“No, Pax,” Mom cautions.
Like I'd fucking tell these two sector assassins that my sister is an Atomic. Black hole queen. Space and continuum disruptor extraordinaire.
Then Dee shows up and takes all the guess work out of everything, along with her zombie and a Reflective like a partridge in a pear tree. But this guy is serial killer bad, and his sights are on my sister.
Bad call.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gramps
Oh hell.
There's Deedie and her friendly zombie—and one of those Reflective people.
My eyes do the initial sweep of the guy. What in the blue hell is all that over his face? It looks like chunks of his skin are missing, and dime-sized pieces of bone gleam in the fading afternoon light, giving him a mottled appearance.
Something got after that fella—good.
Deedie yelps when he snaps into our presence with that curly-cue iridescent whip of glitter the other two Reflectives employed.
I expect unicorns to crop up any moment and start pissing rainbows. I snort, loving the visual.
“Oops,” Pax says, and my face swivels to him. His expression is sheepish.
“Delayed blink?” he comments.
Caleb and Jade simultaneously put their hands to their heads like a whopper of a headache might be coming on.
My eyeballs shoot upward like rockets. Dear God.
The new Reflective, whoever he is, turns to the other two. “Merrick. Jasper.” His lips curl when he says the woman's name, and I can tell there's no love lost there.
The new guy’s uniform matches the woman's, but Merrick's is slightly different. More permanent, if I was to take a wag.
“Inductee Ryan,” Merrick says, and his hands loosen from their knotted perch at his back.
Ryan glares at Merrick.
Jasper gives a disdainful teeth-baring smile. “Ryan.”
Small tells. Only someone with my background would notice that these three are on uneasy terms, at best.
At worst? We'll see.
Deedie's big zombie glowers at Ryan, moving in front of her protectively.
Ah.
That says a lot. It's been my experience that zombies are purists. Mitch doesn't like Ryan. And that means he has a reason not to.
Good enough for me. Immediately, I go on the defensive. Not a stretch.
The two Reflectives notice the wounds on Ryan's face as his attention moves to Jonesy's hastily animated horde.
Didn't his wounds look worse when he first appeared on the scene?
“Report,” Merrick commands Ryan.
The younger man doesn't like it. His lip lifts like he’s a pit bull in the ring.
Nice camaraderie with this group.
“It's her, this Three.” He points an accusing finger at Deedie.
Mitch hisses.
This is rich.
“Deegan, what's going on?” Caleb asks.
Deedie looks from her dad to Ryan. Fearfully. Now Deedie isn't the most assertive little girl, but when she gets her dander up, she handles most things fine.
I frown, thinking of the missing hands of some of the new Graysheet types. Maybe there's room for improvement.
Merrick and Jasper look at Deedie then Mitch.
Jasper's eyes widen. “Reanimated human.” She lumps in Mitch with Jonesy's mess, her eyes shifting between Deedie's zombie and the dozen rot-boys flanking Jones.
Doesn't seem fair. Mitch looks a helluva lot better than Jonesy's undead troops.
“Yes,” Merrick comments in a voice so neutral, I understand instinctively the man's unflappability is failing.
“She is a Death Bringer, Merrick—and, an Atomic.”
Their gazes narrow on Deedie.
I move forward, and they turn to me. Actually, Jasper turns toward me, and Merrick faces everyone else.
Their posture is utterly different. Tense. Resolute.
Fuck a duck. “Hold on,” I say quickly, “let's not do anything rash.”
“Put a lid on it, old man,” Ryan says without glancing in my direction. His words are clipped and dismissive.
Rude twerp. And for the record, I loathe his use of our language.
Merrick frowns. “How did you get those wounds on your person?” He directs the question at Ryan, but his eyes are on Deedie.
“Crows.” He jerks his chin toward Deedie. “The little bitch Death Bringer summoned them.”
Mitch growls. Liking him more all the time. Yessiree.
“I do not appreciate your tone, hooligan.” This is from our man, Clyde.
