The Living and the Dead (Tyler G Book 3) (36 page)

"Oh? Have you considered
insurance? Say a bargain so that if one of us is enslaved, say by The Mistress
of Souls, that you'll free us from her? I have to imagine that would go over
very well. I recently tried to have her killed, myself and several others of
our kind, to prevent her eventual rise to control of the entire world. You
might well be able to do that without destroying it all, however. I think that
several others might wish to be involved in this? May I pass the word about
this for you?"

"Sure, but don't make any
promises for me. I don't want to harm my bargaining position." The guy
should get that. He'd told him once that he'd actually invented haggling after
all.

"Naturally. Still, perhaps a
small group of interested parties? All ones that will be suitable for your
event? Let's call it five? There will be no problems. Not with my people. If
there are, I'll handle them myself."

That sounded fine to him, so he
agreed, and felt the line of intent coming for him. To try and make him into a
slave, over the phone line. That was kind of neat, but it wasn't going to work
anyway, which The Librarian knew, no doubt. So it was a test. Could he actually
do it being what was in question.

Tyler shut it down, and chuckled.

"Try it again. Do your very
best."

This time the bolt of light that
came from around the world was nearly visible. It was intense, powerful, and
locked down so fast and hard that there was an honest to goodness
giggle
from the man.

"All right. I'm convinced.
Are you willing to allow the others to attempt this with you as well? If so, I
think many people will be very pleased to meet you, Clerk."

That sounded fine to him, truth
be told.

Oddly enough, nothing much
happened over the rest of the weekend.

Oh, people did call to set up
meetings, but the vast majority of them did it through the Coalition offices.
That worked for him, since it meant that Fram was able to field the calls from
Greater Demons for him. That was interesting, since he was charging them
several million apiece just to get a seat at the table with Tyler. Apparently
they were splitting that money.

The Greater Demon, who was still
Ricard, the good looking Human man, when Ty walked through the door explained
all that.

"If we don't charge them at
each step they'll try to walk all over us. So, you get the idea. If you want we
can use your half for the budget here?"

He nodded.

"That sounds reasonable.
Your half, too. Don't claim to me you need the money. Besides, you covering
part of the expenses for the Coalition will look
good
. You Greater
Demons have a bit of a bad reputation, in case you haven't noticed? Not that
you
have to be the one to do that part, but..." He shrugged and smiled at the
guy.

The fact was, if no one ever
stepped up and tried to change their image, it just wasn't going to happen.
That might have been
fine
for that kind of person. It could be that
Demons wanted to be feared all the time. Still, jockeying for position in the
public mind couldn't hurt Fram. He could get in place as the nice Demon that
could be trusted. That was a role that no one had yet, so it might actually
work really well for him.

Tyler went on, as he got a rather
annoyed look from his assistant.

"I mean, there's a lot of
room for one of you to step forward and be the spokesperson. Who are we going
to get, Zack?
He's
the nicest of you, but no one seems to really respect
him. Too young or something? Keeley? Half of you want her dead. Allison? Lucy?
No, as far as I can tell it has to be you or Tarsus." Tyler doubted that
he could push The Librarian around.

Fram however, was easier that
way.

"Hmmm. You'll announce that
I provided the funds? Maybe hold a banquet in my name?"

He shook his head.

"You get a plaque. We can
hold a press conference though, and explain it all. I have to learn to
make
that kind of thing though, since we aren't going to waste money on things like
that. That never made sense to me, spending fifty thousand dollars to thank
people for giving you sixty-thousand."

That got a funny look that was
meant to make him feel bad for withholding the laudations.

Tyler rolled his eyes.

"I don't suppose anyone
called with something normal, did they?"

That got a sound from the good
looking assistant, who brushed his fine light colored hair from his forehead.

"Yes, actually. A date has been
set for the cult trial? Jameson Blythe's group. That will take about three
months out of your life, over all. You'll need to go and talk with people, give
eighty more depositions, and practice giving your testimony, even though you
aren't supposed to do that. It's your job here. You
have
to seem
credible in court. Also, the Remembrance Ambassador would like your help in
killing the Elth Ambassador? I told him that I'd see what I could work out, but
that we normally didn't allow the murder of people like that here."

