by Emma Harley
“Any time you need a break, just take one. Look Phoenix, I can tell you had something more than a fling with Logan Blanchard. None of us are going to hold that against you, just don’t be so hard on yourself,” he murmured down to her. Raina pulled her arm from his grasp.
“I had nothing with Logan, I’ll put the bullet in his head myself. Just because you and Alicia are failing at hiding a relationship doesn’t mean I’m hiding anything,” she hissed, flouncing off to the living room, leaving him standing gobsmacked.
“Everything okay?” Davin asked, moving the files away from her as she slammed her coffee mug down.
“Yeah, I just want to get this started. But all of you listen up. I don’t care what comes out when we dig into my history or my family, what I care about is that you keep it to yourselves. First and foremost, you are my team. If this was any of you I would grant you the same discretion. Are we clear?” she commanded.
The team almost stiffened in response, she wasn’t speaking as their team mate or their friend, she was speaking as their General. So rarely did they see her pull rank to get them to fall in line, they knew she was deadly serious when she used that tone. Each of them nodded tightly, JJ didn’t break her stare as he followed suit.
“Okay then, Nick you got anything for us?” she swallowed.
Raina couldn’t allow herself to feel uncomfortable pulling rank, they never would have given her the title if she had any issue with it, but when it came to her team, she never considered them to be anything other than equals. Pulling rank made her feel distant from them. Nick didn’t look her in the eye as he passed out documents he had printed off a hoary printer buried in a kitchen cupboard.
“So as it turns out, there is no evidence to suggest either of the Blanchard parents exist. Just like Raina’s mother and aunt, none of the Blanchard’s have a birth certificate. Literally none of them are registered. This is where it gets weird. Eighteen years ago, Kalen and Logan Blanchard first appeared on records, they got driver’s licenses, and here’s the copies of them.” Nick taped the copies to the wall for everyone to see. Raina ran a hand through her knotted hair and hissed loudly.
“They look exactly the same as they do now,” she breathed. Nick nodded.
“A year later, Coralynn and Elias Blanchard got theirs too, and we have the same mystery, they haven’t aged either. Also I haven’t found any records of a younger brother existing, but what I did find, was a very old rental agreement for a house abroad, registered to Coralynn Blanchard and Brent Ironwood.”
“We always suspected they were lovers, how does that change things?” Davin grunted, staring at the copies of driver’s licenses.
“It doesn’t, but Brent Ironwood looked what, mid to late thirties when we killed him?” Nick answered excitedly, slapping another copied license onto the wall, “he looked the exact same 18 years ago too. No birth certificate, no sign of him existing at all. For all of them, there’s no visas, no record of them coming from abroad. Even if they had been sold as children or brought here illegally, there would be a trail, and it doesn’t explain why they haven’t aged.”
“So we have 4 ghosts and a dead ghost?” Alicia scowled, leaning back on the sofa in exasperation.
“Ghosts can’t talk, if we get our hands on them we can make them talk,” Raina snarled in response.
Davin picked up the file about Raina’s mother to flick through it, before turning to her. “There’s no record of you being born either is there?”
Raina shook her head, absent-mindedly chewing on her fingernail. “Not until I was like six or seven.”
Her eyes widened at the same time Davin’s did.
“You didn’t appear until they did.”
She nodded and spun to the team.
“Question for you all, how old were you in your earliest memory?”
Alicia shrugged, “Three, maybe four. I remember my first ever day of school.”
“Same here, about three,” Izak mumbled. The others echoed their answers and Raina looked to Nick.
“Can you access hospital records? From about 18 years ago?”
He shook his head and sighed loudly. “Most records that old are on paper, they aren’t digitised, but I can check. Any particular hospital?”
“No idea.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “What am I looking for?”
“Me. My mother told me I fell from a tree house and hit my head, I had no memories whatsoever from before that day. If I fell, presumably I would have been taken to hospital.” Davin cocked his head and squinted at her.
