Dirk The Savior - Book 3 of the Raven Series

by Rhiannon Neeley

  Connor was bent over Casey, ready to drink. At the sound of Dirk's voice, he straightened and turned. “Ah,” he said, opening his arms wide, “welcome home, Fledgling. You're just in time to watch as I make this woman truly mine.” He began to move toward Dirk and his cousins. With an evil smile, Fagan added, “Then I shall tell you a story about another battle. One that I won. The night I flayed the skin from your father's body. Your father—Roth Raven.”

  Before Dirk could stop him, Drake ran at Fagan, the wooden stake he carried raised in his hand. “You son of a bitch!” Drake yelled, drawing his arm back.

  Fagan caught Drake's arm just before the stake touched his chest. “Pitiful,” he said, throwing Drake aside with ease. Drake hit the rocky floor and rolled. Fagan continued his advance toward Dirk.

  Dirk stood his ground, trying to keep himself calm. He knew if he lost his composure, that he would do something stupid and lose this fight. Drake was already on his feet and circling around behind Fagan. Dirk was careful not to let his eyes linger on his cousin for too long. Holt came up beside Dirk, axe gripped tightly in one meaty hand. “When you killed my father, you loathsome piece of rotted meat, he was alone. You really think you can take three of us?” Dirk taunted. He wanted to keep Fagan's attention on him and off of Casey and his cousins. Holt started to shift to one side—putting some distance between them.

  “You three don't add up to what your father was,” Fagan said, his voice dripping venom.

  Drake took the opportunity. He attacked Fagan from behind, burying the stake in the monster's back but he was off the mark. Fagan whirled, shaking Drake off. Drake hit the floor again, his shoulder taking the brunt of the fall. Drake struggled to catch his breath.

  Bones cracking, Fagan popped his shoulder out of place and reached behind him, pulling the stake from his back with a sickly sucking sound. He lobbed it at Holt who was getting ready to make his own attack. Holt raised his axe, knocking the stake away.

  Dirk glared at Fagan. “Come on,” he said.

  “Did I ever tell you that I think your mother would be such a mouth-watering morsel,” Fagan said. He took another step toward Dirk. “Too bad I didn't take the time to sample her the last time I saw her. Is she still alive? Tell me that she is,” he said with an evil smile.

  Dirk's anger flamed at the mention of his mother. His vision sharpened. He took a breath. The odor of coal oil wafted to him, issuing from the approaching monster. Without taking his eyes off Fagan, Dirk turned on the gas and snapped the igniter. The torch flared.

  Connor laughed. “Fire does not scare me, don't you remember?” He advanced another step. “I think I would like to have a taste of Raven blood again before I finish the woman. After all, your father's was such a vintage that it tasted like a fine wine.”

  “You will never taste Raven, or any other, blood again,” Dirk said. He gripped the torch tightly at his side.

  Connor's face became a mask of evil. He closed the space between them. “You challenge me to a battle then?” he asked, his face inches from Dirk's.

  Dirk smiled easily. “No, Fagan, there's no battle…” He raised the torch between them, holding the flame to Connor's silk shirt, “because I've already won.”

  The flames caught instantly, devouring the material. Then a whoosh filled the air as the coal oil that soaked Connor's skin caught. Connor screamed, the sound screeching off the rock walls. He was completely engulfed within seconds, arms flailing, looking like a demon from Hell. He stumbled. Fell. Suddenly, Connor flew to his feet and with flame-licked arms, reached for Dirk. Holt rushed in and swung his axe. Connor's head flew through the air, bouncing off the wall in a shower of sparks. It rolled to a stop in the middle of the floor.

  Connor's body, now headless, folded in on itself, dropping to the ground. But it was still animated, not quite dead. Dirk moved out of the reach of Connor's body as the thing thrashed on the floor, the flames eating it. It was dying. Within a few moments, Connor Fagan was reduced to a mass of smoldering bones, his flesh completely burned off. Finally, the body was still. The stench was thick, overpowering.

  Holt kicked the skull toward the body. He raised one booted foot and brought it down on the skull, crushing it into shards of bone.

