The Last Raven: An Urban Fantasy Noir (Riftborn Book 1), page 23
“Where do you get the fiends from?” I asked.
“Dan used to let us know when one had been found in the wild so they could go retrieve it.”
“How long has that been going on?” I asked.
“As long as the data goes back,” Scarlet said. “Two years, at least.”
“And those things that attacked the RCU and FBI agents?” I asked.
Scarlet nodded. “They combine fiends with human DNA to try to make a greater fiend with intelligence . . . They’re horrible.”
“So, they killed the informants, dumped standard greater fiends near the cabin to make it look like they were responsible for the RCU and FBI attack to throw anyone off the trail as to what was actually behind the killings,” Gabriel said. “Looks like you were right, Lucas.”
“Had to happen sometime,” Hannah said with a smile.
“Where are the other five agents?” Booker asked. “We know at the warehouse, but do you have a better location than that?”
“Main building offices, I’d guess,” Scarlet said. “That’s where they put people before bringing them to the offices. Or it’s where they put fiends. It’s big enough to house a few dozen people.”
“I’ve heard rumours that Mason isn’t very happy about what happened,” Booker said. “About the attacks taking place without his say-so.”
“I always thought Mason was in charge,” Scarlet said. “But I don’t think he is. I think he just found out that he was a smaller cog in a bigger machine than he’d first assumed. I saw emails he’d sent to Dr Mitchell a few weeks ago, calling her a Judas and asking how she could do it to him. Take something from him that was so important. I never saw a reply. That was when I knew I had to get out. At some point, people like me are going to be considered expendable for knowing more than we should, and I know a lot more than I should.
“I just want to go home,” Scarlet said. “To Tennessee. Can you do that?”
“We can try,” Gabriel said. “I think it’s going to be a long time before you’ll be able to walk around in public, though. Until we’ve dealt with Dan and his friends, the only way to stay safe is to stay out of the way. To hide. We can hide you. The church has been doing that for a long time.”
“I’m going to have to go to jail, aren’t I?” Scarlet asked as we started to walk across the park as Zita brought up the rear, keeping watch, and Hannah did the same in front.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to be honest but really having no idea. “The RCU are under the thumb of someone who appears to be using them to kill their enemies. The FBI have people working with the very people you’re informing on, and the local police force are utterly corrupt. I think that’s a question for Emily when we see her later.”
“Who’s Emily?”
“FBI agent,” Gabriel told her. “She’s definitely one of the good ones, so don’t worry.”
“Oh, good,” Scarlet said.
I turned to check on her and saw Zita dive toward her, tackling her to the ground. They both rolled down a nearby hill, with Booker, Gabriel, and Hannah jumping down after them. I was last. A bullet whizzed by where Scarlet had been standing, impacting with a nearby tree.
“They’ve found me,” Scarlet said, terror dripping from every word.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Everyone had started yelling at once, and Scarlet had been half-dragged, half-pushed to the side of the hill, dropping behind an especially large tree. Zita had thrown up a wall of shadow behind us, hopefully obscuring us from view, but it wasn’t going to work forever.
Scarlet looked petrified, her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide and full of fear. Hannah had her gun drawn, ready to fight. The difference between someone who has never been in a gunfight and someone who, by her own admission, had probably been in far too many.
“Can you see anything?” Booker asked.
“Not from here,” Gabriel called back.
I scrambled up the hill, keeping low, to look through the shadowy mist that sat at the top, and hoped it would obscure me from view.
“Six incoming,” I said to Zita as she joined me, lying down beside me.
The attackers had come in the park, using their large black SUVs to block the main entrance. They’d spread out, moving through the children’s play area, taking up positions.
“How’d they track her?” Zita asked me. Her face was covered in shadow, her eyes giant pools of rippling darkness. Hooded revenants were masters of camouflage, stealth, and subterfuge.
I didn’t have an answer for that. From the abject terror on Scarlet’s face, she hadn’t brought them there knowingly.
I moved back down the hill. “Get to the train and get out of here,” I said to Gabriel. “You have cover for maybe thirty feet. Wait there, and I’ll get their attention.”
“And leave you here?” Gabriel asked.
“I’ll give you time,” I told him. “Look, we can’t all die here, and we can’t all get caught.”
“Lucas, if you stay, they’ll kill you,” Booker said.
I stared at Gabriel.
“He’ll be fine,” Gabriel said.
“Are you all insane?” Zita asked as she joined us. “I count eight out there, at least one is decent with a rifle, and one looks like some deformed fiend . . . thing.”
“Awesome,” I said. “Even so, get going. They can’t find that train, and they can’t get hold of any of us. Everything we’ve done will be for nothing if they do.”
“We can’t leave you here,” Hannah almost shouted at me.
“Look, I can keep them busy while you escape and then vanish into my embers,” I said, avoiding Gabriel’s expression. “It’ll be fine. Just go.”
“You’d better be right about this,” Gabriel said, and ran after the others as they sprinted along the bottom of the hill toward the rear of the park.
