I did anyway. "I need to take some of your life force."

Brett looked at me for a full ten seconds, then he looked at Jade and his face got tender.

My jaw clenched.

"Okay. She can't die, Caleb. She's one of the good ones."

"Yeah," I said, feeling like that was the only thing we'd ever agree on.

I kept my hand on her chest, the heartbeat beating with irregularity. I grabbed Brett's hand, he looked at me but wasn't scared.

He was scarred from his past and those lessons had made him unafraid.

I opened myself to my power and it came. I could feel the Skopamish, beyond them I could feel the gophers, field mice, bugs. Then the power fluttered at Jade, feeling her life ebbing, waiting to claim her.

Death waited for Jade to come into its embrace.

I gritted my teeth, staring at Brett, his face a mirror of mine. "Do it," he bit out.

I did. I called the fingers of power and drove them into Brett, he gasped in surprise. "It's cold," he said through his teeth, grimacing with the pain.

I nodded, transfixed in the process, I began to transfer his life energy to Jade. It flowed like warm taffy, strung between the two of them, a tether of life and death.

Jade gasped, rich color filling cheeks that had grown ashen, shock stealing her coloring, her warmth. Her eyes snapped open and she grasped my free hand. Then she noticed her face was in Brett's lap and instantly intuited what we were doing.

Not too shabby on the Empath vibe.

"Stop it," she whispered. She looked up at Brett with green pools of emerald fire, they shimmered as he held her stare. Through his pain, he pushed the hair out of her face.

"No," he said softly, with a tenderness that made me want to commend him and kill him in equal parts. I seethed and I was grateful. It was such a confusing wash of muck that I didn't know when the Organic arrived until she tapped my shoulder.

I turned to look into Jezebel's somber face. "I think I'll take it from here, Caleb. I have two patients instead of one."

I opened my mouth to protest and she held up a hand. "One would have been bound for the morgue, but for you," and her eyes took in Brett's and she nodded in his direction, "and your friend here."

I didn't correct her on the friend part with an effort.

The medics converged and Brett fell backward into the arms of one and Jezebel shifted Jade to herself, immediately beginning her body scan as she called them.

She looked up at her lead medic. "We need transport. Like yesterday."

He dug his pulse out of his red smock and pulsed for transport.

"What?" I asked, wanting in the worst way to touch Jade.

"We need a chopper. You've staved it off, Caleb, but it's a near thing, she's sustained extensive internal trauma."

I gulped, thinking of my own nightmare last year.

I looked over at her dead dad and a cruel smile twisted my mouth. The Skopamish moved forward, a mirror of my emotion standing on faces that never wavered from mine. Waiting, eternally waiting.

He lay in a pool of blood that spread around his body, creeping across the floorboards toward where Jade and Brett lay.

I was beyond glad that he was dead. The zombies felt my fierce joy, pulling their lips back from their teeth in matching smiles that looked like grimaces.

My friends stepped back from them, looking anxiously at the warriors.

Jezebel and the medics gave nervous glances their way. "Are they going to... ?" Jezebel asked.

"Nah, they're cool," I said, looking down at Jade. She gave a weak smile at me and I breathed a little easier.

I heard the pulse-sirens before they showed.

Gale and Garcia popped into the house. Cops-in-a-box, I thought with humor that was laced with the edge of hysteria.

Garcia waded in, gun naked in his hand. He saw me and made a low noise in his throat. I knew it had been a swear word.

"Why am I not surprised?" he asked to no one and everyone in the room.

"Not now, Raul," Gale said, indicating the blood and gore of LeClerc that was spreading into the crevices that ran between the wood slats, inching toward the mop board that hugged the wall and bisected the ground.

"See it was like this... " Jonesy began and there was a collective groan in the room. Garcia whirled on him. "Absolutely not."

He turned to the medic and Jezebel. "Will the girl live?" She nodded tersely but added, "She would not have if it hadn't been for Caleb and Brett." She smiled at us and I looked at Brett, who was an alarming shade of nothing, holding his chest like a five-hundred pound guy had used him for the receiving end of his ass. He nodded at me.

He was going to be okay. We both looked at Jade. The medics put her on the stretcher as the whir of chopper blades could be heard over the house.

Garcia made the circle motion with his hand. "Get her out of here, I'll pulse the morgue and get the body out of here." His eyes took in all the kids standing around, many with white, shocked out faces. "You kids get outside, now."

Jezebel stood, noticing Andrea for the first time. Her hand flew to her mouth... she ran to her and dropped to her side. Rolling her over gently she used a practiced hand and opened it above her head, then her heart. Her eyes met the cops'.

She didn't have to say it.

I could feel her, Andrea was part of it now.

Part of the dead.

Jade made orphaned in a night.

LeClerc had beaten his own sister to death. My eyes met the J's, Sophie's, Tiff's, Archer, Alex, Bry and Mia's battered face. I saw the same thing in all of them.

Sorrow.

Sorrow for Jade. And what she'd come home to. A home without family.

I hung my head as I followed the stretcher out, not daring to touch her with her aunt's death in my mind, swirling like slow poison in my consciousness.

She looked up at me and I saw she already knew. Somehow, with not one ounce of AFTD, she knew that death had welcomed Andrea into the fold.

I saw something vague standing in her gaze. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but I thought I saw something in the swimming green that gave my heart pause, made my soul hiccup.

Accusation.

I looked at her until she was in the helicopter.

Then I looked at where she'd been until the chopper was a dot in the sky that was edging toward twilight.

Bruised and beaten, the dark looked like I felt.

