Raven Cursed

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Be Polite to the Nice Pussycat

That the sheriff allowed me to bring in Kemnebi while we waited for the state crime scene techs to arrive and set up, proved he was reaching the end of his rope, but the fact that he agreed to allow the black were-leopard to hunt with us in big-cat form, showed just how stressed the county officials had become. All it had taken was my comment that the wolves had been back to the site recently, since the rain started. The fresh wolf tracks under the small ledge had been all the evidence Grizzard needed to consent. Even the park officials agreed that a tracker with claws and fangs of his own was a good idea, if I could keep him under control. I also knew that the officials would be making casts of any black were-leopard prints they found, to compare to the Beast prints. I figured that would clear Kemnebi from any possible suspicion in the killings, but it wouldn’t make the county and park powers-that-be any more satisfied.

Wet to the skin, chilled, I waited in my SUV at the access road, the heater running. I checked my e-mail, answered phone calls, and took a much needed nap, stretched out on the SUV’s leather backseat. Before noon, I heard tires on gravel and sat up, yawning. Rick, driving a borrowed, dented pickup, pulled in beside me and cut the engine. I was surprised to see a black leopard sitting up high in the passenger seat. Somehow I had expected Kem to shift on site. He swiveled his head and met my eyes. Hissed, showing killing teeth in warning.

Beast stirred. We were alone, parked far from the law enforcement vehicles, upwind from the scent of old death. Beast thought at me, Want to hunt. Want to hunt with Kem-cat.

“Not gonna happen,” I murmured, as I climbed from the vehicle, shut the cab door, and tucked my hands in my damp pockets. “Not now, not ever.” She narrowed her eyes at me, deep in my mind, flicked her long, blunt tail, and slunk away, sulking. I leaned against the wet SUV.

Rick exited the pickup and walked around the truck toward me, moving like he was half leopard already, with a liquid and predatory grace, despite the water repellant jacket and layers beneath. His hair was blacker than midnight, his eyes blacker still, and something warm and heated flowed down my body and settled in my lower belly. Despite the rain and the chill on the wind and stink of old death, a smile pulled at my mouth.

Rick opened the passenger door and Kem stepped out, a slow, four-pawed slink. The spots beneath his black coat weren’t visible in the dim light, and he looked pure black with gold-green eyes, round pupils wide. He shook once and hissed, looking up at the clouds, shoulders hunching. Black leopards are good swimmers, surpassed only by tigers in their love of water, but getting rained on was evidently different from taking a leisurely swim in a cool pond on a hot, jungle day. Kem had seen me once, from a distance, in Beast form, and he looked at me now, remembering. He hissed again, pulling his lips back, wrinkling his snout.

Rick held out a steel-prong dog collar, the kind that, when the leash is pulled, extends prongs into the dog’s throat. The collar style is used to control dangerous, aggressive dogs, and was the one concession Grizzard had insisted upon for a black leopard on the day’s hunt.

Kem hissed in warning, showing his insult in the way that cats the world over do, by passive aggressive behavior. When Rick bent to put on the collar, Kem jumped to the hood, then the cab roof, and off the other side of the pickup. Without looking back, he started downhill, directly toward the kill site, tail in the air like a modified, upraised, middle finger.

Rick slanted his eyes at me and let his mouth quirk up on one side. “He’s pissed because he’s sober in daytime. He’s worked hard to avoid that state since we got here.”

I thought about Kem knowing me in my Beast form. About Grizzard and the gun-happy deputies. “He’s not going to let you use the collar at all, is he?”

“Nope. Not without a fight none of us can hope to win. And, speaking of fights, he told me that the first time I shift, he’s going to challenge me to personal combat and kill me for sleeping with his wife, which I didn’t do.”

The breath left my lungs as if I’d been socked in the gut. Mine, Beast chuffed, shoving her claws into me. Mine!

“Yeah, that’s the way I felt about it too,” Rick said, as if he’d heard her claim, but reacting to my facial expression. “He says were-law doesn’t allow him to kill me until then. And since I won’t know how to fight, won’t even know how to stand on four legs, I’ll be dead before dawn. Fortunately, the full moon is a few days away, so we can find time to say good-bye.”

