by Eros, Marata
At least I'm hell on wheels with a blade. And I can crush skulls in my half form.
I know when I'm cheering myself up and it's not working. I huff out an exhale, checking the time of day.
Long eyelashes, designed to protect my wide and slightly protruding eyeballs, sweep closed, tickling the fur of my cheeks. I hike up the hill. My large feet causing the earth to shake with my gait.
Blades from a helicopter pulse their music above my head and I still, squeezing my body against a stand of trees and staying like a statue. When it passes I slump in relief.
Using my long trunk I sweep it back and forth as though it's a metal detector looking for treasure.
Like a tuning fork, the sensitive appendage halts and I snuffle above the spot. Swishing my trunk side to side, I uncover pine needles and underbrush to exhaust what I'm looking for.
There. The entrance to the clan.
I crane my neck back, studying the treetops. Almost indiscernible among all the green, hang vines. If you know what to look for, they can be seen, otherwise, the long tendrils of transport appear like indigenous vegetation.
But I know better.
I smell Grace Cline. She's a genetic Heinz 57, and it's only a matter of time before I spring her from them and get her back to the clan. For another male. I scowl at the thought.
Using my will, I change, collapsing in pain as searing heat tears through me, rearranging my bones and sinew into those of a human man.
Gazing down at my feet, they're the last to change and they always hurt the worse. Woolly mammoths are incredibly strong and I'm no different. But that doesn't speak to my total distaste for pain in all its forms.
I lie there panting, wishing I could die, but somehow live through my bones realigning to my human form. The process feels like hours but it's really only minutes.
Standing, I shake off the loose hairs that always shed during the process and look dispassionately at my four meter long tusks. I'd almost had that saber tooth last year. I grin with the memory, goring that fucker had been sweet. But in the end, his claws did me in.
If there was a female for me, I'd have to fight them all for her. Cross-breeding prehistorics wasn't like moderns, where a Lycan had to be with a Lycan, a tiger with a tiger and so forth. Nah, us prehistorics could do the nasty with any female that had prehistoric DNA and she would throw true... with something.
My ears perk forward as Jake brakes roar their unpleasantness from the highway, and I wince. All shifters, even the moderns, have sensitive hearing and listening to that trucker fuck up the general peace causes my jaw to clench.
I'd love to stick it to that inconsiderate douche canoe.
But more important things need doing. I walk the short distance to the entrance of the First Species lair and position myself at the lip of what on casual observation, appears to be a hole in the ground.
And jump.
*
With a groan, I sit up and clutch my shoulder. Pretty sure I dislocated my shoulder with that fall.
I stagger to a stand and wrench my shoulder, plowing the joint to the side then ramming it inside the pocket. I bite my lip to keep from crying out.
The smell of primal is everywhere. I hiss my next few pain-filled breaths very carefully. Leaning for a moment against the stone walls, I take in my surroundings as the pain subsides.
I might be able to go full form but the ape boys would take me down. They'd need five to make good on killing me, but for entering their clan with the intent to take a female? They'd be on board.
I'm just pissing everyone off now. Got two vampire bounty enforcers up my ass, First Species will definitely have their noses out of joint—and Doric—head honcho, will not like Noah's bold plan.
Our alpha is too soft, wanting to protect the few prehistorics who are left rather than being aggressive and taking the females who can give us hope for the future.
Short-sighted, if you ask me. Of course, no one does.
A rustling draws my eyes as a female quietly makes her way down the hall.
“Oh!” she puts her hand on her chest and my nostrils flare.
Grace Cline.
Could this get any better?
“You startled me.”
I grin. “No worries. I just dropped in for a visit.”
Not a lie.
I take in her light t-shirt and lounge pants.
She'll freeze.
Unless I go mammoth. Choices, choices.
“Who are you?” she asks and I can scent her fear. Not unusual for an un-transitioned female.
“Jacob, but my friends call me Jac.”
She cocks her head to the left and I can just make out the prettiest shade of blue eyes I've ever seen. Or are they violet?
“I haven't been here very long but I—aren't you supposed to be sleeping?”
I feel my smile fall away. “Well—that'd be because I'm not a First Species. I'm a woolly mammoth.”
Her expression freezes for a heartbeat then she bursts out laughing.
I don't find it funny. At. All.
When she can finally control herself she notices I'm not laughing.
“I know, I should be frightened.”
I shake my head, lifting my shoulders then letting them drop. “No one's frightened of a woolly.”
