Death 07 - For the Love of Death (3 page)

“You cannot abuse your power due to your familial tie.”

Brad chuckles. “Why ever not? And speaking of which, how much time do you have from wifey before your shit slides downhill?”

Clyde doesn’t have long. If he’s away from Bobbi Gale for more than several hours, he will begin to rot. The earth is always waiting to reclaim its dead.

“Accidents happen,” Clyde says lightly.

Brad narrows his eyes at Clyde. “To whom?”

“To everyone, of course.” He gives Brad the weight of his hazel eyes. They glitter their intent.

Brad stares back, the gauntlet thrown.

Without a backward glance, Clyde takes me out of the dump.

Brad's laughter follows us.

Pax

We break apart. Gramps holds my gaze, and I let him. It should be totally awkward, but here’s the deal: it never is with him. We’re both broken up by Gram’s impending death. We’re in the same headspace.

He’s old school, so his eyes are dry. I cry for us both. I’m from another era. We’re not above crying if our lives get flushed down the toilet.

He claps me on my shoulder, handing me the grease rag, and I rub my fingers off.

“Better clean up—use the mechanic soap.”

“Yeah, I know, Gramps.” I smile.

It’s short-lived, that little reprieve. I feel him.

Clyde.

And Deegan.

“Gramps,” I call, and his sharp gaze finds me.

No preamble, no pleasantries.

His eye slim down on me, interpreting my expression. “We got a little disaster making its way here?”

I nod.

“Well.” Gramps hikes up his old-guy pressed blue jeans. “Bring it.” He pops open his door and grabs the twelve-gauge.

A guffaw bursts out of me. “Gramps—
damn
, settle. It’s just Clyde and Dee.”

Gramps’ tension doesn’t ease up. “Yeah?” He jams a new cig in his mouth and lights it one-handed, scowling through the smoke. “We’ll see if they’ve got a tailwind of bad.” Gramps of the Paranoia squared. ’Course, he’d been through some heavy shit in his time. Dad had told me some of it.

Not all.

And Dad couldn’t say dick to me about my temper. His had been legendary. I think it still could be, given the right circumstances.

Clyde appeared holding Dee in his arms. Gooseflesh sprouted like a disease over my arms. I was moving before I knew I’d begun.

“What the fuck, Clyde?” My gaze roamed my sister for injury.

“Language, young master.”

I scowl. “Yeah, okay, but you’re coming in here like a cannon with Dee all, I don’t know—what’s wrong with her?”

I looked my sister over. At first glance, she looks like Mom. But even a casual scrutiny brings out what she really looks like. One hundred percent Native American.

And boy, in this time, it's as rare as red hair.

Gram and Grandpa did the genealogical testing to determine their origins. Because that’s just the way Grandpa Kyle rolled, being a geneticist and all, and they’d found Grandpa was an eighth-blood. Hadn’t even known it. With the Indigenous Peoples Act, all native blood was sacred.

So when my Cherokee mother had married my dad, the drops mixed, and Deegan turned out looking more like full blood than the half she possessed.

Right now, her dusky skin was a little on the pale side.

Not that I let her know my concern.
Not on a bet.

Gramps cocking the shotgun one-handed made us all flinch. Not an easy skill. Gramps can bring it.

“What in the blue blazes is going on, Clyde?” A billow of smoke wafted between us.

Clyde’s nose twitches. “Mac.”

Dee's eyes pop open. “I’m okay, Pax. Chill.”

Clyde sets Dee on the ground, and she comes to my shoulder. I drag a hand through my hair. “God, you had me sphinctering out.”

“She was at the dump,” Clyde explains.

I frown. “Why, Dee?”

She shrugs. The knees of her jeans are full of stains. “I just went for a walk….” She looks down at her feet. “Ditched my Null.”

Dumb.
“God! Dee, ya could’ve—eff me. Something bad could have happened.”

“Clearly, something did, Paxton.” Gramps holds his loaded shotgun at his side, stamping out the offending cigarette with a boot. Meaty treads demolish it into cement older than Dad.

