Raven Cursed jy-4

by Faith Hunter

“They called you Dalonige’i digadoli, when you were born with golden eyes like your father and tsa lisi, your grandmother.” Horror swept through me. And longing. He knew me. From before. I put out a hand and Beast slammed down on me, biting me so hard I felt her teeth pierce my skull, creating the mother of all headaches. I had taken three steps toward the trap and I quickly stepped back. The demon laughed. “Yes, I was there when you were born, watching, waiting to see if your mother would survive or if I might take her.” He tilted his head, birdlike, fast. And he whistled, a raptor’s hunting call, long and piercing, but not one I had ever heard before. “There was much rejoicing when you opened your eyes that first time.”

  My heart was thudding. He had known my family? Or just plundered my fractured memories and woven a story? Was this why no one should indulge in conversation with a demon? Because they knew everything you did, everything you wanted, and weren’t averse to lying and twisting truths to get you to do what they wanted? Yeah. That felt right. I took a breath, steadying myself. And shifted my foot back a step. Another. Toward the stairs.

  He went on as if I weren’t making my escape. “But when you were five summers old, your grandmother, who was Ani gilogi, panther clan, tried to tie me into the skin of one of her beasts, the pelt of the tlvdatsi. To avenge herself on the white soldiers who killed her son.” I swallowed, and my throat was as dry as sandpaper; the muscles ached with the motion. “She was a fool,” he said. “I left her to die in the snow, her blood black in the moonlight. I thought to find you, but you had vanished into the night and the cold, and I was free. So I took the lives of many of the Tsalagi that night, and many more over the next weeks. I took the days they had left to them, had the white man not forced them on to the long march, and I left them dead. With their days as my own, I walked as human for many years, taking what and who I pleased.”

  My breath was too fast, my heart pattering, rabbitlike. This thing seemed to know everything I had lost about my past. I vaguely remembered the Trail of Tears, when the U.S. government broke its covenant with the Cherokee and forced us onto the long march west. So many had died of the cold, of hunger, and illness. Or to the claws of this thing.

  He also knew what I wanted—to fill the empty places in my past, in my soul. I wanted to listen to him now, and he knew it. His eyes were the black of The People’s eyes, dark and wise and kind, and he gestured with the fingers of one hand, to come closer. I didn’t. He said, “I have all the secrets you desire to know. All the truths you have forgotten.”

  I pressed the scarf against my mouth, smelling Evangelina in the weave. Tasting tears I hadn’t known were falling. Beast bit down. Shattering pain took me, and my vision went white for a moment. I put out a hand and my elbow bumped the wall behind me. I staggered and swore, and caught my balance. When the pain cleared, I could breathe.

  “Go,” Beast snarled. “He is part of the hunger times. He is part of the fire times. Run!”

  “Come to me and I will tell you what you desire,” the demon said. I backed to the left. My heels bumped the bottom stair. “I knew your father. I can tell you—”

  “Jane?”

  I stopped. Lincoln Shaddock? I heard metal clinking. Lincoln rose, a ghostly image seen through the hedge of thorns. Metal clinking louder, he stepped around the ward. The smell of vamp blood hit me. And sickness. The stench of infection cleared my head. Lincoln was wearing rags. Blood coated his lower legs. He was wearing silver shackles, the bindings made in such as way that any movement cut into his skin. Black and red streaks ran up his calves, infection from the metal poisoning. “Listen to me, girl.” As he spoke, some of the desire to listen to the demon passed. “Tell Leo, I’m mighty sorry. Then get him to safety.”

  “Why?” I asked, my voice dry and breathy.

  “Because when Evangelina sacrifices me at moonrise on the full moon, the demon will be bound and will come after him.”

  I nodded once to show I had heard, my movement erratic. “How are you avoiding the call of the spell,” I asked. “You’re two-natured. You should be walking inside the ward.”

  “The summoning and binding aren’t complete. Blood from a living-undead Mithran will complete it, but only on the full moon.”

  “Okay. Got that,” I whispered. “Why does Evangelina want to hurt Leo?”

