Chapter 6 #3
And remained silent as they drove over to Tybee Island where a quaint little white house was set off by itself near a waterway.
“Catalina Drive?” she asked, surprised that something paranormal would be so normal in appearance.
“You expecting Mockingbird Lane, Elm Street or something more obvious?”
She laughed. “Not really. But this is quite a perch.” It was a small home with a little porch and a nice view of the sawgrass and water.
Luke didn’t say anything else as he parked in front of the garage and turned off the car.
Helly came awake with a loud yawn. “Oh, hey. Sparrow’s. What are we doing here?”
“Visiting,” Luke said dryly.
Stretching real big and then yawning again, Helly turned her back to them. “Tell him I said hi.”
“You’re not coming with us?” Sorcha asked.
“Naw. I see him a lot.” And with that, she went back to sleep, clutching her dragon.
Sorcha passed a bemused stare to Luke as he headed for the door. “Did you know?”
“What? That Helly hangs out with questionable beings? Yes. You should have seen her in Hell. She was always finding someone to torture.”
Sorcha didn’t want to think any deeper on that subject, so she stared at the house. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d expected as a Raven Mocker’s home. It actually looked like any well-kept, unassuming place.
And when Luke knocked, a short, skinny man in a black tee and jeans answered.
Not what she was expecting.
At all.
While the man appeared a bit gaunt, he was cute enough with dark eyes and short black hair.
He took one look at Luke and slammed the door in his face.
Had he screamed first, it would have been hysterical. As it was, Sorcha had to press her lips together to keep from laughing.
Luke tsked at her, then spoke to the door. “Really, Sequoyah? Open the door before you make me angry.”
The door opened slowly. Sequoyah let out a long, tired sigh as he braced an arm against the door and leaned on it while glaring at Luke. “Why are you here, evil spawn?”
“Why don’t you have a phone?”
“Don’t like to be disturbed. You should understand.”
And while they stood on his porch, a group of ravens landed on the white railing to watch them.
Bemused, Sorcha stared at the group suspiciously. “Look. A murder of ravens.”
Sequoyah passed her an irritated glare. “Conspiracy, treachery or unkindness. Murder is for crows. We’re not crows.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know that.” But personally, she’d rather be in a murder than a treachery, unkindness or conspiracy. They sounded awful.
What did the world have against ravens to call them that? Other than the fact that they looked rather scary in a group. Even the half a dozen that currently eyed them.
She had a sudden urge to cross herself.
Sequoyah inclined his head to the group of his friends. “We’re fine. No need to pluck out eyes, right now.” He stepped back to let her and Luke into his house.
Even so, the ravens remained on the railing like silent paladins, ready to attack over any insult they perceived.
Sorcha glanced at them through the window as she moved to the center of a sparsely decorated living room. Her mind kept replaying scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
She forced her thoughts away from the movie that had given her nightmares for a month after her sister had made her watch it when they were kids.
Clearing her throat, she looked at Sequoyah. “I didn’t know Georgia had ravens.”
“We’re a very small conspiracy. Most of our brethren hide north. In the mountains.” He passed a hateful glare toward her as he moved to stand beside his white sofa and crossed his arms over his chest. “We were run off a long time ago.”
She didn’t miss the bitterness in his tone. “You sound like you hold a grudge.”
“I’m a raven. Of course, I do. It’s what we’re known for.”
Yeah, there was something very sinister about Sequoyah. It made the hair on the back of her arms stand up.
“I always heard ravens were playful,” she tried again.
“We can be. Unless you do us wrong. We hold on to that shit.”
Luke cleared his throat to get her attention. In the small room, Luke physically dominated it. “They also mate for life. Sequoyah’s wife was killed by an enemy. It’s made him a bit crabby in his old age.”
Her stomach sank at the thought. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. That’s awful. My deepest condolences.”
Sequoyah shrugged with a nonchalance she could tell he didn’t feel. “Why are you here, Luke?”
“We have a dead college student who’s missing a soul. Any of you been hungry lately?”
“We’re trying not to make any additional enemies so we only go where we’re invited these days. You’re looking for a different circus.” He walked over to the side table to a bottle of water. “Why would you think it was us?”
Luke pulled out his phone and handed it to Sequoyah. “She was severely torn up. Didn’t so much think it was one of you who killed her as much as one of you might have sensed her dying and decided to take an easy meal. Was hoping one of you might have seen who did this to her.”
Sequoyah appeared less offended by those words. He held his hand up to signal one of the birds outside.
It moved from the railing and transformed into a tall, Goth woman. Beautiful, with long black hair and dark eyes ringed in thick black eyeliner. She came in through the front door and passed a bored look to her and then Luke.
