Shield of Innocence (Alternate Places Book 4) Read online

  Looking from one to the other, Zack could see that one. In more than one way. After all, he'd seen the man in front of them come back from the dead before. Not that Zack hadn't done that too, so the zombie label could work for both of them.

  "That works for Cavendish, too. We need to go, if you're willing to come along? The vampires have weapons and armor, plus their own powers, so mainly need us to help point out where the enemy are."

  That got the hyper fit seeming man to smile. It was a happy thing. To anyone not standing right next to him, it would probably look like he'd won a prize, or been offered something very fun to do. Being right there made Zack wonder if he were about to die.

  "Excellent. I can do that. So... Eve... I used to have a massive crush on you in school. On Evelyn? I don't suppose that you're single?"

  She shook her head, turned and started to walk back toward the rift.

  "I have a boyfriend. And a girlfriend. It's an open relationship though, so... It could be worth looking into? How about you?"

  That got the man to look a bit sad, and then follow along, looking like they were off to the sex club.

  "I scare people too much for that, I'm afraid."

  Zack nodded, going kind of big with it, even knowing it wasn't fair.

  Eve just furrowed her brow a little bit.

  "Really? Heh. I can't feel anything like that at all. You aren't a mouse, after all. Come on. Last one to the rift gets to buy the beer later."

  That ended up being Zack, in a manner that was hard to recognize. Then, he had money for that kind of thing, so it made sense to him that he should pay.

  In the end, he had a sudden feeling that he'd be paying for a long time, for pretty much everything.

  Chapter five

  Bangladesh was a mess. There was a small army of undead fighting invisible monsters in the streets. Worse, or perhaps better, others had joined the battle by the time Zack and the others arrived. It was an interesting collection of individuals really.

  There were at least a dozen beings doing things that weren't strictly possible for instance. One woman was spreading fire from her hands, throwing it like a liquid that could be flung from her. It burned a bright blue, and wasn't all that effective in and of itself as a weapon, but when it hit the invisible creatures it stuck for a bit, marking them. That made it nearly invaluable to their side.

  Even regular people were fighting, like they had in Lesser Shia. The big difference was that the people in that distant world were largely non-violent beings, who had mainly frozen, or run away when they could. The people in this great city were used to taking a more proactive approach to life. Not that they were much better when it came to combat, but a lot of them stayed to fight, and die, so that the others could get away from the monsters.

  The biggest difference really was the vampires, and the super high tech energy weapons they held. As soon as the line walkers, and Cavendish, got there, they started winning pretty fast. Unlike the last time, Kate and the deadly human man didn't do most of the work. They'd only been asked to point out were the things were, and doing that got things done much more efficiently than trying to do it all themselves.

  Eve and Lyn moved in at the same time, as if protecting this strange place was their duty. Almost as much as well as their own home would have been. Zack could see that, feeling the same way, since it didn't matter who, or what, the beings were that needed help. A tiny part of him simply hadn't expected them to think that way, too. That left him baffled for a few moments, and feeling small.

  Good people could come from anywhere, after all. His life just hadn't taught him to think of it as likely. Even from his friends.

  Two hours into the fight, without a lot of warning, a series of military trucks pulled up.

  A fighting line of sorts had come, filled with young men who all had nice dark tan skin, black hair and light green uniforms. Their inner shadows were all looking around, most of them terrified of the carnage they were seeing. Only one of them, who didn't seem to be in charge, was calm and collected.

  Zack waved to him, which got the fellow to dash over to him, speaking in Hindi. Zack thought that was the case. His inner shadow didn't do that, and a weapon was tentatively pointed at him, but there was no real intent to kill. Calm or not, the man simply didn't know what to do. He was, it seemed a plain human being, but his mind was controlled, and his inner being ready to do what it had to that day.

  Not knowing what else to do, Zack spoke, in English, and pointed at what was going on.

  "We have... Aliens. They're invisible, until they die. Large and powerful. There are, um, vampires... Fighting them. The people in the black armor? They have energy weapons from off planet. We need to hold on that side." He pointed, he tried to will the man to understand him, but didn't hold a lot of hope of that. Not until he started to speak on the shadow level.

  Everyone could understand him there. So far anyway.

  Zack repeated the message, and the man looked hard at the buildings being taken down, then to the right where no one was at the moment, and a sense of movement rippled through the air.

  Then he nodded.

  "Ah. Aliens? Right. Good. Good." He turned and screamed then, pointing at the correct place that needed to be defended, getting the more scared men in the trucks, all eight of them, to pile out, and start shooting. It was hard to tell if it did much to the invisible being, but they did it anyway. Even if they couldn't really understand what was going on around them.

  His calm buddy ran off in that direction, figuring that he was about to die. It was possible, so Zack didn't correct him as he fled. They all could go down that day. It was one of the dangers of being at war.

  The only good thing was that, however these beings had gotten there, no more seemed to be coming through. That meant, after several more hours, that they had forty giant bodies there, dead and showing in a translucent silver, sometimes tinged with green. The city smoked and was on fire in places, though the citizens had come out to douse the flames. The military was running around, and more of them came, a bit late to do anything useful.

