by Jenna Ryan
They circumvented the west wing rubble and headed for the north side of the house. He kicked open an iron gate grown wild with vines and creepers, then used his shoulder to close it. Lopsided headstones dotted a bushy plot of land. He located a path and jerked her onto it. With the greenery so high and widespread, she didn’t spot the crypt until they rounded a sharp bend.
“Here’s where the rotting dead come to rest and the sneaky living to hide. Say hello to your ancestors, Raven Blume.”
Once inside, he released her with a shove that sent her sprawling to her hands and knees. Her eyes locked on a pair of scuffed boots and shot quickly up.
“Thank God.” She exhaled in huge relief. “You’re alive.”
Steven, bound at the wrists to an iron wall ring, bared his teeth in a grimace. “Pleasure to see you, too, cousin.” As Weasel started toward them, Steven mouthed, Stand up fast and move.
Without hesitation, she climbed to her feet, shook off a dizzy spell and eased away from her cousin.
Demars’s smiling, practically salivating hit man tracked her every step. “Time for you and me to have some fun, I think.”
Terror wanted to choke her, but, like the dizziness, she fought it and continued to inch along the marble wall. “I can’t imagine your employer would be very happy if you, uh, messed me up before he arrived.”
“I’m not gonna mess you up, lovebird. We’re just gonna have a little fun is all.”
Steven made a subtle head motion to keep her going. Stall, she thought, and latched onto the first thing that crossed her mind. “You fired that shot back at the campsite, didn’t you?”
“Works every time. Folks scatter like magpies. Some of them get rude. A few get downright mean. And there you have it, instant chaos.” He ran his tongue over front teeth that jutted from his mouth at a comical angle. “What kind of bra you wearing under that tight shirt?”
Panic spurted, but she battled past it. “You’re getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you?”
“Can’t have any fun if you keep your clothes on.”
“Okay.” She made herself hold Weasel’s stare. “But in that case, we should probably have a drink first, don’t you think? I mean, it’s not really fair, is it? You’re all—well, lets say you’re nicely loosened up, and I haven’t had a drop of anything since last night.”
Licking his teeth again, he glanced at the Mason jar on the stone slab. “I guess I can spare a little if it’ll keep your screams from breaking my eardrums.” He wiggled his fingers. “I know how to hurt without leaving a mark. Can’t let you go comatose, though.” His eyes glittered. “Ain’t no enjoyment in it for me when that happens.”
She could do this, Raven thought, and worked to calm her scrambling heart. He was more than half cut already, and that home brew he’d stolen had a wicked finish.
“Thermos cup’ll do you fine.” Grabbing her head in passing, he gave her a kiss that almost made her gag.
“Please find me, Aidan,” she prayed.
In the process of setting his gun on the slab, Weasel sent her a suspicious look. “What’d you say?”
“I said that stuff in the jar looks good.” When he handed her a brimming plastic cup, she raised it quickly, before he could assault her mouth again. And dredged up a smile. “To your health,” she said. Then without looking at Steven, added a silent, And hopefully more to ours.
* * *
HE COULDN’T FIND HER anywhere. Although panic churned inside, Aidan shoved the bulk of it into a mental box and twisted the lock. If he didn’t shut it down, he couldn’t help her. Better to use just the rough edges to keep his mind sharp and cycling through the possibilities.
“I might’ve seen her.” The camper who’d given them the liquor last night scratched under his beard. “She was heading west with a skinny-assed guy. Seemed strange to me she’d leave, given the potential for injury when that tent collapsed. She’s a doctor, right? Fellow I met said he thought she was a doctor.”
Tension coiled in Aidan’s belly. Weasel had her. But he’d already figured that, hadn’t he, when he’d realized that the wrong woman had followed him from the campsite.
He scanned the grounds ahead. Where would the bastard take her?
The tents had limited potential. Too many of them looked too much alike, making it all too easy for anyone to wander through a wrong flap.
He considered Blume House, but nixed that idea as well. Too high profile. Plus, Weasel wasn’t familiar with the place. Even with Steven out of the picture, the risk of discovery outweighed the safety factor.
