Never Look Back
Sheri WhiteFeather
I am Allie Whirlwind, shaman.With my father a ghost, my sister a psychic, my great-grandmother a vengeful Apache witch and my mother on death row, I'm no stranger to the supernatural–or the struggle between good and evil.When I painted his image on canvas–this dark-winged warrior–I imagined an angel, but he's far more. Dark. Delicious. Sinfully sexy…and cursed. My painting released him from a spell, but the transformation was incomplete. Now he lingers in twilight, half man, half raven. If I don't find a certain talisman before the curse comes full circle, he'll suffer eternally. I cannot let that happen….
“You’re a shaman.”
“No, I’m not.” She resisted the urge to step back, to move away from him. “I don’t conduct ceremonies. I don’t cure the sick.”
“Your paintings are your ceremonies. Not all Apache shamans heal. Some are bringers of rain. Some have medicine over snakes. Others can shoot guns without touching the trigger.”
“And I give men wings?” She pointed to him, then smiled a little. “You fascinate me. The man and the raven.”
He smiled, too. The transformation made him look even more handsome. “You do that to me, as well. The woman and her paintings.”
She told herself this was fate. Part of her destiny. Something that was meant to happen. He’d clarified her confusion about her power. He’d called her artwork ceremonies, associating it with shamanism.
Given her magic new meaning.
Dear Reader,
A paranormal mystery and killer sex. What else could a woman like Allie Whirlwind want? How about breaking an ancient curse? And choosing between two men?
Alas, many of you have written to me, anxious for Allie’s story. And here it is, with some supernatural twists and turns. Although Allie was featured as a secondary character in Always Look Twice, my January 2005 Bombshell book, and in Apache Nights, my September 2005 Desire novel, her story stands alone.
In this tale, she battles shape-shifters, ghosts and witches, but it’s all in good, creepy fun, with a touch of eroticism tossed in. A Bombshell that goes bump in the night. A book that was a challenge to write and a joy to pass on to you. I sincerely hope that you enjoy it.
Love,
Sheri WhiteFeather
Never Look Back
Sheri Whitefeather
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
SHERI WHITEFEATHER
lives in Southern California and enjoys ethnic dining, attending powwows and visiting art galleries and vintage clothing stores near the beach. Since her one true passion is writing, she is thrilled to be writing for Silhouette Books. When she isn’t writing, she often reads until the wee hours of the morning.
Sheri’s husband, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, inspires many of her stories. They have a son, a daughter and a trio of cats—domestic and wild. She loves to hear from her readers. You may write to her at: P.0. Box 17146, Anaheim, California 92817. Visit her Web site at: www.SheriWhiteFeather.com
To the readers who asked about Allie Whirlwind and are anxious to devour her story. Allie’s book was conceived from historical facts and paranormal fiction. It was written with the utmost respect to the American Indian and First Nations it represents. If I made any errors or depicted inaccuracies about those tribes, I apologize. Unfortunately, some of the research I uncovered contained conflicting information.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 1
The wind rushed through the window, sending a gust of air spinning through the loft where Allie Whirlwind lived.
Lost in a painting, she ignored it. She was putting the final touches on her current watercolor—a depiction of an angel.
But he wasn’t your ordinary, garden-variety angel. She’d given him a long, muscular body with enormous black wings. His hair, as dark and shiny as his wings, flowed long and free, the thick, rebellious strands heightened by a lavender-hued dusk. Piercing brown eyes, a sharp, straight nose and prominent cheekbones lent his face a fierce quality.
For his clothes, she’d chosen practical fabrics in pale colors. The tan shirt, faded from the sun and unbuttoned to his waist, bore the brunt of his labor, with ragged edges and frayed seams. The garment was torn along his shoulder blades, making room for his wings. On his feet, he wore work boots.
She’d dressed him like a turn-of-the-century farmer.
Puzzled, Allie tilted her head. Did her angel grow crops? Did he let the soil drift through his fingers?
Yes, she thought, gazing at his callused, dirt-smudged hands, he did. Was that strange for a celestial warrior? Allie didn’t know. She hadn’t figured out what tribe he was from.
She’d painted his image from instinct, from somewhere deep inside. Her artwork, the fantasy creatures she created, always came from her soul.
But this one…
She paused to add more light, more shadow. This one was supposed to protect her. She scanned the length of his body, his slightly scarred chest, his deeply bronzed stomach, the ripple of hard-earned, sweat-glistening muscle. He was supposed to boff her brains out, too.
With a girlish grin, she chewed on the end of her brush. It was a joke, of course. A lark between herself and her sister. Allie didn’t really expect him to come alive. If she wanted a lover, she would have to look elsewhere.
Then again, for the last year, she’d been steeped in magic. Good magic. Bad magic. She’d seen it all. She knew anything was possible. In the past, her paintings had possessed paranormal powers. She’d done a portrait of her dead father that had attracted his ghost.
The wind swept through the studio once more, and Samantha hissed. Samantha was Allie’s cat, a finicky feline she’d found on the streets of Los Angeles.
The City of Angels.
She went back to her watercolor, shushing Samantha with a flick of her wrist, dropping a spot of paint on the already mottled floor.
The cat hissed again, only louder this time. She sighed, turning to face her pet. “Come on, Sam. It’s a nice spring breeze. A little air won’t hurt you.”
Perched on a cluttered art-supply shelf, the suspicious animal tensed, her sleek black body arching, her fur spiking on end.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a nice breeze. Maybe it was strong and aggressive. But it fit Allie’s angel. She could imagine him soaring into the sky, his arms raised to the heavens, his threadbare clothes blowing, his hair whipping like a midnight tornado.
Lord, he was gorgeous. Rough and primitive.
“If only you would come alive,” she said.
And that was when it happened, when her wish took a twisted turn. Without warning, the wind howled, pushing against the window screen, popping the device from its hinges. It landed at Allie’s feet, where the hem of her dress billowed, mimicking Marilyn Monroe’s fanning garment in The Seven Year Itch.
Talk about feeling sexy.
Samantha went into a tizzy, growling like a demon, her ears pinned to her pretty little head. But Allie didn’t scold her. Foolish as it was, she was too busy waiting for her angel, her heart thumping in anticipation.
Only, it was a big, black bird that flew into the loft and circled the studio, its wings whooshing past her.
Allie blinked. A raven?
So much for getting laid.
She looked up, watching the raven perch on a rafter, one of the highest spots in the studio. The cat hadn’t quit growling. She hated birds. And this big, bad baby was no exception. It stood about two feet tall, with an impressive wingspan.
“That’s not Zinna,” Allie told Samantha, as the wind calmed down. Zinna was Allie’s great-grandmother, a dead witch, an Apache shape-shifter who took the form of an owl. An evil spirit who’d tried to steal Allie’s sister’s soul.
Not that Olivia Whirlwind was easy pickings. The older sister was a kick-ass, gun-toting psychic who assisted law enforcement officials. Currently she was working on a covert FBI mission. Allie couldn’t reach her if she tried. But there was no need. Allie had this situation under control.
Samantha batted her paw in the air, ready to do battle. Convinced, or so it seemed, that the feathered creature was Zinna.
“That’s a raven,” Allie said, glancing up at the rafters. The bird was too far away to react to the sound of her voice, to make out her words. Not that it would know the difference. Allie often put thoughts in Sam’s head, assuming what her pet was thinking, but she wasn’t going to do that with the bird, too. “Ravens are part of the crow family. That’s not the same as an owl. Besides, Zinna’s magic was contained by a binding spell. She can’t hurt us.”
Samantha narrowed her wary green eyes. All right, so the cat had a point. The binding spell could wear off at any time. Zinna’s magic was too powerful to contain forever.
“Don’t worry. I’ve been preparing for Zinna, honing my skills.” Allie paused, smoothing her waist-length hair. “But that raven isn’t her. Nor did she dispatch it.”
Samantha gave her a look that asked, “How can you be sure?”
“I have witch radar.” Allie, who’d been dubbed Addle-brain by the man who’d trained her to fight, puffed up her chest. “It’s part of my magic.”
If Samantha had eyebrows, she probably would have raised them. Allie had just painted an angel and conjured a bird. That didn’t bode well for her magic, for the skills she’d been honing.
