Raven Cursed: A Jane Yellowrock Novel Read online

  The rain made it hard to make sense of anything, and not just because the ground was mushy and the downpour was spilling down my neck. Not just because the cold front was pushing in fast on top of the dying hurricane, changing temps into early fall. The storm had washed all the scents downhill to meet the feeder creek the campers had pitched their tents beside. The creek was now a rushing torrent clogged with trash, brush, and body parts, the roar a violent white noise that drowned out every other sound.

  I had seen a lot of gore in my day. I’d made a lot too. But this was beyond anything I had seen, a sensory overload, further complicated by the scent pattern. The wolves had been here more than once, their newer scent overlaying the older one like open wounds, infected and dying. And, of course, the grindylow had paid the place a visit, leaving his fishy trace. I learned one important thing—­the woman killed here had been a witch, like Itty Bitty. No coincidence.

  I crossed my arms and hunched my back against the cold, but, despite my faster metabolism, the dropping temps were seeping into my bones along with the wet. Standing under the partial protection of a big-leafed Royal Paulownia tree, I studied the site. I didn’t know what was driving the wolves beyond revenge and sickness. The level of violence here made no sense at all. The wolves had rampaged, killing all the campers, even the one woman, in an attack that appeared frenzied and irrational, even for werewolves. I looked out over the campsite, trying to see it from the viewpoint of whacked-out wolf. Rampage. Violence. Bloodlust.

  Beast huffed and sent me an image of a spotted kit chasing her tail. There was mild insult in the image, and I chuckled, despite my misery. Moon madness, she thought at me. First shift after losing pack. No purpose but bloodlust.

  That made sense, so I worked the timeline backward. Jail, the loss of their pack, then the full moon, had made the wolves unstable, uncontrolled. This site, though new to me, was the first attack site, made soon after the wolves got to the mountains. The attack site with the dead couple on the bank of the French Broad had been the second. The pieces began to click together like dominoes falling into a pattern. When the wolves finished with the campers on the river, they had gained control, and bit the squatter at the abandoned house, leaving him alive. The attack on Itty Bitty, the first site I’d seen, had been the fourth attack, and the place where the three women had all been bitten but left alive, was the last and most recent wolf attack. There had been none since, which might just mean that the wolves had gotten smarter.

  If the wolves had made any mistake, it was here, when they weren’t thinking at all. I needed to track them back to where they had shifted to wolf and then back to human. I needed to understand it fully. Shivering with the dropping temps and immobility, I moved up under the laurel, against a rock face, protected from the rain, and found werewolf tracks. By the smell and the number of tracks, they had slept here in wolf form in the last few days. It was evidence. I moved out again and, for another hour, growing colder, wetter, and more frustrated, I stood in the increasing cold, under the unreliable protection of the Royal Paulownia, waiting for the searchers to find my GPS location. I was spinning my wheels, getting nowhere. With the rain, I wasn’t going to be able to track on this one, not without a better nose than I had in human form. And I wasn’t going to shift in front of humans. That left very few options.

  Looking over my shoulder, I spotted the searchers sliding down a steep incline, led by the sheriff. I smelled coffee and cigarette smoke and sweat from the group behind him. Grizzard was not gonna like this. Not at all. “Hey, sheriff,” I called out. “You like cats?”

  “You mean like the big-cat that walked all over my crime scene yesterday?”

  Oh crap. I’d forgotten about the Beast prints. “Um, not exactly,” I said. After that, my day went into the toilet.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Be Polite to the Nice Pussycat

  That the sheriff allowed me to bring in Kemnebi while we waited for the state crime scene techs to arrive and set up, proved he was reaching the end of his rope, but the fact that he agreed to allow the black were-leopard to hunt with us in big-cat form, showed just how stressed the county officials had become. All it had taken was my comment that the wolves had been back to the site recently, since the rain started. The fresh wolf tracks under the small ledge had been all the evidence Grizzard needed to consent. Even the park officials agreed that a tracker with claws and fangs of his own was a good idea, if I could keep him under control. I also knew that the officials would be making casts of any black were-leopard prints they found, to compare to the Beast prints. I figured that would clear Kemnebi from any possible suspicion in the killings, but it wouldn’t make the county and park powers-that-be any more satisfied.

