I staggered. Georges was a practical man. Not necessarily smart, but smart enough to know people would pay for his size and strength. He had taken jobs in bars as a bouncer back in Haiti before working with a security firm. He wasn't necessarily a bad man, though his time with Abigail had corrupted what little good he had left.
He had volunteered for the eternal life she had offered if he pledged his life to her. He agreed on the condition that his mother in Haiti got half his pay. She had agreed with a smirk. I can guarantee that smirk was because she most likely didn't pay any of her walking corpses. But Georges wasn't smart enough to figure that out. So he was loyal to her, doing unspeakable things and not really understanding exactly why he couldn't seem to do the things he wanted.
I pushed his memories from me as I stood triumphantly above two large rotting corpses, the men's revenants standing in shock, looking at their hands and their bodies below. I shouldn't have been so smug as I learned why Rin insisted on training me. I've not had the chance to experience a spirit who decided to fight instead of coming with me willingly or simply trying to get away.
I saw stars as Leon hit me with a pile-driving uppercut that had me smashing through a stalagmite in the dark shadow world of the spirit I found myself in with them. It was like an enormous dark cavern that the balcony seemed to meld into.
I winced in pain as I staggered to my feet. I noted as I glanced around, that there was no corresponding area that would lead to the light. Both these men were destined for eternal damnation without any other possibilities.
I inhaled deeply, strengthening my resolve and dove at the two charging men, using everything my mini pseudo-sister had taught me. It almost wasn't enough. Leon had so many years of training, military, and martial arts, and I found myself outmatched quickly. Georges was a brawler who used his size and strength to overwhelm.
It wasn't until I exchanged a flurry of blows with Leon, blocking all his strikes that I realized something. Rin had never taught me that. I was instinctively pulling on Leon's military and martial training. I used that realization to go on the offensive instead of retreating. I was pushing him back, then spun in a flying roundhouse kick to land a blow to Georges' chest when he tried to attack me from behind. Marinette preserve me, I was a flippin' martial artist.
Georges stumbled back, and one foot stepped in a black puddle. He tried to step free, but his foot didn't move as the water started moving up his leg. I realized it wasn't black, it was dark red, blood! It formed hands and arms that started pulling him into the puddle. The arms were stripped of flesh and bleeding.
I didn't have to listen to his screams as he was pulled into his own personal hell for very long. I hoped my... no, his mother would be ok without him. No, she had been without him the past two years, I'm sure she already thought him dead. And he has been.
Leon pressed the attack. Even with my enhanced strength, the man was doing damage to me. In this world between which we battled in, I worried that it must be my soul he was damaging, not my physical body.
But Rin said my soul would heal right? Because it is bound to my living body? It was after our third exchange of blows and kicks that I realized I was depending upon his training, but that I had something he didn't. I looked down at my talons, the four inch claws were sharp as razors. I let my Raven, who had been screaming at me to listen to her, take over.
Her primal instincts flooded me, and it was as if I were along for the ride as I slashed and stabbed at the man who suddenly didn't look as confident as we tore at pieces of his soul. Pieces he couldn't heal as I could.
We separated and he backed off.
Then I dove at him from fifteen feet away, spreading my arms, gliding the distance then twisting mid-air like a corkscrew as my taloned feet slammed into his chest. He teetered on a precipice that was just suddenly there. How had we not noticed it before?
Then I realized it as terror filled his eyes as he fell into the void. It was nothing, that is why I hadn't noticed it. It was a void of nothingness. Bereft of anything. No sound, no light, no anything. That was his hell that he feared, he feared there was nothing after life, and that is what he would have for an eternity of eternities.
I shuddered at that thought as I stumbled back into the real world again. My disorientation lasted only an instant as I realized I was standing above the two corpses again. How long had I been in the other realm? All the others were gone.
I heard voices below and rushed to the balcony to see Abigail and the others rushing across the lobby. I didn't even hesitate to vault the railing. My respect for heights didn't seem to give me the slightest pause anymore. I already loved the exhilaration of the air rushing around me and through my feathers.
I landed between them and the door, a reverberating growl vibrating my chest, then I hissed like a cat. It was an inhuman sound that just came from my throat. They all slid to a stop. I looked between them and the door, knowing two others were out there somewhere.
Abigail smiled at me, her fear seeming to bleed away as she said, “My dear Adelaide, you are so full of marvelous surprises. It is a shame we didn't get a better chance to know each other in life. Though you'll just love being my little toy in death.”
That made me hesitate. I'd never thought of her enslaving me like the others. I had already lived that enslavement a few times when I touched her victims, and I didn't want to live through it again.
But then my Raven chuckled at her as we realized that all she had left were enslaved socialites and a poor soccer mom left between us. I started stepping forward, when her smile grew bigger, and she looked at the receptionist on her arm and said, “Claire? Be a dear would you?”
The receptionist looked at her adoringly and nodded. She stepped in front of her mistress and reached up and took her hair out of the elegant bun it was in, shaking it out. Then she started walking toward me, each step getting faster until she was running at me. I was wondering what kind of threat she could possibly be when she exploded into the black feathered form of a screaming Raven Maid.