She copped a defensive stance. “This isn’t my fault. Birds fly into people’s houses all the time.” To prove her point, she made a grand gesture, trying to shoo the stupid raven back out the window.
But it flew straight at her instead. Startled, she smacked it with her flailing hands, sending the wild creature to the floor, where it landed on the linoleum with a thud.
She gasped, stunned by the force with which she’d hit it. Even Samantha reacted with a you-killed-it meow. Of course, Sam sounded happy. Ding dong, the bird is dead.
“I didn’t mean to.” Guilty, Allie knelt over the fallen raven.
Samantha abandoned her post to get closer to her mistress’s kill. Whispering an apology, Allie stroked the bird, and it opened its eyes.
It was stunned, not dead.
Oddly enough, the raven simply stared at her, as though it understood her apology. A strange chill crept up her spine. But before she had time to analyze the feeling, Samantha grabbed one of its tail feathers with her teeth and yanked as hard as she could.
Suddenly the bird rose to the occasion, diving at Allie and taking a screw-you bite out of her arm.
Damn. She jerked back, realizing she’d taken a hit for something Samantha had done. The cat seemed to sense it, too. She took off running with the feather in her mouth, and within the blink of an eye, the bird was back in the rafters, tracking the cat from above, waiting to make its next move.
Clever beast.
Allie’s arm was bleeding like a bitch. She wrapped a small towel around the wound.
And while Samantha leaped from shelf to shelf, Allie searched for something to attack the raven, something that would reach the rafters, which wouldn’t be an easy task in a loft with museum-height ceilings. But what else could she do? By now, the bird was dive-bombing Samantha, behaving like the star of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. And its caw. Lord Almighty. It sounded like the messenger of death.
And then she recalled that in some forms of folklore, ravens were omens of death.
Like owls.
Shit.
She warned herself to stay calm, to think clearly. Wasn’t Raven the creator of the world to some of the Northwest Indians? Wasn’t he highly revered?
Of course Allie wasn’t from a Northwest tribe. Anxious, she scrambled to remember what ravens represented in her culture. She was half Chiricahua Apache and half Oglala Lakota Sioux, and sometimes their traditions didn’t mesh.
To the Apache, crows were associated with the hunt. The appearance of a crow was a good sign. But did that go for ravens, too? Allie didn’t know. She found a broom and swung at the bird, missing it by a long shot.
Wily beast.
As for the Lakota, she couldn’t remember what ravens meant to them. Or maybe she never knew to begin with.
Samantha knocked over an entire shelf of acrylic paint, scattering the tubes all over the floor. The oils came next. Then the cat dumped a bottle of brush cleaner, where it spilled into a pool of clear liquid.
That was Allie’s downfall. She took another missed swipe at the raven and hit the brush cleaner, sliding like a skunk on roller skates. With a feminine-pitched screech, she slammed into a sturdy oak cabinet, where her head rammed the wood.
She could have sworn she saw stars. The room was starting to spin. She glanced around for Samantha and noticed the cat was hiding behind the biggest chair in the studio. But the bird was no longer stalking her.
And then Allie realized why. The raven was shifting, transforming into a man.
No, not a man.
Her angel.
It was him, right down to the smallest detail. As enormous black wings empowered him like a magic cloak, she watched him as closely as her fading vision would allow. He seemed disoriented, confused by his celestial state. He simply stood in the middle of the shambled studio, staring at the painting that depicted his image. Even in all the chaos, the watercolor remained unscathed.
Allie fought to stay conscious, to touch him, to talk to him, but she couldn’t hold on. She drifted into oblivion, her head throbbing, her arm still bleeding from his bite.
When Allie regained her senses, she didn’t know how much time had passed. All she knew was that the sun continued to shine, sending daylight streaming into the room. She fought a wave of nausea and squinted through her delirium. As her eyes focused, she looked around.
The angel was missing.
No, not missing.
She glanced up and saw that the raven was back. There he was, in the rafters once again.
Good God.
Taking a chance, she stood up, holding on to the cabinet she’d slammed into, using the wooden structure for support. The raven watched her from above, and the cat was still hiding under the chair.
Allie didn’t know what to think. Had she imagined the bird’s transformation?
No, she thought. His shape-shifting had been too real. Too powerful. For a few stolen moments in time, he’d become her angel.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice echoing in the spacious room.
Silence met her call. Then a sudden dash of wings. The raven rushed past her, making her hair flurry around her face.
She let go of the cabinet, spinning around to question him again. But it did no good. He soared straight out the window, taking the route from whence he’d come. And then she lost sight of him. He wasn’t even a speck on the horizon. He’d flown completely away.
She took a minute to catch her breath, to ward off the lingering dizziness, to walk to the bathroom and splash some water on her face. Last year, she’d lived through some craziness with her sister, fighting bewitched creatures Zinna had conjured.
But this seemed strangely erotic. As confusing as it was, she couldn’t stop the heat that spiraled through her body, the attraction that left her wanting him.
Her angel.
She bandaged her wound, and once she got her sea legs back, she returned to the studio and set about cleaning up the mess, wiping the spilled liquid and putting the shelves in order.
Samantha crept out from under the chair with the bird’s feather in her mouth, moving like a jungle cat, slow and steady, her shoulders arching, her rangy muscles bunching. Drama queen, Allie thought. The shape-shifter was gone.
Gone.
The word reverberated in her brain. She took the feather away from Sam, putting it in the oak cabinet for safekeeping. She needed to find out who or what the angel was. At this point, she didn’t know if he was a manifestation of her magic or if he’d existed before today—if his image, the details she’d painted, went beyond the strokes of her brush.
She reached for the window screen, intending to replace it. But she changed her mind. She left the window as it was, just in case he decided to return.
To come back to her.
Samantha meowed, grabbing her attention. She blinked and scooped up the cat. She didn’t need to worry about leaving the window open. Aside from it being too high for Samantha to reach, Allie and her sister lived on the fourth floor in a commercial building, a downtown loft in the Los Angeles Fashion District that was located above a trendy shoe store and a gourmet coffee bar. Home invasion robberies weren’t part of their realm.
Then again, Kyle Prescott had broken in one night. Of course, Kyle hadn’t been robbing them. He was Allie’s trainer, an Apache militant who’d staged an attack. At times, she thought he was the toughest, most capable man on earth. And other times, she thought he was as dense as a rusted doornail. But the feeling was mutual. The nickname Addle-brain had come from him.
She closed the studio door and carried Samantha down the hall, placing her on a velvet sofa. The living room had been decorated with rich fabrics and mystic accents. The walls were covered with a mural she’d painted, with unicorns and fairies and an armor-clad knight slaying a dragon. Luckily none of those beings had jumped to life.
Allie wished she could call Olivia, but her sister wasn’t available. So she dialed Kyle’s cell phone number instead.
He answered on the fourth ring. “Hello?”
“It’s Allie.”
“I know. I saw your name on the caller ID. What’s up?”
She decided not to waste any time. “Do you know anything about ravens?”
He made a perplexed sound. “What?”
“Ravens. Those big, black birds. One flew in my window today.”
“Damn it, Allie. Did you do something weird?”
“No.” She wasn’t about to tell him about the raven’s transformation. Not because he wouldn’t believe her. He’d been involved in combating last year’s witchery, and he knew she’d been experimenting with her magic. But she wanted to keep the angel a secret, to let her romantic notions linger. Everyone had a partner but her.
Kyle was married with a baby on the way. He’d wed a homicide detective, a lady Allie respected and admired. She’d helped them get together, in the same way she’d helped Olivia commit to her FBI lover. Allie liked playing matchmaker. She’d always believed in love.
Kyle’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Are you sure you didn’t do anything weird?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t lying. Not completely. She was simply omitting a few details. “I’m just curious about ravens now.”
“Then you should talk to Daniel Deer Runner. He’s a member of my Warrior Society.”
How was one of Kyle’s hard-edged militants going to help? She wasn’t looking for someone to hunt the bird down and kill it. “Why should I talk to him?”
“Because he’s half Lakota, like you, but he has a tribal affiliation with the Haida Nation, too. Raven is a demigod to them, a major part of their mythology.”
Her pulse jumped. Any little bit would help. She reached for a pen and paper. “What’s his number?”
“Hold on. I’ve got it programmed in my phone.” A second later, he rattled it off.
