Shield of Innocence (Alternate Places Book 4) (33 page)

"I think we're all going
back tonight, so that the council won't freak out and try to go into hiding.
I'll try to bring Bey for his visit tomorrow or the next day. I need to come
back and help set some things up here, but that can be done anytime you want,
Lenore." She looked at Luthor, but it was clear that she wasn't planning
to be working with him directly.

The old vampire, his inner beast
vast, standing nearly ten feet tall, bowed to the much younger being. Not
everything was about raw power after all, and the man was intelligent enough to
understand that.

"Wonderful. If you have need
to contact me, please feel free to go through Claire? She has the needed
information to do that." Then, as if it made any sense, he bowed to Zack.
"Line Walker. Thank you for your aid this night. Would it be welcome for
my people to send others to you, or yours, for such things in the future?"
He meant the sex stuff, and rekindling
that
in his kind. It wasn't a
thing that they'd all want, but enough would that it made a great prize to be handed
out for services.

To that end, he waved to Kate.

"I think that Kaitlyn is
going to be our go to person for that? I'm certain that something can be worked
out, to that end. Claire, you're technically in charge of that, right?"

She nodded and smiled, since it
was a big deal. After all, it was proclaiming her the go to person for the
Nation of Line Walkers.

A short twenty minutes later Zack
was starting to get things around, and wearing his nifty backpack, he took
everyone to their correct worlds. Rather, he took Lenore and Ty back, with Eve
and Chris doing Rebekah and Ginger. Chris, being smarter than he looked, made a
point of paying attention to the chalk white and exotic vampire, rather than
the younger one. The singer was far more impressed with him, understanding that
Christopher was more important than she was already, and a good person to have
as a friend.

Eve had kind of picked up on the
interplay too, and as they stood in the back of Yoghurt World, she watched the
others all leave, and held her hand out to him. For a moment he thought she was
going to tell him something, but she just kissed him on the cheek, instead.

"Hey, have fun? I'll see you
in a week or so. Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on your peeps. Things will go
fine. If not, I'll get our Zack to handle it." She looked at him a bit
wistfully, and didn't explain why, then pushed him toward the node, as if
thinking he needed the help to actually get going.

Which, of course, he did.

Vacations were hard, and
strange
,
to his way of being.

The house seemed tiny to him,
when he got to the sleepy seaside tourist town. It was, rather on the nose,
called
Seaside
. Zack liked the name, since it reminded him of the food
court names at the mall. Part of the sleepy feeling might have been due to the
fact that it was about seven in the morning, and on a Sunday. Blaming the small
city for not having a hot night life at that hour wasn't exactly fair.

The inside of the place, which
had two floors, the upper one being essentially a loft area that could have
been an attic in most places, was about the size of his walk in closet back
home. It had six beds in it, crammed together with only a few feet between each
one. The stairs came up into the wood floored place without any kind of announcement.
There was no railing around it to prevent accident or disaster. It was a hole
that had steps inside of it. That was all. A clear danger to any sleepy person
that wanted to stumble off to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

There was a single lamp at the
peak of the ceiling in the center of the room, unmoving, but dangling by a
copper metal chain. It had a dingy green glass shade on it however, that needed
to be cleaned up, but wasn't bad. There was no bedding, but there
were
mattresses, so with a bit of shopping he could fix that part of things. It
didn't affect him, not needing sleep, but if other people ever wanted to use
the place, and there was no reason for them not to, it would be ready that way.

The lower level had a kitchen,
with some appliances, which was kind of nice. An old white colored stove that
someone had scrubbed hard for a while was tucked into a counter that was made
of something that was a color of blue that was probably teal, but felt awkward
and out of place. It was a fake substance over plywood, but sturdy enough, if
not great looking.

It had a fridge too, and when it
was opened the thing was warm. No light came on, but it told him rather plainly
that it was in decent condition, and didn't need to be retired yet, if it was
all the same. Old, but with years of life left in it. It had to be plugged in,
but Zack told it that could be arranged, since the power had never been turned
off. The cord was a bit greasy, but the plug went in with only a bit of work.
Then he patted the side of the old chill chest. It was white too, and made a
rather loud humming noise.

"There you go, boy. I think
we'll get along fine. Let me know if you need anything?" The object didn't
really understand him of course. Even on the shadow level it was an inanimate
object. More or less. Most things were.