  Wet to the skin, chilled, I waited in my SUV at the access road, the heater running. I checked my e-mail, answered phone calls, and took a much needed nap, stretched out on the SUV’s leather backseat. Before noon, I heard tires on gravel and sat up, yawning. Rick, driving a borrowed, dented pickup, pulled in beside me and cut the engine. I was surprised to see a black leopard sitting up high in the passenger seat. Somehow I had expected Kem to shift on site. He swiveled his head and met my eyes. Hissed, showing killing teeth in warning.

  Beast stirred. We were alone, parked far from the law enforcement vehicles, upwind from the scent of old death. Beast thought at me, Want to hunt. Want to hunt with Kem-cat.

  “Not gonna happen,” I murmured, as I climbed from the vehicle, shut the cab door, and tucked my hands in my damp pockets. “Not now, not ever.” She narrowed her eyes at me, deep in my mind, flicked her long, blunt tail, and slunk away, sulking. I leaned against the wet SUV.

  Rick exited the pickup and walked around the truck toward me, moving like he was half leopard already, with a liquid and predatory grace, despite the water repellant jacket and layers beneath. His hair was blacker than midnight, his eyes blacker still, and something warm and heated flowed down my body and settled in my lower belly. Despite the rain and the chill on the wind and stink of old death, a smile pulled at my mouth.

  Rick opened the passenger door and Kem stepped out, a slow, four-pawed slink. The spots beneath his black coat weren’t visible in the dim light, and he looked pure black with gold-green eyes, round pupils wide. He shook once and hissed, looking up at the clouds, shoulders hunching. Black leopards are good swimmers, surpassed only by tigers in their love of water, but getting rained on was evidently different from taking a leisurely swim in a cool pond on a hot, jungle day. Kem had seen me once, from a distance, in Beast form, and he looked at me now, remembering. He hissed again, pulling his lips back, wrinkling his snout.

  Rick held out a steel-prong dog collar, the kind that, when the leash is pulled, extends prongs into the dog’s throat. The collar style is used to control dangerous, aggressive dogs, and was the one concession Grizzard had insisted upon for a black leopard on the day’s hunt.

  Kem hissed in warning, showing his insult in the way that cats the world over do, by passive aggressive behavior. When Rick bent to put on the collar, Kem jumped to the hood, then the cab roof, and off the other side of the pickup. Without looking back, he started downhill, directly toward the kill site, tail in the air like a modified, upraised, middle finger.

  Rick slanted his eyes at me and let his mouth quirk up on one side. “He’s pissed because he’s sober in daytime. He’s worked hard to avoid that state since we got here.”

  I thought about Kem knowing me in my Beast form. About Grizzard and the gun-happy deputies. “He’s not going to let you use the collar at all, is he?”

  “Nope. Not without a fight none of us can hope to win. And, speaking of fights, he told me that the first time I shift, he’s going to challenge me to personal combat and kill me for sleeping with his wife, which I didn’t do.”

  The breath left my lungs as if I’d been socked in the gut. Mine, Beast chuffed, shoving her claws into me. Mine!

  “Yeah, that’s the way I felt about it too,” Rick said, as if he’d
heard her claim, but reacting to my facial expression. “He says were-law doesn’t allow him to kill me until then. And since I won’t know how to fight, won’t even know how to stand on four legs, I’ll be dead before dawn. Fortunately, the full moon is a few days away, so we can find time to say good-bye.”

  “Not gonna happen,” I said. “I’m his alpha. I won’t let him.”

  Ignoring my reply, he handed me a fleece shirt and a Gortex jacket, both dry. “Here.”

  I curled my fingers into the warm clothes, thinking of Rick and Kem, fighting. Kem would kill him slowly, playing with prey. I pulled the clothes to my nose and inhaled Rick’s scent, warm and masculine and satisfying. “Thanks,” I said. I looked down the hill for Kemnebi, who was mostly invisible, moving in the shadows of the slope. I kept my eyes on the forest as I said, “I’m still his alpha. Remind me before the full moon. I have a feeling that my Beast might have a thing or two to say about some black leopard killing you.”

