The Last Raven: An Urban Fantasy Noir (Riftborn Book 1), page 7
“They’re on the way,” Isaac said, ending the call and sitting beside me, far enough away from the dead thing that we didn’t have to smell it anymore. “Any luck?”
“Still looking,” I said, poking around in the backpack.
“Remember, you’re now officially working for the RCU,” Isaac told me. “But not so officially you can tell members of the FBI to fuck off.”
“I would never . . .” I said, placing my hand on my heart.
Isaac stared at me.
“Okay, sure, I totally would,” I said, picking up the wallet again and turning it over in my hands. It was made of black leather with a red interior. It looked expensive, but there was nothing inside beside the single bill. I turned it over in my hand again.
“He played you,” Isaac said. “Got you to kill him, and now we don’t have anyone we can ask about what happened.”
“He was peeling apart,” I said. “He could barely utter a word. I don’t know what was done to him, but he looked like he was unravelling. If there were two of those, I imagine there’s a second one not too far from here.”
“You think there are definitely two of those?” Isaac asked.
I nodded. “Two dead fiends in the cabin. Two of these things. Keys to a car on him. I don’t think they were meant to die here. I’m guessing they’re meant to be somewhere right now, enjoying the fruits of their job.”
“Why not call their employee to let them know something is wrong?” Isaac asked. “I imagine whoever sent them wouldn’t want them to be found.”
“Can’t call anyone without a phone,” I said. “And my guess is there’s no tracker on it, so whoever sent it expected it to just come home. Didn’t work out so well.”
“You want to go search for part two?” Isaac asked.
“Not really,” I said. “They had a car stashed somewhere. If the FBI are going to be involved in this investigation, they can do the legwork.”
“They might strongly suggest that we help,” Isaac said.
“Can you strongly suggest that they fuck off?” I asked.
Isaac laughed. “I missed you, Lucas. You were always terrible at the political game. Too honest, wanting to know the truth and not caring about what that uncovered.”
“Thank you,” I said with a wry smile. I tossed the wallet onto the backpack and carried on sifting through the contents, I noticed an interior pocket I hadn’t checked and, opening it, found a business card inside. The card was black with Sky-High Security printed in white font. A Rochester address sat on the reverse of the card, but other than that, there was no information on the card.
“What’s that?” Isaac asked.
I passed the card to him. “You ever heard of Sky-High Security?”
“I have,” he said. “Sky-High Security is a subsidiary of Barnes Pharmaceutical. The former is a private security agency. They’ve done some work in pretty bad places around the world, and they have some large, and exceptionally classified, government defence contracts. We’ve had runins with Barnes in the past; they’re doing research into using the rift for monetary purposes. It’s all very classified and probably backed by at least one senator.”
“So, it’s a no-go area,” I said.
“With Sky-High, you’re probably okay,” Isaac said, passing me the card back. “But Barnes is off-limits. Dan tried to investigate it a few years back and got shut down hard.”
“So, what you’re saying is that we can’t just go accusing them without a lot more evidence than a business card,” I said.
“A lot more evidence,” Isaac said as voices could be heard coming our way.
“What the bloody hell did you both do?” Hannah shouted as she came into view.
Hannah Jackson was five and a half feet tall, with pale skin, and blue eyes the colour of topaz. Her head was shaved on either side, with the centre being shoulder-length but tied back in a ponytail. The last time I’d seen her, it had been shocking pink, and was now a combination of forest green and silver.
“Nice to see you too, Hannah,” I shouted back.
Her stern expression softened somewhat as she got close and wagged a finger in Isaac’s direction before hugging me, lifting me off my feet in the process.
Hannah was a horned revenant and strong enough that I’d once seen her tear a car door clean off to beat someone with.
“You haven’t answered the question,” Hannah said, looking over at Isaac.
“There are two of us here,” Isaac said, at least attempting to spread the blame.
“I haven’t seen Lucas in four years,” Hannah said. She was originally from Cork, and despite how long she’d lived in America, the accent had stayed. Something she’d always been happy about.
“It’s good to see you, Hannah,” I said with a smile.
“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” Hannah said. “Four years, Lucas. Four. Fuckin’. Years.”
“You know why,” I said.
Hannah nodded. “I do. I understand, too. I just don’t like it. Didn’t like it then, don’t like it now. You don’t sort your head out by fuckin’ off to somewhere without occasionally lettin’ people know you’re okay. And don’t start tellin’ me about Isaac knowing where you were; Isaac hadn’t heard from you in years until today.” Hannah’s expression softened. “I was worried. I missed you.”
Hannah hugged me again, this time putting a little bit of strength into it, so I gasped.
“I missed you too,” I whispered as she let me go.
Isaac briefed Hannah about the recent events, while she looked at us as if we were insane. Emily arrived while the explanation was still ongoing, forcing us to start again while dozens of agents scoured the surrounding area, occasionally throwing me expressions of bewilderment or outright irritation.
For my part, I remained quiet. I wasn’t even certain that I was “officially” supposed to be there, so thought it best to say nothing until asked.
