Raven's Fall (World on Fire Book 2) Read online

  Raven’s Fall

  World on Fire, Book II

  by

  Lincoln Cole

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lincoln Cole, Columbus, 2015

  [email protected]

  www.LincolnCole.net

  Cover Design by M.N. Arzu

  www.mnarzuauthor.com

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  When mercenaries kidnap two drone operators and steal the software that can control drones anywhere in the world, Kate Allison is called to action to try and stop them before they can use the drones against civilians. Kate is a strong woman with a sordid history who is trying to make up for past mistakes.

  She teams up with the unlikeliest of partners in her mission: Lyle Goldman, the application developer who designed the drone software. He’s her only hope of finding a way to shut down the mercenaries and figure out who is behind the attack. Unfortunately, Lyle is also being hunted by the FBI in connection with the stolen software and is being framed for the crime.

  Can they stop this attack and clear Lyle’s name before it is too late?

  And if that’s not enough …

  Get The Ninth Circle, too!

  Arthur Vangeest has been hunting a cult known as the Ninth Circle for months and finally located their base of operations, but something goes terribly wrong. Someone he trusts betrays him and his family is murdered.

  Now he isn’t sure if there is anything left to live for. But, when he exacts his revenge on the people the hurt him, he finds a new reason to stay alive.

  This short story takes place several years before the events of Raven’s Peak and details how Arthur came across Abigail, and how she gave him something new to live for.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  “It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.”

  Buddha

  This book is for my mom.

  Prologue

  As soon as Abigail stepped outside the house, she knew something was wrong. She no longer stood alone, although she couldn’t see anyone else around her in the immediate proximity. How could she know? Nevertheless, she felt certain.

  Alert and alarmed, she slipped her gun loose and crept toward her car, scanning the area around the house. Dark and cloudy, she couldn’t see anything.

  When she drew closer, Abigail noticed that the vehicle rested lower than it should have. Someone had slashed the tires.

  Not waiting for the trap to spring on her, she sprinted to the right, running toward a fence leading into an old horse paddock. A shout came from behind, followed by a gunshot. Abigail ducked and dashed to the fence, climbed over it, and dove into the tall grass below.

  Years of horses walking over the muddy terrain had made the ground uneven. Luckily, the grass stood several feet tall and disguised her entire body, especially with such little light.

  Abigail landed hard and rolled, ducking into the grass as more shots fired behind her. She kept moving, crawling low through the grass and, occasionally, glancing back the way she had come.

  Near her car, three people ran toward her. Although Abigail couldn’t recognize their faces, she knew them from the way they moved: Colton Depardieu, Jack Wright, and Anong Sao.

  It looked like they had come to finish what they had started back in Lausanne. Colton raised his pistol and fired into the grass. The shot fell behind her, but not as far away as she would like.

  Abigail flinched, ducked again, and continued crawling. On this breezy night, the grass wafted in the wind and masked her progress. She moved fast, staying low, and went another fifteen or so meters. When she checked again, her pursuers had made it through the gate and into the field. They combed the area slowly, spread out to fan the entire field, and worked their way toward her.

  Abigail held onto her revolver. At the least, she could drop one of them from her hiding spot. Anong stood closest, oblivious to her. They hadn’t prepared for her to retaliate, and she could put a bullet in Anong and still (probably) crawl away without the other two being able to find her immediately.

  However, she didn’t. These were Hunters, her brothers and sisters, and killing them felt … wrong.

  Though she might well regret it, Abigail slipped her revolver away instead and belly-crawled through the weeds and toward the fence. There, she found an opening that she could crawl under and slid outside the field. Abigail couldn’t see any other houses or vehicles in the area, but an old barn sat only fifty meters from her.

  It looked like it had burnt up in a fire years ago, probably due to lightning or hooligans, and only half of it remained standing. Still, it gave better cover than nothing.

  Abigail moved cautiously, crouching low, and made her way to the barn. Once there, she ducked inside, out of sight of the fields, and let out a quiet sigh.

  Chapter 1

  (A few weeks earlier)

  “What are you thinking about?” Frieda drew Haatim out of his thoughts and back to the world at hand. He stood staring out of the window at the mountains and countryside as they flowed past. Headed through Switzerland, the beautiful landscape slid past their train. In only a few more hours, they would reach the Council buildings where they would stay for the next few months during Abigail’s trial.

  Snow had fallen in the region, leaving a light dusting over everything. At just the beginning of winter, conditions would get considerably colder before spring thawed everything out again.

  His mind drifted far away in his thoughts and memories. It would be the first time since the aftermath of Raven’s Peak that he had spent more than a few hours in the same room with his father. He couldn’t decide if he looked forward to the prospect or not.

