Marked (Valeterra Series Book 1)

by Jennifer Reynolds

  “I have no idea, but she says she needs to talk to me in private.”

  “About?”

  “No clue.”

  “You want me to stay with you?”

  “Nah. I can take her if she tries to harm me in any way. Look at her. I can sit on her until the police come if she acts up.” I was straight up boasting with that statement, and my sister knew it. The woman had a toned body and could easily overpower me in a fight, but it helped my ego to say that I could take her.

  Gail laughed. She kept cutting her eyes to the woman, though, while we set up the tables. Right on time, Clara, my day manager, walked up a few minutes later.

  “Morning Valerie, Gail,” she said, nodding to my sister and me.

  “Morning Clara,” Gail said. “I should help my wait staff. You sure you don’t need me to hang around?” Gail turned to me and asked before giving the woman at the book cart a final suspicious glance.

  “I’m sure,” I said and followed Clara into the store.

  “Something wrong?” Clara asked.

  “We’ll find out. Ms…” I said, leaving Clara to open the store and approaching the woman.

  “Stephanie Weems,” skirt-suit woman said, turning to face me.

  “Ms. Weems, if you’ll follow me. We can talk in my office.”

  4.

  ~~~Valerie~~~

  “Please have a seat,” I said to Stephanie, pointing to the chair on the other side of my desk.

  The woman looked at the cushioned seat dubiously before sitting. For a brief second, I wondered if I had forgotten to roll it that morning, but could tell by the number of lint roller strips in the trash that I had done that chair and mine.

  We had a cat named Sarge that lived in the back part of the store. He didn’t belong to any one person. If I had to guess, though, he loved Clara more than he loved anyone else at the store. She was the one who fed him and who let him in and out to do his business. Clara put a litter box in the basement for him to use if he had to, and she was the one who changed the box.

  Sarge was too scared to roam the entire building. He did like to sleep in my office chairs after closing. Every morning, I shooed him out of my office and rolled the chairs, not that I had that many visitors to my office, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Weems?” I asked, taking my seat.

  “I’ve come to discuss a very sensitive matter with you today. As I’ve said, my name is Stephanie Weems, and I’m with the NSA,” she said, handing me her badge. Putting up her hand to stop me from asking questions, she continued. “Before I say more, I want to know if you would be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement that states that you will not discuss with anyone what I reveal to you today. Keep in mind, if you sign and do tell anyone about our conversation, you’ll face criminal punishment.”

  She sat her briefcase on her lap, reached in, and pulled out a sheet of paper that she in turn handed to me.

  I took the form without taking my eyes from her. Her expression stayed serious and on me despite my skeptical look, which made me nervous.

  “I…um…” was all I could say.

  “Please take a moment to read through the document before signing,” she said, handing me a pen. “What we need to discuss is a matter of national security. If you do not sign, I cannot say anything else, which would be a shame, as I think a woman like you would find what I’m about to say beneficial.”

  Judging by her flinch, she hadn’t meant to say that.

  “A woman like me? What are you talking about?” I demanded.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that in that way. I wasn’t trying to offend you. If you’d just read and sign the form, then I can tell you what I mean so that things will make more sense.”

  I looked at her doubtfully but read the papers. Every word was vague but basically said that I couldn’t repeat what I heard that day to anyone, not my parents, my siblings, my friends. I found it odd that it didn’t say anything about my spouse. I had a feeling that my lack of husband was what the woman meant when she made her comment earlier. At least it had better be. If she were referring to my weight or my looks, I’d boot her narrow behind right out of my store.

  The form didn’t give me a hint as to what the woman was about to tell me, but I agreed to my government’s terms and signed the form. If anyone asked about our meeting, I would just say she was an author wanting me to sell her books in my store.

  I clicked the end of the ink pen and handed the paper back to her.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking it and putting it into her briefcase. She pulled out a folder and a few other things. “Here are my credentials. As I’ve said, I’m from the NSA, more precisely the paranormal division.”

  I took the information she gave me and looked it over before it dawned on me what she’d said. I dropped the badge I was examining and looked up at her in shock and incredulity.

  “You heard me correctly. There’s a paranormal world out there. Yes, we’re keeping it a secret from the rest of the world. No, I’m not pulling your leg. If you bear with me, I’ll give you proof.”

  Shaking my head in denial, I slid her things across the desk to her and stood to escort the crazy bitch from my office.

  “Ms. Stutts, please sit down. I promise you’ll want to hear what I have to say,” the woman said, not moving.

  “No, I don’t think I will.”

  “Ms. Stutts,” she said firmly, reaching out and grabbing my arm. “I suggest you take a seat. What I’m telling you isn’t a joke. We aren’t playing with you.”

  I glared at the woman before looking down at the hold she had on my arm.

  “Please hear me out,” she begged.

  Looking deep into her eyes, I not only saw determination but fear. What could she possibly be afraid of, I wondered.

  “Fine. I can see that you believe whatever it is you want to tell me, so I’ll listen to you, as you want. Okay. Just let go of my arm.”

  The woman’s fingers loosened, and I stepped away from her. The relief on her face told me that I was doing the right thing. I’d call the police when she left if I deemed her a threat. She may just be a crazy person that needed a little attention. If I gave it to her, maybe she’d just go away and leave me alone afterward.

  I went back to my seat, pulled her credentials back to me, and read over them one more time. I didn’t have a great memory, but I said her name over and over in my head. I tried to remember her badge number as well, but before I could say it in my head too many times, Stephanie reached out for it.

  Reluctantly, I handed the badge back to her. I gave her a fake smile and asked her to tell me what she needed to say. After she’d put the stuff back into her briefcase, she laid a small stack of folders out on the desk in front of her.

  She didn’t speak right away, and I could tell she wasn’t entirely comfortable with what she was about to say to me, so I offered her a bottle of Acai Grape flavored water. She took it and drank half of it before putting the cap back on it.

  “I’m sorry. You’re the first person I’ve had to tell,” she said, sounding a little sheepish.

  “I’m listening,” I said patiently.

