Raven Cursed jy-4

by Faith Hunter

  I was early, only one truck parked in the lot, the front doors wide to air out the day’s heat, half the lights on, but the sanctuary empty. I went in and took a seat in the semidarkness, sliding to my knees on the old, wide-plank floor. It had been a long time since I had prayed. And I didn’t know what to say to God. I settled on confession, beginning with the whispered words, “Today I killed a man. His death was sudden. I didn’t give him time before death to confess. To seek you.” Tears started to fall, hot and searing. “I killed a man,” I whispered, the words like the breath of hell in my mouth. “I didn’t really mean to kill him. But all I can see is his body fall. And fall. And fall. Like so many vamps and weres. And I have to wonder if they were all as precious to you as a human is. I have to wonder if the blood of murder rests on my soul.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Streams Talking Softly in Mountain-Water Tongue

  No one bothered me while I prayed. No one bothered me while the small church filled up and the lights came on, and the heat went up despite the open windows. I stayed through the service, singing with the congregation, without the benefit of instrumental music. I listened to the earnest minister and his sermon on what it meant to be drenched in the blood of the lamb, a topic Beast might have reacted to, but this once, she remained silent, in the background. And I slipped out during the last hymn so I wouldn’t have to talk with any of them. It was the chicken’s way out, but I wasn’t ready to be welcomed into the presence of God’s people yet. It was hard enough to try to reach out for the presence of God himself. And I had a feeling that I might find it easier in the silence of the forest and ragged hills, far from other humans.

  My Cherokee self, the part of me that had memories from long ago, was damaged. Had been broken by the death of my father, the rape of my mother. Had been further damaged by the loss of my people on a cold and frigid snowy night. By the years I spent as we sa, a bobcat, before I stole Beast. And by the hunger times, lived in her form. I had tried to find that ancient, human, Cherokee part of me, to wake it and merge it with who I was now, creating one cohesive self. I felt that if I did, if I could find my ancient self, I might learn something important, might finally feel whole. But I was fractured, broken, and I didn’t have the time, not now, for self-analysis and soul-searching. Someday. Someday.

  I glanced back at the small church and started up the truck, driving away as the last notes of the last song poured through the open, stained-glass windows, along with the stained light. I had a search of a different sort to begin.

  A half hour later, after a stop at an Ingles to purchase ten pounds of raw steak, a dozen granola bars, and a roll of paper towels, I turned off the paved road near Hot Springs, onto a well-kept gravel road, still some six mountain road miles from the site I had decided to search. It was near the Rich-Laurel Wildlife Area, on a little feeder creek that emptied into the French Broad River. There were no people close by. It was late and the weekend campers were long gone; the few hard-core campers were gathered at their tents, fires burning merrily here and there, easy to spot and easier to avoid in the dark.

  I maneuvered out of the campground, parked out of the way, and got out to reconnoiter, leaning against the armored vehicle, the metal warm beneath my skin, wild grasses moving against my skirt and boots. I let Beast rise slowly to the surface, her senses expanding. I could discern her heartbeat, slower when at rest than mine, beating strongly beneath my own, a mystical sensation, powerful in my memory. The night, dark beneath the overhead foliage, grew perceptibly brighter as my pupils widened with Beast-sight. My lips parted and drew in air over tongue and through my nose, the way big-cats scent, though I had no scent sacs in the roof of my mouth like Beast.

  Even to my human nose the night breeze was sun-heated and rich with the perfume of the earth, river-wet from the French Broad only feet from me. Fish and water plants. Warm stone and old campfires, turtles, wild undergrowth mixed with escaped garden plants, basil in flower and something spicy-bitter. But no human scent nearby. No human sound or voice carried on the air. I was alone. I started to pant in the warmth. The engine pinged softly beneath my hands.

  Good night for hunt, Beast thought at me. Moon is big, like pregnant doe.

  I carried my supplies to the base of the Paint Rock. The red rock cliff was jagged and broken, rising a hundred feet or more above the French Broad River. It was once covered with ancient paintings, paintings that predated the Cherokee, drawn in red pigments, but time and the elements and the stupidity of man had erased most of them. Humans had spray-painted their names and ancient-looking figures over large parts of the fractured surface. But with the breath of the river flowing across the earth, the place still had power.