  Then, because it made any sense at all, the man in charge of the new forces, one of the newcomers that was late to the game even compared to his people, decided to try and arrest the vampires that had fought that day. Like something that stupid was even going to work, or made sense.

  Zack read the intent, and simply rolled his eyes, then waved at his people.

  "Pull out. The army here is about to become idiotic. Take the vampires with you. Everyone else that fought, too. We really don't need to deal with that kind of thing today. Not on top of an alien invasion. One that we won for them." Well, the fighters did, at any rate.

  It meant trying to open a shortcut to use, which was his part in things, and passing a lot of the people himself, but that was the way things went. Oddly, there weren't all that many vamps, or others, that needed to leave from there, directly. The ones that had to be pulled got taken to the most local embassy facility, which was about three hundred miles away. Well outside of the zone under control by the local humans.

  At that point, once everyone was safe, Zack decided his part in the whole thing was well enough done. After all, the issue had taken all day, and they'd won. Apparently with the help of every single day-walking vampire in three countries, with a bit of help from North America. That had made up about thirty of them in all.

  Claire moved over to him, as they stood in what seemed like a marketplace in a large cavern complex, and gave him a small grin. Her boss, Vaun, sauntered over, and sighed, which was just as put on as any vampire could have been, but well enough done that even his inner self tried to sell the whole thing. It looked funny, and kind of cute, seeing the vast monster inside of him trying to act a bit like a put upon housewife.

  "Line walker. Thank you for your timely assistance. The events of the day weren't planned, or I dare say we would have managed things more quickly. What do we owe you and your people for this aid?" That was a b
ig vampire thing, Zack knew. They paid their debts, and expected others to do the same. Worse, they worried about it.

  Before he could say anything, Cavendish walked over, with Kaitlyn and Eve right next to him. One of the girls was even good with it. Pretending that being next to the deadly man without being freaked out. The Alede tried really hard not to give into the fear she obviously felt. A wave of it overcame Zack too, but he held himself in place, refusing to back away. Or run in fear. The man was fine, as far as looks went, and even actions. Deadly, but not bad. Making Cavendish feel uncomfortable about it simply wasn't fair.

  It was just so hard not to respond to the aura he gave off. Standing there even the vampires, other than Eve, seemed to feel it. That was a pretty powerful affect.

  The man spoke gently however, his words polite. As far as Zack knew, he always was.

  "We seem to be in a real war. We might need your help in the future, in different places. Would it be sensible to kind of... I don't know, make a treaty of mutual protection? I may not have the wording right on that..." He seemed nearly embarrassed, standing there in his black, glossy and fake looking armor.

  Vaun made himself bow in that direction.

  "I think we might do that. I'll need to be in touch with Luthor, our leader, before we finalize anything. I don't have the right to speak for all of my kind, but I do think that is a most sensible arrangement. I know that if such a thing as this takes place again, I wish for you to aid me. So, if that works, we don't need to pay for your time and efforts here?" That part seemed to interest the dead man a lot, and he looked back at Zack, the threat of impending demise outweighed by the power of a good deal.

  Taking a moment to think about it, or at least pretend too, Zack took Claire's cool hand, mainly for comfort, and nodded.

  "That seems like the best plan right now. Really, we should get everyone in on it. The hard part will be the human governments. I don't know what they're going to think about this. I mean, it's hard to hide the damage and there are more bodies back there than we could hide, even if we wanted. I'm not even sure we should. The military... They didn't win the day, but they held their side, once they got in place." He didn't know the exact way to state it, but the others all nodded, understanding him, more or less.

  The young men, with their pea shooters and the few automatic weapons that they'd had with them, really had held the giant alien things back. They hadn't killed any of them, but they'd bottle the things in, keeping the city safe from fleeing monsters while the vampires slaughtered them.

  Vaun smiled, a thing that he didn't mean, and glanced at Cavendish. It was a suspicious seeming look. One that suggested that he wanted to leave the area, fast.

  "Do we, perhaps, get transportation to our homes, as part of this tentative arrangement? It would be cheaper to go overland, given the meager distances for some, but our people here might find that difficult at the moment. I have to imagine that this portion of the world is about to go into lock down." His shadow came out, and spoke of the terror and possible panic that would be coming. Even if the whole thing were well hidden from the regular citizens, which might well happen.

  Zack nodded, getting the flow of things well enough.

  "Right. Um, line walkers? Over here!" He waved his hands a little, but there were less than a hundred people in the large underground cave area, so his new people, all six of them, not including himself, jogged over, even with Cavendish being right there. None of them were cowards after all, no matter the fear that doing that had to cause them all.

  After a bit, all of them working out what was needed, one way or another, since they all saw reality slightly differently, he spoke.

  "The best we can do is get everyone close to where they need to go. Chris, Troy and I will do that part on the ground here. Um, Eve, can you help with that? You're a little slow with the shortcuts yet, but I think that's probably down to being a little new and lazy, rather than just being one of the slow kids that way." He had to fight a smile as both Kaitlyn's put their hands on their hips and glared at him. Seeing that, Don did the same. He'd been left out too, after all.

