“Quiet!” Calvin hissed, cleanly taking off the head of the nightloper he and Kennet had killed.
“God—what are those things?”
“Nightloper,” Jeb said, but he was already moving. If three were guarding this entrance, he felt confident there would be more elsewhere.
They moved quietly through the large arched door.
Jeb knew very little about the illegal fighting. Reflectives didn't police primitive sectors as that was not a duty of The Cause.
He did understand prisons. And what Jeb needed to free the Reflective regime while the distraction of the fight was in full swing.
What he saw made him hesitate and stand riveted, his eyes sweeping over the tops of males who roared for the victor.
A bloodling and Reflective Ryan had beaten each other into bloody bodies of blurred motion. Jeb could hardly track the fists, then the blood spray misted from a chop to Ryan's jaw with his retaliatory kick causing the crack of bloodling bone.
Jeb tore his eyes away, finding Calvin and Kennet.
They lifted their chins in acknowledgment. Jacky pointed to a narrow corridor that flanked steep stone steps.
His face was turned to the backs of the males enraptured in the fight. He glanced back at the steep dark staircase. Jeb believed the mechanicals which operated everything to do with the prison, lay just ahead.
The small group took the steps three at a time. When they reached the zenith, Jeb stalked forward on silent feet.
The controls operator never knew he'd passed from this life to the next.
Jeb stepped over the body, sat down, and gazed at the controls.
Damn, they are too primitive. All of it was pre-pulse. A flutter of panic began in his chest.
“Scoot over, big dude. I got this,” Jacky said with a confidence Jeb didn't feel.
Jeb's eyes scanned the crowd through the control window and snagged on Beth, so small and dark next to what must be the slaver.
Jeb's hands gripped each other. It was all he could do to stay rooted to the spot.
“My grandpa was great on all this mechanical shit and used to let me play with all his gadgetry! I'm a pro!” Jacky chirped.
Jeb wanted to hit him.
Equally irritated, Calvin and Kennet came to stand behind the boy. “Release the Reflectives.”
Their eyes moved to the fighters. One lay on the ground unmoving.
“Huh, that's easy!” Jacky moved a few levers and hit a button.
Nothing happened at first.
Then a great churning of gears began, and the cell doors that had imprisoned the Reflectives opened slowly.
“See?” Jacky said, leaning back in the chair and lacing his hands behind his head.
“Come at me, guys.”
*
Slade dropped to his knees. Ryan delivered a final kick that landed on his chin.
Beth rushed to the cage as Slade toppled like an old-growth tree.
“Hopper!” Dimitri screamed.
Beth hit the cage, her fingers sliding through the metal links. She gripped and tossed herself over the three-and-a-half-meter-tall cage, spinning as she did.
Beth landed on her feet in front of Ryan, who was beaten but not finished.
He attacked in the way of the Reflective: brutal, instant, and merciless.
Beth’s only chance was that Ryan was worn from the fight with Slade. When his strikes connected with Beth, they held all the strength of his body.
It was mighty.
Beth danced away from his limbs.
His fist came for her jaw, and she captured it in both her hands, twisting viciously against the forward momentum.
His wrist broke, and she stepped into his body, her knee sailing up to his groin.
He deflected and she held tight to the broken wrist, swinging Ryan over her shoulder as he moved with her, flipping with her momentum and landing on his back.
She'd attached herself to him and he used it, giving a painful roar as he used his own broken wrist and jerked her tight, punching her in the jaw as she fell into him.
It was a glancing blow because she'd been in motion and too close for him to strike properly.
It still blurred her vision.
Beth brought it all, biting his bad hand like a snake striking.
Ryan howled and tossed her away from him.
Beth lay on her back, trying for air and finding none.
Then Jeb moved into her vision.
They shared a heart beat of silent communication while tears rolled out of her eyes and wet the mat underneath her.
She had never been so grateful for anything as she was for him in that moment.
Jeb turned as Ryan came at him. He used all his momentum, delivering a skull-cracking blow that dropped Ryan where he stood.
Jeb held out his hand as the human mayhem swirled around them.
Beth took it, and he lifted her to her feet. She could hardly stand, her vision tripling.
“Let's go.”
Jeb led her away. Reflectives Calvin and Kennet flanked him with the primitive weapons of One they’d picked up along the way.
“Wait,” Beth said weakly.
She turned to look for Slade.
Only a bloodied outline of his body remained.
THE END
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The Reflective Cause, Book #2
DEATH WHISPERS
A Death Series Novel
Book 1
New York Times Bestselling Author
TAMARA ROSE BLODGETT
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2010 Tamara Rose Blodgett
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
www.tamararoseblodgett.com
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CHAPTER 1
Pre-Biology sucked, but the subject was mandatory in eighth grade. I walked in and slumped into my seat. We were going to be dissecting frogs, and I wasn’t excited about it.
John sat down next to me with two pencils up his nose.
“Hey, Caleb.”
“Hey. Did ya make sure the erasers were in there first?” I asked him.
