Revenant's Kiss (Chronicles of the Afterlife) (41 page)

"I went and found a kid they called a spoon bender, moved things with his mind, a girl who
could start a fire just thinking about it, it’s not as uncommon as you’d think and they were all just people,
no vampires." He was going out of his way to convince her, it looked like he’d gone out of his way to
convince himself. That was all very interesting and Stephen King she might add, but what the hell had
she done back there, how did you kill a revenant by looking at it, and not just her father, Tom had so
much as said that what she’d done had taken them all down.

"But what does that make them, what does that make me?"

"Human," Tom answered, "I swear that you’re still only human," but he couldn’t believe that not
really or he wouldn’t have kept it a secret for so long.

"How did I do it, what did I do?" She had no answer to that so she looked to him.

"I don’t know."

Chapter 27

Tom had left her with a whole lot of crap to digest, her cell phone, and a command that she try
and get some sleep. She was certain that he’d intended to add more orders, like say don’t go near the
living-dead people again, but he thought better of it, at least for the moment. Or maybe he thought her
new found status as semi-freak would keep her from going there to avoid becoming a super freak. She
was already on their radar, but she was fairly certain that disappearing wouldn’t make her less of a
target.

She was lying in bed trying to force herself to sleep because she fully intended to do her job
again tonight but she couldn’t even manage to get her eyes closed. That little girl she’d remembered,
doing unnatural things, had her brain doing somersaults trying to associate that with her. She had passed
out once it was done, and now that she could remember what she’d done her brain wouldn’t rest. The
offal question of ‘what am I,’ wouldn’t cease tormenting her. It didn’t seem likely that anyone who
found out would think of her as human, they’d probably think she was a necropheliac, or whatever Tom
had said Ada was into.

As soon as she’d crawled into bed Khan had assumed his position next to her, but even his
warmth lacked its regular comfort. She was the one person that the giant dog had never growled at,
he’d simply taken up a position in her life that she’d never questioned, now she had to wonder if he
wasn’t somehow drawn to her semi-freak status. She hadn’t a clue about anything that was around her
anymore, she rolled over and came face to face with the pup in question. He didn’t look like he was
different from any other dog, well outside of size and strange breeding choice. Though she supposed
that if she was going to assume her freak power was only over the very disgusting choice of revenants
then she didn’t have to worry about her dog. She gave the pup a pat on the head and sat up, she wasn’t
sure how long she’d waited trying to force herself to sleep because she knew she needed it, but it
wouldn’t come. So she got up, stripped out of her pajamas and got dressed, she couldn’t recall the last
time she’d eaten so she made her way into the kitchen. Replaced Khans food and water before
grabbing a bowl out of a cabinet for herself. She retrieved milk from the fridge surprised to find that it
was still good, and poured herself a bowl of cereal. She was a few spoonfuls into the bowl when her
cell phone started ringing. She made a habit of answering given the only people with her number
circulated around work.

It had been a day since she’d seen or heard from either Malcolm or Marcia so she dropped the
spoon and retrieved the phone from her pocket. "Ryan here," she could have looked at the screen first
but she found she was less likely to get the phone before it went to voice-mail if she did. In answer to
her greeting she heard Marcia rambling and terrified on the other end of the line, every jumbled set of
words the woman emitted was followed by the sound of something heavy slamming into metal. "Marcia,
calm down, I need you to tell me what’s going on and exactly where you are." For a moment there was
nothing but more of the same terrified discombobulated talking. "Marcia," she barked into the phone, "I
can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on."

"I’m sorry, I’m sorry," Marcia all but sobbed over the line and it took some will not to bark at
the woman impatiently to spit it out. She was clearly in some trouble so they didn’t have the time for her
to be having a melt down.

"Are you with the vampires?" It was the first thing she could think to ask given the girls clear
infatuation with them, then again it was daylight and they were probably dead to the world.

"No," she went on like that for a bit whimpering and crying while the banging got louder.

"Marcia, tell me what’s going on or I can’t help you," and she’d be damned if she would lose
one more of her team to this.

"Malcolm and I, Douglas told us you’d gone off with someone he’d never seen before to hunt
these things, even after what happened to Manson and Clive." Great so the medium was going to start
with filler despite the fact that her life was in danger.

"Where are you," she demanded outright.

"We thought if we went hunting them on our own you’d see that we could help you." Marcia
sobbed over the line, clearly she was regretting that action now. They had gone looking for the
revenants themselves and apparently found some, panic officially settled as the medium sobbingly kept
apologizing.

"Marcia," Jennifer tried again, desperate for the woman to get her shit together, "I don’t care
that you took off without me, I don’t care why you did it, just tell me where you are." She dragged each
word out hoping that it would get through the cloud of panic that was prompting Marcia’s inability to
communicate the one thing she needed. Without a location she was powerless to help them, just like
she’d been powerless to stop what had happened to Clive and Manson.

"Malcolm saw one go into the sewers at the apartment complex where Manson was injured, we
followed the sewer-line for maybe eight or nine miles south from there." Jennifer tried to calculate that
distance in her head, tried to figure in the direction and immediately knew where they were.

"Marcia I need you to hang tight, do you hear me, is Malcolm there with you," she waited for
Marcia to confirm that they’d both holed down in an area with a metal hinged door, which Malcolm was
currently using his weight to help hold closed. "Listen to me," Jennifer told her, "I need you to hang the
phone up, I’m on my way, the two of you need to remain absolutely quiet, these things are drawn to
sound." She waited for Marcia to confirm but there was just more hysterical crying from the other end.
"You want to prove to me you can work in the field," she demanded from the other woman, "then prove
it Marcia, suck it up, shut the fuck up and wait for me to reach you." She was aware that she’d just
exploded and that she’d probably just made a hysterical ninny worse so she was kind of surprised when
she heard some sniffling over the banging.

