The Last Raven: An Urban Fantasy Noir (Riftborn Book 1), page 3
We waited around until George arrived, then took off, telling Bill to call me if they needed anything. It had started to snow again, and we stood outside for a moment as I put on my hat and scarf before crossing the road, the sounds of New York’s nightlife still evident in the distance. The city that never sleeps . . .
The park entrance was further up the street, and I spotted the young couple who had stayed around to help clean up. They vanished arm-in-arm into the park. A hundred or so feet behind them, two men walked toward the park. They were too far away for me to recognize, but I had a bad feeling nonetheless.
“I’ve booked a cab from your place to mine,” Meredith said as we started to walk around the outside of the park. “It’s not a long walk for a chat, but it’s all we’ve got, I’m afraid.”
I looked back at the approaching two men, and the bad feeling didn’t go away. “Can you get the cab from here?” I asked.
“Sure,” Meredith said, although the tone was one of confusion. “There a problem?”
“I hope not, but I just want to be sure,” I told her.
Meredith made the call and we walked back to outside the bar to wait for the cab.
“I read through your research,” I told her, passing her the notes and file that I’d brought with me. “The idea of being able to use the rift energy to heal humans without the need for them to die first would revolutionize the medical industry.”
“If it works,” Meredith said.
“If it works,” I said, keeping one eye on the approaching men. “You’re devising some kind of tracking system.”
“Yes, we’re using computer simulations to do it, but we can’t get it to work. There’s no rhyme or reason to how the tears open; we don’t even know why some people come back as different revenants. Why is one person an elemental revenant and another a hooded revenant? We know so little, but we do know that when the tears open, they revive the person caught in it, and anyone in the immediate vicinity is healed.”
“The young woman shot in the bank robbery,” I said. Meredith had written about it in her notes. It had been all over the news a few months before.
“Exactly,” Meredith said with considerable enthusiasm. “Her body was almost immediately filled by the energy from the rift, and the lady who had been trying to help her was healed of her arthritis. It was as though she had the joints of a teenager.”
“You didn’t really need me to go through it all and check it, did you?” I asked.
“No, I just wanted you to read it through before I went to the university for more funding,” Meredith said bashfully. “I figured if you liked it, so would they.”
“You could have told me,” I said with a smile.
“I needed you to go in cold,” she told me. “Can you imagine it, Lucas? No cancer, no disease, no premature deaths.”
I stared at her. “Meredith, if that’s possible, then great, but people have tried to do this before—usually with exceptionally bad results.”
Meredith sighed. “I know; I’m getting overexcited and thinking about running a sprint before we’re barely crawling. I just . . . Lucas, we don’t know anything about the energy that comes through from the rift. Not really. We know that there are people living inside the rift; we know that there are cities in there, an entire civilization we can never get to.”
“Inaxia,” I said, using the name of the capital city inside the rift. Home to several million rift-fused.
Meredith nodded. “Not just Inaxia, though. Lots of cities. Some riftborn talk about them. They’re the only ones we know of who can go back and forth to the rift whenever they like. We know that tears appear seemingly at random. That the energy that comes through brings back people or animals who died, and that’s it. It imbues great power, and frankly, we have a responsibility to find out how and why.”
“Did you just paraphrase Spider-Man?” I asked.
Meredith smiled. “Yes, yes, I did.”
I chuckled. “Okay, look, I think your ideas have considerable merit, and they’re worth looking into. I also think you need to be careful. If you manage to do this, if you discover how the rift selects people . . . you won’t be the only one wanting that information.”
Meredith’s smile faded. “Yeah, I know. I’ve already had several government agencies asking me to work on their own rift-science projects. One of whom wants to create soldiers that fuse humans and fiends. I want to help people, Lucas. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“I can’t think of anyone else who’s more likely to solve it,” I told her as the two men came close enough for the streetlights to illuminate their faces. Two from the bar. They both stared over at where Meredith and I stood, then walked into the park instead. “But please do be careful.”
“I will,” Meredith promised. “So far, it’s just me, you, and my assistants. Oh, and the funding committee.”
“Just out of curiosity, who asked you to help fuse humans and fiends?” I asked her.
“Her name was Dr Mitchell,” Meredith said. “She works for some security-consultant firm.”
A shiver of foreboding hit me. My thoughts flashed back to five years previous, my arrival at the asylum. I’d gone there to help Isaac. There had been stories of people experimenting on revenants, on fiends too. I’d stayed because . . . well, because I was stupid enough to think it was a good idea. It hadn’t been, and the brutality and horrors I’d seen there had stayed with me for a long time. I saw firsthand the kinds of methods she’d used to get results. I heard the screams; I smelled the blood. She was little more than a psychopath with a doctorate.
“You recognize the name, don’t you?” Meredith said.
I nodded. “She’s a monster,” I told her. “She experiments on the rift-fused to see how they work. I’ve seen the aftermath of her research firsthand.”
“I turned her down,” Meredith said. “She was intense and, honestly, a little scary. She wouldn’t say who backed her, either, which raised huge alarm bells.”
