Between Death (#6.5): Dark Dystopian Paranormal Romance

by Blodgett, Tamara Rose

  Six feet three, two hundred forty pounds, former athlete, first third of life cycles.

  Too young for the damage he's done to his body to have caught up. Size advantage, but slower than Jasper.

  Chuck smelled like the pennies of Three, which still passed for currency but were no longer made.

  He smelled of other people's blood.

  Jeb didn't realize he'd moved until Jacky came sailing through the air, headed straight for him.

  Jeb instinctively caught him.

  It was well-played.

  He set Jacky down quickly and spun to locate his partner.

  The hill was vacant.

  Jasper was gone.

  *

  Fifth: protect the young.

  On his hands and knees, Jacky gasped for air.

  Jeb eyes sought his partner in the tapestry of darkness peppered by silvery markers of the dead.

  He assessed Jacky.

  Bruised trachea, compromised breathing; debilitated by ten percent.

  Eighth: defend those who cannot.

  “Come on,” Jeb said to Jacky.

  He didn't wait to see if the boy would follow, but ran headlong after where he thought Jasper would be.

  How did she not subdue Chuck?

  Was there something they hadn’t known? Jeb ticked off his age—Chuck was too old to have paranormal talent. He had a weapon, and though it would do the job, it should not have been sufficient to overcome Jasper. She was trained to counter all weapons from every explored sector.

  He spotted tracks—two sets.

  Jeb crouched, his fingers going to the depressions. Like railroad tracks from hundreds of years ago, they ran deep, side-by-side, and the heel moved the grass apart like a plow through grass waters.

  Jeb closed his eyes, and his nostrils flared wide.

  His eyes sprang open, and his vision speared a far corner. He stepped into one of the prints.

  It wasn't a dragging heel print, but deep and long—laid by a male similar in size to Jeb.

  Jeb's instep matched the pattern.

  He ran, and Jacky followed, gasping.

  *

  A hand cracked across her face, and the stinging of flesh on flesh roused Beth like an ice-water dousing.

  Beth's face swung with the momentum of the slap.

  She knew how to take a hit, and fighting it meant more damage.

  She was intimately aware of torture techniques, and she felt the bite of old-fashioned zip ties constricting her wrists as she was bound to a chair.

  Putrid breath fell across her face, and Beth recoiled instinctively.

  “Don't get shy on me now, sweetheart.”

  His hands plunged into her unbraided hair.

  Beth bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  She opened her eyes; a sting like an insect bite was at her neck.

  The bastard had juiced her with a sedative.

  She shuddered to think about the sterility of the needle.

  None.

  Her mind churned through the possibilities.

  That was how Chuck had overtaken Jacky's parents. It was fast working.

  It robbed Beth's consciousness that fast.

  While Jacky's parents lay on the ground they'd been sacrificial lambs to his blade.

  How did Maddie survive this maniac?

  She almost hadn't.

  Chuck was speaking, and Beth had been slow in answering.

  The second hit was harder, more accurate, and her mouth complied, spraying blood.

  Some of the splatter hit Chuck in the face, and he casually swiped it away.

  The impact had been close to Beth't temple, and the area would begin to swell, taking some of her vision along with it.

  She spit blood.

  “I said—where the fuck is Maddie?” His voice was a soft roar and Beth shook her head to clear it.

  If she had not been Reflective, that last hit would have broken something. As it was—it'd hurt.

  “Somewhere safe,” Beth replied.

  Chuck paced, his large hands, adept at hitting, swung in agitated jerks and fits as he moved back and forth in front of her.

  He turned, facing her. Beth could see that he ached to jerk her head back, using her hair as a handle. She suddenly wondered if her long hair would get her killed.

  Chuck kicked the chair back, and Beth fell, her head smacking the floor, her hands crushed and immobile behind her. Her shoulders felt as if they were being torn out of their sockets.

  She did cry out then.

  “Good, not so tough as I thought.”

  He bent down over her.

