On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3) (41 page)

He told them that he wouldn't miss it and had already
arranged for a flight later that day from home. Since he planned to bring
guests. He had to go back that night, but this party was the most important
thing on his schedule for the next day. Kate liked hearing that, because it
meant he was at least willing to pretend that they were all an actual thing
already. That, or he
really
liked to party, which was also an acceptable
answer.

After making sure he didn't have anything else he needed to
do and checking the node carefully, she dropped him back through quickly, so
that he could shield her with his body if it came up. The room looked a mess,
from where holes had been punched in the walls, but she didn't linger to find
out how much damage had been done.

She called Don again and suggested that he come back and get
some people from there to sit with his mother and Chris, or even bring them
back to Zack's for the evening. Don didn't want to lose the evidence of the
beating, which sounded worse than she'd been originally told, once he recounted
the story away from his mom, but he still obviously didn't have the whole tale
yet.

“Screw that Don. You've got a bunch of Vampires looking for
your dad and all of them are going to be plenty happy to do whatever you want
or the court decides. Real court, you know,
ours
. The hard part is going
to be keeping him alive if that's what you want. I wish Zack were back already...
and Claire. Then I could just come and get you all. Or stay there with you. I
feel like we're just leaving you there all alone right now.”

This got a soft snort over the phone, “Right, there's half a
dozen people here standing guard. They're not even being covert about it. One's
literally standing in front of Chris's door and keeps following the nurses in
when they go to check on him. I told my mom that one of my friend's mother is
an Ambassador, and that these people are here because she sent them, but I
don't think that's going to hold out for very long. She's trying to sleep now,
but I need to have something better by the time she wakes up.”

Kate sat in a hard metal chair, just waiting for a while,
focused and ready, but not actually doing anything, since there didn't seem to
be a lot to do at the moment that would actually help. At a few minutes past midnight,
Zack, Claire and Libby ran out of the back of Something Wonderful, calling her
name. She'd been sitting in the food court with Merri and Xan. Hawk hovering
about five feet from her, watching everything as carefully as he could manage.
When the trio ran up he moved in front of Kate again, ready to fight these
people if they were attackers. Xan raised a hand and actually called for them
to halt.

“
Friends
!” The copper haired Alfric, tall for their
people, called to them his hand raised palm out. “Please move slowly. There
have been two attacks already this day, and young Hawk stands to protect your
Kate, but I do not believe he's had time to learn that you are all friends
yet?”

Claire stopped and looked at Hawk questioningly, “He knows me
though. What's the situation?” This she spoke softly, almost below Human
hearing, Kate got it, but the Alfric and Zack probably didn't.

“The first attack was on the younger brother of Donald the
other Line-Walker. The second came as I guarded Kate when we went to pick up Vaun
in Houston. He's fine and so are we, three of
them
are dead, the last
being questioned.” This came out without inflection, fast enough that it seemed
almost hard to understand even when she focused on it. Claire seemed to get it
all though.

It took a few minutes to fill them all in and then get Zack
to find Don and take them all there. Hilda and Troy insisted on going, along
with Claire, Libby and Hawk, who related how he'd promised Kate that he'd beat
up this man that hurt the child, if she decided she wanted him to.

“Beat, or kill?” Claire asked him quietly.

The boy gave a slow smile that almost didn't count as one in
Kate's book.

“Oh, I specifically said
beat
. I know that you don't
want us killing people without good reason. I think this
may
be a good
enough reason, but I was very careful about what I said.”

Claire looked at Kate kind of coldly until the other girl
realized she was checking the kid's story. What you promise someone exactly
meant a lot more to Vampires than Alede, she'd realized a long time before, so
of course Claire, his...boss? Master? Would check out what he'd said. She told
them all that was precisely what he'd offered, and had left in the caveat of
her will too, so she could pull him back that way if need be. Plus, he
did
save
her life earlier and help directly capture one of the attackers, after coming
up with the idea of being her body guard on his own.

He shook his head, “Not exactly true, that incredibly good
looking blonde girl said something that made me think of it, when she'd run
over at first. Blaine? I think that might have been her name.”

Zack thought for about ten seconds then took them all,
holding hands first, to his house,
their
house now, then to Kate's now
empty dorm room. From there he worked out where Don was, backed off from the
hospital about a quarter mile into an abandoned building and built a new rift
directly there. They had to walk, and it was cold, at least for Kate, but they
managed it quickly enough she didn't freeze. In the hospital Kate just followed
the line to where Don sat, dozing, next to a slightly older looking woman that
must have been his mother, and a man that stood with military bearing, watching
them approach with a hand underneath his jacket. He whispered softly to them,
his voice holding no menace, but no warmth either.

“Identify yourselves.”

Claire stepped forward and listed off who they all were, from
least important to most. She had to hesitate when she got to Libby and Hilda,
but finally put Libby's name first, then continued without pause putting her
own name before Kate's or Zack's. Zack made sense to her, but the idea that
Claire would feel less important than Kate seemed new and a bit strange to her.
She wondered for a moment if this kind of feeling would be what Zack always
worried over. A sense that
real
importance held more weight when it came
to other people.

She tried to smile at the Vampire and look encouraging, which
seemed to work. It could have been the names, or maybe the guy was just getting
anxious for relief to come, since morning would arrive in a few short hours.
Regardless he looked at Hilda and told her that she had the watch. Hilda just
nodded and took his position, her hand going inside her own jacket. Something
new she'd gotten to hide weapons in. Kate knew this because Hilda had asked for
her and Blaine's input into the purchase.

The Human woman, Don's mom looked at them, a little worried.
Her mouth had the set of someone with long term stress, a spider web of lines,
many vertical from either holding a cigarette in her mouth all the time or from
a look of severe disapproval that she wore nearly constantly. Around her eyes
deep lines scored her face, as well as grooves between her eyes. Kate knew she
couldn't be even fifty yet, no older than her late forties, but she looked
nearly sixty.

