Raven Chapter 9 Cages and Confrontations 100 #2
I settle at the bar beside Forrest and immediately start scanning for the comms device in his ear. It's my little tradition—seeing if I can spot it before he gets comfortable. He hides it too well, tucked beneath those loose curls that always fall just right. I never find it. But I always try.
He calls the bartender over and I take a moment to study him.
Underneath the relaxed facade, I can still see the seriousness in the set of his jaw and the way his eyes continuously scan the room. It reminds me of a cat pretending to nap, just waiting for the mouse to make a run for it.
I look out and spot the others in their positions.
Anik stands alone at a high table on the outskirts, pretending to look for someone.
Emerson leans against the wall near the back door, fiddling with something before pulling a cigarette from his pocket and slipping outside to work his hacking magic unseen.
Kieran and Leandre are on the dance floor, slowly spreading out and engaging people—mainly women.
Not wanting to watch the guys flirt, I decide now's the perfect time to hit the dance floor myself. For half a second, I consider staying. Watching. Letting the green-eyed monster build until I'm angry enough to finally kick something important.
Come on, you know you want to. The unhinged part of me whispers.
But then I catch a glimpse of Kieran's hand on some woman's waist—strictly professional, I know, I know —and something in my chest goes hollow in a way that has nothing to do with being a ghost.
I decide that some things aren't worth weaponizing.
My mood noticeably more sour than when we arrived, I weave through the crowd, floating effortlessly through bodies until I find a spot right in the middle of the pulsing music.
I close my eyes as a new song begins, letting the bass fill up that hollow place inside me. My hips find the rhythm first—a slow, rolling sway that pulls the rest of me into the music. My hands trace arcs through the air. My feet glide across the floor. Every movement is an extension of the beat.
Or I'm just writhing around like an idiot. But I choose to play to my audience and let myself believe I'm a fantastic dancer.
For a while, I let myself get lost. In my mind, I’m real.
Kieran is behind me, his hands on my hips, his laugh a warm rumble against my back.
Dre is in front of me, all smoldering eyes and teasing words, using his body to shield me from the crowd.
They box me in. A perfect, flirtatious prison, and I lose myself in the fantasy of their heat and the press of them against me.
But all fantasies fade. My eyes flutter open, drifting instinctively toward the bar. Forrest is already gone.
I look around and spot him making his way toward the back. I extricate myself from the crowd—literally floating up and over the worst of it—before dropping back down at the edge where the bodies thin out.
I take a few steps towards where I saw Forrest last when a man walks straight through me.
He stops and looks back—right through me—as if he’d felt something but saw nothing.
It’s his face that makes me freeze.
Suddenly, it's like being yanked into someone else's nightmare.
Fragments hit me in disjointed waves: a dank stone ceiling.
The scrape of a cell door opening. Dread, cold and immediate.
A face I can't quite focus on—but it's him, the man from the club, or someone who looks wrong in the same way.
A jeering crowd. His smile, all manic gleam. Then nothing.
"Holy swinging priestess titties," I breathe. "What in the realms was that?"
Did that guy kill someone and leave me with their memories?
Is that a thing some supes can do? Is he a reaper?
I didn't think they could pull shit like that—but honestly, I've barely spent time with most species. For all I know, half of them can juggle random memories while singing show tunes. It’s not like I’ve ever even had one of my own. Nothing to compare it to.
I shake my head, forcing the carousel of questions to stop. Not the time , I remind myself, scanning the area for the guys. Of course, they’re nowhere to be seen. Just my luck.
Since most shady black-market dealings won't happen out in the open—and Forrest was heading away from where Em's blueprints clearly marked the VIP rooms, the only place left is the basement. Sucking in a breath I definitely don't need, I drop through the floor.
“Oh, fantastic. This is fine. Everything is fine,” I say dryly, actively fighting the urge to adopt the nose-pinching power stance Forrest loves so much. “I leave you alone for five minutes, and you walk straight into a trap?”
Then I peek around them, and a fury I’ve never felt before ignites inside me. Three men are aiming guns at a group of men, women, and children huddled in the corner. They’re locked in a freaking cage—and something about that, more than anything, makes my blood boil.
At least I’m not alone. As I float in front of the guys, I see it mirrored in their expressions: pure, unadulterated rage. On the bright side—they’re not hurt. Small relief.
Before I can focus on them any longer, a low chuckle sounds from behind me—the kind that says I definitely don’t want whoever it is at my back.
I turn and see the man who walked through me earlier, standing slightly apart from the armed guards, his eyes locked on my guys.
Some might call him attractive, with that all-American, boy-next-door look, but to me, it screams look away, and I’ll roofie your drink.
“You thought you could just walk in here and take my cargo?” he asks, a smug grin plastered across his face.
"Give me flesh and bones for five minutes. That's all I'm asking. Five minutes and a bat." I look up to the gods before I can stop myself, then immediately grimace. Ugh. Now they're going to think I actually care about them.
“I knew someone was sniffing around, though,” he continues, motioning toward the cage. His expression shifts from triumphant to coldly annoyed. “My employer doesn’t appreciate your interference in our business.”
Forrest steps forward, shoulders squared, drawing every gun in the room toward his chest. "That cage says you're not a businessman." His voice drops. "You're a monster. And monsters get put down."
The man just laughs again. “We’ll have to agree to disagree. It’s a very lucrative business—one we’ll continue once you’re out of the way.”
A cold, silent rage builds within me as I listen to the man speak, but my eyes remain locked on the caged men, women, and children.
Most are bruised, shivering, dressed in little more than rags.
My gaze snaps back to him as the words "out of the way" leave his mouth.
I plant my feet in a wide stance, my eyes flicking to my guys for a single, grounding second.
My resolve crystallizes into something unbreakable.
