Raven's Song Read online

  The White Spider’s head dipped in the slightest of nods, “We’ll return the boy in due time, though I make no promises as to his being unharmed. Before I go, I leave you with one last gift.”

  Frederic’s heart began to race as he felt a pair of cold metallic manacles slide over his wrists. He attempted to withdraw his hands from the Hermes, and found himself held fast.

  “Goodbye, CEO Von Raben,” the White Spider said solemnly.

  “I’m caught!” Frederic cried.

  “FREDERIC!” Nicolene shrieked as she plunged her hands into the slots on the Hermes and clawed at the manacles she found there. Suddenly her eyes went wide and she let out a sharp gasp. The men watched with dread as she slowly pulled her hands from the Hermes, revealing two small dots of blood on their backs. The screen on the Hermes blacked out while the manacles slid from Frederic’s wrists. Frederic leapt from his chair, caught Nicolene by the waist just as her legs failed her, and quickly lowered her to the floor.

  “GET A PARAMED!” he bellowed.

  “It burns!” Nicolene groaned as her breaths began coming in short, uneven bursts.

  “Fight it, my love! In the name of all Humanity, fight!” Frederic begged.

  Michael activated his Cell and desperately tried to connect with the local emergency services.

  “HURRY!” Frederic shouted.

  “The fuck!” Michael cried; his voice a mix of disbelief and panic.

  Daryl was at his side in an instant.

  “My Cell’s com-functions, they’re not working!” Michael explained frantically.

  Daryl and Ronald activated their Cells and also found their com-functions dead. An ear piercing shriek erupted from Nicolene as her body was wracked by terrible spasms.

  “They are being jammed,” Daryl realized; his voice, as always, calm and steady.

  “How’s that possible?!” Ronald wondered, his voice tinged with panic.

  Daryl attempted to work out the problem while one of his dearest friends writhed in agony on the floor. Although it seemed like an eternity to everyone else in the room, Daryl deduced the problem in a matter of seconds. “The Hermes,” he stated.

  “Destroy it!” Michael barked.

  “We cannot,” Daryl countered, “it might have more traps.”

  “Love . . . ,” Nicolene squeaked as she groped for Frederic’s face. Her eyes had been clouded over by a translucent film of crimson, and it was painfully obvious to Frederic that his wife had been blinded by whatever poison was ravaging her.

  Frederic grabbed her quivering hand and brought it to his cheek. “No! Oh, please, no!” he blubbered as his wife’s body continued to quake.

  Nicolene let out another shriek, and her back arched deeply. Blood began to run in rivulets from her nose, ears, and eyes and rapidly coursed down her face.

  “The direct line!” Ronald exclaimed, silently cursing their stupidity in forgetting this particular emergency measure in their panic.

  Ernesto, who had been frozen in horror throughout the crisis, sped behind Frederic’s desk and threw open a drawer containing a telephone receiver based on ancient land-line technology. He snatched up the receiver, which automatically put in a call to the emergency response services. The pleasant voice of a young man answered, but he could only get a few syllables out before Ernesto cut him off. “We have an emergency at Von Raben Manor, priority code black! Mrs. Nicolene Miller-Von Raben’s been poisoned and is dying!” he blurted.

  “An emergency team’s been dispatched, sir. ETA, five minutes plus. Please remain calm,” the operator informed him.

  “That’s too long!” Ernesto raged.

  Daryl’s medical sensors were now informing him of the grim fact that Nicolene was mere seconds from death. This fact was made obvious to the others in the room when Nicolene’s complexion went ghostly pale and her breathing became dangerously shallow and ragged. A liquid hack gurgled from her mouth accompanied by a small gush of blood, and then her body went limp. One final, pitiful breath wheezed from her lungs, then she was still.

  “DON’T GO!!!” Frederic screamed as he dropped her hand and placed his hand on her chest.

