The Last Raven: An Urban Fantasy Noir (Riftborn Book 1), page 10
“Why didn’t you use it to do church stuff?” I asked.
“It’s tainted money, Lucas,” Gabriel told me. “After you left, I took it from the RCU for hunting down a revenant who was hiring himself out as an assassin. It was the last job I did. Dan worked with me, told me to keep the money and do something good with it. I know, we can keep proceeds that we find, but it’s blood money. Something about using it for the church felt wrong. I used two hundred grand of it to help people in the community, but I knew that I had to keep some back. I just had a feeling I was going to need it.”
“You killed an assassin?” I asked.
“Dan did,” Gabriel said. “The target was making himself a problem to the Ancients. He took a shot at one. We were asked to track him down and make sure he didn’t do it again. He was not a good guy.”
We talked about old times for the hour or so that the journey lasted, and I was genuinely happy to be in the company of old friends again. I’d felt conflicted about coming back and helping, but seeing Hannah and Gabriel, and spending time with both of them, made me feel like I’d made the right choice. I couldn’t run from my past forever; I just needed to learn from it and be better in future.
I stopped the car in a car park behind a long, squat three-storey building that looked like an office block, but I got the impression it was anything but. There were five other cars in the car park, all of which probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The red Ferrari F8 Spider in particular looked like it had cost its owner a small fortune.
“Booker’s car,” Gabriel said.
I looked behind me at what Gabriel was pointing at and spotted the bright yellow Porsche 911 Carrera 4S.
“What the hell does Booker do for a living?” I asked.
“I don’t think fifty grand is going to get us very far,” Hannah said.
“He’ll be fine,” Gabriel said as Hannah got out of the car, pulling her chair forward for Gabriel to exit behind her.
I took a deep breath and left the BMW, locking it behind me as I looked over the roof at Gabriel and Hannah. “How do you want to play this?” I asked.
“Honesty,” Gabriel said. “He’ll spot anything less and it’ll go downhill from there.”
We walked together to the nearest door. Gabriel knocked, and the door opened.
“Yes?” a large Hispanic man asked, his huge arms crossed over a barrel-like chest.
“We’d like to see Booker,” Gabriel said. “My name is Father Gabriel Santiago.”
The large man’s eyes widened the second the word father was uttered. “He knows you?” the man asked.
“We’re old friends,” Gabriel said. “You can go tell him I’m here if you like, and he’ll decide for himself, or you can let us in out of the cold and we’ll wait for you to go check.”
The man looked Hannah over before checking me out last. Clearly, he considered us to be no threat to him, because he opened the door and motioned for us to take a seat on a nearby bench. A second man, this one white with tattoos all over his bare arms, sat in a folding chair nearby, a shotgun on a counter beside him.
“Nice ink,” Hannah said to the man.
“Thank you,” the man replied.
“I like the shark,” Hannah continued, while I tried to spot the shark among the mass of colour on his arms.
“Gotta love Jaws,” he said, twisting his arm as if to look at it for the first time.
“It’s a classic,” Gabriel said.
“That it is,” the man said with a sage nod.
“You worked for Booker long?” I asked.
“A year now,” the man said. “José and I started working for him at the same time.”
“José, the guy who went to find Booker?” I asked.
“Yeah, we were studying American history at college, and we needed some cash,” the man said. “Booker gave us a job, but we had to keep the studying up.”
“How’s it going?” I asked him.
“Well, thanks,” the man said.
“Oli,” José said as he returned. “You don’t need to tell them our life stories.”
“Sorry, man, they don’t really seem like a big problem,” Oli said sheepishly.
“Apologies for Oli,” José said. “He doesn’t have much of a filter when it comes to talking to people who don’t cower from him.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Booker always did employ the best.”
José and Oli both nodded at that.
“I’ll take you to Booker,” José said. “He’s with Zita.”
“Who’s Zita?” Hannah whispered to Gabriel as we followed José down a long corridor where I heard snippets of conversation behind several ajar doors. Whatever Booker had going there was a bigger operation than just José and Oli.
We walked up a flight of stairs and down a second, identical corridor, and at the end, José knocked, and pushed open the door for us.
The office inside was large and spacious, with a wooden desk next to a large window that overlooked the car park.
Booker stood behind his desk, his hands behind his back. He wore a tan suit that I was pretty sure cost more than Gabriel had brought in his bag, and had diamond studs in each ear. Booker was six feet tall, thin, with dark skin, and a scar that went from under his left eye, stopping just above his ear. I’d occasionally wondered where he’d gotten it, but I was a hundred percent certain it was none of my business, so I’d never asked.
A comfortable leather couch was under the large window, with a Latina woman sat on it. She wore jeans, a black T-shirt, and high-heels, her brown hair tied back in a high ponytail.
“Booker, Zita,” José said. “These are the people who came to see you.”
“Thank you, José,” Booker said.
We all waited for José to leave.
“Gabriel,” Booker said, unfolding his arms from behind him, walking around to the front of the desk and hugging the smaller man.
