Night of the Raven Page 14

  * * *

  THE WORLD AS McVey knew it gave a mighty quake. His eyes snapped open to shadows. The floor beneath him threatened to buckle and the air was rich with the mingled smells of smoke and storm.

  A fire, tinged with green, flamed high in an impossibly tiny hearth. A small black pot hung over the flames. Three others stood smoking on a heavy table.

  A woman in a cloak moved from pot to pot. She mumbled and chanted and sprinkled powders that made the contents boil over the sides. “Betray me and suffer the consequences,” she vowed. “What was love has transformed into hate. I pit brother against brother and seek destruction for both. At night’s end, all that the first one possesses shall pass to me and mine.”

  “Go!” Whirling, she held her hands out, palms up. As they rose, so did the flames in the hearth. Her voice dropped to a malevolent whisper. “Never forget, Hezekiah. It was your own brother who killed your wife—your wife, who was my sister. He raped her and then he killed her. He betrayed us both, for I loved him, and I foolishly believed he loved me.”

  Fury smoldered in the air. Vicious streaks of lightning revealed more than a desire for revenge in her eyes. From the floor where he lay, unmoving and with his own eyelids barely cracked, McVey saw the madness that simmered inside her.

  “All will be mine,” the woman promised again. “Before this night is done, there will be death many times over, and the perpetrator shall be deemed to be evil....”

  Her words echoed in McVey’s head. Echoed and expanded. In his mind he saw a man. There was blood, and suddenly the man was alone with bodies scattered across the forest floor. His brother lay dead at his feet. His breath heaved in and out, and tears ran down his cheeks as he cried a woman’s name.

  “Nola...!”

  The smoke in the attic thickened. The storm beyond it grew wilder still. But in the forest of his mind, McVey glimpsed a raven. It swooped down and landed in front of the sobbing man. It spread its silky black wings and grew to full human size.

  When it spoke to him, it did so in a woman’s soft voice. “I can do but a small spell, my love, yet I shall do all that is possible to save what remains of your soul. You must embrace the raven, Hezekiah. You must embrace and become the raven....

  The image in McVey’s head fractured. He saw fire and blood and the dripping black mass that the cloaked woman had given to the damned man.

  But it was fragments now; frozen images caught in time-lapse photography.

  He had to get out, McVey thought. He had to do something. Find someone. No, protect someone. Protect Amara from the person who wanted her dead.

  Without warning, the woman’s strong fingers gripped his wrists and hauled him to his feet. “I knew you were awake, Annalee. I know what you have seen and heard. I know what you think.”

  McVey seriously doubted that. How could a mad witch know the thoughts of a man who was, however briefly and for whatever reason, trapped inside the body of her sister Nola’s daughter?

  * * *

  “MCVEY, WAKE UP!” He felt himself being shaken—not by the wrists, but by the shoulders. “McVey!”

  The female voice, muted at first, came clearer. She shook him again, then committed the cardinal sin of wrapping her fingers around his wrist.

  “McVey!”

  Hell with that, he thought and, yanking free, took a hard swing.

  “Not tonight, slugger.”

  His fist punched air. The momentum of it landed him facedown on a dusty floor.

  Weight descended on the small of his back. Firm bands cinched his ribs on either side. A hand grabbed his hair and pulled.

  “Wake up!” a familiar voice said in his ear.

  Reality trickled in, slowly at first, then like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head.

  He came back swearing and reaching for his gun. When he surged up, the weight vanished. He made it to his hands and knees, looked around—and saw Amara sprawled on the floor.

  Concern struck first, a brutal kick to the gut. “Are you hurt? What are you doing?” He shoved himself upright, swayed. “What am I doing?” His mind began to clear and he frowned. “Where the hell are we?”

  “All good questions.” She pushed to a crouch to study his face in the shadowy light. “Are you you?”

  The dream—hell, nightmare—slithered back in. So did a truckload of confusion. “I don’t know who I am, or was. Is this an attic?”

  She continued to inspect his face. “Yes. We’re in the central part of the manor. I woke up when you got out of bed and pulled on your jeans. No big deal, I thought. Until the lightning flickered and I saw your eyes. They looked wrong. Trancelike. I called your name, but you didn’t answer. When I touched you, you shoved me onto the bed.”

