Raven's Shade (Ravensblood Book 5)

by Shawna Reppert

  He had no Craft training. Possibly he was imagining everything. But he wouldn’t dare think that too loudly while he was within this cave.

  He went deeper into the cave, passing more and more petroglyphs, some overlapping others. Some were recognizable—stylized bighorn sheep with curling horns, birds, saber-tooth cats long extinct. Others were abstract—lines and circles in patterns that he could not make meaning of. There were more human-like figures, but none held the power that the sharp-toothed, spiral-eyed one did. All, however, struck in him a sense of awe. These are older than every book in my library, older, probably, that the Ravenscroft name. He could understand why someone would kill to preserve the petroglyphs.

  Understand, but not condone. Especially as they were too cowardly to acknowledge the deed, leaving an innocent young man to take the fall.

  You can’t be certain he’s innocent.

  He shook his head. Focus. There would be time for that later. He needed to keep his mind on the here-and-now. Too much magic present that he didn’t quite understand to let his mind wander. Besides, if he didn’t pay attention, he risked missing clues, and he didn’t have a Guardian at his side to compensate for his weaknesses.

  He had thought that the desert outside had been quiet, but the cave’s silence reached a new order of magnitude. It was as though the silence itself was a sound, a pressure against his eardrums, like the weight of the air before a thunderstorm. He found himself straining for the drip-drip of water, the scuttle of a small creature hiding among the rocks, anything but the oppressive nothingness.

  The tunnel took a gentle curve to the right, and the darkness seemed to dim. Raven stopped, reaching ahead cautiously with his magic to sense another power, a new signature, anything to explain the light that should not be there. Nothing. He took a careful step forward, and then another.

  And then looked up and laughed at himself. His steps had brought him close enough to the cave roof that had been cracked by heavy equipment to see the sun that streamed through. That sun was the bane of archeologists who had not yet determined if these petroglyphs were as hardy as She Who Watches, who presided over the Columbia Gorge from her high cliff wall for ages uncounted, heedless of the wind and rain. Intellectually, Raven understood all the problems of exposing to the open air artifacts that had been for centuries preserved in a sealed environment, but at the moment that ray of sunlight brought a wholly illogical sense of wholesomeness into the dark, grim cave environment.

  The cave opened up into a wider underground chamber. In the center of the cave floor was the chalk outline where a body had lain before it was removed. Raven could practically hear the archeologists scream at the disturbance of the sensitive site. He winced. The dark stain of blood that had dried on the cave floor had done at least as much damage as the chalk. Petroglyphs covered two of the walls, now in regular patterns that surely had had some meaning to their creators. The third wall, a large, flat surface directly opposite the cave and at least as tall as a single-story house, held what could only be the stylized petroglyph of a raven, chiseled deep into the wall, black on black like a shadow against the night sky. It stood with wings outspread, its claws designed to create the illusion of clutching the boulder on the cave floor and its beak open in a silent scream to the cave roof.

  The wall exuded a darkness that flowed forth like contagion from a wound. Betrayal washed over him. After all the times he had insisted that the raven was not a symbol of evil. . . But no. He sensed the signature of the raven itself—strong, yes, dangerous, yes, but only in the same sense that the spiral-eyed figure near the mouth of the cave was dangerous. It felt a little bit like a ward. A ward that had been weakened, about to break.

  Halfway down the wall, a deep fault appeared, scarring the widest part of the raven. Damage, no doubt, from the same earth-movers that had caused the crack in the cave ceiling. Raven spared a thought for the geologists that had declared the cave physically stable enough to enter, and wondered from which college they had received their degrees. Could the crack be what weakened whatever protective spirit the raven represented? Perhaps the petroglyph had been placed here to hold back the darkness he felt all around him?

  But that made no sense. The petroglyphs in this cave dated back to the dawn of history, maybe to the days when humans hunted mammoths and occasionally fell prey to saber-tooth cats and dire wolves. No matter what folk tales and superstitions hung about various places in the world, dark magic was a human creation. He could not believe that the workings of any dark mage could be so powerful after so many years.

