Apocalypse Assassins: The Complete Series Read online
APOCALYPSE ASSASSINS TRILOGY
BOOKS 1-3
D. LAINE
Copyright © 2017 by D. Laine
All rights reserved.
This ebook is protected under copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design © 2017 Cover Art by Cora Graphics
Photography © Depositphotos
Editing provided by Sara Meadows at TripleA Publishing Services
Created with Vellum
CONTENTS
Marked
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Tagged
Prologue
1. Thea
2. Dylan
3. Thea
4. Dylan
5. Thea
6. Dylan
7. Thea
8. Dylan
9. Thea
10. Dylan
11. Thea
12. Dylan
13. Thea
14. Dylan
15. Thea
16. Dylan
17. Dylan
18. Thea
19. Dylan
20. Thea
21. Dylan
22. Thea
23. Dylan
24. Dylan
25. Thea
26. Dylan
Epilogue
Endured
Prologue
1. Dylan
2. Thea
3. Dylan
4. Dylan
5. Thea
6. Dylan
7. Dylan
8. Thea
9. Thea
10. Dylan
11. Thea
12. Dylan
13. Thea
14. Dylan
15. Dylan
16. Thea
17. Dylan
18. Dylan
19. Thea
20. Dylan
21. Thea
22. Dylan
23. Dylan
24. Dylan
25. Thea
26. Thea
27. Thea
28. Dylan
29. Thea
30. Dylan
Epilogue
Note from the Author
Also by D. Laine
About the Author
MARKED
APOCALYPSE ASSASSINS BOOK ONE
PROLOGUE
My foot hit the loose gravel that tended to accumulate along the side of the road, and I slipped as I turned to slam the car door shut behind me. Only the grace of God kept me from landing on my ass. Pretty sure I might have dislocated my shoulder, though.
“Shit!”
“Jesus, Dylan.” Jake rounded the front of the car, his driver’s side door left wide open and jutting out into the dark, deserted road.
The silence smothered me, because I knew what it indicated. The quiet before the storm. The end was near. I felt it. I smelled it. I sensed it.
I stared into the vast night, trying not to draw parallels between the two things that would come to an end before this day was over. It didn’t work. I still saw nothing but her.
Her green eyes rounded with surprise, then slit in contempt. While that was bad enough, it was the transition in between that I couldn’t shake—that brief moment where she looked at me with a nauseating combination of disbelief and disappointment.
“You going to hurl?” Jake asked.
With my hands on the warm hood of the vehicle and my head dropped between my shoulders, I waited for the bile to work its way up my throat. But it wasn’t my stomach causing me to feel this way. It came from something a little higher than that.
Jesus. What was next? Turn into a door-opening, hand-holding, poetry-writing pussy? What the fuck was wrong with me?
If only I could get that look in her eyes out of my head, then maybe I could do what I needed to do. But then she would never know the truth. She would end up like all the others when the inevitable shit hit the proverbial fan. She would be lost forever.
I rubbed at the ache to the left of my sternum. “I’ve got to go back.”
“Hmm?” My partner-slash-best friend angled his head like he hadn’t heard me correctly, because there was no way he could believe that I’d just told him I was going to go back there. Not after what I had just done, and definitely not when we both knew what was about to happen.
But I was going back. I had to. My mind officially made up, I turned to face Jake. His mouth worked up and down a few times before he finally managed to make an intelligible noise.
“You said you’re going back?”
I nodded.
“For her?”
My jaw clenched tightly. “For her.”
His mouth opened, then snapped shut. He shuffled his feet, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and nodded his head in that way he did when he was trying to decide if I was suicidal or just plain stupid. In our line of work, there were times I could be either.
“Didn’t she tell you to go to hell, or something like that?” he finally asked, as if the reminder of her glaring opinion of me would convince me to change my mind.
If anything, it only reinforced my decision. I needed redemption. No way could I go down like this. No way could I let her think the worst of me up until the moment she—
No. I wasn’t going to leave her there. Nothing was going to happen to her. She was too goddamn spunky to go out this way, as evidenced by her final words to me.
“Crawl up my own ass, and die . . . and then rot in hell.” I relayed those words to Jake now with a grin.
“And you want to go back for this girl”—Jake pinned me with the look he gave me when he concluded I was being an idiot—“that obviously despises you.”
“That’s just the thing, Jake.” I patted him on the shoulder. “She only hates me right now because she likes me.”
His face puckered up in confusion. “I don’t know if I agree with your reasoning. But besides that, you’re missing one very important detail.” He paused for dramatic effect before adding, “If we go back, we’re probably going to die.”
My grin broadened as I opened the car door. “Then it’s just like any other day at the office.”
1
DYLAN
3 weeks ago
I vaulted over the downed tree like a lion charging its kill, my eyes never wavering from the slick black jacket of my target. Pine needles and crisp, recently fallen leaves carpeted the ground, softening my footfalls and giving a much needed spring to each step. They also inconveniently masked the groundho
g burrow in my path—the one my foot found effortlessly.
I went down on the only patch of this forest not covered by pine needles and cracked my elbow off the protruding root of a tree. “Motherfu—”
“Looks like you’re buying tonight!”
My dick of a partner zipped by, gliding over the burrow, tree root, and me with a move that belonged on one of those reality dance shows. Not that I ever watched those stupid shows. But sometimes they were on in the background while I did manly stuff—cleaned my gun, threw back some beers, took the bra off some chick. I never actually watched that shit.
Kind of wished I had taken some pointers now, as I trailed after Jake in the dense forest. He frolicked around the thick trees like a fairy on crack, and I slowly lost ground on him and the target. Barely any light filtered through the thinning leaves above me. What little I could see was fading fast, and I knew if we didn’t catch this mark soon, we would be in some serious shit.
