Death Incarnate Read online

  DEATH INCARNATE

  A Death Series Novel

  Book 9

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  TAMARA ROSE BLODGETT

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2017 Tamara Rose Blodgett

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  www.tamararoseblodgett.com

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  Editing suggestions provided by Red Adept Editing

  Cover art by Willsin Rowe

  CONTENTS

  [Main] Character Index

  Works by Tamara Rose Blodgett and Marata Eros

  TRB News

  A Death Word

  The Last Chapter of Death Blinks

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Synopsis

  Deegan Hart's very existence hangs in the balance. Mitchell, her zombie from a world where Cyborg's roam is about to make a decision that could erase her from not just her home earth—but every earth.

  Does Mitchell interfere with fate and save the lives of his brother or sister?

  Or does destiny have different plans.

  In the aftermath of a pivotal blink, a reordered future unfolds, and the original group of paranormals are needed to right a wrong. But at what cost?

  Is a new government order intent on ripping Deegan away from her family for their own purposes? Or worse: will Brad Thompson find a way to see his evil plans of an Atomic super race to fruition—with Deegan Hart as the catalyst?

  Finally, can the changes the paranormals make set into motion the events that would give earth hope for the first time in a generation...

  [Main] Character Index:

  Paxton Hart

  Deegan Hart

  Caleb Hart

  Jade LeClerc-Hart

  Mark “Jonesy” Jones

  Mia Cote-Weller

  Bryan “Bry” Weller

  Tiffany “Tiff” Weller-Terran

  John Terran

  Lewis Archer

  Sophie Morris

  Gram/Ali Hart

  Gramps/Mac O'Brien

  Grandpa/Kyle Hart

  Mitchell “Mitch” Rasmussen - Deegan's zombie

  Tara Rasmussen – Mitchell's sister

  Clyde Thomas - Caleb's zombie

  Bobbi Gale-Thomas

  George & family - Paxton's zombie family

  Brad Thompson

  Clement “Clem” Thompson

  Jeffrey Parker

  Kim, from Bot World - Healer

  Ron, from Bot World - Null

  Works by Tamara Rose Blodgett and Marata Eros:

  Tamara Rose Blodgett

  The BLOOD Series

  The DEATH Series

  The REFLECTION Series

  The SAVAGE Series

  Shifter ALPHA CLAIM

  Vampire ALPHA CLAIM

  Final Enforcement Vampire ALPHA CLAIM

  &

  Marata Eros:

  A Terrible Love (New York Times bestseller)

  A Brutal Tenderness

  The Darkest Joy

  Club Alpha

  The DARA NICHOLS Series

  The DEMON Series

  The DRUID Series

  Road Kill MC Serial

  The SIREN Series

  The TOKEN Serial

  Final Enforcement Vampire ALPHA CLAIM

  Shifter ALPHA CLAIM

  Vampire ALPHA CLAIM

  The ZOE SCOTT Series

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  DEDICATION

  Joel M.B

  I love you more.

  A Death Word

  Hey Guys,

  A short word about Death—short for me anyway. I've done things a little differently on this final Death volume. The Death series is a long-running and beloved series for many of my readers. In an effort to fully respect the body of work that Death has become, I'm including the last chapter of the preceding volume as a quick reference since it's been over a year since it was released. Further, the list of characters has grown, and everyone has so many talents that I wanted to make this volume extra clear by expanding that list and posting it in the front for quick reference.

  This is the end of Death as we know it. But there might be other stories in the future that take place in this unique world. Familiar characters might even crop up elsewhere.

  And though I've found a “sweet spot” that I dig a lot for length in my novels after nearly seven years of hybrid publishing, I have made this volume longer, like the first couple of novels in the series. Why? Because I felt Death couldn't be wrapped with anything shorter. Too many loose threads and loops needed to be cinched and closed.

  As an aside, I find that I'd rather spend more time researching, writing, and creating than inserted myself into the hamster wheel of social media. That pursuit does not fulfill me—writing does. However, my readers are Numero Uno Importante. So how do I find that balance? Well, I've decided that the SM platforms I enjoy the most are YouTube and Instagram. It's visual and intimate, yet allows me the necessary time to accomplish my writing so my readers have something to read.

  Pretty simple.

  I'm not closing up media shop. This shift in interaction essentially means I'm doing less on other online platforms—and more writing. That's where my focus should be. The work.

  Love ya, each and every one~

  Tamara

  The Last Chapter of Death Blinks

  Deegan

  I breathe deeply. Again. Let it out.

  And smell.

  Exhaust, like Gramps's garage.

  Refuse.

  Humanity.

  My eyelids flutter apart, and I feel strong arms bind me to a muscular body. I move to sit up, and those arms tighten around me.

