Conspiracy of Ravens

by J. C. McKenzie

  “Get what I want?” Cole’s eyes narrowed. His lips flattened. “What is it you think I want?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Originally, I thought you just wanted the Claíomh Solais. Now, I’m not so sure.” She ran her hand along the worn fabric of her couch. “What are you really after?”

  “You.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “I am serious.”

  He couldn’t be serious. He had to be lying, somehow. Maybe he really was after her, but for some other reason. Maybe some twisted fae worship ceremony where he needed an extremely gullible half-fae woman to sacrifice as a tribute. “You should be with someone as powerful as you are.”

  “Who I should be with and who I want to be with, are two separate things, and I don’t care about the former. Besides, you haven’t tapped into your full potential yet. You could be powerful if you wanted to be.”

  “So, you’re banking on my potential development into someone to fear?” Her skin prickled. She’d spent most of her life hiding her talent and using it sparingly. Now she could alter how she shifted. Did she have other undiscovered talents? Would Huginn Muninn provide tuition to the Underworld’s private school for underachieving halflings for her to reach her full magical potential?

  “I’m not banking on anything.” His deep voice rumbled over her skin.

  An ambulance siren wailed down the street, intensifying as it passed her apartment before fading away. The bright flashing lights briefly illuminated the room and the fire sparking in Cole’s dark gaze.

  “I’m a fae lord, Raven. I don’t think about why I want something. I feel and I take.” His gaze smouldered like the hot embers in a bonfire. “And what I want is you.”

  “But...why?”

  “I feel good when I’m with you.” He reached over, gripped her arms and pulled her to him.

  He moved so fast and smoothly, Raven blinked and found herself sprawled in his lap. His dark gaze danced with laughter. His hands slipped down to caress her back in warm circles.

  Her heart fluttered. Her fingers itched to run along his satin skin, to reach out and thread through his hair, to pull his face, with all its hard angles, to hers.

  “Who’s the Claíomh Solais?” she asked instead.

  Cole’s smile faltered. His circles hesitated.

  “I know he or she belongs to you, somehow, and Bane paid my brother to steal him or her. I want to know two things. No evasion. No distraction. How does one ‘own’ another person, and who is the Claíomh Solais?” She bit her lip and tried to breathe through the crushing pain in her chest.

  Cole sighed. “Both those questions have the same answer.”

  She crossed her arms and waited. Her scalp tingled. Maybe she should’ve asked these questions before she straddled the Lord of Shadows’ lap. The urge to squirm against his thighs and groin rose. If she leaned forward and opened her arms, she could rub up against his chest and feel his strong arms around her.

  Gah! This was important. Bear’s survival depended on her. Don’t let the dong distract.

  Cole’s hands slid down her back and settled on her hips. His fingers pressed in, then relaxed, as if he, too, fought the urge to do more.

  “I’m waiting,” she bit out.

  “I don’t own the Claíomh Solais. She’s my sister.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Wouldn't it be great if we lived in a world where insecurity and desperation made us more attractive?”

  ~Albert Brookes

  Raven sat in a plastic chair in the dentist’s waiting room, Doctor Kim’s office. Those three little words ignited a gamut of emotions. Now firmly in reality, instead of memory, the smell of latex gloves and antiseptics bombarded her. The strong scents brought the taste of bubble gum flavoured fluoride foam to her mouth as if it coated her tongue.

  Raven gagged.

  Her family hated this office because fox shifters smelled everything. Mike called Dr. Kim’s the “Burning Bone” place. Raven called it the only dental office open on Sunday mornings—a rare find, even in the age of alternate and extended business hours.

  Raven waited in the plastic chair and pressed the heels of her feet into the floor to fight the gravity trying to pull her to the clinical white tiles.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  How much longer? She glanced at the clock. Her appointment should’ve started ten minutes ago. That meant she’d been waiting here for twenty minutes in total. Half the torture of this place was the waiting, yet, she showed up early every time. Every. Single. Time.

  The young girl across from her fidgeted relentlessly. Her pigtails swung with each head bob and leg swing. Her father sat stoically beside her with a pinched expression.

