Last of the Ravens

by Linda Winstead Jones

  “I’ll tell him one day. Promise.”

  Dee’s answer was a graceful nod.

  Miranda had grown accustomed to the fact that she was almost never truly alone. Others sometimes had a hard time with that. Would Bren?

  More than once in the long night it would’ve been easier to turn back than to go on, but she didn’t retreat, not even to glance into the darkness she’d already passed. There was no time to look back. Did Bren’s “Wait for me” mean he was going to join her to help? Would she reach the farmhouse too late? Would she arrive to find the men she loved the most in this world dead? She pressed on, aching and scared and wondering with every step if she’d made the right decision. Thanks to her, Bren was once more in danger.

  And then she thought of Jackson. Roger could take care of himself. If he went down as a victim of his own Order, then it had been his choice, perhaps even his destiny. Bren had escaped from the Order, had flown into their midst to save her, and he’d gotten away without a scratch. He could do so again. But Jackson…Jackson had not chosen his father’s life. He hadn’t asked to be involved in this madness. His was a ghost she could not bear to face, and she would not sit in a cave and wait, or worse, run away while events unfolded.

  Miranda pushed onward, even though she wasn’t sure how she could help once she got to the farmhouse. She had no weapons. Even if she’d had a gun it wouldn’t have done her any good. She’d never held a firearm and had no idea how to use one. So how could she get her friends out of there?

  Doubts assailed her as she trudged through the forest, and still she was driven onward. What if Bren was so angry she’d disobeyed his instructions that he refused to help? He hadn’t exactly allowed her to argue last night, and he might be one of those men who insisted on doing everything his way. She loved him, she felt love from him, but he’d never said the words. He’d never admitted that he needed her in any way beyond the physical. Though she knew she was his—as he was hers—she wondered if the Lynch love curse could strike even a destiny like theirs.

  Her feet hurt, she was cold, and she felt lonelier than she ever had. Even after the accident and Jessica’s death, she hadn’t suffered such isolation. She’d discovered what it was like to be a part of something bigger and finer than she’d ever imagined, and she’d walked away from the man who was at the center of these new feelings.

  What if she was too late?

  What if she did more harm than good?

  What if she was recaptured and they used her against Bren?

  The sky turned gray, and dim light seeped through the trees. As day broke Miranda could see farther ahead, could see more than looming darkness and the closest tree or bush or rock illuminated by ghostlight. Now that daylight was coming she looked through the tree trunks, past undergrowth and dipping limbs, hoping to catch a glimpse of the farmhouse or the barn ahead, but still she saw nothing. She’d walked all night and now that daylight had come she was breathless and exhausted and aching, and she seriously doubted Bren’s intentions. And though she felt she was close, believed her night’s journey was almost done, in truth she had no idea how much farther she had to go. Had she misjudged the distance so horribly? Or was the farmhouse going to come into view at any moment?

  When Pete stopped beside a misshapen, wild dogwood tree, she thought perhaps he was allowing her a moment of rest. But the way he stared at the ground, the way he went stone still, made her realize that something else was going on here.

  She and Dee both stood behind him. “What is it?”

  “My father buried me here,” the spirit said. “With no ceremony, no goodbye, no marker. He told my mother we’d had an argument and I’d left. He was afraid if she knew that I was dead she wouldn’t be able to hide her sorrow, and questions he didn’t want to answer, questions from an outside world where he doesn’t have complete control, would be asked. Then he dumped my body in this shallow grave and walked away. He didn’t even look back. I know because I watched him walk away. I stood over my grave and screamed at him, but he didn’t hear me.”

  Miranda wanted to lay a comforting hand on Pete’s shoulder, but she couldn’t. She could see him, hear him, feel his pain. But she couldn’t touch him. This was not the first time he’d mentioned his mother, and she decided the woman could be a significant factor in sending him on to peace. “I’ll find a way to tell your mother that you didn’t run away.”