“Hannah,” Booker said, continuing with the hugs.
“It’s been too long, Booker,” Hannah said.
“Yes, it has,” Booker said. “But not as long as when I last saw this guy.”
“Booker,” I said, looking around the office, taking in the number of paintings on the wall. One of which was of an old plantation-looking house, but it was on fire. “You seem to be doing well for yourself.”
“I do okay, thanks,” he said before giving me a hug. “Goddamn, it’s good to see you.”
I smiled as Booker looked over at Gabriel. “Sorry, Father,” he said softly.
“We’ve been teasing him for hours,” Hannah said. “I doubt it even bothers him now.”
“You all know I don’t run a Christian church, right?” Gabriel said. “Goddamn doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
Booker smiled, and I caught Hannah looking away to stop from laughing.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Booker said. “This is Zita.”
Zita waved but didn’t get up.
“She’s not a handshaker or hugger,” Booker said.
“She your business partner or girlfriend?” Hannah asked.
“Both,” Zita said with a smile.
“She keeps my more . . . outlandish ideas in check,” Booker said.
“Like buying Ferraris?” I asked.
“That one is mine,” Zita said with a laugh.
“I heard about your team,” Booker said to Hannah, suddenly serious. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” Hannah said. “That’s why we’re here.”
“You want information?” Zita asked.
“On Sky-High Security,” I said.
Booker considered my words for a moment. “Zita, what do you know about Sky-High Security?”
“Run by Mason Barnes,” she said almost instantly. “Oldest male child of Barnes Pharmaceutical, thirty-six, rich, asshole. Not necessarily in that order.”
“How do you know that?” Gabriel asked.
“I worked for the family,” Zita said. “About two years ago, I was doing some accounts work for his father, Dominic, and I had the unfortunate luck to run into Mason fairly regularly. He’s one of those handsome-and-knows-it kind of men, the kind who don’t really understand the word no and think it’s a challenge.”
“I’ve met one or two,” Hannah said icily.
“Well, Mason is their king,” Zita said. “He wants to create the first-ever all-revenant private security team. I know, there are other private security that have revenants, but this is only revenants. Ones that are loyal only to Mason and his shareholders. It was something I felt deeply concerned about; I went to Dominic, and soon after, I was fired for gross insubordination. A few days later I start to see goons following me around; I grabbed one and got him to tell me that Mason had hired them to scare me. Obviously, that worked brilliantly. I knew Booker already and came to him for a job, and since then, no creepy stalkers outside my apartment.”
“That worked out well that we came to ask for intel on someone and the lady you’re dating worked for them,” Gabriel said.
“Not a huge shock,” Booker said. “I’ve poached about a third of my staff from that company. Apparently, revenants don’t enjoy working for people who look at them like lab rats.”
“What is it you do?” I asked.
“That’s an excellent question,” Booker said, putting his arm around my shoulder. “How about Hannah, Gabriel, and Zita all stay and have a chat about Mason and his machinations for world domination, and I’ll show you around.”
“Sure thing,” I said, letting Booker lead me out of the room.
We tracked back the way we’d come until we were close to the entrance, but instead of making our way toward it, we turned the other way and walked past several doors until we came to an office at the end of the corridor. Booker opened the door, revealing a set of three lifts inside. “There are stairs too, but they’re in one of the rooms behind us.”
He pressed a button for the lift, which immediately opened, and he motioned for me to go in first. Seeing how my alarm bells weren’t sounding, I did as was asked, waiting for Booker to scan an ID card over a numberless box next to the entrance. The doors closed, and we began our descent.
The doors opened, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t imagining the scene in front of me.
“Booker, you have a casino,” I said, stepping out of the lift into the silence of the cavernous room.
There were a few dozen people cleaning or talking in groups, but other than that, there was no one there.
“We don’t open until eight,” Booker said.
I followed him down a flight of steps to the casino floor. The mass of machines were switched off, and I was grateful for the lack of sensory overload.
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked Booker after he’d said hello to several members of staff on the floor.
“Revenants like to gamble, but we’re barred from most casinos for one reason or another,” Booker said, raising his arms in a grand fashion. “We like to compete too, but we’re not allowed in officially sanctioned sports. So, I provide what others won’t.”
“You’re a casino owner and sports promoter?” I asked.
“There’s another building across town, next to a large field, which I also own. We run physical competitions there. Boxing, UFC, running, basketball, whatever people want to play. We have an actual chess tournament once a month. Last month, eight thousand people turned up to watch.”
“To watch chess?” I asked.
“Humans are starting to come too,” Booker said with a sage nod. “They want to see what we can do.”
“That’s brilliant,” I said honestly.
“I know,” Booker said with a wide smile. “I don’t want that bag of money that Gabriel is holding.”
“You know about that?”
“Yeah, it’s Gabriel. He holds the money like it’s about to float away.”
I laughed. “Okay, Booker, what do you want?”
“In return for Zita telling you everything she knows about Mason and Sky-High, I want to know what happened to the Ravens, Lucas. I want the truth.”
