Trouble no. 2 RavenCroft Collection

What?

You didn’t honestly think Bastion was going to shoot his own son, did you? If he had that wouldn’t have made for a good story. Course, just because he isn’t going to shoot him, doesn’t mean he won’t threaten him a bit.

It’s always nice to see a happy ending. Don’t you think?

And in case you all are wondering; Bastion was thinking he might well shoot Kalabernus anyway for two very different reasons. First, because his son was taking Ariana upstairs so he could make a little love to her.

But they weren’t married yet.

Mind you, Bastion fully understood human nature, of course, but he also believed in the importance of marriage. He did have some scruples, after all, and he’d thought he’d taught his son better than that too. He fully intended to stop Kalabernus before things got x-rated. As far as he was concerned, if they were going to be a couple and have babies, then they needed to be married. This might seem a bit backward to you, I suppose, considering she’s pregnant, but just because someone makes a bad choice initially, doesn’t mean they can’t put effort into making things right.

Bastion’s second reason was because Kalabernus had clearly broken his promise and allowed the shadows to take him over. That notion riled him just about as much as the fact that Kalabernus intended to consummate his marriage before the wedding even took place.

Shoot, the man hadn’t even proposed to her yet!

The RavenCroft patriarch might not have been raised in a house of faith but he figured no good ever came from letting the shadows in. He’d seen proof of that first hand... and paid a rather high price for it too. But that’s another story.

In case you’re wondering who that stalker was, well, Sheriff Kalturek RavenCroft managed to get the prints off the body of the stalker and soon learned that the man’s name had been Anthony Warren. After a little investigation, it was discovered that Anthony had been a classmate of Ariana’s sister. This knowledge prompted Ariana to dig back into her sister’s things and that’s when she found Sareena’s diary. It would seem Anthony Warren had developed an unhealthy fixation on Ariana at an early age. Sareena had initially thought it just a school-boy crush that would eventually go away after a couple years. But then she caught Anthony following her sister around and peeking through Ariana’s bedroom window at night on several occasions. That was when Sareena confronted Anthony and threatened to tell on him if he didn’t stop. Unfortunately, Sareena had no idea how truly dangerous young Anthony Warren was. She never got a chance to tell anybody about her concerns because the day after her last entry in her diary, Sareena died in a car accident when her supposedly frayed brake lines went out on her. She was sixteen at the time.

Though Sheriff RavenCroft couldn’t prove that Anthony Warren had anything to do with Sareena Davis’s accident many years before, between the timing of her last diary entry and Bastion’s vision from several days prior, it led them to believe that he was likely responsible for Sareena’s death.

Man, it broke Ariana’s heart to find this out. Her sister had tried to protect her and wound up dead for her efforts.

Fortunately, Ariana didn’t stay sad for long. Not wanting to take anything for granted where Ariana was concerned, Kalabernus pulled her into the living room the next Wednesday night, bent down on one knee in front of the roaring fire in his father’s hearth, and asked Miss Ariana Davis to marry him. His resounding whoop upon hearing her say yes could be heard fifty yards away down near the stables by the ranch hands.

Course, it helped that the living room windows happened to be propped open at the time. Which makes no sense to me seeing as it was November and there was a fire going in the fireplace. But then no one ever said the RavenCroft’s weren’t a bit different.

That’s it for now.

You’ll have to wait to find out what happens next because this story isn’t anywhere near over yet. There’s so much more going on than what you might realize. For the shadows, might have been ‘Trumped’ this time in their efforts to create havoc and chaos with all their ‘Terrible’ tactics but they weren’t done yet. They were already regrouping and forming another plan. And they had already found their next mark.

Now, as for who I, Vortigern Black, am? Well, let me ask you… Got any ideas yet? Have you at least narrowed it down to whether I am male or female?

Hahahahaha!

I bet right now, you’re presuming that Vortigern Black is a male, aren’t you? How sexist is that? Just because the name seems masculine doesn’t mean I’m a guy. After all, Bastion RavenCroft himself re-named his own son, Toni Starck, now didn’t he? And when he did that he spelled it with an ‘I.’ Typically, that would be the effeminate way of spelling the name.

I suppose you’re probably thinking, “Shoot, can’t prove it by me. The image on the cover of the last book and this one has been a guy. That has to mean you’re one of the men in the RavenCroft tale.”

Nope.

Not necessarily.

Geez, people, haven’t you ever heard of an avatar before?

Hahahahaha!

In case you haven’t, an avatar - as in the circumstance we’re using here - is an icon or figure representing a person in computer games, internet forums, and in other areas. For this series, I have chosen one for me to protect my identity. Hence the picture on the book cover. Because, you know…

…I’m deep, deep undercover after all.

Oh, and as for that hint, I promised you…

…well, gather your suspect list already and try and keep up. I know it’s hard but I’m confident you can do it.

I will tell you this much… In this story alone there were six new characters. You check the Character List of Suspects at the back of this book and you’ll see it’s true. That’s a lot of new potential suspects, don’t you think? Well, allow me to save you some ‘trouble.’

I, Vortigern Black, am not any of the new characters introduced in this book.

Be seeing you soon.