Riot Girls: Seven Books With Girls Who Don't Need A Hero
Page 65
She found it, the worn path almost hidden by fallen leaves. An October breeze picked up and chilled her flesh, causing bumps to rise on her now exposed arms. She crossed them, rubbing each forearm. Her second sleeve hung in black tassels, torn and tied to her right thigh to stave off the blood flow. “Come this way.”
When it seemed like they’d been walking the animal trail for almost an hour, she noticed the lack of chatter in the woods. The three of them were causing the leaves to rustle too loudly. Her stealth had fled with her strength, causing her feet to drag. Even her limp had become more pronounced. And who could force a nine-year-old boy and his one hundred-fifty pound dog walk quietly through the woods? She giggled at the thought of it, and suddenly she couldn’t stop laughing.
Just a little farther. Ever notice how that almost sounds like just a little father? Who would have a little father? The world tilted in a see-saw motion. She giggled more.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded her head and collapsed to the ground, face first. The heady scent of earth and rotting leaves assailed her as she embraced the blackness and swimming stars.
“Raven!” The boy shook her shoulder.
The soreness in her arms and back screamed and pressed her to wakefulness, but her legs felt numb, useless. With a series of snapping noises, Darius was removing the crossbow and sword she’d stuck to the magnets on her corset. He pushed her shoulder, helping her turn over. The silver moon shone between the bare branches of the oaks and maples whose leaves made a soft landing for her. Water soaked through her coat. Her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering.
“What can I do? Should I go back to those men?” Darius’s blue eyes shone in the half-light, and tears glistened on his cheeks. He removed his jacket and covered her shoulders, arms, and chest, tucking it on the sides.
Her abdomen tensed, and she couldn’t stop shaking. Through her stiff and clacking jaw she struggled to keep her words steady. “No. Keep to the path. Climb the hill and keep an eye out for it. The path is easy to lose on the other side. Once you’re past the first farmer’s field, you’ll see a rose bush. It will be bare and thorny—no flowers now. But when you see it, turn left and follow the edge of the field. It will be hard to see in the dark, but there’s a house on the right just before you get to the river. Take my night vision goggles. Find that house and get the doctor. He’ll come. Say my name.”
The young baron nodded and ran.
~*~
Heavy droplets of rain exploded on Raven’s face and arms. She squinted at the sky. The faintest hint of dawn showed behind the pregnant gray clouds overhead. Cold. The shivering took over, and her teeth ached from chattering. She let herself drift into a semi-conscious state.
Memories and dreams intermingled in this shadowy realm.
“No!” Raven’s father slammed his fist on the table, causing the cup that held his juice to tip and spill the orange liquid over the hardwood table.
Raven jumped. First, as a response to the sound of the slamming fist, and second, to get the dishrag before the juice seeped into the cracks between the planks of the handmade table. She’d never be able to get the sticky, syrupy liquid from between them if they made it past the surface.
At eleven years old, she’d already become more than a daughter to her father. He treated her as an equal. He never talked down to her and respected her opinion. She took on so many of her mother’s domestic duties in the three years since losing her.
Raven pulled herself up to her full height before saying, “Father, I need to know how to protect myself. By refusing to teach me the reaper’s way, you’re leaving me as defenseless as mother was the day she was taken from us.”
His violet-blue eyes shone with unshed tears as they met hers. He pulled the unwashed black hair from his forehead, looking tired from the two days of work. Home for two days, gone for two. Her father returned this time with the pelts of six animals for market.
“If she’d had the heightened senses of a reaper, you know she would have seen them coming. She could have been saved.” Raven’s voice shook from the truth of it, knowing the words pained her father as much as it cut into her own chest.
Raven moaned and shifted, trying to alleviate the pain in her side. The adjustment made her thigh scream and pulled her from her memories. Still, the images of her father putting her in a blindfold for training came back to her. She remembered the bumps and bruises she’d received for weeks before she properly learned to anticipate her father’s sudden attacks. Wooden swords, staffs, crossbows, guns, steam-throwers danced in the shadows of her vision. The exhaustion and the cold drew her back into her memories.
