Ravens (29 page)

She jerked her head toward the door as
it rattled. Someone tried to get in. She panicked. Had the men come back
already? Had they escaped the hospital, dodged the police, and returned for
her? Had they contacted other hunters and sent them to the barn?

The noise didn’t sound like someone
trying to break in, it sounded like someone rattling the keys in the lock.
Kendra froze. It must be the men; her parents knew how to open the door. Who else
could it be?

The door to the barn squeaked as it
opened enough for the young man to slip in and close it behind him, locking it
with one movement of his wrist. It was dark inside so he flipped on the lights.
Both he and Kendra squinted to push back the sudden glare. She didn’t move, and
he stood in place as he scanned the barn.

The young man stepped lightly across the
floor, avoiding the mats, and directed his attention to the only rolled up matt
to his left against the wall. There, he found Kendra watching him with a hatred
that seeped through her being. 

Randal froze in place. His mouth opened
as if he were about to say something.

“What do you want?” she asked bitterly,
breaking the silence.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“How did you get back here?” Randal
inquired.

He didn’t have any idea that Kendra
escaped, but he knew he shouldn’t enter the barn. He had a nagging doubt about
the entire thing. He had to come and examine things for himself. He couldn’t
just leave Kendra to memory.

She scoffed. “Is that your first
question? No, how are you? Are you hurt? What happened? It figures. Why should
you care?”

“I do care, Kendra, that’s why we
brought in help. How did you escape?”

“Oh escape is it? It’s a fitting word.
After all, they took me against my will.”

“Kendra, you’re never going to
understand that we did this for your best interests. We have to take control
until you’re healthy.”

“Shove it, Randal.”

“It isn’t easy for us. We all love you.
It was the hardest thing to do.”

“I’m going back so you’ll never have to
worry about me again. I’ll be
healthy
and finally happy.”

“So you will go back to the
institution?” Randal misunderstood her.

She chuckled. “I’m going back to where I
belong, to the parallel dimension. I don’t fit in here anymore. I only stayed
because of my parents, but they handed me over to them. I’d rather be a Raven
than a human.”

“Listen to yourself. You
are
human and this
is
the only world.” He pleaded with her.

“You know, the other Randal believed me,
but that was because he saw the proof. If you saw the proof, you’d believe me
too.”

“But there isn’t any proof.”

“It’s sad that you need evidence to
trust me, instead of placing faith in me.”

He shook his head. “Faith only goes so
far. Some things are too ludicrous even for the most devout followers to
believe.”

“Then we have nothing more to say to one
another.”

He crossed his arms. His patience with
her wore thin, evident by the clenched jaw, and incessant tapping of his foot.

“I guess you’re not going to tell me how
you escaped, and yes, you’re right, that is the correct term. You weren’t going
to seek help for yourself, so we did what we had to. I will take you back
myself if I have to.”

“You gonna go running to my parents?
Give me a break. You’re not laying a hand on me. You’ve seen me fight, if I
have to, I’ll kick your—”

“Kendra, I’m not going to fight you,” he
interrupted.

“That’s the only way you’ll get me back,
and I do mean that in every sense of the word.”

He paused, as if contemplating her
meaning.

Randal stumbled at the unexpected disturbance
in the ground. Kendra jumped to her feet, her skirt whisking against her thighs
as she stood and bent her knees, trying to find balance. She smiled, almost
laughed.

“You’ve thrown my trust out the door,
but I have one last request. I can’t trust you to do it, but if you don’t,
you’ll regret it,” she said calmly over the increasing hum.

The ground shook further, and a swirling
of white and pink light emerged in the floorboards beneath Kendra’s feet,
illuminating her like some sort of awe-inspiring angel.

She went on, “Don’t tell anyone about
this moment, because if you do, those guys will come after you next and you’ll
finally know the truth. They’ll do to you what they’ve done to us Ravens for
years, what they planned on doing to me, and it ain’t pretty.”

“What’s going on?” He took a step toward
her, but the force of the portal shoved him away.

Kendra folded the letter a few more
times and then tossed the disc of a paper at his chest. He caught it.

“Give that to my parents, please.”

“Kendra.” He took a step forward, but
the trembles pushed him back.

The portal didn’t accept him. He already
existed on the other side of the gateway. The force seeped across the floor and
up the walls like millions of crawling vines. They slithered toward the
surveillance equipment and trickled into the system. Clawing and bleeding, the
energy pried opened the circuits, destroying all proof and leaving the
equipment worthless.

“Your proof!” she cried over the heavy
winds created by the portal that kept Randal struggling to bend and lean toward
the young woman who was perpetually at arm’s length.

Kendra stood boldly, her feet melting
into the portal. She smiled one last time at him.

He should have trusted her, should have
vanquished the ramrod gut feeling of doubt.

Randal drew his hand to his face to
shield himself from the ever-growing glow that engulfed Kendra. He could not
see past the barrier of his hand nor through the wall of the intense
iridescence that gathered up and around Kendra, wrapping her like a cocoon of
energy.

Her feet molded into the portal. Then
the portal sucked her into a painful yet wondrous journey of molecular
decomposition and reconstruction. The earth shook fiercely, the winds blazed,
and then it stopped.

The light and the wind vacuumed into the
portal until nothing remained as evidence of it ever having been there. The
barn stood still and the lights flickered for a few moments.

Randal lowered his hand and squinted. He
stumbled and searched the area. Kendra vanished. The light and mysterious wind
escaped. His heart pounded in his chest and adrenaline whirled through his
body, making him dizzy.

