Page 1 of Beyond Reason

Chapter 1

Marshall

Everything ached. The world came in flashes—a young man named Clay, trapped in the body of a boy named Seth. The knowledge that what we were doing was wrong, what was happening was wrong. What was about to happen was wrong, and I needed to fix it.

Deke, staring at me with wide eyes… and…

A needle.

A sharp hit.

My head aching, my thoughts flooding away… and then…

Nothing. Nothing but a voice pooling somewhere in the depths of my chest that called out a name.

Axel.

Axel?

I didn’t know anyone named Axel.

And then I didn’t know anything.

Marshall Xavier

There was fire when I woke up. So choking and hot, and my body was screaming in pain. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where I was… I just knew I had to move.

To a door.

Down a hall. Through flames that were slowly engulfing the entire building around me, I finally found a door. The hit of cool air on my lungs was like a balm, stinging against scorched skin and sending pain zinging along a wound on my head.

In the distance, I could see two men standing… one small with curly blond hair, and one tall with tattoos and a leather jacket. It was the smaller one that looked at me with eyes that went wide. His companion was staring at the building that was slowly erupting into flames behind me like it had personally offended him.

It was the smaller one that grabbed the other man’s hand and said a name. “Kade, come on. Let’s go.”

“Don’t you want to watch it burn?”

“No, I just… want to leave.” He tugged him away before he noticed me, but he threw one more glance over his shoulder as darkness engulfed me again and my head hit the ground.

I was aware, but things were… strange.

There was beeping—I knew sometimes that I was up, that I was moving… but everything was drifting in and out in edges of white and bursts of color, like a kaleidoscope that left me incapable of processing what I was seeing.

Sometimes, the people around me spoke like I wasn’t in the room, and sometimes they whispered in hushed tones like mourners over a dead body… and I wondered if that was what I was.

Was I dead?

Was this some bastardized version of limbo where a god I’d never believed in tried to weigh the measure of my sins against the good I’d done?

If that was the case, I wasn’t sure why the jackass was taking so long—we both knew Heaven wouldn’t have me. The blood on my hands had stained straight through my skin and painted my soul in slashes of crimson and streaks of black.

I let myself drift, and I didn’t try to fight to the surface. I was content to ride beneath the waves that left everything hazy and unclear. It was less painful that way, less…

Difficult.

It took me a while to realize that I couldn’t think of why it was hard, though, why it might be painful.

When I finally remembered that I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten here, I tried to sit up. My body ached, my muscles felt loose… and when I tried to speak, my voice came out as nothing more than a whisper.

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