The Raven Game by Jessica Sorensen

Raven

After I tell the guys what I saw in the memory, they all sink into unnerving silence.

“It’s weird, right?” I ask. “I should be dead.” I reach up and lightly brush my fingers along my throat. The skin is smooth and scarless, which makes the memory even more confusing. “I don’t even have a scar. And I know I can scar since my side is covered with them.”

“It’s definitely weird,” Jaxon states, but a hint of doubt weighs in his tone.

“You’re questioning the weirdness,” Hunter remarks, looking at him.

The four of us are sitting in a circle with the night sky above us and the haunting howls encompassing us. We still haven’t seen any of the creatures, which I find a bit bizarre. But perhaps they’re hunting other people who are a part of the game.

Jax shrugs. “When the shadow feeder clawed her, she died, but my father had an antidote, so perhaps they had something that cured her from the throat slit.”

“Throat slitting is way more extreme than poisoning someone,” Zay grumbles. “It’d have to be some sort of drug that’s self-healing.”

“We all know our fathers were doing some sort of experimental shit,” Jax points out while rolling up his sleeves. “We already have assumed they created the shadow feeders. Created them. Our father’s created an entirely different species. If they can do that, imagine what else they can do.”

I swallow the massive, aching lump in my throat as images of me bleeding out on the floor rush through my mind. If I died and am still alive, what does that make me? Am I just a human who was healed by them? Or am I something more?

I look down at the weeping wound on my knee. “Well, clearly, it was a temporary thing since I’m bleeding now.” I smash my lips together, pausing for a beat, almost hesitant to ask, but I need to. “If my blood is the key to the map …” I trail off, unable to finish the sentence.

All I can think is, What if they want to slit my throat? Sure, they’ve shown a bit of a sign that they might not totally hate me, and the memories of them that I’ve been recalling show me that they once were nice. But, who the hell knows who they are now?

“We’re not going to slit your throat, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Jax says. “However—and I hate to say this—we may have to make you bleed a tiny bit, if what you’re saying is true, and your blood will make a trail to the ceremony, we can either try to get some of the blood out of your knee or give you a tiny cut. I honestly worry that just getting some of the blood from your knee might not work, considering, in your memory, the blood was fresh. I know how my father works, and those tiny details are his way of making everything more complicated.”

“You’ll just give me a small cut?” I’ll admit that sometimes when I’m feeling a lot of shit, physical pain is better than emotion pain, so I’m hoping it’ll help alleviate some of that.

Zay’s spine straightens, and he snaps his head toward Jax. “Like fucking hell I’m going to let you guys cut her.”

Jax calmly turns his head to him. “It’s our only choice, unless we want to just sit out here and wait for everyone to come find us and slaughter us.”

A howl echoes across the air, and I swear I feel Jax tense.

“Or everything to find us.”

Zay furiously shakes his head. “No.”

“Um …” Hunter looks between Zay and Jax as the two of them stare each other down. “As much as I hate to hurt our pretty raven, Jax has a point, man.”

Zay glares at him. “I don’t give a shit what the point is. The answer is no.” His voice drops to a soft whisper. “We’re not hurting her again.”

I’m starting to realize that Zay is the sort of guy who’s cold to everyone but the people in his inner circle, and those people, he’ll probably take a bullet for. And I think he might consider me as part of his inner circle.

Still …

“Zay.” I place my hand on his arm. He stiffens but then relaxes as he looks at me. “It’s cool. I can handle a cut or two if it means we can get the hell out of this apocalyptic forest.”

He grinds his teeth so loud I can hear it over all the chaos encompassing us. “This isn’t fair … This … after everything …” He trails off, shaking his head.

“Life never is,” I agree with him as I push to my feet. At least, I try to before I nearly collapse back to the ground. Hunter catches me before I do, though, and steadies me as we both get to our feet.

Jax stands up in front of me, his face just a shadow, but hesitancy is written all over his face.

A hesitant Jax?

Well, that’s a new one.

“Zay, I know this is hard for you, but I think you should do it.” Jax tries to sound calm, but his voice conveys a trace of uneasiness.

Before Zay can answer, I say, “I can do it … I just need a knife. Wait—I forgot I have one.” I move to reach for the knife that’s in the holster secured to my thigh, but Jax beats me to it, quickly placing a hand on my thigh.

“Dude, I can grab my own knife,” I pretend to protest, but deep down, I like the feel of his skin on mine. It brings me back to when we were getting ready to leave the house and he touched my thigh before slipping his finger into me.

“Can you?” is all he says as he slides his hand up my inner thigh until he reaches the holster.

I fight back a shiver and, since Hunter has his arm around me, he feels it.

“I think she might be getting turned on, man,” he says to Jax.

“I am not,” I protest, shaking my head, but then I shiver again as Jax pulls the knife out of my holster, his fingers brushing my flesh as he does. “I’m thinking about how I’m going to have to cut myself in a moment.”

