Chapter Twelve

Hunted, the raven flies to the heavens

R avyn’s mind woke up first, her limbs and even her eyelids too heavy to react as they typically would. The synapses crackled to life, firing up as she began hearing groans, light clangs, and even soft shuffling noises around her. Testing and feeling the heaviness, the aching of her limbs, and the smell of rotten meat, her brain slowly and dully considered the possibilities. Eyes heavy and closed, she floated, hearing and feeling but not comprehending or reacting to any of it as it wormed its way through her brain.

Then an internal shot fired in her brain, screaming, “Danger, wake up!” And so, her subconscious alerted her that it was time to reconnect to whatever occurred outside of itself. Not quickly, though. Despite the insistence that something bad was going down, her mind remained dull and not connecting the things that it was hearing and smelling to the sensation of danger.

With a moan of her own, her eyes began fluttering heavily, begging to simply stay closed. That moan made another part of her brain realize that some of the sounds were coming from her. But the lights were too harsh to even open her eyes. His nose wrinkled as it was assaulted with the scents of old blood, decay, and overpowering fresh bleach.

A cruel hand twisted into her hair, pulling her head back before whispering crassly in her ear, “Wakey, wakey, darling Ravyn.” The hot breath assaulted the skin on her cheek as he made his demand, which he followed up with a wet nip to her ear, hard enough that it would draw blood if she were merely human. Again, Ravyn couldn’t stop the cry that escaped her and she found herself cringing away when her tormentor laughed harshly before holding onto her chin and whispering at her, “My beloved, we will have so much fun together.”

Awareness pooled throughout her body as her limbs stretched and prickled, as if they too were waking from a deep sleep. How long had her limbs been stretched out like this? The back of her neck ached where it hung forward with her chin near her chest, while her arms stretched out to the sides, pulled so taunt they held her straight up from the ground, holding the weight of her body, her now bare feet barely touching the floor. Her wrists burned where shackles held them snuggly in place.

A rough hand firmly, painfully, lifted her chin up once again, holding her head upright and drawing her up on her tip toes.

Ravyn stood quietly, aware that her captor stood in front of her, most likely face to face, waiting for her to acknowledge him, the situation, or anything at all, but her mind couldn’t stop rolling, attempting to make sense of the position she was in. Attempting to capture the fleeting thoughts that rolled around, hinting, taunting at some sort of idea or observation that seemed to remain just out of reach.

The jarring, harsh voice taunted, “You’ve been a greedy, greedy little girl, Ravyn. Tsk tsk. All that wine. You just couldn’t stop yourself stuffing yourself. Gluttonous. Unlike that pup you had with you. He drank so little that we barely had time before he woke up.”

Mewing softly, Ravyn’s scrambled brain attempted to latch onto his words. The wine? The pup? Toby? Toby!

“I truly thought that thisss would have been more of a challenge,” the voice continued, hissing a bit as the words bit through his teeth. “Ah, but dangle a script in front of you and you forget all about, well, anything. Everything. I spent so much money on mages and witches, tracking and spells, taunting and watching. Waiting, but in the end, I just offer you another glimpse at immortality and you come running and nearly truss yourself up like a Christmas goose for me. At least your friends took care of the old mage problem for me. He clipped your little tag-along for me and then got himself killed before I needed to make the final payment to him.”

Tag-along? Eva?

The words sank through the mist and waves in Ravyn’s head as the pieces began clicking together in her mind, like a puzzle. The stalker, click. The gifts, click. The invitation, click. The wine, click. Tobias, oh goddess, click.

Slowly she forced her eyes to open. Only moonlight filled the room, unusually bright moonlight reflecting off the walls of her prison. Wide, nearly rabid eyes met her own sensitive eyes. This fool literally shook with glee as he held her face up to meet his.

Dead. He was a dead man; he just hadn’t realized it yet. Hissing, her eyes boiling red, she met his look with a glare and a snap of her fangs toward the hand that simply gripped her chin even harder, then gave it a firm shake.

“Ravyn, you still don’t seem to be grasping this situation fully or correctly.” Holding onto her chin, he forced her to look down first at her right arm, then her left. “Silver chains for my lady.”

Silver. That explained the burning in her wrists. Each wrist had been wrapped several times with a small chain of silver links. Those chains were then pulled through to the opposite walls and could be tightened or loosened depending on how much slack the captor gave or took.

Savagely pulling her chin over toward his right shoulder, he stepped a bit to the side.

