Reaper: A raven paranormal romance (Crookshollow ravens Book 2) (14 page)

I
woke in the darkness
, cold and alone.

For a moment, I thought I had dreamed the rescue, and that I was still trapped in Morchard Castle, sleeping in that giant French bed with the creepy butler outside my door. But then my eyes adjusted to the gloom, and I saw the cream-coloured walls, the modern furniture, the abstract art hanging above the bed. I was at Raynard Hall.

But where was Cole?

I pulled back the covers, hoping he’d somehow just caterpillared his way down the bed in the night. But there was no one else there. The sheets were cold. He hadn’t been here for some time.

“Cole?” I called out, hoping he’d just gone to the bathroom or to get a drink of water.

Then I saw them, sitting on the edge of his pillow. Two black feathers.

No.

I looked over to the window near Cole’s bedside table. It was open a crack, just enough space for a large bird to fit through. There was another black feather on the sill. Cole’s boxer shorts lay crumpled beneath it.

He’s gone.

Tears clung to my eyes. I couldn’t believe he’d left me. After everything that had happened, after the way he’d held me last night, after the way he’d kissed me and promised everything would be OK, he’d gone and left.

Everybody I loves leaves me.

Suddenly, I couldn’t bear to be in the room anymore. The cream walls loomed in on me, mocking me. My head spun. I felt ill. I pulled the edges of my bathrobe around my body and fled into the hall, tears running thick and fast down my cheeks.

“Is anyone awake?” I called out into the silent hallway, closing my door with a slam. My stomach twisted. I felt frantic, my heart beating like a jackhammer. I needed … I didn’t know what I needed. I needed Cole, but he wasn’t here.

Elinor and Eric came running out of their room. “Belinda, what’s wrong?”

“He’s gone,” I sobbed. “Cole’s gone.”

Elinor wrapped her arms around me. “Sssssh, it’s OK.” she cooed, the way you would calm a child.

“No.” I wailed. “It’s never going to be OK again.”

“What the fuck is going on?” It was Bianca’s voice. I heard heavy boots stomping down the hall. “It is far too early in the morning for hallway conversations.”

“Cole’s gone.” Elinor explained, patting the back of my head.

“That bastard,” Bianca said. “Men are such fucking pigs.”

“Hey!” Eric punched her playfully in the arm.

“I don’t think that’s what’s going on,” Elinor replied. “Cole’s been a wreck ever since you were taken, Belinda. All he’s thought about in the last few days has been how to rescue you. I can’t imagine he’d have left you so suddenly.”

“But that’s exactly what he did,” I bit my lip. A lump rose in my throat. I was dangerously close to losing it.

“Something could have happened.” Elinor insisted. “Maybe Byron was in trouble. We’ll find him, Belinda. I promise—”

“No.” My voice cracked as the tears I’d been holding back spilled over. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t …”

The tears overwhelmed me. I turned on my heel and ran from the hall, back into the bedroom. I threw myself down on my empty bed, and sobbed, my heart falling to pieces like autumn leaves crumbling beneath Cole’s heavy boots.

E
very mile I covered
, the pull in my chest intensified. It wasn’t just the pull of the bond, trying to drag me back to Libby. It was my heart, longing to return to Belinda.

It was well past sunrise now. The sleepy villages below me were waking up, bikes whizzing down the narrow lanes, delivery trucks doing the rounds of the local shops, cows put out in the fields. Belinda would have discovered I was missing by now. I wondered what she’d done when she’d found the bed empty and my clothes in a pile on the floor. My chest ached as I imagined her crying, her anger. She wouldn’t understand, not after what I’d said to her last night.

I should have left a note, explained why I’d left her. Maybe I could go back and—

No.
I had to be strong. If I went back now, I wouldn’t leave again. And I had to leave, for her, for us.

Just on the other side of the next village was a large expanse of forest. I swooped lower, preparing to perch in one of the trees while I considered my next step. As I did this, I became aware of a shape behind me. It lost altitude as I did, coming up fast on my tail. I dared a glance over my shoulder. It was a raven, but I couldn’t get a good look at its face.

Fuck.
I darted into the trees and swung hard left, hoping to lose it in the canopy. But no, the bird followed me, its wings angled back, its body straight as an arrow. It closed the distance between us.

Before I could reach the perch, it hit my wing, knocking me into the tree trunk. I bounced against the bark and fell, hitting branches on the way down. I managed to grasp the edge of a branch with my claw, holding myself while my body hung upside down like a bat. The other bird fluttered down and landed on the branch above me. I stared up at its beaky eyes, preparing myself to meet Odin …

“Byron?”

“Of course it’s me.” My brother grinned down at me. He hopped back to give me some space to pull myself up onto the branch. “Who else would it be?”

