Ravens (30 page)

She knocked. No reply. She knocked
again, harder and faster. Again, there was no noise or sign of a presence.
Kendra turned the doorknob but it didn’t budge, she rattled it and shook it,
but to no avail. She didn’t even have the energy to use her powers to unlock
the door the way Liam had so many times.

Kendra slammed her back into the door
and slid down. She would have to wait. She worried about Liam. What could
possibly be more important than this reunion?

She gasped. What if hunters recaptured
Julie? What if Liam risked his life for his fellow Ravens? What if he was hurt,
or worse, dead? She couldn’t think of living in this world without him. She
couldn’t even imagine living without him, period.

She slumped onto the floor, sagging in
her sleepiness. She succumbed to sleep before the hour ended. It felt like
hours later, perhaps only a few minutes later, when she heard something.

“Kendra?” The high voice and the sound
of little running feet dragged Kendra from her sleep.

She looked up groggily as she adjusted
to the brightly lit hallway and the figures that loomed over her. Julie bent
down and helped Kendra to her feet as Mark opened the door and let the girls
in.

“What are you doing here? Liam told us
you passed back through the portal,” Julie said.

“He didn’t tell you that I was coming
back?”

They shook their heads and gave each
other a look. Kendra caught it.

Kendra flopped onto the couch, unable to
sit straight. She hunched over her knees. Fighting to keep droopy eyes opened,
she asked, “Where’s Liam?”

“He went out on a raid, hasn’t come back
yet.”

“What?” The adrenaline fought with her.
“Is he in trouble? Don’t we need to go after him?”

“We’ve been searching for him. Nathan
and Lou went to the raid site on a stake out.”

“Did he get captured?” She panicked at
the thought.

“We think so.”

She didn’t need to hear anything else.
Kendra jumped to her feet, but staggered back. “Gotta go get him before he gets
hurt.”

“Wait a minute,” Mark finally spoke. He
took a wide stride to barricade her off between the couch and the walkway. “Did
you just portal back?”

“Yeah, what’s that got to do with
anything?”

“I’ve never seen someone come back
twice, much less come here and not pass out for a day.”

“I need to make sure Liam’s okay. I’m
not going to sleep until I find him.” She swerved, catching the back of the
couch for support.

“Uh huh.” He watched her and crossed his
arms.

“Kendra.” Julie went to her side. “Let’s
get you into bed. As soon as we hear from Nathan and Lou, we promise to wake
you.”

“Promises don’t mean anything,” she
muttered almost incoherently.

“Oh, c’mon. We haven’t known each other
long enough for me to gain your trust, but have I ever done anything for you
not to trust me?”

Kendra couldn’t argue with that logic.

Julie led her to Liam’s room. “We all
need some sleep. When the guys come back, it’ll be our turn to take watch at
the raid site.”

Julie lowered Kendra into bed and
removed her shoes, pushing them beneath the bed so that she wouldn’t trip over
them later. As Kendra sprawled out over the covers, Julie went to the window at
the foot of the bed and lowered a black covering to keep the light out during
the day. Morning would arrive shortly.

“We’ll get some food when you wake up,”
Julie spoke to Kendra but she was dead to the world.

She passed out in a rigid position. She
had dark circles beneath her eyes, and bruises covered her body. She went
through quite an ordeal. Nothing like embarking on a dangerous road and
changing her mind only to realize that she rather liked the cutthroat back
streets of civilized life.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The sun pushed the nightly celestial
bodies out of the way to shine gloriously and captivate the world. Who could be
in awe of three gorgeous moons when a sweltering crimson ball of fire existed?

The shadows slowly moved just outside of
the city limits.

“So here we are, petty criminals risking
our lives for a few scraps of paper just to sustain our lives? You know, in the
other world, my parents were doctors and I would’ve been one too?” Lou raised
his brows.

Nathan glanced at him, then returned his
gaze to the house in the distance. “Yeah, you’ve already told me this story
only a dozen times. No one really wants to be a thief, but what choice do we
have? Prejudice and ignorance is an ugly thing, my friend. It’s not really
criminal when we have no choice. It’s this, starve, or die by their hands. It’s
the risk we have to take. But do you really want to be a stuffy white-coat-wearing
nerd with a god complex? Where’s the fun in that?”

“I’ll tell you where the fun is at. They
make bank, they have chicks, and they can walk outside during the daytime and
not have to worry about being hunted down like animals. Did I mention the
chicks?”

“What happened to that Sally girl that
you dated?”

“Oh, the one who would have given up
everything on the first date until she took my shades off and screamed bloody
murder? I just didn’t see that working out.”

Nathan chuckled. “Liam told me some
human guy sniffed around Kendra. He’s obsessed with Ravens.”

“Well yeah, Raven chicks are hot. Any
guy would want that. But where are the human girls with wild streaks, the ones
who want bad boys and all that? I don’t meet those girls in bars anymore.”

“You should call that Heather girl, the
one we saved at the lake when we rescued Julie. She seemed into you. Plus,
she’s a Raven.”

“I’ve been meaning to get to her, but
when do I have time? It’s always a raid or fighting off these pesky hunters or
saving someone.”

They usually raided for food and
clothing, but once in a while, this crew took on real criminal events for large
sums of money, never to kill, but to steal. Some Ravens were professional
criminals. They stole all the time for the world’s wealthiest mafias. They
remained elusive enough that they couldn’t be found or caught, but they somehow
found a way to continue with business.

This raid was a rescue mission.
Conversation with Lou grew irritating until they caught sight of some movement
in the broad, tall building. They waited for this.

Nathan scanned the house earlier with
his powers, and he knew the humans held a Raven captive. He also knew how many
humans lurked inside and how many guards prowled the premises. They knew the
hunters had Liam.