  “All I know is the word Shiloh.” Lincoln dropped, landing with a hard flat thump on the black floor, his hands barely catching his weight before his head banged down. “Ask the right people,” he whispered. “Ask the right questions.” He collapsed with a short sigh and closed his eyes, the sun outside and the silver taking their toll. He was asleep, in the undead sleep of vamps. He’d be hungry when he waked. I should have tried to set him free, but that would have meant getting closer to the demon. No freaking way. I turned and ran, stumbling up the steps. Falling. Catching myself on my forearms, bruising. But the pain cleared my head, and I held the scarf like a lifeline as I made it to the top of the stairs and out of the house. Only when I was back at my car did I remember that I’d left the lights on and doors all open. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t going back in there. Not for nothing. I sat in the sunlight in my SUV, in the warmth created by the sun through the windows, clutching the scarf that had saved my life. And trembled.

  When I could think more clearly, I drove to a little store, bought three bottles of ginger beer, which was like ginger ale but dark and sharp-tasting, and four homemade pastries, consuming them standing at the counter, needing the calories, and ignoring the anxious glances of the proprietor at my bloody, torn clothes. When my shakes had passed and I had my head on straight enough, I sent the pictures to Big Evan’s phone, and was careful not to look at them for fear the desire to go back and learn more may take me over. By the skin of my chinny-chin-chin I had gotten away from the big bad wolf. Or the big bad raptor—a demon of The People.

  I couldn’t fight this thing alone. I needed to call in the cavalry, but I didn’t know who to call, who I could trust to keep Molly alive. With the heater on high, I drove back to Asheville.

  I made my room without running into anyone I knew, stripped, and climbed into the shower. I stood beneath the scalding water and let it parboil me, trying to thaw the cold in my soul left by the nearness to the ancient evil. When I was warmer, I dressed and went to the drawer holding my Bible and crosses, the only defense against evil I knew. I put on three silver crosses, held the Bible on my lap, and turned on the gas fire with the remote control as I scrolled through my phone contacts for Aggie One Feather’s number.

  Guilt wormed under my skin like bamboo shoots under fingernails. I hadn’t told Aggie—my Cherokee teacher, the elder who was helping me find my past—that I was leaving New Orleans. I hadn’t said good-bye. I was a coward and an idiot. And if the thing in the circle had claimed to be anything other than a Cherokee demon, I’d go on being a coward and an idiot. I checked the time on the cell—nine a.m.—and hit send. Aggie answered on the second ring.

  “Hello. How can I help you?”

  I thought about that for a moment. Only an elder would answer the phone like that, knowing the odds of it being a solicitation call. “Aggie One Feather.” I paused. “Egini Agayvlge i, in the speech of The People. This is Jane Yellowrock,” I took a breath, “Dalonige’i digadoli. Yellow Eyes Yellowrock. I seek council.”

  “How may an Elder of The People assist?” There was no snark in the words, no sarcasm.

  I swallowed and said, “First of all you can forgive me for acting like an idiot and taking off without telling you I was leaving.”

  Aggie laughed, the sound soothing. “There is nothing to forgive, Dalonige’i digadoli. You have a life outside of my counsel, outside of the sweathouse.”

  I do. I did. But it was way more than that. It was the parts of my life staring at each other across a chasm of decades, across a sea of cultures and religion and history. Parts of myself that were bifurcated, broken, torn. Parts that didn’t know how to heal or how to accept the other.

  I
could almost see Aggie, sitting at her kitchen table, a plate of fresh baked cookies and a bottled Coke frosted with white before her. Her calm reached out across the airwaves and settled around my shoulders like a warm blanket. I relaxed, only now aware that I was tense. I took up my guilt in both hands as if to strangle it, and said, “I haven’t been back to see you since going to water. I ran away from your guidance and took a gig in Asheville to put space between us.”

  “No,” she said gently. “You accepted the job to put space between the parts of yourself. The Christian child with the white man’s upbringing and the Tsalagi and our ancient ways.”

  Crap. I was so totally transparent. I looked down at my hand in the firelight, at the shadows and light that moved across my skin. I was at war with my selves and I didn’t know how to knit me together into a single whole. Aggie knew this, even if she didn’t know what I was, or where I came from. “Yeah. Change is hard. Acceptance is harder.”