The floor was tile, and cracked
in enough places that it was pretty tired and needed to be changed up.

Walking around he saw that there
was a single chair in the living room, on another bare wood floor that had been
scrubbed well, and smelled old, but
not
musty. He'd really thought that
it would, so that was better than expected.

The bathroom even had a nice
nineteen-sixties charm to it. That meant everything was old and heavy. It had a
tub with a curtain around it, which was the cheapest kind, made of clear
plastic with no decoration to it. The sink was pink, instead of white and
looked newer, but had probably been put in about the same time he was born.

So not
new
in any way.

There was, by some miracle, a
half roll of toilet paper, in case he needed to use the facilities before the
store opened up, which would be a few hours, he was willing to bet. Not that he
had to at the moment, thankfully. He was a bit hungry, but shopping was doable.
He just had to wait a bit. Or, being him, he realized he didn't have to, if he
wanted to be honest about it all. The point was to relax though, and not go off
to the East coast, or worse, another world, to do basic things like that. That
meant he had...

Nothing at all to do for a while.
No place was open for food gathering, and it was just then starting to lighten
enough that walking to the ocean might count as being a fair thing to do for a
normal person. If they were an early riser and probably on drugs that didn't
let them sleep. Maybe a serial killer.

If no one was there to see the
body, then it didn't count, so he let himself nod a bit.

"Which is a plan. Why go to
the beach if you don't go to the beach." He was speaking to himself, but
he didn't answer, so Zack didn't have to worry about how damaged his mind was
yet. There was some delicate fraying around the edges, deep inside of him, but
honestly he wasn't that much worse off than most people were, inside. For all
the tearing that living as long as he had pressed into his being, surviving in
the void had taught him to hold himself as a single thing. Not perfectly, since
to do that meant not really being a person any longer, but enough to leave him
sane.

More or less.

He had the key in his pocket, and
locked the front door when he left, since people did that kind of thing, most
of the time. After all he was leaving most of his money inside. The cash at any
rate. He had a few thousand tucked in his backpack, which was upstairs, near
the back wall of the single room there. No one breaking in would find it
easily, but again, people didn't take that kind of thing lightly for the most
part. In his wallet, which was in his jeans back pocket, held enough to get a
lot of food, and his debit cards, with which he could buy another house or two
if needed. He had two of them, but mainly used the one, for some reason. Habit,
of course. It was kept in front, so was the main account to his mind.

That was all. The beach wasn't
hard to find, and only a short walk away. There were street lights, and they
looked attractively old fashioned, being made with black iron, or at least
looked to be. Starting about a block away from his new beach house they had decorations
on them, for the holiday season. It was basically a tourist town, and the slow
season, but the bits of gold, green and red plastic on the lights looked
festive to him.

He had a jacket on, which was his
heavy, but older one. Nearly three years before. Claire had gotten it for him,
the first year they were together. Zack appreciated it now, the cold sea salt
breeze would have stolen a lot of his heat otherwise. He
could
circulate
his inner life force to create more warmth, and started doing that as he moved
along.

Still, having a way to hold the
heat to his body was useful and would save effort.

The path to the beach requires
him to go to the promenade, which was a large concrete walkway, and then hop
over it, to the sand about seven feet below. There were steps that went down,
naturally, for the old and short, but that didn't really fit his outer form. A
patter of rain hit him, but the gray of the beach was no more than moist under
him at that point. Not wet and packed. It was all held in place by hardy grass.

That was, along with the wall
behind him, what held the whole
thing
in place. It wouldn't last
forever, obviously. There was clear erosion from the sea levels getting higher
already. In fifty years, the promenade would need to be rebuilt, if they
weren't going to lose it. Not because the ocean would be running in the streets
all the time, but bad storms would be doing that far more often. He could see
the patterns for that forming already.

Looking out over the water, he
could see the sun, a brilliant golden color in a pale blue and black sky, just
peeking over the edge of the world. There was a sense of force from it, the
lack of energy behind him allowing the power of the orb that powered his world
to strike more noticeably than normal.

The wind wasn't strong yet, but
it was there and real. If he had a kite, he could fly it, he knew. No one was
doing that, being almost dark still, and a bit of rain coming down over where
he was. There
was
a nice break in the clouds, which would probably turn
a nice pink and orange he bet, in about half an hour. Settling on a large log
that had washed up, which was in a field of the things, Zack waited.