  No heart beat within her, and with a desperate sob he began CPR, but after nearly ten minutes had passed without success, he finally gave up. Frederic Von Raben, the mighty patriarch of the Von Raben family and Chairman and CEO of Veriform Holdings, laid his head on his dead wife’s chest and wept. Michael tossed his blade aside and he and Ronald joined Frederic beside the fallen lady. Together they mourned the passing of the woman whose kindness and gentle nature was renown by countess people. None present could bring themselves to look upon her bloody face or into her lifeless, half lidded eyes. It seemed almost sacrilegious to replace the image of her lively, expressive face with this terrible mockery.

  As Daryl looked on in silence, a rogue thought flashed through his mind, and he looked about the office, “Where is Ernesto?”

  SEVENTEEN

  The sound of a Lux-car’s hover jets woke Stephen from a peaceful slumber. Pauline was snoring softly beside him, her nude body glowing in the moonlight. He carefully left the bed and, after tenderly covering Pauline with a sheet, began to search for his clothes, which had been torn from his body by Pauline before their passionate lovemaking had commenced. The thought of her dexterous little fingers unbuckling his belt as her tongue and lips teased their way down his bare torso sent a shiver down his spine. He considered crawling back into bed and rousing her for another bout of loving, but quickly shoved those thoughts aside as he continued his search.

  He eventually located his shirt and pants and began dressing, trying desperately not to wake his lover. He had just finished when he heard a soft rustling coming from the bed and turned to find Pauline crawling across its width towards him. “Where are you off to?” she purred as she rose up and ran her hands across his chest, the engagement ring he had given her only a week before glittering in the moonlight.

  “A Lux-car just pulled up outside, and I’m going to see who’s arrived,” he explained quietly.

  Pauline rose up, pressed her body against his, and nibbled his earlobe. “You could do that, or you could come back to bed and pleasure me some more, Mr. Governor,” she whispered lustily, her breath a hot, seductive breeze moving past his ear.

  Stephen inhaled a deep, shuddery breath, his arousal moving through him in a fierce, heady rush, “When I return, I promise to thoroughly pleasure you as many times as you want.”

  “Hurry back,” Pauline urged in a husky voice before giving him a fiery kiss.

  After the kiss ended he gazed upon the love of his life with complete and potent adoration. “I love you so very much!” he proclaimed before tearing himself away from her, the action requiring a titanic force of will, and making his way from the room.

  That final kiss would be the last one he would ever experience.

  #

  Stephen and Pauline had celebrated Founding Day with his father and sister at the Fulsom ancestral mansion. It had been a wonderful holiday, made all the more wonderful by the fact he and his father had enjoyed each other’s company without coming to blows over politics or corporate feuds. The man had even seemed genuinely happy for the couple when he had been informed of their recent engagement. Richard had been conspicuously absent, but Stephen was grateful for this, as both he and Pauline found his presence extremely repugnant.

  In a way, he was grateful to his brother as the man’s cruelty had led to his meeting Pauline. He had been in relationships before, but this woman, this inconceivable beauty, connected with him in a way he never could have fathomed before. They possessed many similarities, and their differences were minor enough to have virtually no impact on their relationship. It had been a blissful five years, and he loved watching as Pauline had transformed from a timid little lady into a strong, vivacious woman during this time. He could finally stand it no longer, and exactly one week before Founding Day he had proposed to her, and she had made him the luckiest man in
the universe by accepting. The first person he had shared this news with had been Bertram Von Raben, who was rendered wild with exhilaration by both this news and Stephen’s request that he be best man at the wedding.

  His mind was still fixated on all things relating to Pauline when he reached the second floor landing, where he thought he could hear his father’s voice drifting up from the first floor.

  “Thank the White Spider on my behalf,” Alexander stated.

  Stephen crept to the top of the stairs and looked down to see his father standing with his back to the staircase. Facing him was a pair of unfamiliar men in casual dress. On the floor between them lay a large, bulging knapsack. The men turned and silently left the house, leaving the sack behind.

  “The Spiders can be a very impudent lot,” a deep, soulless voice remarked from the shadows.

  There was a squeak of rubber as a very tall, powerfully-built man wearing a dirty green rain slicker stepped from the shadows and went to Alexander’s side. He was completely hairless, and his skin was deathly pale with a marbling of dark blue veins throbbing just below its surface. Dark, beady eyes glared from beneath a heavy brow on a face dominated by a large hooked nose. A mental image of a vulture occurred to Stephen, an image he would have found amusing were it not for the apprehension dominating his being.

