The Prophecy Read online

  The Prophecy

  The Coven Of The Raven

  Avin Vang

  Copyright © 2018 Avin Vang | All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  Introduction

  1. Raven

  2. Matthias

  3. Raven

  4. Matthias

  5. Raven

  6. Matthias

  7. Raven

  8. Matthias

  9. Raven

  10. Matthias

  11. Raven

  12. Matthias

  13. Raven

  14. Matthias

  Epilogue

  Do you want more Paranormal Romance?

  Ali

  Anatolie

  Ali

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  A message from Avin Vang

  About the Author

  Introduction

  Raven is a beautiful young woman trying to escape from the normal Spring Break party scene. She has no idea that her trip to Romania is not just a bad vacation planned by her roommate, and that she is actually caught up in a prophecy that started nearly 600 years ago.

  Matthias is only concerned with one thing, getting his family’s castle back. He only has to fight off a pack of werewolves to do it. He has never cared about love or humans. He left his humanity behind when he was turned, and he has never wanted it back.

  They are fated to be enemies, but you can’t change the way you feel.

  Chapter 1

  Raven

  “Spring break!” Ali shouted as her friends tried hard to ignore her. Raven was holding her book so close to her face that she couldn’t even see the words anymore. She knew if there was even a sliver of eyeball showing Ali was going to try and talk to her. “Come on, who is taking this shot from me?”

  “Why are you drinking?” Carrie whined. “You promised you were going to take this trip seriously.”

  Carrie had broken the wall of silence. Raven set her book down. Ali was smiling ear to ear as she poured out another shot. The train was bouncing all over the place, but Ali wasn’t deterred. She had three shot glasses between her thighs and everyone was having a drink.

  “You two planned the worst spring break of all time, but nobody rain on my parade!” Ali shouted as she passed out the shots. “To banging the hell out of some hot Romanian dude!”

  The others did their shots without engaging in the cheer. Raven put her glass behind her on the seat, and picked up her book again. Carrie went back to the map that she had been using to organize their week’s activities.

  “Okay then,” Ali grumbled loudly. She was wearing a bikini top and cut off jean shorts. Ali was a blonde bombshell if ever there was one, and she was not about to let this boring trip stop her from enjoying her personal spring break traditions. She had made this point to Raven several times during the last week, but now that she was on the train with two unwilling partiers, Alison Blacktree was seeming a little deflated.

  “We are at the dig for six hours Monday to Friday, and then I have tons of stuff planned,” Carrie said as she set down the map. “There is a pottery place that actually teaches you how to make…”

  “Why do you hate spring break?!” Ali demanded to know. She looked like she was ready to explode.

  “It’s just hook-ups, fights, beer flying all over the place, crowding, dirt…I shower for hours, and I still never quite feel clean,” Raven answered before Carrie could get a word in. Raven needed a change of pace. She had already been to three spring breaks, and it just wasn’t her scene.

  She didn’t know much about Romania, and she didn’t care about archeology in the least. Raven just knew that this trip was going to be as far from a spring break trip as she could find at this time of the year.

  “We are going to have a ton of fun,” Carrie said with a defensive tone in her voice. “It isn’t maybe the kind of fun that you’re looking for, but it is going to be cool, and you’ll learn a lot.” Carrie sounded like an actor in a terrible after school special, but Raven nodded along to offer support.

  “Yeah, I’m just going to make sure that the two of you remember to have a good time.” Ali threw an arm around Raven as she flopped onto the armrest that separated Carrie and Raven’s seats. “You both need to learn to loosen up a bit.”

  Raven just put the book back in front of her face. She was not going to get into an argument with Ali about spring break. They had been going back and forth over the same points for days. No one was going to change their mind. Raven let the fingers of her left hand play with the pendant around her neck.

  It was a big, gaudy pendant that her grandmother had given her. It didn’t go with any outfit, but Raven always wore it when she was nervous about a trip. She felt a strength coming off of it; she liked to imagine that it was her grandmother’s arms wrapping around her. With Carrie and Ali at odds, Raven would need that strength; it was going to be a long train ride to Hunedoara.

  The small Romanian city was the home to Corvinus Castle. It was rumoured to be one of the most haunted places in Europe. “Vlad the Impaler was once a prisoner there,” Carrie had said when she was trying to get Raven excited about the trip. Raven had to admit that she liked the look of the castle, the weathered stone, and the high peaks on the red roofs on the minarets.

  There was something about the building that called to her. Raven had made Corvinus Castle her screensaver right after Carrie sent the first of 25 images to Raven’s phone. The images had come in groups of two, every day since the day Raven agreed to go on the trip. Raven looked at her screen one last time before closing her eyes.

  “Come on, time to go,” Carrie was yelling. Raven’s eyes shot open and she looked around. Raven felt disoriented as Carrie started tossing bags from the overhead compartment. “I already have a cab waiting to take us to the castle.”