Now he is someone I see eye-to-eye with. I grunt. Good to have him on the team. Very few words, but lots of action. Unfortunately, Clyde seems to be outgunned as it were. Similarly, Caleb sets everything on fire but doesn't seem to be AftD—that kind of thing is happening in spades here.
Ryan's feet burst into flames, and he leaps like he was goosed in the ass.
Excellent. Sometimes timing just works.
“Nice, Dad.” Pax smirks.
Jonesy pushes up his sunglasses, and they come apart, falling from the bridge of his nose.
He bends to retrieve them.
Pesky metal screws. Metal does weird shit when one travels the Paxton Blinking Highway.
Ryan shouts what sounds like a swearword in the Reflective language, then he vanishes. A burst of serpentine glittering light flashing before his form slams into the lens that had just been covering Jonesy's right eyeball.
“Shee-it!” Jonesy shrieks, jumping back.
His zombies tense.
Ryan reappears before Deedie.
I react before I can stop myself—damn near a lifelong trend. A hard thought has me moving through Ryan before his form completely solidifies.
Well isn't this nifty?
I figure I've got less than a second until he takes me, so I don't stand around being introspective. I jack my fist into that soft spot under his jaw, and Ryan stumbles backward, trying to reclaim some oxygen.
Ryan's hop to my great-granddaughter seemed to put out his fire.
I look at Caleb and cock an eyebrow.
Jonesy steps on what remains of his sunglasses with a “fuck that” followed by a crunching noise.
“Mac!”
I duck, and a hand passes through where my head would have been. Jerking my ceramic work knife out of my pants, I flick the blade and hammer it in Ryan's kneecap.
He howls, and I punch the hilt, breaking the blade off inside his leg.
That'll put a pause in your step.
He moves, and I throw myself backward. My bag of tricks is about empty when Pax and Mitch move in.
“Stop, or we will kill you.”
My gaze shifts to Merrick. “What about all your fancy-smancy directives?” I nod knowingly. “This pain in our ass is gunning for Deedie, and we aren't going to sit around while he cleans her.”
I harrumph, and he and Jasper move toward Ryan as Mitch and Pax each grab an arm.
The little girl that kicked my old ass disappears. She is much smoother than Ryan.
Her tailwind sinks into the crushed glass of Jonesy's ruined lenses. The remnants are no greater than a pea.
And she's suddenly in front of the guys holding Ryan.
“Jasper!” Merrick hollers and runs toward her. She sucker punches Pax, and he folds.
Hard charger. Gotta admire the little filly. But Mitch. Ah—Mitch, a zombie after my own heart.
Jasper's fist sinks, and he grabs her wrist.
She yanks, and he pulls.
“Sorry,” he says. Then he picks her up and throws her about twenty feet from their position.
Ryan punches Mitch, and the skin of his chin sloughs off with the blow.
Oh my.
Deedie starts bawling.
Not great timing, I have to admit.
Clyde comes to stand beside me. “What to do?”
I nod. It's a conundrum. “Pax!” I holler.
Merrick turns, and Pax sits u
p straight and kicks the man’s kneecap. He winces.
And by God, I know that hurt like a sonofabitch.
Pax stands, and Merrick slaps him.
The Reflectives are as tough as nails, and Pax yelps as his face rocks back. But he latches on to Merrick.
Shadows of the coming night slide across the grass, and Merrick's eyes widen. They darken like cups of soft black in his face.
Pax's eyes tighten, then he blinks. His bluish-gray eyes, so like Ali's, move like blackened turquoise under a sheet of opaque ice. The thin membrane of his second eyelid floats over the color, muting it.
Instantly, worlds appear like sheets of glass covered by water.
Holy mother of God. It's like being in the funhouse full of reflections without end.
There are a million Macs. I see variations of my face, one after another after another. My next swallow is painful, my next breath, shallow.
Not losing my shit, I tell myself like a command.
“Not this again,” Tiff mutters, joining hands with whoever is beside her.
Merrick resists.
“Holy fucking cow, Pax's blinking trumps mirror hopping!” Jonesy chortles. He spares a quick glance for the horde and shrugs. “Sorry, Dead Dudes.”
