The Last Raven: An Urban Fantasy Noir (Riftborn Book 1), page 2
“Yeah, I know,” Bill said. “You only use it because you’d prefer to have it with you and not need it than not have it and need it.” He’d repeated what I always said about it, practically word for word.
“Thank you,” I told him, and he nodded as he went to deal with another customer.
The interior of the bar was divided into three parts. The first was directly upon entering the establishment, where people ordered drinks. The counter was in a horseshoe shape, with dozens of bottles of various spirits hanging in front of gleaming mirrors. Fridges sat below the mirrors, each full, while several craft ales and beers were available from one of the three pumps.
There were several tall tables around the counter, and they usually got full fast when the place became busy, especially at the weekend. The booths directly either side of the doors filled up quickly too, but tonight, only I’d taken up residence in one.
It was a Wednesday, though, and the snowfall had been heavy, so people were staying at home. As it was now ten o’clock, the two dozen people there were probably as busy as it was going to get. There were a group of five people around a table, all in smart business attire—presumably, they’d come straight from work.
The second part of the bar, to the left of the entrance, had tables and booths for people to sit and eat. It doubled as an overflow when it got busy, although today there were three people in one booth and a couple in another. All of them looked to be in their early twenties, and they kept to themselves. The booth with just two appeared to be a date, considering the amount of hand-touching each of them was doing.
The final part of the bar was on the right of the entrance and, mostly, just tables and chairs. There was a step that led up to several arcade machines, two pool tables and two dartboards; they were all occupied by a large group of a dozen or so people, some regulars that I’d seen in there before.
I sat back at the booth I’d been in for three hours. I’d picked one a few back from the bar doors—mostly to stop the draft of wind from flowing over me every time someone came in or out.
“What are you working on?” Bill asked as I looked up from my reading.
Bill was a revenant, as were, I presumed, most people in the bar. It was hard to tell—not something you’d pick up on just by looking at them, as, externally, they still looked human. Revenants were created at the moment of a human’s dying; a dimensional tear opened and power from the rift beyond filled their bodies. The energy merged with the human “soul,” bringing them back to life and giving them abilities at the same time. All revenants looked human until they shifted, and then each of the revenant species looked very different. I’d never seen Bill’s true form—which was what they called it—that was something reserved for either their closest companions and friends, or people they were about to tear in half. The latter of which was not always an exaggeration.
Once someone had been rift-fused, they could no longer have children unless they stepped through a tear into the rift itself. It’s why the rift-fused numbered in single-digit millions on earth and aren’t the main species on the planet they might have been otherwise.
“Something for a friend of mine. She’s a professor of rift science at Columbia University,” I said.
“Meredith Pincher?” Bill asked, sitting down opposite me.
I nodded, not surprised he knew her name. Meredith was a bit of a rock star among revenants, seeing that she was one of the few who actively sought out revenant input into her work. “She asked me to look into some of the research she’s doing. She’s trying to figure out if there’s any trend in how the rift gifts individual humans with a specific revenant species. She thought another pair of eyes might catch something new.”
“And?” Bill asked, genuinely interested. Even revenants themselves didn’t really know how they’d been created, why they’d been chosen, or how tears opened and closed, seemingly at random, all around the world.
The rift was a dimension attached to our own. A place where in the far north sits a giant cloud of power known as the Tempest. Occasionally, that power releases itself like a pressure valve and creates a tear between the rift and earth. And that’s when the magic happens.
The power that leaks through the tear can do a lot of things, depending on if it touches a human or animal, and the state of their physical health.
The rift-fused have been around for thousands of years as a species, and while we hadn’t been open about our existence until only a few decades ago, no one had taken it upon themselves to do a lot of research into the hows and whys of the revenants’ creation.
“And we have no idea,” I said. “It’s seemingly random.”
“What about riftborn and fiends?” Bill asked.
Fiends were animals that were touched by the energy from the rift, and riftborn were those humans who, when almost near death, were actually transported into the rift, healed, and given exceptional powers. Like superheroes but without the matching outfits.
“Pretty much the same,” I said. “All rift-fused: fiends, riftborn, practitioners, riftwalkers, hell, even primordials. All born of chaos and randomness. At least that’s how it appears.”
“Well, three of those we don’t see many of,” Bill said. “So, I guess that makes it more difficult.”
Practitioners are born like humans are—biologically—but only in the rift. Riftwalkers are either a mythological being or so rare they might as well be extinct, depending on who you talk to. And primordials were . . . really bad, but no one has seen one in centuries, so no one wanted to tempt fate by going looking.
“There’s even less information on them,” I said. “Fiends, being essentially dangerous animals for the most part, aren’t exactly the talking type, and riftborn are rare and also aren’t the talking type, but for different reasons.”
Bill heaved a sigh. “Yeah—there’s a lot we don’t know about any of it. George was talking to me the other night about a case he’s working on.”
