Raven's Rise (World on Fire Book 3)

by Lincoln Cole

  “I’m sorry, but it looks that way. All of his discharge paperwork has been filed, and him released. He checked out about an hour ago.”

  “Damn it,” Frieda said.

  “Is that all you need?”

  This time, Frieda didn’t reply. Instead, she turned and rushed away from the station. In the corner of the room, the priest stood and shadowed her, following her toward the exit.

  Frieda had an idea of where Aram might go. She just hoped she’d guessed right.

  ***

  Luckily, Aram didn’t go far. Frieda went to the hotel where his wife had stayed these past few weeks while in Switzerland. Would Aram try and run? If so, he might well try to collect his spouse before fleeing.

  When she arrived at the hotel in the center of the city, however, she saw Aram sitting on a stool at the restaurant bar, sipping a drink. The long bar hosted only a handful of people. Soft music played in the background, classical and upbeat, and the opposite of how Frieda felt.

  Aram had a giant cast on his leg that went up all the way to his thigh, and two crutches leaned next to him. Frieda walked toward him, and then a soft voice came from behind.

  “If you don’t do it, I will.”

  She turned and saw the bald head of the priest walking away from her. He had followed her from the church, though she hadn’t known he’d gotten so close to her. He moved so silently it terrified her.

  With a steadying breath, she faced back toward Aram. Whatever had happened to him back at the Council must have proven painful. With the cast on, he sat awkwardly on the stool, half hanging off the edge. He looked distant, thoughts far away, and barely noticed when Frieda sat down at the bar next to him.

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  “Want a drink?” he asked.

  “I thought you didn’t imbibe alcohol?”

  “Just started.” He took a sip. “Thought I’d give it a try.”

  The bartender glanced over at her, but she waved him off. “Terrible time to start.”

  “Great time.” He shook his head. “What the hell else do I have?”

  Frieda didn’t have a good answer.

  “I came here to check on my wife. I wanted to make sure she was okay and not too freaked out by everything going on. Whatever drugs Nida gave her, though, she’s still unconscious.”

  “Does she know what happened?”

  He shook his head again. “No. She’ll feel confused and disoriented when she wakes but won’t remember anything.”

  “Probably for the best.”

  He took another sip and didn’t reply.

  “You came here just to check on her?”

  “I don’t plan to run.” He stared down at his drink. “If that’s what you think. Where the hell would I go?”

  “You know what happens next.”

  “Yeah. You can do whatever you want to me. I won’t fight back. Just one last time, I wanted to see my wife.”

  “Do you want to wait until she wakes?”

  Aram thought about it, and then shook his head. “Better this way. I’d rather leave her wondering than tell her the truth.”

  He turned to Frieda, and on his face, she saw the look of a thoroughly defeated man.

  “After what I’ve done, I couldn’t possibly ask forgiveness.”

  “What you did …?” Frieda trailed off. Unable even to think of the words to justify how furious and betrayed she felt.

  Part of her wanted to grab a bottle, smash it on the counter, and then use it to stab Aram until he stopped moving. She should pay him back for everything he’d done and all the people he’d gotten killed.

  “I know,” he said. “I thought … I thought I had it all under control. That I’d stayed in charge and things happened because of me. I didn’t know they—”

  “Used you?” Frieda raised her brows.

  Aram nodded and stared down at the bar. “I had no clue that I was just a pawn in their game until Nida showed up. I did this. I destroyed everything we built for my selfish reasons. I can’t hide from that. And now my daughter is dead, my son hates me, and I can no longer face my wife as the man she believes me to be.”

  “If you expect sympathy, you won’t find any here.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “All our friends have died except for you, me, and Jun, and it’s my fault.”

  “I should kill you.”

  Frieda clenched and unclenched her fists, trying to decide her next course of action. She stared at Aram, knowing that the proper punishment for what he had done, as dictated by both the decrees of the Council and the way she felt right now, could only be death.

  That felt wrong, though. There seemed something inherently perverse about punishing a man for these crimes by killing him. Hadn’t enough people died already?

  Honestly, she didn’t know. Never in her entire life had she felt so confused and conflicted as she did at this moment. Her entire world had fallen and now showed to be a sham. Everything she had worked for and believed in had gone, and all that remained …

  Emptiness.

  “I won’t do it.” Frieda shook her head. “Honestly, part of me thinks I should thank you.”

  “Thank me?”

  “I’ve waited for this day to come for a long time. I’ve expected it and felt terrified of it for long enough. At least now, I don’t have that shadow looming over me.”

  “What?” Aram glanced up and coughed.

  Frieda ignored his reaction. “She’s as prepared as she’ll ever be. After what happened in Raven’s Peak, I had my doubts, but now we’ve simply run out of time. Arthur believed this day would come.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Frieda fell silent. Finally, she turned to Aram, “You had it right. You always had it right about her. The best thing we could have done was kill her on the day we found her. I knew how bad things could get, and still, I let Arthur talk me into all of this. Now, we’re committed.”

  Aram stared at her, a confused expression on his face. “Kill who?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she stood and bundled back up in her coat. “For what it’s worth, Aram. I’m sorry. I hope they end it quickly.”