Chapter 13 – Annie Cumberland
To say that I was shocked to the core of my being would have been the understatement of the century. Then I realized as I watched the charging Raven Maid leap into the air, just why my Raven was reacting so violently to the sight of Claire. Abigail had turned one of us.
She had turned Claire into the very thing we fought. The very thing all of our instincts needed to bring to the beyond. Was... was this why she had asked about Rin's body? She was going to do the same to her? I felt nauseous at that last thought, realizing this is what she planned on doing with me as well.
Claire was more Raven than Rin, more than my current form. Why couldn't I bring out my full form which had saved Shannon? I dove back at the woman, who could have been me. I needed to free her from this unnatural thing that had been done to her. Every instinct inside of me knew that to be a fact. I had to save this woman from this twisted fate and allow her to find her own light.
We collided in the air with a solid thud, our talons clanking together and sparking like great blades of steel on the battlefield.
“Please, let this Adelaide be the one to finally set me free.” That was the last thought in my head as I lived the life of Annie Cumberland, the woman that Abigail Truit had renamed Claire, taking not only her life and soul from her, but her name too.
I gasped, trying to separate out what thoughts were mine and which were hers. Annie was the last of the Raven Maids except for Rin. Abigail still didn't quite know how Raven Maids were created, she needed information if she was to avoid them in the future or wipe them completely from the face of the planet.
So she had Annie taken, since every team she sent out to capture or kill the child Maid never returned. It had been a group of human mercenaries who had killed Annie, they had ambushed her and shot her in the back like cowards. Then they brought her body cross country back to Abigail.
A tear rolled down my cheek. I had... Annie had been there, bas
king in the afterlife of warmth and peace, her family was there. It was an idyllic serenity, then dark coils had wrapped around us and tore us from that perfect peace, kicking and screaming back into my, her, body.
But everything was wrong. Her Raven was there but neither of them could move, neither could do a thing as Abigail loomed over them, placing something around her neck. The abomination was right there, all Annie had to do was to lash out and drag the creature's revenant to the underworld, but she couldn't. She was confused, scared, and angry she was taken from the peace she had earned.
The thing that terrified her most was when Abigail Truit, the one who had Annie's life taken from her, said three words, “Sit up, chere.” And, without willing it, she sat up, unable to resist. She knew she should have been resisting, but the realization that she actually couldn't not even in her head told her what she was. Abigail had made her one of those unnatural zombies with no free will. Abigail's will was her only will.
This broke her, her psyche couldn't take it, she and her raven were now what they were supposed to combat. She was just a puppet now, and her mind broke. I could still feel the madness writing around inside me, part of me now, trying to find purchase in my mind.
Abigail quickly learned that she had broken her mind, when all of Annie's responses to her questions were filled with that madness, and she couldn't separate the nightmares, imagination, and truth from her words. Abigail must have put the incoherent words together enough to wonder if Raven Maids ran in a bloodline.
So that must have been when she set up this whole thing, so she could observe me, to see if I had or exhibited any Raven abilities. Now she knows, and the families of all the late Raven Maids are not safe anymore.
Truit was so enraged that Annie couldn't provide her with what she needed, that she made her truly a broken puppet on a string. She named her Claire and made her act as her receptionist when people were around, and her doting slave when they were alone. She knew that somewhere inside the broken girl, that this would be the ultimate torture for a Raven Maid.
The worst of it was since she had no will of her own, and Abigail said she was to view her as her goddess and only love, Annie loved her without having the will to fight it.
We loved and hated Abigail. She was our... no... her goddess. And she knew the only thought she should have was to kill the abomination again, but she was her everything. Those diametrically opposite facts kept her spiraling deeper and deeper into her madness.
There was hope that this inexperienced Raven before her could return her to the peace she remembered. But her goddess wanted her to kill the one who could possibly be her savior, so that is what she would do.
I shuddered, Annie wanted nothing more than to end me because her mistress's will was her own, even with the echoes of hope in the back recesses of her mind. And she wasn't pulling any punches. She came at me over and over, she was almost as skilled a Rin, though bigger and stronger, being an adult.
Even with my new fighting knowledge from Abigail's men, she was pushing me back further and further. It was all I could do to stop her talons from shredding me. I would have loved to see her in her fighting prime.
We separated and circled as I wiped a tear from my feathers. The whispering voice of Abigail in my ear in Annie's memories, “This gris-gris around your neck is all that binds your will to mine. All you have to do to gain your freedom, my sweet pet, is to remove it. Now grovel at my feet.”
That is the one thought that has been swirling around in her madness since she instantly did as she was told, the words booming like a drum, all consuming. It kept echoing over and over, and what terrified her was that she couldn't because her goddess had not willed it.
We clashed again, her claws slicing deeply into me, leaving burning trails in my mind. She would slice my spirit to ribbons. I stepped into a blow, biting back a scream of agony, grasping her chest with my talons and then I fell back, dragging her with me.