  “Mitchell,” I say.

  “Hmm,” he says against my temple. I smell death and the life I gave him swell, and it eases me.

  “Mitchell,” I say more urgently, my eyes beginning to take in our surroundings. I don't recognize anything.

  Th
ere are no bots, and that should make me relieved. I do know I'm sitting in the middle of a heavily treed neighborhood in my hometown of Kent, Washington. I recognize it.

  There should also be relief in that realization.

  But the cars cruising past at about thirty miles per hour on the ground have my full, terrified attention.

  Again, I'm reminded that I loved history before I graduated high school just a month ago. I don't have any memory of fossil fuel and only recognize its scent because of Gramps's ancient car, but it’s not seen mainstream use in at least two decades. There is no point of reference for me.

  But I'll just hazard a guess, as Dad would say.

  Somehow, Mitch blinked. So that means that somewhere in my makeup, I can also blink.

  And he didn't blink to a where. He blinked to a when.

  Mitch stands, pulling me up with him. “What in the hell is this?” His voice is quiet. Tight.

  I turn my attention in the direction he's looking.

  Antique cars begin to slow, clearly noticing a bunch of people rolling around on cement sidewalks.

  Gramps hops to his feet, looking more spry than a guy that old should look. But his regeneration continues, and I can tell by the expression on his face that he knows when we are. His features go from neutral to troubled in a flash.

  Everyone is waking up from the shock of landing, and the cars that drive by hold curious drivers and passengers, checking out the dozen people lying on a sidewalk of what appears to be a quiet neighborhood at—What time is it? I look to the sky and notice the sun is low in a distant horizon. Sunset is a promise.

  Twilight is near.

  Pax will be able to blink us out of here. I'm so relieved by the thought that Pax can fix us from here that I don't think about why we ended up in this time. Or how.

  Pax doesn't blink us to a timeline other than the one we live in. The present.

  “That's my house. I mean, my folksʼ house.” Mitchell's disbelief rides his voice.

  What?

  Suddenly, a big guy exits the house we're looking at and strides to a souped-up, old-fashioned-looking hot rod.

  “Nice car,” Gramps says, rocking back on his heels.

  The hell with the car. I can't take my eyes off the dude who’s about ready to get behind the wheel.

  Oh God.

  A slightly younger Mitchell stabs a key into the car door then jerks the handle and pops inside. His hands are busy now with stuff like inserting a key into an old-fashioned ignition, adjusting the wheel, and general tasks of starting an old-style car.

  I gape at the scene.

  “Let's make ourselves scarce,” Gramps says in his puzzling way, and we all move silently backward into a small greenbelt, congregating together and thanking everything holy that the Mitchell of now didn't notice all of us conspicuously loitering a block from his house.

  As though Mitchell heard our thoughts, he says softly, “I was distracted.”

  I turn to look at him. He avoids looking at me.

  “Why?” I search his face, but my eyes are pulled in the direction of the other Mitchell as his car zooms past. The low purr of the gas-guzzling auto momentarily destroys all potential conversation.

  He takes a breath like he's starving for air. “Because I was trying to remember what everyone wanted on their pizza, Deegan.” His voice is bald, empty like a scooped-out husk.

  Oh my God.

  Everyone stares at Mitchell.

  “This is the day you murdered those men?” Dad asks from across the small copse of trees. His voice carries perfectly. The onlookers are long gone.

  Mitchell nods. “It's 2010. I don't know how...” His hands fist.

  “Because as a zombie, you'll remember the most traumatic event in your life,” Dad says with irrefutable logic.

  “Caleb,” Mom says, putting her hand on Dad's arm.

  “It's true. It's the way the dead work. How they process. We know more now than when I was a kid and roadkill would follow me around. There's a purpose to their thoughts.”

  Being burnt alive by enemies in a foreign country wasn't the biggest. That wasn't the most traumatic thing for Mitchell.

  No. Not being here to protect his sister and brother was the most traumatic event.

  “I can stop this.” Mitchell's eyes become fervent. Hostile. The same eyes I imagine he had when he became a murderer on this day.

  “How is this fucking possible?” Pax asks. “I never blink to another time. I didn't even know it was possible.”

  “He unconsciously blinked to the when that he felt was the most critical juncture when he lived, I surmise,” Uncle John says thoughtfully.

  Mitchell isn't listening, and I feel his mental withdrawal from me. “I don't have much time. They were watching the house. They're probably already in there.”

  Mitchell's arms fall from around me, and he begins to walk away.

  I don't say anything. I can't. Tears tremble at my jawline. Drip, drip, dripping, they soak the fabric of my T-shirt along my collarbone. Cupping my elbows, I bite my lip to keep from crying out.

