Living Proof (Tyler G Book 2) (27 page)

Ty started back out, figuring
she'd need a lot more than that. Then he stopped in the doorway.

"So, it isn't enough to be a
Bat Shifter, you're a super one? How unfair is that. All
I
can do is be
shot."

Ginger giggled at him, but got up
to follow him into the other room.

"Well, I hear that you can
play music, too. That's nearly as neat. Let's make some grub for our girl, and
then you can play for us? Or would that be too embarrassing?'

That got him to stick out his
tongue, which was quickly put into the Vampires mouth.

When she broke off, he nodded.

"Okay, I walked into that
one. I can do that. Play for you. I need to start working on some new things
anyway. It would be lame to go audition and have to play 'Mary Had a Little
Lamb' don't you think?"

Food had to come first though, he
knew. Or guessed, to be more exact. Shape Shifting wasn't a thing he knew how
to do, himself, so if Calley said it made her hungry, he was just going to have
to go with that idea for now.

They made pasta, with garlic
bread, and a small salad. All of it was for Calley though, even if it smelled
good. Then, before anyone mentioned it, he ran off to shower. It was the food
that reminded him, since two of the people in the house probably thought he
smelled a bit like cake at the moment.

The amazing thing there was that
he was totally healed, when he got out from under the hot water.

For all his whining about not
having a super power, that one
had
to count.

Feeling pretty good about the
whole being dead thing at the moment, he got dressed and then went to set his
new keyboard up. That felt good, even with the rest of the evening having taken
place.

Like he was whole again.

The rest of the night he played,
and tried to write songs. He had a good start to three different pieces, but
wanted to go into the meeting with more than that. New things that were the kind
of stuff that would be played on the radio. He wanted to play with a few
different sounds at the same time.

The point wasn't to make himself
look good however, or to push the boundaries of reality, but to be popular and
make money. They were different things, and while he
had
to be good, it
made sense to try and write songs that people would want to hear. That meant
being close to what people were used to, while pushing their emotional buttons
and calling to them at the same time.

For him anyway. For all he knew
that wasn't what anyone else would have in mind. The rest of the new band might
want to try Celtic Rock or something, which was pretty and would showcase
Rebekah well, but probably wouldn't sell.

The girls all stayed with him,
which was a little bit strange. Calley and Ginger lived there, and while the
schedules hadn't matched up all the time that wasn't too unusual. That Eve remained
didn't make a lot of sense. Not at first. It wasn't until he went off to work
in the morning that he got it. She was his bodyguard.

Because
that
was
reasonable.

Without asking if that was her
real plan for the day, he nodded at her.

"This way you can protect me
against kidnappers, errant bad guys and politically challenged individuals?
Or
jump in the way of bullets, if little old ladies are going to be hit? Cause I'm
pretty sure I don't need a bodyguard in particular. Not really." Looking
down again, Ty indicated the fact that he wasn't all messed up, even after
everything. The pristine and untouched dead.

"Yep. That's the plan. Edom
suggested it. I won't be around all day, having a real job. But until we can
hide you, we need to keep someone around all the time. Honestly, we should get
you out of the area. I was thinking that I'd talk to Zack and see if he'd lend
us his summer camp. Except... There are kids there right now. I wouldn't want to
bring people down on the little ones like that. So, someplace else?"

That just got a shrug, and a head
shake.

"How much of this can we
expect to keep happening now? I don't know for a fact, but I don't think that
that cult has many more members out and about. Not that are going to be willing
to be beaten up by Vampires and go to prison for the honor of ruining my
clothing. As for the feminists... I... I don't want to be mean, but I think
that they really only took action because they figured they wouldn't get in
trouble for it. Which kind of shows that they're wrong, in the end. Scared, but
not of me, or even the police. My bet is that they aren't going to keep coming
at me,
or
the Alede anymore. That wasn't the best plan to start with.
You'd think they'd have figured out that all they have to do to take power is
to start doing things, as long as they don't infringe on other people too much.
No one is stopping them."

They were still walking, and Eve
was watching the world like she really expected a fight, even as they got to
the door of the mall, which she held for him, being there first.

