Echo Returns E-Book

Alex Westmore

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: An Echo Branson Investigation
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 397

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Echo's beloved bayou has been swept away, and with the destruction rises a dark force more powerful than any hurricane.
When she and her best friend Danica arrive to help the survivors, they discover that the flood is the least of their worries; something sinister threatens Echo's cherished matriarch, her family, and the very fabric of her life.
It will take every supernatural power at her disposal to defend and protect her home and her people, but in doing so, Echo must relinquish the one thing she has held onto tightly since childhood: the truth about who and what she is.
Echo and her supernatural family discover the truth behind the darkness… and the battle is on.

Leseprobe

ECHO RETURNS

An Echo Branson Investigation: Book 2

Alex Westmore

Published by Inspired Quill: October 2021

First Edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The publisher has no control over, and is not responsible for, any third-party websites or their contents.

Content Warning: Natural disaster, death, assault, gun violence.

Echo Returns © 2021 by Alex Westmore

Contact the author through their website: www.alexwestmore.net

Chief Editor: Sara-Jayne Slack

Proofreader: Laura Cayuela Ferrero

Cover Design: Deranged Doctor Design

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-908600-87-5

eBook ISBN: 978-1-908600-88-2

EPUB Edition

Inspired Quill Publishing, UK

Business Reg. No. 7592847

www.inspired-quill.com

Dedication

No one escaped 2020 without loss.

No one.

Some of us lost more than others.

Without my tribe, I might have sunk into the abyss of sorrow, but I didn’t. I can’t thank my people enough for keeping my head above water (and there were times when treading it seemed impossible). So… this one is for:

Connie Nomann

Dori Zuckerman

Tami Slutbones Neff

Renee Sproles

Barrett Flores

Shari Sheffler

Jennifer Ingram

Kari Knight

Lori Major

Sunnie Major

Kelley Major

… and to the one woman who picked up the phone at 2 in the morning because we were both suffering the same loss:

Lisa Bilek.

It takes more than a village to raise me.

Luckily for me, I have one.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Author’s Note

About the Author

More From This Author

CHAPTER 1

“Oh…” Danica whispered, edging closer to me as we stared at the wreckage. Not in a million lifetimes could I ever have envisioned that my beloved New Orleans could ever again look like a waterlogged maze of death and destruction. Nothing I had seen on television the day before could have prepared me for the complete and utter obliteration before me. The stench stung my nostrils. Debris floated lazily past, destination unknown. Remnants of lives swirled in a cesspool of gunk and sewage that made my eyes water.

Or were those tears?

One didn’t need to be an empath to feel the sorrow and distress of a flooded city.

If the sight didn’t break your heart, the stench would.

“You okay, Clark?” Danica reached for my hand as though we were two field medics staring at a battlefield with no idea of where to begin to staunch the flow of blood. “Clark? Talk to me.”

Clark isn’t my real name. My foster name was Jane. As in Jane Doe, a baby nobody wanted. I was one of many Janes caught up in a broken system I escaped as quickly as I could. I changed my name to Echo shortly after I ran away from a mental hospital when I was fourteen. Long, ugly story. Anyway, sometimes our names fit us, and sometimes they don’t.

Mine didn’t.

Jane Doe.

God, how I hated that name.

Dani understands. She’s been calling me Clark for several reasons; first off, I’m a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, which is normal enough, I suppose, if you’re a comic book fan and know that Clark Kent is a reporter and also Superman. The second and real reason is, like Superman, I have powers.

Not superhero powers, like x-ray vision, but they are definitely paranormal.

My name now is Echo Branson, and I am an empath. I can feel people’s emotions, sense their intentions and desires. I can tell when someone is lying and when they’re telling the truth. It’s a power I was born with. It is my greatest gift and my heaviest burden. Emotions are something people choose to show or share with others, so I often feel like an emotional trespasser when I absorb someone else’s emotional state.

Ten years ago, I came to the Louisiana Bayou to learn how to control my powers and not let them run my life. I fell in love with the river folk and the uniqueness of the swamp. There is no place in the world quite like it, but at this moment, my powers were absorbing loss, sadness, and despair. “I… I just can’t believe this. Where is the help? Where is the government? FEMA? Anyone?”

“I hate to mention the obvious, but it looks like we’re it. I mean, we may be all they’ve got.”

It’s never easy being different, but at times like these, standing among the ruins of what was once the beauty of New Orleans, I’m glad I have a special ability that enables me to help.

And these poor people needed some serious help.

“The news reports haven’t shown how bad it really is,” Danica said softly. “Not even close.”

Years ago, the damage from Hurricane Katrina had been complete: the destruction, total. This hurricane, Hurricane Abigail, was Katrina’s ugly little sister, and she packed a wallop just as great. Only this time, she came back to a city barely rebuilt from last time. While there hadn’t been as many deaths so far, the death toll still topped just over a thousand, and was rising.

