by Lincoln Cole
Raven’s Rise
World on Fire, Book III
by
Lincoln Cole
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lincoln Cole, Columbus, 2015
[email protected]
www.LincolnCole.net
Cover Design by M.N. Arzu
www.mnarzuauthor.com
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
“Not necessity, not desire—no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything—health, food, a place to live, entertainment—they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
This one is for four people: my Mom, Crazy Kateen, Alan, and Mike.
Prologue
As soon as Matt Eicholt stepped inside his quiet little church in the center of Phnom Penh, something felt terribly wrong. The lights remained off, just as he expected, but he could feel the presence of someone else hiding in the room.
The mere fact that they hid from him filled him with concern. He couldn’t see anyone but could tell they hid there.
“Hello?” he called out in Khmer. “Who’s there?”
No response. He tried English as well, but still, no answer came. Probably kids hiding away from their mothers. He’d experienced situations like this many times in the past, finding children avoiding their schoolwork or chores, though not usually this late in the day.
No doubt, they hid from him as well, hoping he wouldn’t return them to their angry parents.
However, something about the situation made him worry, and even though wayward children seemed the likeliest scenario, something told him that this case differed.
Matt walked across the hardwood floor toward the front of the church and to the light switch. Wary and uncomfortable, he felt unsure what might be afoot but also afraid he would miss his dinner appointment.
He used the light spilling in through the open doorway to navigate between the wooden pews toward the front, keeping his eyes open for any trespassers.
He made it to the far side of the room and felt around for the switch. It took a few seconds for his fingers to find it in the darkness, and then he flicked it on.
Nothing happened. The room remained dark.
Suddenly, the door behind him swung closed with a crash, casting him into complete darkness.
A shiver danced across his spine, and he backed up against the wall, willing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Someone stood inside the room with him, and a tinge of panic rushed through his body.
“Who’s there?” he asked in Khmer. “Come out where I can see you.”
“Why would I do that?” a woman asked in English from across the room. She sounded young, with a sultry voice.
“Who are you? Why are you in my church?”
“Maybe I came here looking for God.”
She sounded closer this time as if she’d moved across the room toward him. He listened but couldn’t hear any footsteps tapping across the wooden floor.
“He does hide in the most unexpected places,” the woman said.
“What do you want?”
“I want you, Matthew. You have no idea how much you mean to me.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You make the last piece of my puzzle. The light at the end of my tunnel. Matthew. I like your name. So Biblical.”
He backed away slowly, one hand on the wall. He aimed to move away from the approaching voice and head for a door at the back of the cathedral. One he kept locked normally, and that exited into a back alleyway.
His eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness, and he bumped into a pew while he scrambled through the church, knocking it sideways to scrape across the floor.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked, a few steps to his left. “Our fun has only just begun.”
“Stay away from me.”
“I couldn’t stay apart from you any more than a moth can from a flame.”
Suddenly, the door to the church blasted open, pouring bright sunlight in once more. A wretched-looking woman stood in front of him, maybe two meters away. She appeared of Indian descent, though pale. Pockmarks and rashes covering her skin and face gave her a sickly appearance.
The woman turned toward the door and let out a laugh when the light came in.
“I wondered when you would show up.”
Matt glanced over. Another person stood the doorway. This one silhouetted by the sunlight, which made it impossible to make out the features or see the face.
“Matt, run!” the person in the doorway—a woman—yelled.
The newcomer’s arm flew up, and a thunderous roar of gunshots filled his tiny church. On reflex, he covered his ears and stumbled backward, trying to get away from the sound.
He glanced back at the first woman, the scarred and sickly one. She dodged back and shifted behind one of the pillars that held up the roof. Gunshots thudded into the area around her.
The woman moved with unnatural speed, gliding as much as moving. Matt watched her in awe, not even sure if she qualified as human. More rounds blasted into the church. They buried into the pillar behind which she hid, shattering off huge wooden fragments that went flying through the air.
She turned, looked at him, and let out a hissing sound.
“Run, Matt!” the newcomer screamed from the open doorway before firing off more rounds at the Indian woman. “Get out of here!”
Matt ran.
