by Carly Fall
REBORN
by
Carly Fall
©2012 Westward Publishing
All Rights Reserved
Praises for Carly Fall
"Your narrative voice is so strong and unique, raw and honest..."
"Shackled to the Night was a great introduction to the "dark side!" It was very hard to put away, I look forward to more of Carly's work."
"This was a great story. It's very well written. The author has a great writing style that is easy to follow & pulls you in. If you enjoy steamy, dark novels, you'll enjoy this book."
"I LOVED this book! I can tell this is going to be another great series in the paranormal romance genre. I can't wait to read the next in the series, which I am going to guess has to be about Aiden. Hurry up and write, Carly!"
"That book was absolutely wonderful! I gave it 5 stars. When will the series continue? Oh PLEASE don’t make me wait too long!"
"I love that you have this ability to take the reader on a journey with your characters, and there’s no stopping the fact that you fully engage the reader in every point."
"Your writing is so poignant, funny, realistic..."
"This gripping, and often sexy, story leaves the reader wanting more..."
DEDICATION
First and foremost, I would like to thank my husband for his unwavering support
and encouragement. The only way you could get any better is if you cooked and I'm willing to let that one slide.
I also couldn't have done this without the guidance and support of my editor,
Allison Itterly.
And finally, I have a bunch of people to thank for their contributions to this book: First, my mother for sharing some of the more colorful sayings my grandfather
used to say.
Second, for sharing their cooking expertise with me, I want to thank Tammy
Ramey and Jennifer Kamptner. You both helped me understand why people like to cook, but I'm still not inspired to do it.
Chapter 1
So this was what it felt like to die.
Hudson had planned his death to be fast and painless. A simple shot to the head by his own hand, an escape from his inner demon that relentlessly clawed at and twisted his very soul resulting in excruciating turmoil and pain. He didn’t know if he would feel the initial penetration from the bullet, but he figured after it did a blender on his brain, it would be a moot point.
However, sometimes even the best-laid plans turn to shit, like what was
happening now. No, instead of dying the quick, painless death he had imagined here in this lovely hotel room, he was tied to a chair in nothing but a pair of boxers, his blood slowly draining from him by the cuts of his attacker’s knife.
He silently swore as he felt another slash across his chest.
Over the course of the past few hours, his attacker had already sliced up most of the heavily muscled plains of his six-foot-five, two hundred-and-sixty-eight-pound frame.
That last cut hurt like a bitch on steroids.
He had heard that people often saw their lives flash before their eyes when they
were dying. Different snapshots of loved ones, places, and special occasions that made up the mosaic of a person’s existence. Oh, and look there...he was getting his own private viewing of his own.
Could this day get any better?
The first picture that flashed in Hudson’s mind was of the high golden buildings
that made up the cities of his home planet, SR44. He loved the way the light from the twilight sun reflected off them, while the colored forms of the inhabitants of SR44 also mirrored off the buildings, casting the whole city in a rainbow of color. His mother and father stepped into his line of sight as clear as if they were directly in front of him, the makeup of his mother’s body swirling in a very pale, yellow smoke, while his father’s SR44 form consisted of a rustic red color.
“The road to happiness is peace in your soul,” his mother used to say.
“What did you just say?” his attacker asked.
Great. Now Hudson was talking to himself as well as seeing things.
Fabulous.
Hudson’s mother reached out to him. “Moha,” he heard himself say.
“Your mommy can’t help you now, asshole.”
The vision dissipated, and a new one took its place. His younger brother. His form had been a dark brown. Hudson had given him the English equivalent of the nickname of Stretch, because the guy was taller than Hudson. Toward the end of his life, Stretch was also a consummate liar, always stretching the truth, so the nickname fit like a glove.
Hudson hadn’t seen Stretch in over five hundred years after that fateful night in the forest.
Hudson’s uncle had become a Forest Dweller on SR44, or one who preferred the
life of living off the land instead of in the cities. Hudson’s father had taken the family to visit when Hudson was the equivalent of a fifteen-year-old boy in Earth years, Stretch twelve. Someone always had to be on guard because the little dinosaur-like creatures that lived in the forest often attacked the Forest Dwellers, inhaling their smoky forms. That night, Hudson’s brother and cousin had been standing guard. Hudson remembered the first shattering scream of his cousin being killed. Hudson’s father had told him to run, and he had. When he returned to the camp later, no one was around. No one from his family had survived the attack—his father, mother, nor his brother. There simply wasn’t any trace of them around.
He had returned to his small home in the city, angry and confused, not knowing
where to go, what to do, how he would survive.
The guilt he felt for running and not staying with his family ate at him. Humans
called it Survivor’s Guilt, and he carried it around like a boulder on his shoulders. He became angry at his world, at the incredible unfairness of it all, and turned to crime to survive and to work out his anger. He took from others. He fought to earn the coupons, or the equivalent of Earth’s money, needed to keep his family’s apartment. He often lay awake at night waiting for his family to come through the door and claim that they had played a joke on him.
