Night of the Raven Read online

  With Lazarus’s truck belching exhaust and tendrils of fog winding around everything in sight, McVey stayed low and eased forward.

  He caught sight of the figure thirty feet ahead. Bent slightly at the waist, it crept along the side of a caravan. It seemed to be searching for something.

  Or someone, McVey reflected darkly.

  Cutting the guy off was easy enough. He slipped between two trucks, skirted a tall wagon and waited until the man tried to sneak past the hitch. When he did, McVey met him gun first with the barrel aimed at his head.

  “Hey, R.J.,” he said softly. “Why the military stealth?”

  Lazarus’s nephew froze, raised his hands. “Don’t be getting trigger-happy, McVey. I have no quarrel with you. I just got here myself.”

  “In your uncle’s truck?”

  “Hell no, in my own. It’s parked out front of cabin ten. I hightailed it back here when I heard Lazarus’s old Dodge start up. He’s not supposed to drive at night.”

  “He’s not in the cab,” McVey told him. He made a quick but thorough sweep of the shadows. “No one is. The truck’s a diversion. I thought you were the perp.”

  “What I am,” R.J. countered, “is confused. I saw right away there was no one in the truck, yet all the lights are on and the engine’s racing. Lazarus babies that engine. He won’t let anyone but him behind the wheel. So like I said—confused. Can I drop my hands now?”

  “Be my guest.” McVey looked from wagon to truck to caravan. “Have you seen anyone in the past few minutes?”

  “Haven’t seen anyone at all. That’s the problem. But I know this. Trucks don’t start themselves, and you wouldn’t be sneaking around here with a gun if they did. What the crap’s going on?”

  “I’ll let you know when I find out.”

  He spotted it a split second too late. By the time the quiet thwack that made R.J.’s eyes widen registered, the cane was less than a foot from his head.

  He had no time to prevent or even deflect the blow.

  But he glimpsed color and had enough time to curse himself for not twigging to the deception sooner. Raven tamer whiskey got people drunk quickly, and it could do a lot more than burn holes in stomach linings. A hell of a lot more.

  As pain shot through his skull, however, it wasn’t whiskey McVey thought about—it was Amara. She was inside her uncle’s motel room. Safe from Willy Sparks, but not from a much closer killer. A killer whose motives and methods mimicked those of a long-dead, frighteningly mad witch.

  * * *

  “UNCLE LAZARUS!” AMARA gave him a desperate shake. Her eyes darted around the room. “Wake up! Please, I need you to wake up so we can get out of— Damn! Damn, damn!”

  She jerked upright, her gaze glued to the floor.

  “Uncle Laz...” This time she choked his name off.

  A reflection in the framed print on the opposite wall revealed a movement outside, nothing more than a glimmer of motion. Amara ducked as a bullet blasted through the window and embedded itself in the wall next to the print.

  She took off like a runner from her mark. With her stomach churning and her fingers stiff, she reached for the bathroom door, yanked it shut. Her action blocked the light, but didn’t, probably couldn’t, contain anything else.

  Knowing she’d be visible as a silhouette, she used the threadbare sleeper sofa for cover. She was both relieved and horrified when a second bullet whizzed past her. Her uncle wasn’t the target.

  On the other hand, obviously she was.

  Casting a fearful look into the darkness, she fought for calm. Options. There had to be at least one other means of escape besides the front door.

  She swung her head around. Yes, there! The kitchenette had a window. If she could open it, she could get outside.

  Hugging every available dark patch, Amara worked her way over to the window. She pulled and tugged on the latch until the slider stuttered sideways.

  A quick look revealed nothing except fog and a swarm of raven tamer vehicles. Two more bullets burst through the front window as she climbed over the sill and hopped down between the cabins.

  She wanted to scream, longed to run and hide until the danger and the terror passed. But she maintained her crouch and ordered herself not to make a sound. She only remembered to exhale when everything around her started to spin.

  Chills scraped like claws along her spine, over her skin, through her head.

  Shut the fear out, she told herself. Think about McVey.

  She could see the back of his truck from her current position. If she could reach it, she could—what? Not leave. Never leave. Because somewhere in her jumbled head she felt certain she had the answer.