  “You may open the bag if you like, Lurah,” Alexander offered.

  “I don’t remember giving you permission to use my name,” the bald man pointed out, the menace in his voice readily discernable.

  Stephen was left utterly dumbfounded when his father stammered out a humble apology. Who is that man, he wondered.

  “This had better be worth my time. Between the cost of this product and the risk that comes with leaving the dome to get it, my chieftain and I won’t tolerate subpar goods,” the man said as he stalked his way to the sack and roughly undid the zipper.

  He threw a couple of handfuls of clothing aside before reaching into the sack and hefting a small boy wearing black formalwear into his arms. The boy’s hair was a mess of black tresses, and his limp body and the way his head lolled from side to side indicated to Stephen that he was heavily sedated. His heart sank upon suddenly recognizing the boy as Del Von Raben.

  “He looks strong and healthy, and at such a young age it’ll be simple to subjugate him,” the man remarked, his face betraying a tiny hint of pleasure.

  “And his family will be completely unable to locate him once you’ve taken him away?” Alexander asked, a distinct discomfort suddenly manifesting in his demeanor.

  “He’ll be nothing more than a memory, which will, in turn, be devoured by time.”

  “That’s wonderfully poetic, but could you please get him out of here now?!” Alexander hissed.

  Before the man could act, Stephen flew down the stairs and with utter fury confronted his father. “What have you done?!”

  Alexander was obviously flustered by his son’s sudden appearance, but he managed to answer, “I did what had to be done to keep the Von Rabens from gaining presidential power.”

  “You’re completely insane! All this over some stupid argument that took place centuries ago?! As much as I hated them, at least the corporate skirmishes were legal, but kidnapping an innocent child?! Oh, and those other men damned well better not have actually been Spiders, because neither your money nor my office will save you from the law if they were!”

  Alexander looked pained, “The Von Rabens can’t gain the presidency! If you could just understand why–”

  Interruption came in the form of Richard throwing the front door open with such force that a crystal vase sitting on a nearby credenza tumbled to the floor and shattered into countless tiny shards. “I’m home, and I just saw the funniest thing on the news ticker earlier!” he shouted; his inebriation painfully obvious.

  Alexander and Stephen both regarded Richard with open contempt as he staggered up and plopped a hand on Stephen’s shoulder.

  “You’re supposed to be confined to the mansion!” Alexander pointedly reminded his drunken son.

  Richard either missed or purposely ignored his father’s remark. “Someone kidnapped a kid tonight!” he announced happily.

  “Shut up, you drunken fool!” Alexander snapped.

  Richard ignored the command, “The kid was that Maximilian guy’s son. Bunch of Von Raben brats hangin’ off Frederic’s tit! Wonder who did it. Really hope it was one of ours.”

  Just then Richard noticed the man who stood with Del in his arms. A pleased chuckle tittered from him, “Looks like it was one of ours! Kudos, Pater!”

  Alexander gave an angry shout and raised his hand to strike his son, but was stilled by the sound of footsteps charging up the front walk.

  A Snake ranger in green and black combat fatigues, part of the small platoon which had accompanied Stephen as his bodyguards, thundered into the room. Her spatha, a type of double-edged sword, was clutched in her hand and her ruddy face was tight with worry. The man in the slicker casually turned from away from her, using his large frame to conceal the boy in his arms as she skidded to a halt in front of the quartet. “Mr. Governor,” there’s an armed man at the front gate demandin’ to see your father,” she reported, her words flying from her lips.

  “Doesn’t he know he’s gotta buy tickets like everybody else?!” Richard blurted out.

  “I won’t tell you again to shut up!” Alexander barked at his son before turning to the ranger. “I’ll be along shortly,” he told her.

  “No, I’ll go. Gotta keep this situation from becoming worse than it already is,” Stephen decided.

  #

  Stephen had begun to grow uneasy as he approached the main gate of the mansion grounds. A man clothed in a black kimono was bashing the gate with the hilt of a scimitar. His handsome face was contorted with unfathomable rage as he shouted curses at the platoon of Snake rangers arrayed defensively inside the gate.

