Raven Born: An Urban Fantasy Shifter Series (Lost Souls Series Book 1)

by Bree Moore

  “Now, I wouldn’t say that. You are stronger and smarter than any average human. You are creative. That escape attempt you made says as much, and the fact that your brother got out. You cannot be caged. Besides, I heard about the performance you gave when you found Tyson.”

  She was talking about the song Harper sang that knocked the rogues out. But how did she know? Had Tyson told her? “I didn’t tell you about that.”

  “No. A friend did. You could say, a friend who was there.”

  Harper’s eyes widened as she realized what that implied. “You are friends with the rogues?”

  Lilith found a chair and pulled it over to where they stood. She sat down in it, and gestured for Harper to do the same. Harper realized she’d been standing next to one and brought it a little closer to where Lilith sat. They looked at each other.

  “Friend is too strong a word for what we have. They are loyal to me, and they bring me information when I need it.”

  “Why do you let them do what they do? They seemed pretty sinister,” Harper asked, skin crawling when she thought of the look that vampiress had given Tyson as she breathed in the scent of his blood.

  “They are so similar to you and me, Harper. They just want freedom. The fact that it’s denied makes them act like caged tigers. Mr. Miller just got caught up in things, is all. I don’t agree with all of their methods, and I assure you they had a stern reprimand after that night’s events.” Her eyes glittered with something. Satisfaction? Or was it something more like malice?

  Harper shifted in her seat, uncomfortable at the parallel Lilith made between Harper and the rogues. Harper wasn’t like them. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, she just wanted freedom.

  “What would you be willing to do for it?” Lilith asked. Her eyes watched Harper, as if knowing the answer before she would give it. But then, why ask the question?

  “Do for what?” Harper knew what Lilith meant, but she wanted to be sure.

  “Escape. Freedom.”

  Harper’s head moved side to side, and her lips screwed together as she thought. “I wouldn’t harm. I wouldn’t kill.”

  Lilith held up a finger. “Ah. That is what you wouldn’t do. I asked, what would you do?”

  Harper threw her hands up. “What’s the difference? I would do anything else. Anything other than those things. I would lie, I would steal, I would cheat.”

  Instead of the reprimand Harper expected from a person in Lilith’s position, the witch grinned and clapped her hands together. “That’s exactly what I hoped you would say. You, my dear, are in a unique position to help me with a problem I have, and I think you’ll support the cause.”

  “The only cause I support is my own. I want to get out of here and find my brother, Lilith. I won’t be distracted by anyone else’s good intentions.” Especially since Harper had no reason to trust Lilith. No reason other than the witch’s honey-sweet words and general likeability. her good nature. But anyone could fake that.

  Harper avoided Lilith’s scrutinizing gaze, rubbing her fingers on the surface of the table next to them and staring at the myriad of jars filled with dried herbs and concoctions.

  “I can reunite you with him. All I need is your help. A few days, Harper, and I’ll have you flying out of this camp in broad daylight.”

  Harper eyed Lilith. “You could do that? What about the others?”

  “That’s who you’re going to help me with. I need you to disarm Violet and James for me.”

  It was as if Lilith had struck Harper in the stomach. She gasped. “Disarm them? How?”

  Lilith brushed her pants briefly and tucked her hair behind her ear. She seemed so calm, despite whatever she was about to say, but Harper sensed tremendous energy building up in the room, creating pressure so strong her ears popped.

  “Those two have been thorns in my side since I arrived here. I try to make things better for the residents and they push back. Violet used to do this for good, but I wonder how many of the first residents paid her to keep their presence here quiet. Now she has a cushy government job as leader here, she’s head of a coven with decent clout, and she controls everything that happens in these walls. She has power, and she’s not risking it to rock the boat of the administrators who approve things for us here. You’ve seen the kind of change that needs to happen, Harper. We need to stand up for ourselves, not cower in our corner and take orders. That will never happen with James and Violet at the head.”