  “You think I don't know what she was?” His face lowered over Beth. “That I don't know what you are?”

  The wash of his rotten breath bathed Beth's face, and she leaned forward, clamping her teeth around his disgusting lower lip, and bit through.

  He jerked up instinctively—the exact wrong thing to do.

  Beth hung on, and his lip nearly tore off. Beth had to close her eyes against the heavy spray of blood.

  His blood flooded her nostrils in a metallic slap, and she choked. Her teeth full of his flesh, her nose full of his blood, she couldn't breathe.

  Still she held.

  He roared and hit her in the head hard. It rang her bell, and her teeth released him as the chair she was bound in tipped to the side.

  She landed hard and screamed.

  Beth shook her head to free it of his vile leavings and saw his ruined mouth.

  She'd always been an opportunist. And for that, she would pay.

  He mewled like a wounded animal.

  And anything wild retaliates when it’s injured because it feels cornered.

  With a bellow, Chuck charged, and Beth waited, her heart a part of her throat.

  When he'd grabbed the chair off the floor to right it, he swung her around, sending blood, spit, and hair flying with the force.

  The chair legs creaked at the abuse.

  Chuck jerked her close.

  Beth bunched her unbound knee tight against her chest then drove it into his crotch with everything she had.

  She prayed to Principle it was enough.

  Chuck fell, and Beth did too. It was the first break of the night—she landed on a big parka that had been discarded on the floor.

  She lay on her face, the chair riding her back like a monkey, ass in the air and her face planted in soft down.

  She was suffocating in a jacket, tied to the chair while a dangerous Three lay just paces away, grabbing at his nether regions.

  With every ounce of her diminishing strength, Beth turned her head. Glorious oxygen filled her burning lungs.

  She coughed, and Chuck's muddy eyes trained on her face.

  The planned cruelty she saw in the stare turned her veins to ice.

  When Chuck recovered from her opportunist attack, it would be she who would be defenseless.

  Beth closed her eyes, thinking of her life and how much of it was yet unlived.

  She thought of Jeb.

  The effort to keep the crystalized tears of her despair from falling was ugly.

  *

  Jeb's head cocked to the side when he thought he heard a vague scream.

  Ten precious minutes they'd been looking for Jasper.

  It was sufficient time for one human to do the unspeakable to another.

  The trail had ended at a car's treads.

  The spun mud had been flung along the sides of tree trunks in a villainous spray of indifference.

  Chuck had left in one Hades of a hurry.

  Jacky had managed to gasp out that there was a caretaker's shed not too far away and that Chuck held a part-time maintenance position there.

  Sure he does.

  “Can we run it?”

  Jacky shook his head.

  “You can,” he said, out of breath.

  “Where?” Jeb asked. A muffled clap arrested his body, and his ears pricked, listening for Jasper.

  Her scent was on
the wind, like wild roses and woman. He caught it.

  “Half mile that way,” Jacky pointed vaguely north.

  Jeb ran, his heels kicking his own ass, his arms cracking against his side like spinning saws.

  Breath tore at his throat as his hair swept back.

  Scraping, then a clatter.

  He shot to the left.

  A roof—he could just make out the outline of black against a midnight sky. A crumbled, out-of-use chimney jogged out of the top like a rotting tooth hanging on by a thread.

  The door was painted red like old blood.

  Jeb never slowed down, swinging his leg out in a kick that took the handle, flinging it away and throwing the door open ahead of his momentum.

  His mind was a camera shutter.

  The scene filled his vision.

  Click.

  Jasper covered in blood, her face so soaked with it that only her eyes gazed unblinking back at him like stranded black gems.

  Click.

  A bloodied Three, his lip a torn flap of meat. A limping stagger told Jeb Jasper had worked him.

  Click.

  Jeb plowed into Chuck, upending him neatly.

  They sailed into the back wall and through it.

  Chuck swiped the knife out, and Jeb plowed the hilt with his fist.