“I thought Katrina was bad,” Danica whispered. “But this one… this feels personal.”

“Like the gods hate us or something.”

“Or something.”

My heart cowered in a dry corner for fear of what lay around the next bend. Whole streets were submerged under filthy water lapping noisily at broken windowsills like the flicking tongue of a snake. TV and online videos could not convey how wickedly evil this disgusting water was. Like a giant serpent slithering through the streets of my adopted home, the water had cruelly snatched both the living and the dead in big, gaping jaws.

Winding its way through every nook and cranny, the murky water polluted everything it touched, leaving an alien-like slime and mold spores clinging to everything in its path. Things you never expected to see floated in that sickening water, bobbing up and down like miniature buoys. In the five minutes that we stood on the crest of a hill overlooking the carnage, we saw a toilet seat, a golf shoe, dentures, a dead cat, and several wooden picture frames. There were toys, Tupperware, and tires, among other things and, at the moment, I was staring down at a floating photo of five small children. “This is heartbreaking,” I uttered, barely above a whisper. I had to raise my mental shields to protect myself from the overwhelming sadness around me. I think we both were having troubles speaking loudly with such a somber vision surrounding us.

Suddenly, a young Black man made his way through the water pushing, of all things, a refrigerator. It was as if we had fallen down the rabbit hole and into an upside-down world. Nothing I saw made any sense to me. I’d seen the YouTube videos of Katrina, and it felt like a disaster movie, but this? This was all too real.

“Can we give you a hand?” Danica asked.

“Hey.” He nodded as he waded by us. “Thanks, but I got this.” Inside the hulled-out refrigerator were two little girls, maybe five or six. I had to blink several times, trying to fit the pieces together into some sort of sense. This was as real and as ugly as life gets, and I knew Dani and I had arrived none too soon.

“You okay?” Dani asked softly.

I imagined her repeated question was like a skipping record; she just didn’t have the words… but who did? No one, not even the reporters who’d been on the beat last time something like this has happened, had the right colors on their palette to accurately paint the grotesque portrait before us.

No, our major news stations might have shown borderline propaganda to drive home the ‘necessity’ of our troops always being overseas, but heaven forbid they report the truth about what had happened to one of the most beloved cities in America; beloved and forgotten by a government too entrenched in useless wars and partisan bickering to come to the aid of its own people.

That was why we were here; to help people like this young family floating by in the hull of a refrigerator.

“I got my lil’ ones all right, but ain’t nobody seen my wife.” Tears rolled down his cheeks to add to the grimy water. “Ya’ll know Chantal Peterson?” He was not talking to me. He aimed his question at Danica. I was just some skinny white woman standing with her mouth agape. I turned slowly toward Danica, as if seeing her for the first time.

When you’ve known your best friend for over a decade, you naturally take some things for granted; things like her ethnicity. We’d both gone to an all-girls Catholic school in Oakland, California and then to Mills College. Surrounded by Black people and having one for a best friend doesn’t give you the automatic ‘anti-racist’ card many folks think it does. It was the people sharing Danica’s heritage, not mine, who had taken Abigail’s beating the hardest. Suddenly, I wondered what this must feel like to Danica to see the injustices of our still very segregated country.

Yes, I could have read her, but I’d taught her how to put up a psychic shield to protect her thoughts and feelings from me. Long ago, in this very place, I had spent hours working with Danica so she could have the privacy of her true feelings whenever we were together.

Being the best friend of an empath has its drawbacks. When we were fourteen, I had my first empathic episode that nearly drove me to an irreparable mental break. One asylum and a thousand miles later, I ended up in the bayou of Louisiana where I was tutored by one of the most powerful supernaturals in the world. And though I spent the next four years learning how to control my powers, Danica never abandoned me, nor did she ever tell a living soul what I was. Instead, she embraced the new and improved me, my new and improved life, and my bizarre powers by coming often to visit in my four-year stint on the bayou. In doing so, she learned more about supernaturals as well as how to protect herself against mental and emotional invasions from empaths and others like me.

And there were many others like me.

“Did you see his eyes?” she asked softly. “That’s what hopelessness looks like.”

I nodded. One would have thought things would be different after Katrina, but the Trump years had reminded us how deep our systemic racism ran. Danica may not have been poor, but she was still Black, and the injustice of what was happening here hit her hard.

And that was when I knew what my story would be and the angle I would take to reach the most people.

Danica looked over at me. “Thinking about your story?”

I nodded. “Are you sure some of me isn’t rubbing off on you? I was just thinking about what you said. It all feels so hopeless, doesn’t it?”

