A Soul Remembered by Vivien Dean

(Part of the Reborn series)

The Reborn project began out of the desperate need to keep a dying man alive. It turned into a century-long hunt for his soul.

Until everything changes one fateful night in a Bayside alley.

Bleeding out from an unexpected attack, prostitute Adam Silver is convinced he’s going to die again without finding the man he’s been looking for since his very first death over a hundred years ago. He gets lucky. Rescue comes in the form of Dr. David Bogart and his friends who happen to be in the area, but it’s in the ambulance on the way to the hospital that Adam sees the birthmark he created to designate the reincarnation of his long lost love. For the first time in years, he feels hope.

But it turns out, finding Bogart was the easy part. Staying alive as he fights to help the man the media has dubbed “Dr. Death” is a hell of a lot harder...

Genres: Gay/Science Fiction/Futuristic/Series

Heat Level: 2
Length: Extended Novella (39k words) 

Read a short excerpt...

...People. Potential rescue.

Reinforcing my grip, I pulled forward a few more inches, scraping my bare thigh across the gritty detritus of the ground. The new holes in my skin didn’t worry me as much as the ones draining my life away. I barely felt the sting as dirt slivered its way into the fresh cuts.

A final cry tore from my broken lungs. The laughter halted in mid-stream, and I squinted through the blur that ruined my vision. I couldn’t see the street now. The world was starting to gray at the edges, shapes losing definition, colors evaporating into nothing. The voices returned, lower, more rushed, punctuated by quick footsteps.

“Hey!” someone shouted. Not me this time. “Down here!”

The footsteps converged in a thunder. When shadows blocked out the watery streetlight, the last of my strength disappeared. My head fell hard against the ground.

“Shit,” a guy muttered. “Someone really worked this one over.”

“Get an ambulance here,” a third man barked.

Hands fell onto my shoulders, pushing me flat. My first instinct was to try to bat them away—I needed to keep moving or I was going to die, didn’t they see that?—but my savior was stronger than me, or more determined, or both, which was probably more the case. I tried to speak, but instead of air passing through my vocal cords, I got blood, turning my words into wet gurgles that had me coughing a third time.

“They’ll never get here in time, Bogart.” That might have been the first man who’d spoken. I was too tired to see how many had found me. “Look at all the blood.”

“Then we stop it until they show.” The weight disappeared from my upper body.

“What’re you doing?”

“My job. Either help or shut the fuck up.”

When his hands came back, they moved quickly, tearing open the front of my shirt where my attacker’s dox rings hadn’t already shredded it. Cooler air wafted over my chest. Another shiver surged through my slender body.

“Hang in there, pal.” His voice was low and soothing in a gruff sort of way, like he’d spent all night at a concert screaming along to the music. His touch was less so, pushing into parts of me that didn’t want anything more to do with the mortal coil. “Talk to me.”

I’d tried that already and gagged on my own blood to show for it. The best I could manage was forcing my eyes to open so I could blink up at him and show I was still alive.

Though the light in the alley was piss-poor, enough trickled from the road to outline the man kneeling at my side. Broad shoulders blocked out a good part of the background, but I saw enough to know he was bare from the waist up. A dark shadow matted his burly chest, trailing down into pants that strained across his thighs. Dress pants, with a visible ribbon trailing along the outside seam. I stared at it for several seconds before my brain connected the garb with the kind of formal occasion they merited.

A wedding? Who would get married at San Francisco’s abandoned docks, at least at this time of night? A man named Bogart, it would seem.

He was too focused on my chest to notice I was staring at him. “What’s the ETA on that ambulance?” he called out.

“Shoney says ten.” The first man appeared at Bogart’s shoulder, a wraith dancing back and forth on his feet. “Is that working?”

“I’ll make it work.”

New pressure pushed against the deepest of the injuries, the one I was pretty sure had punctured my lung. I cried out, trying to flinch away, but Bogart shook his head.

“You’re going to bleed out if I don’t keep this on,” he said. “Stay still.”

My lips worked, determined to communicate with him. “Hurts.”

“I know. I’ll get the techs to pump some empthol into you.”

“That’ll kill him if he’s already using,” the other man intervened.

Bogart leaned closer, bringing his features into sharp relief as he peered into my eyes. His were brown, his full lips tight. Lines feathered from the corners, markers of age that put him at least a decade older than me. He looked kind, which was a silly observation to make when he was trying to save my life. But right then, I was glad he was the one who’d heard me.

I might have a fighting chance...