Death Whispers (Death Series, Book 1) (28 page)

“Nah, I want to see what Jonesy's got that's so
special.”

“Let's take a walk,” Jonesy said.

We
followed Jonesy with his bag of mayhem into the cemetery. As soon as
I crossed the threshold, the buzzing of their voices rose to a
fever-pitch, like the low droning of bees. That was with me trying to
tune it out. I should have been able to hear the dead even further
away. But there was something about actually being
in
the cemetery that seemed to make it resonate deeper.

I stalled a little and Jade slowed beside me, her
eyes widening and I knew she was getting a little feedback.

She confirmed this when she whispered, “Are
those the voices?”

I nodded.

“Is it like this all the time?”

“Not always, but this close to a big nest o'
corpses, oh yeah.”

Everyone turned to look at us and we began to walk
again. Jade and I stopped holding hands. She didn't need the overlap
and I was straining for control. This was a bad place, I thought
belatedly. This much dead were just impossible to ignore for me. Now
that Jade wasn't touching me, it was a little better. She was like a
radio antenna, she amplified their signal. Kinda like Tiff.
Interesting. But Jade wasn't AFTD. Something to consider.

Jonesy
and Carson stood close with Jonesy taking out each item for the
science experiment. It looked like a strange hodgepodge to me. Jade
shared the same expression. But as I remember, when Jonesy pulled
this on
us
,
we had fallen for it. If I was guessing right, he had improved on his
original idea.

Jonesy was all seriousness. The first clue that
this whole thing was an absolute farce. He said to Carson, “You
take this tube-thingey,” he pulled a bizarre, corrugated tube that
looked like something Dad had put by the foundation of our house and
Jonesy then pointed to Brett, “holds the other end, while you,”
and he mimed depressing the small spray tip of the hairspray can,
“spray this crap inside the tube.”

“Why is it duct taped on this side?” Carson
asked.

Jonesy did a long, slow blink at Carson.

Wow, he had the IQ of a shovel.

“It's to keep the Aqua Net inside the tube,
Carson.” Jonesy elaborated slowly.

Carson tried to save face. “I knew that,” he
countered.

Right.

John sorta turned away and laughed into his hand,
pretending to cough. Brett glared in his direction.

Brett asked the first smart question of the night,
“What's the lighter for? How'd you get it?”

Jonesy smiled. “Swiped it from my dad.”

I was sorta drowning in the voices but making a
colossal effort to quiet them.
Gotta
get through this.
I just wanted these two to figure out that
we weren't gonna be messed with, to leave us all alone.

Carson asked, “You guys did this, right?”

We
all nodded, I gritted my teeth,
get
on with it.

Then, just to sweeten the deal I asked, “Scared?”

Carson lowered his chin like a bull before a red
flag, fists clenching and said through gritted teeth, “We can do
anything you ass-wipes can do.”

Resolute, his chin rose and he crossed his arms
across his chest.

Going to plan.

Almost like it was choreographed, Jonesy motioned
Brett over, handing the tube with the duct tape out to him. Carson
stalked to Jonesy and tore the can of hairspray out of Jonesy's hand.
The top spun off from the force and became a bright pink exclamation
point on top of a grave marker. Nice. Jade watched with fascinated
horror.

I sorta knew it wouldn't end well, but it was like
the chocolate with the mystery stuff on the inside. I suspected it
would taste bad but there might be something about it I liked.

Jonesy ignored Carson's crap and opened the palm
that held the lighter. A ghost of a smile formed on Carson's lips. I
wasn't liking that development. He shouldn't have been smiling.

He leaned forward and delicately plucked the
lighter out of Jonesy's hand.

Jonesy backed away, a little uncertain. “So...
Brett holds the duct tape end and you like,” he mimed depressing
the sprayer gizmo again, “spray a bunch in there until that's all
you can smell, then light the lighter just as you stop the stream.”

Brett had an expression on his face that might
have been some sort of thought process.

John immediately saw the dilemma and took it in
hand, seeing that the whole thing could go sideways.“Look, you
guys, if you're chickenshit or something, you don't have to do it. We
won't hold it against you,” John said, all sincere-like with a hand
laying over his heart.

We all nodded our agreement that we would
definitely not be inclined to spread crap about them in school.
Riiiggghhhttt. I could see how John's cleverness was going to work
this kink right out.

“No,
we'll do it. I can't see any of you guys not saying anything.”
Carson looked at each one of us, lingering on Jade longest. Who
stared defiantly back at him.

“You just remember, we,” he included Brett in
this, “have the goods on you, Hart. We know what you are, what you
can do. We know who to call...”

“Ghostbusters?” Jonesy asked, eye alight.

We laughed, they glared.

Standing just inside the gate, with unspoken
consensus, we moved over to a stand of fir trees, away from direct
line-of-sight.

Avoid prying adult eyes at all costs.

Brett
held the tube up. The black exterior looked very much like the
old-fashioned accordions, with the duct tape end facing him, his
hands
circling it like a steering wheel. Carson readied the can, carefully
facing the spray nozzle away from his face and sprayed into the tube.

Even
from a few feet away I could see the mist and smell the God-awful
cosmetic smell wafting around. How did women wear that? It meant
something that you could set it on fire... ah, hello?

Carson
positioned the lighter, depressing the ignite button just inside the
tube. Exactly like what happened to us a year ago, there was a
sucking noise. What I didn't remember was that nothing happened at
first.

Then....

Flames
burst out of the open end in an orange tangle, licking along the
sides and traveling toward Brett's hands. Just before Brett dropped
the tube, Carson leaned
into
the flames.