Danica nodded slightly. “Katrina showed us nothing. These people are still being treated like they were in the nineteenth century. What’s your angle?”

As an investigative reporter I’d been sent here, like thousands of other reporters, to inform the country on what was really happening to New Orleans after Hurricane Abigail blew in and decimated the entire Gulf Coast; only, I was different.

Unlike most of the other reporters trying to get access to the emergency zone, I had more ins and connections than my colleagues could ever dream about. I knew these people, this city, that river.

And that was why my story would be different. These people, my people needed help, and if the government wasn’t going to do it, the American people would. The American people always had; we just needed to know the truth before we could act. We needed to know that any progress we’d made before the last presidency had been obliterated, leaving people of color once again on the fringes. It wasn’t a new story, but if it would help – even a little – I had to try.

As an empath, getting to the truth was somewhat easier for me than it was for ‘naturals’, someone without powers. My powers allowed me to sniff out the lies and see the truths, and I had come to New Orleans to write a piece that would accomplish both things in an effort to galvanize the American public to act for the disenfranchised.

“Personal stories. My guess is that most reporters will come at us with the whole enchilada. Data doesn’t reflect this horror, Dani. It isn’t what makes Americans get off their asses to do something. It’s personal stories that create empathy.”

“Creating empathy? Now that’s right up your alley.” Danica sighed. “Stories like a father pushing his two daughters in an old refrigerator?” Looking away, Dani made a sound like a bird chirp. “I’m sorry, Clark. I know I should have snapped a photo, but…”

Putting my arm around her shoulders, I pulled her to me. “But nothing. You did the right thing.”

Danica pulled away and wiped her face. “How can we get pictures of this… this… mess without exploiting these people’s misery?”

I shrugged. “Maybe we don’t. Maybe we wait until someone says, hey, get a picture of this. We’ll know when the time is right.”

Nodding, Danica slipped the cell back into her waterproof fanny pack. As my best friend, she had volunteered to come, but she didn’t work for The Chron.

She didn’t need to.

In college, Danica majored in computer science and developed a security software program that eventually made her millions. With that money, she opened a firm called Savvy Software, where she continued making big bucks while also funding a number of non-profits in the heart of Oakland, California, where we went to college.

When I told her I was coming to New Orleans, she put her business on autopilot, packed a small bag, and met me at the airport. That was the kind of friend she was.

“We should have brought some masks or something. That stench is awful.” Danica looked down at me. At six feet tall, she towered over my five-foot four-inch frame. “You feeling any of this?” She turned and I followed her gaze. Two men were struggling to keep an old woman in a wheelchair above the waterline. The wheelchair teetered this way and that as they fought to keep it balanced. It would have made a great photo to accompany the first part of my story, but I couldn’t do it.

“No. I can’t. I’ve got maximum shields up.”

Danica nodded. “That’s wise. You need to have a clear head if we’re going to be of any use.” Danica sighed loudly. “Who’s picking us up?”

I shrugged. “Melika just said to watch for Bones’s boat.”

Bones had always reminded me of the legendary boatman on the river Styx. His dilapidated boat carried everyone from the outskirts of the city to the deepest, most inaccessible parts of the bayou. The rickety vessel was somewhat scary, but it was Bones who looked a hundred and two years old and carried as much wisdom of the river as anyone in Louisiana. He knew the fingers of the delta better than any man alive, and I trusted him with my life.

I always had.

“He never comes this far up.”

I nodded. “All the rules are being bent; don’t you think? Things are different now.” I sighed, feeling the pressure of sorrow against my chest. “Guess they’ll never be the same.”

“We can’t just stand here, Clark. We have to do something.”

I nodded. “Come on.”

Danica and I waded into the soupy water up to our waists to help the two men with the wheelchair. The water was lukewarm, and shit was floating in every layer. It was awful. It wasn’t until we were able to set the wheelchair down on the soggy grass that we realized the old woman was dead.

“Try not to get scratched by all this fucking detritus,” Danica said. “This water will infect any open wound.”

Looking over the old woman’s head at Danica, I knew I needed to get her out of here. Something happens to people once the feeling of hopelessness subsides. “Dani?”

When her eyes met mine, I could see a fire burning beneath them. Here comes the rage, I thought to myself. I didn’t need to lower my shields to feel it – it was written all over her face.

She shook her head. “We have to do more than report a story. These people need our help now.”

She was right, of course. I had used the same logic when trying to convince my boss, Wes Bentley, that he needed to send me down here. Although to be honest he didn’t take much convincing. Three months earlier, I had broken an international story that pretty much made me the Golden Girl of The Chron (a pseudonym given me by the Los Angeles Times). In the three months since that story broke, I’d had two other stories of national merit. Wes knew I had been courted by every major newspaper and television station in the country, so keeping me happy was in his best interest. What none of them knew was that I was coming with or without the newspaper’s backing. I hadn’t come for any story.

