Ravenous Virtue Read online

  She did her round of hellos to the night shift just about ready to come off duty. It was still half an hour before her shift began. She got her assignment for patrol and saw it was in one of the more remote parts of the park, a section where treasure hunters loved to snag not just pieces of the petrified trees but also some rare species of flora and pottery shards left behind by long-departed tribes. Her assignment detail noted the area hadn’t been checked in over two weeks. The office really was undermanned with the summer staff going back to school.

  Raven grabbed her second cup of coffee for the day, needing the extra boost after being out too late last night and up too early this morning. She decided to hit the concession stand on her way out, where she knew she could snag a ham, egg, and cheese biscuit for breakfast.

  She got to her duty truck, still with no sign of Douglas Bringer. Humiliation averted. It was turning out to be a pretty okay day after all, she decided. Humming a little tune with the rising sun at her back, Raven headed out to snag her breakfast and get to the first stop on her patrol where she would eat, drink her coffee, and then officially start her day.

  * * * *

  Two hours later, Raven armed sweat off her brow. The temperature had already climbed to the 90-degree range and continued upward fast. She checked the photos she’d taken on the digital camera’s LCD screen.

  A couple more pictures of the bald eagle she’d found dead by the road would suffice, she decided. She took the shots and packed the camera back in its bag. She put the photography gear into the duty truck’s storage bin and found an evidence bag.

  Raven looked down at the gorgeous bird’s body. There were drag marks and a scattered trail of blood, the signs of the eagle’s struggles to fly again after it had been shot from the sky. She saw no signs of the poacher who had taken it down. The corpse hadn’t stiffened yet, so Raven’s arrival on the scene might have scared the would-be collector away. She scowled in disgust for the waste of a beautiful creature’s life.

  No one was allowed to shoot animals, particularly American bald eagles, on the park’s grounds. Only registered members of Native American tribes were permitted to collect feathers and talons from dead eagles. Otherwise, it was illegal. With a park the size of Prehistoric Forest and too few rangers to adequately police it, sometimes the worst happened however.

  Raven was always saddest when the animals suffered. From the signs surrounding the bird’s body, it had suffered plenty before finally succumbing.

  She bagged it and headed back to the truck, stuffing the carcass in the bin with the camera. She headed for the cab of the running vehicle, elated to get back into the air-conditioned environs.

  The sound of a blatting engine heading down the shimmering highway made her pause. The old truck heading her way appeared like a mirage through the waves of heat coming off the asphalt. Its red paint had faded into a sickly pink, and the theme song from the old television show ‘Sanford and Son’ began to play on a loop in Raven’s head. Boy, that thing was a clunker.

  It was also weaving over the two-lane highway’s center line, sometimes veering over onto the shoulder as the driver overcorrected. Raven sighed, glad this part of the park wasn’t visited as often as the rest. Even on a Saturday this remote corner of Petrified Forest stayed quiet. At least the idiot had less of a chance of taking out a family car.

  “Started the weekend early, I see,” she muttered at the approaching vehicle. “What the hell; it’s five o’clock somewhere, right? Not here, asshole.”

  Raven tried to wave down the truck, which was going pretty fast for something that sounded like it would fall to pieces at any moment on the blacktop. She was careful not to get too far into the road though. Someone as obviously as blotto as that driver might not see her at all and run right over her without a clue.

  He saw her, all right. Raven had a quick glimpse of long, stringy graying hair, and a drawn face sneering at her before he raced past her with a blaring horn. “Fuck you, bitch!” came the screeching voice.

  Raven hurried to her own truck. “Honey, you haven’t seen bitch yet. You’re about to,” she said as she jumped in.

  The blast of air conditioning on her sweat-soaked skin barely registered. Raven put the vehicle in gear and swung around in a U-turn. The next instant she hit her sirens and lights and sped after the still weaving potty-mouth drunk.

  She grabbed her radio microphone. “Virtue to Base. I’ve got a five-oh-five-A, possible five-oh-two on Route 73, two miles from the checkpoint heading into the park. In pursuit.”

