Shield of Innocence (Alternate Places Book 4) (35 page)

He just nodded.

"Zack Hartley. I'm on
vacation though, so don't book any trips right now. We have
loads
of
line walkers, which means breaks. So I get a whole week off. Hobson... Are you
Keeber's sister by any chance? I think I heard something about you." Which
he had. It was just in a different world.

She smiled, getting who he was
instantly. It was part of the price of fame.

"Yep! He's talked about you.
Good things. He said
we
should date, but that was before you got married
to fifteen women. You... You're dating Libby Paterson, right? He said that she
didn't really try to get you killed exactly?" It was a sudden change up,
and while the new people just accepted that the line walker was there with
them, paying for the food, the ones from the beach were baffled by it.

"She's a line walker now,
too. The first shifter to do it. You should all try, later. Right now... Well,
there are some problems in the void, so until that's done I can't recommend it.
Hopefully that part will be over soon."

Vivian smiled at him, and let her
muscular leg press up against his under the table. She was very warm, since
most shifters were.

"Really?
We
have a
line walker now? That's going to be big. We should hit her up for travel before
everyone abuses her too much. If she's willing, I mean. Ohhh.
Pancakes
."
She was distracted for a bit, since food was coming, and even if she hadn't shifted
that day, not needing to for the month yet, her type still ate pretty well. The
antelope man just got a fruit salad, which also sounded nice.

At about ten they were able to
leave, and he actually didn't have to pay too much more than the three bills
he'd passed over. He tipped a hundred percent however, since it was the slow
season, and he might want to eat there the next day. It was a bit funny, but
Brad and Vivian both followed him out, like they were all together. The others
broke off, either not caring about him, or wondering if asking for an autograph
was out of the question.

Vivian patted him on the back,
trying to come onto him a bit. It was kind of flattering, since she honestly
wasn't thinking of him as anything
except
her brother's friend.

"What do you have planned
for the day? I wasn't going to go and see what was open here? It's the off
season, but I do smell cotton candy and caramel corn." She sniffed a bit,
and so did Brad.

He grinned.

"Sounds fun, we should all
go. I need to go and shop, first. I'm sort of setting up the new place here.
Help me carry things, and I'll be your friend." He meant it, because they
were nice seeming, but they both nodded, seriously.

Brad looked around as they
walked, and then pounded him on the back too.

"Good plan. So we do that,
then
circle back for candy?"

They did exactly that, which was
oddly enough, kind of fun.

Zack spent most of the next few
days alone.

That was his choice, since the
shifters
had
invited him to hang with them, even if half of them were a
bit worried about that kind of thing. Vivian and Brad liked him pretty well
however, and no one objected to him precisely. Instead it was more that they
were concerned that he'd think they were sent in to spy on him, rather than
just having gone there at the same time by happenstance. Given that they would
have had to be in cahoots with Lisa, that wasn't likely. Plus he knew it wasn't
true, since he could get that from their inner selves pretty easily.

So he went his own way, meeting
up with them only occasionally, even if it was fun having others around who
didn't really want anything from him. On the good side he was able to order in
furnishings for the new house, and by Thursday had a nice looking place going
on. It wasn't luxurious, but it had a nice feeling to it. The counters and
kitchen tile really needed to be replaced, but he was going to get Lisa to hire
that part done. Woodworking was a great skill to have, but he didn't. Not yet
anyway.

That was why he found himself
meeting Friday morning, at about three in the a.m. on the beach. Walking toward
the rocks on the left hand side of the long sandy thing. There was a boulder
field over that way, and it had been calling to him for a few days. When he got
to them he debated going back to the house, but just stood there for a bit.

Something, he realized after a
bit, was incredibly wrong there. Enough so that he actually froze, unable to
find the source of the discomfort. A shiver of true and unabated fear tried to
crawl up his spine, and then back down, even though there was nothing there.
Not that he could
see
. The feeling was real however. The ocean was moon
lit, so he could
see
, and the wind pretty nifty, if too cold to be
pleasant.

That wasn't the issue. No, it was
the shadow coming across the waves. At first he couldn't make the thing out,
being a bit too focused on his footing, and the world around him, oddly enough.
The physical reality that was.

Which meant, by the time he really
focused on the arch-demon, and realized that it was his friend, Big Shadow, or
at least the more youthful version of him, the thing was on top of him.
Literally. The shadow, and it truly looked like one in the outer land, outside
the void, was about twenty feet across and a bit blob like.