“What’s going on?” she asked Sequoyah.
Sequoyah handed her the phone. “Anyone venture near the college lately?”
She took the phone and shook her head. “We don’t normally go there.
The students have a nasty tendency to follow us around and throw food at us.
Stupid entitled shits. They act like we’re pigeons.
” She handed the phone back to Sequoyah, then looked up at Luke.
“Hard to take their souls when so few of them have one these days.”
Luke snorted. “Hard to disagree given the number of them who try to sell their desiccated souls to my kin.”
With a heavy sigh, Sequoyah passed the phone back to Luke. “Have you talked to any Daimons?”
“Just a Dark-Hunter.”
Sequoyah scratched at his chin. “Try the vampires, then. Granted they’ve fallen out of public favor lately. But some of them do still haunt the campus, looking for Vampire Diary fans to prey on.”
Sorcha cleared her throat. “It’s Vampire Diaries. Plural.”
Sequoyah responded with an arched brow and a peeved glare. “Like I care.”
“Sorry we bothered you.” Luke turned toward the door.
As Sorcha started after him, the woman stopped her and cocked her head in a very bird-like manner. “There’s a darkness inside you. Don’t let it grow any larger.”
Those words chilled her. “Pardon?”
Instead of answering, she returned to being a raven and flew from the room.
Confused, she glanced to Sequoyah who shrugged.
“Starla’s complicated. But she sees things others don’t.”
“Meaning what?”
He shrugged again.
Okay then. Those words were haunting and terrifying. She definitely didn’t care for the bird people. They were very unnerving.
Her heart pounding, she followed Luke from the house. “Long way to drive for nothing except an ulcer I could have done without. Now I’m paranoid.”
He snorted. “I’m always paranoid.”
“Well, with your genetics, I get it, but I don’t like this feeling. What darkness? Am I damned?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?” she repeated. Those flat, dry words didn’t help her mood at all. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” he said with a grin as he opened the door and got into his car.
“I’m really not liking this job at the moment.” Or Luke, either. Couldn’t anyone answer one damn question?
“There are worse jobs to have.”
“I shudder to ask.”
His grin widened. “Helly? You want to take up the challenge?”
She didn’t move from her sleeping position on the backseat.
“Working the shit pit in Hell…not sure what is worse. The ones being shit on or the ones who have to clean it. Either way, that pit is awful as they’re being doused in the scat of those with serious intestinal woe.
Then there’s scraping roadkill off the highway that leads to Hell…
in the desert…at four in the afternoon. Those who are chosen to be the guinea pigs for Hell’s new torture devices…
I can tell by the sounds of their screams that is a really horrific job…
Finally, there’s the poor souls in test audiences for bad movies and hokey TV shows. ”
“Copy editors for technical manuals,” the car said through the radio.
“Delilah for the win.” Luke chuckled.
“They really have those jobs in Hell?”
Luke nodded. “Made worse because no one gets paid there. They do that shit for free. Pun fully intended.”
She groaned out loud at his bad joke. “So, my takeaway is that I need to be in church more often.”
“Couldn’t hurt.” He pulled his hair back into that strangely sexy man bun.
Awesome. “This job is going to make me crazy.”
Luke backed up, out of the drive. “Life makes me crazy. Nothing is more of a mind fuck than humanity. Give me the damned any day. They’re usually much more dependable.
Evil things do evil things. When it’s human, it looks all warm and fluffy like the Monty Python bunny. Turn your back…it goes for throat.”
He had a valid point.
“Bert,” she said under her breath.
Luke arched his brow. “Tourette’s Syndrome again?”
“Ex-boyfriend who randomly sends me into it. He was just what you describe. A genuinely nice guy. Mr. Harmless. Opens the door for you. Pretends to be unable to hurt anyone or lie. Goes to church on Sunday, pretending to be kind and decent. Biggest fucking liar and vindictive bastard ever born. Wouldn’t know the truth if it tackled him to the ground and choked him out…
which I’d like to see it do, just once.”
“I know the generic losers you’re talking about. Would it make you feel better to know there really is a special place in Hell for them?”
“Actually, yes.”
“Then take heart. We love to torment them for eternity, and Hell is the one place no one believes their bullshit. We do actually make them choke on it and other, sometimes literal, shit, too.”
Wow. It was incredible how that little bit of knowledge lightened her day.
“Then I’ll never mention him again.”
Luke shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me. Get it off your chest so it doesn’t fester. Nothing good ever comes from keeping things bottled.” The sincerity of his comment shocked her. He meant that.
“Thank you.”
He pulled out of the gravel drive and headed back toward town.
“Where are we going now?”
“Talk to a wicked witch. Maybe get some food.”