  "Come on, I don't suck that much."

  Which was true, but Zack had something else in mind for them.

  "No. You and Kate need to get back to school and study for finals. We'll try to handle the rest of this. Troy will need to sleep soon, and so will Chris. So... No big thing. Let's get this all done and meet back at the house? Not you or Kate, Don. Back to school with you both, now. Go. We've got this here." He made motions with his hands, trying to act like a real person. He thought he had it right, and while a few of the others laughed at him, it was in a good natured way.

  The vampires really weren't that hard to handle, since night was coming and blockades or not, most of them were masters of moving in the dark. They had super powers, and could move over roofs, and in the shadows pretty well. That meant they were all good just getting within about ten miles of where they had to end up. Some of the other beings needed to have shortcuts opened to get them almost directly back to their homes, but Zack did those for them, trying to balance himself, so he wasn't tossed around all over the world.

  It didn't always work, but he was, he thought, finally getting better at it all.

  Chris, looking young and a bit uncertain at the moment, for some reason, got their people back to the states. He used the node for that, and then came back after a few minutes, seeming happier. It wasn't until they all met back at the house, with Vaun and Cavendish gone that he explained his unease with the whole thing.

  Zack would have guessed that it was all about his making a deal to get people into place like he had, which he didn't have the power to do, but it was an emergency, and frankly, the right thing to do. His actions had probably saved thousands of lives, or more. It wasn't that though. In fact he just heaved a sigh, and settled onto one of the big sofas in the front room of the mansion. It was cream colored, but they were all mainly clean enough. They hadn't really fought after all, and were remarkably blood free this time. In all it had worked much better than the events at Lesser Shia. It had been smaller, thankfully. They were better prepared this time as well.

  That wasn't the problem, and Chris stretched, his thin, slightly gangly, body arching back.

  "That Cavendish guy?" He looked right at Zack, and made a face.

  Thankfully his shadow came out, and seemed relaxed about the man himself. Not even as scared as Zack felt around him.

  "Yeah?"

  "He hasn't really had a job in a few months, and is about to lose his house." The words dropped on the room, and everyone looked down, like fixing it was some kind of big issue, or hard to do.

  Instead of just an oversight as to his pay packet reaching him.

  Zack grinned then. Really, for once he felt good about things. It was a sudden thing too, and got Eve to look at him hopefully. It was clear that she liked the man more than the rest of them even could, after all. It had to be really hard for him to keep a job, scaring the entire world like he did in his passing.

  "Not a problem. I'll run his pay over in the morning. He's one of us, so the Nation of Line Walkers will make sure that he isn't put out or anything. I really should have thought of that before. Good call though, Chris. The whole day, I mean. All of it. Now..." He didn't have a watch, but there was a clock on the wall, behind him, so he stood and looked at it. "It's five in the morning. Gah. I'll get in to work in an hour or so, and see about doing the early part of the day. Eve, Lyn, you're with me for that? Chris, you have school still, so... That means no sleep for you."

  He was going to the local high school. Or, more to the point, he was going to the one most local to the mall. There were good shortcuts from there, so he walked each day. Merry had been planning tutors for him, but in a decision that wowed Zack, she'd picked to have him socialize with other humans each day. Being one of those himself, it was deemed important that he learn their secret ways. Not that he got out of having other classes too, in the evenings
and on the weekends. Sword work, and unarmed fighting, as well as playing the guitar.

  Later, Merry assured them, in the summer, they'd do other things, like learning to do wood work and how to speak, and write, in Elth. Like a real man of proper standing should.

  The boy didn't even groan at the idea, even though he was clearly exhausted already.

  "See, I shouldn't have been so wicked all my life. Well, it's Friday, so I can sleep-in tomorrow. Now I just need some coffee, and an I.V. drip of amphetamines, and I'll be fine." It seemed like he was joking, but almost on top of the words Merry came in, holding a tray with large red mugs, and a vacuum container in silver that had coffee in it. Smiling at Chris she poured a cup of the stuff herself, and handed it to him, carefully. She was a bit protective of the furnishings, which, Zack had to figure, was fair, since she took it upon herself to keep them clean, so if people spilled, it would end up being her trying to repair the damage.

  The boy looked into the dark cup, stilled himself inside, and drank it all in one go. Like medicine. That got him a second one, with Merry standing by to do more, if she had too.

  Lyn looked at him, and shook her head.

  "See, I would have said that any night I have to go into battle should get me out of going to school the next day. You're probably one of those kids that gets straight A's and never misses a day, aren't you?" She looked at him closely, as a second cup of coffee vanished.

  Then the young looking, but still ancient, boy smiled at her.

  "I am at that. Now would be a great time to tell me how that turns you on, so I can stay motivated in my life." He looked back at her with an expression that was a bit blank. Like he really thought she was going to accuse him of being a geek.

  Instead there was a smile and slightly widened eyes.

  "Of course it does! Then, I'm an Alede, so you kind of had me at hello, you know? What about you Eve? Do you think smart guys are sexy?" It was putting the vampire on the spot, which could turn out to be a poor plan that day, given all the stress.