Her flesh came into contact with mine and I saw the realization of what actually happened take shape, her Empath abilities aiding me without words.

"I thought..." She shuddered, her eyes looking into mine. It felt like she could see all the way to my toenails with that gaze, so deeply did she go. When a full minute had passed she said, "He gave you no choice."

"No," I said, and the first, hot tear rolled out of my eye, burning a pathway of shame, relief, terror and my old friend-rage, as it settled near my chin.

Jade brushed it away, putting her head against my chest, the thump-thump of my heart pushed against her cheek as she whispered, "It's alright, Caleb... it's alright."

I wrapped my arms around her and cried against her soft hair.

*

I thought I was crazy about Jade before. Well, after I tried to kill her there was nothing on earth that would have kept me from her side.

Clean up wasn't a snap. Jonesy and I were arguing about Frazier's body. I looked down at it with distaste. "Here's the thing, Jones," I began, absently stroking Jade, who was more or less tolerating my constant need for contact. "If I raise his dumb ass," Jade shivered and I drew her tighter against my body, "then he'll just..." I made a motion with my palm like it was diving underwater.

Jonesy put his hands on his hips, checking out the brains around Frazier and gave one last retching cough.

Clyde looked on with a little too much keenness if you asked me.

Brains around zombies. Yeah, kinda a diversion.

"So, we don't have to bury the putz to hide the evidence...."

"He's fragment, remember?"

Clyde nodded, "He is from the world of spheres. A ne'er do well."

I nodded, although he was not pulse printed like the rest of us, and he'd have no history to speak of, he was still dead. Dead bodies collected more than flies. Thankfully, with the winter weather, his decomposition... ah, the hell with it.

I thunked Frazier between the eyes with a hammer of death energy and he rose with a gasping lurch, coming to his feet and staring at me.

Jade slid behind my body. Even knowing I was in control, knowing Frazier couldn't touch her. I swallowed hard against the fear I felt coursing through her. I hated that she was afraid because of what I needed to do.

His personality filled his eyes and Frazier drilled me for about two seconds, our gazes locked. I opened my mouth to command him to return to rest, thereby negating the need for digging graves while still getting his criminal ass gone and out of Jade's sight forever.

Instead, my cool simplistic plan got blown away when he turned to Clyde. "Kill them," he said in the same Manipulative tone he'd used on me.

"Fuck a duck!" Jonesy hollered, putting his hands to his head.

Clyde turned to me and our eyes met. His held a vacant emptiness... then he hissed and came at me.

Suddenly, I was fighting for my life from the only one I thought I'd never have to worry about.

Jade screamed again as Frazier smiled, slowly walking toward her.

"Do I have to kill ya again, ya dickhead?" Jonesy asked, grabbing a stray limb from the ground.

"Gnaw your own arm," Frazier tried.

Jonesy flipped up his middle finger. "Sit and spin ya tard. You're dead, dipshit, your crap doesn't work on me."

"You can't blame me for trying, Jones," Frazier said, half growling.

I saw in my peripheral vision, Jade move behind Jonesy and Frazier followed her unnervingly with his freshly dead eyes while I kept my gaze on Clyde.

He moved in and, unfortunately, he remembered all the moves I'd put on him. He was a fast learner.

Clyde rammed that fist into my jaw and I turned at the last second or it would have come off its hinges.

We exchanged strikes, mine smooth martial arts and his jabbing butchers of flesh as they struck all the vulnerable points of my body.

He was winning, I simply didn't have the undead strength. The only thing that kept me going was Jade.

She'd be dead for sure if I didn't subdue Clyde.

How could I?

How could I not?

I fought and when he had brought me down to my knees, ready to pound me into oblivion, I met her eyes and Jade mouthed her love for me.

That's when I felt it, a doubling of the sentiment.

I'd wonder later if it was my imagination or that little bit of psychic I had.

I'll never know for sure because Bobbi was striding in the mess.

She interpreted things perfectly, kicking out Clyde's feet from underneath him. Her surprise advantage allowed her to knock him over like a domino set and he fell, throwing out a hand to catch himself as it gripped the icy grass.

I swiveled my head toward Frazier. "Rest!" I bellowed into the chilly air.

The command hit Frazier like a well-aimed bullet between the eyes. He didn't just fall, he sunk into the ground like it was split-second quicksand. I heard the ground suck him in like a vacuum.

I laid down in the weeds, twigs and frozen needles that were all around me and closed my eyes, my forehead pressed against the chilled ground.

When I opened them, there were four heads above me.

"Master." Clyde swallowed through his guilt, bruises fading as I watched. They turned from purple to chartreuse in a reverse healing of colors.

I held my hand out and he took it, jerking me to my feet. Every bit of my body ached and screamed from the shit I'd just put it through.

"How did he...?" Jade asked, moving against me and I winced as she touched me. She leaned back and looked at me and I shook my head slightly. There was nowhere that didn't hurt so fuck it.

She cuddled in against my abused body. I'd rather hurt and have Jade plastered to me, thank you very much.

"He couldn't Manipulate anyone living because he was dead," I said softly, easily putting it together.

I felt like a tool for not thinking that through.

Jonesy looked at me. "Smart, Hart."

"Yeah," I agreed, giving him a thanks look.

Bobbi put up her hand. "It's over now. It's just one of those things..."

One. Of. Those. Things?

I threw back my head and laughed. Yeah... I was so sure that those types of things happened to everyone.

When we could finally stop laughing Jonesy chirped, "I think I can get to Tiff."

"How?" I asked.

Clyde, Bobbi and Jade looked at him.

