Grave Omen (Raina Kirkland Book 3) Read online

  “The news vans are on their way. Channel five and thirteen. We’ve found too many of these cages to ethically keep this under wraps any longer. People need to know to be vigilant, and I want you by my side when I tell them. The people know you, Raina. They know your reputation. I want them vigilant but I don’t want them to panic or become violent toward their preternatural neighbors.”

  “Two birds, one stone,” Henry said with a smile. How could he smile here? These people were caged like animals and burned alive. It was such a violent death, and I didn’t need to be a psychic medium to know this field would be haunted. People would report hearing screams, seeing burnt or burning people standing in this very spot. This was a wretched place, a cursed place. No one should ever smile here and I distrusted him all the more for it.

  “Why her?” asked another bounty hunter whose name I didn’t give a shit enough to remember. As far as I was concerned his name was Ass Hole, Mr. Hole if we were in a formal setting, but this wasn’t formal, so I’d just call him Ass. After all the smart remarks and dirty looks he flung my way on the long drive here, he earned that name.

  Henry gave him a dirty look and I gave Henry one of mistrust. I didn’t like it when people were too nice to me too soon. It was an old sales tactic and I wasn’t buying it. “She’s a non-human and that shows unity. And, she’s never lost her monster.”

  “Because she is a monster,” mumbled another hunter, a very tan muscular man with a bald head. Knight was what he introduced himself as, as in Knight in shining armor. It was a nickname, obviously, probably one he gave himself.

  The forth hunter never introduced himself; he never talked and no one talked to him. He just gave me dirty looks that weren’t particularly intimidating or impressive in any way. He didn’t look like a team player, so I doubted whether he’d be any help whatsoever.

  I walked toward Katie and whispered, “Do you want me to take you back to the van?”

  Her eyes were glued on the cage. “No,” she said quietly.

  John, the quiet but brilliant CSI that was normally Richard’s shadow, had stayed with our group. I was wondering why but I wasn’t worried about it until I caught him staring at me intently. Richard once told me that John stammered around everyone but him. That’s why he didn’t talk, but it looked to me as though he was trying to build the courage to say something to me. I knew better than to press him about it. That would only make things worse. I didn’t use my talents often, not the mind reading/controlling and certainly not the fire, but for John’s sake, reading his thoughts would be the best way to communicate with him. I set my hand on his shoulder. Touch wasn’t necessary. It was just for comfort, maybe more for me than him.

  It was like second nature to me. One moment I was living in my own head and the next I was bombarded by loud, screaming thoughts. Those were Katie’s. The others, all of the police and hunters, had calm collected thoughts, totally focused and totally zeroed in on the task in front of them. They had to be or they wouldn’t be able to function. They’d run away or stand there staring at the cage like…well, like Katie was right then. Goddess, I felt horrible about her being there. But I had to narrow my powers in on John. I pushed everyone out of my head except him.

  His thoughts didn’t stutter. He was thinking very clearly, “She needs to know he’s here. Just tell her that Mato is here.”

  My initial reaction was shock, then confusion; why was he here? What the hell did these murders have to do with Mato? He was the Sheriff of Darkness, but none of the cages were found anywhere near Mount Rainier, let alone Darkness.

  I nodded at John and without saying a word I let him know that I already knew. He didn’t say anything to me; he just walked away and I turned around to find Fillips with the Sheriff of Fall City, Sheriff Griffin. Nothing about Griffin was striking or grabbed your attention. He was a common looking man and cop. In fact, the only thing that told me that he was the Sheriff was his badge. But I saw past him, to Sheriff Mato.