In front of him the ocean roared,
making a constant rumble that was powerful and impressive. The water was about
a football field away from him however, since he hadn't come to go swimming.
That meant, at just about the time that the sun was really coming up, that he
noticed the people coming out of the water. There were three of them, and they
looked healthy. Lean, and kind of tight. Well, two of them were that. The other
was larger, and seemed a bit
fluffy
, at a distance.

He could tell all of that at a
glance, since the two men and women were completely naked. The man on the left
was still changing form as he came ashore, probably not expecting anyone to be
sitting there, watching the sun come up in the rain. It
was
a bit weird,
but he was enjoying himself, and Zack didn't care if shape shifters wanted to
be out at that hour, too. It was a public space, so totally fair game. They didn't
really notice him either, at first, and it was the decently busty young woman
that saw him there first.

He could tell, because she went
incredibly still, and the dolphin inside of her, floating in the air like it
was swimming, spun in place suddenly to look at him. The men with her weren't
like that, being a seal and what had to be a walrus, inside. Which was nice to
see. That showed a lot more diversity than he was used to from their people
outside of one of the embassies. Not that shifters didn't get along, but they
tended to stick to their own type of being a bit. Kind of like how different
racial groups did with humans.

The lady that had frozen was
staring at him, from about fifty feet away, which got the seal, who was a man
that seemed a bit older, and the larger one, who was kind of chubby, but
younger, to do the same thing.

Zack went back to looking at the
sunrise.

After all, swimming wasn't
illegal there.
Cold
, but these people didn't seem to need medical help,
so it wasn't his business. That didn't mean that they didn't respond to him
being there however. They had to walk closer to him to get at their towels and
clothing, which were, now that they pointed it out with their attention, hidden
under a log, about twenty feet from him. After a while the seal man moved that
way, muttering something which Zack couldn't hear.

Well, he saw what he saw. There's
no screaming, so let's play it cool. He isn't even checking out your package,
Brad.

That wasn't enough to get a
laugh, even though the boy felt a bit self conscious about that part of
himself. He wasn't exactly hung like a horse or anything, but other than being
a bit heavy, he probably didn't need to feel self conscious about it all. After
all,
Zack
didn't care how big his junk was, and neither did the shifters
with him. Even the woman was unconcerned about that, though she did glance at
the kid and smile.

They just sauntered to their
things, and got dressed, trying to act like they weren't doing things that no
sane person would have even considered. That was fine with him, so he watched a
bird, a very large one, fly overhead. Then it landed by them and turn into a
tiny woman with very light blonde hair.

"Hey all! Lovely day, isn't
it?" The voice was high pitched, happy and slightly breathless. Probably
because both flying and changing shape was a lot of work. The seal glared, and
his inner self barked, a bit noticeably.

"We're being
watched
!"
There was real anger, and some panic, to him now. He was in charge, more or
less, being the oldest, and for Freya to just change in front of a human was a
horrible
problem. Now they would either have to go into hiding and scuttle the vacation,
or kill the innocent human.

On the good side, the man didn't
seem to think that Zack was the problem, so the running away part, even if it
left him with a story that made the news, was preferable. The bird lady saw
him, and turned, waving at him. It was cute and reminded him a bit of Libby.
She was technically a little cuter, and had a tight, firm and very tan body, to
contrast with her hair. She was still naked, too, but grabbed her clothing
feeling cold once the feathers were gone, and as soon as she was dressed up in
her warm clothing, marched over to him.

"Um, hello!" Her voice
was bright, and there was fear underneath. "We were just out swimming and
flying kites." It wasn't at all what had happened, but her idea was to
give him something to put into place that made sense.

The shape changing part of things
was kind of a big deal, but really, she
could
have claimed that her
folding the thing up was what he saw. It was still sort of dark after all, and
the bird inside of her chirped that he should believe her, even if it was a
lie. That would be easier for her after all.

The others stood behind the
woman, looking at him with expressions that seemed a bit cold, and decently worried.

Zack noticed that there was a man
walking a dog down the beach now, since there was enough light for the first
individuals to come outside, damp or not. Looking back, he smiled.

"Hi! I just got in. I have a
house here, but this is my first time in the area. I'm kind of waiting for the
shops and restaurants to open." It was all true, so he repeated it on the
shadow level, which got the four people to relax a lot. The real point was that
he wasn't screaming about freaks, or acting afraid. That could, no doubt, be
worked with.