“So in the period of time there’s no record of you, you somehow have no memories at all?” Raina flopped down on an armchair and grabbed her lukewarm coffee. “Not a single one. Might explain why I have no recollection of the Blanchards.” Alicia stood up and called to everyone to stop.
“Is no one else bothered that we’re currently investigating some men in black shit here? Gorgeous men who don’t age and memory wiping? I’m as open-minded as the rest of you but this is fucking crazy,” she half-laughed, pointing a shaking finger at the board, “Seriously guys this is ridiculous. And the first person to say the word ‘vampire’ is getting kicked in the nuts.” Raina’s temper flared at Alicia’s mockery, advancing angrily towards the red-head.
“No one believes in that shit, but we need answers. And if they are vampires, our objective is to put a stake through their hearts. Okay?” JJ shoved his hands in to pry the girls apart and moved slightly in front of Alicia.
“Nobody is saying anything like that. Honestly my first thought was they’re part of some top-secret government programme that constantly regenerates the body,” he admitted sheepishly. Izak clapped sarcastically.
“Now we’re making progress.” JJ clenched his fist and was about to argue before Nick piped up.
“I wouldn’t dismiss JJ’s theory so soon,” he called over the hubbub or arguments. Everyone paused to look at him with dumbstruck expressions. “It’s not a top secret government project, per se, but Raina, your mother was mentioned in this project with them. It’s completely nuts,” he exclaimed, the team forgetting their grievances as they crowded around him, “I found a record of a project the Blanchards were involved with, they were genuinely trying to extend human life spans and prevent the expiry of the body as well as creating a new source of energy.”
JJ raised his hand in the air, “I mean even a stupid guess ain’t stupid if it’s right.” Izak high-fived him with a whoop. Raina pushed closer and squatted down to read over the project details.
“So my mother was involved in this?”
Nick nodded.
“Not for long though. The project wasn’t started by the Blanchards, in fact it was dropped years before they came along, they just set it back up again. Your mother and Brent Ironwood were both working on it, but your mother quit after a year, there’s no sign of her having any further involvement with them after that.”
Raina stood up and walked back to the board, tapping her fingers anxiously.
“My mother moved us around constantly, she always seemed afraid, like we were running from something. I always assumed something had gone down with my father, and she was afraid of him finding us. To think the ones she was running from smiled in my face.”
Raina launched her coffee cup at the wall in a surge of fury. Logan’s face was burned into her mind. Pieces were falling into places they should not fit. She was a damn general. The manipulation required to set her on the path to encounter the Blanchards was extensive. And she hadn’t noticed it at all. She spun to her team, ignoring their sympathetic glances.
“Is there anything that says where their lab was?” The tech nodded rapidly, “At the manor itself, apparently there was an older part of the manor scheduled for renovation but it never went ahead because they had put their labs in there and couldn’t secure any other venue.” Raina’s pacing quickened to match the anxious thumping in her chest “I think I know this already, but what was the name of the oper
ation?”
Nick scrolled for a moment and paused shiftily, avoiding her gaze as he answered. “Operation Vincent.” Raina sucked on her teeth and paced along the floor. She forced a laugh and rubbed her face angrily.
“Who was the original leader of the project?” Nick’s eyes were like saucers, jumping from his chair like it burned him.
“Captain Jonathon Green.” In a split second, they team dived upstairs, Nick grabbed his laptop and scrambled with wires, shoving it into his backpack. Alicia grabbed as many of the folders and files as she could find as the others grabbed their bags and the gear they had brought with them.
Almost smacking into each other in the hallway, Raina loaded her handgun as the other’s followed suit.
“Alicia’s got the minivan, we’ll go together. I’ll drive,” she ordered, nodding to Davin. In their attack formation, they left through the back door, aiming for the cow shed where their vehicles were stored. Raina slid into the driver’s seat, Izak beside her.
“How did you know it was Green?” Davin called from behind her. The tyres squealed as she took off down the mountain road.
