Broken Communication Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Mandy M. Roth Featured Books

  Mandy M. Roth, Online

  Broken Communication (Immortal Outcasts)

  Dedication:

  Praise for Mandy M. Roth’s Immortal Ops World

  Note from the Author:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  ***

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader

  Broken Communication (Immortal Outcasts)

  by

  Mandy M. Roth

  Broken Communication (Immortal Outcasts) © Copyright 2014, Mandy M. Roth

  Cover art by Andrea Depasture, © Copyright 2014

  First Electronic Printing December 2014, The Raven Books

  Edited by Suz Gower

  Final Line Edits by Dianne B., Jinxie, Lesley Parkin

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  All books copyrighted to the author and may not be resold or given away without written permission from the author, Mandy M. Roth.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any and all characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence. Intended for adults only. Intended for mature audience only.

  Published by Raven Books

  www.ravenhappyhour.com

  Raven Books and all affiliate sites and projects are © Copyrighted 2004-2014

  Mandy M. Roth Featured Books

  Immortal Outcasts (Part of the Immortal Ops World)

  Broken Communication

  Damage Report

  Wrecked Intel

  Isolated Maneuver

  Intelligence Malfunction

  Immortal Ops Series

  Immortal Ops

  Critical Intelligence

  Radar Deception

  Strategic Vulnerability

  Tactical Magik

  Administrative Control

  Separation Zone

  Area of Influence

  Desired Perception

  Carnal Diversions

  Zone of Action

  PSI-Ops Series (Part of the Immortal Ops World)

  Act of Mercy

  Act of Surrender

  Act of Submission

  Act of Security

  Act of Command

  Act of Passion

  Act of Engagement

  Act of Pride

  Act of Duty

  Shadow Agents Series & Crimson Sentinels Series (Part of the Immortal Ops World) Coming Soon!

  Mandy M. Roth, Online

  Mandy loves hearing from readers and can be found interacting on social media.

  (copy & paste links into your browser window)

  Website: http://www.MandyRoth.com

  Blog: http://www.MandyRoth.com/blog

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AuthorMandyRoth

  Roth Head (Mandy M. Roth Fans) Facebook Group:

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/MandyRothReaders/

  Twitter: @MandyMRoth

  Book Release Newsletter: http://www.mandyroth.com/newsletter/

  (Newsletters: I do not share emails and only send newsletters when there is a new release/contest/or sales)

  Broken Communication (Immortal Outcasts)

  Part of the Immortal Ops Series World

  By

  Mandy M. Roth

  Genetically altered into a super soldier who can shift into a wolf, Casey Black should have been the perfect asset—but that wasn’t to be. The scientists who conducted DNA splicing experiments on him put a little too much wolf in his cocktail. Considered a danger to society and a risk to the survival of the secret project, the government tried to eliminate him. The former Immortal Operative has spent the majority of his life on the run and off the grid from the very government who’d helped him be ‘all he could be’. When the sassy, headstrong woman who makes his body burn with need vanishes, he realizes it’s not his head, but rather his heart that is broken. And he’ll do whatever is called for to mend it.

  Dedication:

  To my readers: For loving my genetically altered alpha bad boy ops for over ten years now.

  Praise for Mandy M. Roth’s Immortal Ops World

  Silver Star Award—I feel Immortal Ops deserves a Silver Star Award as this book was so flawlessly written with elements of intrigue, suspense and some scorching hot scenes—Aggie Tsirikas—Just Erotic Romance Reviews

  5 Stars—Immortal Ops is a fascinating short story. The characters just seem to jump out at you. Ms. Roth wrote the main and secondary characters with such depth of emotions and heartfelt compassion I found myself really caring for them—Susan Holly—Just Erotic Romance Reviews

  Immortal Ops packs the action of a Hollywood thriller with the smoldering heat that readers can expect from Ms. Roth. Put it on your hot list…and keep it there! —The Road to Romance

  5 Stars—Her characters are so realistic, I find myself wondering about the fine line between fact and fiction...This was one captivating tale that I did not want to end. Just the right touch of humor endeared these characters to me even more—eCataRomance Reviews

  5 Steamy Cups of Coffee—Combining the world of secret government operations with mythical creatures as if they were an everyday thing, she (Ms. Roth) then has the audacity to make you actually believe it and wonder if there could be some truth to it. I know I did. Nora Roberts once told me that there are some people who are good writers and some who are good storytellers, but the best is a combination of both and I believe Ms. Roth is just that. Mandy Roth never fails to surpass herself—coffeetimeromance

  Mandy Roth kicks ass in this story—inthelibraryreview

  Note from the Author:

  Broken Communication is book one in the Immortal Outcasts Series, a spinoff from my bestselling Immortal Ops World which has been available to readers for over ten years now—spawning many books and spin-offs. I hope you love this glimpse into the genetically altered men the government classified Outcasts.

