Chapter 21

"You're going out now?" Danny frowned as his sister pulled on her coat. Admittedly, he planned on leaving now to make it to the meeting place on the card so he would arrive before the time listed. Their parents had gone to the laboratory after washing up the dinner dishes to work on a few projects before calling it a night. Danny had expected his sister to go to her room to study, giving him the perfect opportunity to sneak out and avoid any awkward questions about where he was going.

"I promised to tutor Dash tonight."

Danny's brow creased when he heard the answer. "But didn't you do that after school?"

Jazz paused at the front door then turned to face her brother. "No, Dash was busy after school so we planned to meet later."

"Isn't it kind of late for a tutor session?" Danny folded his arms, lifting his eyebrows in a curious expression, as he leaned against the wall by the stairs.

"Like I said. Dash was busy after school. This is when he was available to meet for tutoring." Jazz placed her hands on her hips as she gave him her usual stern stare. "And have you finished all of your homework?"

Danny rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. You don't have to keep asking me. I'm perfectly capable of getting all my homework done without you hovering over me to make sure I didn't miss anything."

"All right." Jazz held up her hands in surrender, but she smiled a little. "Don't stay up late playing video games though."

"With how Dash has a major crush on you, are you sure this isn't some lame setup by him to turn this tutor session into a date?" Danny wouldn't be surprised if Dash actually came up with an idea like that, though he would bet Kwan had a hand in suggesting the whole thing.

"I think I'm perfectly capable of making sure a guy knows it's not a date. And if Dash tries anything," Jazz clapped one hand over a bicep and punched the other fist into the air, "he'll regret it."

Danny laughed. "Okay. I'm sorry. I forgot how much your headlocks hurt."

"Come over here, and I'll give you a reminder."

Danny backed up a step, holding his hands out before him. "I remember just fine without a demonstration."

Jazz grinned as she lowered her arms. "Good. Then I'll see you later." She turned and opened the front door then left.

I'd still be worried about this whole late night tutoring with Dash if I thought he had any chance with Jazz, Danny thought with a shake of his head. He walked into the front room like he was going to play video games, but he simply wanted to be able to watch Jazz leave from the window. Once she was gone, he would sneak off to the meeting place. Too bad I didn't get the ability to fly too. That would be so handy for this. He had checked the bus schedule earlier, and the nearest one that would take him downtown was still twenty minutes away.

Thunder boomed overhead.

Danny jumped to his feet, his heart beating fast in his chest. "Just had to storm tonight, huh?" He raked a shaky hand through his hair. The thunder wasn't what bothered him. It was the lightning he knew would come with it. He hadn't caught any flashes yet, but according to the weather woman tonight, they could expect to see some lightning. "I'm going to be as bad as Tucker with hospitals if I don't just face this problem."

After he took a deep breath to compose himself, Danny headed for the front door. His parents would probably be in the laboratory for the rest of the night, so Danny wasn't worried about them catching him out past curfew. He just had to hope he made it back home before Jazz did.

Locking the door behind him when he left, Danny jogged down the street toward the bus stop. He had allowed for some extra time so even with Jazz stalling him, he would be able to reach the stop before the bus arrived. Once he was on the bus, which was virtually empty at that late hour, he pulled out the card from his pocket. A skull and flowers? It still seemed like a strange logo to him. Maybe it had some sort of rock or punk meaning to it that he simply didn't understand? Turning it over, he stared at the address. He had programmed it into his phone for directions, but he didn't recognize the location that came up.

What was this all about? Who were the men who met up with Ember anyway? Danny lifted his head slightly and frowned. He had forgotten to ask Kyle what the men even looked like. He couldn't do anything about that now. He didn't even have a way to contact Kyle, another thing he had overlooked. Next time he would have to be smarter about those kinds of things. Not that I want there to be a next time, he thought as he shoved the card back into his pocket.

The bus arrived at a stop downtown near the location on the card with little event, but the thunder continued to rumble overhead. Danny hunched up his shoulders as he walked the dark streets. He passed by a club along the way, and despite it being a week night, he saw a line of people in their early twenties waiting to get inside as loud music could be heard from outside. None of them paid him any mind as he crossed the street away from the club and rounded the corner. He checked the directions on his phone. If he walked up three more blocks and turned right then walked another five blocks, he would arrive at the mystery location.

When he got within a block of the location, Danny moved to the shadows, glad he had thought to wear darker clothing for this. He arrived earlier than the time on the card by a few minutes, but he remained cautious in case the people meeting here were early rather than late. The street was clear of anyone, but if he was meeting some creepy men under suspicious circumstances, he probably wouldn't meet them right out front of the location on the card. Danny paused just to the side of the building and craned his head upward to stare at it.

