As Evil Does Read online

  The new line walker that worked with them, being awesome like he was. A thing that, in and of itself was so massive that some of their own people had to be confused by the idea. They were supposed to collect data on new and interesting things. That was the job, flat out.

  That the rest had stayed on with them was interesting, really. Some of them might well have not noticed anything going on. Or, if they had, they might just agree with what had happened. Not everyone was as peaceful as the law in the States required people to be. Even the night before, the people that had been attacked had clapped when she’d made the terrorists scream in pain.

  Her boss turned to look at her, and shrugged.

  “Time off for you, right now. At least officially. There are only four of us right now, and you’re the only one we have that can talk to the Settlings. That means… Um… Well, can you look different again? I’m nearly certain that changing your face and fingerprints will be enough to throw the Feds off a bit. At least if you aren’t standing in the office here constantly.”

  She could see that one as well. Instead of doing anything to complex, she simply altered her face from what it was at the moment, with its long nose and thick lips, to what she thought of as her real look. Her face becoming totally smooth, more symmetrical and her hair just a bit shinier and flowing. Her eyes were a different color, moving from a near gray to a simple brown. The biggest change was that she seemed like she was in professionally done makeup, suddenly, even if she didn’t have anything on.

  A prettier face by far.

  She also shrunk a bit, becoming a full three inches shorter, though thinner, so her clothing fit, more or less. Her chest grew, but she didn’t let that happen to the level that she’d lived with for most of her life. Her current work shape was a B-cup. She let that fill out a bit, but not all the way to a C-cup. If she went to her normal size that way, her clothing wouldn’t fit. As it was, a moment later, about twelve seconds later, she simply wasn’t the same person at all.

  Her boss snorted at her.

  “That works. I need to get on the desk. I probably shouldn’t have left like I did…” He looked a bit guilty, as if he’d abandoned his post. That wasn’t the truth, of course. They’d left Ruffo, their seventeen-year-old intern, in charge.

  It was him or Ravi, and their line walker was off at his other job. One of them. The one at the local coffee shop. It sounded ridiculous to most that heard it, but Keeley understood what was going on there. To the man, even if he was a magical being now and had been in his own right, even before having any kind of training at all, didn’t really believe that what was happening was real.

  To that end, he was holding to parts of his old life, rather firmly. Then, that made some sense. He’d only been a line walker for three days. True, he’d had to sit in the void between worlds for fifteen hundred years first, learning to meditate and control space itself, but that was part of the problem. In the shared, outer, world, he’d been away for less than a minute.

  He’d walked into a hole in space with Troy Lopez, and come out a minute later, to her perspective. The same was going to be true for everyone else as well. There was a sense, off of the other line walkers, that no one else really understood that part of things. He’d really aged by well over a thousand years in what seemed a moment to her. To his family as well.

  Then he was asked to come back into the world, acting as if nothing had happened. So he had. In Ravi Pendar’s case, that had been done by keeping both his other jobs, not trusting that he was going to be making millions a month as a line walker. Even if he didn't work doing that kind of thing, he was making a hundred thousand a year as a member of Division Six. That wasn’t vast money, but it was still more than the coffee shop was going to pay.

  It was worse than that though, naturally. To him, his life had suddenly gone sideways in a way that couldn’t make sense. A portion of his Human brain had to be telling him that he’d gone insane. After all, an incredible shape shifting girlfriend, teleportation powers and making energy constructs from his subconscious mind would have meant being crazy, for most people. That it wasn’t, in this one case, was going to take a while for the man to actually understand. Keeley figured that it would take him eighteen months to mainly get the idea, with the last of the work not really taking hold for seven years.

  So, he was dressed in a little red apron, making coffee for people that morning and would be until noon. Given he’d been up all night, and the day before, she didn’t expect him to come in, unless they needed him. Then he’d show, if called on, of course. Even if he had to drag himself in using raw gumption to make it happen.

  Will was in much the same place, that way. There had been a terrorist attack, right on the heels of an alien first contact scenario on the White House lawn. Interestingly, even though her spot of slave torture had been televised, the Settlings showing up was bigger news by far. On the other hand, she’d noticed that her face, the one that she’d just changed out of, was front and center on that one as well.

  The only saving grace was that no one, in the first case, had her name. That meant only about a hundred people in the whole world knew who had done what. The government had her name now, but Will was correct there. Her changing shape was more than enough to throw them off. Having the same name as someone else wouldn’t be enough to have her locked up for her crime of torturing a few Human criminals. Not even if the government suspected it was really her. The court system simply wasn’t designed to handle things like that. Honestly, it wouldn’t be enough to find her, even if they gained entry to the Sparks Embassy complex.

  Technically, they could do that, legally. As long as they had a warrant. At least down in Deep Six.

  Each Embassy was sovereign territory of the group that held it. The hallways, public spaces and Division Six were all fair game that way. Meaning that if the DHS wanted to come for her there, the only thing to stop them was the fact that they’d all die and vanish before they could do it. If they could notice she was the right person at all.

