Death Weeps Part 11

"Corpse-boy can do the rest," Jonesy said subtly, swinging the ball of his sucker in the air, his tongue flas.h.i.+ng blue as he spoke.

I felt a little s.h.i.+tty but I thought I'd mention it. "Yeah, Logan Tracker was there too."

I watched Sophie's eyes widen in surprise even as Jonesy's narrowed to black slits.

"Yeah? Who gives two s.h.i.+ts?" Jonesy said, jamming the blue sucker back in his craw violently. Amazing he hadn't gagged himself.

Tiff laughed, pulling hers out with a disgusting plop. "Sounds like you care plenty, Jones." She eyed him up as he glared harder.

"Anyway, back to the logistics of our 'field trip' as Caleb so eloquently phrases it," Archer began.

"I think we need more than the sketchy stuff he's throwing our way, don't you guys think?" Mia asked, flicking a piece of dark blond hair over her shoulder.

Bry shrugged a huge shoulder. d.a.m.n... had that guy gotten big over the last summer, I thought. Then he spoke into the silence of the hideaway, "I think Randi's right, you pack of paranormals can keep a lid on the unexpected and she can zap us back and forth," he made a waffling motion with his calloused hand, beaten to death after our yard work blitz.

"Zap?" Randi said, sliding off of Alex's knee and he gave her b.u.t.t a slap as she did and she whirled on him. "Stop that, Alex."

He waggled his eyebrows. "Just as soon as you stop squealing I will."

"Argh!" Tiff said, whipping her empty stick out of her mouth and popping an unnaturally blue bubble, collapsing it ruthlessly, she snapped it into submission and looked around the silent room.

"What?" She shrugged.

We all stared at her, our ears ringing.

"Anyway... can ya just not perv-out on a.s.ses for like, five minutes?"

Alex grinned. "I'll make a colossal effort, sweet thing."

"Yeah," she stabbed her stick in his direction, "see that ya do, perv-boy."

Randi giggled and Jade rolled her eyes.

a.s.ses and Alex. Yeah.

John put up his hands. "You guys are so amusing, let's get back to business."

Right.

John outlined the plan, Jonesy paying close attention by unwrapping another sucker, swinging his legs, looking around the room and generally not paying attention.

When he finally wrapped things up he said, "So Caleb is the key here. But first, we do reconnaissance of the dome world, then go from there."

"When?" Jade asked then added, "I want to go, it seems safe." Tiff rolled her eyes but Jade explained, "Remember that first time you met Caleb in the cemetery, Tiff?" Tiff's face fell. "It wasn't so safe, right?" Jade looked at me and I smiled. "No offense, baby."

Right. None taken.

"But we can't live in fear. What if Parker is actually trying to help? What if..." she paused and we all leaned forward to listen, "what if we can stop the Graysheets from how they're trying to control everything. Us." She shrugged and met our eyes.

Couldn't fault my girl's logic. It was just... life had a way of unraveling that wasn't neat and perfect.

Usually it was a huge-a.s.s mess.

John nodded. "Point taken. No time like the present, I guess." He leveled a stare at the group, his pale blue eyes glowing softly in the low light of the hideaway. "It'll have potential for danger, I'm not going to lie. But," he looked at each one of us, "if we can do something for the betterment of everyone, it will have been worth it."

"Betterment, Terran? Screw that blowhard, let's just go and kick some a.s.s, do the fortune teller routine and see how the program rolls," Jonesy said.

John pointed a finger at Jonesy, grinning. "Or that."

"I'm in," Bry said, giving a sideways look at Mia.

Everyone gave their a.s.sent. Randi was the last, flipping her black hair over her shoulder. She mustered the sa.s.s that she had become known for and said, "I'm the driver so I'm on board."

She winked.

We buckled our seat belts and readied ourselves for inter-dimensional travel.

Weird even for our standards.

Which were expanding.

All the time.

CHAPTER 7.

We fell out of a gaping tunnel of frozen blackness, rolling on top of one another in a messy tangle of limbs, the vertigo nailing us on the dirt of the floor where we'd landed, unable to stand from the dizziness.

Jonesy staggered to his feet, swaying. Turning to us he said, "We're definitely not in Kansas anymore! d.a.m.n!" He fist-pumped in the air. He reached behind him and pulled Sophie to her feet, her face pale beneath her normally healthy light coffee-colored skin.

The Js looked around, taking in the walls of a dome-like structure, the air like a sauna. "It's hot-as-h.e.l.l in here Terran," Jonesy said.

I rolled my eyes and said, "Alex talked his girl into giving us the teleport shot to..."

"Wherever the h.e.l.l we are," Bry said, looking around cautiously, his bravery springing back into action or his stance of Most Willing to take a Beating.

Tiff looked at her feet which stood on a dirt floor, then spied a bench that stood beside a huge door made of some kind of metal, a golden b.u.t.ter color. It shone softly in the ambient light that entered through walls that were milky and slightly opaque.

"Kinda reminds me of realm," Sophie said.

That couldn't have been a great memory, I thought, thinking of my "judo" instructor.

She slapped the dirt off her thighs. I noticed her wince and saw her inspect a nice red mark on her arm, probably from falling out of that weird time warp thing.

I turned my eyes to a spot of nothingness that was over our heads. Nothing looked different. I began to move away from the area then caught a slight s.h.i.+mmer in the air. So it wasn't totally invisible. Interesting. I was betting that outside, in natural bright light, it would look like a rainbow that moved and sparkled. Otherworldly.

I gave an internal smirk to my vocab. We were, after all, way the h.e.l.l away from Kansas. Sometimes Jonesy had it goin' on.