  This was about revenge—it had to be—for something she’d done as a child.

  She and Yolanda had traded barbs her first night back in the Hollow. So had she and Jake.

  Spiders, Amara recalled. Years ago, Yolanda had wanted to terrorize her. For reasons of their own, Jake and Yolanda’s brother, Larry, had collected a jarful of the horrible creatures, then put the jar in her bed. Jake in particular had enjoyed the so-called prank.

  Had Jake and Yolanda been friends as children? Had Jake and Larry? Amara didn’t think so. Why, then, had Jake been so eager to participate in Yolanda’s scheme? Because of his younger brother, Jimbo?

  From Jake’s perspective, it made sense.

  But would Jake want Hannah dead? Would he blow up the Red Eye? He certainly could have left the bar without anyone noticing. But why destroy a place he liked?

  Unless his plan had been to murder her and cloud her death by killing innocent people with her. Would Jake go that far out of spite? Would anyone?

  There had to be more.

  The “something” she’d mentioned to McVey tapped a sly finger on the shoulder of her memory. It almost scratched its way through. But as before, “almost” faded to black, leaving her frustrated and frightened.

  Where was McVey? And the paramedics. Surely thirty minutes had passed. Why hadn’t they arrived?

  Why had she left McVey’s backup gun and her cell phone on the table in her uncle’s room?

  Okay, enough, Amara decided. There was a plus side here. She had McVey’s keys in her jacket pocket, and there was a police radio in his truck. She could call the Harden twins for help.

  She waited until long wisps of cloud passed across the moon; then she slammed the lid on her terror and ran. She reached the driver’s door without incident. Yanking it open, she climbed onto the running board.

  And spied a dozen spiders crawling across the seat.

  She jerked back as if electrocuted.

  Spiders in McVey’s truck. Spiders in her uncle’s medicine cabinet. Jake would not do this. He’d always been bitter and spiteful, downright hostile toward her, in fact. But torment wasn’t his way. He was a hothead, and hotheads tended to want the job done.

  The elusive “something” she’d been struggling to identify all day struck her as she backed across the parking lot. Maybe it was the cotton-candy streaks on one of the raven tamers’ wagons, but suddenly there it was, front and center in her head. A smear of pink lipstick on the rim of a wineglass in Hannah’s kitchen sink. Bright pink. Like the lipstick worn by Willy Sparks and...

  “One more step, Amara, and you’re a dead woman.”

  The voice grated along her nerve ends. But Amara halted because she knew. This was no idle threat. Not with three people dead and a bar in smoldering ruins.

  Footsteps crunched on the gravel. She saw the gun first, then the arm, and finally the hatred that spewed like poisoned darts from her cousin Yolanda’s glittering blue eyes.

  * * *

  MCVEY STRUGGLED TO RESURFACE. Unfortunately, to push through, he had to battle distorted visions of smoking pots, dripping black blobs and the terror of a young girl as she broke free from the woman holding her. As she ran from the attic at Bellam Manor.

  Through the child’s eyes, he took in stairwells—long, narrow sets of them—and the jag
ged bolts of lightning that split the sky above the manor.

  The high cliffs beckoned, but he ran from them, over rock and rough ground toward the bridge.

  He didn’t know why he’d chosen that direction until he looked up and saw a raven flying overhead. It seemed to be leading him. To his death or away from it? Too confused to think, he followed the bird on faith and hoped like hell it would take him someplace far away from the madwoman behind him.

  “You must cross Bellam Bridge, Annalee.” The raven’s voice floated down. Could ravens talk, or had he gone mad, too? “You must cross what she cannot.”

  The child McVey had been knew the structure had been damaged by a series of recent storms. No one crossed Bellam Bridge these days.

  “Run, Annalee,” the raven urged. It landed on a damaged support, appeared to gesture with its wings. “You must cross the bridge now!”

  McVey glanced back and saw her coming. Sarah, enraged, her arms outstretched, her eyes glowing with madness.

  Going now, he decided, plunging onto the bridge.

