Raven Cursed

“Fine.”

 

 

I looked at the cell, thinking that Bruiser was awfully short-tempered for a guy who’d nearly had his way with me in the shower not so long ago. I put the phone back to my ear. “Thanks.” I closed the cell. “Okay. Money’s not a problem. Name and double your fee for the info you’re collecting. The vamps want the weres caught and handled.” I ate some sweet potato fries while studying the map and, with the other hand, pointed to three creeks, close to Asheville: Spring Creek, Big Laurel Creek, and Bushy Creek. “This is the farthest east the grindy marks have been seen, and there seem to be a lot of them here, too. Maybe more than up Stirling Mountain.”

 

“There may be more in other places, but they don’t get the traffic, even in the touron season,” a river guide said from over my shoulder. It was the guide with the silver stud in his tongue. At my curious look, he said, “Tourist? Moron? Touron.”

 

I gave him a small smile. I laid my cell on the table, the fancy one paid for by Leo, the one with all the bells and whistles, including a map-app and GPS tracking. “Here’s where I was this afternoon.” I pointed to the GPS coordinates. “Is this close to any of these creeks?”

 

Dave took over, aligning my coordinates with the ones on the map. “That’s a feeder creek not far from where Shelton Creek and Laurel merge to become Big Laurel Creek,” he said, his damaged voice soft but still carrying over the screams of the tourists’ children.

 

“So, here, here, and here”—I pointed to the places on the North Carolina side of the mountain range—“he’s marked several dozen times. And all three creeks are within hiking distance of the kill-site of last night’s attack. So maybe the weres have a hidey-hole somewhere in this area too.”

 

“There’s hundreds of rental and camping places, and thousands of empty, unused places where someone could squat for the summer,” Mike said, “and they’d never be noticed.”

 

“Mmm,” I murmured, considering the map, eating more sweet potato fries and licking my fingers free of grease between bites. I tilted my head to follow the overlay of streets and recognized the street where Molly lived. She was at the top of a mountain above one of the grindy-marked feeder creeks. All the blood left my face in a cold rush. A painful tingling started in my fingers. “Crap,” I whispered. Two of the smaller creeks were on either side of the mountain ridge where my best friend, her husband, and kids lived.

 

Beast woke up and rolled to her feet in my mind, a low growl vibrating through me. Kits, she thought, hunching as if preparing to leap.

 

Two of Molly’s sisters lived just down the mountain from her. Angie’s school wasn’t far away either. I stood up and turned the map again. The third creek was near a road that went right by my old apartment, the one I’d moved out of when I thought I’d be staying in New Orleans for a while. If the grindy was hunting wolves, then the wolves were hunting me. I sat and dialed.

 

Angelina, Molly’s daughter, my godchild, answered. “Hey, Aunt Jane. You chasing the big doggies?”

 

The feeling of cold spread through me. “Angie Baby, have you seen some big doggies?”

 

Mike and Dave stopped midmotion and focused on me.

 

“Yep. Two of ’em. They standed up on two feets and looked in my window. I stuck-ted my tongue out at them and made some black light and they ran away.”

 

Black light. Were’s had gotten through the wards on her house, and Angie had used her gift to chase them off, both of which were bad. Crap. Crap, crap, crap! In so many conflicting ways. Angie wasn’t supposed to be able to draw on her witch gift until puberty, but the little girl had the witch gene from both mother and father, and her gift had come upon her early. Even with her parents binding her gift down, she was scary strong. She knew things she shouldn’t far too often, as if the gift was searching out ways to express itself and had found an opening in prescience and in knowing what was happening to the people she loved. But when the wolves got close, she used the gift to protect herself and her family. Which was good. Wasn’t it? “Angie, let me talk to your mother, okay?”

 

“Okeydokey. Mama!” she screamed in my ear. I pulled the phone away. “Aunt Jane!”

 

“Big-Cat, what’s up?” Mol said a moment later.

 

“Hang up, Angie,” I said. I heard the click, though Angelina had ways of knowing what was going on other than eavesdropping. I swallowed, feeling my stomach contents rise. “Did Angie tell you about the dogs at her window?”

 

“Yeah,” Molly said, drawing out the word.