Targets were to never get away. Rule number one in the Assassins Regulation Handbook—the only rule I followed wholeheartedly.
Ahead of me, the target cut around the corner of a vertical rock formation and disappeared from sight. While Jake followed like a good little soldier, I pulled up and eyed the rough surface of the rock wall.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I dug in and started climbing. The waning light made it difficult to find adequate hand and foot holds, but the experience I had gained from many years of training gave me a significant advantage. There was a reason I’d ranked first in the rock climbing exercises, and I proved that I deserved the title as I hoisted myself over the lip thirty seconds after I’d started the climb.
I had also ranked consistently in the top five in speed since I was sixteen. With no trees or groundhog dens to impede me, I made excellent time as I angled across the flat plateau in the direction I suspected the target was headed.
A grin tugged at my lips as I ran. No way in hell was I buying drinks tonight. I was catching this mark. Not Jake.
My determination, combined with the thick curtain of night that had descended, nearly blinded me to the ledge when I reached it. My feet dug in, kicking up a cloud of dirt and loose stones as I halted my unplanned plummet to the ground below. Then, in the quiet dusk, I listened.
As I suspected, the target had come this way. Fifty yards out. Moving fast with Jake close behind.
But not close enough, I thought with a smug grin.
With the stealth of a mountain lion, I leapt from the ledge of the rocky plateau and free fell the ten feet to the ground below. I landed softly—this time grateful for the bed of pine needles—and withdrew my pistol as I pushed to my full height in the target’s path.
He skidded to a stop, then tried to cut around me. He rolled onto his ass before jumping up to attempt a ninety-degree turn. A bullet to the temple stopped him cold.
“What the fuck, Dylan?” Jake slid across the slick bed of pine needles as the target crumbled to the ground at his feet. His dark eyes narrowed on me. “I could have shot you! You could have shot me!”
“You know I have better aim than that.” I holstered my gun with a shrug. “I was more at risk of being shot than you were, and that was a risk I was willing to take.”
“You were willing—unbelievable!” Jake threw his hands up and paced the forest floor, muttering to himself, as I patted the dead man down.
Man . . . but not a man. More dangerous than an unmarked human, and with the ability to become a monster when the time came. These vessels were a nuisance that we, and other assassins like us, were dedicated to eradicating. One by one, we were cutting down the population of vessels on Earth. Not fast enough, I feared, but I did my part despite the impossible odds stacked up against us.
I found no weapons on the vessel. No intel other than a wallet in his jacket. I pocketed the twenty bucks he no longer had use for before taking a closer look at his identification.
“College student,” I announced for Jake’s benefit. “That’s a first, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. That can’t be good if they’re breaching college campuses now.” Jake kicked up a cloud of dirt and pine needles as he worked on cooling down. He was all business when his eyes darted up to meet mine. “We need to notify the agency.”
It was protocol to call in a confirmed kill—rule number two in the handbook. Somewhere in that manual, along with the hundred other rules we were given, was: don’t loiter around the scene of the crime once a kill was made.
We left the body where it lay. With any luck, a pack of hungry wolves or a grizzly bear would take care of the evidence. If not, then a hiker would eventually discover the body. By then, Jake and I would be long gone. Off to take down another vessel, then another, and another. That was what we did—what we had trained to do since the age of twelve—and we were good at it.
Jake and I were arguably the best team in the agency. We should have been at a disadvantage, being the only team that lacked the bond of blood. Though we could pass as brothers with our matching dark, military-cropped hair, impressive height and toned physique, and similar green eyes, everyone in the agency knew the truth. Jake and I were each only one half of a whole.
We both knew loss. That common connection had brought us together in the early days of training, and led to a strong bond that had only strengthened over the ten years since we’d first met. I loved him as much as I would a brother. Possibly more. No doubt the feeling was mutual. Though there were times I tested his patience, he knew I had his back.
With the assistance of our sleek agency-issued flashlights, we made quick time back to the parking lot where we had left our black Hummer. I remembered the day we got the keys to our set of wheels. I was eighteen at the time—fresh out of training, and not an ounce of respect for authority. I couldn’t contain my laughter at the realization that we had been trained to save the world, yet were given the biggest ozone-destroying vehicle ever made to assist us in doing so. My supervisors hadn’t been amused when I pointed that little fact out to them.
Despite its poor gas efficiency, the beast had become a second home to Jake and me. It was there, parked in the shadow of the mountain range that made up the northern-most section of Yellowstone National Park, that we put in a call to the agency and relayed our findings.
“What university?” Agent Spence’s clipped voice boomed from the vehicle’s speakers.
“Montana State,” I read off the identification card in my hand.
“Bozeman, Montana?”
“Yes, sir,” Jake replied.
The line went silent. Only the consistent hum of the connection reassured us that the call had not been dropped—despite the shitty service out here. I heard the unmistakable sound of papers being shuffled, then finally an answer.
“We’ve had reports of four potential targets in the area in the past week,” Spence informed us.
“Four?” Jake exclaimed, casting a wary glance in my direction.
Ignoring his outburst, Spence continued, “It’s going to take a few days to get another team out there. Until I do, you boys are on your own. You know what to do.”
While I grinned at the speaker in front of me like it held a video connection to my boss, Jake did his “I don’t like the sound of this” head roll. Typical Jake—the agency’s worrywart.
“Sir, we just took one of those targets down, and left the body as the agency recommends. Someone is going to find it. There’s going to be heat on us if we stay in the area,” he worried. “To take out that many vessels in one town, at one time, is asking for trouble. Not to mention, once the other three vessels realize there are assassins in the area—”