Raven Cursed

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 Evangelina’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