Allie jotted it down. Then she drew a black bird on the paper, coloring its wings with bold marks. “What does Daniel do?”
“He’s a veterinary technician at the zoo.”
She looked at Samantha. The cat was curled into a ball, napping on a gold-tasseled pillow. “So he would know about real ravens, too? And not just the mythological kind?”
“That’s why I recommended him.”
“Thanks, Kyle.”
“Sure.”
She said goodbye and disconnected the line, preparing to call Daniel Deer Runner.
For now, he was just what Allie needed.
The following day at five-thirty, Allie arrived at Daniel’s house. He lived in an average district of North Hollywood, where nondescript homes blended into each other. But not Daniel’s. His in-need-of-repair structure sat on a bed of dying grass and flourishing weeds, with a weathered tire hanging from a solitary tree.
She exited her economy car and noticed that he drove what she called a terrorist van. The white, nearly windowless vehicle was parked in an oil-stained driveway.
His house was even worse than Kyle’s, and that wasn’t an easy feat. Kyle was a junk dealer.
She trudged up the walkway, dodging loose stones and chipped cement. She rang the bell, but nothing happened. Figures. It was broken.
As she knocked on the door, she noticed a brittle green hose rolled up in the dismal flower bed. An ugly brown spider had built its home in the center of the hole. She made a disturbed expression. She hated bugs.
“You must be Allie,” a deep voice said.
She jerked to attention, unaware that the door had swung open. “And you must be Daniel.” He looked like a Native American nerd, with a solid, six-foot-plus frame and horn-rimmed glasses. His medium-length kettle-black hair was combed straight back, revealing a square jaw, a flat-bridged nose and killer cheekbones.
Did he think the glasses made a pseudo/L.A./artsy statement?
Behind the dorky specs, he checked her out. His gaze swept the long, lithe length of her, taking in her Southwestern flair—the loose cotton fabrics and silver-and-turquoise jewelry she’d bought at a pawnshop.
She assessed his style and noticed that his white, button-down shirt and shrink-to-fit Levi’s were clean and pressed. She thought it was weird when people ironed their jeans, but at least he hadn’t put a crease in them. On his feet, he wore a pair of high-top, black-and-white tennis shoes.
“So what do you think of my house?” he asked.
Allie didn’t know what to say. She glanced at the garden hose. Its occupant had disappeared.
“That bad, huh?” He gave her a goofy grin. “And here I thought this place was a chick magnet.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “Not quite.”
“Was it the spider that ruined it for you? He and I are buds.” He turned to look at the web and noticed that it was vacant. “Traitor.” He grinned at Allie again. “I should have known better than to trust an arachnid.”
She almost laughed. Maybe the arachnid didn’t want to turn into an arachnerd by living so close to him. “You’ll have to be more careful next time. Choose your friends a little more wisely.”
“No kidding. Do you want to come in?”
“Okay.” Strange as he was, he was starting to grow on her. He smelled like Brylcreem, a men’s hair product that had been around since the ’50s. Her dad had used the goop, too.
“I just moved here,” Daniel said as she crossed the threshold. “The landlord offered me a deal on the rent if I fixed it up. I already started on the inside.”
Allie looked around. The chestnut-colored carpet and beige drapes were old, but she could tell that the walls held a fresh coat of paint. He’d decorated with light-toned woods, a tan couch and a leather recliner. A few leopard-print pillows were tossed in for good measure.
It needed a bit more color, maybe a splash of red, but overall it wasn’t bad.
“Do you want a soda?” he asked.
“Sure.” She followed him into the kitchen, where ancient white appliances, a chipped sink and a vinyl floor with an avocado-green pattern from the ’70s had been scrubbed clean.
He opened the fridge and handed her a generic cola. “I bought those peel-and-stick squares for the floor. But I haven’t had time to rip up this stuff yet.”
She fought the urge to move closer to him, but she knew it wouldn’t ease her soul. The smell of his hair was making her homesick for her childhood, for the innocence that had been long since shattered.
As silence engulfed them, he watched her flip the tab on her soda and take a drink. Allie wasn’t the self-conscious type, but his scrutiny was a bit too intense.
“Why do you want to know about ravens?” he asked.
“Because one flew in my window yesterday.”
“No shit?”
She nodded, repeating what she’d told Kyle, revealing only a portion of what had actually happened.
He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Raven keeps the world from being boring.”
“Did he create it?” she asked, inquiring about Haida beliefs.
“In a sense.” Daniel shifted his weight. “But Raven is more of a transformer, a trickster, than a creator.”
Her heart struck her chest. Last year, during all of the witch madness, she’d had dealings with Coyote, another Native American trickster. And those experiences weren’t the least bit pretty. But this was different, wasn’t it? Raven was her angel.
“Did it bite you?” Daniel asked suddenly. “Is that what the bandage on your arm is from? Let me take a look at it.” He reached for her wrist.
“It’s fine.” She pulled away from him, and when she did, she caught a dark shadow outside his kitchen window.
In the shape of a big, black bird.
Chapter 2
Daniel moved in front of the window, trying to get her attention. Damn him. She pushed him out of the way, but it was too late.
The shadow was gone.
Daniel darted in front of the window again. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” Allie could only assume that the raven was watching her. That he’d followed her here. As for Daniel, he was too absorbed in her bite. She should have worn long sleeves.
He adjusted his glasses where they’d slipped down his nose. A strand of his Brylcreemed hair had fallen onto his forehead, too. “Let me see your wound.”
“What for?”
“I just want to see it.”
Getting bitten by a bird was nothing compared to what she’d been through. She’d battled bewitched bats and mutantlike giants. But worse yet was her mother. Allie’s mom was a convicted serial killer. It was something she and her sister would never live down.
“Don’t be stubborn,” he pressed.
“Fine.” She set her soda on the counter and removed the bandage. Did he know about her mom? Sometimes Allie and Olivia got crank calls. And sometimes people treated them like ghoulish celebrities. The thought sickened her. “See?”
He examined her skin. “It’s not as bad as it could’ve been.” He glanced up, catching her gaze. “You don’t need stitches.”
“Told you.”
“Lucky for you the West Nile Virus isn’t transmitted from birds to humans. Ravens are susceptible to the disease.” He turned her arm, studying it from another angle. “What did you do to piss him off?”
“What makes you think my raven is male?”
He stalled for a second, getting an analytical look on his face. The expression seemed natural on him. She decided that he had a high IQ. That it wasn’t just his dorky demeanor creating a book-smart illusion.
“I’m not sure,” he responded, not giving her a clear-cut response about the bird’s gender. “So, what did you do?”
She lost focus. “What?”
“To upset the raven?”
“I accidentally knocked him on the ground. But I apologized for that. I tried to soothe him. I think he bit me because my cat plucked a feather from his tail.”
Daniel frowned. “You were in the line of fire?”
She rebandaged her arm. “Yes.”
He tilted his head. “What makes you think he was male?”
“I could tell.”
“How? The sexes generally look alike.”
She took a wild guess, hoping she was correct, hoping she could fool him. “It was a rather large bird, and I assume that males are bigger.”
“Sometimes,” he said. “But not always. Females make a knocking sound the males don’t make. Did it make any noises?”
“Just a loud caw. Do they make a lot of different sounds?”
“Totally. They’re masters at mimicry. They can imitate just about anything.”
She glanced at the window. She wished the shadow would reappear. “Do you mind if we go outside?”
He perked up. “To swing on the tire?”
Lord, he was odd. “I don’t think we’ll both fit. Maybe we can just stand beneath the tree.”
“Okay.” He smiled a little. “I’m not dumb enough to say no to a pretty girl.”
Was he flirting? She hoped not. She had another male on her mind. And this one had long flowing hair, a slightly scarred chest and breathtaking wings.
They proceeded outside, where the sky shimmered on the brink of dusk. Branches clawed and climbed above their heads, with leaves rustling in a late-afternoon breeze. He ran his hands along the rope that secured the tire, and she assumed that he needed to touch something. That he was a physical person.
She looked up. “Do ravens nest in these types of trees?”
“Sure. In the city, they roost wherever there’s a suitable platform to build a nest.” He smoothed his hair, pushing away the lock that had fallen earlier.
“What about mating?” she asked.