John
and I had about exactly three seconds to exchange a look,
what-the-hell?

But
when we glanced back at Carson, we saw what the problem really was.
The fire hovered like a lover, all around Carson's face but leaving
him untouched.

Jonesy,
never one for internal dialogue said, “What the hell is this?”

That about covered it.

Brett was backing up, backing away from Carson,
who turned to us with an evil grin. Fire was still moving around his
face in a wave. He held out his hand and a small flame swept down his
arm, blue in its center, burning just above his palm.

“So, you were saying Hart? You want to go chew
some glass? Sounds like a good plan to me.”

Beautiful, Carson the Comedian.

We
stood speechless.

Holy
hell.

I
guess Carson had the fire thing goin' on and Jonesy, the Plan-Man,
hadn't counted on this.

Zero contingency plan; nada, zilch, zip.

Shit.

Brett was well and far away from Carson with a
stunned expression. A surprise ability apparently.

John stepped in, the voice of reason. “Listen,
it was just a joke, you've been up Caleb's ass since forever and it
was just a little payback. You don't need to torch us.”

John put his hands out like,
just all
fun-and-games here.

“I'm
not gonna torch you guys... just him.”

And with that delightful objective, he did just
that, putting his hand back, readying to throw the ball o' fire.

Everything happened in slow motion. I heard Jade
gasp beside me and I gave her a hard shove to get her out of the
literal line of fire.

Jonesy shrieked, “Hey!”

But it was John that shocked me, stepping right
into Carson, the two of them colliding, the fire halting mid-throw.
There was a crazy flame floating, suspended between myself and
Carson. It moved neither backward or forward, but sputtering and
flickering, trying to go out.

With a roar, Carson leaped forward trying to
recapture the flame but John drop-tackled his ass and they both went
down. Once John nailed Carson, the flame died out completely.

“
Get
off me Terran!” Carson roared, grabbing John by his frizzy mass of
hair, pulling him off his legs by his scalp. Now that the fire was
out, John had started to get up but Carson, typical jerk-off that he
was, just
had
to get into with John.

“Hey! Let go!” John gave him an elbow to the
nose and a spray of blood erupted. Carson howled and grabbed his
nose, kicking John right in the kneecap. John went down holding his
knee.

Well...
damn.

I ran over to break it up before the whole world
figured out that something was going on besides a practical joke.

And was interrupted by Jade's dad.

He appeared at the entrance of the cemetery, the
wind lifting his sweating hair off his forehead. Fists clenched and
breathing heavy, his chest rising and falling, swooping in great
lungfuls of air. I was struck by how much he moved and looked like
Brett's dad; he was in a lot better shape.

His timing blew.

I swung my head in Jade's direction and, prone on
her butt (oops, shoved harder than I meant) she gave me the
I'm-caught-rabbit-stare.

He hollered, “Jade... what in the blue hell are
you doin' hanging out with this pack of boys?” His face had flushed
an alarming purple color as he began making his way toward us.

He scared me to death, a fine tremble coursed
through my body. I called Jade over; she scrambled to her feet and
ran. His momentum was carrying him, he was gonna put a hurt on us and
I wasn't gonna let it be Jade.

My next move was as natural as breathing.
Instantly remembering that Jade and I worked like complements, I
grabbed her hand and flung out every bit of my power over the dead.
Mr. Scary was wading through graves, his fists like great meaty
hammers, coming to nail us.

Like a great flowing river, the power left my
body: a vessel fully released of its contents.

I looked over at Jade and she was breathing
rapidly. Her eyes so wide the whites showed, the startling green
irises standing out, burning like emeralds on fire.

Like before, nothing happened, then... chaos
reigned.

The
graves in front of him burst upward, sod and dirt exploding in every
direction. Hands followed; two, three, no... five graves shifting and
opening to allow the dead to rise.

My
dead.

Starting from my toes, the full flesh crawl
climbed my body.

Jade
was saying something real soft, “no, no, no.”
I
released
her hand.

“I think I can take it from here,” I said,
stepping away. So much for not raising the dead.

Like a freight train, Jade's dad hesitated at the
junction, not sure what track to choose.

“What the hell is this?” He flung his arms
wide, including the corpses.

Violence wasn't the only thing that Brett and
Jade's fathers had in common. The smell of alcohol preceded him by a
mile. Brother, what a loser.

I had a collection of corpses now standing. Their
eyes vacant, waiting for direction, purpose. I stepped forward and
they all swung their heads to me.

“Protect us from him.” I pointed a finger at
Jade's dad.

Her
dad wasn't drunk enough to
not
understand the potential for self-preservation.

“Come here Jade. You don't need to be hanging
out with them losers,” he said.

That
was a joke. Him calling us losers. I looked back at the ass-potatoes,
Carson and Brett. Excluding them, maybe he
was
onto something with them.

“No daddy. I won't ever come back,” Jade said,
stepping forward as if to speak with him. I grabbed her arm. She
wasn't going near him.

She
turned to me and shook her head, like,
it's
okay.

I redoubled my hold and shook my head back. “No
fucking way Jade.”

The corpses started to get agitated. One in
particular. He shambled forward, keeping his eye on Jade's dad, who
had begun to inch closer.

The corpses closed in on him, a tide wave of death
to shore.

Oh
geez. This is the one I had raised before... Clyde. Fluke of flukes.
In the whole graveyard I couldn't raise a new corpse? I bet raising
zombies more than once wasn't a good thing
.

“I
have risen again,” Clyde said, his voice full of the dirt-sound I
was getting used to. “For what purpose, necromancer...for what
purpose.”

The other zombies, in various stages of rot,
stared at me.