Chapter 1
Haatim clutched the gun in his hands. They shook, and he worried that he might lose his grip and drop it onto the floor. He stood in the loading area of the hotel in Switzerland, where the Council had resided over the last few months, and aimed the pistol at his father.
He had found the weapon on the floor near his father, who looked to have a broken leg and had trouble moving. Aram looked at him with an expression of sadness and terror, which should have made it harder for Haatim to want to hurt him.
It didn’t.
“I should shoot you,” he whispered, the words barely audible. “I should pull the trigger and end this.”
“Haatim, please. I’m your father.”
“Is that supposed to make everything better? Should that absolve you of your crimes?”
“I love you, son. I never wanted any of this to happen. Please, don’t do this.”
The sheer insanity of the situation washed o
ver Haatim and made him feel dizzy. A year ago, he had known nothing about the Council of Chaldea or the Hunters who served them by stopping supernatural and demonic threats. He’d had no idea that his father was anything except a religious figure in his community who went on a lot of business trips on behalf of his congregation.
Now, here he stood, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he might actually pull the trigger. He might end his father’s life, the man who’d raised and protected and taken care of him. The man who’d taught him right from wrong.
The man who’d gotten it wrong.
Nausea gripped Haatim, and everything about this situation felt surreal as if he watched all of this happen from outside his body rather than as an active participant. His mind numb, and hands sweaty, he couldn’t think straight.
“Why would you do this?” he asked. Then he shook his head. “No. I don’t want to know. Nothing you say could absolve you for your crimes.”
Abigail dead. The Council betrayed and murdered. The hotel a devastated wreck out in the middle of nowhere. And all caused by the man cowering on the ground before him. Haatim couldn’t remember ever getting so angry in his entire life. He felt furious at the betrayal, the manipulations, the hypocrisy, everything.
At the same time, an empty pit of grief also filled his heart. The sheer finality of what had happened sank in for him, albeit slowly. There could be no going back. This part of his life had finished, and he would never look at his father the same way again.
It seemed like he was closing out a chapter of his life and losing a part of him that he could never get back. He had never imagined that his father could keep so much from him.
Aram whimpered on the floor in front of him, leg broken and battered. The man held his left hand in the air between the two of them with an expression of confused fear. Mixed in with that fear, though, Haatim saw resignation. It looked as though he’d already decided that Haatim would pull the trigger and end his life.
Maybe he should.
“Haatim, please …”
Haatim didn’t want answers, but he needed them.
“How could you do this?” he asked his father. “All of these people are dead because of you.”
“Let me explain.”
“Explain what? Nida? Betraying the Council? What could you possibly say to justify this?”
“I did it for us.”
The words hit like a punch to Haatim’s gut, a lie so brazen it took his breath away. Haatim’s hands tightened on the grip of his gun, and he narrowed his eyes. Could his father have become so deluded that he believed his words true?
“You did it for you. All of this, you did for your own selfish reasons and nothing else. Don’t you dare try to bring me into this.”
“When Nida got sick, your mother—”
“Not her, either. My mother had nothing to do with this.”
“You don’t understand …”
“I understand perfectly. You made a deal with the devil to get back your daughter, and now everyone else has paid the price for your crimes.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“No. It is. You are a coward and a traitor.”
“Haatim.”
Haatim ignored him. “Right now, I’m just trying to decide if I should shoot you, or let Frieda decide what to do with you.”
Aram blinked. “Frieda is still alive?”
“Does that surprise you? Did that not form part of your bargain with The Ninth Circle?”
Aram winced. “No, it isn’t that. I just … she was all Nida wanted. She promised me … I didn’t think …”
“You didn’t think what?”
Aram took a deep breath. “Nida promised to take only Frieda and leave everyone else. No one should even have known of her presence until Frieda had gone.”
“Oh, so you only tried to betray and murder one person. Is that supposed to make me feel all rosy inside?”
“No. No … I just … who else survived?”
Haatim didn’t reply immediately. He felt unsure if he should withhold any information from his father, considering what had happened. Not because he thought his father might use it against them or betray them further.
The thing was, he didn’t doubt his father’s sincerity; at least, not in how things had played out. Aram seemed genuinely distraught by what had happened here, and it was clear that none of this had been in his original plan.
He had simply tried to play with fire and learned the hard way that it’s easy to get burned.