Toby kneeled on the other side of the narrow room in an alcove she assumed reflected hers. He, too, had silver chains holding him to his spot, but he had enough slack that he could kneel. Matching links lay on the ground behind him, attaching to the wall, which Ravyn fearfully assumed also attached to his ankles. His angry bright eyes met hers, and he gave a small, tight nod that made him grimace. Then she realized that a thick silver collar had been snuggly placed around his neck. Holding his head high helped alleviate a small point at which the deadly silver touched exposed skin. The pain would be excruciating, especially to a young, untried wolf.

Ravyn’s eyes twitched frantically as she tried to convey that everything would be okay. Of course it would.

Bopping her nose almost playfully, Bertrando Roland emitted an eerie, high-pitched giggle that echoed from the walls, so unlike his gently congenial voice from earlier. “Is it starting to clear up yet, my lovely?”

He let loose her chin, and she struggled weakly to hold her leaden head up on her own, refusing to allow him to see anything but anger and death in her glare. “You, my queen, my greedy queen, downed a bottle of spiked wine. An entire bottle!” Another shrieking giggle rolled through him and a hiccup escaped as he attempted to calm himself. “Spiked with… vervain and wolfsbane.” The dramatic pause had Ravyn wondering if the fool actually expected them to applaud him.

“Young master back there had the same, but in a bit of cola, or do you say soda? Or pop? I love all these American colloquialisms. What a time we live in. Make up your own slang, call it your vernacular, and see who follows you.”

What in all the levels of hell is he talking about?

About every other sentence made any sense, and Ravyn suspected that it wasn’t due to her being drugged at all. This brand of crazy was all him.

Bertrando’s back was to her as he examined Toby, tilting his head from side to side as the young wolf shifter silently glared up at him. Ravyn tested pointing her toes, trying to reach the ground completely to ease the strain. Thankfully they weren’t burning as if they, too, were wrapped in silver. Not great news, but it could be worse. After all, they were still alive.

For now.

“Mr. Roland—Bert—so you’ve wanted to meet me. My, what a lot of trouble you’ve gone through.” Ravyn desperately wanted his attention off the teen as her gut screamed at her that his attention on Toby was a bad, bad thing. Nothing made sense. How had Roland trapped her?

Well, sadly, the wine made perfect sense. And she begrudgingly admitted it was brilliant. The bold, spicy wine had covered the taste of both the wolfsbane and the vervain, but how had he known to use it?

She’d never seen him before in her life. Everything about the man screamed human. Rich human. But money didn’t necessarily mean that a human would have the means and ability to carry off such long-term stalking and kidnapping. Repeated kidnapping, in fact, considering the orchestrated kidnapping and subsequent torture he apparently had ordered on sweet Eva. Who was this man? Insane, sure, but what could lead a person to basically take on one of the most ruthless predators ever created?

“Ravyn, Ravyn. I’m honestly surprised at you. I courted you with gifts and visits, and you denied me at every turn. When that didn’t turn your head my way, I decided you needed to be rid of that albatross around your neck. That filthy half-demon who tied herself to you, blocking my attempts. Yes, those were my attempts to get closer to you. She didn’t even know what she had, being a part of you, inside your mind. One can only dream of that sort of… intimacy. But with such filth.”

Bertrando’s disgust dripped from his every word. Clearly, if he could have killed Eva outright to break the bond, he would have. Obviously, his witches had given him the same lecture about magic backlash that Delta had given Oliver and her. The magic slap from recklessly breaking a bond could kill even a vampire if they were on the receiving end. So, while his minions hadn’t taken any care in cutting the magical bond, it could have been much worse.

Eva had protected her without even knowing, but Ravyn had no intention of trying to explain anything to this madman. Despite his obviously thorough research, Bertie Boy was wrong in saying that Eva had tied herself to Ravyn. In fact, the opposite was true, and it was beginning to sound like both of them had benefited from the now broken bond. The bond had allowed Eva to see Ravyn’s past and present through dreams. Although the stories were often incomplete or random, she’d managed to weave them into some fairly impressive bestselling novels. And despite the fact that Ravyn had been magically assaulted several times, the bond had allowed Eva’s magical protections to settle over Ravyn as well.

“Truly, Bert,” Ravyn lied smoothly, dropping her voice a treble and adding a mild testing of coercion, “why me? I’m flattered, but…” Setting her eyes upon him, she dropped her lids for a long second before looking back up at him, mentally screaming, “Look at my eyes!”

“Ah, you little wicked minx.” Surprisingly, Bert easily met her eyes, his own flashing with excitement and his tone hinting at amusement at her. Before she could blink, he drew a fist back and struck her flat in the face, surprisingly strong for such a soft-looking man. Stunned, her head violently shot back several inches before stopping sharply and bouncing forward again, as the chains holding her arms quivered and shook from the impact.