  “You will find yourself, Dalonige’i digadoli. You will like what you find at the end of that journey. You will like being whole, though the way of the Christian may have to work hard to accept the way of the Tsalagi. How may I help you?” she asked gently.

  “It’s pretty heavy stuff.” When she didn’t reply I said, “A mostly Irish Celt witch has trapped a demon in a binding circle to summon and drain the two-natured to accomplish—I don’t know what. The witch is looking younger, prettier, and a lot less stable. The thing in the circle is black, misty, has wings and claims to be Cherokee. Do you know what it is?”

  Aggie One Feather took a slow breath between her teeth, the sound shocked. “No. But I will ask my mother.”

  “I need to know how to kill it.”

  After a long moment, she said, “If it is a true demon, they cannot be killed. They can only be bound and banished.” Aggie’s voice sounded calm, steady, not like she wanted to run from me and my problems. Kudos to her for that. I didn’t think I’d sound so serene in her place. “And the ceremony to banish a demon to the underworld is lost in time. No one knows of it. I cannot help you Dalonige’i digadoli.” I hadn’t really believed it would be easy, but a heavy misery flowed over me at her words. “But I will ask others. Give me your numbers. I will call when I know more.”

  I gave her the number to my fancy cell and to my throwaway cell, the one I used when I didn’t want Leo to have access to me. Of course, if Leo could listen in on my conversations, then giving out that number meant he had it now, but it couldn’t be helped. Modern communication came with a price: total lack of privacy from anyone with the money to buy the access, and with the will to listen.

  When I hung up, I opened the Bible at random and started reading. I hadn’t read anything holy in months. I hadn’t wanted to. But now, with the coercion of the demon and my own emptiness, I needed something. Something to fill me. To protect me. Because I was close to being . . . afraid. Yeah. Afraid. The emptiness inside me was a yawning maw with killing teeth and I was poised on the lip of the darkness. The scripture I opened to in Deuteronomy six wasn’t exactly comforting.

  Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you;

  (For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

  A cold sensation swept through me, like a frozen wind. Had I done that? Gone after other gods? The gods of The People? The gods of my own life, my job, my friends, my own wants? Yeah. I had. I wondered if God would forgive me for that. Before I closed the Bible I flipped to the New Testament at random and read in Luke six:

  Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:

  “Okay,” I said aloud, not sure what I was reading, but willing to accept it. I closed the Bible. “Okay, I can forgive. Forgive what?” Instantly I saw the face of yunega, the white man who killed my father. I saw the shadows on the cabin wall as the other yunega raped my mother. I felt the chill of the cooling blood as I painted my face in promise of retribution.

  I jerked out of the memories and put the Bible down, staring at it, the worn pages looking ordinary, powerless, in the dull light seeping around the blinds. “Okay. Not so easy, then,” I murmured. I hadn’t forgiven the murderers and rapists, even after more than a hundred years.

  I closed the old Bible and went online. Reach had sent me some files, a huge one on Thomas Stevenson, Shaddock’s scion who had gotten free and was probably hunting humans for dinner. I didn’t bother to open it. Instead I opened the one labeled Evangelina Everhart Stone. The file was full of info pulled off the Web and other places, and it mentioned her in a lot of contexts: her graduate and post-grad work at the University of North Carolina; a stint at UNC Asheville as a part-time professor; in Charlotte at Johnson & Wales University’s College of Culinary Arts; a few years teaching at Shaw University; the opening of Seven Sassy Sisters’ Herb Shop and Café; a newspaper spread about her cooking classes at the restaurant, which had been before I knew her. She had returned to UNC Asheville as a full professor, and married a professor named Marvin R. Stone, and they had one daughter, Shiloh Everhart Stone.

  I remembered the body rolled in the carpet behind the couch. And the girlish bedroom, dusty and closed off. Neither husband nor daughter had lived there in years. I did a search for Stone but he had disappeared off the map. So. Hubby might be wearing a carpet, but he wasn’t alive.