No, Haatim considered withholding the information because his father didn’t deserve to know. He had betrayed them and caused all of this to happen, and Aram found it painful not to know how badly everything had turned out. Part of Haatim wanted to keep him in the dark about it and torture him further.
But that part of himself, he didn’t want to give rise to. He felt furious, and the more he tapped into that anger, the angrier he became. No matter what happened, he didn’t want to become that kind of person. At length, he could see nothing to be gained by withholding the information.
“Dominick,” Haatim said.
A moment passed. “Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“You said I got her killed a few moments ago,” Aram said. “Who did you mean?”
Haatim’s hands shook again while emotion coursed through his body. He couldn’t find the words to speak, only rage.
“Abigail,” Aram finished, face turning pale. “Oh, son, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t say her name,” Haatim said in an anguished whisper. Then, with more anger, “You have no right.”
“You have no idea how much I regret what happened.”
“Your regrets mean nothing. Only actions, and your actions got her killed.”
“Then, do it. Please. Pull the trigger. I’m guilty. I confess. I deserve this.”
“I know you’re guilty. But I need to know everything. I need to know what else you’ve done.”
“You know it all.”
“I need you to say it.”
“I worked with The Ninth Circle. I thought I could manipulate them, but clearly, they manipulated me.”
“What else?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not. I have nothing to hide. I’ve lost everything in my life, everything that mattered to me, and without you, I have nothing; I can see it in your eyes: I’ve lost you too. Pull the trigger and end it, Haatim. You’re right, I’m guilty, and I should pay for my crimes.”
Haatim’s hands shook some more. With his finger, he could feel the cool, curved metal of the trigger. He wanted to squeeze it in the hopes that it might offer a solution to the pain and misery coursing through his soul. Silent, jaw clenched and eyes hard, he prayed that it would give a balm against the agonizing loss and despair that smothered him.
However, killing Aram wouldn’t bring a solution to his problems or the way he felt. It wouldn’t make anything better, and if anything, would serve to make things worse.
Haatim lowered the gun to his side and let out a shuddering breath.
“Abigail is dead,” he said, the words spilling forth. Even as he spoke, he had trouble admitting them as true. The words sounded hollow and unreal, like a sentence he wasn’t supposed to say aloud. “You got her killed.”
“I’m sorry; I never—”
“Yes, you did. You got your wish. She died saving Frieda’s life.”
“How?”
“A train wreck and explosion. We couldn’t even find her body.”
“Haatim, I …”
“Maybe, I should execute you.” Haatim ignored the man on the ground in front of him. “A part of me knows it would be the right thing to do. I know you deserve to pay, the same as I know that all the people you betrayed didn’t deserve it.”
Aram stared up at him, bottom lip trembling.
“But I won’t kill you.”
“Thank you, Haatim.”
He shook
his head. “Not because I shouldn’t kill you, but because I want to. A large part of me wants to kill you, but for vengeance. Not justice. Then, I would be just as bad as you. I refuse to sink to that level.”
Aram didn’t reply, but Haatim could tell by his father’s face that the words had stung him.
“Also, I won’t forgive you. Ever. I’m done with you, and I never want to see you again for the rest of my life. Do you understand?”
“Haatim.”
“Do you understand?” He gave his father a hard stare. “We’re done.”
Aram remained silent for a long moment, letting the finality of the words sink in. Finally, he looked away, unable to meet his son’s gaze. “I understand.”
Haatim nodded. “This is the last time you’ll ever speak to me. Goodbye, Aram.”
Haatim turned and strode out of the room before his father could respond. He headed back out into the cold night air outside the loading bay of the hotel. The wind washed over him, chilling the sweat on his skin and making him shiver.
For a long while, he stood there, listening to the wind and watching the snow swirl around him. Emotion and energy drained out of him, leaving him a husk standing in the cold Switzerland air, alone and broken.
Haatim couldn’t believe how close he’d come to murdering his father, but he also couldn’t believe that a part of him still wanted to go back in and finish the job. Lost and confused, he didn’t have any clue what he should do.
This world, he didn’t know. This world, he didn’t belong in. This life seemed too brutal, too evil, and he felt unready to spend his entire future balancing on a knife’s edge between life and death.
This wasn’t his world.
Chapter 2