An outbuilding then, one not readily visible to curious eyes.
As he approached the market, Aidan slowed from a run to a jog. He tried to recall how many freestanding structures he’d noticed in the past two years. The number had to be upward of twenty, so he could probably double that to include the secreted ones.
“Lose your partner, did you?” The man who’d been pushing mussels on Raven earlier flapped a pot holder from behind his grill. “Remind her I’ve got a delicious lobster dinner waiting for her tonight.”
“Move your damn grill to another spot, fish man,” the dark-haired woman shouted from her catering truck. “You’re suffocating me and my customers with your smoke.”
Tuning them out, Aidan ran through the dwindling list of prospects.
Instinct drew him to the ruined west wing. When he spied a movement in one of the shadows, he snapped the gun from his waistband.
Not Raven, he realized instantly. But it was someone he’d seen before. And she was waving her arms as she ran toward him.
“You’re the doctor’s friend, aren’t you?” Gulping air, a woman with short blond hair and a cut on her cheek stumbled to a halt. “I was sitting over there, reading about the house and the evil, and I saw her come by with a man—a creepy man. He had a gun stuck in her back. I knew he hadn’t seen me, so I waited, then I followed them. Your lady helped me last night when I was a drunk and acting weird. It’s my turn to help her back.” She took hold of his wrist. “Come with me.”
Chapter Ten
“You surely can hold your liquor, lovebird.” Weasel gave a sloppy wink. “It takes a woman with balls to do that.”
Not the most flattering description, Raven reflected, but he was slurring his words quite badly now, and that was a promising sign.
She deliberately kept her distance from Steven. Whatever he was doing involved a great deal of covert arm and shoulder movement, as well as the odd grimace of pain.
With his gait off-kilter, Weasel tossed back the last of the alcohol in the Mason jar. Please be enough, Raven prayed. She struggled not to recoil when he walked up to her and, face-to-face, hung his left arm over her right shoulder. “Fight me,” he ordered.
Her stomach clutched. “Um, now? Before I’m finished...?”
The plastic cup flew from her fingers. Showing his prominent front teeth, Weasel grabbed her shoulders. “You fight me, Raven Blume, else I’m gonna start hurting parts of you you’d rather I didn’t.”
He’d do that anyway, she realized, until she screamed. Then he’d do more until those screams got him off.
Her throat muscles didn’t want to work. She had to beat back the panic that controlled them.
“Do you want it clean or dirty?” she managed to ask.
His bloodshot eyes lit up even as his hands slid downward to grip her arms. “Surprise me.”
Closing her own eyes briefly, she sucked in a mental breath and moved to knee him. As expected, he laughed and blocked the blow, leaving her free to slam her fist into his ear.
When he howled, she shoved him backward. Remember the lessons, she told herself, and used her foot to side kick his knee low and his torso high.
He stumbled into a wall still howling—and, unfortunately, still smiling. Sort of. The expression on his face had changed to one of excitement tinged with anger.
“Bitch,” he swore. But he made a come-ahead motion with the fingers of both hands. “Y
ou hurt me good there, lovebird. Now I want you to take your very best shot. You get one more freebie.”
Without hesitation, she went for a hook kick to the head.
The surprise on his face told her he hadn’t seen it coming, but he got a hand up fast and tried to trap her ankle.
His bleary eyes flashed with something ugly when he missed. “My turn now,” he warned. He took a single pawing step and charged.
Raven knew he was going to ram her into the wall. She ducked to her right, saw him correct and braced for the blow. However, instead of being butted against marble, she was mowed down from the side by Steven’s flying body.
Weasel cursed, her cousin snarled and the two men grappled briefly on the floor. Steven got in three solid punches before Weasel nailed him in the throat, did a shoulder roll and yanked a gun from his boot.
“Twitch, either of you, and I’ll put a bullet between Cousin Blume’s eyebrow rings.” Staring Steven down, he aimed a finger at Raven. “You, over here!”