“The day I left I called him. His driver was only ten minutes from me, despite the manor being in the back ass of nowhere. I didn’t tell him where I was, so he was having the manor watched. I didn’t realise before, but when Logan gave me the gun, I gave it to him and asked him to check forensics. He told me to check the chamber, it had a single bullet. He knew exactly what it meant, which means someone who wasn’t on this team told him. Our mission was classified, so he couldn’t have accessed our files yet somehow he was able to give those to us? They all thought I was about to disappear again, what better way to keep tabs on me than pretending I needed protection,” she snarled, slamming the steering wheel in frustration, “he kept us in that farmhouse because he thought we couldn’t work out what was going on, and we still don’t know until we get answers from them ourselves.”
The tyres squealed as Raina flew along the mountain road, until a warning roar from Davin made her lift her foot. They wouldn’t solve anything if they died in a wreck. She leaned back on the prickly fabric of the chair and let out a sigh.
“Green manipulated everything. He’s had tabs on me for a long time. When I requested leave, he was the one tried to convince me to stay on for another mission. He handed me the brochure for the university I enrolled at. Conveniently close to the Blanchards. He knew I would have to look for a job, and showed me the obscure website with the job posting from the Blanchards. If he couldn’t keep me under surveillance with the army, he could keep me with them, and lure the Raven in. Two birds with one stone.”
Izak handed her an earpiece from the set Davin was distributing. She scoffed at it and looked into the mirror at the others.
“Do you really think he’s not listening in on those?” she snapped. Davin smirked at her and shook a tin at her.
“The ones he gave us are in here, these ones are ours. Nick set them up to a secure frequency, so right now he’ll think we’re back at the farmhouse.” Raina couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief, she didn’t know why she doubted them in the first place. JJ leaned forward between the front seats.
“So, any idea where we’re going?” Raina glanced back at them and locked eyes with Davin in the rear-view mirror.
“You’ll check me right?”
He looked confused, but he nodded firmly, bringing his fist to his shoulder. She took a deep breath to steady herself.
“We’re going to the Blanchard manor.”
Chapter 5
The van journey was tense. And very long. They were hours away from the city in the opposite direction from the Blanchard manor, meaning the journey would take them well into the evening. They swapped shifts for driving and sleeping, only stopping to refuel and grab food. On their last stop, Raina ordered everyone to gear up, they were almost there. Looking like bulky black shadows, they had dressed behind the van in a side road just past the petrol station.
Raina took a moment to herself before she finished. She had put on her armour and braided her hair down her back, a habit she had picked up from her mother. She kissed her mother’s necklace for good luck and strapped so many weapons to herself she was like a walking robot. A dagger in each boot, her mother’s athame strapped to her arm, handguns at each side of her waist. Flashbangs, an automatic hung along her front and a machete at her back. Her teammates were equally armed up, although Alicia had favoured a crossbow, and JJ carried a shotgun. Raina had abandoned the van back beside a field, obscured from the road, and they creeped along the rest of the way by foot.
The manor’s lights were on in one half of the house, Raina assumed the brothers had returned home after their fake alarm. She signalled to the team to move, slinking among the trees in the forest surrounding the grounds before she reached the window of the kitchen. As expected, none of the staff had been allowed to come back yet. She signalled to Izak, he handed her a roll of duct tape and a small pointed hammer. She put a large cross of tape on the window and smacked the centre with the point of the hammer. The glass shattered with a crunch and Davin peeled it away for Raina to climb in. She helped the others climb through silently and so they began their scout throughout the house.
Raina took the lead, despite Davin previously claiming he was running command. He obviously trusted her enough not to lose control and put them in danger.
They moved in formation throughout the older part of the manor, their first objective being to find Thea and begin extraction. JJ held the rear, silently closing doors behind them to avoid detection. A sudden girlish squeal of delight made the team freeze in their tracks as Davin silently pointed to a polished wooden door at the end of the hallway. Raina nodded and signalled for the team to move forward. She flattened herself against the frame of the door and loosed a flashbang from a pouch on her chest. The voices were louder, and a female was definitely inside. The team crouched into position, Davin gripping the handle waiting for her signal to go. She took a deep breath, looking at the unspoken words in Davin’s eyes.
