Nor when the howling began.

CHAPTER 12

Zondorae's toes were splattered like mashed pancakes, his howling was waking the dead.

Hardy har-har.

Now, that would have been funny if the dead hadn't actually risen.

"Who the hell are they?" Nevaeh asked.

"Indians," Parker responded.

I rolled my eyes when the nearest zombie frowned, that ripple of skin staying like a flesh stripe between his brows.

"Skopamish," I corrected automatically.

Nevaeh shrugged and Tiff, the only girl who'd remained for the carnage, snorted in the background.

The chief came forward, his eyes taking in Parker, Nevaeh and myself. "Why have I been called?"

"Injun again," Gramps muttered when the Indian spoke in his native tongue above a hollering Zondorae.

The chief, a lean specimen with corded muscles that flexed when he gripped his tomahawk tighter- hissed.

The sound didn't have a direction, it just happened, like an involuntary hiccup.

"Pesky fucker," Nevaeh observed, giving a casual kick to Gary's ribs.

Tiff came closer, Bry at her heels. "Let's drag his butt into the garage. He's making a lot of noise."

"Right," Gramps said, his fist loosely holding the wrench covered in toe gore.

Gramps titled his head and looked at her. "Not feeling sorry for him yet?"

"Nah," she said, popping her bubble of gum like gun fire.

I was sure Tiff was ruminating on the happenings of the sphere-world. It wouldn't exactly elicit sympathy for Zondorae.

I looked at the chief who had an attitude and said, "He would take away the Song of Death."

"Damn, Hart!" Jonesy said, "been studying?"

I nodded. I had. The deal was that I wanted to know what the things were that I raised. Knowledge was power. My parents had been right about that.

The chief nodded, bending to pick up Zondorae who threw up from the smell. Chief whipped it off himself with a casual swipe of his hand and it splattered to the ground.

Archer stepped around the mess with distaste.

Chief threw Zondorae in a chair, Gramps put the tip of the bloodied wrench under his chin and said, "Speak," like Zondorae was a dog.

Actually, Onyx received better treatment.

He was weeping, trying unsuccessfully to cradle his mangled toes.

"Stop being a sissy, an Organic can fix ya right up," Gramps paused then said, "later."

"How would you know?" he wailed.

"How do you think I knew what to do?" Gramps asked and I gave him a sharp look.

Hell, Gramps had been tortured?

His gaze slid to mine and I knew more than I had. All of it was bad.

Zondorae spoke, between hiccuping sobs, weeping and flailing around. He told us the Graysheet Plan.

It was worse than we had supposed.

Wasn't it always?

Nevaeh was the first to break the silence. "Why would you sterilize me?"

Zondorae's eyes met hers. "Yours was a special dose." His watering and swollen eyes took in the group of guys and Tiff. "It's for your own good. There's no way to alter your genetic code. We can inhibit the manifestation through a booster," he said then coughed and shuddered, moaning and holding his feet. "But we can't have the breeding."

Like we were goddamned cattle.

Parker clenched his fists. "You think that you can stop the paranormals from having children? Are you insane?" I narrowed my eyes, his anger seemed feigned to me. Off. But Zondorae distracted me from further reflection.

Zondorae nodded, arrogance rearing its ugly head like a slip showing underneath a skirt. "We know we can. We have."

The chief twitched, his tomahawk moving without a word. Zondorae's eyes widened at the blade; rusted but effective.

"Not yet," I said casually and Chief gave me a look, backing down.

For the moment.

Nevaeh smirked. "Lots of action, no conversation," she observed, flicking a strand of inky black hair behind her shoulder.

"Yeah," I replied, my eyes never leaving Zondorae. "The Skopamish are my favorites."

"You can kill me, but the wheels are in motion. You will be shut down, your powers- gone." He looked at me. "You should be happy, Hart. Who wants to raise the dead?"

I don't know, I was kinda used to it now.

"You can't be allowed to have children. Period. Once we knew..."

"You thought you'd play God," Nevaeh growled, her body vibrating with her anger as more zombies arose from the wet ground.

It was great timing because the Graysheets silently pulled up in their black, unmarked SUVs, pulse-fueled, state-of-the-art.

Gary Zondorae grinned as his pals showed up to save the day.

I wanted to smash his teeth down his throat.

Instead, the three of us necromancers opened a can of whoop ass.

*

"Holy smokes," Jonesy said as the Graysheets stepped out of their vehicles, guns naked in their hands.

"This will definitely not improve neighbor relations," Archer commented dryly while Zondorae chortled in the background, "Over here!" His voice broke on the last word.

The one in front looked at Parker, taking in the fifteen zombies behind him and said in greeting, "Parker."

"It's not what it seems," Parker responded.

I got the crooked mouth. In the middle of death staring us in the face, guns and the prospect of never having children, I felt like laughing.

Typical reaction to Bad Shit Coming Down.

"Let me get this straight," the agent said, taking in a bleeding and barely coherent Zondorae. "I recognize torture techniques when I see them and a rogue agent. Don't try to turn the tables."

Zondorae stood favoring his pulverized foot. "Kill them. They know everything, the reversal, the sterilization. They know."

The agent sighed, raising his gun.

My crooked mouth slipped when he shot Gary Zondorae between the eyes.

"Oh shit," Alex whispered as Zondorae slumped to the floor and began to bleed out. The pool of red flowed toward the drain Gramps had installed when the place was built.

Parker looked at the agent, casually turning away from the murdered scientist. "Listen Brewster, I'm all for him going...."

