Death Weeps Part 41

As I got nearer, I saw her stare at me as I came and a flutter of uncertainty welled inside my consciousness. But my step never faltered. All I saw was Jade.

It was simple, I loved her.

Jade Caleb came and she could feel his emotional signature before he touched her.

He didn't need to, she was tuned into it intimately. You didn't have to touch someone you'd been through that much with. Someone you knew that well.

At least she didn't.

She felt a tingle in her body as she watched Caleb, his perfect, muscular body, full of lithe grace approach her even as his face hardened when he caught sight of Brett standing behind her. He made her tremble, her need for him was so great.

Caleb was her sinful addiction.

She was dependent on him. He made her feel safe in a world that had been torn into shreds all around her.

That's why she'd have to let him go.

CHAPTER 23.

I saw it on her face and didn't want to believe it.

It was such a sure feeling of denial that I embraced it like a drowning victim.

Jade came forward and took both my hands in hers. I knew she was saying goodbye and it didn't even matter if it was the enhancer still surging through her bloodstream, or the connection to Brett. If I had to lose Jade... I didn't know if I could face it.

Survive it.

Instead, I wrapped her small body against mine and pressed her against me. When I knew she wanted the s.p.a.ce I released her just enough to search her face. There was love there, yes.

But there was resolution too. She had worked something out in her mind and I hated whatever it was.

Brett looked at me over her head and I knew somehow he was the cause of it.

"It isn't Brett," Jade said in a flat voice.

"How do ya know, Jade?" I asked her, gripping those small shoulders, staring into eyes that were determined, dark.

"I've figured out what I want out of life. I don't want to be protected anymore. I don't want to have to be."

I shook my head, dismissing it. "Do you love me?"

Tears welled in Jade's eyes, she was killing me. She nodded and said softly, "You know I do."

"Then let us be together!" I said, my voice rising.

"It's the drug, Jade," John said. "It's going to skewer all your logic..." he spread his tapered fingers on either side of his body. "You won't feel normal for a whole revolution."

"What?" Jade asked, turning to him.

John shrugged. "It'll be twenty-four to forty-eight hours before you can figure anything out as you normally would."

Sophie snorted. "Well, I feel pretty weird still."

"That seems normal to me," Tiff muttered to herself.

Even though we all heard.

Sophie narrowed her eyes on Tiff.

My attention refocused on Jade but she shook her head again. "I love you... but I don't want this life. The zombies, the violence... all of it. I'm tired, Caleb. I just want a normal life like every other teenage girl."

Her eyes begged me to understand. I just couldn't wrap my mind around her logic. We weren't normal. This was the new normal. Paranormals were never going to have a normal existence. It was having an existence of any kind that was the goal.

I knew that.

I looked around at my friends and saw a lot of them getting it too.

My eyes s.h.i.+fted back to Jade's as I heard the first chopper in the air.

The Graysheets had arrived, and with it... all semblance of normal and all the other things Jade had been talking about floated away on the wind like decaying leaves.

One idea at a time, lost to the storm of the Graysheets.

Jade and I stood uncomfortably close, so close as to touch... but... not.

Brett stood on the other side of her and I was so sh.e.l.l-shocked by her breaking up with me that I couldn't even rouse interest in the Arch Enemies touching down.

They used pulse choppers so they were utterly silent. Only the movement of the air they dispersed let me know they were here. And their ominous presence, suits and all.

The first of them departed the chopper before the blades stopped their rotation.

My stomach fell as I saw who stepped out first.

The Zondorae brothers.

Parker blanched, he couldn't contain his expression as Clyde, picking up on my surprise and unease came to stand beside me, flanking my position.

"I must ask: did we not leave these delinquents in the world of spheres?" Clyde asked.

"Yeah."

"Why then are they here?"

I didn't know.

I could tell Parker didn't.

Then Jonesy said, "Didn't we leave these a.s.swipes behind on purpose?" He looked at Randi. "You didn't like... do some kind of overlap and drag these two trolls by accident. 'Cuz, there aren't enough bridges for these guys here. Nope!" He threw up his hands. "All our bridges in this world are full up!"