George was a defence attorney who specialized in crimes involving those raised from the rift. He did a lot of work with the RCU—Rift-Crime Unit—a multi-nation agency who investigate crimes committed by, and against, those touched by the rift. I’d met a few of them over the years, and they’d been good people who were expected to bridge a gap between law enforcement and a world most people didn’t even know about until the 1970s, when it was decided to introduce the rift-fused to the world and finally become an open part of society instead of hiding in the shadows.
“Kid died in a car crash and came back to life a revenant while being transported to the morgue,” Bill said.
“Not unusual,” I said.
“Yeah, well, he freaked out and attacked the morgue attendant, hurt him pretty bad,” Bill said sadly. “All he said during the interview was he didn’t understand why he’d been brought back. Why him?”
“How’s the morgue attendant?” I asked.
“Good now,” he said. “Broken arm, few ribs, probably felt better. Doesn’t blame the kid, although some would have. Not sure how; he’s a kid who woke up after dying and turned into a spined revenant. The attendant is lucky he wasn’t turned into a pincushion.”
“And the kid?”
“They want to charge the kid with assault, but George thinks no judge in the country would take a nineteen-year-old to court over this,” Bill sighed. “Honestly, it’s a mess. More people need to do research into us. I don’t see another way forward that doesn’t include more incidents like this one.”
I nodded. “Meredith is doing good work, but she has a team of six, and that’s just not enough. So, I try to help where possible.”
“You’re a doctor, right?” Bill asked. “Not like a proper doctor, but . . .”
I chuckled. “I have a doctorate in rift-science, yes.”
“How many revenants have the same doctorate?” Bill asked me.
“There are twenty-two people with a doctorate in rift-science in North America,” I said after a few seconds of thinking about it. “It’s only existed as a qualification since the early 2000s. And since then, only three people who aren’t human have even bothered trying to qualify.”
Bill whistled. “And in the world?”
“I have no idea; probably not many more,” I told him.
Bill waggled his finger. “That might be the problem, doc.”
I agreed with him completely; I just wasn’t sure how to change it.
“Meredith meeting you here?” Bill asked.
“Should be, yes.”
Bill went back to the counter as six men entered the bar. I paid them little attention and went back to my work, only to find a fresh cup of tea placed in front of me.
I looked up at the waitress who had brought it. She was barely five feet tall with dark skin, and her auburn hair was tied back in a ponytail. Her name was Michelle; she’d only worked at the bar for a few weeks. Like all of the staff, she wore a black T-shirt with the name of the bar written on the back and a name tag on the front.
“Bill says it’s on the house,” she said with a smile.
“Thanks very much,” I said.
Michelle glanced over at the six new men, a shadow of concern in her eyes.
“You know them?” I asked.
Michelle shook her head. “Know their type, though,” she said, sadly.
I looked beyond Michelle to the newcomers. All six of them were white, wearing blue jeans in various shades and thick dark jackets, giving the overall impression of an incredibly bad 1990s boy band. Two of them were clearly overweight, their checked shirts almost straining as they moved. They looked to be in their forties and had short hair, almost military-style, although I would have bet that neither had seen a day of military service in their lives.
Of the other four, two were younger, maybe early twenties, both with dark hair, one was almost stubble, and one long, the latter’s dropping over his broad shoulders. The one with the long hair was also considerably more muscular.
The last two were the interesting ones. One was clearly in charge: he held himself with an air of authority, and the others moved aside so he could get to the bar and order. He had long, chestnut hair that he’d put into a ponytail, revealing a skull tattoo on the back of his neck, next to the letters S.H.. Damn.
The last man’s name was Dale Winters, and he was the tallest of the group at a little over six and a half feet. He was broad-shouldered, with dark hair and mean eyes. He was the only one of them who had any kind of facial hair, in his case, a short goatee. Dale was a bully, a thug, and possibly a drunk. He also lived in my apartment building and was generally known as a huge dick by everyone else who had had to endure his presence over the last few months since he’d moved in.
“Sovereign Humanity,” Michelle whispered, a little bit of fear creeping into her voice.
I nodded. Sovereign Humanity were a minority group of extremists with backing from elitists who loved to cause upheaval, who blamed the rift-fused for everything from stealing their jobs to climate change. As with most groups like this, they were made up mainly of dissatisfied, privileged people who were fed “facts” from social media groups, false news, and conspiracy theories in a perpetual cycle of self-vindication and ignorance. “They been in here a lot?” I asked.
Michelle shook her head. “Came in the other week, had a few drinks, and left; been back a few times since then.”
“They caused any trouble?”
She shook her head. “Not yet, but it’s coming. I can feel it.”
“Bill won’t let them start anything,” I said.
“And then it’ll be all over the news how a revenant bar refused to serve humans,” she said bitterly.
“I know for a fact that a lot of humans drink here,” I told her, still watching the six men as Bill brought them their drinks—all beer, from the looks of it—and they walked off toward where the pool tables were.
“You know that some of the media won’t care about that,” Michelle said. “Sovereign Humanity have their allies in the news, in the police—they’re everywhere.”
“They’re scum,” I said.