  “It’s Saturday,” Ali groaned as she fought through the raining baggage to talk to Carrie. “We don’t need to spend every day at the dig site.”

  “That’s true, and we’re not going to do that.” Carrie smiled broadly as she turned to look at her friends. “I booked us a tour of the castle!”

  Carrie’s excitement seemed to drain away as she noted the lack of enthusiasm on her friends’ faces. It had been a long plane ride, then a taxi, and an equally long train ride. Now they were going for a walking tour. Raven was hoping for a bed, and Ali wanted more of a pub crawl than a walking tour.

  “Well, it’s already happening so grab your stuff,” Carrie shrugged as she found her bags and headed out the door.

  “I need to sit down and talk with our little travel agent,” Ali grumbled.

  Raven grabbed her bags as Ali took a quick swig from her bottle and then pulled herself together. “How did the two of you become friends anyway?” Raven asked as the girls went to find Carrie.

  “We got…um…hm.” Ali seemed a little confused about the details herself. They definitely seemed like an odd match for friends. “We were paired together on a project in first year.” Ali laughed to herself for a second. Raven felt like she was being left out of an inside joke, but she always felt that way around Carrie and Ali. For all thei
r differences, they seemed to have their own secret language.

  They found Carrie standing beside the open trunk of a red and black taxi. “Move it!” The normally demure Carrie was tapping her foot and looking at a wrist that definitely didn’t have a watch on it. Raven and Ali rolled their eyes simultaneously as they dragged their feet across the pavement.

  Raven was excited to see the castle. She wasn’t normally a guided tour kind of person. She never wanted to be a tourist. Tourists were old and boring, and they took too many pictures. Raven preferred youth hostels to hotels and she always tried to find her own routes when touring an area. Her favorite vacation pastime was asking locals for their directions to different sites.

  “Have you ever taken the tour?” Raven asked the taxi driver.

  “His English is poor,” Carrie snapped, “and put on your seatbelt.” Raven was going to press the issue, but the driver seemed very on edge.

  The trip was uneventful, though the driver was eager to depart after hastily depositing them outside the castle. Raven let Carrie and Ali proceed ahead as she paused to take in the splendour of the impressive structure before her. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face, no matter how hard she tried. The sense of history was undeniable, but her appreciation was cut short as an impatient Carrie beckoned her onwards from the castle’s entrance.

  Stepping through the entrance, Raven joined her friends as a smiling, unknown man made his way towards them.

  “My name is Roman and I will be your guide.” Ali knocked Carrie and Raven to the side as she rushed to get her hand out. “Oh, hi, I…”

  “It is so funny, we were just talking about you on the train,” Ali said, turning and giving Raven a wink.

  “How did you know about me?”

  “Sorry, I meant the tour.” Ali was still holding Roman’s hand. She was smiling brightly, which had more than a little to do with the half-empty bottle in her bag.

  “Okay, we’re going to get started then,” Roman smiled. He seemed more than comfortable with the aggressive American on his arm. He led them off down the hall with Ali just dripping off of him.

  There were a few other employees standing around, and Raven noticed that they all seemed to share similar features. They looked like they could be brothers, not twins, but there definitely appeared to be a family connection. She asked Carrie whether she noticed it too, but Carrie just shrugged it off.

  “They’re gypsies,” Carrie whispered. “Their family trees don’t have a lot of forks.” The girls giggled, and then Carrie waved her arms and they both fought to pull themselves together.

  “I am trying to listen to our guide!” Ali snapped. “Some people have no respect for history.” Carrie and Raven burst out laughing. Ali scoffed at them and led Roman on down the hall, leaving the gigglers to try and pull themselves together.

  Raven could feel the power surging through the stone walls of the ancient building. There were definitely spirits moving through the chipped and broken façade. Touching her hand to the hard surface, Raven felt as though she was in communication with the dead. “What do you hear?”

  “What?” Raven looked up to see Roman standing over her. He was at least 6’5” and his broad shoulders made for a very imposing frame.

  “It looked like you were listening for something,” Roman explained. He had piercing eyes; there was something inhuman about them. His intense gaze was hitting Raven right in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to look away, but she was a deer frozen in the headlights.

  “I don’t know how to explain it,” Raven laughed nervously. “I have always felt like I could hear the spirits talking to me…please forget I said that…that was dumb.”

  “No, I get it,” Roman smiled. “This place is full of ghosts and ghouls…I mean, if you believe in that stuff.” Roman laughed awkwardly and was about to say something else when Ali swept in and pulled him away. Raven was happy for the interruption. She hated to talk about her weird feelings. She had spent most of her life trying to ignore them.