  “Beast?”

  I laughed softly. “Yeah. Beast is what I call my cat-self.”

  Beast hacked at the words. Not Jane’s cat. Beast belongs to no one.

  “Of course, once she kills or chases off Kem-cat, she’ll likely flay your hide off with her claws for cheating on her with the wolves.”

  “Uhhhh . . .”

  To give myself something to do while he floundered, I pulled my wet shirts off and tossed them to the floorboard of the SUV’s cab. They landed near Evangelina’s scarf with a wet plop. Warm, dry clothes went on over my chilled skin; I was pretty sure he was looking, and I shivered once, hard. To the cold, I assured myself, not in reaction to Rick. I felt so much better inside the warm clothes that I sighed as I locked the door. “Come on. First things first. We gotta catch and dispatch some sicko werewolves who are killing and eating humans.” I moved into the brush and under twisted, tangled laurel. Rick slid into a backpack and followed, silent and thoughtful.

  The searchers stopped and watched as the black were-leopard circled the kill site. Kem-cat walked with a fluid, feral grace, leaping across the terrain; he made no sound, a killing shadow crossing cloud-dimmed ground. He was beautiful, wild, and unafraid for humans to watch, which was more in keeping with human thought processes than big-cat thinking. Leopards, like mountain lions, are solitary, hiding by day. That he showed himself with such balletic abandon said it was deliberate, part of his job description as the leader of the Party of African Weres.

  If his purpose was to disarm the humans, it worked. The searchers were staring in awe, seeing something feral and wondrous, rather than a creature who could bring them down with single snap of powerful jaws. Fortunately, now that he was sober, Kemnebi wasn’t going to yank their chains and do something that would cause the well-armed men and women to shoot him.

  Rick eased up behind me, nearly as silent as Kem-cat, standing with his shoulder to my back, checking out the searchers and the tree line. Grizzard moved slowly to me, always facing Kem-cat, his movements showing he was aware of predator/prey response to quick movements and turned backs. When he reached me he muttered, “What about the collar?”

  “You put it on him,” Rick said. He held out the leash and Grizzard looked at it, then at Kemnebi, and frowned. Kem moved around the campsite, feet lifting and falling with careless precision. He sniffed and hissed and avoided body parts, his rounded ear tabs flicking backward and forward. Rain pelted on him and on us, but I was half-dry—­the top half—­and so I didn’t care. As we watched, Kem stopped and put his nose to the wet ground, sucking in air in a scree of sound.

  Grizzard started, his hand moving to his weapon before he could stop himself. “What’s he doing?” he asked. “What’s that noise?”

  “Flehmen behavior,” I said, not taking my eyes off Kem. “Cats have scent sacs in the roofs of their mouths. When they scent-search, they pull in air through nose and mouth, over the tongue, past the scent sacs. It’s noisy.”

  “Gross,” said a searcher standing near enough to hear. “That’s why I keep dogs.”

  Kem turned toward us and hissed.

  “Mmmm,” Rick said, amusement in his tone. “Better be polite to the nice pussycat.”

  Kem hissed again, this time at Rick, who laughed low, the sound taunting. It didn’t take a genius to tell the two men had a dysfunctional relationship. Of course, Kem’s threat to kill Rick took dysfunctional relationships to entirely new heights. I hoped my being Kem’s alpha would keep Rick alive and healthy. I’d have to rethink my plans come the full moon.

  Kem made two circuits around the campsite and one to the ledge where the wolves had slept before he moved away, into the woods, up under a laurel thicket. He reappeared minutes later in another spot, and then in another. He was mapping the wolves’ ingress and egress, and when he was satisfied, he padded quickly to Rick and sat, tall and pretty, front paws crossed and greenish eyes on Rick as if he were prey. He hacked, opened his mouth, showing killing teeth.

  Rick asked, “You done?” Kem nodded once, a strange-looking gesture on the big-cat. Rick pulled out an old fashioned spiral notepad and flipped pages. I hadn’t seen a paper pad like that in years, but it was a smart move. Most electronics would have been ruined by the rain. If the pad was damaged, a buck and change would replace it. Rick located a list of questions, clearly ones they had worked out before they got here.