Tyler nodded. "No, but we
should look into it, even if it isn't really our job. Also, we should get with
Richard Swerlin and see if he can set up a Human representative to have an
office here. Maybe an international thing?"

"Got it. I can do that next.
Here's the schedule for the rest of the day." A paper came across the
Greater Demon's desk, which had most of the half hour blocks for the day filled
with different names, whom he assumed would be meetings, though several of them
had phone numbers for him to call.

Including, in ten minutes, where
he was supposed to get with Karen, from the Jeff Smears Program. To be on the
air, live, about...

That part was left off the sheet.

"Okay, I need to go and set
this one up. Any clue what they want to do for this one? I hope it's a sex
tape. I haven't done one though, so probably not."

Fram grinned at him then.

"Well, we can do that. You,
me... Maybe get your friend Calley in on it too? I'd say we get Darla, since
she's always in for a good time, but lately she looks a bit young for that. It
will be fun. We can... Set that up for the week after next? For release after
the trials, of course, and your band's first album... Oohhh. I know, we can get
Rebekah in on it too. People would
pay
for nudie pics of her. I'll call
her and ask, while you're on the air." It was kind of clear that the guy
was joking.

Or not.

Karen informed him that the show
was actually about the upcoming album, and they had some tracks from it
already. Hally York had set that up for him. It was a good plan, but he would
have loved some time to get ready for it.

By holding some concepts
carefully the whole time, he got through it all, and asked the radio woman out.
That came as a shock to her, but it shouldn't have. She was a nice person, after
all. That was the kind of woman that Tyler liked best. Oh, sure, there were
women around that might have been a bit better looking, but that wasn't where
the worth of a person was. Karen had competence going for her, and an open
mind. After all, she knew that he had two other girlfriends.

He did talk up the supposed sex
tape to come, however.

"We're trying to get the
whole band in on it. If you have any recommendations for it, let me know, and
I'll ask if that person wants in on it."

It was kind of cute, because Jeff
himself blurted out a name instantly.

"Eve
Benson. I would totally watch that. I..."

The
man just stopped dead, for about five seconds. Ty filled the dead air with fake
panic.

"Jeff?
Jeff? Oh, gosh, I think he had a stroke at the idea of Eve Benson nude."

It was funny enough, thanks to
his delivery, that people on the other end of the line broke up, which let them
change the topic to the Coalition of Nations. That actually got more people
interested than anything else, even though a few did call in to mention that
the music was good.

Mainly crediting Rebekah, who was
the lead singer on the two tracks they had. It was a good point too, since she
rocked on those, even though they probably wouldn't be the ones that hit the
top one hundred songs. Those were being held back for the big release in five
months.

It was going to take a while to
get everything done, but it would turn out.

Keeley had already started the
new slave training thing, though she called it
magical reconditioning
.
He was due on Friday afternoon to meet everyone at the clinic in Sparks. They
already had fifty people signed up, mainly to get rid of drug problems. Not all
of them were there voluntarily, but stripping people of their right to kill
themselves was the kind of thing he could get behind.

Apparently he was an asshole that
way.

In all honesty, Tyler kind of
figured that the next attack would come at Friday's party. There would be
Greater Demons there, and The Storm could use that as a way to get her cronies
into place. What were the odds that it wasn't a set up? The thing there was
that the Greater Demon was smart, for all she wanted to bother with
him
.

So, when the attack came, it was
overwhelming, coming from three directions at one time. The Demons were
unfamiliar to him, though one of them was The Storm herself, it was clear. The
parking lot nearly flooded under the high winds and deluge that appeared. It
was her signature move after all.

His bet was that the one standing
in the middle was probably her. She looked like Will the feminist, though that
could be a trick. The one on the right was bulky, in a muscular way, and a good
looking black man. If he'd been walking down the street he would have gotten attention
for several things, but being a Greater Demon wasn't one of them.

