Raven Cursed: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (16 page)

I said nothing, knowing now that he didn’t intend to kill or trank me. Knowing that this was a form of intervention, an act of compassion. Some confessions are just that—acts of kindness.

“I might have disarmed him, dragged him down with me. I might have forced him to drink of Grégoire’s blood
and heal him. But I saved myself and let him burn. And, even now, I hear his screams when I wake in the night. Hear and know that I did nothing to save him. He had been sent to kill me and to kill my master. And so I shot him and left him to die.

“What you did today was self-defense. That man’s death might provide short-term protection for my brother, my master, and me. And so I thank you for the sacrifice of a small piece of your soul.” I started, hearing words on his lips I’d thought myself, hours earlier. “If you are willing to take the advice of an old, old man, then do your penance, and live—with the memory of your own evil.”

I lifted my Bible. “Is there any penance for the death of another?”

“Abel died.” His New Orleans accent faded away, his voice now pitiless. “Cain was marked with the mark of the Beast and exiled. But he lived. I confessed to my own priest, who gave me harsh penance, and then he left the country never to return. Mithrans and their crimes were more than a man of God could bear. It took twenty-five years to work off my penance. In the twenty-five years, I found freedom and peace. And you will find peace as well, if you choose it.”

Mark of the Beast.
Yeah, I know that one. “I’m not Catholic.”

Brian smiled then and shook his head. “No. You are a little goddess.”

I stood and gathered up my things. “I’m not a goddess. Can I go now?” Brian stood and pulled the chair out of the way. I left the suite.

I drove to a little church I had found—a wooden, white painted, two-hundred-year-old building on a crossroads, tucked into the side of a hill. The steeple rose against a backdrop of dying hemlocks, pointing to heaven where the sun set, a golden, rosy glow. Boulders the size of small houses rose up in the grassy yard all around, one behemoth half as tall as the church itself. The land was unsuitable for farming, but made a good site for a church and, if gifted to a congregation, would be a contribution to be remembered. It wasn’t the church I had once attended when I lived here, but a new one, where no one knew me, which said some
thing about who I was now, something that I didn’t want to look at too closely. It was the same denomination that I’d attended in New Orleans, though they eschewed the word denomination. This one was called simply Church of Christ, and they were having a revival-type service all week long.

I was early, only one truck parked in the lot, the front doors wide to air out the day’s heat, half the lights on, but the sanctuary empty. I went in and took a seat in the semidarkness, sliding to my knees on the old, wide-plank floor. It had been a long time since I had prayed. And I didn’t know what to say to God. I settled on confession, beginning with the whispered words, “Today I killed a man. His death was sudden. I didn’t give him time before death to confess. To seek you.” Tears started to fall, hot and searing. “I killed a man,” I whispered, the words like the breath of hell in my mouth. “I didn’t really mean to kill him. But all I can see is his body fall. And fall. And fall. Like so many vamps and weres. And I have to wonder if they were all as precious to you as a human is. I have to wonder if the blood of murder rests on my soul.”

No one bothered me while I prayed. No one bothered me while the small church filled up and the lights came on, and the heat went up despite the open windows. I stayed through the service, singing with the congregation, without the benefit of instrumental music. I listened to the earnest minister and his sermon on what it meant to be drenched in the blood of the lamb, a topic Beast might have reacted to, but this once, she remained silent, in the background. And I slipped out during the last hymn so I wouldn’t have to talk with any of them. It was the chicken’s way out, but I wasn’t ready to be welcomed into the presence of God’s people yet. It was hard enough to try to reach out for the presence of God himself. And I had a feeling that I might find it easier in the silence of the forest and ragged hills, far from other humans.

My Cherokee self, the part of me that had memories from long ago, was damaged. Had been broken by the death of my father, the rape of my mother. Had been further damaged by the loss of my people on a cold and frigid snowy night. By the years I spent as
we sa
, a bobcat, before I stole Beast. And by the hunger times, lived in her form. I had tried to find that ancient, human, Cherokee part of me, to wake it and merge it with who I was now, creating one cohesive self. I felt that if
I did, if I could find my ancient self, I might learn something important, might finally feel whole. But I was fractured, broken, and I didn’t have the time, not now, for self-analysis and soul-searching. Someday. Someday.

