Shield of Innocence (Alternate Places Book 4) (20 page)

He didn't speak until they were
through the shortcuts, and standing in the back of Something Wonderful, where
Charli was once again assembling the baskets. She worked quickly, without
wasting a lot of time on anything other than what she was doing.

Zack called out anyway.

"Hi, Charli. Jen and I are
going to Westfield. Then into the void. We should be back in a few hours,
tops."

The other woman looked up, her
face smooth, perfect and pleased.

"Neat. Hi, Jen!"

Then they moved into the node,
since telling her all about being in a different reality first wasn't going to
help anyone. He didn't think. They came out in the back of Yoghurt World, to
find that Nikki was working behind the counter, her face cheery.

Eve was there too, but in the
back room, doing paper work. She was behind a nice desk in an office that was
smaller than the one Claire used by about four times. Looking up, she smiled,
and looked at the girl with him.

"Hi! Um... You're with Mr.
Hartley, so...
Alternate
Jennifer Stone? Or is the name different? You
look a bit younger."

Zack had to fight a wink, but
leaned toward her just a bit.

"Jennifer Stone.
Jelly
.
Mage, and college student. Jelly, this is Eve Benson, who's also a line walker.
As you might have guessed, this is a different reality. Don't let it bug you,
most of the people here aren't too bad."

He expected the girl who was
young still, to freak out a bit, but she just smiled hugely.

"Kaitlyn and Don
both
mentioned you. I didn't think I'd get to come
here
though. I feel
special now."

Eve winked at her, in a cute way
that didn't promise anything, but was friendly none the less.

"You
are
. You know, I
think you're going to do really well at this. Mages are good at focusing,
right? They have to be in order to use their abilities. That's all you really
need to do for it. Concentrate and keep doing it." A trickle of magical force
left the vampire, which was a lot different than compulsion. After about three
or four minutes there was a bit or a shift in Jennifer, which coincided with
Eve being done with her part in the process.

"Good luck. We can use you
here, on our side of things? I have all these important yogurt related duties
to see about. That and embassy stuff. I can't let taking people places get in
the way of all that. We can get you in here a few times a week to take our
people around? Once you get good at being a line walker?" She licked her
lips a little, but they stayed dry.

Jen snickered a bit.

"Right. I'll be back in
about five minutes, weeping, rocking, and holding myself." She didn't
really seem to feel like that however, inside. In fact her shadow was confident
that she
would
do pretty well. Maybe not perfectly, but enough so that
she wouldn't have to feel bad about it later.

Zack did his part, quietly, and
nodded. There was much aggressive shadow shouting to that part, but it really
didn't take very long, the girl already being a bit scared of him for some
reason.

"We'll go in with a rapid
time frame involved at the very start, so yeah, five, ten minutes here."
He wasn't certain if he could do that, himself, but it made sense not to take
days on it, if they could.

Once in the line it went... Well
enough. She wasn't the easiest person to hold in the void ever, true, and she
was
a bit weak internally. To start with. After a while she grew to be more though.
It wasn't just her focus altering and becoming more powerful, but also a sense
of maturity that the others hadn't really developed there. She was simply more
peaceful after a while, and when it came time to let her hold herself in the
void, after about twenty or thirty years, she did it without the initial panic
that most had shown to begin with. It was a lot different than how she'd
started.

The girl didn't even become
scared when they came under attack.

The large shadow that moved
toward them did it slowly, thank goodness, and cast a beam of death and
destruction that made space itself boil up around them mainly toward Zack
first. He was glad of that, since it meant his friend would have a chance.

DIE
!

It was a booming sound, and Zack
knew what to do about it, which was to flee. The problem there was that he
couldn't do that until he had Jennifer with him, and while he was able to
smooth the disruption of space as it boiled, before it harmed him too much, she
couldn't. That meant moving away, to draw the being off.

Sending a tendril of focus out,
Zack sent a single thought.

Why
?

It got the thing to follow him,
if no real response. A big part of that was how much faster he was moving that
the other thing was. There was no attempt on the part of the slow motion
shadow, which was huge compared to him, to do that too. It just tried, and
failed, to follow him. A wake of death and destruction behind him. Where it got
too close to Zack, he smoothed the flow of energy easily.

After all, Big Shadow had taught
him to do that so that the void wouldn't become messy. Now it was saving his
life.

The creature, the giant looming
bit of black that couldn't be seen, and could barely be registered even by him,
screamed after what seemed like a few hundred years of their game.

It was so long in fact, that
Jennifer, probably feeling bored, simply found a node, and left. That meant he
could, too. It was getting tedious anyway, the raging monster trying to simply
destroy him, looking too much like his old friend. Big Shadow.

Then, it was really clear that it
was his friend. Just an earlier version of it.

Ah. I see.

He sent this to the being, making
a point of finishing the thought before he left the void.

I am not your enemy, and you will
not kill me, or I you. We need to be friends, and will be. Later. Earlier too,
I think.

Zack winced, knowing that he
sounded cryptic. He hated that when people did that to him, and here he was
returning the favor. He felt a bit like a jerk, and would have felt worse if
his future friend tried to make him boil away into nothingness.

DIE! MY MASTERS COMMAND IT
!
IT IS MY ONLY TASK!

Zack opened the same node that
Jen had used, almost right on top of her, and sent back a single line as he
stepped through.

Nope! Question why they want
that. Why they sent you to this point in space and time.

