by Eros, Marata
Sit, stay, roll over... play dead. Or... we kill your zombies. They'd been using his undead like cannon fodder for almost ten years. He was in the middle of his twenties and had never loved anyone. His life was not normal.
And Caleb Hart's would not be either.
Jeffrey was tasked with Caleb Hart's acquisition, but he wouldn't be a part of his manipulation. The challenge would be to make sure his colleagues didn't get even a faint whiff of his intentions or he couldn't help the boy.
Parker looked down from the soundless chopper and had a pang of nostalgia for the boy he might have been.
In another life, another time.
Now it was Caleb Hart's life. And Jeffrey'd be damned if the boy's would be fucked six ways to Sunday too.
Not on his watch.
He observed his people leak down the ropes like oil on water and the kids begin to respond.
This would be the theatrical performance of his career and he wasn't about to blow it.
Parker leapt out of the chopper, facing off with a power that was in harmony with his own.
His feet touched down and the dead sang to him for release.
Jeffrey ignored them, his eyes finding Caleb's as he worked his way between the gravestones toward the young necromancer.
*
Brandt caught up with Kyle in the hall and plucked his sleeve. Kyle turned and they exchanged a heated glance.
“I've got it,” Brandt said in a low voice, showing a sliver of the white cap of the pill bottle to Kyle.
Hart nodded. “Thanks. I don't know what we'd do if...”
“I understand. It's sure a helluva different situation than when we began. Who was to know...” Brandt's revelation died on his lips at the sight of Kyle's eyebrows jacked down like a brick over his eyes.
“Okay, cool it.”
Kyle frowned harder, if possible. “I know they're listening.”
Brandt ran a hand through his long hair, finally clasping it in a messy ponytail on the back of his head. “Paranoid-much, pal.”
Kyle nodded. “Didn't used to be.”
They walked to outside in unspoken agreement.
Standing beneath the shade of a lone outcrop of trees they continued. “Who would know your kid would ping AFTD. Seriously?” Brandt stared at him for another heartbeat and said, “You think they're going to what? Use him?”
“Maybe,” Kyle looked at him. “Remember when those government men showed up? Asking questions about Pulse?”
Brandt nodded, knowing there would be a point coming. With Hart, there always was.
“Caleb's seen them hanging around the school.”
“What, before the AP Testing?”
Kyle nodded.
“Well—that makes things dicey. You know they funded the whole nut here, Kyle.”
“I know, and I don't much care. This is my son. He's not going to be some,” he whipped his palm around, “experiment.” Kyle's eyes flashed. “If I didn't know better—” Kyle began and Brandt smirked.
“But ya do.”
Kyle nodded. “Yes, I do. If I didn't know better I'd say the Prime Booster had been rigged.”
“Who'd want to juice your kid with such a weird ability?”
Hart shook his head. Damned if he knew . When he could puzzle through the answer, he'd sleep better. As it was, that wasn't happening. Insomnia had become his reluctant companion most nights.
“These will dampen him chemically,” Brandt captured his eyes and held them, “but, the effects will not last, and it might make him higher than a damn kite. Half dose him, Hart.”
Kyle nodded.
AP Testing loomed large in the a.m. He felt so damn bad for Caleb. Couldn't he have had something that was easier to manipulate? Controlling the dead? Raising cadavers? AFTD was going to be a life challenge. And right in the middle of puberty.
Kyle Hart didn't have many regrets. But in this case he wanted a Do Over.
Like yesterday.
He stuffed the pills in his pulse top carrier and made his way to the house. Sometimes decisions were based on making the best choice among bad ones.
The worst part was he felt that it wouldn't be the last time.
*
Parker called in Chimney after the teens scattered and he was left with a zombie that wasn't his. One that had been made from the energy and life force of one of his agents.
Jeffrey didn't know it then but he'd be in a coma for the next month.
Chimney smoked, of course. He stood, surveying the mess of the graveyard and gave Parker a critical eye. They stood in bloated silence for several minutes and finally Smoker said, “Couldn't get the kid?”
“No,” Parker said.
“What in the Sam Hill is that?” he pointed a finger at the zombie cum soldier.
Parker shrugged. He didn't know but someday, it would want Caleb. Its dead eyes found Jeffrey's and moved on without interest. Searching, always searching. For its real master.
A kid that wasn't fifteen for a couple of months.
Fucking splendid.
