FATAL RETRIBUTION: CHAPTER 3

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FATAL

RETRIBUTION

A RAINA KIRKLAND NOVEL

Book 1

By Diana Graves

Copyright © 2011 Diana Graves

All rights reserved.

Book cover & format by Diana Graves, www.dianagraves.org

Kindle Edition

♦

License Statement

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Disclaimer

This book is a work of pure fiction.  Characters, places and incidents are creations of the author’s imagination, and any similarity to people, living or dead, businesses, events or places is purely coincidental.

Acknowledges

To my family and friends, thank you.

♦

OTHER WORKS

THE RAINA KIRKLAND SERIES

Fatal Retribution

Mortal Sentry

Grave Omen

Deadly Encounters

Toxic Warrior

NOVELLAS

The Artist: The Serial Series Book 1

The Librarian: The Serial Series Book 2

The Zombie Book: Zombie Book 1

OTHER

Adult Coloring Book: Dark Whimsy

3

I WAS LYING on my back, staring up at my tent.  Morning dew added a beaded quality to the hunter-green fabric.  It was still dark out.  “Wakey, wakey,” Nicholas said for the fifth time in the past ten minutes.  I could almost feel him smirking from outside the tent.

“I’m up!” I shouted back, again.  I hoped Nick wasn’t feeling playful.  I so wasn’t in the mood for it.  Yesterday had been warm bordering on hot, but the night was freezing cold, and I barely got an hour of sleep.

“You better be.  Don’t make me come in there after you.”

“I said I’m up!”

“Okay, okay,” he laughed.  I listened to him walk away, and then I let out a heavy sigh.  I was exhausted, and the day hadn’t even begun yet.  I forced myself to get dressed and join the boys outside.  

I stretched tall and admired the view of the heavens.  The scores of stars that dominated the night were replaced with gray-blue clouds that made a patchwork on the early morning’s sky.  I never saw skies like these living in the city, so vast and colorful that they made my troubles seem petty.

My brothers stood around the fire pit, newly ablaze with fresh wood to fuel it.  Nicholas was dressed in all black; a black tank top, black jeans, and black nail polish.  He reached into a pouch at his hip and pulled out a handful of green powder.  He whispered words into his hands before tossing the powder into the fire, making it bigger still.  Nick had a way with magic that I envied.  I knew that by definition Nick was a warlock, but he wasn’t all that bad.  I know, I know.  Warlocks are evil black magic wizards who abuse their gifts by exploiting other’s greed and suffering.  Nick wasn’t like that, mostly.  He was the fat-free version of a warlock, all the benefits and none of the death and destruction.  Not all magic is black and white.  Some of it is gray.  But, try telling that to our coven elders.  Yikes!

“Morning sister,” Tristan said as he handed me a bowl of his homemade granola and a steaming mug of hot coffee, made just the way I liked it; heavy on soy cream and sugar.  He was the only one still in his pajamas, thick dark flannels.

“Thank you,” I said.

Michael stood between Nick and Tristan, looking like a virgin sacrifice in his white t-shirt and pale jeans.

“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you after breakfast,” Tristan said with a long smile.

“Okay.”  I accepted Tristan’s love of surprises, but Nick gave me a devious smile that I didn’t trust.  “What?” I asked him.

“Nothing—you’re scared of heights, right?”

My heart skipped a beat and my face became instantly hot and probably red.  I could already feel the sweat begin to bead on my upper lip.  “You know I am!”  I turned to Tristan, “Are we hiking up a cliff or something?”  I yelled it without meaning to, but I was more scared than angry.  I hated being up high, whether it was on an airplane or in a building.  I just flat didn’t do heights.  They were lucky that they got my ass on a mountain!

“Calm down.  Nick’s just playing with you, Raina.”

I glared at Nick from over my coffee.  He was in a playful mood.  Damn it.  He had two strikes against him.  One for waking me, even though I was already awake, and another for teasing.

“Should we get Katie up for breakfast?” Michael asked.

Nick and I both frowned at him.  And here I thought camping meant that we would get away from the hate filled-world, not bring it with us.

“Explain to me again why Katie’s even here,” Nick was rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

Tristan shook his head, “Because she’s our sister and we love her, damn it.”  He turned to me.  “Raina, go get Katie,” he demanded.  I quietly growled while I made my way to Nick’s hearse.  Usually, I didn’t respond well to demands, but I made an exception for Tristan, just this once.  What could I say, I was feeling generous.

Katie’s being here with us had been a last minute decision on her part and she was less than prepared for camping.  She had refused to share a tent with me last night, so she ended up sleeping in Nick’s hearse.  I knocked on the tinted window.  “Are you going to be in there the whole weekend?”

