Separation Zone

by Mandy M. Roth

  Nothing.

  He had no life apart from the Immortal Ops. Nothing that held his interest any more. He walked around feeling empty emotionally, yet filled to the brim with anger and rage. So much anger, so much rage, that peace was found only in the bottom of a bottle of Jack or Jimmy.

  He didn’t discriminate. And he had yet to meet liquor he didn’t like.

  An empty bottle sat perched upon the table next to his bed, mocking him. He’d needed it to fall asleep, but it had done little to keep the dreams away. Each time he closed his eyes he was reminded of his bad choices. There were too many to count. Each seemed worse than the next.

  Jon grabbed the glass of water near the empty bottle of booze and downed it quickly. He couldn’t remember when he’d poured it or how long it had been sitting by his bedside. He didn’t much care. It did little to ease the cottonmouth, but the water would help to dull the ache in his head. At least somewhat. As a shifter male he metabolized things faster than a human. That was why he tended to drink three to four times more than a human would. He’d been catching a lot of shit about his drinking from his fellow ops. They weren’t happy he was smoking again, either.

  He didn’t really give a shit.

  With a toss, he threw the glass at the wall, wanting to get rid of some pent-up anger. When the glass struck his favorite painting, ripping the canvas before sending the entire piece crashing to the floor, Jon groaned.

  “Fuck.”

  He wasn’t much for art and had very few things hung on his walls, but when he’d walked past a gallery and spotted that one in the window, he’d bought it then and there. It was kind of creepy and he could have sworn there were tiny, almost ghostly figures in the background of what looked to be an old industrial building landscape, but there was something about it that he liked. As he saw it lying on the floor, ripped, broken and in a pile of shattered glass, a pang of guilt washed over him though he wasn’t sure why.

  He lit up a cigarette and drew in a deep drag, closing his eyes a moment, hoping this was the moment his personal demons would somehow fade away.

  No such luck.

  “That shit will kill ya,” he mocked, hearing those words too many times lately from his friend and fellow operative Wilson. It would be damn hard for smoking to take him out when he was technically immortal—or in real terms, harder to kill than most and would live forever so long as he didn’t lose his head or heart.

  His gaze swept to one of the two jars of knickknacks he’d had since he was a child. Very little from his past had come with him in his new life—his life as a shifter. He, like all the other men who had signed up to be in the I-Ops program, had to fake their deaths and forget their pasts. That was easier said than done for most.

  Jon included.

  He’d been unable to fully cut ties and run. The only child to a woman who had lost her husband before Jon was old enough to even know the man; he couldn’t do that do his mother. He couldn’t totally abandon her. He’d gone against the rules and sent money to her under the guise of one thing or another. Some so ridiculous they were nearly laughable. He had just needed to know she was cared for.

  He knew it was wrong to have purchased the home when his mother had fallen ill at the end of her life. He knew it was against the rules to have anything to do with ties from his past, but he’d not cared. His mother had been his world, and it had nearly killed him allowing her to believe he’d died during the war so very long ago.

  He’d kept tabs on her after his enrollment into the I-Ops program. He’d seen the toll his “death” took on her and he’d hated himself for doing that to her. The only way he’d gotten through it was to remind himself he was serving a greater good.

  “Greater good, my ass,” he whispered, his attention going to the shelf near the headboard of the bed. Back home, in Nape Field, at this childhood house, his mother had kept his room just as he’d left it when he’d signed up to do his part—to see the world and fight for freedom.

  She’d believed in him. Believed he was going to make a difference. She’d had no idea just how much of a difference that would be. She also had no idea that the man she buried wasn’t her son. That still hurt Jon to this day, even all these years after her passing.

  He sighed, his heart aching as he thought back to what a wonderful woman she’d been. She’d raised him on her own in a time when that wasn’t normal. He knew little of his father, only that he too had been a soldier.