I had been summoned.

For the first time since I left the bayou, my mentor Melika had sent a summons; and when Melika calls, you don’t keep her waiting. Every super knew that we would forever be obligated to the bayou and those still living here, like one feels toward family, but I didn’t feel an obligation to come back.

It was my duty and my desire.

We were family with Melika our matriarch; our queen bee had buzzed, and the call to arms couldn’t be ignored. Most of us had wanted to get down here before Abigail landed, but Mel would have none of that. She wanted to make sure we were all out of harm’s way and were adequately packed and ready for what was to come. Given her supernatural connections, it wouldn’t have surprised me if a seer or clairvoyeur had warned her. Something of this magnitude had surely been seen by someone who receives premonitions (a precog in our lingo). Whatever the case, Melika had forbidden any of us from rushing into the eye of the storm, thereby giving us a chance to get our affairs in order first.

For me that meant getting my assignment, making sure someone would come feed Tripod, my three-legged cat, and explaining to the man I had been dating for three months that I needed to go home and wasn’t at all sure when I’d be back.

“Is that them?”

Shielding my eyes, I watched the familiar canoe-shaped boat as it made its way down what used to be Jefferson Avenue. Danica and I were standing on a strange little incline that rose about two feet above the water. I had seen Bones maneuver the boat in about a foot of water, so I had complete confidence he could get to us without any problem.

“Zack is with him.”

“I thought Jacob Marley was going to be here.”

I frowned. “You’re right. Maybe he had a harder time getting here.”

Danica’s eyebrows rose. “Harder than we did? I don’t know, Clark. That wasn’t the best fourteen hours of travel I’ve ever experienced.”

If we hadn’t have run into a Canadian Mountain Police (I kid you not), who took a fancy to Danica, we’d still be waiting at the airport. I may not have known where our government was (I had a pretty good idea it was somewhere warm and sandy), but I did know there were other countries coming to our rescue, just as they had done during Katrina.

“Damn, that guy just keeps growing,” Danica murmured. It had been a few years since she had seen him, and he had, indeed, continued to come into his own.

Zack was a TK, the acronym for telekinetic. As with most paranormal powers, it’s all about energy. TKs can use the energy surrounding an object to lift it or push it. Hell, Zack could bend rebar in the shape of a pretzel if he really put his mind to it.

When I first met Zack ten years ago, he, like I, had just come into his powers. Now, at 26, he was an incredibly handsome man, standing well over six feet tall and all grown out of his awkward teenage ways. Even from where I stood, I could see his carrot-red hair sticking out from under the baseball cap he always wore.

The last time I saw him, we were in Atlanta for his college graduation. Those of us who went through our training in the bayou never missed each other’s special moments, no matter what the cost. And if we didn’t have the money for plane fare, Melika would send us a ticket. She felt it was important for us to stay connected, because the truth was, no one would ever truly understand us as much as those who also possessed special skills.

“That red hair never settled down, did it?” Danica mused.

“Not really.” Though his hair had not, he had. Zack had grown up thinking he was a freak, but once Melika taught him how to control his abilities, he eased back into normal life better than most of us and was now a scout for the Atlanta Braves. He had a fiancée and a baby girl he adored.

“I’m a little surprised he came,” Danica said, fanning herself. The fumes were beginning to take form as the heat made the stench even more unbearable.

“Melika must really be worried about what’s happening down here if she tore him away from his family.”

“He’s a mover, that’s going to be useful in this mess. His powers aren’t so flashy that he’s at too much risk of getting caught.” Danica waved to Zack.

Risk of getting caught.

Danica well knew the dangers of using our powers in public. If anyone suspected what we were, if there was ever a time when someone could actually prove our existence, we would all be in mortal danger. What the American government, or any government for that matter, would do if they had a super in their ranks was a scary notion. What if a telepath didn’t want to spy on people or listen in to important thoughts? Would they be forced?

You betcha.

And if we weren’t forced, we’d be poked and prodded like some new bug under a microscope. Even normals would eventually be affected, as scientists would find some way to test people to see who had powers. Then we would trot right to where governments would try to create supernaturals.

So yeah, we knew the score, and it wasn’t pretty.

As if on cue, Zack moved his arm as if waving back to Danica, and a small bookshelf floated swiftly out of their path.

I nodded to Dani, who pulled out her cell phone and snapped a few photos of Zack and Bones in the rickety boat.

Lowering the camera, Danica looked over it. “How old is Bones now, anyway?”

“Three hundred and twelve?” We both chuckled. “Ancient or not, he’s the best boatman there is. He could have found us blindfolded.”

“Thank god for that. I don’t know how much longer I can take it out here.”