“Yes!” she yelled back.  At sixteen years old, Katie was the youngest of us and she acted it.  I took a deep breath.

“At least open the door.  You don’t have to join us, but in the spirit of camping at least enjoy the scenery,” I reasoned.

She opened the driver’s side passenger door.  “Fine, the door is open.  Are you happy?  Now leave me alone!”  She was wearing the same clothes she had on yesterday, but her makeup was fresh.

“Even out here, in the middle of nowhere, you’re wearing makeup?”

Her face grew red.  “Just leave me alone.  I only came with you guys to get away from Jed.  I just want to be left alone!”

I had met Jed before.  He was her mom’s long time honey, and she was right to want to get away from that ignorant, backward pervert. The few times I’d met him the only words out of his mouth were inappropriate racial slurs or sexually charged threats that made me laugh out loud.  

I took another deep breath and backed up with my hands in the air.  “Ok, I’m leaving.”

“She’s not coming out,” I told Tristan.  He looked genuinely sad, but he shrugged his shoulders and finished off his coffee in one last gulp before disappearing into the boy’s larger dark gray tent.

I sat down on a log near the fire to finish my breakfast in peace, but Nick sat down next to me.  His shoulders were tense and looking at his face, I could almost see him fishing for the right words.

“What’s up?”

He ran his hands through his crazy hair, trying to tame it I think, and failing.  “Why does Tristan keep extending olive branches to Katie?” he asked.

I thought about my answer while I chewed some granola, but Michael beat me to it.  “Because she’s young, Nick.  She doesn’t really know who she is.  She’s sixteen.  She’s behaving the way she was taught to.  Just give her time.”

His words sounded smart.  I nodded thoughtfully with my mouth still full of chewy granola, but Nick didn’t look fully satisfied with that answer.  I opened that part of myself that sometimes knew what others were feeling.  I felt nothing from Michael, but that didn’t alarm me.  My ability, my empathy, only worked sometimes and only with some people.  Nick felt lonely sitting next to me.  From the hearse, I could feel that Katie was scared and lonely, too.  From Tristan, I felt anticipation, probably for whatever activity he had planned for us today.

“I’m going to go for a walk,” Nick said before he stood up and began walking away.

“You want company?” I asked after him.

He stopped and looked at me for a moment before he shook his head.  “No, just tell Tristan I’ll be back in a few.”

“Okay.”

He turned back and walked into the thick of the dark woods.

“He tries to act like such a badass,” Michael said after he sat down where Nick had been sitting.  I looked at him and nodded.  “He’s not though.  He wears it like armor so that no one gets too close.”  I agreed with Michael, and I knew who taught him how painful letting people close could be.

“He’s lonely, so I guess it's working.”

“I get that Katie’s a pain, but Nick seems overly angry at her.  Why is that?” Michael asked.

I shrugged but I had a theory.  “When Nick was her age something happened between our mom and him, and she kicked him out.  No one was willing to take him in, not even Dad, no one.  Whatever he did was unforgivable, and he was forsaken by everyone who was supposed to love him.  And here he sees Katie shunning people left and right over trivial bigotry.  She doesn’t know how lucky she is that people love her so much.  That we’re all so willing to forgive her insults and crass attitude.”  I shook my head.  “Nick would give anything for that kind of love.”

Michael opened his mouth to respond to me, but he was interrupted by a heart-piercing, wild scream.  We jumped in our seats and looked at each other for a long, horrible, silent second.

“What was that?!” Katie shouted.  She climbed from the hearse and looked to us.  Her eyes were too wide.

Tristan climbed out of the boy’s tent fully dressed in jeans and a red T-shirt.  His body seemed to vibrate with adrenalin.  Michael and I stood.  The four of us looked into the forest, squinting, willing our eyes to see deeper into the darkness.  Michael ran off into the woods, as though he heard or saw something that the rest of us didn’t, and Tristan followed him.  Katie and I stayed where we stood, listening intently, but at the sound of another long desperate scream, we ran.  We ran toward the screaming, and into the forest.  I ran as fast as I dared in the thick of the wilderness.  I ran until I realized I was alone.  The screaming had stopped, or at least I couldn’t hear it anymore.

“Holy Shit!” I yelled when a man appeared not three feet in front of me.  It wasn’t Nicholas or any of the boys.  He was wearing a filthy white t-shirt and the remnants of pajama bottoms.  He looked at me with eyes hidden by the shadows of cavernous eye sockets.  Torn skin hung from his mouth, his lips were all but gone.

“Shit, you’re hurt—” I started to say, but he charged me.  I barely escaped his grasp, and he fell to the ground.  “What the hell are you doing?” I shouted at him.