Gregory’s green eyes pleaded with her, his eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t see why you have to go.”
Raven couldn’t help but smile at his bare wrists and ankles. He’d grown too fast over the summer, and hadn’t gotten to New Haven for new clothes. She had to look up into his face now and watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed his sadness. She tried to smile as she said, “I’ll be back as much...as often as I can, but this is something I have to do.”
“School is starting next week. Doesn’t your dad want you to go?”
“This is more important. It would be our last year of school, anyway. You need to concentrate on your studies so you can go to University. I’ve always been a distraction for you.” Her voice softened and her throat grew tight. “Your mom says so.”
“I don’t care.” Gregory wrapped his long arms around her and put his forehead to hers.
She closed her eyes and said, “I do.”
Their foreheads rubbed together as he shook his head. His voice cracked. “You always come back from these trips injured.”
She half-laughed. Every time she and her father returned from a mission, she had a new wound. “Someday I’ll stop being a reaper and marry you.”
“Someday can’t come soon enough.”
When would that day come? Tears mingled with raindrops on Raven’s face. Sobs racked her body until the pain became so unbearable, she welcomed the black curtain of unconsciousness.
~*~
Jack squinted as the raindrops beat a gentle drum on his face. Soon the dirt on the road through Red River Forest would become an utter clay mud pit. How long had it been raining? His head ached and warmth flooded his cheeks when he sat up. Pale morning light filtered through the rainclouds above.
The scene of carnage surrounding him, looking worse than it had in the moonlight. The twisted metal bodies of the mechanized horses were tangled together in a pile of spikes and sharpened limbs. His fallen comrades were also awakening one by one, and sat up, each with a hand to his head.
No casualties. It should have been a massacre. Impossible that they still lived. Each of his men stood and gathered together in a group like soaked chicks looking for a hen to sit under. Clenching and unclenching his jaw, Jack continued to sit in the fast forming mud. The wind picked up and chilled his wet shoulders. Two soldiers stumbled from the woods, their clothing stuck to their arms and chest. Harry and Colton seemed uninjured but shaken.
“Why?” Rupert put a voice to the question that flitted around Jacks head like a caged bird.
Jack met eyes with his second-in-command. Lightheaded and dazed, he decided to remain silent.
Rupert’s expression was hard to judge in the half-light. His dark skin and eyes made him look like a shadow against the trees. He sneered as he continued. “Not one of us is injured, except for the fog in our heads. She had Colton’s sword. That blade was cared for and sharpened daily; no one takes better care of their weapon than him. So, why are we still alive?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.” Jack took the arm Rupert extended and pulled himself from the mud with a sucking sound.
The rain fell into his eyes and ran down his face. No need to brush off. The rain would soon wash the soiled clothes.
“There will be no trail to follow, now with the rain.” Rupert shook his head and stood with his hands on h
is hips.
“That’s for certain.”
Bradley came over, shivering from head to toe. His teeth chattered as he asked, “What will we do now?”
Jack ventured a glance in the direction Raven and Darius had likely gone. He longed to go after them, but felt unsure in so many ways. How would it be different this time? What could he do to alter the outcome? A mistake learned from is an experience. A failure is when you learn nothing from your mistake. He shook his head, the gears turning to figure out what needed to change.
Colton interrupted his thoughts. The pale, blonde soldier’s high cheekbones hinted at his relation to the nobility, but his wet hair stuck like straw to his wrinkled brow. “Captain, have you seen my sword?”
Chapter 7
Keep a distance.
Even a friend can become an enemy in an instant.
Know when it’s time to hide wounds even from a friend.
RAVEN ACHED ALL over. Not one part of her body settled without screaming in pain. She steeled herself and opened her eyes, meeting the southern apple-green eyes of Dr. Gregory Patrick. A taut smile stretched her lips. It hurt.