  The high shrill sound of a drill travelled from behind the front counter.

  Raven jumped and looked over at the desk. The receptionist made eye contact and smiled with perfect white teeth. “It shouldn’t be much longer.”

  Raven grimaced and caught her reflection in the large mirror sitting on the front counter. Placed prominently, the dentists probably intended to show patients their great work. Right now, it highlighted Raven’s pale and drawn face, with sunken eyes, dark bags, and pinched lips.

  Not her best day.

  Or week.

  Or year.

  She still had to process the Claíomh Solais bomb Cole dropped on her last night. His sister! Her name was Chloe and as his twin, she had a power complimentary to his own—absolute light.

  Raven had asked if Chloe could shoot laser beams from her eyes. Cole hadn’t found it funny.

  Apparently, his sister had been staying in a secure compound in the Mortal Realm due to recent abduction attempts.

  One day she was there, the next she was gone. It didn’t take Cole long to track Bear down as the thief. He’d installed a multitude of safeguards against Others but hadn’t considered a mortal theft. The hard blaze in his eyes suggested he’d never make that oversight again.

  “Branwen Crawford?” A soft, comforting voice broke her thoughts. “Dr. Kim will see you now.”

  Raven’s breath caught in her throat. A dental assistant wearing bright blue and pink floral print scrubs walked through the frosted glass doors to stand beside the receptionist’s desk. With her blonde hair tied back in a tight bun, the young woman smiled brightly. “Right this way.”

  Raven swallowed and stood up. The skin on her thighs peeled from the plastic seat. She winced and pulled down her sale rack jean shorts before following the assistant through the doors. They passed stall after stall filled with patients sprawled on their backs on recliner chairs with their mouths gaping open. Professionals huddled over them with obscure instruments and mumbled dental jargon to each other from behind their masks. The drilling grew louder, and the potent smell of chemicals, cements, molds and scorched teeth intensified.

  “Here we are.” The cheery assistant waved her bony arm at an empty seat, resembling more of a contraption for torture than a medical chair.

  Raven’s throat tightened. Her stiff legs somehow managed to carry her the short distance to the chair where she sat. The bright lights above bore down on her. Her skin slid along the cool tan leather until the seat encased her. Dr. Kim walked into the room, sat on a short stool and rolled the remaining two feet to stop by her side. “Raven. How’ve you been?”

  She placed her hands gently on the flat of her stomach and forced air into her lungs. “Fine, thank you. And you?”

  “Can’t complain. Can’t complain.” He tugged two latex gloves out of the nearby box and pulled them onto each hand with a dramatic snap.

  Raven wasn’t a doctor, but she was pretty sure the snap wasn’t required.

  “So. What brings you in today?” When the dentist chortled, his belly contracted and danced a little jig. His pinstriped shirt brushed her shoulder. He stepped on a pedal. The chair lowered and the leather groaned.

  “I cracked a filling.”

  “Which one?”

  Raven opened
her mouth wide. Both Dr. Kim and his assistant leaned in, mere inches from her face.

  “Dat un.” She tapped one of the teeth at the back of her mouth.

  “Thirty-seven,” the assistant murmured.

  Dr. Kim grunted. And ran his fingers along the tooth and the surrounding gums. The gloves made a squeaky sound. “Sensitive to hot and cold?”

  Raven nodded. A pool of saliva built at the back of her mouth.

  “Let’s run a few tests.” He pulled his fingers from her mouth but gripped her bottom row of teeth with his fingertips. She couldn’t close her mouth. The saliva pool continued to build.

  “No x-rays, please,” she said. Or at least that’s what she tried to say.

  “No coverage?”

  Raven nodded.

  He winced.

  The pool of saliva deepened.

  “Let’s have a closer look then and do a couple of diagnostic tests to make sure before we start doing any work.”

  “I see some wear right here.” He reached for one of those pointy dental instruments and leaned over her face. He flipped down the two black magnifying glass extensions over his regular thick glasses and his owl eyes peered down at her. With a gleam in his eyes, he brought the tool to her mouth and poked her tooth.

