Raven Cursed

“I can think of far better things to do in your bedroom than play smash and grab, but yes. I’m only a few blocks from there. I’ll call you shortly.” The call ended.

Lincoln had his hand under Evangelina’s shirt. Public displays of affection were not Shaddock’s style; I didn’t like what that said about his state of mind. As for Evil Evie, she was once the most stuck-up, inhibited, repressed woman on the planet. Now? Not so much. I set the phone on the table, wondering how much power Evangelina was siphoning off her sisters and if that was more dangerous than interrupting the spell. I studied Shaddock and his dance partner, thinking about what I’d just set in motion due to the red mote I’d seen.

When Bruiser got to my freebie house in New Orleans he would know I hadn’t planned to return. My belongings were in cardboard boxes on the floor of the closet, packed for shipping. They had Molly’s address on them. They had postage attached. I didn’t know what Bruiser might say or do, but I figured it wouldn’t be pretty.

While we waited, I saw movement among the vamps as two powerful walking dead stepped into the restaurant. They weren’t powerful as in physically imposing, but they were formidable. Commanding. Dominant. Compelling. Dangerous. And, crap. They had decided to pay us a visit. They surged toward us across the floor with the boneless, nearly gravity-defying grace of the hunting vamp. “Heads up,” I said. “Dacy Mooney and Constantine Pickersgill at the door. They want something.” But then Lincoln’s heir and spare would do nothing unless they wanted something. “They’ll smell the gun oil and ammo.”

As they neared, I felt the crosses under my shirt start to glow. The vamps draped themselves into chairs at our table, Dacy wearing a beaded buckskin fringed jacket and dark brown jeans with boots. She had feathers woven into her blond hair. On her, the look worked. Seeing the glow on my chest, Dacy laughed low, as if crosses didn’t scare her. Her fangs snapped down with a small click, one and a half inch bone-white killing teeth. Beast huffed in delight, which always surprised me. She liked sane vamps too much sometimes.

Pickersgill said, “Are you boys here to try your hand against Linc?” There was insult in the word boys, as thick as if he’d used the N-word. But it was threat in the tone that my guys reacted to, pulling weapons, the light gleaming on silvered blades, the smell of challenge rising.

“Hold,” I said. I stared at Mooney’s eyes, blue as her daughter’s, not vamped out, but in control. “I’m here to send the witch packing and Lincoln to Grégoire on his knees, quaking in shame and fear.”

Dacy smiled. “You’un Leo’s enforcer?” Her accent was pure Tennessee, probably poured on thick to keep from sounding like the threat she undoubtedly was, but the heavy accent sounded weird coming out of a vamp’s mouth. I didn’t reply. I had seen the term in a codicil of the Vampira Carta, and read over the language an enforcer used to establish control over vamps, but I hadn’t really studied it. I didn’t fully know what enforcer meant in vamp terms, and I didn’t want to get stuck with any nasty duties I hadn’t already signed up for, not unless agreeing kept my people safe. So I shrugged, which was universal for, Call it what you want.

“No need for violence, y’all,” she said. “If I’da wanted you’uns dead, you’da been hamburger sixty seconds ago. As it happens, however, my little girl says I can trust you, Jane Yellowrock, even if you do hunt my kind. And if you’re speaking the truth, then I’ll be happy to stand aside and let you”—she tapped her cheek as if thinking of the right phrase—“interfere with my master’s plans for the evening. He’s actin’ foolish, which ain’t like him a’tall, and is unworthy of us’ns.” She stood. Over her shoulder she said, “Try not to hurt him too much,” and winked. I laughed, letting Beast show in my eyes.

Pickersgill followed her to their table. It was easy to see who was heir and who was spare: Dacy was firmly in charge, with political savvy, brains, and power. Pickersgill was smart, but in the power department, he was her shadow. As they settled, the outer door opened, and Adelaide entered. She was dressed in slim casual clothes and a pair of Italian leather boots that likely cost more than my entire wardrobe. She cast a fast, evaluating look around the restaurant, met my eyes and let her lips curl up on one side. Then she walked to her mom’s table and slid in.

