“Lance Ryan healed,” Rachett commented dismissively.
“You let those… things… suck him dry?”
She felt her eyes bulge.
“I did,” he said, as serious as a priest.
Beth came to an understanding that day.
There were worse things than true death.
*
They were spit out of the pathway like newlings from a reluctant womb.
Beth landed hard.
Too much daydreaming and not enough preparation.
She did a somersault and landed on her ass with her legs out in front of her, breathing hard.
Merrick’s large hand stretched out and she took it.
He lifted her to standing.
Pitch-black night greeted them. It covered every surface, and Beth found herself momentarily disoriented.
But Jacky was not.
“Ah, hell. We have to walk it.”
“Where are we?” she asked, brushing off her clothes.
“About a mile from my house.”
Beth translated to metric.
One point six kilometers.
She barely caught her groan. It just wouldn't do. Really?
Merrick was already moving in the direction of Jacky's domicile.
Beth jogged to catch up, initializing her pulse.
A map grid lit up her screen. Jacky's house became larger until it filled the thin handheld viewer.
Got it.
She dove in alongside Jacky and Merrick, keeping pace easily, despite the filthy air, and the apparent night-vision issues seeming to plague Jacky.
“Damn!” he yelled, blowing whatever cover they'd hoped to maintain. “You guys have cat's eyes or somethinʼ?”
He klutzed along, banging into whatever was upright, all the way to his domicile. Streetlamps were not prevalent near Jacky's domicile.
They hung back on the sidewalk after arrival.
Low lights from the windows lit the front yard.
“That's weird…” Jacky said absently, studying the dwelling without approaching.
Beth frowned at his reaction.
“What?” Merrick asked, scanning the structure.
Beth didn't see anything amiss, either.
“Mom's not home.”
“Is that odd?”
Jacky's chin jerked back. “Hell, yeah, it's odd.” He snorted.
“I've been gone, she's probably had the entire universe looking for me. She'd be glued to the phone for sure…” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “Wait a sec—what day is it?”
“We try to jump on Thursdays. It's a better time. We're not sure why.”
“No, duh! The date?”
Beth looked at her pulse.
October 31.
About two weeks had passed since Jacky’s departure. Why was that day significant? Beth worked it mentally but couldn't remember.
Disgruntled, she turned to Merrick, but his attention was on a group of younglings making their way toward them.
They were dressed in a variety of costumes.
Suddenly, Beth knew.
Halloween: the creepy Three custom of begging for candy from others.
“Great,” Merrick commented.
“Hard to be inconspicuous.”
“This is the day my bro died,” Jacky said into the laughter-filled darkness.
Beth was startled.
She wasn't a fan of coincidence and was beginning to get an uneasy feeling.
From the tightness in Merrick's jaw, she saw she wasn't alone.
“Are you safe to be left here?” Merrick asked logically.
“Oh, yeah!”
But something in his expression held them back.
Trick-or-treaters weaved around them, utterly ignoring the presence of the two Reflectives in plain sight. The pulselights inside their small hands bobbed on the cement sidewalk ahead, lighting their paths.
She swung back to Jacky.
“My folks meet at his grave each year on the anniversary of Chase's death.”
“And that's where you believe them to be?”
Jacky frowned at Merrick. “Loosen up, would ya. Yeah, I think they're there.”
“We can take him to the yard of grave-stones.”
Merrick seemed to deliberate.
He nodded. “Yes, that would be fine.”
“You guys don't have to. I mean, I know you've got more important things to do.”
Merrick folded his arms as his eyebrows rose. Beth was a mirror of him.
“We do, do we?” Merrick asked.
“Yeah—like killing good old Chuck.”
That got their full attention.
“Why would you say that?” Merrick's face was carefully blank.
Beth's wasn't.
Jacky tapped his temple with two fingers. “’Cause I'm a thinker.”
He turned, walking away from his dwelling.
Jacky became very small as he left them on the sidewalk, swallowed by the dark.
Beth followed.
She heard Merrick’s soft tread behind her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jeb and Jasper followed Jacky to a different cemetery from the one where they'd made the pulse fingerprint strip sale.
Jeb was disgusted that he had only a thousand in Three currency left because of the mess at the eatery.
But there was nothing he could do; it was, as they said on Three, spilt milk.
In this case, spilt cash.
The sign above the entrance identified the cemetery as Scenic Hill. Jeb knew without looking that they were still vaguely on the east hill of the Kent Quadrant but lower than its very highest point.
Jeb could make out the Kent Valley below, overtaken with industry. Very little of the food-producing crops of the twentieth century remained. He shook his head. All that fertile soil wasted beneath concrete and recycled quartz.
Only some were smart, but as a whole, humanity was stupid, each thinking of themselves and not the collective good.
Soon enough, intellectuals of the current generation would make innovations that would sway the sheep.
The cemetery was well lit—though the gate was secure.
“I bet they keep this locked ’cause there'd be an assload of vandalism tonight.”