The fact that Dr Mitchell was around and still performing her horror science meant nothing good. I made a mental note to call an old friend and ask him to look into it.
An Uber pulled up alongside us, and Meredith asked the driver to wait a moment as she checked the confirmation of its arrival on her phone. You can never be too careful. Which is sensible but also a damning indictment of the state of the world.
“Sorry about the truncated evening,” Meredith said. “Thanks for your input. We’ll have to do this properly soon,” she said, getting into the car just as it started to snow again.
I looked across the road and into the park, hoping that the two Humanity Sovereign members hadn’t caught up to anyone or done anything I needed to deal with. They’d been more than enough of a pain for one day.
Better to be safe, though, so I headed after them.
I’d crossed over a small bridge when I heard the first scream. It came from deeper in the park, and I quickened my pace.
Another scream, and I was flat-out sprinting until I spotted the two rotund men a few hundred feet down the path. One of them held the woman from the bar, while his friend kicked someone—presumably the man she’d left with—on the floor.
“Hey,” I shouted. It had the desired effect of stopping the two men as they looked around to see who had seen them. They spotted me as I walked under a streetlamp.
One of the men pointed at me and laughed while the other kicked the prone man in the side again.
“What do you want, old man?” the man who’d laughed said.
“Old man?” I asked. “That’s uncalled-for; it’s not like either of you are spring chickens.”
“Yeah, but we don’t need a walking stick,” the second man said as the woman helped her friend up and started to move away.
“Get going, you two,” I told them. “Get him to a doctor.”
She looked at her friend and nodded.
“We didn’t say the mutants could go,” the kicker said with a sneer.
“You think we won’t beat your crippled ass?” the joker said.
“Humans drinking in a revenant bar,” the kicker said. “Drinking with the damned soulless. It’s disgusting.”
“I don’t like that word,” I said slowly, making sure that there was enough distance between us that both men would have to take a few steps before they could do anything.
“Cripple or soulless?” the joker asked, laughing like he’d said the funniest thing of all time.
The kicker and joker stood in front of me, the latter removing a brass knuckleduster from his pocket. He put it on in an exaggerated way, making sure I saw it. Both were about my height, but I was pretty sure that neither of them were trained fighters, just thugs who liked to bully and pick on those weaker than them.
“That stick isn’t going to help you,” the kicker said.
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Either of you want to tell me who threw the rock?”
Both of them laughed. “Dirty soulless don’t belong in this neighbourhood,” the joker said. “They should be in their own neighbourhood, with their own kind.”
I sighed. There were always people like this. People who thought they were better, who needed someone to blame for the state of their own existence.
The kicker threw a punch. It was a right-hand haymaker, the kind that puts you on your ass if it connects. If. I stepped around the punch, pushing his arm away with my right hand while sweeping my left hand under and up the outside of his arm. My left hand also held my walking cane, so I let go of it, catching it in my right hand and driving it into my attacker’s ribs as I stepped around him.
He was on his knees, coughing up his lungs, as I continued past him. I swung the cane around at the joker, who was surprised at what had happened, leaving him open for the cane to crack around the side of his face. He dropped to the ground and blinked as blood began to pour out of his broken nose.
I stepped toward the joker and smashed the butt of the cane into his face, knocking him out cold, sending him to the snow-covered ground.
The kicker had gotten back to his feet, one hand holding his side, but the other had a switchblade in it. He darted forward and I stepped back and to the side, putting distance between us. The kicker swiped the blade toward me in what I could only assume was him trying to feint, because he quickly shot toward me, lunging the tiny blade like a lance. I stepped to the side and brought down my cane on his wrist, immediately bringing the cane back to my shoulder before bringing it down again, this time on his forearm, following through and ending with a crack on his already-injured ribs.
The kicker screamed, presumably unable to decide which part of him hurt more, and he dropped to a foetal position on the ground.
“Broken wrist, arm, and probably ribs will do that,” I said to him as the switchblade hung uselessly between two fingers.
I kicked the switchblade away, which had the not-so-unpleasant consequence of the movement causing him more pain in his hand.
“Who threw the rock?” I asked, placing the butt of the cane an inch above his swelling limb. “Don’t make me ask again.”
“Brad,” he said through gritted teeth. “The one in charge.”
“Hair in a ponytail?” I asked. “Had S.H. tattooed on his neck?”
The kicker nodded.
I placed the cane against his wrist and pushed as I knelt down beside him. Kicker screamed again.
“I want you to remember that feeling,” I told him. “Remember what happens to people who hurt those who are just trying to live their lives. Don’t let me see either of you around here again.” I pushed down harder. “Understand?”
The man nodded, gasping for air as I released the pressure on his wrist and took a deep breath. “Phone,” I said.
“Front pocket,” the kicker said.
I found it where he said it would be; it was some old flip-phone thing that screamed burner. I dialled 911, explained the situation, ended the call, and dropped the phone on the ground close to the head of the kicker.
“I was never here,” I told him. “I would make sure you remember that.” I kicked him in the head, knocking him out.
I continued on through the park without any further trouble. I hoped the kicker would relay my words to his friend when he woke up; I’d hate to think that I’d had to hurt them both for no reason. Well, apart from the fact that they clearly deserved it.
