The so-called morgue didn’t have fancy metal drawers for body storage. It had a walk-in freezer with sturdy, wide shelves. All the same, Atwood barely fit on a lower tier. He was still in his pajamas, barefoot, his skull bloodied and damaged.
“Not much else we can do,” said Taylor. He cast one last pitying glance at the man, and then followed Gray out of the freezer. He shut the door and snapped the lock on it. The minute it snicked closed, a spell engaged. Anyone who touched the lock—zzzzzt!—would find himself zapped into unconsciousness.
“You think that’s necessary?” asked Gray. “Who’d steal Atwood?”
“It might be overkill. But you know what Ren did.”
“Yes,” said Gray, his expression grim at the mention of Taylor’s former deputy. “I know.”
“I’ll give Dr. Green a call and see when he can do the autopsy.”
“All right. Helluva way to end the day,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Taylor. “Damned sure is.”
“Let’s go check on Banton’s gun,” said Gray.
Taylor had tucked the gun they found near Atwood into an empty holster on his weapons belt. Grimly, they exited the old clinic and walked next door to the sheriff’s office. Ember had taken Arlene home earlier, and the place was quiet. To Taylor, ghosts seemed to hover in the corners, waiting, watching. The evidence “room” was a repurposed janitorial closet, and it hosted few items. The gun with which Harley Banton had committed suicide had been locked in a case.
Taylor opened the case and found it…empty.
“Shit.” He pulled it off the shelf and showed it to Gray.
“The door was locked, and the case, too,” said Gray. “I don’t sense any magic. Someone had to take it.”
“There’s no way Atwood would’ve gotten in here without someone noticing. And I’ve tripled the protections on this place. Anyone who tried to break in after hours would get some nasty surprises.”
They both considered the case silently. Then Taylor slid it back onto the shelf. “Maybe you should take the gun and keep it protected at your place.”
“All right.” Gray accepted the Peacemaker. “I’ll take it home now. You let me know if you find out anything else.”
“Will do.”
Gray nodded his good-bye, and Taylor watched the Guardian leave. As soon as Gray shut the door, Taylor let out an unsteady breath.
What the hell was going on? He couldn’t begin to fathom how the gun had gone missing and ended up in Atwood’s hand. Or what had caused Atwood to end his life. He never figured Atwood for the kind of guy who’d kill himself. He was too stubborn a cuss to give up like that.
Taylor’s neck prickled uncomfortably, and he tried to rub away the tingles knotting his shoulders. He leaned against a counter, still feeling the chill of that freezer—or maybe it was the chill of foreboding. He didn’t want to believe that Atwood committed suicide, but it was almost better than the alternative. Still, who would murder the man? He didn’t have a lot of friends, but everyone knew him and tolerated him.
No, sometimes the obvious answer was the true one. Atwood, for reasons unknown, had put the. 45 to his temple and pulled the trigger. And stealing Banton’s gun to do the deed added a whole new twist to the tragedy.
Yeah, Taylor felt itchy about the whole thing. Atwood was a writer. He would’ve left a note, or more likely, a set of instructions for his nephew. Shit. His stomach dropped to his toes. Taylor still had to give the bad news to Trent.
He took off his cowboy hat and slapped it against his thigh. Then, putting the hat back on his head, he tugged down the brim and strode out of the room.
Duty was duty.
Even if it broke someone’s heart.
Norie Whyte awoke in the crook of a tree. It was huge, its branches thick and gnarled, and its leaves shimmered gold. Contentment stole through her, and she felt right at home.
She was clean, her skin feeling as though she’d been freshly bathed, and she wore a white robe that felt as cozy and warm as a beloved quilt. She looked out over the horizon and saw endless rolling hills of emerald green. The air was crisp, with just a bit of chill in it, and it smelled like apple blossoms.
“They’re afraid you’re going to die.”
She looked at the big white raven sitting on the wide branch that crooked to her right. It was speaking to her. “Maybe I am.”
“They’re trying the ritual earlier than planned.”