  Was Lilith talking about full-scale rebellion? Against James and Violet, or against the government? “How far does this go? All the way to the top?”

  “Eventually,” Lilith said. She examined her nails. She kept them long, almost like talons, if talons had glittering turquoise gel polish. “We hope to appeal to the president and his committees ourselves. But Violet won’t stand for that. All I’m asking is for you to help diminish her power. I’ll do the rest.”

  Harper spread her hands wide and shrugged. “I know you think I’m the great-great whatever granddaughter of some ancient deity, but I’m just a bird.”

  “No, darling.” Lilith swung her head emphatically. “You are so much more than that! You have Raven in your blood, and you are unique in your ability to help me with this. I tried to recruit your brother, but he was only interested in escaping. He thought small. You, I can tell, think big.” She held her arms out, then brought them in close, leaning her elbows on her knees and putting her chin in her hands as she looked at me with wide, unblinking eyes. “What do you say, Harper King?”

  Harper hesitated. What Lilith proposed sounded good. It sounded like everything Harper wished she could do on her own—leave camp and help those left here. Violet was unstable, unfit for leadership, no matter how her husband denied it. But how could Harper possibly help remove a witch’s powers? Why didn’t Lilith do it herself? She was also a witch, after all.

  “What can I do that you can’t?”

  Lilith clapped her hands together again and squealed. “Oh, I hoped you would catch my vision! You and I will do a great thing together, you’ll see. Our time together here is almost up, but I can show you tonight. I have some people I’d love for you to meet, and I can explain the plan in detail. There’s just one more thing I have to do first.”

  Her tone shifted, becoming almost apologetic.

  Harper narrowed her eyes and tensed her muscles, readying herself to shift or run. “What’s that?”

  Lilith waived her hand. “Oh, do relax. You ravens are so intelligent, but it does make you get suspicious easily. I have a spell that will contact you when I need you. It’s a simple thing. I’ll draw an ‘X’ on your palm, like this.” She traced an ‘X’ on her own hand and it glowed purple, then faded into her skin. “Instead of coming to your room, which might draw unwanted attention, I’ll activate the mark and you’ll be able to find me.”

  “All right.” Harper reached her hand toward Lilith, who cupped one hand beneath, then placed the tip of one fingernail in the center of Harper’s palm.

  Lilith crossed it over Harper’s skin. Harper didn’t feel anything, not even the pressure of Lilith’s touch, and then her skin tingled and a bright purple ‘X’ formed across the creases of her palm. Sweat broke out on Harper’s forehead. Her ears rang against the pressure in the room, and a slight buzzing sound reverberated through her skull. Lilith’s skin, even the entire room, was cast in lavender light.

  “I’ll trust you to not tell anyone about this.”

  Harper bobbed her head in agreement, but Lilith’s stare indicated she needed verbal assurance. Harper cleared her throat. “Of course. I won’t tell anyone.” She tried to pull away, but Lilith clasped her hand in a grip like iron.

  “Very well.” Lilith’s voice intoned. The room immediately brightened back to regular midday lighting, and Lilith’s skin became a warm, blushing peach color. She patted Harper’s hand, pushing it back, and her smile revealed its usual straight, white teeth.

  Harper’s hea
d spun a little. There was a reason she usually avoided witches. She didn’t think she would regret it this time, though. A simple meet-up spell sounded like getting a text message. Just a small convenience.

  “This should wear off, right?” Harper looked at her palm, turning it over and seeing nothing but smooth skin.

  Lilith opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted as the door swung open. She snapped to attention, eyes riveted on the person at the door. Harper twisted, her left wing pressing into the chair back. Violet stood there, chest heaving, black, curled hair flying wild about her face.

  “I’ve received a call, Lilith. I need to leave immediately. Will you take charge until I’m back? It should only be until dinner.” Violet’s eyes flickered to Harper, obviously avoiding details due to her presence.

  “Of course.” Lilith rose gracefully from her chair.

