by Eros, Marata
It was the Aura Reader, the one that had been in the crowd when I saved Onyx.
I looked at her and then at John Smith. They looked alike.
Smith smiled. “You got it; she's my sib, Caleb. Right under all your noses and you never knew. She was pegging all the Nulls, and doing a bang up job, until Garcia called you in.”
His eyes narrowed on Garcia. “Watch him,” Smith said.
Apparently, that meant put a gun on him. His sister walked over to where Garcia stood, blood ringing his mouth, the side of his jaw swelling grotesquely.
She put the barrel of a shotgun against his back and looked at me. “I'm not the shot my bro is here, but the spray will leave a mark.” She barked out a laugh.
Nice girl.
“You did McGraw?” Tiff asked.
“Oh yes. It was a long time coming for him.” He waved that away. “So, as I was saying, your plaything here,” and he shook Jade again and she bit her lip to keep from screaming. “Miss LeClerc came by the precinct today to defend you!” he laughed. “Anyway, I caught her before she came inside and directed her to my car.”
God, this was so awful. She'd been trying to get me out of this mess on the sly, so I wouldn't have to do it myself.
I closed my eyes briefly; Jade was so much more than I thought. And here she was in the killer's arms. Damn . Tears of anger and frustration flooded my eyes.
He went on, “And I was fully tuned, this Empath couldn't get squat off me. She'd never know. But that's not what her strength is? Is it, doll face?” he said next to her ear through gritted teeth. “She can get all kinds of readings off of things, Caleb. She's not just an Empath, she's clairvoyant too.”
Jade was starting to hyperventilate as he held her in a deadlock, her hair straining away from her face.
I'd never wanted to kill someone.
I did now.
“I told her to get in the car, and she touched the door handle. That was it, her face gave everything away. She knew what I was, what I'd done. All that careful planning and deception, ruined by this girl .”
“Come on, John. Whack them already, leave them for the crows,” his sister said.
As if by macabre cue, a crow landed on a grave marker and cawed, its slick inky eyes lighting on McGraw's body.
Her face was turned away and Garcia used that moment, grabbing the barrel of the shotgun he twirled it. On the upswing, he bashed it into her head before she could react and she sunk to the grass like a stone in water.
He trained it on Smith. “Let the girl go, Smith,” Garcia said in a voice garbled by his swollen mouth.
“You'll regret that,” Smith said calmly and flung Jade at Garcia, her hair streaming behind her from the speed of the throw.
Garcia instinctively dropped the gun to catch her and Smith turned the gun on me.
There I stood, paralyzed in the moment.
Suddenly McGraw was standing in front of me, his dead body a shield.
“What the blue fuck?” Smith shrieked.
Tiff looked at me, stunned.
It wasn't my power.
Smith started to unload into McGraw, his dead body jerking as the rounds penetrated.
Out of the woods came Jeffrey Parker, and my head became suddenly light, like it would just spin off. The situation was so acutely insurmountable, I could hardly breathe. In my peripheral vision, I saw Garcia had Jade.
Tiff stood at my right as Smith clicked empty.
He smoothly reloaded and pointed it in my direction as Clyde burst through the opening Parker had made.
Holy shit.
Parker had two zombies with him, I could feel them as they drew nearer.
Smith whipped out another weapon. Flame-thrower.
I saw the blue at its tip and shuddered, he was going to take on the zombies.
Tiff grabbed my hand, and I fed off her like a starved battery while Smith was distracted.
I used my power like a honed arrow and screamed my mental call to Clyde: Protect! I yelled with everything I had, my mind ringing with the command.
I siphoned from Tiff and she sunk to her knees.
Clyde became more; eyes filling in, clothes mending themselves, hair sprouting on his head. A glittering intelligence came alive in his gaze.
Those bright eyes landed on Smith, and with the barest glance at Parker, he and the other two zombies worked in unison, flanking the Null.