“Okay, start from the beginning, Dee.” I say it calmly, but I’m getting worked into a lather. Dee doesn’t like to bother me with issues. But then there's the consequence. It's always worse. Always.

She says quietly, “I don’t want you to get another strike, Pax.”

I tie my longish hair in a band at my nape. “Here’s the thing. We’ve got us”—I point to her then my own chest—“and that’s it.”

“Bull hokey,” Gramps says.

I move my gaze to his shotgun and wave a palm in the air. “You know I dig ya, Gramps. That’s not what I mean. I mean—I think I know what this is about, and I gotta say, I needed you to reach me, Dee.”

“Who was it this time?”

Clyde turns away, stuffing his hands in his trousers and pacing off. He watches the small waves in distant Lake Tapps, and I turn back to my sister.

“It’s that energy-sucking Null.”

I narrow my eyes, and she shrinks. “I’m not mad at you, Dee, but I want to kick his ass. Thompson, right?”

She nods.

I slap my fist into my palm. “I effing knew it.”

Gramps puffs on his cig, the end a cherry on fire. “Who’s this punk?”

I slide a glance his way. “Probably don’t need the shotgun, Gramps. It’s not a load and go.”

Gramps makes a noise of disbelief in the back of his throat. “Yeah?” he asks casually, when he’s anything but. “Is he over sixteen?”

Shit.
“Yeah, Gramps.”

Deegan giggles. I turn to her, and she tries not to laugh. From personal experience, it’s nearly impossible to restrain myself once I feel like laughing. Dee’s the same.

“Don’t encourage Gramps’ manic shit, Dee.”

“Young man, you have a foul mouth,” Clyde says to the water.

“Yeah, I know.”

Gramps sighs. “We’re all upset about Ali. I understand you kids need to work out your”—Gramps waves around his free hand, obviously searching his emotional framework for the right word. My lips twitch. A total challenge. He gives me a look. “Grief.”

He’s triumphant, and even Clyde gives a small smile. Now that’s a hard dude.

Zombie.

His death energy beats like the heart in my chest.

I’m a five-point AFTD like my dad. Everyone is constantly romancing me for zombie work.

Doesn’t interest me.

Deegan’s a four-point, and personally, I think her brand is worse. She claims she can’t raise corpses, but that’s a ready defense mechanism from the trauma of what she
can
raise. People who die violently. People who have killed the same way.

Well that's a helluva lot, actually.

I answer Gramps' question. “He's this douche nozzle that is a champion for all the mundanes, but he's really a Null.”

Gramps' face scrunches. “Let me put on my thinking cap.” We wait. Gramps isn't big on interruptions when he's puzzling through something. He wags a finger at me. “If he's a Null, he's a Random.”

I shake my head.

Clyde says, “No. Our wonderful government has taken it upon themselves to catalog Nulls as mundanes.”

“You said this putz sucked on Deegan?” Gramps pushes his teeth out. “Like a vamp?” He cups his hands slightly by his shoulders, in a ready pouncing stance.

I laugh. Vampires,
what a load of shit
. “Kinda. But he’s some siphon who hasn’t been caught. There isn’t a category for Drainers.”

Gramps sweeps his palm to me. Throwing the safety of his shotgun on, he gives a last wary glance into the gloom outside his fortress. “You got a name for him?”

I put my hands on my hips, see grease in my fingernails, and let them fall. Mom will have my ass if she has to degrease another pair of jeans. I shrug. “It’s just a made up thing. Like Dad’s name for the Helix Complex.”

Gramps tips his head back. “
Ah
, the Graysheets.”

“Turd central,” Dee mutters.

Gramps gives Dee a hard glance. “Did they hurt you, pumpkin?”

Dee keeps her crap together, but I note the fine tremble of her lip. “Not really. He just scared me. Him and his goon squad.”

Gramps nods. “Yes. There’s a ready solution for that.” He looks like he’s going to offer something, but we all say
no
at the same time.