“What about it?” he parroted, studying her with a look that made her uncomfortable.
Did he have to be so intense? So curious about her? Why couldn’t he just answer her questions like the animal expert he was?
And then she remembered that there was more to Daniel than being a veterinary technician at the zoo. He was part of Kyle’s Warrior Society, a group of former military men who excelled at close-quarter combat and fought for Native causes. They protected Indian burial sites, and sometimes they stole sacred objects, items that had gotten past the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and returned them to whom they believed were the rightful owners. So far, they hadn’t been caught.
Of course, Kyle had stopped stealing after he’d fallen in love with a cop. But Allie had no idea what Daniel Deer Runner did in his spare time. Aside from avoid questions about mating birds.
“I think the raven is following me,” she said. “That I saw him at your window,” Allie admitted.
Daniel frowned. “Maybe it was a shadow or something.”
“You don’t believe me? You think I imagined him?” She crossed her arms. She wasn’t about to tell him that the figure at his window did look like a shadow. “Don’t you believe in animal medicine? In spirit guides?”
“Of course I do. But Raven is a trickster. You can’t be sure if he followed you here. Or why he appeared to you in the first place.”
“That’s what’s driving me crazy.” She softened her body language. Getting defensive around Daniel wouldn’t help. And now that she was outside, there was no sign of a big, black bird. “In Northwest mythology, does Raven ever shape-shift into a man? Or a man with wings?”
He reached for the rope again. “As far as I know, he can shift into any form. But I haven’t heard all of the stories. I’ve only been to Canada a few times. That’s where my mother’s people are, but I barely know them. She died when I was a boy.” He sighed, the sound as rough as the twisted nylon in his hand. “I don’t think it matters what form he takes. From what I recall, he helps humans, even through his trickery.”
“So I don’t need to fear him?”
“No. But trying to analyze him won’t be easy. To the Haida, he can be greedy and lecherous, even through his good deeds.” Daniel released the rope. “Whether you’re dealing with a mythological creature or a common raven, a Corvus corax, you’re facing one of the most intelligent, highly evolved birds.”
“Which are you more connected to? The myth or the real bird?”
“I don’t know.” He gazed at her through his glasses, through eyes that were an opaque shade of brown. “I was taught to believe in legends. But I work at a zoo. Sometimes those worlds collide.”
“Either way, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. I didn’t know much about ravens before today.”
“The Haida are either from the Raven Clan or the Eagle Clan. My mother was a member of the Raven Clan. Hoya,” he added, using the Native word. “That has always mattered to me. In a scientific and a spiritual sense.”
“That’s understandable.” And admirable, she thought.
“Have you read Poe’s poem?” he asked.
She nodded. “‘The Raven’ was required in school.” But now she wondered if she should search for it online. She barely remembered it.
“Have you read the Teen Titans comics? Or seen the animated show?” Daniel asked.
They’d gone from Edgar Allen Poe to comic books and cartoons? Trust Daniel. He probably had friends who dressed up at Star Trek conventions. “Is there a reason I should?”
“Raven is a superhero from Teen Titans.”
“Really?” She stopped to ponder that scenario. “What are his powers?”
“Her powers. She’s female. Raven is the daughter of a woman who was impregnated by Satan.”
“So she’s part human, part devil?” The way her raven was part human, part angel?
“Yes, but she was taught to control her demon heritage. She learned to heal by absorbing other people’s pain, and she learned to project her soul out of her body for short periods of time. But she has to fight to keep her darkness under control.”
Suddenly they both fell silent. Allie’s ancestry had been steeped in evil. All of the women on her mother’s side were black magic witches, everyone except her and Olivia. Controlling the darkness in their blood, the Apache ènti, was something they understood all too well.
She looked at Daniel and her heart sank. “You know, don’t you?”
He shifted his feet, and his spotless tennis shoes picked up a smidgen of dirt. “Know what?”
“About my mother.”
She didn’t break eye contact, but he did, squinting into the waning sun. Dusk was only minutes away.
“I’ve been trying to act normal around you,” he said.
Normal? She had no idea what that meant anymore. She longed for the days when she was young and naive, when she’d assumed that her family was like everyone else’s. But at twenty-nine, with her childhood behind her, she knew better. “People always treat me differently when they discover I’m related to Yvonne Whirlwind.”
“I didn’t.”
Didn’t he? She wasn’t so sure. She’d just met him. She couldn’t gauge how he would have behaved otherwise. “Do you know about my dad, too?”
Daniel nodded. “He was a Lakota actor who committed suicide.” He stalled for a second. “My father is Lakota, too. But he’s not an actor and he’s still alive.”
“That’s not much of a parallel, is it?”
“No, it isn’t. I’m sorry about your father.”
“He put a .44 Magnum in his mouth and pulled the trigger.” A gun she’d reluctantly learned to shoot. “I was fresh out of high school when he did it.”
“I’ve seen some of his movies.”
“Really? He only got bit parts. He wasn’t famous.”
“He is now.”
A lump formed in her throat. Even though her father had died over a decade ago, long before her mother had gone on a murderous rampage, her notoriety had triggered his. During Yvonne’s trial, the media had drudged up Joseph Whirlwind’s name, along with every old photo and film clip they could find. She suspected that was how Daniel had heard about him. “Dad is a wanagi now.”
He didn’t say anything. He just looked at her.
“It means ghost in Lakota,” she told him.
“I know what it means. But you’re speaking metaphorically, right?”
“No. I’m talking about an earth-bound spirit. He was there when my sister needed him. And someday he’ll be there for me, too.”
“Your life is confusing.” He shook his head. “A wanagi, a raven and a mother on a death row.”
Allie wasn’t about to argue. She glanced up at the sky, where daylight had disappeared, where clouds had begun to gather.
As though something dangerous was on its way.
Danger came in the form of a violent rain. To the Chiricahua Apache, sudden storms were regarded with fear.
When Allie got home, she entered the loft with water dampening her clothes and matting her hair. She looked around for Samantha and saw that her pet was crouched in a corner. The cat didn’t trust the weather, either.
“It’s okay, Sam,” she said, even though things didn’t feel all right. Last year, when Allie’s great-grandmother had cast her dark magic, the earth had been flooded with rain.
She lit a candle and took a deep breath, filling her nostrils with the cookielike scent of vanilla. The flame made a curvaceous sweep, swaying softly, reminding her of a lone dancer, a lost lover.
Allie sighed. If only she wasn’t such a dreamer. As a child, she’d thrived on Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. And now she wanted to drift in the arms of an angel, to let him keep her safe.
She walked down the hall and into her studio, hoping to find him there. But all she encountered was a puddle of water on the floor.
Weary, she closed the window, grabbed a towel and sopped up the water. Afterward, she walked over to the painting she’d created, gazing at the angel, looking for answers in his eyes.
If she tried to cast a spell, if she used his feather in an incantation, would it draw him near? Or would she be tempting fate? Allie didn’t know what to call herself. She wasn’t a witch. Native witches used their power to perpetuate sickness and death, to do harm unto others. But by the same token, she wasn’t a shaman. Shamans used their power to conduct ceremonies and cure illnesses.
So what am I? she wondered. A grown woman who believed in fairy tales? Who thought Prince Charming wore tattered clothes and big, dark wings?
Unable to stop herself, she reopened the window. A little water damage was better than the raven barreling into the glass.
Finally, she went into the kitchen to feed Samantha and fix a snack. She opened a can of cat food and scooped it into a bowl, but Sam didn’t come running. The animal approached her meal warily, still smarting over the weather. Water pounded on the roof like a thousand angry fists.
Dark and heavy. It was a male rain, Allie thought. Or so she’d been taught. And since that knowledge had come from her mother, she battled a quick chill, rubbing her arm and disturbing her bandage.
Trying to focus on food, she diced an apple and cut bite-size chunks of cheddar cheese. A glass of wine came next. She needed something to pacify her nerves.
Then she got the urge to call Daniel, to ask him what ravens ate. It might help to leave some food out for the bird. She glanced at her cat. When Samantha had been living on the streets, Allie had earned the stray’s affection by feeding her.
She looked up Daniel’s number and punched out the digits. The phone rang and rang. Finally, she left a message on his voice mail. It hadn’t occurred to her that he wouldn’t be home. Where would he go in the rain? Allie intended to stay put.