  Dispatch came back immediately. “Copy that, Virtue.”

  Raven picked up speed, closing in on the drunk driver. “Raven Virtue to the rescue,” she mumbled to herself with a small smile. “Or would that be Ravenous Virtue, as Bringer insists on calling me? The crusading ranger on patrol; just another day saving the national parks and ordinary citizens. Da-da-da-daaaah!” she finished, singing her own heroic music.

  She gained steadily on the truck as it continued to weave its way down the road. She winced as it nearly hit an oncoming RV and breathed a sigh of relief when the truck veered sharply to miss. The RV’s horn blatted an insulted blare and continued on its way.

  Raven got a few feet away from her quarry and spoke through her duty vehicle’s loudspeaker. “Pull over to the side of the road immediately.”

  She expected the driver to keep going, playing like he hadn’t heard her. Instead, his brake lights flashed as he slowed down. The old pickup gradually veered over to the scrub alongside the road until it came to a shuddering rest.

  Raven radioed in to headquarters. “Virtue to Dispatch. Possible intoxicated driver has pulled over northbound 73, approximately three miles inside park boundary.”

  “Copy that, Virtue. Sending a custody transport vehicle, which will arrive in approximately five minutes. You are cleared to approach.”

  “Ten-four. Leaving my vehicle to approach suspect.”

  Before she exited her truck, Raven unsnapped the holsters of her taser and gun while giving the battered truck in front of hers a good look. The driver was moving around in his seat, leaning a bit to the passenger side. Raven knew he was probably hiding contraband. Drugs or an open container of alcohol, most likely. She sighed and prepared herself for the usual song-and-dance of ‘No, ranger, I haven’t been drinking. Well, maybe just one beer.’

  She swung the door open, letting in a blast of desert heat. “All right, my wobbly friend. Let’s get you off the road before you hurt someone.”

  Raven got out. As she did so, the driver opened his vehicle’s door and clambered out as well. His hair looked greasy, but it was probably sweat, she thought. His unkempt hair was par for the course; his sallow face had two days worth of stubble, his clothes were wrinkled and sweat-stained, and his eyes were sunken.

  Raven put her left hand on her taser. Traffic stops were the most dangerous part of a law enforcement officer’s job. Even the most ‘routine’ stop could turn ugly in an instant. Keeping her tone calm but firm, she called out, “Sir, I need you to stop right there.”

  The unkempt man didn’t show any sign he’d heard Raven. In fact, he never looked at her at all. Instead, he wandered onto the road, still blessedly empty of traffic, and went to the straight white line that indicated where the shoulder of the highway began.

  “Oh yeah,” he wheezed and began dancing down the line to music only he could hear.

  Definitely impaired, Raven thought. The man’s legs wavered like spaghetti as he boogeyed to the beat playing in his inebriated brain. She had to suppress a smile at the sight. He did look funny.

  Steeling herself to do her job properly, Raven tried to talk to him again. “Sir, I need you to go over and stand next to your truck. We need to talk.”

  The man stopped dancing. He finally looked at her, and the loopy expression on his face turned to fury in an instant. “Fuck you!”

  Yeah, this is going to be pleasant, she thought with resignation. Her hand tightened on the taser, read
ying to pull it out if necessary. “Sir, I’d appreciate it if you’d step on over to the back of the truck and let’s talk about this.”

  Spittle flew as the man screamed at her. “Go to hell, bitch! I got nothing to say!”

  With that bit of sweetness, he stormed to his truck and leaned in. Raven started to hurry over to him, afraid he’d get in and take off, making things far too dangerous for himself and other drivers he might meet up with.

  “Sir—” she began, starting to draw the taser out.

  Raven stopped cold. The man wasn’t getting into the truck, he was reaching in. She immediately abandoned the taser and reached on her right hip for her firearm. As it cleared the holster, the man straightened, coming out of the truck cab. With a shotgun.

  “Put it down! Put it down now!” she screamed.