  He was more than simply a soldier, he thought, knowing that somewhere in his family history was supernatural blood, and his money was on his father. That was the only reason Jon had survived the testing to make him what he was.

  A ticking time bomb.

  He pulled down a jar from the shelf and fingered a knucklebone—a stone he’d had since he was a child. The edges of it long since worn smooth. Two jars full of the stones sat on the shelf. He kept a few stones with him to serve as a reminder of his past.

  From before he’d become what he was now.

  Closing his eyes, he could still hear the sound of his childhood friend’s voice telling him how he was going to find home base first during their games of knucklebones. Jon had never heard of the game prior to Vincent—or Vinnie as they all called him—moving to Jon’s tiny town. Before Vinnie’s arrival, Jon’s childhood days were spent helping around the farm, hunting, playing baseball and fishing. Vinnie’s arrival brought a whole new way of living to him—he’d become something of a thug. The crimes they committed were hardly crimes, but they felt like gangsters. Stealing pies out of windows, pulling sheets down from lines out behind homes, and even swiping the clothing from those who dared to skinny dip in the river.

  Jon laughed softly, thinking back on his childhood antics. Those were fun times, and while his mother had taken a switch to his backside more than once after Vinnie’s arrival, he could tell she had wanted to laugh at some of the stunts the boys had pulled.

  Vinnie spent hours upon hours laying out rules for their particular game of knucklebones, ignoring the stench of Mable’s Diner trashcans. They’d lost themselves in their worlds of fun and make believe. The back alley was one of only two alleys the tiny town of Nape Field had at the time and Vinnie was damn proud to claim it as his own.

  “I win, Jonny,” he’d say, his New York accent leaving most of the residents in the town positive he was a felon, even at the age of nine. They were sure he was affiliated with the Mob in some way. To the residents of the little town, anyone who was Italian surely had to be in the Mafia. Right?

  They couldn’t have been more wrong. Vinnie had grown into a man who, like Jon, served his country. World War II claimed many lives. Jon still wasn’t sure how he and his best friend Vinnie had managed to survive it all.

  A sardonic laugh fell free of Jon. They’d survived hell only to agree to leap from the pan into the fire for their country. He and Vinnie had been selected, along with handfuls of other men, to undergo testing. At the time, they were told only that the government was putting together a Special Forces unit, something unheard of before, and that they’d been singled out as possible candidates. He knew better now—they wanted him for something else. Something he could have never imagined.

  Lifting the hand holding the stone, Jon allowed his hand to shift partially. Orange, black, and white fur encased the stone. Long, dagger-like claws emerged from his fingertips. He glanced up, long enough to catch the reflection of his eyes in the mirror. They swirled, varying shades of amber and ginger moving through them.

  He raised his shifted hand toward the top of his head. It was strange to see himself without his standard close-cut buzzed hairstyle. Spending several months in South America, in search of Wilson, Jon had let his hair grow. It now hung just past his ears, and ran the gamut from light to dark blond.

  He snapped his hand shut, shifting it back into normal, human form. His government had given him the ability to shift into a tiger, to live forever, to struggle with his guilt for eternity. He’d been the one to talk V
innie into participating in the experiments with him. Vinnie had been selected but had declined the opportunity, going on and on about how he couldn’t wait to do his time and get home to his mother, and to possibly start a family of his own one day.

  Jon had persisted, pushing his friend to rethink his stance. Vinnie gave in and it ended up costing him his life. He, unlike Jon, had not been able to tolerate the introduction of were DNA into his system. At first, Vinnie seemed fine with the injections. Neither of them were sure what the doctors were injecting them with. They only knew they felt stronger and faster than they had prior. About four months into the testing, Jon had awoken in a cold sweat, his heart racing, his breathing labored, and his senses heightened. He heard something outside. It wasn’t threatening, yet every instinct in his body told him it had to die, regardless. It was invading his space.