  “I shoved...?” Revulsion swept through him. “Jesus, Amara, did I hurt you?”

  “Onto the bed, McVey. No. I tried to follow you, but you’re very fast, and when I realized you were heading outside, I had to run back for my boots.”

  And his T-shirt, he noted. “Your hair’s wet.”

  “It’s raining. And blowing. Hard. I don’t know how I knew you’d gone to the main part of the house. Maybe I sensed you. Or maybe it just made some kind of weird sense to me that you’d come here, but I ran upstairs when I heard the attic door slam.”

  “I hope it was me who made that happen and not the house.”

  She smiled. In relief, he imagined.

  “I don’t think the manor’s possessed, McVey, but the central attic is believed to be where Sarah Bellam was confined after she was pronounced insane.”

  “Insane and pregnant.”

  The smile spread to Amara’s eyes. She held her hands out to her sides. “Tah-dah.”

  “With Ezekiel Blume’s child.”

  “Thus the sparsely populated branch that binds our family trees.”

  McVey lowered his gaze to his forearms. “She grabbed me, dragged me to my knees and threatened me. With amnesia in the original dream. Possibly with something worse tonight.”

  Amara skimmed a speculative finger over his wrist. “You were breathing strangely when I found you. I tried to take your pulse. You tried to punch me.”

  His eyes shot up. “What?”

  She grinned. “I saw it coming, of course, so you missed. You hit the floor. I jumped on your back. McVey, Sarah was a small woman, no more than five foot three or four, and according to all the historical records, very slender.”

  “So how could she drag me to my knees?” He let his mind crawl back into the nightmare. “Annalee,” he murmured, and heard Amara’s comprehending “Ah.”

  “I was a girl in the dream,” he went on. “Seven, maybe eight years old. I was hiding in the attic. Sarah pulled a dripping black blob out of a boiling pot and handed it to a man.”

  “Did the man have long black hair and the face of a demigod?”

  Amusement stirred. “From the perspective of both man and child, Amara, he was just a guy in a cloak.”

  “Some people say... Uh, okay, are we leaving?”

  As lightning raced through the sky, McVey stood, flexed a sore left shoulder—he probably didn’t want to know the source of that injury—and extended a hand. “I’m in the mood for some raven’s blood wine. If you have theories, and I’ll lay odds you do, we can talk about them downstairs.”

  Instead of appearing rattled, she trailed a suggestive finger over his collarbone. “The wine part’s an excellent idea, and the prospect of talk’s intriguing, but I think I’d like something more stimulating between the first and second things.”

  He allowed himself a brief smile when her hand clamped his half-zipped fly, and he felt his body’s instinctive reaction. “Having been trapped inside a girl’s body a few minutes ago, I’m more than happy to find myself back on form.” He ran his gaze over her face as the heat in his groin ramped up to painful proportions. “In fact...”

  Eyes glittering, he lifted her off the floor by her hips. Her long legs twined automatically around him. With his
mouth already locked on hers and need raging like thunder inside him, he found the nearest wall, pressed her to it and tossed the last of his nightmare into the storm where it belonged.

  * * *

  “LET ME GET this straight.” Inside Hannah’s cozy west wing living room, with a wood fire glowing in the hearth, Amara endeavored to sort through all that McVey had related. “In your dream—okay, nightmare—your name is Annalee. As Annalee, you saw Sarah give Hezekiah something black and icky, probably a magical root. After Hezekiah left, you heard her claim that brother was going to destroy brother. Meaning Hezekiah was going to destroy Ezekiel for raping and murdering Hezekiah’s wife, Nola. You’re saying it really was Sarah who gave Hezekiah the power to be...well, evil.”

  “Sarah knew Ezekiel had betrayed her love. She knew he wanted Nola for himself.”

  “That part’s in the original legend, the one written by the Blumes. But years ago a Bellam suggested the very thing you’re telling me now. That Sarah was actually the ‘evil’ spirit. That she caused Hezekiah to go on a killing spree. Except Nola wasn’t dead, only in a state of limbo. When Hezekiah’s spree ended, it was Nola who came to him as a ‘good’ spirit.”

