Night of the Raven (7 page)

She fought back a laugh. “Don’t do this, McVey. It’s been a very long, very weird night, to say nothing of sad.” A picture of Yolanda popped in. “And irritating.”

He looked at her for a thoughtful moment. “You’re part of a dream, Amara. A nightmare, actually. One I’ve had off and on since I was nineteen.”

“Ah, well, that clears things right up, doesn’t it—seeing as we’re total strangers.” Her expression grew wary. “You’re not a Bellam somewhere in that dark and mysterious past of yours, are you?”

“If I am, it’ll be a hard thing to prove. I’m what’s called a foundling. Or close enough that the term applies.”

Sympathy softened everything inside her. “I’m so sorry, McVey. Were you adopted?”

“In a sense.”

“You know that answer’s a form of avoidance, don’t you?”

“I know it’s the best you’re going to get right now. As for me seeing your face, I dream what I dream, and believe me when I tell you, I don’t enjoy the experience.”

“Well, that’s me flattered.”

“You’re a hag in the opening act.”

“Better and better.”

“You come into my head chanting over a fire in a room filled with smoke. Next thing I know, you’ve sent a man God knows where and you’re telling me you intend to take my memories away. And, hell, maybe you pulled it off, because the dream ends there every damn time I have it.”

A pinecone bounced off the windshield, catching Amara’s gaze. “I’m sliding very quickly across the line to freaked, McVey. I’m not responsible for your dreams. I don’t chant over fires or zap memories from men’s minds or—”

“I’m not a man in the dream.”

“Boys’ minds, then... Whoa!” She braced herself with both hands as a blast of wind punched the truck like a giant fist.

McVey glanced skyward. “If there’s anything in your background that can affect the elements, Red, now would be a really good time to call on it.”

“I’ve never actually... Oh, my God, is that the yellow-ribbon tree?” Shocked, she stared at the huge, uprooted oak that currently lay between her grandmother’s house and one of the outbuildings. “It was a hundred and twenty years old.”

“It missed the roof by less than five feet.” McVey pulled into the driveway. “It also flattened the old well.” With his eyes on the exposed roots, he reached for his beeping cell. “What is it, Jake?”

Amara slid from the truck while he talked to his deputy. Some of the branches had scraped the outer wall of the house. Thank God her grandmother hadn’t been inside at the time.

Still on his phone, McVey headed over to survey the damage. Amara left him to it and turned for her rental car. She needed at least one of her suitcases and she wanted her medical kit. It might not be smart for her to touch McVey given their earlier wow of a kiss, but as she’d put the scratches on his cheek, she felt she owed it to him to clean them up.

Score settled. Or as settled as it could be with lust doing its best to tie her in knots.

She scooped the hair from her face as she approached the vehicle. “Dozens of so-called witches in Raven’s Hollow, yet no one’s moved this stupid wind along.” She shot a vexed look at the night sky. “I’m sure Bangor could use a good airing out.”

The wind shrieked in response and almost caused her to stumble into the driver’s-side door.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Releasing her hair, Amara reached for the handle. And froze with her fingers mere inches away.

Her throat dried up. “Uh, McVey?”

Of course he couldn’t hear her. She could barely hear herself. But she could see. And what she saw was a man. He was slumped over the steering wheel of her rental car. Long blond hair obscured his features, but he wore a sleeveless shirt and, most significant to Amara, he wasn’t moving.

“McVey?” She inched closer. Was he breathing?

“McVey!” she called again. When the man failed to stir, she took a bolstering breath and opened the door.

His head came up lightning-fast. His eyes glinted. “Hello, gorgeous.” He offered a freakish smile, whipped his right hand around and gave his wrist a double flick. Amara saw the gleam of a knife a split second before she turned and bolted.

Thoughts scrambled in her head. Had there been blood on the blade? On him? Pretty sure she’d seen red streaks on his arms.

Trees and bushes rushed past in a blur. There it was, the lit porch of her grandmother’s house, less than fifty feet away. “McVey!”

Suddenly the porch light winked out. Everything around her went dark. Amara stepped on a fallen branch and had to slow down. “Ouch! McVey!”

A man’s hands descended on her shoulders from behind.

She didn’t think or hesitate. She simply spun, knocked the hands away and brought her knee up hard.

