Rebirth (Cross Book 1)

by Hildred Billings

  “So… how do we do it?”

  Danielle held up her wrist to the light hanging above the front door. The black butterfly fluttered whenever she flexed her hand. It reminded her to find a watch to wear at work to keep her captain off her ass.

  “That old guy would say something about the tattoos being on our arteries or whatever.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  “And that it leads to our heart and soul and shit like that.”

  “I’m not following.”

  Devon held his wrist against hers. “Concentrate on your soul, Danielle.”

  She rolled her eyes so hard the hazel in them turned green in one and brown in the other. Her head didn’t feel much better.

  “I woke up today still hoping that this shit is a dream. This will officially make or break that. Because at least I can blame the voice haunting me on childhood trauma. I’m sure I can.”

  “Same. I’ve got a deadbeat mom and no dad. I’m ready to blame everything on that.”

  Danielle’s stubborn personality forbade her from jumping right in. She had to convince herself to overlook how ridiculous this was. Devon, on the other hand, had a more fuck it, let’s do it approach to life. If he ended up looking stupid in front of a military grunt seven years older than him? There had been worse moments in his life.

  The inner workings of julah magic went above any of the heads they had ever possessed over the past thousand years. Not that mere humans were meant to understand how such complex and ancient sorcery worked, anyway. Even the brightest human minds in the Federation couldn’t replicate the kind of reality-bending feats the most intellectually advanced julah like Ramaron Marlow and Nerilis Dunsman could achieve. Sure, intergalactic travel was to the point that people could warp from one planet to the next, but it required the kinds of computers not readily available on Earth. Using a bodily marking to travel through possible dimensions and to some other space on the other side of the cosmos? In as little as a few seconds?

  Yeah, that was magic.

  Dangerous magic, for what Marlow never told his mercenaries was that fucking up the transfer could mean they stepped into a cosmic vacuum the next time they opened the door. But he was fairly confident in his abilities at this point in his long life. They would be fine. Probably.

  Just because there was that one life where Devon’s back-then incarnation ended up on the wrong planet for two weeks…

  Fine! They would be fine!

  “Wonder if it worked.” Danielle put her arm down. “Let’s find out.”

  “Ladies first.”

  They stared at the door that usually led to more campus housing. Shrugging, Danielle insisted that she had done more dangerous acts during Basic Training and the occasional field exercise she was sent on to make sure she was in tip-top shape.

  Might as well open the damn door and possibly see into the big, black void of the world. Or a parking lot. One was definitely better than the other.

  Devon beat her to the door. He might’ve said ladies first, but it was his door, after all.

  To the sounds of Alicia groaning on the couch behind them, Devon turned the knob and swung the door open.

  “Huh,” he said. Danielle concurred.

  On one hand, it was good to know that magic worked. On the other, that meant this shit was probably, most definitely real, and neither of them really wanted to deal with that.

  “Fuck my life,” Danielle muttered, stepping over the threshold and into the dark, ticking world that Ramaron Marlow had constructed for them to use. “Let’s find that old man and get this over with.”

  They walked into the depths of the shadows, the door disappearing behind them. How the hell were they supposed to get back home? Then again, did they really want to burst through the door at midnight, looking like they walked straight off another planet? (Dimension, alternate universe, whatever.)

  “So,” Devon began as their steps echoed across the catwalk weaving between swinging pendulums, “am I the only one getting more nervous as time goes by and it becomes obvious that this is some real shit?”

  “No,” Danielle concurred. She slowed her steps to match Devon’s shorter stride.

  “It’s just so ominous, you know? If we’ve sucked so much in the past to fail that many times, what’s the point of even trying right now?”

  “Do you think… nah, never mind.”

  “What?”

  Danielle leaned against the catwalk railing. A large pendulum swung back and forth behind her head, the conjured breezes sending chills down her spine. “Just wondering, if our fates are always so intertwined, does it mean we’ve been related before?”

  “You mean like siblings?”

  “Something like that.”

  They resumed walking until they reached the end of the catwalk. A spiral staircase descended between two more pendulums and offered to dump them off in Marlow’s office. A faint light shone in that direction, and the clacking of typing and grumbled voices wafted up to their ears.

  “Guess it’s possible.” Devon led the way down the stairs. “I’m more worried about the whole death and destruction thing more than how many times we’ve been related or married or whatever.”

  “Married?” Danielle followed, although the snort clogging up her nostrils almost made her fall the rest of the way down. “Don’t get your hopes up, kid.”

  Devon wouldn’t let her see him blushing. Not because he hated it when people saw his cheeks color, but because until that point, he had done an excellent job denying any attraction between them. Now really wasn’t the time, especially when he had left his drunk girlfriend behind on their living room couch. Certainly, whatever spiritual chemistry existed between Devon and Danielle would be one helluva image for poor Alicia to deal with. On a Monday night, no less.

  “I smell dog food.”

  Charlie the Basset Hound awaited them at the bottom of the spiral staircase. Sure enough, a can of American dog food was cleaned out beside him. Someone should tell his owner that the food was supposed to go into a bowl. Couldn’t the poor dog cut his tongue on that can?