“The heat or the smell?”

“Neither. My heart. I’ve never seen anything like this. All the money I have, and it can’t do a damn thing to help these folks right now. I feel so helpless.”

“Just wait, Dani. When it comes time to rebuild…”

“Fuck that, Clark. They need help now. Some of these people have just started rebuilding after Katrina. This will wreck them.”

Before I could say anything else, Zack leapt from the boat, waded over to where we stood, threw his arms around my waist and lifted me up. “Here’s my favorite feeler!”

I squeezed him tightly. His shirt was soaked and mine stunk of this sewer water, but neither of us cared. “It’s great to see you,” I said when he put me down. “Though I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“No doubt. This is seriously effed up.”

“Effed up? What are you, two? You can say the word.”

He turned to Danica and gave her a less enthusiastic hug, but a big one nonetheless. “No, but my daughter is, so I’ve got to mind my mouth.” He held Danica’s hands in his. “You get more beautiful every time I see you.”

Danica lifted an eyebrow. “The Braves pay you well for your bullshit?”

Zack tossed his head back and laughed, an unfamiliar sound among this carnage. “Very well, actually.”

“How’s Melika?” I asked. After Abigail landed, we were all worried about Mel’s house and the aftermath. Most of the homes along the river were made of wood and needed patching and reparations every year. Not Mel’s. Like Bones’s house, hers was built from cemented cinder block, but as we had seen, nothing was impervious to the powerful water.

“She’s been better,” Zack replied. “This has really wiped her out emotionally.”

“Her house?”

“Still standing. The bayou folks are pretty safe. The levees don’t affect people that far out. They’re already helping each other locate animals and repair downed walls.”

“Good.” Inhaling deeply, I asked the question I wished I had bitten back. “Is he here?”

Zack nodded. “Are you kidding? Of course. Tomas came down days before Abigail ran ground. Typical of him to go against the grain. When everyone was leaving, he was coming. Pissed Melika off something awful. You know how she is, but Tomas insisted he come and batten down the hatches. Bones was telling me that Tomas pulled Mr. Wyatt out of his house just before it blew over. Ever since I can remember, he’s always been a reluctant superhero.”

I was certain Zack was referring to the time he got us in trouble in town by showing off his powers to me. When some thugs started harassing us, Tomas came to our rescue and kicked some ass. He was Dirty Harry, John Wick, and Deadpool all wrapped into one, only without the sense of humor. Tomas was one of the most powerful telepaths on the planet. He spent his life collecting new supers, studying from gurus from all over the world, and keeping track of all of us in times like these. He was a mentor and a brother to each of us.

He was also my ex-boyfriend.

“What about Jacob? Is he coming?”

Shaking his head, Bones pulled the boat closer. He looked more like a blackened skeleton than a man. “The boy can’t get through from d’airport. Too many dead. Too many wantin’ to talk to ’im.”

Zack and I stared at each other. “I hadn’t thought of that. He must have gotten bowled over.”

Bowled over was super-speak for having your shields busted down. All super-sentient power, whether it’s empathy, telekinesis, clairsentience, or straight up telepathy, required us to erect psionic shields to keep all the feelings and thoughts of others out of our consciousness. Without shields, we’d go insane from the sheer amount of mental noise bombarding us. Construct shields was the first lesson we all learned from Melika; not how to control our powers, not how to strengthen or use them, but how to protect ourselves from naturals and supers alike. The amount of mental noise from a crowd of people could be devastating. In times of sickness, stress, or exhaustion, our shields could fail us, and all that noise would come crashing in. It sounded like trying to watch four different movies at the same time.

I had seen what happened to someone when that noise couldn’t be stopped. It wasn’t pretty, and I harbored a secret fear of someday becoming that.

As a necromancer, or someone who can converse with the dead, Jacob Marley was highly in tune with the death and destruction around us. It didn’t surprise me he couldn’t handle the onslaught of newly departed spirits.

“I’ll see if Tomas can find him and help him get through. We need to get to Jacob fast.”

“Let’s get you out of the sun first, Echo, so you can concentrate better.” Zack handed our backpacks to Bones, who was leaning on a long pole called a ’gator getter.

“The folk need me help. I’ll be back. Go higher. I’ll meet you there.”

CHAPTER 2

The three of us made it to higher ground in half an hour and that was when I realized what was happening: People could not get out of New Orleans. Out. Off of. Away from. They were trapped and panicking. Were my shields crumbling, or was I just now feeling what Danica had been seeing all along?

“Over here, Clark!” Danica said, reaching for my hand. The three of us climbed on a decrepit porch that had no house, lodged between a telephone pole and a cyclone fence.

“I need to rest a minute,” Danica said. “It’s hard as shit to breathe out here.”

