Raven Cursed

I waited long enough to be sure she hadn’t forgotten something, before leaving my vehicle, my camera and cell in my pockets. I stuck my hands in my pockets with them, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, for a six-foot-tall Cherokee girl with bloody, damaged jeans and nefarious intentions. But I passed no one before I turned down the narrow street and melted into the greenery. I studied the witch circle in the ground and the lines that marked the inside. There was no pentagram, just the odd broken lines, lines that looked half familiar but meant nothing.



I snapped a few pics and stepped onto the porch, expecting a ward to be up at the house to keep out intruders, but I felt nothing until I touched the lever handle at the back door. The desire to go inside hit me like a padded baton. I wanted to go inside Needed to. I pushed the door open.



Beast pressed claws into my mind and growled. I paused, and she bit down with her canines, the pain like knife blades inside my skull. I gasped at the sudden headache and was able to pull my hand from the lever. But it was hard. As soon as my fingertips cleared the metal, the compulsion left me and I remembered to breathe. I took a step back. “Crap,” I whispered. The door, already open, swung inward in welcome, a pretty little trap for anyone wanting to steal. Getting inside was gonna be easy. Getting back out might be a problem.



Good thing I hadn’t rushed in to try to take down Evangelina. It was possible that I’d have been inside too fast for Beast to save me. A chill sank talons into my spine at the thought.



I walked back to my vehicle, head down, scrutinizing my boots. Thinking. I remembered the scarf folded so neatly on the floor of the SUV. Blood magic—likely two different spells with the same power source, the blood-diamond—was being used against the two-natured and against the Everharts. And unless the helpful valet had shaken the scarf, I had some red hairs from Evangelina’s head at my disposal.



I carefully unfolded the scarf and found twisted hairs caught in the weave. I refolded it to keep from losing them, and carried the scarf back to the house. Standing on the back porch, I could hear the gurgle of the creek at the bottom of the hill, see the sunrise brighten the garden. The dogwoods were already turning, leaves tinged with crimson. Using the scarf, I opened the door. I felt nothing of the compulsion. “Sweet,” I murmured.



I entered the house and stood inside the door, closing it after me. Magic danced along my skin like static electricity, hot and pinging, as if the air was too dry, superheated just to the point of pain. Though humans might not have been able to see it, the interior of the house was illuminated with a soft pink glow, magic permeating the walls, floor, and furniture. Careful to touch nothing that might be holding a magical charge, I gripped the scarf in both hands, using it to open the door to the basement.



The lights weren’t on downstairs, but a bloody glow lit the walls of the stairwell, and illuminated the painting at the bottom. It seemed to move, as if it were a TV screen, with active participants instead of a static surface painted hundreds of years ago.



I turned on the lights and made my way down. Stopped at the bottom. The hedge of thorns trap was still glowing with red and pink energies, scarlet motes bounding around it, the magic smelling tart, acrid. Black and scarlet sparks fluttered through it, but now they were stronger, more numerous, racing over the surface of the ward. Some areas of the ward were totally black, like heavily smoked glass, with no trace of the red energies. The demon was more substantial, easier to see, half man, half bird, or half man, half fallen angel. He had human calves and feet, torso and sexual organs, with a bird chest, wings with fingers where they might have been had the wings been arms, and a half-human, half-bird face. Human eyes over a raptor beak, but pinkish, with red lids. And inside with him were the two wolves.



I had no idea how Evangelina had kept the demon in the ward while she put the wolves in with him. But considering the compulsion spell, maybe they just walked inside without disturbing the outer ring. Like a one-way valve, allowing in anything that wanted to cross, but letting nothing inside cross back out.



The demon had been eating the wolves. While they were still alive. Gorge rose in my throat. Blood coated the floor of the circle with a gummy, gelatinous residue. The wolves were smiling about it, holding hands, staring into one another’s eyes like goofy teenagers in love. The big guy, Fire Truck, was missing chunks of thigh and buttocks. The little guy was missing an arm and chunks of muscle, but the lethal wounds had healed. Sort of. Which meant they had shifted, even with the silver wounds from Evangelina’s ceremonial knife. The wolves clearly hadn’t been given food or water to make up for the caloric drain, and they were emaciated, loose flesh hanging on their frames. I stuffed the scarf under my arm and took a dozen digital photos of the trap and the thing inside with its dinner. I didn’t know if it would photograph at all, didn’t know if digital cameras would go all pixilated near witch magic. I checked the shots, and was gratified to see that most came out, and tucked the camera back in my jeans. I took some more shots with my phone, and sent them to myself.



