Shield of Innocence (Alternate Places Book 4) (32 page)

It kind of sounded neat however,
so Zack nodded.

"I like it! We can do that
over a weekend, right? I don't want to use up all my vacation days too soon, in
case an emergency comes up." Then he glanced at Lenore, locking eyes with
her. The familiarity was striking, and she looked nice, being dressed up for
public consumption like she was. "I work for myself, but the boss is a
slave driver at times."

There was nothing even approaching
a chuckle, just a somber nod.

"I know the feeling. Well,
I'll leave making those arrangements up to Ginger and Tyler? I'm not certain
where Calley has gotten off too, exactly." She knew the general direction,
since there were twin bat girl sounding sex noises coming from Libby's room.
That she was a bit of a sex fiend was a known thing, and apparently Calley was
no different on that score, or not much.

Tyler sighed, which was fake, and
shook his head a little.

"We
should
have sent
Ginger off with them, if nothing else. She just got the ability to feel that
kind of thing back..."

Chris looked away, trying not to
feel jealous, since he sort of liked Libby, and the idea of two of her being
there
wanting
sex was a bit much to bear.

Giving them all a group shrug,
Zack waved in the right direction.

"You should all go. Just,
Chris,
don't
mention this to Don?" That could create a problem, if
it became known.

None of these people were going
to pass diseases or get pregnant however, and even if they were the same person
inside, Ginger and Chris were externally far more different than the bat
shifters were from one another. They all left then, though Lenore stayed
behind, watching them walk away.

"Ah, children. I remember
what it was like to be young, I think. It's been a while, so I may be imagining
that part. There was something about me heroically toiling for years on end,
and saving my people?" She grinned just a tiny bit at the end.

He had to agree with the basic
thought, really.

"Yeah. I'm... I lived most
of my life in the void, and time passes differently there. So really... I'm so
old now that the rest of you seem like babies to me. Not just you and Ginger,
but all of you. Chris is over a thousand years old, you know?"

"I didn't, to be honest.
Amazing. It takes that long to learn the skills you taught Eve and Kait?"
She looked off at the other room, where Eve was, and then over at Kate, since
the idea was probably pretty similar to her mind, even if they were different
Alede.

"Yes. There's a cost to
everything worth doing. I know that a lot of people don't get that, as if the
time spent there doesn't count somehow, but it does. You live all of it. Every
single second. After a while you tend to go a bit insane, I think."

That got him to recall Riley's
theory. That at the end of each reality would be one being, in one line,
floating forever in nothingness, alone. He was able to understand what that
really meant, but for
those
beings there was no escape. There was
nothing around them and no way to leave, ever. No way to do
anything
except go mad, eventually.

It would take a long time to
happen for some of them.

Zack, for instance, had lived
like that for thousands of years. Most of that time hadn't really been alone
however. Big Shadow had been there, or one of the others, to keep him company
through most of it. Even if they didn't speak, he knew they were around. There
was a certainty and closeness to that kind of thing.

Being truly alone, for millions,
or billions, of years, might well have an effect that even he wasn't ready for.
Worse, he couldn't even begin to
understand
the madness that would
follow. It would likely be different for everyone. Some would become bland and
boring, probably barely thinking at all. Some would become monsters on a level
that no one would have ever thought could exist, he bet. Hanging there, at the
end of everything, waiting. Planning to do... Something.

Blinking he realized that Lenore
had been speaking, her voice soft and friendly.

"I should arrange a party
for you and your people, in my world? I'd love to meet you all. Plus it makes
fine business sense, don't you think?" She was being playful and touched
his arm with her cool hand. Flirting with him.

It was flattering, but he didn't
fall for it. Not that she didn't mean it. She would have had sex with him,
right then, if he wanted. For her, even with a newly rekindled sex drive, that
was business too, however. You used what others wanted to influence and control
them. Thankfully he was in control of that part of himself, now. Finally. Not
feeding the Alede was paying off that way, big time.

Even spreading it out would
probably help a lot.

Zack had never really gotten to
try that, because the instant he figured out how to feed his friends energy, a
lot of them had wanted in on it. Not that he blamed them for wanting to eat,
but not having to have sex three or four times a day himself was kind of nice.
Not that he didn't enjoy it, but too much of a good thing was
still
too
much, and chafing was a real problem, or
had
been.

Now he could go into the void and
come out healed, perfectly, if he took damage, but still, it was nicer to not
be forced to do things like that all the time. It was hard enough to be in the
body of a young man, really. Having been both male and female, Zack knew the difference
now. Women could enjoy sex, but men were pushed into it. Having only one
perspective led people to think things about what others went through into a
lot of distortion.

Lenore however pretty much was
just using that part of him, or trying to, in a way that would put her in an
advantageous position to be friends with a being she thought of as powerful.
Kind too, her shadow assured him. Her Zack was a nice man, for his type of
person, and he, the Zack there, was even more so, as far as she could see. She
was even wondering, examining him, if all Zack's were basically gentle beings.

That got him to think about it,
and realize that probably wasn't the truth in the end.

"We're a collection of
people, the ones that I've been in contact with, that do seem to be basically
good, in the way I think about it. There probably millions, or billions of
Zack's or people close enough to being me that there is a connection that
counts, and half of them are probably more or less evil. There were a lot of
times when I could have gone that way, and for each of those, out there,
somewhere in the greater scheme of things each of them exists, having turned
out a lot differently."

