Raven Cursed: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (31 page)

Beast slammed into my mind again and glared. Growled. Kem blinked. A moment later, he slid into the shadows. I
looked at Rick who was watching me, amusement, speculation, and something warmer hiding in the deeps of his eyes. He held out a hand, indicating the nearly sheer wall, wet with falling water. “After you.”

I grabbed a root and gave a tug. It held. I started the climb. At the top, a fresh breeze slapped me in the face. It was heavy with the stink of old blood and rotting flesh.

Two miles and sixty minutes of hard hiking later, we were in a narrow cleft of mountain, far from any path. The temps had fallen, and I was wearing my jacket; my feet, even in my hiking boots, were again wet and icy from walking in the only place a human could—the rill of water. I was out of sorts, the lack of sleep was catching up to me—that and the constant smell of death on the breeze, as if the entire mountain breathed with the stink of rot and grindylow. The hair on the back of my neck went stiff, as buzzards soared overhead, ghosting through the rising air currents.

The way ahead was blocked by dead trees; one gigantic white oak had come down, taking half the saplings on the mountainside with it, and together, they had blocked the cleft and backed up the creek, except for the small rill we had been following.

I started yet another hard climb, using the shattered limbs lodged with stone. I heard Rick follow, and knew he had put me ahead so he could catch me if I fell. It was totally unnecessary, and so sweet I couldn’t keep the silly grin off my face, in spite of the putrid stench and buzzards soaring. Hand by hand, I pulled myself up the dead-tree-and-rock wall and reached the top.

The water was backed up into a pool about twenty feet long, less than ten feet wide, brown with tannins from decomposing leaves, but clear. On the far slope were
corpses. Deer corpses, bones and hide in a jumble, in various stages of decomposition; the most rotten ones were at the bottom; a well-picked, fresh corpse was on top. Maybe four deer, all small. There were also fish bones and several turtle shells. Buzzards lined the tree limbs staring at Kemnebi and the human intruders, alien emptiness in their eyes. Mixed with it all was the smell of the grindy. And an occasional whiff of something like the stink of sour cheese, if you first mixed it with dead fish and added in some vomit. Yuck.

“Dead deer,” I murmured, thinking of Angie Baby and her nightmare. Beast-fast, I pulled blades. If she were seeing my future, then something bad might happen here. If.

Kemnebi lay only feet away on a downed tree, his belly off the ground, staring at the corpses across the small pond. He was breathing too fast, a shallow pant, his muscles tense, shoulder blades up high. He looked like a scared cat. I licked my lips.

“Cave,” Rick said.

Beyond the pile of deer was a slice of blackness. The Appalachians were riddled with caves: limestone, mines through solid rock, narrow places where underground creeks once ran. Hundreds had been mapped. Hundreds more had yet to be discovered. And when they were, they were often hard to access. The mouth of this one was clear of brush and detritus. A well-trodden path led up to it, to the pile of bones, and to the water. It was covered with the three-toed and three-clawed paw prints of the grindylow. The entire area was covered with grindy markings, slashed into rock and trees.

I looked at Kem and back to the cave. The vamp-killers felt good in my palms as I stepped up and around the small pool toward the cave entrance. The jumbled bones were covered in flies. Maggots—not my favorite bug—crawled everywhere, big, small, totally gross. A buzzard spread its wings and flapped, irritation in every feather. I’d interrupted their feast. Rick at my shoulder, I stood at the entrance to the cave, letting my eyes adjust, drawing on Beast’s speed, vision, and hearing. Adrenaline flushed through me. Something brushed my thigh. I daggered downward. Jerked to a stop. The tip of the blade was buried in the shoulder hair of Kem-cat, just touching the skin over his scapula. He looked up at me and growled softly in warning. I showed
him my teeth. My look promised challenge. Later. He looked into the dark before us. Together, we stepped inside the cave.

It was an underground microcosm of the cleft in the mountain, almost mimicking the shape of the pool. Twenty feet deep and ten wide at the entrance, it narrowed to a point overhead and at the far end, a slash into the heart of the world. Stone slabs composed its walls. The roof was fifteen feet high at the entrance, lower at the far end. The floor was dirt, covered with fresh fir branches. More fir branches lined a small shelf at the back, about three feet off the floor. And on it was the grindy, curled tightly in a protective ball. When I’d seen him last he had been wearing baggy human-style clothes. Now he was naked. Around him were green balls of fur, shocking bright, almost neon. One moved. And mewled. “Holy crap,” I whispered.

