The Living and the Dead (Tyler G Book 3) (21 page)

He did the same to her though,
and in the end, about twenty seconds in, she gasped, and rolled to the side,
then stared at the people through the door. The slaves.

Because clearly she got the idea
well enough. Both Skalla and Scotty were there too, having been chatting in the
front room. After a few moments though it was kind of clear what had happened,
since Tina and Darren both moved toward Keeley, standing in front of her. Using
their own bodies to guard her. From Ty.

He was about to mock them for it,
and her for using them, but she was the one still on the ground, bleeding. He
was on his feet and already starting to get better. It wasn't instant for him,
but the bones had already started to pop back into place. No red liquid gushed
from him either, so he looked better, he was willing to bet.

The girl looked up at him and
smiled again, not wincing at her broken open lip.

"Or you could have pulled me
aside and chatted about it? I get it, I went a
little
over the top.
Sorry. Next time I'll just rip an arm off." She stood up, and then looked
at the others.

"These two were a trap, of
sorts, for me. Goethe wanted the information on me. Probably so he could set me
up for something more adventurous. They're my slaves now. I..."

Tyler shook his head.

"No, they
aren't
. Get
them free. Now. I swear if you try to bargain using them as a chip, Mistress of
Souls..." Okay he had nothing, except a continuation of the beating and
really, if she had a chance to work out it was coming, he didn't think that
winning was in the cards for him.

She made a face, which was a bit
bitter seeming.

"God. Rape a guy with
threats of violence
once
, and they get all whiney on you. I was just
going to say that I can tell them to go with you. That was all. What kind of person
do you think I am?"

Tyler shrugged.

"The horribly evil kind? By
definition, even if it doesn't always show?"

Instead of arguing the point, the
battered looking Greater Demon laughed and stood up straight.

"Well, at least you can
learn. Now, let's get to this. I have something to do later."

She looked at him like that might
involve getting revenge, but he didn't really care at the moment. While he didn't
feel good about the violence, he was ready to keep it going until she knew not
to mess with Tyler G. anymore.

Given her nature he was afraid
that might take a while.

If Keeley was upset over having
her butt kicked, she didn't say anything about it or act like it was even a
consideration. That wasn't going to be the truth though, he knew. It had been
stupid, doing that. The monumental type of fuck up that generally led to the
ending of a life. Ty had let his emotions get the better of him, and now he
was, no doubt, going to end up paying for it. It was kind of like a bad movie
that was being played on late night television. The kind that he used to watch
when he was about fourteen.

He'd thought that he was being
all clever, sacrificing sleep to do that at the time, but now he realized that
even then he hadn't really needed to. Most of his life to that point had been
illusion. Even now he was still running into things like that.

Things that should make sense
that just didn't, or that he, for some reason, couldn't seem to set right
inside his own mind.

The thing with Keeley was like
that. He knew why he'd reacted of course. He'd been left confused and feeling
powerless, and that didn't set well with anyone. She'd stripped him of any
sense of self possession, and that was a thing that Tyler was in short supply
of all the time. So he'd lashed out, and managed it a bit too effectively for
his own good. While it was pretty clear to him that any of the Greater Demons
could take him out if they wanted, the job that he'd done had actually been a
bit
too
good.

He had, for some reason, really
gotten the drop on one of them, and thus marked himself as a real potential
threat. Perhaps not one that would be truly dangerous to any of them, but they
had to all understand what he'd just done. He'd made a choice to attack a
Greater Demon, and left her alive. So, again, it was like those old bad movies.

He glanced over at her, the good
looking young woman that even downplaying her attractiveness was out of his
league by so much that he couldn't even let himself find her alluring. That was
a real point too. To most of the world, based on how she looked, she was the
innocent and abused one.

A rapist, but most of the world
would say that coercing him using threats to have sex was fine. He was a man,
and as such didn't count that way. Not enough for him to harm a woman. She
wasn't one. The Mistress of Souls was a monster. One that, for some reason gave
him a slightly wry smile when she caught him looking at her. For his part he
was frowning, and wondering if he should just start fighting and keep going
until one of them died.

He made eye contact and shook his
head a little.

"I know, I know, I should
have killed you. Now I have to sleep with one eye open." Only, he didn't
sleep. Neither did she, which was no doubt going to make his life interesting.