It was, in a way, a perfect
balance. A perfect neutrality built over... Everything.

There was a big picture there,
that held a kernel that he needed to examine, closely, and it called to him,
but...

Before he could consider it, the
woman, looking cute and a bit younger than he did, about nineteen or twenty,
wrinkled her nose at him. It was distracting enough that he let his focus move
back to her instead of the mysteries of creation.

"You read my mind?
That's
hardly fair. Not that I'm unused to it, from my own Zack. So, do you think that
there are evil versions of us doing battle at this moment instead of having
polite conversation in your parlor?"

That got him to nod at her.

"Oh, yeah.
Everything
is probably happening. Billions of worlds where we never meet. Ones where
I'm
the awesome vampire and you're just the line walker. Ones where I'm
just
your boyfriend, and we're both human, or lizard people. Places where we're both
fighting in the war against the aliens, or zombies. That and... Not just
more
,
but
everything
else that can happen. Ever. Including things that we
would never be able to understand. Things where we're just sentient balls of
light, striving to overcome the limits of being mere energy?"

It was a lot, and a
huge
idea, but a cool hand came out and touched his arm.

"Interesting. On the good
side, I think that we only need concern ourselves over the realities that we
connect with. Let's avoid the ones where I'm an awful being however? I
can
be a bit of a bitch, I hear."

He grinned and shook his head,
not falling for
that
trap.

"That sounds like a plan in
general. It's probably not going to happen forever, since we go to different
worlds blind, but I'll attempt to keep that in mind. So far so good?" That
led to an overview of the people that he'd visited with Riley's letters.

She was fascinated by the way
some of the places had seemed to him, but didn't ask too many questions. Getting
perhaps that twenty minute visits to a node didn't actually mean he was an
expert on things yet. That did remind him to make some return visits to some of
them, since you didn't become friends with people that were never around. Not
that it had been in his instructions from the trickster. Then, the being hadn't
come and told him not to do that either, yet.

The tale of his journey to other
worlds got a bit of an audience, and finished a bit before a troop of rather satisfied
and sheepish people came out of Libby's room. Lenore smiled and tried not to
indicate that she could smell the combined pheromones and scents of sex on
them. All of them. Including in combinations that were probably a bit sketchy,
given that there were people who were the same... Person involved, in different
forms.

He had no problem with that.
Since Zack considered it as either them being different people, or, if you
wanted to get into it on a different level, masturbation. Either way was fine
with him. Then,
he
went out of his way not to care about things like
that.

Calley held Libby's hand, and
leaned her shoulder into her. At least she was dressed up like that ambassador,
and in her clothing. The inner shadow indicated that it was tempting to trade
places for a while, but that wouldn't work, since Libby was a lot older now,
and could travel on the lines. While she could possibly fake being a
politician, Calley would be hard pressed to do the other side of things.

Otherwise they totally would have
tried it out. That was just the kind of people they both were.

Ginger was feeling a bit upset,
inside, since she'd done some things with Chris that weren't all that bad, but
had left her wondering how close to having sex with her own brother she'd
actually come. That wasn't a big issue however, since genetically they weren't
all that close. There was a mental pattern that was linked, but it was a lot
more distance than say,
he
had with Chris.

Then, Zack wasn't going to blow
the guy either, so her feelings that way were a thing for her to work out. She
hadn't wanted to be rude about it, and while not attracted to the boy, she also
didn't want to give offense, and
had
to be a big, tough, vampire about
it all. It was a rule. In both worlds, it seemed.

Thankfully, that wasn't enough to
really hurt her mind. She was
uneasy
, but not harmed by what she'd
chosen to do in that room.

Tyler was happy enough, having
gotten enough from everyone else there that he felt, if not loved, then at
least appreciated. Including Chris, which the
kid
wasn't bothered about
at all. That was different, since Zack was a little bit of a homophobe, he
knew. Not as an ethical or moral thing, but he
really
didn't want to
have sex with other men, and the idea left him feeling a bit uneasy. As in a
real fear. An irrational one.

That was due to his own past
however, which thankfully Chris hadn't lived through.

Eve, Claire and Luthor came back,
with Rebekah, following behind by about ten paces. That was interesting, since
she was taking the subordinate position, due to her age and lack of personal
power there, but Eve, who was much younger,
wasn't
. For her part she
moved smoothly, in front of the others, including the vampire leader. It wasn't
the same as saying she was more powerful than he was, however, since it was the
traditional guard location. Claire's shadow told him all about it, with the
ancient leader nodding along, or at least his inner beast was.

Still, it was her pretty much
indicating that, young or not, she was the best one to protect them if anything
started in the other room. It
also
meant that whatever deal they had
together, she was thinking of them as her people to protect now. That was a
good sign that things had gone well.

He waved at them, not caring
about the politics of it all.

"All right, I need to get
you all back to your own world, and then get to my vacation. Is anyone
staying?" He glanced at Eve, since she could get people back and forth,
and so could Chris, who was trying not to look at Ginger, who he liked a lot more
than she had enjoyed him. On the good side, he also knew that, and wasn't going
to press the issue. Instead he was making eye contact with Eve, who was
actually
a lot more interested in him than the younger vampire felt.

Don and Kate had been standing to
the side for most of the evening, watching everyone, but they could transfer
people just as well as anyone. The thing there was that Eve and Chris were the
ones kind of in charge of that sort of transfer. They all knew that too, so Eve
winked at him, to show she got the idea he was going for.