  Mato was of average height, with lean muscle and long black hair. He was one-hundred percent Native American, and he looked it. His beauty was noteworthy, from his golden eyes to his perfectly balanced open face. It was probably his downfall. Vampires didn’t normally turn people they found ugly. They turned people they wanted to keep around forever. Mato looked breathtaking standing out in a crowd of police officers and EI detectives. I was having a hard time looking away. I remembered him too well. It’d been almost two years since I’d seen his face, but I could still recall the feel of his hands, the smell of his hair, and the taste of his kiss. Something low tightened in me, letting me know that it, too, remembered the feel of him, his piercing rhythm. I loved him, but he loved so many other women. I couldn’t stand for that. I wanted to be his one and only, but he wanted me to be his one of many.

  I shook my head, but that didn’t rid me of those carnal thoughts. I had to power through them. I walked up and he spared me only a glance before turning his attention back to the police officer who was talking to him. I was hurt that his eyes didn’t linger on me, but I told myself that I was being stupid. I should be happy that he didn’t find me attractive anymore. I had gained a little weight since he’d last seen me. Damon called it stress weight and I wanted to believe him because I liked pie way too much to give it up. But still, sadness. There I was losing myself to warm thoughts, and I struck no cord in him at all anymore.

  I joined their little circle. Mato was pointing at a mess of wires that weren’t attached to the cage. There was burnt flesh surrounding it, holding the rest of the wiring together perhaps.

  “You, back the fuck up!” a tall cop yelled at me. “This is police business, witch.”

  I ignored his remark and looked past him, to Mato. “You found an opening,” I said, but the cop bent down to my level, put his hand on my shoulder and leaned in to say something in my ear, something derogatory probably, but I didn’t give him the chance. “You got a problem? Because, from what I see we are neck deep in the stuff of nightmares and you’re letting your emotions get the best of you, Officer.” I knew I was giving him an ugly face—narrow eyes, deep frown, and flared nostrils, the whole nine yards. He didn’t say anything and he was taking his sweet time backing the fuck up.

  “Yes, Raina,” Mato began. I took a deep breath when he said my name. His voice was like music to me. “It was the first thing I saw when I arrived. Some of the wiring here is undone. It might be nothing, but it is at least something different from the other four cages that were found.”

  “Why are you here?” I asked, and I knew I was being unprofessional. Talk about letting your emotions get the better of you. Focus, Raina! Damn it.

  Mato looked to the cage, “In La Grande, right off of Mountain Highway on the shore of the La Grande Reservoir, they found Laura in a cage just like this.” Mato’s face looked hard, but I could see the hurt in his eyes. Even if I could never read the minds of vampires I knew people well enough, and I knew he was hurting. I knew Laura as a necromancer and a barista at Darkness’s local Starbucks. I met her only once, but she seemed like a nice person.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Fillips invited me to help anyway I could, and so here I am.”

  “I don’t think anyone could fit through that,” chimed in an officer, bringing us back to the task at hand. I looked back down at the broken wires, but I could feel the weight of Mato’s eyes on me.

  “Fillips! Mato found something!” I yelled over my shoulder. I turned to find her on her way over with her entourage of Fall City’s finest. Katie was still standing where I left her. She was in shock. She was too fragile for this work.

  I walked up to her and placed my hands in hers. “If you’re not going back to the van then stay near me, please,” I said. She inclined her head and we walked back over to the group which had grown bigger.

  When we arrived, they were discussing the possibility that anyone could even fit through such a small opening. Most of the local police said no, while most of t
he EI officers said maybe. After all, they’d seen stranger things in their line of work.

  Katie tapped my shoulder and said, “Look at those prints.” She gestured to the mud on the ground in front of us and Fillips and I looked down. I could almost make out a bare foot print amongst the mangled wet grass, but it was becoming more and more unrecognizable as we trampled on them. I was surprised Richard and John missed them.

  “Shit.” Fillips looked out over the field, one hand holding onto her phone and the other smoothing back her bouncy curls. “Okay, let’s say one of these poor souls found a weak spot. He or she worked at it on the ride here and somehow hid it from their murderers. How did this person escape, and did anyone else escape? If this person escaped, where is he? Did they find him and kill him, and if so where is the body?”

