Rebirth (Cross Book 1)

by Hildred Billings

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Excuse me.” A man stepped out from a group of people, clipboard in hand. His no-nonsense suit (sans jacket, since it was the evening, after all) was wrinkled from a day of use and his hair a bit frayed, but he still commanded a professional presence that got everyone’s attention. “I’m conducting a brief survey on behalf of the Neighborhood Association. Can I borrow a few moments of your time?”

  The trio exchanged glances, all of them saying, “This time of night? In a place like this? What the fuck is the Neighborhood Association? Is that a real thing? Do I owe it dues?”

  “Anyway.” The man uncapped his pen and wrote something down on his clipboard. “Can we start with you?” He looked to Danielle.

  She did not like the way he looked at her.

  Did he know her? Because that wasn’t the face of a stranger. No, she didn’t recognize him. She had no reason to recognize him, after all – they had never met before. She knew nothing of this man or what he wanted specifically from her. But this survey bullshit was a front. She saw through it like he saw through how humiliated both Danielle and Miranda were to be caught making eyes at one another on a Friday night.

  “Well! Sorry to sit and then immediately quit, but,” Miranda got back up, tea still clenched in her hand, “I just remembered that I’m supposed to meet someone.” She pointed to a private room in the back. “Good luck with your romantic endeavors, everyone.” She bumped into the survey taker on her way by. Just enough to gain the attention of a group of drunken friends who popped in for some coffee before going home to party some more.

  “I’ll take your survey, man!”

  “Survey the fuck out of me, you’re cute!”

  “I’ve got a few questions for you.” A skinny man in a crop top looped his gangly arm around the suited man’s shoulders. “You top or bottom?”

  Whether willingly or not, the survey taker was absorbed into the drunken group so he could get nothing but non-answers and a lot of offers for gay sex.

  Troy relaxed his arm across the back of the couch. “Think of it this way,” he said. “That could’ve been a lot more uncomfortable than it was.”

  She shook off whatever strange feelings that man had given her. “It was plenty uncomfortable, you ass.”

  “I’m going to laugh when I wake up one day to a frantic phone call saying you’ve woken up next to her.”

  “Why are you saying it like that?” Danielle pulled herself off the couch. The rabble of voices in the crowded coffee shop on a Friday night continued to grow. The live guitar music changed to a song that got people up to dance. Apparently, the party was taking on new form.

  “Wanna dance?” Troy asked. “We could pretend that we’re, I dunno, het or something.”

  “Why in the world would we want to het dance, you homo?”

  “Anyway, I’ve always wondered what it would be like to grind with a woman. You know, without that extra bulk in the way.”

  Danielle launched off the couch. “Sorry, but I’ve got to get out of here. My head hurts and it’s getting late. Try to find me some pussy another time.”

  Troy followed her to the exit, and with a quick, friendly kiss the two of them parted ways. For the first time that evening, Danielle had a real motive to go home. The temperature outside dropped as the minutes went by, making the ten-minute walk home imperative.

  Danielle did not, in fact, have a headache, aside from the one she would receive walking by a crowd of smokers on the sidewalk corner. One man shouted something at her, but a brief side-glance informed Danielle he was not armed and too weak to stand against a woman subjected to constant strength training. Maybe then she would have a headache. Just as well. A headache allowed her time alone, and a headache meant she was not expected to kowtow to strangers wondering about her relationship status and whether they stood a chance with her.

  Besides, was she even ready to move on from her last relationship? If anything, it taught her to stay away from younger partners. Her last girlfriend was a sophomore in college when they met, fresh at twenty and filled with grand ideas that made her look like a bright-eyed politician. After seven months they discussed moving in together, and Danielle bought a small locket for her as a sign of their love. When Danielle thought about the night everything ended, her stomach twisted into a disgusting knot that pulled at her esophagus and put pressure on the ducts behind her eyes.

  “Excuse me!” A voice echoed behind her. “Ms. Cromwell!”