He folded his arms and glared at the brothers.

"You can't beat us, Caleb Hart," Joe said.

I wasn't thinking about winning right then, but handing him his a.s.s sounded about right.

I moved before I knew that I had.

Gary tsk-tsked me. "No, Hart. For somebody that is so smart, you think with the primitive side of your brain too much."

"I didn't bring them," Randi said softly, as if to convince herself.

Gary looked at Randi and Alex pressed her in against his body protectively. "No, not by plan. But the echo of your power was enough for us to caboose a ride on your tailwind."

Randi paled, thinking that somehow, she was responsible for the Frankenstein Scientists reentry into our world.

Effing fantastic.

The brothers looked at Parker and smirked. "We know that you helped him, that you allowed sensitive and cla.s.sified genetic information into the hands of teenagers. There will be a reckoning for you. As of now, we do not have clearance to end you, but there will be a new protocol of control, Cadaver-Manipulator."

"I'm not going anywhere with you. You don't rank higher than me. You boys have done the bidding of our superiors. You have nothing new to offer. Me?" Parker jabbed a thumb into his athletic chest. "I can still raise people to manipulate for the good old U.S. of A."

"Not from where we're going to keep you, Parker," Joe Zondorae said, raising his gun to point it at Parker's chest.

They were gonna load him up with the juice.

Parker's power washed over and through me like a wave of death and I folded underneath the call.

The rats came from every corner of the dump, their eyes feral and red in the low light of late afternoon.

s.h.i.+t that was swift.

Then Zondorae pulled the trigger, impaling Jeffrey Parker in the chest. The short dart waved like an obscene flag out of one of his pecs.

"Caleb!" he shouted to me, throwing me the undead la.s.so.

Let's see if I could catch it.

I did but the d.a.m.nedest thing happened. Four suits went for Jade just as I was getting the hang of someone else's undead leash.

As Parker lost the battle with consciousness, the four Graysheets laid hands on my girl.

Who wasn't my girl any longer.

But that didn't matter, my heart wasn't a pulse switch.

That light inside me still burned for Jade like the torch it was.

An eternal flame.

Jade's scream pierced the air and I stopped thinking, it was that fast. I didn't even decide, I dropped the supernatural rope that Parker had launched at me to wield, seamlessly picking up my other role.

Defender.

I watched the rats scurry, thinking they were off the hook for good, no undead tether to hold them to the open, their nocturnal habitat unnaturally illuminated by a human who had called them after their last meal was long past.

I threw my own command at them, picking up the signature they put out. I let that s.h.i.+ft of undead energy shove out of me in a great, surging pulse and the rats stopped in their tracks, whiskers twitching.

Then the suits started shooting my rats, blowing them to bits, where the trembling globs of dead flesh trembled, still trying to move and honor my command.

Which hadn't been complicated. I was controlling death and probation be d.a.m.ned. I'd reached the end of my patience, my girl was in danger, Parker was unconscious, these d.i.c.kheads had f.u.c.ked with the fam.

I was doing a Carrie on them.

The rats moved forward in a wave of slick and coiled bodies of fleshy and hairy resistance. A wave of bodies slithered through the gra.s.s and attached themselves to the ankles of the Graysheets.

They blew them away. One dips.h.i.+t blew off his own foot in his panic to nail the rat.

"Nice!" Jonesy fist-pumped, thrilled by Mr. Footless.

Blood pumped out of his foot for my dead rats to feast on as the Graysheets began to haul Jade toward the chopper, Brett moving in.

"Stand down, pal," I said from somewhere outside my body.

Brett looked at me curiously as I called every rat within a one mile radius.

I was pleased when not just rats came. Of course, some of the rats were the size of small cats.

"Okay... G.o.dd.a.m.n... get that girl and let's get out of here!" Gary said, panic seeping in as he saw the Rodent Contingent.

I swept the net of power further just as one of the suits pressed the cold barrel of an M-5 against the tender skin of Jade's temple. Her eyes were so wide all I could see were the whites.

I speared the power of the dead at him, his gun... his arm.

Five of the rats nearest him sprung, mouths wide, tiny teeth like razors in their mouths.