He kinda growls low in his throat, part affirmation, part disgust. “How do I know these ruffians won’t be stopping by?”

“He got what he wanted,” Dee says.

My eyes meet Clyde's.

“And Clyde happened along, missy?” Gramps asks.

She nods and Clyde's eyes go to hoods.

Gramps studies Clyde's expression. “Bullshit. You're keeping an eye on the youngsters.”

Youngsters.
“Gramps…”

“Save it, Pax. When you’re older than dirt, everyone is young.”

“Except me,” Clyde says neutrally.

Gramps stares at him for a long moment. “True.”

His gaze goes to Deegan. “Did ya call Clyde?”

Dee shakes her head. “Not on purpose.”

Gramps palms his chin, a five o’clock shadow rasping with the movement. “I don’t like that Deedie has no way to defend herself if these losers come calling. They had to have been following you.”

He doesn't wait for confirmation.

She nods and gives me an uneasy glance.

God, it just gets worse and worse. This is why I don't want to take some of those seven figure jobs they keep enticing me with. Who's here to protect the fam?

Nobody. I look from Clyde to Gramps. Not that Clyde can't toss cars.

Not that Gramps can't bring the home defense. Hell, Dad told me about his creativity with a socket wrench incident.

If you're a Random, you
need
another Random to watch over you.

“I can take care of myself,” Dee says softly.

Clyde arches an eyebrow, his hands knotted behind his muscular body. My gaze goes skyward.

Gramps’ gaze narrows. Whether to see through the smokescreen he creates or because he wants to force her to confess, I can’t tell.

No, Dee,
I say silently.

I’m tired of hiding, Pax. So tired.

I close my eyes in resignation. Two kids born of parents that should have been sterile. One powerfully gifted in Affinity for the Dead, the other a strong Empath. And that's the paranormal tip of the iceberg for us.

Caleb Hart’s latent genome possesses all paranormal markers. Dormant until passed.

Recessive until realized.

Deegan looks up at me with crocodile tears in her mossy green eyes. “I could have taken care of them.”

Jesus, Dee
. I scrub my face with my palm. She might not get over that. Like ever.

“What?” Gramps stamps out his cig and grips her shoulders, his gaze going to me.

“I can send them away.”

“I beg your pardon?” Clyde’s eyebrows draw together as he comes to stand beside us.

Dee flicks her gaze to Clyde. “Somewhere…”

“You mean a Dimensional,” Gramps says hopefully, while he and Clyde reserve a disquieting stare for each other.

I shake my head.

“No, like a black hole.”

The silence is its own presence.

Gramps is speechless while tears stream down Dee’s face.

Clyde wraps his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t fret, dear heart.”

Dee swipes at her nose, and Clyde offers her his handkerchief. “That’s a very interesting talent,” he offers. But I see his face.

Gramps’s gaze is for me.

I exhale in a rush. “Yeah, you can say that.”

Deegan

Shame fills me.
I shouldn't have told.
Even if it
is
Gramps. And Clyde.

Dad told me never,
ever.
Never.

Tell.

I press my forehead against the car window. It’s a polymer mix of glass and Lucite. Shatterproof.

I can’t stop the tears.

The steering wheel creaks under Pax’s grip. He’s pissed.

“I’m sorry.”

My words fog the window.

“I know.”

Silence. Then, “It’s just… if anyone finds out you can will those things into existence…”

He doesn’t finish.

He doesn’t need to. They won’t study me; they’ll kill me. The HC is gone, but our government is still active.

There will always be plotters
, Dad says.

“It's like you,” I say.

I shake my head. “No. Me seeing other dimensions alongside our world, traveling to them, is not... hell—collapsing it.”

I turn on him. “Do you think I want this?” Fury rides my voice like a passenger.

He pulses the car to autopilot, and the iconic green figure of a man blinks on in the middle of the odometer, casting eerie emerald phosphorescence on our faces.