Jasper frowned, no doubt at Jacky’s colorful vocabulary.
Jeb answered, “I suppose that'd be the ʽtrickʼ part of this ghoulish little fest.”
“Ya suppose right,” Jacky said noncommittally.
“Then how can your parents be in here...” Beth rattled the iron gates. They were secure.
“My dad's kinda sneaky.”
His eyes met theirs in the gloom. “It's an important reason anyways.”
He swung his face from theirs.
“Allow me,” Jeb said and lifted the flap of his denims, revealing a slim tool. It was contained on a fob, which held several slim utensils.
He touched the ends to his initialized pulse, and each one glowed.
“Estimates?” Jeb asked Jasper, knowing she had a better handle on history than he did.
Jasper stooped to examine the lock and sighed. “Mid-twentieth century?”
Jeb extracted a tool about the size of a pair of tweezers and muttered, “Pre-1960…”
He inserted the tool into the keyhole, and reluctant tumblers ground out their acceptance of his burglarized pulse-hybrid lockpicks.
Jeb smiled when the lock moved inside and popped open the gate.
“That is effing slick as hell,” Jacky said, impressed.
“It's definitely a benny of being a Reflective,” Jasper said.
Jeb's lips tilted. She really was quite good at the Three lingo.
They entered.
He turned and adjusted the lock to make sure it appeared secure upon casual observation.
Jacky was already far ahead of them, and Jeb lifted his chin at Jasper. She nodded and tucked in closer to him, though she left the minimum hand-to-hand combat distance.
; Reflectives moved in loose groups. No one could engage properly if their close proximity constrained movement.
Jeb doubted seeing Jacky’s parents would warrant a defense. However, a Reflective was cautious first and presumptuous as a last resort.
They tracked Jacky as he moved between grave markers, climbing a small knoll. At the zenith stood three figures, one larger than the other two.
He frowned at what seemed a strange number but held their position.
Jasper distracted him by pointing to a sculpture just ahead of them. It towered at least four kilometers above them, a silvered glacial blue in the moonlight, which was waxing to full.
Jeb heard low voices and paused, moving to the marble angel, its trumpet between its pursed lips in mid-bellow.
“What is this?” Jasper asked.
Jeb gave a very small shake of his head.
“I don't know.”
He caught her eyes in the gloom, dark pools of onyx in her pale face. Jeb hesitated. “But I know I do not like it.”
He turned back, watching.
Jasper saw it first. “I know that male.” She straightened.
Jeb's vision narrowed, automatically going to the largest of the Threes. He held a fistful of Jacky’s shirt in his hand.
They had hung back to keep their presence concealed. They'd gone over the story Jacky would shout far and wide upon his return.
It had been quite good.
“Chuck,” Jasper identified, and he and Jasper stepped out from beneath the shadow of the statue.
The angel seemed to give her assent as they raced to the Three they had come to kill.
He had the young Three they intended to return to his parents unharmed.
What madness of coincidence was this?
Like Jasper, Jeb was not a believer in chance.
*
Jeb took the hill like everything else in his life—completely.
One moment, he was an observer of a sad family reunion. The next, he was cresting the knoll overlooking twinkling city lights like slow moving fireflies.
Jeb’s assessment was instantaneous. Chuck stood over Jacky’s parents, whose slit throats soaked blood into dirt that already held the dead.
Unfortunately, Chuck was smarter than he'd first appeared and had used his every scrap of intellectual prowess for evil.
He proved it instantly by laying a blade against Jacky's throat. His frenzied eyes landed like a painful boxing glove on Jasper's face, and Jeb felt his heart stutter between emotion, duty, and compromise.
“Let the boy go,” Jeb said as though he didn't care one way or the other, as though the boy's parents’ blood had not begun to leech into the canvas lace-up shoes he secretly loved.
Now they were just shoes seeped in the death of innocents.
“Where is my Maddie? You give me answers, and maybe this shitbag smartass lives.”
He seemed to think through the murk of his dirtied motivations. “Unlike that brother of yours. Now that—that was a work of art.”
Jacky's green eyes widened. The car accident hadn’t caused Chase’s death—Chuck’s deft manipulation had made it to look as though it was.
Jeb's fists clenched.
“Don't get squirrely on me, big guy. Stand down.” His gaze swung to Beth.
“Let the little bitch, if she feels froggy enough, jump on my lily pad.”
Jasper had been silent as a tomb. She spoke with conviction, and Jeb's heart squeezed at her words. “Let Jacky go, and I'll go with you.”
“No,” Jacky squeezed out from behind a hand buried in his throat.
Nodding, Chuck smiled. “Yeah. I think that's a good trade. I fuck up your little defiant princess here—I got the assholes that knew where Maddie's holed up, and I get to have fun.”
He pointed a large finger at Jasper. “No funny games, or the kid gets it.”
That was clear to Jeb. What wasn't clear was how he would get his partner out of this criminal's hands without her suffering.
Jeb thought about how he'd taken her as partner again. His mind touched on the abuse he'd meted out to Jasper in his nightmare.