  McVey took a long drink of wine. “A good spirit in the form of a raven.”

  “Raven Nola told human Hezekiah that the best she could do was transform him into a raven as well, a condition in which he would remain until someone who was fated to die succeeded in cheating death.”

  “Told you it was a nightmare.”

  “But with a slightly different twist tonight, one you sleepwalked through.”

  His gaze swept across the high ceiling. “Could be the surroundings. Proximity to the place where the original nightmare unfolded.”

  Thoughtful now, she poured him another glass of wine. “Still, McVey, everything you’ve said is just background information to the really fascinating part.”

  “That I was a girl in a former life?”

  “That you were Nola’s daughter in a former life. I had a dream, too, the night we stayed in the raven tamers’ camp. The name Annalee came up. I was sure I’d heard it before, and it turns out I had. Annalee was Nola’s daughter, born before she met Hezekiah. You were Annalee.”

  “Only if you believe in reincarnation, Red. Which I don’t.”

  “Which you don’t want to.” She curled her legs under his black T-shirt, then, unable to resist, leaned in to whisper an amused, “Makes you a Bellam, you know.”

  He poured more of the wine into her glass. “I guess it also makes us kissing cousins.”

  “Fifty or sixty times removed. Tell me, have you ever had the urge to cast a spell?”

  “Or ride a broomstick?”

  “No male Bellam ever rode a broomstick, McVey. I doubt if any of them even knew what one looked like.”

  “Apparently, I’m more enlightened. I swept the floors in my father’s antiques shop as a kid.”

  “I love antiques—” Her head came up as something slammed against the side of the house. “Well, wow. If that whatever-it-was was wind driven, Bellam Bridge might not even be in the state of Maine tomorrow. Which could be good or bad, depending on Willy Sparks’s present location—and why on earth did I bring that up?”

  McVey shifted so they were both facing the fire. Resting an arm across her shoulders, he played with her hair. “Talk more about Sarah.”

  “What? Oh.” She pushed fear aside and gave his leg a smiling pat. “That’s your story. You said Sarah said she wanted both Hezekiah and Ezekiel destroyed so she and her unborn child—Ezekiel’s child, obviously—could inherit Hezekiah’s vast estate. Money, land, homes, et cetera.”

  He grinned. “Give the woman credit, it was an ambitious plan.”

  “Yes, and only two Blumes and a Bellam had to die for her to achieve it. Oh, and I forgot, all the townspeople who followed Ezekiel into the woods and helped him ‘murder’ Nola.”

  “Ambition isn’t always pretty, Red.”

  “Jimmy Sparks is an ambitious man.”

  “So was I once, in what I thought at the time was a more positive way.” McVey took a drink of the bloodred wine. “Life can screw you. Lines are irrelevant. Good, bad, pick a side, stand back and watch the mighty fall.”

  She regarded his profile. “I’d call that an extremely cryptic remark. I hope you’re going to elaborate and not force me to draw my own conclusions.”

  He linked the fingers of his left hand with her right. “Let’s just say my last bust as a city cop proved to me that once in a while the so-called good guys go bad. Unfortunately, if their connections within the department are important enough and reach high enough, Internal Affairs will turn a blind eye and the dirty deeds will get shunted to the investigative morgue.”

  “Causing at least one good cop to go looking for something better. Somewhere better. In this case, a spooky little town on the coast of Maine.”

  McVey examined the wine bottle. “We’re down to the dregs, Red, and I’m not feeling a single adverse effect. You?”

  “No, but then I hit my head when we made love in the shower, so I can attribute any dizziness I might be experiencing to that.”

  “I’m the one who got whacked by the showerhead.” When Amara laughed, he set the bottle aside and pulled her onto his lap. “If you’re dizzy, what you need is exercise.”

  “From a medical standpoint, I have to tell you, that’s really bad advice. However...” Eyes dancing, she hooked her arms around his neck and wriggled until he went hard. “Seeing as I know what you’re doing and what you want, all I can say is—”

  The rest of the sentence stuck in her throat as lightning flickered and her eyes, now facing the living room window, picked up a movement. For a split second she saw someone in the driveway.