  Harper stood, too, passing through the door moments behind Lilith. Violet’s eyes seemed to bore into Harper’s back, even as she disappeared down the hallway. Harper’s hand throbbed. She leaned against the wall just around the corner, staring at her palm. She half-expected that purple ‘X’ to appear again, but the skin remained smooth and unmarked. She couldn’t shake the feeling churning in her gut that something terrible was about to happen.

  And Harper might have agreed to be part of it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tyson

  The sandwich delivery guy’s eyes popped wide open when he saw the hole in Tyson’s wall.

  “Renovations,” Tyson said, taking the plastic sack from his hand and shutting the door. He bolted it for good measure and slumped into the couch, closing his eyes and eating in silence. Well, except for the traffic sounds, louder now with the window missing.

  Tyson’s phone sat innocently on the arm of the couch, a small black void on the grey microfiber. He ignored it until the last bite of his sandwich was gone and the garbage tossed, then sat back down on the couch, straighter this time, and opened up to the images he had taken. He selected the first one.

  The pages mostly held observations, formatted like journal entries by whoever wrote them. With a cup of coffee at his side, Tyson took his time flipping through them. The four double-sided pages contained only a few weeks’ worth of information—almost a year after Tyson remembered her family being taken in. He noted the progression of the “treatments” as they were outlined. Potions and truth serums, with carefully calculated percentages, made him inclined to think a witch had indeed written this. Could it have been Violet?

  Subject deemed incompatible. Tyson’s eyes blurred as he read the line on the second to last page. Incompatible for what? Naturalization? These would have been the early attempts to merge paranormal citizens with the human population. Had Reya failed to meet the requirements?

  His heart stopped on the last page. Reya’s red hair spread out on a steel table, her face the only part visible. The rest of her body lay beneath a stark white sheet. Her eyes were closed. She could have been sleeping, except he knew she wasn’t.

  Subject retired after sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride injection. Higher than average dosages were required to achieve cardiac arrest.

  The statement was followed by a full autopsy report, containing the exact percentages of the compounds and the time of death. Tyson tossed the phone away, stomach churning as bile climbed his throat. He stared at the screen from a distance, hardly believing what he’d read. Reya was thirteen when she received that lethal injection.

  Did her parents and siblings all pass the same way? What transpired before then? Why did they deem her worthy of death? Tyson’s chest gripped with the emotion that flooded him. He didn’t understand. Reya would never hurt a soul. He could access the full record, find out more. Though, knowing that it sat on a shelf in Violet’s lab made the nausea worsen. Violet had known about this. She might have written those words herself, or she knew the person who had.

  Tyson retrieved his phone and poured over the pages, muttering the words under his breath, trying to understand why. Why was Reya killed? There wasn’t enough. He needed to see the rest of the record, but no doubt Violet would have moved it if she suspected he had seen something.

  He fell asleep at some point, his phone dropping out of his hand.

  The sticky drip of drool down his neck woke him, and he smeared it away with his hand, smacking his lips and groaning as he stretched. His neck ached from the angle it had rested on the couch arm.

  With a start, Tyson remembered what he’d read the night before and scrabbled for his phone in the crack of the couch. A zoomed-in shot of Reya’s autopsy photo glared back at him from the screen—the last thing he saw before he fell asleep. The tightness in his chest released and that’s when the tears came. He sobbed on his couch in the still-dark hours of dawn, cool air blowing in through the hole in his wall.

  When the tears stopped, there was a fuzzy sensation as Tyson breathed in deeply. His face tingled with the aftermath of emotion. He stared blankly at the open wall, seeing out onto the street below. A few stray cars passed, their lights golden beams shooting through the blueish dawn light.

  Did it change anything? What Tyson had learned? The camps didn’t use those methods often anymore, only when a truly unstable paranormal case was presented. They were treated as the highest of criminals, despite the fact that sometimes, they had never killed a soul. It was the potential to kill, to lay ruin, to destroy, that made the Administration decide that they needed to call for execution.