  If Mitchell saves his family right now in this second chance of destiny, the events of the rest of his life will be reordered. That's the way fate operates.

  He will not die.

  I might not live.

  We will not be more.

  Mitchell suddenly stops.

  He turns.

  I see by his expression he understands that when bot world happens, Brad Thompson will have me.

  Hurt me.

  If Mitchell doesn't go to that house where he was raised from a toddler to the young man that I realize I love, he's condemning his family to death.

  Pax's hand lands on my shoulder—and passes through.

  Oh my God!

  I slowly raise my hand and flutter my fingers. I see Mitchell through flesh that was solid a moment before.

  My life hangs in the balance of a choice from a man I raised in a moment of terror so great I couldn't think. So I didn't. My ability thought for me, saving me then.

  It can't save me now.

  Mom screams, and I feel bodies move toward me as though if they're close enough, they can keep me in the present.

  “Deegan!” Mitchell bellows. He runs to me. Then sprints.

  As his family dies just meters away, I become solid again.

  He wraps his arms around me.

  “I can't lose you.”

  His huge body trembles, dwarfing me.

  And I can't kill them.

  I take his hand and open it. I place my lips in the center of his palm. “Let's go together. Maybe that will be enough.”

  Jonesy walks up to where we stand. “Don't know what's happening here, guys, but let's get hot. I'm on board for ass-kicking if that's what's on the table.” He waggles his eyebrows.

  The rest of the group files around us. They don't know the details, but they know enough.

  I see the willingness in their eyes. My parents can't stand by while two kids are assaulted and murdered.

  Gramps is already on his way to Mitchell's house, Kim's hand in his own.

  A tremulous smile curls the corners of my mouth.

  I'd rather do one really right thing in my life and die than do a million wrong things and live.

  Glass clanks, and a muffled scream reaches my ears.

  Mitchell runs toward his childhood home, and I'm tucked against him.

  Solid.

  For now.

  #

  Now, on to DEATH INCARNATE, volume 9 of The Death Series...

  CHAPTER ONE

  Pax 2010

  “Hey!” I shout after them, taking automatic stock of the group as foreign smells of fossil fuel, fresher air, and vague refuse wallop me. I'm never disoriented when I blink, but right now, my vision trembles. I sway in a world so strange it staggers me.

  A past world.

  Clyde's in sick shape, pretty much all melted-candle-wax rot of a face, only one eyeball remaining.

 
; My further scan has Mitch and Gramps already halfway to gone, eating the distance between the boggy stretch of greenbelt where we landed after my blink, and taking long strides deeper into this Kent neighborhood (looking suspiciously like Dad's old hood).

  We’ve arrived at the scene of the home invasion where Mitch's fam was murdered.

  What I do know is: now this zombie—who's got a major undead boner for Dee—is keeping her alive in our future, which he oh-so-conveniently didn't return us to.

  Not sure if I should be grateful or pissed.

  On one hand, we don't have to deal with the Sanction cops who are probably neck-deep at Jonesy's house in our time, scouring the area for what might have happened to us.

  On the other hand, my sister's very existence hinges on psycho Mitch. As usual, all the choices are shit. Normal state of being for a Hart.

  All eyes turn to me.

  I hike my shoulders, letting them slam back down a second later, and state the obvious to Dad: “We need the zombies whole.”

  Crickets buzz in the sudden silence of late summer, and Dad looks to Clyde, shamefaced. “Of course!”

  Fucking duh. Yeah—let's just roll into the house with a sloshing zombie in tow. Real subtle.

  Clyde does a rough shamble foward as Dad strides to meet him.

  “No time, Hart!” Mitchell's brows dump over glaring eyes. Dee is tucked under his arm like an odd-shaped parcel.

  My lips flatten as I ignore his commanding ass.

  Dad grasps Clyde's shoulders, and even I can hear the slop the gesture produces under his deteriorating early-twenty-first-century clothing.

  Then a miracle happens. Clyde's head tips back as though seeking a sun he hasn't felt the heat of in a hundred years.

  The warmth of Dad's power is a better rush than any drug could ever be. That familiar heat pours over me—through me—as I watch what I never get to see: an AftD, who isn't me, restoring a corpse.

  Wild, threadbare patches of hair barely clinging to a chrome dome of a skull fill out like sprouting brown grass and begin to sweep over Clyde's head at spine-tingling speed.

  His jaw becomes solid again, flesh consuming the bare spots of gleaming bone.

  Soon he tucks his chin, meeting Dad's eyes. A sigh slides out between plump, bruise-colored lips, which are bleeding to deep pink with every second.