“Pax or Poe or any of those crazy ravens Morchard has in his service. You were following me, after all.”

“What choice did I have? You were running away.”

“I’m not running away.”
I didn’t really want to explain. “How did you find me?”

“I’ve been following you for miles,” he gestured behind us with the corner of his wing.
“Ever since you left Raynard Hall. I wasn’t about to let you go off and do something stupid again. Which, if I’d been able to catch up with your sooner, I might’ve actually achieved.”

“What do you want, Byron?”

“I’m your brother. I want to help you. Why is that so fucking hard for you to understand?”

“You didn’t want to help our mother when Morchard was torturing her.”

“That was different.” He turned away from me. “I was young. I didn’t know how bad it was.”

“I told you how bad it was. But you were too busy—”

“I’m not here to dig all that shit up again, OK? I’m here because I have no fucking clue why you’re here. You got your human girl back. Why aren’t you back at Raynard Hall, shagging her senseless?”

“You know why,” I growled, unfurling the edge of my wing so the black ring was visible.

Byron sighed. “Not this again. You are what you are, Cole. You have a great master now, better than anything the rest of us could hope for. The sooner you accept it, the happier you’ll be.”

“I can’t accept it. As long as I’m a slave, I’m a danger to Belinda. I could hurt her, and I don’t want to ever be put in that situation ever again. I’m of more use to her if I’m as far away from her as I could possibly get.”

“So what’s your wise plan, then, Socrates?”

“I have to find a way to break the bond forever. I’ve seen it done before, so I know it’s possible.”
Briefly, I explained to Byron about Mikael’s sister Ingrid.

“I remember her. I thought she’d died.”

“That’s what Morchard told Lord Carnarvon. He was too embarrassed to admit she’d somehow escaped.”

“But what good will being free do? Say you do manage to break the bond tying you to the Gillespies. You’ll lose their protection, and the Morchards are never, ever going to stop hunting you.”

“Or you.”
I stared up at my brother, feeling even more anger at myself. “I’ve dragged you into this and ruined your life, too. Fuck, I’m such an idiot.

Something sharp jabbed my shoulder. “This fucking emo shit is not you. The Cole I grew up with would never step down for a battle, even when he was vastly outnumbered. And don’t you worry your pretty head about me. I got into this on my own. And now we have to see it through to the end.”

I looked over at my brother, our eyes meeting. For the first time I saw him,
really
saw him. Although I hated the way he’d ignored our mother when she was in need, and for what he did after she died, he was still the old brother who’d taught me to fly and had stood up for me when Pax and Poe ganged up on me. There was guilt in Byron’s eyes, and a lot of pain. He had loved our mother a lot, and if I had done what he’d done, the guilt would have eaten me up inside. I hadn’t thought before that he might be experiencing that.

Byron felt responsible for me. He was trying to stand with me, the way he had done when we were chicks. And here I was, rejecting him again.

“OK.” I nodded. “We’ll see it through together.”

“Good. Now, what exactly are we going to do?”

I thought again of Mikael’s sister. She was the only rogue I knew, and it was highly unlikely she would have come back to Crookshollow to join up with Isengrim, so she was still alive out there somewhere. She deserved to know that her brother had died.

I grinned up at Byron as I swooped down towards the next village. “We’re going to find Ingrid.”

* * *

W
e had no money
, no mobile phones, and no clue where to find Mikael’s sister. We didn’t even have any clothes.

First things first. We needed access to the Internet if we wanted any hope of finding Ingrid. It was pretty hard for anyone, even a rogue Bran, to keep their identity off the Internet these days. But where could two ravens find free access to the Internet in the late evening without arousing suspicion?

The local library.

We located the town’s library easily enough – it was the large grey building on the corner of the high street covered with an
Libby in Wonderland
mural. Byron and I swooped down and hid in the bushes outside the front doors. We watched the last of the library patrons leave for the night. A little boy carrying a stack of picture books noticed us and threw us the leftover crusts from his school lunch. I gobbled mine up, my stomach rumbling. Our next mission would have to be finding something substantial to eat.

A half-hour later, the librarian came outside, and keyed something into the security system. Byron and I hopped out from the bushes and darted through the door before she slammed it shut and locked it. We were stuck in here for the night.

Luckily, their alarm system was pretty cheap. I was able to prise open the panel with my talons and cut the sensor wire with my beak. That done, Byron made a quick inspection of the building, flying from one end to the other to search for any lingering librarians. “It’s all clear.”

Moving away from the large front windows, we both changed into our human form. I looked back at my brother, his tattoos shifting as his feathers retracted into his skin. He’d taken me to get my first tattoo – the raven with its wings spread across my chest, and he bore the same design across his. Brothers forever, a bond that even magic could never break. Suddenly, a lump rose in my throat.

