Living Proof (Tyler G Book 2) (18 page)

Even if she did look totally
different the whole time.

"Riley, The Trickster. I
picked up a shift for him earlier, so he could buy a house. For someone else. It
saved the world. Not that he mentioned that part until
after
. Still, it
turns out that running the Fun Zone isn't that hard. He just told me about what
you were doing, since I didn't need to be tricked into things. Part of my
payment?"

Instead of getting mad, which
Lucy almost never did, she seemed impressed.

"Really now? Few can
navigate that sort well. So, since you found out, I can get in on one of the
good rooms? You wouldn't want your mom screwing strange men on the hard
backroom floor tile, would you?" She tried to make herself seem pitiful
and abused over the whole thing. Complete with big eyes and a sad face.

Put that way it was true enough,
but he shook his head. His initial impulse was to demand she go away, and not
do that kind of thing. The place was packed, and it left him feeling uneasy,
because most of the men and women that had come in wanted to fuck her. Then,
even if she wasn't an Alede, she wasn't
Human
either. Trying to make her
play by those rules wasn't going to work very well.

"First come, first serve. If
you want one of the good rooms you should come and make an arrangement ahead of
time. Rent the space out for the night? Bribes and bargains woman. Bribes and
bargains!" That would have to be with Zack, but saying it got a laugh.

"I'm very proud of you,
Tyler. You know that, right?"

A man, who was standing behind
her reached out and grabbed her ass then. He held it too. She didn't jump, but
did turn and give him an annoyed look.

"
Seriously
? You can't
wait your turn? I'm on the list. Sally. Now, take your hands off my backside,
or I'll make you eat them." It was said gently, not screamed or even
blurted, but the guy didn't seem to be getting the idea.

"I just want you to be proud
of me, too. Is that too much to ask?" He said it like an asshole might,
mocking and making fun of Ty. It got him to stare at the guy, who was, he
realized, one of the football players from his old school.

Rick.

If he had a last name, Ty didn't
know it. The guy was cute, but like that
all
the time. A major prick.

Tyler just nodded, looked at the
hands on his mom's behind, and tried to relax. It wasn't his place to tell
people what, or who, to do. It was really annoying however, which Zack and
Hiram both seemed to understand when they came out to help with the sales desk.
Hiram looked ready to fight, just watching what was happening, which was
strange. People felt up the Alede all day long. Heck,
Hiram
did it. They
liked
it.

Still the instant that Sally had
indicated she wasn't wild about the contact for some reason, the mood of the
room shifted. In fact, it was about to become violent, he noticed.

Tyler also understood that
nothing he did in particular was going to stop it from happening. Rick was,
always and possibly foremost in his life, a jerk. If Ty tried to save him, the
guy
wouldn't
have pulled back and listened to him. Honestly, the only
thing he could think of to save the guy was to attack him well enough that the
others didn't
have
to.

He nearly did it, walking around
the counter. Then... Stopped. It just wasn't his job to save a person that didn't
want the help. Especially if it meant going up against Greater Demons.

Plus the fucker was still feeling
up his mother. Sure, it was easy to see how a person not related to her
might
think of that as fun, but it wasn't a thing he wanted to defend. When he got to
the man, Tyler just shrugged.

"Get out. Don't come back.
If you don't leave, right now, we'll call the police. She
asked
you not
to touch her right now, and you're still doing it. So... Which do you want? To
leave, or sit the night out in a cell?" Not that he'd get to live that
long.

Rather than turn to hit him, or
threaten to fight. He let go of Sally and smiled.

"Hey, I was just playing. I didn't
mean anything by it."

Ty shook his head.

"Fine. You still have to
leave and not come back. You aren't wanted here. Go."

"Fuck you." The kid,
his own age, more or less, did try to bluster, puffing up his muscular chest
and stretching upward in an almost comical fashion. As if they were going to
decide this by seeing who was bigger. It was funny, so he laughed, and pointed
at the front of the store.

"You have ten seconds to be
gone. I'm not warning you again." He tried to look steely and tough, but
probably didn't get there.

Rick flipped him off. Then left.

Sally smiled at him, and patted
his arm. Collecting all the information that he'd ever had.

"See, I have good reason to
be proud. Thank you, dear. Now, let's get back to the fun part of the
evening?"

It took work to ignore her for
the rest of the night. Mainly because she kept stopping to chat with him
between visits with her new friends. Even worse, that got all the other Alede
to do the same, and since Kait wasn't around, being off work already, they were
all spraying the room with lust. That meant he was awkwardly trying to think of
anything except that every twenty minutes when Sally walked over to him.

Finally, after six hours of that,
people cleared out. It was only midnight, but the flow of bodies cut off like a
tap, with only a few stragglers being left. At first he didn't get it, until
Rupert and Vivian ran in, both with heavy and complicated looking firearms in
their hands. Things large enough to require both hands to carry.

Rupert called out what was
happening, in a strange stage whisper.

"We got a call that said an
attack is possibly incoming. Bomb threat. We're evacuating. The police are on
their way, but we need to get the customers out of here." He looked uneasy
about that, but Ty just nodded and clapped his hands.

"All right, everyone that
isn't immortal get out of here! Bomb threat. Be careful and head out now. Come
on, everyone move!"

Zack added his voice to the
suggestion. After a bit, Sally came over, her face more plain and normal now.
Younger looking too. Instead of early twenties soccer mom, she looked like a
fourteen year old Asian schoolgirl. Dressed the same way as before though, if
shorter by a good bit.

