House of Ravens (24 page)

“
I’ll send a crew out to
take care of it,” I say. “Where are you?”

“
Down at the church on the
water,” he says over all the noise. “There was a huge accident, and
it started a fire.”

There’s a little prick at the back of my
mind. Something about all these things, happening all at once.
“This doesn’t seem right,” I say quietly into the phone. “This
feels…all this feels planned.”

“
No shit,” Luke says with a
huff. I hear something smack in the background. Luke curses again
and the line goes silent. He’s hung up.

I put the phone back down and call out.
“Christian, Lexington, I need you to go to the Institute and get
Obasi and Nial. We have a problem and a possible medical
situation.”

The two of them appear in the foyer just a
moment later, armed, and ready to track down the Bitten. I explain
the situation quickly, and they’re out the door.

“
It’s not all coincidence,
right?” I ask, turning to Henry and Rath. Elle walks in just then,
watching us all with big eyes.

“
This doesn’t feel right,”
Henry says. And goosebumps prickle along the back of my neck.
Cameron, Markov, and Ian are out on patrol right now, as are at
least three from the Institute.

“
We’re spread out right
now,” I say. I immediately head to the armory. “If they were going
to attack, now would be a good time.”

“
Who’s still here?” Henry
demands as he follows me into the room stocked with weapons. Rath
is on his tail. The lot of us begin loading up on
weapons.

“
Smith!” I bellow as I hand
Elle a handgun and a stake. She pulls out a thin flue from her
pocket, and I remember Ian telling me how deadly she is with a dart
gun. “Get out here. We’ve got a situation and you’re on guard
duty.”

He appears in the doorway almost immediately
and grabs his own weapons.

“
Rath, I want you at the
ballroom doors,” Henry immediately takes command, making
assignments. “Take Elle to the panic room. Smith, you are to patrol
the rooms upstairs. I’ll take the front doors. Alivia, you’re to
stay in the House, away from any windows.”

“
But I want to-”

“
You will be helping,” he
says, fixing me with an understanding look. “You know as well as I
do that there is more than a few ways to get into this house.
You’re guarding this home from inside.”

It’s exactly what I needed. I have to do
something to help. This is my home and I’m not just going to
hide.

“
Panic room?” Elle
questions, sounding unsure as Rath leads her out of the room and
toward the kitchen. She looks back at me, unsure.

“
It’s okay,” I say with a
nod, even though I can’t be sure of that.

She only nods back, total trust in her
eyes.

Rath turns into the kitchen, and apparently,
I still have more secrets to discover in this house. I had no idea
about any kind of panic room.

One by one, I move through the bedrooms on
the lower levels. Markov’s. Leigh’s. Lexington’s and Smith’s.
Henry’s. Checking in closets, under beds. It’s silly. If there were
a Bitten already in the house, I’d smell them. But we’ve been lax
before, and we’ve paid dearly for it.

The bathrooms are clear. As is the formal
dining room and the kitchen. I’m so glad it’s the staff’s day off.
I think it’s time we sent them on another vacation.

I move upstairs, going in the opposite
direction of Smith to my bedroom. I close the door behind me
because no one knows about the secret passage from my room to
outside the property but me and Henry, and I don’t need Smith
getting clued in when Markov is so suspicious of him.

I’m silently sliding from my room to check
the bathroom when my cell phone suddenly blares out into the
silence, causing me to jump about three feet into the air. I swear
as I fumble to answer it, seeing Lillian’s name.

“
Alivia!” she calls out,
terrified and frantic. “Alivia, they broke in to the Institute,
just after everyone left. There were a dozen of them. Holland…
Holland is…”

But she’s too frantic and distraught to
reply.

“
Lillian, calm down,” I
say, even though I’m the one who’s falling apart inside. “Where are
you right now?”

“
We cut through the woods,”
she says, her breath ripping in and out in loud, frantic pulls.
“We’re hiding in Ian’s cabin. We’re at least armed now.”

I nod, Ian has kept a stockpile of weapons
there for years. “Okay, who’s with you?”

“
Just Francesca and May,”
she says, her voice quivering with emotion. “Alivia, they killed
Holland. She’s dead.”

I swear under my breath. After all of this,
after all the attacks, they finally got to us. They’ve killed a
House member. “Okay, Lillian, what happened to the Bitten who
attacked you?”

“
We managed to take out
seven of them, but they’d driven us out of the house. We didn’t
have anything but our bare hands. There was no choice but to
run.”

And everything finally catches up to
Lillian. She begins sobbing, the sound muffled, as if she is
covering her mouth with her hand.

Lillian, who has been so mothering to
everyone in the House. Who has taught so many, taken care of
us.

“
You did the right thing,
Lillian,” I say, wishing so very badly that I could comfort her and
put my arms around her right now. “You did the very best you could.
I have to know, do you think anyone followed you? Do you think you
can make it to the Estate safely?”

She takes several moments to calm herself.
She pulls in hard breaths that wheeze in and out of her throat.
“No,” she says. “We didn’t even get to grab shades. We ran blind
through the woods. There’s no way we would make it to the Estate.
But I don’t think they followed us. They weren’t willing to go out
into the light.”

“
So they could still be at
the Institute,” I begin filling in. I walk to the window in the
bathroom and look outside. “Okay, as soon as I can, I’ll send
someone after the three of you. I promise.”

Tears overtake her once more, and she gives
a little mumbling noise of agreement before I have to say
goodbye.

I try Anna. No answer. I try Ian. No
response. I go through seven numbers, but not a person
responds.

I swear under my breath.

This leader knows what they’re doing. They
have us separated, weak because we’re spread out. No one cell is
strong right now, and if they’ve got the numbers, even weak Bitten
will overtake us immortal Born.

