"Okay," Anderson moved away from the desk he'd just abused, pacing and pissed out of his damned gourd. Really? Was this possible? They'd never, and he meant never, been shut down.

He tried to reason one last time with his boss, "Kyle Hart brought it to me himself." Anderson placed both palms on the wide wooden desk again, antique by most standards as real wood was no longer used. He himself had a recycled glass desktop. He drilled Rumford with his stare. "You remember a couple of years ago, Bill?"

"Yeah," Bill Rumford answered, scrubbing his weary face with a damp palm. He was pissed himself. But his hands were tied.

"Remember the numbers, Bill? How our sponsorships and ratings soared? Demographic-neutral, boss." Anderson straightened, his eyebrows were to his hairline, palms out in the universal gesture, Are you hearing me?

Bill held up a palm. "I understand. It was unprecedented, all age groups hit the same plateau."

"Everyone wanted to read about the Graysheets. About a boy that had almost been taken by a government organization so covert, the name isn't even whispered."

Bill looked at his lead journalist. Skeptical and exacting, Tim Anderson was a dog with a bone. And the one he was after was meaty. Spoiled.

However, Bill had his neck on the guillotine's blade, it was pressing on his jugular.

"It comes as a mandate..." Bill began.

"From whom?" Anderson's eyes searched his, waiting for answers that wouldn't be forthcoming.

"The President."

"Oh shit, seriously?" Anderson straightened, propping his hands on his hips, brows raised to his hairline again.

"Bullshit!" Anderson nearly shouted.

"Would I joke about that?" Bill responded quietly.

Anderson looked at the man who'd shared the last revealing of the Graysheets in the none-too-recent past. Dammit. Hell no he wouldn't.

Anderson sat, throwing his legs out, his feet diving underneath the large square desk.

"What? National security or some other happy-ho-ho-crap?" Anderson asked, flailing his arms around in frustration.

Bill's brows rose.

"Wow... just wow," Anderson said, raking a hand through his hair. "I have to say, Bill... I think Dr. Hart was using that slide info. as insurance." Anderson's intense eyes stayed on Bill Rumford with a palpable weight.

Bill leaned forward and Anderson met him, their noses a foot away from each other. "He's scared, Bill," he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

They looked at each other.

"He's not the only one," Bill Rumford said, ending the conversation.

Anderson turned to leave, then faced his boss again. "I feel like the worse kind of coward."

He left.

"Me too," Bill answered to the closed door.

*

Caleb

I saw Gramps give a look at the group of dead that had come into the open pathway of the dump, their dead eyes following my every move.

Gramps looked at them, then swung his face into the downpour that was slowing. "Damn weather," he muttered, tossing his cig onto the sodden ground, and tramping it down with a savage stomp of his foot. "They followed you?"

I nodded. Actually, they'd been waiting here. I'd been that smart at least. I gave a small smile.

"Good thinking, son." He glanced at them again, impervious to the rain, the weather dripping off fingertips of some, others it found the crevices of rot perfectly, pooling where it shouldn't have been able to.

John said, "Let's go."

I looked at my dead. The reality of not being able to have that affinity for all things not living was something I couldn't even wrap my head around. That potential seemed wrong. Whereas just a few years ago it was absolutely alien.

Jade's hand found mine and we headed to Archer's car.

I gave the dead a final command. They followed. I still had that pressing portent of fun things to come.

When we showed up at Tiff's house it was a charred ruin, the cinderblock foundation like heaved gray teeth out of ground that was wet from rain and stinking of violation by fire. The responders were crawling all over the place like red ants. Fire, ambulance and police, a rainbow of protection, their colors of red, navy and black should have filled me with an abiding comfort. After all, they were here to help.

Instead, my suspicious nature took precedence. I took stock of my surroundings, watching my friends three vehicles pull up and they piled out.

The rain had thinned, giving the day a dimmed and slightly off-kilter feel. The ambient light made everything seem to float.

I watched the insects of salvation work over the rubble. I saw Bry rush to his parents, the Weller spawn cocooned safely in the gray wool blankets of shock-prevention. I noticed too late Terran's eyes widening at something behind me.

When Gramps yelled at me in warning, I was already turning.

I'd always feel when I was older that if a moment could hang, suspended, captured in slow-motion... it was indeed that one.

I met Frazier's eyes and jerked the chain of the dead to me, feeling the heat and connection of Jade at my back.

Then his hand fell on my arm.

"Sleep," he whispered with a voice that brought slumber instantly.

I fought.

And lost.

CHAPTER 15

Clyde

Clyde stopped, a void-like pain beginning like a stone thrown at the middle of his chest, just off center of his heart.

He rubbed the deep bruising ache that began, radiating from the core of his body and stopping at his fingertips.

"What is it?" Bobbi said, throwing the last duffel in her car. She gave a quick glance at the home she'd be leaving behind and sighed. She shivered against the chilly weather seeping into her bones.

The house was just a thing. Bobbi knew this.

But it had been a thing she'd loved. However, there was now something she loved more that sticks and mortar.

Her gaze slid back to Clyde, her zombie lover, and she screamed when she saw him fall to his knees. "Clyde!"

Clyde's hands hit the same sidewalk that Jonesy had broken his arm against. His mouth had gone slack and he was beginning to drool.

Clyde understood intrinsically that somehow, he would be less alive if Caleb Hart would ever cease to exist. It was obvious that Roberta gave him the essential spark that fueled him. But it was the necromancy at Caleb's center that had brought him here.

It was compromised now.

He did not know how or why.

