The Riser Saga

by Becca C. Smith

  A man’s voice answered. “We didn’t do anything. We were told that hooking him up to the computer would help him. When we took him he was already comatose.”

  In front of me the man behind the voice stepped forward. He looked like he was Turner’s age. Old. Deep suntanned lines around his eyes and grey hair cut short. He looked like he could have been handsome when he was young, but it was impossible to tell since he was at least fifty. I had to admit he was in incredible shape though. I could tell through his black attire that the guy was cut. I didn’t even know old people could work out. You’d think they’d break or something.

  I knew who he was.

  Harry.

  He held himself with such assurance it was intimidating, but I couldn’t let him see me sweat.

  “You must be Harry,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster.

  “And you’re Chelsan Turner,” Harry replied with a smile.

  “Derée,” I corrected him.

  “Interesting,” Harry said, looking at me as if I had done something to explain the answers to the universe.

  “What’s interesting?” I should have let it go, but hey… I couldn’t.

  “That little microscopic sneer your lip did when I called you ‘Turner.’ Now I know how you feel about Geoffrey. I still think you’re a liar, but maybe I can use your hatred.” Harry walked over to stand directly across from me, with Ryan’s prone body between us.

  I tried not to look at corpse-Gramps. It was quite possible I did sneer. I didn’t want to be associated with my grandparents no matter what kind of truce we had come to. I guess it was to my advantage that I felt that way in this moment, but I can’t imagine what Turner was thinking as he heard Harry accuse me of basically being repulsed by him. Knowing Gramps, he could give a rat’s ass.

  I decided to appeal to this Harry guy’s heartstrings. If he had any. “Please. Ryan didn’t do anything to you. I just want to take him home. He’s very sick. He could die here.”

  “That’s not what our mutual friend thinks.” Harry cut me off like I was an irritating fly.

  “Mutual friend?” I shuddered to ask. (And I really hoped he was talking about Isabelle and not who I thought he was talking about.)

  “Elisha,” Harry said as if… I don’t know… Isabelle hadn’t told him anything!!!!

  “Elisha?! Are you kidding me?!” I turned to Isabelle. “Did you not hear a single word I said?!”

  “Calm down,” Isabelle stepped forward shaking her head. “Of course I heard you. I just don’t believe you.”

  “Oh really? Is that why this building is hermetically sealed and there’s nothing dead I could possibly use to defend myself with?” I said as sarcastically as possible.

  But I could see it in her eyes. She had no clue what I was talking about. And that freaked Isabelle out a bit.

  Elisha must have prepped the place. Harry and Isabelle were just gullible idiots.

  Isabelle tried to defend herself, “Harry has been in contact with Elisha’s people for the past two months and she’s proven herself an ally.”

  Her people? Eva probably. Since Elisha had been in cocoon world until recently, neither Harry nor Isabelle really had the chance to see how insane-o Elisha was.

  “So basically, at Nancy’s house, that was just for show? You two have been working with Elisha the whole time?” I felt so stupid. And betrayed. And stupid. Wait a minute. “Harry was working with Elisha and not you? You had no idea.”

  Isabelle and Harry exchanged looks.

  Isabelle hadn’t faked a thing!

  When Isabelle talked with me she was being sincere. Then, when she came back to report to Harry what I’d said, Harry told her that I had lied and that Elisha was a friend and not a foe. Of course Isabelle would trust Harry over me, she’d worked with him for centuries. And, come to think of it, she probably thought Max was just Max and not Elisha puppeteering him.

  “Harry set me straight,” Isabelle confirmed.

  “You two are even bigger idiots than I remember,” Corpse-Gramps spoke up.

  Oh man.

  Isabelle and Harry turned to the dead guard, slightly disarmed by his statement.

  “Do we know you?” Harry asked.

  “Dead thing! Remember?! I control dead things. So does Turner. Better than I do.” I rolled my eyes. Talk about stubborn dummies. They hated Turner so much, they hadn’t believed a word I had said to Isabelle. I had given her state secrets for crap’s sake. I made a ripe smelling opossum bite her leg!