We have your back.
With a tight nod, Davin slammed the door open and dropped back as Raina tossed in the stun grenade and ducked. A thunderous boom sounded and a stunning flash of light erupted in the room before her team filed in, guns at the ready. Raina slipped in behind them, sliding to the front of the formation as they cleared the space.
A large open basement area with metal tables like a morgue opened up before them. Several metal chairs were bolted to the ground, and three of them were occupied. Kalen was strapped to one, his face almost pulverised on one side, his eyes squinting from the light. Elias was unconscious in the chair beside him, his lips and eyes so swollen and bleeding he was almost unrecognisable. Logan was in no better condition than Kalen, his shirt had been ripped open and it looked like he had been sliced repeatedly. Large gashes lanced across his muscled chest, each movement breaking the crust of dried blood and allowing a fresh layer to slither down his torso.
Raina slid her visor off and kneeled before Logan. He raised his head slowly as his golden eyes met hers.
“Get out of here,” he snarled, “it’s a trap.”
“Where’s Thea?” Raina asked quietly. Kalen groaned and moved his one unswollen eye to her.
“We weren’t helping her Raina, I swear,” he mumbled, each movement of his lips making him wince in agony. Raina ignored him and didn’t take her eyes off Logan. She slid a handgun from her waist and held it under his chin.
“Where. Is. Thea.” she hissed, gritting her teeth as she pushed the gun harder into Logan’s jaw.
“She’s right here darling.”
A smooth voice laced with malice sounded from behind them as her team spun to the door. Coralynn Blanchard gripped Thea tightly as she led her into the room, a gun pointed to her temple. Raina swung behind Logan and kept the gun pointed directly at his head.
The Raven sneered and looked her up and down.
“Well h
aven’t you grown up,” she shrieked with psychotic laughter, “from the beast that slaughtered my mate I expected…more.” Raina rolled her eyes, forcing her face into neutrality. She would kill Thea without a thought if this didn’t go her way.
“Good things come in smaller packages,” Raina hissed, yanking Logan’s hair back. The Raven sat herself down on a large desk chair across the room, not at all concerned that there were five guns aiming for her.
“Oh put your toys down dearie, we all know you want answers first yes? If that useless oaf did his job properly then you should know all about our history by now,” she grinned, showing a vicious row of sparkling white teeth. Raina didn’t move the gun from Logan’s head, but signalled to her team to stand down. Davin didn’t move. “Stand down Bolton,” she demanded. He twitched slightly, but ignored the warning. Behind his visor, The Raven couldn’t see him speaking, but the team could hear him through the earpieces.
“I warned you I’d check you Phoenix, I don’t care if you want answers. I have the shot, I’m not moving.” Coralynn noticed that Davin hadn’t lowered his gun, and she chuckled.
“Oh, what’s this? Is he your lover too darling? The valiant white knight wanting to protect the princess that doomed them all,” she snarled, yanking Thea’s hair to the side. Thea yelped in pain and Raina flinched, her finger moving to the trigger. The Raven’s eyes narrowed on her hand on the gun and grinned evilly.
“Go ahead and shoot him. He’s not my brother,” she cackled wildly, her blonde hair unravelling from the twisted knot on her head. She glared at Raina as if she could see into her soul.
“When are you going to start asking questions princess? Would you like me to start? I bet you’re dying to make sense of this all aren’t you.” She pulled Thea’s hair back to loudly whisper in her ear. “Why don’t you tell her Thea?”
Raina winced as her aunt was pulled around, her tears rolling down her rounded cheeks. She had to do something, anything to stop her pain.
“Let her go,” she screamed, pointing the gun at the Raven, tears forming in her eyes. The bitch didn’t care if she shot Logan, she had no leverage here. Coralynn licked her lips, almost as if she was tasting Raina’ fear on the air.