That joke never came.
His mother, father, and brother were gone for good.
Not that he missed his brother much. If the accident had happened a few years
earlier, then he would be able to say that he missed Stretch. But in the year prior to the accident, Stretch had changed. Looking back, Hudson believed there was something
fundamentally wrong with his brother. He began leaning toward cruelty, often finding ways to torture Hudson without leaving any spaces in his smoky form to indicate he had done so. There was a time or two when Hudson had found a SR44 animal around their abode that had been killed. He could never prove it, but he believed his brother had been responsible.
So yeah, he didn’t miss the guy, but he did miss the idea of a brother, or his
brother before he had turned into something dark.
One night, two years after his family’s death, Hudson had been caught fighting
and was hauled to the Sub-Court to be charged for his crime. When he met the
Peacekeeper, the male had recognized something beneath the anger in Hudson. The
Peacekeeper had enrolled him into the SR44 military, where Hudson thrived on the
structure. He quickly made his way up the ranks to the Battle Squad of SR44, the
equivalent of the human special forces in the military.
“Tell me the code to get into that missile silo or I will slowly gut you. Sternum to your dick.”
Hudson looked up at his attacker. The guy was one of twelve Colonists, one of the baddest of
the bad who had escaped from the Colonists’ banishment on SR44’s moon
called The Colony. He had come down to Earth, taken on a human form, and proceeded to do a lot of killing. Hudson was one of the Warriors who were sent to clean up the living garbage that had been unleashed on Earth. But it was taking much longer than anyone had expected. Like two hundred and eleven years longer. Considering the lifespan of an SR44 male ranged about two-thousand years, give or take a century, there was still plenty of time for Hudson to fulfill his mission of killing Colonists—if he had wanted to.
He figured he was about eleven hundred-to-twelve hundred years old, but looked like a male of about thirty.
The Colonist appeared so normal. A typical suburban guy who kept his grass
mowed and his bushes trimmed, maybe an accountant, or someone in middle
management. His face was terribly unremarkable, as was the dark hair that was cut close to his skull. He was average height and weight. Being so unremarkable was the way he moved through his life killing at will. He was someone that no one would notice, and if they did, they wouldn’t remember him.
The Colonist’s white button-down shirt was now stained with drops of blood.
Hudson’s blood. He smiled at that. At least Hudson had ruined the guy’s shirt.
This normal-looking psychopath wanted the code to get into the missile silo just
outside of Phoenix where Hudson and his fellow Warriors lived. The Colonist would never, ever get that code from Hudson. He might be ready to meet the great beyond, but he sure as hell wasn’t sending any of his fellow Warriors—or their mates—anywhere near there, which was exactly what would happen if this asshole got in there.
Hudson looked around the room. It was a nice place he’d chosen to die. He had
checked into the hotel yesterday and was getting ready to kill himself when this asshole showed up. A dark, brown comforter and stark-white silk sheets covered the bed, and a piece of fine chocolate sat on the nightstand with a note of goodnight wishes and sweet dreams. The black leather couch to the left of the bed faced a sixty-four-inch plasma TV.
His eyes gazed over to the oak desk and the hallway that led to the bathroom and
dressing area. The whole room was encased in light brown wallpaper that was something sort of fuzzy. Maybe a velvet?
But really, did it matter at this point?
He looked down at the floor, black ash dusting the very thick, very plush, tan
carpet. The Warriors discovered that the Colonists’ shed the black ash when they killed because they were in a heightened state. When the Warriors were in a heightened state, their skin radiated their SR44 color. Hudson’s color was yellow, but right now looking at his own skin, he saw nothing but red.
“I’m not telling you shit,” Hudson said, meeting the black eyes of the Colonist.
“Go ahead a kill me. That’s what I came here to do anyway. You’re just saving a bullet.”
The Colonist’s eyes flared for a second, then narrowed. “Who checks in to a Four
Seasons to commit suicide?”
“I do.”
Yeah, it was a little over the top, he knew that. But Hudson really enjoyed the
finer things in life, and the more over the top the better. He loved beautiful, well-fit clothing, jewelry, and staying in nice places. The missile silo that he shared with the other Warriors was plush and comfortable, but he didn’t want them to have to scrape his brains off the walls. He decided he would go out in style, which meant having a fabulous meal, meeting a woman, having sex one last time, enjoying a few belts of scotch, and then have his Glock as a chaser. He had accomplished everything but eating his Glock. This asshole had interrupted him.
Hudson hissed as the knife slashed his arm.
“I would love to kill you outright, but this is kind of fun,” the Colonist said with a small grin and a giggle. “I think you’ll break, Warrior. You’ll give me that code, so I can get rid of the rest of them as soon as I’m finished here.”
Hudson sighed. There was no way he would ever give up the code to the missile
silo where he lived with his fellow Warriors—Noah, Rayner, Jovan, Talin, or Cohen. All six of them had been nicknamed the Six Saviors by the people of SR44 who hoped that they would be able to save the people of Earth.