“Not gonna happen,” I said. “I’m his alpha. I won’t let him.”

Ignoring my reply, he handed me a fleece shirt and a Gortex jacket, both dry. “Here.”

I curled my fingers into the warm clothes, thinking of Rick and Kem, fighting. Kem would kill him slowly, playing with prey. I pulled the clothes to my nose and inhaled Rick’s scent, warm and masculine and satisfying. “Thanks,” I said. I looked down the hill for Kemnebi, who was mostly invisible, moving in the shadows of the slope. I kept my eyes on the forest as I said, “I’m still his alpha. Remind me before the full moon. I have a feeling that my Beast might have a thing or two to say about some black leopard killing you.”

“Beast?”

I laughed softly. “Yeah. Beast is what I call my cat-self.”

Beast hacked at the words. Not Jane’s cat. Beast belongs to no one.

“Of course, once she kills or chases off Kem-cat, she’ll likely flay your hide off with her claws for cheating on her with the wolves.”

“Uhhhh . . .”

To give myself something to do while he floundered, I pulled my wet shirts off and tossed them to the floorboard of the SUV’s cab. They landed near Evangelina’s scarf with a wet plop. Warm, dry clothes went on over my chilled skin; I was pretty sure he was looking, and I shivered once, hard. To the cold, I assured myself, not in reaction to Rick. I felt so much better inside the warm clothes that I sighed as I locked the door. “Come on. First things first. We gotta catch and dispatch some sicko werewolves who are killing and eating humans.” I moved into the brush and under twisted, tangled laurel. Rick slid into a backpack and followed, silent and thoughtful.

The searchers stopped and watched as the black were-leopard circled the kill site. Kem-cat walked with a fluid, feral grace, leaping across the terrain; he made no sound, a killing shadow crossing cloud-dimmed ground. He was beautiful, wild, and unafraid for humans to watch, which was more in keeping with human thought processes than big-cat thinking. Leopards, like mountain lions, are solitary, hiding by day. That he showed himself with such balletic abandon said it was deliberate, part of his job description as the leader of the Party of African Weres.

If his purpose was to disarm the humans, it worked. The searchers were staring in awe, seeing something feral and wondrous, rather than a creature who could bring them down with single snap of powerful jaws. Fortunately, now that he was sober, Kemnebi wasn’t going to yank their chains and do something that would cause the well-armed men and women to shoot him.

Rick eased up behind me, nearly as silent as Kem-cat, standing with his shoulder to my back, checking out the searchers and the tree line. Grizzard moved slowly to me, always facing Kem-cat, his movements showing he was aware of predator/prey response to quick movements and turned backs. When he reached me he muttered, “What about the collar?”

“You put it on him,” Rick said. He held out the leash and Grizzard looked at it, then at Kemnebi, and frowned. Kem moved around the campsite, feet lifting and falling with careless precision. He sniffed and hissed and avoided body parts, his rounded ear tabs flicking backward and forward. Rain pelted on him and on us, but I was half-dry—the top half—and so I didn’t care. As we watched, Kem stopped and put his nose to the wet ground, sucking in air in a scree of sound.

Grizzard started, his hand moving to his weapon before he could stop himself. “What’s he doing?” he asked. “What’s that noise?”

“Flehmen behavior,” I said, not taking my eyes off Kem. “Cats have scent sacs in the roofs of their mouths. When they scent-search, they pull in air through nose and mouth, over the tongue, past the scent sacs. It’s noisy.”

“Gross,” said a searcher standing near enough to hear. “That’s why I keep dogs.”

Kem turned toward us and hissed.

“Mmmm,” Rick said, amusement in his tone. “Better be polite to the nice pussycat.”

Kem hissed again, this time at Rick, who laughed low, the sound taunting. It didn’t take a genius to tell the two men had a dysfunctional relationship. Of course, Kem’s threat to kill Rick took dysfunctional relationships to entirely new heights. I hoped my being Kem’s alpha would keep Rick alive and healthy. I’d have to rethink my plans come the full moon.