  “How many wolves?” Rick asked. Kem patted one paw twice. “How many times did they come here?” Kem again padded twice. “How many times did the grindylow come here?” Kem padded once. “Is the scent wrong?” Kem nodded once, his eyes intent on Rick.

  I had no idea what the question or answer meant, but now wasn’t the time to ask.

  “Did the wolves enter the campsite from the same direction each time?” Kem shook his head no. “Can you track both trails?” Kem nodded, but ducked his head slightly, raising his shoulder blades. “One trail is going to be harder to follow?” Kem nodded. “The older one,” Rick said. Kem nodded. “Now?”

  This time Kem didn’t answer. He turned in a single sinuous swirl, leaped over his own shoulder in a motion that appeared to defy the physical laws, and headed into the laurel thicket. I looked at Grizzard. “Coming?”

  “Not this time.” He turned hard eyes at Rick. “You’re that cop from New Orleans, the one PsyLed called me about.” Rick’s mouth tightened but he nodded, the gesture oddly like Kem-cat’s. “You’ll know what I need to see, if anything. For now, I have a crime scene to work up. If you get something, call. I’ll find you.” Grizzard turned his back and stamped through the wet, his shoulders rounded with fatigue.

  “PsyLed called him?” I asked.

  “First I heard about it. Come on. We have a cat to chase.”

  By four p.m. I was tired, cold, wet, hungry, and probably permanently deaf. The constant rain was a white noise that drowned out every other sound, a steady, deadening, deafening roar that only got louder when we had to cross swollen streams and cascades. The falling temperatures had made everything miserable, with a low-lying fog shrouding the ground like heavy gauze, hiding puddles, runnels, holes, roots, protruding rocks, and ruts. Laurel and rhodo thickets had meant crawling bent over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and my palms were torn and blistered and wrinkled up like raisins. The wind was traitorous, delicate and warm one moment, buffeting us with cold the next.

  Not even Gortex is designed to resist a hurricane, and my boots and jeans had failed the stream-crossing test. Even my underwear was sodden. Rick had brought several pounds of raw steaks in his backpack for Kem, and a jumbo-sized pack of high-cal trail mix for us. If not for the nuts, coconut, and dried tropical fruit, I’d have been tempted to try to steal from Kem-cat, which would have been gross and stupid.

  To make the experience more wretched, as far as I could tell, we were lost. I had no idea what the leopard had discovered. We hadn’t seen a real road—­one paved in the last century—­in hours, and we had crawled up and down steep slopes until east and west were alien conc
epts, even for me. If Kem wanted to lead us out into unknown territory and leave us to die, he couldn’t have found a better place for it. Grumpy. That was me. Ahead, I saw two dark mounds emerging from the fog. Once we were upon them, they resolved into our vehicles. I lay across the hood and panted, my relief so strong I wanted to weep.

  “Big, bad vamp killer, reduced to a whining mass of female flesh by a little water,” Rick teased. The look I gave him shut him up and he backed away, palms open wide in a mock protective gesture, eyes laughing. The first time we’d been alone together I’d taken him down, but something about the way he backed off, with a confident swagger I hadn’t seen before, suggested that now I might not have it so easy.

  I crawled into the SUV and turned the seat warmers on high, the heater on max, and the windshield warmer on. I sat in a miserable heap and shivered until the interior was toasty and my core temp started to warm. Then I crawled around in the back for anything that might keep me warm, coming up with a tire iron, a tool box, a ragged fleece blanket, and a pair of cargo pants left balled in a corner by God-knows-who. The scent wasn’t familiar and the pants were none too clean, having been used as a towel to wipe a mechanic’s greasy hands, but I stripped and pulled them on, hoping I wouldn’t get body lice or worse. The blanket, I ripped a head hole in with a screwdriver and tore a ribbon off one end to use as a belt. I was just barely presentable when a human-shaped Kem and Rick got into the vehicle with me, Kem in the passenger seat, his feet on my soaked clothes, and Rick lounging in back. Rick, wearing dry clothes, looked me over and laughed before passing me a king-sized Snickers bar. After the laugh, I should have refused on principle but I took it and started chewing.