"Like Gale found Clyde..."

Bobbi looked at Clyde and shrugged. "It's a death-vibe," she said, smiling. She gave him a little squeeze and he gave her one back.

"Clyde!" she cried.

"I am sorry, dear heart," he said, using too much undead gusto.

"Hamilton busted his ankle thing, right?" Jonesy elaborated.

We nodded.

"Well," he tapped his head. "I think I can sniff that out because it is newer technology so when it's busted it's like someones playing the wrong musical note..."

"A discordant melody?" Bobbi asked.

Jones thought about it, then slowly nodded.

"Great," I said, beginning to hobble back to Jonesy's borrowed monster truck, "I'm ready to go."

"Hold your shorts, Hart." He walked by me and winked. "I'm in charge this time."

I stopped for a second then relented. "Okay."

He looked surprised and then said, "Yeah, baby!"

Jonesy jogged off and I hobbled after him with Jade against my side, hoping I had enough to bring it with the next mess.

'Cuz there'd be one.

CHAPTER 18

Parker

They dressed in the quiet shroud of snow, the circle of dry forest floor disappearing as the temperature dropped and a rare day of true winter moved in to stay.

For once Parker was at a loss for what to do next.

He did know that killing Nevaeh was no longer in the cards. He'd killed for years, some murdering had been justified and others had been his job.

Caleb Hart had changed all that... and Jeffrey's personal hunger to make the Helix Complex crumble. Their path had never been of his choosing, but one he'd been coerced into when they'd killed his worthless family at about the same age Caleb was when Parker first made his acquaintance in that old graveyard.

Yeah, Parker was meant for something greater. His family had been terrible, true.

Yet... they'd been what he'd known. The sweep of death had done nothing but cripple a psyche already damaged by the abusive familial upbringing he'd received.

HC intel gave credence to Nevaeh's childhood being worse than his. The fine scars that he'd caressed.

Kissed.

They told the history of her abuse. Parker hadn't needed to see any confirmation on her beautiful skin. It was in her eyes. When Nevaeh let down her guard, that heartbreaking vulnerability had been there, a mirror of his own.

He saw himself in her and was inexplicably drawn to her.

And he made the worst mistake of his life.

Parker embraced the hope he'd caught sight of in the maze of life and chased it.

*

Parker pulled Nevaeh against him from behind. She didn't have her shirt on and his warm palms brought gooseflesh to the surface of her pale skin. "Quit it," she said. "I'm freezing my ass off here," she elaborated, trying to pull away, the warmth of their encounter standing between them awkwardly.

Parker jerked her against him, wrapping one hand against her throat, the other a caged band of warmth around her waist. "Don't you dare run, Nevaeh," Parker said in a fierce whisper, his large hands wandering the bare skin of her flat belly, dancing with exquisite slowness up ribs that were too prominent.

"Let me go," she said in a whisper, uncertainty threading her voice, momentarily stealing her normal throaty purr.

"No," he said, breathing against her ear, wrapping his hand in the tangle of inky hair and gripping it so tightly it was almost painful. He added, "I have found my slice of heaven and I'm not going to give it up."

"No one's ever connected that," she answered, laying her head against his shoulder, relaxing against his dominant hold. Her voice and body told Parker she'd relented to the chemistry that roared like an unchecked fire between them.

"I knew that your name had been chosen by an angel," Parker said in the first inspired and poetic turn of his life.

Nevaeh turned in his arms, her bare breasts pressed against the thin material of his t-shirt and he shivered, pressing her deeper against himself, his hold on her hair never wavering.

"You were sent to kill me," she said with breathy certainty.

"I don't think you have to worry about that now," Parker said, tipping her head back, he began kissing her slowly. When her eyes fluttered closed he kissed her lids, working his way down her cheekbones. When he began to lick and bite softly at the bones of her neck she became limp and he realized they weren't quite ready to leave this sliver of shelter.

They dropped where they had stood, devouring each other in a frantic and all-consuming passion.

Like it would be their last pass at happiness, a wisp of smoke seen, then disappearing into thin air.

Parker understood the irony of Nevaeh's name. A place he didn't believe in had become real in the form of a highly intelligent, broken woman with a secret of which she was unaware.

Nevaeh was Heaven spelled backward.

No security in the hereafter for Parker, but Heaven had come for him regardless.

Sometimes seeing was believing.

Or feeling.

*

Caleb

Bobbi had barely escaped notice. The rest of the gang had been rounded up and she had felt, "a blackness" she said, from Clyde that spurred her to find him.

In essence, when Frazier had pulled his final Manipulation move, Bobbi had already been trying to find us and it was all a shake down of lucky timing.

Really lucky.

Jonesy was driving carefully as the snow thickened. "Damn!" he said loudly, "I can't see dick in this white out."

Clyde scowled, looking around at the snow starting to gain ground, piling up on the curbs and sighed. "This does not help our pursuit."

Jonesy did the duck head, which I liked to affectionately think of as part of his non-verbal vocabulary. "Ya think?" He looked at Clyde like he'd lost it.

Bobbi smiled, and gave a cough behind her hand that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

"You are driving or another cuff would be in order," Clyde grumbled.

"I hate those, man. They make my ears ring and hurt like hell."

Clyde gave a genuine smile. "Yes, that is the intended consequence."

"Well, it works! Why don't you do more of that to the bad dudes?" Jonesy asked, squinting into the roadway. The snow gave us all a dizzying sense of being in a blackened wind tunnel hurtling through space with white bullets racing alongside. I closed my eyes for a second. Being in the back seat sucked, I decided.