Gritting her teeth tight, barely feeling her fangs tingling in anticipating, Ravyn braced herself, forcing her head to hold still despite the ringing in her ears. She would kill him. He was a dead man. An animalistic roar shot out from Toby and his chains clanged as he fought against the bindings.

“No,” Ravyn whispered to him, knowing that his sensitive hearing would pick up her voice, begging him to stop, commanding him if she could.

Bertrando shook a long, bony finger back and forth in front of Ravyn’s face while his head followed slowly. “Oh no, no, no, no. None of that mind voodoo. It doesn’t work on me, and if you try again, well, you will make me angry—and you most certainly don’t want that, my pretty Little Bird.” His eyes twitched maniacally back and forth, as if judging whether she understood his threat. Perspiration beaded on his forehead as he watched her. “I will clip your wings, and you won’t like that. You won’t like that at all.”

Had his fingers been so long before? Her muddled brain attempted to remember how they’d looked wrapped around his wine glass, the one he’d simply held while he peered over it at her. The excitement in his beady eyes hadn’t been from the thought of working with her; it had been in anticipation of something much more sinister.

Little Bird. Ravyn wanted to spit in his face and tell him to never call her that name again. It was the name her sisters had once bestowed upon her, and this madman had no right to use it. Even more than before, she wanted to rip his face off and stomp upon it.

Another strong shake of his head, then the maniac reiterated his promise with his sharp nail just inches from her eye. “You do not want to make me angry. If you try to use those eyes on me again, I will pluck them out and feed them to you. Oh, yes, this I promise, my Little Bird.” The strange tone of affection mixed with the amusement in his voice hit Ravyn harder than the punch she’d just taken. Spit flew with the enunciation of each word, as if his tongue had suddenly grown too large for his mouth.

Swallowing the blood pooling in her mouth from his hit, Ravyn promised herself she would do much more than spit on him when she got the chance.

“I’ve been searching a long, long time for you, my queen. You are all I could have hoped for. Magnificent!” The lanky figure stood tall, examining her under the moonlight that filled the room, allowing the same finger that had threatened her eyes to run down her cheek, then her neck and lower.

Ravyn stared forward, remembering the exact route his finger took down her body and promising herself that he would feel her own claws mapping down his body all the way to the bone—after she broke his wrists, of course.

Twitching, his entire body spasmed before he seemed to regain control of it, shaking off the tremors before gripping his hands together.

The cement slabs that lined the floors, wall, and tall ceilings felt like a basement, but the wide windows that lined the top of the room let in moonlight from all sides. The tail end of the full moon shone in all her glory tonight high in the sky. It had been light still when they arrived at the mansion, and many hours must have passed for the moon to reach its zenith. Bash would be back. Surely, he would be back by now. He just needed to get the update from the remaining security and track them to this location. Anytime now, reinforcements would be arriving. She and Tory just needed to hold out until then.

“Why?” Ravyn asked, genuinely curious. She could feel the dripping of blood from the edge of her mouth. Noticing him watching, she slowly drew her tongue out and lapped up the wayward drops while staring at him.

His breath hitched while he watched, mesmerized by her every move, enthralled by the sight of her nearly black blood. War was a game, and she wasn’t out of moves yet. He would be ripped apart by her hands, Ravyn promised as she suggestively shifted her hips toward him, sucking in her swollen bottom lip, which still burned from his hit.

Bertrando gulped, looking rapidly from her eyes to her mouth before drawing himself up taller, stretching deeply, once again seeming to shake off tremors from his body. Was he growing? Under the moonlight and shadows, his body seemed to gradually grow longer and thinner, lankier as his torso expanded and his limbs lengthened.

Blinking, Ravyn wondered if it were a trick of the light or the poisonous herbs still floating around in her system. Disorienting, but it still didn’t change what she planned to do to him.

“Because, Ravyn, you are the living flesh, the flesh of the dead. Neither and both. And to reach eternal life, I must partake of such a flesh. You are the origin of the undead flesh that offers eternal life.” His words peppered out quickly, as if he needed to get them completely out before his tongue stopped them. More perspiration dotted his upper lip as he bounced before her on his toes, seemingly excited to share the news with her.

This creature was certifiably insane. And he apparently knew exactly what she was. Seduction suddenly seemed like a useless weapon in this battle against insanity.

“My body has an affliction,” he offered as he bounced on his toes, swaying back and forth as if not quite comfortable with his body. “This affliction has haunted me for over a hundred and fifty years, well over. It’s the hunger, you see. I just get so hungry.” Bertrando’s eyes turned woefully upon Ravyn. “So hungry,” he pleaded, his voice growing shriller, higher with every word. “That hunger just grows and grows and when I eat it feels so good, but then I’m just so hungry again.”