Raven Maid: Out of the Darkness

by Erik Schubach

  I looked down at my blood covered human hands. My clothes were saturated with blood, and blood was oozing still from my belly. I looked around and tore the Seattle Seahawks flag from the wall behind the receptionist desk and tied it below my leather jacket, around my waist. It applied the much-needed pressure to the wound, which was so grievous to my spirit that it bled through to the physical world.

  I staggered toward the door then thought of Annie, and my anger rose inside me, filling me with warmth, a resolve and my steps became more sure as I started for the door. I saw that the eternity I fought with Annie had only been a few seconds as I saw the zombie bitch scurrying to her car bracketed by her four puppets.

  I called out in a voice that boomed and echoed as if it had originated in one of the rings of hell, “ABIGAIL TRUIT!”

  She froze and turned slowly, shock and fear painted her face. I stumbled forward, gaining more strength with my resolve to end this nightmare.

  She regained her composure and smirked at my condition. She simply said, “Pets?” And the others started toward me.

  I growled. If I had to go through them to get to her, so be it. I splayed my arms to my sides, feathers exploding from my skin as I took my full hybrid form. It was so easy now that part of Annie lived inside me, all her experience as a Raven Maid were inside me now. I had been doing it all wrong, treating it as something separate from me. I was the Raven, that is all there was to it.

  I think her knowledge made me finally truly accept who I was. And right now, I was the one who was going to drag Abigail, kicking and screaming, to eternal damnation.

  My foot talons scratch and sparked on the concrete, leaving furrows in it, as I prepared myself to clash with her unwitting minions. But just before we met, a dark shadow swooped in from the side, bowling them all over into a pile of bodies.

  Soc Au' Lait!

  They started to get up as the feathered projectile rolled to her feet and yelled to me, “I got these fuckin' meat bags, you get Truit.” She cocked her head in an inhuman manner and blinked her golden avian eyes at me.

  Rin!

  I had never been so happy to see someone in my life. I nodded once then started walking, then jogging, then running as adrenaline pushed away all the pain and fatigue.

  My prey got to her car and looked back. I could see it in her eyes, the realization that she couldn't get away in time, that she'd have to fight.

  Chapter 14 – Endgame

  This was it, it was either her or me. I had so much hatred for the woman, part from me and partly from those she had enslaved. I had to fight off the part of Annie and the others in me that worshiped Abigail against their will. I hesitated, could I take on my goddess?

  I exhaled sharply in anger at myself. No not my goddess, a false goddess who enslaved others so that she might pretend to live. I almost pitied the woman, since she seemed to truly see herself as a goddess. I wondered if she actually realized the monster she really was.

  She saw the hesitation in my eyes and smiled widely, and she asked as she dug in a bag she had slung over her shoulder, “Is it true that a Raven Maid lives the life of her victims?”

  That showed how little she knew of us. The lost revenants weren't our victims, they were our charges.

  She grinned wider. “I can see you fighting the need to obey me from the memories of those you consumed. Wouldn't that be so much easier? I can make it oh so pleasant for you, ma chere.”

  When I didn't slow in my approach as my rage built, she paled then tossed some glittering dust that smelled of bones, shells, and death, in an arc between us. She chanted a word, and a black flame that burned at my insides from a distance sprang up between us.

  I glanced frantically around for a way around as it started closing around me. I spread my fully formed wings wide, preparing to take to the air when someone stepped beside me. I almost panicked at the sight of my Gran standing there. She had a broom of feathers tied with twine and shells, and she just waved it once, uttering a chant of her own.

  With a screeching sucking sound, the flames seemed to consume themselves. I blurted, “MawMaw, what are you doing here? Get back!”

  She locked a steely gaze on Abigail and asked me, “Is this da creature that done killed Lisette, an m' pitit fi?”

  The word 'creature' enraged Abigail, it was another blow to the illusion she had in her head of being a real woman, un-aging and beautiful, instead of the rotting corpse that lay beneath the glamour. MawMaw knew exactly the right buttons to push.