  His skin had itched and then burned. Try as he might, Jon couldn’t fight the urge to run free in the night, to stalk the prey near him. In the end, he found himself sitting alongside a dead rabbit, shaking, terrified, and sure he’d been possessed by the devil himself. It wasn’t until Lukian, his now-team captain, arrived that Jon fully understood what was happening to him. He was turning into a were—a human who had the ability to change into the form of an animal. From all the different injections they’d pumped into him, the form his body had taken to was the Bengal tiger. Apparently, somewhere in his family gene pool he already carried small traces of it, making the merge that much easier. It also explained his amber eyes. He’d been born with them and people had always commented on them.

  Vinnie wasn’t what anyone would term normal when they entered testing. The guy was always going on about getting vibes and swearing he could sense other people around them when no one was there. Mostly, Jon thought it was funny as they grew up. During Ops testing that all changed. It stopped being a joke when Vinnie would sit with his back to his holding cell wall, screaming and pointing at things that weren’t there, talking about the scientists’ dead relatives, and so much more that he shouldn’t have known about.

  “He wasn’t seeing things,” Jon said softly, understanding that whatever had been done to his childhood friend had left him seeing things Jon and the others couldn’t. Left him broken in so many ways.

  Jon’s attention went to the computer monitor in the corner of his bedroom. The same image had been on it for the past twenty-four hours. He always read the online headlines for Nape Field. He used to have the paper shipped to him. When it went online, he subscribed. He liked keeping up on what was going on in the place he’d once called home. As he scanned the headline—Memorial Ceremony for Lost Soldiers—he knew he’d fly out and attend. He shouldn’t. He knew that. He also knew his name was carved into the marble statue even though he wasn’t dead.

  His existence was a secret. He, like the other men in the program, had agreed to severing ties with family and leaving the men they’d been behind. Each was listed as dying during the war. They were permitted to keep or change their names, but they had to be creative about it. Each one had simply stayed out of public view for the first ten years or so, keeping to themselves. It worked perfectly because they were generally on missions anyway. As the years went on, they emerged, careful to keep low profiles and stay away from the places they’d once called home.

  The memorial had come at a perfect time. Jon glanced at the letter from Vinnie, the one that spoke of Jon’s mate and of the tragedy that would befall her upon meeting him. A meeting that, if Vinnie had been right, was set to happen soon. All Jon had to do was make sure the meeting didn’t happen. Yes, he longed for someone to complete him—every alpha male did—but not if it meant that woman destined for him could possibly die because of him.

  Hell no.

  He’d get out of Dodge and he’d make sure to outsmart prophecies. Nape Field, his hometown, was the perfect place to do that and the memorial service was just one more reason to go. He’d go, pay his respects to those who were lost, and hopefully, relieve some of the guilt he carried.

  Chapter Four

  Jon stood in the back of the memorial, his sunglasses on in hope they would keep the morning light from reaching his eyes. He felt like a vampire, sensitive to light and basically preferring the night. His head was a mess, as he’d spent yet another night deep in a bottle. He’d had to catch an early flight, and then rent an SUV and drive the two hours from the airport to Nape Field, all while hung over. Shame filled him. He hadn’t even been able to keep his shit together for one more day, long enough to honor his fallen brothers and sisters.

  They’d all made the ultimate sacrifice and he couldn’t seem to hold it together. He’d done so well for so long, sweeping his past under the rug, pretending he didn’t carry the weight of it all with him. Since Lance’s death, he’d felt his grip on his composure slipping, and he knew that he held on to it by only a thread.

  Even that was just barely.

  His tiger side rustled from deep within, still wanting to run free, though he was sure by now it knew better. Knew he would deny it like he denied so much in his life. The problem was the animal in him could only be pushed aside for so long before it would push back with a vengeance, and he was past that point.

  Walking a thin line.

  Ignoring it all, he looked around, watching from the sidelines as people gathered at the service. There were more people there than he’d thought would turn out. More dead being honored than any town should have. He’d known many of them.