Rick said, “He had babies.”
He
was a
she
.

The grindy woke, moving from balled up asleep into fighting mad and protective-mother-predator in half a heartbeat. Standing over her litter, she showed us long killing teeth, her arms out, claws spread, legs wide, her head forward, like any predator in danger. Multiple teats like a nursing dog’s hung on her belly, and when she shrieked, it was a high-pitched squeal, her eyes wild, not recognizing us at all.

Kem turned with a liquid grace and leaped from the cave. I backed away, not taking my eyes from the grindy, Rick’s shoulder touching mine. He was holding a nine mil, safety off, ready for firing. I felt better just seeing the gun. I had seen what the grindy’s claws could do to a boulder, and my flesh wasn’t nearly that tough. I also wasn’t immortal. If I lost my head I was done for. If I received a mortal blow, and didn’t have time to shift before blood loss took me, I’d be dead. My father had died that way, too fast for a shift to save him.

In the daylight I blinked at the sight of Kemnebi, on a log, still staring at the cave. He looked at us and patted the log twice with his left front paw before whirling, front feet leading his body, taking off up the hillside. “And that means, what?” I asked Rick, still processing the sight of the grindy
low with babies. Babies with neon green fur. Angie had seen this. How weird was that?

“He’s hunting. We get to wait.”

“How about we do that upwind of the bone pile.” We trudged uphill, pulling our way with trees and roots when needed, until we found a stone outcropping overlooking the grindy’s lair, but upwind. We sat, our feet swinging over a seventy-foot drop. Rick opened his backpack, revealing apples, raisins, and nuts. I opened mine, showing packages of jerky made from three types of meats and six Snickers bars. “So how long do we wait?” I asked, taking off my shoes so my feet could dry.

A cat-scream and a roar sounded, echoing through the folded earth of the mountain. I jerked my gaze up, following the sound. The roar rang out again, followed by the challenge of a big-cat. Snarling. It was a fight. “I’m thinking Kem is trying to kill a bear. So not long,” Rick said, his tone wry. He took my feet in his hands and began to rub, his eyes watching out over the mountain below us. The sloppy sentimental thing called my heart did a little somersault.

Want to kill a bear,
Beast thought at me, flooding my system with longing and my mouth with the remembered taste of hot blood and fat.
Long time since I hunted black bear.

“Not today,” I said aloud. And shook my head when Rick looked at me curiously. I bit down on a strip of turkey jerky and chewed while Beast prowled the back of my mind, pouting. And Rick rubbed my cold feet. This was turning out to be the weirdest job I’d had in a long time. Moments later I was asleep.

Rick said, “He’s back. Wake up, sleepyhead.”

I sat up and yawned, spotting the dark shadow that was Kem, far below us on the opposing face of the mountain. He was moving erratically, jerking and sliding, backside first, dragging a black bear down the mountain. It looked like two hundred pounds, maybe two fifty. Beast couldn’t have dragged the bear. She hissed in displeasure, but it was true. Beast could drag a hundred fifty pounds, but not much more. Leopards have excellent musculature in head, jaw,
neck, and shoulders, and superior climbing ability. They can even climb down a tree headfirst. The leopard could probably drag the bear up a tree, which is where leopards keep their dinners, safe from other predators or scavengers. Kem dragged the carcass inside the mouth of the cave. I looked at Rick. “I thought Kem was ticked off with the grindy for killing Safia.”

He shrugged. “Instinct is hard to resist. I’ve seen him feed the grindy while fighting the urge to kick it. He says the two species are linked, I’m guessing on a metaphysical level.”

