Life Cycle

Life Cycle

Zoe Winters

Copyright © 2012 Zoe Winters

all rights reserved.

Digital Edition License Notes

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Publisher's Note:

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Contact [email protected]

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the following people:

Robin Ludwig for cover art!

Natasha for her always-amazing copyedits. (As well as
developmental edits. She’s always trying to help me get to the
“next level” with my writing.)

Kimberly, Michelle, Eden, and Jackie for beta
reading.

Michelle for the kickass book trailer.

Tom. Because I just like him.

For Kelly Mueller for her
birthday.

Thank you for all your
support of my work.

Prologue

123 A.D. A hidden cavern near the waters of
the Blue Grotto in Italy.

Tamar shivered with her twelve companions. They were
about to attempt their most daring incantation. An opening at the
top of the cavern allowed the light from the full moon to shine
down on them, illuminating their secret gathering and adding its
own power to the unfolding ritual.

Salt water splashed on her from a waterfall in the
nearby pool. They’d searched for the water of immortality, a legend
that had spread since before her birth. Far and wide, people had
spoken of water that could make a person eternal and young.

But it wasn’t the water that conferred immortality.
It was the creatures that lived inside the water. They were
transparent and hard to see, with spongy tops and long tendrils on
the bottom that could sting if you got too close. They didn’t die.
Instead, they could age backward, reaching the end of their life,
and then, without dying, start over again.

“We’ll freeze to death if you don’t hurry.” Tamar
glared at the man in the middle of the circle. The irony of
freezing to death while seeking immortality caused her to stifle a
dark laugh.

“The potion must be altered with other
ingredients unless you want to come back as a newborn each time.
You’ll find that frustrating,” Jacob said. He was their leader and
the best with potions.

Tamar made a face, but huddled closer to her sister,
Naomi, for warmth. A circle of salt had been poured around them.
Candles were already lit. A large stone had become a makeshift
table upon which the coven leader worked. The sea creatures had
been pulverized and added to an iron pot. He poured the herbal
infusions into the potion.

Jacob passed a sharp knife to the person on his left.
“Each of us must contribute blood to the potion or it will fail.
The magic is in this creature, but they have no blood. Our blood
must bond with this animal if we hope to succeed.”

“Are you sure that’s necessary?” Naomi asked. Tamar
nodded her agreement. Cutting themselves and mixing their blood
seemed extreme. What would be the consequences of linking together
eternally?

“I am sure,” Jacob said, losing patience with their
squeamishness. Magic like this had a price, and they all knew it.
But the consequences always showed themselves when it was too
late.

One by one they sliced the center of their palms with
the ritual knife and added their blood. Jacob stirred the
concoction with a wooden spoon; it smelled like death. When he was
finished, he dipped a silver goblet into the brew.

“We each drink and then we chant,” he said, passing
the goblet.

Tamar couldn’t help feeling pride
at the chant she’d written. When they’d all drunk, they clasped
hands and turned their faces up to the moonlight. The cavern echoed
their words back to them.
“Da
immortalitatem. Renatus sine oblitus. Numquam moriens. Da
immortalitatem. Renatus sine oblitus. Numquam
moriens...”

And then they all died.

Tamar jolted as oxygen flooded into her body.
Something felt very strange. Had the spell worked? She glanced
around at her companions, each of them coming back to life one by
one.

“We’re all children.”

Chapter One

Golatha Falls, Georgia. The Present.

Tam perched on the bar stool in her kitchen, still as
death. Her third cup of Earl Grey tea cooled on the counter,
ignored. Normally the warm brew calmed her nerves, but nothing
would comfort her today.

She’d read her tarot cards, tea leaves, and scried
with a bowl of water and sea salt. Everything she tried gave her
the same morbid story. The death card glared back at her, mocking,
and though she’d told many others—sometimes truthfully, sometimes
not so much—that the death card didn’t always mean death, she knew
this card said her number was up.

Jack—as Jacob was called now—was back, and he was
after her. She fought to keep the tremor out of her hand as she
raised the tea to her lips. He wouldn’t offer her a quick death. It
would involve a cold stone slab, bleeding to death, and having
vital organs removed. Ritualistic, because ritual was how you got
the most effect out of stealing a fellow magic user’s power.

Tam had considered herself a
cycler
since the night
she was reborn in that cavern nearly two thousand years ago. True
to Jack’s word, each time they died, they came right back in their
own younger body, looking for all the world to be about twelve
years old—an inconvenience to say the least. Tam had been shuffled
from orphanage to orphanage each time she began a new life
cycle.

This last time she’d gotten lucky and been adopted by
a well-to-do family who had taken her in and put her through a good
school. The thought was nice, though pointless, given how many
times she’d already suffered through school.

Cyclers kept their memories, their sense of
continuity. They were effectively immortal, just like the rare
breed of jellyfish they’d discovered so long ago.

Jack had only been actively hunting the other cyclers
for a few centuries. He’d gone power hungry, convinced he could
stop the cycle altogether and achieve true immortality by draining
the power of his coven. Magic users aged differently—the more
magic, the longer they could live. But it wasn’t just that. She
knew him. He had an angle—something more than a personal quest for
immortality.