  “That’s Turner?” Harry didn’t look like he was buying it for a second.

  “No, that’s a dead guy being controlled by Turner,” I shot back snottily. If I had taken a second to really comprehend my situation and the danger I was in, I might not have had so much attitude, but I couldn’t help it. I was a lot more angry at the fact that Isabelle hadn’t believed me than I cared to admit. Sure, she was an assassin, sure she was Turner’s mortal enemy, sure she had tried to kill me, but damn, I hated it when people thought I was a liar. It came from the fact that my whole life I actually was a liar. Lying about my power, lying about keeping my stepfather alive, lying about who I was. Now that everything was out in the open, I was super-paranoid about what people thought of me. Especially when it came to lying.

  “Elisha said you’d tell us these lies. She warned us in advance that your true power was in making things fly.” Harry looked triumphant, like he had exposed me for the traitor that he thought I was.

  Aside from his idiocy, it was the second time where Elisha wanted people to believe I could make things fly. What was she up to?

  “And Turner may have been clever, but he didn’t have any powers. I’ve known that man my whole life and the last thing he is capable of is black magic.” Harry’s face had turned angry.

  “That was your own stupid ignorance,” Corpse-Gramps said.

  Harry went from angry to furious in a half a second. He pulled out his gun and shot the already dead soldier in the head. “Let’s see how dead you really are,” he said fully expecting the man to drop dead in front of us.

  Nope.

  Still standing.

  Lamebrain.

  “You were saying?” I sighed.

  Harry couldn’t or wouldn’t believe it. He emptied his entire bullet clip into the corpse, shredding its uniform and skin.

  Still standing.

  But barely.

  Gramps didn’t have the kind of control over dead bodies the way I did. Even for me, the less skin they had the harder they were to control, but for him it was a lot harder.

  The dead guy turned to me, “Little help here.”

  I took control over what was left of the corpse.

  Gross.

  He looked like a mangled zombie, but he was intact enough that I could control him comfortably.

  I turned to Harry, “Look, duh, we’re telling the truth. Watch.” I made the dead guy jump around and do a little spin. “Elisha is lying to you. You’re trusting the wrong person. I don’t know why she wants everyone to believe that I can make things float or fly or whatever, but I can’t. Unless it’s dead, then I can. But other than that, I can’t.” Good speech.

  “You always were a stupid fool,” Turner’s corpse sputtered. Considering he was still able to access this guy’s vocal chords while I was controlling his body was pretty impressive.

  Harry stood there.

  Frozen.

  Thinking, no doubt.

  It was one thing to hear Isabelle talk about witnessing me controlling the dead, Harry could write it off as me tricking her. But to see it firsthand was throwing him for a loop.

  Weighing what he was seeing in front of his face with what he’d been told by Elisha. He must have truly believed her because he was definitely struggling in his brain.

  THWAP! THWAP! THWAP!

  I saw it before I could react.

  A swarm of dead flies carried three metal rods toward us: one rod whacked Isabelle unconscious and the other two
knocked-out two more of Harry’s guys.

  “All my toys in one room. I couldn’t have planned it more perfectly.” Elisha’s voice echoed from the back of the warehouse.

  Harry was all military.

  His men had their guns out and pointed at Elisha and Eva as they approached our little group.

  No Max.

  I stood in front of Ryan’s unconscious body to protect him.

  “What’s the meaning of this, Elisha?” Harry barked. He was seriously pissed.

  “Um, you’re stupid, like I told you.” Did I really just say that? I was shocked at my own attitude, but this guy really annoyed me.

  With at least thirty guns pointed at her, I’d have thought Elisha would be scared.

  Nope. Too nuts.

  Elisha strode over to Harry and me.

  Dang.

  Seeing her in person was crazier than seeing her on the holo. The girl was drop dead gorgeous. This, I thought, might have something to do with Harry’s unwavering belief in Elisha. She bamboozled him with her looks. Guys! Her large violet eyes were piercing and stunning. I couldn’t stop staring at her. I felt like an imbecile. Elisha looked like she could go to my high school, dressed in a tank and jeans. She even had the nerve to wear a pair of Chucks. Evil.