The doors bore the logo of Dalv Pharmaceuticals. Danny puzzled over that detail. The name wasn't one he recognized, certainly not as big a company as the Manson's company. But it seemed like an odd meeting place for a musician. Danny would have expected Ember to use something more like the club he passed on the way here as a meeting spot. Why would two men want to meet Ember here? But the logo on the doors didn't match the picture on the card, which was only another mystery for Danny to solve.

The crunch of wheels pulled him from the headache of trying to understand why Ember would be here, and Danny ducked into the alley between Dalv Pharmaceuticals and the building next door to avoid being seen. When the car passed by without stopping, he released the breath he was holding.

"Okay," Danny mumbled to himself as the first drops of rain fell upon his head. "If I were meeting some weird guys that approached with a death card, would I really be meeting them out front?" Something told him no, especially when he considered the idea that they weren't here to buy anything. The news stories about the robberies popped into his mind, and Danny turned his gaze down the alley toward the back of the buildings. "Nope. I'd meet them back there."

The rain came down as a light drizzle. Lightning streaked through the sky in the distance, and Danny managed to count to thirteen as he walked before the thunder rumbled, something to focus on rather than the panic building in his chest. He squeezed his hands into tight fists, his nails biting into his palms. He wanted to say he was over the trauma of being electrocuted in his parents' machine, but he wasn't. Logically, he knew that flash of lightning was miles and miles away from him and he had no reason to be scared. But from the first instant it lit up the sky, Danny felt a tremble seize his body and refuse to let go of him.

"Just go already!"

Danny halted at the edge of the building. He didn't recognize the voice, and he doubted it was Ember since the voice sounded rather masculine. Could it be one of the men who approached Ember?

"Will just listen to me for a minute?"

Danny's jaw practically hit the ground. His surprise drove back the fear and panic even as another streak of lightning shot through the dark clouds overhead. What was Jazz doing here? She was supposed to be tutoring Dash right now. Danny jerked back a step as it struck him: Jazz lied to him!

"You don't get it!" the man shouted back. "I don't want to listen."

Shaking out of his shock, Danny pushed away from the wall and rounded the corner. "Hey!" he shouted to get their attention. The man wasn't someone that stood out in Danny's mind. The rain was already ruining his uneven Mohawk, and he had tattoos snaking up his neck, the only ones Danny could see with the leather jacket the man wore. He seemed like he might fit in with the Goth crowd Sam sometimes liked to hang out with over at the Skulk and Lurk bookstore.

Jazz spun around with her aqua colored eyes wide. "Danny! What are you doing here?"

"I came here to - Hey!" Danny's mouth pursed as he narrowed his eyes at his sister. "Don't turn this around on me. You lied about tutoring. What are you doing here?"

"I'm trying to talk to Spike-"

"I don't need you to help me," the man shouted. "Both of you need to get out of here. Now!"

"Spike, if you would just let me talk," Jazz pleaded.

"Jazz, why would you lie to me?" Danny could ignore not knowing what this was all about, but it hurt to know his sister lied to him.

"Danny, I just wanted-"

The flash of lightning and quickly following boom of thunder surprised him. Danny jumped back with a fearful gasp as his heart hammered in his chest. Jazz's brow creased with concern, and she reached out a hand toward him, but Danny jerked away from her grasp.

"Danny, what's going on?" Some of the concern faded from Jazz's expression as anger flickered in her eyes. "And don't play dumb with me. I can tell when something's up. You and your friends have been whispering about something, and you might think you're being secretive, but you're not. It's so painfully obvious. And now you're jumping at a bit of thunder? Danny, you've never been scared of thunder."

Danny flinched, mostly because his sister had hit the nail on the head with him keeping secrets from her. "You're going to turn this around on me when you were keeping secrets too?"

"This seems like a conversation you two should have, alone, somewhere else," the man suggested. "Perhaps over coffee. I'm pretty sure there's a coffee shop just a few blocks away."

"Danny, if you just give me one minute-"

"No." Danny shook his head. He doubted Ember would turn up at this point if she hadn't come already. Even if Ember and the two men did show up, they would probably be frightened off by their arguing. "Friend's not coming, so this was a waste of time. I might as well just go home." He realized he was being childish. He and Jazz were equals in their lies to each other. The difference was that even if he felt like he was ready to talk to Jazz about his accident and the results of it, Danny wasn't going to say anything in front of a complete stranger. "I'll see you whenever you get home."

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Danny turned to walk back the way he came. Jazz called out to stop him, but she was torn between chasing after him and dealing with the man who seemed eager to get rid of them. And what was the deal with that man anyway? Why did Jazz want to meet up with him? Why were they meeting at some pharmaceutical company? Danny rubbed at his forehead as he walked through the alley back toward the street. All these questions without answers were giving him a headache, and he was still no closer to discovering what happened to Ember.