We were at a crossroads I could see the Institute lobby down one way, Abigail was on the move with the others since we had passed to the world between. Then I glanced down one road that had razor sharp vines and black webs of corruption blocking the light I could feel a familiar joyful warmth from. And the other way was a macabre scene of gore and wrongness that burned by just looking at it. But laying on top of the piles of corpses wearing gris-gris pouches, was a desiccated corpse that was beckoning in a seductive manner. The sight caused Annie to pause, a deep need, of combined want and revulsion was reflected in her avian eyes.
It was Abigail, she was Annie's personal hell, and part of her wanted to go to her. I winced at Annie. She and her Raven were half rotted, with dark tendrils of sick power squirming through her head, binding her. Imprisoning her will and exerting its own.
I could tell that as much as she appeared to want to go to that eternal damnation with her goddess smiling at her, she still had no will. I could see that she was told to kill this Raven Maid who could be her only salvation, so that is what she would do.
The crossroads were telling to me. She was at a point where the good she had done before her death was balanced out by the evil she has done in Truit's name. She was at a tipping point for which there would be no return if she succeeded in killing me.
She charged me, and we fought. I still don’t know how much time passes when I am in the spirit realm, ushering the dead. Sometimes it seems but an instant, and sometimes time passes at a normal rate, like upstairs, giving Abigail time to attempt her escape.
We fought until my spirit form was beaten and bloodied, my feathers glistened with the blood of my soul. It could have been minutes or hours, I didn't know, all I knew was pain and exhaustion like I couldn't have ever imagined.
Annie seemed to never tire, and no matter how much damage I did to her she didn't slow. She was just a marionette on those strings of decrepit black magic. Her madness twinkling in her eyes.
I hesitated. Strings. How stupid can I be? I stumbled away from a slash of her talons as I looked at the animated Raven. There even in the spirit realm, hanging from Annie's half rotted, feathered neck, was the gris-gris. The tendrils of darkness were all extending into her from it.
My mind drifted to one of Annie's favorite memories. Her daughter, Kyler. She had turned thirteen just last year, days before Abigail got her claws into Annie. She had given Kyler the necklace her mother had given her when she was a girl. It was a finger bone of a raven on a silver chain. The blood-rite of their line. Kyler had been so proud as she hugged Annie. They celebrated her birthday in the bayou as only we can in New Orleans.
Kyler felt like my own daughter to me, I had all the memories of her growing up and the joy that filled me... Annie, every time she saw her.
I was crying, as I again stepped right into a thrust of Annie's talons. Her cheeks dimpled around her hooked beak as the part of her loyal to Abigail smiled in triumph when I screamed as her talons pierced my stomach.
I wrapped my arms around her, hugging her tight to me as I saw motes of light swimming in my vision. Her strike had white hot pain threatening to take my consciousness even in this mystical crossroads. Was my soul too damaged for me to heal it now?
She struggled against my embrace, and I whispered into her ear, “For Kyler,” as I reached one clawed talon up to her throat and tore away the gris-gris. I could see all the black writhing tentacles slide out of her, trying desperately to hold on.
And I collapsed on the pathway, breathing hard looking up at a very pretty woman in her early thirties. She just stood there, looking down at her hands like she had never seen them before. It was a look of confusion and wonder.
Then she looked down at me. I must have looked a sight, a beaten and bloodied Raven hybrid who was bleeding profusely from my gut. She quickly knelt beside me and helped me to my feet. I swayed as she looked away, all the shame and guilt she should have felt when Abigail controlled her now evident in her face.
I think that shocked her more than being free. The fact
she could feel things without being told what to feel. The realization of free will seemed to almost break the woman all over again.
I said to her in a croaking, wavering voice, “Let's get you home.” I nudged my chin toward the light, barred by the sickness and vines.
She looked between that and the hell that still beckoned her, and she blanched. Then said to me, “Thank you, Adelaide Oliver, I will always remember that you gave me back myself, but I've done unspeakable things, and the garden is walled off to me now. I know what I deserve.”
Then she started walking toward the pile of corpses, all of who smiled, but not as cruelly as her interpretation of Abigail. I grabbed her arm, my talons sinking in, causing her to wince. I growled at her as I tried to marshal my strength. “No, you are going back to where you belong.”
I dragged her toward the vines, she resisted the whole way, but I gained strength from the knowledge I was doing the right thing, I was doing what Raven Maids should. I was going to escort her to her final destination if it killed me. I hissed and winced at every cut, every puncture from the vines as I slashed my way through with my talons. The black threads burned my feathers and bubbled my flesh.
Then we were there, I could see my... I mean her mom, her family who had passed before her all waiting. Annie looked at me in wonder, then she kissed my cheek, patting my feathers and said in a far away voice, “Thank you, Adelaide.”
Then she shook her head. “But you need to be somewhere else right now, Abigail is getting away.” She struck my chest, causing me to stumble back. It took me a moment to orient myself as I realized I was back in the real world in the empty lobby, beside the rotting corpse that was Annie Cumberland.
There was a smile on her face. The sight should have revolted me, but instead, I felt warmth. She was home now. If I survived the night, I would find Kyler and let her know that her mother loved her so much, and that she is at peace now.
Raven Maid: Out of the Darkness Page 14