  The shotgun’s barrel was still coming up, still on its way to sighting on her when she had hers ready to fire. She squeezed the trigger, but the man was standing sideways to her. He jerked as she shot him in the shoulder.

  His face suffused not with pain, but with rage. It was not a surprising reaction given he might be psychologically impaired, drunk, high, or all of the above.

  Back at the academy when Raven had trained to become a ranger, she and her fellow students had been shown dash cam footage of officers caught in similar situations. They’d been warned how such people might not react to injury, including being shot. It was real life, not Hollywood. Single gunshots rarely killed and often did not incapacitate attackers.

  This was the first time Raven had seen it in person, however. Even footage from real life altercations held none of the immediacy of being in the middle of the situation. She lost precious seconds gaping at the man when he didn’t go down.

  Instead he screamed, “Fucking cunt! You can’t shoot me! I’ll kill you, bitch!”

  Training kicked in and Raven moved back, hurrying to get behind her truck. She shot again, but she was in the grip of tunnel vision, only seeing the black hole of the barrel sighted on her. She shot at that instead of at the man who was now running towards her, bringing that deadly maw closer and closer.

  A spark of fire emitted from that immense cavern. An instant later something kicked Raven in the center of her chest, knocking her backwards. There was a thunderous blast that echoed all around. It was followed by a horrible, high-pitched scream splitting the air, the screech of a terrified rabbit facing a coyote. It came from her own throat, shredding the tissues as unspeakable agony burst through the center of her body.

  Raven’s left arm went numb just a moment before another gun blast nearly deafened her ears. He was shooting her, and she was feeling each hit before the sound registered.

  She crashed to the asphalt. All this time she’d been falling, falling since the first round entered her body. Now she was finally down, thumping hard to the road. The pain of it was nearly lost in the shrieking hell of her blasted heart and lungs still refusing to stop their work, keeping her alive despite the violence done to them.

  Coppery liquid bubbled from Raven’s lips. Her body was welded to the ground, too heavy to move. The sun beat down from overhead, blinding her in its baleful glare, refusing to warm her chilling body. The only coherent thought in Raven’s head was that she needed to get to her duty truck. She needed to get in and drive away, leaving the hideous pain and the man dealing it to her far behind.

  The sun went out, or so it seemed at first. Raven blinked, laboring against the massive hurt to breathe, to live. She saw it was a human silhouette blotting the sun out. It was him. He pointed the shotgun at her face from just inches away.

  “I thought I could kill you,” he giggled. The sound was far away but still obscene. “I thought I could, so I did.”

  Raven tried to lift her gun, but she couldn’t feel her arm anymore. Suddenly, dying didn’t seem so bad. She hurt so much. She just wanted it to end, to escape all this hell. The barrel of the shotgun was huge, bigger than the sun its owner blocked. She waited for it to swallow her.

  A sudden thump came from the heavens. Here it is, she thought. This time I get to hear the shot before it hits me.

  Instead, the man over her seemed to disintegrate. The sun was once more glaring down at her, and hot wet drops rained down from the bleached-blue sky. The tunnel was still there though; the long, black tunnel that no longer came from a gun barrel. It descended down. Then the pain stopped, and the black of the tunnel comforted as it surrounded her.

  Just as she was ready to dive deep into that endless darkness, a voice called out to her.

  “Raven! Raven, answer me!”

  She didn’t want to, not when going back meant returning to that awful heat and pain. Yet the voice was like a fishhook snagging her and bringing her mercilessly back to the surface.

  The pain did come back, crushing and agonizing. Raven could barely breathe for the brutality of it. Even worse was that man-shaped silhouette blocking out the sun once more. He was still there, still ready to make her hurt more, blasting her into little bits until the gentle void returned.

  “Raven. Can you hear me?”

  It wasn’t some homicidal drunk with a gun. It was Douglas Bringer, he of the chameleon hair and golden eyes.

  Raven could feel the coppery-tasting froth spilling from her mouth as she spoke. “You’ll have to fill in my sheet for me. From eleven-fifteen to the present, I was shooting and dying.”