  “A little over ten years ago the USGS reported over twenty minor earthquakes. All of them happened at the same time at different points around the country. None of them were large enough for the surrounding populace to feel them. After some initial investigation, they simply assumed that it was a fluke and marked it as such.

  One scientist wasn’t convinced, so he continued investigating. He started hearing things, feeling things, and seeing things in and around some of the areas the quakes occurred. Then one day, a year or so after the quakes, a woman stepped out of nowhere while he was investigating one of the sites.

  “She turned out to be a sick shapeshifter. The scientist couldn’t take her to a regular hospital because she kept changing back and forth between a woman and a fox. The U.S. government quickly got involved. They go
t her stable long enough to hear some of her story before she died. She said that she was from a parallel dimension—a world that resembles this one in many ways, though it differs from it in a great many other ways. In her world, the people there have magic, so there isn’t much of a need for most of this world’s technology. Their people also have elves, weres, fairies, giants, and a great many other creatures that we once believed were make believe.”

  I sat quietly taking it all in and didn’t bombard her with questions when she stopped for a second to take another drink.

  “We found out later from others who have crossed over to this world that for millions of years their world has lived in relative peace. A few clan wars here and there, but nothing more. They don’t have an issue with overpopulation. Most of their people live a long time, and most species don’t bear children often. They aren’t immortal or invincible. They can die, and easily, but if they are careful and lead peaceful lives, they can live for hundreds of years. Their history goes back farther than this world does, though they claim their creator created the two worlds at the same time.”

  “I guess you would like to know what this has to do with you,” she said after a long pause.

  I nodded but didn’t trust myself to open my mouth. The entire story was so ludicrous that I couldn’t find the words to speak.

  “Well, shortly after that series of earthquakes, their people started dying. Not all at once mind you, but slowly a plague began working its way through their world. Their population is less than half what it was on the day of the earthquakes and is continuing to drop. The decline is slowing. With our help, they’ve figured out that it’s because most of those who are left are immune.”

  The next time she stopped to take a sip of her drink I said, “I’m still unsure as to what this has to do with me. I’m not a doctor or scientist. I can’t help them cure the disease.” I knew the question sounded as if I believed her, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “No, but you can help them repopulate it. We hope that children born to two immune parents will also be immune. We don’t know that for sure, but…,” she said as if that wasn’t the most ridiculous thing she could have said at that moment.

  “Excuse me,” I said, cutting off her train of thought. I burst into laughter, thinking she was joking with me.

  “We’ve run tests on your blood. You’re immune to the disease and someone in your ancestry was from that other world. Somehow, you have shifter DNA.”

  “How?”

  “We don’t know. Valeterrian histories don’t mention them ever crossing into our world until the quakes, but as this world has legends and stories of their kind, at some point the two worlds must have crossed.”

  “What kind of shifter am I?” I asked curiously.

  “That we don’t know, but what we do know is that both things make you compatible with them and means you can carry their children.”

  “So what? You want to turn me into a broodmare? You’re fucking insane. I’ve heard what you have to say, so please leave.”

  The mere thought of what she was proposing pissed me off so much I saw red.

  “Ms. Stutts, I’m not insane, and we don’t want to turn you into a broodmare. Even if we did, their society doesn’t work that way.”

  “Then how does it work?” I asked, letting my tone show her how much I didn’t believe what she was telling me.

  “They mate for life.”

  “Huh?”

  “Valeterrians aren’t promiscuous. They stay celibate until they find their mates. Once they find their mate, that’s it. They don’t cheat. They don’t fall out of love. They’re together until one of them dies. The death of a spouse breaks the bond, but the living partner doesn’t usually find another mate for a very long time.”

  “So you want me to mate with one of them? How does that work?”

  “We don’t know. You can’t just go up to someone from Valeterra and claim them as your mate. Their gods or the Fates choose for them.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?”

  “We want you to incorporate yourself into their world in the hopes that one day you find a mate.”

  “What if that never happens? I’m thirty years old. Most people don’t find me physically attractive, as you have noticed and pointed out. My body size isn’t socially accepted. I’m not leaving my home, my family to live in a new world just on the off chance that I’ll find a mate before menopause. That’s another thing. Humans don’t live hundreds of years. Why would one of them want to chance meeting me and to mate me just to have me grow old and die in the next thirty to forty years?”

  “We don’t think that will happen,” she said, then finished her bottle of water. “We believe that once you cross over into their world, you’ll become more like them. That part of your DNA that is theirs will kick in. We don’t know if you’ll be able to shapeshift or use magic, but we think it will allow you to become someone’s mate and live a long life with them.”

  “You think. Meaning you don’t know. I’m not the first, am I?” The possibility that I of all the people on the planet would be the first woman they would approach shocked the hell out of me. Damn it, now I was thinking about what she had said as if I was considering it.

  “If you agree, you will be. You aren’t the first woman we’ve approached. Of all the women we’ve tested so far, only you and one other in this state are both compatible and immune, and one of about ten throughout the country who is both. We had a few others from your world who were compatible, but they weren’t immune. We gave them the option of going or not. A few went, and the others didn’t. Those that went got sick and died soon after crossing the portal. You’re only the third woman that fit both criteria that we have approached. The other two declined to go until someone else does. ”

  “You want me to be the guinea pig. Why? Do you think I’m that desperate?”

  “No, we don’t. We haven’t told any of the other women this yet, but there’s one other thing all of you have in common.”

  “And that is?”

  “You are all over one hundred and fifty pounds.”

  “Well, I’m a great deal larger than that.”

  “And so are most of the other women, which is another reason they’re reluctant to go. I think they all believe us on some level, but are too afraid this is a joke to commit to going.”

  5.

