Conspiracy of Ravens Read online

  I cried out again, this time without fear and pain, as my orgasm hit me, barreling through me, and making every muscle and sinew clench at once with its force. Brad watched me, his eyes tracing fire into my flesh as he finished a moment later, burying his head in my shoulder and shuddering with pleasure. We lay like limp rags, breathing hard, for long moments.

  “I don’t date much,” I finally said, “but I have to give you first place now, I think.”

  Groaning, he pulled out of me with infinite care and rolled to his side. He wrapped his arms around me, spooning me and pulling the quilt back up over our entwined bodies.

  “Thank god,” he replied. “I don’t think I can top that just yet.”

  I giggled. He sounded so relieved. He propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at me, those amazing eyes mine, all mine.

  “You okay?”

  “I’ll be fine. I am fine. Better than fine.” I tried to kiss him but he saw the sheen of tears in my eyes before I could marshal my feelings under control.

  “I’m sorry, Sophia,” his voice was pained, “you should have stopped me if it was too much...”

  “NO! No. I wanted to. I’ve wanted to since I met you but I let my fear cripple me from pursuing those feelings. It was amazing! Does it always feel like that?”

  “Like...what? Did I do something unusual?” He gave a half-laugh.

  “I mean...the end part. You know. ‘IT.’ Does “it” always feel like that?”

  “You mean...the orgasm part? You’ve never had one?” He was incredulous.

  I blushed. “No. I told you. I don’t date much.”

  “How much is not much?”

  “Um...never?” I made it a question.

  “I find it hard to believe a woman as beautiful, intelligent, and talented as you has never dated.”

  “I’ve had ‘dates’ but I never let it go far.”

  “So you’ve never had...sex?”

  “Not willingly, no. Well, I mean. I have now.”

  He said nothing, just turned the full power of that intense gaze on me. Finally, he gathered me close and held me for a long time, until I slipped into the first dreamless sleep I’d had since coming here. We awoke three more times in the night, making love and raiding his fridge, talking until the sun came up. We showered together, joints creaky with overuse. We played and laughed with each other while doing his morning’s chores, feeding horses and Brodie. We kept sneaking in long kisses, making the morning rounds take twice as long, he claimed.

  Finally, with great reluctance, he drove me back to my hotel. He parked, coming up to my room with me and saying he couldn’t bear to be parted with me for a single instant. It was corny, but so romantic I played along.

  We made love in my hotel bed of course. We were like two teenagers who couldn’t get enough of each other. Now that the dam of fear inside me was broken, I wanted to climb into bed with him forever and shut the world away. We had to shower again, this time quickly. I dressed and grabbed my things. At my car, he kissed me so thoroughly my toes curled. “Ah, hell,” he sighed. “Real life is intruding on my dream come true.”

  “Come on, my own personal Romeo. I’ll race you to the prison.”

  “You’ll do no such thing or I’ll be forced to arrest you for disorderly conduct, driving while intoxicated and/or sleep deprived, and a host of other things that will keep you in Pittsburgh for the foreseeable future.”

  “Well I could think of worse fates. “I stuck out my tongue at him and he swatted me on the ass. I got into my car and he raced for his, ending the best date of my entire life.

  ****

  Catherine, of course, knew instantly. “Well, well. How coarse and cliché, Sophia. Rutting like an animal with our Officer Shaw? What would your grandmother say?”

  “She’d probably say “good for me,” Catherine. You should get laid now and then, it does wonders for the tension.” If she was going to bait me, then turnabout was fair play.

  “Don’t pretend with me Sophia. Tell me, how often did your uncle’s face intrude on your fuckfest with Dudley Do Right? Or was he not that great, our Officer Shaw? Did you welcome your uncle’s presence in bed with you, out of boredom?”

  I mentally counted to ten, calming myself down and hoping my anger wouldn’t show. I fervently prayed Brad didn’t believe what she was saying. Yes, I’d been afraid, but hopefully he knew I’d gotten over it, thanks to him. I returned my thoughts to the dangerous viper sitting shackled at the table. “Now who’s slumming, Catherine? Prying details of my sex life because you can’t have one of your own?”

  “Oh, have I upset you Sophia?”

  “Not at all. I’m just waiting for you to get around to it, rather than focusing rather immaturely on matters which do not pertain to our purpose here.”

  She tried to cross her arms but the handcuffs prevented it. She settled on clenching her hands together tightly, bloodless knuckles pressed against one another like marbles beneath her skin. “Fine. The next card was Strength. I’d ditched the beautiful boy’s car somewhere north of Williamsport and hitched into town. As usual, I managed to find a job as a waitress in an Italian restaurant downtown. Before too long, the dark lord was whispering his sweet nothings into my ear.

  “We chose a woman this time, a lone girl a few years younger than me. She looked kind of like me, with red hair, slightly paler skin and only blue eyes, not special eyes.” This was said with a glance in Brad’s direction, intended to insult him and his ‘only’ blue eyes. “She was alone every time she came into my restaurant and the dark lord took a fancy to her. She was pathetically stupid though, but a perfect mark. She had no one in the world to care for her, she said. Both of her parents were dead, just like yours and mine, and she had no kin. We were two orphans in the world. She clung to me like a barnacle and I patiently waited for the manner in which Strength was to manifest itself. I wanted to prove myself, to move one step closer to His loving embrace. Waiting was delicious too, but difficult, like a long awaited meal or the yearning for ice cream. Satisfied at last.