Keeley winked at him, her face
already nearly perfect again, even though it had only been a few minutes.
They'd moved into the living room, moved the furnishings to create a large
space and put up the time machine already. It was basically just a set of eight
large cylinders that Allison the teen Demon had put out. She was The
Technician, so did that very quickly and efficiently. That seemed to be part of
her reality, he noticed. When she worked with the tech things, or even the
complicated magics that she used, the girl suddenly changed in demeanor and
bearing.

She became a very different
person. This one was setting out heavy looking soup can things that had little
bar like knobs on the top.

Still she managed to look up from
her work, her round face seeming interested in the discussion.

Keeley for her part shrugged, and
managed to make it seem very Human. Her thin shoulders were expressive and came
up high enough that the move seemed just a tiny bit fake.

"I think we can let this go
now. There's no benefit to either of us to continue it. You threw your weight
around, and I had to respond to teach you not to do that. You attacked to teach
me the same thing. We both understand that, don't we? Lessons learned, and now
we can move on?" She sounded considering and reasonable about the whole
thing, to tell the truth.

That almost had to be a trick. Or
a trap.

Sighing he gave a single nod.

"All right. I agree not to
attack you, or set you up for anything negative, if you do the same for me in
return?" Greater Demons were all about the deal, after all. Mainly so they
could take you as a slave.

The Mistress of Souls froze for a
bit, actually chewing her lip, and then swallowed hard. A soft wash of magic
had come over him as she struggled with herself. If he had it right, the
compelling feeling that he'd noticed was her trying to take him as a slave.

Except of course that she really
wasn't
.
There had been a struggle in the mix, with her trying to pull all the energy
away from what she was doing. It still might have taken him, if he was weak, or
hadn't been somewhat protected already. If she'd wanted to, she could have used
that moment to take him, and then let him die.

So that was a sign of something.

Finally she managed a closed eye
nod.

"Agreed on those terms. Now,
this looks about set up, Darla, are you doing the honors here, or is
Zack?" There was no hint that she'd be doing it, for some reason.

Probably because it wasn't her
problem.

Zack moved forward then, having
stood back by the two slaves, and waved a hand gently.

"This one is mine. First,
why don't we ask the questions you have, Keeley? I'm sure that we're all
interested in the answers. I know I am."

That got a vulpine and slightly
wicked smile, but the young women waved at her new slaves, who were the oldest
looking people in the room, even if they weren't the most aged. That would
probably be... Ty glanced around and shook his head.

"Which of you is the
oldest?" He felt stupid when he said it, but the words were already out.

Allison smiled at him, her
thirteen year old face giving him a flirty expression that was probably
normally only used in bars. Not that he'd know about things like that. He'd
never been to one, after all.

"Me, by about six or seven
hundred years. I know, it's hard to keep in mind at times like this, but you
really shouldn't feel bad about Keeley having tricked you. It's like with your
Ginger. She looks youthful, but is older than you are. So when Keeley looked
like me to abuse you, she wasn't actually a child. She did manage to be a bitch.
Luckily for her you're willing to let bygones be, isn't it? Otherwise a certain
little Demon girl might have just found her ass kicked every two weeks for a
long while." She spun to look at Keeley and shook her head a few times.
"That was pretty sad, Keels. He isn't even one of us, and if he'd pressed
things you would have gone down for good. Zack wouldn't have fallen for
that."

These words got the little girl,
who was just standing back from her magic time device, flipped off.

Keeley smiled while she did it.

"I love you sis, but fuck
you.
Zack
wouldn't have fallen for it, but you would have, at least half
the time. That first move was fast. I can match it, but I don't walk around
ready for that, I have to admit. I'll work on it."

Instead of flipping her off in
return, the little girl Demon wiped her hands on her jeans.

"Do that. I will too. That
really wasn't too shabby, Tyler. Now, enough praise for your violent ways, and
enough needling Keels for being lame in a fight. She knows that. Question and
answer time?" This was addressed to The Mistress of Souls, who waved at
her new people.

"Tina, Darren, why don't you
step into the rectangle made there, by the device? Stay relaxed, and tell the
whole truth, even if you were told to hide it before. Tina, why don't you go
first? What were your orders here?"

That woman moved first, in lock
step with her husband, and they both ended up in the middle of the cream
colored carpet. It was soft underfoot, and a bit spongy feeling. Hopefully when
they died the two wouldn't get their blood all over it. That would be really
hard to clean up.