She heard a cursed reaction.

“Are you insane? Amara, it’s me.”

McVey swung her around so they were back to front, holding her in place with a forearm pressed lightly across her throat. “Have you lost your mind?”

She pointed straight ahead. “Man. In my car. With a knife.” Her fingernails sank into his wrist. “There might be blood.”

McVey released her. “Stay here.”

“What? No. Now who’s insane? He could be anywhere.”

“Fine. Stay behind me.”

She did. Unfortunately she was so close behind that she collided with his back when he halted.

He said nothing, just passed her a penlight from his pocket and pressed a hand to her stomach to keep her in place. He had his gun out, but as it was aimed at the ground, she understood even before she angled the light at the car.

The man inside had vanished.

* * *

“
I
AM SO
done with this night,” Amara declared.

McVey followed her around the fallen tree and across the yard to the porch. Thankfully, the generator had kicked in.

“I want to believe the guy I saw was your resident nutball taking refuge from the falling sky, but the Crocodile Dundee knife suggests...well...not.” He saw her shoulders hunch. “Do you have any theories?”

“None worth mentioning.”

“Figures.” When she turned for a last look behind them, he felt her eyes on his cheek. “And then there’s this.” A sigh escaped. “They’re not deep scratches, but I bet they sting.” Lifting a hand, she used her index finger to draw a circle. “They should heal fast enough.”

“They always do.”

Smiling a little, she drew another circle. “Meaning you’ve been scratched before?”

“I worked in vice in Chicago. Cops get scratched, punched, kicked and shot at on a regular basis.”

“I guess the Hollow’s a cakewalk by comparison.”

“Depends on your definition of the term. I’ve been scratched, kicked and shot at within the space of five hours tonight.”

“Pretty sure Samson was thinking about punching you at the Red Eye.” Her eyes danced. “You’re four for four, Chief, and the Night of the Raven hasn’t even begun.”

“Maybe I should have gone to Florida with Tyler and Molly.”

“You still can.”

He dropped his gaze briefly to her mouth. “No, I really can’t.” Wouldn’t if he could. And, God help him, he had no desire to explore that scary-as-hell thought.

She circled the scratches a third time and then let her hand fall away.

Was it crazy that, for a single blind moment, he wanted to abandon all logic and have wild sex with her on the kitchen floor? His hormones said no. Fortunately for both of them, his brain retained control.

“You should go upstairs,” he said before the badly frayed threads of his restraint snapped and he turned into the big bad wolf they’d been playing with all night.

He started to step back. Then blew his good intentions to hell and covered her mouth with his.

For the first time in memory the world around him dissolved, leaving him with nothing except the full-bodied taste of woman and the mildly unnerving sensation that some small part of her was seeping into his bloodstream like a drug. Whether good or bad, he couldn’t say. He only knew his control currently teetered on a very ragged edge. Drawing on the dregs of it, he gripped her arms and set her away from him.

“Well, wow.” Amara fingered her lips. Her eyes had gone a fascinating shade of silver. “That was...amazing. I don’t normally kiss men I’ve just met like that. Not altogether sure I’ve kissed any man like that.” She bit lightly on her lower lip. “You?”

“I try not to kiss men at all if I can avoid it.”

She laughed, and that didn’t help a damn thing. “No Irish or Italian in your background, hmm?”

He fixed his gaze on hers. “You want to go upstairs, Amara, now, before it occurs to me that self-restraint’s never been my best quality.”

A sparkle lit her eyes. Tugging him forward by his shirt, she whispered a teasing “Mine, either.”

He let her stroll away. This might be Grandma’s house, but he hadn’t regressed to a wild-animal state quite yet.

Rifle shots, he reminded himself. Supersize knife. Twisted leer. Oh, yeah, that worked. Anticipation rose. Adrenaline ramped it up.

He gave Amara sixty minutes to settle in—and his libido the same amount of time to settle down. Then he checked his guns, pulled on a dark jacket and made himself part of the night.

Location presented no problem. He’d discovered several spent cartridges earlier in a section of the woods where three giant oak trees stood bent and tortured around a collection of boulders that resembled witches’ hats.

A silent approach wasn’t necessary. The wind raged on—like a huffing, puffing wolf, if he wanted to keep the fairy tale alive a bit longer.