The rain came down harder as he neared the street. Thunder rumbled, but thankfully no lightning struck again. Danny glance toward the sky, half expecting to see a bolt of lightning racing down in a jaggy line toward him. His heart gave a hiccup, and he shuddered. He kept his mind focused on getting home where he could drown out the sounds of the storm with his headphones. Because if he didn't have something to concentrate his thoughts on, the times lightning flashed through the sky would render him unable to take another step out of the overwhelming memory of being trapped in the machine and struck a million times over by electricity.

A chill wrapped around him, drawing out a gasp. His feet felt glued to the spot, and the sensation of ice crawled over his heart like frost gathering over a window pane. He had grown accustomed to the small chills creeping up his spine when something was about to happen, usually Dash or one of the other jocks wanting to rough him up a bit in the name of bullying. But this feeling, this overwhelming sense of dread, reminded him too much of what he felt right before the explosion at the football game. Was something like that about to happen again?

BANG!

Danny's heart leapt into his throat as his eyes grew wide. He couldn't breathe, like the gunshot had punched him right in his gut and knocked out all the air in him. The heavy raindrops felt like pellets of hail striking at him. Footsteps pounding against the wet ground of the alley was muffled by the downpour. But it was the ringing of the gunshot still in his head that prevented him from acknowledging the approaching person until said person slammed into his shoulder.

It was like watching one of those old black and white movies. All color had washed away. Then the man with the Mohawk stumbled past him, and Danny caught a splattering of a red upon the man's leather jacket. Red? Blood? Jazz! Danny twisted around and sprinted back down the alley. His feet slipped and slid beneath him, and he nearly dove face first into the hard pavement more than a few times before he reached the end of the alley and turned the corner. His legs trembled beneath him as he stumbled over to where the body laid on the ground.

"Jazz," Danny said in a broken voice, his chest feeling so tight his lung could barely draw a breath. He dropped to his knees and circled his arms around his sister's body, pressing his hands to the wound to help stop the bleeding from her abdomen. "Jazz! Oh sh-" Panic ate at him as he watched the dark blood mixing with the rain washing over his hands. He couldn't make the bleeding stop!

"Dan-" Jazz's voice was barely a croak as her eyes opened, her brow a deep furrow. She stared up at him, and Danny's eyes burned with tears.

"It's okay. It's going to be okay." Danny wasn't sure if he was trying to reassure his sister or himself. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone, quickly dialing 911. "My sister's been shot," he said in a rush the second someone had answered the call. "We're behind Dalv Pharmaceuticals on Madison Avenue, and she's bleeding out a lot. Please hurry!"

"I'm s-sorry." Jazz closed her eyes, her face twisting in a painful grimace. "For keeping s-secrets."

Danny shook his head. "I was keeping secrets too. I shouldn't have, but I just didn't know how to tell you."

Jazz wore a watery smile as she laughed, which turned into a cough that made her brother wince. "I figured you would tell me when you were ready. You always did. Danny," she opened her eyes again and stared like she was searching for something in her brother's eyes, "I - I know you're going to become a really great man." She reached up and touched a bloody hand to Danny's cheek. "I'm really proud to be your sister."

His phone clattered upon the ground as Danny took his sister's hand. "I'm the one who should be proud to be your brother." He blinked away the tears blurring his vision. "Just hang on, okay? The ambulance should be here any minute. Just-" His voice hitched, and he struggled to get the words past the lump forming in his throat. "Just stay with me. I promise I'll tell you everything. So just - Just stay!" Danny squeezed Jazz's hand tightly, but there was no response.

BringbackDannyPhantom: I can assure you Kyle wasn't doing it for some sinister purpose. XD;; It was more an accidental thing because he couldn't get up the courage to talk to her.

Tetractys: Dan definitely needs to turn up more. XD;; Hopefully that happens soon. The head hunter thing was meant to be a joke, one Danny wouldn't get because he doesn't know that Dan is the one who chopped off that employee's head.

Guest: Bertrand might show up! XD I'm still working out how and when he might turn up. Everyone just wants to see Ember smack the crap out of Kyle the stalker, huh? XD I'm struggling with a good idea for a thank you gift Danny could get Kwan. orz Skulker will be turning up at some point. =)

HawkeyeLover: Danny's the king of smooth. XD

kirahphantom: Big bad Dan is on the loose! Quick, Danny, go stop him! XD

midnight: Ha ha. XD One of the few times it was useful. But still no less creepy.

The freedom girl: I'd say no, but that would be lying. XD Dang it, Dan! You're not going to make your boy happy if he learns about that! We didn't get many of those moments, huh? D: I think Pirate Radio was about it? I debated making Kyle an actual character from the show but decided to make him an OC in the end.