Between Death (#6.5): Dark Dystopian Paranormal Romance

by Blodgett, Tamara Rose

  Jeb studiously ignored the audience.

  “Nice local crowd here, Jasper.”

  His meaty palms hitting the glossy surface of the wooden bar top, the bartender's attention shifted to Jeb,

  He made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded like muffled breaking glass. “Oh yeah? Ya fool… piss off.”

  Beth put a hand on the bartender's forearm, her smallness easily engulfed by his size. His eyes held hers with kindness.

  “He's rough around the edges, Jimmy, but not all bad.”

  Beth looked at Jeb, and her expression said otherwise.

  Jeb crossed his arms. “How am I rough?”

  Beth cocked an inky brow, and again he was struck by how she did not look like the typical Reflective.

  In fact, nothing about her was typical.

  Jimmy chuckled, and Jeb’s frown deepened.

  Beth patted his shoulder in condescension. “You just are.”

  Adlaine was the most uncivilized, rude, dirty, and crude quadrant in a fifty-kilometer radius.

  Jeb opened his mouth to say so, but Beth covered it with her hand, shaking her head.

  “Jimmy, get my partner a drink,” she tossed out.

  “Partner, is it?” He eyed Jeb closer. His scrutiny was heavy, like a lead weight.

  Beth lowered her hand and said, her accent straining around the edges, “Yeah, he's my partner.”

  They shared a look, and he spun the stool away from her mocking expression, facing the mirror that flung their images back at them.

  Reflections.

  Jeb swiveled back to Jasper, but she was gone.

  Dammit all to Hades. He gave an angry scrub to his face and stood.

  ***

  Beth whistled a melodious tune as she made her way past the house that had become her home when she was an infant.

  She had not seen her adoptive parents in over fifteen years.

  Morbid compulsion drove Beth to visit this place she could never return to, but like a small child with her nose pressed to the candy store window, Beth put her metaphorical nose to this small house with its thatched roof, convex windows, and rough-hewn door. She wished to belong there.

  The centuries-old house sat anchored upon a slight knoll. Soft light glowed through the windows like eyes that saw only her.

  A sigh of pure longing escaped the prison of her lungs.

  Beth wanted to see it one last time before her first official jump. Even if those parents who'd loved her, albeit too briefly, never knew she stood outside their domicile in abject suffering. She could take a small measure of comfort in the memory.

  She felt a little bad for ditching Merrick. But she’d needed to be alone. Nothing good came from witnessing private sorrow.

  No other Reflective needed to know any of Beth's weaknesses. As far as they were concerned, the ones they could see were far too many.

  She stared for another twenty minutes or so then turned on her heel to return to her own quadrant.

  Barringer was the closest to Adlaine, but it was barely within required range of The Cause Headquarters. It was a good stretch of legs—a thirty-minute walk from where she stood in front of her adoptive parents’ house—but the fresh air would do her good.

  Midway home, she took up whistling again, her heart somewhat lighter.

  Whiskey burned pleasantly in her stomach. The fragrance of sweet autumn clematis filled the night with its weighted perfume, chasing the fresh night air.

  Beth was pleased she'd been given first hold of the locator. She moved her hand over the smooth sphere and thought of how plentiful these were on Sector Three, where they had a different use.

  There, people called them “marbles.” Curious moniker. Though she had never seen any with the surface necessary to jump, an unconscious smile lit Beth's face as she thought of the many intersecting things across the sectors.

  Someday, she thought, I shall travel them all.

  Not for torture, but for pleasure.

  ***

  Jeb was pissed.

  Every patron in the tavern stared at him as though he carried a disease from a different sector. He slapped the shot glass on the wood bar.

  Then he looked Jimmy in the eye and said, “Thanks.”

  Jimmy's brows dropped into a single bushy line of anger. That might've been because his thanks sounded curiously like fuck off.

  And that was what he'd really meant.

  Jeb slowly met every pair of eyes as he scanned the inside of the bar.

  Nice first night with my partner.

  He walked out the door unmolested. They would have been fools to try and overpower him. He could have escaped easily. The damn bar had an acre of mirrors—mirrors, for Principle's sake—lining an entire wall.

  The fresh breeze drove pleasantly against him as he exited the dive and dusted the place off his boots, shedding the slum from his thoughts.

  Jeb palmed his pulse. His was a more sophisticated version than Beth’s, but it was a necessity for a Reflective with his seniority.

  He swiped his thumb over the dock and it sprang to life.

  He kept his thumb depressed and thought the location of his domicile.

  Jeb looked up. A panel below the streetlights opened. It was hidden invisibly within the ribbing of the cylindrical column that snaked up the housing, which in turn held the solar wiring that powered the bulbs.

  A small mirror blinked back at Jeb like an unseeing eye. He turned his pulse communicator to face it.

  His pulse initiated a narrow scope of light, which tracked the small reflective surface, and when Jeb could see it refract the light, he jumped.

  The motion was very precise, like hopping on stepping stones.

  To the casual observer, it would have appeared as though a thread of light speared the small mirror ten meters above the sidewalk before a man simply flashed toward that impossibly tiny window, only to disappear in a whip of iridescent sparks almost too rapid to track.