  Did that await Harper? Were Quinn and Becca right to be so furious with Tyson’s decision to side with the system?

  His head ached. he dropped it into his hands, breathing through the tension pounding in his temples. Between Reya and the broken window and everything that represented, his apartment didn’t feel safe anymore.

  Tyson had just gotten there, and now all he wanted to do was leave. Where to go? He could visit his sister and her kids. He wasn’t in a mood for entertaining children, though.

  His thoughts drifted toward Nana, and he picked up his phone again, turning on the lock screen to check the time. It was after 5:00 a.m. already, not as early as he thought. Visiting hours at the rest home didn’t start until 9:00 a.m. He could grocery shop at the twenty-four-hour store nearby and grab breakfast.

  Tyson was too hungry to wait to eat. His first stop was a gas station where he bought a warmed breakfast bagel and coffee, deliberately avoiding any thoughts of Reya or Harper or anything to do with his job. The small talk made by the cashier brought his anxiety down a few notches, but once he was in his car again, it crashed over him like a wave. He chugged the too-hot coffee like his sanity depended on it, hoping the buzz from the caffeine would hit and help him make it through today without any more breakdowns.

  The events of the day before and that morning felt like a life someone else lived, until Tyson glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the gauze taped to his face.

  He couldn’t brush this off so easily. He pulled down the visor mirror and peeled the gauze and tape off, expecting an ugly-looking scrape. Instead, his hands brushed a cheek covered in two-days’ worth of stubble and nothing else. It was smooth and clear of any evidence of injury—not a scab or even a scar. Over and over Tyson touched the skin, wondering what could possibly have been in that salve Lilith used. Only, no salve could do this alone. She had to have used magic on him, and that thought made his blood chill in his veins. He could talk to paranormals, watch them shift without too much discomfort, but magic was one thing that didn’t sit well with him. It was too unpredictable. Too…volatile. The unease settled into his stomach. He flipped the visor up and started the car.

  Grocery shopping passed without incident. Tyson only needed a few things; he’d be back at camp tomorrow. Putting away the food and doing a quick cleaning of the apartment, including sweeping up the glass, gave him time to put his thoughts in order before he got back in the car. He was beyond ready to talk to someone
, even if it wasn’t about work. Especially if it wasn’t about work.

  The drive to the rest home Nana lived at took less than fifteen minutes. Tyson parked in the lot outside the red-brick building. His keys went in his left pocket, his phone in his right, and his wallet in his back pocket.

  Sometimes visiting Nana felt like going to battle. Tyson never knew if he’d catch her on a good day or not.

  The doors slid open automatically, and Tyson walked through. It was too cold and smelled of antiseptic pretending to be some kind of floral air freshener. Photos of past residents decked the walls. Tyson thought he recognized one or two as he walked up to the reception desk to check in.

  Visitor sticker on his chest, he walked to room 206. The door stood open, and Nana sat up in a chair. She wore a shawl, despite summer temperatures outside. Tyson had adapted to the AC on his walk down the hall and felt pretty comfortable, but maybe getting old made her feel it more. He took her in for a moment. Her black hair was streaked with grey, and someone had done it in a braid down her back. There was something youthful about the expression on her face.

  Tyson rapped his knuckles on the doorframe. “Hello, Nana.”

  “Nukilik?” she murmured, squinting at him.

  Nukilik. Nick. Tyson’s grandfather. “No, Nana, it’s Tyson.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Oh. I thought you were my Nukilik. He was so handsome.”

  She was caught in memories today. Days like this usually made Tyson wish he hadn’t come, but then again, maybe it would help, after all. He came to forget. They could be forgetful together. He pulled up the room’s spare chair and sat down.

  Nana’s hand grasped for his. Tyson liked to think part of her recognized him, but more likely it was simply a comfort thing. Nana always treated anyone she met like family. “I see him so clearly like he was standing here. You look like him.”

  “Thank you.” Tyson sat in awkward silence, though he doubt she noticed. She was used to silence.