Michelle walked over to Bill and obviously warned him, as he looked over at the newcomers and nodded once.
Keeping one eye on the newcomers, I started to reorganize my work, putting the loose pieces of paper and notepads back into my brown leather bag before closing it up.
It didn’t take long for their presence to have an effect, as several customers gave them cautious glances and then left. The Sovereign Humanity guys were all laughing riotously, as if they’d witnessed the funniest things ever seen, and I noticed that there were still a couple of regulars playing pool. A man and a woman, both early twenties, both had arms covered in tattoos, and both were doing their best to completely ignore the Sovereign Humanity guys.
I drank the rest of my tea and took the cup over to the counter. “Thanks for the drink,” I told Bill.
“You’re welcome,” he said, keeping an eye on the pool tables.
“You want them gone?” I asked.
Bill smiled. “Todd and Mikey are upstairs if we need them,” he told me.
Todd and Mikey were two massive security guys who worked for the bar while training to become security detail. They’d rented the upstairs apartment from Bill and George months before, and they’d been incredibly helpful at dealing with the small amounts of trouble that had come the bar’s way. Turns out most people don’t want to make trouble when the clientele consist of people who can literally rip your arms off.
“I want to tell them to leave,” Bill said with a sigh. “But I don’t want trouble, either.”
I stood chatting with him, and a few minutes later, the Sovereign Humanity group walked over to the exit.
“Fucking disgusting,” the one I’d thought in charge shouted. “Beasts and monsters sitting down with hardworking humans.”
“Get out; don’t come back,” Bill told him, his tone leaving no room for argument.
The leader spat on the floor. “You sicken me,” he said, with so much anger and hatred. “You’ll all get what’s coming to you.”
“I said leave,” Bill told them.
Unfortunately, the man was on a roll. “And you,” he said, pointing to the woman who’d been playing pool with the young man. “Humans fornicating with beasts. You’re just as bad as these creatures.”
I spotted the woman take a furious step forward, about to say something, but that would only escalate everything.
“Hey, Dale,” I said casually but loud enough that everyone turned to look at me.
Dale stared at me, and all blood left his face in one of the funniest oh, shit moments I’d ever seen.
“Lucas,” Dale said softly.
“You know this . . . degenerate?” the leader demanded of Dale.
“Not really,” Dale said.
“He one of these abominations?” the man demanded, waving his hands about, as the rest of the group kept their eyes on the rest of the bar’s clientele.
“No,” Dale said, shaking his head. “He’s a doctor or something.”
“You should not be in here,” the leader said, pointing a finger at me.
“Neither should you,” I told him, keeping Dale’s eye contact until he looked away first.
The leader pointed at me. “You should watch yourself, boy,” he said, in what I assumed was meant to be a menacing voice. “Be sure you know whose side you’re on.”
“I already know,” I told him. “Whatever side stands against you and your kind.”
He flushed with anger, but before anyone could say anything else, he motioned for everyone to leave.
I looked over at Bill. “You okay?” I asked him.
Bill nodded.
I looked around at the young man and woman. The man’s hands were in fists down by his side, and the woman had her hand on his shoulder as if trying to calm him, although she looked incensed herself. “You both okay?” I asked them.
“That . . . bastard,” the woman snapped.
“They won’t be back,” Bill said.
And at that exact second, a brick was hurled through the glass front door of the bar.
CHAPTER TWO
The brick had bounced off the front of the bar, leaving a gouge in the wood, but thankfully no one was hurt, either by the projectile or the glass, which was all over the floor.
The employees helped Bill clean it up. Most of the patrons elected to stay and help as well, a nice show of solidarity that I was pretty sure Bill appreciated.
It was just after nine p.m. when Meredith arrived, and immediately set about helping.
By the time it hit one a.m., Bill had sent most people home, and I’d finished nailing a large plank of wood over the empty door frame.
“So, this wasn’t how I imagined we’d be spending the evening,” Meredith said as she sat opposite me at my booth. Meredith had pale skin and was four or five inches shorter than my own height, even with the heels she wore. Her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she had half a dozen earrings in each ear. She wore a pair of dark blue jeans and a black sweater, the sleeves of which were rolled up, revealing the mass of colourful anime characters tattooed over both her arms.
“Not exactly, no,” I said. “On the plus side, it’s good to see you again.”
“You too,” Meredith said. “I guess we’ll have to reconvene our conversation about my work.”
“We can walk back to my place,” I said. “We’ll talk about it on the way and you can grab a cab back to yours or crash in my spare room.”
“Cab it is,” Meredith said with a smile.
There was no room in my life for romantic entanglements, and Meredith was focussed on her work, so we were both happy to be good friends and nothing more.
Bill reported the incident to the police, but as no one was hurt, the perpetrators had run off, and there were no signs of a repeat attack, it wouldn’t be high on their list of priorities.
Only the young man and woman who had taken abuse from Dale and his cronies were left in the bar with us. Bill sent the younger pair home, too, once it became apparent that everyone was okay.