  On the one hand, Aram had raised him. Taught him right from wrong. Helped him grow up and shown him how to be a man.

  Haatim kept thinking of the little things, like how to tie his shoes and shave. He loved his father dearly and missed listening to him tell him stories about the wide world and all of the places he’d been.

  Yet, on the other hand, Haatim could hardly believe how much of his true self that Aram had kept hidden from him. The sheer volume of lies he’d told his son since birth felt staggering. His father had withheld everything that mattered and kept him in the dark. All of those fairy tales that his father had told him about the world had just been stories.

  A fairly large part of Haatim felt furious at such complete deceit. His father was his blood, and if he should have been able to trust anyone in the world, that person should be Aram Malhotra. And yet, he’d come to find out that his father made for exa
ctly the sort of man he couldn’t trust.

  How the hell would he ever explain that to Frieda?

  “Just thinking about life,” Haatim said, realizing how vague his words sounded. “Nothing in particular.”

  Frieda sat on the railcar seat opposite him, studying him in a way that always made him uncomfortable. The woman never seemed to smile, but he also found her quite beautiful despite being many years his senior. She had an austere and pristine grace that captivated.

  Right now, she wore a gray business suit with a white blouse and high heels. A mole sat on her left cheek, and she had her blonde hair tied up in a bun. It amazed him that she could always dress so immaculately, even in the craziest of circumstances. He’d never once, in all the months he’d traveled with her, seen so much as a hair out of place.

  “Are you worried about confronting your father?”

  Haatim cursed her intuition. She always seemed to know exactly what thoughts held him in thrall.

  “It is a concern,” he said. “Aram … my father kept so much from me—from us. I don’t think he told anyone in my entire family about this secret life he leads. I doubt he told my sister anything before she passed away, either, and I know my mother is in the dark. I just never knew he could lie to us about so many important things.”

  “It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.”

  “No,” he said. “But it does make it harder to trust him. I never even guessed he would keep something from me, let alone something like this. I think that says something about me as much as him.”

  If he’d expected Frieda to disagree, he’d find disappointment. “It’s a wonder the things we can convince ourselves of when we have a stake in maintaining our false reality.”

  Haatim looked back out of the window, tapping his fingers lightly on his knee. “I’m also worried about Abigail,” he said, after a few moments. “I haven’t seen her in months and want to make sure she’s all right. Are you worried about seeing her?”

  Frieda hesitated. “I suppose I am a little bit, and about what comes next. The evidence your father’s built up will make proving Abigail’s innocence quite challenging.”

  “You can do it, though, right?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Abigail has many faults, but at heart, she’s one of the greatest people I’ve ever met. I’ll never regret the decisions I made to trust Arthur all those years ago.”

  Haatim wanted to ask her what she meant. All the time, she made vague statements about Abigail’s past, but whenever he questioned her more deeply about it, she closed up and refused to speak to him at all.

  He decided not to try and get more information right now. If he’d learned one thing over the past few months of traveling with Frieda, it was that he shouldn’t press his luck. Frieda would tell him when she wanted to.

  “She did save my life,” he said, instead. “When I tell them what happened at Raven’s Peak, they’ll have no choice but to release her.”

  “Maybe,” Frieda said.

  “You said I would be allowed to testify.”

  “You will, and your father is on the Council, so your words will carry weight, but I fear that some of the evidence against her will prove hard to overlook. I feel certain that I can prove she’s a hero for what happened in Raven’s Peak, but that doesn’t mean she’s not also guilty of many other crimes. She has broken our laws and disobeyed orders. My job is to show that she’s still redeemable.”

  “Dumb laws,” Haatim said before he could stop himself.

  Frieda shrugged. “Many of them are, and I would love to remove or change half of them. But, just because they shouldn’t exist, doesn’t mean we can ignore them. You can’t change a system if you refuse to play by its rules.”

  Haatim returned his gaze back through the window just as the train went over a bridge. An enormous canyon stretched into the distance, several hundred meters below them. He couldn’t even see the bridge next to them, just the emptiness.

  Part of him sat in awe of it, and the other part felt terrified. Heights weren’t his thing, and he couldn’t keep his fingers from tapping.

  He’d never been much for riding trains, but this seemed like something else entirely. The tracks ran up and through the mountains, passing innumerable pristine vistas, unlike anything he’d ever imagined seeing. To call it awe-inspiring gave a disservice to the true power of what he experienced.

  Beauty, he’d come to realize, could also terrify all too often.

  “Would you like a drink?” Frieda asked.

