taken away.

  "Be it ever so humble." He wasn't going to complain. It was huge. Nice and eccentric, too. Everything was just a bit off inside. Tilted, or painted with stripes in places where no one would do that kind of thing, because if you had money enough you could rent taste, even if you didn't come pre-installed with it.

  Then, when three of the four members of your band were dead, one way or the other, and the other the slave of a Greater Demon, even if he didn't know it, things like good taste were optional.

  Looking down at the stump, Tyler sighed.

  "Hopefully I have good taste." It was a nonsequitur, but his companions were also Greater Demons, so they got all the possible meanings, he bet.

  Zack grinned at him anyway.

  "That's the spirit. Keep it up and you'll be better in no time. That was... Hard core." The other man let one eye close and shook his head a bit, as Lucy started working the door. "Most people would have waited too long to take their own head off like that, and all would have been lost. You acted, and did it early enough. You, a regular Human, more or less, beat a Greater Demon at her own game. A thing that she'd literally built to defeat you. Personally. That's... Well, most beings couldn't have pulled it off."

  There was something like pride in his voice, and a soft smile from Lucy, who helped him hop through the large wooden door to the place. It was heavy and nice, being polished brown wood with a simple pattern carved into it. Once they got inside, he called out, but didn't know if anyone would be there. Not who was awake for the day yet.

  It was still light out, after all.

  "Honey, I'm home!" He was going for goofy, not expecting a response, but the air in front of him stirred, and a girl suddenly appeared.

  She had ash blonde hair, the remains of a few freckles across her nose, and looked about fourteen. Ginger. His girlfriend. One of the two women that called themselves that anyway. Also a master Vampire, which was why she was up and around, when his band mates weren't. It was, he thought, about noon. The hardest part of the day for her kind.

  "Tyler! Oh!" There was a lot of hugging and no particular staring at his leg, even though it had to have been noticed. "Come in! I didn't know what to do. You were just gone. We all thought you were dead."

  He nodded, hugged her again, and then let Lucy act as a crutch as he got himself inside. It would be less awkward that way. Not that there were neighbors outside to watch him. The place was nicely isolated that way. He thought that Sparks wasn't too far off, but he hadn't come in a car, or even a plane, so had never seen the road signs. In one direction there was nothing for a long way, so the other probably held the city.

  It was kind of clear that she didn't know the tale of his time away. There wasn't a lot to tell, but he decided to do that sitting down.

  "Hey, could someone get a blanket or something for me? So I can rest on the sofa and not ruin the poor thing? Bloody stump." He waved it around a bit, which got Ginger to focus that way, her face a bit hard. She didn't seem scared though, or worried that he was crippled for life.

  Lucy patted the Vampire woman's arm, bare flesh connecting. Drinking in all the information her form held, most likely. That was a gift her kind had, after all.

  "It will grow back. In a few days now. Two really. I could speed that up, but I doubt it will be needed. Would you be a love and get a throw for him?"

  That didn't take long, since Ginger was hard working and had super human speed when she wanted. Normally, it being daytime, she should have been at work, which got him to glance at her when she came back, and they all moved to the next room. The red thing she'd gotten was thick and soft under him, as he settled into place.

  "Shouldn't you be off working or something? Not that I don't like seeing you. I just figured that I'd have to dig everyone up. It's been a few weeks after all." Not that he recalled most of that. To him it really seemed like about fifteen hours had passed. The remains of the party were all packed up though, as he looked around.

  The Vampire girl smiled, her teeth white, but with no unruly fang showing. It was kind of darling, really.

  "Nope. I have today off. I work a whole five days a week, like a regular person, and get the weekends off. Felicia has been really sweet that way. She's the Ambassador here now. We have a building set up in town, but Keeley let me stay here. Calley too, though she's off at work, since, you know, she's in charge here and doesn't have half the staff that us Vampires do. Do you need a pillow, or... Um, some soup?"

  He nearly said no, since he wasn't sick, but then realized that the purpose of her saying that wasn't so that he'd feel better, but so she could take care of him. Pamper him a bit. Because she
'd been worried.

  So he nodded at her, and smiled.

  "That would be wonderful. I should get my keyboard too, so I can work while I sit around being lazy. I'll be fine. It wasn't the greatest way to spend quality time with my enemy, but it turned out all right." It was part of his plan, not being the world's whiniest dead man.

  Though, before he was going to get his soup, he apparently had to spill the beans about what had happened. It was, he knew going to be the story of the day, he bet, so he tried to come up with a shorthand for it.

  "Kidnapped, stuck in a magical cave to starve me, with a little boy as food. So I used a bit of sharp rock to take off my head. The boy needed a snack, hence the leg." It was nicely brief, and for some reason, other than a slight widening of her eyes, enough for his girlfriend. For the time being anyway.

  She leaned in, kissed him on the cheek, and then dashed from the room, toward the kitchen.

  "Oh, what kind of soup? We have vegetable, and tomato?" Her voice was soft and very far away, but it was clear that she was yelling so he could hear it. Her abilities that way far outstripped his own, so he just spoke back, like she was standing right next to him.

  "Tomato, please. Thanks. You're the best girlfriend, you know that?"

  No sound came back that he could hear, but hopefully it was near the right thing to say. He'd never had a real girlfriend before, so was making that kind of thing up as he went. Even if he'd had more experience, what was the right level of that sort of thing, when you came back from being kidnapped? Tyler was willing to bet that there were no real rules for that kind of thing.

  Zack stood back, not fussing over him, but Lucy kind of did, making sure that the couch he was on, which was soft and a light tan color, was totally covered. Protected from the ooze that was assembling itself into his new leg. That was a cool trick. A power, after a fashion. Super healing on a level that was kind of neat. He'd always kind of thought of himself as being a bit like Batman. Only without the money, or fetish gear.

  In a way he was probably a bit more like Wolverine. Super healing as a power, more or less. No claws. If he'd had those, taking his head off would have been a lot easier than it had been.