The shadows that Zita had used to conceal us faded away, and I headed for the trees, which meant running across open ground for maybe ten or fifteen feet. I steadied myself and sprinted as fast as I could, hitting the tree line at full speed, tripping over a concealed branch, which sent me to the ground as a bullet smashed into a nearby tree trunk.
I drew my P30L and fired twice around the tree, hitting one of the soldiers and scattering the rest into the nearby trees. A sniper round slammed into the tree trunk about an inch above where my head had been, and I decided that whoever that was, they were my first problem. The fiend, though, all seven feet of skeletal limbs, muscular ape-like torso, and a head that appeared to be some kind of furry cross between a snake and a wolf, stood in the middle of the field and sniffed the air, its long dark tongue flicking around. Frankly, the whole thing looked monstrous and something I wanted no part of. I put it second on my list of things to kill. Because I’m optimistic like that.
I moved to the next tree along, but a bullet caught me in the shoulder, and I flung myself down to the dirt, rolling down another hill, stopping halfway down when I grabbed hold of some strong roots. I winced in pain but knew I needed to keep moving. I turned to smoke.
It’s difficult to maintain turning into smoke at the best of times, but when you can feel a bullet tumbling through what used to be your body, it makes keeping things together much less pleasant. I kept in smoke form until I was safely inside the woodland, out of view of the sniper and, hopefully, of anything else that might be after me.
I stopped for a moment beside the remains of an old tree that had once been struck by lightning and reassembled myself. I hadn’t long since left the embers, and had turned to smoke several times in two days, as well as having been shot. I wasn’t even back to full power. It had been a long few days.
“This way,” someone called out from close by, and I began to run through the forest, vaulting over low branches and trying not to maintain a straight line as I made a wide circle around where I’d been, hoping to come up behind my attackers. I assumed the sniper would stay where they were, just in case I tried to flee or some of my friends arrived, so I hoped that they wouldn’t be expecting me to attack. My plan rested on hope and assumptions, neither of which were great.
Gunfire tore into a tree beside me, causing me to pick up the pace, but I wasn’t watching where I was going, lost my footing, and tumbled down a large embankment. Leaves, snow, and dirt covered almost every inch of me, and the hole in my shoulder wasn’t helping. Unfortunately, turning to smoke doesn’t heal any injuries I’ve received. I’ve tried putting myself back together in my smoke form before, and . . . well, it went badly. I moved my arm slightly; it was stiff, but it wasn’t broken.
I scrambled to my feet and ducked behind a tree trunk to catch my breath. I needed to even the odds a little, but whatever that fiend with them was, it appeared to be able to track me.
I peered between two interlocking tree trunks and got a view of the fiend stood beside the man I’d known as William Stone, a large metal leash in his hand. On the other side of William was a large man covered in a bone-like armour. Alexis Capan. They’d sent the big guns after us. That would have been almost nice if it weren’t for the fact that they were trying to kill me.
As a riftborn, I can reach out and touch the rift, causing a small tear and using the power to detect rift-fused. It would have made my life a little easier. But with the fiend there, I wasn’t certain if that was how it had tracked us, and if it was the way, opening a tear would have been like setting off a giant firework with an arrow pointing to me. Besides, with my increasingly painful wound, it was unlikely I’d be able to open a tear without being forced inside to my embers. I was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.
I slowly backed away from the trees and threw myself forward as gunfire peppered the area I’d just been. I turned to smoke again and moved quickly through the dense foliage, re-forming a hundred meters away, as the sounds of my pursuers could be easily heard. I had to stop with the smoke; if I kept it up, I was going to pass out well before I was able to do any harm to any of them. I needed that fiend gone. Time to change plans.
The fiend was easily visible with William on top of the bank; clearly, William had expected me to be easy pickings.
I dropped to my knees next to a large tree and looked up at the thick branches above. I scrambled up the trunk—using claws of smoke to help—until I was concealed above my targets, fifty feet above the ground. There were three men, all with what looked like silenced MP5s, moving through the woodlands. They wore identical black outfits, with balaclavas and heavy boots that didn’t make as much noise as you’d think. They were probably well trained and almost certainly versed in fighting rift-fused.
I kept low and moved along the branch, concealed from anyone below—it was large enough to support my weight—until I was almost directly above one of the men. The other two had gone around the trees. They were maybe fifty metres away by the time the one beneath me was where I wanted him to be. I was about to drop down on him, take him out nice and quietly, when I spotted the bone-armoured revenant moving through the forest, keeping low. The fiend was right beside him.
I spotted William walking back across the field toward the cars and wondered if he was going to get something that would make my life more complicated. I really hoped not; it was complicated enough.
The fiend was thirty feet away, fifty feet below me. It sniffed the air, growled, looked directly at me, and I shot it in the head.
The explosion of sound left no doubt as to where I was. I rolled off the tree, drawing my larger dagger as I fell, quickly turning to smoke to ensure I didn’t slam into the ground at high speed. The soldier below was too slow to react, and I reformed just before landing in a crouch beside him. I stabbed him three times in the thigh as I stood and once more in the throat before taking his MP5 and moving away.