  I opened the steaks and dropped them on the smooth earth at the base of the massive rock, the meat still chilled from the store’s refrigeration. With the roll of paper towels, I cleaned my hands and put the wrapping and foam containers into the grocery bag and sealed them. Carried the trash back to the SUV.

  I stripped in the front seat and left my clothes in a pile on the floor, hoping no one would tow my vehicle, but not really caring if they did. Grabbing up my supplies, I stepped from the SUV, barefoot and soundless, my travel pack under one arm. Opening the zipper bag containing my fetish necklace, I set the necklace of the Puma concolor over my head. It was made of the claws, teeth, and small bones of the biggest female panther I had ever seen, the cat killed in Montana during a legal hunt, the pelt and head mounted on some bigwig’s living room wall, the bones and teeth sold through a taxidermist. The mountain lion was hunted throughout the western United States and thought to be extinct in the eastern states, though some reports said they were making a comeback east of the Mississippi. One could hope. I didn’t have to use the necklace to shift into this creature—the memory of Beast’s form was always a part of me—but it was easier. I locked the SUV.

  Already it felt weird walking on two legs, as Beast moved up from the deeps into my thoughts. Barefoot, the wild grasses sharp and cutting on my calves and thighs, the rough surface of the earth rocky beneath my tender soles. I returned to the Paint Rock and the stack of raw, bloody steaks on the ground.

  Beast wanted to lick them. I held her still, though my stomach was rumbling. I was panting, salivating. Hungry, she thought. Because Beast is something outside my skinwalker nature—an independent entity who shares my body and, more and more often, my mind—I don’t have complete control over her. And I know, in my bones, that if other skinwalkers exist, they don’t have a Beast-soul living inside. We had ended up together through an accident, if black magic can be accidental, and thinking about it always left me feeling uneasy.

  I pulled the go-bag over my head and positioned my gold nugget on its double gold chain, swinging free. Together, they looked like an expensive collar and tote, making Beast look like an escaped exotic pet. I leaned into the Paint Rock and scraped the gold nugget across a space unmarked with human names, depositing a thin streak of gold. The gold was like a homing beacon, among other things, a way to find my way back, if I was lost after a hunt.

  Yesssss. Hunt, Beast thought at me. She was ready to scope out the territory, unfamiliar hunting ground, though it was close to Asheville and seemed like a location we might have explored. Naked, I sat on a sun-heated stone and closed my eyes, feeling the power of the world in this place, the strength of the breath of mother Earth. I shivered in the remnant heat. Holding the fetish necklace, I closed my eyes. Relaxed. Listened to the wind, the pull of the moon, rising above the horizon. I felt the beat of my own heart, and Beast’s. She rose in me, silent, predatory.

  I slowed the functions of my body, let my heart rate decrease, let my muscles relax, the rock wall against my back, facing the moving water. Mind clearing, I sank deep inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the purpose of this hunt. That purpose I set into the lining of my skin, into the deepest parts of my brain, as I always did, so I wouldn’t lose it when I shifted, when I changed, because oftentimes, right
after a shift, Beast had complete control, while my own spirit and mind slept. I dropped lower, deeper, into the darkness within me where old pain and memories swirled in a shadowed world fouled with blood and fear. The night wind on my skin cooled. The river whispered a susurration, leaves moved and sighed. Memories firmed, memories that, at all other times, were half forgotten, both mine and Beast’s.

  As I had been taught so long ago, I sought the inner snake lying inside the bones and teeth of the necklace, the coiled, curled snake of DNA, deep in the cells, in the remains of the marrow. For my people, for skinwalkers, it had always simply been “the inner snake.”

  I took up the snake that rests in the depths of all beasts and I dropped within. Like water trickling through cracked rock and down a mountain. Grayness enveloped me, sparkling and cold as winter. The world fell away. I was in the gray place of the change.

  My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped. My bones . . . slid. Skin rippled. Fur, tawny and gray, brown and tipped with black, sprouted. Painpainpain, like a knife, cut between muscle and bone. My ear tabs bent and twisted, listening, and my nostrils widened, drawing deep.