  But track it, he did. Jeb hopped seamlessly between streetlamps—every kilometer, a lamp contained a hidden pocket mirror—until he got to the one that lit his front stoop.

  He was always invigorated after jumping, and this was no exception. His weariness and frustration had left him, and his strong heart beat was even and perfect.

  That flutter of purity and purpose only lasted a few moments before Jeb's gaze caught a wisp of paper thumb-tacked to his front door.

  Jeb strode to it, tearing it off the highly polished surface. The rare species of wood had been forever marred by some Adlaine lowlife.

  The note read very simply:

  Mongrel-lover.

  Or perhaps it was not from an Adlaine. The Adlaines loved Beth. One of theirs was a Reflective. It was a first in their history.

  Merrick ran his finger over the pockmark on the door and his lips flattened in anger, his fist crushing the paper.

  If they only fucking knew.

  He didn't want to be with Beth Jasper any more than they wanted him to.

  Rachett had insisted.

  He'd promised to cut Jeb's term short if he partnered with the only female Reflective The Cause had seen in the last ten years.

  Principle, what have I agreed to?

  ***

  Beth absently scratched at the disc embedded underneath her ear, right at that bone that protruded. Everyone who possessed a pulse communicator had an implant, but she had never gotten used to hers. Its very foreignness made itself known day in and day out. No matter how many times her fingertips ran over nothing but smooth, perfectly healed skin, Beth knew what lay beneath.

  Her uniform was neatly tucked away with the other ten, which were perfectly laundered. It was the only break she’d caught; the Reflectives were required to look shipshape, and they had people who made sure of it. So she didn't have to do her own laundry, which was excellent, because she wasn't the best housekeeper.

  Beth took pride in the sheer wealth of vocabulary, idioms, and other slang she had at her dispo
sal. Because she was a half-breed female, slight of build, she’d done everything in her power to be the best, the brightest, the most cunning, and the most merciless.

  Being merciless was not her best thing.

  She had told no one, but she had many small pets in her domicile who eased her in the life she was destined to live.

  Beth had not confessed because others could hurt the defenseless creatures she loved. The Papiliones did not care that she stood only five feet two and had the unsightly coloring that was not the ideal.

  Her butterfly menagerie greeted her in the same way whenever she returned—with reverence.

  Beth was honored that creature for whom their world had been named had chosen to roost in her humble abode. Actually, she was of the opinion that she could not have begged them to leave, which pleased her to no end.

  Beth ruminated in English and spoke in Latin. The practiced effort to remain fluent in both languages had never let her down.

  All other sectors had reverted to English as their primary language, leaving behind the ancient Latin long ago. But the people of Papilio had never thrown it out. Papiliones were an atypical people who were steeped in traditions but embraced technology.

  And she would travel to Sector Three that night. She would speak only English for as long as the reconnaissance would last.

  Beth couldn't help the nervous flutter in her stomach as she lay on her bed, arms folded neatly over her mid-twenty-first-century Sector Three costume.

  The butterflies felt her heartsick anxiety and floated in a cyclone of spotted, iridescent beauty.

  They landed along Beth's folded arms, their wings swaying to balance themselves on her flesh.

  The small hairs of her arms rose at their touch, and she settled peacefully into a fragile hiatus before the jump.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jeb stood beside Jasper, whose small hands were clenched.

  “Relax.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “You've jumped before.”

  He didn't mention that she'd jumped to ditch him just hours before. He would not queer the jump because she'd been a bitch.

  “I know.”

  They were partners. In a way, it was more than a marriage. They were responsible for each other. Liking didn't enter into it. That was why he’d fed Beth in the hospital.

  He agreed more with Ryan than he should have.

  Jeb would have killed Ryan if he'd tried to hurt her. Hell, Jeb would have ended it when they were in the ring had he known that Rachett had caught on she'd been assigned as his partner.

  Beth Jasper would do the same for him.

  Jeb couldn't deny that he agreed with Ryan about Reflective females in combat. He also remembered Rachett's words when he'd balked at the pairing.

  *

  “The Reflective can't help being a warrior.”

  His eyes nailed Merrick to where he stood. “The Principle decides, Merrick. And It has decided that Beth Jasper is a warrior. Hades…”

  Rachett raked a hand through graying hair.

  He was nearing a thousand years old.

  “In all my years as Commander, I've never seen one jump like she can. Even for an unbeliever, it means something.”

  Jeb agreed.

  But a female in combat? “You remember what happened to our last female Reflective in combat.”

  Rachett's chin dipped. “Yes.”

  The ensuing silence possessed the horrible quality of knowledge too terrible to speak of. Yet, Merrick spoke.

  “How many Reflectives died trying to save her?” It was Jeb's turn to plow fingers through his hair in frustration. He had grown it long in preparation for the jump to Sector Three.

  “Too many.” Rachett exhaled in a rush.

  Jeb leaned forward, capturing his Commander's steely gaze. “Exactly. We are instinctively protective of females. She was a seasoned warrior… but what they did to her… our males died because they could not stand what was happening.”

