Shield of Innocence (Alternate Places Book 4) (9 page)

Eve smiled at him and shook her
head then.

"Not this time. Eve Benson,
from an alternate reality. Just like there you're
Tyler
." Turning
to Zack she explained that one, leaving Cavendish out of the loop totally.
"Think of Bruce Lee, if he were a zombie that learned how to use death as
a direct weapon?"

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.

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 big 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.