Zay winces, but Hunter places his fingers underneath my chin and tilts my head toward him. “Well, stop thinking about it.” He skims the pad of his thumb along my bottom lip. “Let Zay make the cut. He’s a professional at this sort of stuff.”

“He’s a professional at cutting?” I question.

A hint of pain ghosts across Hunter’s pretty face, but he erases it and nods. “He is. And he knows just the right places to make a person bleed the most, or the least, depending on what we’re looking for.”

I assess Zay. His jaw is set tight, and his hands are clenched into fists. He resembles a portrait of misery as he stands in the darkness with tension rolling off him as fiery as the fires in the background.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” I tilt my head up at Hunter. “He looks like he’s about to slam his fist into a wall.”

“He’ll be fine.”

Hunter looks at Zay. “Right, Zay?”

Zay remains quiet, but then he surprises me when he sighs.

“Give me the damn knife.” He sticks out his hand to Jax. “You two distract her while I do this.” Then he drops to his knees.

My eyes pop wide, for several different reasons. One, because Zay is on his knees in front of me. And two, because he’s on his knees in front of me, about to cut me. And then, just when I think shit can’t get any stranger, Hunter kisses me.

I gasp, sucking in a breath through my nose. He pulls back, giving me a moment to catch my breath before kissing me again, parting my lips with his tongue. I moan, clutching his arms as I kiss him back, the feel of his tongue ring sending shivers through my body in the most wonderfully confusing way.

“That’s it, baby,” Hunter encourages between kisses, resting his hand at the small of my back and holding up my weight. “Relax.”

He kisses me again, and then I feel his hand drifting up my inner thigh. Well, I think it’s his hand until I realize he has one hand already on my back and the other is resting against my cheek. So, whose hand is traveling up my thigh? Zay’s? Is that where he’s going to cut me?

I’m starting to freak out when I feel fingers reach the apex of my thighs. Moments later, the edge of my panties are slid aside and a finger slips inside me.

I gasp, opening my eyes as I pull back from the kiss and find Jax in front of me.

He traces the pad of his thumb across my lips while he moves his finger inside me. “Does that feel good?”

I bob my head up and down without even thinking. It does feel good. Like, so fucking good I swear it has to be a hallucination. Maybe this all is one big hallucination. Who the hell knows? Right now, I really don’t even care.

A trace of smile rises on Jax’s lips, but I only catch a glimpse of it before Hunter’s lips are against mine again.

I moan as Jax slides another finger into me and starts moving them while Hunter kisses me, the two of them pushing me farther away from reality. I’ve just about reached the fucking stars when I hear Jax mutters, “Do it now.”

I moan as they push me over the edge while simultaneously feeling the bite of the cold metal blade of a knife. A sting of pain follows, but my mind is too far gone to even be able to process all of it, too many emotions pulsating through my body at once. And the combination isn’t necessarily bad. It’s just new, and confusing, and amazing, amongst a bunch of other thing.

Eventually, the feelings dwindle as I return to reality.

Jax has slipped his fingers out of me, and Hunter’s lips have left mine. But he leans in and gives me one small kiss, as if to assure me that he’s not abandoning me. Jax is licking his fingers, which I don’t even know what to think of that.

“It’s done,” Zay mumbles without looking at me as he wipes the blade of his knife on his pants.

I look down at my leg and see that he’s made a small cut on the side of my thigh. Blood is trickling from it and onto the floor.

“Whoa, that’s crazy,” I say. “I barely felt you cutting me.”

“It’s amazing what an orgasm can do with a little pain, isn’t it?” Hunter says with a trace of playfulness in his voice.

Somehow, even after everything, my cheeks warm. And somehow, even though it’s dark as the pits of hell themselves, Hunter manages to notice.

“She’s blushing,” he remarks with a grin.

I glare at him, but my blush only deepens. “Whatever, dude. Are we gonna follow this trail of blood to the ceremony or what?”

My words must remind everyone of the bigger picture since everyone’s gazes drops to the floor of the treehouse where my blood is currently pooling.

“It’s not doing anything,” Hunter states the obvious.

“Give it a moment,” I say. Deep down, though, I worry that perhaps this isn’t the answer. That perhaps slitting my throat is. “It took a few seconds for it to …” I trail off as, like in the memory, the blood forms a path, moving like a snake across the wood and down the side of the tree.

We all hurry to the side to see where it’s going, Hunter staying by my side and helping me as I move slower due to my injured leg that now has two cuts on it.

“Where did it go?” Hunter asks as Jax peers over the ledge of the balcony of the treehouse.

He turns toward us with a frown on his face. “Through the forest. That way.” He points toward where the fires are blazing, which also happens to be in the same direction where the howling is coming from.

Great.

“So, now what? We just run through the damn forest and hope we don’t get eaten up by—”

My words are cut off as blinding pain sears into my brain.

My veins …

My back …

My entire body …

“Raven,” someone whispers. “Ravenlee, baby, stay with me … What the hell—”

It’s the last thing I hear before everything goes dark.