Raven Cursed: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (42 page)

Outside, the moon rose, and Beast rose with it, flooding me with the urge to hunt, to mate, to roam the dark, free and powerful. To feel the air in our pelt, scenting and tasting and hearing the life of the world. Kem looked at me, sharing the moon-call, Rick was feeling it too, his heart rate a little fast, his sweat smelling of excitement. The reddish wolf in the circle felt it the most—panting in his sleep, paws running.

Big Evan came to me, holding a cut-crystal bowl and an athame, a ceremonial knife. I held out my hand and with no warning, he grabbed my thumb and stabbed downward. I couldn’t help my hissing indrawn breath. My blood welled, scarlet. Evan whispered the name, “Kalona Ayeliski.”

The witches all sat. The Raven Mocker screamed.

I jumped in my spot against the wall. Rick laughed under his breath. “Not funny,” I muttered. Big Evan glared at me. “If you can’t be quiet, we’ll ask you to leave. We have enough problems with the baby talk and the demon shrieking.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. Rick’s chest moved fast, quivering, as if he were suppressing silent laughter. I wanted to punch him, but I figured that would get me expelled from the room.

“We gather,” Evan said. My humor disappeared as if blown away by a hurricane. It was similar to the words uttered by vamps when they
gather
for some important event. The witches started talking in a foreign language, in unison, like recitation. Irish Gaelic, I thought, the language Molly and her sisters use when they do a major group working. It was a beautiful and barbaric language, flowing like a stream down a narrow cleft, full of tshhhushhs, and odd-sounding Fs, and long, sibilant Hs. I found myself leaning in, closer to the mesmeric sound.

There was no drum or flute, as there might have been in a Cherokee ceremony. There was nothing but the purity of the voices, Big Evan leading the phrases, the others repeating them. Evan Junior was silent, his mouth moving as if he wanted to join in, his pudgy hands gripping the straps of the
car seat. I was reminded of the toddler climbing up into my lap at the café, demanding that I help his spelled family.

And then I heard the word Hayyel fall from Evan’s mouth. And the others repeated it. “Hayyel. Hayyel. Hayyel . . .” Over and over again, the syllables falling like a drumbeat, or a heartbeat, rhythmical, musical, and lyrical, as if the flowing stream of their words bounced against boulders and fell in a long arc. My heartbeat found the rhythm of the words of the angel’s name, and, silently, I joined in the calling, for it was a
calling
, a repeated prayer. “Hayyel. Hayyel. Hayyel . . .”

Evan leaned forward and took the flute in his hands. The others each took up their talismans, and held them, even the toddler, who was holding both the holly leaf and the feather, one in each fist, his arms pumping up and down in excitement. Molly picked up the bowl of blood, mine and Angie’s mixed. Angie Baby’s eyes were wide, her lips parted, face flushed. “Hayyel. Hayyel. Hayyel . . .” they all said. She was holding the doll, the other things forgotten. And . . .
The doll’s eyes were glowing.
I shrank back against the wall. The doll’s eyes were glowing golden, like mine when Beast is rising up in me. There was no way that the black glass eyes could— But this was magic.
Magic
, ancient and foreign . . .

Inside the
hedge of thorns
, the werewolf woke up, eyes wide and mouth open in horror. I was vaguely aware of Lincoln Shaddock as he left the room, moving fast, the air of his passing like a faint, dry wind. “Hayyel. Hayyel. Hayyel . . .”

As the others repeated the chant of the angel’s name, and Evan played a haunting melody on his flute, Molly added words to the chant, like a descant sung in soft minor notes, “Kalona Ayeliski. Kalona Ayeliski.”

The Raven Mocker stood in the center of his cage and screamed.

A flash of light hit the
hedge of thorns
like lightning, pure and brighter than the sun. I shrank back, covering my eyes with both forearms. The images burned through my arms, my bones, my lids, into my eyes, into my brain, into my soul. I saw a winged being attacking the demon. Light and darkness. The light of an exploding atom bomb, the
light of the sun’s core, the light of the center of the universe. And the darkness of a black hole, empty beyond all understanding, full of nothingness. The sound of bells, high winds, roaring waves. Echoes and echoes of a perfect, pure note sung for eternity. Screams of agony. Trapped for a long moment together, in combat.