I put out my hand. “Deal.”
Booker shook my hand. “There’s one other thing.”
“Don’t start adding to the deal,” I said with a shake of my head.
“Nothing like that,” Booker said with a chuckle. “I think you’re going to want to see this.”
I followed Booker through a nearby door, with Booker nodding to the large doorman as we went through. He took me down a set of stairs and into the first room we came to on the hallway below.
The room was empty of people and contained just two chairs, a table—all of which were made of metal—and had several Manilla folders in a stack on it. “I had my people set this up,” Booker said. “I think you’d like to know away from Gabriel and Hannah.”
“Know what?” I asked, taking a seat on one of the chairs as Booker sat on the other and passed me the first folder.
I opened it and took out the picture of the woman inside. She was sat cross-legged and barefoot on a bench, with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She had short, dark hair and olive skin, and wore a long black dress, but what drew me were the chains that came out of hoods of skin on each wrist.
“A chained revenant,” I said.
“Her name is Nadia,” Booker said. “We think she’s Argentinian. But all we really know is that she’s five feet tall and, like you said, a chained revenant. Thus ends the information we have on her. She comes here once a month to fight in one of the tournaments.”
“I figured that Mason wouldn’t like his people coming here, seeing how you poached them,” I said.
“I don’t think Nadia is all that close with him,” Booker told me. “She’s a capable fighter, a scary fighter, too.”
I looked back at the picture. Like all chained revenants, Nadia’s chains were approximately an inch in diameter and a foot long, although based on previous chained revenants, I imagined she could grow them to be several feet in length and use them like whips, changing the edges to be razor-sharp at the same time.
I’d once seen an X-ray of a chained revenant’s arms, and the chains were fused with their radius and ulnar, almost wrapping around them while being a part of them at the same time. Most people who were afraid of revenants were terrified of chained revenants. And for good reason. If there was ever a type of revenant that would kill you for just being there, it was them.
Chained revenants move with a sort of jerky stop-motion movement when they use their powers, which makes them difficult opponents.
“What’s she like?” I asked.
“She’s scary,” Booker said. “Even sat still, she gives off the vibe of being someone you do not want to cross. Her smile is . . . off. As if she’s considering how best to end your life. She’s quiet but not shy, intelligent, and, more than anything, capable of killing someone without batting her brown eyes. Honestly, Lucas, I like her.”
I opened the second file, which had a picture of a large blond man with bushy beard. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, and looked to be standing on a beach somewhere.
“Alexis Capan died in 1889 on the shores of the White Sea on the north-western coast of Russia,” Booker said. “He’s a bone revenant. Alexis is six foot eight, and weighs nearly three hundred pounds, all of it muscle.”
Bone revenants could cover their body in thick bone-like armour and create weapons out of their body. They were strong, dangerous, and not people you want to fight up close and personal if you can get away with it.
“We know that after he was murdered and came back,” Booker said, “he hunted down and brutally killed everyone who had taken part in his death. He also killed their friends and family members. And then he left his village, and after several decades, he joined a Guild, but left after less than twenty years. Rules are for other people. So, he became a gun for hire. He’s fought here too; he’s not the brightest bulb, but he’s dangerous.”
Before I could open the last file, Booker snatched it away. “Look, the reason I brought you down here was because I need you to see this away from Hannah and Gabriel. I wasn’t entirely sure how you would react.”
“Is it your mom?” I asked Booker, who smiled, but it only lasted a second.
“I’m serious, Lucas,” Booker said. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
I took the file as it was slid across the table and opened it. The man in the photo was handsome in a sterile, frat-boy sort of way. He was clean-shaven and had the appearance of someone who would one hundred percent flex in the mirror at every available opportunity.
“This is Mason Barnes,” Booker said. “The boss of Sky-High Security, and look what he’s wearing.”
I didn’t answer, I didn’t look up. I was focused on why there was a medallion of the Raven Guild hanging around his neck.
CHAPTER TEN
Lucas,” Booker said somewhere in the distance of my hearing.
“Why does he have a Raven’s Guild medallion?” I asked without looking up.
Seven years earlier, my friends . . . my family in the Raven Guild had been ambushed and slaughtered. I’d spent years searching for who had done it, almost to the point of exhaustion, both mental and physical. I’d suffered from survivor’s guilt; I’d pushed away anyone who tried to help. Isaac had been the one who had forced me to accept what had happened, who had helped me, who had given me a chance at the asylum five years before to redirect my energies. I thought I’d been ready to jump back in, and I’d been wrong. Seeing the medallion that had belonged to a murdered member of my Guild, dropped around the neck of someone like Mason Barnes like it was a piece of gaudy jewellery, brought back a crescendo of emotions.
“He bought it at auction,” Booker said. “Paid a lot of money for it. The photo was taken three years ago, just after he’d claimed his prize.”
I sucked down the anger I felt at seeing something with so much meaning paraded by such a worthless piece of shit. Booker had called it his prize, and the idea of someone thinking of the medallion like that, an object people had died wearing, made me feel ill.