He looked up at me from the ground and growled.  The growl caught me off guard.  It made me notice things, things like his deathly pale skin and the would-be mortal wounds on his neck, head, and abdomen.

“A zombie—this far from a cemetery?”  Shit!

No matter what the movies say, zombies don’t walk slow and rigid, with their arms stretched out in front of them.  They run at you, fast.  I could never hope to outrun him.  I searched my memory for a useful strike; some great spell or something, but he came at me again and we hit the ground hard.  I scrambled to get away, but he bit into my right arm and a ragged, desperate scream erupted from my mouth.  He had a death grip on my arm while he ate at it, digging his teeth into the flesh of it, lapping up my meat and blood like a wild animal.  My body bucked and squirmed under his strength.  I couldn’t think past the pain.

“Get the fuck off of her!” Katie shouted, making herself a big, loud target.  He ripped away from my arm, taking a chunk of it with him, but it fell from his mouth as he growled at her from over my body.  Whatever happened to want not, waste not?  Jerk.

“No, Katie, run!” I yelled.  

From beyond Katie, I could see Tristan running toward us.  His wand was in his hand, and his long black-gold hair flew out behind him like a cape.  “You!” he shouted at the thing still kneeling over me.

“Run, Katie!” I yelled again, but she was frozen with fear.  The thing lunged at her, but Tristan shouted an incantation I didn’t recognize and it hit the ground.  It crawled away at a speed I never thought a zombie would be capable of, faster than fast.  Tristan hit the thing with massive bolts from his wand, again and again.  He looked at me, “Get out of here, Raina!”

I looked for Katie.  She was still paralyzed with fear and I ran to her, dodging the corpse and trying to stay out of Tristan’s line of fire.  “Come on!”  I hooked my good arm around Katie’s arm.  The moment we touched she regained her mobility and we ran together.

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“You’re going to burn!” I heard Tristan yell from behind us.  I looked back.  

“He’s chasing it our way!” I yelled to Katie.

“The suns up!” she shouted back.  I looked up through the branches of the trees.  The sun had indeed risen while we were in the forest.

“The sun doesn’t kill zombies!”  

“It’s not a zombie, it’s a vampire.”

“What?”

“Michael!” Katie cried as we arrived back at camp.  She ran to Michael, who was kneeling by the hearse.

“Vampire?”  I asked after her.

I heard Tristan shout the incantation again and I looked back into the forest.  He had hit the vampire in the back with a bolt from his wand, sending him into the morning sun.  Wild blue flames burst from his body, shooting from his eyes and mouth, as though he were burning from the inside out. Before I could react the burning vampire slammed into me.  He took me to the ground with him, burning us both, his skin enveloped in flames.  We screamed together.  I didn’t want to see his face as he burned.  I closed my eyes tight and felt the vampire be reduced to ash and bone fragments.  I felt the fire die down and I screamed still, for pain and sheer horror.

“Raina?”

I was still screaming when I opened my eyes to find Tristan standing over me.  I was covered in a thick layer of dark gray ash, but I wasn’t hurt as badly as I should have been.

“How are you not—how did you survive that?”  I didn’t have an answer for that.  In fact, I had no words.  I looked up at his worried face.  All I wanted to do was scream but nothing came out.  “It’s okay, you’re okay,” he finally said before he picked me up.  Billows of ash flew into the air as he carried me through the tall grass toward the hearse.  I stared after what was left of the vampire, the patch of burnt grass, the gray ash, the perfect outline of my body.

“Oh my God,” Katie said when she saw me.  She was standing over her brother, who was trying to push her away as she bandaged his shoulder with a huge square Band-Aid.

“Go to the hearse and get another jug of water,” Tristan told Katie.  She hesitated leaving her brother’s side for only a moment before she obeyed him.  Tristan dusted vamp crumbs from me while I sat on the log, the same one I was sitting on while I enjoyed my breakfast just minutes earlier.  

“We finally managed to escape that thing with Nick and come back to camp to find you two handing yourselves over to it!  That was stupid, Raina,” he said.  His whole body shook violently; hands, legs, even his voice.  The sight of him shaking made me calmer.  We couldn’t both break down.

“I didn’t know what it was.  I was running toward the screams.  Where’s Nicholas?”  He ignored me as he cleaned me up.  “Tristan, where is Nick?” I asked again once he got most of the ash off, revealing burns on my arms, hands, and face. My clothes were singed here and there but intact.  Why, because I’m a witch, and when one dances around fires it’s just common sense to have flame retardant clothes.  But, these burns weren’t as bad as they should have been, not by half.

“Nicholas is in bad shape,” he said.  His frown was deep.

“Are you okay?”  He just nodded.  “Michael?”