I glanced back at the small church and started up the truck, driving away as the last notes of the last song poured through the open, stained-glass windows, along with the stained light. I had a search of a different sort to begin.

A half hour later, after a stop at an Ingles to purchase ten pounds of raw steak, a dozen granola bars, and a roll of paper towels, I turned off the paved road near Hot Springs, onto a well-kept gravel road, still some six mountain road miles from the site I had decided to search. It was near the Rich-Laurel Wildlife Area, on a little feeder creek that emptied into the French Broad River. There were no people close by. It was late and the weekend campers were long gone; the few hard-core campers were gathered at their tents, fires burning merrily here and there, easy to spot and easier to avoid in the dark.

I maneuvered out of the campground, parked out of the way, and got out to reconnoiter, leaning against the armored vehicle, the metal warm beneath my skin, wild grasses moving against my skirt and boots. I let Beast rise slowly to the surface, her senses expanding. I could discern her heartbeat, slower when at rest than mine, beating strongly beneath my own, a mystical sensation, powerful in my memory. The night, dark beneath the overhead foliage, grew perceptibly brighter as my pupils widened with Beast-sight. My lips parted and drew in air over tongue and through my nose, the way big-cats scent, though I had no scent sacs in the roof of my mouth like Beast.

Even to my human nose the night breeze was sun-heated and rich with the perfume of the earth, river-wet from the French Broad only feet from me. Fish and water plants. Warm stone and old campfires, turtles, wild undergrowth mixed with escaped garden plants, basil in flower and something spicy-bitter. But no human scent nearby. No human sound or voice carried on the air. I was alone. I started to pant in the warmth. The engine pinged softly beneath my hands.

Good night for hunt,
Beast thought at me.
Moon is big, like pregnant doe.

I carried my supplies to the base of the Paint Rock. The red rock cliff was jagged and broken, rising a hundred feet or more above the French Broad River. It was once covered with ancient paintings, paintings that predated the Cherokee, drawn in red pigments, but time and the elements and the stupidity of man had erased most of them. Humans had spray-painted their names and ancient-looking figures over large parts of the fractured surface. But with the breath of the river flowing across the earth, the place still had power.

I opened the steaks and dropped them on the smooth earth at the base of the massive rock, the meat still chilled from the store’s refrigeration. With the roll of paper towels, I cleaned my hands and put the wrapping and foam containers into the grocery bag and sealed them. Carried the trash back to the SUV.

I stripped in the front seat and left my clothes in a pile on the floor, hoping no one would tow my vehicle, but not really caring if they did. Grabbing up my supplies, I stepped from the SUV, barefoot and soundless, my travel pack under one arm. Opening the zipper bag containing my fetish necklace, I set the necklace of the
Puma concolor
over my head. It was made of the claws, teeth, and small bones of the biggest female panther I had ever seen, the cat killed in Montana during a legal hunt, the pelt and head mounted on some bigwig’s living room wall, the bones and teeth sold through a taxidermist. The mountain lion was hunted throughout the western United States and thought to be extinct in the eastern states, though some reports said they were making a comeback east of the Mississippi. One could hope. I didn’t have to use the necklace to shift into this creature—the memory of Beast’s form was always a part of me—but it was easier. I locked the SUV.

Already it felt weird walking on two legs, as Beast moved up from the deeps into my thoughts. Barefoot, the wild grasses sharp and cutting on my calves and thighs, the rough surface of the earth rocky beneath my tender soles. I returned to the Paint Rock and the stack of raw, bloody steaks on the ground.

Beast wanted to lick them. I held her still, though my stomach was rumbling. I was panting, salivating.
Hungry,
she thought. Because Beast is something outside my skinwalker nature—an independent entity who shares my body and, more and more often, my mind—I don’t have complete control over her. And I know, in my bones, that if other skinwalkers exist, they don’t have a Beast-soul living inside. We had ended up together through an accident, if black magic can be accidental, and thinking about it always left me feeling uneasy.