The smaller one, the only one to
look like a woman at the moment, hit him fast, from the left. So hard that he
was thrown through the air about a hundred feet. Tyler had to repair his body
twice from that. The first time in the air as he moved, also holding the
concept of time distortion he needed at the same time, and then again when he
hit, not sticking the landing he needed very well. His feet did touch the
ground first, and stuck in place, but both legs broke with a deafening crack.
That was his fault, for not controlling his momentum correctly.

Then they made the sound again,
right before he stood up.

The storm ended with a thought on
his part, and so did all access to any energy for the three in front of him.
That left them with what they held within, of course, and they could make on
their own. That, he knew, was too much for him to overcome. Not before they
managed to rip his head off or cause him to burst into flames. Except that when
a powerful magic attack came at him from the attractive black man, Tyler waved
it away. Killing the life force that was needed to bring it into being.
Smothering it in darkness. Death and destruction.

It got the man to go a bit wide
eyed.

"Impressive. So, magic does
not work against you? We will have to do this the old way then." That,
apparently, was with knives. Two of them, the very fast girl, who looked a bit
like she could have been working at a grocery store, complete with a brand name
uniform top, came at him first. Her stringy hair was a bit wild, thanks to the
wind having blown it around.

As she closed with him, Tyler
shook his head.

"You can't survive this. I
don't know what you were promised, but it isn't worth dying over. Run. Leave
this place. You too, big guy. This is between me and The Storm." That
didn't stop anything, and the fighting then was fierce. It was all he could do
to keep sticking his body together as the parts tried to fall off. The thing
there was that he
did
it, and while he didn't look that good fighting
with his slightly leaking limbs being chopped into bloody chunks, he was
staying together, and beating the other two into the ground, over and over
again.

They healed too, but as with The
Storm the last time, they slowly lost their internal energy stores, and were
using them up too fast to replace them.

For his part, well, the world was
filled with death, all the time. It was clumsier, and didn't respond as easily
as the magic of life, but there was a lot more of it, and these beings were
starting to starve. Somewhere during the fight he noticed that a crowd had
formed. One of them, Fram, was helpfully getting the whole thing on a high end
video camera. Not that he knew that was the truth, but anything less wasn't
going to catch much.

True, some help would have been
nice from that quarter, but Tyler had bargained for
blowjobs
, not mutual
aid in a fight. That was, it looked like, an oversight on his part. Next time
he'd have to be a bit more adult about that kind of thing, he decided. Still,
about ten minutes in, the whole thing suddenly changed. His two new attacker
buddies both tried to pull back, at about the same time, moving toward the
lines.

Cutting the silver strands of
life with a flick of his hand, and a wave of death, Tyler shook his head.

"No. You had that chance.
Now we need to have a talk about your behavior here today. Go stand by that
Demon. Fram, if they try to leave, get it on video. We'll publically shame them
later." It wasn't a great threat, but he didn't want to go around killing
people, if he didn't have to.

To his utter shock, they actually
did it. That left The Storm standing there, with something that she hadn't been
holding before. It was a rocket launcher, if he could guess at that kind of
thing. A nice green one, that looked slightly bland, as far as shininess. It
really was the sort of thing that might actually give her enough of an edge to
beat him, since it didn't take any of her own energy to use.

It probably would have worked
too, if her head hadn't snapped forward at the last second, forcing her entire
body to move toward the ground. The thing in Will's hands went off, but didn't
explode, since it hit the ground about six feet from where it started.

Behind the woman stood a giant
bull. A Minotaur, actually. Along with several other beings that were a bit
more familiar to him. Keeley, Zack, Allison, the tiny doll like fairy girl, and
the average looking man that had come before with Keeley.

Off to the side a bit were a
collection of other beings, that weren't exactly normal either. One was Gregor,
The Cleric, but how anyone could ever think that he was a Greater Demon, Tyler
didn't know. The energy going into him did follow the same pattern that the
others had, flowing at him from all sides, but it was finer, and of a sort that
spoke of something
very
different. He was right next to a rather stern
looking man, who was dressed in what seemed like a tunic and loose trousers.
Like something that a peasant might have worn, hundreds of years before. That
was in black. The Cleric was in a deep brown, and the man next to them, who
looked old and wise, if in a friendlier way than the others, was in the same
outfit, in a lighter color.