She finished her wine, then poured another glass. She deserved to get tipsy. She was alone on a stormy night with powers that confused her.
Screw it. A third glass of wine did the trick, giving her a nice buzz. Who cared if she wasn’t a witch or a shaman? Who cared if magic—her supernatural gift—didn’t make any sense? It was part of who she was, of what made her special.
The phone rang and she grabbed it on the second ring. “Hello?”
“It’s Daniel.”
“Oh, hey. That was quick. Where were you?”
“In the shower.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t about to envision him without his clothes. He wasn’t the naked type. Fogged glasses, maybe. Bronzed and bare, no way.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked.
She popped a piece of cheese into her mouth. “I want to know what ravens eat.”
“Damn, woman. You’re obsessed.”
“Yep. So what’s their diet like?”
“They’re omnivorous. They eat animal and vegetable substances. They’re attracted to carrion, too.”
Hmm. She couldn’t recall what that meant. She blamed it on the wine instead of her scattered mind. Allie usually had a zillion thoughts going at once. “Carrion?”
“It’s dead and putrefying flesh. Like a deer that’s spoiling.”
Her stomach roiled. “That’s gross.”
“You think so?” He chuckled. “They eat the insects that feed on carrion, too. Mostly maggots and beetles. Oh, and they’ll chow down on the afterbirth of ewes and other large mammals.”
Now her stomach was turning something awful. “Let’s discuss the kinds of non-animal foods they prefer.”
“What for?”
“Because I’m a vegetarian.” She set her empty wine glass on the counter. “And I’m fresh out of maggots and afterbirth.”
“You’re going to try to lure the raven with bait?”
“That’s the plan.”
“I forgot to mention that they eat spiders.”
“That’s not funny.” But she laughed anyway. “Come on, Daniel, be a pal.”
“All right. Fine. Berries, nuts, corn, grains. Whatever you can scrounge up. They’re not picky.”
“I can do that.”
“Ravens take their food from the ground and store it. So leave it in a place that seems natural. No fancy plates. No silverware.”
“No kidding,” she said, enjoying his sense of humor. She wondered if she should set Daniel up with one of her friends, with someone who thought quasi-geeks were sexy.
“Do ravens have special mates?” she asked, pursuing the question he hadn’t answered earlier.
“Some do,” he responded, still sounding hesitant. “They stay together for years, maybe for life. Females incubate the eggs, but both parents care for their young once they hatch.” He paused. “I think you’re getting too attached to that bird. You can’t become part of its life. It’s not like a stray dog that’s going to adopt you.”
What about a stray angel? she wondered. “I know. I understand.”
“Okay. Be good, Allie.”
“You, too. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up the phone and suffered an instant pang of loneliness. Suddenly the rain seemed even stronger, more tumultuous.
Ignoring the temptation to call Daniel back, she gathered food for the raven and carried it into the studio. The procedure felt familiar. Sometimes Allie left meals for her dad. The Lakota believed in feeding ghosts.
She set an ear of corn down and hoped her father didn’t think she was putting his food on the floor. Not that he ever ate what she gave him. But she knew the gesture mattered.
After making a floral pattern with sunflower seeds, something Daniel would have admonished her for, she wrote her name in blueberries. Just in case the raven wondered who she was.
She stood there for a moment, realizing how silly her effort was. She decided to sober up, to let the buzz from the wine fade away.
Determined to unwind, she closed the door and headed for her bathroom, peeling off her clothes along the way. The loft had two bathrooms, one for her and one for her sister. Allie’s was decorated with butterfly wallpaper and gold fixtures.
Finally, she soaked in the tub, adding her favorite scented oil, making herself feel soft and pretty.
Even if the rain was pounding like tears from hell.
When the water turned cold, she dried off and slipped on a long-sleeved nightgown, something to keep her warm, something to give her comfort.
After that, she treated herself to a pedicure, painting her toenails a shimmering shade of pink.
And then she cursed a little, putting a damper on her feminine mood. She couldn’t quit thinking about the raven. Yet that damned bird wasn’t going to show up on a rainy night. He was probably snug in a cozy nest somewhere, wooing his mate, feeding her maggots and cawing love sonnets.
So close the window. Forget about him.
Taking her own advice, she headed to the studio and opened the door. Then she stopped dead in her tracks, her heart somersaulting to her throat.
Dear God.
There he was. Her angel. Her protector. As big as life, as glorious as her watercolor, with his clothes clinging to his body and his hair dripping with rain.
She gulped, and his wings swooshed, making a powerful sound. Beneath his work boots were crushed berries. He stood in the center of her studio.
Allie didn’t know what to do, what to say. His eyes, the same pitch-brown eyes she’d painted, were staring straight at her.
Chapter 3
He didn’t blink. He didn’t move a muscle. He just scrutinized her in the way Daniel had.
Yet unlike Daniel, everything about him was familiar, every angle of his face: his slashing cheekbones, his razor-sharp nose, lips that thinned and slanted slightly downward at the corners.
Being this close to him seemed surreal, like a twisted dream. His feathers caught the light, glimmering beneath the studio lamps, creating a violet sheen, a velvetlike softness. She itched to touch them, to absorb their midnight texture.
But she wouldn’t dare.
She took a chance, introducing herself. “I’m Allie Whirlwind.” She gestured to the floor where she’d written her name, and he shifted his feet, squishing the blueberries even more.
She waited for him to respond and got nothing in return. Now what? In some early Native cultures, it was rude to ask someone his or her name. And unless it was spoken in an emergency, it was impolite to say a person’s name to his or her face.
Allie decided that a painting coming to life constituted an emergency. “Do you have a name?” she asked. “Or should I give you one?”
Once again, he said nothing. Maybe he didn’t understand English. Or maybe he didn’t have the capacity to talk. She tilted her head, analyzing him. What if he was missing the parts that she hadn’t painted, things that weren’t visible, like vocal chords or—
She dropped her gaze to his fly. What if he was a big, beautiful, winged eunuch?
God forbid. She’d made jokes about boffing his brains out, wisecracks about having raw, wicked, holy-heaven sex with him.
When she looked up, she caught him frowning at her. But she could hardly blame him. If she were in his situation, she would be scowling, too.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
This time, he squinted at her. Rain was still falling violently from the sky and blowing in through the open window. The floor behind him was soaked.
“I can alter my work.” She motioned to the easel. “Give you what you don’t have.” Of course, that would mean doing a series of renderings, an entire study, sketching him from the inside out. But she’d done anatomy depictions before. It was part of her training, what she considered the da Vinci side of her education. “What do you think?”
More silence.
Allie sighed, and he moved his hands, turning them outward, the way they were in the portrait. She noticed how rough they were. Just like the image she’d created, he had calluses on his palms and dirt under his nails. Did he know that he was a farmer?
Probably not. If he didn’t have vocal chords, or a penis or testes, then he probably didn’t have a brain, either.
Then again, that raven had seemed pretty damn smart. Hadn’t Daniel told her how intelligent the species was? How highly evolved?
She looked at the angel again. She could see him taking in air, letting it out. Apparently he had a fully-functioning respiratory system. So how could he be missing parts that weren’t visible? That she hadn’t painted?
Allie resisted the urge to move closer. If she placed her hand against his chest, would she feel his heart?
A sturdy wind blew, rustling his ragged shirt. Although his clothes were damp, she realized that he hadn’t flown into the loft in his present form. As the angel, he was too big to fit through the window. His wings would have gotten stuck. He must have come in as the raven and shifted afterward, the way he’d done before. Yet the rain he’d encountered clung to him. In a scientific sense that seemed odd. In a supernatural sense, it proved how connected he was to the bird.
“Why did you do this to me?” he asked, sending her into a tailspin.
Heaven help her. Not only could he talk, his voice was strong and masculine, the words articulated deep in his throat. But his tone was raspy, too, as though he hadn’t spoken in a very long time, as though he’d been trying to remember how to form the words, how to accuse her of something treacherous.
She winced. “Do what?”
“This.” He indicated his wings.
“I painted an angel for protection.”
“I’m not an angel.”
She curled her toes. She wasn’t wearing slippers, and her feet were cold, chilled by the linoleum. “You’re supposed to be.”
“But I’m not.”