  Pain lanced down her jaw and neck.

  “Did that hurt?”

  Of course, it fucking hurt.

  “How about this?” Poke. “Or this?” Poke. Poke.

  With each jab and prod, she twitched uncontrollably. Her eyes watered, and the pool of saliva deepened.

  “Let’s try some cold.”

  The assistant handed him something ominous and he placed it on her tooth.

  Cold encapsulated her tooth. Ice seared her veins. Her body jerked.

  “Definitely some sensitivity there.”

  He repeated the process using hot water. Raven’s body arched out of the seat. Sweat broke out along her skin. The pool of saliva threatened to drown her.

  Dr. Kim sat back with a satisfied smile. “Yup. I think you have a cracked filling, and maybe some new decay.” He pulled off his gloves with exaggerated snaps and tossed them in a nearby bin. “Now. Did you want freezing?”

  Of course, she wanted freezing. Who in their right mind got fillings without freezing? She nodded and tried not to whimper.

  Dr. Kim looked up at his assistant. “Let’s get her started then. I’ll check in with some of the other patients.”

  Raven drooped into the chair and swallowed the pool of saliva. The thick fluid slid down her throat slowly. Raven gagged.

  “And give her some suction.”

  The assistant turned on the mini-hoover and stuck the plastic nozzle in her mouth. “Close.”

  A little late for suction. Raven closed her lips around the instrument anyway and let it suck up the remaining drool. The air rushed through her nose and left her nasal passage and the back of her throat dry. A headache bloomed behind her watering eyes and her mouth throbbed.

  “I’ll be back soon,” Dr. Kim assured her.

  That’s what she was afraid of.

  Sprawled in a dentist chair for forty-five minutes with no escape from the smell of her teeth being drilled down and packed with porcelain gave Raven some time to reflect on the information Cole unceremoniously dumped at her feet.

  She couldn’t blame him for wanting to protect his sibling. After all, wasn’t that exactly what she was doing? If anything, his revealed secret gave her more of a glimpse at his true self. She understood him better now, and not only his motivation for finding the Claíomh Solais, but his tangible anger for the “theft.”

  “That will be fourteen-hundred twenty-nine dollars and fifty-five cents.”

  Raven dropped her wallet.

  The receptionist’s eyebrows rose to her hairline.

  “Uh.” Raven squatted to pick up her wallet. Her hands wrapped around the soft black leather. She straightened gradually. Her head still throbbed. The freezing in her mouth slowly wore off and made her swollen cheek prickle and tingle as feeling returned. “Sorry. How much?”

  The receptionist repeated the same total. Clearly, Raven heard her correctly the first time, but her brain still stumbled over the total.

  “Why is it so much?”

  “Let’s see,” The receptionist clicked some things on her computer. “It was a 37MOD.”

  “And in English?”

  “Three surfaces. If you look here, you’ll see the charges broken down for freezing, supplies and the dental work.”

  “Didn’t they just spackle the existing filling?”

  The receptionist clicked something on her computer. “No. Says here, there was some infiltration and a new cavity site. They had to redo the entire filling.”

  Odin’s left testicle. Doctor Kim had mumbled something about that from behind his surgical mask. “I, um...I’ll put that on my credit card.”

  “Of course.” The receptionist held out her hand and completed the transaction in record time. The slip streamed out of the machine, a visual confirmation Raven had been robbed of any disposable income for shopping or a night out. Ugh.

  “Thank you,” Raven said, though she didn’t mean it. She smiled. Her puffy, half-frozen cheek responded sluggishly.

  The receptionist recoiled.

  Raven said goodbye, yanked open the door and stepped into the heat of the summer afternoon. She had a short time left to enjoy the solitude of her own apartment and she planned to enjoy it as much as she could with a missing brother and no concrete plans to retrieve him.

  Saliva trickled down her chin. Raven ducked into a narrow, dead-end alley and pulled out a napkin to wipe the drool away.

  “Miss Crawford?” A shadow passed over Raven as a man stepped forward to block the exit.