  Chapter One

  Sweat-soaked and in a panic, his body shaking, Casey Black sat up on the edge of an old cot in the center of a sparsely furnished room, his head hung in defeat. A quick check of his watch revealed he’d been asleep less than an hour. Denying himself much-needed rest over the past week had left him exhausted and his mind a muddled mess. Not that his mind hadn’t been heading in that direction on its own for a long time.

  While the sleep had been required for his body to continue to function, it had not been welcome. He’d dreamt of horrors from long ago—ones he could no more change the outcome of than he could control the weather.

  With his forearm, he wiped the sweat from his brow and stood, stretching his sore muscles. The bathroom off the bedroom wasn’t anything that anyone sane would want to use, let alone drink from the faucet, but Casey wasn’t what anyone would term of sound mind. He bent his head and put his mouth under the old faucet, unconcerned with the rust and grime coating the sink as he turned the handle. The water tasted heavily of rust and sediment, but it was cool and quenched his thirst, so he paid it little mind. He’d had worse.

  He had bigger matters at hand than the quality of his drinking water. He had to find Harmony. She’d already been gone a week. His gut said she was still alive, but he suspected that wouldn’t last long. If he knew anything about the woman, she was full of spit, vinegar and probably caviar or some other fancy food.

  “Don’t,” he said to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Mold coated the bottom corner of the mirror, leaving only a portion of Casey’s face visible, b
ut it was enough for him to see just how far he’d fallen. He looked like a crazed mountain man rather than the high-society gentleman he’d once been, long ago, before deciding to serve his country—before he signed away his life. Before he agreed to be reinvented.

  Re-imagined, even.

  He snorted and half-laughed at the sight of himself there. “Furball.”

  Harmony had called him that more than once over the years. It was strange how much he missed her annoying names for him and her cutting remarks. How much he missed her.

  He splashed water on his face and left the small bathroom, making his way across the room. He tossed on the overhead light and the single, suspended bulb did little to cut through the darkness of the room. The damn thing was practically an antique, and he wasn’t sure how it didn’t burn the whole fucking place down. Exposed wires on the frayed cord signaled the mice were back. They’d leave now that he was at the safe house again. They knew when to avoid a predator, and he was the biggest around. And like the many times before, once he stopped bothering to do more than check in on the place every couple of months, they’d resurface, sensing the big bad wolf was gone.

  The light from the bulb barely made a dent in the quest to illuminate his findings. Some human habits died hard. Lighting a room was one of them, even though he preferred it darker. His eyes, having been genetically altered long ago, were sensitive to light.

  Ever since the unfortunate mishap.

  “Yeah, if that was a mishap, then the Hindenburg was a hiccup and the Titanic sinking was kind of bad for the boating industry,” he said softly, though he wasn’t sure why he bothered whispering. The safe house was secure and remote. All his safe houses were. It’s why he’d picked them over the decades.

  He had homes all over the world. Some were fancy. A lot were barely standing. He had money. Most immortals did—even the ones on the run. There had been a time and place when he’d thought all life’s questions had answers found in fortune.

  He’d been wrong.

  Nearly dead wrong.

  He bent his head in remembrance of the life he’d been forced to leave behind over a century ago. His mother would have been horrified at the state of disrepair the safe house was in. He rubbed his shaggy beard, just under his chin, knowing she would have forbidden such an unsightly state. As much as he’d loathed her demanding nature, he missed her. Missed all his family. They’d passed long ago.

  “You have Laney now,” he said softly, reminding himself that, in reality, his enemies had given him something of a family again when they’d used his DNA samples, taken against his will, to help in the creation of other supernaturals. Laney was a good girl who was mated to a man who could protect her. Casey had passed that baton to him a week prior, after carrying it faithfully for years.

  So much had developed in such a short period of time. Casey had foolishly permitted himself to be lulled into a false sense of security. Into believing his life of living on the run was behind him. He’d known better. Deep down. But that hadn’t stopped hope from burning strongly within him.

  His emotions welled. Letting them free was a bad idea. He wasn’t allowed to have extreme emotions anymore. Doing so left him weakened against his inner beast.

  “My own fucking demon,” he said, venom dripping from every word. He’d never, as of yet, completely mastered the animal side of himself. Over the years he’d met natural-borns, men and women born with the ability to shift forms into animals. He’d even run into those who had been attacked by a natural and lived to tell the tale—getting pretty fucking furry the month following. They all seemed to have a better handle on their animal sides than he did.

  Special.

  That was what the scientists had called him way back when he’d been their pet project.

  “Special, my ass.”