“Oh.” She returned her gaze to the horizon, to the jeweled blue of the sky, and the glowing gold knot of the sun. “I love this dream.”
“I’m not a dream,” sniffed the bird. “I’m your familiar.”
“That’s just silly. I’m not a witch. And even if I was, familiars are…well, fictitious.”
“We are not.” The bird flapped his wings in reproach. He cocked his head and chirped. “You need to remember, Norie. It’s time.”
“You think the key to why they want me is locked inside my forgotten childhood?” Norie sighed. “I don’t care about that. I was happy just as I was.”
“Happy? You were a lonely waitress in Los Angeles.”
His derogatory tone made her flinch. “My life wasn’t so bad.”
“You have a bigger destiny.”
“I don’t want a bigger destiny.” He was stealing her contentment, scraping away at it with his words, and his urgency.
“You have been called.”
“Called?” She zeroed in on the bird. “By who?”
“The Goddess.”
She stared at him a long moment and then snorted a laugh. “Right. The Goddess. Where was She when I needed Her? I spent my entire childhood being dragged from one place to another with a mother who couldn’t settle down. I’ve spent my entire adulthood toiling and saving for the day I could live life the way I really wanted. I’m nobody, Raven. And I don’t mind that. I just want some breathing room. Some freedom to explore. To just be.”
“Trust the Goddess. Have faith,” said the raven. “And you will see the fruition of dreams greater than you imagine now.”
“Trust the Goddess,” she whispered. “Just like that, huh?”
“Even an ounce of faith will buoy you through the coming storm,” he said kindly. He looked up. “You will awaken soon.”
Fear dropped like a block of ice into her stomach. Frissons stole up to her throat. “They’re going to make me suffer.”
“Yes,” he said. “Have courage, Lenore.”
Have faith. Have courage. It was easy for the bird to toss out those phrases. He wasn’t getting sacrificed.
“Courage,” he said once more.
“Courage,” she whispered back, and then the dream faded away, and she spun through the darkness of unconsciousness, dropping down, down, down, until…
She woke up chained to a stone altar. Still naked, her body shivered in the cold air. She groggily noted she was at least clean. Her skin felt scrubbed and her hair washed. The faint scent of apple blossoms tickled her nose. They were outside, in a place she didn’t recognize, but it felt ancient. Large blue-gray stones enclosed the altar; above her was the star-specked night sky. There was something wrong…something about the place that felt as though it were grieving.
Six black-robed figures surrounded the altar, all with gleaming daggers raised. Their hoods hid their faces, but their intent was obvious. Evil. All of them were drenched with the stink of their malevolence.
“Begin the spell,” uttered the voice she hated above all others.
When the six blades cut her all at once, she swallowed her cries. She didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of witnessing her final humiliation.
Then the real agony began.
The first electric tendril of dark magic wiggled underneath her skin. It felt as though acid were winding through her veins. The magic ate away at her, and the blades nicked her, offering her blood and pain to the Dark One. Goddess, oh Goddess, it hurt! She sobbed, and the wails dammed in her throat broke free.
&
nbsp; She screamed.
And screamed.
Until she couldn’t anymore.
Chapter 2
“Taylor Edward Mooreland! You wake up right now, y’hear?”
His mother’s no-nonsense voice, crackling with impatience, dragged Taylor from the dark depths of his nightmare. He awoke in his bed, sucking in oxygen like a drowning man who’d just broken the surface of the water.
“Mom?” But no, she was dead. She had been for the last six years. He’d heard her voice, though. Hadn’t he? Cold perspiration dribbled down his spine, and he felt as if he were having a heart attack. He snapped on the bedside lamp and shoved off the covers.
Son of a bitch.
He rubbed his hands through his hair. He never recollected anything solid from the recurring nightmare, just wispy fragments tainted with dread. Moonless night. Incense-tainted air. Heart-wrenching screams.
He remembered only the woman in detail.