Moving into real space he had to
fix a few problems, but they felt minor to him now. He'd lost his left foot,
but built a new one, doing it correctly, by turning himself into Maria. That
was really the first time he'd managed that on his own, but it made total
sense. His form was only a thought after all. Just like everyone else. Now if
he could get back into the void, and come out again, he could reverse it.

His clothing didn't fit suddenly,
but it was all too big, so didn't damage him. Her. That part was
important
.
All the Alede said so. When you were a woman, you were a woman. A man was a
man, and even while you were the same
person
, you were different. She
guessed that if you were a lizard person you lived that too. That... Should
actually be possible, he realized again. You were rebuilt each time you left
the void anyway, after all. It was easiest to become yourself, of course, but
holding a different pattern worked. That meant, as long as he could truly hold
the whole thing, a being could become anything they wanted.

Which meant he also could have
just stayed Zack, only with a foot, but he'd done it differently, since it had
worked for him before, if with help from Kaitlyn.

Jennifer was just taking a step
away from the node, making way for him, so he hadn't been in there for long
after she'd left. Probably a few years, at most. They were in the back of
Candles and More, but that made sense, even if they'd left from a node in a
different world. She was a mage, after all. This was her rightful place.

Lisa walked out of her office and
grinned, seeing them, even before the girl in front of him realized Maria was
there.

"Jen! Maria! I didn't think
to see either of you today. Zack mentioned... Nothing about this." The
light eyed blonde woman locked with Maria's brown eyes, and then took in her
form. Slowly, and with a bit of lust in her eyes.

Maria was a lot better looking
than Zack was, after all. Also the correct sex for Lisa to really enjoy.

Jen spun half around, and smiled
at her, nodding.

"We were attacked by
something in the void. It took me forever to find my way out. I... Honestly
don't know why Zack is a female now." Her voice was really peaceful, and
relaxed, considering she was speaking of a potentially lethal attack.

Maria shrugged, and smiled in a
way that would show her cute dimples off. She didn't truly mean it, but Lisa
only looked curious, not afraid, which was good.

"About that. It was an
arch-demon. A really powerful one. I mainly handled it, but took a tiny bit of
damage, so shifted to fix it. I can move back, as soon as the void clears. I
figure that if I wait an hour, and go quick, it should be fine. It's hard to
find people in the void if they don't linger for a while. Decades. It might
make training hard for the time being, so for now Jelly here is the last one,
until I get this taken care of."

This didn't seem to upset anyone,
thankfully. Then, it was clear that Lisa had figured out that the mages had
their
own
line walker now. Not that they weren't both part of the Nation
too, already. It made sense for her to help out her own people, and things did
come up, so it was probably worth doing well.

Lisa nodded however.

"But it's safe to go and do
things? The normal traffic and daily work?"

Zack didn't really know, but
nodded, because it seemed like it would be really. Just
going
someplace
was so fast there that it was nearly impossible to track unless you were
trying
to hang out for a while. It could be done, if you slowed time enough, but so
far this new threat, which he'd seen and fought before, wasn't doing that for
some reason. Probably because Zack hadn't taught him how to get that done yet,
and Big Shadow wasn't creative enough to figure it out on his own.

"It really should be. We
just need to pass the word to everyone not to hang out for a long time. Even at
that, it might only be coming for
me
. It said something like that, but I
don't know for certain if it can tell me from say, Jen here, or Troy. So better
safe than sorry and all that." Her voice was softer, and a bit more
pleasant, as Maria.

Lisa seemed fine with that, as
long as the bodies she scheduled would be flowing through the nodes, and the
people at Lesser Shia probably felt the same. Without explaining what was going
on Maria clomped in her oversized Zack shoes back to the line, and went as
deeply into slow time as possible, then looked around. Nothing was waiting
there for her. So turning back, he stepped out of the line as Zack, and felt
more himself. Taller, and with all the bits and pieces in the right place for
his clothing.

"It seems fine now. So,
let's um, get Jen back to school? She has finals soon. Over a node, to
Something Wonderful?" He went in first again, but as soon as Jen followed
him, he pointed at the shortcut, and had her travel to fifteen different
locations, finding each of them from his thoughts, rather than getting her back
to her room.

In fact, he kept her out for
nearly five hours, and they ended up in Kate's room, where everyone else had
gathered to let off steam and eat snacks that had been brought in later. That
meant it was crowded since there were four people already there when Jen walked
through, and she couldn't really get totally out of the way as Zack stepped in.
That meant he bumped into her in a way that made it look a bit like he was
trying to grind up against her. Not one of the people, even with three Alede in
the room, interpreted it that way.

Instead there was a group hug,
targeting their friend.

Blain looked envious.

"You did it? My god, I
didn't even know you were going to
try
!"

Instead of hanging out with them,
Zack smiled, and then looked at Kate and Don.

"There's an arch-demon in
the void, off and on, which tried to kill me. I think it's safe as long as we
don't linger there, so try not to stay for years. That means no training anyone
else for a while, until this gets worked out."

Kate frowned a bit.

"Your friend Big Shadow is
dealing with it?" It kind of made sense, even if it was wrong.

"
Nooo
. If I have it
right, it is Big Shadow. A very young one. I wouldn't normally credit it, but
there really isn't any time there. Picking to go to an earlier time wouldn't be
hard, or even to get time to run backwards there, I've just never done it. So,
anyway, don't kill him, if you can help it."