  Someone wearing rain gear and carrying a rifle.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You coulda shouted, McVey.” Clearly annoyed, Brigham stripped off his muddy raincoat and dumped it on the porch. “Come at me like a battering ram and I’m gonna batter right back.”

  McVey took the bag of frozen garden peas Amara handed him and pressed it to the side of the knee Brigham had injured during their brief skirmish. She plunked a similar bag of lima beans on Brigham’s head and told herself this ridiculous comedy of errors wasn’t funny. It could have been Willy Sparks or even Hannah’s killer sneaking around the perimeter of the manor instead of her raven tamer cousin.

  “You helped Rune,” Brigham grumbled, “so I figured I’d help you.”

  “Next time, mention it,” McVey said through his teeth. “I’m too young to be thinking about having reconstructive surgery on my knee.”

  As she rooted through the cupboards, Amara shook her head. “You’re never too young, McVey. I’ve reconstructed feet, ankles, knees, hips—the list goes on and up—for people a lot younger than you.” She located a bottle of amber liquid and held it up for Brigham to see. “Is this raven tamer whiskey?”

  “I don’t know. My head hurts worse when I open my eyes. If there’s no label, it’s ours, and gimme.”

  She placed it in the middle of the kitchen table within easy reach of both men. “You can share the bottle or wait until I wash some of the glasses Hannah left piled in the sink. I’ll go out on a limb here and speculate that dish washing wasn’t one of her favorite chores.”

  Brigham shot McVey a glare. “I can handle a dirty glass.”

  “As a medical practitioner, I’m forced to say, yuck.”

  McVey worked up a faint smile. “Is that doctor talk for ‘it’s an unhealthy practice’?”

  “No, it’s woman talk for ‘it’s gross.’ There’s black gunk hardened on the bottom of every mug, it’ll take a week’s worth of soaking to soften whatever she burned onto this casserole dish and the red stains in the wineglasses are probably permanent by now.... Why didn’t you tell us you planned to stick around, Brigham?”

  The big man shrugged. “Didn’t know it myself until we started moving out. Then it came to
me. Too many people are dead who shouldn’t be. Would a hit man leave a trail of bodies like this?”

  McVey reached for the bottle, took a long drink and shot it across the table. “Depends on the hit man. In Willy Sparks’s case, I’d say it’s unlikely.”

  The lights, which had held to this point, began to wink out as Amara filled the sink with hot water. “I still can’t think why anyone would want Hannah dead. We assume Westor witnessed something in the alley at the Red Eye. Possibly ditto for Mina, but...”

  “Is she the tourist I heard about?” Brigham asked.

  McVey shifted the frozen peas to the other side of his knee. “One more piece of our ever-expanding puzzle.”

  Amara glanced up as the lights fluttered again. “It crossed my mind that Mina and Westor were...you know, together.”

  McVey nodded. “You could be right. Jake said he found sleeping bags—plural—in an empty apartment in Yolanda’s building. I’ll check it out when we get back.”

  “If we get back.” Twitching off a chill, Amara plunged her hands into the hot, soapy water.

  Westor’s and Mina’s deaths disturbed her, but Hannah’s completely baffled her. She’d been a harmless eccentric—a hermit with a bad leg and really nothing a thief might want.

  Amara wondered if her mental state had been deteriorating without anyone realizing it. She could have had too much to drink, wandered into the manor’s central core and bumped into a homicidal hobo.

  “Right,” she said under her breath. “A hobo who took the murder weapon with him when he left, because...” Like the question, her theory sputtered out.

  Behind her, McVey and Brigham continued to bait each other while the overhead lights surged and faded. They winked off completely, but popped on again as she put the last glass in the drain rack.

  Still wearing his frozen vegetable hat, Brigham took a swig of whiskey and fished an iPod out of his shirt pocket. “I’ll take first watch, Amara, if you and McVey have something you’d rather be doing upstairs.”

  She regarded him through mistrustful eyes. “You weren’t spying on us earlier, were you?”