  Drake joined Holt beside the body, rubbing his shoulder. He had hit the floor hard that last time. He cleared his throat. “Getting a little over-excited there, Holt. We still have to finish burning him you know.”

  Holt shrugged and wiped the blade of his axe on his pant leg.

  Dirk crossed to where Casey lay in two steps. He raised her head from the stone, his mind searching. Her pulse was almost non-existent, her mind down some deep dark well where he couldn't reach her. Dirk's heart went cold. “Casey,” he whispered, his voice strained.

  “She's too far gone,” Drake said over his shoulder. “She'll die. Then we'll have to…”

  “No!” Dirk glared at his cousin. They would not touch her. Would not reduce her to a pile of ash.

  “Dirk, we have to,” Drake said, placing a hand on Dirk's shoulder.

  Dirk jerked out of his grasp. “I said no.” He lay Casey carefully back down on the stone. “There's another way.” Dirk brought his wrist to his mouth. He hoped it would work. He couldn't bear to lose her. He opened his mouth wide, exposing his fangs. Then, he bit into his wrist, opening the vein. The pain was white-hot.

  The wound issued a hearty flow of blood. Dirk brought it to Casey's pale, parched lips.

  “Drink, Casey. Live.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Judas Priest,” Drake said. He didn't know what the hell Dirk thought he was doing. The woman was hanging onto life by a thread and that thread was swinging back and forth over the line that was human on one side and vampire on the other. Drake fought the urge to knock Dirk upside the head and finish off the unfortunate girl. The only thing that stopped him was the blaze of determination that he'd seen flare in Dirk's eyes when Dirk had challenged him concerning her status.

  Drake moved to stand beside Holt, who hovered in the shadows. “What do you think?” Drake asked, nudging Holt.

  Concern etched Holt's normally expressionless features. “We wait.”

  Drake nodded, trusting Holt's unshakable countenance. He looked back over where Dirk hovered over the stricken girl.

  * * * *

  Dirk's heart felt so tight he was amazed it could still beat.

  He held his bleeding wrist to Casey's dry lips, using his other hand to lift her head. “Come on, baby. Don't leave me now,” he said. He pressed his wrist against her mouth, forcing the blood over her lips. Dirk prayed that there was enough vampire DNA in his blood to trigger her turning. The irony wasn't lost on him. He was trying to create the exact thing that he had vowed to destroy. He had no choice. They were too far from any sort of help to save her. He couldn't take her to a regular hospital anyway. The minute they did blood tests, all hell would break loose. And Casey had lost too much blood to make it to one anyway. This was the only way until they could get her back to the Unkindness and transfuse her. If it took everything he had, every drop of blood in his body, he would give it. Dirk loved her more than life itself and if he had to forfeit his life for hers—so be it. He knew that without Casey, his own life would be meaningless.

  Candlelight flickered in the cold chamber. The stench of Connor's ravaged flesh hung in the air. Dirk closed his eyes and probed Casey's mind, searching for any glimmer of her psyche that he could use to pull her up out of the void that she was languishing in. Casey, he called out to her, answer me.

  * * * *

  Casey felt light. She had no weight in the place she was in. She was floating in a murky sea that had no light, no sound. Am I dead? she wondered. Is this it? Is there nothing but this? She began to feel a sense of panic. If she was dead, where was the bright light everyone spoke of? The light that would lead her to Heaven and her Savior? Had it all been a lie? A fairy tale?

  Just as the panic threatened to consume her, there was a ripple i
n the thick sea. It washed through her, a rumbling sensation. It felt as if her whole being had fallen asleep. Pins and needles raced over her, the sudden rush of blood tickling through her veins like tiny electric shocks, not unlike the sensation she got when standing after losing circulation in her foot. That's what she was feeling, except through her whole body. She grasped onto it as if it were a lifeline.

  She tasted salt. Coppery. Warm.

  Casey began to feel her body become solid again. The pull of gravity grew tremendous and she couldn't move but at least she no longer felt adrift. Her insides began to burn, a million fire ants in her stomach. She needed something to drown them. The pain doubled. Her muscles jerked throughout her body, bright flashes of pain as her synapses fired frantically.