After an hour of me freezing and a very kind FBI agent bringing me the world’s largest cup of coffee—which, I told him, meant that I now owed him my firstborn—Emily West was winding down her interrogation. She’d stopped looking over at me with irritation a while back, especially after she’d seen for herself the unravelling fiend in the cave.
The feds removed the corpse and I looked beyond Emily and Isaac as the fiend’s body was moved out of the cave. It was a huge mass of a creature, and its skin had become ribbons, peeling off the body in large strands, leaving large chunks of flesh and blood behind as the specialists tried to get the creature into a body bag. It looked like someone had cooked it for days so that the meat slid off the bone. I wasn’t going to be eating ribs again for a long time.
“Lucas,” someone called out over the noise of the feds working all around us. I was grateful to tear my eyes away from the horror show and, with surprise, spotted Meredith trudging toward me, in a yellow medical coverall that covered everything up to her neck.
“Hey,” I said after walking over to meet her halfway. “Why are you here? How did you get here so quickly?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Meredith said. “Got a call at about five in the morning, asking me to come here and help with an investigation. FBI kindly got me here to get involved. You?”
“Similar thing, but the RCU,” I told her.
“Dr Pincher is helping us with our investigation,” Emily said, appearing behind me like the ghost of federal agents past.
“I didn’t know you were working here too,” Meredith said.
“Something I’d like to talk to him about,” Emily said with a smile that definitely didn’t remind me of a predator about to pounce.
I turned to Emily. “Any chance you can give us thirty seconds?”
“We’ll see you by the fiend, Dr Pincher,” Emily said to Meredith before turning to me. “You’ve got fifteen. Make ’em count.”
I turned back to Meredith. “Okay, I’ll explain everything. But I don’t have time right now. I’m at the Grand Hotel in Hamble. Room 718. Any chance we can meet up tonight and we can go over some things I need to tell you about?”
Meredith looked a little confused, which I would have certainly been in her shoes. “Sure,” she said a second later. “About nine okay with you?”
I nodded. “Let me know when you’re there and I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
“Is everything okay?” Meredith asked as Emily called her over.
“I promise I’ll explain everything and answer every single question you have,” I told her. “Look, Meredith. I think something bad is happening here, and I don’t know what it is, but neither does anyone else. Just stay on your toes.”
Meredith smiled. “I’ll be fine, Lucas. I’m a big girl.” She winked at me and walked off toward Emily.
“Ah, you made a friend,” Hannah whispered from beside me.
I turned to Hannah; the huge beaming smile on her face almost made me laugh. “I am capable of it,” I said.
“You sure?” Hannah asked. “Your ability to have people try to kill you usually trumped your ability to make friends.”
“People can change,” I said.
“Yeah, right,” Hannah said with a slight chuckle.
I smiled. I couldn’t help myself; Hannah always had this slightly mocking edge to her, no matter the importance of the situation.
“We need to talk,” Emily West said, once again appearing as from the ether.
Isaac, Hannah, and I followed her to the edge of the clearing, and I wondered if anyone else got the feeling we were about to be told off by teacher.
“Isaac informs me that you’re assisting the investigation into what happened here,” Emily said. “You do know that the RCU and FBI are joint investigating, yes?”
“Sure,” I said.
“That means you don’t get to run off and do things on your own,” Emily said. “That also means you follow the law. The human law. We need to find out what happened here and, if possible, arrest those responsible.”
There were several prisons in the world where rift-fused people were incarcerated. I was happy to try Emily’s way. For now.
“Sure,” I said.
Emily sighed. “Honestly, you found the Sky-High business card and the dead . . . whatever the fuck that was.”
“See,” I said to Isaac. “It’s catching on.”
“And it appears you actually know what you’re doing,” Emily continued. “Isaac said you worked with him in the past.”
“What else did Isaac say?” I asked, wanting to make sure we were all on the same page.
“That you’re reliable and trustworthy,” Emily said. “Both of which I’ll decide on. But I can’t stop you being involved, so please just work with me. We all want the same thing here.”
“Deal,” I said.
“We can’t touch Sky-High Security,” Emily said. “When I say that, I mean it. Barnes Pharmaceutical has more lawyers and money than the United States government. We’ve tried going after people who work for them before, even had a whistle-blower a few years back.”
“What happened?” Hannah asked.
“Whistle-blower developed a case of being blown up,” Emily said. “We were moving her to a secure facility, and someone got to her. Killed two US Marshals and an FBI agent in the process. No evidence, no nothing. And we looked, I promise you. If you can help us nail these assholes to a wall, I will take that help. But if you get caught, you’re on your own. If you break the law, you better be damn sure you’re on your own. There’s no cavalry here; there’s no backup.”
“Thank you,” Isaac said.
Emily nodded. “We found a second fiend. By a Toyota on the road. Same state as his friend here. You think they attacked the agents here and just died?”
“I think there’s a bit more to it than that,” Isaac said.
“Explain,” Emily said.
