Spree (YA Paranormal) (18 page)

At this, Zipper smiled. It would make his prey that much easier to trap. He just sat back and let the players wear themselves out.

Will slipped, and Alex went for the ball. Alex moved slower than most of the other players but maintained his balance. Alex maneuvered closer to the goal than he had any right to be off of a single play, but waiting by the goal were #8 and #27, who drove Alex away from the goal, to the sidelines. No one else from Burgundy Hill could make it far enough in time, so Alex took a wild kick. The kick was easily caught by the goalie, #12, who kicked the ball back into play, but Alex’s daring matched Will’s tempo. In a game like this, where the kids would have a better match playing water polo, all risks were fair.

A few Keepers kept working over the coaches. Takers went to intercept, but the light of the Keepers kept them at bay.

Suddenly, Burgundy Hill’s Coach Ryan called out to Franklin Shore’s Coach Derriza.

Zipper’s face turned even paler than usual.

“Miguel,” Coach Ryan said. “What do you say we call it? Neither set of boys is going to get a decent shot today.”

Coach Derriza had played pro
futbol
down in South America, over in Europe, and was the best living player to come out of the area since Coach Ryan played for the last championship Burgundy Hill team. Coach Derriza had played in all kinds of weather, but even he wondered if this was the real way to win a championship.

Coach Derriza looked up and examined the cloud cover. Takers fluttered everywhere, trying to reflect as much sunlight as they could.

“Just give them the first half,” Coach Derriza said. “It looks like the clouds are breaking up.”

At those words, the Takers stole my play and concentrated on the rain. Puddles started forming over the field and quickly turned to little bogs.

Not one player complained, though, and the crowds cheered them towards the wettest championship soccer game in Burgundy Hill’s history. Just then thunder roared and lightning took the sky. Hail began falling, and part of the crowd grew restless.

Zipper saw his cue. He quietly unzipped his bag and took out both the detonator and an assault rifle.

Crazy T personally protected his protege so that it was dark out and people were busying themselves covering up from the hail. Many of their auras showed that they were ready to bolt from the bleachers. Zipper waited one more second while Alex tripped in a puddle and fell. The rain, thunder, hail, and lightning made visibility low. Zipper was ready to aim his rifle right for Alex without anyone seeing him quickly enough. I stood in front of Alex, trying to protect him. I tried to appear one last time before Zipper, to change his course, but his mind was made up. Takers swarmed around him, ready to swoop in for the dead as Zipper aimed right for Alex’s head and shot. I did what I could to use whatever control of energy I had to make Alex slip. He did, just as the bullet went in his left leg.

The starters and midfielders concentrated on the ball, but Tom was able to signal to Coach Ryan that Alex wasn’t getting up. A few Burgundy Hill players huddled around their fallen captain.

Just then a blinding light came from the bleachers. I knew why. I turned around and saw the Keepers under attack from swarms of Takers. Several Keepers were hauled away by the dark ghosts, but like a Roman legion in the history books, the Keepers bunkered down. Their light grew to blind the Takers, but one person wasn’t so moved.

“Now,” Crazy T yelled to Zipper.

Zipper held the detonator in his hand. He paused a moment. I could feel his conflict. Still, the good in him had eroded too far away. Preggers took advantage of the situation and used her fury to conjure the lightning. It started striking down. Zipper, the opportunist, pressed down on the detonator. The left bleachers exploded and came toppling down just as the lightning struck.

The Keepers held their line, though, and contained as much of the explosion as they could.

Only a few people broke anything, but at least forty people were buried under debris and were crying and screaming.

“One more explosion,” I said to myself, “and the whole school will blow away, fields included.”

Coach Ryan focused on Alex, but I used a glimmer of light to distract him long enough for the coach to see a second chunk of bleachers fall.

“Lightning struck the bleachers,” Coach Ryan called out. “Get everyone off the field!”

Coach Derriza joined him, signaling his players with a wave of his arms. “Game’s over,” he called to the Franklin Shore boys. “Help get the people out of the debris!”

Lightning still struck down on the poles as the Takers and Keepers took to all-out war in the skies. Takers collided mid-air with the Keepers, many of whom used their light to go right through the Takers and tear them apart. Wisps of mist and light fell back into The Flow, which now hovered like a giant funnel above the fields.