"There's a new plan, Parker," Brewster said.

Jade was suddenly there. Which made me want to puke, her terrible vulnerability in the open.

"You didn't stay in the house," I said quietly as Parker and Brewster squared off.

"They're going to kill us," she said with an intense certainty that tightened my guts.

I didn't wait for verification, I grabbed Nevaeh, her bony hand like fragile twigs in my grasp and we called everything that would respond and things that wouldn't.

And I thought siphoning off Tiff had been a rush.

The pool of our power was a crushing slip of energy that left us in a hot ripple of death that flowed out in every direction.

I felt the Null before he tried to shut us down and John was suddenly there.

He nodded at me, his bronzed hair like a low flame in the late dim of dusk. "I have this, Caleb," he said in a low voice.

I swung my face away from him as the bullets fired, trying to cut us down even as we kept summoning.

Our zombies moved like a wall of dead flesh in front of us without being invited.

The dead needed no such invitation.

They came, their bodies jerking as they shielded us from the barrage of bullets. My soul cringed as I delivered my zombies up for massacre.

It felt somehow wrong yet it was all we could do.

Nevaeh turned her head like we were moving in a slow motion dance underwater and reached out to Parker.

The slide of deadly power, linked by our affinity, brought all the death that remained to heel.

We fell to our knees as Brewster pressed the gun barrel to Parker's bowed head, execution-style. Parker remained under the weight of somnolent awe of the death energy that had brought us low.

The Chief stepped into the agent's path, smoothly swinging the tomahawk and took Brewster's hand off at the wrist. After a heartbeat or two, the veins that had retreated by the hack now began to flow in earnest.

He began to stagger around in a jerky stumble as his raw end pumped his lifeblood on Gramps' driveway.

Jade moaned at my back, clearly not feelin' the moment.

When dead came from five miles away I saw another relative I hadn't expected.

"Mother," Gramps breathed, dropping the bloodied wrench on the ground.

Gran had definitely gotten her groove on and was back with her head in the game.

I gave a shouting bark that sounded alarmingly like laughter combined with a cry and realized that hysteria was a pace away from me, waiting to consume me in an instant if I let it.

I felt Jade's small and warm hand press on my back and shuddered underneath her blind faith that she poured into me. She was fragile in stature, but never in her interior.

Jade was my rock.

She gave me what she could.

It was enough; my head started clearing.

We stood and I hauled up my compatriots.

I looked over at the Zondorae's corpse and with a small tap of power I raised him.

He stood smoothly, the power of the three of us cleanly knitting his wounds into a sublime kind of perfection and he gave a small bow.

"Touché, Caleb Hart. I'm here to serve," Gary said, his voice like a low growl.

"I know," I said and beckoned him forward. He shambled forward quickly, like a spider walking upright. His mangled toes caused a little bit of a balance problem.

Huh.

"Now... that's just wrong," Jonesy said as the zombies hacked and the Graysheets shot.

I was hoping Jonesy wasn't having a moment of regret.

"I like it," Alex said, tossing a Graysheet armed with only a knife about seven meters away, his powerful body doing a slight swivel that sent the agent flying like a low human airplane.

The zombies, some with separated limbs, some headless, never quit. They kept coming in waves and in various stages of rot and pieces. Their missing limbs trembled across the surface of the ground to get to the enemy. The sheer numbers overwhelmed the paltry force of the Graysheets.

That's when I knew that something was desperately wrong.

But what?

The Graysheets simply didn't do small.

It wasn't long before we found out.

*

We chucked the bodies inside their vehicles. Actually, it was more like a scrape and stuff.

The two Ss.

Jade began to gag. I'd had to just ignore my need to comfort her because of my need to get the agents hidden.

"There's more work, Caleb," Parker said, heaving an agent in the rig by the legs.

"Eww... they're just staring," Sophie said, peeking at the zombie horde from between her fingers. Jonesy snorted. "You ought to be immune now, sweetheart."

Tiff rolled her eyes, snapping a bubble while eyeing Gran. I'm sure the event from a few years ago where Gran had tossed Bry and her around might be a little fresh.

We finished and the zombies closed in, sensing us, needing us. Their hands flowed over our clothing and we stood while they drew energy from us.

"Does it just leak out?" Nevaeh asked.

I knew what she meant.

"Yeah. It's more like I keep it caged..." I began.

"Raw," Parker said in loose agreement.

I nodded.

"So," Jonesy said, hopping off the crushed end of the Camaro's spoiler. "What about all these dead guys?"

I looked at Zondorae because that's who Jonesy was looking at.

"Gary Zondorae," I said and I heard his neck pop wetly as he turned and I realized he must have fractured it on the way down. A pink scar showed like a cyclops eye in the middle of his forehead.

It was bizarre even by my standards.

"This is our chance," Parker said.

There was silence.

Then Gramps said, "Are we talking about a total clean up?"

Jeffrey Parker nodded. He may have started out normal but his background and training had changed what he might have been.

He was what he was now.

I had never been happier, or more scared of the unknown.

"I'm in, death-boy," Nevaeh said then looked at Tiff. "What can you do, dude?"

"I've been a helluva battery for Caleb," Tiff responded.

"And you gotcha a buttload of snark."

Tiff smiled. "Only for the deserving," she deadpanned.

Nevaeh grinned and it transformed her face, making it open and pretty.

She looked at me. "You got some relatives here." She looked at Clyde. "He's different..."

"Yeah," I said, not wanting her to pay too much attention to Clyde until I knew what side she was batting on. I was getting to be as suspicious as Gramps.