  “I’m in here!” came the booming voice. “Don’t mind the dog! He’s overeating. Again.”

  They entered the main office, where nobody but the dog dwelled. There were no signs of Evan – not even a box of HoHos or DingDongs – and Marlow had left most of his electronics turned on but closed. Soft blue lights and the occasional throbbing yellow one permeated his desk. One notebook with a sleek black pen was flipped open, but nothing was written on the pages. (Or at least by first glance. The pen was a gift to himself on his 2995th birthday. Invisible ink that could only be read by his registered retinas. What would they come up with next on Terra III?)

  “Back here!”

  Charlie (a gift to himself for his 2994th birthday, at Evan’s insistence that the Basset Hound was the soundest canine an old man could ask for on Earth) bounded from his abandoned can and tore down the adjacent hallway. He disappeared into one door left ajar, a stream of soft yellow light pouring into the dark hallway. The voice had come from within.

  It was a library, with racks and shelves of aging books lining the walls and an empty table and chairs in the center of the room. “Welcome to my record’s room.” Marlow closed one of the books and removed his spectacles. He turned in his seat, chair creaking beneath his oddly distributed weight. “Every piece of information you two have ever collected about Relics in your previous lives is catalogued in here. I also keep general data about you two and your planets. Please feel free to come and go as you please to do your own research.”

  “This is what you wanted us to drop by for?” Danielle only entered so Devon would have room to see it for himself. “A museum of our supposed past lives?”

  “Not only that, but over the past few years I’ve tasked Evan with translating some of the bigger documents into your current native tongue. I admit, it’s always something else when you’re born not speaking a lick of Basic. Granted, Modern Basic is quite a b
it different from the Old Basic you spoke a thousand years ago.”

  “Hate to know what they called it when you were a baby.”

  Marlow didn’t miss a beat. “Ancient Base Language. Of course, it was just Base back then. Er, loose translation.” He motioned to the shelf nearest the door. “Those are the ones translated into English. If you require an older document, I’m sure I can get Evan on it in whatever spare time he has. There are also programs that will scan languages and translate them for you based on their stored databases, but I prefer human translations.”

  “I do too.” Devon helped himself to one of the empty chairs around the big table.

  “So wait…” Sometimes Danielle was too observant for her own good. Especially when she knew the possible answers would only give her a headache. “If you only got a hold of us last week, how did you know to have this stuff translated over the years? Pretty sure English is only spoken on this planet, unless there’s something else I should know.”

  “Natively? Yes, English is usually only spoken throughout the Federation by citizens born and raised on Earth who then return to their parents’ home planets. But that’s rare.” Marlow leaned his arms against the table. “And the truth is that we have been aware of your current lives for nearly twenty Earth years. It’s only this past week we’ve contacted you.”

  “Twenty years? What? How?”

  Marlow sighed. Fine thing inviting his mercenaries over for tea and a jolly fun time down memory lane. Wasn’t it like this woman to always live in the present? “When you die, your souls are automatically bound to Nerilis’s will. Even if he doesn’t yet know what his next target will be, you are born there. So, we honestly have no idea where you may be born. The moment you die, our work begins anew. First, in an effort to clean up what has been destroyed in the wake of your death, and second, to find you two again. We have a nice system in place by now, though. In this case, we were tipped off by a Federation citizen working on Earth.”

  “Who?”

  “About twenty years ago, my assistant Lanelle received a call from your hometown. A therapist who used to treat you, Danielle, believed that you may have been the female reborn.”

  “My…” Oh my God, she thought. “My therapist. My child therapist?” As her supervisor had pointed out earlier that day, Danielle had been in and out of therapists’ offices for most of her childhood. While she didn’t recall most of the details now, her grandmother had hinted that the biggest reason Danielle went to a therapist was because of her “strange behavior” that made people wonder if she had a mental illness. Back in the ‘80s, that was enough to get her bullied by classmates and ignored by teachers who should have known better. Hell, it was the same way now in the military! How many of the top brass still thought homosexuality was a mental illness?

  Well, shit.

  “Pretty sure she violated about five-million laws when she outed me to you, huh?”

  “I checked in with her recently. She moved back to her home planet shortly after she stopped seeing you.”

  “Guilt, huh?”

  “More likely fear.”

  Marlow leveled his gaze until Danielle was forced to look away. Fear, huh? Because if Danielle really was the reincarnation of a doomed mercenary, then that meant the planet was probably going to blow sooner rather than later?

  Exactly that.

  “We tried getting through to the both of you multiple times over the years, but were usually blocked by outside forces. These past ten years have been us planning a course of action and attack. I hired Evan as soon as it became apparent that you really might be one of my mercenaries. I needed someone with an intimate knowledge of Earth and its cultures and peoples. He is one of the few in the galaxy with the equivalent of a Doctorate solely dedicated to Earth Studies. He… has a fondness for the place, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  “Especially the junk food, huh?”

  “Yes, well, he has a sweet tooth that keeps one of my colleagues in dental health busy.”

  Devon approached the bookshelf and pulled out the first folder he came across. “My curiosity’s killing me. Let’s play this game.”