“Gregory.” Her voice cracked and sounded foreign to her own ears. Her throat was too dry.
“Hey, you. Do you always have to show up on my doorstep half-dead?”
One small chuckle shook her frame, and she winced in the pain. It hurt to laugh.
“Easy, Raven. Your body needs a lot of recovery.” Gregory stood and backed away from the side of the bed.
She recognized the plain stucco ceiling overhead as that of Gregory’s family farmhouse. The unadorned white walls glowed bright in the light of the sun from the bay window. From the kitchen in the house she knew by heart, the smell of cookies rose to her bedside. Gregory’s mother, Mrs. Patrick, had always baked when she came for a visit, but his mother had been gone for almost four years now. A warm feeling enveloped her as she thought of Gregory baking them for her.
“You’ve had me quite worried.” His eyebrows knit together in a stern line. He pushed a tendril of her hair from her forehead, and she loved the cool brush of his fingertips. “You’ve been asleep for three days.”
“Sorry.” She mouthed the word, but the breath to say it stopped behind the lump in her throat.
“I know you are, Raven, but don’t be.” He rested his hand on her shoulder, and his firm expression fled. “We’ve been taking good care of you and of Darius.”
We? Raven wondered who else he could mean. Mr. and Mrs. Patrick had been gone for years. It had been too long since Raven’s last visit. Her last mission had taken two years to fulfill. She wondered if he might have gotten some help in the meantime.
“I’ll fetch you a broth. You must be hungry.”
She nodded, but her throat cried for liquid. The intravenous needle might be putting fluid directly into her bloodstream, but it did nothing to squelch her insatiable thirst. Gregory tripped over the threshold as he headed for the door but caught himself at the doorjamb. Best doctor in the countryside, and still didn’t know where his two feet were.
A moment later, the tawny Great Dane loped into the room and jumped up, putting her front end on Raven’s gut. She winced and closed her eyes to the sudden pain and gasped for breath.
“Nikki!” Darius bolted into the room after his dog.
Raven squeezed her eyelids as a giant pink tongue accosted her face. After receiving a shove with her needle-free right arm, the Great Dane dismounted her bed. Raven couldn’t help but smile. “Hi, Baron Darius, how are you doing?” Her voice sounded gruff and unfamiliar.
“Me? I’m fine. It’s you I’ve been worried about for three days!” The boy looked exasperated, and his blue eyes were glistening. He had a cup in his hand.
“No need to worry about me—I’m sure the doctor is taking good care of me, as always.” She took the cup and swallowed a quick sip.
“Have you seen his basement? He has a laboratory larger than my father’s alchemist!” Darius leaned his elbows into the side of the bed.
She nodded and set the cup on the bedside table. “Medicine is a strange mixture of science and alchemy these days, and that laboratory used to be Gregory’s father’s.”
“He told me.”
The sound of boots approaching on the hardwood floor of the hallway caused them both to turn to the doorway in anticipation. Like an impatient puppy, Nikki bounded out the door to greet Gregory before he made it to the room.
Lifting his arm higher to keep the dog from the tray he held in his hand, the doctor chuckled as he entered. His green eyes shone like emeralds, and his dimples showed in his smile. Her heart leapt. He’d removed his jacket and vest, his red suspenders exposed in an intimate way. It reminded Raven of how his father would snap the same red straps as he’d talk to punctuate his sentences. The sleeves on Gregory’s white linen shirt were rolled up to the elbows, exposing his forearms. They were no longer the thin, awkward, adolescent arms she had remembered. His arms showed the strength and dexterity of the man he’d become. “I hope you’re in the mood for a cookie or two.”
Before she could nod, Darius leapt to his feet. “Yes!” He looked at Raven, clapping his hands gently in his excitement. “These are the best things I’ve ever eaten. Have you ever had a chocolate chip cookie?”
She raised an eyebrow and asked, “Are you telling me you’d never had a cookie before?”
He shook his head, his enthusiasm wavering.
“Well, it makes no difference,” she assured him. “If Gregory is using his mother’s old recipe, it would still be one of the best things you’d ever eaten.”
