Grave Omen (Raina Kirkland Book 3)

by Diana Graves

  Then it gave a Newcastle address. Newcastle wasn’t too far from Fall City. I tried to read the web address, but I couldn’t make out the letters. I looked back at Bailey, but she wasn’t on the bed. She was standing next to a purple bicycle—and so was I. The desk was gone, the room was gone. She looked to her left and right and we were standing in a parking lot. I couldn’t see beyond the parking lot, though. It was all a haze.

  A red truck drove up and parked near us. A man stepped out and just stood by his door. His face was distorted, cloudy somehow. Bailey didn’t look at him directly and he never looked at her. I walked around the truck but there were no details to see. I couldn’t make out anything. Two more vehicles parked near us; a blue jeep and a red car. Again, not much detail there. Two figures stepped out of the vehicles, but I couldn’t tell if they were men or women. They looked around, but Bailey was keeping her eyes mostly to the ground. It seemed that I couldn’t see what Bailey never saw, and she never looked at them directly. I heard other cars’ engines coming close and then cutting out. I heard footsteps, but I didn’t see anyone. Bailey had her head down while the rest arrived, so she didn’t know what they drove or what they looked like.

  “Where are we?” I asked no one in particular, and no one said anything.

  Then I heard a loud rumble and I watched a white van approach. The van was more detailed than the other cars and trucks and I looked back to find Bailey staring right at it with a smile. The van came to a stop in the midst of all the vehicles and two men jumped out. I couldn’t make out their faces either. They walked around the van, to the back and opened the double doors. Two other men popped out. They were holding two large poles that were connected to a tarp that was then connected to the van. They held up the poles and in doing so created a tent with walls.

  I heard footsteps and looked back. The waiting people were walking up to the back of the van, including Bailey.

  “Make a line,” said a man’s muffled voice.

  They did and I stood by Bailey in line since she was my guild through all of this. When I tried to peek into the tarp before Bailey got there, I only saw clouded nothingness.

  I heard something that sounded like metal against metal as we approached the van. One of the men who’d come out of the van was becoming clearer as we moved up. The figure standing in front of us disappeared behind the tarp and one of the men holding one of the poles looked directly at Bailey. His face was still a little blurred.

  “What a shame,” he said in the same deep muffled voice, and Bailey’s eyes flicked to him for a micro second before she stepped into the tent. In that second I saw him clearly; tan face, black hair, dark eyes and clean shaven. He was handsome, but soon everything went dark. She had no memory of life outside the tent once she ducked through the tarp. I had to follow.

  On the other side of the tarp a faceless man pulled her shirt over her head and threw it in a box that was half full of other clothes. He pulled out scissors and cut her bra off of her and tossed it in after the shirt.

  “Turn around,” he said. She did, and he harshly grabbed her feet, left and then right, to take her shoes off. She fell forward at first, but steadied herself with a hand on something sitting in the back of the van. She looked at it and suddenly it was there—a large cage. There were blurry people in it, packed in tightly, naked and not fighting at all. He pulled her pants off of her and then her underwear.

  “Get in,” the man demanded.

  I wanted to stop her. I wanted to stop all of this, but this wasn’t real. It was a memory only. If I interrupted it I could alter it, and we needed answers. Bailey was showing me exactly what happened, or at least, what she experienced. Naked, she climbed into the cage, scooting through it until she was up against the other bodies. I stepped into the van and sat on the metal floor by where Bailey was lying inside the cage. Eleven other figures were undressed and packed into the cage before it was closed. The men who were holding up the makeshift privacy curtain climbed in the van on either side of the cage. They put the poles on the floor and the tarp acted as a privacy curtain once again, blocking the large square windows in the back doors. It would have been completely dark if not for the light coming from the front windshield.

  The man who spoke to Bailey before entering the tarp moved closer to me and I moved back, giving him space to do what he did. He was looking down at her and she was looking up at him. Was she alive in there? Was she conscious or aware in any way of what they were doing to her, or was she oblivious to her fate? Either way, the look in her eyes was a sad one, but the man didn’t look away. As the van drove on he looked at her. The other kidnappers were talking amongst themselves, but it sounded like Charley Brown’s parents, all wa, wa, wa… Bailey didn’t hear what they said, so nor could I.