  Why wasn’t she worried about the guns?

  Elisha had knocked out Isabelle because of her powers, but why the other two soldiers? Did they have powers as well?

  I knew better than to ask her directly, so I kept quiet and let Harry and Elisha hash out their beef.

  In the meantime, I tried to casually find a way out of this warehouse tomb!

  Elisha and Eva stopped a few feet from us. Eva had a self-satisfied look on her face as she stared me down.

  Elisha’s grin grew wide as she glared at me as well. “Hello, Chelsan.”

  I was glad she was an adult now. Before, even knowing she was a hundred years old, she still looked like a kid, but as an adult…

  ...I was planning the ways I’d kick her butt.

  “You better explain yourself, Elisha, or I’m just going to shoot you and call it a day,” Harry said with such intensity it gave me goose bumps.

  Elisha laughed. “You mean like this?”

  Before I could react, out of the ventilation shafts a handful of dead crows soared through the air faster than I could blink.

  THUNK! THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!

  Each dead crow slammed into the jugulars of four of Harry’s men. Blood sprayed everywhere as the men gurgled and dropped to the floor, dead, with freaking crows sticking out of their necks!

  I was in shock. The crows were too fast. I didn’t have time to stop them. Now there were four dead men lying at my feet. I waited to take control of the corpses, not sure if Elisha and Eva would be stronger than me and simply take control of the dead soldiers themselves.

  Elisha had a better grasp on dead things than I did. I wasn’t even sure I could have made the birds move that fast. My worst nightmare was coming true: Elisha knew my powers better than I did.

  And she could use them to create more death and destruction.

  “Fire!” Harry screamed with fury.

  Every soldier in the sealed warehouse pulled their triggers.

  And a bunch of harmless clicking sounds followed.

  Not one gun went off.

  Harry looked stunned and, actually, a little bit scared. “Charlie?” he said in horror.

  Elisha smiled. “Charlie’s with me now.”

  That’s when I saw it.

  Someone dead arriving through the same back-of-the-warehouse entrance Elisha had come through. He was about five foot ten, of Asian decent and looked like he was in his late twenties (so really he could be any age, either pre-Age-pro, or poor). He walked over to Elisha and Eva.

  “Charlie, how could you?” Harry’s face showed the betrayal he felt.

  “He’s dead, you dolt,” Turner’s dead puppet sniped at Harry.

  Harry couldn’t accept this answer, “Charlie, we’ve been working together for three-hundred years. I was wrong to trust Elisha. She’s our enemy.”

  Charlie spoke, his voice low and gravelly, “You can rot in hell.”

  Harry physically flinched.

  I felt Harry’s pain. Roberta had made my mom say monstrous things to me when she controlled Mom’s dead body. Elisha was being cruel for her own entertainment.

  Time to see if I could beat her.

  I connected to Charlie’s black swirling hole.

  Elisha whirled on me. “No you don’t.” She turned to Eva. “Eva.”

  WHAM!

  I felt the two of them knock me off of Charlie’s spinning black chasm with force.

  Okay.

  Two to one.

  “Charlie’s mine and so are you,” Elisha grinned at me.

  I was assuming that whatever Charlie’s power was, it involved stopping guns. So, some kind of control over metal? I really didn’t know. I really didn’t want to know. I just didn’t want Elisha to have all that power.

  “What do you need with me, Elisha?” I asked. This was the third time Elisha had tried to extract me. Why on earth would she want me? She had my power already. Did she want to kill me so I couldn’t stop her from using dead people? She’d have to kill Grams and Gramps too since they could do the same thing.

  Besides, if she wanted me dead, she’d have killed me already.

  “That’s my business.” Elisha made the freshly killed corpses with the birds in their necks stand up. She forced them pull out the crows and walk over to Ryan’s body on the gurney.