  It flew away harmlessly, and Jeb sank his fist into Chuck's throat, ending whatever words he'd thought to utter.

  A gurgle leaked out as Jeb straddled him.

  Jeb jerked Chuck up with one hand and joined his other around the Three's neck. He placed his thumbs underneath the meaty jaw, and his eyes met Chuck’s.

  Jeb smiled as he spun that neck in the wrong direction.

  Bone squealed for a moment's protest as he ended Chuck.

  Jeb dropped the body and stood.

  He turned around, staring through the hole in the shed and saw Jasper through it.

  He'd never seen her cry—not once.

  Jeb's hands shook; the rage had nowhere else to go. Killing Chuck twice wouldn't have been enough.

  Tears made clean tracks through the blood on Jasper’s face.

  Jeb wondered when logic had left him and emotion taken its place.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jeb had never felt empathy during a session of torture. It's not what Reflectives worried, or talked, about. They completed their mission.

  Things occurred.

  So why was he having so much trouble breathing as his ceramic switchblade cut through the obsolete binders that held Jasper's wrists?

  Her hands fell, the brutal stripes against her flesh bleeding and raw.

  He pulled her away from the chair, kicking it aside.

  It rolled in a clatter, and Jeb sat on his ass, widening his legs.

  He leaned forward, carefully sliding his powerful arms underneath Jasper's back.

  She was so light as he pulled her onto his lap.

  Her eyes were at half-mast. Consciousness was not full.

  He extracted a clean towel from one of the utility pockets in his denims and wiped her face. It made a clean spot, but it wasn't sufficient. She needed a thorough cleansing.

  “Hey,” he said when the velvet of her gaze swept past his own.

  “Hey,” she whispered back.

  Jeb meant to look away, he did. He found he could not. The dried blood, grime, and her wounded face needed attention.

  He moved her head to the crook of his arm. The naked bulb swinging above them threw jagged shadows and light around the room and across her expression.

  A fine bruise was beginning at the corner of Jasper's eye, and her opposite cheek was starting to swell from a hard slap to her ivory skin, marred with a hot-pink handprint.

  “He's dead.”

  She blinked slowly.

  “Mission accomplished,” Jasper whispered as her head rolled more deeply inside his arm.

  Jeb felt his heartbeat thump against her face.

  The moment was a keen one—ready, alive.

  Instinctual.

  Beth felt it, too. She moved her face away from the hammering heartbeats against his ribs.

  His eyes moved to her mouth, the only thing that was whole and perfect.

  He licked his lips.

  In that moment, Jeb was painfully aware of his long-term denial.

  His hand moved to cradle her jaw, a thumb caressing the delicate bone. He took in the fluttering pulse at the base of her throat.

  Beth swallowed, her wide eyes held on his.

  Jeb's thumb touched the mouth he'd been looking at for months.

  If he was honest with himself, it had been years.

  Jeb brought Beth closer as he leaned down to meet her.

  His lips touched hers, and his timepiece slipped away.

  The speeding clock ground to a halt, and he took a breath of liberated air.

  He no longer worked for The Cause but for his own happiness.

  Jeb wound Beth's arm around his neck.

  “No,” she whispered around his seeking lips.

  But she didn't stop him when he pushed past the blood of another to the sweet center of her mouth.

  Beth responded with an intensity that made him groan and convulsively tighten his hold.

  “Oh, yes,” Jeb said, awoken as if from a dream.

  He felt as though he had been given the perfect key to fit a lock for a room full of treasure.

  And here she was. Here she had always been.

  His soul mate had been under his nose for two decades, and he'd never known it. Jeb's mind and body had tried to tell him, but the timepiece ticked, keeping that realization at bay by the slimmest of margins.

  Many things suddenly made greater sense.

  He gently pulled Beth closer, holding her tight, his nose in her hair.

  Jeb's body sheltered her from harm. He faced the door, his back to the wall.

  ****

  Jeb noticed another presence in the building and stood with Beth in his arms.

  She groaned.