“Yeah, duh.” The pencils bounced as he spoke. For a smart guy, he had some weird ideas about self-entertainment.
“You still buzzing?” he asked.
“Yeah, it's on and off.” I felt kind of defensive about that and didn't really want to talk about it.
“I've been thinking about that,” he said.
I wondered briefly how he could think with pencils up his nose. A mystery. “Yeah?”
“I think you have the undead creeper, like that Parker dude,” John said.
That would be bad. “He's the one that could corpse-raise, right?” I asked.
I had just been thinking about how much that ability sucked. However, the rareness of corpse-raising might come in handy. But that being my ability wasn’t likely. Mr. Collins went to the whiteboard and started to explain how to pin down the frogs.
“Government took him. Bye-bye... gone.” John made a fluttering motion with his hand like a bird flying away. The pencils kept bouncing in a distracting way.
I'd heard about that. Corpse manipulation was rare. Jeffrey Parker was the only recorded case.
“Are you shitting me? Why do you think? Dead people? Come on.” I got an image of zombies with M-60s. I was interested for a change. Sometimes John would lose me in a tech rant, and it was all over.
“No, think about it. They could get people raised and force them to do stuff
. From a distance, they'd look like they were alive, important people.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Presidents?”
“Rulers or whoever,” John said. “He was a five-point. He could do the whole tamale. I think the government exploits whatever they can; using whoever they can.”
I laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“I can't take you seriously. You look like a dumb-ass.” The pencils dangled indignantly inside each nostril, humiliated.
John pulled them out, checking the ends for gold.
I'd been wondering why my head was buzzing. I tried to remember when the it'd started. I had no idea what triggered it. I wondered if John could be right?
“Okay, people,” Collins said. “Zip up here and pick up your trays. Your sterilized utensils should already be at your desks.”
John went for our trays, minus the attractive pencils. I stared out the window, the rain rivulets that looked like gray streamers marring the glass.
I shook my head, clearing fuzziness. I couldn't get rid of the buzzing, a dull noise that ebbed and flowed. As soon as I had entered the classroom, it had increased. It was starting to sound like people whispering.
“Here. One frog for the both of us.” John plunked down a frog that had once been green but was now a bone-gray. The pins staking it to the board gleamed under the LEDs.
Suddenly, I felt as though the earth was swiveling on its axis with me at the top. The whispering grew in volume then images of a marsh flooded my head. A frog, in the bloom of its life, shiny with amphibian iridescence, leapt to a log, hoping to fool a water moccasin.
Right behind you! I shouted.
But the frog didn’t seem to hear me.
A motor boat was closing in on the frog. A man leaned out, getting ready to take capture the frog with a loose net on the end of a long metal pole. I heard the frog's thoughts: Strange predator. Must seek cover... noise... hurts...
No! No!
More visions came. With every cut my classmates made, I saw stuff from other frogs’ lives. I realized through some dim sense that I was lying on the floor. I think I might have passed out for a few minutes.
“He bit it over a frog? Seriously?” Carson yelled.
Brett, not to be outdone, caterwauled, “He's a total girl!”
Collins was moving his hand in front of my face, holding up fingers, but I was caught in the grip of the death memories absorbing my consciousness. My vision grayed at the edges. A pin point of black expanded in the center, and I knew no more.
*
Trees surrounding the cemetery danced in the languid breeze of the mild spring night. Headstones glimmered like loose teeth, and the whispering was like a steady thrumming of white noise in my head. My hands grew clammy.
I looked behind me at my two friends who'd come to support me. They had discovered my secret: that I could hear the dead. Proving to Carson and Brett that I had Affinity for the Dead—or AFTD—wouldn't keep them off my back completely, but it'd notch down their stupid to something me and my posse could manage.
“Caleb, show them you're not a frickin' poser,” Jonesy said.
“I don't pose.”
I took a step through the Victorian-style gate, my foot touching its reluctant toe on hallowed ground.
The feeling of being forced pressed uncomfortably against my mind.
As I crossed the threshold, the whispering turning into voices. One whispered stronger than the others. As if an invisible string pulled me along, I was drawn toward one of the gravestones. The marker stood sentinel near the middle of the cemetery, glowing softly in the moonlight. I stopped in front of it.
“Clyde Thomas, born 1900, died 1929.”
“Wake me...” someone whispered.
“What?” I asked.
“Wake me...”
“Caleb, who are you talking to?” John asked.
I swung my head in slow-motion, as if moving it through quicksand. Blood rushed in my ears, and my heart beat thick and heavy in my chest. Everything became crystallized in that moment. John's frizzy hair and freckles stood out like measles. A microscopic chip lay like an imperfect shadow on the headstone, a shining stark contrast to the white marble.
Something... something... was building, rising up as if underwater and rushing to the surface. I was supposed to finalize something, but what? John's mouth was moving but no sound was coming out. He was arguing with Jonesy and flailing his arms as he spoke. The whispering of the corpse in the earth was so loud it drowned out his words.