  She stopped, even though she really shouldn’t have.

  The man from the café. It was him.

  How the hell did he know her name?

  He stopped, breathless, suit still wrinkled and clipboard missing from his hands. He put his hands on his knees, inhaling as much of the Earth air as he could before raising his head, a look of determination and mounted frustration crashing off his face.

  “I have been trying to get a hold of you for so long now.”

  Danielle took a step back. “Who are you?”

  The young man shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small business card. “Evan d’Aranara.”

  “Come again?” Danielle took the card. The same name was printed on one side. On the other, the words “Call the number below and ask for Master Marlow’s office” were written. “I knew there was something weird about you.”

  “Please forgive my cover back there. I didn’t know how else to approach you. I’ve been trying to contact you for years.”

  Danielle bristled where she stood. “Years, huh?”

  “You have no idea. You are not an easy woman to get a hold of on this planet.”

  “This planet?”

  He uttered a self-admonishment in his native language, one she couldn’t understand. “Forgive me. I know this is a lot to take in right now. Can we speak somewhere private? I’m here on behalf of my employer, Master Ramaron Marlow. Perhaps you know him?” He really was that hopeful.

  “No. I don’t know who that is.”

  Danielle knew that name. She knew it better than she knew most of the names in her family. Of course, she didn’t know that yet. Not in this life. Her brain had specifically blocked that name out of her memory, and for good reason.

  That name always brought death and destruction. Hence the bile once again reemerging in her throat and threatening to choke her.

  “And no, we can’t go somewhere more private.” Danielle attempted to hand the business card back. “Please leave me alone.”

  It didn’t work that way. Not when Evan d’Aranara had spent the past two decades of his life tracking Danielle down and trying to get close to her. How many times had he reached out to Danielle’s grandmother with mad stories? None of them ever worked.

  Danielle hadn’t fallen for his “Neighborhood Association” either. Oh, well. This was different. This was him finally taking the actions he should have as soon as Danielle turned eighteen and went off to college.

  “I’m afraid this is important, Ms. Cromwell. Lives are at stake. A lot of them.”

  “Take it up with my employer.” Danielle turned, although she kept one eye on the man advancing on her again.

  So he wanted to get hurt, huh?

  Evan d’Aranara had fucked with the wrong woman. He should’ve known better, really. When, in any of Danielle’s past lives, had she been anything but strong and capable? This was a woman who constantly joined the armed forces wherever she lived, because she couldn’t get away from rules, regulations, orders, and schedules, made for her as they had been in her first life a long-ass time ago. Armed forces demanded that she be fit enough to knock a grown man off his feet and put him in a chokehold.

  This time in self-defense.

  “Leave. Me. Alone.” Danielle tightened her arm around Evan’s neck. He futilely pawed at her arms, gasping for breath. “I don’t even have to call the cops, got me? I know people in the military who know how to make you go away.” She’d start by calling her grandmother. Regina Biggs would find
it very interesting that this man was coming around again. “You get me?”

  Evan couldn’t breathe. Good enough for Danielle.

  She released him, his body crumping on the dirty sidewalk. Danielle shook out her arms and continued to march down the street. She was too pissed off to be properly shaken by the experience.

  Evan didn’t follow her. He retreated to enact Plan B, which was his employer’s original plan anyway.

  Danielle reached her building within two minutes. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Too bad she didn’t live in the sort of tenement that had top-notch security she could tattle to. Too convenient. Too expensive. Not at her pay level.

  The entrance was abandoned, save for an elderly woman with a bag of groceries. A breeze rustled the trees growing from the sidewalk. Danielle stopped, as if that alone would help her decompress before entering the building. The wind picked up into a howl.

  No. Not the wind. A dog.

  A Basset Hound pawed at Danielle’s shoes, its buttoned snout slobbering on the sidewalk. At first, Danielle tried to shake the dog off and head inside, but he was compelled to look toward the elderly woman slowly making her way toward the front door.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. Is this your dog?”