  I stepped in front of them. “You’re not taking Ryan.”

  “Yes, I am. And…” Elisha made Charlie concentrate, I could literally feel it. What was she doing? In less than a second every soldier in the warehouse jerked their guns up to their heads and shot themselves with a collective BOOM!

  Harry’s entire army dropped to the ground, dead.

  Harry was frozen in astonishment.

  I was speechless.

  I couldn’t help but feel that I let that happen.

  I was so enraged I could feel my brain shatter in red hot fury.

  Elisha had just killed more innocent people.

  “Kill Isabelle, Terence and Dean,” Elisha ordered Charlie. “They’re easier controlled dead like you.”

  No.

  Elisha may have my power now, but I’ve had it longer.

  SLAM!

  I connected into Charlie’s chest and snapped Elisha and Eva’s hold over him like they were twigs.

  I could barely hear Elisha scream orders to pin me down as I disconnected Charlie from his black swirling hole.

  “NO!” Elisha screamed in rage.

  Charlie slunk to the floor. He’d been dead a long time because he rotted instantly, turning into a pile of gloppy mush and bones on the floor.

  Next.

  I connected to every single dead soldier and made them rise and turn on Elisha and Eva.

  “Guns work now,” I snarled.

  I made the men point their guns at Elisha.

  I could feel Elisha and Eva trying to tag team it, and take over the bodies themselves.

  Nope.

  Stronger.

  And way more pissed.

  “Guess I’m still more powerful than you,” I said. I sounded more impressive than I felt. I could feel the two of them gnawing at my hold on the soldiers, but I was able to hold them off.

  “Kill her!” I heard from two voices at once. I jumped slightly at the fact that both Corpse-Gramps and Harry were ordering me to kill Elisha. If it hadn’t been such a serious situation, I’d have yelled jinx.

  Kill Elisha.

  The thought rolled around in my brain and I wanted to do it. I wanted to stop the monster that was going to destroy the world if she wasn’t stopped. It would be so easy. Just make one of the corpses pull the trigger.

  But I couldn’t.

  I couldn’t kill anyone.

  As close a bond as I had with t
he dead, killing was something I could never do willingly.

  I’d killed too many times. Once when I was a kid and didn’t know what I was doing, and the second time when Elisha made me use the twins. But now, here, I was fully aware of what I’d be doing.

  And I couldn’t do it.

  Elisha saw this instantly.

  And she smiled.

  I turned to Harry. “Get Isabelle out of here before I lose control.” Then I focused on Turner’s corpse host. “Get into another body and take Ryan and everyone to safety.”

  Harry was angry, “I have to get Terence and Dean, too.”

  I had enough mojo to let Turner inhabit another body. When he was safely inside, I used the powers I had left to help him and four other dead guards carry Terence, Dean and Isabelle toward the exit. The corpse Turner controlled hurried to my side and started to unplug Ryan from the contraption.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Elisha said between gritted teeth, she was concentrating so hard. But she still took pleasure in holding something over my head.

  Ryan started to convulse as soon as the first suction cup was removed.

  “Put it back!” I screamed, and I almost lost my control over the corpses.

  Turner’s host put it back.

  “Just leave! I’ll stay with him!” I yelled.

  Even though it was a dead man in front of me, Turner’s eyes came through. “We’ll come back for you two.”

  “Just go!”

  Elisha and Eva were knocking on my control. I felt the dead men starting to twitch. I was going to lose my hold on them in a minute or two.

  Elisha was so concentrated on breaking through my power, she merely snarled at the corpses and Harry carrying the three unconscious people out of the warehouse. I could see the spinning holes of Turner’s dead army just beyond the door.

  Elisha was breaking through.

  I couldn’t fight it much longer.

  I sighed in relief as I saw the swirling black holes outside lift into the air toward safety. I hoped Turner was truly coming back for Ryan and me, but I wasn’t sure he was powerful enough to challenge Elisha’s ability. Only I was.

  And I was waning.

  How was I going to get out of this mess?

  Eva smiled, “At least we have what we really came for.”