  Pete seemed not to hear her words. “Sometimes still, on Mother’s Day or her birthday or at Christmas, she’ll watch for the mail or sit by the phone thinking maybe this is the year I’ll call. Sixteen years since my father buried me here, and still she waits. To watch her hope breaks my heart, as her heart is broken. I try to reach her, to touch or speak to her, but she doesn’t have your gift. We are in agony together, but she doesn’t know I’m there.”

  Perhaps Miranda couldn’t touch Pete, but Dee apparently could. The spirit of Bren’s mother laid her hand on the malformed spirit’s twisted shoulder. “Before this day is done, your mother will know the truth,” Dee said.

  Pete nodded and turned away from his unmarked grave, continuing toward the farmhouse.

  “How much farther?” Miranda asked.

  “Not far,” Pete said. “Not far at all.”

  Miranda glanced up at the gray sky above the trees. Since setting out, she had not seen or heard a single raven, much less a flock of them. If she got to the farmhouse and Bren wasn’t there, if she had to battle the Order without him, she didn’t have a chance. “Where are you?” she whispered. Though her last steps had seemed to drag, it hadn’t been all that long since she’d heard him in the depths of her mind. If he’d flown straight to her he’d be here by now. Without Bren, it was likely she and Jackson and Roger would all end up like Pete, buried in the woods, lost and forgotten.

  With that thought, the spirits of others who’d been buried here appeared, each of them standing over his or her grave, ghostly markers of an Order’s violent calling. Men, women, creatures that were not entirely human, so many had been disposed of here. So many had died in the bunker where Miranda had been held. All she had to do was glance at the ghosts to know if they were evil or simply unlucky, if they’d chosen to be so monstrous that the Order felt they had to stop them, or if they’d simply been different and therefore a threat to the world orderliness as a handful of men saw it.

  They had died in horrible ways, killed with as much hatred and evil as the Order claimed to fight against. Would she and her family be next?

  Duncan paced impatiently, ragged with lack of sleep, annoyed that the thing he’d observed for so many years had gotten away. In the underground room, which was more bunker than cellar, Roger Talbot sat on the cot Miranda Lynch had once occupied. The former warrior of the Order was shackled, restrained by sturdy chains while his son lay beside him, drugged into a senseless state.

  The old man had interrogated Talbot all night, trying to break him, trying to get him to veer from his story of ignorance. Talbot claimed he’d had no idea that Korbinian might swoop in and save Miranda at the last minute. Yes, he’d come to consider the medium a friend, but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten who he was and what he’d been charged to do. Fear for his son was evident in the way he did his best to protect the unconscious boy with his body, even though he was all but helpless himself.

  Quinn was tiring of Talbot’s professions of innocence, but he didn’t give up. Lack of sleep and fear for his child would make the traitor tell all. Eventually.

  Even though Duncan had studied the freak he was assigned to watch, he was well aware that no one knew more about the Korbinians than Roger Talbot, whose father had not only watched over Joseph Korbinian for nearly forty years, but had researched the dying breed incessantly, collecting volumes of information and lore. If anyone knew how to track and kill Brennus Korbinian, it was this man. For that reason alone, Duncan had not yet suggested that they kill Talbot and his son and move on.

  Miranda reached the edge of the forest exhausted an
d certain that the whole Korbinian Kademair thing was nothing more than a fairy tale. No one was born for another person; no two people were destined for one another. If Bren wanted to procreate, she was certainly not the only woman on earth who could help him out. That was just a part of the fairy tale the Order had bought into.

  Yep, the Lynch love curse was in full effect.

  She couldn’t blame Bren for taking off. This was her family in danger, not his. They weren’t blood, but she’d made them family and had thought of them as such for the past two years. They were all she had in this world. Bren had wisely avoided close attachments that could lead to moments like this one, where the choices to be made were not choices at all but compulsions. Requirements.

  He’d given her a choice. She could’ve made her escape with him and maybe they would’ve lived happily ever after. Maybe not. Now she’d never know. The cowardly thought was spurred by fear and uncertainty, and didn’t last very long. She had to be here.