“This is awkward,” Byron grinned, as he saw me staring. “Now we have to stare at each other’s naked bodies for the rest of the night.”

“Speak for yourself,” I growled, the lump receding. “You’ve got nothing I covet.”

“Oooh, big words from a not-so-big guy.”

“Wow, snappy comeback. Did you learn that one at kindergarten?”

In response, Byron stuck his tongue out at me. I laughed, grabbing a book off the returns cart and lobbing it at his head. He caught it mid-air and tossed it back.

Byron walked behind the checkout desk, grinning wickedly as he rubbed his naked butt over the edge of the counter. “This is probably the first time anyone has ever been naked in this building. Unless they secretly film porn here after hours or something.”

“Let’s hope not. I don’t particularly want to run into any porn directors tonight. I’m not wearing my favourite butt-less chaps. Come on, let’s do what we came here for.”

Byron rifled through a tray labelled Lost and Found on the desk, and tossed me a white card. “Here. You’ll need that to access the computer.”

I glanced down at the name on the card.
Eric Bolger. What an unfortunate name.
“Won’t you need one, too? You’re going to help me look.”

Byron disappeared into one of the offices behind the counter. “I have other things to worry about. There might be something back here we could use, like clothes or food or some kind of weapon.”

“What exactly do you think goes on in a library? You’re not going to find any of that stuff back there. We have work to do.” Five computer desks leaned up against the wall next to the women’s fiction section. I sat down at one of the terminals, and booted up the machine. Luckily, the library had instructions on how to log in pasted on a card on the corner of the desk. I entered Eric Bolger’s card number and waited for the computer to think.

“Hey, there’s a kitchenette back here.” I heard a fridge door open. “Maybe there will be some food.”

Finally, the desktop booted up. The browser had reserved Eric’s search history. “Hey, Byron. The dude whose card you pulled has been looking up porn on the library computer. It looks like our naked bodies aren’t the most obscene thing this building has ever seen.”

“No fucking way,” Byron came clomping out of the kitchen, carrying a bowl of crisps, a knife, and a block of cheese. “I thought they had a way to block that kind of stuff.”

“It looks like Eric found a way around it. Yikes,” I clicked on one of his links. “He’s got a fetish for ladies with club feet.”

Byron leaned over my shoulder, his face inches from the screen. He screwed up his face. “That is disgusting.”

“Don’t breathe in my ear like that,” I snapped, clicking away as fast as I could. “You’re making this unpleasant discovery even more scarring.”

“Whatever.” Byron leaned against the back of the chair, his hand dangling down over the seat. His fingers brushed the edge of my naked thigh.

“Jesus, Byron!” I yelped, upsetting the bowl and tipping all the crisps out over the floor.

“Don’t waste the crisps,” Byron scolded me, as he bent to pick them up. “This might be the only food we have.”

“Well, don’t put your hand on my arse.” I turned the screen away from him.

“This really isn’t working for me,” Byron grumbled, leaning over further. Now his knee was pressing against mine.

I shoved him away, flipped over to a search engine and started typing. I started with Ingrid’s maiden name, not expecting anything to pop up. After all, she couldn’t change into human form, so she must be living her life as a raven. And ravens didn’t make Facebook profiles.

To my shock, the first entry that came up was a social media account. Her online nickname was RogueBirdie. The profile picture was of a lean, dark-haired girl with exquisite features and a serene smile. Her face looked vaguely familiar. With a start, I realised where I’d seen it before. When Ingrid was in Victor’s aviary, he’d forced me to hold her down while she tried to change into her human form so he could inject her with something. Her skin had been obscured by a large swath of feathers, but it was the girl in the profile picture all right.

But how had Ingrid transformed into a human?

I scrolled through her profile. There were pictures of her laughing with friends, enjoying a picnic with a handsome guy, holding a friend’s baby … she had a whole life.

I stopped when I saw a series of images of her inside an aviary. I couldn’t imagine being free and ever wanting to be around birds again, especially considering the fact that she’d been experimented on by Victor. But there she was grinning enthusiastically for the camera, with two yellow-breasted cockatoos perked on her arm.

Here I am volunteering at the Royal Lewcott Bird Shelter,
she wrote.
I come here every weekend to help with the birds. All my life I’ve been fascinated by birds, and I wanted to devote some of my time to ensure that these birds have the life they deserve – a life free from fear and pain and injustice. Birds are incredibly intelligent, and the things humans do to them in the name of sport or ignorance are just not right.

“Byron,” I whispered. “You won’t believe this. I’ve found her.”