Raven's Destiny Read online

  Raven's Destiny

  The Shepherds, Book 1

  J. E. Hopkins

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Newsletter

  Also By J. E. Hopkins

  Meet The Author

  1

  Banging uninvited on the door of a ramshackle trailer could be bad for your health. Raven had learned that as a teen in the Appalachian hollers of Maryland. But that was a different world, a different era, and she was no longer a kid afraid of her own shadow.

  She climbed the two steps of the rotted wooden platform, wiped the day’s sweltering heat from her face, and shrugged off the icy sensation crawling up her spine.

  She cast a glance over her shoulder, confirming her first impression of the scene as she and Pat Carpenter, her partner, had approached the isolated home. The trailer was ancient, and the foot-tall grass in the tiny yard had burned to a crispy brown. A faded red zinnia struggled to survive next to the front stoop. No shadows or refuge in sight.

  She stepped to the side of the rust-pocked door and rapped twice. In between the knocks, flickering specks of light the colors of the rainbow danced at the edge of her vision.

  Shit, she thought. Not now.

  The buzz of locusts in the trees bordering the surrounding field faded, along with all other sounds.

  The sensation had first occurred a few weeks earlier and then several times—with increasing frequency—since. The pattern was always the same. Raven checked out for a second, and an irresistible daydream replaced reality with a parade of other-worldly images.

  The dream catapulted her back to her childhood and an imaginary friend long since forgotten. Amethyst. A tall, thin woman with a gentle smile who lived in a dark and rainy woods far away.

  Raven’s mind leaped from the faded whisper of her past to the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest and the reclusive race of Ancients who called it home.

  Which was absurd.

  She’d neither visited a rainforest nor met an Ancient and would never meet one. Federal law, enforced by the U.S. military, prohibited any contact. Rumors said the beings who occupied the forest guarded their isolation by impenetrable wards that would cause humans to sicken and die.

  Ridiculous or not, she believed one of those ghostly creatures was trying to reach out to her.

  Her partner’s derisive sigh broke her reverie. “Hello? You still with me?”

  The lights winked out. “Yeah,” Raven said, “I’m here.” She felt like she’d just tried to run a marathon and exhaustion forced her to quit at mile twenty.

  “We’re here to talk to an eighty-three-year-old woman who’s cashing her dead husband’s Social Security checks. No need for the door safety bullshit.”

  They were in the blistering countryside thirty miles outside of Washington, D.C. The Office of the Inspector General had requested help, and Raven’s boss had agreed as a professional courtesy.

  “Besides, as scrawny and flat-chested as you are, if you turn sideways it would take a marksman to pick you off.”

  Pat Carpenter was a thirty-year veteran of the FBI, a cliché of a used-up cop. She was hostile, sloppy, too lazy to move out of her own way. And who said women couldn’t be misogynists? Carpenter played to her male bosses by trashing female agents at every available opportunity. Her most endearing feature? Chronic onion breath.

  The older agent stepped up to the door and smacked it with the side of her fist. “Watch and learn.”

  “FBI! Open the damn door!”

  Raven flinched and stifled a laugh. She ran her fingers through her spiky black hair, a nervous habit from her childhood.

  Carpenter’s voice belonged to a young girl. High and squeaky. Raven had no doubt the woman’s screech reached the next county over. She bounced down from the rickety two-step platform and away from the unholy noise.

  Carpenter had been assigned as her partner after Raven graduated top of her class at the FBI academy. Their mutual hostility during the six months they’d worked together led Raven to question her new career. She was beginning to think she never should have left the homicide squad on the D.C. police force.

  Carpenter banged the door a second time. “Open up!”

  She sounded like a pissed-off Minnie Mouse with a pack-a-day cigarette habit. Raven pitched her usual contralto to match her partner’s squeal. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We’re here to talk to an old woman. Quit being such a bitch.”

  Carpenter’s back stiffened like Raven had clubbed her with a two-by-four.

  It occurred to her once again that refusing to accept her junior status and bow down before her alleged superiors wasn’t smart career planning. Neither was poking them with a sharp verbal stick.

  She gave a mental shrug and started to step up and scoot around Carpenter’s bulk. Let the subject see a friendly face, she thought.

  “Stay put,” Carpenter said without turning. “We do this my—”

  A deafening explosion blew the two women off the steps and dropped them on the gravel path. Three things demanded Raven’s attention before she passed out: the foot-wide hole in the trailer door; the screaming demon of pain possessing her body; and the gurgling bloody wound in Carpenter’s chest.

  2

  Raven woke in darkness, suspended in space, floating on her back. Hot, humid air threatened to smother her. A minuscule circle of white beckoned from far above.

