Raven Cursed

CHAPTER FOUR If the Vamp-Poo Became Airborne

We stopped for a late lunch at a little mom-and-pop store that sold local produce, local honey, jellies and jams, chutney, molasses, homemade breads, used books, and local arts and crafts: leather belts, handbags, handmade quilts. They also had a lunch bar and sold the best egg salad sandwiches I’d ever tasted. Between us we ate six sandwiches, out under the shade tree, sitting silently at a heavy cement table on hard, cool benches. The view between the trees, straight down the mountain, into the gorge, was entertainment.

In the middle of a bite, I noticed Rick’s new key chain and lifted it, letting one corner of my lips curl up as I swallowed. He mirrored the expression and added a little shrug, laughter in his eyes. The old key chain to his red crotch-rocket Kawasaki hadn’t been seen since he was captured and tortured in a hotel room in New Orleans. The new one was a growling, enameled, black leopard on a silver base. Were-humor. Beast hacked with amusement. I pulled out my own and set them together, my Leo key chain with the female African lion and a stylized sun at one paw, next to his black leopard. I left them there, side by side, wondering if now was the time for the Big Talk.

I finished off a chocolate Yoo-Hoo with the last sandwich and ate a banana MoonPie for dessert. They were food I remembered from my youth and brought back memories I didn’t have time to think about just now. Not with Rick suddenly turning his attention from the view to me.

“We gonna talk?” he asked. Yep. Time. His voice was smooth, calm, not at all accusatory. Even pleasant. There was no reason for me to cringe inside, but I did. “Talking’s overrated,” he added, searching my face, “but there’re things between us that need to be said.”

I crumpled up the papers and carried them to the garbage can, knowing I was dithering and not knowing how to stop.

“Jane.”

I halted with my back to him. Not seeing the view. Not seeing anything. My eyes filling with unwanted, stupid tears. There was so much gentleness in the sound of my name on his lips.

“I cheated on you with the were-bitch.”

My shoulders tensed. I raised a hand and brushed away the tears. I took a breath that shuddered through me. But I didn’t turn around, keeping my back to him. Coward.

“You and me, we weren’t . . . going steady, or whatever. And I didn’t have any choice in the matter, once I was infected with the were-taint, but I cheated on you. I knew it even when I was sick. I was used to talking my way into women’s good graces and beds for information. It was easy; always had been. And I paid the price for it. I lost my humanity—”

“Maybe,” I interrupted.

“Maybe,” he conceded. “Probably, if the pain of the last full moon was an indication. But I also lost you. And that’s the part I can’t stop thinking about. I cheated on you, and yet you came and got me out. You saved my life.”

“Maybe,” I said again.

He chuckled, the tone mocking, and I hitched a shoulder. The were-bitch’s dead body had been crumpled at Rick’s feet when I found him. If the werewolves had found her, they’d have killed him without a second thought, holding him responsible. I found her, and Rick, first.

“But you don’t have the wolf-taint. You’re infected with black were-leopard,” I said. And that was the sticking point. The were-bitch had raped him. I knew that from the smell on the mattress in the hotel room where he had been tortured. But Safia had—

“I was infected, but not by sex. We didn’t—” He stopped. “It never went that far. Safia bit me.”

I blinked, letting my eyes go unfocused, putting the timeline together. It fit. It was possible. My mouth opened slightly. I inhaled, feeling the air move through me. Tension, anger, jealousy, and something even more primitive, lifted off me, as if a rotting, uncured pelt had been resting on my shoulders, and had then fallen away. Deep inside, my Beast began to purr. She smelled the truth of his words. “Rape isn’t cheating,” I whispered. “And were-taint makes humans crave sex.” I turned and met his eyes. “Not your fault. Not your guilt.”

He shrugged, clearly holding himself responsible still. “Your turn,” he said.

I came back to the table, and sat on the edge of the hard, concrete seat. I was as far from him as I could get and still be at the table. “What do you want to know?” I hedged.