  They’d gotten lucky with him. Unbeknownst to Casey and the scientists at the time, he had supernaturals in his family history somewhere, which left his body in a better position to accept what wasn’t natural to it—wolf DNA, among other things the group had thought up and used.

  Straight humans weren’t so lucky.

  He almost laughed at the idea of what had happened to him being anything other than a nightmare. It had been nearly one hundred years since he’d volunteered to help better his country. Since he’d agreed to try to make a difference and better the future of mankind.

  Since he’d said yes to becoming a lab rat. A human test subject for twisted scientists who wanted to better the human race.

  Spoon-fed lines of total and utter bullshit.

  He was living proof of that.

  Sure, their goal eventually worked, but that meant little for the good men and women who had been used to further the cause of science and died because of it. And it sure the fuck meant little to those who had been subjected to testing against their will—by some of the very same doctors who pioneered the first attempts at creating super soldiers. The brains of the eugenics movement.

  So many thought, wrongfully, that the Nazis were the ones who’d pioneered eugenics. Their quest for a Master Race was all over history books and etched in the brains of many, but they’d not been alone in the beginning.

  Far from it.

  The roots of eugenics hit much closer to home. Hell, it was in people’s backyards to this day, but they didn’t know. The government liked to bury its ugly history and point in another direction to divert attention from themselves.

  His existence solidified the statement. Though, had the men and women in charge of it all had their way, he’d not be living proof of anything. The others like him—the ones whose bodies rejected the doctors’ tests and experiments in some form or fashion and who were lucky enough to survive the ordeal—had been relinquished to a secure location to live out their days in peace.

  “More bullshit,” he said, his voice harsh.

  Casey thought back to his time in what the higher-ups had taken to calling a “long-term care facility”, when in reality it was a prison. Bars were on the windows, armed guards at each entrance and exit, and the men were locked in their rooms at night. None of that added up to a cushy place to lay low and live out their immortal lives.

  Far from it.

  They’d really been sent there to be held until the government could figure out what to do with them. Apparently, the age-old question of “What do we do with our mistakes?” hadn’t been fully thought out prior to the start of the testing. In the end, the government decided termination and elimination of any evidence of their spectacular failure was necessary.

  They wanted no trace of the Outcasts—the genetic rejects. And they’d nearly gotten their wish.

  Ironically enough, the doctors were the reason Casey had survived the first attempt on his life. They’d altered his DNA and changed his genetic make-up, making him something much more than human, but thankfully not totally animal, as he’d seen some of his brethren become during the testing stages. The doctors had paid particular attention to increasing Casey’s ability to heal, attaining a level that was relatively unheard of, even in the supernatural community.

  He looked down at the back of his hand, remembering the smell of burning flesh, as if the explosion had happened just yesterday, rather than decades ago. He could vividly recall that his flesh looked like wax, melting, leaving muscle and bone painfully exposed. He’d not stopped what he was doing. Men—lab rats like him—had still been in the building during the explosion. It didn’t matter that he’d been burned badly. He’d done what he had to in order to get them out.

  As many as he could.

  Getting to safety had needed to wait when so many were still trapped.

  When he’d gained consciousness a week later and found himself in the care and treatment of a tiny elderly woman gifted in the arts of Chinese medicine, there had been no regrets. Didn’t matter that his body hadn’t, at that point, fully recovered, or that every second of every hour he’d lived in excruciating pain. He’d freed his brothers-in-arms. That was al
l that mattered to him.

  What bothered him most wasn’t even the attempt to wipe them all out, it was how they’d been forced to scatter like rats in the wind, losing contact with one another after they’d gone through so much together. He missed them and regretted not being able to locate any of them. They’d been trained well in the art of escaping and evading. They were ghosts and would only be seen and found when they wanted to be. As far as Casey knew, none of the Outcasts wanted to be found.

  He couldn’t blame them. They not only had to worry about their own government still wanting them dead, they had to worry about new enemies over the years—sick fucks who wanted to create supernatural armies, and they’d do anything and hurt anyone to see that come to pass. They were as bad as the men who had turned him into what he was.

  “Bastards,” he said as he reached to the wall and touched one of the sketches of the main scientist who had been in charge of Casey’s treatments so long ago. Casey had drawn the picture from memory, the man’s features forever seared into his mind. Hell, the guy still haunted Casey’s nightmares.

  Others had picked up the baton the doctor dropped and the testing continued in secret, hidden from the public after the shock and horror of Hitler and his scientists came to light. To this day, the war conducted under the noses of humans continued. Though, it was getting harder and harder to hide from them all.

  Forensic science advancements continued to grow daily, and at some point hiding would become nearly impossible unless every supernatural in the world went totally off the grid. As Casey had done.