If murder was his new hobby, his purpose for gaining
all that power couldn’t be good. If he was going to get her anyway,
suicide seemed the smarter option. It would free her to be reborn
the normal way and keep her safe from a more brutal death at Jack’s
hands.

But it wasn’t so simple. There were two ways she
could die for real—and two ways only: at the hands of another
cycler, or through magical means by a very old preternatural being,
such as a demon or vampire at least a few thousand years old. Those
were hard to come by, and their killing methods were usually too
creative for Tam’s taste. She wanted to break the cycle, not be
tortured.

Either way, she’d managed, through this latest cycle,
to stifle the suicidal urge. Until now.

The image of the demon she’d chosen formed in her
mind. Cain. The very first incubus. If he couldn’t kill her, nobody
could. And he hated her. It should be simple enough to get him to
agree, assuming she could find him. She’d dropped him in front of
his badass pals a couple of times already with energy balls. He was
probably plotting her death at this very moment.

Anna might know where to find him, since she was
mated to a demon, but Tam hadn’t seen her best friend in three
months. It wasn’t as if Tam had directions to the demon portals or
a way to get through to their dimension even if she did. If Anna
surfaced in the human dimension, Tam could do a spell to locate
her, but who could say when that would happen? And would it be
before Jack reached her?

Deep in her gut, she knew she was
going to die—either by Cain’s hand or by Jack’s. As arrogant as the
bastard was, Cain’s methods would at least be pleasurable. Bleeding
out and organ removal versus orgasms.
Gee,
how do I decide? They both sound so glamorous and
exciting.

***

Cain snarled as he passed through
the portal point into Cary Town, Washington. The filmy dimensional
doorway shimmered and then fizzled out of existence as he moved
through the forest away from it. He couldn’t believe he’d allowed
himself to be summoned by the vampire king.
Half-breeds.

He’d thought his business with
Anthony was finished when Cain had delivered his
don’t mess with us again or there will be a
war
speech the last time they’d met. But
now there was a bigger evil brewing, something that risked the
living standards of all the factions—and possibly their
lives.

Even his newly turned succubus and her werewolf mate
would be at the meeting, which was going to be awkward to say the
least, given that they all hated Anthony. And the feeling was
mutual. How this was going to go with everybody in one room, he
couldn’t say. Officially, the werewolf pack was banished from Cary
Town. If someone saw them slinking through the night to Anthony’s
penthouse, things would get entertaining.

The demon nodded at the guardian in the lobby of the
Cary Town Luxury Apartments. This meeting was being kept on the
down-low. The Preternatural Council had been shut out. Even most of
the vampire king’s coven didn’t know he was fraternizing with the
enemy and holding a secret meeting in his former penthouse
residence. Cain stepped onto the elevator and pulled out the key
he’d been given to gain access to the sixth floor.

The door at the end of the hall was answered by a
vampire who looked more like a butler. “They’re on the roof by the
pool, sir.”

Cain took the stairs two at a time. His presence
announced itself as the metal door clanged against the brick. All
eyes went to him, and he smirked.

“Well, well, looks like the gang’s all here.” And
what a motley crew they were.

Anthony stood at one end of the table beside an
overhead projector and portable screen that had been plugged into
an outlet embedded in the brick.

At the table were several familiar faces. Beside
Anthony was his human mate, Charlee. Coming around the table was
Cain’s brother, Luc, and his annoying mate, Anna. Then there was
Jane, the new succubus who was mated to Cole, the Cary Town
werewolf pack alpha. The rest, he didn’t know.

“You’re late,” Anthony said, bristling. “We’ve
been waiting, and Charlotte needs her rest. The baby takes a lot
out of her.”

Cain’s eyes cut to the vampire’s mate. She was so
pregnant she’d pop any day now. If this meeting was about her and
her spawn, heads were going to roll. If he didn’t care about a
half-breed, he sure as hell didn’t care about a quarter-breed.

“I was detained. These things happen. Lovely little
school teacher. I made some third graders very happy today. Or
they’ll be happy tomorrow, anyway.”

Cole growled from his seat beside Jane. “You killed a
woman, you mean.”

Cain chuckled. “My god, man, what is it with you and
this obsession with killing? Which one of us is the demon? Perhaps
amongst your kind third graders are happy when their teacher dies.
She’s… just a little spent. She’ll have to take a sick day
tomorrow.”

He dropped into a chair at the end of the table where
he could most easily glare at and annoy Anthony. Since Cain wasn’t
killing him right now, annoying him would be the second best thing.
He didn’t like that Anthony was in charge of this meeting. The
vampire king was practically a child next to Cain’s eight thousand
years. It should be seniority rule.

The vampire cleared his throat. “Sitting next to you
is Father Hadrian who is one of mine… And over here is our resident
sorcerer, Dayne, and his lovely werecat, Greta.” Anthony leered at
the brunette beside the sorcerer and Greta gripped Dayne’s hand
tighter.