  She fell away. Night was fierce and bright in mountain hunting place. Crags and cliffs rose all around, with water flowing fast, earth breathing. I drew in air over tongue, a long scree of sound. Scents long remembered filled nose and mouth and mind: thick mist above river, air scented with taste of home. Smell of soil and fire. Plants strong with fall seeds. Old smell of rabbit. Blood from cow, old and cold. I panted. Listened to sounds—music from far, far away, sound of car along gravel road, not close but coming. Streams talking softly in mountain-water tongue, so different from bayou-water tongue. Familiar sound of home. Gathered limbs beneath me and padded to dead meat. I ate.

  Later, moon still high, I cleaned paws and claws and groomed face and whiskers free from cold dead cow blood and hot deer blood. Yearling buck walked along road where I ate. Buck had never smelled big-cat before. Was not afraid. Stupid deer. Good meat. Fresh hot blood, good blood from easy hunt. Beast was good hunter. Full belly.

  Hunt now? Jane said in back of mind. Hunt for wolves. Search for scent of grindylow.

  I rose and padded away from wide river, into darker night under trees. Found trickling creek and followed it uphill, past campground, into wild country. Smelled scent of wolf. They had been here.

  How long ago? Jane asked, her thoughts excited.

  Two days and two nights. Have not returned.

  Can you tell how they came in here? What roads did they use?

  Turned and turned, sniffing wind. Small road is high in hills. Smell of gasoline and man chemicals that poison the earth.

  Can we go there?

  Beast is good hunter. Can go where I please. I padded through dark woods, leaping from stone to stone or high into trees, following scent on ground from high in air. Wolves had to walk on ground, and could not hunt from up high. Could not leap as Beast did. I had hunted and killed wolves long ago, wolves who had killed Beast’s prey in the hunger times. Pack hunters, I spat, hissing. Hate pack hunters. Thieves of food.

  Found place where man had fouled the earth, dumping poisoned blood of machine onto ground, stink strong in air. Jane had tried to explain about machines. Not alive. Not dead. But machine has blood and hard parts like bone, and sometimes growls and is sometimes dead but not dead, like vampire. Confusing. Man is confusing. Man’s world is confusing. And dangerous. Sniffed machine blood. Old and bitter smell.

  A four-by-four, off-road vehicle, Jane thought. They’re illegal in the parks. Either the wolves came in on little-used roads and the rangers didn’t catch them, or this is private land.

  Trotted farther on flat place along hillside. Smooth like road but grassy under paws.

  Old logging road, Jane thought.

  Logging humans stole trees from land. Was reason two for hunger times. Fire that followed was three. Killed mountains for many-more-than-five years. No live prey anywhere. Man is stupid. Man is dangerous.

  Jane did not respond. Soon found place where wolves changed from man to wolf. Old bloody bones scattered on ground. Cold, old chickens, wrapped in smelly plastic. Blood full of water and smelling rank. Looked back at logging road, thinking. Man-wolves came here on machine, like car but not like car. Changed. Hunted. Came back, got on machine, and left. Why? I asked Jane. I do not smell blood from hunt. They did not bring down prey.

  Jane drew in air like hiss of snake. They came to make more. They came to turn humans. They entered campground on, Jane tried to count back days, but was tired and confused, maybe Friday night. Crap. They were here and they bit someone and they left. They bit a lot of people that night.

  And people are gone. Full of werewolf sickness. No way to track who they bit.

  Jane cursed. Some words are bad, some are not, but all are just words. Humans are confusing. I headed along wolf trail, following scent and spoor. Found two places where humans had been bitten. One was abandoned house, full of mold and roaches and rats. Human man had been sleeping there, had not bathed, had fouled his own den for days. Jane called him squatter. Wolves had bitten him and left. Man had left too, stinking of blood and fear. Outside, smelled where he had gotten in car and driven off.

  Impossible to find, now, Jane thought at me. It’s like an epidemic. If he gets away, and he turns furry, he’ll try to bite humans. Crap, crap, and double freaking crap.

  Moved on, following scent trail. Other place was campsite near river. Man and woman had been together. They had fought wolves. Both had died and been eaten.