  “Those are a lot of questions,” said Sheriff Griffin.

  “He would have had to be small,” said an officer.

  “Yes, even then, whoever this is would have severe lacerations from the wires.”

  “If you were in a box and about to be burned alive, you’d cut off your own hand if it would free you,” said Henry as he walked up with the other hunters. I agreed with him. I’d do whatever it took to get out.

  “Or, maybe no one escaped,” Katie said, and she looked as though she was very close to breaking down. These people would have definitely had something to say about an emotionally fragile young lady even being there let alone contributing, but because of the potion she had taken they didn’t see her as she was.

  “I would say that it’s more likely that someone did escape,” said Richard as he came up with John right behind him. John took out his camera from his bag and began taking photos. “Step back,” Richard said to the officers standing on the prints Katie pointed out earlier. He looked irritated, maybe at himself for having missed the tracks and broken wires.

  “How can you be sure?” asked Fillips.

  “If we combine what we know from all the previous crime scenes and what we see here, then we know that there were at least five men in a white 2006 Ford van. They hauled the cage here already filled with people kidnapped from random locations all over Washington.” He pointed at some deep tire tracks. “They drove into the field, unloaded the cage, slaughtered the animals for their blood, set the cage on fire and drove away. The prints here suggest that the men were all wearing boots and that they didn’t move around more than they needed to. However, these look as if they belong to someone with small feet and...” He gently ushered me and those standing around me aside. “Well, the rest of the prints are completely mottled, but I’d say they lead toward the woods.”

  “What’s beyond that line of trees?” I asked a Fall City police officer.

  “Snoqualmie River,” she said.

  “If I were on fire that’s where I would run,” an officer said.

  “Jordan!” the Sheriff yelled.

  “Yes, Sir,” said Officer Jordan.

  “Get the K9s to the river and an ambulance standing by.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Mato stepped up then, before Jordan could do as he was told. “Do not waste time. I can smell as well as any hound, and if we find this person, I can take him to the hospital faster than any vehicle.”

  “He’s right,” I said to Sheriff Griffin. “Come on Mato. I’m coming with you.” I turned to Katie. “I won’t argue with you. What you’re experiencing is shock, and the sooner we get you home the better, but that means I have to go with Mato now and you need to go back to the van.” I said it quietly. She looked at me as though I wasn’t making sense to her, and maybe I wasn’t. On the one hand she was riding a wave of potion induced confidence, but on the other she was in the presence of so much death. She was having a hard time not staring at the burnt corpses, and she could probably taste their cooked flesh on the back of her tongue, same as me. She was in shock, but her mind refused to believe it. I thought I was going to have to leave her there, alone in that field as the police worked around her statue, while Mato and I searched for our possible survivor.

  “I think you’re right, Raina. I’m going to wait in the van,” she said, and she gave me her back.

  I stared after her for only a moment and then I was off. I ran through the field and the thick tree line, as Mato flew overhead. I was capable of vampire-like speed but it was something I never quite got the hang of. I could move faster than most people’s eyes could follow if I wanted to, but I fell a lot and broke a lot of stuff doing it. I figured I was safe running through a field at high speeds but I slowed my pace a bit when I came to the woods. The river was high due to recent heavy rain.

  Mato landed with a thud right beside me. He smelled fresh with windblown hair. “I could not see anything from the air,” he said.

  I took a deep breath. I smelled many things with my heightened senses; dirt, animals, plant life, the cage, the people and the road and cars on it…but I didn’t smell anyone except Mato and myself within several feet of us. “You don’t see anyone and I don’t smell anyone.”

  “That does not mean there is no one,” he said. He stopped and knelt at my feet but he was looking out over the dark water. “Sit Raina, relax and absorb the area. Listen to what it has to tell you.”

  I took a deep breath and rubbed my tired eyes, but I did as he suggested. With lazy eyes and a smart ass comment begging to come out of my mouth, I sat on the rocky shore of the river. I must admit that I wasn’t relaxed or absorbing anything. I was restless. I wanted to get up and actually do something. I was about to suggest that we move up river when Mato stood still. He was looking deep into the darkness across the river.