  The man put his fingers through the bar to pet Bailey’s hair. “You look lovely,” he said softly. A tear fell from her eyes and was lost in her hairline. She was alive in there! She just couldn’t deny them. It was mind control. Holy fuck! All these people were probably screaming on the inside.

  He rubbed his nose and looked up at his colleagues. I guess they weren’t paying attention to him, because his hand slowly crept into his pocket and he pulled out a utility knife. Acting in a sort of nonchalant manner, the guy snipped the wires around her head, making a big enough hole for a small child to fit through, but not carving it out completely. He left some wires intact so that it looked uncut from afar.

  The sky that was visible through the windshield grew darker and eventually the van came to a rough stop. The back doors swung open. An older man with dazed eyes lifted the tarp and handed the men two boxes. I could hear the terrified meow of two cats and I debated calling for Melvern to get me out of there. I didn’t want to see what they did with those animals. I might not be as anal-retentive an elf as Tristan and my mom, but I loved animals. That’s why I refused to cross the line from vegan to omnivore, no matter how much the smell of bacon made me salivate. I was craving animal meat like nobody’s business, but I really didn’t need another reason to hate myself. I felt guilty enough just thinking about it.

  The doors were slammed shut and once again we were driving down the road, but we didn’t drive for long. The doors swung open again and the men started getting out. This was it. Shit! Maybe I’d learned everything I could, but maybe I hadn’t. I didn’t want to stay for this, but I still didn’t understand why these men were doing what they were doing, or why these random people were acting the way they were.

  The man who cut the wires reached in and lifted the section of the cage that he’d cut, while three others lifted the other sides of the cage. How could four men lift twenty or so people with such ease? They carried the cage out of the van like it weighed nearly nothing and I followed. I couldn’t see much beyond the cage. It was all darkness. Only the small piece of the world that we currently occupied as we walked through the tall grass existed for us. Rain began falling as the men set the cage down far from the road.

  The fifth man was holding both boxes, one in either hand. He set them down and pulled out a large knife from his waistband, decorated with jewels. He opened one of the boxes and lifted a feisty grey Persian cat by his hind legs. The cat cried and screamed and I fell to my knees. I fell because if I stayed standing I would try to stop him from doing what I knew he was about to. I put my hands over my eyes and mouth and I cried.

  “Why are you crying?” I hear Melvern ask.

  I shook my head with my hands still covering my face. “They are sacrificing animals.”

  “Who?”

  “The men who are killing people.”

  The cat cried out one last blood chilling scream and I felt something hot spray over me. Without thinking, I opened my eyes. I was covered in blood, cat’s blood. He threw the cat’s body on the cage and I couldn’t keep my wide eyes off of it. He’d cut it down its stomach, long ways. He bent over and took out another cat, and I wished Bailey would look away, but she wouldn’t. Her neck was strained to see what
he was doing, and she watched as he pulled out a fluffy tabby cat by his back legs. The cat was meowing like the other, just as feisty, just as scared. The man brought up his knife. He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear it over the rain and cat screams.

  “Look away!” Melvern shouted. “Don’t watch it. You’re going into shock, Raina. Your body is cold to the touch, but your heart is racing. You’re breathing too fast. Whatever is happening, look away!”

  I did more than look away. I crawled away; I scrambled on all fours until I was hiding in the darkness that surrounded the cage like black fog. I closed my eyes, and the cat screamed, I heard it fall on the cage, and then I could hear the men. They were chanting.

  “Trivia, Trivia, Trivia…”

  One of the men lit a torch, while two others poured a clear substance on the cage, now crimson with the cats’ blood. The man who cut the cage still stood near the opening he made.

  Through this whole ordeal the people in the cage made no sound and did not fight. They just watched it all in silence, but when the man holding the torch lowered it to the cage they screamed. They screamed so loudly that it hurt my ears and I had to cover them with my hands.