This close, I felt the compulsion of the come-to-me spell and gripped the scarf tightly. The demon stared at me through the scarlet and black energies. I knew not to talk to demons. I knew that to engage them in discourse was stupid, but I did it anyway. “She’s making you solid, isn’t she?”



He gestured, a tossing motion with his human-looking hand, as if what his captor wanted was unimportant. He had talons on the end of his fingers, black as a raven’s and twice as sharp. “She thinks to control me.” His voice was guttural, as if he didn’t speak often. And his accent was odd, as if he came from elsewhere, or from nowhere, mangled by the beak. “She thinks to use me for her vengeance.” He breathed in, the action like a man inhaling an expensive perfume.



“You are Tsalagi,” he said. “You are of the blood of The People. I have fed upon the Tsalagi for many centuries. No one controls me. Not even . . .” he breathed in again, as if scenting me. “Not even your grandmother, little yellow-eyed child.”



I jerked, the muscles of my shoulders twitching, my hands twisting the scarf. He smiled, which was just plain horrible. There was dried blood on the beak. His tongue darted out, like a sapsucker, tasting the air.



“They called you Dalonige’i digadoli, when you were born with golden eyes like your father and tsa lisi, your grandmother.” Horror swept through me. And longing. He knew me. From before. I put out a hand and Beast slammed down on me, biting me so hard I felt her teeth pierce my skull, creating the mother of all headaches. I had taken three steps toward the trap and I quickly stepped back. The demon laughed. “Yes, I was there when you were born, watching, waiting to see if your mother would survive or if I might take her.” He tilted his head, birdlike, fast. And he whistled, a raptor’s hunting call, long and piercing, but not one I had ever heard before. “There was much rejoicing when you opened your eyes that first time.”



My heart was thudding. He had known my family? Or just plundered my fractured memories and woven a story? Was this why no one should indulge in conversation with a demon? Because they knew everything you did, everything you wanted, and weren’t averse to lying and twisting truths to get you to do what they wanted? Yeah. That felt right. I took a breath, steadying myself. And shifted my foot back a step. Another. Toward the stairs.



He went on as if I weren’t making my escape. “But when you were five summers old, your grandmother, who was Ani gilogi, panther clan, tried to tie me into the skin of one of her beasts, the pelt of the tlvdatsi. To avenge herself on the white soldiers who killed her son.” I swallowed, and my throat was as dry as sandpaper; the muscles ached with the motion. “She was a fool,” he said. “I left her to die in the snow, her blood black in the moonlight. I thought to find you, but you had vanished into the night and the cold, and I was free. So I took the lives of many of the Tsalagi that night, and many more over the next weeks. I took the days they had left to them, had the white man not forced them on to the long march, and I left them dead. With their days as my own, I walked as human for many years, taking what and who I pleased.”



My breath was too fast, my heart pattering, rabbitlike. This thing seemed to know everything I had lost about my past. I vaguely remembered the Trail of Tears, when the U.S. government broke its covenant with the Cherokee and forced us onto the long march west. So many had died of the cold, of hunger, and illness. Or to the claws of this thing.



He also knew what I wanted—to fill the empty places in my past, in my soul. I wanted to listen to him now, and he knew it. His eyes were the black of The People’s eyes, dark and wise and kind, and he gestured with the fingers of one hand, to come closer. I didn’t. He said, “I have all the secrets you desire to know. All the truths you have forgotten.”



I pressed the scarf against my mouth, smelling Evangelina in the weave. Tasting tears I hadn’t known were falling. Beast bit down. Shattering pain took me, and my vision went white for a moment. I put out a hand and my elbow bumped the wall behind me. I staggered and swore, and caught my balance. When the pain cleared, I could breathe.



“Go,” Beast snarled. “He is part of the hunger times. He is part of the fire times. Run!”



“Come to me and I will tell you what you desire,” the demon said. I backed to the left. My heels bumped the bottom stair. “I knew your father. I can tell you—”



“Jane?”



I stopped. Lincoln Shaddock? I heard metal clinking. Lincoln rose, a ghostly image seen through the hedge of thorns. Metal clinking louder, he stepped around the ward. The smell of vamp blood hit me. And sickness. The stench of infection cleared my head. Lincoln was wearing rags. Blood coated his lower legs. He was wearing silver shackles, the bindings made in such as way that any movement cut into his skin. Black and red streaks ran up his calves, infection from the metal poisoning. “Listen to me, girl.” As he spoke, some of the desire to listen to the demon passed. “Tell Leo, I’m mighty sorry. Then get him to safety.”



“Why?” I asked, my voice dry and breathy.