The Last Raven: An Urban Fantasy Noir (Riftborn Book 1), page 18
One of the men, the largest of the three, with a big black bushy beard, got to his feet and rolled his shoulders, cracking his knuckles as he walked toward me while his friends finally found their courage.
“We don’t need to fight, do we?” I asked.
The big man, who stank of cigarette smoke, ran toward me, throwing a huge haymaker that I ducked, and I smashed my elbow into his ribs, pushing him back toward his two friends, both of whom had drawn knives, despite them having guns in their holsters. I guessed that they weren’t meant to draw attention to themselves while they stayed there. Either that or they considered me no threat.
The commotion brought out thugs number four and five, the latter being Brad, whose eyes widened when he saw me. He went for his gun.
I turned toward him, took one step, and turned into smoke. I can create smoke, manipulate it, make it into weapons, harden it, and a host of other things, but turning into smoke itself and moving around in that form was hard work, especially seeing how I turned whatever I was wearing or holding into smoke, too. Except for living tissue. I done it a few times and . . . well, frankly it’s bad.
The smoke swirled around Brad, who tried to bat me away like I was an errant wasp. I re-formed behind him, the larger of my two knives in hand, as I spun away from him and drove the knife into the chest of his companion. I pushed him away, the knife sliding out of him with ease, and spun back toward Brad, who had turned toward me, his gun now out of its holster. I turned partially to smoke and moved faster than he was capable of understanding, punching him in the stomach as I moved past him, breaking his arm, and tossing the gun aside before I let go of him.
Brad fell to his knees, screaming in pain, as his three remaining friends stared at me in open horror. I couldn’t keep up the turning to smoke for long, but it was usually enough to do it once and let everyone else piss themselves.
The big man surprised me by barrelling into me, taking me off my feet and trying to smash me, head-first, into the wall. I slammed my elbow into his nose, and he changed his plan, releasing me enough to drop to the ground. I pushed him aside and stabbed him under the armpit, twice in quick succession, one slightly lower than the other. Blood poured out of the wound, and he staggered back as I moved toward his two friends, one who was trying to get the revolver out of its holster and died with a blade to the throat before he was able to.
The last one back-pedaled and fell onto the glass coffee table, utterly destroying it with a deafening crash. Blood began to pool around the back of his head, and it didn’t take long to realise there was a large chunk of glass imbedded in his neck. I left him where he was and went back to Brad, who was crawling, one-handed, toward the bedroom.
I grabbed hold of the back of his shirt and practically lifted him off the floor, pushing him back toward the living room. He didn’t resist and soon found himself sat down, staring at his friend, who I was pretty sure was going to die.
“Dan said you were riftborn,” Brad said.
“Good for Dan,” I said.
“He told us you wouldn’t be back for a long time,” Brad continued as if I hadn’t said anything, his voice holding a faraway quality of someone whose entire world view of where he sat in the pecking order had just been shattered.
“He said you were dangerous,” Brad continued, looking up at me for the first time. “But . . .”
“Not like that, yes?” I asked.
I sat down on the chair beside me. “Brad, Dan lied to you. Dan lied to a lot of us, and I want to know where he is. I want to know where Mason is. I want to know what you’ve done to my friends, and if I don’t like any of those answers, you’re going to see what happens when I turn into smoke while I’m holding on to someone else. Spoiler, it’s nasty.”
“But you were just quiet in the bar,” Brad continued. “You didn’t do anything. Dale said you were just a professor.”
“Yeah, not so much,” I told him. “Look, I don’t have all day.”
“I don’t know where Dan and Mason are,” Brad said. “Probably in Mason’s office building. We burned down your friend’s church.”
“By we, you mean you?”
Brad nodded. “Some of Mason’s Sky-High Security guys helped.”
“Why? Why go to all this trouble?” I asked him.
Brad said nothing.
“Look, there are dead FBI agents and dead RCU agents; the latter were definitely betrayed by Dan, and I think probably the former too,” I started. “This all goes back to those two whistle-blowers, doesn’t it? Mason get a little freaked out? Worried the FBI were going to start getting too close to something he’s working on?” It was a guess, but it was as good of a guess as I had.
Brad nodded. “Mason didn’t expect the FBI to just keep coming though.”
“So, do you know of someone in the FBI working for Mason?” I asked.
Brad shook his head. “Not for Mason, no.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“There’s a whole organisation just beyond Mason, an organisation Mason is working for,” Brad said.
“What are they called?” I asked him.
“No clue,” Brad said. “All I know is that Mitchell is working on creating more of those hybrid things. Needed a test.”
“Was that the attack?” I asked. “A test?”
“I don’t know,” Brad said.
“Sovereign Humanity?” I asked. “How are they involved?”
“We were going to blame them for the attacks on the RCU,” Brad admitted. “Dan said it was a stupid plan because no one would ever believe that a bunch of humans killed highly trained rift-fused.”
“Dan had a point,” I conceded.
“Yeah, well, we’d already set them up, been using them to spread hate and getting people to distrust rift-fused. Dan said there were big plans for SH, but I don’t know what they were.” Brad sighed. “We were just to keep doing what we were doing. Utterly pointless, if you ask me.”
