Raven Cursed

The Raven will possess the witch in death, Beast thought. His goal from the beginning.

Evangelina ripped down on the delicate chain. Breaking it. I lunged toward her, pushing off with my toes, up through my arches, ankles, calves, knees, a whiplashing thrust into thighs, hips, spine. Too slow. She dropped the blood-diamond into her wound.

The earth screamed. Darkness rose and covered . . . everything. Everything, everywhere, was nothingness. But I had been here before, in this place of emptiness. It could be defeated. Blind, I finished my leap, reaching down. Into the void of the warm, wet, bloody wound.

I took the diamond into my hand.

The world blazed around me, bright. Her blood sizzled. Her blood boiled. My hand scorched and froze in chorus, a duality of agonies that raced up my arm. Into my chest. But I was still leaping. Airborne. Out of the car. To land and stand, poised on the pavement. The gem in my fist. It had no warmth, no cold, yet it contained the energies of the Raven Mocker, the blood sacrifice of countless witch children over centuries. It was powerful beyond anything I had ever touched. And if I destroyed it, I might release an evil beyond my own imagining. A trilling cry sounded behind me. Slowly, I turned.

The Raven Mocker stood on the back of the car, illuminated by the lights from a van. And this time he threw a shadow. He was real. He was here. He was free. Evangelina’s blood had bought his freedom. His huge, clawed feet dented in the trunk lid with dull thumps. His wings gathered close. Beak to the sky. He was singing, a hooting, warbling, tocking sound, his head back. Throat exposed. Then he reached down with his beak toward Evangelina. And she reached up to him with blood-stained hands.

My blades were all gone. The last one was buried in the witch. Movement caught my eye. I saw Molly and Big Evan, racing toward me, appearing out of the bright lights. Big Evan wore a grimace. Carried a knife in his fist. It was a twin to mine, the silver brilliant as moonbeams on the blade. He flipped it. At me.

Time slowed again. Thick as clotted cream. The blade glittered, scattering the light. It tumbled in midair, gliding at me, hilt first. I lifted my right hand. The one with the necklace in it. The chain wrapped around and around my wrist as I raised it, caught in the force of my movement. The hilt smacked into my palm. Perfectly planted. Big Evan opened his mouth, started to speak the round, fluid syllables of the ancient witches. I pushed off hard, leaping. To the back seat of the car.

Holding the blood-diamond, my hand coated with Evangelina’s blood, I stabbed upward. Into the belly of the demon. I shouted, “Hayyel!”

The magic was cold. It swarmed over me like a blizzard, burning and icy. The demon’s blood gushed over my hand, mixing with Evangelina’s. Coating the blood-diamond. It flashed red, then black, and red again. My wrist burned where the chain touched me. Binding itself to me. The gold chain around my neck branding into me. The hilt of the knife heating. Evan invoked the name, “Hayyel, take Kalona Ayeliski, the Raven Mocker.” He spoke the Irish Gaelic of the binding, syllables I couldn’t reproduce if I tried. “Bíodh sé daor, le m’ordú agus le mo chumhacht.”

The explosion sent me back, over the witch dead on the front seat, over the windshield and hood. To the ground where I hit, slamming the breath out of me, a shocking pain. I rolled, bounced, scraped over the driveway, leaving layers of my flesh. Light flashed over the night, so bright I saw my own bones through my skin. Wings, light and golden, black and shadowed, beat at the world.

It was all over when I finally remembered to take a breath.

All except the screaming. The grief. Molly wailed, clutching her sister to her. A reporter raced up to thrust a microphone at my face. I growled. Leo smoothly stepped between us before I coldcocked her. I caught a glimpse of Grégoire being helped into the hotel, the stink of burned vamp on the air. Derek handed me my weapons and put an arm around me. Shielding me. Steered me inside. Something crashed, and the light, so bright it had been blinding, went out. In my right hand was an elk-horn hilt and a melted blade. The chain of the blood-diamond was seared into my flesh, still so hot my skin blistered around it.

“Light?” I croaked.

“From the news van. They got the whole damn thing and sent it out live.” He pointed to a TV discreetly on the check-in desk. It was a close-up of Leo, looking urbane and elegant, even with the smear of blood on his cheek. And beside him was Lincoln Shaddock, looking shell-shocked and lost, staring at a body on the pavement. Chen. Naked. Dead. With runes cut into his flesh. I remembered the lump in the car next to Shaddock earlier. Evangelina had sacrificed him to the demon.

My back and Derek’s were in the background, something dangling against my hand. I tucked the pink diamond gem—the blood-diamond—into my pocket. I knew what it was now. A portal into hell. Guarded by an angel.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE A Marriage Ceremony with a Death Sentence at the End

Two days later, I stood beside the hospital bed, awkwardly patting Itty Bitty’s hand. The tiny woman was being released, her werewolf wounds healing with no trace of were-taint found in her blood. Gertruda, the Mercy Blade sworn to the service of Charles Dufresnee, the Master of the Raleigh-Durham area, sat at her other side, looking far more comfortable in the medical surroundings than I felt.

Gertruda still wanted nothing to do with me. She hadn’t looked at me once since she walked into the room to give the injured witch her final healing. Still silent, she left the room, managing to convey her disdain of me and everything I stood for without saying a word. I didn’t know what I’d done to the woman, but I was good at ticking off supernats.

And cops. I was real good at ticking them off. And men in general, even better. Itty Bitty’s boyfriend sat in the corner of the room and glowered at me as if the wolf attack had been my fault. Which it had been. Sorta. It’s hard to dodge well-deserved blame, and harder still to ignore the stab of guilt when I think about all the people hurt because I hadn’t thought about two werewolves in jail and how they might react when their pack was slaughtered. And hadn’t thought about the magical amulet locked in my gun cabinet in New Orleans. And hadn’t thought about Evangelina and how weird she had acted while visiting me in New Orleans. And just hadn’t thought at all.

I patted Itty Bitty’s hand again. “Like I said. The Party of African Weres will pick up any outstanding medical bills. The leader assured me personally.”

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “You didn’t have to.”

I managed a smile, but from the reaction on her face, not a good one. “Yeah. I did.” Okay. Enough social-small-talk. I waggled my fingers at them and left the room, fighting the urge to run. I’d rather face a pack of wolves than try to comfort someone.

Rick lounged against a wall in the hallway, his legs crossed at the ankles, looking long and lean in black jeans and jacket, and not trying very hard to discourage the two young women who were hanging around. They were dressed in brightly patterned scrub suits and one had a chest that Rick clearly found imposing. Maybe mesmerizing was a better word. “Come on, Ricky Bo,” I said, “before your eyeballs fall out.”

He grinned at me, his too-long hair falling forward, curling into his collar. “Sandra is Sam Orson’s nurse.” He nodded to the busty one. “She says the deputy’s going to be fine. He just took a ricochet off the magical ward into the meaty part of his thigh.” I hadn’t realized I carried the weight of the cop’s injury until it fell away. “You can quit worrying,” he added more gently.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and shrugged, not knowing how to respond.

Rick pushed off the wall and draped his arm around my shoulders, not an easy thing to do when there’s no disparity in height. “Come on. We need to talk.”

Oh crap. We need to talk as in, I bought a house and want you to move in? Or as in, I want to see other people, like the busty Sandra? Or as in—

“I had a call from Grizzard. And from PsyLed. I’ve got job offers from both.”

I thought about that as we entered the elevator and Rick pushed the button for the lobby. As the doors