"Goody. I was about to get
bored. Who do you think called that in?"

She was speaking to him, but Zack
was the one that answered. His voice was playful and almost happy sounding.

"It could be anyone. Midgets
that are upset with everyone looking down on them? Only, no, because Little
People tend to be
awesome
. Our people could have done it, but that seems
a bit heavy handed. My best guess? A certain feminist group. Probably just a
call too, because if you're going to actually attack you just do it, you don't
make threats first. I don't suppose we could get a copy of that threat? What
was said exactly? Who took the call? Who did it come in to?"

Rupert searched the room
carefully, his eyes scraping everything for bits of information or possible
threat.

"Valerie, over at Pretty
Plus. It came in about fifteen minutes ago. We heard it. Calley knows more than
I do, since it was kind of far away for me. Viv suggested we go store to store
and spread the word, which is a good plan." He spoke like he needed to
defend his sister.

She was probably right given the
situation there, so Ty headed out too, only to have Sally take his arm.

"
You
should look for
bombs. Start at Pretty Plus. Be really careful, and try to find anything
unusual. Focus really intently and don't miss anything."

The words made more than sense to
him, and he moved to get that done, running fast. If there was anything, then
odds were it would either be just outside the back door since that was the
easiest target, which ended up being perfectly clean when he checked the area,
or in the front. In places where a person off the street could walk in, say
carrying a bag, and not be noticed.

There were a lot of places to
hide things like that in a clothing store. It still didn't take him long to
locate the likely bomb. It did surprise him that anything was there, because
Zack had been right. You didn't call something in like that if you wanted dead
bodies all over the place. In the center of a circular clothing rack, in the
shielded ring made by rather tame looking dresses and skirts, all in black, sat
a paper shopping bag. He didn't touch it, just looking down into the top of the
thing.

"Hmmm. Well, this
does
look like a bomb to me. Wires, an electronic timer, something that looks like
modeling clay in blocks."

He spoke the words out loud,
which got several people to run toward him. One of them was the girl that his
mother had changed into.

"Good work. You should keep
looking. Here first, then go store to store. I'll mark this one."

It took a bit for him to actually
go from one place to the next, but that was the only explosive device. After
about half an hour a Police officer came and started to tell him to evacuate
the building. That was silly of course. He wasn't done checking it yet.

After explaining that, he went
back to work, only to have the officer try to push him around on the topic. The
man even pulled his gun, which was ignored. Normally that would have been a big
deal to him, but at the moment he had important searching to do.

"Look, I'm working here. You
need to get and
stay
, out of my way." The man wasn't thrilled to
hear that, but finally another cop came over and sent him away. A useful one.

Robertson.

The Coalition of Nations local
liaison. His partner wasn't there at the moment, but the older man actually
just asked what he was doing. That was kind of why he had the job he did. The
guy was brilliant, and actually bothered to try to be reasonable, even if
something strange was happening.

Ty didn't stop searching for even
a second.

"I found the first bomb. I
need to go over the whole building... Um, I can't
die
. I can go into
that more later, if you want, but for the time being, don't you think that you
should leave? If I get blown up it will be messy and inconvenient for a week or
two. That's all. Can you say the same?"

"No, I can't. I'll pass the
word. The world is sure a strange place anymore."

It really was.

The explosives unit did their
job, well away from him, and
he
didn't find anything else. Even as he
went into each store, since they were all still open, and checked them
individually. One at a time. It took a long while, but by the time he finished,
almost everyone was gone. It was also morning, or close enough that it was
daylight outside when he went to see where everyone had gotten to. There was a
large collection of people in the parking lot, but when Ty moved in that
direction he realized that he didn't know any of them.

Almost none of them.

Several of them were
kind
of familiar, having been part of the feminist attack on the bookstore a few
weeks back. Looking around he noticed that Will was there standing with them,
if a bit to the side. The feminist guy that had helped to wrestle the gun away
from the would be killer that had targeted Alex.

Instead of waving though, the man
pointed at him, and yelled.

"There
he is! There he is! That's the one!" His look was a bit blank and vapid,
and several women

turned
toward him, and started running.

Then they attacked. Mainly with
weak slaps, which didn't hurt, and hair pulling. That part did close to
nothing, since there wasn't a lot up top for them to hang on to, which he could
have told them, if they would have stopped freaking out at him like they were.
Then several of them picked him up, bodily, even though he wasn't moving. At
first he didn't get it, but when the van pulled up next to him, an SUV, with lots
of windows, Tyler worked it out. He was smart that way.

He was being kidnapped.
Again
.
Only this time it was a bit more serious in intent, and more comical in execution.

"Um, hey... You
probably
don't want to do this. You can get in real trouble for kidnapping."

That got a rather homely woman to
punch him in the face.

"Shut up, cis scum!" A
little chant went up then, as he was tossed into the back of the red vehicle.
It was a nice burgundy color, actually, with a bit of metallic sheen that was
visible in the very early morning light.

Rather than fight, since these
people honestly weren't ready for that kind of thing, he called out, wondering
if anyone would be able to hear him.

"Hey! This is Ty Gartner.
I'm being kidnapped. By the people that attacked the bookstore. Red SUV, in the
parking lot. A little help, please? They're mainly women, and I don't want to
hurt them."