“I—” she shakes her head, dark blond hair sliding over her shoulders, —“You don't have to lie to put me at ease or whatever, Conrick told me what would happen if I left his chamber and I'm not interested. I'm not interested in any commitment.”
My plastered fake smile is nearly painful.
I spread my palms away from my sides. “I'm not here for commitment.”
Grace Cline's face falls. “What are you here for?”
“Procurement.”
I know when she readying to flee.
I'm very fast in my human form. Very.
She moves and I'm on her before her next inhale. Grace opens her mouth to scream and I cover it gently with my own.
“Shh, I'm not going to hurt you.”
Her frantic eyes roll upwards to meet mine as my shoulder throbs.
“Listen to me, and listen close. I need to get you out of here before the enforcers show up and one of the brutes that live here discover a prehistoric's in their nest. Now if I let my hand up are you going to scream? Because if you scream, I die, and you stay with the ape boys.”
She nods.
I slowly lift my hand. She spins, facing me. “I'm getting tired of everyone trying to get a piece of me.”
I shrug, staying close. “Time isn't our friend. Come with me and have better choice or stay and become a primate.”
Grace frowns and I chuckle. A shifter needs a sense of humor in times like these.
“He has my little brother. Toby's safe here I don't want to leave him.”
She wrings her hands. “Enforcer Murphy said I could go to a safe house and a Turner would transition me.”
I sigh, plowing fingers through my hair. What a mess. “That's true, but you're unique, Grace. My species seeks women out who have ancient DNA. We need females like you.”
She flings her hands to her side, shivering. “I don't want to be this important. I just want to protect my little brother and exist without danger.”
Strange words. I frown. “So cooperation isn't going to happen?”
She shakes her head.
“Well shit.”
Grace giggles. “You're kinda silly for a big, badass shifter.”
I'm not big and badass, but I'm more determined than most. I hear something stealthy above my head and move fast.
Enforcers Murphy and the female I gored drop lightly from above.
That means dusk has come and gone while I was chatting it up with Grace.
“Murphy!” Grace cries in clear relief, running to him.
“Grace!” the enforcer warns with a shout.
First Species appear to bleed out of the walls of stone, casually walking out of hiding.
&nbs
p; “Murphy—what the fuck are these?” the female vamp asks, backing up toward the wall.
“Trouble, love,” he replies, holding up his holographic card. “Final Enforcement. Grace Cline is target #1231, stand down or face incarceration.”
Grace looks from Murphy, to me and when a big guy strides down the middle of the corridor the rest of the gorilla guys part like the Red Sea.
He looks directly to me, nostrils flaring.
Fuck.
“Prehistoric?” he asks.
I nod.
He turns to the five First Species piling up at his flanks. “Kill him.”
Right.
“No!” Grace cries and she runs for me.
The female thinks the alpha of the First Species will stop his kill command because she's in the way.
It's kind of sweet.
Chaos ensues.
I go half mammoth, tearing the female behind me and take the first of the ape guys out with a tusk.
Tossing his body, the head plows into the hard stone with a resounding thud.
Instead of staying and fighting with the vamps and First Species. I swing my leg, using the powerful legs of this form and leap, positioning myself underneath the portal that led me here.
Grace resists, attempting to tear her hand from my hold.
The vampire plunges his fangs into my shoulder and I swivel my head, puncturing his with the end of my tusk.
Fucker fanged my bad shoulder.
He howls, thrown off as blood ruins his vision.
I crouch as the rest of them roll toward me like thunder and bunch my leg muscles, bounding upward.
I miss the top, Grace hanging from one hand. I fork my tusks into the side of the rough opening and fling myself backward and outside of the hole.
Wrapping my arms around the female I land hard, caging her protectively in my arms.
Noah stands at the entrance.
“Bad day?” he asks with a smirk, eyeing the disaster of my escape.
Not funny. “Could be worse,” I reply.
Grace screams, jerking at my hand and flinging her head around.
Noah frowns. “She's not into it.”
“Uh-huh.”
Doric slides from behind a tree, his scales rising to the surface of his body in iridescent glory and I fume.
Show off.
“Is this her?” His multi-colored eyes blaze.
I nod.
Our eyes meet.
“Good work, Jacob.”
He goes to half-dragon and wings break from his back, stretching wide. His ears morph next, opening like a shining deck of cards and tipping forward as they unfurl.
Doric's eyes are oblong and have an elongated pupil. It's difficult to speak with a forked tongue but he says, “Put her on my back.”