  Pete and Dee stood behind her, waiting for her next move. They’d done their part in leading her here, and what came next was up to her. Straight ahead sat the quaint and sturdy farmhouse. To the right rose the barn. Her eyes were drawn to the closed hayloft door, and her mouth went dry. She could almost feel her stomach roiling at the sensation of height.

  Where was Ward Quinn? The two armed guards? Duncan Archard? More important, where were Roger and Jackson?

  The scent of bacon and coffee reached Miranda, faint but unmistakable. Inside that house her only possible living ally in this battle was busy making breakfast.

  “Will she listen to me?” Miranda whispered.

  “Mom’s a good woman,” Pete responded. “She doesn’t know the whole story where my father’s affairs are concerned. She knows some, probably more than he realizes, but she doesn’t understand that he’s a bad man.”

  Miranda dropped her supplies to the ground and left the shade of the forest, walking directly toward the front door of the farmhouse. Her hammering heart seemed to be stuck in her throat. At any moment a gun could fire; she was an easy target in the open space between the woods and the picturesque porch, which looked peaceful and wonderfully ordinary. Halfway there she began to run. Exhausted or not, running seemed to be a good idea.

  Dee and Pete flanked her, floating at her speed, whatever that speed might be. They were great moral support, but when it came time to fight they wouldn’t do her any good at all. They couldn’t stop a bullet if one was fired in her direction. They could throw themselves between her and any weapon used against her, but they didn’t have the physical form to stop a mosquito from alighting on her skin. Dee might be able gather the strength to push one opponent or another aside, but that wasn’t going to help much. So Miranda had moral support, but physically she was on her own.

  She all but leaped onto the front porch. Before she could change her mind about what had to be done, she rushed forward and knocked soundly on the front door. If the old man answered, she was sunk. If it was Pete’s mother who came to the door she might have a chance. The footsteps that approached were steady and even, and it was impossible to tell if the approaching resident was male or female. Miranda held her breath as the doorknob turned.

  The door swung open on a gray-haired older woman who was the very picture of a farm wife. Mrs. Quinn was slightly plump, her bosom was considerable, and her face was not as lined as it might’ve been, given her age. There were sad lines around her mouth, and having listened to Pete, Miranda understood why. But for the most part the woman appeared pleasant and friendly and normal. Miranda craved normalcy at this moment when nothing was as it should be.

  Miranda said simply, “I need your help.”

  The woman wiped her hands on a dishtowel and leaned out of the doorway to look at the driveway. “Have you had car trouble? Out on the road? I can call the gas station in town. Len’s quite good with all sorts of mechanical problems.”

  “I walked through the woods,” Miranda said.

  Mrs. Quinn studied Miranda up and down, her eyes and her expression critical. An overnight hike through the forest couldn’t look pretty on any woman. “Have a seat on the porch. When my husband comes in for breakfast perhaps he can—”

  “Your husband tried to kill me yesterday,” Miranda blurted. “Right now he’s holding two of my friends hostage in a secret room under the barn, and I’m afraid he’s going to hurt them.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Quinn whispered. “My husband has a hobby room in the cellar under the barn, and he often has his buddies over, that’s true. They’re playing cards. Why you would tell such a tale I never—”

  “One of my friends is only fifteen,” Miranda interrupted. “Please, call the local police. Call the sheriff’s office. I can see that you don’t believe me, but dial 911 and have them send everything they have. If I’m crazy, the police will take me away with them and you’ll never see me again. If I’m right, then you’ve just saved the life of an innocent young man.”

  Mrs. Quinn stepped inside the house and reached behind the door, coming out with a shotgun in her hands. She held the weapon as if she knew how to use it. It was pointed at Miranda.

  Not the expected response.

  “I know a bit more about my husband’s hobby than he realizes, though I do try to play innocent when I can. I watch. I listen. If Ward tried to kill you, then he had good reason, but I can’t let you call the police. They would never understand. My husband searches out the wickedness of the world and disposes of it. If he’s holding a young man in the barn, then that young man is anything but innocent.”

