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Prologue
A Future
No one was coming. The thought sounded hollow and round, like one of the crudest bullets in the humans' arsenal. There wasn't a soul who could help his wife, no one at all.
Vainly he searched the battlefield for a healer, but they'd been tapped dry by the day's carnage; to the very last man and woman they were spent. The medics were knee-deep in loss and bloodshed, unable to hike the long distance to the wind-battered tent where Hope lay dying as she labored in vain to deliver their baby girl. Human or hybrid, the doctors couldn't say for sure what their child would be, yet Scott Dillon knew one fact for certain: Precious Leisa would be theirs. It was the only thing he needed to know about their daughter, born of love in a time of hardship and turmoil—born to them against all odds, including Hope's fragile health.
He could picture the tufts of light blonde hair atop Leisa's head, silvery gold, just like Hope's, and he could already feel her nestling close beneath his chin on cold nights like this one. In a cruel world made so much crueler by the years of endless fighting, their tiny child would smell of innocence. And perfection … of a love that defied battle lines as well as the lines that separated species.
Yes, by All, she would be theirs.
But only if he could get someone—hell, anyone—to deliver their baby girl on the night of this Armageddon.
With the night-vision goggles fixed over his eyes, he scanned the perimeter of the battlefield but still found no one who could help. He'd hiked more than an hour, beyond the defenses of the day's skirmish and onto the next plateau. Blood, bodies, death. There wasn't a soldier he recognized who might help them, just devastating loss in every direction.
Falling to his knees, he lifted his hands in supplication. "Lord of All, please save my wife … our baby girl. Help them, I beg of you." Bowing his head, he reached with every particle of his being, every molecule of his essence and lifelong faith in the One who governed their destinies.
Help them. Take me, but spare them, please!
A rustling of wind caused him to adjust his night-vision goggles and glance up toward the tree line along the ridge. There, kneeling and bent over a fallen soldier, he glimpsed Rory Devlin, one of their strongest and best healers. How he'd missed the man before, he had no idea, but like a gift from above, Rory glowed bright green with energy through his goggles. Without another breath or thought, Scott took off running, sprinting with all his might toward that one gifted healer gleaming out of the darkness, the answer to his prayer.
Time. Just give me one more breath of it, he begged, stretching his shaking legs as long as they would go.
By the time they reached her, almost another hour had passed. An hour of heartrending, unstoppable moments that Scott Dillon counted off with every endless step. An hour of hiking and dragging their drained bodies over rough terrain, forcing themselves onward. Sighting Rory on the ridge had been a miracle, and for the first time in his quest, he'd allowed himself to truly believe that Hope and Leisa might have a fighting chance for survival.
Arriving back at their shabby encampment, he led the way into their battered tent, but none of his worst imaginings could have prepared him for what he saw: the love of his life, still and motionless. Rory followed quickly on his heels, gasping in shock, but Scott could only stare in mute horror, unable to process the unholy image before him.
"Hope," he whispered, falling to her side. "Sweetheart … love." Only then did he see the swelling bruise along her neck, the purpling outline of fingers around the pale and delicate column of her throat.
Her lovely gray eyes were closed, one hand crumpled across her forehead, the other cupping her full belly in a protective gesture.
"Gods in heaven!" Rory hissed behind him, but Scott could only laugh. Insane—hideous, wrong—but he couldn't seem to stop himself.
Rory grasped his shoulder. "Dillon—"
"Shut the fuck up!" he screamed, pressing his face against Hope's. She'd wake up; hell, of course she would. It was some kind of sick joke. What else could it be?
Nuzzling her, he whispered, "Sweetheart, knock it off. What're you trying to do to me, huh? Stop this right now!"
Rory tugged at his elbow, but Scott shook him off like he would a rabid dog. "Get the hell outta here!"
"Let me lay hands on her," Rory tried lamely, but Scott's tears blinded him senseless.
"Get out!" Scott screamed, and Rory backed out of the tent, leaving him alone with Hope.
Burying his face against hers, he kept murmuring to her, reaching for their bond. Anything just to wake her up.
"So it comes to this," a chilling voice spoke into the quiet.
Scott jerked his head sideways and saw a giant of a human in the far corner of the tent, sneering, the scent of Hope's death all over him.
For a long, distended moment Scott kept his face against Hope's cool one, time playing out, playing him for the ultimate fool. Until he lunged upward, slamming to his feet and to his fighting senses.
Without a thought or any rational process, he lunged toward the human stranger, both hands about the giant's throat as he tackled him to the ground, all awareness dimming. Struggling, he had the much larger man pinned beneath him almost instantaneously.
Scott sucked at the air all about him, gasping. "How could you … fucking … do—"
His opponent cut him off. "You know how!"
The stranger's human stench was unmistakable as he writhed within Scott's grasp, gurgling and laughing up into his face as they grappled, fought. His enemy had the weight and size advantage, but Scott had the advantage of hatred and fury, pinning the bastard beneath him, both hands stifling breath from the man's throat. Just as this enemy had stolen life from Hope's body.
The human actually half smiled up at him, smirking even as his life was being choked away. As if he knew a secret—as if he knew why. Why he'd killed Scott's wife and unborn baby.