He laughed, the sound free and easy. He looked so good sitting there, the black T-shirt accenting his olive skin, the tips of the cat-claw tats and scars peeking beneath the sleeve of one bicep, the white and jagged scars marring the flesh on his other arm. He bent up a knee and clasped his hands around it. “I’ll likely turn furry eventually, into a black were-leopard, maybe one with a wolf tail or wolf ears. I’m not human. Neither are you. What are you? Start there.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it when nothing came out. Opened it again. Blinked slowly. The Big Talk. “Uhhh . . .” Rick chuckled again. I smiled and shook my head, looking away from him to the view. It wasn’t often that I said the words aloud. I took a breath and said, experimentally, “What do I smell like?”

Rick shook his head. “I knew you weren’t gonna be easy, not you.” When I didn’t reply, he said, “I haven’t turned yet. My sense of smell is heightened but not what it will be. Maybe,” he said, beating me to the equivocation. “But you smell like big-cat. Mostly. Like Kem, but not like him. Like a bird. And like a dog. Just a whiff. But mostly like big-cat. You’re not a were.”

“No,” I said. My mouth went dry. “I need something to drink.” Before he replied, I was up and inside, my head in the drink cooler. I stayed there too long, cooling off, but eventually, the sales lady called out to me. I made my purchases and came back out with two colas. I put his on the table and opened mine. Drank half of it and still felt dry-mouthed. I took a breath and blew it out. “I’m a”—the words were raspy, and I had to stop in the middle and take a breath—“a skinwalker.”

Rick nodded, sitting there, looking calmly at me. “Did you try to turn me,” he asked, “when we had sex?” There was no accusation in the words, just honest questioning.

I thought about being offended, but I had sex with him without telling him anything about me, which was a form of lying. I’d lied once so I might lie again, right? “I can’t turn anyone. I was born this way.”

“Okay. I’ll buy that. Black magic practitioner?”

“No!” I stood fast. Inside, however, Beast hacked with derision. Stole my body. Stole my soul. Jane is killer. Worked black magic. I forced her down, and myself back to the seat. I put my hands on the table, fingers splayed, staring at them instead of the man I had lied to. And who had lied to me. Things were so screwed up.

“My kind were the protectors and the warrior leaders of the Cherokee for a thousand years, until the white man came. The word Cherokee once meant people of the caves, or people who came from out of the ground. Something like that. They were cave dwellers; skinwalkers kept them safe. Then the early Spanish came, and, I think, brought some contagion, maybe. My kind started to die out. Started to turn to the dark arts. But we don’t have to do evil. I don’t have to.” Beast didn’t respond to my claim this time; she was too tightly focused on Rick.

“Can you shift into any animal? Tiger, sparrow, catfish?” He hesitated. “Mountain lion?”

“I need bones or skin to change. I use DNA to adopt the shape I want. I can’t change mass very well. It’s dangerous. So I stay with animals of my mass most of the time.” He wasn’t looking at me like I was an escapee from a supernat zoo. That did happy weird things to my insides, and I clenched my hands into fists before relaxing them again. “I’ve never tried water animals. Only land mammals. Rarely birds. We were protectors so predators are easier.”

I stopped. He’d asked about mountain lions. Though he’d been on the brink of death, Rick had seen me in my Beast-form once, the first time I’d saved his life; I’d made a habit of that lately, in between occasions of leaving him in danger. I knew what he was asking.

I drained the rest of my drink. “I usually choose mountain lion. And yes, that was me you saw when the sabertooth attacked you.” I’d been at a larger mass than my own, thanks to a glitch in the shifting process. That was what I was calling it, a glitch. Not a Beast-took-control-and-forced-a-mass-change-to-the-top-of-the-genetic-range-situation, which was

closer to the truth.

Rick nodded, which I saw in my peripheral vision. I risked a direct look at him. His eyes were steady, calm, nonreactionary. “Have you been in counseling or something?” I blurted.

He laughed and said, “No. Not unless you count Kemnebi’s drunken ramblings. Not since I woke up sick, in pain, and bleeding, with the Mercy Blade. Gee DiMercy talks a lot, and I was too sick to push him out of the room, so I listened.” He waved that away, wry, self-deprecating. “But I’ve had time to do a lot of thinking.” He bent over the table and rested his weight on his elbows, chin in hand, holding my gaze. “Time to get over the anger. Time to remember. So that was you.”

He was back at the memory we shared of Beast. Rick being attacked by a shape-changer in sabertooth lion form. Me saving him. Beast having forced the mass increase was the only reason I’d been big enough to fight the sabertooth lion off.