“Not now, Jones,” John Terran says in a flat voice.
Jonesy grunts dismissively. “Chill, Terran.”
Sophie grabs Jonesy's hand, and everyone holds on.
Pax blinks again, and we travel to wherever my great-grandson decides to take us.
I can hope for my place.
It's like this: hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up faster.
Guess where wishing got me?
Back in the land 'o bots.
Marvelous.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Deegan
Our kiss is crushed by heat.
I know that heat.
It's not the newfound passion with my zombie; it's blinking. But Pax isn't here—so how are we moving?
One second, I'm pressed up against my zombie, sharing a kiss I know would ground me for life, and the next second, we're landing in a pile of entangled limbs.
I yelp at the landing. My arm’s twisted behind me by Mitchell's hold. He rearranges me so I'm not pinned, and I sit upright.
The smell of rot hits me first. Alarming to some, it’s nothing to me. The scent is eau de zombie.
Badly raised zombies.
I rub my eyes, nausea gripping and releasing me from the shift from one place to another. The sensation when Pax blinks from area to area within the same world is like when a rollercoaster first lurches on the rails and my stomach does a toss as I hurtle down the slope.
Mitchell grips me by my waist and easily heaves me to standing. His grip is firm, as though he knows I'm about ready to puke.
I quickly take in the scene then gasp.
Ryan is here—missing chunks of flesh that reveal wounds that glow slightly. His bone shows through gouged skin.
“Oh, my god,” I whisper.
“The Pecking,” Mitchell comments noncommittally.
Ryan swings his face to us, and Mitchell takes a step back with me in his arms. He hisses.
Ryan points at us, and I belatedly notice his feet are smoldering. I shift my eyes to Dad, and he's smirking. Huh. The soldier Reflective guy's a mess.
“Pax,” I say without turning, a quiver in my voice.
“Dee, now's not a hot time to chat.”
Right, but now's a good time to get away.
I can feel who raised the horde about four meters from where Mitchell and I stand.
My eyes flick to Jonesy.
That's bad. Zombies are so much an extension of the raiser. And apparently, on this world, Jonesy is AftD.
As though on cue, Jonesy slaps one of his zombies on the back and says, “Hey, guys, take care of this dude.” His dark eyebrows quirk, and he jerks his chin toward Ryan.
The zombiesʼ eyes (those who have eyeballs) fall on Ryan. Can't think of a better guy to get the evil zombie eye. I shudder, thinking about my time in the cell when he was talking about doing me because I'm Atomic.
The dead begin to shamble toward Ryan.
Ryan points again, with one eye on the ever-present undead crew. “She is a Death Bringer and an Atomic!” he announces triumphantly.
The man, who I remember popping up before, says, “She will need to be brought before council.”
No.
Pax gives me a tense sideways look as the tight rotting horde moves closer to Ryan. He spares them a glance of pure distaste. If it hadn't been happening to me, I would think it was funny. As it is, nothing about this world is remotely humorous.
The first zombie touches Ryan's uniform, leaving a slug trail of rotting gore.
Ryan smacks the zombie's wrist, and its hand falls off.
Gah. I rub my sweaty palms on my jeans.
The hand falls to the ground, twitches, and begins its slow journey back to Ryan.
“Righteous!” Jonesy shouts with a whoop. I'm so glad someone is enjoying himself.
Aunt Tiff snaps a bubble that makes everyone who's living startle.
“He manhandled me!” I yell at the other two Reflectives over the din of zombies getting beat up by Ryan.
I notice the two others (one is a girl) are not really helping. Like zombies aren't a threat. So not true.
Then I notice the snakes.
I jerk my chin in the direction of the death signature I can feel like a high-frequency thread of noise.
Tiff. She smirks, crossing her skinny arms underneath her boobs. “Gotta love the dead.”
The snakes sidewind toward Ryan.
The other Reflective guy's sharp gaze finds the snakes in the grass. Literally.
I laugh and notice I only have a slight edge of hysteria. Mitchell takes my hand. I breathe deeply.