  Danielle said nothing, her mind full of crap she couldn’t get away from short of having a lobotomy. Nevertheless, she leaned against the bookcase behind her, bumping against black folders labeled in a language she couldn’t begin to understand even if she tried.

  Their past lives resided in those folders. Names, dates, occupations… families they would never remember, because according to the rules of the Process, the lives between the first and the last were void.

  Devon handed her an English file labeled with the Arabic numeral 34. Danielle hesitatingly opened it.

  The cover was dusty but under no threat of deterioration – no doubt Marlow and his small administrative crew kept things digitally backed up as well. The first page Danielle touched didn’t have much information other than saying, “Trial 34: Trallan. Ms. Rallie Graft Yid, age 20; Mr. Hold d’Hollary, age 16. No relation.”

  “Rallie. What a dumbass name. Thanks, Mom #34,” Danielle mumbled. “I was definitely better off dead.”

  “Huh?” Devon flipped through a different volume labeled 87.

  “Nothing, Hold.”

  “What?”

  Danielle fell into silence as she checked the time on her watch and read the mundane information listed in her files. Devon, on the other hand, kept one finger running beneath carefully translated lines while begging his brain to remember something, anything about these forgotten lives. Charlie whined at Marlow’s feet until the old man got up and promised to do something in the other room.

  The next hour passed beneath a cloud of boredom. Although learning about one’s past lives was an interesting pastime, in the end, Devon and Danielle absorbed the information as if they were reading about different people entirely. They couldn’t connect to these people, the planets they supposedly hailed from that no longer existed, and the interpersonal relationships presented on the page.

  Rather like AP History classes. Lots of names, lots of dates, and absolutely no need to remember most of them.

  Halfway through their mutual perusal, Devon looked up and stared at the pallor boredom plastered upon his partner’s face. He was reading about a fight she entered with Nerilis before he killed her and stole the Relic in her possession. All while an imprisoned Devon looked on, helpless, before being killed as well.

  How could he not remember shit like this? Throughout his adolescence, Devon had an affinity for reading about world religions and was particularly interested in Eastern theologies that offered reincarnation as a truth. How many experiences of past lives had he read about? Yet Devon couldn’t remember one of his, let alone ninety-seven of them. Hadn’t Danielle said something similar?

  “How do you think it’s possible that we don’t remember any of this?”

  Danielle put her folder down with such lethargy that she almost passed out. “Maybe I do… a little.”

  “Really?”

  She looked away before Devon could make uncomfortable eye contact. “I’d forgotten about it until my captain brought up it up earlier. But when I was little, I used to have lots of the same nightmares over and over. I don’t remember them now, but at the time I got so little sleep and became so anxious about it that my grandmother took me to a child therapist to try to help me out.” Danielle needed another breath, but the air in that cluttered room was so stagnant that she could barely inhale. “My grandmother often said that the stuff I talked about sounded like I had suffered trauma, even though she was fairly certain I hadn’t before my mother died.”

  “That blows.”

  “Yup. I don’t have nightmares like that anymore, though.”

  Devon flipped his binder shut. “From what I’ve gathered so far, we were platonic every time. I wonder if we were ever related, like we talked about earlier.”

  “I got one earlier that said we were cousins. Then they next one said we were… divorced.”


  “Nothing strains a marriage like forcing a couple to save the world.”

  “Maybe we were so busy fighting that we couldn’t be bothered to stop this guy.” Danielle threw her report down. “It’s so… fantastical, you know?” She tilted her head back, the chair pressing into her neck. “Maybe we’re better off not remembering. I’d rather experience this life without thinking about any others.”

  “That’s what my girlfriend told me the other night. Speaking of…” Devon shook any ill thoughts about Alicia out of his head. “I wonder if I was ever gay. You think stuff like that changes from life to life?”

  “The way discourse is turning, pretty soon it will be verboten to suggest that we’re not all a little gay inside.”

  “Some of us more than others?”

  Danielle met his gaze from across the table. “I’m bisexual, so… sure. Kinsey’s got me.”

  She pushed out of her seat and filed the reports back onto the shelf in numerical order. “I’m leaving. This stuff is depressing. It all ends the same no matter how you look at it. We die.”

  “Speaking of, I need to make sure there are no dead bodies in my apartment.” Devon followed her out of the room. “Maybe we won’t die this time.”

  Danielle stopped in the middle of the hallway. “Maybe. I admit that I’m not big on the dying thing right now. Anyway, see you later. I’ll figure out how to get out of here on my own.”

  ***

  Getting home was as simple as walking through the door they entered with the same sort of magic at play. Think of home. Go home through the door. Marlow warned Devon on his way out that they would have to meet again soon. Whatever he meant to say about Nerilis’s stalking went unmentioned – the old sorcerer decided to do more research instead. Besides, what was the point of scaring these poor kids more than they already were?

  Devon found Alicia right where he left her. When he was assured that she wasn’t in immediate danger, he gathered her sleeping body in his arms and hauled her back to their bedroom, her feet dangling over his elbow and her head leaning against his shoulder.