Tina settled, relaxed like she'd
been ordered to be, and looked only at her new master. No one else mattered
after all. Not her son. Not the other people in the space. Not even that the
plan was for her to die in a few minutes.

Skalla the Amazon was still
there, standing near the door, her face stoic seeming. Scotty looked more
worried. They were close to one another, and not touching. Rather bravely, and
comically, they both kept shifting who was in front, trying to protect the other.
The giant seven foot tall warrior woman and the small Shifter-Vampire man. They
weren't easy about the whole thing, but neither left to protect themselves.

Trying to hold the concept of
being very alert, and able to understand things, he could see the connections
there. What was going on. Skalla was different, but Scotty was a jaded old man.
When he was a boy the idea of a scantily clad, but unshaved woman would have
just been naughty, not slightly gross like it was for Ty. It was limited
thinking on his part, he could tell, but he still had that feeling.

Skalla for her part was
responding to Scotty like she would a man from her own world, he was willing to
bet. Her goal, her responsibility in life was to protect the weaker members of
her tribe. The men were that, so she was trying to get in place to fight the
dangerous beings in front of her. The woman had to know that Scotty could
handle himself, on some level, but the man's own nervousness made it seem like
he was weak. So her social programming took over.

It was much harder to get the
rest of the situation however, but now he could understand why that was.
Greater Demons weren't people. Not strictly speaking. They were more like the
idea of the worst beings possible. Not creatures that seemed angry and were
easily seen and avoided, but stealthy creations designed to work into their
surroundings and do damage in just the right places to allow the whole thing to
keep going. That was, he thought, their point. Gregor and his brother Michael were,
in a way the other side of that coin. They were as good as could be. Why that
was the case he didn't know, but it hit him then that these three Greater
Demons were about the best of their kind really.

Zack was probably a cannibal
rapist for instance, who would have killed him without having even a twinge of
guilt, but he
didn't
go around doing things like that for the most part.
Ty could see that, though not why that was. Age was, no doubt, part of it. Even
Keeley was kind after a fashion. She
should
have killed him, after all.
True, he really was willing to let things go now, and she'd called the
situation correctly, that they'd both learned from what the other had done, but
he was a potential threat to her.

Even if only a minor one.

Allison, The Technician, was
probably the worst of them. She did what she wanted, and hid it so well that
everyone, even these others of her own kind, didn't really see her depravity.
Almost as if pleased she looked up at him, smiled and nodded. Clearly having
been reading his mind.

"Exactly, Tyler. It's part
of why these two aren't long for the world if they can't figure that out. Don't
forget that The Rotted is even worse than I am that way. She's insane after
all. For instance, did you know that she once raised a piece of dead meat and
raised it as her own child? That isn't normal." She seemed pleased, but he
didn't answer and no one else seemed to notice the byplay.

Probably because her lips hadn't
moved.

Tina, in the rectangle described
by the outline of gold family sized soup can things started then, her voice...
Incredibly conversational.

"Goethe, our old master,
told us that we were to do our best to work our way to you, Mistress. Then we
were to watch and tell him what your weaknesses were. He was most angry with
you, for getting him to hunt The Storm. That cost him greatly, having to buy
himself out of trouble there. He wishes to come for you, but knows that those
that fight you directly tend to be taken as slaves. Even his kind do. So he
works at a distance. We didn't get a lot of information about you." There
was a shrug then, and a wince. "No one had ever told us that Zack was
alive. That was a real shock, I have to admit. In fact, we'd been told, long
ago by Xenses that he was dead. He knew because the slave bond had
broken."

The Line Walker nodded, his face
blank.

"My grandfather, The Mind
Taker, Finias, offered to kill me, and I said yes. I was ten. It was better
than being left alive, so I took the offer. Then he brought me back for some
reason. It wasn't kindness. Even now I'm dealing with the fallout of what had
been done to me." He didn't sound pissed off, but that had to be pretty
bad, given everything.

It got a hunched over move from
both Darren and Tina. Shame seemed to crawl over them then. Even though it hadn't
been in his orders, the man, who still seemed worn and broken spoke, his voice
deeper and more filled with pits and gravel than it had been before.

"You should kill us. We
don't deserve to live, after what we did."