  It pitched and rocked and made dreadful screeching noises that rose above the wild thunder. But it didn’t buckle, not even when he tripped and went down hard on his hands and knees.

  “Run, Annalee,” the raven repeated. “I will not allow her to leave this mountain. Here she has built herself a cage, and here will she remain.”

  McVey almost lost his footing a second time, but he managed to clutch a thick post and prevent the fall. Too winded to look back, he jumped over a broken plank and landed on all fours on the other side.

  Sarah screamed into the howling wind, “It’s mine, all of it, by right. Do you hear me? It’s mine.”

  Whatever “it” was, McVey wanted no part of it. But Sarah obviously did.

  “You have nothing more to fear,” the raven told him calmly. “Be still, and know that she who would see you—who would see all of us—worse than dead will herself never see anything beyond the world she has created in her attic room again.”

  McVey wasn’t quite as certain as the raven appeared to be. He watched until he saw double. Stared unmoving as Sarah stepped onto the bridge.

  Stared in shock as, three steps later, she fell through, ranting and cursing, yet somehow able to catch hold of a truss.

  Her shrieks joined with the thunder. Together, the sounds wrenched McVey out of his dream.

  Amara!

  Her name was a thunderbolt in his head. Gaining his feet like a man after a three-day drunk, he brought the motel into focus.

  On the ground beside him, R.J. groaned and rolled over. McVey saw blood on his shoulder and hoped the wound wouldn’t kill him. Because at the same time he spied R.J., he also spied Lazarus’s truck fishtailing toward the old highway.

  “Go, McVey.” Panting, R.J. rolled onto his elbow. “I can manage. Find whatever bastard did this and put a bullet in him for me.”

  McVey wiped blood from his cheek, spit it from his mouth. “Not him. Her. Check on your uncle if you can. I’m going for Amara.” His features hardened because, damn it, he should have seen this sooner. “And Yolanda.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Woods and hills shrouded in fog flew by in an eerie blur. Despite her terror—which had peaked when Yolanda and her Luger had stepped from the shadows of a raven tamer wagon—Amara knew where they were headed. Bellam Mountain.

  With her hands cuffed behind her and her ankles bound by a rough hemp rope, she could only give her body an angry twist. “What did you do to Uncle Lazarus?” she demanded.

  Yolanda snickered. “I slipped a mickey into his milk, of course. Right after R.J. left for a night at Two Toes Joe’s bar. Traitor likes it there.”

  “You call R.J. a traitor?” Amara gave another angry twist.

  “I call it as I see it.” Her cousin smirked. “Fight all you like, Amara. I stole those handcuffs from Jake. You won’t be getting out of them any time soon.”

  “Yolanda, this is crazy. Why are you—?”

  “Shut up,” her cousin snapped. She beamed a smile across the cab when Amara wisely broke off. “I love it when I give an order and someone obeys. Especially when that someone is you. Now spill. Did you think it was me, Jake or Larry who put the spiders in Uncle Lazarus’s bathroom? Go ahead, you can say. Me, Jake or Larry?”

  “Jake.”

  “Seriously?” She wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

  “Revenge. I freaked his brother, Jimbo, out when we were kids. I didn’t think you’d go that far, and Larry’s got his own quirks and hang-ups to deal with.”

  “So my brother sleepwalks naked. What does that prove?”

  “That he has his own quirks and hang-ups to deal with, and while he might be willing to do you a favor, he’s not really a vindictive person. Plus, even though he’s a Bellam himself, I always thought Larry was nervous about the whole witch thing. He never possessed any power, but I’m pretty sure he believed we did.”

  “You think Larry believed, but Jake didn’t?”

  “Jake’s too sexist to believe any female could harm him.”

  “Bull. What it really boils down to, why you really thought Jake put the spiders in Uncle’s bathroom and not me, is because Jake’s a guy and I’m not.” Yolanda gave the steering wheel a petulant thump. “Why do people think only men can kill with guns? Poison, that’s a woman’s weapon. Fine, maybe I didn’t shoot her, but I got Hannah with the butt end of my Luger. One whack and down she went. Not that it took much muscle on my part. She was pretty hammered by the time I coaxed her over to the main part of the manor.”