  I was still a bit shocked that Gran had just used some sort of Voodoo magic to douse the unnatural flames. Was she... was she a real Voodoo priestess? I knew she believed, but I thought it was mostly all show to bilk the unsuspecting tourists of their coin.

  Abigail raised a hand and blew some of that same dust she used on Shannon toward MawMaw, but an imposing figure stepped between them and just slashed his hand in the air. A sudden gust of wind blew the dust away, and I blinked at Uncle Bo. My head was spinning. Was he a boko?

  Why was my family all here, risking their lives? This was my fight.

  Benoît's deep voice called out, “Don' be thinkin' your perverse magic is a match for us. You're a charlatan. Borrowing a life that was long ago spent.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “You done killed my sis, an' my niece.”

  Then he looked at me. I felt my head cock at an impossible angle as he said, “We always have yer' back, chere. Now finish this, Lizzie.”

  I looked between them and Rin, who was making short work of the remaining zombies. I hesitated when I saw her gently lowering the corpse who had been Ingrid to the ground. I felt some sort of relief, some closure, that the poor housewife had finally been put to rest.

  I had tasted the balance of her life and knew she would find the peace of her private heaven now. I'd have to find our, her, children if I happened to survive the night, and let them know their mother hadn't abandoned or stopped loving them. They needed closure too.

  Then I leapt at Abigail, the screech of a bird of prey coming from my throat as I spread my wings, blotting out the parking lot light I passed under, casting a dark shadow on my prey. With one great stroke of my wings, I closed the gap between us and slammed into the woman.

  I knocked her across the hood of her Mercedes as she screamed in anger, pain, and frustration. I didn't catch most of it as I crumpled to the ground under the weight of the balance of her soul. Even in Harold Barnibus, the arsonist, and Leon, there was a time they were not consumed by darkness, by the evil they embraced in themselves.

  But Abigail, being as old as my Gran, but still looking young, had embraced that darkness decades ago, even as a child. I never believed the old women who frequented Desirada's, that say that sometimes someone is just born evil. The things Abigail did, even as a child... the manipulation of her parents, the torture of small animals just to see how much pain they could take.

  I was a... I mean she was a beautiful child, and she played the part, but it was just an act to get what she wanted. It was all about getting what I wanted, so I used my looks, and feigned innocence, to always get what I wanted.

  I held my head in my talons, trying to hold onto my sense of self, I wanted nothing more than to get Abigail out of my mind. But she was part of me now. And for so many decades she has done evil. We learned of a handsome young Boko, Alexander Bertrand. He was said to be powerful and knew how to give eternal life and beauty.

  We seduced the man, playing the innocent girl from the bayou. I learned all I could about the forbidden Voodoo as well as the light mysticism and teachings Alexander preferred. The fool wanted to move away from the darkness and instead do good, for me. When we found what I, we, she needed she balked at the part where she had to die for the rituals to be performed.

  But vanity and self-interest won out, and she staged our death. It was the single hardest thing she had ever done, as she loved herself so much and letting herself die went against every fiber of her being.

  Then she experienced her
first moment of true terror, when she woke up in her body, and couldn't move. The terror doubled when the voice of the lovestruck boko told her to sit up, and she did without even wanting to. She realized her will was not her own, and to be under someone else's control was her greatest nightmare. But she knew this would happen.

  Alexander was a love drunk sap who would not wish his lover to be a puppet. And as she had anticipated, he gave her the vessel he had bound her soul into, restoring her free will. We were so relieved, and now that we had what we wanted, Alexander had to pay for that solitary moment he had controlled her.

  We long ago mastered the potions and powders used in darker Voodoo rituals. We blew the zombie dust in Alexander's face while she straddled him in bed as he was in the throes of ecstasy. Then she told him to walk to the swamp, cut his wrists and wade into gator feeding grounds.

  After that, she was free to remake her world in our image, now that we would live forever.