Kem made two circuits around the campsite and one to the ledge where the wolves had slept before he moved away, into the woods, up under a laurel thicket. He reappeared minutes later in another spot, and then in another. He was mapping the wolves’ ingress and egress, and when he was satisfied, he padded quickly to Rick and sat, tall and pretty, front paws crossed and greenish eyes on Rick as if he were prey. He hacked, opened his mouth, showing killing teeth.

Rick asked, “You done?” Kem nodded once, a strange-looking gesture on the big-cat. Rick pulled out an old fashioned spiral notepad and flipped pages. I hadn’t seen a paper pad like that in years, but it was a smart move. Most electronics would have been ruined by the rain. If the pad was damaged, a buck and change would replace it. Rick located a list of questions, clearly ones they had worked out before they got here.

“How many wolves?” Rick asked. Kem patted one paw twice. “How many times did they come here?” Kem again padded twice. “How many times did the grindylow come here?” Kem padded once. “Is the scent wrong?” Kem nodded once, his eyes intent on Rick.

I had no idea what the question or answer meant, but now wasn’t the time to ask.

“Did the wolves enter the campsite from the same direction each time?” Kem shook his head no. “Can you track both trails?” Kem nodded, but ducked his head slightly, raising his shoulder blades. “One trail is going to be harder to follow?” Kem nodded. “The older one,” Rick said. Kem nodded. “Now?”

This time Kem didn’t answer. He turned in a single sinuous swirl, leaped over his own shoulder in a motion that appeared to defy the physical laws, and headed into the laurel thicket. I looked at Grizzard. “Coming?”

“Not this time.” He turned hard eyes at Rick. “You’re that cop from New Orleans, the one PsyLed called me about.” Rick’s mouth tightened but he nodded, the gesture oddly like Kem-cat’s. “You’ll know what I need to see, if anything. For now, I have a crime scene to work up. If you get something, call. I’ll find you.” Grizzard turned his back and stamped through the wet, his shoulders rounded with fatigue.

“PsyLed called him?” I asked.

“First I heard about it. Come on. We have a cat to chase.”

By four p.m. I was tired, cold, wet, hungry, and probably permanently deaf. The constant rain was a white noise that drowned out every other sound, a steady, deadening, deafening roar that only got louder when we had to cross swollen streams and cascades. The falling temperatures had made everything miserable, with a low-lying fog shrouding the ground like heavy gauze, hiding puddles, runnels, holes, roots, protruding rocks, and ruts. Laurel and rhodo thickets had meant crawling bent over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and my palms were torn and blistered and wrinkled up like raisins. The wind was traitorous, delicate and warm one moment, buffeting us with cold the next.

Not even Gortex is designed to resist a hurricane, and my boots and jeans had failed the stream-crossing test. Even my underwear was sodden. Rick had brought several pounds of raw steaks in his backpack for Kem, and a jumbo-sized pack of high-cal trail mix for us. If not for the nuts, coconut, and dried tropical fruit, I’d have been tempted to try to steal from Kem-cat, which would have been gross and stupid.

To make the experience more wretched, as far as I could tell, we were lost. I had no idea what the leopard had discovered. We hadn’t seen a real road—one paved in the last century—in hours, and we had crawled up and down steep slopes until east and west were alien concepts, even for me. If Kem wanted to lead us out into unknown territory and leave us to die, he couldn’t have found a better place for it. Grumpy. That was me. Ahead, I saw two dark mounds emerging from the fog. Once we were upon them, they resolved into our vehicles. I lay across the hood and panted, my relief so strong I wanted to weep.

“Big, bad vamp killer, reduced to a whining mass of female flesh by a little water,” Rick teased. The look I gave him shut him up and he backed away, palms open wide in a mock protective gesture, eyes laughing. The first time we’d been alone together I’d taken him down, but something about the way he backed off, with a confident swagger I hadn’t seen before, suggested that now I might not have it so easy.