Her black hair gleamed like a raven’s wing, and she had pale, delicate features—a heart-shaped face and a cute pointed chin. When she smiled, the left side of her mouth dimpled. And she had the most amazing eyes—a color of blue so light that he was reminded of the dainty flowers etched on his mother’s favorite dishes, the ones he’d packed away after she died.
“Get going, boy. She needs you.”
Taylor’s head snapped up, and he stared into the shadows of his room. “Mom?”
He waited, his heart stuttering, his chest heavy. Seconds ticked by, but he heard nothing else. Slowly, he let out a breath. Goddess above! He was losing his damned mind. It had been almost six years since she’d died, and though he thought of his mother every day, he hadn’t dreamed about her in a long while.
And he’d never heard her voice outside the dreamscape.
The room felt empty.
And so did he.
He looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was almost three a.m.; it would be hours yet before the roosters crowed and the farmers crawled out from their warm beds. He used to keep those hours, back when he was working this land with Ol’ Joe. The old man had owned this farm, and Taylor had worked for him. When Ol’ Joe passed away, he’d left the farm and everything on it to Taylor. It had been a good thing for his family—he and Mom and his siblings had all moved in and started over. Memories hung around like friendly ghosts. Still. The place was kinda lonely with just him and Ant, his younger brother, living there. Now all that remained were a hundred acres or so, a house that needed repair, and a barn that needed demolition. Taylor wasn’t a farmer anymore.
He was proud to be the sheriff, glad to have real purpose—even though he’d been feeling somewhat restless lately—probably a side effect of the nightmares. It was his job to serve and protect, and knowing that he couldn’t save someone, even in a dream, was no doubt digging at his ego.
No use trying to sleep now. He needed a workout, a shower, and a vat of coffee.
Taylor rolled his shoulders, and then he popped his neck. He’d go for a run first to shake off the exhaustion and the lingering foreboding. Just a bad dream, he reminded himself. It isn’t real.
Still, he couldn’t help but think that in a world filled with magic—anything at all was possible.
Nightmares could sure as hell be real.
And with that final cheerful thought, Taylor dragged himself out of bed and into a pair of clean sweats and his Nikes.
Ant was asleep; the proof was in the snores that drifted down the hallway. The kid had been working himself into exhaustion every day. The House of Wolves had responded to his brother’s petition to join; they were sending out someone to gauge his abilities. To Taylor’s mind, it was more along the lines of judging Ant’s worthiness to be called a magical at all, and he didn’t cotton to that. But Ant was twenty years old, and he could do what he wanted. His younger brother had always been good with plants, but eight months ago, he’d become a full-blown wizard, able to wield earth magic. He’d also fallen head over heels for a girl who was his match in every way, except that she was three years younger, and one year away from being considered a legal adult. His brother maintained the friendship because his moral code would not let him do anything else.
The light of Ant’s life, and the bane of his existence, was named Happy. She lived with Gray and his wife, attended high school, and on the weekends, she worked at Ember’s tea shop. She honored Ant’s choice to keep romance off the menu. But she wasn’t that great at controlling those yearning moon-eyed stares or sighs of longing. Taylor suspected that his brother trained hard and kept busy so he’d keep his hands off the girl.
Taylor figured that Ant needed to get away from Nevermore, and from Happy, so he could get some perspective. If Ant tested well, he’d be given the opportunity to go do the traditional year of training with other Wolf novices at a facility in Canada. Truth be told, Happy needed to see the world without Ant in it, too. They were just kids. All that goo-goo love stuff was raging hormones and lack of dating choices. After all, who could find true love in a town with a little more than five hundred citizens?
Taylor shut the front door. The weathered boards of the porch protested as he walked across it, and guilt stabbed him. As he bounded down the old wooden steps, he admitted that he really needed to work on the house. Maybe next weekend he’d do some fixing up.
It was mid-October, and in the predawn hours, it was a mite chilly. Still, it was Texas, and no doubt by noon, temps would be in the seventies. Texas held on to the heat the same stubborn way a desperate lover might cling to his ex—with passionate disregard for anyone else’s feelings or opinions.
