The Living and the Dead (Tyler G Book 3) (27 page)

"I... May I do you from
behind? I know that some men have an issue that way. I understand if..."

Tyler smiled at the
hermaphrodite.

"Sure. We need some lube.
Plus, after that, I get to do you that way, too. It's only fair."

"We can do that. It's been a
while. Allow me to set this up."

His part didn't hurt at all, and
felt mildly pleasurable, which wasn't going to be the case for anyone else, he
bet. It was a thing to remind himself of, since other people had real pain. If
Marissa did though, she didn't complain when he was doing her that way. Though
he
did
try to be gentle with her.

She was, after all, a friend,
after a fashion.

When they were done they both
showered, since being clean was nice, and then moved to the hot tub. She'd been
using it, and found it to be a wonderful thing to have at a private home.

"I need to get one for my
place, in Florida. Would you like to come visit sometime? With young Ginger,
and perhaps your Shifter friend? Both are delightful, aren't they? I don't want
them to think I have plans to steal you away however. Just a dalliance? If that
isn't amiss?"

He thought about it for a bit and
then nodded.

"That sounds fun. We should
look into it. I can't speak for them of course, and I need to deal with a
little matter first, before I go and visit people. I have an issue with a
Greater Demon. She seems to think she owns me. I
don't
mean the one that
was downstairs, either. She raised me and basically keeps me going now. The
Storm... I guess my parents were her slaves? It sounds like it was a big mess,
when they died. If I even know the real story."

"That can be a
hardship." Her breasts, which weren't huge, did float at the edge of the
water. Her nipples were dark, which didn't match the rest of her look. Most Vampires
were pretty pale, but it was clear that in her first life she probably hadn't
been white. Probably from India, from the way she looked. Her nose was a bit
big for instance, though it worked for her face really well. Her voice carried
a slight English accent too, so that fit.

She saw him looking, but just
smiled about it. There was very little use in hiding them now.

"You mean having Greater
Demons around? Because I can see that one."

"Rather. Still, we can only
do what we can that way. You know, if we stay in the tub long enough, we should
be able to stay warm for hours after. It won't matter to those like we are, but
I rather wager that Calley Hale would enjoy that. All her lovers here are so
chill, except for Steven." She looked a little sly then, letting that
drop.

It wasn't a shock. Calley wasn't
in the band, and loved sex so much it was nearly a problem for her. That she
was going to try and get with everyone there was kind of just expected.
Honestly, she was probably sleeping with the entire band. The only outlier
there would be Scotty. They might be related after all. Even then, Ty wasn't
totally sure it wouldn't happen.

"Yeah. That has to be rough
for her. Like cold feet against her back in the winter. Poor thing. Well, good
plan then. If she comes home tonight. You wouldn't think that being an
Ambassador here would keep anyone so busy, would you?"

That, for some reason, got a
happy laugh. Like he was joking, and
not
just being stupid.

Tyler found the world changed a
bit after he got out of the hot tub. The reason for that wasn't what he figured
it would be either.

It wasn't that The Storm grabbed
him and stuffed him in a cave or anything, which he was, kind of, expecting to
happen. That, or something far worse. Given how he felt about the whole thing,
he wasn't too shocked to find himself with a sudden urge to go for a nice,
regular, jog.

He'd just walked from Toronto, so
he didn't need the exercise, which was, he had to figure, a dead giveaway.
Honestly, when he got outside, noticed that it was starting to rain and that
the wind had picked up, Ty
knew
that the time had come. It was probably
time for him to be getting ready for whatever might come next. Still, he moved,
heading away from the house at a faster rate than he would have normally.

The rain started to fall, but
didn't touch him, which wasn't impossible in real life. It was a thing that
he'd seen before several times, actually. If you ran, out in nature, often
enough, that sort of thing took place. This one was a bit weird, given that it
seemed like he was in a ring that was following him. The ground was damp under
his feet however, as he stayed dry.

A thick curtain of gray fell
around him though, the very air changing color as he moved. Where he was going,
he didn't know, but as soon as he saw who was standing there, about a mile away
from the house, he kind of got the general idea.

Padding up, still dry, he saw the
man in overalls, wearing a straw hat this time and dusty work boots. His
clothing was clean, but looked worn, and he smiled, his blue eyes shining.

The Archangel Michael.

Tyler shook his head a little. It
would be easy to be annoyed at the takeover, but he managed to smile anyway.

"Or, and I mean this as
politely as possible, you
could
just call?"