He asked for proof, and he received it.
Kendra hadn’t been insane. She was as sane as ever. Maybe everything she said
was true. Portals, powers, parallel worlds? He would never know for sure, but
he knew that she would never come back.

Randal jogged to the spot of her
disappearance. He stepped on the solid wood floors. Nothing appeared to be out
of the ordinary. He stomped on the solid floor.  

“Huh,” he muttered.

He stood in awe, having witnessed such a
phenomenon. Either he joined the insanity train with Kendra, or he experienced
what very few people had. Fear suddenly struck him. He trembled uncontrollably.
He possessed valuable information, information that he now knew certain men,
the hunters, would torture, perhaps kill, for.

What would he tell Kendra’s parents? How
would he respond to the “psychiatrists” when their inevitable knock pounded
down the door?

Guilt felt like a sharp bullet wound to
his chest. He could never forgive himself for ever doubting Kendra and handing
her over. If she told the truth about this, then certainly, her belief that the
strangers were hunters must be true as well. Randal shuddered. To think of what
he would have been an accessory to. What sort of horrible, inhumane experiments
would they have done to his Kendra?

After some of the shock wore off, Randal
scrambled around the lower portion of the barn in search of answers. He could
not easily accept what he’d just witnessed. He tossed over the rolls of mats
and kicked against the steps. He crawled around and clawed against the
floorboards. He couldn’t pry anything apart. Everything was intact.

He stood where Kendra stood only moments
ago. He scratched his head. He knew the men would come back and bombard him
with questions.

He would do what he should have done in
the first place—protect Kendra.

With all the heartache and ridicule that
he imagined Kendra endured because of his lack of faith, he would have to share
in it now. His heart already began to ache over her. What a bittersweet
farewell. She left nearly hating him, and he let her go without a consoling
word, but she was free and safe now.

“Goodbye, Kendra,” he whispered into an
empty room.

And goodbye to his own heart as it sat
crushed and repentant, buried in his chest, within his ribs, like a caged and
dying bird. Among this torture was a lifetime of pain and doubt.

Randal left the barn and stood on the
porch to the house where he unfolded the piece of paper and read it. Tears
formed, and he felt a heavy burden in his chest. He gulped. He failed Kendra
before, but not again.

Raising a hand to knock on the door, he
gripped the refolded letter until it nearly crumpled. Mr. Pierce opened the
door. His eyes were red and his face puffy.

“Randal?”

Randal handed him the letter, then
shoved his fists into his pockets. He watched as a train of emotions crossed
Mr. Pierce’s face—confusion, concern, fear, anger, and hopefully, somewhere in
there, a bit of relief.

****

Kendra moved through the portal at
lightning speed, faster than she could conjure up thoughts about the intense
pain or the odd sensation of an ionic fluctuation.

She gasped when she hit the portal’s
exit. She felt more aware of this journey than the past ones. She wasn’t
rendered unconscious or amnesiac, thank goodness for both. On the other hand,
she saw and felt every minute of the travel, and it was not pretty. Despite the
deception of beautiful colors, traveling through the portal was one of the most
terrifying events in her life! She didn’t want to do it again and she didn’t
plan on it.

The portal spat her out and gravity
hurled her down. She crashed into the branches of the lone oak tree in the park
that nestled against the woods. Light erupted, then vanished during her
descent. She groaned as her body hit tree limbs. Some of the more fragile
branches snapped on her way down. She turned in the fall, pushed off and
twisted with every collision, until she hit the last limb, the thickest and
oldest of the branches on the tree, with her stomach. She cried out in pain.
She wanted to spew out every bit of junk food left in her.

Kendra clung on to the limb for a second
after impact until, rolling from it, she fell backward and crashed onto the
soft, dry grass. She moaned along with the thud of the impact. All right, so
the ground wasn’t so soft.

She grunted and remained in a fetal
position. Kendra hugged her belly. She clenched her eyes as tears formed. It
took a few minutes before she shifted onto her side and caught her breath.

Kendra didn’t catch a soul in sight.

She scanned the park. Where was Liam?
Shouldn’t he have been here waiting for her? Wouldn’t he have raced toward her,
swept her injured body into his strong arms, and whisked her away to his bed?
That sounded like Liam, but she didn’t see him. She had yet to feel his real
muscles around her and his warmth embrace her.

Kendra crawled to her knees and
straightened her back. It popped and cracked as she flinched.

Something was wrong. He would’ve waited
with anticipation.

She stumbled to her feet, dizzy and weak
as she staggered back until she felt the tree trunk and used it to support her.
With deep, regulated breaths, she lifted her chin. She would have to walk back
to his apartment and find the answers herself. It would be a long walk, but
after stumbling back to the barn half inebriated and physically debilitated,
this wouldn’t be much harder.

Kendra shuddered in the sheer silence
and solidarity of the lonely night.

It took her longer than it should have,
but she made it to the familiar apartment complex. She looked up at Liam’s
illuminated living room window.

Kendra didn’t leap up the stairs in a
few, swift bounds, as she could have; she opted for the elevator. Leaning
feebly against the cold, reflective, metallic walls as the elevator music
hummed softly in the background, she glanced at her reflection in the wall. She
had her lovely features again, black sclera and white irises and pupils. In
fact, her sclera was so black that she hoped it meant she didn’t have to
painfully transform again. Perhaps, the transformation was a one-time thing,
despite how many times she hopped worlds.

The elevator door chimed and opened at
the fifth level. She clutched the edge and pulled herself out with a huff, then
wandered to Liam’s door.