Chimney slowly grinned. “That thing out there is Hart's creature?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, fuck me,” Smoker said, taking another drag.
Jeffrey stared at the red ember glowing softly at the tip, wanting to smash it down his throat.
Chimney looked at him. “You know, you would do well to contain your expression. Everything shows.”
“Maybe I'm not trying,” Jeffrey said.
Smoker barked out a laugh, flinging his butt to the ground with a practiced arc where it smoldered, waiting to cause a fire.
“Let's get started,” Chimney said.
Parker nodded.
They cleaned.
When the second crew arrived with the machinery necessary to remove the rotary blade that had stabbed the graveyard, and the hundred million dollar specialized stealth pulse chopper remnants, Jeffrey left with what remained of his team.
The zombie soldier followed, its eyes ceaselessly churning through the darkness with a searching intensity that unnerved everyone but Smoker. He didn't care what dead thing scuttled around. He hadn't been hired to give a shit. He was hired to clean.
And Smoker was hell on wheels at that.
*
They watched Caleb leave the house and Ali laid her head on Kyle's shoulder.
He stroked her hair. “I've done what I can, honey.”
“I knew this was a can of worms, Kyle,” she whispered into his chest.
Kyle squeezed his wife tighter. There was no explanation that would make her understand that hindsight could be wished for but never used. That sometimes the best a human being on this planet could do was have the best reactions, the best intentions.
They'd have to be satisfied that they'd given Caleb the tools necessary to cope with this unique challenge of his nature. Because it was a part of him now. There was no reversal.
No cure.
His son was a manipulator of the dead. What that would mean, and for whom—it meant different things.
For his parents, it meant safeguarding and nurturing a talent that was unknown, powerful and strange.
For the Js and his future, it meant friendships that were binding and lacking in prejudice. And for those in power it might mean exploitation. The variables were too numerous to anticipate them all.
But Kyle did know one thing: they would watch and wait, be prepared.
Be ready.
Their son's silhouette became a dark speck of denim on the road as he crested the hill.
Then he vanished over the other side.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1929
Maggie took a deep and shuddering breath as she straightened the tweed lapel of Clyde's Sunday best, closing the tortoiseshell buttons of his vest over the crisp white linen shirt.
The air in her lungs grew hot and painful, hitching in her body as it had each day since his death.
She still could not believe he was gone. Maggie felt a
s though she bobbed in a sea without a current, and couldn't find where she belonged.
Her heart hurt. Maggie imagined all those broken pieces floating around inside her body, the sharpness tearing at the softness of her. Her soul abused and wanting.
Needing.
The coroner and morgue attendant stood stoically by as she did her useless things. None of her ministrations would bring him back from the water that had stolen his life.
But it had been the fight that had readied him for the perfect exit. He had been too injured to be a hero.
Heroes aren't made , Maggie thought, they're natural . He couldn't not be what he was. It had been one of the things that Maggie had loved so much about Clyde.
She allowed her eyes to linger over his hands that would remain forever abused and pulled a sob back into her throat while the Funeral Director, hanging in the periphery until that moment, stepped forward, giving her shoulder an awkward pat.
Maggie wanted to hop into the coffin with Clyde.
On that morbid note, she extracted his pocket watch, the dull rolled gold of it glowing softly in the subdued lighting of the mortuary.
She slipped it into the vest pocket it belonged in.
But not before reading the inscription that lay etched upon its back: Your beloved, Maggie-girl.
Maggie allowed herself to be led away, one small hand covering her mouth as tears fell like hot rain, the other clutched over a belly that had not yet swollen with child.
EPILOGUE
Clyde rose from the earth like fragrant brown water, the ripples of which fell away as he came through in a languid push of warm energy that called to him.
Sung to him.
He looked around, his mind a slow-moving pond of memories and reality colliding together in a mixture of puzzle pieces that did not fit.
A young man with strange attire and unfashionably long hair stood before him and the pieces that had errantly drifted but a moment before coalesced into perfect synchronicity and he knew who this one was.
A necromancer. He also understood what he was: dead.
Clyde's next thought was of Maggie.
He swung his head, looking about him until his eyes made sense of his surroundings. He saw the year of birth and death on a grave maker that was only ten feet away.
2025, it read. If that were the year, his Maggie was long gone.
Sadness seeped into the clutter of his brain that had not thought in—decades.
But what of the babe?