She’d made it halfway to the slab where Weasel’s larger gun sat. When he barked at her, she halted and drew her outstretched hand back. She should have gone for the knife lying next to Steven’s ropes.
“I’ll give you credit for jumping on an opportunity I was dumb enough to give you, Blume, but you put one foot wrong, and your party’s history...I said, over here,” he shouted at Raven. “Party—history,” he reminded, and put pressure on the trigger.
She did as she was told, and only shuddered once when he dragged her up against him, thankfully with her back to his front.
Teeth gritted, he waved his gun in Steven’s face. “I can carve you into pieces, no problem. Or—damn, no, I can’t. If I do that, there won’t be a hostage like the big D wanted.” He snugged his arm under Raven’s breasts, swayed slightly and appeared torn. “What to do here, lovebird, what to—”
She felt the reaction of his muscles before she understood the reason for it. It wasn’t until she saw blood spurt from his shoulder and heard him swear that she realized he’d been shot.
His gun struck the floor with a clatter. He made a choking sound as a bloody river ran along his forearm.
“Let her go, Weasel.”
Aidan...
Raven’s eyes combed the shadows—and found him in the darkness next to one of the lesser tombs.
“You’ve got three seconds before I put a bullet in your skull, pal. Two, one...”
Weasel flexed his biceps, but it was an instinctive reaction. Whipping his arm free, he sent Raven stumbling over Steven into Aidan, then ran from the crypt.
Steven bit off a yell when her foot landed between his legs. Fortunately, Aidan caught her before she smashed into the tomb.
Setting her upright, he pushed the hair from her face with his fingers and stared into her eyes. “Are you hurt?”
“What? No. God, you’re here.” She grabbed hold, hugged him and fisted his shirt. “I knew you’d come. No, I’m not hurt.”
He kissed her once, hard, then again before releasing her to kick Weasel’s gun in her direction. “Stay here, stay together,” he said. “He’ll have a backup weapon, and he won’t hesitate to use it.”
“No, wait, I think...” But Raven was already talking to herself. “This is his backup,” she ended on a growl.
Glowering, Steven crawled to his feet. “Your aim’s pathetic, Raven. You got the creep in the knee and almost made a eunuch out of me. You’re welcome, by the way.”
Her response was interrupted by a scream from outside. A single, high-pitched shriek followed by a series of short, whimpering bursts.
Raven’s heart actually stopped beating. “He’s killed Aidan,” she breathed.
Ongoing whimpers led her, weak-kneed, through the tangled foliage to a collection of crumbling headstones.
She spotted Aidan on his feet and released her breath in a rush.
He stood near one of the markers, staring at the ground. Several yards behind him, the blonde woman from Joe’s bar held her arms in an X across her chest. Her mouth was open, and her eyes were huge with fright.
“What happened?” Steven demanded.
But Raven saw the skinny, unmoving legs and knew. Weasel was dead.
Aidan held out a hand to her.
She’d seen death before, but never like this. The bullet had entered through the hit man’s throat, blown his Adam’s apple wide open and likely exited through his neck.
“Was it you?” she asked, but the sideways look Aidan sent her killed that hopeful thought.
She leaned against him, suddenly exhausted. “I wanted it to be you who got him. I’m sorry, but I did.”
“I wanted it to be me,” her cousin remarked. Then he shrugged. “He’s dead, though, so I’m good.”
Running a hand along Raven’s arm, Aidan shook his head, “You’re missing the point, Steven.”
“Why? There was nothing he could have told you. He never met or even saw Johnny Demars.”
“Still not the point.”
“In your own time then, Aidan.”
Raven stared at Weasel’s face, at his protruding teeth and glassy, unblinking eyes. “Think about it,” she said softly. “If Aidan didn’t do this, who did? That’s the point, Steven. Weasel’s death means Johnny Demars is here in Raven’s Cove.”
* * *
AIDAN DEALT WITH THE CORPSE while Raven and her cousin did what they could to calm down the blond woman whose name was Sylvie. A handful of oblivious people passed them near the woods, but by then they’d reached the west wing and were safely out of sight of the crypt.