By the time I left the park, any adrenaline that I’d felt from the fight had dissipated, and I felt like just getting home so that I could have a shower and get some sleep. My automatic black Longines Heritage watch told me it was after two a.m. It had been a long day.
I crossed the road and walked over to my apartment building. It was six storeys, and my two-bedroom sixth-floor apartment had wonderful views of the city. Even at night, it was an impressive view. I’d lived there for three years and found it to be a place that I could go to get away from everything.
The foyer to my apartment building was large but fairly unassuming. There was a wall lined with metal post boxes on one side and a large mirror opposite.
I was halfway through the foyer when the door opened and Dale walked in. He looked worse for wear and had the good grace to look embarrassed when he saw me.
“Lucas,” he acknowledged softly, his voice barely above a whisper.
I stopped walking. I really didn’t have time or energy to deal with him, but the way his friends had behaved still left a bad taste in my mouth. “Your friends are assholes,” I told him.
He looked at me. “Now, that’s not fair. We’re fighting for human rights,” he continued without a trace of irony or intelligence in his regurgitated nonsense.
“You’re fighting for nothing,” I said sadly. “You’re just trying to find someone to blame because you’re pathetic.”
Dale’s expression darkened and I thought he was going to take a swing at me.
I walked past him and over to the lifts without another word. Dale was not worth my time and effort.
The lift doors opened, I pressed the button for the sixth floor, and the lift started its journey.
The lift doors opened, and I walked down the dark green carpeted hallway to my apartment.
The interior was spacious and light.
I had two dark grey couches, one with two seats and the other with three. The entire place was silent, and I shrugged off my jacket, placing it on the hook next to the door, before walking into the room and pouring myself a large glass of whisky.
I sat on the couch, enjoying the silence as I finished my drink, still feeling on edge about the fight. It had been too easy. Too easy for me to slip into old habits. Four years and no need to hurt someone, to fight. I trained every day, but the second I knew that violence was about to happen, it felt like I’d never stopped.
I looked over at the cane next to the front door. I didn’t need the cane, I’d never needed the cane, but it was part of the facade that had been created to hide myself. I poured another drink and knocked it back in one, letting the burning fill my throat.
Enough. I took the glass through to the kitchen and went for a shower. Keeping the water as hot as possible, I stood there for several minutes, just feeling the heat cascade over my long dark hair and shoulders. I’d half-expected the water to turn pink. It had happened more than once in my life; it was pretty much a certainty that it would happen again at some point.
I opened the shower door and stepped out of the bathroom, drying myself as I walked into the master bedroom.
I pulled the wardrobe doors open, revealing shirts, jeans, and trousers next to two dark grey suits both in dust jackets, neither of which I’d worn in a long time.
Dropping to my knees, I placed my index finger in the hole at the base of the wardrobe and pulled toward me until there was a click. I pulled the base of the wardrobe up, revealing the false bottom beneath it. Inside was a six-feet-square floor safe with a numerical pad beside it. I’d had the safe custom-made the day I’d moved into my apartment. I punched in the numbers 1576, opened it, and revealed the contents inside: a drawstring pouch in black velvet that was large enough to conceal the mask inside, a second identical pouch about the size of my hand, a metal suitcase, and a black duffle bag.
The safe was quite deep, and all the contents fit inside with ease, but I stared at the velvet pouch containing the mask above anything else. I tore my gaze away from it and opened the smaller pouch, removing the Raven Guild medallion from inside. I held it for several seconds before putting it back.
“Not today,” I whispered, and closed the safe, putting the false bottom back inside the wardrobe and closing it with another click.
I remained sitting on the edge of the bed for some time, staring at the dark carpet, wondering how long it would be before I had to take the bag and suitcase out of the wardrobe again. I hoped that the fight was a one-off, a momentary return to the world I’d left behind.
My time at the asylum had taught me many things, primarily that I was not in a good place mentally. That I hadn’t dealt with the deaths of my friends. That I hadn’t dealt with surviving what had killed so many. I walked away from that life and found that the longer I was away, the easier it became to convince myself it was best to keep it that way.
When I finally fell asleep, my dreams were of things I would rather forget.
CHAPTER THREE
Five Years Ago
I’d woken up with a headache and the feeling that I’d like to find the man who had hit me in the face and feed him his own rifle.
I rolled to the side and blinked a few times. My head hurt. A lot. That was a surprise. I’d expected my body to have healed itself, but instead, I was met with pain and the unpleasant sensation that something was very wrong.
Pushing myself upright was a herculean process I’d rather not have to do a second time. My head spun a little, and I had to close my eyes and wait for it to pass. What the hell was wrong with me? Was I drugged?
I swung my legs off the side of the bed and leaned up against the wall, the back of my head feeling the cool touch of stone. Opening my eyes, I realised I was in a cell. The entire front of the cell, door included, was made of bulletproof Plexiglas with several holes drilled into the door and wall. A marked difference from the grey stone that made up the other three walls. A window sat at the top of the cell wall opposite the door.