  Warm, salty liquid rolled over her tongue. She was so thirsty, so parched. She needed more. Casey swallowed, the liquid oozing down her throat, drowning the biting fire ants in her belly. Please, she pleaded in her mind.

  A voice. Far off—faint—but an answer to her cry. Drink.

  There was something at her lips. Something that supplied the liquid that she needed, that her body screamed for.

  Overwhelmed, Casey used every ounce of strength she could muster.

  She began to drink.

  * * * *

  Dirk's heart soared when he sensed her plea. She had answered. Drink, he had told her as he held her head to the fount of his wrist.

  Her throat worked, her mouth tentative at first. With every struggling swallow, her heartbeat became stronger. After the first few swallows, her mouth sought more. She began to suck softly at the wound, a baby feeding.

  Dirk was filled with a joy that was immeasurable. She was going to live. There was still much that she would have to endure but she was not lost to him. No longer having to support her head to drink, Dirk stroked her hair while she fed. Satisfied murmurs came from deep in her throat, her mouth working at his wound. Soon, she grasped his wrist with her hands, holding him to her mouth in a firm grip.

  “Casey,” Dirk whispered, easing her fingers loose. “Casey, enough.” He was beginning to feel dizzy. His own craving was kicking in. He, too, had a hunger for blood but he would not give in to it. Dirk knew that he was close to crossing over into the territory of the undead. They had to get back to the Unkindness. Fast. It was going to be hard enough dealing with his own weakness when he got back. Trying to convince his brother John not to destroy Casey on sight was going to be next to impossible.

  Casey pulled Dirk's wrist away from her mouth and opened her eyes. She gazed at him. Her eyes looked sleepy, sated. And dark. Dirk wiped the traces of blood from her lips with his thumb and smiled at her. “Sleep now,” he said softly.

  Casey closed her eyes and fell immediately asleep.

  Dirk rose and took a strip of cloth that Holt handed him and tied it tightly around his wrist. His eyes traveled to the entrance of the mine.

  Dawn was breaking.

  * * * *

  Drake and Holt moved as fast as they could back to the sedan.

  “John is going to freak right out, you know that, don't you?” Drake said, shrugging his sore shoulders while he walked.

  Holt didn't say anything.

  Drake shook his head. They were going to break the cardinal rule of the Unkindness. They were bringing a vampire back to base. Drake hoped that Dirk could take it when John made the decision to destroy Casey instead of trying to save her. All he could think was that there were a few redeeming circumstances. One, Dirk obviously loved the woman. Two, Casey had just been turned. She had yet to acquire the evil nature of a vampire that was way past dead.

  They got to the gate that blocked the trail up to the mine. Holt shook it. The chains that held the wooden gate closed rattled.

  “Ram through it?” Drake asked.

  “Yep,” Holt said.

  They climbed the gate and got into the sedan.

  Drake started it up, took aim and floored it.

  * * * *

  Dirk cradled Casey in his arms in the back seat of Drake's car. Thankfully Drake had a large tarp in the trunk. They used it now to protect Dirk and Casey from the sun. They would have waited to make the trip back to the Unkindness after the sun had set but haste was of the utmost importance. Casey needed to be transfused as soon as possible. Preferably before nightfall. Before she woke up and was ravenous.

  Dirk hugged Casey close, feeling her heartbeat next to his. He'd wanted to protect her and look at the poor job he had done. He felt guilty that he hadn't been able to keep her from her fate. But he would remedy that soon. It would probably put her through a lot of pain but he would make it up to her if it took his entire life. She had called him her savior. That was what he wanted to be.