The three of us sat on the porch stairs.

“Bones hasn’t stopped patrolling the bayou and backstreets since Abigail left,” Zack said, adjusting his cap. The brim was already stained with sweat. After a short while, Zack stood and brushed his butt off. “Okay, Echo, let’s see if you can contact Mr. Wonderful.”

A bead of sweat rolled into my eye, stinging it. “If he doesn’t want to hear from me, Zack…”

“Who are you kidding? Just let down your shields. He’ll come running like a kid to a pile of chocolate.”

Danica nodded. “Get a hold of tall, dark, and miserable so we can blow this pop stand. He’ll come. Call him.”

Tomas and I had been lovers for a nano-second the year after I left the bayou, but having a boyfriend who could read my mind and communicate with me across the distances was too weird even for me. We eventually severed our romantic ties but remained emotionally bound together, like most of us raised out here.

Danica knew as well as I did that Tomas still loved me and wanted to be a bigger part of my life, but I’d moved on with my new life in California, and that didn’t include being with someone who just wouldn’t stop trying to control me, even if he didn’t mean to.

“Give me a minute,” I said softly. Sighing, I let down my shield. “Tomas, I know you’re here. We can’t seem to get a bead on Jacob Marley. Any idea where he might be? Any at all?”

About thirty seconds passed before I felt his presence in my brain.

“Hey, kiddo. Sorry I couldn’t come do the meet and greet, but as you can plainly see, we’re in a helluva mess here. Again.”

He sounded tired. As an empath, I not only heard his words inside my mind, I could also feel the energy with which they were spoken. “You okay? You sound tired.”

“Tired, but fine, which is more than I can say for Jacob Marley. I had his position an hour ago but had to help these three young women out of the water, and I lost him. Let me see if I can find him again.”

Tomas was the telepathic equivalent of a giant cell phone tower; he could tune in to almost any supernatural anywhere as long as their shields were down. This skill enabled him to hunt young supers so Melika could get to them before they self-destructed or gave themselves away. Having special powers might seem like fun to the outside world, but those who couldn’t handle them paid a steep price.

“Jacob’s in a bad way, kiddo. You gotta get him out of there.”

“Where is he?”

“He ducked into Henderson Elementary and is trying to regroup, but there’s just too many… too much death around him. He’s lost his block. Grab him fast and I’ll have Bones meet you on the backside.”

“Gotcha.”

“And Echo? Be careful. A lot of weird shit will start going down. Desperate times make desperate people. Stay low. Get in, get out. Watch out for any gangs, groups, or guns. Get Jacob Marley and then DD outta there and meet me at Mel’s, you hear me?”

“Right. Mel’s.”

“See you there. Don’t disappoint.”

“Have I ever?”

“You want to have that conversation now?”

I opened my eyes to find Danica and Zack watching a family of five pile out of Bones’s boat. They were soaked through, shivering, and scared to death. “Things are going to get uglier,” Zack whispered, reaching for my hand. “Much uglier. You feel it, too, don’tcha?”

I asked Bones to take us to Henderson, which he did.

It was slow going, though. We had to ‘push’ larger floating objects like cars and furniture out of the way when we couldn’t easily go around. It was even harder when we had to push corpses to the side.

When we finally found Jacob, he was holed up in a semi-flooded classroom holding his hands to his ears and rocking back and forth.

That’s when I knew that we’d arrived just in time to keep him from losing his shit. I’d only seen that happen once and it nearly put him in a coma.

“Careful,” I whispered to Zack. “Like a beaten kitten.”

Zack nodded and slowly, cautiously approached him. “Jacob Marley, we’re here. It’s Zack. Zack and Echo. We’re taking you out of this place.”

The sound of Zack’s voice made Jacob unclench his eyes and look up. He was drenched in sweat, his eyes flashing wildly about as if scanning the room for an exit.

Or a friendly face.

Maybe both.

“Zack?” Jacob’s eyes grew wide. “Oh my god…” Jacob flung his arms around Zack’s neck like a little boy and clung to him. But Jacob wasn’t a little boy. A few years younger than Zack, Jacob was still a grown man… a man now being bombarded by the voices of the recent dead.

“It’s okay, buddy,” Zack said. “We’re going to get you out of here.” Zack set Jacob back on his feet. “I gotcha. I promise.”

“My fault. My fault… didn’t realize…” Jacob shook his head, and sweat and water flew from his dreadlocks.

Jacob Marley had already been training with Melika when I first arrived, and in the days that followed, he showed me all the wonders of the bayou. He had the sweetest heart and gentlest soul of anyone I had ever met, and it killed me to see him so rattled.

Instead of acting like some possessive alpha male when we’d first met, he showed me everything he knew, and then some. Now, he was a young man in his early twenties getting his doctorate in theology from NYU. It was an appropriate degree for a necromancer, someone capable of speaking to the dead.

