Chapter 36

I sat perched on a beam for ten minutes before someone discovered me.

“There it is!” I heard shouted from somewhere below me.

I looked down only to find the two who had freed me accidentally staring and pointing while they spoke to some other people. I didn’t think that they had a real way to get me from where they were so I stayed where I was and watched them without worry.

Someone pulled out a gun and shot up at me, missing but making both me and the raven jump and take to the air for a moment before perching back on the beam.

I spotted Kris on the outside of the building, approaching at a jog but I couldn’t follow his progress because I was being shot at again. This time in a burst of three shots. I dodged the first two but the shooter had anticipated my movement for the third to hit me straight through my wing and grazing me across the chest.

My broken wing stopped holding me in the air and suddenly I was falling again. This time there was no canopy below to catch me, just vampires ready to kill me because they thought I was some kind of trap for Kris.

I hit the floor on my back, hard and painful, too stunned to move for what felt like a really long time but no one touched me. They just stood there staring down at me until Kris shoved some aside and knelt next to me.

“Raven!”

I blinked as I took the pain from the body so that the raven could get us moving. We got to our feet and hopped over to Kris who scooped us up instantly and held us tight against his chest in one arm while smashing the gun from the man in the purple tie in the other hand.

“What the hell were you thinking?! You could have killed her!” Kris shouted.

“We thought it was a trap, sir,” purple tie answered meekly.

“We were told it was sent by your brother. We have the man who was trying to put it in your apartment in the hold,” the woman in glasses added, coming to purple tie’s defense. “Here’s the note that was attached to the cage.”

Kris let the crumpled gun clatter to the floor before swiping the note from the woman’s hand to read it and let out a low growl.

“Clean up your mess,” he hissed “and get back to work! We have people incoming from the fight who need to be processed and two who need to be put down.”
Kris strode to the elevator and let it close us in before he looked down at me and sighed.

“I thought you were dead! What the hell were you thinking, coming back here without us? Why didn’t you go back to Leo?”

The raven hid our head in his shirt while I reached out to his mind. He stiffened as if I had shocked him when I made contact.

“Kris, don’t panic. I’m trying to communicate with you,” I sent gently.

“Is this a witch thing?” he hissed as if the elevator might have ears.

“It is and I’m sorry about all of this. It was an accident. Your brother sent me here in a cage. I didn’t have a choice.”

“How did he get you into a cage? You were just supposed to fly over and tell us what you saw happening.”

The elevator dinged and I waited for him to stride down the hall to his apartment door before I replied.

“To understand what happened you have to know that there are two of us in here,” I began. “The raven has control of the body and I’m stuck in the mental space like a passenger. We were looking over the edge of the hole in the roof of the building when the raven tried to give me control so that I could see through the darkness but it shoved me into the body too hard and we fell down into the building and got caught in the canopy. I think I can show you but you should probably sit down for that.”

He sighed. “We need to get you cleaned up first. Your wing looks broken.”

“It is,” I confirmed as the raven looked up at him again for the first time. “I’m taking all the pain from the raven at the moment so it’s pretty weak.”

“Can you drink blood? I think that’s all I can offer,” he asked with a twinge of worry in his voice.

I wasn’t sure but the raven answered for us with a nod. Then it sent me an image of a syringe dropping liquid into a baby bird’s mouth.

“You’ll have to feed it to us from the IV drip tube,” I added mentally.

“Let me call Leo so he knows that you’re safe, then I’ll feed you,” he said pulling a towel from a cabinet near the bathroom and wrapping it around me. “Don’t pass out on me, okay?”

The raven nodded again as he put us on the couch and tapped on the screen of his phone before putting it to his ear.

“I’ve got her in my apartment and Evan is heading up the team to take care of the fight. You’re off duty as far as I’m concerned so get over here as soon as you can.”

Leo demanded to know what happened. I could hear the panic in his voice but couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“Just get yourself here. We can talk about what happened when we’re all here.”

Leo grumbled something else that I couldn’t hear before they both hung up.

Kris went to the kitchen and pulled a bag of blood from the refrigerator. He sighed when he looked over at me.

“How is it that you keep getting into these situations? I swear that I’ve had more problems in the last few months than I’ve ever had before.”

“I’m not trying to be in trouble,” I sent mentally. “I just want to get my memories back and live a normal life. I don’t think I would have looked to become a vampire and I don’t think that I was unhappy with my life the way it was. I was going to go to college and settle down before all this happened.”

“I know kiddo,” he sighed as he scooped me up and sat on the couch. “I’m just tired of chasing my brother around the world to keep him from hurting people or exposing us.”

He tucked me under his arm before breaking off the valve at the bottom of the tube where a nurse might have attached the bag to an IV. Slowly he let the blood drip into my waiting mouth then pinched the tube again when I needed to swallow. He was silent and patient with me until the raven turned our head to say that we needed no more blood even though I was ready to finish the whole packet.

Kris was about to tell me to drink more but Leo knocked on the door so he flipped the packet over and set it next to me on the couch before he went to let him into the apartment.