  “End what quick?”

  Again, she didn’t reply.

  Realization dawned on his face. “I thought you wouldn’t kill me?”

  “I won’t. The Church will, though. They’ll hunt us all down and kill us for what you did. You’re only the first.”

  While she spoke, the garbed priest walked out of the hotel lobby and into the bar area. He saw Aram and looked at her in question. Frieda nodded and walked at a slow pace toward the exit.

  “If it’s any consolation,” she said, turning back around to face Aram one last time. “Your death bought us space.”

  Aram turned and spotted the priest. His eyes widened. Clumsily, he reached over and grabbed Frieda by the wrist.

  “No. Please! I’ll do anything. Don’t turn me over to them.”

  She eyed him for a second, feeling just an iota of pity. Finally, she shook her arm loose. “Goodbye, Aram. I hope you can find peace in your next life.”

  Then, she left the bar. A week. Father Paladina had promised to get her seven days for turning over Aram to the Church. Not much time.

  Next, they would come after her.

  Chapter 5

  Early the next morning, when his flight landed at the John Glenn International Airport, Dominick felt exhausted. Though still dark outside, it promised to become a dreary day. He rented a car and headed away from the airport, struggling to stay awake.

  Dominick now ran on fumes and needed a real bed to sleep in to recharge his batteries. He felt sure he could sleep for a week at least. And though he’d managed to zonk out for a few hours during the flight, if anything, he felt worse from it and not better. The seats on his international flight had seemed some of the least comfortable in which he’d ever sat.

  Or maybe that just came down to the exhaustion talking. Either way, he didn’t car
e.

  Frieda had asked him to check in on Arthur’s brother, Mitchell, before hopping over to Pennsylvania and guarding Jill Reinfer. He had never met Jill before, but her reputation as a spoiled rich brat with no common sense appeared legendary. All of the Hunters disliked her, and he’d never heard anyone say anything nice about her. Wealthy, she liked people to know it. In her mind, it made her better than everyone else.

  That proved a fairly normal attitude that Dominick had experienced from rich people, but hers went a step further. She had served on the Council many years earlier, but only for a few months before opting out. And had only done it to appease her father, who’d felt she didn’t take her life seriously. She had no interest in the day-to-day monotony of the work and could care less about protecting people from the demonic underworld. All she cared about was money.

  Which meant she felt willing to risk the lives of the Hunters for completely meaningless reasons if it benefitted her. Dominick could deal with her being a spoiled rich brat, but not someone who risked the lives of others for no reason.

  Mitchell Vangeest, on the other hand, and an old acquaintance but not necessarily someone Dominick would call friend, he got along with just fine. He could check on him fairly easily but doubted that Nida would have gone after him. Mitchell, not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, rarely kept up-to-date with Council events.

  To check on him would just prove a shot in the dark. Neither he nor Frieda had any idea what Nida planned to do next, which meant that, basically, everything they did would end up a shot in the dark. The problem was that they lagged four or five steps behind her already, and didn’t feel sure where she would go next or what might be her overall agenda.

  Dominick didn’t know if she intended to go after any more of the Order of Hunters. A few out there hadn’t been at the Council when it got attacked, which meant they could be at risk. He doubted that would be her next move, though. The damage she had done would cripple the Council for years, if not end the organization entirely. Whatever endgame Nida played at, it went beyond just damaging the Council.

  He just wished he knew what it was.

  ***

  Dominick didn’t have any better ideas of what they should do than what Frieda offered. And checking on and protecting Mitchell and Jill for Frieda gave a productive way for him to spend his time; something he could use right about now. To have spare moments to sit around and think offered the last thing he wanted.

  He hadn’t found the courage to call his husband yet because he felt petrified of what he would say. How could he explain any of this without telling Marvin the truth? A truth he had withheld from his partner for years. He’d grown used to lying to his husband on a daily basis about the true nature of his work, but right now, all of the other lies seemed tiny by comparison.

  Often, he justified the mistruths he fed to his spouse by telling himself that he did it for the greater good of humanity and that keeping Marvin in the dark kept him safe. This, however, had become something else entirely, and those justifications seemed flimsy.

  The thing was, he knew the job as risky, but now that risk had jumped to an entirely new level. He only remained alive through a sheer turn of luck that he’d gone away with Haatim when the attack came.

  To keep the secret while he believed in his survivability proved one thing, but how could he maintain the lie now that all his illusions had gotten stripped away?

  Worse, what if he had put Marvin at risk? Did Nida know about his relationship and family? Would she use such information against him?

  Dominick had no clue. He also had no clue about what he would do if that ever came to pass. If he had to pick between the Council and his husband …

  He honestly didn’t know what would happen.

  So, instead of facing the problem, he simply avoided it. Marvin still expected for him to stay away for the next several days on a business trip, which meant he could push off the problem for now. But, eventually, he would run out of time and have to confront the issue head on.

  ***

  Dominick headed out of Columbus, traveling east on the freeway. Already, the rain fell, and the roads had grown slick, but it stayed early enough that not a lot of traffic used the route.