Derek was watching me. In the past, I would have pulled Beast back down and tried to pretend that nothing had happened when Dacy and I had our little dialogue, but lately I didn’t bother. I was getting tired of the angry, wary condemnation in his eyes each time I proved I wasn’t purely human. Or maybe the irritation was Beast, flexing her claws. Cats didn’t care who liked them, as long as everyone else knew their place—at the cat’s feet, under the cat’s claws. Derek sat forward, his body tensing. Before I could act on that subtle dare, my phone rang, Bruiser’s number on the display. I punched a button. “And?”

“When were you going to tell me you were leaving for good?” His voice was emotionless, empty as a vamp’s.

“When I made up my mind for good,” I said, stuffing guilt down deep and out of the way, “which I haven’t. What did you find?”

“Several things. Magnolia Sweets’ old trunk, open, the contents strewn, a locked weapons cabinet, and an empty velvet bag.” I closed my eyes. I had known Evangelina was a thief when I saw the red motes in her spell. She had stolen the pink diamond, the blood-diamond that carried the sacrificial power of hundreds of dead witch children, the black magic amulet or relic used by the Damours—witch-vamps. I had taken it off the Damours when I killed them, and researched it, learning its name and some of the myths that surrounded it. The blood-diamond. The weapon that was at the heart of the witch negotiations with the vamps in New Orleans.

“Hmmmm,” I said, thinking about Magnolia Sweets’ photocopied diary. I’d had her trunk for a while, and had never gotten around to digging into it. Once the werewolf had died, it didn’t seem like a good use of my time to take a blast to the past. I was betting Evil Evie had opened the trunk and sent the photocopy to Jodi at NOPD. “Thanks. I’ll get back to you. Lock up on your way out, would you?”

“Jane?”

“Yes?”

“I want you to come back to New Orleans. This time without a spell between us.”

“That’s problematic right now,” I said, “because Evangelina Everhart is using that spell on Lincoln Shaddock. And I’m getting ready to intervene.”

“Between a witch and a bespelled Mithran? Do you have a death wish?” He sounded pretty close to dumbfounded.

I chuckled and ended the call. I left the cell on the table, and tossed silver crosses to the men at the table. They caught them, the silver glowing. “Hope you boys are ready to play,” I said, letting my hands drop to the stakes in my boots as I stood. Ash wood, no silver, weapons for wounding not killing, unless I was very unlucky and hit Lincoln’s heart. In that event, I figured I’d be dead at Dacy’s fangs before he hit the floor. And she’d be the new vamp in the talks with Grégoire. I wondered which ending Grégoire would prefer. “Follow my lead, and I’ll leave you an immobilized vamp to restrain. Then I’ll take the witch.”

I moved ahead of my guys toward Lincoln, who was facing me, dancing with his eyes closed, leading Evangelina into a quarter turn. Beast poured her strength and speed into me. I flew across the floor. Hit the couple. Heard Evangelina’s breath grunt. The vamp and witch separated. Bodies moved back and away as my own rammed between them. The pinkish glow of the spell prickled over my skin, scattered. And now that I knew what it was, I smelled witc hblood and black magic, tart and burning, like fire, heavily banked but killing-hot.

Lincoln snarled, vamping out. Fangs dropping. I staked him fast, hitting him in the abdomen, low enough for the watching vamps to recognize a deliberately nonlethal strike. Trusting the men to handle him, I whirled on Evangelina.

She flailed for balance, feet scuffling. I followed her down, grabbing her arms. Pulling them wide, out from her body. Pushing her. Stepping over her, a leg to either side, riding her down. I let gravity do my dirty work, feeling her hit the floor, and the air whoosh out; I landed on her abdomen as if straddling a horse, my feet on her arms, my hands at her throat. “Hiya, Evie,” I said. “Let him go.” And I let Beast slam through me, eyes glowing golden, a growl low in my throat, “or I’ll kill you where you lie.”

“You won’t steal this from me,” she gasped. “I won’t let you.” She rocked hard, more power in her limbs than a human should ever have. The pink glow of the dark magic built beneath her skin.

But the I/we of Beast was coursing through me, and no witch could hope to win. “Yield,” I said, my voice the lower pitch of Beast. “Yield!” I showed her my teeth and she drew back against the floor, chin down as if to protect her throat in my hands. “Say it. Say you yield,” I said. I don’t know what she was seeing,