On the Line (Alternate Places Book 3) (52 page)

She popped up then, and kept to her own pattern, killing and
hiding. They fought for hours, until Kate thought she'd die from exhaustion. The
smiling man moving without end, stopping only once, to suddenly run behind her,
calling to her and asking her to cover him. He dove into a building that was
collapsing and came out fifteen seconds later, dragging a group of beings she'd
never seen before out. They looked like people, but odd to her, covered with
bag like clothing, and strange hats. Their faces a pale blue-gray and instead
of hair, they had what looked to her like stubby tentacles on their heads.

Seconds after he got them out, something hit the building and
finished collapsing it. He yelled at them to run and pushed them back the way
that Kate and he had come. She jumped up and slashed at another silver being,
this one had a slight greenish tinge and looked bigger to her. About half way
between what they fought before and the smaller silver ones that were still
four or five times bigger than she was.

It dodged her blow and pointed a weapon at her, which took
her left leg off at the knee. She stood for a moment, releasing the energy from
around her hands in shock, then fell to the side, gasping. The pain so intense
that it turned her vision white for a moment, then red. It faded into black.
Kate came to a short time later, she figured it was a short time at least,
given how she was still alive. She wanted to take her remaining shoe off before
she changed, but couldn't reach it without too much pain, so she shifted into
Kyle as she was. It destroyed her clothing. Her shirt
kind
of stretching
to fit though and her underwear, a silky black g-string, stayed on, though
neither were comfortable. Her right shoe burst, the foot inside it way too big
for it suddenly. That hurt, but she didn't think anything was broken.

Kyle took the shirt off, it ripped when he did it, having
been pushed too close to destruction anyway. After a moment he ripped off the
g-string too. It didn't help at all and kind of pinched at his groin. He hid
for a few seconds, fear coursing through him. His fucking
leg
had been
blown off, after all, so he figured that he deserved the moment, but he didn't
let it go on long. He reformed the mental blades and started fighting again,
hoping he'd live through the day.

If the man, who'd kept fighting the whole time, working his
way down the street, wondered where the naked guy had come from, he didn't ask
the question out loud. He just accepted that this person fought like the girl before
and kept going. They fought like this for hours. Finally Zack and Claire found
them.

“Kyle... We've held the city, but you and your friend are the
only ones that have proved effective yet... We've taken a few others, of the
large sort, but only a few. Chris is bringing people in to fight from
everywhere... But we can't find Don.” She sounded sad about the whole thing,
especially Don.

Kyle had told her about Don having something else to do, but
she shook her head half way through his attempted explanation.

“No, Kyle... that's what I mean. He's been
taken
, and
no one knows where he is. We think he's been grabbed by the same people that
killed the others on campus.” She looked like she expected the nude boy,
covered with wounds and blood from battle, to leave then and run to his friend.

“Fuck! We have to hold here first. We need to get to him as
fast as we can. Are Willet and his people looking for Don yet?”

This got a grim nod from the Vampire.

Troy's armored form, an iridescent bluish color ran up to
Kyle and the man. He held out something in his hands, one to each person. He
didn't say what it was, but when each took the one offered to them he yelled at
them to swallow it. It was huge for just swallowing, a rectangle about the size
of two sugar cubes side by side.

“Swallow them.” He ordered, sounding rather commanding. Kyle
took his and the man next to him followed suit. It choked him, expanding in his
throat. Growing to fill the space. For about a half minute he wondered if Troy
was trying to kill him. Finally able to take a breath, he looked down and saw
that he wore armor. Fake looking, totally black armor, like the kind that
Beatrice had worn before.

The man next to him had the same thing on and looked at his
hands, then flexed and moved around. The blade thing he'd had in his hand
before now rested on the back of his right hand, but worked anyway.

Troy's flat glass helmet came up, his chin jutting a bit,
“Courtesy of Beatrice. Nano armor or something similar enough that I don't know
the technical difference. It's strong and light. You can tell it to put itself
away and call it out inside a second. I don't know how to do that, but Bea said
you'd get the hang of it when you needed those functions.”

He turned and ran back to where he'd come from, someplace
much closer to the Nexus they'd all come in from than the place they were now.

Zack stepped forward and put his hand out, placing it on the
black armor, on the flat of Kyle's stomach, passing energy until he stepped
back. The other man smiled at them and took off running toward the loudest
sounds of combat.

The battle was hard. Harder than anything Kyle had thought
possible. Bodies littered the streets, mainly not Human or Alede, but they were
dead all the same, and didn't need to be. After a while he had to shut his mind
off, leaving only his ability to fight active, focusing on nothing else. It
took time to reach that state and he didn't want to leave, the hours later that
the man next to him called his name.

“Um, Kyle? I think we're done for now. The enemy have all
died or run away, and people are calling for you. Time to come back now. It's
safe.” He noticed the man beside him, the terrifying man that had saved him
over and over again. Even now he couldn't look at him without seeing a cloud of
blood coming from around him. He swallowed and nodded.

The other didn't touch him, just walking away, calling to him
every now and then, to make sure he remembered to walk after him, as hard as
that was to do. He led him toward the Nexus, and it took a while to get there,
being over several miles away. He heard something as he walked, but had to
block it out. It sounded too much like screaming to him to bear right now.

When they reached the Nexus Hathe was surrounded by blue clad
translators, all with splashes of red-brown on them all, some worse than
others. Veils off, showing their white faces and big, black colored eyes. They
bowed low to them, so Kyle bowed in return, followed by the other man, whose
name he still didn't know.

Standing he looked at the man hard, “I missed your name...
And if you try to tell me that you're just nobody special, I'm going to
nickname you Noodles. I can make it stick too...” He tried to smile, but
nothing in his face moved.