  Raven jumped and her head snapped up. Instantly, more throbbing bloomed behind her eyes. Drool ran from her swollen mouth. “Huh?”

  The large man, wearing a simple shirt and jeans, neither of which fit him very well, stepped forward. A clear sticker with 3XL in black bold letters ran down the right pant leg. The sun hit his face, illuminating the paleness of his skin and blackness of his Other gaze.

  Raven tensed.

  He lunged forward. Heart racing, she dodged to the side. He was so broad, though, it made no difference. She couldn’t go around him. His hands clamped over her wrists. His Other energy vibrated against her own, rattling it before squashing the power down. He pulled her roughly into his gargantuan chest. His shirt smelled brand new, like he’d pulled it off the hanger, ripped off the tags and threw it on five minutes ago.

  Raven thrashed. Her legs flailed and smashed against his shins.

  He grunted but held on. Like a manic boa constrictor, his beefy arms squeezed her tight, the pressure unyielding.

  She screeched for help.

  He jostled her around so one massive hand slapped against her mouth while somehow pinning her body and arms. He rummaged in his pocket.

  Sweat broke out across her skin. She was completely useless and ineffective against Tank man. Her heart hammered. She strained against his vise-like grip. His hand on her mouth shifted a little.

  Raven wrenched her head up and sank her teeth into the meaty flesh of his hand near his thumb. She bit down. Hard.

  The man yowled. He dropped the portal disc in his hand and grabbed at her hair. He pulled sharply, but she didn’t let go. Flesh tore. Blood coated her throbbing mouth.

  Pain exploded across her face. Her world tilted and she released her grip.

  “Fucking bitch,” the man seethed. He shook the blood from his hand and picked up the portal disc.

  She teetered by his side, in danger of capsizing. Her head pounded. Her limp body sagged toward the concrete. She spat the blood from her mouth, and whispered, “Beul na h-Oidhche gu Camhanaich.”

  The man swore and threw the disc to the ground. Wind blew by them and whipped through her hair. A portal snapped in place. The powerful energy from the Underworld spiraled out and entwine
d with her senses.

  A dark thick band of misty gray streaked out from the wall and Cole emerged from the shadows to stand between the man and the portal. His stony expression turned to Raven and searched her face. His gaze blazed.

  He turned back to her abductor. “You will pay for that.”

  The man shoved Raven out of the way. She flailed as she slammed against the wall. Her head exploded with pain. Her stomach rolled. She couldn’t shift now if she tried.

  “Lloth wants the bird girl,” the man growled. His clothing ripped as his body expanded. “It’s unwise to cross the queen.”

  “I like my odds.” Cole stood his ground, large and imposing. His lips tugged up in a small smile. Shadow bands darted out and circled them both. And then they were gone.

  Raven staggered to her feet, now alone in the alley. Her heart convulsed. Her head hurt, and her legs stung from newly acquired scrapes. She bent to pick up her wallet. Her vision blurred. The man’s one punch probably gave her a concussion. Great. Fan-flipping-tastic. This day couldn’t possibly get worse.

  Most people mistakenly assumed a concussion meant losing consciousness, but that wasn’t the case. A person didn’t have to get knocked out to sustain a life-altering brain injury. Robert had shared this little tidbit when they were still together. The only helpful thing she’d learned from the douche canoe...other than not blindly trusting your partner with your finances.

  She stumbled forward and caught herself on the wall. Her stomach rolled again. Blood still coated her mouth. Leaning in she rested her forehead against the cool brick. A gentle breeze trickled down the narrow alleyway. The sea scent washed over her. Raven focused on breathing. In and out. In and out.

  With a shaky hand, she pulled her napkin from her pocket and wiped the drool from her chin. The white paper-like material came back bloody. Hopefully, it all belonged to the other guy. If she cracked another filling because of this, she was going to be pissed. Maybe she could sue? Raven groaned. If she couldn’t take her loser of an ex to court—she’d looked into the possibility after speaking with her financial advisor—she doubted she’d successfully sue Lloth’s minion for damages.