Most people don’t realize the importance of raw energy to everything on earth. When someone dies, their corpse no longer retains energy, but the spirit does. Sometimes these spirits are just outside the living realm and they’re all pissed off about it. It was these newly departed spirits who were driving Jacob Marley over the edge. What they were saying to him was anybody’s guess, but too many voices at once makes it hard for him to fend them all off and maintain a shield, so we needed to get him out of the neighborhood fast.

“There are so… many…”

Danica and Zack got him to the boat while I lowered my shields and surveyed the surrounding areas for potential hostiles.

I felt none, but that didn’t mean they weren’t just outside the edge of my powers.

“We need to clear out,” Zack said to me.

“Does Bones still have an engine in that thing?” I asked.

Turns out he did, and though Bones seldom used it, it managed to fire right up and carry us rapidly away.

“How you feeling now?” I asked Jacob once we reached the outskirts of town. Despite the motor, the trip had still taken us a long time thanks to the never-ending debris.

“Better.” Jacob wiped his face with his shirt and forced a grin. He had the sweetest smile of any guy I had ever met.

I nodded. “Get your shields back up. We can talk later. Right now, we need you to be able to protect yourself. There’s bound to be more death along the way… more voices.”

Jacob inhaled a deep breath and closed his eyes. With his eyes closed, he looked peaceful, not at all like his namesake.

We had always called him by both names: Jacob Marley. And though he’d once told me his real name, I had long since forgotten. To me, he would always be Jacob Marley.

A good ten minutes went by. Zack caught Danica up on his life while I tried to get back in touch with Tomas and let him know we had Jacob.

He probably already knew. That was how he operated. Always in the know, always lurking slightly beneath the surface.

Kneeling in front of Jacob Marley, I took both his hands in mine so I could get a better read on his emotional wellbeing.

He opened his eyes and smiled at me like he did when we were kids. “Justice,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Justice. They were all crying out for justice. That’s all I could hear when I got stampeded.” A stampede was necro talk for being bombarded by groups of dead people, especially when those souls suffered violent deaths. Given the way many of Abigail’s victims died, spiritual hostility was almost a given. He looked over at me and I released his hands. I didn’t need to read his energy to know this had exhausted him. “We’ll catch up later. Right now, get some strength back. I’ve a feeling there won’t be much time for rest.”

CHAPTER 3

We were quiet the rest of the way to Melika’s. If you’ve never been to the bayou, you’re really missing out. It’s a world unto itself with mazelike waterways snaking in and out of the delta. There are no signs, no maps, no real landmarks to speak of out here, and many a drug runner has died after failing to find his way out. Of course, those who live here see plenty of landmarks and signs. All of us can. Once you understand the distinctiveness of nature, you realize that no two trees are alike, no two flowers the same.

I’d learned that from Bones first. Bones could navigate these waters in the dead of the night with only a penlight, and maybe not even that. These rivers were both mysterious and dangerous, and yet for all of its incredible poverty, what New Orleans was to Louisiana, the bayou was to New Orleans.

“I’m sorry about your house, Bones,” Zack said softly. When we passed by where his house had once stood, no one said a thing. Bones didn’t even give it a cursory glance. “All them hurricanes like Bones’s house.” He shrugged. “I build a new one later, when the water tells me it’s ok.”

And so went the true spirit of Louisianans in the days after Katrina and Abigail. No jumping up and down and hair pulling, just a silent resignation of what needed to be done to right the order of things.

As we reached Melika’s dock, a good hour later, we all grinned softly. There she stood, as always, wearing a black dress, a white-brimmed straw hat, and her black galoshes. I had seldom seen anything else on her feet. She was waving, as usual, and though she was too powerful for me to read, I knew her well enough to notice the exhaustion on her face.

“She looks beat,” Danica said softly, shifting in her seat.

“The storms they come and they go… but the people hurricane… it’s comin’. Ma’am know that.”

Danica and I exchanged glances. When Bones speaks, everyone listens. I understood what he meant by people hurricane, and if people were about to turn on each other, we were in the safest place in the state.

“You all made it, I see.” Melika waited for Bones to pull alongside the dock before offering her hand to Danica to help her from the boat. “Danica, my dear. It’s been too long.” Melika hugged Danica, who towered over the diminutive Haitian woman with waist-length black hair and flawless skin, looked much younger than her sixty-six years. Much, much younger.

“She wouldn’t let me come alone,” I said as I exited the boat, my eyes scanning the dock for any sign of Tomas.

“Because she is a good friend… a dear friend.” Melika released Danica and hugged me tightly. “I have missed you, child,” she said, then whispering, “You needn’t strain your eyes, my dear. He is waiting on the porch for you, and she… well, she is practically jumping out of her skin to see you again.”