“No one did, I assume,” I said.
Brad visibly bristled. “No, they didn’t. I spoke to Dan about it beforehand; he was working with some FBI agents. Dan got them to go with him. It was just meant to be the RCU, but the FBI were poking their noses in things they shouldn’t have been with regard to Sky-High, so Dan saw it as a good way to eliminate them as a threat. He led them all into an ambush, but he got hurt, and one of the RCU survived. The whole thing was fucked.”
“I don’t understand why Dan would put himself in a corner like this,” I said. “Why kill the FBI and RCU? What does he hope to gain from it?”
“Ask Dan,” Brad said.
“Someone is trying to create a war?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Brad admitted. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “If it helps, I’m going to kill Dan, Mason, and everyone else who was involved in this.”
“Dan said you used to be in a Guild,” Brad told me. “Said you’d want vengeance.”
“Partly because of that,” I said, feeling anger bubbling up at the thought of my Guild’s assassination. “Partly because you deserve it.” I moved quickly and slammed the dagger up under Brad’s chin, into his brain, killing him instantly.
I removed the dagger and cleaned it. Rift-tempered weaponry killed humans just as well as revenants, fiends, and riftborn. The biggest difference between the two groups was that killing a human with it ensured they’d never come back as one of the latter.
I made sure that all five were dead before leaving the apartment and finding that the man I’d hit in the temple was also dead. The other man, with the broken wrist, was sat up against the wall, cradling his arm against his chest. I dragged the dead one into the apartment and then motioned for the other to come to me.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I said when he shook his head.
He stood up, although it looked like it hurt. I showed him the bloodbath inside Dale’s apartment. “There’s a rumour that when Genghis Kahn destroyed his enemies, he used to leave one person alive to tell the others what happens to those to cross him. Congratulations.”
The man stared at the bodies inside the apartment and slowly looked up at me, terror etched on his face.
“Tell them I’m coming,” I said. “And then run. If I see you again, you’re going to be alongside them.”
I left him in the room with his dead friends and went to find Dale. I got the feeling that by the time I was done, there would be a lot more death in my wake.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As much as Dale wanted to go to his apartment and pick up a few things, I convinced him that it would be better not to go back in there.
I’d left my blood-splattered hoodie in my apartment and put on a clean pair of jeans and T-shirt. There had been too much blood for me to get away with it. I’d washed my face, too; I didn’t want to go to the Stag and Arrow covered in the blood of several thugs.
“How many of them were cops?” I asked Dale.
“Ex-cops,” Dale corrected. “A few. Most are ex-military.”
We reached the bar, and I opened the door, the din of the full bar crashing into me and making me pause. I let Dale in first. I wasn’t really someone who enjoyed lots of people in one place, or loud noises. It’s far too easy for someone to get the jump on you when your senses are in overdrive.
“Bill,” I shouted over the noise, gaining his attention when I started waving in his direction.
He came over and leaned over the bar. “What’s up?” he shouted in my ear, and I only just heard him.
I pointed to Dale, and Bill’s expression darkened. “We need to talk,” I shouted back. “Now.”
Bill looked between Dale and me, and concern spread across his face like oil on water. He nodded and motioned for us to follow him, leading us through the throng of people and into a room at the rear of the bar, next to the stairs that lead up to where he lived with George.
“What the fuck is he here for?” Bill snapped as we entered the room.
“Bill, meet undercover FBI agent Dale Winters,” I said.
Dale nodded slightly.
“He’s a fed?” Bill asked, sounding more than a little surprised. “And where have you been? What’s going on?”
“Short version,” I said. “A member of the RCU betrayed his own people; I have no idea why. A man called Mason Barnes seems to have been involved in the deaths of FBI agents, and my friends have been hurt while I’ve been away. I’m a riftborn. Someone in the FBI has stood down the team who were helping with the investigation. Oh, and a bunch of bigoted idiots were being primed to take the fall for it all.”
“That’s a lot to take in all at once,” Bill said. “Why would anyone want to bring the trouble of the FBI and RCU down on their heads? Especially someone with as much money as Mason? Why would he want to risk losing it all?”
“I don’t know why,” I said.
“Me neither,” Dale said. “I wasn’t privy to the finer details.”
“I need to get to Gabriel’s church,” I continued. “I’m pretty sure I can figure out where everyone went from there.”
“You want to borrow my car?” Bill asked.
“I was hoping to,” I said. “But your car is . . . How can I put this?”
“Slow,” Bill said. “You can say it. I have a Chevy Silverado that has a zero-to-sixty time of about two weeks.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was hoping that maybe George could lend me his Mercedes.”
“I can do you one better,” Bill said. “Give me five minutes.”
“I have another favour,” I said as Bill removed the phone from his pocket and was about to walk off.
“You want the fed to stay here?” Bill asked.
I nodded.
“Do I get a say in this?” Dale asked anyone who was listening.
“No,” Bill and I said in unison. “You’re someone with a brain full of intel and a badge. They find out where you are and you’re dead. As is everyone around you. George has access to several safe houses inside the city. You can become a resident of one for a few days, after which we’re going to need you to go through everything that happened.”