  No one had discovered bodies. Humans cannot smell fresh death. Humans do not see when buzzards mark place of the dead. Jane would tell humans. Snarl on face, I left and padded to river to wash old human blood from paws. Dawn was not far off. The mist of river had risen, as if trying to reach up to clouds pushing in through the sky where sun fell at night. I stepped into river and drank, letting water wash paws, cool belly. And leaped onto rock, then to another, and then a hard, strong leap to middle of river, to a boulder larger than the others, gray and brown in the night. Standing high above water, to see world. Good place to see the sun.

  * * *

  The sun was rising over the eastern curve of the river when I shifted back, in the middle of the river. Beast had lain down on a night-cool rock out in the open, the river rushing around the boulder, a soft, pulsing froth. She had watched the sky lighten to a dull gray, her belly still full. Happy. Ignoring my pleas to return to land. And at the last moment, before the sun’s rays slanted over the earth, she had let me shift back. And there I was, in the middle of the French Broad River. Naked and exposed. And no way back to shore without a river-swim rock-crawl. Beast thought it was funny, her hacking laughter clear in the back of my mind. I’m not sure if her sense of humor is peculiar to her or is shared by all cats. I have a feeling that it’s a little bit of both and that my own sense of justice and making the punishment fit the crime had altered her cat-humor.

  The water wasn’t high enough to swim, and the light wasn’t bright enough to see through the surface. By the time I was back to shore, I was bruised and bleeding from contact with underwater rocks, had a scrape on one shin, and was half drowned from falling into holes with no apparent bottom. Wet and smelling of river, I opened my go-bag, pulled out crushed, wet, wrinkled clothes and flip-flops, and dressed in the golden light, hoping no one was up and about to see me. Dang Beast.

  Dressed, wet hair hanging down my back like a tangled skein of wet wool yarn, I made my way back to my car. I was lucky. It was still there, but with a parking ticket under the wipers. It was a whopper, but I’d bill it to Leo, and he’d pay, especially once the dead campers were reported. I found my fetish where Beast had dropped it and scattered river sand over the dried beef blood. Inside the car, I ate granola bars and drank a liter of water before driving back to the hotel, just missing rush hour traffic. Carrying the trash, two fast-food bags of Mickie D’s, and my other clothes, I tossed the keys to the valet with a
ten. “Keep it handy. I’m leaving in twenty minutes.”

  After a fast shower, stuffing my face with six McMuffins to ease the hunger of a shift, and changing into more professional clothes—jeans and a tee, all dry, with green snakeskin Lucchese boots that added three inches to my six feet, I drove to the sheriff’s office to report the dead campers. Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office was in Asheville city proper, on the corner of Haywood and Carter streets. I walked in, one of the fast food bags under an arm, just after shift change to find the place hopping and looking well funded, despite government budget cutbacks. The tourist trade had been up all summer and tourist tax dollars had helped offset the decreased county and state taxes. Tax dollars that would evaporate if the wolves weren’t stopped soon.

  I handed my card to a female deputy at the check-in window and asked to see Grizzard. When she looked pointedly at the bag, I thought how easy it could be to conceal a gun in a food bag, so I opened it and let her have a look. I tilted it to her with a little shake, and said, “They were for Grizzard, but he’ll never know he’s one short. They’re a little cold, but have one.” I didn’t have to twist her arm. Rule number one, if you want a favor from a cop, bring food.

  “He’s in,” she said, buzzing me in, taking a breakfast sandwich as I passed, and giving directions. She was eating when I headed for the stairs and the bowels of the building. I wasn’t searched or stopped, and tucked my hands into my jeans pockets, bag smashed under an arm as I meandered, relearning the layout of cop-central. I found the office and stood in the empty, dusty, secretary/receptionist/junior deputy’s nook of a workspace, listening through the walls as Grizzard blessed out a deputy and an investigator for a crime scene chain-of-custody failure. He sent them out with two admonitions. “Whyn’t you both not be so damn stupid next time.” And, “Make sure the assistant DA knows about the evidence problem you pissants made.” Our sheriff had such a sweet mouth and easy-going temper.