  The man who had killed the cats bowed his head and said, “Amen,” and then he walked away. Three of the other men followed him as he entered the darkness that I hid in and disappeared from her memory.

  The man who had cut the cage, opened it with his leg, “Here girl,” he whispered earnestly, “here.”

  The people in the cage seemed finally awake to their situation and fought to escape, but it was useless. They reached out through the wires, scratched at each other, and begged and screamed for help. I didn’t remember seeing any children but I could hear them now, crying for their mommies and daddies. All I could do was cry with my hands over my ears. But no matter how hard I pressed my hands against my head, I couldn’t block out their screams.

  Fighting against the desperate people in the cage, Bailey finally got a hand out on the grass, then her head poked out and the man lifted his leg so that the wires swung back and hit her in the face.

  “I’ve done what I could for you. I must go. Trivia be with you,” said the man in a hushed voice before he ran away, past me and into the darkness to leave with his colleagues.

  Bailey screamed with pain as she fought to escape the roaring fire. People scratched at her in an attempt to get to the hole, but she clawed at the ground, digging her fingers into the wet grass and mud. The wires cut into her, but I couldn’t tell her blood from the cats’. Slowly she pulled herself free of the cage. Another person tried to follow her out, but it was too late for him. Bailey lay on the grass, trying to catch her breath and she cried as rain sprinkled down on her naked, burnt body. Soon the sounds of rain, the dying fire and her cries were all that were left. They were all dead. After a while she half crawled, half staggered off, through the woods and into the river. I followed her but I felt like I’d been through the ringer, emotionally speaking. My legs felt weak as I stood and watched her wade into the freezing water. It was deep and wide, but she managed to cross it somehow. She crawled out on the other side and I watched her, burnt and bloodied, stumble into the woods, where she would wait for death. But death didn’t come, Mato did. I was left in darkness again and I fell to my knees and cried.

  SHOT

  BARELY AUDIBLE SHOUTING was the first thing I heard. Before I opened my eyes I knew Mato was the one who was shouting. He was yelling at someone to back off and give him and Melvern space. He shouted, “Leave Melvern alone!”

  A pair of soft hands grasped my head and I opened my eyes to see Melvern staring into my face. His brows were strained in concern. I’d never seen him look so distraught. I wanted to tell him I was okay. I wanted to tell everyone to calm down, but there was a pain in my pelvic region like I’d never felt before. There was a heavy weight bearing down on me from the inside of my body, tearing me apart! I fought to get out of the chair by Bailey’s bed because it hurt to be sitting. Bailey herself was still lying, dead to the world in a drug induced coma. Melvern put a hand on my chest to keep me in the chair and I screamed in agony.

  “Goddess! What’s wrong with me?!”

  Melvern took back his hand and stood, and I fell out of the chair and to the floor at his feet. It felt better to be on all fours, but not much. He looked back to Mato.

  “Mato, let the doctor through,” he said.

  Mato wasn’t listening to Melvern, his master. Two hospital security guards and the EI officers were trying to push him away so that a doctor could get to me. Damn, four grown men against one vampire, and the vampire was winning. It wasn’t until he saw me writhing on the floor in pain that he stopped fighting them.

  A man in blue scrubs ran to my side. He had a colorful bandana covering most of his short dark hair; it left his large green eyes and thick black eye-brows quite striking in the midst of his clean-shaven face. He was talking to me but I couldn’t hear him, not over my screaming.

  “Breathe!” he shouted in my face. Wasn’t I breathing? I had breath enough to scream. I tried to swallow the screams and breathe small shallow breaths, but I ended up making myself hyperventilate. “You need to calm down. You’re having a panic attack.”

  I looked at him with angry, pain filled eyes. How dare he tell me to calm down! I was in pain. I wanted to yell at him. Tell him to calm the fuck down while I shove a burning-hot poker up his ass but instead I shook my head.