  Her voice was little more than a wheeze. Douglas seemed to hear her anyway. “Do you want to live?”

  Raven wished she had the strength to punch him for asking such a stupid question, especially when there was obviously no hope. What was he doing out here anyway?

  Pissed off and unable to do anything about it – which pissed her off even more – Raven sighed, “Gonna make it worth my while? Do I get a swimming pool and maid service? You idiot, shut up and let me die in peace.”

  “Listen to me, Raven. Do you want to live? It means being indentured to another man, a man who needs your protection.” Douglas grimaced. “Even when your contract is up, you’ll still belong to him. There’s no getting around that, I’m afraid.”

  Raven couldn’t make head or tails of what the man was blathering about. Damn it, she just wanted to close her eyes. Now that she’d had a glimpse of the void beyond and the delicious lack of pain that went with it, dying didn’t scare her at all.

  Tiredly, she mumbled, “Which of us is having an end of life hallucination?”

  “You’re almost out of time. Do you want to live?”

  The bastard is insistent, I’ll give him that, Raven thought. Then she felt warm drops falling on her face. She blinked up at Douglas, noting how his expression screwed into such terrible tragedy. Was he crying over her?

  His tears helped Raven feel something besides the pain and anger that she’d gotten herself killed so stupidly. Douglas was only trying to make her feel better as she checked out of this world, trying to ease her suffering by distracting her with nonsense.

  Give the guy a break. I can play along so maybe he won’t remember how helpless he feels at this moment, the way I would feel if our roles were reversed.

  She dredged up a smile, doing her best to ignore how torturous every little breath and each hesitant heartbeat had become. “Are we going to your space station? Where real justice prevails?”

  “That’s the place. Just say the word, and we’ll go.” He returned the smile, blinking out tears as he did so.

  Things were turning gray, taking her back. This time, Douglas wouldn’t be able to pull her out. Raven sighed. “Sure Scotty. Beam me up and let’s kick the universe’s ass.”

  “That will do.”

  Douglas gathered her in his arms. As he stood and lifted her up, Raven had an instant when she saw his eyes change. They went from gold to every hue of the rainbow, one color melting into the next, spreading to the whites of his eyes in moving swirls of color.

  Wow, dying is weird. And pretty, she thought as the world around her turned silv
ery gray. Then all went dark again, sending Raven back into the long, cold tunnel where nothing hurt.

  Chapter 5

  Voices. Two voices, belonging to men. They came from far away, intruding in on the perfect emptiness that surrounded Raven. While distant enough to keep her from discerning the words, one sounded familiar.

  After a few moments, her sluggish mind revealed the voice’s owner: Douglas Bringer.

  The other, a deeper male voice that moved deliciously through her safe, pain-free void, came close enough to understand. “You’re walking funny, Daagiis. Does it hurt?”

  Douglas, sounding angry and a bit breathless: “Of course it hurts, you sadistic shit. Who did you practice your whipping arm on while I was gone?”

  “Oh no, I saved it all for you.” There was laughter in the unknown man’s tone.

  “How sweet. The no prep before you shoved your cock up my ass was a nice touch too.”

  “I thought that might get your attention. You knew I would be pissed off when you got back.”

  Raven tried to speak, to tell the pair to shut up. Their conversation was definitely squidgy. However, she couldn’t feel her lips, much less make them work.

  What the fuck is going on? I’m not dead yet? Who’s the other guy talking to Douglas? Is it my back up? I don’t recognize the voice.

  The unknown man said, “So tell me about this human wreck you brought back and why you let her get torn to pieces?”

  Douglas’ voice went defensive. Raven tried to frown in her nowhere place. She’d never heard him sound like that before.

  “I didn’t let her get hurt. I had to keep my distance initially or she would have seen me watching her. Then that piece of shit pulled his gun out and…”

  There was a catch in his voice, and he went silent.

  The other man’s voice softened. “She lives.” He turned musing. “You are quite attached. Perhaps that has muddled your thinking?”

  Douglas sounded angry again. “I have only ever once allowed my feelings to supersede duty, you asshole.”