  Explain the petroglyphs, then. They were not dark, but they were ancient, and still powerful. He’d been worried about being out of his depth when it came to investigative procedure, but he hadn’t expected to be in over his head when it came to magic.

  None of this made sense, though. None of it fit with his understanding of how magic worked. The petroglyphs he had tucked into a corner of his mind labeled Craft-works-different-than-Art, but the darkness he felt, it was something more, something dangerous, something unlike any Craft working he’d ever known.

  He backed out of the cave, stumbling occasionally as he went, but not wanting to turn his back on the darkness. When he reached the spiral-eyed guardian petroglyph, he paused to face it respectfully. Who made you? Who called you into being? Are you here to protect us from the darkness in that cave, and if so, will you serve even though the ones you were to protect are long gone?

  Stepping out of the cave and into the sunlight felt like returning to the land of the living after a sojourn to the underworld of the dead. Odd, how the desert that had seemed so still and lifeless before he stepped into the cave seemed, by contrast, a soothing symphony of sound. The wind rustled softly through the tall grass. A crow called in the distance and was answered by a neighbor. Far down the trail, the bored young deputy-Guardian tossed stones at a hollow, sun-bleached log; a dull thud scored each hit while a sharp crack of stone-on-stone betrayed each miss. Raven started down the trail, squinting in the bright light.

  When Raven got closer, the deputy stood to greet him. “Learn anything?”

  For one, adolescent outburst or no, I don’t think there’s any chance that boy you have in the station could have generated that much power. But he was working independently this time, and on a course contrary to the one the local Guardians had taken. Should he show his hand so soon? For that matter, how could anyone believe that Morgan had managed that level of magic on his own? It seemed counter-intuitive that any Guardian would chance letting whoever was behind that much dark magic go free solely in the interests of a quick close to a case, even one as high-profile as this one. Contrary to his own expectations, he had not found Craig Schmidt to be the sort of ignorant rural sheriff who would railroad a young man against logic solely because of his past. But even a Mundane could not miss the sense of dark power rolling out of that cave. How could they not realize that it couldn’t possibly have been Morgan? None of this made any sense.

  “I haven’t come to any conclusions yet,” he hedged. “But I’d advise Schmidt to continue to keep the cave closed off to the public until we figure out what’s going on.”

  Chapter Six

  Rafe’s friend Scott wouldn’t be available to consult with him until the evening, so Raven returned to the bed and breakfast. It had been a long day so far, and he decided to try for a nap so that he’d be alert and clear-minded when he went to talk to Scott. Raven seldom slept well in a strange place, especially when Cassandra was not with him. He had planned to take a nap before going out again, but sleep eluded him. Memories of the dark, dangerous power he had sensed in the cave would not leave him. Odd that the residual magic remained so strong while the magical signature had, as predicted, faded to uselessness. Soul stealers had that effect, but Raven knew soul stealers, and this felt different. Similar in a way he could not articulate, but different nonetheless.

  He stared at the wall, or rather at the landscape painting that hung on the wall. Aga
in, he found himself wishing Cassandra was here, and not only for the company. Though he loved her like plants loved the rain, they were never the sort of couple that needed to live in each other’s pockets to survive. But Cassandra was a trained investigator; he was merely a consultant with more knowledge of dark magic than anyone came by honestly. He’d thought he’d come out here, meet the boy, look over the crime scene, give his assessment and, if necessary, make himself available as an expert witness at the trial. But now he had a feeling that there was way, way more going on than met the eye, and they needed a real GII agent down here as soon as possible.

  The host had provided a message crystal for guest use. Raven disliked using a crystal not personally warded and keyed to him, but the alternative was that gods-awful Mundane phone which Sherlock had finally foisted upon him. He was sure Cassandra had slipped it into his bag somewhere even though he himself had deliberately ‘forgotten’ it.