"My GPS will be on," Marcia said and then the line went dead, hopefully not because the door
had broken in and the last of her team was being eaten alive.

A very large part of her wanted to spend time to freak out, the rest of her knew she couldn’t
unless she wanted them to die. Grabbing the cereal bowl she placed it on the ground next to Khan’s
leaving it for him to finish. She had no choice but to go into the basement and retrieve more ammunition,
she’d burned through more then she usually would in a few days. She stuffed the cell phone back in her
pocket and quickly hooked herself back into the harness for the Beretta and slung the Remington back
over her shoulder. When she finished pushing her feet into a pair of running shoes she charged to the
basement door, closing it behind her when Khan tried to follow. She still had a potentially lethal bag of
cloths lying at the top of the stairs that she had no time to deal with. Practically jumping the stairs she ran
to the storage locker that held her weapons. She punched in the code on the door, pushed it open and
ignoring the veritable arsenal she had stored there she grabbed loaded clips for the Beretta, and
restocked the belt where the ammo for the Remington was held. Taking note of the empty holster on
her left hip she grabbed another Beretta, checked to see that it already possessed a loaded clip of it’s
own and stuffed it in the hip holster on the opposite side of the single one she still had. Tom had given
her back her cell phone but he hadn’t given her back the Beretta he’d taken. On a whim she grabbed a
P-32, checked to ascertain it was loaded and strapped it to her ankle. She didn’t take time to grab
anything else although she thought it was likely she’d miss having Manson at her back with his light anti-tank hardware. She didn’t bother to cover any of the weaponry that she was wearing, outside of
slamming the storage area for her arsenal closed she paused for nothing.

When she was up the stairs she locked her doors and found that despite the fact that she’d never
driven her car home it was in the driveway, her cousin was a Godsend. Before she put the car into drive
she paused long enough to tell Tom exactly what she was up to. She wasn’t taking any chances with
this, not if he could get there first, although that may or may not be an event she would regret. She
didn’t think he’d just shoot them, but she hadn’t expected him to do it to Triple-F and Sam either. She
would do anything if it meant it gave her people a better chance of survival. And he was probably less
then a mile away from her people considering they were likely in the sewer systems directly below him,
just like Ethan had suggested. She could only hope that none of the previously known as vampire,
currently revenants came knocking on that door Marcia was behind, or they were dead.

She hated to admit that it was true, but she really wished that the vampire could walk around
during the day because she could really use his speed about now. Every single second of the drive there
was torture, every single one of those seconds was just another opportunity for her to fail someone yet
again. She could not lose these two, she would not, they were the last of what was left of her team,
losing them would be like losing herself, for the second time in her life she would have lost everything.
At least now she had a finger to point at someone, Ada, had taken her entire family from her on a whim,
and she was doing it again.

 She probably broke every speed limit there was reaching where she needed to be, and then
having little choice she called Zip. "I need you to pull up some sewer schematics," she ordered without
so much as an introduction. She rattled off the location, "I need you to find me a section that has a metal
door and I need you to find it for me fast." He didn’t ask for explanations, she really loved how efficient
the kid was.

After a pause, which she spent speeding around several corners, Zip broke the silence. "I’m
pretty sure I found what you’re looking for, I’m sending the schematic to your phone."

"Thanks Kid," she hung up and slammed on the brakes a few blocks from the mall. She was not
going to try and get in that way. She had neither the time nor the constitution to deal with any kind of
fuss Tom would put up. Jumping out of the car she opened the trunk grabbed a crowbar that was
stashed in there and slammed it back closed. Instead of sliding down the drain, which wasn’t likely to
be easy with all the hardware she had sticking out she made her way to the nearest manhole and used
the crowbar to pry it open. A waft of stench that smelled a lot more like death then sewage came out as
soon as the lid was up. She had no idea what she was jumping into on her own, no idea how many
she’d be up against, or what kind and still she didn’t hesitate. She all but jumped down the hole in her
haste to get to her friends, stopping to pull the manhole above slightly closed. While she didn’t want
anything getting out that way she certainly wouldn’t mind having an easy way back out either. As soon
as she was down she thought back to the schematic that Zip had sent her and did her best to head in the
direction of the mall. If she was lucky Malcolm and Marcia wouldn’t be far, if she was really lucky
they’d both stayed quiet and the revenants had wandered off. She didn’t dream for a second that she
was that lucky but a girl could hope. Hooking the crowbar to her belt and bringing the Remington into
her grasp she started forward, not bothering to try for stealth. One reason being she was tromping
through water, it was not easy to stay silent in it to begin with, and the second reason was if she could
draw these things to her there were less likely to be as many blocking her people in.

She made it only a few feet before a blood drenched figure came stumbling out of the dark, she
didn’t hesitate to shoot, it’s head exploding in a shower of red. That was a good deal of noise and she
imagined if she was close to where her friends were, more of these things wouldn’t be far behind.
Considering her initial reaction to the revenants she was being surprisingly calm now, given she was
currently down in a dark hole possibly surrounded by them. Her instincts when it came to fight or flight
had always been heavily grounded in fight until she’d come across revenants, admittedly for the second
time in her life. But it looked like she was past her need for flight now, back in her own skin, at least for
the most part. She was somewhat surprised when she made it several more yards and nothing came at
her, but she could hear the clanging of weight against metal now. It was encouraging at least in the sense
that it meant there was still a door between her people and the monsters outside, it was irritating in a
sense that it meant likely Marcia hadn’t been able to stay quiet.