Then she grimaced at him, and
seemed upset.

"You, Tyler G. are far too
kind to women in general. I
get
it, because as a group we're pretty
sweet, and smell nice, but it will end up with you being in trouble if you
aren't careful. Possibly with someone else being dead. Not you or me, so I
suppose there's that, but some innocent person that doesn't ignore bullets like
a mildly inconvenient rain storm."

They were very near where he'd
been grabbed by the van full of women, but he still stopped and stared at the
pretty Vampire for a bit. The sun was beating down, so after a few seconds,
remembering that it had to be pure torture for her kind to take, he walked
inside.

"That... I'm
too
nice
to women? How's that again? I just treat them like anyone else, don't I?"

"Oh, sure. But when a woman
was trying to beat down Valerie at Pretty Plus you just subdued her as
peacefully as possible and then let her go with two weeks of camping. What would
she have gotten if she'd been a man? My bet is that you would have at
least
beaten him until he couldn't move anymore. But
not
a woman. In fact I
know
it, because when a guy had a gun you did exactly that.
He
ended up in
the hospital." She reached out and touched his arm. It was just to get him
to stop, now that they were inside, and not flirtatious. "You keep cutting
those feminists slack, too. Okay, they're an extremist bunch, and most women
aren't like they are, but they planted bombs and tried to kidnap you. They got
that guy to try and
kill
one of your Alede. What do you do though? Try
to understand them, and see that they're just scared? Laudable, but too kind by
far.
Because
they're women."

That got him to blink. Not that
it wasn't all true, but that he'd been treating men differently than that. The
entire time, his whole life, he'd seen men as being the ones that were
responsible for themselves and their own actions, but had acted like women
needed to be handled with kid gloves. Okay, they demanded that kind of
treatment, but that didn't make it right, did it? They weren't made of glass or
anything all that fragile.

"It isn't just me though, is
it?"

"Nope. Let me tell you, it
was a
giant
shock to me when I started working at Yoghurt World. I mean,
I started out being hard working, and pulling my weight, even when I was a
Human, but I didn't get how much other people were doing for me before I got
there. A portion of my work was done for me without ever even noticing it
happening, and it
always
had been. I didn't get it until that privilege
was taken away." She smiled, her white teeth showing just a tiny bit.

Like he was supposed to
understand what she meant without her saying any more about it. Tyler didn't
though, and gave her what had to be a baffled look in return. To his mind she
was just her. Wasn't that the same for everyone else?

"I don't think I..."

She sucked in a deep breath and
looked miserable for a second.

"Right. You know that
Classic Vamps, like me, we don't have a sex drive in the main? A few do, but
it's basically a special power when it happens. Like my speed? So I went to
work at the Yoghurt World, and suddenly I was around all of these guys that
didn't cut me any slack for being a pretty girl. Most places a girl that looks
like me, or even an average one... We have men to do part of our work for us.
Constantly. No one admits it, and I think most women don't even realize it
happens, but it was a shock to the system when I noticed that I was expected to
do what the men were, all the time. It seemed like I had to do twenty-five
percent more right off the bat."

Tyler shook his head, but didn't
say it wasn't real.

"I thought that women had to
do twice as much to get the same results?"

Eve laughed then, and started
walking again. She didn't speak until they were in front of the bookstore. The
front was opened up to the public, and Madeline worked behind the counter. She
looked up and smiled at him, her eyes lingering on Eve for a bit.

"You really think that? Who
told you that? Oh, right, feminists. Ones that by and large don't even work for
a living? The world, at least the Human one, is powered by the labor of men. We
use them up, and grind them down. That's traditional though, and probably has
some biology behind it. That isn't the problem. Most guys don't even blink
about that, to be honest. The thing there is that women as a group have been
told that they're just as good as men in all ways, without being forced to
prove it. A lot of us
are
that good, but I've yet to meet a woman that
did twice what a man did in any given situation. Doing as
much
normally
gets them promoted over the guys."

He shook his head then.

"I don't know if that's
right. Wouldn't it be kind of obvious if men were doing all of that work to
cover for women?"