  “Sure,” he said.

  She stood and walked to the bar near the middle of their railcar. They rode in high comfort in one of the luxury cars. Each ticket cost more than the monthly allowance he’d had while he lived in Arizona. On these travels with Frieda, he enjoyed comforts he felt unaccustomed to.

  However, he could get used to them with little effort.

  Frieda returned a moment later with two mixed drinks.

  “Kirsch,” she said, handing him one.

  He took a sip and winced. It tasted sweet but incredibly harsh on his throat. When he glanced up, Frieda had an amused expression on her face as she watched him.

  “Takes some getting used to.” She stirred her drink with a finger, and then took a sip. “We’re almost to Lausanne.”

  “I can’t wait.” Haatim took another cautious sip. “We’ve been cooped up in these seats for too long. I still need to do my stretches.”

  Frieda nodded. “Every day,” she said. “But I won’t be able to do them with you anymore.”

  “You mean because of the trial?”

  “Yes. I won’t be able to teach you anymore.”

  “I understand,” Haatim said.

  For the last several months, Frieda had trained him in how to defend himself. Basics of hand-to-hand combat and the use of fairly common weapons like pistols and shotguns. He wouldn’t have considered himself ready for a real fight by any stretch, but he felt better prepared to defend himself than he had a few months ago.

  “I’ve asked someone else to continue your training, and he will be able to help you tremendously with your fighting and survival abilities; far more than I ever could.”

  “Who?”

  “Dominick Cupertino. A dear friend and incredibly loyal.”

  “Okay,” Haatim said. “Does he know about …?”

  Even without finishing the thought, Frieda knew what he meant. She shook her head. “I would advise discretion. I trust Dominick completely, but some things are best kept secret.”

  They spoke of the events in the factory at Raven’s Peak. Haatim had faced down a demon in a violent confrontation. It had tried to harm him, but he had chanted a stream of litanies and prayers that he’d learned through his years of studying religions. Somehow, he’d managed to walk unharmed through a tornado of dangerous objects that the demon threw at him.

  He’d told Frieda about it and felt surprised at how readily she’d believed him. The woman had heard stories about people with abilities similar to what he had demonstrated, but knew few concrete details about just what happened. It lay outside her expertise.

  Frieda recommended that he keep the details to himself until they could better determine what had gone down. Fine with him. The only people that knew were himself, Frieda, and Abigail.

  To be perfectly honest, he didn’t feel totally sure if he believed anything strange had happened. When he looked back through his memories, he thought it more likely that the demon had simply gotten overconfident and Haatim exceedingly lucky.

  “I’ll avoid discussing too much with him,” Haatim said. “He’ll teach me to fight?”

  “He’ll beat the hell out of you,” Frieda said. Haatim thought she was joking, but she didn’t smile. She rarely smiled. “Hopefully, you’ll learn something about fighting along the way.”

  Her statement didn’t reassure him.

  They rode in silence for another ten minutes before reaching the city. Small and quaint, it had a lot of short bu
ildings spread out into the distance. The station sat on the outskirts of the city, little more than a platform and series of ticket booths.

  The train pulled to a stop next to the platform, and people filed out. Not a lot. The train appeared about half-full, right now, of bundled up adults and children. Haatim watched them disembark, and it took him a moment to realize Frieda sat watching him.

  “We’d better go,” she said, finally. “The train won’t wait around forever.”

  “Where’s it go now?”

  “Basel,” she said. “But it’s a long trip through the mountains.”

  He nodded and stood, grabbing his duffel bag. Toiletries and a change of clothes the only items he’d packed. “Are you ready?”

  ***

  “Welcome, welcome!” a man said, as they exited the railcar onto the platform. He looked medium height and well-built, muscular and athletic, with brown hair and eyes and a winning smile. Most of the other passengers had gone already, heading off to their rides or a nearby rental office to get a car.

  “Hello, Dominick,” Frieda said, greeting him with a modest hug. “It’s nice to see you.”

  “It’s been a while.” He walked over to Haatim and stuck out his hand. “You must be Haatim.”

  “That I am.” Haatim shook it. Dominick had one hell of a grip. Haatim took care not to wince.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you. Nice that I finally get to put a face to the name. Do you guys have any bags you want me to grab?”

  “No,” Frieda said. She held up her bag, and then gestured at Haatim’s duffel. “We travel light. Martha will come with the rest of our stuff in a few days.”

  Martha worked as Frieda’s assistant, and a highly competent one at that. Haatim never noticed her, but she always seemed to be there whenever Frieda needed something. She had stayed behind in Germany for a few extra days, wrapping up business, before following them.