“No! No-no-no!”
Grace literally digs her heels in as I flip her over my shoulder and stride to where Doric kneels.
I fling Grace on Doric's back and he catches her with his hands, securing her weight.
He spins and sprints, running hard in the opposite direction of me and Noah.
Vaguely, I hear him tell her to hold on. She must do as he says because Grace Cline doesn't fall off on his ascent.
Soon they're only a dot in a deepening sky.
THE END
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FINAL ENFORCEMENT
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Volume 9
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DEATH BUNDLE
A Death Series Box Set
Books 1-3:
Death Whispers
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New York Times Bestselling Author
TAMARA ROSE BLODGETT
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2010-12 Tamara Rose Blodgett
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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What happens when teenagers manifest paranormal abilities which make them more powerful than the adults? Can death be used as a weapon? Can humanity transcend death? DEATH WHISPERS, reveals impossible human potential and the evil which lies therein.
DEATH WHISPERS
A Death Series Novel
Book 1
New York Times Bestselling Author
TAMARA ROSE BLODGETT
All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2010 Tamara Rose Blodgett
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
www.tamararoseblodgett.com
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CHAPTER 1
Pre-Biology sucked, but the subject was mandatory in eighth grade. I walked in and slumped into my seat. We were going to be dissecting frogs, and I wasn’t excited about it.
John sat down next to me with two pencils up his nose.
“Hey, Caleb.”
“Hey. Did ya make sure the erasers were in there first?” I asked him.
“Yeah, duh.” The pencils bounced as he spoke. For a smart guy, he had some weird ideas about self-entertainment.
“You still buzzing?” he asked.
“Yeah, it's on and off.” I felt kind of defensive about that and didn't really want to talk about it.
“I've been thinking about that,” he said.
I wondered briefly how he could think with pencils up his nose. A mystery. “Yeah?”
“I think you have the undead creeper, like that Parker dude,” John said.
That would be bad. “He's the one that could corpse-raise, right?” I asked.
I had just been thinking about how much that ability sucked. However, the rareness of corpse-raising might come in handy. But that being my ability wasn’t likely. Mr. Collins went to the whiteboard and started to explain how to pin down the frogs.
“Government took him. Bye-bye... gone.” John made a fluttering motion with his hand like a bird flying away. The pencils kept bouncing in a distracting way.
I'd heard about that. Corpse manipulation was rare. Jeffrey Parker was the only recorded case.
“Are you shitting me? Why do you think? Dead people? Come on.” I got an image of zombies with M-60s. I was interested for a change. Sometimes John would lose me in a tech rant, and it was all over.
“No, think about it. They could get people raised and force them to do stuff. From a distance, they'd look like they were alive, important people.” He raised his ey
ebrows.
“Presidents?”
“Rulers or whoever,” John said. “He was a five-point. He could do the whole tamale. I think the government exploits whatever they can; using whoever they can.”
I laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“I can't take you seriously. You look like a dumb-ass.” The pencils dangled indignantly inside each nostril, humiliated.
John pulled them out, checking the ends for gold.
I'd been wondering why my head was buzzing. I tried to remember when the it'd started. I had no idea what triggered it. I wondered if John could be right?
“Okay, people,” Collins said. “Zip up here and pick up your trays. Your sterilized utensils should already be at your desks.”
John went for our trays, minus the attractive pencils. I stared out the window, the rain rivulets that looked like gray streamers marring the glass.
I shook my head, clearing fuzziness. I couldn't get rid of the buzzing, a dull noise that ebbed and flowed. As soon as I had entered the classroom, it had increased. It was starting to sound like people whispering.
“Here. One frog for the both of us.” John plunked down a frog that had once been green but was now a bone-gray. The pins staking it to the board gleamed under the LEDs.
Suddenly, I felt as though the earth was swiveling on its axis with me at the top. The whispering grew in volume then images of a marsh flooded my head. A frog, in the bloom of its life, shiny with amphibian iridescence, leapt to a log, hoping to fool a water moccasin.
Right behind you! I shouted.
But the frog didn’t seem to hear me.
A motor boat was closing in on the frog. A man leaned out, getting ready to take capture the frog with a loose net on the end of a long metal pole. I heard the frog's thoughts: Strange predator. Must seek cover... noise... hurts...
No! No!
More visions came. With every cut my classmates made, I saw stuff from other frogs’ lives. I realized through some dim sense that I was lying on the floor. I think I might have passed out for a few minutes.