His fists tightened.
Chuck taking Jasper out of his line of sight was not an option.
“Come ’ere, little girl.”
Jasper's expression soured.
Six feet three, two hundred forty pounds, former athlete, first third of life cycles.
Too young for the damage he's done to his body to have caught up. Size advantage, but slower than Jasper.
Chuck smelled like the pennies of Three, which still passed for currency but were no longer made.
He smelled of other people's blood.
Jeb didn't realize he'd moved until Jacky came sailing through the air, headed straight for him.
Jeb instinctively caught him.
It was well-played.
He set Jacky down quickly and spun to locate his partner.
The hill was vacant.
Jasper was gone.
*
Fifth: protect the young.
On his hands and knees, Jacky gasped for air.
Jeb eyes sought his partner in the tapestry of darkness peppered by silvery markers of the dead.
He assessed Jacky.
Bruised trachea, compromised breathing; debilitated by ten percent.
Eighth: defend those who cannot.
“Come on,” Jeb said to Jacky.
He didn't wait to see if the boy would follow, but ran headlong after where he thought Jasper would be.
How did she not subdue Chuck?
Was there something they hadn’t known? Jeb ticked off his age—Chuck was too old to have paranormal talent. He had a weapon, and though it would do the job, it should not have been sufficient to overcome Jasper. She was trained to counter all weapons from every explored sector.
He spotted tracks—two sets.
Jeb crouched, his fingers going to the depressions. Like railroad tracks from hundreds of years ago, they ran deep, side-by-side, and the heel moved the grass apart like a plow through grass waters.
Jeb closed his eyes, and his nostrils flared wide.
His eyes sprang open, and his vision speared a far corner. He stepped into one of the prints.
It wasn't a dragging heel print, but deep and long—laid by a male similar in size to Jeb.
Jeb's instep matched the pattern.
He ran, and Jacky followed, gasping.
*
A hand cracked across her face, and the stinging of flesh on flesh roused Beth like an ice-water dousing.
Beth's face swung with the momentum of the slap.
She knew how to take a hit, and fighting it meant more damage.
She was intimately aware of torture techniques, and she felt the bite of old-fashioned zip ties constricting her wrists as she was bound to a chair.
Putrid breath fell across her face, and Beth recoiled instinctively.
“Don't get shy on me now, sweetheart.”
His hands plunged into her unbraided hair.
Beth bit her lip to keep from crying out.
She opened her eyes; a sting like an insect bite was at her neck.
The bastard had juiced her with a sedative.
She shuddered to think about the sterility of the needle.
None.
Her mind churned through the possibilities.
That was how Chuck had overtaken Jacky's parents. It was fast working.
It robbed Beth's consciousness that fast.
While Jacky's parents lay on the ground they'd been sacrificial lambs to his blade.
How did Maddie survive this maniac?
She almost hadn't.
Chuck was speaking, and Beth had been slow in answering.
The second hit was harder, more accurate, and her mouth complied, spraying blood.
Some of the splatter hit Chuck in the face, and he casually swiped it away.
The impact had been close to Beth't temple, and the area would begin to swe
ll, taking some of her vision along with it.
She spit blood.
“I said—where the fuck is Maddie?” His voice was a soft roar and Beth shook her head to clear it.
If she had not been Reflective, that last hit would have broken something. As it was—it'd hurt.
“Somewhere safe,” Beth replied.
Chuck paced, his large hands, adept at hitting, swung in agitated jerks and fits as he moved back and forth in front of her.
He turned, facing her. Beth could see that he ached to jerk her head back, using her hair as a handle. She suddenly wondered if her long hair would get her killed.
Chuck kicked the chair back, and Beth fell, her head smacking the floor, her hands crushed and immobile behind her. Her shoulders felt as if they were being torn out of their sockets.
She did cry out then.
“Good, not so tough as I thought.”
He bent down over her.
“You think I don't know what she was?” His face lowered over Beth. “That I don't know what you are?”
The wash of his rotten breath bathed Beth's face, and she leaned forward, clamping her teeth around his disgusting lower lip, and bit through.
He jerked up instinctively—the exact wrong thing to do.
Beth hung on, and his lip nearly tore off. Beth had to close her eyes against the heavy spray of blood.
His blood flooded her nostrils in a metallic slap, and she choked. Her teeth full of his flesh, her nose full of his blood, she couldn't breathe.
Still she held.
He roared and hit her in the head hard. It rang her bell, and her teeth released him as the chair she was bound in tipped to the side.
She landed hard and screamed.
Beth shook her head to free it of his vile leavings and saw his ruined mouth.
She'd always been an opportunist. And for that, she would pay.
He mewled like a wounded animal.
And anything wild retaliates when it’s injured because it feels cornered.
With a bellow, Chuck charged, and Beth waited, her heart a part of her throat.
When he'd grabbed the chair off the floor to right it, he swung her around, sending blood, spit, and hair flying with the force.
The chair legs creaked at the abuse.
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