“Then who are you?” she asked. “Where did you come from?”
He didn’t answer. Her question teetered, like a book that was about to fall. Allie grumbled beneath her breath. They’d only exchanged a few brief words, yet they’d reached a standstill, caught in a challenging moment. He was wary of her, and she was frustrated with him.
He rounded on her. “Why do you need protection? Why do you seek an angel?”
She took a defensive stance. Her toes were no longer curled. “Because my great-grandmother is a soul-stealing witch, and after the spell that binds her magic wears off, she’s going to come after me. She already tried to lure my sister. It’s only logical that I’m next. I thought painting an angel might help.” She held up her hands, raising them toward the ceiling. “Angels hail from the Creator.”
“Usen,” he said, referring to the Apache God. “I prayed to Him when a witch took part of my soul. But it was too late. It happened too fast.” His eyes turned darker, deeper. “I think—I fear—that your great-grandmother is the witch who cursed me. Why else would I be here? Like this?” He swished his wings, creating a gusty breeze. “Your power must be connected to hers.”
She blinked, stunned by his words, by his revelation. “You’re him? The man Zinna claimed to love? The man she punished for not returning her affection?”
He nodded, and thunder cracked in the sky.
Overwhelmed, she reached out to touch him, but he stepped back, away from her. She needed to convince him that she could be trusted, that her magic was good. “It never occurred to me that you were him. That I’d painted…” She turned to look at the watercolor, then shifted her gaze back to him. “I didn’t know it was you. I heard about you from my sister. Zinna told her there was a man she’d cursed. But the details were vague.” She paused, recalling the conversation she’d had with Olivia. “I wanted to save you, but my sister said that you would be dead by now. But you’re not a spirit. You’re not like Zinna. You’re alive.”
“I have lived a long time.”
“That was your curse?”
“Part of it.” His voice echoed in the vast, damp room, making a hollow, distant sound. “There is more. A darkness that awaits.”
“Will you tell me about it?” She walked to the window and closed it, shutting out the storm, dodging the water on the floor.
“Yes. But first you should know my name.” He paused. “I’m called Raven.”
Like the bird he’d become, she thought. She suspected that was another aspect of his damnation, something her great-grandmother had done to him. “And what about your life before you shape-shifted? Will you tell me about that, too?”
“Yes. But where to do I start? There is so much that has happened.”
“You can begin with your childhood.”
“My early life was happy,” he told her. “But when I was ten, I was separated from my parents. Soon after Geronimo surrendered, the Chiricahua Apache became prisoners of war. They were removed from their reservations in the Southwest, even those who hadn’t made war with the government.” He paused. “The adults were sent to a reservation or to a prison in Florida.”
Allie knew bits and pieces of Chiricahua history, but not enough to connect her with that side of her heritage. “What happened to the children?”
“The older ones, like me, were shipped to a boarding school in Pennsylvania. They cut my hair and outfitted me with a uniform.” He stopped to touch his shirt, as though picturing himself as a child. “It was dark blue, decorated with red braid on the shoulder, similar to a military uniform.”
She waited for him to continue. He did, after he took a laden breath.
“Students were forbidden to speak their native languages. We had to learn English, to read and write. To memorize Bible verses. They forced us to say the Lord’s Prayer.” He made a troubled face. “But the environment wasn’t merciful. I was punished many times.”
Her heart went out to him. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t like being told that the Indian way of life was inferior and that only ‘bad’ Indians retained their culture. I didn’t understand how this could be so if the white man’s God had created all men equal.”
Allie believed in Christianity. But she followed Native ways, too. Her father had practiced two faiths. But not her mother. Yvonne had feigned a disinterest in religion, in the battle between good and evil, when all along, she’d been a witch.
“The Chiricahua adults didn’t stay in Florida for very long,” he said. “They were relocated to Alabama, where many of them died.”
“From illnesses?”
He nodded. “But my parents didn’t take ill.”
“They survived?”
“My mother did. My father shot himself. Other warriors did this, too. They couldn’t cope with captivity.”
Stunned, Allie fell silent. Raven’s father had committed suicide. Like her father.
“I was in the boarding school when it happened.” He frowned, his eyes reflecting his pain. “I was hundreds of miles away from my grieving mother.”
“I’m sorry.” She wanted to touch him, to hold him, but he was still keeping his distance.
He kept talking, telling his story. “The Chiricahua prisoners spent five years in Alabama, then they were sent to Fort Sill, a military reservation in Oklahoma.”
“Is that where you lived after you finished boarding school? Is that where my great-grandmother cursed you?”
“Yes,” he said, and began to describe the night Zinna had destroyed his life.
Alone, with dusk coloring the sky, Raven stood in a watermelon field, his boots hard and heavy on the ground. He glanced at the carefully cultivated rows. The planting had just begun, and this was his favorite time of year.
He stopped to breathe in the spring air. At Fort Sill, the government had built houses for the Apache and put them to work, farming and raising cattle. But this wasn’t new to Raven. Farming was in his blood. His family had always grown their own food, even before the government had dictated their lives.
He knelt to touch a seedling. He had lived at Fort Sill since he was eighteen. He was thirty now, and he remained a prisoner of war, a man who barely remembered what it was like to be free.
He stood up, leaving the seedling to fare on its own. Some of the white men Raven had encountered over the years were cruel. But some were kind. He didn’t hate them. He had learned to live in their world. But even so, he had begun to wear his hair long again. It was his rebellion, his way of taking back what had been stolen from him.
The brightest spot in his life was Vanessa. She was his Apache wife, a small-boned woman with sun-warmed skin, long eyelashes and a teasing smile. He loved her with his entire heart. They had been married for eleven years, but they had no children. It was their greatest pain, their biggest disappointment. Someday they hoped Usen would bless them with sons and daughters.
He gazed at the sky. Darkness was beginning to fall. It was time for him to return to his house, to eat the meal Vanessa would have waiting for him. She never scolded him for working late, for remaining in the field after dusk, even though she worried that it was dangerous.
Because of the witch.
The one who had vowed to destroy him.
He took a familiar path with scattered trees. He walked with a strong, steady step. It was bad enough being under military custody. He wouldn’t allow a dead witch to control him, too.
Zinna had died several months ago. She had contracted an illness that had gone untreated. There was not a shaman among the Chiricahua who had been willing to heal her. Everyone knew she was a witch. She had been feared, and shunned, among the people.
He kept walking. By now, the moon was half full, creating diffused light and casting shadows. He stepped on a twig that snapped beneath his foot, but he didn’t flinch.
Not until a small voice stopped him. “Raven.”
He spun around and saw a young girl. She held a lighted candle, and the flame illuminated her face. She was a haunting child, strangely pretty, with hollow cheeks and hair that coiled around her shoulders. He recognized her as Zinna’s nine-year-old daughter, Sorrel.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Home,” he said.
“To your wife?”
“Yes.”
“To fornicate with her?”
Stunned, he could only stare. Children were supposed to be innocent, yet this one was rude and abrasive.
“My mother wanted to fornicate with you,” she said. “It was you she craved, not my father.”
Raven didn’t respond. Zinna’s love spells hadn’t worked on him. So she’d bewitched Sorrel’s father instead.
“Do you know what Mother did to get her revenge?” A wicked smile twisted Sorrel’s lips. “She stopped you from having children. She hexed your wedding night and made your wife barren.”
The pain, the horror of her words, clenched his stomach. He’d heard of ceremonies that made women sterile. But they weren’t witchcraft ceremonies. Some women chose to do them because they didn’t want children.
But Vanessa wanted babies, and he’d never associated her inability to conceive with any kind of ceremony, least of all witchcraft.
He narrowed his gaze at Zinna’s offspring. She was still smiling, still reveling in her mother’s deed. He wanted to crush this young girl, to stomp her to the ground.
“Go home,” he spat. “Get away from me.”
She laughed at his ire, enjoying her devious game.
He turned his back on her, then resumed walking. She persisted, following him, skipping along the way, making his blood run cold.
An owl hooted, and Sorrel dogged his heels. “Listen, Raven. Do you hear that? Mother is talking to me.”
He increased his pace. He didn’t doubt her claim. When a witch died, he or she became an owl.
The bird hooted again, its voice terrorizing the night.