Pax looks at me, his eyes so much like Gram’s it makes my breath hitch. Trees hurtle past as we move at one hundred fifty-five miles per hour. The sensor softly beeps, alerting the car to obstacles.

“You
know
I don’t think that,” he says.

My lip trembles. “Don’t be mad, Pax.” Another tear leaps out of my eye, escaping like a traitor down my face.

“Come ’ere.”

He holds out his arms, and I climb onto his lap as I used to back when the talents started to hit me.

Like a punch. One after another, after another.

The car blasts us toward our house as I sit in Pax's lap in comfortable silence.

The sensor bleats like a goat and we jerk our eyes to the windshield.

Another car is parked in the middle of the road. The middle of the sky.

Pax's arms convulse around me, his casual embrace going to crushing instantly.

Our velocity is too great. We’ll crash.

“Dee!” Pax hits the red button where dome lights used to reside back in the day. In the year 2049, we
think
our needs. Except for the one Pax executes.

Fine netting bursts out of the interior seams, capturing us in a web so fine and tight I can’t breathe.

“Pax!” I grunt, panicking.

The car flips as though in slow motion, in a maneuver to avoid the car in front of us. Our speed makes it impossible to compensate, and it lands against the invisible pulse rails, hitting the ground once and bouncing hard. My stomach heaves, but I’m too frightened to puke.

The roof caves in as we tumble.

The net holds me against Pax, and I scream. He tightens his arms around me a second time, and my ribs shriek in protest.

One of his arms bursts through the webbing, a tensile strength seventy times the human capacity to stretch to breaking.

He slams his palm into the roof, keeping it from crushing us.

“Pax,” I whisper.

His arm snaps, and he yells.

The car flips one more time and lands upright.

It spins slowly in a single revolution, righting itself on the tracks. The correction is possible. Pulse tracks cover the entire surface of the earth, even houses.

<
Safe arrest of moving vehicle reached
> the auto sensor proclaims.

A breath shudders out of me.

I wipe away the netting, and Pax groans. “That fucking hurt.”

<
Humerus fracture detected
>

We burst out laughing.

“That’s a no shit.”

Pax tries to move. Falls back. “Unlock.”

<
Hart, Paxton; voice recognition authenticated
>

“I hate her voice.”

“Bee-otch for sure.”

Pax groans.

We smile.

The door opens and I crawl over my brother, half-falling outside.

<
Medical assistance necessary
> the tiny voice grates.

“Yes,” Pax says with a heave as he rolls out.

A whir and clicking sounds and I frown, looking at the sensor gauge.

<
Override
>

Pax straightens outside our car. Its beat up roof looks like a crimped bullet. He staggers forward, his own frown holding steady, and grips the door rim with his good hand. He grits his teeth.

“Authenticate.”

<
Override
>

My eyes meet his.

We turn, looking at the moron who blocked our path. We shouldn't have gotten in an accident anyway. All vehicles are equipped with safety avoidance. It's been in place for a decade.

The car is gone and men stand where it was.

Men with guns.

*

“Dee,” Pax says.

I swallow. “Yeah?”

Be ready.

Yes
, I mind-whisper back.

I chance a glance at Pax and his skin has a grayish-white tinge.

Shock.

“Pax… you’re scaring me.”

He’s holding his arm, jerking his jaw toward the crew of men in suits. “They’re scarier.” He flicks his gaze to mine. “Get behind me, Dee.”

I do as he asks.

“Hello, Mr. Hart,” Mr. Cheerful greets us.

I scan the area for witnesses. However, with the void of children, that translates directly to no games, no school, no… whatever.

No soccer moms are whizzing by to see a big brother moment.

The man before us moves like a spider.

I figure he’s Random, but I can only guess. It’s not like my best friend, Pritzi. It’s her gift. She knows and can locate any Random in the world. Of course, she’s keeping that part to herself.

There are five of them. All early twenties.

No,
one is
older.

“We have been inviting you for a long time, Mr. Hart.”