Until it settled over his
physical body, and entered him.

Taking him. It was a painful
thing, since he fought, so hard that his inner self started to separate from
his body. Being forced out by the invader who tried to take it. Killing him in
the process. Except that it couldn't. Even trying was kind of silly, he
realized.

He was, in the end,
Zack
.
When Darla had tried to steal his will, he'd pushed her back without being more
than slightly focused about the idea for him. This being wasn't having that
however, and was inside of him already.

Invisible claws of energy taking
him from the inside. Possessing him.

If he'd been ready for it,
or
in the void, things would have gone differently. It should have even then, he
knew. The truth was, Zack Hartley, the ancient line walker, could have
killed
the being inside of him, at any time. Easily. Tearing him to shreds in an
instant. Even without dying himself, he could do it. The problem there was
that, if he did
that
, then his own past wouldn't have happened, and
that, at least in theory, would mean he'd die as a child, and never learn how
to keep it from happening now.

So he couldn't get that done. Or,
more to the point, he could, if he did it correctly. Standing on the beach it
would be hard, but once in the void the whole thing would be easy enough to
manage. There he could separate the two of them out instantly, and then talk to
the arch-demon for a while. Chat him up and explain that he needed to alter
everything about his being. Zack knew that would go over pretty well. It had
to, after all.

Instead of killing anyone, he
froze in place, fighting against the force inside him, that wasn't trying to
take him over at the moment, as much as get him to walk into the water and take
a deep breath. Like
that
was going to be enough to kill him. That
thought, which was true after a fashion, was honestly kind of interesting.

"That isn't happening,
friend. You need to come with me now. We can talk and work this out. You can't
beat me, and I won't let you die. So, what do you say? Truce?" It was
agony, trying to do anything at all. The fight
shouldn't
have been fair.
A mere human didn't stand a chance against an arch-demon, in almost any
circumstance. That he'd left that state, being human, behind a while back was
clear to him suddenly. He was, after a fashion, possessed, sure, but that was
because of circumstances. If any other being had tried it, they would have died
already.

Boiled in the space inside of
him, even if it meant his temporary death.

If he didn't just pop into the
void and school them for a while more peacefully.

So he fought, to save his oldest
and best friend, tearing apart enough that just taking a single step broke a
bone in his foot. At least that was what it felt like, though the bone was
still solid when he checked his shadow. It
hurt
, and when he tried to block
out the horrible and sharp pain, using the might of his full ability to focus,
nothing happened.

He
could
make himself
move, fighting the being within, that darkness which was doing everything he
could to destroy Zack. What couldn't happen, apparently, was making things not
burn and ache as he did it. Driving himself, pushing his mind, he found that
there was one thing he could do that Big Shadow wasn't able to match yet. Slow
time.

So he did that, and kept going.
His mind not able to block the sense of ripping and shredding and burning, he
pushed
.
Even in the first step, which took so long that it felt like years were passing
in order to make it happen, Zack
moved
.

One foot at a time, Zack shifted
back toward his house. A block and a half away. It took a time period that felt
impossible for the real world. Even as the daylight drew near no one saw him
however. He was battling too hard for that to take place, apparently, and the
reason he was taking damage, or felt like it, had everything to do with why he
wasn't visible to anyone else. They, both of them, were out of phase with the
space around them. Normal matter couldn't exist that way.

So he was, technically, battling
along with Big Shadow in a dimension that they were creating between them. At
least he was. Big Shadow was clearly doing the whole thing in the real world,
and not taking any pain from the whole thing. Which was a jerky thing for him
to be doing, as far as Zack was concerned.

The pain grew, uncontrollable on
his side of things. Nothing even
distracted
him from it. He'd lost
limbs
and had them destroyed while attached and never felt anything like it. He
had
to breathe, but doing so made him feel like he wanted to die. Not that he
would
.
Rather, it was that he would have gladly volunteered for it, if it had been an
option.

The air about him glowed red,
which he couldn't be totally certain wasn't his eyes trying to disintegrate.
They burned like they were
made
of fire. He hadn't known that
anything
could hurt as much as he did at that moment. Still, even if the being inside of
him was bellowing, trying to distract him so that he could win, they kept struggling.
Fighting to cause what each wanted to happen.

