That wasn't gonna happen.

"We're five miles out, Caleb," Bry said, intuiting my thought processes, running a hand over his skull trim.

I looked at Clyde, then Tiff. "Come here, we've got to save Jade."

"What, like remote, Hart?" Jonesy asked.

I looked at him and nodded as Bry and Mia started up their respective cars to get to the Frazier house.

"We can do it together, Caleb," Parker said.

"I'll raise every dead thing in Kent," I said. My eyes bored into his.

"And I'll control them," he responded.

With my power and his control, we'd stave off the mess that was tightening around Jade like a hangman's noose.

But I'd be using the dead again.

And they weren't a weapon of choice.

I'd made the decision long ago.

They were always a weapon to me.

*

Bry's car smelled like a noxious and poisonous cloud of fumes, choking us as we piled in the back.

Me, Parker, Tiff and Bry rode with Gramps in shotgun.

The zombies were en route. They were inhumanly strong. The ones we'd raised that were lifelike were just as fast. I tried not to think about the lone person that might see the zombies sprinting toward Valley Keys.

Parker, who had been my nemesis but a scant two years ago, had become a savior of sorts.

A relative. My mind put together that our shared AFTD was less coincidence and more a wedding of genetics than any of us could have realized. Clyde was no accidental raising but a genetic signature that had linked us. When my novice power had stroked the dead underneath the hallowed ground of Scenic Cemetery over two years ago on that fateful night, Clyde had answered.

Predestination.

Parker grasped my hand as Tiff took the other and my power sighed in an exhaustive gasp of intense relief in one tense burst. It made Jeffrey Parker seize in my grip and Tiff rolled her eyes up in her head.

I pushed everything I had toward the dead I thought would respond without hesitation.

As near to Jade as I could get them.

*

Skopamish

Consciousness returned to the chief of the Skopamish like an arrow that had found its mark.

His eyes surged open as dirt filled the wetness therein.

Earth suffused his nose, his mouth... he could not see, breathe.

Yet, he lived.

Because not one, but two Masters called him from his place of rest.

The war cry had been issued as a terse battle alarm and he responded.

His body was torn from the ground and set upright by invisible strings of death, strung to his body from a great distance, the dirt fell away like brown clumps of rain.

He knew the taste of the call, he had felt it upon his tongue before.

It was the Master of Death. He had delivered him up for battle once more.

The call began to wash over him in a sickening cloak of life. The Chief of the Skopamish bowed underneath its power.

When he could finally stand, he looked at his body and found it whole. A pulse beat underneath the flesh at his throat. His warpaint lay bright against his coffee-colored skin, his feathers stood straight and true. He clenched his dominant hand around his knife hilt, and the muscles in his body reacted reflexively.

He opened his mouth and let the shrill war cry sound in the still air of dwellings that lay dark and unused.

He turned and watched as his brethren closed their mouths with a snap, the echo of their cry synchronized with his perfectly. Their tomahawks glinted savagely in the artificial light cast by strange poles which stood high above him, having captured small suns behind a hard surface which was clear like hardened water.

His eyes reflected black in the whitish blue lights cast by the LED street lights, the pulse-activation automated for commencement as night approached.

Twilight came and with it the connection of death and all that death entailed.

The Chief of the Skopamish moved toward the dwelling which housed a female of the tribe who was in danger.

This one had been in danger before. The white man did not honor the women of the tribe.

Honor could be taught.

The Chief was most glad to teach those lessons if needed.

They moved with purposeful stealth between houses that were tended without pride and reverence in accordance with nature.

The disrespect to his Mother Earth was a grinding insult upon his senses.

The Skopamish drove forward, the command thrummed through their brains in time to their heartbeats.

They beat strongly within their newly fashioned bodies.

*

"Your power is in harmony with mine," Parker breathed out in the cramped confines of the car.

"Does it matter that we're related?"

He nodded. "To work that seamlessly, yeah, it matters."

Tiff was passed out, she'd been so overwhelmed by our combined power her body had effectively shut her down. I felt for her pulse and it beat strong and steady underneath my fingers.

"She's okay."

Bry screeched to a sudden halt in front of Howie's house. He turned around and got a load of Tiff, conked out.

"She okay?" Bry asked and when I told him she was he grunted. Not always a bad thing to have Tiff out of the way.

I saw Brett's hoodie on the ground of the sidewalk and knew he'd stripped it off for a reason.

Mobility, freedom in motion. Delivering a beating without encumbrance.

I didn't want to owe any more debt to Brett Mason. I already owed more that I could repay.

We threw ourselves out of the car, Gramps bringing up the rear.

I could hear grinding metal and hinges popping away from their hold.

We poured through the front door, hanging askew, courtesy of Brett.

I was starting to like him despite myself.

*

Jade felt the reverberation as the door finally gave. Howie burst through, slapping the metal against the cinderblock walls of the basement. She fled deeper into the corner of the room, her gaze locked with his.

"Come here little girl," he said and she felt the weight of his command even as it slid off her. The partial immunity her Empathic gifts afforded her would soon bend the instant he made physical contact.

Jade grabbed the nearest thing, a snowglobe, given to her by her dead mother. She heaved it at his thick skull. She watched the crystal globe spin in the air, the snowflakes within like a blizzard as it whirled toward his head. Howie leaned out of the way and the base nicked his temple then shattered as it hit the wall behind his head. The figurines inside laying in a broken heap on the concrete floor.

Like she'd be if he got ahold of her.

Jade's eyes widened as she met his stare and he charged her, his temple oozing blood from where the sharp plastic base of the globe had caught his flesh.