  The better idea, would be to go to Keeley’s home and try to get her there. Which wouldn’t work either, but it made more sense to her. Then, she’d been given a warning to lay low for a while, from Agent Benning. If she chose not to take it, that was on her. Except that it was clear that Will was going to tell her to do that anyway, just to be safe. While part of her felt like she shouldn’t have to listen to anyone else or their opinion on the matter, she’d taken the job knowing that Will Dern was the boss of her. Ignoring him that way, on that topic, would be rude of her. Without there being a good reason for it.

  Which meant that she probably shouldn’t go home, for the time being. Really, she needed to not go anywhere that had the lease in her name. It meant moving away from work, as well as not hanging out in her normal haunts.

  Smirking a bit, she sighed.

  “I should probably get out of here, for the time being. Just in case the Human Government gets creative. They probably won’t, so I’ll keep my phone on me. It’s just…” She shrugged. “If they send a SWAT team for me, then they all die. You get that, don’t you? I mean, I could let them live, but the honest truth is that being an ex-Greater Demon is still a new thing. If the new plan doesn’t hold, I can’t be seen as ever having been that weak. It isn’t fair or good, but that’s what would have to happen, right now. Hence me moving out of here for a bit. I’m still on the clock, just working from… Well, not home. For the same reason. To protect innocent government agents. Like a good girl.” She shrugged, knowing that there were still bugs in the hallway they were standing in. “I know that they’re just doing their jobs and that it can be hard for them to understand that we don’t all play by the same rules.”

  Her boss, Human or not, was clever enough to get what she was doing. He even looked up at the ceiling, where one of the listening devices was. It was done obviously enough to indicate he got her point.

  “Fine. Keep that phone on you? How do we handle the Reality Wars Issue?” Af
ter he spoke the words, the man grinned, if a bit tiredly.

  After all, it really made it sound like they were fighting a secret reality war, whatever that was. It would probably weird out whoever was listening to them, if they didn’t have a good background on what was going on. That the reality war had been real and was over already, without them even being drawn into it at all. They probably would be up to date on part of things, of course. After all, both she and Will were working as actors in a television program. At least that was the plan. They hadn’t started shooting yet. They wouldn’t, for several months. Keeley figured that the schedule was going to be moved up, since their director, Krista Hall, was eager to get to work on the new project, just as soon as the last one was over. That would happen in three weeks.

  That didn’t mean there weren’t meetings to get to and all that, in the meantime.

  “Have Wendy go in with you, if anything comes up that way. Ravi can do the line walking to get you both to the meetings.” She sounded perfectly normal, which Will matched, even if his eyebrows went up.

  That made sense, given there was no one named Wendy around, as far as he knew. Still, he caught the ball like a professional and played along perfectly.

  “Right. She has everything down well enough, I suppose. Not that we have anything going on today. What about the Human Mage training? How are we handling that, if you’re out of the country?” That one was more serious, after all.

  Some people had shown powers, subconscious ones, since the veil had fallen from the minds of humanity as a whole. As they’d woken up to how reality functioned, things had slowly begun to shift and alter inside of them. Functionally speaking, a few thousand people in the world were suddenly manifesting… things. Beings, people, animals and objects. Out of all of those, they’d located two so far who were showing enough power that way to be interesting or dangerous. Ravi, who was under control, thanks to his incredibly focused mind, even if he didn’t know how to consciously use his powers that way yet, and Steve Moore. The Producer of Reality Wars.

  He was, currently, being held as one of her slaves, just to make sure he didn’t accidentally kill a few thousand people without knowing he was doing it. Not that he was being treated as such, because she wasn’t doing that kind of thing any longer. Except with The Mimic. The Greater Demon was still planning to kill her if he ever got free of her control. A thing that she suddenly had some time to deal with. Not that she didn't most days.

  It was a thing to do, and certainly wouldn’t be boring. Possibly deadly, but that was going to be true if she dealt with the matter in fifty years as well. The safest thing for her to do would simply be ordering him to die. To take away all the loopholes a Greater Demon might use to survive and to make sure that it really took. So that he could never be a threat to her, ever again.

  Not that it would be the good or right thing to do, of course. Just the logical one. She knew, for certain, that she could end him. Trying to convince the man that they weren’t really Greater Demons any longer was the harder, far less certain path. Even if he agreed that being evil wasn’t needed any longer, that didn’t mean he might not try for her again, out of fear.

  It was sort of why they’d had a problem in the first place. He’d been so afraid of her taking him as a slave that he’d tried to kill her, with the aid of several other Greater Demons. Who had all been set free, when they’d decided that not doing that again was a good idea. Even when she’d been evil, Keeley had been willing to work with people. As much as she could.

  She just shrugged.

  “This should blow over in a week or two. Maybe less than that. We just need to let them decide that they had a huge win last night, and that they don’t actually need to place any blame for it. It will work out. Really, I’m kind of shocked that anyone at DHS would try to have me brought in at all. It’s like they think that being an ex-Greater Demon means that I’m less powerful, instead of more. It isn’t working out that way at all.” That part was, actually, true.

  For her at least.

