Page 3 of The Raven
To destroy all those who took everything I held dear to me.
And it started with Boogie.
He emerged from the shop a few minutes later, pausing in thedoorway to find the rain was still coming down, heavier than before. In one hand, he clutched a brown paper bag containing a bottle of vodka. No doubt his second, or even his third, bottle of the day.
It seemed the events of last year had impacted Boogie in ways theyhadn’t impacted the other Vipers, not that Boogie had shown any remorse. Instead, he’d turned to alcohol in a bid to block out his crimes.
Braving the rain, Boogie darted from the shop door, andhurriedly made his way along South Street toward his tiny studio apartment, his feet hitting puddles and splashing water up his legs.
I pulled my hood further over my head to hide my face as I followedhim. Within a few seconds, the rain battered my clothes, plastering my long black hair to my face, and sending a chill down my spine.
Another misconception. I always thought that if ghosts existed, theycouldn’t feel things.
But I felteverything.
Including the unbearable pain I’d been subjected to on the night theVipers wreaked havoc.
The pain I would carry with me until every single person who wasresponsible for what they did were no longer breathing.
Boogie didn’t glance behind him once; his sole focus was on reachinghis front door so he could lock himself away and drown his sorrows. He kepthis head down, the bottle clutched under his jacket as he dodged people, barely missing being hit by a car as he sprinted across the road to his apartment.
I followed, watching in amusement as he fumbled with his keysbefore dropping them. When he bent down to pick them up, his head turned so he could look over his shoulder, his eyes scanning the street. Across the road, I stared at him, and when his eyes met mine, hidden under my hood, a flash of fear passed over his face.
It was as if he knew he was being hunted.
Picking up his keys and finding the correct one, he dashed inside and out ofthe rain. I waited for a minute until the light in his top-floor apartment flicked on before I stepped back into the shadows, deciding to give Boogie a little longer to live.
He was an easy target; he’d drink himself into a stupor before hecould try to fight back.
Not that I was worried about Boogie hurting me.
After all, the dead couldn’t die twice.
Boogie was the last idiot to join the Vipers. He moved to the townwhen he was twelve, quickly earning his nickname because of the giant booger hanging out of his nose on his first day of school. The nickname stuck, even twenty years later.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it, theVipers saw Boogie as an easy target and inducted him into their gang. Sure, kids stopped picking on him, scared of what the gang would do if they continued to tauntBoogie, but Boogie was too stupid to realize that the Vipers were using him to do their bidding.
It started small, encouraging Boogie to steal from classmates, but inrecent years, Boogie had served time in Hadleigh Peak Penitentiary for robbing a jewelry shop, set up by the leader of the Vipers, Grim.
I didn’t remember anything about Grim or Boogie, or the other Vipers. Mymemories from before were nothing but darkness, lost in the abyss, until Oz showed me select events from my past that I needed to remember.
It was a shame that Boogie had fallen in with the wrong crowd; thepath he should have been on would have led him to a happier life, with a wife and three kids, a great job, and a big house with a white picket fence.
But Boogie made the wrong choice.
And now he would pay.
For what he did to me.
For what he did to Eric.
At the thought of Eric, blinding-hot agony pierced through the spacewhere my heart should have been beating. My fiancé. The man who’d tried to protect me when the Vipers broke in and attacked us, only to have been brutally murdered right before my eyes.
Yeah, Boogie would pay.
They wouldallpay.
Gaining access to Boogie’s apartment was easy. The idiot didn’t lock hisdoor. My theory that he’d drink himself into oblivion was correct; I found him passed out on his bed, loud snores and grunts erupting from him.