  Somewhere nearby a creature’s high-pitched screams sent shivers up her spine. She struggled to sit up, to find and help the poor thing, but her body refused to move. The cries grew, and the disk of light began to fall toward her, expanding and accelerating like an avenging angel. She knew in her bones that she was going to die as soon as the blinding brilliance wrapped itself around her.

  Her eyes popped open.

  She was tied to a skinny gurney rattling down a narrow cerulean-tiled hallway under a ceiling striped with fluorescent lights. One of the stretcher’s wheels squeaked in protest like an old grocery cart.

  “Where am I?” Her voice sounded like a woodworker’s rasp. She pushed against the restraints, which triggered a sharp pain in the back of her head and a wave of nausea. Her chest stung from the assault of a thousand wasps.

  “Lie still. You're at the Fair Pines Hospital in Manassas Park. My name is Violet, and I‘m taking you for a CT. The docs think you have a concussion.”

  Raven lifted her head to look toward the foot of the transport. Violet was an older black woman with short white hair and a wrinkled, warm smile. Raven gingerly lowered her head.

  “What happened to me? Was I shot?”

  “No, honey, you weren’t shot. But you got a pretty good bump on the head. You don't remember?”

  “The last thing I recall is eating a sausage muffin for breakfast at the drive-thru this—”

  Her memories stormed back with a vengeance that left her mute. The run-down trailer. The shotgun blast. Pat Carpenter’s desperate struggle for air. “Is my partner here? What’s her condition?”

  “Sweetie, I just move people from one place to another,” Violet said. “A doctor would tell you that you need to concentrate on yourself.” She slowed and slapped a metal pad mounted on the wall. Raven heard the whoosh of doors opening.

  “This is a small hospital, right?”

  “Sure, but you don’t need to worry about that. We have good—”

  “I grew up in a small town,” Raven said, “where everyone knew everything about each other. It was one of the reasons I wanted out. I imagine this place is like that. My partner is dead, isn’t she? What was it? A bomb? A shotgun?”

  Violet’s silence was all the answer Raven needed.

  The gurney slid between the open doors and into the imaging room.

  She submitted to the test without any further conversation, her mind consumed by her mixed feelings about Pat’s death. The woman had a husband and two daughters, but she’d concealed her personal life behind an impenetrable wall. Even though Raven had no connection to their private world, her sorrow for what they must be going through was heartfelt.

  Test over, they passed back through the automatic doors and rattled their way along the hallway. “I guess you’ve figured by now that you’re going to be admitted,” Violet said. “We have a room all ready for you.“

  “Hadn’t thought about it,” Raven said, “but I don’t suppose the docs will give me much choice.”

  “Well,” Violet said, “you need to get yourself ready. That grapevine you were talking about told me a couple of local cops and a big shot from the FBI are waiting for you in your
room.”

  “Lovely. Thanks for the heads up.”

  Raven had neither respected nor liked Carpenter, but no one should die like that. She wished her last words with her hadn’t been tainted with the poison of their relationship.

  “How about taking me for a Coke before we go to the room?”

  Violet hesitated. “I can’t just roll you into the cafeteria. I don’t know if you’re even allowed something to drink. Best we talk to the nurses after I get you settled.”

  “I understand. I guess my bigger problem is the pile of crap the police and FBI have in store for me.”

  Violet was quiet for a couple of seconds. “I’ll take the scenic route. Can’t delay forever, but maybe it’ll help a bit.”

  “Thanks.”

  Raven needed time to think. Handling the local LEOs and the FBI wasn’t really a problem. She knew what to expect because she’d been on the other side of the conversation more times than she could count. But her guilt was almost more than she could bear. She dissected her feelings as if taking them apart would make them more manageable.

  She should have worked harder to break through Pat’s shitty attitude, to understand her better. That would have done nothing to save her life, but might have improved their time together.

  Raven knew herself. When attacked, she responded in kind without stopping to consider motivations. It was a character flaw she regretted but had never seriously tried to change. Which meant that she and Pat were destined to butt heads and not become best buddies.

  Had she made a mistake that caused Pat’s death? Should she have refused to yield her place in front of the door? Would a kinder approach have avoided whatever the hell had happened? Or would that simply have meant Raven would be in the morgue rather than Pat?

  She had another, scarier, thought. Had her zone-out contributed to her partner’s death? She’d been putting off going to a doctor about the episodes and had said nothing to Moon. Too risky. She replayed the moments before the explosion and couldn’t see how her daydream contributed. Maybe she just didn’t want to face the truth.

  She realized with a start that her strongest emotion was anger; she was pissed at the dead woman for almost getting them both killed. What kind of a depraved person felt anger instead of guilt?

  She sighed.

