She saw Stevie Rae bark out orders to the other guys while she just watched and listened to her high priestess.
So much has happened; she met Stevie Rae when she was turned into a fledging. Stevie Rae helped her and was super nice to her. Then, Zoey came and the both of them became really close.
She saw the closeness and slowly she became isolated. She knew Stevie Rae was becoming best friends, something she always wanted but never had, so she didn't impose.
Alena was sweet and calm. She always loved to help people and always wanted to be the best for her high priestess.
She was actually glad she became a fledging, it took her away from her boring life, where she barely had any friends but she didn't care. She had her mother, her mother who was always there for her.
She felt something in her lungs and it became hard to breathe as she thought of her mother. She slowly and mentally counted number in her mind before she could crumple in on herself.
She touched the tattoos that framed her right side of the side, signaling she was a transformed vampyre.
She was a red vampyre just like Stevie Rae with the only ability she had was to create force fields with her mind.
She hadn't realized she was so into thought when Stevie Rae called her name over again.
"Alena? Alena Lucia?" Stevie Rae asked.
"Huh? Oh, sorry, what did you say?" Alena asked as she felt embarrassed.
"I said, I need you to go down along the tree row by twenty first and check out f there are more raven mockers."
"Oh, um okay…"
"You'll be okay?" Stevie Rae asked, remembering that Alena was a loner but really nice and sweet.
"Yeah, I'll be okay."
"Alright, y'all meet me in front of Mary's grotto in half an hour or so. Holler loud if you find anything and we'll all come runnin'"
She watched as they each took off in each different direction. She felt jealous that Stevie Rae was dating Dallas, wishing she had someone to love for besides her mother.
They really do make a cute couple, she thought as she trudged through the grove of old tress that ringed Mary's grotto and buffered the abbey's land from busy Twenty first Street.
She hadn't gone a dozen paces before her long honey colored wavy waist length hair with blonde streaks within her bangs that were swept to the side, were completely soaked.
Water was dripping off of her everywhere. She backhanded her face, wiping off the cold, wet mixture of rain and ice.
Everything was so weirdly dark and silent. It was weird that there was no streetlight working. No cars or TPD were visible. She slipped and slid down the incline.
Her feet met road and only one her super-good red vampyre night vision kept her oriented.
Feeling skittish, she backhanded the sopping wet hair from her face again and pulled herself together just like her mama always had taught her.
Alena kicked at a broken, ice covered branch. Squinting and cupping her hand over her jade colored eyes to try to shield them from the sting of the icy rain, she peered up into the branches of the tree.
Even with the darkness and the storm, her eyesight like any other red fledging, was good, and she was relieved not to see any big dark bodies lurking above her.
She made her way down Twenty first street heading away from the abbey, all the while keeping her eyes up.
It wasn't until she was almost at the fence line that divided the nuns' property from the upscale condo beside it that she smelled it.
Blood.
A wrong kind of Blood.
She stopped, looking almost feral, She sniffed the air. It was filled with wet musty scent of ice as it coated the earth, the crisp, cinnamon smell of the winter trees, and the man made tang of the asphalt beneath her feet.
She ignored those scents and instead focused on the blood.
It wasn't human blood, or even fledging blood, so it didn't smell like sunlight and spring,- honey and chocolate- love and life and everything that she'd ever dreamed of.
No, this blood smelled too dark. Too thick. There was too much of something in it that wasn't human. But it was still blood, and it drew her, even though she knew the wrongness of it deep in her soul,
It was the scent of something strange, something otherworldly that led her to the first splashes of crimson.
In the stormy darkness of the sunless predawn, even her enhanced vision saw it only as wet splotches against the ice that sheeted the road and covered the grass beside it.
But she knew it was blood. A lot of blood.
But there was no animal or human lying there bleeding.
Instead there was a trail of liquid darkness thickening in the sheeting ice, moving away from the street and into the densest part of the grove behind the abbey.
Her predator's instinct kicked in instantly. Alena moved stealthily, hardly breathing, hardly making a sound, as she tracked down the blood path.
It was beneath one of the largest trees that she found it, hunkered down under a huge, newly broken branch as if it had dragged itself there to hide and die.
Alena felt a shudder of fear pass through her. It was a raven Mocker.
The creature was huge. Bigger than she'd thought they'd looked from a distance. It lay on its side, head tucked down against the ground, so she couldn't see its face very well.
The giant wing she could see looked wrong, obviously broken, and the human arm that lay beneath it was weirdly angled and covered with blood. Its legs were human, too, and curled up like it had died in a fetal position.
She remembered hearing Darius firing a gun as he and Z and the gang had ridden like bats outta hell down Twenty-first to the abbey. So, he'd shot it from the sky.
"Damn," she said under her breath. "That must've been one heck of a fall."
Alena cupped her hands around her mouth and was getting ready to holler for Stevie Rae so she and the other guys could help her drag the body somewhere when the Raven Mocker twitched and opened its eyes.
She froze. The two of them stared at each other. The creature's red eyes widened, looking surprised and impossibly human in the bird face.
There was something about those eyes that made her feel something, as if she was in a dream.
They flicked around her and behind her, checking to see if she was alone. Automatically, Alena crouched, putting her hands up defensively. And then he spoke.
"Kill me. End this," he gasped, panting in pain.
The sound of his voice was so human, so completely unexpected that she dropped her hands and staggered a step back.
"You can talk!" she blurted.
Then the Raven Mocker did something that utterly shocked her and irrevocably changed the course of her life.
He laughed.
It was a dry, sarcastic sound, and it ended in a moan of pain. But it was laughter, and it framed his words with humanity.
"Yes," he said between gasps for breath. "I talk. I bleed. I die. Kill me and be done with it." He tried to sit up then, as if he were eager to meet his death and the movement caused him to cry out in agony.
His too-human eyes rolled back and he collapsed to the frozen ground, unconscious.
Alena moved before she remembered even making the decision. When she reached him, she only hesitated for a second.
He'd passed out facedown, so it was a simple thing for her to move his wings aside and grab him under his arms.
He was big, really big—like, as big as a real guy, and she'd braced herself for him to be heavy, but he wasn't.
Actually, he was so light that it was super-easy to drag him, which was what she found herself doing while her mind screamed at her: What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?
What the hell was she doing?
She didn't know. All she knew was what she wasn't doing. She wasn't killing the Raven Mocker.