I crawled into the SUV and turned the seat warmers on high, the heater on max, and the windshield warmer on. I sat in a miserable heap and shivered until the interior was toasty and my core temp started to warm. Then I crawled around in the back for anything that might keep me warm, coming up with a tire iron, a tool box, a ragged fleece blanket, and a pair of cargo pants left balled in a corner by God-knows-who. The scent wasn’t familiar and the pants were none too clean, having been used as a towel to wipe a mechanic’s greasy hands, but I stripped and pulled them on, hoping I wouldn’t get body lice or worse. The blanket, I ripped a head hole in with a screwdriver and tore a ribbon off one end to use as a belt. I was just barely presentable when a human-shaped Kem and Rick got into the vehicle with me, Kem in the passenger seat, his feet on my soaked clothes, and Rick lounging in back. Rick, wearing dry clothes, looked me over and laughed before passing me a king-sized Snickers bar. After the laugh, I should have refused on principle but I took it and started chewing.

Kem wasn’t impressed either way, though he accepted a Snickers as well, and ate it in huge, half-chewed bites. He opened another, gesturing with it in what sounded like a non sequitur in his elegant African accent. “The grindylow no longer function according to its previous and proper purpose. It should be able to track the werewolves once it has taken their human and were scents, and it should have killed them long before now. It isn’t, it hasn’t. Its scent pattern has change in ways with which I am not familiar. It appears to be moving much more slowly than normal, spending long moments in one place, doing what appears to be”—he stopped, as if unable to find the right word—“nothing. Perhaps it is . . . resting.”

The emphasis on the word resting made it sound foreign to the little green-skinned grindy. “They don’t rest?”

“No. Never. Not as long as human is in danger. Perhaps it is . . . ill.” But he didn’t look fearful, Kemnebi looked ecstatic at the prospect. The grindylow had killed Kem’s mate for trying to infect Rick. Kem hoped he’d die.

I frowned, adjusted the blower at my midsection, and ate another candy bar, curling one leg under my butt for comfort as I angled myself to face him. “The grindy didn’t stop the weres in New Orleans from repeatedly biting Rick. Torturing him.” Rick went utterly still, and I could suddenly smell the stress and fear-memory leaching from his pores. He was remembering.

Kem’s lip curled at the smell. He slanted a look to the back, at Rick. “The grindylow was beleaguered in New Orleans. His mistress broke were-law with this human.” Kem’s eyes took on a voracious glow at the word. “He knew that were-law required her death. He . . . loved Safia. Her death was painful to him and was responsible for the delay in tracking the wolves.”

“Yeah?” I remembered the state of the grindy’s room at vamp central. It had been shredded, as if in a rage. Or in frustration. Another of the dominoes fell. I cursed softly, and Kem turned away when he saw the understanding in my eyes. “Coulda been that. Or, you caged him in his room so he couldn’t get out and stop the werewolves from torturing Rick.”

Kem turned hot golden-green eyes back to me. His beast eyes peered at me in threat. I wondered what I’d learn if I pushed at the cat. Beast stirred, flowing up through my veins and nerves, intrigued by the big-cat. It almost felt as if she had been waiting for this moment, primed for some action she expected. Wanted. Heat and power flooded through me and she stared back at the leopard, her claws unsheathed and painful, holding me down. When I spoke next, it was her thoughts I spoke. “To punish Rick for Safia. She was going to leave you. To mate with him.”

Kem growled. Time did a shift and seemed to step sideways, slowing into overlays of still-shots. Kem’s lips drew back. Revealed fangs. Male big-cat musk saturated the air. Claws burst through the tips of Kem’s fingers; black fur sprouted on the backs of his hands.

Beast slammed through me. Pain cut through my hands and mouth like razors. My jaws ached and I tasted blood as big-cat canines pushed through my gums. She hissed, showing killing teeth. I pushed up with the foot beneath me just as Kemnebi launched himself across the cab. One claw swatting at my face.

My leap lifted me over the swipe. Golden-furred hands tore into Kem’s neck. My hands, Beast’s fur and claws. Blood spurted. My fangs tore into his throat. Latching to either side of his esophagus. I bit down, not hard enough to tear out his throat, just enough to cut off his airway. His claws ripped into my middle, catching on the fleece and the belt, hooking deep.

Behind Kem, the door to the cab opened. Rain and wind swept in. I got a glimpse of Rick. We tumbled backward, my body over Kem’s, to land with a splash on the watery earth and sink into the mud. Beast took over my mind. Kem could get no air. He thrashed. And went still.