Raven Chapter 19 Bad Men and Blanket Burritos 241
Raven
I’m back in the moving coffin. The technical term is ‘elevator,’ but let’s be honest—it’s a metal box that moves, so my description is objectively correct. And I have to admit, the thing is growing on me.
The first time, I didn't appreciate the miracle of being transported without breaking a sweat. But that was before I’d experienced one of Anik’s so-called "training" sessions. Otherwise known as torture.
The parking garage is cold, dark, and smells nothing like the basement where I got my real body.
Which—considering I waited forty years for that moment, daydreaming about how it would happen—is probably for the best. Because the universe chose the basement that smelled like rotting bread.
Or what I assume rotting bread smells like, based on the sourdough loaf I huffed this morning out of curiosity.
Wait. Is sourdough the one made from the soup of rotting flour?
I'm pretty sure it is, but the details get fuzzy being so long removed from the human realm where it was just starting to gain popularity.
I shake myself out of that train of thought. This is not the time to be thinking about random human fads.
Taking a deep breath, I notice this basement is sharper. A chemical tang hangs in the air, clinging to the back of my throat, and for some reason, I find it pleasant.
I drink in the rest of the sensations around me, soaking everything up because on the way in, I was too distracted by Forrest’s pretty car, face, and hovering hand to pay attention.
The smells are a cacophony, but the sounds are lacking.
Right now, the only soundtrack is my stomach’s dramatic growling and the relentless click-clack of Forrest’s Oxfords on the concrete.
“So, do you have a stone stomach too? Or do you just enjoy skipping lunch every day?” I ask him.
“I usually remember,” he says, his gaze fixed ahead. “But our current caseload, combined with running the company and… unforeseen complications… has turned my lunch break into collateral damage.”
“Oh, I see,” I say, knowing exactly—or more accurately, who —those unforeseen complications are. “Promise me you’ll try to remember lunch more often and I won’t tattle on you to Miriam.”
“I can’t make promises I can’t guarantee I’ll keep,” he says matter-of-factly.
I just huff and file the idea away. If I think it'll help, I'll tattle. I don't think it will, though. The man only does things when he wants to do them. Not a minute before. Not a minute after.
When we’re about fifteen feet from the sedan, the click-clack cuts off abruptly as his body goes still in a way no human, and most supes, could ever imitate.
“Raven. Behind me. Now.” His voice is low and smooth.
And, because I’m not a total idiot, I do as he asks.
Three masked men slide out from behind two hulking black SUVs parked between us and our car. They move with a predator’s grace that has nothing in common with Anik’s feline fluidity. This isn’t natural; it’s menacing. Their eyes, filled with a desperate, greasy kind of greed, lock onto me.
The lead guy—let's call him Baldy—smiles. It doesn't reach his eyes. "Mr. CEO Man," he says with mock respect. "We're just here for the girl. No need for this to get… messy."
Forrest's posture doesn't change, but the man he's been all day just… disappears. What's left is something I've only seen in glimpses. The stone underneath all that buttoned-up stoicism. The gargoyle.
His skin seems to almost ripple, the shade of gray his stone form has, peeking out from underneath as he seems to expand a little.
I look up at him and, in a move of profoundly bad timing, my pussy flutters. Literally flutters. This is so not the time for my body to file a review titled 10/10, Would Recommend Being Protected by This.
“You are mistaken,” he says, the words clean, absolute, and final. “On all counts.”
He doesn’t wait for them to move. He explodes outward like the most brutal and efficient wrecking ball I’ve ever seen. I’ve watched him spar with the guys, but this… this is the real thing.
Gods, the man is perfection.
His style is a language of pure economy. A sidestep becomes a dislocating shoulder lock. The sound—a wet pop—is exactly like Anik tearing a chicken wing apart. The man’s scream is cut short as Forrest uses his body as a lever to slam him head-first into the SUV’s hood with a sickening thud.
Bad Raven, I scold myself the minute my mind takes his suit jacket shedding as a cue to start mentally undressing him. This is so not the time.
The second man lunges with a taser, prongs sparking. Forrest’s arm, now free of his jacket, moves in a blur. He catches the man’s wrist, twists, and drives the taser back into its owner’s neck. The man convulses, drooling, as Forrest neatly sweeps his legs out from under him.
I see the first guy stagger to his feet, and I open my mouth to warn Forrest—but movement to my side snags my attention.