And something about that sneer unlocked the berserker within Scott Dillon, caused him to delve deep within his nature as an Antousian shifter, taker of life and being. With one last glance toward Hope, her body lifeless—Leisa lifeless within her, too—Scott waged war upon the human. Probing deep within the stranger, into the marrow of his being, he determined to kill. To take. To murder, as his soul mate had been murdered at this dark man's hand.
Scott Dillon became everything he'd always sworn he would never be—something clicked inside him, something driven and dark. He would leave his own mortal body and take possession of his enemy's, thereby snuffing out the oilier man. He would abandon himself so he could choke out every bit of identity that the killer had ever known. He'd always reviled this about his kind, this ability to harvest another living being's body, forcing that person into oblivion. But blinded by grief and fury, it seemed right somehow. It seemed the only possible ending to the life-and-death battle that he waged against the human who writhed beneath him.
"You'll pay." Scott clenched his hands about the human's throat, eyeing him hard with his gazing ability. Searching him totally with his Antousian gift of stealing everything. A life, a body, an identity. Images invaded Scott's mind, flashes of a dusty road, a military installation, a corporate-looking office, a bar. A slashing staccato of mental photographs that he couldn't string together, not when his rational mind had deserted him so completely.
"Why would you kill them?" Scott demanded, tightening his grasp around the man's throat.
The human slugged at Scott's chest weakly, his eyes shutting, but said nothing.
This killer would pay, totally.
"You are ours," Scott hissed into the darkness of the tent. "You belong to Hope Dillon. Leisa Dillon. And me." He was crazed, unaware of his wife's lifeless body, of anything
that smacked of goodness. He didn't give a hell's virgin for his soul, not then. Not for eternity. "You are mine," he swore.
And I am yours, he thought, feeling his own body blend with that of the murderous human's. We are one.
Kelsey Bennett pushed her way past the gathered soldiers outside Scott and Hope's tent, ignoring the protests of several who tried to stop her. "Careful, my lady!" some called out. "A killer's in there."
One of the burliest soldiers grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her back. "My queen," the lumbering man implored her, "he's a madman."
She shook off his grasp, striding into the tent and shoving her way past the several officers who had guns drawn and aimed at the intruder. She'd mentally prepared herself for the sight of Hope's dead body, but despite that fact, finding her friend lifeless—and held by a stranger—drove the very breath from her lungs.
A large man lay behind Hope, holding her against his chest, rocking her. He stared at some unseen sight on the far side of the tent, singing a quiet song in Antousian under his breath—a song she'd recently overheard Scott teaching Hope, a lullaby from his childhood.
She heard the weapons around her engaging, safeties dislodging, as she moved ahead of the gathered soldiers and stared down at the large man who cradled Hope within his arms. On the far side of the tent lay Scott Dillon's lifeless body, but she couldn't bring herself to do more than barely glance at it.
She didn't even know why she was here; everything within her said this tent was an incendiary point of danger. Still, she'd jolted awake from her disturbing, vivid dream, absolutely compelled to come. After leaving the tent, Jared still asleep inside, she'd heard the news—that Hope had been murdered, and that Scott Dillon was dead at the hands of her killer.
Still, that wasn't what her dream had shown her, and she'd learned that her intuitive visions were always significant. The most important ones were infused with a particular smell, a palpable feeling—just like the dream that had called her out of deep sleep and into this tent.
Dropping to her knees, she took Hope's cool hand within hers, bowing her head. The man holding her flinched, then wrapped both arms about Hope's body more tightly—as if he thought Kelsey would try to take her from him. For long moments she knelt beside her dead friend, praying and listening to the mournful Antousian song the man sang.
She was supposed to believe he'd killed Hope, but because of her dream she knew better. Casting another glance at Scott's lifeless body on the other side of the tent she finally spoke. "You're going to have to let her go."
"I can't leave her here, not like this," was the man's answer, his voice a deep gravelly sound.
"The fighting's going to start again in just a few more hours. We don't have long to give her the burial she deserves."
He moaned softly. "I'm never burying her."
"If you don't, then the wolves will get her. That's not what you want."
He rocked her harder in his arms, slipping one large hand over her full belly. "I'll stay with them. From now on, I'll stay."
Kelsey looked up and for the first time saw the brilliant, almost eerie green eyes he now possessed. "Scott," she answered meaningfully, "you are going to have to let them go."
His eyes slid shut. "They think I killed her."
"Of course you didn't—you could never hurt Hope or Leisa."
"They don't understand what I did." He trembled all over, burying his face against the disheveled blonde hair atop Hope's head.
Kelsey slid forward on her knees, lifting her fingertips to Dillon's forehead, stroking his temple with a soothing gesture. "They've forgotten who you are, Scott, and what you can do. You were distraught—"
"I had to stop him; he couldn't do this again."
"I know." She kept her hand atop his head. "I know, Scott. I saw it all in my dream."
"They're going to kill me." Tears welled in his green eyes; he looked like a stranger, but his soul was that of her husband's lifelong best friend—and one of her closest friends, as well.