  “You got Hannah to walk all that way on a bad leg?”

  “She didn’t walk, she limped. Stumbled. Laughed like a loon. But come on, Ammie, we’re talking raven tamer whiskey here. A few swigs of that stuff and who even knows you have legs?”

  “You got an old woman drunk so you could kill her.”

  “The old woman was a lush. She dumped three fingers of whiskey into her coffee without a word of encouragement from me. I’ll cop to adding more while she was pouring me a glass of that gut-rot raven’s blood wine, but honestly? It was superfluous at that point.”

  Working herself around so she could lean against the door, Amara regarded her cousin’s profile. “Call me dense, Yolanda, but I’m still not getting this.”

  “You’re dense.” Only Yolanda’s eyes slid sideways. “You’re also stupid, stupid, stupid.” Grinning, she did a little butt dance. “Knowing that makes all the trouble worthwhile.”

  “Trouble. Is that your euphemism for murder?” Amara tugged experimentally on her wrists, but, as predicted, the cuffs held. “When did you go insane?”

  Her cousin sneered. “You’re such a weenie. People die every day. Some do it naturally. Others are helped along. I subscribe to the second way of thinking. And in support of my earlier remark about women and guns, Hannah wasn’t the only person I ‘helped along.’ I also offed the cute jerk with the knife who wanted the bimbo with the overbite instead of me. I admit that night’s a bit fuzzy, but I think I put a bullet in her before I did him. Would you believe the bitch pulled a gun on me at exactly the same time I pulled one on her? I mean, talk about your bizarre coincidences.”

  She didn’t know. Yolanda had no idea who she’d murdered in that alley. Growing desperate, Amara worked on freeing her ankles rather than her wrists.

  The foggy landscape rushed past as her cousin pounded through ruts and potholes, mindless of the damage she might be inflicting on the truck’s undercarriage.

  “Yolanda... Ouch. Damn.”

  “Almost bite your tongue off there, cuz? Not to worry. You’ll be dead soon. Won’t matter.”

  “Yeah, I got that part. What I still don’t get is why? I know you hate me....”

  “Loathe, despise, put a thousand curses on you that unfortunately never took.” Yolanda shrugged. “No point understating things.”

  “We’ll agree we’re not friends. I never liked Jake’s brother, but I think murdering him would ha
ve been a little extreme. So I’m guessing there’s a reason other than loathing behind what you’ve done.”

  “Well, duh.” Yolanda swung the truck with reckless abandon around the remains of a fallen tree. She did her second butt dance to an old Abba song. “Money, money, money. I want it, honey. When the rich man croaks.”

  Astonishment momentarily blotted out every other emotion. “That’s what this is about? Money?”

  “Rich man’s money. Richest man in the Hollow and the Cove combined’s money.”

  The missing puzzle piece fell into place at last. All the way into place as Amara recalled the contents of their uncle Lazarus’s medicine cabinet.

  “Oh, my God,” she exclaimed softly. “Sunitinib. And everolimus. The first drug was farther back on the shelf. It would have been older.”

  “Is that doctor talk for ‘oh, what a dumb ass I’ve been’? Which you totally are, and I’d be the last person to argue the point. But bottom line? Uncle Dearest’s life is winding down like an eight-day clock ticking through the last few minutes of its final hour.”

  Amara only half heard her. She’d been blind. She’d seen the drugs the night she’d gone looking for antacid. Seen but hadn’t absorbed.

  “Saw the trees just fine.” She sighed. “Missed the forest completely.”

  Yolanda ticked a finger. “More doctor talk, I assume, meaning your teeny, tiny mind overlooked what would have been a no-brainer for most first-year med students.”

  Ignoring her, Amara let her head fall back against the window. “Those drugs are used to treat renal cancer, the newer usually after a failure with the older. But even the new drug didn’t have a recent date on it.” Her terror momentarily suspended, she regarded her cousin. “Uncle Lazarus has kidney cancer.”

  “Yes, he does. It’s also in his bladder and, fingers crossed, his liver. And how do I know this, you ask, when in all probability he hasn’t told a soul?”

  “You went through his desk?”