  She is so self-conscious of her looks, knowing what actually lay beneath the glamour, no matter what she does, she can smell it. Her vanity is her greatest weakness.

  I pushed and struggled against the overwhelming weight of her memories, of all the evil she has done, trying to find myself again. All the evil she has enjoyed inflicting upon others; men, women, children, it didn't matter, pushed down on me, consumed me, and I reveled in it until the memory of the confrontations with my mother came to mind.

  Mother's Raven was fierce and beautiful at the same time.

  I remembered how she almost defeated me the first time, it was only by sheer luck that I, we, she escaped. The second time she was ready and had a small army of zombies to do her bidding. Mother almost defeated them all... she would have, if not for the human mercenary sniper I had waiting. I... no, she gave the signal and...

  I roared out in rage, the coward couldn't defeat mother, so she had her assassinated. I forced the memories away, there were too many to sort through, too long of a life, something I could remedy. I didn't want her memories, so I stopped looking. I locked the part of me that would always be the darkness of Abigal Truit into a vault inside. I swore I'd never call upon her memories, lest they corrupt me. They may already have, and that scared me.

  I leapt and soared over the car, she was running for the dock. I saw a small watercraft tied to it. She was going top try to escape to the water. Again I roared out her name, “ABIGAIL TRUIT!”

  She hesitated in her mad rush and looked back at me, her face pale and fear shone brightly in her eyes. My predator smiled at that fear. She was prey now, not just a charge. I think she saw that in me as I landed and started sprinting at her. She turned and ran faster along the seawall toward the dock.

  I leapt again and with two downstrokes of my massive wings, took to the air and closed the gap between us in a mere moment. I twisted in the air and corkscrewed into her as I pulled up my taloned feet.

  My claws sank deep into her, and I twisted and wrenched, using my momentum to tear her dark and fetid soul from her body. To one side of us was the Institute parking lot, to the other side bent and warped mirrors, all reflecting a Raven and a rotted corpse, with flesh dripping from it, and black sludge that was blood oozing from cracks in its leather hard skin. Maggots and worms slithered in and out of the flesh, and bone showed through where centipedes and maggots had eaten the flesh away.

  It raised its hands to its face as Abigail did. The horror on her face looked to consume her as she looked at her apparently healthy human hands and the rotted claw-like hands in the mirrors. The mirrors seemed to radiate pain, searing heat, and a sense of forever. This was what Abigail feared the most. This would be her hell.

  My cheeks dimpled around my massive beak as I smiled. She spun on me and screamed, “You will pay for this, insolent little girl!”

  She dove at me, her hands curled like claws as she slashed at me. What did she hope to accomplish? She had others do her fighting for her, she couldn't hurt me. I grabbed her hands in one of my claws, and she kicked ineffectually at me. I mused that she should have spent part of her long life learning to defend herself.

  I grinned at the gris-gris on her neck and then swiped my other talon at it. It was the smirk on her face when I did which had one of her memories screaming to the forefront of my mind. It was too late when I remembered that this was a trap I had set for any Raven Maid who ever got this close to taking me.

  My, our, her spirit was bound in the idol from the display case. Why hadn't I remembered that it was the vessel that Alexander had place it in?

  My entire soul screamed as white hot pain engulfed me as the gris-gris tore away from her, burning my talon with the heat of the sun and setting my feathers aflame along my wing. Only my instincts were working as I became a creature of pain.

  I slashed out with my other talon, grasping and yanking at her revenant as she dove toward the parking lot, off the path of the afterlife.

  She seemed to stretch as she screamed in mid-dive. Then with a tearing sensation, I pulled half of her soul away and threw it at the mirrors. I could still hear her screaming in a million rotted reflections as I fell back into the real world in my human form. Cradling an arm that was smoking, the flesh of my hand bubbled and burned.