There’s no one to help Lillian right now,
and the clock is ticking.

I glance back at my bedroom door, listening
for Smith’s location. He’s down in Cameron’s bedroom, on the other
side of the house.

Knowing I only have seconds, I dart around
my room, to all the places I have sun goggles hidden. Grabbing a
backpack from the closet, I stuff three sets inside. Pressing the
button, I unlock the hidden armory. It slides open, and I’m
instantly loading stakes, two extra handguns, five knives, and an
extra quiver of arrows, to go with the crossbow slung over my
shoulder.

Looking once more toward the door, I offer a
silent prayer that I will make it back to this House alive and that
when I come back with the others, Smith, Rath, and Henry will still
be in one piece.

Slipping my backpack on and holding my
crossbow at the ready, I swing the painting away from the wall, and
step into the dark passageway, before closing it behind me.

On silent, impossibly fast feet, I set out
down the narrow stairway, and then across a damp, dirt tunnel.

THE AIR IS DAMP AND
tastes of minerals and time as I breathe. My
booted feet fly over the ground, and just moments later, I’m
pressing the door open, my fingers splayed across Elijah’s name
carved into the wooden surface. I work my way through the tangle of
trees and bushes that covers the opening and climb to my
feet.

My sharp eyes scan the area. Behind me lies
the Estate, before me is an open field of tall grass, with houses
off in the distance. Keeping low, I bullet through the grass. I
reach the first neighborhood. Peering around the corner of a house,
I take off down the road.

My enemy could be anyone. This army has
taken so many familiar faces. At this point, I can only rely on my
sense of smell. Those that smell like my next meal are safe. Those
that don’t are to be killed instantly.

I reach Main Street and crouch behind a car,
scanning the road. Just as Luke said, there’s a car being loaded up
onto a tow truck, its front end all smashed up. A fire truck sits
in front of the church, water drenching the west side of the
building, smoke billowing everywhere.

I’m so paranoid. Are the two connected? The
attacks, the appearances of the Bitten, and this crash? All of the
on-duty cops in Silent Bend must be on the scene. I count three
patrol cars with their lights flashing, and I’m pretty sure that’s
the entire force.

Searching the road once more, I dart across
in a flash and cut through the trees in the direction of the Ward
property.

The underbrush is thick and heavy as I make
my way through, snapping twigs and bushes with my powerful
movements. The land becomes wet and soggy, telling me I’m
close.

Movement to my right grabs my attention. I
instantly duck behind a tree, holding my breath to not cause any
kind of sound.

There are two people walking through the
trees, a man and a woman, probably in their fifties. They don’t
quite seem to know where they are going, but if they’re out here,
I’m assuming they’re looking for Lillian and the other two. The
stakes clutched in their hands make me sure of it.

I level the crossbow in front of me, lining
my vision with the sights. I follow the man’s movements, my finger
held over the trigger.

Letting my breath out, I pull it.

The arrow sails through the air before
embedding itself into the man’s back, right into his heart. He
drops to the ground just as the woman flips around, searching for
the source. Just as I nock another arrow and loose it, right into
her chest.

She drops to the ground, and I dart over to
their dead bodies. Grabbing the woman’s arm, I find what I
expected. The brand of a snake, burned into her skin. It’s bubbled
and red, fresh. I’d guess done within the last day or so.

Once more, I take off through the woods,
moving faster and faster. I have to get back to the House. We have
to find the others.

A metal roof and dark, rustic siding comes
in to view. Pausing for only a moment to survey the property, I
climb the stairs and knock on the door. “It’s Alivia.”

Lillian opens the door just a moment later,
a displeased look on her face as she yanks me inside, shielding her
eyes against the bright light. “What are you doing, darting around,
playing hero? What if something happened to you?”

“
There wasn’t anyone else,”
I say as I squat to the floor and begin unloading the backpack.
Francesca and May tighten around me, watching as I work. I unearth
the goggles, handing them over as I begin explaining what is
happening. “And I got here just in time,” I continue, pulling a
curtain aside to scan the surrounding area. “There was a couple not
far from here. They were looking for you.”

“
That means there’s still
two of them that are possibly back at the Institute,” May says. She
straps a holster around her hips, sliding stakes into her cargo
pockets.

“
With how bad things are,
as much as I want to go after them, I think we need to get back to
the Estate,” I say, against everything in me. “We need to get our
numbers gathered. And we need to figure out a way to draw out this
leader and get this war going.”

Lillian nods in agreement, no matter how
white her face has turned. They finish gearing up and strap their
sun goggles on. After scanning out the windows once more, we open
the door and head for the woods again.

No other Bitten roam and our path remains
clear. When we get to Main Street, the wreck has been cleared away
and the smoke trails off from the fire. The firemen seem to be
wrapping things up. We dart across the street in a blur and head
down the road that will lead to the Conrath property.

We cut through one corner of the field and
hop the fence that surrounds the property. We make sure to keep our
hands raised and move slowly as we walk up to the front doors.
Smith keeps his gun trained on me from one of the upper windows.
Henry glares at me from the front door.

“
Ian told me you were never
very good at following directions,” he says in annoyance as we walk
up through the door. Henry locks it behind him, casting us in
lovely darkness once more. “Apparently, you have my knack for
stealth.”

“
I had to do something,” I
say, not in the mood to explain myself as I remove my goggles and
set them on a table in the foyer. “If I hadn’t, they might have
been hurt.”

The look in Henry’s eyes is certainly
annoyed, disapproving, but there’s also a proud gleam to them.

Once more, I pull out my cell phone and try
Anna. Again, no response. Next, I try Ian, who still doesn’t
answer.

“
Help watch the windows,” I
bark at Francesca and May as I scroll through my contacts, clicking
on Samuel’s name. I swear under my breath as it just rings and
rings.