“Yeah. Me. I chased the sabertooth off you and got help.”

He nodded. “Okay. So if I go furry, can you do the whole black leopard thing?”

Beast moved closer inside me, padding, shoulders hunched, belly tight against me, the way she would hunt unwary prey. I smiled slightly. “If I have the bones or skin or teeth of a female black leopard, yes. Probably.”

Good mate. Strong, Beast thought.

“A real one?” he asked. “Not the bones or teeth of a were-female. Not Safia’s bones?”

“No! That’s black magic.” And besides, I wasn’t sure how the DNA of a were differed from the DNA of a normal animal or mundane human or skinwalker. And I wasn’t curious to find out. “I can become a real black leopard. If I want to. If I have the DNA material. Soooo. Are we . . . good?” I asked, not sure what I meant by that. Beast hacked in amusement. I ignored her.

Rick extended his hands across the table and I placed mine into them. “We’re good. Or as good as we can be until we find out if I survive the next full moon, furry, or not. Till then, it’s a good day to be outside and free.” He lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed the back of my fingers. His lips were warmer than a human’s and soft, and something melted inside me. Beast purred. This man was one of very few people on the face of the earth—to include Molly, her husband Evan, and Angie Baby—who knew I was a skinwalker. And he was okay with it. His scent warmed as if he knew my thoughts, and he pressed my Leo key chain into my palm. “Let’s go for a ride.”

We helmeted up and I followed Rick’s red crotch-rocket Kawasaki out of the small parking lot and up and down switchback roads. We didn’t talk. We roamed the hills, catching one another’s eyes, much like mated big-cats might, pointing to prey and old barns and cabins covered in undergrowth. We followed the scent of grindy and once of werewolf until it faded.

At the first shadows of night, we were back at the campground. I keyed off Fang, set the kick, and straddled the bike while the engines cooled, studying Ricky Bo. While I watched, he secured his bike for the night, his movements more graceful than once upon a time. Though he hadn’t gone furry, he was picking up the traits of a cat: stealth, grace, improved senses. He unstrapped his helmet and I pulled off mine. His hair swung forward, damp, matted by sweat.

I caught the scent of him, musky, salty, cat, all male. I stood and took a step toward him. He met my eyes for a single moment. Heat flared between us, and I was in his arms, his mouth on mine. The world tilted, my hands clawing under his shirt. I was slammed against something hard. Pinned. Bark gouging through my leather jacket. I curled a leg around his, pulling him close. Breath hot. Tongue and mouths and the rising scent of musk. One hand cupped my head. The other my butt. Pulling me close into him. Grinding.

“Get a room,” someone said. Too close.

Rick jerked back, baring teeth. But the man was gone, the scent of sweat and irritation on the air, footsteps receding. Rick huffed a laugh and I made a sound perilously close to a giggle. He bent his forehead against mine, our hearts pounding together. “Holy Mary, Mother of Jesus,” he whispered, catching his breath. “What the hell was that?”

“Cat scent?” I gasped. “Mating pheromones? It’s just a guess.”

“You never did it . . . I mean not with another skinwalker?”

My smile faded. So did my joy. I put my hands against his chest between us. Pressed until he let me to the ground and stepped back, though Rick refused to be pushed entirely away. His hand was still on my nape. I turned my head and rested my cheek in his palm.

“What?” he asked, and I could smell Rick’s confusion, his worry. His cat.

“There are no other skinwalkers,” I said. I tilted my head and searched his eyes. “I killed the last one when it went crazy and started eating people.”

I could see him putting things together. “Leo Pellissier’s son? Was a skinwalker?”

“Maybe. Probably. One who did black magic, took a vamp’s DNA, and the two natures didn’t mesh.” When he didn’t comment, I said, “It was a lot older, I think. Like weres, walkers live a long time. They don’t get nutso until they get very old, or do something stupid like try to become vampire on top of being a walker. I’ve never met another one.”

“Once Kem goes back to Africa, I’ll be the only black were-leopard on this continent, and the only one on the face of the earth who might not be able to change at the full moon. Looks like we get to be singularities together.” He gathered up my hands and pulled me away from the tree, back to Fang. “You’ve got a long ride back. Be careful, Jane Yellowrock.”