  The woman stared at Danielle over the top of her paper bag. “No, that’s no dog of mine. It’s been sniffing around ever since I went to the market an hour ago.”

  Danielle stepped away from the dog. It slinked toward the unlit alleyway. Once it reached a trashcan, it turned and barked at Danielle, pulling her away from the sidewalk.

  “Look,” she said, bending over to meet its black nose, “I don’t have time for this. Someone’s stalking me right now. You need to get back to your owner before someone calls animal control.”

  The dog lifted its snout and licked her cheek. Danielle wiped the slobber off her skin. The dog scuttled into the dark crevices of the alley, luring Danielle after it, the animal-lover within her insisting that she catch the damned dog before something happened to it – like a car. A big car.

  “Hey! Come back!” She went into the narrow alley. “Where the hell are you?”

  Following the sounds of the dog’s whimpers, she pushed passed a small trashcan that threatened to tumble down with a kick of her foot. She avoided a bramble, her stride quickening through the darkness. Was any dog worth this, though?

  Danielle turned to give up, but an endless tunnel of brick and shadow greeted her.

  “The hell? I couldn’t have gone that far.” Furthermore, the building wasn’t as wide as this alley made it out to be. But before she could contemplate that tidbit any further, the dog returned to sniff her feet and trot off again into the darkness. Danielle reached into her back pocket and pulled out her cell phone.

  No service.

  Barking brought her back to the present. After another quick glance into the darkness, Danielle forged on in search of the dog, the only other living creature around.

  THREE

  She caught up with the dog, its nose sniffing and its feet pawing at something. Danielle bent down to find a clock on the ground.

  The obstructive clock now in her hands, Danielle shook the dog off her leg. Seconds ticked away.

  Tick, tick.

  Her body lurched forward as all gravity and equilibrium became lost to the world, turning her upside down and shoving her through dark space. The dog yelped as it too experienced this strange phenomenon, but Danielle could not force any shriek or sound of surprise through her gasping mouth.

  As quickly as it began, her body came back to itself, and she once again stood in the darkness. Danielle dropped the clock. The dog sniffed it before running off into the night.

  “Hold up!” Danielle did not have time to figure out what was going on when she had a dog to chase. It was her only companion in this strange, lawless world she was sucked into, and she wasn’t about to be alone.

  A light appeared, illuminating the dog until Danielle could see the round, brown patterns on the top of its coat as it frolicked forward. Years of physical training let her catch up to her friend, although the onus of such a run made her chest swell under the pressure of a dozen leagues beneath the sea. Breathing was overrated, anyway.

  She ran so quickly that she almost launched herself over a barrier, but she caught the ledge before plummeting a considerable drop into oblivion. Ticking clocks surrounded her as she perused the balcony. The dog descended a staircase to the left.

  Danielle inhabited a giant, wooden room that was more like the workings of an internal clock than a sparse place. A giant pendulum swung in the midst of a dozen smaller ones, all swinging with one loud monotonous tick that reverberated in her ears like a warning bell. The staircase weaved beneath her, passing between pendulums and descending into the belly of the room. The dog navigated the Daliesque landscape with nothing but a wag of the tail and a bark.

  “Dear. God. The fuck is happening?” With luck she was hallucinating, dreaming, anything to explain this strange and twisted phenomenon. Maybe someone had laced her drink at the café with something a little too good. Maybe she slipped and knocked her head on the street. Maybe she couldn’t remember climbing into bed and sleeping away the absurdity of her week.

  When trapped in a bad, involuntary trip or deep sleep world, what did a woman do?

  Follow the dog. Sometimes Basset Hounds were March Hares.

  Yet that was becoming dangerous, even for a dream world, as the dog hugged the edge of an unfenced platform. The ticking of the clocks dwindled as they moved more into the light.