All eyes turned to Randi, who was all girl-of-the-hour. "K, so you're the Dimensional. Can you tell us, where in the blue h.e.l.l are we?" Jonesy asked in his usual delicate style.

Randi looked around for a long moment, her exotic almond-shaped eyes missing nothing. "Nope."

Totally helpful.

John had wandered over to the door and was running an exploratory hand over the metal plank that barred the exit. He straightened, turning to the group. "This is a hand-wrought forging."

Jonesy threw his hands up in the air. "English, ya putz!"

"Yeah John, if ya got some details, barf it out," Tiff said, snapping her gum, the noise of it oddly swallowed by the soft walls. John ignored them. Instead, he walked to where the door stopped and pressed his hand into the spongy material of the sphere wall, the depressions held for a few seconds when he took his hand away then it filled in once again.

I looked up, noticing small holes dotted the surface randomly. Like the dome had a case of the measles. Were those supposed to be there? I looked at Jade and motioned for her to come over to me. She did, her eyes everywhere while my eyes took in the sight of her. Jade was okay. She should have been, she'd landed on me on the way out. I smiled, nothing but a trampoline guys.

John sighed. "I think I can estimate a time period," he put his hand on the back of a bench made of some kind of metal, a weathered green, a spigot for water with a hand pump at its top. He motioned toward the door with his palm. "It is a turn-of-the-century location."

Everyone looked at him blankly. He sighed. "Turn-of-the-last-century," he clarified.

"Dude, we've traveled back in time?" Alex quizzed and Randi rolled her eyes, giving him A Look. He shrugged, his ma.s.sive shoulders moving like a separate ent.i.ty, their own zip code.

"No! I told you guys, I can't move through time, only around it." We stared at her silently. She tapped her foot. I guess it made sense to her.

"Okay, here's the thing. I'm a Dimensional, I can visit alternate realities. Worlds that are parallel to ours. This is the dome world. It's the one I flashed to before they gave me the juice that tore me back to our world."

Alex jerked a thumb at the gizmo they'd traveled through. "What's that then, baby?"

Randi shrugged. "I don't know, exactly. It's like a doorway was already there. Someone has been through here before."

Parker hadn't said d.i.c.k about a doorway. Or how he'd gotten to the dome world. Thanks for the head's up. Ya putz. But I knew what his answer would have been. He'd have shot his mouth off about how I only needed part of the story or I'd boink up the time-continuum or some c.r.a.p like that. That was me, keep me in the dark and feed me s.h.i.+t. Like a mushroom.

John walked toward her. "You mean a Dimensional? Someone like you?"

"No... someone needed that hardware to get here. They didn't have the juice."

Tiff snorted in the background.

I knew the Graysheets were behind it. It was something they'd do. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around in other people's stuff... their worlds. Their Business. Up everyone's a.s.ses.

Uh-huh.

"So how'd we get here on the Dimensional superhighway?" Jonesy asked.

"I don't know how it works. I just got designated this year. They're guessing as usual."

The Adults. Guessing. Go figure. I did another internal smirk.

"I bet mommy dearest loves your new skills," Jonesy snickered and Randi scowled.

Actually, I knew she was pretty unhappy with Randi at the moment. And it wasn't just her newfound ability, it was her Body boyfriend. And as Mom would say, the company she kept. Yeah.

Alex came to her defense, "She can't help who her mom is Jones."

"Yeah, I know, but it's pretty d.a.m.n funny anyway."

"Yeah, effing hilarious," Randi said, swinging her long black hair behind her shoulder and giving Jonesy the long-suffering look.

"Let's get out of here, it's creepy," Jade said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, her puffy still on. I couldn't believe she was wearing the hot-a.s.s thing. I was about to strip mine off when Bry and Tiff said, practically at the same moment, "No!"

They looked at each other, laughing. Tiff said, "We came all this way to check s.h.i.+t out and I wanna. Plus," she pulled everyone in with her intense gaze, "Hart has to save the day or some s.h.i.+t like that," she threw out, rocking back on her heels while she sounded off a bubble burst timed to perfection.

I listened to them laugh at Miss Cavalier but I was distracted.

I'd felt a familiar pull. Looking through the murky wall of the dome I saw them.

Hundreds.

Grave markers. The call of the dead a siren's wail. Just outside the old-fas.h.i.+oned door.

My friends saw my face and followed my gaze.

John's brows jerked up to his hairline, his hair a deep bronze in the low light of the sphere tunnel. "Ah... no, Caleb. No corpses. We don't have enough info. We don't know what we're getting into here. Or where we're even at!"

"That's the glory of it, Terran," Jonesy said, "it's the surprise factor."

Tiff and Bry nodded.

Sophie piped in, "That's just it, what if something bad happens?" she stated, chewing her bottom lip softly, eyes anxious.

Lewis spoke for the first time, "What could happen? There's no Graysheets here. And," he held up an elegant finger, not a wrinkle or speck of dirt on his clothes, "if this is an old-fas.h.i.+oned world, they don't have the technology to be dangerous. They'll be primitive right?"

He had a point, but a lot of times our excursions defied logic.

Utterly.

Jade tweaked my sleeve, the sweat from the heat of this place beading on my forehead. I looked at her.

"I've got a bad feeling about this."

"It'll be okay. I mean... look at them all," I said, indicating the grave markers, the white crosses standing at attention just outside the dome, their forms slightly obscure because of the material of the dome's wall.

"Dead are dead, right?" I said to her with confidence, squeezing her against me, the vanilla smell of Jade mingling with the humid air.

Jade nodded reluctantly. She was utterly missing my dose of confidence.