Steven steered Sylvie toward the tent grounds. “I’ll convince her to keep this to herself,” he promised.
“Yeah, really good luck with that,” Raven murmured in his wake.
“Talking to yourself could be construed as a sign of inherited ancestral tendencies,” a familiar voice remarked.
“Gaitor?” Whirling, she spotted the bearded reverend and ran to hug him. Tightly. “You,” she punched his shoulder, “are a major rat.”
“I need to stay in character,” he whispered and, separating himself, gave her a solemn once-over. “You look beautiful, Raven, as always.”
“I look like death—which it just so happens, I’ve seen far too much of lately.”
“Another bad sign. Fall into step with the crazy man, and fill me in.”
The news about George in particular hit him hard. They found a log near the woods and sat down.
“I’m really sorry, Gaitor,” Raven said gently.
“I wouldn’t have expected one of our own to turn like that.”
“Me, neither.” She patted his leg. “I don’t think Aidan was as surprised, though.”
“I’m not so much surprised as I am disappointed, and pissed that I never considered the possibility.” When he raised a palm to a woman with a long black braid, a trace of humor entered his tone. “Poor Trisha. She got swept up in the melee that unfolded here and found herself running after Aidan who was running after me.”
“No one should have been running in the first place.” The pat became a rap on Gaitor’s knee. But she grinned. “He thought she was me, didn’t he?”
“Yep. When he saw she wasn’t, he flew back to the clearing so fast you were probably found and free by the time I made it out of the woods.”
“Fergus said you’ve been keeping an eye on me since Aidan’s funeral. He also said you were following a lead on Demars, and that’s why he—Fergus—trailed me to Maine.”
“Yes, well that’s not quite true, though in fairness to Fergus, it’s the story I gave him.”
“Okay. What’s the real story?”
“I haven’t let you out of my sight since Aidan—damn the crafty bastard—‘died.’ Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand why he did it.”
“Yes, we’ve been through the eye-for-an-eye thing.”
“He wanted you safe, Raven.”
“Been through that, too.”
“There you go,
then. Aidan and me both did what we thought was best. Still, even with him gone, I couldn’t get it out of my head that Demars might decide to off you, just for the hell of it. Time passed, and nothing happened. But every once in a while I’d see someone who looked to be watching you, and my first thought would always be Demars.”
“No wonder I felt like a bug under a microscope. But, Gaitor, if you knew I was coming to Raven’s Cove and you intended to be here yourself, why did you need Fergus to come, as well?”
“I wanted someone closer to you than I, in my ministerial disguise, could get.”
She smiled. “Are you saying Fergus doesn’t know you’re really Uncle Alley Gaitor?”
“No—and don’t give me that look.”
“What, like I haven’t met your weird sense of humor before today?” As her tension subsided, Raven massaged the knotted muscles in her neck. “This has been one truly bizarre experience.”
“I hate to sound gloomy, but I feel it necessary to point out that in no way is this nightmare remotely close to over. Truth be told, my gut says hell’s about to break loose in this spooky little section of Maine.”
“Hell and Ravenspell,” she agreed. As if summoned, three ravens glided in for a landing, two on a tent to her right and one on the ground in front of her. “If three feathers mean death,” she mused, “what might three live ravens portend?”
“It could mean that evil’s closing ranks,” a voice behind her remarked.
Laughing, Raven poked an elbow into Aidan’s ribs. “You’re so cynical, you’d make the same prediction about three turtledoves.”
“Song says two turtledoves, but forget the birds. What we’ve got here are two corpses and still very little to go on in terms of Johnny Demars.”
“We know he’s in the Cove.” Raven seesawed her head. “But that’s not exactly positive knowledge, is it?”
Gaitor shrugged with his mouth. “As trite as it sounds—forewarned, forearmed. And unless Demars has telepathic powers, I might yet, in my fanatical guise, be considered the ace up our collective sleeve.”
Leaning over, Raven gave his cheek a peck. “You’re an ace at clichés, anyway. Thank you, Gaitor, for everything.”