The man did manage a smile and held it, “Oh, right... People
like names for some reason. Well, call me... Cavendish. That should serve as
well as anything.”

Kyle nodded and resisted giving the man, Cavendish, a hug.
Terrified of him or not, the being had carried the whole day. Zack told them
that only the Djinn had managed to hold out too, even killing some of the
enemy. He kept watching Cavendish warily, swallowing occasionally, not so much
afraid, but still acknowledging what stood in front of him.

It took Kyle about five minutes to figure out how to put the
armor away, not knowing what it would do to him if he tried to change in it.
Then he got back to his other form. Kaitlyn. She felt a bit of relief when both
legs were there, attached and strong. She'd known they would be, but the fear had
remained. The sense of loss that had claimed to her darker impulses that she
was ruined forever, with no hope of being herself again.

That... Was probably just the honest truth, she knew. No one
seeing even part of what she had that day could ever be what they were before
it. Unless they were so broken already that nothing could impact their minds.

Cavendish put his own armor away and she worked her way over
to him, fighting her own fear the whole time, but making herself wrap her arms
around him anyway, just hoping he wouldn't kill her for it. He hugged her back
warmly and smiled sadly at her, letting her go sooner than she thought he
wanted to, but seeing how she shook and trembled at his touch.

A sense of pure loneliness washed over her, coming from his
direction, but only for a moment. Then he started looking around, for threats
that no one else could see. Ready to fight them all, if he had to.

It was heartrending to watch, but what else could be done,
except go on as best they could?

Claire walked over and started to speak, but Zack put out his
hand.

“No, now we need to go and find Don. I don't know what he was
doing, but... I'm worried.” He didn't say anything else, just headed to the
node in the back, motioning with his right hand for anyone that was coming to
join them.

Hathe and most of the others really didn't want Kate and
Cavendish to leave, but the dangerous seeming man just smiled at them and told
them they'd come right back if they were needed. "Right now our friend
needs us. We have to go and find him."

The way he said it sounded almost sad, as if he didn't think
they could help Don at all. Kate hoped that was just fatigue, or her own
imagination, not some kind of prescience. That the man had something like that
going on was simply clear to anyone that had watched the day's events.

She didn't have the paper Riley's aunt had given her, that
being lost during the fighting, along with her clothes. She looked down and
tried to summon the armor again, which came, flowing darkly out of her skin itself,
covering her in an instant. It looked a little odd for a college campus, but it
covered her well enough to keep the police off of them.

Focusing she tightened her concentration until she could follow
the lines in her head to the paper she'd had before and recited the address
they needed. She could see the paper in her hand as if it were actually there,
so she was pretty sure she'd gotten it right. Claire pulled a pad and wrote the
address down.

Then they moved out in force.

Kate took Cavendish with her, trembling or not, because if
Don wasn't all right, she planned to make certain that whoever had hurt him
wouldn't survive the day and if that meant unleashing this incarnation of death
upon them, then so be it. If she couldn't do it herself, she'd make sure it was
still done.

Cavendish smiled and offered his arm to her.

She took it and went to search for her friend. Wherever he
was.

Kate ignored everyone for a moment. No one made an impression
on her for nearly a whole second, then she moved. There were things that had to
be done, and being tired, or hurting inside herself wouldn't help anyone.

 Wanting to get to Don before anything else, she gave Willet
the address, his scruffy electronics friend taking it from him without asking
and running, calling out that he had a car
and
GPS. They all followed
him, every one of them, including Riley's aunt and a guy that had just happened
to be in the hallway when they'd gotten there, talking loudly about what they'd
all feared had happened.

The car, a white van, quickly filled with people. Looking
scared, but determined the boy from the hall followed, ending up next to
Britney in the back. Tucked next to some electronic gear. Blaine was next to
Kate and Cavendish was pushed into her side, creating terror for her and
everyone else in the back. If the kid had jumped in feeling
that
he
probably had a real reason to be there, so she didn't ask. For all she knew he
might be the one that saved the day.

Blaine didn't know why he was there though, and was probably
wondering if they should throw him out before they got where they were going.
It was all over his face when Kate looked over.

“Um, hey...” He started softly, looking at the boy, who had
light brown hair, and a slightly soft look to him. Not fat, but young and
clearly not an athlete. Average looking in both face and body, and not
remarkable at all. “Do you know what we're doing here?”

He asked this gently, not trying to scare the guy more than
he was already. The guy nodded slowly, and seeing that Blaine wanted more from
him finally explained.

“You're going to save your friend, who you think has been
taken by the people that killed Rachel. I'm going to find them and kill them if
I can.” The boy said this softly, with steel underneath, and looked at Blaine
as if waiting for him to tell him he couldn't.

Blaine snorted, “Well, you may have to kick the corpses by
the time this crew is done with them, but I won't take that from you.”

Kate wondered who Rachel was, but didn't want to ask, because
it seemed like it would hurt the kid's feelings. Given everything, she was
probably the liberal arts student that none of them knew. This boy must have
been her lover. He was at
least
her friend, regardless. That gave him as
much right to be there as any of the rest of them, at least to her mind.
Cavendish just smiled, his face relaxed and his attention going to everyone
around himself, constantly.

They rode then in silence, for over half an hour. The driver
didn't go slowly either, meaning that this address had to be at least forty
miles away from the school. It turned out to be an isolated cabin, back away
from the road, hidden behind a low hill. It was a great spot for someone to
have their little murder house. Only a sicko would pick the place for that, but
she feared that it really fit the situation at hand.

They piled out of the van quickly, Cavendish simply going to
the front door and opening it, finding it not even locked. Shooting started,
but ended within seconds. Smiling death had walked into the room after all.