There was a subtle move then, and
a soft glance at Madeline.

"It
is
. If you bother
to see what's really going on. Like I said, it was a shock to me when it first
hit. When none of the men around me were cutting me slack because they wanted
to have sex with me. Even then, I think they kind of did. Help me out a little?
Not that I'm not hard working. I
am
. It's a choice for me, that I made a
long time ago. If
you
came in and tried to work like anyone else here,
even like Kait, Zack would have fired your butt already. True, you pull the
stops out, but no one thinks of that as special really, do they? Men are
supposed to sacrifice everything for their job like that, so they don't even
notice what you've been doing really. They will when you're gone, but then
they'll probably blame you for taking off too soon."

That got him to make a face.

"So, you're saying that
women are lazy and evil? That seems... A little over the top to me."

"No. Not that. Like I said
before, it's probably biological. It's just that men used to be
honored
for all they did. It was
enough
to be a good and hard working man. That
got you a wife, kids, and a real shot at a happy life. Now that doesn't count
for much. If you aren't a CEO, or a rock star, most women won't even
see
you. That,
or
the cutest guy around. You probably don't get that, since
you've kind of been riding the whole star thing the whole time you've been
here. Fighting Vampires and winning, getting in on that Coalition thing... Now
becoming a
real
rock star, or at least doing bubblegum pop. That
isn't
normal. I  mean, Ben kind of lucked out, since both Kait and I are different,
but we
aren't
Human women." She sighed, and looked around, getting perhaps
that a lot of people were listening to her.

It was early still, but a Bat
Shifter was going to practically be part of the conversation, and the Alede
could hear things really well, too. Robert was right across the way, setting
Pretty Plus up for the day.
Passions
. The sign said both, but no one
called it that, even if it made a lot of sense given who ran the place.

Ty didn't really get her point.
While he could see that Ben, a slightly heavy, bearded and average looking guy
that worked in a bookstore had sort of gotten lucky, dating the two hot
women... Well, it really
was
odd. Even getting Ginger and Calley was
special. For him to have scored one of them would have been a really big deal,
he knew.

Eve went on, taking a step back,
to leave.

"Not that it matters. You
still
have to work and slave away, to make the world work out right, and most women
will still not be able to see all that you do. It's both the power and curse of
being a man, I guess. The hardship though is that all that work doesn't really
count to anyone anymore. Not unless you make it to the very top of the heap.
Even then, if you ever lose your hold on things, you become nothing again,
really fast."

Then she left, not looking back.
The Bat lady behind the counter saw him and wrinkled her nose cutely. She
reminded him a lot of Calley. More than just the family resemblance of being
her Aunt, too. It was probably that they were similar beings in a lot of ways.

On the good side she didn't
insist on keeping the same, rather awkward, conversation going. Instead she had
rather normal things to say.

"Hey, can you catch the side
rooms for me? I haven't had a chance."

"Sure, let me sign in first.
We should do the whole place. Sweep and mop. Probably dust, too." He got
to work, moving quickly.

Madeline, rust haired and sort of
average in appearance stood behind the front counter, watching him as he moved
from one spot to the other. She wrote something, which reminded him that he
needed to keep up with his notebook, himself. As he finished mopping, the
yellow caution signs out, the woman, who was older than he was by over twenty
years, folded the piece of paper, and held it out to him as he walked over.

"Here you go, the secret to
life."

Unfolding the paper, which was
yellow, and had been ripped from a legal pad, he saw what it said, and made a
face.

"
Thanks for doing all my
work for me
." It took him a second to get that he
had
.

The woman danced in place then.

"And us Shifters aren't even
bad that way. Then no
Shifter
man would have let me do that to him. It's
something to keep in mind, for the future. You coddle your women a lot more
than they need. It's made them weak, and dependent. That's your fault. Men, I
mean. Not you in particular. Still, you should probably stop doing that, if you
can. At least get something out of it, if nothing else."

He didn't say anything, just
going to straighten the front of the store. The Bat Shifter came along with him
this time, having made her point, it seemed. In the end, it was like Eve had
said. It probably didn't really matter, since he still had to be himself, and
so did everyone else.