The only thing that allowed him
to keep going on, to face the agony he was undergoing as he walked in near slow
motion through the nice little beach town, was that he knew he had to. More, at
some point in time, he already had. And in that moment, would again. There was
no real fear that he would lose, because he hadn't. Zack was there, because
things had worked out. That meant he wouldn't be giving up.

So instead, he simply feared
taking the next step. Over time he felt himself tearing. Without end. The world
around him slowing so much as he focused that the people started to look like
they weren't moving. It was hard to pay attention too, but after a while he saw
that the birds, three seagulls above him, were flapping their wings, but so
slowly that he had to stare for what felt like twenty or thirty minutes to
notice it. The problem was that he couldn't keep going if he let his concentration
lapse even a little. At the same time, the pain kept going, growing.

After centuries of pure torture,
not able to breathe any longer, he reached the shortcut he needed. It was right
there, but blurred and distorted, thanks to the battle going on inside of him.
All he had to do was climb through it, and get to a node, then climb in. There,
in that absence of anything, things would be sorted instantly.

You. Will. Not. Live.

The message was from his friend,
and came so slowly that he missed it the first few times. It was, helpfully
enough, being chanted. Drawn out over what felt like months or years per word.
If it hadn't been for his life in the void, he would have missed the helpful
information totally.

It was tempting to try and send a
message back, though it was kind of clear that
he
was processing the
whole thing on a much faster level than Big Shadow was. Doing it by so much
that the whole thing simply wasn't fair at all. He was the only one feeling
pain from this. That meant he had to figure out what to do, in order to help
his friend.

The way home, or even into the
void, was blocked as long as the being was inside of him. It took a long time
to figure out why that was, since he could have drawn energy from the world and
push a shortcut from there into a node directly. That had always been possible
for him, but until he'd seen others do it, the idea hadn't occurred to him. It
was a new thing to him, but he could work out how to do it in his mind.

Big Shadow was stopping him, but
by resisting, and doing things correctly, Zack could slip by the blocks that
were put in front of him, stopping the easy use of the shortcut by blurring
reality.

If he did that however, at that
moment, from the place he was in, then a rip would open up in the very fabric
of reality. Which was, of course, the whole point. He could push himself into
the void from there. From anywhere, now that he understood the idea. If he did,
at that moment, carrying Big Shadow inside of him, then he'd become the gate
that the dark monsters needed to enter reality.

So
this
moment was the
point of his existence. If he took the easier path, the creative one, then
everything would be lost. At the same time he was being tortured beyond
anything imaginable, to try and get him to do something new, instead of taking
the impossible path. That was, instead of going through hell, he was supposed
to take a shortcut.

It didn't take him long to work
out what the answer was, though it was much harder to think now, since the
burning and sense of dissolution was greater now than it had been. Much so.
Enough that he didn't
have
a way to explain it. Even to his own mind.
The concept just couldn't exist for him.

Worse, it wasn't reaching a level
where it was as bad as it could be. The sensation kept growing. Blooming, like
a flower opening in slow motion.

So what took him a while was
figuring out
how
he was going to have to get home. That part was needed,
since the service that Merry had to do for him suddenly made a lot of sense.
What didn't was that there was no easy shortcut for him now. Only a long walk,
in slow motion. Every step twice as hard as the one before.

He took the first step of the
impossible journey, and slowly sent a message to the being inside of him.

I. Will. Save. You!

If he was understood, Zack didn't
know. He had to increase the power of his focus to keep going, but as he did,
the world around him drew out, distorting by slowing, and blurring, as light
itself
warped around them. He pushed to a level that he neared the death of mental
singularity. That point of oneness that, if he went too close to it, would turn
his mind into a single point that was so dense nothing would ever escape from
it again. The whole time Zack pushed along, he kept trying to explain to the
being inside of him. They had time, even going like they were.

Millennia passed. For him.
Not
the passenger with him.

At first it felt like a mere decade
or two per step. Then centuries. By the time he hit the city limits, it was
thousands of perceptual years for him just to move a few inches, as he folded
the universe around him in a way that no one had probably ever done before.
Step by step, he moved. Through a hell worse than even he had ever thought
could exist.

It occurred to him then that his
friend, Courtney Moore, had once told him that if he chose to go back to the
world instead of staying dead, he'd suffer more than any being ever had. For
longer
than anything could. Really, he'd figured she was just being dramatic. She had
been an actress in life and an Alede. To him that had made sense at the time.
Now he knew that he was kind of an asshole, doubting the dead woman like that.