Her hair had a bottle red-head look, probably to hide the
premature gray, and her clothing looked respectable enough, but cheap. Kind of
like what happened when a person with decent taste had to shop at Wal-Mart for
the bulk of their clothing. A look that couldn't manage chic, or even class,
being too generic, yet still told anyone paying attention that care had been
taken in the selection, and even though it took effort, the person did indeed
have style.

Kate smiled at her and put her right hand forward, standing
in front of the woman, but keeping her distance, so the other woman had to lean
forward slightly to shake with her. Her eyes opened fully when she saw that the
very pretty girl that had walked up seemed to be there for a reason and wasn't
just there to visit someone else.

“Mrs. Karver? I'm Kate Swanson, we talked earlier on the
phone?” Voice soft and gentle she waited for some sign of recognition or at
least a sign that the woman hadn't fallen asleep with her eyes open, being that
at the moment, she stared at Kate without blinking.

It took about ten, maybe fifteen seconds, but the woman
finally shook herself slightly and managed to talk, her voice sounding dreamy,
as if slightly drugged or hypnotized by the events of the day. It gave the
feeling that she already didn't really understand or believe what had happened,
maybe she even thought she was dreaming and waited to wake up. Kate stored that
fact away, because this woman could
easily
go over the edge right now if
not handled well, at least it seemed that way to her.

“The woman that called for Don on Chris's phone earlier?”
This came out without particular inflection, sounding very lost and innocent,
almost like it came from someone simple minded.

The woman realized that Kate's hand still hovered in the
space in front of her and shook it, a weak motion that barely touched finger
tips, as if wanting to avoid contact with anyone else.

They started talking to her slowly, asking what had happened,
and getting a story that sounded almost word for word like the one Don had
given Kate earlier, though the extremity of the beating sounded a lot less in
her version. The woman, who gave her name as Marcia after having talked for
several minutes, didn't have a clue what she should do now. She had to protect
her boy, but she didn't have a job and didn't even know where to go for
support. She shook her head, tears forming, but she didn't let herself sob or
make a sound beyond slightly hoarse breathing.

Looking around, Kate saw that Zack had gone into the closed
room of the boy, glancing in for nearly two minutes, probably examining the
situation or getting information from Chris's mind. Not wanting to interrupt,
she waited for him to turn and come back then.

“Kaitlyn... He needs to be healed. They have him in splints
and have him heavily sedated, but there's some internal bleeding still. Also,
he's missing about half his upper teeth and a few lower on the left side. I
don't think this was a
spanking
gone wrong at all, someone tried to kill
him. I got the reason... We should wake Don up for this.”

Kate shook her friend softly, until he jumped, a single
overhand blow aimed at her, which she stopped easily and held in place so that
he wouldn't think he was
really
under attack. He leaped to his feet when
he saw her, holding her for a minute, then gave a similar hug to Claire. Hilda
nodded to him professionally, keeping her senses alert for attack and mind on
the job at hand. Zack walked over and clapped him on the back, recommending
that they get some coffee for the people that drank it before they went over
what had actually happened.

Don showed them where a pot of coffee sat on a small table
with pink and blue packets of artificial sweetener, sugar and fake creamer that
made Kate glad she'd learned to drink the stuff black if she needed to. They
got four cups, dingy Styrofoam that looked suspiciously dirty to her, but came
from a stack that claimed to be clean. She filled them with the bitter smelling
brew and they brought back flavorings and sweeteners for everyone else.

Zack, Marcia and Don took the other three cups, leaving her
one, which she sipped at, glad for something to do, but having to fight
shuddering a little with each swallow. Maybe later, as a pet project, she could
have this hospital set up with decent coffee. A massive coffee of the month
plan? Before she left she decided to make a pass by the coffee machine again to
see what brand of coffee this was, so she could boycott it from this point on.
None of this came out loud, since Zack had started to speak, telling them what
had really happened, if in brief and leaving out most of the details to spare
Chris's family members.

The story sounded simple, even if a little tragic in its
stupidity to Kate. Chris had gone to the library about two weeks before, to get
information for a paper on World War II reconstruction. Then he went home. All
this a normal enough thing for him, since he tried to keep his grades up, not being
into sports or video games. It gave him something to be proud of.

When he got home, his dad started calling him a fag and
screaming at him, something about having been with some guy behind some shops
as he'd driven past. He tried to tell the man clearly where he'd been and even
showed him the nearly finished paper as proof, but in the classic line of
bullies everywhere, instead of accepting proof for what it was or the word of
his own son, he accused the boy of calling
him
a liar.

A few days after that, Roger, the dad, had confronted some
boys that he thought were the ones he'd seen behind the shops before, hanging
around and accused them of being gay, and told them to stay away from his kid.

Zack shook his head and rubbed at his face then.

“That was
brillian
t
of course, since it meant
that Chris would be targeted for harassment then, being tripped in the hall,
called names and that kind of thing. The kids, while offended by Roger,
didn't
go as far as to attack the boy though, not past a few pushes and harsh words.
Really, pretty decent restraint all things considered. Annoying, but it could
have been a lot worse there.”

Then the day before, the kids had found out where Roger lived
and retaliated against the man directly, by throwing rocks through the large,
fairly costly, front windows.

“Roger flipped and accused the boy of setting it up with his
little butt buddies. About that time, Chris seemed to have had enough of this
and told Roger to go fuck himself and stop lying about him. That started the
fight, if a full grown man beating a fourteen year old with various objects is
a
fight
. Chris wouldn't admit he was gay and Roger wouldn't stop beating
him till he did. He figured he was dead near the end there...”