  Since he was using an unfamiliar crystal, it took longer than usual to convince Cassandra’s work crystal that he was an approved contact. Cassandra wasn’t available, and he ended up leaving a message. He tapped his fingers on the polished wood of the small dining table, thinking. He was on his own, at least for the time being. Where would Cassandra go from here?

  Of course. If Cassandra only had one suspect and had serious misgivings about that suspect’s guilt, she would start looking around for who else had reason to want the victim dead. Lansing had been CEO of a high-powered company. Not only did he have a substantial fortune of his own, but he controlled even more millions. Billions, probably. When the numbers got that high, the precise figure ceased to matter, at least to Raven. Enough money, anyway, to provide a strong motive. But for whom?

  He activated the crystal again. “Chuckie?” He cringed a little at using such a childish name, but Chuckie insisted that Charles was his father. “It’s Raven.”

  Chuckie answered immediately. “Raven, buddy, how ya doing? I’m just finishing up that research that your sweetie asked for.”

  Chuckie had been Cassandra’s partner before Rafe. Most mages had little use for Mundane technology, although things like cell phones and televisions were slowly making inroads, much to Raven’s disappointment. Chuckie was an exception; the self-styled techno-mage specialized in magical/computer interfaces and was GII’s go-to for any research best done on a computer.

  “Ah, yes. I’m not working with Cassandra on that one. I have a little side project I was hoping you could help me with.” He explained about Lansing’s death, skirting the fact that he was looking into it as a side-project for Rafe, not for GII.

  “So basically you want to know who might want Lansing dead?” Chuckie said. “You want the whole list, or just the top hundred or so?”

  “I’d heard he was an unscrupulous profit-monger,” Raven said. “But you’re making him sound like he was as bad as William.”

  “Nah. William at least had class.”

  True enough.

  “Listen, perhaps the man’s only saving grace was that he was a Mundane. Limited the amount of damage he could do.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if I should put you on the suspect list.”

  “Hey, I’m only someone willing to dance on his grave. You need to move up the list to the people who were willing to put him there. Better yet, the people who wanted to see him die horribly. That should narrow the list down to a thousand or so.”

  “Starting with?”

  “Off the top of my head? His first wife. His second wife. His th— No, make that the family of his third wife. She committed suicide, and he’s widely believed to have driven her to it. The shareholders of his first two companies, many of whom lost small fortunes, some of whom were left destitute when the companies filed bankruptcy, while he skipped away with his off-shore holdings that no one could quite prove were acquired illegally.”

  “Wait. Why would people buy shares in a third company if his first two companies went bankrupt?” Raven didn’t pay too much attention to the stock market—he left his lawyer and his accountant to hash out the details of his own portfolio—but he knew enough.

  “People are greedy and gullible. Sociopaths are charming and convincing. You do the math.”

  “His current company is—”

  “Smoke and mirrors. Same as the first two. The shareholders don’t know yet, of course. My guess would be most of the board does, but they’re probably hoping to grab their suitcases of money and jump clear when the tower falls.”

  “What about the environmentalists?”

  “Personally, I’d put them pretty low down on the list. Not that they’re likely to be mourning his passing, but statistically they’re more likely to picket his luxury hotels or haul his ass into court. Even the direct-action types are more likely to pour sugar into the gas tanks of the bulldozers than they are to resort to inflicting bodily harm, let alone murder most foul. But I’ll talk to Suzy. Her thing’s the oceans more than the desert, but she might know someone who knows someone who heard something.”

  “Wouldn’t that be asking her to betray her own?” Raven asked.

  “Not even close,” Chuckie said. “You should hear her rant about anyone who discredits the cause by resorting to violence.”

  Chuckie sounded perilously close to a rant himself; Raven headed him off with a description of Morgan, finishing with “By your analysis he’s unlikely to be the murderer?”

  Chuckie made a non-committal sound that Raven had learned meant that he wasn’t willing to disagree with Raven, but wasn’t fully committed to his point of view.