*

They loaded Brett into the ambulance and Jezebel hopped in last, her gaze meeting Garcia's. "He'll be okay, needs a few days to recover."

"And the girl?" he asked, his eyes searching her face. I realized at some point in the last couple of years that we'd become more than just a call to come to, a scene to take note of, contain.

He cared. He cared about us.

Gale stood by his side and put a hand on his arm. "They're here."

The dead techs came in, splitting into two groups, they swarmed like bees over hives. Two hives, both LeClercs, both dead.

I swallowed, looking for the Skopamish.

But they had vanished.

We filed outside. I used my call to locate the tribe and they were tucked away in their graves like they had never been.

But they were here. The chief murdered LeClerc. Or was it Brett who was the murderer?

Garcia looked at the group, numbering fourteen and scowled. "Start talking," he began without preamble.

Jonesy opened his mouth and Gale gave a shake of her head and he reluctantly closed it again.

Mia is the one that started talking. It was an hour before she was done. She had to stop twice to drink water. Bry didn't even try for subtle. He gathered her against him and held her tight until she stopped trembling.

The shaking didn't really stop until she finished. She didn't move away from him. Carson's group was quiet. Even Christi. It proved the severity of it all. I mean, if Queen Skank could shut her whore mouth for more than three seconds, shit was bad.

I whipped out my pulse and told the parents. I asked Mom if she'd go to the hospital for Jade.

My eyes were burning with the need to cry. I clamped down on it like my life depended on it.

Garcia smiled. "I think we need you to follow us, Caleb. Somehow, I think there's more to the story than you're letting on."

I looked at the blood and other stuff all over the floor, the chalk outline of Andrea and LeClerc, their bodies in the shrouds of plastic death and could only nod. Maybe I wasn't getting out of this after all.

Was there something illegal about using a zombie as a weapon?

Because I had to say, it had been pretty damn effective. Or, because Brett actually struck first, gutting LeClerc like the swine he was, was he the actual killer?

The question that seared my brain was where would the finger of blame be pointed when the dust settled?

Who would it land on?

Questions swarmed in my head like an ant hill poked.

I pulsed Gramps on the sly. I needed back up.

I followed the cops to the hospital. Like a caravan, my friends followed after me.

You'd have thought it was funeral procession.

CHAPTER 21

Mom spoke softly next to Jade's ear, scooping the hair away from her face as I entered the room with the cops on my heels. My parents parted like water and there was Jade, wires entering her everywhere like small snakes.

I took a shaky breath and approached her bedside, my eyes flicking to Jezebel's. "She's out of the woods but has sustained internal damage, three broken ribs, a punctured lung and esophageal bruising." She looked at me for a moment more then said, "It could have been worse. I haven't asked her but... " She looked down at Jade. "Did you... ?" I could tell she wasn't sure how to phrase things.

Jade answered the unspoken question. "I know how to protect myself pretty well."

I closed my eyes at her words. She'd had this happen before.

"I was just lucky that he'd already beaten everyone else and the walls. He was tired. If he'd been fresh... he would have killed me, instead of Andrea," she said with a gasping hiccup as she covered her mouth with one of her small hands.

"Don't, Jade," I whispered, taking the hand that wasn't covering her mouth, holding it in mine. I looked at her, thinking about her curled up in a ball in the corner while LeClerc beat on her. How she'd known how to position her body to minimize the abuse. It blew me away. I was stunned by the circumstance, their deaths.

Her logic in the face of fear.

Her eyes glistened and I squeezed her hand, afraid to touch anywhere else. I felt my Dad's hand on my shoulder. Not saying anything, just being there.

Jade looked at Jezebel and asked, "Is Brett going to be okay?"

Jezebel nodded and I frowned. Couldn't help it. Brett would live. He'd been a tool I'd used.

Garcia came forward. "I'm sorry for your loss Jade." His eyes stared into hers with sincerity. "And I know that this isn't the best time but we need to ask you a few questions."

Jade nodded but spoke, landing the biggest bomb we'd had in weeks, "He was wearing it," she said, the tears that threatened spilling over her cheeks and dampening the awful hospital smock she wore.

We all stood in a loose group, staring at her stupidly.

Garcia leaned forward, understanding it was big. "What? Who was wearing what, Jade?"

"Brett," she whispered, taking her hand back and wringing it with its mate.

The sample.

John and I looked at each other. It hadn't been my zombie that had struck the death blow. He had just guaranteed its goal.

It was Brett who had always intended death.

The Death Intent of LeClerc in his mind. Weeks ago, months maybe.

Garcia looked stunned. "Brett Mason was the DI?"

She nodded. "I recognized the hoodie right away," she said. Then continued, her eyes glancing down, the blackness of her lashes like soot on her pale skin. "I didn't put that together right then... "

"Shock," Jezebel said and Jade glanced at her, giving a small shrug.

"I don't know," she said.

"So, LeClerc was going to bite the big one anyway? It wouldn't have mattered what we did? In the end, Jade's flash of awesome precog told us what was gonna happen," Jonesy said, throwing his hands up in the air like, see how all this coolness comes full circle?

Mom said, "Okay, Jonesy. Let's take a break outside the room for awhile." Her eyes gave him the look and he seemed to get that being gleeful about Jade's dad's death with her right there was somehow uncool.

"Sorry Jade," he said, contrite.

"It's okay," she said, turning her face away into the pillow.

Brother.

Garcia whipped out his notepad and looked intently at her. "So this is your final testimony. Brett Mason killed your father with premeditation?"

She knew what that meant. We all did.