  Reach had provided me with a file on Shiloh. The contents were thin. Shiloh had been a mediocre student, better at art and poetry than math and science, and had disappeared at age fifteen. And reappeared in New Orleans, in a shelter for runaway teens. Crap. Shiloh had run to New Orleans—Leo’s city. The chill I’d been fighting settled in my bones.

  Shiloh disappeared from the shelter before her mother could get to her. The police report said three of the girl’s friends had watched as she was yanked into a dark car, maybe a Lincoln or a Park Avenue. The car squealed off before the friends could do anything. Shiloh had been kidnapped. In New Orleans. In Leo’s main power base.

  Quickly, I minimized the screen and opened a different file, one provided by NOPD, listing all the witch children who disappeared in their city, kidnapped and never found. Shiloh E. Stone was on the list. I compared the date of Shiloh’s kidnapping to the dates other witch young had vanished. Three others had gone missing in the same month. “Oh crap,” I whispered. I knew what this case was about, now. As with most things vampy, this situation went back a lot of years, the originating event buried beneath the weight of time. But now I had the single thread that tied the disconnected parts together. Shiloh Everhart Stone.

  I opened more of my own files and discovered that the policeman who had taken the report was R.A. Ferguson; he had filed the report as a runaway, not as a kidnapping. Shiloh was a witch kid. He hadn’t cared about a nonhuman child who disappeared, had, in fact, hated them. I had met Ferguson, just before an ancient vamp had rolled him and sucked the hatred out of him along with his blood. I hadn’t tried to stop the vamp.

  Evangelina had lost a witch daughter in Leo’s city, in Leo’s territory, likely to the vamp witches who were sacrificing witch children to the pink blood-diamond. They’d been trying to create a cure for the long-chained—scions who never found sanity. Evangelina had known that. She had claimed that her appearance in New Orleans was for parley—to negotiate peace between vamps and witches, and compensation to the witches for the loss of their children, not that there could ever be sufficient compensation for the loss of a child. But she had really gone there to kill the man she held responsible for her child’s death. Leo Pellissier.

  Evan hadn’t known about Shiloh running away and being kidnapped, which meant it was likely that Molly hadn’t known either. Evangelina had kept it all secret until she spelled her sisters to enact vengeance on Leo. Shiloh had run away from home. Had Evangelina killed Marvin by accident, later? Or had Shiloh seen Ev
il Evie kill her father and then run away? Crap. I’d never had a family, but as an investigator, I knew that family secrets were the very worst. They destroyed so much. Sometimes they destroyed everything, as if, after decades in the grave, the dead reached out to shatter the living.

  Molly had never told me the story of Shiloh, so Evangelina had likely not told her sisters. Probably because she had killed her husband. I called Evan and left the info about Shiloh on his voice mail. He needed to know. They all did. But for some reason, I didn’t mention what I feared had happened to Marvin Stone. Coward. I was a coward.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Eat Humans When They Go to the Dark Side

  Staring at the computer screen, I put it all together. Evangelina knew that Leo’s now-true-dead scions killed Shiloh. The witch was trying to get back at Leo for the decades of murders, but she wasn’t stupid enough to try to kill him in open confrontation. She had appeared in New Orleans, allied with the wolves, tried to help them kill Leo in his lair by creating a modified hedge of thorns that let the wolves in. Unrelated, but associated, I took a gig in my old hometown and came to Asheville. When the weres got out of jail, they had followed me here from New Orleans to exact their own brand of vengeance. Evangelina—who had been kicked out of New Orleans by Leo—found out that weres had followed me to Asheville and lured them to her home, her place of power. And there she created a spell or upped the power on an existing one, with their two-natured blood. The spell was intended to kill Leo, who was dead and undead—one of the two-natured. It all made sense.

  I dialed Bruiser. When he picked up, before he could say more than hello, I said, “Tell me who suggested to Leo that Lincoln Shaddock was ready to be master of his own city.” When he didn’t answer, I said, “Was it you?”

  “Yes.” He sounded bewildered, and just a tad defensive. “I recommended that he go to the Appalachians and meet with Lincoln. Amy Lynn Brown had come out of the devoveo in record time. It was a good call. Why do you ask?”