Smith had his gun on Parker and the flame-thrower pointed at Clyde, who inched closer. “Call your dead dogs off or I kill you.”
“You've got the wrong AFTD, it is Caleb that is the threat.”
I had let go of Tiff's hand and was a mere three feet behind Smith when he spun on me, gun in hand.
I stared down the slick black metal hole facing me, and my stomach dropped just as Clyde barreled into him. They fell on me, their combined weight pinning me to the ground.
“Caleb!” Jade screamed.
Smith released his gun and pulled a knife from the waistband of his pants, the hover pulse falling from his pocket and zipping into the blade as it tried to reconnect with his body.
The blade arced, the dying sunlight glinting off the metal as it descended.
Clyde's teeth sunk into Smith's neck, an arterial spray splattering my face. Clyde and the zombies mewled at the smell of copper in the air.
They surged forward, Smith a squirming gurgling mass on top of me. They yanked Smith off of me.
The zombies fed.
I lay on my back. My enemy, Jeffrey Parker, stood above me as his black shadow spread over my body, outlined by the fiery red ball of the sinking sun.
Garcia walked over, the feeding of the zombies in the background a grotesque music. He had Jade in his arms, face broken up.
I sat up. “Is she okay?”
“Passed out.”
I looked to where Tiff was throwing up. Great. Parker was watching the zombies drag Smith in a detached way, Smith's arms flailing less and less. Then they stopped.
“You're going to let them kill Smith?” I asked him.
Parker nodded. “Do you think this is the worst I've seen? I've done?”
Garcia and I stared at him.
Smith's sister began to stir on the grass.
Garcia laid Jade down and turned his attention to Parker. “I know who you are and who you work for.”
“You know nothing.” Parker said, his gaze steady. “I won't hurt the girl.”
Garcia's eyes took in Tiff and me.
His smile was cold. “Or them.”
Garcia strode over to Smith's sister, handcuffing her and using zip ties to secure her ankles together. She wasn't going anywhere.
Jade lay beside me pale and unmoving.
Without the Null tuned up my power was there for the using. But it would be an impasse. Parker was a five-point too. Without the nifty life-transference, but more experience.
We were equal. I was shaky; Tiff was barfing.
I stood, that was an improvement. We faced each other.
“They don't know, Caleb. They don't know I'm here.”
Who?
“The Graysheets?” Garcia asked, coming over.
“Graysheets? Oh, who I work for. That's what you call them?” he laughed. “I guess that works. Yeah, they don't know. But we have Caleb on a monitoring system right now. His clever father put a lot of heat on them last year. We needed to lay low. The respite will not last forever, Caleb. They will come for you. McGraw is who alerted me that you were in danger.” He scrubbed his face, looking at McGraw, a zombie with spots of fading daylight leaking through his body. “He was a good man,” Parker said in a hollow voice. His arms were planted on lean hips, a nerdy look replaced with determined hardness.
Garcia snorted. “Him?” McGraw turned his rotting eyes to Garcia and the cop stepped back.
“Yes. He was deep undercover.”
“I'll say,” Garcia said, moving his jaw from side to side and wincing from the movement.
I kept my eyes
on Parker, and walked the few feet to Jade, her chest rising and falling.
My eyes flicked to Parker, then shifted to the zombies, who returned my interest with steady regard.
They stood, leaving Smith's body, their mouths decorated by his blood. In the twilight it looked black. My stomach turned at the sight and Smith's sister started howling.
“Shut up or I send them to you as well,” Parker said smoothly.
She shut up.
“You need to leave. You've killed the murderer.”
“By zombie,” Tiff said, wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her hoodie.
Garcia nodded. “And take them with you.” The zombies turned to look at him. He shuddered.
Tiff and I couldn't relate. They had done something terribly necessary and they were ours. Somehow.
Jade groaned and made a tiny movement.
