Raven Cursed

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.

“Because when Evangelina sacrifices me at moonrise on the full moon, the demon will be bound and will come after him.”

I nodded once to show I had heard, my movement erratic. “How are you avoiding the call of the spell,” I asked. “You’re two-natured. You should be walking inside the ward.”

“The summoning and binding aren’t complete. Blood from a living-undead Mithran will complete it, but only on the full moon.”

“Okay. Got that,” I whispered. “Why does Evangelina want to hurt Leo?”

“All I know is the word Shiloh.” Lincoln dropped, landing with a hard flat thump on the black floor, his hands barely catching his weight before his head banged down. “Ask the right people,” he whispered. “Ask the right questions.” He collapsed with a short sigh and closed his eyes, the sun outside and the silver taking their toll. He was asleep, in the undead sleep of vamps. He’d be hungry when he waked. I should have tried to set him free, but that would have meant getting closer to the demon. No freaking way. I turned and ran, stumbling up the steps. Falling. Catching myself on my forearms, bruising. But the pain cleared my head, and I held the scarf like a lifeline as I made it to the top of the stairs and out of the house. Only when I was back at my car did I remember that I’d left the lights on and doors all open. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t going back in there. Not for nothing. I sat in the sunlight in my SUV, in the warmth created by the sun through the windows, clutching the scarf that had saved my life. And trembled.

When I could think more clearly, I drove to a little store, bought three bottles of ginger beer, which was like ginger ale but dark and sharp-tasting, and four homemade pastries, consuming them standing at the counter, needing the calories, and ignoring the anxious glances of the proprietor at my bloody, torn clothes. When my shakes had passed and I had my head on straight enough, I sent the pictures to Big Evan’s phone, and was careful not to look at them for fear the desire to go back and learn more may take me over. By the skin of my chinny- chin-chin I had gotten away from the big bad wolf. Or the big bad raptor—a demon of The People.

I couldn’t fight this thing alone. I needed to call in the cavalry, but I didn’t know who to call, who I could trust to keep Molly alive. With the heater on high, I drove back to Asheville.

I made my room without running into anyone I knew, stripped, and climbed into the shower. I stood beneath the scalding water and let it parboil me, trying to thaw the cold in my soul left by the nearness to the ancient evil. When I was warmer, I dressed and went to the drawer holding my Bible and crosses, the only defense against evil I knew. I put on three silver crosses, held the Bible on my lap, and turned on the gas fire with the remote control as I scrolled through my phone contacts for Aggie One Feather’s number.

Guilt wormed under my skin like bamboo shoots under fingernails. I hadn’t told Aggie—my Cherokee teacher, the elder who was helping me find my past—that I was leaving New Orleans. I hadn’t said good-bye. I was a coward and an idiot. And if the thing in the circle had claimed to be anything other than a Cherokee demon, I’d go on being a coward and an idiot. I checked the time on the cell—nine a.m.—and hit send. Aggie answered on the second ring.

“Hello. How can I help you?”

I thought about that for a moment. Only an elder would answer the phone like that, knowing the odds of it being a solicitation call. “Aggie One Feather.” I paused. “Egini Agayvlge i, in the speech of The People. This is Jane Yellowrock,” I took a breath, “Dalonige’i digadoli. Yellow Eyes