“It’s a small bite, nothing like this.”  I looked at Michael.  The Band-Aid on his shoulder was clean, no blood.  “Did you give him a slan talisman?” he asked.  

I squeezed out a painful, “yes,” and closed my eyes.  He was trying to clean my arm with the water Katie had set down before running back to her brother, who was now bent over something too far for me to see.  

“Michael was freaking out before we even got to Nick.  When I saw the vial around his neck—well, I know Mom’s handy work.  We were not caught completely unawares.  Thanks.”

I brought my hand to my chest, just then remembering the vial, the useless piece of shit vial that I had made.  It hadn’t worked, big surprise that.  It wasn’t there.  The fire must have burnt through the hemp.

“Looks like the vampire cauterized the wound on your arm for us,” Tristan said.

“What happened, Tristan?”

“I don’t know.  When we got to Nick the vampire was feeding on him and we thought he was dead.”  His eyes were swimming in tears.  I put my hand on his shoulder and he flinched.

“You killed it, Tristan.”  I had meant for it to be a comforting fact, but Tristan’s whole body became very still.  Decent elves didn’t kill, it's taboo, even in self-defense.  Nick, Tristan and I were raised to be both practicing witches and elves.  Nick and I never took to any of the high and mighty elf stuff but Tristan did.  “I’m sorry,” I stammered, but my apology was ignored, and my intent was taken as cruelty.  He threw the rag he had used to clean me into the puddle of blood and water that had accumulated at my feet.

“I’m sorry, Tristan,” I said again, but he ignored me still.  He tore a strip of white cloth from a shirt and tied it around my forearm recklessly before he stood and walked away.  

“I need to check on Nicholas,” he said with his back to me.

I stared after him for a moment, cursing my tactlessness.  Michael and Tristan were huddled on the other side of the fire, looking down at something I couldn’t see from where I sat.  When I knew I could stand under my own strength, I got up and walked over to them, and found Nicholas lying on the ground between them.  Michael was bent over him, cleaning his wounds with water and a piece of cloth torn from his own shirt.  Tristan was trying to bandage his stomach wounds and keep pressure on them.  Katie stood far from the boys, her hands over her mouth, quietly crying.

Tears welled up in my eyes.  “Nick,” I cried softly.  I knelt down at his side.  The vampire had ravaged his body.  His flesh hung in red ribbons, his innards leaked from his stomach.  The smell of raw meat and bile was overpowering.  Nick looked up at us, helpless, asking us with his eyes to save him, to help him somehow.

“Oh, Nick, no,” I cried.  “Do you know any magic that can fix him, Tristan?” I asked, but he didn’t answer me.  “Tristan?”

“Do you?!” he spat.  His face was so enraged that I flinched.

“No,” I whispered.  There was nothing I could do but watch him die.  I didn’t look away from Nick’s face though.  That would be cowardly.  I took in his large brown eyes, full of such pain, such hopelessness.  He gasped for air, spitting out blood and choking on it.  I grabbed his hand and squeezed tight.  “I’m so sorry, Nick. I love you so much. I’m so sorry.”  His body trembled, and then it became still, lifeless.  His hand became a cold weight in mine.  A shudder ran through Tristan as he looked down at his little brother with eyes red from crying.

“Nick!” Michael screamed hysterically.

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I wanted to scream wordlessly at the sky, I wanted to curse the gods.  Instead, I wrapped my good arm around Michael.  He looked at me with a face torn by absolute grief.  I would stay strong for him.  My burns hurt like hell, but I had to ignore the pain.

Tristan’s face looked hard and bitter.  He turned to me, putting all that pain and all that anger on me.  I had to look away.  “We need to leave here,” I said to the ground.

“Yes, we need to get to a hospital,” said Katie softly.  “I’ll start loading stuff up.”

“Quickly!” Tristan yelled at her.  We all flinched.

“Okay,” Michael said, and he walked to the boy’s tent and grabbed his bag before climbing into the hearse.

“What are we going to do with Nick?” Katie asked.  Her words were almost too quiet to hear.

“We take him with us,” Tristan said.  He looked around the campsite, “Do we have anything to wrap him up in—a tarp maybe?”

“I’ll get my sleeping bag,” I said.

“Katie will get your sleeping bag,” Tristan corrected me.

Katie did so without a word.  They bent down over Nicholas and after trying for some time, they finally got him into the bag.  I tried to help them, but they wouldn’t let me, so I went to the hearse and took a seat in the front beside Michael.  I pretended I wasn’t crying while Katie and Tristan struggled to get Nicholas’s body into the hearse.  Michael didn’t pretend anything.  He let out great big sobs of pain, hit the dashboard hard with his fists and screamed at his god.

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