Zinna’s daughter gloated. “Mother says she is going to destroy you.”
“She vowed to do that a long time ago.”
“And now she has the power to make good on her promise. She is stronger in death than she was in life.”
“I don’t care.” But he did. Deep down, he was afraid, especially when the moon slipped behind a tree and everything went black. He could no longer see the path in front of him.
He nearly stumbled on something beneath his boot. And when he looked up, Sorrel stood in front of him, holding the candle.
On her shoulder was an owl.
Zinna.
Sorrel smiled and nuzzled the feathers that tufted around the creature’s foot.
Mother and daughter.
Raven tried to run, but he couldn’t move. His limbs had been paralyzed. Was this what the Chiricahua called ghost sickness? Was this the first symptom?
He stood like a scarecrow, and the owl’s yellow eyes burned into him.
“Mother is going to curse you.” Sorrel unbuttoned his shirt, then reached up and grabbed the amulet he wore, snapping the leather thong that held it in place. The necklace, a flat stone with an engraving of a raven, had been a gift from his wife. She’d given it to him for protection. And now Zinna’s daughter had it.
He knew he was doomed. He should have heeded Vanessa’s warning about walking alone after the sun went down. But it was too late.
The witch was winning. She flew at him and her body grew bigger, expanding right before his eyes. Soon she was a human-size owl. A monster that was nearly as tall as he was.
She clawed his chest with her talons, leaving scars, making him bleed. He could feel her poisoning his veins, drawing energy from him.
“Mother is taking part of your soul,” the child said. “But you won’t die. Not for a hundred years.” She closed her fist around the amulet. “You will live as a raven. A bird that flies through the century in a timeless battle.” She paused for effect. “And then the day will come when Mother will take the rest of your soul.”
He tried to speak, but his voice was trapped, silenced in the wind. He watched the flame on the candle flicker.
Sorrel continued. “That day will be more painful than you can imagine. You will die an excruciating death.”
And Zinna would torture his soul for all eternity, he thought.
He wanted to lash out at her, to tear her apart, to rip the feathers from her body. But he was still paralyzed, unable to move, to defend himself.
So he prayed in his mind, asking Usen to help him. But he had already been cursed. He fell to the ground.
Sorrel stood over him with the necklace. “This is mine now. It belongs to me.”
He glanced up at the amulet and saw colors swirling inside it, making the etching glow. Sorrel tipped the necklace, spilling the colors onto the ground, grinding them with her foot. He knew she had just stepped on the missing part of his soul.
He closed his eyes, and suddenly he was a raven, soaring through the sky.
He tried to fly in the direction of his home, to stay near his wife, to look after her, but his wings forced him in the opposite direction, away from Fort Sill, from the Chiricahua. Being alone, missing the people he loved, was part of his fate, the isolation thrust upon him.
And as everything familiar disappeared from view, he heard the laughter of a child.
Then the dark, deathly screech of an owl.
Allie’s heart filled with shame. What Zinna and Sorrel did to Raven only reinforced the viciousness that marred her ancestry.
But it told another tale, too.
“I think the curse can be broken,” she said.
Raven blinked at her. They still stood in the studio, with rain beating on the roof and a puddle of water on the floor. “Why would you say that?”
She gestured to the painting, to the image she’d created of him. “Because a portion of it has already been broken. You’re human once again. And you’re not paralyzed. You can walk and talk. The ghost sickness is gone.”
“Half of my soul is still missing.” He put his hand against his chest. “I can feel it.” He paused to frown at the portrait. “And I am not completely human. I still have wings.”
“You only have them because I painted you that way.”
He spread the wings in question and they opened like enormous fans, as dark and compelling as the expectancy in his eyes. “Can you unpaint them? Can you make them disappear?”
“I can try. But I’ll need some time to prepare.” To get in the right frame of mind, she thought. To stop thinking of him as an angel.
“What about the rest of the curse? How do I get my soul back?”
“I’m not totally sure, but it seems possible that if someone in Zinna’s family—someone who practices positive magic—returned the necklace to you, it could become a talisman, drawing your soul back and breaking the rest of the curse.”
“Are you offering to do this?”
“Yes.” Her pulse jumped in anticipation. “How many years has it been? Is it closing in on a hundred?”
“In another month, it will be so.” He took a step in her direction. “How will you retrieve the necklace after all this time?”
“I’ll delve deeper into my ancestry, into the witch realm. Sorrel took the amulet from you, and she was my grandmother. She’s dead now, but I’ll track her life, her old belongings.”
“Did you know her when she was alive?”
Allie shook her head. “She died before I was born. But my mother spoke of her from time to time.”
“Does your mother still live?” he asked.
“Yes.” A shiver shot through her veins. “She’s in prison. For three counts of murder,” she added, her stomach clenching. “I’ll have to visit her.”
“And this will be difficult for you?”
“Emotionally, yes. Technically, no. When she first went to prison, she mailed my sister and me the visitor’s forms. I wanted to throw them away, but Olivia said we should fill them out and send them in.”
“Olivia is your sister?”
“Yes. She’s psychic, and she had a premonition that one of us would have to see our mom. She didn’t know exactly why. Sometimes Olivia doesn’t get clear-cut visions or feelings. Sometimes it’s only snippets of information. Things that don’t seem to make sense at the time.” She shifted her stance. “We both hate our mom.”
His eyebrows furrowed. “Then why did your mother send the forms?”
“That’s what prisoners are supposed to do if they want someone to visit them. But we knew she’d done it to be snide. To remind us that no matter what, we were still her daughters. Still related to her by blood.”
“To a killer?”
“Yes.”
Raven didn’t say anything else, and his silence was deafening.
She noticed his hair was still dripping with rain, and his clothes remained slightly damp. She reached for a towel, taking it from a nearby shelf. She always kept a supply of linens in the studio.
He dried off and returned the towel to her. She clutched it for a moment, then draped it over an empty easel. “Why don’t we go into the living room? It’s cold in here.” She walked toward the door. “I can fix some tea. And I can tell you about this century.”
He followed her. “I am already familiar with the way the world is now. I have watched it change. I know of its progress.”
Of course, she thought. He’d seen it through the eyes of a raven. She walked into the hall and waited for him, but he couldn’t get through the door.
His wings were stuck.
He struggled in the narrow opening, turning his shoulders, trying to force his way through.
Finally, he made it into the hallway, but the impact of his effort propelled him a bit too far and he bumped straight into Allie, nearly knocking her off her feet.
She teetered, flailing for support. He reached out to help and caught her arms.
And then they looked at each other.
Depth. Warmth. A skin-tingling sensation.
He brushed the bandage under her sleeve. “Is this covering the wound I gave you?”
“Yes.” She swayed a little. His face was only inches from hers. “What’s it like being a raven?”
“Confusing. When I’m in that form, I have the comprehension of a man, but I react like a bird.” He continued to hold her arm. “I didn’t mean to bite you. To hurt you that way.”
“It’s okay. It was instinct.” A conflict of nature, she thought. “I should make that tea.”
“Are you still cold?” He hadn’t released her.
She took a lust-driven breath. “No.”
“Nor am I.” He glanced at the front of her nightgown, at the flutter of feminine lace. A second later, he shook his head and stepped back. “I miss my wife.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” He’d been married to a woman that he’d desperately loved. That he hadn’t forgotten, not even a century later. And here she’d been worried about the bird having a mate. How ironic was that?
They walked into the living room and Samantha darted into a corner to hide.
Raven ignored the wary cat and studied his surroundings, taking a special interest in the mural that covered the wall. He even reached out to touch the dragon.
Curious, Allie watched him.
“In the beginning, the world was covered with darkness,” he said. “The night had no moon or stars. But there were birds and beasts. One of the beasts was a dragon.” He ran a finger down its scales. “Like this. The coating on its skin came in four layers.”
“I wasn’t aware that dragons existed in Apache myths.”
“You were not taught our creation story?”
“No. I’m only half Chiricahua.”
“The witch half,” he said.
“Yes.” Her chest turned tight. “What happened to the dragon? Did anyone ever slay him?”
He nodded. “A young boy whose name was Apache. He shot the dragon four times. The fourth piercing exposed the beast’s heart and killed him. After that, Usen taught the boy how to gather herbs and how to hunt and fight. He became the first chief of our people.”