I shook my head and put my cold, wet boots back on. Together, Rick and I descended the precipitous hillside, mostly on our butts. When we got to the bottom, Kemnebi stepped from the cave in human form. Naked. I averted my eyes. Rick opened his backpack and tossed Kem some clothes and a bag of nuts. Kemnebi dressed without the slightest sign of embarrassment, and ate the nuts, while I tried to affect a bored expression, pretty sure I wasn’t succeeding. Rick tossed him a package of granola, the kind with M&Ms in it. Kem ate that too. Then he walked barefoot toward us with that deadly-looking, catlike grace. Without preamble, he said, “They give birth only once a century. I did not know she was female, nor that she was carrying young.” I wasn’t sure how he could not know her gender, and he answered almost as if he had heard my thoughts. “They have very little external genitalia. They are very private creatures. I put her life in danger by bringing her to this country.” His voice was toneless, but his eyes were heavy with guilt and sorrow. He looked around the steep hills and back to the cave. “She has been deeply stressed by her inborn imperative to hunt down feral weres, while carrying young. She did not hunt enough for food, did not gain enough weight, and her litter is small. The bear will feed her baby-hunger for the remaining days of her nursing.”

I remembered the teats. I’d thought the grindy was an amphibian, not a mammal.

Without looking at Rick, Kemnebi held out a hand, imperiously. “Shoes.”

Before Rick could react, I jerked the backpack out of his hand and stalked to Kem. Far too close, inside his per
sonal space. I felt his cat flinch at the intrusion. Beast huffed in defiance. “He’s not your servant. He’s not your slave. He’s not your punching bag.” Kem’s eyes went golden green so fast I didn’t even see the change. But I wasn’t finished. “And he isn’t yours to challenge or to kill. He’s
mine
. Get it?” I tossed the backpack into the pond. It landed with a splash. “Get your own damn shoes.”

I grabbed Rick by the elbow and yanked him downhill. “Yours, huh?” he said, sounding entirely too satisfied. I growled at him. “You do like to play rough, Jane Yellowrock. I like that about you.” I ignored him, dragging him along, Rick laughing under his breath, shaking his head.

I shook my head and hid a smile. “Shuddup.”

Back at the parking lot, I let the men go off in their borrowed, battered truck and I headed back to Asheville. I was cold, wet, exhausted, and really, really,
really
needed a nap. Which I got. Finally. Even though sleeping meant I still had not called Angie back.

By half an hour after midnight I knew there were problems, I just didn’t know what kind or how bad. The evening’s talks had been scheduled to begin at twelve, but Shaddock was late. Again. No one answered at the clan home. No one answered anywhere. It was like Shaddock and clan had been sucked out of the universe, and thinking about the thing in Evil Evie’s basement, the bite marks on her neck, and the pink spell, that might be possible. I just hoped he wasn’t stuck in the basement ward. If he was, I’d need Evangelina’s sisters to free him. And maybe a howitzer.

Grégoire, insulted, retired to his suite with his twins, having a midnight blood-snack and a massage, leaving me with orders to find Shaddock. Things weren’t going well for the local vamp, and if Grégoire’s expression was indicative of the future, Shaddock wasn’t going to be master of any city, anywhere. Ever.

Back in my room again, I closed the door behind me, stripped off my fancy jacket, and opened my cell. There were no voice mail messages or texts from Molly. No calls from Evan either. Nada. Nothing. They wouldn’t call now, not this late. There was also nothing from Rick.

I was closing the cell when it rang, startling me. I flipped it back open, my heart in my throat, but it wasn’t Mol. I narrowed my eyes at the number on the screen. It wasn’t one I wanted to hear from right now. “Yellowrock.” I let my tone show my lack of pleasure.

Bruiser hesitated as if reading my emotions from the single word. He said, “Leo is dispatching the Rogue Hunter to the service of Lincoln Shaddock.” Bruiser was sounding all formal, which he did when he was acting strictly in Leo’s behalf, and not entirely with his own approval. When Leo wanted me to sleep with Kemnebi, Bruiser had used the same tone.

“Yeah? Would this have anything to do with old Linc being a no-show?
Again?
” I asked.

“There has been a disturbance. You will provide him and his clan all reasonable service.”

“I don’t sleep with Leo’s pals,” I reminded him.

His voice was warm, a low burr, when he said, “You
have
been remarkably resistant to my charms.”

Ooookaaay
. I opened my mouth and closed it. Not gonna say
anything
I was thinking.

“Now,” he went on, his tone sharpening, “Leo hears rumors that his pet Rogue Hunter has claimed the title of his Enforcer. Is this true?”

“Ummm?” I got a sudden bad feeling. “Maybe.”

“Brilliant.”
But I could tell he really meant
stupid
. “The Enforcer is a titled position in a Master’s household. Have you drank from him? Have you drank from
any
Mithran?”

“Nooooo.” I drug the word into three syllables.