“Jasper,” the other guy Reflective says in a voice so neutral, it's colorless. The girl, small and dark like me, turns to him.
“Merrick, she's summoned the reptiles.”
They've got it wrong. They can't read death signatures.
I look to Dad, and I peg him as a one-point. Tiff is four plus, and I feel excellent—flexing my AftD muscle. The energy inside me swells, and more dead come. A tremble flows through Jonesy's horde.
Jonesy's head whips in my direction, a frown marring the space between his eyes. “No, sister, don't mess with Team Rot. They're on a mission.”
I nod, in a sort of trance. Vaguely, I hear Mom and Dad exchanging heated words.
Then Sophie, John, Tiff, and Uncle Clyde smack hands, and I know what will happen.
Pax will blink us.
My power beats inside me, unsatisfied.
“Deegan, pull it back,” Mitchell says.
Feels good to use the power.
He turns me, and we face each other.
Small scrapes and abrasions caused by the rapid inner-world shift smooth on his face as I watch, repaired by the overflow of my death energy.
“Death Bringer,” the female says in a commanding strike of two words.
I turn toward her, my head moving as though I'm underwater, and I catch sight of the dead animals I've unwittingly called from the surrounding forest.
The lake we'd been so close to earlier, before Pax blinked us to this new location, is now far away.
Her dark eyes find mine, so deep brown that the pupils hide in the irises. “Do not use this power in Papilio.”
Fine. I tilt my head. “Call off Ryan.”
Jasper turns to Ryan. “Stop this.”
Merrick gives a curt nod in clear agreement. “This is not the way of it, Ryan.”
Ryan bares his teeth, and my power flares in response. Every dead animal within a kilometer moves toward Ryan. Black eyes hold his death in their gazes.
Ryan shoves another zombie to the ground, where it falls to its butt and rolls out of the fall before clumsily shuffling to a stand to come at Ryan again. “The counci
l need never know. Cleanse her now. This Three is everything that is dangerous.”
Someone grabs my hand, and Mitchell is latched on to me like a barnacle. I feel Pax's power flow through me like a flog of fire.
Jonesy says, “Sorry, Dead Dudes.”
Heat rushes up my neck, suffusing my head. The Reflective pair sharpen their gazes on me while the dead animals and zombies converge.
My last clear image is of Ryan tearing the limb off one of the zombies then using the ball joint of the socket to bludgeon its head.
Brains explode in a shower of skull shards and gray matter. The head breaks from the spinal cord and rolls to Ryan's feet. The zombie's mouth opens and tries to take off the toe of his boot with the few teeth that remain.
Then Ryan's image wavers. The horde looks as though they're melting. Or like I'm seeing the Reflectives and the undead behind water that skates over glass.
Then we're gone.
Pax has blinked, and the fire and ice march across my skin like ants on the hills and valleys of my body.
When we roll out of Papilio into the new world, I want to cry. Before Mitchell even confirms where we are—I know.
I don't want to be in bot world.
And of course, that's where we land.
*
I don't throw up, but I'm on my hands and knees doing a version of the quick swallows. If you're the blinker, I guess everything's A-Okay. In my case, my blinking at nighttime only enhances my vision by about a billion, but still—it's not me traveling to parallel dimensions. I'm just the rider, and I feel terrible.
“Deedie?”
I swing my head in the direction of Grampsʼs voice. “Yeah, Gramps,” I manage a hushed whisper.
“Gonna need to get up. We need your paranormal mojo on board.”
On board for what? I hear a bot scream, and that answers the question.
I gulp back my gorge, my fear. “Move,” I say without enthusiasm, and Gramps scoots to the left.
A bot—cyborg—whatever the thing is, has sighted us and opened its mouth for round two. A cavernous mechanical hole in its smooth face yawns black, and I briefly think of zombies then make sure none of our group's in the way.
Please God, I pray silently.
I aim my zapping ability right at the source of the noise, and the head disappears with a low crackle like gunfire heard from a great distance.
Death Series 08 - Death Blinks Page 6