  “Do you see something?” I asked.

  “No, I hear something. The faintest of heart beats,” he said.

  “I don’t hear it.”

  “You are not a full vampire, but can you not hear its thoughts? Is it man or animal? I cannot tell as it is very quiet.”

  I listened closely with my mind. Mato might as well have not been there; I was reading nothing from him. I projected my focus across the river, toward the area where Mato was staring at, but I heard nothing still…nothing but a quiet static. Static meant death or something damn close to dying.

  “There is someone out there, but she’s dying,” I said, and Mato was off.

  He flew across the water and disappeared into the trees beyond. I felt her mind spike with fear. She saw him looking for her and she was afraid of him but too weak to move. Injured gravely, she had run through the field, swam across the river and had only enough strength left to crawl into the woods, hide amongst the mud and fallen leaves and wait for death. He found her! She would scream if only she could. He gently picked up her broken body and within seconds he was air borne and landing on the ground in front of me.

  “Oh my Goddess!”

  She was a child no older than fourteen. Bubbling, blacked, raw burns and deep, bleeding lacerations covered her entire body, as small as it was.

  “You are safe,” Mato said. He looked to me and there were tears in his eyes. No one with a heart could see her body and not feel for her. I took off my coat and laid it over her. “Where should I take her?” he asked me.

  “Children’s Hospital in Seattle. They’ll be best suited to treat her. I’ll tell the others. I’m sure Fillips will be there as fast as those vans can get her there. This little girl may have some very important information.”

  Mato said nothing before he took off into the night’s sky with the little girl in his arms. I made my way back to the cage and for every second that passed, every step that I took, I became more and more angry. Before, what these murderers had done was some horrible story, then it became real when I saw their handy work for myself, but after seeing that young lady ripped and burnt and so near death I was enraged at how monstrous these people were. Why did this happen?! How could anyone do such a thing to people? How could they look into the eyes of a child and feel nothing as they burned her alive? People called me a monster, but they ha
d no idea what a monster really was. These people were monsters and I had to stop them. I stormed up to Fillips.

  “Yes, Raina? What did you and Sheriff Mato find?” she asked.

  At first the words wouldn’t leave my lips; hell they wouldn’t even enter my mouth. They were stuck in my throat like heartburn, and it was just as hard to swallow past. “A girl, barely alive. Mato took her to Children’s Hospital.”

  As I predicted, Fillips rushed to her van and took off without much of a word to anyone. She flew past the news vans as they came up the road. That girl was our only lead, and maybe the only thing that could stop us from finding another cage full of more innocent people. But, in Fillip’s absence, Sheriff Griffin was left to deal with the media all alone. He didn’t want me standing anywhere near him either. That was fine by me. No skin off my nose. The media wasn’t any of my concern.

  Katie and I were taken back to the Justice Center and I drove home with shaking hands. I wanted nothing more than to pick up Thomas and hold him to my chest as he slept, but that would have been selfish. He was sleeping soundly and safely at his grandma’s. Instead, Katie and I sat silently at the dining table, sipping on coffee, prolonging the moment we would have to go to bed and have our well-earned nightmares. We talked very little, but we stayed close to each other and she broke down in my arms once the potion began to wear off. Damn them for the pain they caused, and damn me for letting Katie come along.

  IT WAS JUST A DREAM

  I WAS COMPLETELY exhausted by the time Katie went up to her room to fall asleep. Even so, I sat down at my computer and wrote a short email to Nick. I wasn’t sure if he ever read any of the emails I sent him, but I still sent them, almost every night. I felt terrible that he was sent away to some bizarre place to live among strange vampires, but it was the only way to save his life. I loved him so much, and if writing an email every now and then was the only thing I could do to keep him in my life, then that’s what I would do.