  They had been on the road for a few hours now. Dirk had listened to one side of the conversation when Drake had phoned John to let him know of their impending arrival. Drake had only told John that two of them were in need of transfusing. That one was fully turned, but just recently. Drake told him that the turned one could still be saved. He hadn't told him that one of the two was not a Raven. Still, from what Dirk had been able to glean from the conversation, John had been livid. Their generation of Ravens had never performed a full transfusion. They had never needed to. They had all of the equipment needed stored in an area of the basement of the main house that was kept behind a locked steel door. They had a supply of blood that they each took turns donating to and all of them had trained on how to perform a blood transfusion. They had done a partial transfusion on Eric after he had a bad brush with a vampire while on an assignment with John a while back. Eric had only needed a couple of bags of Raven blood to bring him back to normal. But this would be the first time they had put their skills to the test to complete a full transfusion. All of them had also taken a very strict vow—if any one of them was turned and too distanced from the base to attempt a transfusion, then the others would come together to destroy him.

  Dirk prayed that they could do what needed to be done to save Casey. There was no way that he would be able to allow the others to destroy her. Again, the fact that none of them had ever carried a full transfusion through worried him. There was only one person alive who had ever witnessed one that had succeeded and that was Dirk's mother.

  Lark Raven.

  * * * *

  John Raven roamed the halls of the Unkindness. The last few days had left him completely unsettled. It didn't help that he'd had no sleep to speak of thanks to the only joyous thing that had happened during this trial of days.

  The arrival of his precious new daughter.

  They had named their new addition to the Unkindness Skylar Larken Raven. John could not get enough of the baby. He had stared at her for an hour right after she had been born. He was glad that Madison had decided to give birth here at home. A midwife had assisted with the labor and birth, then had left discreetly soon after so that the family could enjoy the new addition. It saddened John that since Madison had married him, her parents had disowned her. John was not what Madison's parents thought of as an acceptable husband for their daughter. Madison shrugged it off, telling John that she had always been the black sheep, but now that Skylar had been born, John wondered if Madison missed the attention of her parents.

  Skylar had her mother's cinnamon-toned hair that complimented her rosy pink skin but her eyes were her father's. Deep, deep brown. Madison had commented that most babies were born with blue eyes that later changed but not Skylar. She must have too much of her father in her, Madison had teased. That's a scary thought, John had replied.

  Mother and baby were sleeping peacefully now, which left John roaming the halls of the Unkindness, too tired to work, too keyed up to rest.

  Too worried about having to perform not one but two transfusions without any idea of what the outcome would be. John entered the living room and stopped in front of the fireplace. He looked up at the portrait of his mother and father that hung above it. Looking at his father's image was like looking in a
mirror. A sense of satisfaction filled him when he thought of Connor Fagan's demise.

  But had Fagan caused the downfall of two more of the Unkindness in the bargain?

  John's eyes shifted to his mother's image. She had been so vibrant, so intense, when the portrait had been painted. Now she was a pale version of her former self. John hadn't informed his mother of Connor's death. Yet. He wasn't sure how she would take the news. John hoped that if they needed her help to save the two tainted ones that would be back any time now that she could rise out of her foggy existence long enough to complete the task. Especially the one who had been turned. Though Drake hadn't said, the two had to be Holt and Dirk and if John had to guess, he figured Dirk was the one who had succumbed completely. If they couldn't save them, John would have to steel himself in preparation to destroy two of his own. Drake hadn't mentioned the girl either. John had a lot of questions for them when they returned.

  “John,” Eric said from the doorway, “They're here.”

  * * * *

  Drake drove the sedan into the underground garage and out of the sunlight. He shut the engine off, spotting John, Eric and Lydia waiting by the door that led into the lower level.

  “Prepare yourself, Dirk. John does not look happy,” he said.

  * * * *

  As soon as the car stopped inside the garage, Dirk threw off the tarp and sat up. He opened the car door and stood. His whole body ached, not only from cradling Casey on the long ride but also due to the changes he knew were occurring inside his body.

  Two stretchers arrived beside the car, John and Eric pushing them.

  “Who?” John asked, his eyes shifting from one to the other.

  “Me,” Dirk said. He leaned into the car and lifted Casey out of the backseat, placing her on the nearest stretcher. “And her.”

  “What the hell?” John boomed, his voice echoing off the concrete walls. He stepped up beside the stretcher. “She's fully turned, or damn close to it.” He glared at Dirk. “What the hell are you thinking bringing one of them in here? Into our home!”