  Rachett's gaze did not flinch. “I was there.”

  “Then you know.”

  Rachett nodded.

  “Better than most.” They stared as quiet bloomed between them. “I should know—I killed her.”

  Shocked, Merrick stepped back from Rachett.

  “What? Why? I thought her injuries were too grievous…”

  “They were.” Rachett stood straighter. “They had wrecked her in a way she could not heal from.”

  “Yet you sent Ryan to Sector One.”

  Rachett nodded grimly. “He'll heal.”

  “He'll hate you.”

  Rachett shrugged. “He should have thought about that before he tried to kill Beth Jasper.”

  “Why her? Why not keep her safe, let her live out her term as… like Daphne.”

  Rachett's lips quirked, and Merrick understood that he knew about their roll in the sheets.

  Swell.

  Merrick opened his mouth to defend it all, and Rachett raised his palm.

  “Don't bother. I know males have needs. I am one, remember?”

  Jeb wasn't likely to forget. Rachett was the most brutal male he'd ever known. He'd seen everything… and done everything.

  “Beth Jasper is my absolution.”

  Jeb's chin jerked back. He searched Rachett's face, gleaning nothing.

  “The female Reflective that I killed as a mercy was Beth's mother.”

  Jeb staggered back, shock running through his body like the electric current of the past.

  “Does anyone else know this?”

  “Just you.”

  “Principle, I wish I didn't.”

  Rachett shrugged.

  “Jasper is important to The Cause. She could not have survived the training without the blessing of the Principle.”

  True. “What of the father?”

  Rachett turned away from Jeb, pacing to the window inside the office and plucking the gauzy drape aside.

  “He is Sector One.”

  Jeb sat down on the closest horizontal surface that presented, his breath leaving him like air escaping a deflating balloon.

  It just keeps getting worse.

  “Those fucking creatures…” Jeb spit into the room.

  “Clearly not all.”

  “She was raped,” Jeb stated, struggling to reconcile why any female would couple with a Sector One inhabitant.

  Rachett shook his head as he gazed outside at the vineyards on the distant emerald hills.

  He turned to Jeb.

  “No. Not by her lover.”

  Jeb paused.

  He recovered. “Then what?”

  “They were as enraged about the union as we were.”

  Jeb sucked in a breath, standing.

  “It was revenge?”

  Rachett nodded. “Yes.”

  His gaze hardened on Jeb.

  “That is why we must never divulge Beth's true lineage until we are bound to do so at her twenty-first cycle.”

  “I would never, Commander Rachett.”

  “I know that, Jeb.” Rachett clapped him on the back.

  “But the information in the wrong set of hands ...”

  “Because they have jumpers.”

  Rachett nodded. “They're not always as skilled as our Reflectives, they don't have the training, and are very rare.”

  “That might be why Beth is ...”

  “Such an anomaly. Such a wild talent.”

  Jeb palmed his chin.

  “Yes,” Rachett sighed.

  “It has come to our attention that there are powerful jumpers in the sector. A primitive, volatile, and barbaric society that believes in survival of the fittest as its modus operandi. However…” He hesitated, plowing his fingers through his shorn hair again. “I think there's a simplicity to their Reflection. They use it sporadically, without gaining control because it's not something they rely on, but something buried within the basest fabric of their genetic composition.”

  “So Beth is the product of a Reflective female and a Sector One ma
le.”

  Rachett nodded.

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “I met him.”

  “No fucking way!”

  Rachett scowled at Jeb’s use of Earth language but Jeb continued unabated.

  “What happened?”

  “He cradled her mother’s body like a man broken.”

  “Why did he not defend her?”

  “He did not come in time.”

  Rachett looked away again, his mind seemingly on memories that Jeb couldn't see and didn't really want to.

  “Maybe that wasn't Beth's father,” Jeb said, stumbling over the title.

  “He was.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  Rachett tapped his fingertips on the edge of his desk.

  “She's his spitting image.” He gave a short laugh, more like a bark.

  Jeb didn't think anything could be funny right then.

  “Then there was the matter of the rain… it fell… and the male rose from her dead body.” Rachett continued to stare at Jeb, though he appeared to look through him at another scene, at a different time.

  “The water washed his black hair into his face. His skin was like marble. He was a hard male, a big one. He howled into that dark storm like he was a part of it.”

  Rachett's eyes fell on Jeb's.

  “Then he was.” Rachett finished quietly. “He had jumped through the storm, leaping between raindrops.”

  Amazing.

  Terrifying.

  A Reflective buried in that uncivilized Earth, surrounded by savagery.

  “He took her with him.”

  It shocked Jeb out of the moment. “He—what?”

  “I didn't say? He stood with her in his arms and bellowed his anguish into the sky and jumped with a dead Reflective through the water as it fell.” Rachett's voice went low, and Jeb leaned forward to catch the last word.

  Moments filled with nothing but the sound of their breathing ticked by.

  “Do you understand the importance of this?”

  “If he knew of Beth…” Jeb said.

  “He would come after her.”

  “And leave a tailwind for every Sector One to follow.”

  Rachett smiled, the first real one of the conversation. “Precisely.”