  “You tell the spunk bags hiding in that house to come out here and face me!” he raved.

  “Stand down and step aside, please,” Stephen ordered as he came up behind his guards.

  The group parted, allowing the man outside the gate to glare at Stephen for several charged moments. Finally, he spoke, “I’m Ernesto Lavenza, manservant of Lady Nicolene Miller-Von Raben! I demand retribution for her murder and the kidnapping of her grandchild! I will personally kill every Fulsom with my bare hands, including you, Mr. Governor! I challenge you!”

  “I’m certain this is a huge misunderstanding, my friend. If you’d just calm down, we could talk this out like civilized human beings. Please, open the gate,” Stephen requested in a gentle voice.

  There was a loud buzzing, and the gate slowly swung inward. Ernesto had lowered his weapon, which actually belonged to Michael, but still regarded Stephen with a fearsome expression.

  “I promise no one’ll harm you. Now, would you like to tell me what’s wrong?” Stephen offered.

  Suddenly Richard staggered in front of Stephen, his rapier and main gauche in hand. “I’ll kill you, you Von Raben lovin’ shit-banger!” he bellowed.

  Stephen watched aghast as Richard lunged at Ernesto with all the drunken grace he could muster, his rapier aimed at the man’s chest. Ernesto dodged outside the blow and grabbed hold of Richard’s outstretched arm. Before Richard had even realized he was caught, Ernesto spun him about, forcing him to face his twin. Ernesto then gave him a hard shove between the shoulder blades. Richard staggered toward his brother, and Stephen instinctively spread his arms to catch his unbalanced brother.

  A sharp, breath-stealing pain exploded across Stephen’s senses, and he looked down to see Richard’s rapier sliding smoothly into his chest just to the left of his sternum. Within seconds, the blade had penetrated to the hilt, and blood began to seep from around the wound. Stephen slumped lifelessly to the ground as tears of devastated rage welled up in Richard’s eyes. He whirled about with full intention of slaying the man that caused him to take his brother’s life and
was met by Ernesto’s scimitar. The blade cut a line of across Richard’s right eye, which immediately grew cloudy as blood bloomed across his vision. Despite his alcohol-dimmed senses, agony was made known to Richard as he dropped his main gauche and fell screaming to the ground beside his slain brother.

  At that same moment, half a dozen of the rangers rushed forward and wrestled Ernesto to the ground, disarming him in the process. Just then, Alexander came jogging from the mansion with half a dozen fully armed LSA troopers in tow. As he approached, he recognized his oldest child lying impaled on a blade, and was at his side in an instant. “Please, son, stay with me! We’ll get you help, but you gotta stay with me!” Alexander cried as he pulled Stephen’s upper body into his lap.

  All were silent as Alexander began to sob, save Richard, who was still shrieking and writhing about on the ground.

  After a few moments, one of the rangers knelt beside Alexander and whispered at length in his ear. When the ranger had finished, Alexander glared hatefully at Ernesto. His hand suddenly darted forward and snatched Richard’s main gauche from the ground. In the span of seconds, he had crossed the gap between himself and Ernesto and skewered the defenseless man’s throat. Three rangers wrestled Alexander away from Ernesto, who lay silent as blood gushed from the horrendous wound to his throat, a wound which killed him less than three minutes later.

  “Pater, I’m hurt,” a voice groaned weakly.

  Hope flared in Alexander like a sudden inferno as he heard what sounded like Stephen’s voice. This feeling immediately turned to fiery rage as he spotted Richard crawling weakly towards him while repeating the words spoken seconds earlier.

  “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!” Alexander thundered.

  The infuriated man broke free of the rangers, sped to his wounded son, and proceeded to kick him repeatedly in the ribs. Richard attempted to cry out, but could manage only a dry wheeze as the air was forced from his lungs.

  “I cast you out! You’ll have nothing more to do with me or my business, and I’ll no longer support you! I no longer have any sons! They’re both dead!” Alexander seethed before spitting on the back of Richard’s head.