Hudson’s daughter, Abby, was mated to Noah, and Rayner had recently taken on a
mate as well, Faith. He cared way too much about all of them to break and throw down the welcome mat to this guy.
Hudson couldn’t get past the feeling that he knew this asshole. There was something familiar about him…something he couldn’t pinpoint.
But that was a fleeting thought. Back to the dying part of his day.
Dammit, why, if he was so close to death, wasn’t he numb? The Colonist had been
slicing and dicing him for what seemed like hours, and Hudson was weak from all the blood loss. He sure as shit felt like the Grim Reaper was knocking on the door, so why was he feeling everything? He had heard that once you got close to death, your brain shut down, causing your body to go numb so you didn’t feel the pain.
But Hudson’s pain radiated from the inside out. No matter what was done to his
physical form, it couldn’t compare to the absolutely agony he had held in his soul for the past twenty-six years, when he’d lost the only woman he had loved.
Iris.
He must have spoken the name aloud, because his attacker got in his face and
calmly asked, “Who’s Iris?”
Shutting his eyes, he blocked out the vision of Iris that threatened to make an
appearance. Iris was the wrecking ball that had destroyed Hudson’s heart.
He knew on the outside it looked like he was fine. He always dressed in the finest clothing, his black hair combed back into a ponytail that hung down to the middle of his shoulder blades. He smiled and laughed when necessary, but never felt the actual emotion of happiness that went with the actions.
Fraud. Yes, he was a fraud on so many levels. He wasn’t fine. He was wrecked,
and he simply couldn’t hold it together any longer.
His thoughts returned to Stretch. Maybe his brother knew he was sadistic at an
early age, but tried to fight it just as Hudson tried to fight his pain. When his brother died, he had been giving in to his desires, and maybe the veneer had been cracking, as
Hudson’s was. Maybe his brother had been done with the fight of his own inner demons.
The only difference was that his brother had seemed to embrace them, while Hudson just wanted them gone, and the only way he could see that happening was through his own death.
The Colonist sliced at his chest again. Hudson shut his eyes and tried to block out the trail of fire the knife left.
Hudson sighed, and supposed he would die eventually. He knew he was losing a
lot of blood. He thought about that little brunette he had hooked up with last night. And then his thoughts turned to the blonde who had invaded his brain and taken over, but the knife slashing across the back of his shoulder cut those thoughts off before they even really had a chance to begin. Shit. Was the Colonist going to carve a roadmap into his back as well?
“What is the code, Warrior?”
Hudson opened his eyes and looked at his own personal grim reaper. “You, sir,
can go fuck yourself.”
The Colonist became enraged and hit Hudson in the face with such force,
Hudson’s world went to black.
Chapter 2
Three Days Earlier
Beverly Devlone sat in a lounge chair under a large tree, her eyes closed. She let the peace, serenity, and beauty of the grounds of the Sierra Tucson Treatment Center seep into her very being.
Although it was 11:00 a.m., the temperature outside was warm and muggy, but
that was how it was in Tucson, Arizona in late August. The shade and the light breeze made it bearable for her though.
To say it was a big day would be an understatement, and she felt the butterflies of anxiety and the tremors of excitement rumble through her belly. As they said in therapy, today was the first day of the rest of her life.
She didn’t hear anyone approach, and jumped when a hand lightly touched her
shoulder. She opened her eyes and was met with a kind smile and serene face of Suzanna, Beverly’s therapist.
“Are you ready to go?” Suzanna asked. She was around fifty years old with salt-
and-pepper hair, carried her love of chocolate around her waist, and her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled. She had become Beverly’s mentor and savior over the past two months.
Beverly sighed and looked around the grounds. Green grass, pretty flowers, large
shading trees, beautiful sunsets, and extreme heat had been her world for sixty days now, and it was daunting to think about going out into the “real world.”
“You don’t have to go, Beverly. If you feel you need more time, you can stay.”
Beverly nodded, pushed her shoulder-length blonde hair behind her ears, and
looked up into the kind face again. “I know, Suzanna, but I can’t live here forever. I need to get back to my life and figure out what I’m going to do, what direction I’m going to take.”
Suzanna nodded. “You do, but if you’re not ready, stay. I would rather have you
around longer then have you come back later back at square one.”
Square one had been a raging addiction to pain pills. She hadn’t been picky—
whatever dulled the pain within her. Vicodin. Percocet. Codeine. It didn’t really matter.
As with most addicts, Beverly hadn’t gotten help until she reached rock bottom.
For her, that had consisted of losing her medical license when she was caught
stealing pain pills from the pharmacy at the hospital where she served as a General Practitioner. The hospital director, who she had been on friendly terms with, had agreed not to prosecute her if she promised to get help. After her dismissal, she had gone home, and with tears streaming down her face, she shakily dialed the number to Sierra Tucson Treatment Center.
She had checked in the next afternoon, proud of herself that she had only