In the glare, Molly stood and dipped her fingers into the blood in the crystal bowl and flung the mixture over the
hedge
. Above it all, I heard Molly start the binding words, “Hayyel,
bíodh sé daor, le m’ordú agus le
—” The light went out. The burn on my retinas leaving me blind. After a stutter, Molly finished the binding. “
Mo chumhacht
, Kalona Ayeliski.”

But the light had disappeared. The fighting angel and demon were both gone. Just . . . gone. The dead body was gone.
Hedge of thorns
was gone. The blood was gone. The salt composing the circle was gone. The black paint on the floor was gone, leaving a circle of concrete, seared pure white. And silence. No one moved except to blink against the retinal burn.

A werewolf lay on the floor in wolf form, asleep or dead; not the wolf he had been, not reddish brown and wild, but a huge, pure white wolf, with only a hint of gray in his ruff. Kem was on the far side of the room, in cat form, blacker than night, none of his spots visible after the blast of light. Rick was holding my hand in his, crushed against me in the corner, his eyes unfocused and wide. He smelled of cat, wild and musky. If he knew how to shift, he’d be a black leopard right now, only his tats holding him to human form. Everyone two-natured was affected. Except me. I just felt curiously . . . empty. I reached for Beast . . .
Beast?

Upstairs, a door slammed.
A door?
Dazed, I shook my head to clear it. “Crap,” I said. I shoved away from the wall and raced up the stairs, stumbling over Evil Evie’s skirt, blinking away the afterimage of holiness and evil.

In the living room, Pickersgill was skewered to the floor with a stake in his belly, bleeding like a stuck pig. Evangelina was no longer asleep on the floor. And Lincoln, who had torn out of the basement, was missing as well.

An engine raced. The sports car fishtailed out of the
drive. I landed on my knees and shoved the couch over to get my bike key and go after her. It landed with a heavy thump. There was nothing underneath the couch. My travel tote, torn jeans, and the pink blood-magic-diamond were all gone. I raced outside, but the night breeze off the French Broad River was already carrying the scent of her car away. I went back inside, standing in the corner, staring at the chaos.

Pickersgill was bleeding out, the witches were falling all over themselves, panicked, and Angie Baby was crying. Pickersgill, hissed between his fangs, furious and scared, “My own master staked me!”

“Yeah, but he staked you to keep you alive or he’d have aimed higher and to the left,” I said. I bent at his side, one knee on the floor. “I’ll pull out the stake. Try to bite me and I won’t be so nice.” I pulled the stake from his gut and he disappeared to feed. I figured he’d live, if the undead can be said to live. Wiping Pickersgill’s blood from my fingers onto the rug, I took Angie in my arms and stood in the corner, hugging her to my chest, her legs wrapped around my waist. The reek of vamp blood and magic polluted the air.

Evangelina had the diamond. And Beast—
Beast?
The word echoed through me.

Big Evan asked, “Did the banishing work? Did we bind the Raven Mocker?”

“I don’t think so,” Molly said. “I think Evangelina disrupted the spell.” Which was her right as coven master. Then she ran away. With the diamond.

I wasn’t thinking right. Not thinking clearly. Not thinking much at all. Because the disrupted spell and the appearance of the angel Hayyel had stolen my Beast. I was alone inside my own head. “Beast?” I whispered. I rocked Angie, holding her close.

The weres left together, Rick, silent and acting like a twitchy cat, driving fast. Having a first encounter of the third kind with an angel had to be a major wakeup call for a lapsed, or at least lackadaisical, good Catholic boy. The white wolf and Kem, stuck in black leopard form, were both sleeping in the bed of the truck, in cages borrowed from Evange
lina’s back room. I didn’t know what would happen to the wolf. I wasn’t even sure what the wolf was now.

Cia drove off in her car, leaving her sister’s car in the drive. She mumbled something about needing to see Liz and Carmen in the hospital. Big Evan packed his family into the van with unseemly haste and drove off as if demons were nipping at his heels, leaving his rattletrap in the drive. None of us talked. We didn’t even make eye contact. I don’t think we could.

Fortunately I had a spare key hidden in the bike. I was halfway home when my tears started.
Beast?
The place inside me where she stayed was empty. And cold. And silent. I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea. It was only as I neared the Asheville city limits that I realized how badly I had messed up. Not only was Evangelina on the loose with a diamond capable of almost anything, there was a demon unaccounted for. And Lincoln Shaddock had disappeared. Had Evangelina called him to her?
Crap
. I had lost one of my primary subjects.