  “No?” Raven prompted.

  “Kids are unpredictable.” Chuckie said.

  “He’s nearly twenty.”

  Chuckie snorted. “Maybe you were all grown up and responsible at twenty, whatever responsible means for a dark mage. Hell, you were probably a responsible grown-up when you were five. But most of us were still pretty stupid at that age. I mean, I was nineteen when I hacked the Mundane’s central security system. On a dare.”

  Raven had heard allusions to the incident, which had caused days of nationwide panic and years of strained relationships between the Mundane, Art, and Craft communities. He’d never heard the full story, though. Someday, he’d have to drag it out of Chuckie. Should be easy enough; Chuckie was fond of microbrews and couldn’t hold his drink nearly as well as he thought he could.

  “So you’re saying. . .what, exactly?” Raven asked.

  “Only that it’s still an open field.”

  Raven gusted a sigh of frustration.

  “Yeah, sorry, my friend. Welcome to the life of a Guardian.”

  “I’m not a Guardian,” Raven protested.

  Chuckie laughed. “You keep telling yourself that. I’ll poke around in LansingCorp’s finances and see if I can find anyone with a particularly strong motive, see if I can track the whereabouts of those with more personal motives. But first I have to get dinner on before Suzy gets home. She’s been out counting sea otters all day, so she’s going to be tired and hungry.”

  Counting sea otters. Raven couldn’t quite tell if Chuckie was joking or not, and he wasn’t going to open himself up by asking. “I shall talk to you later, then.”

  His host had left a bowl of fruit on the table. Raven helped himself to an apple on his way out the door to stroll among the orange California poppies and yellow St John’s Wort that seemed to thrive even in this arid landscape. He fed the core of the apple to a small, shaggy-maned black pony that had come to poke its head between the fence rails to beg for a treat.

  He replayed his conversation with Sheriff Schmidt—with Craig, since apparently even law enforcement was casual out here. The thing was, the man’s report on what caused young people to turn to dark magic was. . .interesting, but a little narrow in focus. Raven had never faced not having the funds to do, well, anything, and so he hadn’t spent much time thinking about how limiting it could be, how frustrating it could be for a talented young person who would otherwise
be facing a bright future.

  The Ravenscroft Foundation contributed to a few scholarship funds. Alexander Chen, who had been his lawyer since before his age of majority, handled the details. When Raven got back from this trip, he would make certain that at least some of those had a strong needs-based component.

  The pony nudged his arm, and so he obligingly scratched under its mane and along the crest of its neck. The pony stretched out its rather coarse head, upper lip twitching in pleasure. Raven was not and would never be a horseman, but while in Australia he’d come to not mind the company of at least the smaller, tamer representatives of the equine species.

  His mind kept coming back to one thing. The dark magic residue in the cave was so very strong. Craig Schmidt was neither stupid nor corrupt. How could he possibly believe that something that took that much power had been done by a boy not yet twenty?

  Chapter Seven

  After showering, Raven dressed simply in a white cotton button-down, tailored to fit but not bespoke, and a pair of black jeans that was one of the few denim items Cassandra had persuaded him to buy. He’d been warned that the style in a place like Devil’s Crossing tended to be more low-key and that he might raise hackles if he showed up at a bar in a bespoke suit and tie. Generally, he favored darker colors, but hoped the white shirt, at odds with his usual image, might be disarming.

  Raven was surprised that Scott chose The Devil’s Pitchfork as a meeting place. He was even more surprised to find that Craig was tending bar after having presumably worked a full day at the station. Scott had not yet arrived, and so Raven took a seat at the bar that gave him the best vantage of the door and waited. A jukebox stood in one corner, either a carefully restored vintage model or a detailed replica. It blared a type of music one of the younger GII agents had told him was called country rock. Raven had no desire to make any closer acquaintance with it, then or now, but it seemed he had little choice in the matter. He doubted very much that the jukebox offered anything by Mozart or Liszt.