Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed Read Online Free PDF

“Nobody’s
forgotten the damned vortex,” he growled. “All I’m saying is,
whether it was natural or not, it wasn’t a damned tornado—because
if it had been we’d still be on Xeno-12—probably dead, but still
there. And I, for one, don’t think it was natural at all. Not
saying it couldn’t be, but we were at war. It seems to me that we have to consider
that the chances are high that it was some kind of
weapon.
    “ We know positively that
we aren’t in our universe! A lot of things seem to be the same, but
everything’s backwards and twisted. We dropped onto a battlefield
in our time and place—war games, I’m pretty sure, here. We keep
seeing people we recognize as people we knew in our own time and
place, but they aren’t the same. They just look like the people we
knew—well, except for the people that got sucked through that thing
with us. And I’m thinking it had to be an exchange—we switched
places—because I don’t think I could be in the same time and place
as another version of me—any of us.”
    Damien shook his head. “We’ve gone
over this, Lucien, over and over in the past eighteen months. I
don’t see that going over it is helping. I don’t see that we’re any
closer to figuring this shit out just by rehashing it.”
    Lucien glared at him. “Bear with me.
I’m just trying to get this straight in my head,
alright?”
    Damien shrugged and focused on his
beer.
    “ What I was getting around
to is that even though this is a different place there are
connections and parallels. Laurie isn’t Lindsey. I’m almost one
hundred percent positive of that. But one thing I have noticed
since we got here is that …. Well, it’s like the two places are
connected in a way. They run parallel to each other and a lot of
the same things are true of both. What I’m saying is Laurie
isn’t our Lindsey, but she’s the person our Lindsey would be in this
universe—is. So there must be a connection even if she isn’t the
same person.”
    Damien blinked at him, glanced at
Basil and Kane and then looked at Lucien again, and then his beer.
“How many of these have I had?”
    Lucien glared at him. “Ok, let me put
it this way—I still think we might be on to something and I still
think we need to stay close to Lindsey/Laurie. There’s a connection
somehow someway. I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure we met up
with her because it was inevitable/fate/ or whatever the hell you
want to call it.
    “ It’s like DA Peeples all
over again. He barely glanced at the identities we’d made up for
ourselves. Why? He isn’t Donald. He doesn’t know us—isn’t our
brother in this world--but he still felt the connection. There’s no other explanation
for him hiring us without a thorough background check.”
    Kane frowned, obviously turning that
over in his mind and examining the logic for flaws. “It didn’t look
to me like Lindsey/Laurie felt any connection. She didn’t trust us
at all.”
    Damien gave him a look. “And Cpl.
Merriweather was our bud, right?”
    Kane stared at him a moment. His brow
cleared. “True. She hated our guts so that’s not really
different.”
    Lucien and Damien both glared at him,
but it was Lucien who spoke. “Speak for yourself. She didn’t hate
me, and I didn’t get that vibe from Laurie either.”
    Basil and Kane exchanged a
look. Basil knew when to keep his mouth shut, though.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t something Kane had ever learned. “She
threatened to have us terminated … twice! … for insubordination.
She said we were defective. You’re saying she actually liked us?”
    “ She was against the genetic
engineering project,” Lucien said pointedly. “She didn’t hate us.
She just didn’t trust genetic engineering, and, as much as I hate
to admit it, she was right. We damned sure aren’t normal .”
    “ Somehow I don’t think the
shape-shifting was part of that project,” Damien said dryly. “That
was something that happened to us when we