  “We’re going out with Roman and a few of the other guides after this,” Carrie moaned as she sidled up to Raven. “I tried to talk her out of it, but Ali has her heart set on it…or him, or whatever.”

  “That’s fine,” Raven’s voice was a thousand miles away.

  “Are you okay?” Carrie asked. Raven had moved past the wall, and the awkward conversation, but a painting had caught her eye. “Freaky-looking bird with a beak ring?”

  “That is the crest of the Hunyadi family,” Roman explained as he dragged Ali over to join them. “It is a raven with a ring on its beak, and it was designed to pay homage to the legend of the Raven.”

  “Legends!” Ali shouted. “I’m all in, spill!”

  “Yes, I was going to,” Roman chuckled. “Legend has it that John Hunyadi was actually the bastard son of the King of Hungary. The King gave his mother a ring for the child so that everyone would know who the child was, and he married her off to one of his most loyal knights. The official legend says that at a family picnic a raven stole the ring and John Hunyadi shot the bird with an arrow, proving that he would have a prosperous and glorious future.”

  “So cool!” Ali shouted. Carrie and Raven both shook their heads as their friend continued to try and seem interested in the tour.

  “And the unofficial legend?” Carrie fixed Roman with a hard stare, but Roman seemed happy to share the information.

  “Well, some believe that the raven was actually a witch,” Roman lowered his voice and leaned in. “Hunyadi the elder was trying to secure the crown for his secretly adopted son. He traded the ring for a spell that would grant his family prosperity. When the witch flew away in the form of a raven, she was shot with an arrow. John Hunyadi would go on to become protector of the realm, but his family…”

  “His son Matthias Corvinus became the king,” Carrie had been reading through the Hunyadi family history on the train ride.

  “If you believe that account,” Roman shrugged. “Both of his sons were taken hostage. The older brother was executed, and then the same men made the younger brother king. Some believe that they needed the younger brother to have a legitimate king, but others believe that they only needed his name.”

  Raven just stared at the ring itself, her fingers lazily playing with the pendant on her grandmother’s necklace. She had seen the pattern on the ring somewhere before.

  Chapter 2

  Matthias

  “Matt, I am so glad that you brought me on this trip,” Jenna was incredibly excited to be in Romania. “I never get out of the city. I’ve been saying it all the time, man…all the time.”

  “Get some rest,” Matthias smiled at his travelling companion.

  “You just got here, I thought we could talk for a bit,” Jenna pouted. She had been waiting all day for some time to hang out with her mysterious benefactor. “I mean you paid all this money for me to go on this dig, and I’ve barely spent any time with you.”

  “I’m sorry, but as my associate explained, I am receiving treatment for an extremely rare ailment and I need to stay in complete darkness during the day…”

  “I know that, I…I’m sorry, you must think I’m such an idiot,” Jenna sighed.

  “Just the opposite,” Matthias coughed to hide the disdain in his voice. “You are very...smart, and that is why we chose you for this prize.”

  “I know, I know, I’m just…I’m sorry. You don’t need to keep listening to me whine,” Jenna said as she stood up and started moving around the small train compartment. “I just don’t know why I’m so tired all the time lately.”

  “Low iron,” Matthias replied as he flipped through the paper. The sun had just gone down and he was still feeling a little groggy after bumping along on the train tracks all day long. “I mean, low iron could be the reason. I am of course not a doctor, but I have heard these things can be related.

  “Yeah, just tired all the time,” Jenna couldn’t really follow what Matthias was saying. Matthias breathed a
sigh of relief as he could see that there was not even the least bit of suspicion on Jenna’s face. Matthias hadn’t planned to feed on the student.

  “What happened?” Martin said as he came into the room. It only took one look at Jenna for Martin to know something was wrong. “I thought you were going to talk to her?”

  “We did talk,” Matthias sighed as his assistant started fussing over the girl.

  “We need her,” Martin reminded his boss. “Will she even be able to hold a shovel?”

  “I am always ready for a dig!” Jenna was going to be Matthias’s connection to the archeological findings that the dig unearthed. “Oh no, you’re going to fire me!”

  Matthias sat back as Martin tried to calm the distressed and depleted student. There was just something about young blood that Matthias found irresistible. Matthias watched over his paper as Jenna walked back and forth across the compartment. Even fully fed, the smell of her skin was driving him wild.

  Her soft, bronzed skin was the first thing that drew his eye to the 22-year-old archeology student. She was tall, and her loose-fitting tracksuit didn’t hide her hourglass figure. Jenna had paid for most of her education working as a model. She was definitely attractive, but Matthias hadn’t taken a sexual interest in a woman in centuries; humans were food.

  Matthias knew that he needed her to be functioning at a hundred percent if she was going to be of any use to him. He just couldn’t seem to fight off his hunger. Matthias was on edge, he knew that this could be his only chance at returning home.