  “This isn’t a panic attack. This is extreme pain and it’s getting worse!” I yelled.

  “Come on; help me get her into a wheel chair. We need to calm her down,” he asked the nurses standing around us. He looked back down at me. “First we need you to relax, slow your breathing, then we’ll run some tests, okay?”

  I squeezed out a solid, “No.” If they ran tests there was no telling what they would find. There was only one doctor I trusted and he wasn’t at Children’s’ Hospital.

  “You need medical attention. We’re going to take you to another room and give you something to calm you down.”

  I looked up at Mato and Melvern. Melvern still looked worried but Mato looked pissed. The hospital guards stepped up at the doctor’s request and started pulling me up while I yelled my pain to the floor.

  “No, no, no!”

  “Leave her alone!” shouted Mato. He grabbed one of the guards and the other guard dropped me on the floor to help his colleague.

  Melvern was there before the doctor was. He picked me up off the floor and cradled me in his arms like a child, but the pain was never ending. I clung to his neck, riding the pain with quick breathing and pathetic whimpering noises.

  “Put her in the chair,” ordered the doctor. I looked over at the wheel chair that a nurse had wheeled in and I held onto Melvern tighter.

  “Please, no. Take me to Bastion Fatal, please,” I pleaded with Melvern.

  Melvern looked at me and then at Mato, who was now holding his hands in the air. The guards had pulled their guns out and pointed them at him and he’d stopped fighting them. Not that he was truly fighting them to begin with. He was really just toying with them. Fighting them wouldn’t have lasted long. He was stronger, faster and probably a whole hell of a lot smarter than either of them. And their guns wouldn’t have done much to save them if he truly meant them harm. Mato probably only stopped because things had escalated far enough and no one likes being shot at.

  The EI officers had their guns drawn too, but they weren’t pointed at anyone. They looked confused as to what to do. They were here with us, but the hospital had their own guards and a civilian doctor.

  “Melvern,” I begged again, “please, don’t let them take me. I want to go to Bastion Fatal.”

  “That’s a vampire collective, isn’t it?” The doctor asked, and he looked a little horror-struck. “Why on God’s green earth would you want to go there? You know what, never mind. That’s way too far. You’re already here, just let me look at you. I promise, Miss. Kirkland. You
can trust me. I’m only here to help.” He looked past me at the vampire holding me. “Put her in the chair, now.”

  Melvern didn’t even look at the doctor. His eyes went from Mato to me and then back to Mato before he started walking toward the large window.

  “Where are you going?” asked the doctor.

  “Where she asked me to,” answered Melvern.

  Mato followed us with his hands still in the air, because the guards never stopped pointing their guns at him as he crossed the room. When we got to the window Melvern turned to wait for Mato, so that he could open it for us.

  “Fuck, we’re going to fly there!” I didn’t mean for it to be a scream, but the pain made it come out that way.

  “It’s the fastest way to get there,” Melvern said. “By car, it could take maybe an hour, but by air we’ll be there in ten minutes, the way we fly anyway.”

  “Stop them!” yelled the doctor.

  While one guard stepped forward to put a hand on Mato’s shoulder, the other one pulled his trigger. There was a flash of light and a thunderous bang! The sound was painfully loud in such a small space. I knew that I yelled for Mato, but I couldn’t hear my own words over the temporary deafness and simultaneous ringing in my ears. But Mato was looking at me with wide, angry eyes. I looked down at myself, and there was blood all over my chest.

  “Me?” I whimpered before the world went dark.

  I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS…

  THERE WAS A time when waking up at Bastion Fatal would have frightened me, but that was before the master vampire that ran the Bastion regained his sanity and became one of my most trusted friends. Alistair was my mentor, my confidant and on occasion my hero. His face was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes. There was nothing delicate about him, nothing feminine at all. He was very Nordic in every way. He was tall, blond and lean, with kind blue eyes that matched the fire he could conjure. His dark blue dress shirt only made those true blue eyes brighter in contrast. It seemed odd to think back on the first time we met, on the kind of fear he raised in me.