  He reached about an hour away from Mitchell’s shop, and about two hours away from the Reinfer estate. He’d known Mitchell casually over the years as a fixer for the Council: the kind of guy good at tracking things down that seemed impossible to find. Not a Hunter or a member of the Council, he had only a loose affiliation.

  Dominick doubted that Nida would go after him unless he had something she needed. For Mitchell’s sake, Dominick hoped he didn’t.

  Mitchell also being a notorious user of various illegal narcotics and other substances gave one of the reasons the Council kept him at arm’s length. They only used his services occasionally, and almost three years had elapsed since Dominick had last seen him.

  That didn’t make for the only reason the Council had stopped requesting his services, though: rumor had it that Mitchell and Arthur had had something of a falling out several years ago. That happened before Arthur lost control and got put into the underground black-site prison.

  After the falling out, the Council had shunted Mitchell to the side. They wouldn’t risk jeopardizing the feelings of one of their deadliest and most dangerous Hunters for the sake of his pothead brother.

  Dominick drove through the cold rain, listening to the pattering and forcing himself to stay awake. It sounded soothing and relaxing, and he considered pulling over and taking a short nap just in case. He didn’t, though, because he needed to keep moving and get to Jill Reinfer’s residence by late afternoon.

  It took him a little over an hour and a few breaks for coffee before he reached Mitchell’s shop. The store was an old rented establishment, part of a strip mall, and it had tinted windows out front and a dirty welcome sign hanging in the door. The sort of place that might have been a tattoo parlor in another life.

  The sign on the door said “open,” but he felt unconvinced. The place looked empty, almost abandoned, and had fallen into serious disrepair over the last few years. Though the sign lay flipped to “open,” that didn’t mean too much. If he hadn’t known Mitchell lived here, he would have driven right past without even noticing the place.

  At first, he thought Mitchell might have moved shop sometime in the last year or so, but he soon dismissed that idea. If he had, he would have notified them as part of protocol. Mitchell hadn’t seemed much for taking care of the place before, anyway, so there could have been any number of reasons for its current state.

  The parking lot stood barren, and the entire strip mall quiet. No sign came from just looking at the property that Nida had come here, but he couldn’t be certain. Dominick climbed out of the car. The rain pattered on his skin, cold as it ran down his hair and onto his back. To be safe, he slipped his gun free and chambered a round, and then he tested the door handle.

  Unlocked. Gently, he slid it open and stepped inside, gun ready just in case any threat waited for him. The interior looked dark and smelled of too many incense sticks burning. His husband loved incense, and it had become one of Dominick’s pet peeves and a constant point of contention in their marriage. He hated everything about it: the way it smelled, the smoke, and the way it lingered.

  Mitchell Vangeest, on the other hand, loved it, too. He always seemed to have a couple of sticks burning in his shop.

  The main storefront proved empty. The shelves lay in disarray; items discarded and lying haphazardly on the floor or completely out of place on the shelves. None of the products seemed to have a theme, and it appeared as if a grocery store had smashed against a flea market: canned goods alongside antique jewelry; candles up against vinyl records. No rhyme or reason to any of it.

  It looked like the place had gotten tossed, as though someone had come through here searching for something. Of course, maybe that just came down to Mitchell’s unconventional way of sorting things, b
ut Dominick doubted it.

  Either way, he felt unwilling to take any chances where Nida was concerned. Maybe she did need something here, after all, something that Mitchell had hung onto or could get for her.

  She must have come out here to take it from him.

  Which meant the odds of finding Mitchell alive had just grown slim.

  A half-finished burrito and multiple candy bar wrappers covered the front register, and the door to the backroom stood open. The food looked old like it had lain there for days. He listened at the doorway and thought he heard movement in the back.

  Maybe Mitchell, maybe not. It could be that Nida remained here, continuing her search. If she did, that would prove lucky for him: then he could end this now, once and for all.

  He slid open the door and crept into the storage room, careful not to step on anything or make noise. It looked dark in here, with only a small amount of light filtering through a window. Further in, lay a couple of rooms. On the left was the break room, where Mitchell hung out and got high, and on the right was another small storage place, where Mitchell kept his prized possessions, the things of true value, and a curtain of beads blocked his way.

  The noise came from there—a shuffling of footsteps. Slowly, Dominick raised his pistol and slid the curtain aside.

  Mitchell stood there, spray bottle in hand, as he surveyed a small tray of short green plants. He bent and eyed each one of them critically.

  He had headphones on and bobbed his head, taking little footsteps. A desk lamp stood nearby, aiming down at them with a soft grow light to keep the plants alive and fortified while indoors.

  In the middle of winter, Dominick felt pretty sure those weren’t tomatoes.

  Off to Mitchell’s right lay the small hidden cubby from where he’d slid the tray. Built right into the wall, a heavy shelf that he’d dragged out of the way hid it.

  Dominick lowered his gun and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  Mitchell kept bobbing with his music, completely unaware that Dominick stood right behind him.

  “Mitchell. Hey, Mitchell!”