In the night sky, a multitude of shimmering stars surrounded the gleaming half-moon. He did a few stretches in the front yard while his eyes adjusted to the dark. He sucked in a deep, full breath of crisp air; then he took off, around the house, through the first of several artsy-fartsy gardens created by his brother until he hit the gravel path that took him into the woods—a few acres of densely packed, ancient trees that Ol’ Joe hadn’t cleared. He’d told Taylor once that the little forest was sacred, and none of the foliage should ever be cut down. That was a condition he’d even put in his will, and Taylor honored it. Ant tended to avoid the area, though he’d never really said why.
Taylor liked it.
It felt like a sanctuary. And it seemed to treat him like a favorite aunt: He got the hug, and everyone else got the pinched cheeks.
He followed the narrow, well-worn path, which he’d discovered years ago during some of his first explorations of the area. For whatever reason, it had never been swallowed up by the forest. Hell, it wasn’t overgrown at all, and there was no debris on it, either. No decaying logs. No stray rocks. Not even fallen leaves. Only earth magic could keep a path that maintenance free, and Taylor wondered if in Nevermore’s distant past the magicals had either created the forest, or magicked it. And if so…why?
For a few blessed moments, the only noise was the shuff-shuff-shuff of Taylor’s sneakers on the dirt.
A sharp, long moan sliced right through the quiet.
Taylor stopped short, panting and feeling the adrenaline-laced beats of his heart. He did a full circle, studying the area. His staccato breaths were muffled by the sudden, eerie stillness. There were no animals scurrying, no birds twittering, no wind rattling. The back of his neck prickled. He reached toward his right hip before he remembered he wasn’t in uniform, and he hadn’t brought his pistol.
Caw. Caw. Caw.
“Damn it!” Taylor swiveled and looked up into the branches of a pine tree with scarred and twisted limbs. It looked half dead, at least on the side facing the path.
A raven sat on the gnarled wood less than a foot above his head. It wasn’t a common crow. It was three times the size, for one thing, and for another, it was white. If it hadn’t had blue eyes the size of marbles, it could’ve been mistaken for a big blob of snow.
The bird cocked its head and opened its beak. “Lenore,” it said in a mournful tone. “Lenore
.”
Taylor’s mouth dropped open.
Animals didn’t talk. Sometimes magicals whipped up spells that gave the illusion, mostly as entertainment or as practical jokes. But who the hell would be out here at this time of night with the intention of annoying him? No one liked these woods. And he was doing his run hours earlier than usual—so who could possibly know he was out here?
Caw. Caw. Caw.
Taylor frowned. Yeah. He was definitely losing his damned mind. First there had been the nightmares, then his mother’s voice, and now a mutant bird with a sense of humor.
The prickles irritating his neck paraded down his spine like tiny spiders.
“Lenore,” said the raven again. Then it launched from the branch, circled once, and took off to the left. A few seconds later, it returned, circled again, and flew off in the same direction.
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” Taylor peered into the dark recesses. Was he really gonna follow a talking raven into that mess?
The bird came back a third time and cawed.
“All right,” he muttered. “But if you’re fucking with me, you’re dinner.”
The moonlight didn’t filter through the thick canopy, and the deeper they went, the darker and more foreboding his surroundings. Keeping track of the raven and his own two feet took a lot of effort. He had to follow the damned bird more by its cawing than by watching it swoop overhead. More times than he could count he was either getting whacked in the face by branches or tripping over forest detritus.
Then he stumbled into a clearing, and he stopped.
Holy Mother Goddess.
The area was ringed with southern red oaks so tightly packed that their limbs had intertwined to form a broad, leafy edge that framed the night sky. Above, the half-moon glittered like a whore’s wink. In the middle of the field was a circle of six gray-blue stones. He gauged their height to be at least ten feet, and their width was six feet or more.
Now or Never: Wizards of Nevermore Page 4