  I blinked at the woman who stood up. It was still Abigail, but her perfect youth and beauty were marred now. Tempered with time. Silver shot through her ebony hair and fine wrinkles showed at her mouth and eyes. She looked to be an elegant middle-aged woman, possibly in her early fifties. I had indeed condemned half of her life to eternal damnation.

  I struggled to my feet. It was time to finish this. She looked at her hands then touched her face, pulling some silver streaked hair in front of her face to look at.

  She reached into her pouch as she screamed like an insolent child, “Look at what you've done!”

  My reactions were too muddled with the pain of the soul burn she had given me, and the shock of seeing her aged, to register that she had just pulled a tiny gun.

  I thought to myself as she pulled the trigger, “She's always cheating.” It felt like I was hit in the chest with a hammer as I fell back onto the concrete, a new pain blossoming from my breastbone. I tried to pull my raven forward again, but barely felt feathers tickling my scalp as she raised the gun toward my head.

  I felt almost confused, how was this remotely fair? How could she have won? Were Danbala and Marinette just looking down having a good laugh at my expense?

  Abigail started to pull the trigger again when I heard the roaring of an engine. We both looked over just as a speeding Miata slammed into Abigail. I heard the crunching of bone and the wet thud of flesh hitting metal, and Abigail was spinning off, tumbling across the cement and over the seawall into the frigid waters of Puget Sound.

  A moment later, as things started getting fuzzy, Shannon was diving out of her car. I think she was saying something like, “Hang on baby, I got you.”

  I smiled as the darkness claimed me, feeling her kissing the top of my head and cheek, and... lips.

  Epilogue

  We never found Abigail's body. We weren't sure that even that much damage could kill a zombie. By the time I was conscious again a couple days later, and able to tell everyone what I knew, the idol was missing from the vans abandoned in the Risner Institute parking lot.

  The police were never called in, and there were no reports of Collette Risner being missing. Her offices said she was on extended sabbatical.

  When I was healed enough to get back on my feet again, I found out that even on the run, she was punishing me, when I was informed by the University that my scholarship had been pulled. I had to withdraw since I didn't have an alternate method to pay my tuition.

  Even with my Raven healing, and Uncle Bo's apparent impromptu field medic removal of the bullet, I had a nifty little scar on my chest, and my hand had a few minor burn scars that looked like they'd be a constant reminder to me that Abigail is somewhere out there.

  The police had come to visit while
I was recovering to ask about the disturbances and bodies at the Mongoose. My car was one of those that weren't claimed from valet service, thus their visit. I had to pretend to be sick. My complexion was paler than normal with a green tinge, so it wasn't too hard to sell them on the fact that I got sick at the nightclub and called my friend, Shannon to pick me up. And that I had been violently ill since.

  Rin retrieved my Metro for me after they left.

  It seems that the commotion is still unexplained. Prominent business people and socialites in the Seattle area were found dead on scene. Men with guns seemed to have fallen from the Columbia Center. They couldn't explain how most of the corpses seemed to have days, months, and in some cases years of decomposition even though witnesses have had dealings with all of them as recently as the day of the massacre.

  The authorities are going with the hypothesis that it was some sort of chemical attack. The federal terrorism task force has taken over. The world was not ready for the truth.

  I pulled the Winnebago into a convenience store in Shreveport, parking at the gas pumps behind Uncle Bo's car as Rin pulled up on the other side on her motorcycle. This would be our last fill up before we were home. I could already feel, smell, and taste the difference in the air of Louisiana compared with Seattle. I hadn't known I had missed it so much.

  The first thing I was going to do was find Kyler. I had missed... I mean Annie had missed her so much. I wanted her daughter to know her mother was at peace now. It was all so confusing where Annie's memories ended and I began at times.

  I hopped out of the motorhome, grabbed a gas nozzle, and dragged it to the gas door on the passenger side. Then I stifled a gasp as I felt hot breath on the back of my neck as Shan whispered almost seductively, “I got this. Your turn for snacks.” I swallowed, trying to push down my arousal as she added cutely, “Cupcakes?”