  She’d been able to work with others in the last month, learning some nifty tricks and refinements on old ones. Shape changing, for herself and others, for instance. That was really powerful for healing. She’d also increased her line walking ability by about seventy to ninety times in effectiveness. More than that, when it came to moving between realities. Hundreds of times, at least. Just those two things had made her about twice as dangerous as before.

  Instead of snorting at her, Dern actually nodded, gently.

  “It isn’t that they don’t think of you as dangerous. They’ll get that one. It’s that you’re working for us, here. We’re allies, so to them it makes sense that they’ll be held responsible for your actions. That’s all. If it really came to it… Well, you didn't hurt the terrorists. I mean, you did, but telling them they’re in pain, that isn’t going to be counted as real torture. No one can prove it, for one thing. The worst that would happen would be that they’d insist on you being fired.” There was a giant shrug then. “Meaning Wendy would get your job, as second in command. I think you’re right about how they’ll jump, anyway. Still, to protect that insertion team they might accidentally try to send, you might want to clear out for a bit. Keep your phone on you.”

  She nodded, understanding the idea. Even if things didn’t go well, she was still expected to keep doing her new job. She’d just do it as someone else, if it came down to it. That would be a pain in the behind, but not something outside of her abilities to pull off.

  To that end, she just shrugged.

  “I’ll get with Troy Lopez and see if I can get Wendy in for line walker training. As for the Human mage training… Well, you can handle that, if it becomes needed. Right now, I want to see what will be most effective. Meditation, at least at extreme levels is working. Both Steve and Ravi have that going on. Let me… I’ll get with Ravi, in the next day or two and start working with him that way.” It was going to be different, since they needed to train the men’s subconscious minds.

  Though, that was possible.

  They could do that with nothing more than some light hypnosis and some visualizations. Honestly, that was probably what they needed to do with most of the others they found, eventually. Unless they were insane. Then they were either going to have to be slaves or killed. Otherwise they might well release things, real horrors, into the world that no one was ready for.

  Both Ravi and Steve had kind of done that already and both of them were sweet enough that people underestimated them in day to day life. A person that had truly lost it…

  Well, that was probably how they were going to find most of the Human mages, as time passed. There would be reports of strange happenings, and when they went to investigate, they’d find some hapless moron in the middle of it. That or off to the side. Not that the trend was toward those people being stupid, so far. Ravi and Steve were both bright. That was probably going to be part of what most of them had going on, with a trend toward geniuses being involved, more often than not. Clearly, the power itself wasn’t about anything new coming up in the world. Ravi and Steve were just brilliant enough for that kind of power to work for them, now that the limiters had been removed. They also had creativity to spare. The combination was a powerful one.

  She blinked, but spoke out loud. Mainly for the bugs in the ceiling.

  “I wonder if there’s a link between intelligence and the capability of the Human mages? We need a larger sample size to check on that. Anyway, I’m going now. Call if you need me?”

  Keeley patted her boss on the arm, and then winked. Turning what they were saying into a game they were playing. It wasn’t really, but one way or the other, she wasn’t going to have a problem with the United States government in fairly short order. No more than a week or two. If it became too big of an issue, she could just take over the President, and enough Senators and House members to have whoever was getting in her way fired. That would take some work of course.

  So, really, she de
cided not to bother with it at all. Not if she could just let things take their own natural course and get the same basic result.

  Will just looked slightly bemused, for some reason.

  Chapter two

  Rather than allow herself to get upset over what would probably turn out to be nothing, Keeley simply moved off to a different location for a while. It took her a second to think about what she really needed to get done and she smiled when she understood what was really needed of her for the next day or so. Almost nothing at all.

  It was nearly like she was on vacation.

  That could have left her feeling at a loss, but the truth was that there were always things to do, if you didn’t mind pushing people around and acting a bit like a demon. She needed to change again first, she decided. After all, the face she was wearing at the moment was, for lack of a better term, her real face. It was stunning and more than a bit vain of her to wear it around. Plus, she might want to use it later, for other things. Getting laid in cheap bars, or picking up chicks in libraries. Wrinkling her nose, standing in the small closet they used for travel at the end of Deep Six’s lone hallway, she rearranged her face. The body also had to change, of course.

  Not much.

  After all, her clothing wasn’t going to shift with her. If she made herself shorter, or taller, that could be a problem. The same was true of her turning into a male. That, becoming a guy, was her big card to play while in the United States. The government wasn’t totally filled with idiots, but they weren’t ready for that. A change into a different woman could, at times, be seen as her just using a really good disguise. If she could pull her pants down and show off her porn worthy penis, she’d be untouchable under the law.

  That wouldn’t work with her current outfit.

  Instead of doing that, she decided to simply move into a different face. It was actually attractive, in a cute way. Old, compared to her actual age. Wrinkles formed, with ice blue eyes and long silver hair. She shrunk by two inches, which was what her outfit could take, and her breasts didn’t grow or shrink as much as try to reach for the floor a bit harder than she was used to. Drooping in a way that indicated she was fit for her age, without being unnatural about it.