"I won't let that happen—neither will Jared."
"How do you know who I am?" He jerked back angrily, fixing Kelsey with a furious stare. "You don't know that I won't kill you, too."
Ignoring him, she bent down and kissed Hope's cool cheek. "Scott, we'll get you through this. Just do what I say, and I will help you out of this, okay? They're going to listen to me—they have to listen to me."
"Leave us here." Scott shoved her hand away, sending Kelsey sprawling backward.
The soldiers behind her took several steps closer; she tossed a glare over her shoulder. "Back down! Ease down, right now, Lieutenant," she said to the leader of the small knot of fighters. He searched her face, and she gave a brisk nod, whispering again, "Back down."
The gathered soldiers lowered their weapons, and their leader gave an unconvinced nod. She turned back to face Dillon, to the man he had become, that he was, after seizing his enemy's body. He appeared to be a stranger, but she recognized his soul and spirit thanks to her dream vision.
Shaking, he tightened his hold on Hope. "I'm as dead as she is."
"That's not true." Kelsey shook her head.
"I don't even have a name now."
"You're still Scott Dillon."
One of the soldiers tossed a wallet in her direction and it landed beside her knee. "Found this in his jacket. Says he's Jakob Tierny."
Kelsey flipped open the wallet and examined the driver's license inside. Only a few other slips of paper, a lined photograph, and a computer chip were crammed within. She studied the man in the license photo, but he had almost no resemblance to the one huddling in front of her. The green eyes in the ID were the same electric hue, but they were hollow and empty. Chilling. The eyes gazing at her right now were filled with heartbreak and weariness. They did not belong to the man in the photo.
She extended the ID to Scott. "Take a look. This is the man you killed. Can't you see what's wrong with him? You have to see the soullessness in his eyes."
Scott examined the photograph, staring at it for many minutes before slowly handing it back to her. "From this day forward, call me Jakob Tierny."
"I don't understand."
"Scott Dillon is dead," he pronounced, slowly releasing his hold on Hope. With a quick glance at his former body, crumpled on the floor of the tent, he said, "Everything inside of me is dead. I'm a killer, just like the man whose body I stole. So from now on, I will become him."
"You took his body, but you're not him," Kelsey tried to argue, but he only shook his head.
"Scott is dead." He bent low, nuzzling Hope's cheek. "Scott is dead. And I am Jakob."
Chapter One
Present Day
Jake stared at the cell phone cradled in his palm and deliberated whether he should actually make the call he had planned. The last time he'd phoned Hope, it hadn't gone so well, a result he'd come to expect after about, oh, twenty or so calls like the one he was currently contemplating. Of course things would be awkward between them, he told himself. Of course their relationship would be strained. After all, she had once been his wife, many years before. Not many—five, he corrected himself, although each one of those calendar rotations had felt like an eternity. Days had given way to months, had dissolved into years, a blur of body-numbing grief that finally bled into one long march of pointless time.
And that sensation of timelessness and pain had only grown more muddied now that he was stranded ten years in the past, where everything he'd ever known had been altered. He was a stranger living in the wrong time and dimension, and although he rejoiced that Hope would now live, it was slowly killing him that she was joined with his younger self.
He'd thought he could handle it, knowing the two of them would have the happily-ever-after that he'd been denied. But with every passing day, another chamber of his heart went dead cold.
In his future, she was dead, murdered by the man whose body and identity he'd chosen to seize in a murderous act of his own. At least he had been justif
ied, acting in a moment of blind fury and grief. And that grief hadn't stopped dogging him since that day five years earlier, when Hope and their unborn baby daughter, Leisa, had been ripped right out of his arms. And now, after all that he'd once endured, it was happening again: Hope was alive and well in this world, sure, but she might as well be dead. Dead to him.
Just as dead as the man he'd once been—Scott Dillon.
Every part of his soul that answered to that name had died long ago, too. All that remained in its place was a shell, a hulking hollow of his former self. Staring down at the cell phone clutched in his hand like a lifeline, he realized that he couldn't possibly stop himself. It was inevitable: He had no choice but to try reaching out to Hope once again.
Hitting speed dial, he lifted the cell to his ear and held his breath. She answered after six rings, sounding slightly winded, and his nasty streak of jealousy kicked right in. What the hell had she been doing before he called?
"What's going on … Jake?" She always stumbled over his assumed name; then again, he couldn't imagine that she would want to call him Scott, either.
For a moment, he let silence grow between them, listening to the sound of her soft inhalations across the line. "I needed to hear your voice," he admitted at last. "That's all."
He could practically sense her urge to groan aloud. He'd been calling her far too often lately, more frequently with every passing month since he'd last seen her back in December. It was May now, and not one of those months had dampened his love for her—or the ache lodged deep inside his chest.
"Jake, this has to stop. You know it does." Her voice was gentle, tender. Loving, even.
"I can't seem to help myself, sweetheart."
"But you're going to have to, Jakob." Her tone was firm, insistent. "You're killing yourself like this, and we don't want that."
"We?" he mimicked distastefully. Yeah, he had no doubt that his calls were bugging the shit out of his younger self.
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