She smiled at Gregory. Her smile faltered as his face grew pale and his green eyes, uncertain. The genuine smile he’d had a moment before seemed frozen in a half-grimace. The jovial mood turned awkward for a moment, and it set Raven’s teeth on edge.
Feet padded in the hallway.
Out of the corner of her eye, she found her crossbow and the red corded sword handle. Automatically she judged her ability to reach them. Were they followed? The footsteps were well hidden by slippers and seemed lighter than a man’s usual tread. Was it a reaper, trained in silencing techniques? She gripped the sheet and coverlet, preparing to jump from the bed.
A shocking yellow gingham dress rounded the corner, and the enemy’s voice was light and lilting. “Oh, wonderful. The patient is awake.”
The sudden sting of tears behind Raven’s eyes needed blinking away. She’d come so close to killing this woman. The thought of what she would have done if her weapons were closer or her body less stiff. She’d never killed accidently before.
“Yes, Amelia, our patient is.” Gregory’s grimace didn’t quite leave as he took a step back and placed an arm around the woman’s shoulders.
With the action, a lump formed in Raven’s throat. It was a servant, right? A nurse?
Raven did her best to convince herself of this untruth, even as another question inside bubbled up. Why does he have his arm around this woman?
“Excellent. It’s been so long since I’ve had a female for company in this isolated farmhouse. I tell Gregory all the time we should sell it and move to the city. His practice would grow so much faster there. Don’t you agree?”
The woman’s words registered themselves in Raven’s brain faster than she could deny them. The pain of realization made her feel faint. She fell back into her pillows and closed her eyes. If she couldn’t see it, would it go away? Foolishness. The lies a child would tell herself. She forced her eyes open again.
Gregory held Amelia’s hand as he said, “Dear, I think it’s too much for her right now. Maybe you can converse with her later?”
“Oh of course, she’s just woken. Darius, please bring Nikki into the kitchen. I’m preparing ox tail broth for our patient, and I’m sure your dog will enjoy a bone or two.” With a smile and a gentle wave of her hand, she gathered the boy and his brown shadow and left in the same sing-song way she’d entered.
“Who?” Raven
could barely stammer the word.
Gregory swallowed hard, his hands clasped as though they were handcuffed in front of him. “Amelia is my wife. We were married in the spring, six months ago.”
“Oh.” Raven screamed inside. Her heart shattered in so many sharp pieces, they cut the insides of her ribcage as they fell to her stomach. She wanted to sob. But instead, she found herself smiling and saying, “That’s wonderful.”
Gregory’s smile grew impossibly wide as he knelt at her bedside, holding the side. “Thank you. I had hoped you’d both become friends. Amelia is so lonely here. Won’t you stay awhile?”
Raven clenched and unclenched her jaw, hiding behind the puppet-like smile on her face. The old standby came out automatically. “I have a mission.”
His face fell, and his words came out terse. “Of course. How long?”
She closed her eyes and assessed her pain. “How long will it take me to heal?”
Raven felt him push off from the bed as he stood again. His voice took on the clinical tone his father used to use with his patients. “The blood transfusions were successful, and the stitches seem to be taking. With your strong constitution, you should be up and about in less than a week. However, you’ll need to stay a fortnight before I can remove your stitches.”
She nodded, her hair knotting on the pillow. A fortnight worried her. The rain should have washed away any tracks. The doctor’s house sat so far off the main roads, she hoped the guards would believe she’d never come this way. She opened her eyes. His back was turned to her, as if he studied the picture on the wall. Betraying his unhappiness, his hands fidgeted behind his back.
“Do you know who Darius is?” Her voice cracked as she asked. She felt hollow inside, resigned to the fact he didn’t love her anymore.
“The only Darius I would know of is the young baron. Surely there are more boys named Darius in New Haven.”
“He is the baron, Gregory. I’m to take him to the Wood Witch.”
He spun on his heel to face her. “What on earth for?”