“I’ll talk to George,” Bill said. “Go see Michelle; she’s in the staff room other side of the bar. She lived in Hamble for a while, moved down here a few months back. Gabriel’s church is only one of four in New York State, so Michelle goes back there when she can. She might know where Gabriel is. Dale, you can come with me.”
Dale looked between Bill and I, a slight panic in his face. “You think you can keep me safe?” he asked.
Bill nodded. “George’s firm has been keeping revenants safe for decades. A human Fed should be easy.”
“Thank you,” Dale said to me, offering me his hand. “I’m sorry for what I said and did while undercover.”
I shook his hand, keeping hold of it when he turned to leave. “George and Bill are good people. If I find out that you’re involved in this more than just being undercover, I won’t hesitate to bury you alongside your friends in your apartment.”
“You know you’re threatening a federal officer,” he said, a little bit more confidence in his voice.
“I know,” I said. “Point stands. I’m not playing, Dale. I just wanted you to know.”
Dale nodded, having gone a shade paler, and I left him to ascend the stairs with Bill.
After traversing the still-busy bar, I found Michelle exactly where Bill said she’d be. She was watching a show on the large TV that adorned the wall of the staff room and eating a sandwich. She looked up at me and hastily wiped her mouth.
“Hey,” she said. “This is staff-only.”
“Bill said to come see you,” I said. “Something about Gabriel’s church. Do you know Gabriel?”
“You mean my cleric?” she asked, slightly unsure of where the conversation was going.
“You’re a member of the Church of Tempered Souls?” I asked. “Gabriel’s your cleric? The church is in Hamble.”
Michelle nodded and put the rest of her sandwich on the table beside her. “Was,” she said as I took a seat opposite her. “It was destroyed.”
“What happened?” I asked as a mixture of anger and fear bubbled up inside of me. If they’d hurt Gabriel in any way, I was going to rain down fire the likes of which haven’t been seen before.
“They torched it,” Michelle said. “Gabriel is safe, but no one has seen him for some time. We have an online group to arrange meets, but no one knows where he is.”
I pushed my feelings aside for a moment. I couldn’t help anyone if I couldn’t find out what had happened and where my friends were. “Did Gabriel ever tell you about how to contact him if you needed him?” Every church has a different method to contact its cleric in times of emergency. The only people who knew it would be trusted members of the congregation.
“I can’t say,” Michelle told me, keeping eye contact.
“I need to get hold of my friends. I know you made an oath to keep this information to yourself,” I said, keeping my voice neutral no matter how much I wanted to let emotion in. “But if you can do anything to help, please do.”
“We all take the oath,” Michelle said. “Gabriel wanted us to know that we could go to him for help, that the church was a place of peace. I do not want to break the oath I gave. I want to help, but the oath was a personal thing. More than just words; it placed us into a family. Do you understand?”
I nodded. It was obvious that Michelle was conflicted between telling me to help Gabriel and keeping the secrets that she swore she’d keep. I didn’t want to add to the burden, but I also needed information. Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to keep your mouth closed.
“He has camera feeds in the church and surrounding area,” Michelle said. “If he wants to see you, he will find you. I hope he’s safe.”
I thanked Michelle and returned to where I’d last seen Bill, waiting around impatiently for a few minutes until he appeared with George.
“Lucas,” George said, shaking my hand. “Thanks for delivering such a steaming pile of shit onto my lap.”
“He’s joking,” Bill said quickly.
“I am,” George told me. George was several inches taller than me, Black, with a bald head and dark moustache. He wore an expensive dark blue suit with a white shirt and red tie, with a grey-and-red pocket chief. On his wrist was a black Rolex Submariner. He looked like the word suave was invented just for him.
“I don’t know what’s happening in Hamble and Rochester,” I said. “Either of you heard anything?”
“No,” George said. “Nothing specific, anyway. Rumour has it the FBI have shut up shop, so to speak, and that the RCU are in charge of everything now. But then, there are rumours that the RCU were all killed, so I don’t know how they can both be true. What do you know?”
“Mason is not working alone,” I said. “There’s more going on here than first thought. Brad said that Dan was going to lead the FBI into the attack, but the RCU members decided to join. He got hurt, and Annie survived, so they couldn’t spin it as an RCU attack on FBI. Once she woke, she’d know exactly what happened, so they had to eliminate her and any guards at the hospital.”
“No guards were killed at the hospital,” George said.
“Wait, what?” I asked. “It was just the nurses and Annie?”
George nodded.
“I saw RCU agents in the building,” I said. Why kill the nurses but not the guards? Something wasn’t adding up.
“Let me show you something,” Bill said.
I followed George and Bill out of the rear exit of the bar into an alleyway behind it. It was dark now, and the cold had firmly set in; somewhere in the distance was a rumble of thunder, and I wondered if we were in for a storm.
There were two large garages at the end, and Bill used a remote to deactivate an alarm system before removing a set of keys from his pocket but didn’t open it, instead turning back to me.
“Be careful,” I said.