  His eyes went to her mouth again, and he tried to shake off the thrall.

  “God… get a room,” Jacky said.

  Jeb couldn't help but smile.

  “I'll explain later.”

  Jacky held up a hand. “Do ya think I need a play-by-play? I saw all the tongue dance.” He gave a little shake of his head.

  They stood in awkward silence. Jacky's parents had been murdered, and he was obviously deflecting his emotions about the event.

  “Listen,” Jeb began.

  Jacky held up his palm, not looking Jeb in the eye.

  “I don't want to talk about it.”

  Jeb saw the choked grief on the boy's face and sighed.

  “Fine,” he answered.

  “We need to get his body inside this shed and make our way back to your domicile. Then we can tend to Beth's wounds and figure out your situation.”

  “What's to figure out? My fucking parents are dead.”

  Beth opened her eyes, looking very small in his arms, shell shocked and beaten.

  “Take me to the angel.”

  Jeb's face must've shown his confusion.

  “We've got enough moonlight.”

  Realization dawned.

  Jeb laid Beth on the floor, and that was when he saw the angry wound on her side.

  She was bleeding quite badly.

  Jeb smiled at her, and Jacky turned away from the tenderness he saw there.

  “I can't keep you whole.” Sharp remorse cut the atmosphere of the room like a knife.

  “You tried… Jeb,” she managed.

  Their eyes met, and he walked through the hole in the wall before he picked her up again and kissed her while she bled to death.

  *

  Beth couldn't believe what had happened. She wasn't an idiot.

  She'd witnessed the same besotted gaze from other males who'd found their soul mate.

  She couldn't wrap her mind around the idea that she could be Jeb's.

  Yet she couldn't
deny the way he'd acted—and touched her.

  Beth recognized delayed shock when she felt it. The wounds, the event… the revelation—they were all working at once.

  Jeb moved Chuck's body inside the shed while Jacky stayed beside Beth. He didn't flinch when she walked her fingers over to his hand and took it.

  Her unspoken condolence was enough.

  Jeb scooped her off the floor effortlessly and took her to the angel who guarded the entrance of a mausoleum.

  Faint stars flickered like imprisoned diamonds in the obsidian cloak of the night. Beth shivered with the cold, and Jeb covered her more securely with his body.

  As he drew closer, Jeb grinned when the prize came into sight.

  As though orchestrated, a single moonbeam hit the angel’s trumpet. Its solid antique brass was worn through in spots underneath the original chrome finish.

  The brass was pockets of warm butter under the caress of the white-ish blue moonlight.

  The chrome reflected.

  Jeb saw Beth's face intensify as they drew closer. Hers were the eyes of a Reflective specially tuned to all surfaces that reflected.

  “Jacky,” Jeb threw behind his shoulder, the word full of command.

  A hand grabbed the back of his rough cotton shirt.

  Jeb noticed Beth had on only one shoe, his eyes catching on one small swinging foot.

  “Jeb,” Beth whispered. His name from her mouth was a tonic.

  “Yes?” He hugged her to him.

  “Hurry.”

  Beth's torso was covered with blood, soaking his clothes.

  It was a defensive wound.

  Chuck had been aiming for something more vital, like the femoral artery.

  Beth would not be in his arms if it weren't for her deflection.

  Jeb could kill Chuck again. Once was simply not enough.

  She was losing her battle with consciousness.

  “There, look,” Jeb said, his jaw ticking in the direction of the trumpet.

  It glowed, and she stared.

  Jacky's hand slid down Jeb's shirt and his grip tightened on a belt loop.

  Heat drove from the cold earth and overtook Jeb and Beth, licking out to encompass Jacky.

  They stood in a raging inferno of heat and jumped. Beth was at the helm, Jeb guided, and Jacky held on for dear life.

  Jeb kept the Jacky's domicile in the forefront of his mind.

  He held Beth tightly as they traveled, his healing thrown out deep and hard like a perfectly pitched fast ball.