  ~~~Valerie~~~

  Stephanie and I sat in silence for a long time while I thought over everything that she had said. I didn’t know if I believed her or not. As she told the story, she sounded sincere and more than a little worried about those people from the parallel universe. If, like her, I believed they existed and believed they had suffered through a plague, I guess I would be worried about them as well.

  Finally, I turned to her and asked something she apparently hadn’t expected me to ask. “How do they feel about this?”

  “Excuse me? Who are you referring to?” she replied with a puzzled expression on her face.

  “Those people in that other world. If what you say is true, then they’ve been suffering horribly these last ten years or so. Why would any one of them want to attempt to mate so quickly after losing a beloved mate?”

  She looked at me for a long time. She looked so long that I grew annoyed and snapped out a, “What?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re the first woman we’ve talked to who’s asked about them. The first female to wonder about their feelings in all of this.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to her words, so I said, “The others probably haven’t asked because they don’t believe you. They aren’t worried about people who they don’t think are real. Even those that agreed to go most likely didn’t believe you until they got there.”

  “Does that mean you believe?” She sounded relieved at the idea that she might have finally stumbled upon someone who was willing to accept the unfathomable and be ready to help a world on the brink of extinction.

&n
bsp; “Not even a little,” I said, hating to darken the hopeful look in her eyes. “But for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s all true. I want to know what they think about us coming to their world to find mates among their people. I can’t see them worrying about repopulating their world in the midst of so much loss.”

  “Most aren’t. We only have four men and three women from their world agreeing to be a part of this experiment at the moment.” She pulled out seven sheets of paper and handed them to me.

  The picture and bio on the top sheet were of a young male with dark blond hair and a tribal tattoo running across the base of his neck. I didn’t read any of the information running down the side of the page, just flipped to the next page, which was a lovely olive-skinned woman with a long braid of light brown hair going down her back. Her eyes were sad, and I quickly moved on before her expression made me believe that another world was real.

  The third photo stopped me. I couldn’t take my eyes from the man’s brooding image. From just the head shot, I saw that his eyes were a dark hazel and his hair was light brown and shoulder length. He looked thirty-five or forty. He had a straight-line scar on his right cheek and a hint of a tattoo peeking from his left collar.

  While I studied the page, I forgot Stephanie was in the room. His name was Jackson Luther Nichols. He was six-foot-one, weighed roughly two hundred and twenty pounds, and was a wolf shifter. The sheet labeled him as an American Red Wolf, but that obviously meant they had compared him to one of our breeds. There was a picture of his wolf form, though not one of him changing into the form. The eyes of the man and the eyes of the wolf were eerily similar. The paper stated that he lived in an area of Valeterra—I wasn’t sure if that was the name of the country he lived in or the world—that would be our Tennessee/Alabama area, which was pretty much where I lived.

  Apparently, I spent too much time looking at his photo, because Stephanie had to clear her throat a few times to get my attention. She didn’t look irritated with me, only curious.