“Hey.” Nathan smacked Lou’s shoulder
with the back of his hand, cutting off the conversation. “What do you make of
that?”

****

The so-called “jet lag” from traveling
through the portal wore off, and the hum from the surroundings lifted Kendra
from her sleep. She awoke to a pleasantly dim and cool room. She inhaled,
Liam’s scent lingered on the sheets, a mixture of manly goodness and
pheromones. Nice. A smile crept across Kendra’s lips before the recollections
of Liam’s possible whereabouts dragged it back down.

She lifted her hand to her brows,
yawned, and stretched. Crawling out of bed, she tied her shoes and went to the
door. She felt fine after a rest, no nausea, no headaches, and no onslaught of
new powers. Good news because it meant she could get on her way faster.

Kendra emerged from the doorway and
approached the living room. The men froze and stared at her when she appeared,
their conversations halting in mid-sentence.

“Oh.” Julie ran to Kendra, but addressed
the guys. “Did we forget to mention that Kendra came back?”

“You left and came back of your own free
will?” Lou asked in disbelief. Who in their right mind would do that? Really,
who?

“Where’s Liam? Did you find him?” she
asked desperately.

“We found him,” Nathan answered.
“Hunters caught him.”

“Why? How did they find him? Was the
raid an ambush or something?”

“Not exactly.” He scratched the back of
his head. “See, when you left him, he was pretty beaten up over it and went
after some hunters. He destroyed every one of them in the facility and then
burned the building. It was all over the news. In fact, it shifted the pendulum
with the local government. They’re going to be all over us now and have started
aggressively capturing Ravens to ship them out to the third moon.

“Liam came back days later, emotionally
messed up. He had mood swings going between quiet and depressed to angry and
violent. We’d never seen him like that. He looked like he’d been drinking
himself stupid, but he’s not a drinker. He finally told us what happened with
you. We sorta assumed after Julie informed us about your storming out and how
Liam came back without you.

“I don’t know what happened that made
you come back. I hope things are okay between you two. We Ravens are considered
very fortunate when we have a family or someone to love, so I know that Liam
isn’t going to mess things up.

“He really took out his anger on the
wrong humans, though. Those hunters had friends and family who went after him,
hunted him for weeks and followed him out to a raid. Thankfully, they didn’t
find out where he lived, but they did manage to take him down and now, he’s stuck
in their facility.”

She recalled, for the first time since
the actual dream, the visions of Liam’s anger leaking from him, exposing him as
a true, bloodthirsty Raven in the midst of the demise of human hunters. 

“Don’t worry. There’re five of us. They
don’t stand a chance,” Lou assured her.

“But she just passed through last night,
she hasn’t transformed,” Mark interrupted.

“I’m pretty sure that I don’t have to,”
Kendra spoke as her eyes sparked. She missed the crawling entity inside her.

“Before we get ahead of ourselves, we
need to eat and get fueled up,” Nathan said.

“Food?” Kendra asked in disbelief.

As much as she wanted to save Liam, her
stomach churned madly with the consumption of nothing but junk food for almost
three days. Liam promised her steak and lobster, and she planned to hold him to
that, but for now, she would do for some of Julie’s delicious cooking.

Lou and Nathan took a nap. Mark drew up
plans while the girls cooked a meal. 

“Do you think he’s okay, that he’ll last
until we can get to him?” Kendra whispered.

“Don’t fret, sis. He’s one tough nut to
crack. He won’t go down easily,” Julie replied.

Kendra glanced at her. It was nice to
hear Julie refer to her as a sister. If Liam didn’t survive, at least she had
Julie. Maybe the universe knew Liam’s fate and brought Kendra to ensure that
Julie had family. What a horrible idea! Kendra shook the thought from her head.

The aroma of food filled the room. Mark
woke up Nathan and Lou. 

The crew gathered around the living room
and downed the food. 

Kendra wanted to know all the details of
what happened since her departure. Her chest ached in the fact that Liam took
her leaving so hard. He cared for her and it tormented him to the point that he
took out his anger on others.

The crew moved in the shadows of the
night. They piled into the car while Mark and Julie took Liam’s retrieved
motorcycle and headed to the outskirts of the city where a large, concrete
building sat. They parked a mile away, but it took little effort to run to the
property. Three sentinels scoured the premises.

Nathan placed his fingertips to his
temples and scanned the two-story building. There were four humans on the
second story, six on the first floor and he spotted the exact location of the
nonchalant guards in the front and side yards.

The plan was the same: Creep up and take
out the sentinels first. Kendra sat this one out, squatting and impatiently
tapping her fingers as she waited in the secrecy of a tree’s coiled limbs.

Julie hovered in a nearby tree. Nathan,
Lou, and Mark took out the guards before making a run for a side door, sneaking
in and taking out whomever they saw.

The men used their abilities to pounce
the guards from behind, drawing one arm around the humans to barricade their
mouths and then shoving their energy-primed fists into the sentries’ backs. The
ions of heat diffused through the barriers of cloth, eating through skin and
bone, and then exploded inside of their spines. The energy crashed against
their internal organs and muscles, but most of it traveled upward and violated
their minds. The Ravens held the humans’ bodies for mere seconds until they
heard a sizzle and then a pop when the guards fell limp in their arms. They
tossed them to the floor like worthless toys.

Julie watched from her perch like a
willowy bird. She knew what to watch for and what their go-ahead sign would be.
She bit her bottom lip as her Raven brethren entered the house.

“Now!” Julie hissed at Kendra.

Julie jumped down from her position in
the tree and hit the ground running. Kendra leapt over the brush. Both ran like
beautiful, mysterious blurs.