“Then maybe this is him.” Allie gestured to the knight in the mural. “Maybe I painted him without knowing it.”
“Like you did with me.” Raven made a thought-provoking expression. “You’re a shaman.”
“No, I’m not.” She resisted the urge to step back, to move away from him. “I don’t conduct ceremonies.”
“Your paintings are your ceremonies.”
“But I don’t cure the sick. I was involved in a healing once, but the main source of power didn’t come from me.”
“Not all Apache shamans heal. Some are bringers of rain. Some have medicine over snakes. Others can shoot guns without touching the trigger.”
“And I give men wings?” She pointed to the television, then smiled a little. “There’s an energy drink on TV that claims to do that.”
He smiled, too. The transformation made him look even more handsome. “I know about those entertainment boxes. I have watched them in store windows.”
And he came from the era where moving pictures were invented. “You fascinate me. The man and the raven.”
“You do that to me, as well. The woman and her paintings.”
Another intimate moment passed between them, and she told herself this wasn’t as strange as it seemed. That it was fate. Part of her destiny. Something that was meant to happen.
“I’ll get our tea.” She started for the kitchen, then stopped, turning back to look at him. He’d clarified her confusion about her power. He’d called her artwork ceremonies, associating it with shamanism.
Giving her magic new meaning.
Chapter 4
Allie made a pot of mint tea. She poured the hot beverage into two sturdy mugs and added honey as a sweetener.
The rain hadn’t let up. If anything, it had gotten stronger. Raven had said that there were shamans who brought rain, but this violent downpour hadn’t come from a medicine man.
She carried the tea into the living room and handed him a cup. He thanked her and took a sip. She glanced at the scars on his chest. They were marks from Zinna, from where she’d clawed him.
Allie caught his gaze. “Before we knew Zinna’s name, my sister and I called her the Owl Lady. Her reflection was in Olivia’s mirror.”
“Olivia lives here, too?”
“Yes. But she’s out of town. She won’t be back for about three weeks, maybe a little longer.”
“Did you see Zinna’s reflection?”
“Yes, but when I saw her, she looked like a woman, the ghost of a person, not an owl.” And as much as Allie hated to admit it, Zinna had been young and beautiful, with exotic-shaped eyes and two streaks of silver in her long black hair. “Olivia crossed over into the mirror.”
Rain slashed against the living room windows, nearly rattling the blinds. “Where did it lead?”
“To a haunted dimension. To a place Zinna created. Olivia’s FBI lover was there. Our great-grandmother had taken him.” But it had been their mother who’d infected him with an object-intrusion spell, a witchcraft tool inserted under his skin, making him deathly ill. But she, too, had eventually been stripped of her magic. Only unlike Zinna, Mommie Dearest would never regain her powers. Or so Allie hoped.
Raven didn’t respond. He simply drank more of his tea. Behind him, shadows shimmered on the wall, making portions of the mural seem watery.
Like Zinna’s ghost.
Allie rubbed the goose bumps on her arm.
“What is wrong?” he asked. “Does your wound hurt?”
“What? No.” She hadn’t realized it was her bandaged arm she was rubbing. “It’s fine.”
“But something is wrong.”
“Just dancing shadows.” She indicated a backless stool that would accommodate him and his wings. “Do you want to sit?” They’d been standing all this time.
He shook his head. “No, thank you. But you can.”
She perched on the edge of a chair, where she could keep an eye on the mural. Just in case, she thought.
Finally, she shifted her gaze to her companion. Raven looked big and strong, powerfully tattered, with his rough-hewn trousers and fraying shirt. But he looked lost, too.
“In some ways, our lives have been similar,” she said.
He clutched the cup, his callused fingers wrapped around the handle. “How so?”
“My father committed suicide, too.”
“You understand this pain?”
“Yes. Our mother abandoned us. She disappeared for many years. During the time she was gone, my father shot himself.”
“When my father did it, I had nightmares about him,” he said. “About the rifle he used. About the bullet shattering his skull. I was twelve years old, living in that boarding school, afraid they would punish me if I mourned him openly, if I grieved the Indian way.”
Suddenly she pictured him as a child, alone in his dormitory bed, trying to conceal his emotions, the ache that was still hidden in his eyes. “My dad didn’t use a rifle. He put a handgun in his mouth.”
Raven angled his head, making his hair fall in a razor-sharp line. “He did this because your mother hurt him?”
Allie placed her tea on a wrought-iron table. “She left him for another man.”
“But your father was not Apache?”
“No. He was Lakota.”
“An Apache man can punish his wife for being unfaithful. He can whip her, cut her nose or kill her.”
“They can’t do that anymore. There are laws.”
He frowned a little. “There were moral laws then. The leaders would try to discourage a wronged husband from committing violence. But sometimes a man would kill himself after he killed his adulterous wife.”
Allie didn’t know what to say, and within a heartbeat, the absence of speech dangled between them, swaying like a paper moon. Thin and silvery. Strangely tangible.
She glanced at the mural where shadows still stirred. She knew Raven was thinking about his wife. “What do you think happened to Vanessa after you disappeared? Would she have assumed you were dead?”
“Not without a body. She would have suspected witchcraft.”
“Even so, would the tribe have treated her like a widow? She was without a husband.”
“She wouldn’t have allowed them to treat her so. Nor would she remarry. She would have waited for me, hoping I found a way to return to her.”
“But you couldn’t.”
And now his wife was dead. A hundred bewitched years had passed, leaving a gothic gap between them. To Allie, it seemed tragically romantic. But it made her envious, too. She’d always wanted someone to love her in the way Raven loved Vanessa.
“How did you meet her?” she asked.
“We attended the same boarding school, and we had feelings for each other then. But I didn’t ask her to marry me until we were older. Until I danced with her at Fort Sill.”
She tried to picture a social event on the military reservation, but her mind drew a blank. “Will you tell me about it sometime?”
“Sometime,” he repeated, as though speaking of it now would make him sad.
“I should alter the painting.” She stood up, thinking about the night Vanessa had waited for him, the same night Sorrel had crushed the colors of his soul. He wasn’t an angel. He was a warrior, fighting to survive, to bear the loneliness he’d endured.
The destruction of his life.
His life. Suddenly those two words hit her like a fist. A jolt of danger. A warning.
She looked at Raven and the lights went out. Nothing glowed but the vanilla-scented candle she’d lit earlier.
Then that went out, too. But not from the storm.
Allie sensed a witch.
“Raven?” She said his name. She couldn’t see him, not even the slightest outline of his body, of his wings. The room was pitch-black.
He didn’t answer.
She heard the whoosh of air, and when the lights returned, he was gone.
Samantha wouldn’t quit hissing.
“I know,” Allie said. She was scared, too. Her pulse was pounding harder than the rain.
Was Zinna’s magic returning? Or was there another dead sorceress at work? For all she knew, Grandma Sorrel had popped in from the grave.
She had to search the loft. If Raven was still here, she had to find him. And if he wasn’t…
Cautious, Allie walked from room to room. Samantha followed, eager to fight off evil forces. Of course at any given moment she could turn tail and run. Or hide under the nearest chair. Lately that seemed to be her strong suit.
When Allie came to Olivia’s room, she stalled, apprehensive to enter. The door was ajar. But that was how Olivia had left it.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Here goes.” With a deep breath, she went inside and turned on the light.
The bed was draped with a satin quilt, reminding her of the lining of a coffin. The sheers on the windows were Victorian lace, but they could have been ghouls in bridal gowns.
She looked at the closet-door mirror. The only reflection was hers. And Sam’s. They just stood there, staring at themselves.
Then the cat spun around and growled.
Raven was perched on top of Olivia’s armoire. Yes, perched. He was a bird once again.
Allie’s pulse quit pounding.
Apparently the whoosh of air she’d heard in the dark was him shape-shifting and flying away. But she wasn’t sure what had drawn him to this particular room, if it was coincidence or if the witch had pulled him in this direction.
Not that there was a sorceress in sight. Nothing stirred. No shimmering shadows. No supernatural surprises.
Only a raven peering down at her, and a cat that slipped under the coffinlike bed.
Raven cawed in the silence, his call unmistakably loud, deep-pitched and powerful. Allie thought about Edgar Allen Poe’s poem, wishing she knew the words.
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