Looking over at the small porch that wrapped around the cinder block house perched on the riverbank, I saw two pairs of eyes staring out at me from two people who loved me; Tomas, who always got my last hug, and a ten-year-old girl I had brought to the bayou myself in order to give her someplace called home.

“Cinder!”

Her eyes lit up when I called her name and she leapt from the porch, flew down the stairs, and into my arms without hardly touching the ground. She had grown so much in the three months since I brought her that I was barely able to hold her up.

“I think you’ve grown two feet since I last saw you!” Setting her down, I stood back and looked at her. “Maybe a foot and a half.”

Three months ago, Melika had me collect Cinder from the same mental ward I had spent time in as a teenager. Melika’s son, George, worked at the hospital and was what supers commonly refer to as a spotter. A spotter’s job is to find or spot supernaturals before they are either driven insane or bring notice to themselves. George had been my savior when he’d gotten to me in the nick of time, and I returned the favor to the universe by saving a little girl who refused to speak, but had displayed the raw, untapped energy of a super who was going to be amazingly powerful.

Bending down, I smiled into her face. Her blue eyes were positively aglow, and I hadn’t realized just how much I had missed her. “I hear you’re a good student. Melika speaks very highly of how quickly you catch on.”

Cinder grinned and nodded. Still, after all this time, she had spoken but one word; her name. We’d mistakenly called her Cindy, but when we saw her power after she used it to save my life, she looked at me with solemn eyes and simply said, “Cinder.”

And that was that.

We were a pair.

But still, when she saw Danica standing on the dock, she practically bowled me over to get to her.

Cinder and Danica had formed a special bond when Cinder first stayed with me, and they texted constantly.

“Hey there, Firefly!” Danica said, scooping Cinder up. “You’re all grown up already!”

Melika turned from us and helped Jacob out of the boat. “You go upstairs and rest, Jacob Marley. I’ll be up to see you shortly.”

He grinned over at me. “We’ll catch up?”

“As always.”

Melika hugged Zack before turning her attention back to me. “Tomas will fill you in on precisely why I sent the summons and what we need from you all. I must see to Jacob Marley first. I should have better prepared him. Even I am having a hard time blocking all of the emotions. Not since Katrina has it been so quiet and still.”

I hadn’t even seen one ’gator on a boat ride that usually had two dozen of them sliding into the water whenever we floated by.

“I’ll bet it’s quiet like right after one of your California earthquakes, eh, kiddo?”

I felt him before I heard him, and slowly turned to embrace his massive shoulders, comforted, as I had always been, by the solidity of his body.

“Hi,” I said, pulling him closer. Tomas had the strength I needed right now; a grounding of sorts after all we had seen since we landed.

“It’s good to see you again,” Tomas said softly. “Thank you for getting here so quickly.” Pulling away, Tomas smiled softly with big brown eyes beneath long lashes. Long black hair, deep ochre skin, and piercing eyes, Tomas was a gorgeous specimen of a man. His broad shoulders met a tapered waist attached to two tree trunk legs. To say he was intimidating was an understatement, but it wasn’t his body that could cause the most hurt. As a pure telepath trained by some of the greatest minds in the world, he could bring a natural to their knees without breaking a sweat or moving a muscle.

He was that powerful.

“You’re tired.”

He shook it off with his characteristic shrug. “Who isn’t? This bitch has leveled us. Levee broke again, waters have committed serial murder. Even the animals don’t know what to do or how to act. It’s as if the earth has tilted the wrong way.”

“Point me to it.”

“Come on. Mel’s been anxious to get started.”

I followed him to the small living room with its u-shaped leather sofa that had seen better days, and when we were all situated on it, Melika came downstairs with another super in tow.

I have to say, I was quite surprised. I hadn’t felt a thing.

“Everyone, I’d like you to meet Bailey.” As Melika did all the introductions, I struggled to remember where I had heard of her before. Bailey… Bailey… that’s right. She was a rare hybrid super capable of communicating with animals with the added bonus of being a healer. I had never met her; she’d been a pupil here before my time.

I cut my eyes over to Danica in a “What do you think?” question, and her singular left eyebrow raise told me she wasn’t sure and had her doubts.

The fact that I hadn’t been able to read Bailey meant she had her shields up. I wondered if that was for me or for her.

“Thank you all for coming so quickly,” Melika said after Bailey took a seat next to Tomas. If I was the jealous type, I might have had some petty feelings towards her. Tomas was a free agent, after all. I had no claims on him. We’d both moved on. Still… there was something… proprietary about the way she sat so close to him.

Danica noticed, too, of course, and shook her head.

I looked around the small room. “Is this all?”