  Voices wafted into the room. Danielle picked up her pace as the dog broke out into an excited run and tumbled into the body of someone else.

  “There you are. I was wondering if I had imagined you this whole damn time.”

  This was not the first time Danielle and Devon had crossed paths on Earth – but it was the first time either of them were of a right mind to remember it, not that either one of them considered themselves of a right mind now. Since stalking a dog into a dark corner that turned out to be a strange portal to another stranger world, Devon had resigned himself to nihilistic thoughts insisting that he had lost his fucking mind, even if everything about his current ticking environment was oddly familiar.

  Someone like Danielle standing in front of him? Even more familiar – to the point he didn’t even question it at first.

  Of course Danielle stood here. He may not know her name yet, but he knew her face, her posture, her fatigue from the weight perpetually pressing upon her shoulders. A part of him even dared to say that he was relieved to see her, and not only because he needed to see another living soul in this large room.

  That relief was short lived, however. His subconscious – like Danielle’s – waved a red flag of warning, because there existed only one reason for them to ever meet one another on any plane of existence.

  “World ending, pal.”

  “Who are you?” This was their chance to back out of their metaphysical obligations. Too bad they hadn’t realized it yet.

  “Now I know I’m dreaming.” Danielle held back an exasperated chortle. “You’re the kid from the campus.”

  Devon barely recognized Danielle without her hat and khaki, but the clefts of her short blond hair gave her away as the stoic recruiter from earlier that morning. Oh, good. So he didn’t know her from anywhere else. Whew. Almost started to regress to a past life right where he stood.

  “Wow,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I should be asking you that.”

  The dog sniffed at Devon’s foot. “I dunno. Found this dog in my yard and decided to see where it went. Led me here. What’s your story?”

  “Somewhat similar to yours.” Danielle closed the distance between them with five small steps. “Seems like we’re both lost, then.”

  “You sound rather fine with that.” Meanwhile, Devon had to practice every meditation tip he had heard over the years to keep fr
om freaking out. “I’m trying to convince myself that this is a dream. Fell asleep on my couch and haven’t woken up yet. You know, lucid dreaming.”

  “Either that or somewhere between here and there I inhaled some seriously bad weed.”

  “I’m cool with this being a dream.” Devon laughed uneasily. “Like I said, fell asleep in front of the TV and dreamed that I met this dog when taking out the trash. What were you doing?”

  “None of your business.”

  Devon leaned back. He cut through the thick awkwardness, for better or worse. “Anyway, I’m Devon. Your name?”

  She glared at him.

  “I mean, if we’re going to be stuck in a dream together, I might as well know your name. Hey, did you know that there are studies suggesting that your brain can’t make up faces in a dream? It’ll cast people you came across that day, so maybe that’s why we’re dreaming about each other if we met at my school. Your brain, my brain… uh…”

  A thin smile spread across Danielle’s face. “Guess even in a dream world I’m still Danielle.”

  The dog barked in front of them. Before they could look at the dog, however, a new voice cut through the musty air.

  “Thank the blasted Void. It’s about time you two showed up.”

  The Basset Hound spun in excited circles. Behind him, an elderly gentleman came toward them, slowed by the ebony cane shaking in his grip. Stubble of white and gray framed his wizened face, although the sparse hair on his head remained a muted black from his youth. His clothing, while recognizably Western in nature, was made from higher quality materials than either Danielle or Devon could find in their closets.

  His presence unnerved them both, and not because he was a stranger.

  “Who are you?” Danielle’s lack of tact hacked at the air like a blunt knife.

  “I apologize for the sudden intrusion into your mundane lives.” The man turned, the tip of his cane smashing into the wood flooring of the platform. “But after ninety-eight introductions with the two of you… forgive me if I would rather cut to the chase, as it were. Besides!” His cane whisked through the air, landing on his shoulder, the felt tip pointing directly at Danielle. “You were ignoring my calls, Sulim. Unprecedented discourtesy, even for you.”