I helmeted up, feeling curiously empty and full all at once, drained and vacant and joyful. “You too, Rick LaFleur. I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be here,” he said, “at least until the day after the full moon. If I’m alive then, my whole world will be different.” I reached for Fang’s key. “But I’ll still want you, Jane.”

I looked up at that, but Rick was gone, fading into the lengthening shadows.

Back in my suite in the Regal Imperial Hotel, I rushed through a shower, looking longingly at the whirlpool tub with its candleholders and plush towels. And at the bed I hadn’t used in a day and a half. Maybe at dawn. Which seemed a long time away. I braided my black hair, which was windblown and needed a scrubbing it wasn’t going to get anytime soon, and tucked it up into a tight, compact queue. It could still be used as a handle in a fight, but the bun was better than loose hair over three feet long. I wasn’t vain, and I could be called beautiful only by the most generous or the most inebriated, but my long hair was gorgeous.

I was security on this gig, not chasing rogue-vamps, and the different job description had required a change in a lot of my possessions, from clothes to weapons. The clothes had been commissioned by Leo Pellissier to give me “elegance and utility,” his phrase. And I liked the clothes, which was such a girly thought that I’d not said it aloud. Dodging the bust of some long-dead founding father on its tall stand, I tossed clothes from the closet—all black, which made wardrobe decisions so much easier—onto the bed and drew on Lycra undies, narrow-legged pants, silk tank, tight vest, tall, leather boots, and slung an elegant nubby silk jacket over my arm.

Rushing the clock, I strapped on the knife sheaths and silver-tipped stakes, and gathered three new handguns provided by Leo, which was one of the nicer aspects of being on vamp retainer—access to all the latest toys. Thanks to a big check signed by Ernestine, the financial secretary of the Louisiana Mithrans, I was fully accoutered with new .380s.

Muscle memory giving me speed, I sat on the couch in the sitting area, handguns on the low table, and checked them all, holstering the new weapons. The .380s offered less stopping power than my 9 mils, and significantly less than my Benelli M4 tactical 12-gauge shotgun, currently hidden in the closet, but were perfect for this job where the possibility of collateral damage was not acceptable, meaning accidentally shooting a tourist or bellboy. So I loaded varied kinds of ammo in the new magazines. The Walther PK380s, I loaded with standard rounds in the event of a human or blood-servant attack on the talks between vamps. One went under my arm, its twin at the small of my back. Matching guns. How cool is that? The semiautomatic handguns were lightweight, ambidextrous, with bloodred polymer grips, and reengineered so the safety block wouldn’t break off, a serious flaw of the first ones in the series.

Into my boot holster went a six-round Kahr P380, a small semiautomatic with a matte black finish. It was loaded with silver in case of vamp attack. I had strict orders not to tell the other security or the vamps at the chats about the silver ammo, and not to fire it unless “extreme measures are called for, in the event of unforeseen violence.” Leo’s words. I translated them to mean, “if the vamp-poop hit the fan,” because with vamps, violence was always foreseen.

I stood and checked myself in the long mirror. Of course, if the vamp-poop became airborne I wasn’t well prepared, not even with all the weapons on me. I wasn’t wearing my protective gear, my armored and silver-studded leathers. And I had yet to replace my sterling silver neck, throat, and décolletage collar that protected me from the most common vamp killing techniques. I had nothing defensive on me at all. I was logistical and overall security for the hotel, transportation, any protesters who decided to make a point and kill a vamp, and the talks themselves, so I wasn’t supposed to need my vamp-hunting gear. Yeah. Right.

I threw on the jacket, straightened my gold nugget necklace, and paused. I spun to the closet and stretched up on tiptoe. Spotted the wooden box in the far corner. Even though I knew it was there, it was hard to see, Molly’s spell sliding my eyes to the side, making my brain ignore it. My fetish necklaces were inside, and no human would ever notice the box unless they reached back and felt for something they didn’t see. Satisfied, I raced through the connecting doorway into the common area of the twins’ suite. They were waiting, dressed and armed to the teeth. Brian tossed me a tube of red lipstick, which I caught and smeared on as I passed a mirror. The shade matched the Walthers’ grip, which had made me laugh when I bought it.