Parker looked at his two zombies then Clyde. “He's yours now. You can't just raise whatever you want. Did you call him?”
I shook my head.
He nodded as though that made sense. “He'll come now whenever you need him. It's just what it is. Be prepared. Zombies don't stay as they were for people like us, they become more.”
Clyde looked entirely human except for the clown mouth in red.
Cripes.
“I'm going.” The zombies looked at Parker, moving to stand beside him. “These are my soldiers now. They never go back-to-ground.”
Garcia started, and my mouth dropped.
Parker smiled. “There is much you do not know about being a five-point. And as you do know—you are much more.”
Sirens wailed in the background.
Parker's eyes narrowed on Garcia.
“Guilty,” Garcia said, raising his palms.
“I must go. We will see each other again.” Parker turned, and began to jog for the forest perimeter, the buzzing of the cars from Highway 167 a humming in the background. I watched Parker and his zombie guards melt into the woods, their shapes swallowed into the dark embrace of the forest.
Parker had saved me. Clyde stood staring at me, waiting. He looked achingly human.
Jade came to, her head whipping around. “Where is he?”
“Dead,” I said, gathering her into my arms.
“Is it over?” she asked.
Garcia and my eyes met. “Oh yeah, it's over,” I said.
Flashlights found us. Officers surrounded our tight circle, coming from below, guns drawn.
Gale reached us first. “It was Smith?”
Garcia nodded.
“Crap, Raul, I would have never...”
He nodded. “None of us did.”
They looked at McGraw, no longer animated, having fallen to the ground when Parker no longer needed him.
Garcia shook his head when Gale looked a question at him. Then her eyes found Smith's sister.
“That bitch helped him,” she stated.
Garcia nodded. “She identified the Nulls—and he killed them.”
Gale frowned. “Wait a sec. How was the Mason boy killed almost ten years ago? That means—”
“He was one of the first, like my AFTD teacher,” I finished for her.
“So, he was like our age when he started killing kids? Brett's brother was a Null,” Jade said.
I nodded. “He was a serial killer when he wasn't even an adult. And that sick sister of his was helping out.”
“She'll sing like a canary down at the precinct,” Garcia said with surety.
The other cops swarmed around us like bees to a hive, jerking Smith's sister to her feet and dragging her off for a nice short trip to the station.
Gale said, “Let's get your statements downtown.”
I wasn't letting go of Jade for anything, ever again. I took my pulse out.
Initializing
Mom - CH
Where are you, young man? -AH
I had to go to a crime scene and things got stupid-can you and Dad meet us down at the police station? -CH
Pause in pulse transmission
Yes, we'll be there in ten. - AH
K, I'll explain everything then.- CH
Pulse to hibernate
I used a watered down rag that one of the cops gave me to wipe Smith's blood off my face. Tossing it on the ground and turning to Jade I kissed the top of her head and stood with her leaning into me.
I noticed Clyde watching Gale again. “Must I leave and go to where I rest, Master?” he asked in an absent way, never taking his eyes off Gale.
I nodded. “I don't know what Parker was saying exactly about our connection, Clyde. But it may mean something different for us in the future.”
“What connection?” Gale asked.
I explained everything, including the zombie soldiers that were never laid to rest.
“Does this mean that he,” and she pointed at Clyde and her finger only shook a little, “could be alive again?”
I shrugged. “I don't know, but the facts are: Parkers don't rest anymore. They behave like zombie body guards.”
She circled Clyde and he followed her with his eyes. Without warning, his hand snaked out, and gripped her wrist, hauling her against him.
She yelped.
He leaned in and I said, “Clyde!”
“Do not fret,” he said, his eyes going back to Gale's. “Why do you regard me thus, necromancer?”
“I'm not like him,” her eyes darted to me then back to Clyde, her wrist curled between their chests, his form looming over hers.