Pax grimaces. “Listen, I keep looking around for my dad when ya say my name like that. And”—he moves his body fully in front of mine, utterly blocking their view of me—“I’m not a fan of your techniques.”

Spider lifts the muzzle of his gun.

“Don’t,” Pax says.

He says it like a warning, not a suggestion.

“We're not here to harm, Paxton.”

“Clearly,” I mutter.

Quiet, Dee.

Pax's teeth begin to chatter. The losers move closer.

Fuck, they've got a Null.

How many?
I ask.

Five points, of effing course.

“You won’t listen to our business proposals, so we became creative.”

“Is it because I wouldn’t go out with you guys? Feelin’ all rejected and shit?”

Oh, Pax
. He has to stir the hornet’s nest.

The man’s face falls into hard lines. His gaze tries to find me behind my brother’s body.

“What about your sister? Does she want to ‘go out’ with us?” His smile is cruel.

Pax tenses.

They find his weak spot. He’d let someone take off his legs like an ant underneath a magnifier. But if they were to threaten me…

“You touch her and you die.”

Yep.

“Tsk, tsk, Paxton. You have a very unfortunate temper.”

“Good thing you’re aware, now buzz off.”

I breathe in and out slowly. The other four inch closer.

Twilight edges toward us, stealing daylight. Pax notices.

My heart thuds, palms slicking with sweat, mouth going dry.
Pax, I'm going to do something bad.

His emotions come hard and fast in my head like an old-fashioned shutter of a camera.

Guilt, responsibility and love coalesce, bursting over his words:
No. You won't have to.

They wear all black, moving in the growing shadows as the sun sets below the horizon. Tangerine bleeds over us, the colors wash their clothes to the color of a bruise.

I glance at Pax as the sun sinks.

He blinks, and a thin iridescent sheath slides over his slate blue irises.

Hang on.

Spider sighs, waving his hand. “Get the sister.”

Pax takes my hand. “The fuck you will.”

One of the other's screams, “His eyes!”

Spider's gaze arrows down on Pax and he bellows, “Get him!”

Too late.

Pax blinks again and we're gone.

Yet we still remain.

Pax has tried to explain it to me. As though our earth is a hard cover book from the past set upright, each page almost touches the next as it fans between the back and front cover, thinly separated.

Multiverse theory. Proven by the late physicist Stephen Genning. Each paper-thin slice is another world. Another dimension. But Paxton can see the other worlds with his second eyelid.

Proven but unexplored. Until now.

He brings me against his side, and the assassins whirl around inches from us.

Worlds from us.

As long as Pax touches me, I can see too.

When Pax begins to slide, I go with him.

“
Pax!” I scream.

Don't pass out!

He falls to the ground in this world and I hang on. As long as I touch him, I can see.

His eyes flutter. Then shut.

The men in our world appear to swim behind a transparent veil, though it looks like a sheet of running water separates us. I'm on my knees next to my brother when I hear a furtive noise behind me.

“Well, well. If it isn’t the bitch Dee-gan.”

I look up, and Brad Thompson stands before me. Not the Brad Thompson of my world but of this one.

His hair’s longer,
I notice randomly
.
I swallow hard.
“Get out of here, Brad.”

I roll my lip into my teeth to keep the panic at arm’s length, gripping Pax’s hand so hard I’m probably cutting off circulation.

“You just pop up like a bad penny, as they say.”

His creepy use of Gramps’ expression deepens my unease.

“What?”

“I got rid of you, yet here you are. With your undead brother along for the ride.” He swivels his gaze to Pax, peacefully sleeping in an injury-induced unconsciousness.

“That’s okay. It was so fun killing you the first time, I’m not going to question the unreality of you showing up again. This time, you’ll stay dead.”

In that moment, I want to be a Body like Pax so much. I hurt with the want of it. I could crush his windpipe, protect myself with that Herculean strength.

Instead, Brad tears me off Pax. The world goes black, our contact severed.

I'm blind.

Helpless.