Bullets hit the tree beside me, and I fired back blindly, hoping to hit something, anything, as I ran into the densest part of the forest. I moved behind a stone wall that looked to belong to a long-since-overgrown hut and checked my ammo. The MP5 was almost full, and I had several bullets for my P30L, along with a few spare magazines, should they be necessary.
I spotted movement out of the corner of my eye, raised the MP5, and once I saw the balaclava-clad head of one of my pursuers, I fired a three-shot burst. The head vanished in a cloud of red mist, but the stone beside me exploded from gunfire, and I was forced to move away. My arm was sore, my shoulder too. I wasn’t going to be able to keep this up for long.
I picked up a stone and threw it at a nearby tree, which was hit with gunfire a moment later. Trained but not that smart; that was good to know. I threw a second stone somewhat further than the first as I kept low, letting the moss and vines that covered the hut hang over me too.
The remaining soldier moved slowly past me, his gun moving left to right in a steady motion, tracking all before him. Turning to smoke was out of the question; I’d done too much and was too injured. I needed to get this over with. The soldier turned toward me, but I shot him through the head before his gun was aimed my way.
I moved low and quick to the nearby tree, next to the still-alive form of the fiend. I drew my rift-tempered dagger and stabbed it through the eye into its brain, killing it.
“There is only you and me,” Alexis shouted out. “How about we settle this with honour?”
I ducked back down behind the tree. I wasn’t about to let him know where I was, and I certainly wasn’t stupid enough to stand up and throw my weapons away.
I looked behind the tree as Alexis tossed his rifle away, followed by his revolver and a dagger. “Just you and me.”
I stepped around from the tree, my MP5 still in my hands. “I’ll tell you what: you tell me what I want, and then we’ll do this your way,” I told him. We were maybe forty feet away from each other, and the smile on his face was easy to read.
“You did a good job with these,” Alexis said. “With the tree, too.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Still got shot.”
“We were after Scarlet. You were an added bonus.” Alexis said. “That’s how we found you, by the way. The fiend can track anyone.”
“How?” I asked despite myself.
“Everyone who works for Sky-High has a medical,” Alexis said. “Blood work included.”
“It’s a monstrous bloodhound,” I said. “That how you tracked Harry and Clive?”
Alexis nodded. “The dog-fiends killed them both. I don’t wish to watch something like that again.”
“I’m sure they forgive you,” I said sarcastically.
“How is Nadia?” Alexis asked, ignoring my comment. “I assume she has gone to see you. You’re the angry smoke she’s spoken about for the last few years.”
“She’s okay,” I said, feeling that Alexis’s question had been genuine. “Why’d you come after me and not Scarlet?”
“William thought you were more important in the long run,” Alexis said. “He figured we could go after Scarlet anytime.”
“That didn’t work out so well,” I said. “I killed your fiend.”
“They’ll figure out how to make another one,” Alexis said. “It’s sort of their job.”
“This is very pleasant and all,” I said, “but I assume we can’t stay here all day and chat.”
“It would be nice to think that we could,” Alexis said. “Old warriors and all that.”
“You have a romanticised version of what we are,” I told him.
“Ah, I have done terrible things,” Alexis said with a wave of his hand. “I know exactly what I am. I owe more than I can repay, so I hope one day to meet the person who will collect on that repayment. Maybe it’s you.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Dan told us that you were dangerous, but he thinks he’s better than you,” Alexis said. “Better than all of the Guilds, to be honest. He’s in charge of the RCU now, you know?”
“I heard,” I told him.
“Mason thinks you’re just someone who can be brushed aside,” Alexis said. “I don’t think he truly understands what the Guilds do. What they are capable of. The training. The . . . camaraderie.”
“But you do,” I said.
“I think there are two options here,” Alexis said. “I kill you and go back a hero, or I die. I can’t go back empty-handed. I can’t go back and admit failure. Not now. Maybe I could have taken you alive, but William thinks it’s safer if you’re dead.”
“One of us has to die,” I said, tossing the MP5 aside. “I’m not exactly in peak physical condition here.”
“Your shoulder,” he said. “Would you like to use knives?”
I removed the holster belt and placed it on the ground. “No, I’m good,” I said. Knife fighting sucks for everyone involved. No one comes free from a knife fight without being cut up pretty badly.
I considered just grabbing the gun and shooting Alexis, ending it now, but he’d answered my questions, and I figured at the very least, he deserved what he’d asked for.
“There’s a large spot just down there,” Alexis said. “I think it would be the best place for this.”
“After you,” I told him.
He nodded and took off deeper into the forest. I kept twenty feet between us and hoped that no one would come along to find the small arsenal of weaponry we’d left behind.
Alexis stopped in the middle of the open patch of land, which was lightly dusted with snow but was otherwise thirty feet in diameter and with trees all around. It was a good size. I spotted several rocks and made a note not to get my head smashed onto any of them.
Alexis removed his jacket, rolling his shoulders. He started bouncing from foot to foot. He had the build of a heavyweight boxer, and almost on cue. He did some rapid punches into the air.
I stood and watched him for a moment.
“You’re not going to warm up?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’m pretty warmed up from killing your men.”
Alexis laughed. “You are cold, Lucas Rurik.”
“I have one last question before we start,” I said.
“Sure,” Alexis said.