Brett tried to shake off the dizziness. That bastard had clocked him a good one.

He used the cold concrete on either side to help him stand. He shook his head like a dog. He lifted his head in time to see Frazier run at Jade. Brett was weary but not beaten. He had survived far worse than this at the hands of his asshole dad.

Frazier was nothing. Less than nothing.

Brett wouldn't let him hurt Jade. Even now her terror choked him. Adrenaline surged as he sprung off the last step, flinging himself Superman style at Howie as he came for Jade.

He threw his arms out from his body and landed in the center of Howie's back, the momentum bringing them both down.

Howie turned as Brett began tearing into his face with his fists, Jade screaming in the background.

Howie put up his hands and opened his mouth. What he said next Brett was compelled to do.

Brett had never wanted to do anything less in his life.

"Get off me and stand up!"

Brett did. Howie smiled and looked over his shoulder, seeing that Caleb Hart and a whole shitload of other people were coming and he reacted instantaneously, instinctively.

He reached behind him and yanked that uptight bitch into his body. He pressed Jade against him and felt his body respond to her nearness.

He'd love to force her, it made saliva flood his mouth. No time for that now.

Instead, time was his enemy so he ground her small wrist bones together, the contact cementing her cooperation and said, "Do Brett Mason, now."

Calling for a distraction of epic proportions, Howie struck the Manipulative command like a punch into the center of her chest and Jade recoiled from the strength of it, the inference.

She gasped and turned, her body losing its smoothness, jerkily reacting without her express will as tears streamed down her face.

Jade launched herself at Brett.

Brett saw Jade come, frustration on her face, fear... and something else. He had just enough time to pierce Howie with a look.

What the fuck was going on?

Then Jade was on him, winding her slim arms around his neck, pressing her perfectly small body against his. Her vanilla fragrance wafted around him. She climbed his body and pressed her lips to his. He opened his mouth to ask a question and her tongue was in it.

Brett was lost to her.

The thing he had wanted most in life had wrapped herself around him like a spider.

Before the fly.

Brett didn't notice Howie's self-satisfied smirk, he was buried by Jade.

Howie knew what this would do to Hart.

It'd tear him apart. He'd get rid of a bunch of problems at one time.

Perfect.

Howie watched Jade LeClerc move against Brett as if she'd done it a hundred times. He could feel her resistance and he poured more power into the original command and he heard her whimper in response.

So unwilling... Howie smiled.

He scratched his forearm where a raised welt had appeared a couple of days ago. Damn thing, it was driving him crazy.

Brett snapped his arms around Jade and fell backward against the wall, holding her slight weight around his waist by her thighs. He turned her around and pressed her into the concrete, grinding back into her as she did with him. When she gave a soft whimper of distress he took it for pleasure and captured it with his mouth.

His tongue.

Something nagged at the edge of his psyche, spearing his lust. Howie's command effortlessly flowing from Jade to him. He wasn't sure what it was but when Caleb Hart appeared he knew what he didn't want.

Interruption.

CHAPTER 18

I raced down the steep concrete steps that led to Jade's crappy room, hearing her screams.

Then they abruptly cut off.

I burst through the opening where a door hung off one hinge and my stomach fell into my feet. Brett had Jade in a firm hold, backed up against a wall, dry-humping her for all he was worth.

Something shifted in my head and my rage became liquid.

The lava erupted from the volcano of my emotions.

It was her soft whimper that made my head pound with an instant headache. The dead at my back surged forward, responding to my emotional avalanche instantly. Fire seared my veins and I moved toward the two with purpose.

I never saw Howie.

But he saw me; he'd planned it perfectly. He knew how I'd react, and I didn't disappoint. He'd been waiting in the shadows of the room and hit me in the head with a spare piece of lumber, hidden in the recesses of one of the corners.

I saw stars, slumping to the ground, my head spinning like a top.

I watched from the ground, my girlfriend making out with Brett like she wanted it and felt like I'd be sick, powerless to do anything. The barf just rose in my throat when John leaped forward, covering Randi's ears and I heard Howie scream into the stillness of the scene, "Kill each other!"

As bruised and stupid as I was, I tried to rise to do his bidding, his compulsion was so powerful it intensified my headache.

And along with that, my rage.

Terran dragged Randi backward, unaffected by Howie.

Howie, I realized too late, was a Manipulative.

Effing spectacular. Weren't they springing up everywhere like nasty-ass weeds, I thought incoherently.

John, with his Null-ness was immune and had put it together instantly. John lifted his hands off her ears and held Randi's face as everyone began pounding each other. I noticed Sophie and Tiff were really going at it. No surprise there.

"Get us out of here!" he screamed over the carnage, the noise of the fighting a dull roar in my ears. I was on all fours, shaking my head, my eyes pegged on Brett and Jade as I began to rise. I could taste his death on my tongue, my head was swamped with it. Every zombie that was mine began moving toward him with deliberate purpose. My purpose now had focus through Howie's directive.

I was not immune.

Randi understood what John had told her to do and pressed her eyes shut just as Howie realized his ass was grass. Whatever sick plan he'd had... failed.

We blinked out of the existence of our world and fell smoothly into the other.

Queen Clara's sphere world.

The problem with that was Randi, in her acute panic, wasn't selective. The whole damn posse went. Parker, the zombies, my friends, Gramps... and Howie.

We hurtled through the dark vastness of that space where it felt like our flaming bodies were pelted by sleet and landed in the middle of Outside in Clara's world.