How To Capture The Crow

Chapter Eleven

I kneel on the floor next to the couch where Raven is laying and lift her shirt up staring at her wound intensely.

"This is going to burn a bit" I say dabbing some alcohol onto a cotton swab and gently pressing it onto her wound.

"Why were you lost in the city?" Raven asks clearly trying to keep her mind off of the stinging pain she must feel.

I shake my head and breathe deeply.

"It's embarrassing" I say shyly then laugh a little pausing as I look from her wound to her eyes that aren't intrusive or demanding more information, but kind and understanding.

"I was looking for... someone." I say and squint my eyes as if it were painful for me to say.

"I mean..." I pause again "Not someone I know, just anyone really." I focus on her wound drying it gently and putting gauze over it.

"Oh god, I sound like a creep don't I?" I blush a little as I tape the gauze over her wound and then I frown a bit.

"Have you ever just been lost? Not without a sense of direction, but lost because you don't have a purpose..." I bite my bottom lip as I finish taping her up and I look down at the ground, "when my mom died I felt like the only real piece of who I was died with her. Like nothing was real anymore. I became nothing, empty, alone..."

I feel a tear roll down my cheek and I quickly wipe it up.

Raven sits up and takes the cotton swab out of my hand and holds it.

"Come on" She says helping me up and walking with me out into my back yard.

We walk over the back of the wall and then she clasps her hands together for me to step on then and I stare at her strangely but I step on them quickly grabbing onto the side of the roof and pulling myself up as she lifts me. She makes her way up to as I struggle to get to the top.

Raven smirks at me and lays down staring at the stars and I soon join in.

She flips her lighter open and pulls her cigarettes out of her pocket slowly inhaling and exhaling the smoke and blowing it into the clear bright night sky, illuminated by the moon and stars.

She points at the sky with her middle and index fingers cigarette wedged in between and says, "my mom once told me that stars are like love."

I look over at her and smile a little bit "She did?"

"Yea" Raven says with her raspy voice and blows out another stream of smoke.

"Even when a star dies you can still see it burning." She says flicking her ash and letting it roll all the way down the slope of the roof, the wind blowing it back and forth till it falls.

I look up at the stars, some fading from bright to dim and others a constant beam of light.

"Your mom killed herself." I say in a sad tone almost forgetting in the midst of my despair that I'm not the only one who lost their mother.

"No" Raven says "the guilt did" She says still looking into the sky.

"Once she became... one of us, She couldn't kill innocent people. Her friends, her acquaintances, anyone and everyone she knew, strangers she had only seen once. She isolated herself trying to never know anyone. To never see anyone, until one night, on the full moon, she turned, and she didn't come back. We found her in the forest soon after, her ashes at least..."

Raven takes a deep breath and puts her cigarette out. "She had killed some kid in a nearby village"

I look over at Raven and I swallow hard.

"Have you ever killed a kid?"

Raven shakes her head no and then looks over at me.

"I find its best to make friends with criminals."

"Like Olivia?" I say

"Yes" Raven says and strokes her wound with her finger tips.

"Well, that explains a lot" I say thinking of my house keys, my purse, and who knows what else.

I roll over onto my side and I lay on my arm looking at her short hair tucked behind her ears and her heart beating in the veins in her neck.

"I'm not afraid of you" I say and I reach over to her hand grabbing it away from her wound and holding it as I look at her.

"You've only seen part of me" She says her eyes bright from the night sky.

I see her looking back at me her eyes fixed on me her fingers laced between mine I slowly lean forward and bite my lip to moisten it.

Raven lets go of my hand and pulls back from my gaze. "You should rest" She says getting up and making her way off the roof.

I look down at my hand and then to the grass in my back yard following behind her.

She opens my back door and I feel her stop and hold her hand out as if she's telling me to stop.

"Why are you here" I hear Raven growl beneath her tightly clenched teeth.

A dark figure stands up from the couch and the light hits his cheeks just barley so I can make out his features. He's tall and lanky with light brown hair and a distinctive scar on his face.

He smiles and his teeth look sharp and vicious like a predator.

"Is this your new meat?" He says staring at me.

Raven pushes me behind her and glares at him with fire in her eyes.

"Who are you and what are you doing in my house?" I say trying to get past Raven.

"He's my brother" Raven says with anger in her voice.