The third man is evidently the smart one. Or, at least, smarter than me. I was so busy admiring the glory of Forrest in motion that I didn't notice him bypass the real threat entirely and go straight for me.
Fear is ice water in my veins, but deep inside me, something else stirs. Something vast and hot and angry.
My hair begins to float, a dark halo around my face, as a sensation like a serpent uncoiling from a long nap spreads through my chest. The pendant against my skin burns, then freezes. I hear a tiny tink and watch as a spiderweb of cracks fissures across its surface before it shatters completely.
Of course. Silas probably meant well, but you can't cage this much power in a glass box. I’m assuming nothing mortal-made, no matter how clever, was ever going to contain the magic of a demi-god.
Stars, I have the equivalent of a city-leveling bomb inside of me; there’s no way a little piece of crystal is going to hold that back for long.
“Don’t touch me,” I whisper, the knowledge that I could accidentally wipe this city—and every innocent person in it—off the map does exactly nothing to calm me down.
He ignores me. His hand closes around my arm, grip bruising. It feels wrong. Dirty. Like what I imagine dunking my arm in a porta-potty might feel like. I don't have time to dwell on it because my magic doesn't wait for permission. It explodes.
Not a choice. A reflex. A scream with no sound, ripped out of whatever part of me has been waiting to be set loose.
The air shimmers. My hair floats. My hands freeze—not just regular cold, but wrong cold. The kind that burns. Lights flicker then blaze while every car alarm in the parking garage decides to join the party.
The man lets go, clutching his hand like I burned him.
Good .
His eyes go wide with… terror? It’s there but quickly outshining it is also greed. Which is somehow worse.
Then he looks at my hair. The stupid, floaty, "look at me, I'm a veritable goldmine of magic" hair.
Idiot. Should have worn a braid.
He grabs a fistful and yanks. I stumble.
“Your sacrifice would mean our salvation,” he grits out, as if I’m an idiot for not willingly offering my neck to save his sorry ass.
Before he can grab me again, Forrest is there.
He doesn't run; he simply appears, looming over the man like a divine punishment made flesh. There is no wasted motion. One arm wraps around the man’s neck, a hand cupping the side of his head. A sharp, efficient twist.
The crack is sickeningly dry, a sound that has no business coming from a living body. Forrest opens his arms, and the man crumples to the concrete like a discarded marionette.
Silence descends, thick and heavy, broken only by the wailing alarms and the frantic thumping of my own heart.
My magic still crackles at my fingertips, my hair still floats in a dark cloud, and my arms are sheathed in a layer of burning-cold ice.
Again, that familiar, sentient smoke seeps from my palms, wrapping me in a velvety, comforting embrace before it seems to drink the wild magic from the air, pulling it all back inside me and vanishing.
I try to reach for Huginn and Muninn in my mind, but they feel distant, their presence faint and utterly exhausted. I leave them to their rest and focus on the one thing I can control: my breathing.
Forrest takes a step forward. His tie is askew, a thin trickle of blood welling from a cut on his sharp cheekbone. His breathing is even, a stark contrast to my ragged gasps, but his eyes… his eyes are volcanic.
They scan me from head to toe, and I feel like a messy, complicated, bleeding problem that just screwed up his pristine, orderly world with nothing but divine idiocy.
Luckily, sesides the throbbing bloom of pain on my arm and cheek, I’m in one piece.
His gaze falls to the shattered remains of Silas’s pendant on the concrete, and his jaw tightens to granite.
“Yeah,” I point out, super helpfully. “I don’t think that thing’s warranty covers ‘mid-power-surge.’” Then the cold, hard truth of the ambush crashes down on me. “They knew about me, Ro-ro. How? They came for me. Specifically for me.”
He steps over the body between us as if it were litter, closing the distance until he’s mere centimeters away.
His presence is a solid wall of heat and safety and barely leashed fury, and it soothes something fractured deep inside me.
All I want is to lean forward and curl into him, to absorb his stability like a cat in a sunbeam.
His hand comes up, and for a heart-stopping moment, I think he might cup my face. Instead, his fingers hover over the spot where the man’s hand connected, a breath away from my skin.
“Davison.”
It’s all he says, his furious eyes locked on the blooming bruise on my cheek.
For a second, I’m confused. My name is Raven, last I checked.