I went to the hotel for my cell phones, to strap on some weapons—including the M4—and to change out of Evangelina’s stupid impossible-to-ride-a-Harley skirt. I didn’t speak to anyone, and I didn’t stop to check on my vamp charge and his blood-servants. I was in and out as fast and unobtrusively as possible, a velvet jacket over one shoulder.
Beast was gone.

Fang and I tooled around the city of Asheville, halfway looking for a red sports car, mostly hiding from other people. I was afraid to be alone with my thoughts, using Fang’s roar to block out the part of me that was screaming in fear.
Beast was gone.
My mind was my own for the first time in over a hundred years. And it was scaring the crap outta me. I rode, not thinking, searching for something to muffle the sound of my own fear, and to stop the afterimage flashing onto the back of my lids each time I blinked. An angel and a demon. In combat.

Had I seen an angel and a demon fighting? Or had it been a mass hallucination, something artificial shared by the mismatched group? Or maybe a spell crafted by Evangelina and lying in wait for the right moment. No. Too many
variables in any scenario except the real one. I had seen an angel. A freaking, dang
angel
.

My
angel, who came when my friends called him, to take away an evil who was never supposed to be on earth. Ever.
My angel
, shared with Angie Baby, who could see angels, but never said so, who thought everyone could see them. Hayyel. The angel stole my Beast.

Fear rode me, sucking on my soul like a tick burrowed into my skin.

Molly hadn’t talked to me after. Molly hadn’t talked to anyone. Her daughter had a personal relationship with an angel and her sister had one with a demon. Her life had totally changed. Again. At least this time it wasn’t my fault. Except for Evangelina getting her grubby witchy hands on the pink blood-diamond again. That was my fault, totally.

Stupid to hide it under the couch, with only a vamp as guard. Only a vamp. Pickersgill would have been enough to guard the witch. But not against his master.
Stupid, freaking stupid.
I fisted my hands on the handlebar and bent into the speed.
Beast?
She didn’t answer.

I stopped for gas at three a.m. and checked my cell. I had missed an e-mail from Reach. He had sent pictures of Shaddock’s escaped vamp. I remembered Thomas Stevenson from the scion lair. He stood five feet ten, brown hair and eyes, with a nose that had been broken and was flattened across the bridge—a deformity that hadn’t been fixed by his maker pre-turn. Corrective surgery was something many makers did for any less-than-perfect scions before they turned them. But Thomas’ broken, unenhanced nose was my good fortune—something that would make the otherwise ordinary man stand out in a police lineup.

I sent the photos from my expensive, traceable cell to my laptop back at the hotel, and accessed all the files Reach had sent me on Thomas Stevenson. Getting into them on the small screen wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, but it was handy. Miracles of modern tech.

The guy had money all over the place, from offshore accounts to banks down the street. He had accumulated a lot of real properties, both private and commercial. Several cars were in storage, homes in gaited communities. Rental
property. Strip malls. Undeveloped property. His estate was scattered all over North Carolina and Tennessee. One thing stood out. The nasty vamp had a collector’s appreciation of houseboats. He had three houseboats in storage or in dock at different lakes within a couple hundred miles, the farthest on Douglas Lake in Tennessee. I might be willing to bet that, after spending the last few years sane and locked up with crazy-assed rogues, fed cooling pig blood running in a trough, he might like waking up at sunset on the water, maybe with a well-drained corpse or two on the floor beside him.

But that was just a guess. I’d be searching through the properties for decades to find the guy. Except for the last little text Reach sent, a text that proved he was worth every one of the thousands of dollars he was charging Leo. Thomas had accessed a credit card. The rogue-vamp had removed a car from storage, hit an ATM for cash, bought gas, then clothes, and each purchase had been in a linear direction, due west. The Naturaleza, human-draining, needs-a-good-staking vamp was heading into Tennessee.

My heart got lighter and my smile meaner. So, I’d hunt me some Naturaleza vamp butt and burn off the anger flaring deep inside, a char of hot rage I couldn’t name and didn’t want to look at too closely. And maybe the rage, and killing something, would chase away the fear that Beast wasn’t coming back. Ever.