  He was one of them.

  Others had been lost in wars before Jon’s time or long after. Any soldier who had died in battle and had lived in Nape Field had their name engraved on the large slab of marble standing before a bronzed statue of a soldier in full gear. Many were paying their respects and some had even started taking a flower up to lay near the portion of the marble with their family member’s name as the name was read out loud.

  No one would step forward to mourn him, though. He had no family left to speak of. None of that mattered. He wasn’t there for himself. He was there to pay his respects to Vinnie.

  Jon tossed aside a cigarette butt and withdrew another cigarette from his front shirt pocket. He was about to light up when the overwhelming need to look to his right came over him. He did and the cigarette was all but forgotten as it sat perched on his lower lip, stuck there as Jon’s gaze locked on a petite brunette approaching from the footpath area near the park.

  She wore black nearly head to toe, save a creamy white blouse with ruffles on it. Her long hair blew back in the slight breeze, showing off her profile. He sucked in a deep breath at the sight of her. She was stunning. Her skin was olive-toned and flawless. Her deep chocolate gaze moved up from the footpath and over to him as if she was setting her sights on him. He could have sworn his heart literally skipped a beat as they made eye contact. He wasn’t the only one shaken. She missed a step and nearly lost her footing.

  A man walking near her twisted and reached out, catching and righting her. The moment the man’s hands made contact with the woman, Jon’s beast roared to life, wanting free. Wanting to leap across the park area and tear the man’s head clean from his shoulders for daring to touch the female.

  Mine!

  The woman’s gaze never left him as she yanked back from the man helping her, nodding, pushing what could only be called a fake semi-smile to her face. Jon wanted to hurt the man as much as his tiger did as he saw the array of emotions wash over the woman’s face. Had he not been pinned by her gaze, he’d have gone straight to her, and he wasn’t sure what he’d have done. From the feel of his cock pressing against his dress pants, he’d have probably tried to fuck her then and there.

  That wouldn’t have gone over well.

  He’d put too long between bouts of sex again. He knew it. While never as sex-crazed as some of his teammates were, Jon wasn’t a monk. He liked a good hard fuck as much as the next guy, but he’d been waiting longer and longer between romps. The women he picked up at bars weren’t real
ly doing much for him anymore, so he’d not bothered taking one home in nearly six months.

  That was a hell of a long time for an alpha shifter male to abstain. Especially one who was fighting with himself for control. His skin burned for the change and he had to look away from the woman long enough to try to regain his composure for fear he’d do the unthinkable and shapeshift into a tiger right in front of everyone.

  The internet was already abuzz with conspiracy theories and rumors of men who could change into animals and who worked for the government were real. In the modern age of technology, someone there would video his loss of control and he’d be what cemented the rumors as truth. He’d be what caused a witch-hunt of supernaturals.

  Dammit, get a hold of yourself. You are not some newly formed shifter. This thing won’t beat you.

  As he thought it all, he laughed sardonically. It was going to beat him. He knew it and so had Vinnie in the letter he’d penned to Jon before his death. The tiger would win out, and when it did, it would put his mate in jeopardy.

  My mate, he mused.

  All the men around him had found their special someone. All but Jon. As much as he wanted to walk around saying it was all total and complete bullshit about there being someone out there especially created for him, he had to admit Vinnie’s predictions haunted him. If his friend was right, Jon would meet her soon.

  Very soon.

  And then shit would really hit the fan.

  Damn Vinnie and his damned predictions.

  Vinnie had done minor ones when they were little. But during the process to create the Ops, all that changed. Vinnie became obsessed with the future and writing down everything he could as if he’d been on borrowed time.

  He had been, thought Jon, missing his friend. And some of that borrowed time Vinnie had used to write a letter to Jon, telling him cryptic messages of things to come—of his mate, of the danger she’d been in, and how Jon would actually bring some of that to her doorstep.