“The princess is finally ready,” Brandon drawled, his Louisiana accent thicker than melted praline candy.

“It was worth the wait,” Brian said. Or maybe it was the other way around. Without seeing the tiny mole at Brandon’s hairline I can’t tell them apart, and when they work personal security for their blood-master, they dress alike. Exactly alike. So there’s no telling them apart at a distance. Clan Arceneau’s security blood-servants were gorgeous, and all gussied up in matching tuxedoes tonight.

“You boys look pretty,” I said, tucking the lipstick into a pocket. I put on the ear wire and one of the twins helped me attach the receiver unit beside the Walther holstered at my spine.

“I look pretty. The ugly brother,” Brian said, tugging on the holster, and telling me which twin was which, “looks acceptable as long as he leaves his hair combed over his imperfection.”

It was an old joke. I just wish they’d wear name tags. I flipped the switch on and dropped the coat, checking its drape in the long mirror at the door. In its reflection, I saw the TV, with two mug shots on it, bearded men, rough and angry. Not that the werewolves would look anything like that by now. If they shaved, they’d be hard to recognize. The mug shots became a shampoo ad. “Okay. What’s on the schedule tonight?” I asked as I followed Brian into the hallway.

He knocked on the door at the end of the hall, speaking over his shoulder to me. “The Noir Wine Room.”

I touched my mike to the command channel and said, “Update.”

Derek said, “The locals are still chanting out front. Apparently the Cocke County sheriff released your name at a press conference this evening. Our protestors think you were lying to protect the suckheads when you said no vamps attacked the couple in Hartford.”

“Mmmm,” I said. “Numbers?”

“Fourteen. I have a guy watching and taking video. We’ve ID’d most of them.”

“Okay. We’re moving according to schedule. The Noir Wine Room. Everyone in place?”

“Affirmative, Injun Princess.”

I pushed the mouth-wire to the side as the door to the suite dubbed the Mithran Suite opened and Grégoire stepped out with a burst of vamp-scent. His was the perfume of freshwater streams and summer gardens, and if his security looked good, the blood-master of Clan Arceneau was devastating. He had been turned young, back in a pre-Revolution French court, and had been chosen for his beauty, which said something less than savory about his maker. Yet, Grégoire had a look of perpetual innocence that was unusual among the vamps. I didn’t know him well enough to say if the innocence was real or practiced, but I’d have put money on faked if asked. Hard to maintain innocence for over seven hundred years. Tonight Grégoire was elegant in black tuxedo pants, cummerbund, vest, and silky black shirt with ruffles at cuffs and neck. His coat with tails was a gold cloth slightly darker than the color of his hair. The fit and cut were modern, the color scheme wasn’t. I figured it must be based on something from his own time.

He studied us, taking in every detail, nodded once and started down the hall, Brian leaped in front at point, Brandon falling in at our six. I was slightly ahead at Grégoire’s left.

We drew all eyes as we exited the elevator into the Regal Imperial’s lobby with its huge central stone fireplace supported by stone columns, its art, statues, burned velvet and leather upholstery, and eclectic decor. I took note of who stared too long or looked away too quickly, who moved and who didn’t. The hotel staff had been briefed and given a rundown of possible security problems. They had only one thing to remember. Don’t stare at the patrons or the security, and if I shouted, “Lockdown,” they were to call 911, lock the entry doors, shut down the elevators, and position a bellboy on each floor to keep the clients in their rooms. Easy-peasy. If they remembered and didn’t panic. In my experience, nonprofessionals always panicked.

I looked to the night-dark windows to see Derek, the compact, muscular, black man standing to the side in his charcoal suit. He nodded once to me before returning to his study of the lobby. The nod meant that no one stood out as a possible troublemaker, terrorist, or vamp-hater. I nodded back, knowing he’d see even though he wasn’t looking at me. He tapped his mike and said over the general channel, “Clear?”

“Clear,” another voice said. That would be Wrassler, already positioned in the Noir Wine Room, making sure no one was there but the appropriate staff and sanctioned menu—meaning the humans who would provide sustenance during the negotiations. Which set my teeth on edge, but since no one was there against his or her will, I wasn’t making a fuss.