 The smile on the other man,
which was beatific, got a bit larger then.

"I know. I just don't own
one of those new fangled cell phones, so had to use the old ways. I lack a
physical body, after all, so I can't hold one. Not for long. It's my nature.
Which is why I was sent to you, Tyler Gartner." His eyes locked with Ty
then.

"To tell me all about
Angels? About time. I know nothing that way. I'll need to write up everything I
can about you, in my notebook."

"No. Not that. Not at this
time. I was sent to speak about your nature. What you really are, and your part
in the greater scheme of the universe."

That sounded different than he
figured it would, but he wasn't used to visits by Mike's kind of being. How
would he know what kind of things the man would say? If he was actually male to
begin with.

"You mean me being dead, and
a slave?"

"That's correct, Tyler. You
are dead, and you must stay that way. I will not mislead you, you have the
power within you to return to the world of the living. That is a thing that you
could do within the hour, if you so wished. All you would need for that is to
grab the spark of life from another, and carry it with you, to the end of your
days. If you do that however, you will unbalance part of the world around you.
Tainting it all with your passing. You might also learn, with little
difficulty, to take such energies from the world itself, and use it to create
life within you. It is not your right to do so. You are, as you mentioned, a dead
thing. One without the grace of life."

He didn't get it, but nodded
anyway.

"So I have to just stay a
slave forever? I... Well, I guess I always knew that."

The Angel nodded, but his words
were both kind sounding and different.

"You need not be enslaved.
You must simply
not
take the mantel of life. There are other ways to
power the dead. Indeed, as you are now, you could learn that for yourself. Find
the line between you and your creator, and learn to use that type of power. The
Rotted managed something new and unique there, but it is you, not her, that is
of
that thing. It, too, the power of death, might be taken from the reality you
stand in. That is allowed, and while you will remain among the dead, you will
have what you wish, in part. I cannot force you to take that choice, and it
will not be simple or easy to learn what you need to do, but you can, if you
choose. To simply give you an answer however, if you take that path, you will
remain a slave. You would be forced to sacrifice the living to be free, and you
must not allow that to take place, or all is lost."

It was annoying, but Tyler wasn't
really certain that telling an Angel to go fuck himself, because he didn't want
to work that hard if there were easier options, was the way to make friends. Or
to not be smited by the being.
That
might just fix things though, and
keep the balance or whatever the real point was.

"Um, so, I have to be dead?
Or else... What? The universe explodes?"

There was a head shake and a
peaceful look.

"No, Tyler. If you do that
thing, take life that is not yours, millions of living beings will die, over
the years. Others will sicken and not have the life they should, the taint of
your passing taking from them the grace that is their birthright. That is all.
You are dead, but like all others, free to choose. Also, the creation of a
Greater Demon. I was told to come here and ask hard things of you, which none
have right to request of another. I can do no more." Then he turned to
walk away, but stopped and half turned back. Probably to be dramatic.
"Though you do have a message, if you will hear it?"

"I do? Um, thanks?"

"Indeed. He, God, wants you
to know that while it was your power that freed the water, and the stone from
the wall, it was
his
will that aided you in your resolve to protect the
child. It was enough."

That kind of made sense, though
was un-provable.

Except for the part of things
where it was a freaking Angel standing there and telling him about it. That
probably was a bit of a sign, all things considered.

"Okay. Good to know I had
some back up. I don't suppose he's going to be there for me when The Storm
comes? Or do I get to just go and die alone?"

That got a laugh. It seemed kind,
gentle and heartfelt. Sweet came to mind, even if the Angel did look like a
farmer.

"Tyler... You are already
dead. She cannot kill you. She could, perhaps, remove you from the world, or
enslave you in ways your maker does not yet know of. He wishes me to let you
know that he will be there, to stand by you. Even if it's only to watch you
fail."

He laughed then too, and closed
his eyes.

"Ah. Well, that makes me
feel better, doesn't it? Thanks, I guess?" When he opened his eyes, a
moment later, he was alone.

Being soaked too, because running
in a rainstorm was just about brilliant.

It didn't really influence him at
all as he jogged back, which meant he had time to think about certain concepts.
Like what life itself felt like. It was a thing he knew, almost instantly, he
realized. It was all around him, and
wanted
to flow into him, if he gave
it a chance. Which would, of course, remove it from people, animals, plants and
even insects that surrounded him in the world.

Like he was a black hole that
drank life. It would rush to him, if he simply removed the blocks of death that
held it out.