Burn Girl and Cut Girl used their energy to fuel the larger explosion, but Belinda took both Takers out before they could cause more than one tiny dud of a bomb to blow. If anything, Burn Girl and Cut Girl did the crowd a favor as they began to piece together that this wasn’t simply a lightning strike. Both Takers burned in their own fiery mists and fell to The Flow.

“Get the kids out of here! It’s a bomb,” I yelled again and again, until one soccer mom intuitively heard me and took to the chant.

Unfortunately, two Takers, Rope Man and Preggers, attacked me just after the alarm sounded.

“Keep her from me,” Crazy T called out.

I used whatever powers I had to flip and twirl, kicking at Rope Man, then dangling the end of his noose and hanging him to a tree. Two Keepers then took Rope Man out.

“Leave her to me,” Preggers told Crazy T.

“Cindy,” I said. “Rethink this. These are your friends. Help me to help them!”

“I told you—I won’t be the only one whose life is cut short.”

Her eyes were volcanic red, unnaturally evil. She jumped up and whirled her body around, creating massive waves of anger that fed the other Takers, who swooped in and ripped a score of the Keepers in half.

“I could beat you senseless when we were alive,” I told Preggers, “and I can do the same now that we’re dead.”

“Try it.”

I formed my own violent ball of mist, which emanated intuitively from my own anger. Takers swirled around it, attempting to have their fill, before I hurled it into Preggers. She braced herself in mid-air, fighting to absorb the ball of darkness, but it was too dark for even her deformed ghostly body to contain. It blew right through her.

“Bitch,” she said.

She used what she could of the Taker mists around her and formed black lightning bolts, which she hurled at me as if she was some deranged Zeus from on high.

I weaved in and out of the fellow Takers. Each bolt that hit its target turned the Taker into a mist that was swallowed whole by The Flow. The abyss opened up before me. I could see that the funnel was feeding souls to hell.

As I bobbed and weaved for my supernatural life, Zipper was in full assault mode. He shot at both sets of players, who scrambled for cover. Tom was the boldest. He dove over Alex, trying to protect him. Zipper caught Tom’s face in his sites and shot. Fighting as I was, I couldn’t make it in time. The bullet hit Tom’s face and he went down by Alex, who screamed. Zipper laughed, eerily, sounding more like Crazy T. I saw why. Crazy T entered his body and possessed him. Zipper shot down as many players as he could before Coach Ryan tackled him. Coach Ryan trembled as he saw the red in Zipper’s eyes, and the Takers protected their master by helping him hurl Coach Ryan towards the bleachers. Coach Derizza also fought, but was gunned down by Zipper before the coach could restrain him. The soccer players froze for a moment. Then a group of Franklin Shore and Burgundy Hill players broke off. The Franklin Shore guys distracted Crazy T, putting their lives on the line, while the Burgundy Hill players came around, seeking the element of surprise.

“Jocks never do get any smarter,” Crazy T said through Zipper.

Zipper turned and shot down the squad that approached from the side before shooting down the Franklin Shore players who put their lives at risk. The bullets didn’t kill them all yet, though. Crazy T, who was now clearly in control, enjoyed hearing the cries and screams of pain. He shot into the players, into the crowd, taking special pleasure in bringing a begging Sue to her knees only to shoot her dead.

Jessica, who cowered by the fallen bleachers, tried not to scream. At the behest of the Keepers, she took out her phone and dialed police. They protected her as she then played dead.

Crazy T was too focused on his prize to notice or care, for just then, Zipper had turned and faced Mrs. Walters as well as Tom’s and Alex’s brothers. The young men were fighting to get across the field to their wounded siblings. It was clear what Crazy T was having Zipper do. He was using Tom and Alex as bait so that Crazy T could finish the job he started over a decade ago. The storm now raged in full. The brothers, along with some concerned parents, slid in the mud and hail as they ran after their siblings and children. Zipper shot every last one.

The sight infuriated me. Preggers sent a bolt my way, but I had grown too full of fury to be subject to her depression and rage. I held my hand out and grabbed the bolt she sent flying at me. She sent another. I grabbed it, then flew, like some samurai from an old movie, towards her, shrieking in the way only a Taker can. I cut her ghostly form to pieces with both bolts until what was left of Preggers, her mass of mist, came apart, sucked into The Flow.