All those thoughts slipped through his mind without sticking for when the boy spoke, all intellect and will bowed before the summons of him.
Clyde could feel personality within the constraints of power. All of it running off the boy like an errant tide. Clyde was caught like a bottle in an ocean current of which he was not master.
He was slave to this one who stood before him, not yet an adult. From the looks of him, it was some time away.
Clyde answered without thinking, the word appearing in the frontal lobe of his brain automatically for his use, “Master,” he breathed out of a mouth that would not work.
The boy's eyes widened and he took a step back.
Clyde moved forward. This is what he was now. He desperately wished for what had been. Or an echo thereof.
Bittersweet sadness lay hold of a soul resurrected from his place of rest.
What would wipe that stain away? Could he live again?
Did he want to?
The man that he had been clawed to the surface and demanded recompense. The zombie that he'd become obeyed the boy.
His objective would always be freedom.
What you wished for in life, followed a person in death.
THE END
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***Please read on for a taste of dark romance....
THE TOKEN SERIES
A Token Novella Compilation
Volumes 1-3
New York Times Bestselling author
MARATA EROS
All Rights are Reserved.
Copyright © 2013-14 Marata Eros
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.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to a legitimate retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Marata Eros Website
Marata Eros FB Fan Page
Editing suggestions provided by Red Adept Editing
“Love sears the heart immortal
The embers burnt down to the token which remains ....”
Music that inspired me during the writing of The Token Serial:
Joe Bonamassa
Driving Towards the Daylight
A Fuoco
Ludovico Einaudi
Twenty-two year old Faren Mitchell hears the two words that change her abbreviated life forever. They're so final Faren decides she has nothing to lose by seizing every remaining moment of what life has to offer.
Until Faren collides with a motorcycle ridden by billionaire Jared McKenna.
Even the dark secret of her past and catharsis as a physical therapist can't save Faren from the sexual spiral that waits for her in the arms of a man who commits to no one. When circumstances force her to get a second job as an exotic dancer, Faren never imagines how close that choice will bring her to the brink of a new reality she is unequipped to handle.
THE TOKEN
A Token Series Novella
Volume 1
New York Times Bestselling author
MARATA EROS
All Rights are Reserved.
Copyright © 2013 Marata Eros
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.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to a legitimate retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Marata Eros Website
Marata Eros FB Fan Page
Editing suggestions provided by Red Adept Editing
~ Prologue ~
“You're dying,” Dr. Matthews says.
Two words.
Final.
Complete.
Desolate.
I feel my fingers clench the armrests of the chair underneath me, but the rest of my body remains numb.
If his words aren't enough to convince me, I see my silence is a prevailing annoyance in his day.
Dr. Matthews walks stiffly, making his way to the softly glowing X-ray reader.
I flinch when he slaps the photo of the soft tissue of my brain against the magnetic tabs of the lit surface.
The light glows around the tumor, immortalizing the end of my life like an emblazoned tool of disregard.
Just the facts, ma’am.
I sway as I stand, gripping the solid oak of his desk. It's very large, a
n anchor in the middle of his prestigious office full of the affectations of his career.
I walk toward Matthews. His hard face is edged by what might be sympathy. After all, it's not every day he tells a twenty-two-year-old woman she's got moments to live.
Actually, I do have time—months.
It's just not enough.
I look at the mess that's my brain, at the damning half a golf ball buried in a spot that will make me a vegetable if they operate. My eyes slide to the name at the bottom. For a split second, I hope to see another name there. But my own greets me.
Mitchell, Faren.
I back up and Matthews reaches to steady me.
But it's too late.
I spin and run out of his office as his voice calls after me. The corners of my coat sail behind me as I slap the metal hospital door open and take the cement steps two at a time.
I see my car parked across the street and race to it. My escape, my despair, is a thundering initiative I can't deny.
I miss the hit as if it happens to someone else. Only the noise permeates my senses as light flashes in my peripheral vision, mirrors against sunlight. I tumble in a slow spin of limbs. My body heaves and rolls, hitting the asphalt with a breath-stealing slap.
I lie against the rough black road. My lungs beg for air, burning for oxygen, and finally I take a sucking inhale that tears through my lungs.
The wet road feels cool against my face as I watch someone come into my line of sight. My body burns and my head aches. My arm is a slim exclamation point from my body, my fingers twitching. I can't make them stop. I can't make anything stop.