It wouldn't kill anyone directly,
but he, being a dead thing, would take more than his fair share, which would,
in the end, damage others. At least that was possible, given the feeling of it.
The Angel had been right. It would be
easy
to do, now that he knew about
it. Two simple concepts, and he could be a living boy again. The idea was tempting
him to try it, even if it
would
be harmful to others.

Instead he trudged slowly, and
tried to feel what made him work at the moment. It wasn't comfortable for him,
and felt a lot rougher than the fine, truly ephemeral, sense of life did. Harder
to hold on to as well. A flow of darkness, and literal death, that came in a
thick and ropy line from what he had to assume was his mom.

The blackness existed all around
him too, like life. The difference was that life wanted to flow toward him, as
if he were a whirlpool that was set up to capture it. Death, even though he was
of its kind, rushed away from
everything
. It would, in some fashion that
he couldn't see yet, need to be taken from the universe, and pulled into
himself. On the good side, there was far more of it than there was life. It
felt, when he focused on it, like it was everywhere. It just wasn't in the
right places for him to use easily.

"Which is great fun."
Worse, in his body it was being pushed around, backwards through his being.
Constantly ripping and repairing as he moved. Fixing things because it was made
to do so, by an intelligence from outside of himself. Life did that on its own.

So, even if he could collect the
power up, which he figured that Lucy was doing all the time already, showing it
was possible, he also had to work out how to run his body.

The implications there did not
make him happy. He'd
thought
he was a slave, and had, more or less
resigned himself to it. If Lucy said jump, then he had to do it. That was, he'd
thought, all. The real truth was that in order to jump at all, The Rotted had
to do it for him, more or less. It was why, if he just took to eating flesh for
its life he would become something very different.

Not just a being that fed on
life, but one that was mocking life, instead of being
truly
dead, like
he was at the moment. That actually sucked. So there were two things he needed
to make what he wanted happen. He had to figure out how to draw the power of
death to him, and
then
he needed to learn to animate his own being. To
lock that power into moving himself around like a puppet.

He was, at the moment, what Zack
had said. An avatar.

At the door of the house he
realized that he was going to leave a trail of water through the place, so he
stripped, wrung it all out off to the side, and walked through the house naked.
It could have been embarrassing, but he didn't bother with that idea at the
moment. Instead he was trying to figure out how to draw the right kind of
energy to him. As he changed clothing he realized that he'd seen it happening
before. He simply hadn't thought about it.

Lucy did it. All the time. So
that he could keep going. What he had to do was work out how that happened, and
then he'd have the smaller portion of what he was going to need.

That
part surprised him, however.
When he tried to work it out and thought about his mother, he could feel her
guiding him. Openly. The sense of what he needed, that death, had to be
courted, rather than generated, or directed. That power wasn't like life to be
ordered about by force of will. It was a fickle enemy that shyly ran from
everything else. In the end he was sitting on the floor of his shared bedroom,
naked, trying to convince entropy to organize against its nature, and move to
his position in space.

The
whole
time there was a
hand there, correcting him. Inside of himself, making minute alterations to his
opening attempt. It sort of worked. There was a complex field that was needed,
a set of concepts that was as ephemeral as a spider's web to his mind, but when
he held it correctly, a
tiny
bit of darkness came to him, and became
part of his being.

It didn't want to do anything,
but Lucy, who was always with him, took that energy for him and used it to make
him function. After a few hours, sitting there, he realized that he was doing
about half the work that way. The line between him and The Rotted thinned a
bit, and there was a sense that, now that he could do the work, he was required
to.

That got him to smile. The trick
there was probably close to what his mom used. He had to make the magical
concept so automatic that it didn't take thought. That it was a subconscious
thing that never faded. He didn't know how to do that, of course, but kind of
got something going, about the time that Calley and Ginger came in together.

They stared at him, and after
about ten seconds, Calley started to take her clothing off.

"Now
that's
the way I
like it. I get to be on top!"

Then, laughing, with him trying
to hold himself together, and provide all the power he needed, if not the
control of his body yet, they did things. That was fine for the moment. It was
hard to keep going, being distracted, but if he didn't, he was going to stop
working. Probably not die, but he'd fall to the ground and then stop
functioning until he got it going again. It happened three times, which was
ignored by the girls, because he got things going again almost instantly.

 It was fun though, and in the
end they were cuddling on the bed as he kept working. Providing for himself,
using all his will power.

Calley kissed him gently,
contented for the moment.

"That was unexpected. Read a
sex book?" She waved a little lying next to him, at his nudity.