  I’m kidding myself. A few extra trips up and down the hall aren’t going to sort this out. I’m going to need more time to understand the mess that is me.

  “I’d say I’m ready for the world, Violet, but that would be a lie. Let’s go to my room. Maybe my visitors brought me presents.”

  Violet laughed and stopped in front of a bank of elevators. “Only fools and men think they’re ready for the world.”

  The only person waiting for Raven in her room was her boss, Special Agent in Charge Frank Moon.

  A SAC was the top of the food chain in most FBI field offices. But not in D.C.; the office was too big. Moon shared power with three other SACs, all reporting to an Assistant Director in Charge, a man Raven had met only once. Field-Office SACs and Assistant Directors answered to one of the bureau’s Deputy Directors, who, along with her other Deputy Director buddies, reported to the FBI Director. That august personage was Martin Zinn. Known privately by his troops as the HMFICC, the Head Motherfucker In Complete Charge.

  Raven was one of the smallest roots in a very tall tree.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Moon asked. “You finished your scan a half hour ago. Can’t this place do anything right?”

  Moon had worked at the bureau for fifteen years, so he was young for a SAC. In his first meeting with Raven, he declared that he intended to become the Director, and Raven had better not screw that up.

  “Good to see you too,” Raven said. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  Moon was an uptight, stick-up-his-ass FBI agent. He waved off the comment like a nettlesome fly. “A concussion is no big deal; ask any football player.”

  Violet shot him a venomous glance and slowed her pace as she helped Raven transfer to the bed. The situation became hilarious, at least from Raven’s perspective. Violet moved in tiny steps, almost like she was positioning her body for a stop-motion film, keeping her back to Moon. She winked at Raven as the SAC did a little dance trying to maintain eye contact with his subordinate.

  Moon was clueless about the game Violet was playing. He finally surrendered and plopped down in a blue vinyl chair at the side of the bed. The bottom cushion farted. Any expectation Moon had of projecting his august power evaporated with the flapping seat cushion.

  Game over. Violet patted Raven on the leg and disappeared.

  “What happened to the local police?” Raven asked. “I thought they were here with you.”

  “This is a bureau matter. I ran them off.”

  Raven nodded and pushed herself up. The pain in her chest stole her breath. She patted herself down for bandages. None.

  “Fill me in on what happened, Moon. The last thing I remember is lying on the ground with Pat half on top of me.” She also recalled the horrifying gurgle that came from Carpenter’s chest.

  Moon, who had no more chin than he did hair on his head, had a habit of sucking on his lower lip when stressed. Raven watched as the lower part of his face disappeared into his mouth.

  “I need to ask you a few questions first.” His face colored when Raven didn’t immediately agree. “You were a D.C. cop for five years before joining the bureau. You understand how this works.”

  Raven shook her head. “I’m not playing that game. I’m not a suspect. I don’t know for sure if Pat is alive or dead. I sure as hell don’t know what happened. Fill me in, or you can talk to my lawyer.”

  More lip sucking. “Agent Carpenter died of a twelve-gauge blast to the chest. A farmer was passing by on the two-lane that runs in front of the trailer and saw you two get blown off the steps. He phoned the cops and the life squad. You were still out when they took you away.” He cocked his head and stared at Raven. “You were out a long time. Seems unusual.”

  “I’m sure the hospital explained the meaning of a concussion to you when you were checking on me.”

  She had no intention of going down the “do you have any other health conditions I’m not aware of” path.

  Moon nodded. “You pukey? Having trouble thinking straight?”

  Raven shook her head. “No. You’re not a doctor, so stop playing the role.”

  He didn’t. “Your scan was ambiguous so the concussion couldn’t be too bad. If you even have one.”

  Raven tried to redirect the conversation, which was usually a breeze with Moon. “Who was the shooter?”

  He stared at her. “The old lady you were there to interview. The cops found her sitting inside on a dinette chair, sipping coffee, the gun across her lap.”

  “She resist?”

  “No. She was perfectly calm. Pleased with herself. She claimed that she shot an intruder and thanked the police for coming out to clean up the mess.

  He stood and began pacing around the room. The chair sighed as though freed of an impossible burden. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me what you remember.”

  Raven reported the morning’s events, omitting only her trippy visual fireworks.

  “Why was Pat so aggressive?” Moon asked. “That’s not like her.”

  Raven snorted and grabbed her aching head. “Bullshit. She didn’t let you see that side of her.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Raven wanted to tell him that Pat had been an in-your-face bitch. “I’m not going to.”

  “You’re not leaving anything out? Rookies can make mistakes. It’ll go better if you tell me now.”

  “I was a D.C. detective, remember? I saw more gun action in a month than an FBI agent sees in a year. You recruited me for that experience.”