“Ah, there you are wrong. You do not command me, but I feel you in my skull, a pulsating warmth of life. You are the same flavor as my master, like the girl,” and his gaze drifted briefly to Tiff then back to Gale again, “but different. Do you not feel that tether which binds us?” he asked, every tooth straight and white in his mouth.
Guess I got the mouth right this time. Thank everything holy.
“Yes,” she said, her voice breathy.
“Caleb!” Garcia said.
“Clyde, let her go, please,” I said.
He slowly released her wrist, and she stepped back, rubbing it. Her gaze was wounded and shocky around the edges.
He'd taken her by surprise.
Clyde turned to me. “Has the danger passed?”
I nodded.
“I will go then back to whence I came.”
He turned to go and I called out, “Wait!”
I ran to him and stuck out my hand.
Clyde's perfect hand wrapped around mine and we shook.
Like men do.
“Thank you.”
“You are most welcome,” he said and with a final look at Gale, was gone.
I came back to where Jade and Tiff stood.
Gale was still cradling that hand, her eyes where Clyde had been, wearing an indecipherable expression.
Making our way through the murky gloom, the flashlights cast swaths of bluish-white light just ahead of our footsteps.
We arrived at the squad cars, their bright blue and red strobes spearing the darkness with artificial color and piled into the back of Garcia's cruiser and as we drove away I was struck by something:
Clyde hadn't smelled like the dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I was exhausted but happy. Finally.
We were almost to Grampsʼ and it was on of those Halloweens that arrive clear and cold. I'd had to commit to wearing a coat, which seemed vaguely uncool. After all, with Jade curled up next to me, I felt pretty warm.
The week leading up to my birthday had been full of questions, speculations, confessions.
Best of all, Jade and I were no longer separated.
Zealots that belonged to the separatist group, Mundanes Unite, had raised John Smith and his sister Anne. Mom had explained to me that it was a group set on the control and incarceration of paranormals.
In other words, Professional Creepers.
The Smith kids had never had a chance in a household like that. Day in and day out, they were preached to ab
out how dangerous all paranormals were. It was only a matter of time before someone snapped.
Garcia had gone to each family personally, delivering the news of the killer's demise. Brett's family took it the hardest. To think that John Smith had chosen a toddler at the same park that I was in, that I was playing at that day . Well, it had been a terrible, near miss.
It could have been me.
Didn't make sense that Ceci had been targeted. But Anne Smith had confessed they used her death as a distraction to lead the cops away from the Null theory.
A distraction. Somehow, I didn't think Officer Cline would think about Ceci's death that way. Ever.
The cops kept the tidbit about the zombies eating Smith out of the papers somehow. Parker was kept under wraps too. He'd been listed only as a “good Samaritan.” I wasn't so sure about that but I knew one thing:
He'd saved me. A supremely weird development.
I didn't know how to feel about that part. He was neatly in the “bad guy” box. Now I'd have to rethink his role in my life. He'd gone against the Graysheets to help me. Why? And he had zombies with him all the time. It was a new world order, I thought. Too bizarre for words.
As we got out of Bry's car, I saw Jonesy and my parents huddled around the fire, their breath misting.
A smile broke over my face. The first one in what felt like a million years.
Mia's car pulled up after Bry's and the rest of the group got out, finding a spot by Grampsʼ ginormous fire.
Jade was crammed in the crook of my arm as we slowly approached the fire.
The moon rode high over our heads, the stumps in the lake bed frozen spears dotting the horizon.
Dad winked. “Happy Birthday, Son.”
“It's been a helluva year, Caleb!” Gramps agreed, stabbing a dog through the middle and hanging it over the flames.
I laughed. “Yeah, it sure has.”
“I hope it's not a trend. I, for one, want things to settle down,” Mom murmured.
John and the other kids were solemn but Jonesy broke the mood.
“Settling down is not part of the program for Caleb. Excitement follows him around.” With that, he bent Sophie back where she stood and laid a big one right on her mouth.
In front of his parents.