Clyde knew that his boy now hovered in some state that paralleled death like railroad tracks.

That went nowhere.

Bobbi knelt by Clyde, his muscular arms shaking, holding up his pain wracked body.

"Caleb," he said in a hoarse whisper.

"Is he okay?" she asked, immediately feeling as dumb as a post. Of course he wasn't or Clyde wouldn't be kneeling on the concrete, on the verge of purging... something.

"No." His face tilted up to look at hers, his hazel eyes appeared so green in the brightness of a day gone dark.

Bobbi shook her head in denial. "No, Clyde. They'll take me."

He smiled through his malaise. "Over my dead body." Then he winked.

Rising, Clyde took her small hand in his, gritting his teeth against the death energy fluctuation.

"He wouldn't want us to go and find him, Clyde! Caleb wants you safe," she pleaded with him.

"I know," he responded, cupping her chin, he gave a sensuous flick of his tongue on his dry lips then pressed them to hers in the softest brush of skin, a press of crushed velvet.

Their death energy flexed around them both in a sensual binding that instantly invigorated Clyde, his strength returning. He broke the kiss reluctantly and opened the car door for Bobbi and she slid inside as he strode to the passenger side.

"Where?" she asked in a short word.

Clyde thought. Actually, he felt.

Shattered images filtered in through the conduit that he shared with Caleb, now shut down, only fragments left to grasp. He reached further.

When fear slammed him in the gut, he recognized the flavor of it immediately.

"Tiffany Weller," he returned softly.

"What? I thought it was Caleb...."

His eyes burned at her, the hazel so bright it hurt to look into them. "Oh... her house?"

Clyde nodded once. It was not spot-on as Caleb's grandfather loved to exclaim, yet it had the right feel to it. "It is a good start."

They left, Bobbi's fingers itching to pulse on the hidden police light.

She resisted.

The car sped through the day, the driving rain finally broken by the rare sunlight as the crispness of the fall day became winter and snow fell where sleet had been before. A moment of sunlight stolen by snow.

Turning the world white.

While blackness creeped at the edges like soot.

*

Frazier

Howie watched that dick, Hart fall to the ground, rapping his head a good one on the way out.

It's not like he'd brace his fall. Howie hoped his brains slid out on the pavement. Hart was trouble.

But he'd play the Graysheet game for now.

Frazier didn't know who he really worked for. It didn't matter to him. As long as he could do his criminal shit, get paid and not get caught. Not necessarily in that order.

He now commanded pay first.

Shit, Howie thought, watching as the people came for him in a wave of bodies.

Cops ran from every corner of the block towards his position. Slow asses, Frazier thought, grabbing Jade as he let Hart drop.

She turned and he latched onto her skinny arm, trying to close his palm around the smallness, his mind envisioning immediately the closing and pulverizing of the small bones he could feel just underneath her skin. Jade yelped at the pain and he jerked her against him and she moaned like a trapped animal, a low sound of fear squeezing out of her lips.

"Hey sis," he said, giving her a tender kiss on the temple.

They were almost on them, including that old fucker grandpa of Caleb's, his fists like ready strikes of balled flesh.

Howie Frazier recognized an ex-assassin when he saw one. Like knew like. He saw the knowledge in the old dude's eyes.

He'd have to put him down first. Grandpa was old, but his body moved like he still knew how to use it.

Frazier squeezed Jade's arm microscopically tighter and she moaned again.

Howie liked the sound of that. He figured there'd be a lot more of that later.

"Do not listen to my next words," he said and gave a mental shove into her thoughts. That's what a Manipulator did, pushed their mental directive against another.

Unfortunately, it didn't work on high point Nulls. The low points, one or twos; he could sometimes make pick their own asses, but a not a powerful Null. He had to bring it physically.

Howie could do that.

He waited until every gun was drawn, Jade mewling like a crippled kitten in his arms. Jesus she was weak.

Frazier hated that about her, he also found it terribly exciting. He wasn't perturbed over that internal oxymoron of his emotional signature. He'd known he was fucked up for awhile and accepted it as his unique reality.

When Caleb's grandfather was within striking distance Frazier yelled with a metal shove so fierce that he felt at once empty and coasting, like he was a ship without a rudder.

"Sleep!" he bellowed into the open chill of the twilight.

People dropped like flies.

It was always an interesting phenomena when he did a mass Manipulation. Some were so fast they didn't take their next breath and others were very slow to comply.

Howie dragged the uncooperative Jade as a handful of people still struggled with consciousness, fighting his heavy-handed Manipulation.

Frazier bent down over Gramps. It figured he'd be resistant, Frazier thought with a snort.

"I'll kill you," Gramps said in a voice soaked in sleep, wrapped in the cotton of drowsiness.

"Fuck off, grandpa," Frazier whispered, touching the skin of his forehead, "sleep." He gave him the juice.

The old guy shuddered, his body going limp. Frazier paused, nodding when the jerk's chest swelled and dropped.

Very slowly.

He turned away and Terran round house clocked him.

It took Howie a second to acknowledge that this lanky geek had clocked him.

"Jade, run!" John yelled.

"No... Jade!" Howie said with a quizzical look on his face, like this turd would steal his prize? No. He grabbed her as she tried to run and shook her so hard she fell on the ground, crawling to get away and he shoved a foot on top her back and she sprawled out beneath him.

John tackled him.

Terran didn't know how to fight with the finesse that Frazier possessed but there was no one else. He had to, for Jade.

Howie Frazier went to town on John Terran. If Terran had known how to use his body, he could have wiped the asphalt with Howie.