Jonesy's hand suddenly connected with my face. My teeth slammed into my tongue, and the taste of copper pennies filled my mouth. I leaned over, and a drop of blood hung tremulously on my bottom lip, before falling to the grave like a black gem.
Everything clicked into place, vertigo spinning the graveyard on its side as if it had been waiting for that moment. The ground rushed toward my face, and I threw out my hands to brace my fall. My fingers bit into the damp earth. A hand broke through the ground like a spear through flesh and grasped my wrist. The vise-like grip and intense coldness of the grave lingering on its dead flesh made my breath catch in my throat.
The head of the corpse broke free of the ground, then the hand released me. I scooted backward and got to my feet, swaying, overcome with some unidentifiable emotion. I had done it, but I didn't know how to undo it.
The corpse moved toward me with purpose, using the undisturbed ground for leverage. When it reached my feet, another drop of my blood landed with a dull plop on the corpse's forehead. Jonesy ran out of the cemetery and stood at a “safe” range from what the ground had disgorged.
The zombie's gaze fixed on me. It put a hand on its knee and began to push itself upright. Dull, lank strands of hair hung loosely from a scalp of rotten sinew. “Why have you awoken me?” The words sounded garbled.
I stared at it. “You asked me to.”
John was standing at my right, trying to mask a fine, all-over tremble. His freckles stood out from his pale face like beacons of fright.
“What the hell is this?”
I turned and gave him a duh look.
The zombie’s eyes rolled wetly in their sockets.
“Why have you awoken me?” it repeated, shambling a little closer.
The smell... wow. It rose like a torrent of rotting garbage. John clapped his hand over his nose and backed up a bit.
The corpse took another step closer to me.
“Got any brilliant suggestions?” I asked John, keeping my eyes on the zombie.
“Sorry. I don’t have the Zombie Handbook handy,” John said.
Not helpful.
The corpse tilted its head. “You're just a boy. For what purpose have you disturbed my slumber?”
“I, um… I didn't... uh, mean to… um, wake you up.” I wasn't usually so tongue-tied, but meeting a corpse in the flesh—ha, ha—seemed to have stolen my ability to speak coherently.
“You do not know what you would have of me? You use your life-force to awaken me and without purpose? Put me back.” His clothes hung in tatters, and the smell was definitely old, dark coffin, not that I knew what that smelled like.
John's look clearly said, Do something! What I hadn't told my friends was that I had never thought that I could actually raise the dead. But there the dead guy was, standing before me in all his rotting glory.
“To whom much is given, much is expected. Put me back,” he said.
Adults were all the same, even dead ones; lecture, lecture.
“How?” I asked.
“You are the necromancer, boy, not I.”
“I’m a what?” I felt surprisingly calm. For the first time, there were no whispers. Perfect, blessed silence filled my head. Talking to the dead seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I could still taste the blood from my busted lip. Its eyeballs were inky marbles staring back with uncanny devotion.
“A necromancer. A diviner of the black arts,” he replied.
I thought about
that for a minute. Things had only gotten über-weird when Jonesy had smacked me. I looked back at the corpse, no longer feeling that sense of swimming power just beneath the surface. I needed to regain that essence—fast.
“Ah... hang on a minute,” I told the corpse. I turned to John.
“John, give me your blade.”
“What the heck, Caleb? What are you planning to do with that”—John pointed at the patient corpse, “...thing?” Who was as immobile out of his grave as in.
“I figure my blood made it jump out of its grave, so now I need some to put him back. And you're going to help me.”
John's face got even paler. “Ah, we're good friends and all, but no, not a good plan! We don't know that for sure anyway.”
John needed to ante up the blood, or it was going to be a long night. I tapped my foot on the disturbed mess of the grave. “Here's the deal. Let's do a little 'friendship blood bank' just for the sake of putting the dead guy back in his grave, eh? Just give me your arm.”
John took a deep breath. “Okay, but you're going to owe me big time.” He held out his arm.
I placed the blade on his forearm then made a thin slit in the skin. John let out a little gasp. When crimson oozed out, I repeated the process with my own arm then pressed my arm against John’s.
A vibrating tuning fork of trembling power welled up inside my body. A strange mixture of fear, dread and excitement paralyzed me. My teeth throbbed with the intensity of it. The zombie's hand snaked out and curled around my arm. Its skin felt cold against my warm flesh, like iced tentacles. I swabbed a blot of blood with the fingers of my other hand and dabbed it on the zombie’s forehead like war paint.
The dead guy rolled those empty eyes up at me, its dead bones clinging to my fingertips.
We shared a suspended moment in time, a terrible beauty of precariously balanced control.
“Go back and rest,” I said, feeling that I was choosing for both of us.
The zombie reluctantly let go of my arm, sand through a sieve, then lay down on the disturbed ground. His grave encased him in a shroud of earth.
John and I stared at each other over the grave for a swollen minute, his face showing a mixture of sympathy and dread. I was a corpse-raiser—one of only two in existence—and that was not a safe thing to be. John knew what that would mean for me in the world we lived in.
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