“Fay,” Preggers said in her final moments.

I felt her presence again. For a moment, she was Cindy, the drinking buddy I knew before the crash, the girl I grew up with, who let me kiss Alex first.

Her eyes were so bright, so green at that moment.

“I’m sorry, Cindy, but you made your choice,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Just then The Flow sucked her shrieking ghostly form, all misty, red and black, inside. I turned away, fearful of what it might look like to see a close friend go to hell.

I didn’t let the crying on the field, of older adults, of children, of teenagers, get to me.

I marched towards Zipper, determined to do whatever I had to to take him out.

Crazy T enjoyed himself, gazing as he did over all of the carnage. The blood only acted like an upper. A twisted smile crossed Zipper’s lips as Crazy T set eyes on Mrs. Walters, the good teacher, there alone, fighting to protect a few of the kids with her own body. She was visibly shaking, struggling to be brave.

“How sweet,” Zipper said. “Where was that sweetness when I needed it, when Steve tormented me?!”

Mrs. Walters made eye contact with Zipper. “What did you say?” she asked.

“I loved you,” Zipper said. “I only ever loved
you
!”

“No,” Mrs. Walters said weakly, fearful of having started two shootings and not just one. “Zipper, whatever that is, it’s not healthy, it’s not love. Put the gun down. Let me get you some help.”

“I loved you so much, just like this freak loved Fay; more, even more,” Zipper told her. “How can you say I never loved you?”

Crazy T used Zipper’s hand to stroke the cheek of his beloved.

Mrs. Walters looked carefully into the eyes of her assailant.

“Teddy?” she asked.

Zipper raised the gun in a token of greeting. “Ready to go to hell with me?” he asked. “We mustn’t keep your friends waiting.”

Zipper pointed the gun. Mrs. Walters screamed. She tried so hard to be brave, even if she was not naturally a brave woman. The children she protected screamed with her.

The exchange between Mrs. Walters and Crazy T bought me the moment I needed. I tried to slip into Steph, but she wouldn’t let me. I used my Taker rage, convincing her to come from where she was cowering and stand up to Zipper.

I felt her strength, her outrage, her trauma. I joined it to mine.

She rose.

In the split second that Steph used to get across the field, Zipper prepared to pull the trigger.

Just then, Aliya, close enough to hear the exchange, flipped her wheelchair over. The sound of the crashing chair caught Zipper’s attention. Crazy T screamed at Zipper to shoot, but the sight of the crippled crash victim on the ground moved something in Zipper, and he did not turn away. Aliya took advantage of the moment and yelled, “Fay said to save her a dance! I saw her. I swear it!”

Zipper halted. “What did you say?” he asked.

In that one second, Aliya saved Mrs. Walters’s life.

“Don’t,” Steph screamed as she came closer.

Her knees buckled; she lost her will. I joined my spirit with hers to give her strength.

“Enough death,” Steph screamed. “We’ve lost enough!”

“Get out of the girl,” Crazy T called to me.

“Not until you leave Zipper,” I said.

“To think,” Zipper said to Steph. “I
might
have let you live. But you clearly haven’t suffered enough.”

I radiated in my black mist as best I could until Zipper could see me.

There I was, a dark ghost, nearly as black as Preggers, who was now gone to hell.

Zipper’s eyes reddened. “Fay?” he asked.

“I won’t let you kill her,” I said through Steph. “I took her mother; I won’t let you take her. And I won’t let Crazy T take Mrs. Walters.”

“Crazy who?”

“There’s no time,” I said to Zipper. “You have to listen to me.”

“What?”

My eyes made it to a few of the wounded soccer players on the field. They were going to make one last strike against Zipper. Their eyes showed more ferocity in that moment than they had in their entire championship season. They had a field to cross, but they would get there.

“You set me up,” Zipper said. “I loved you, Fay, and all you could do was try to trick me.”

“No one can trick you now,” I told Zipper. “They’re getting closer. You have a choice to make.”

“What choice?”

“I’m here for you. I’m your Taker.”

“What?”

“I’ve always been your Taker. I died so that you would do this, so that you would be manipulated into doing this. I’m trying to set things right.”