I pulled the go-bag over my head and positioned my gold nugget on its double gold chain, swinging free. Together, they looked like an expensive collar and tote, making Beast look like an escaped exotic pet. I leaned into the Paint Rock and scraped the gold nugget across a space unmarked with human names, depositing a thin streak of gold. The gold was like a homing beacon, among other things, a way to find my way back, if I was lost after a hunt.

Yesssss. Hunt,
Beast thought at me. She was ready to scope out the territory, unfamiliar hunting ground, though it was close to Asheville and seemed like a location we might have explored. Naked, I sat on a sun-heated stone and closed my eyes, feeling the power of the world in this place, the strength of the breath of mother Earth. I shivered in the remnant heat. Holding the fetish necklace, I closed my eyes. Relaxed. Listened to the wind, the pull of the moon, rising above the horizon. I felt the beat of my own heart, and Beast’s. She rose in me, silent, predatory.

I slowed the functions of my body, let my heart rate decrease, let my muscles relax, the rock wall against my back, facing the moving water. Mind clearing, I sank deep inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the purpose of this hunt. That purpose I set into the lining of my skin, into the deepest parts of my brain, as I always did, so I wouldn’t lose it when I
shifted
, when I
changed
, because oftentimes, right after a shift, Beast had complete control, while my own spirit and mind slept. I dropped lower, deeper, into the darkness within me where old pain and memories swirled in a shadowed world fouled with blood and fear. The night wind on my skin cooled. The river whispered a susurration,
leaves moved and sighed. Memories firmed, memories that, at all other times, were half forgotten, both mine and Beast’s.

As I had been taught so long ago, I sought the inner snake lying inside the bones and teeth of the necklace, the coiled, curled snake of DNA, deep in the cells, in the remains of the marrow. For my people, for skinwalkers, it had always simply been “the inner snake.”

I took up the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts and I dropped within. Like water trickling through cracked rock and down a mountain. Grayness enveloped me, sparkling and cold as winter. The world fell away. I was in the gray place of the change.

My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped. My bones . . . slid. Skin rippled. Fur, tawny and gray, brown and tipped with black, sprouted. Painpainpain, like a knife, cut between muscle and bone. My ear tabs bent and twisted, listening, and my nostrils widened, drawing deep.

She fell away. Night was fierce and bright in mountain hunting place. Crags and cliffs rose all around, with water flowing fast, earth breathing. I drew in air over tongue, a long scree of sound. Scents long remembered filled nose and mouth and mind: thick mist above river, air scented with taste of home. Smell of soil and fire. Plants strong with fall seeds. Old smell of rabbit. Blood from cow, old and cold. I panted. Listened to sounds—music from far, far away, sound of car along gravel road, not close but coming. Streams talking softly in mountain-water tongue, so different from bayou-water tongue. Familiar sound of home. Gathered limbs beneath me and padded to dead meat. I ate.

Later, moon still high, I cleaned paws and claws and groomed face and whiskers free from cold dead cow blood and hot deer blood. Yearling buck walked along road where I ate. Buck had never smelled big-cat before. Was not afraid. Stupid deer. Good meat. Fresh hot blood, good blood from easy hunt. Beast was good hunter. Full belly.

Hunt now?
Jane said in back of mind.
Hunt for wolves. Search for scent of grindylow.

I rose and padded away from wide river, into darker night under trees. Found trickling creek and followed it uphill, past campground, into wild country. Smelled scent of wolf. They had been here.

How long ago?
Jane asked, her thoughts excited.

Two days and two nights. Have not returned.

Can you tell how they came in here? What roads did they use?

Turned and turned, sniffing wind.
Small road is high in hills. Smell of gasoline and man chemicals that poison the earth.

Can we go there?

Beast is good hunter. Can go where I please.
I padded through dark woods, leaping from stone to stone or high into trees, following scent on ground from high in air. Wolves had to walk on ground, and could not hunt from up high. Could not leap as Beast did. I had hunted and killed wolves long ago, wolves who had killed Beast’s prey in the hunger times.
Pack hunters,
I spat, hissing.
Hate pack hunters. Thieves of food.