He is not touching them. I will keep them safe.
Blue coils of electricity writhe around the man’s body, crackling as they gather power. He stretches his hands out, and a bolt of raw energy erupts toward us. Time dilates, stretching into a single, clear moment of understanding.
I know what I have to do.
I spread my arms wide, a willing target.
As the lethal energy inches closer, I don't think of death.
I think of them. The threads—I can almost see them, invisible cords tying my nothing of an existence to their messy, glorious lives.
Five years of silent devotion. Five years of watching, wanting, loving them from the other side of a wall I could never break through.
I pull on those threads, draw their memory around me like a shield.
If this is the only touch I ever get—if this stolen bolt of magic is the one and only thing I ever feel—then fine.
I'll make it count. They'll get time. They'll escape.
They'll live, completely unaware of the ghost who just caught a lightning bolt to the face for them.
I guess I’m going out with a bang after all. Just… not the kind I’d always imagined.
It doesn’t feel like I thought it would. It’s a searing, brilliant signal flooding my entire being—so shockingly real it’s almost beautiful. And beneath the fire, there’s a profound, alien pressure, a density that anchors me.
Is this pain? Like every empty space inside me just got filled with electric spiders. Is this what being full feels like? Because if so, I think I want to go back to being hungry.
“Not a fan. Zero stars.” The words scrape past my gritted teeth. Dying's not the plan, but if it happens? I'm going out my way—making jokes while everything burns.
When I realize I'm not fading into nothingness, I pop one eye open.
The man whose electricity is currently making me feel ten different types of spicy is staring, his eyes wide with disbelief.
I look down and my own shock echoes his—the strands of crackling magic are no longer attacking me, but swirling around me, a violent, beautiful cocoon. What was once blue is now purple.
Ooh, and it’s such a pretty purple — Wait.
My head snaps up. "You can see me?" I gape at the mystery man as the spice—almost positive it’s pain, builds to a roaring crescendo. Is it the magic causing this? It has to be.
His face contorts from shock to pure fury. "You! What are you doing here?"
The pain is becoming unbearable, a pressure cooker about to blow. Some primal instinct screams that I have to release it. I look at the man—the wrongness of him so frustratingly familiar—and give him a manic, unhinged grin.
"It’s good you have such a punchable face." I grit out, the pain officially hitting the point of unbearable.
Before he can respond, I shove my arms outward, directing the torrent of energy back toward its source.
I watch, breathless, as the magic soars toward him. Then, my eyes dart to his men, still holding guns on the innocent. A scowl twists my lips—I should have sent some their way. As if reading my thoughts, three strands of lightning peel away from the main blast and catapult towards them.
Four screams tear through the basement as the men collapse, convulsing. Then they go still, their bodies turning to little piles of ash. Once I'm done watching the morbid show, I turn away, my entire being buzzing—alive and utterly, terrifyingly real.
"That's another time I've saved you guys. If anyone deserves a cookie, it’s me." I announce, turning with a flourish to brush myself off like the badass I definitely am.
Before the gloating can fully leave my lips, my legs tangle beneath me. I go down in a graceless heap of limbs.
Wait, what?
The thought is cut short as I hit the ground. A jolt, sharp and focused—entirely different from the diffuse, spicy magic—lances up my entire left side.
Is this… pain? Actual, physical pain? How am I feeling this?
Then, my eyes go wide. "Holy ancestor dicks. I'm real!"
I shove the pain aside and push up. Hands and knees. Actual meat on actual ground. I've watched this a million times and it turns out? You actually have to prepare for the texture. It’s not something I ever thought about. Who thinks about floor texture?
I kneel there, eyes crushed shut, because the floor is aggressive.
Tiny sharp things are biting my palms and it's awful and perfect and I never want it to stop.
The air is—I don't know what the air is.
But it's touching me. Everywhere. Moving against my skin like something alive.
There's a taste in my mouth—dark and closed-in and old.
And underneath it, something that makes my whole body clench with want.
I didn't know bodies could want.
My skin is screaming. I didn't know I had this many nerves. I didn't know nerves could all scream at once.
The world is sharp and loud and absolutely feral.
And it's finally, finally letting me in.
I feel the air around me shift a second before I look up into a pair of light green eyes.
Forrest is crouched in front of me, his face an unreadable block of granite made flesh.
I can’t help the wide smile that breaks across my face, my hand lifting almost on its own to rest against his cheek.
I’m so excited to finally feel him that nothing else matters.
But before my flesh-and-blood hand makes contact, his snaps up and grips my wrist, tight as a vice.
His eyes are cold, assessing. “Who are you?”
I blink, staring from his stony face to the hand clamped around my wrist. My mouth opens and closes, but no sound comes out. How do you say I'm your resident ghost who just got a glow-up to a man who looks one wrong word away from throwing you through a wall?
You don't, the dry wit that lives in my brain like a feral goblin supplies . You just commit and hope reincarnation is a thing and gives you a second chance.
Before I can form a word, my arm begins to shake violently, then buckles underneath me. Holy shit, being corporeal is hard.
“Is this gravity?” I mumble, the words slurring together nonsensically.
Forrest lets go. I don’t process this until I’ve been yanked forward, face first, into a very aggressive introduction to the floor.
Something goes crunch . Inside my head? Outside my head? The line feels blurry right now.
Then the real show starts—a fireworks display behind my eyes, and not the pretty kind. I understand now that the electric spiders were simply the warm-up act and this is true pain.
I lie there, eyes crushed shut, fighting the fuzzy blackness eating my brain. Am I fading? Is this all I get?
No. I need more time.
But the darkness wins. The last things I register are distant shouts, the cold concrete against my cheek, and a warm hand on my wrist.
Then, I slip away, flipping off the sky with whatever consciousness I have left. Don't think this means I owe you anything.