“I think they were sent here to kill the agents here,” I said after Isaac elbowed me in the arm, indicating I was up. “They did their job, and someone else planted those two fiends. They were in no state to get from the fight to that cabin, and no one on the team killed them. Money on it the autopsy report shows they were killed a lot earlier, brought here, and dumped. By this point, the two fiend-human things were meant to make their way back to wherever they came from. But unfortunately, their plan fell to pieces and so did they.
“My guess is that one of them started to unravel, climbed into the cave to make sure they stayed out of sight. The second one ran to the car, and the same thing happened there. Also my guess is that they started to unravel when they tried to change from fiend to human. It wasn’t meant to happen. Whoever dumped the fiends at the cabin assumed the killers would be long gone, so never went to look for them.”
“At some point, they must have known, though,” Emily said. “Why not send people to find them?”
“Cops and feds and soon media everywhere,” Isaac said. “Can’t risk it.”
“Find out what you can,” Emily said. “If we find something, we’ll share it with you, too. Hopefully, we can get this sorted quickly before anyone else dies.”
“Whatever we uncover, you’ll know,” I promised.
“How’d you find the fiend?” Emily asked. “Just curious.”
“My father taught me to hunt,” I said. “To hunt fiends, too.”
“Your father must have been an interesting man,” Emily said.
“He was,” I agreed.
“Did he teach you how to kill them, too?” Emily asked.
I shook my head.
“What’s the plan, then?” she asked. “And please don’t tell me if it’s going to break all of the laws.”
“I have a friend who lives to the west of here,” I said. “He knows pretty much anyone in the revenant business. If anyone has intel on Sky-High or Barnes, it’ll be him.”
“And you think he’ll give you this information?” Emily asked me.
“Not for free, he won’t,” Hannah said with a snort.
“And will it be actionable intel?” Emily asked.
“It’ll be intel,” I said. “How it was obtained, or whether or not you can do anything with it, isn’t up to me. But it might well give us an edge, or at least point us in the right direction.”
“For someone who only arrived this morning, you certainly seem to know your way around,” Emily said.
“Like I told you earlier,” Isaac said, “he’s done some consulting for us in the past.”
Suddenly, the phones of Isaac and Emily went off, and they walked away to answer them. I watched for a moment with Hannah by my side as the pair of them became more animated.
“When this is over, are you going to vanish again?” Hannah asked. There was no hostility in her tone, but the words stung nonetheless.
“No,” I said. “I think I owe you and Gabriel an explanation as to why I left.”
“About damn time,” Hannah said.
I looked at her and saw the hurt in her eyes. I hadn’t meant to hurt people, but I’d also had to do what was best for me. I knew that Hannah, just like the rest of the team, understood my reasoning, but understanding and accepting are two very different things.
“I got married,” Hannah said. “His name is Jonas; he’s a teacher.”
“Congratulations,” I said with a smile.
“He’s human,” Hannah said. “We’ve been married for two years now.”
“I’m happy for you,” I said.
“I wanted you to meet him,” Hannah continued. “But I wasn’t sure whether I was meant to let you know. I’m pretty pissed off at you because of that. And I know that’s selfish, but even so, you missed my wedding, Lucas. You missed the happiest day of my life, and I couldn’t even contact you to tell you about it. And now you’re here because Dan is in hospital and so many of us are dead, and if this is some fleetin’ visit bullshit, I’m not sure how to deal with that. You came back because of misery and pain, but you weren’t here for the happiness and love.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Hannah. I really am. I’d really like to meet your husband.”
Hannah nodded. “I’d like that too, Lucas,” she said softly. “I think Jonas would like to meet you after all these years.”
“Let’s go see Gabriel and I’ll put things right,” I said. “Or try to. After that, we’ll find Booker and see what truly stupid thing he’s going to want to trade for intel on Sky-High, and Barnes,” I said.
Isaac walked back over. “Dan’s awake,” he said.
Emily joined us a second later.
“What has he said?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Emily said. “He’s barely aware of where he is; it’ll be a few hours before he’ll be able to talk, and that’s if he remembers anything. Trauma does weird things to a person’s memory.”
“I’m going to go see him,” Isaac said.
“Good,” Emily said. “If he tells you anything, let me know. I don’t want to have to learn information third- or fourth-hand because you decided to deal with a situation yourself.”
“What about Annie?” I asked.
“Still unconscious, unfortunately,” Isaac said. “They think she’ll pull through, but no one can be sure at the moment.”
“She’s a fighter,” Hannah said.
“Yes, she is,” Isaac agreed.
“We’ll be going too,” Hannah said with an exhale. “We’ll let you know what we find.”
“Thank you,” Emily said before looking at me. “I don’t know what you are, Mr Rurik, but I assume you know how to take care of yourself.”
I smiled. “You remember when I said that my dad taught me how to hunt fiends?”
Emily nodded.
“Well, my dad taught me how to hunt them, but it was my mom who taught me how to kill them.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
While Hannah, Isaac, and I made our way back from the crime scene to our vehicles, Hannah called Gabriel and mouthed answer phone to me.
“Must be a church thing,” she said. “Only ever goes to voicemail when he’s working.”
“Okay, how about I go with Isaac to see Dan,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the church after and I’ll explain everything to both of you at the same time.”