  Miranda’s heart fell. She’d risked everything to come here and ask for help, and this is what it got her. Pete’s mother was not as guiltless as he seemed to believe.

  Still, she had to present some kind of argument. She had to believe that Pete was right about his mother. The alternative was not at all acceptable; she refused to accept death or a return to the bunker under the barn.

  “I imagine some of the men and women your husband disposes of are indeed anything but innocent, but sadly, that isn’t always true,” Miranda said. “I talk to ghosts. Where’s the harm in that? I’ve never hurt a living being. All I’ve done is try to help lost souls and lock away the very human monsters that killed them. Maybe I made the mistake of falling in love with the wrong man. I don’t see anything horribly wrong in that.” She tried to ignore the weapon that was trained on her, but it wasn’t easy. She didn’t know anything about weapons, but she assumed that a little weight on the trigger, and this would be done. If it came to that point, then Roger and Jackson would be lost, too, she imagined. “One of your husband’s associates, Duncan Archard, broke into a cabin where I was on vacation and tried to kill me. I’ve never hurt anyone, and yet they want to be rid of me because I have a gift they don’t understand.”

  She hadn’t wanted to share the news this way, but it looked as if she had no choice. “Your husband took Pete’s life when he was injured. Was Pete wicked?”

  Mrs. Quinn’s response was to pump the shotgun, which didn’t make Miranda feel any better. “You don’t speak my son’s name. He ran away from home years ago…”

  “He didn’t get far!” Miranda snapped. “Pete’s buried in those woods behind me, buried beside a dogwood tree because he was injured doing your husband’s business and the father could not allow the son to live.”

  “Liar.” Mrs. Quinn stepped onto the porch, and Miranda stepped back. The muzzle of that shotgun was much too close to Miranda’s face. She couldn’t help but look directly at it and wonder if Pete’s mother would actually pull the trigger.

  “Tell her I’m here,” Pete said.

  Miranda took a deep breath and pulled her eyes away from the weapon, looking into Mrs. Quinn’s eyes, instead. “Pete is here now. He brought me here. He led me through the woods to your door.”

  Mrs. Quinn went pale. “My son ran away…”

  “He tells me it breaks his heart to see you sit here on hol
idays and special occasions and wait to hear from him when he has no way to reach you.”

  “You can’t use my son this way,” Mrs. Quinn said angrily. “It’s cruel. Why would you torture me? Why would you remind me of the son who ran away from me without a word or a letter or a…”

  Pete stood behind his mother, but he spoke to Miranda.

  Miranda stared into the older woman’s sad eyes. “Pete says you used to make him pancakes every Saturday morning. Not ordinary pancakes, but blueberry or chocolate chip or banana. Whatever he wanted.”

  “Lots of people knew that,” the woman said. She tried to remain unmoved, but her voice shook a little. “Peter’s friends. My husband’s associates who sometimes stay here for days. They all knew.”

  Miranda continued to listen to the spirit who now touched his mother’s hand. “That’s true enough,” she said, “but who else knows that when your husband forbade you to speak of your son again, you closed yourself in the bathroom and cried? Who knows that you cried almost every day for two years?”

  The weapon began to tremble. Mrs. Quinn took another step toward Miranda, and Miranda backed away. She had nowhere to go. She couldn’t run faster than the pellets expelled from a shotgun, and even if she made it into the woods, then what? Bren wasn’t here; he wasn’t coming.

  “I imagine no one else knows that you went into Pete’s room shortly after he was murdered and took a small toy that was one of his favorites when he was a child. It was a figurine of some sort, a small soldier holding a sword. He tells me it’s still in your bedside drawer, hidden beneath a stack of handkerchiefs where your husband won’t easily stumble across it. You know he wouldn’t approve of the fact that you keep that toy so close to you, not forgetting Pete as you were told to do, never letting go.”

  Something miraculous began to happen as Miranda spoke. Pete’s malformed spirit began to change. Where once there had been a half-man half-beast monstrosity, there now stood a handsome young man with intelligent blue eyes and fine blond hair. Oh, he was so young!