He reached the clearing within fifteen minutes. Playing his flashlight over the tops of the stone hats, he let a wry smile form. Despite the whirling gusts, he clearly caught the sound of a rifle being primed.

Sticking to the shadows, he called, “You want to shoot me, Westor, do it now. I don’t play mind games these days.”

“Like hell.” The reply came from a patch of darkness some fifty feet to McVey’s left. “You’ve been playing with minds in two freaking—and I gotta say freaky—towns for more than a year. I did some sniffing around tonight, old friend. You’ve got these people believing you’re a man of honor, someone who’ll stand up for them should the need arise. But you and me, we know different, don’t we? You’d sell your granny, if you had one, for the gold fillings in her teeth. You’d sell me, if you could, for a whole lot less.”

“Or I could just keep it simple and arrest you for shooting at my landlady’s granddaughter.”

“In that case, I might as well kill her and let the chips fall. A little bird told me she’s got majorly big problems that’ll land her six feet under before long anyway.”

“Raven.” McVey scanned the darkness. “It’s all about big black ravens around here.”

“Ravens and witches is how I heard it.”

“From your little bird?”

Westor Hall gave his rifle another Jake-like pump. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand, McVey. You came to Los Angeles a few months back, and being a cop and a turncoat, decided my sister needed some jail time to straighten her out.”

McVey wove a roundabout path through a crop of evergreens. “Why would I do that after fifteen years of silence?”

“I don’t know.” For the moment Westor sounded uncertain. “I don’t, but it doesn’t matter.” Anger tightened his tone. “Dicks came for her six weeks ago. She rabbited and wound up wrapping her car around a power pole. Took three and a half hours to peel the wreck away so paramedics could pull her out. In the end, they covered her with a sheet and drove her to the morgue.”

McVey hadn’t known that. But he’d known Westor’s sister, and an alcoholic haze had been her answer to most of life’s problems, big and small.

“She was all I had, McVey.” Loss layered over loathing. “It’s not a coincidence. You came to Los Angeles and two days later the cops had a line on my sister.”

“I’m sorry she’s dead, Westor, but I didn’t draw that line. And I sure as hell didn’t cross it.”

“Well, I say you did, and I’ve come all the way here to say it to your face.”

Lowering to a crouch, McVey sized up a tangle of brush that could hide a dozen large men. He considered drawing his gun, but when the leaves separated slightly and he spied the laser light on Westor’s rifle, he opted for hand-to-hand.

“See how you feel when you lose someone who matters.” Westor jerked the rifle sideways. “That tasty lady I saw you with tonight, for example.”

Although his stomach clenched, McVey saw his opportunity and took it.

If Westor spotted the motion, he didn’t swing around fast enough to evade it. McVey’s forearm snaked across his throat, cutting off his oxygen and reducing his protest to a wet gurgle as he tried to shake his attacker off. Finally, with his eyes beginning to roll, Westor gave McVey’s wrist a limp slap.

“Yeah, as if I’m gonna believe that. Kick the rifle away.” McVey tightened his grip when Westor hesitated. “Do it now.”

The hesitation became a gagging cough. “Okay, you win.” The rifle spun off. “It’s gone, and now neither of us can see a frigging thing. Tree could fall and kill us both. Still, it might be worth dying to know I’d be taking you with me.”

“Always a possibility,” McVey agreed. “But I think you missed your opportunity with the trees.”

“Are you kid—?” In the process of tossing his head, Westor stopped struggling and let his gaze roll skyward. “What happened to the wind?”

“It died.”

“Just like that?” Westor made a scoffing sound. “Wind’s not alive. It can’t die as fast as a person. One of which your tasty lady is.”

McVey set his mouth menacingly close to Westor’s ear. “I’m only going to say this once, old friend, so you want to listen. If anything—” he cinched Westor’s arm for emphasis “—I mean anything at all happens to Amara, I’ll find you and I’ll kill you.”

Westor craned his neck for more air. “That’s not fair. Way I heard it, there’s a strong chance the lady has a truckload of heavy looking to squash her.”

“Yeah? Who’s your little bird, Westor?”

“Woman at the bar where the fight went down doesn’t like your lady much. Told someone on the phone a nasty dude named Sparks could be looking to do her.”

“In that case, you might want to think seriously about leaving town.”