  “I taught her, you know. I taught her most everything. How to cast a circle. How to perform the blood ritual, what the symbols meant. She was so dumb, so fucking stupid, I had difficulty keeping my temper. Sometimes I would beat her, with my fists or a belt, but never left a mark. She lived in this halfway house and it wouldn’t do for anyone to find out about our friendship. Not that anyone would believe a retard like her anyway. She would crawl to me, after I lost my temper and beat her, begging and crying, dripping snot everywhere. Begging me to forgive her. The stupid cow. I prayed to the Horned God to show me the way, to help me gain the Strength that was required. Finally, my prayers were answered.

  “I lured her to an empty warehouse by promising to teach her the sacrificial ritual, the one thing I had yet to show her. She thought she was going to learn how to make an offering and impress the dark lord but instead she was the sacrifice. I tricked her, telling her to draw the raven across her breasts in her own blood and she did. I’d made her bring a live chicken, telling her she was to sacrifice it.

  “I told her to kneel in front of the altar and lean over to cut the bird’s head off so it wouldn’t spray the altar cloth. The fucking moron! How many times had I told her about the symbols, about the raven? How many times had I told her, over and over again, that you have to cast the fucking circle first, before any ritual?” Catherine’s voice had been flat and neutral, like she was reciting a grocery list. Now her pitch heightened, her anger making her loud and shrill, her face contorted with the force of her rage.

  “She deserved it! As if she would ever be as powerful as me. Her, a stupid cow, a fucking retard, chewing her cud! An idiot who couldn’t remember the simplest directions! She raised the machete I brought, way over her head, and slashed it down on the chicken’s neck, screaming in her stupid retard voice the whole time. But I shut her up good, didn’t I? Yes. I sure did. That chicken wasn’t the only thing that lost its head.

 
; “I’d already cast my circle, you see. Of course. Because I’m not an idiot. With every ounce of strength in my body, I sliced her head off as she sat there hunched and crying over the limp body of the chicken she’d decapitated. Her head rolled off much cleaner than the head of the chicken. I hacked her body to pieces. My arms hurt so badly the next day I could barely lift them, but it was worth it. I arranged her pieces around the altar and drew the raven on the altar cloth with my blood as required, since there weren’t very large pieces of her left to draw on. I left her and got the hell out of there. It was an abandoned warehouse in a crappy part of town but you never know when some nosy cop might come around and interrupt one’s freedom of religion.”

  She finished with a gloating expression planted on her pretty face, giving Brad a nasty smile before turning her attention back to me. “You go fuck your nosy cop, Sophia. Then come back and we’ll play show and tell.”

  I gave her a cold look but said nothing, hauling my briefcase with the rolling voice recorder, taking my anger, fear, and frustration with me.

  9-The Hermit

  I followed Brad, as usual to his office. We made it inside the door before collapsing in each other’s arms.

  “I don’t know about you, but these stories of hers are getting harder and harder for me to hear,” I said, my voice muffled against his shoulder.

  “I’ve only been here a few months but I was a beat cop and then a detective for a long time. You never get used to hearing this shit, not ever.” His voice floated above my head. “You’re doing a great job of getting her to talk. We need her to give us names but don’t tell her personal information about yourself. She’s a fucking monster. You don’t want her in your head.”

  I nodded. After long moments we broke apart, comforted by the contact and ready to keep working. We sat together in the leather seats, Brad circling Catherine’s latest supposed crime scene with the red circle. “How’s the investigation going so far with what she’s given us?” I asked.

  “My Clinton County contact is Dayne Yoakum, one of those good old boys. Probably sleeps in his cowboy boots. He’s running missing persons and coordinating a search, since Sunbury rolled the dice and got rid of her to us. It’s nice to have the extra help. Plus, Yoakum offered to work up surrounding counties, said he has contacts within those other departments. Guess I shouldn’t complain about how long it’s taking but dammit, I’m losing patience. What if she decides to stop talking?”

  “I thought you told Maxwell you hadn’t heard from anyone in Clinton County?”

  He grinned. “Yeah, that’s what I told him all right.”

  “You’re bad. I worry about her stopping, too, though. Part of me wishes she would stop, that there was no more for her to say, but at the same time, this story could make my career.”

  “Then you’d leave, right? If the story was over?”

  His tone was teasing but there was an undercurrent there. I remembered suddenly, for no reason, I’d only packed for a week’s stay. A week? A lifetime? What was he asking?

  “Well, maybe not right away,” I hedged. He smiled, white teeth flashing briefly in his handsome face before he kissed me softly.

  “I have to go write up my nightly report for my boss, regretfully,” I said when the kiss ended.

  “Would you be adverse to a little Chinese take-out and Irish guy at your hotel later?”

  Now it was my turn to grin at him. “Only if you bring your handcuffs,” I teased.

  “Oh, really? Have I created a monster?”

  “I never said the handcuffs were for me.”

  You can guess how that conversation ended.

  The gate guards nodded to me as I left, and one actually smiled. My buoyant mood was crushed by the sight of a fourth raven perched on the upper pediment, beady black eyes staring down at me through the windshield.

  ****

  I woke the next morning, tangled in the blankets, terror shrieking through my veins. Shreds of my nightmare played behind my eyes and the sound of beating wings echoed in my ears. Gradually the sound was replaced by the water pouring in the shower. Brad must be in there, I thought. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be alone anymore with Catherine’s ghosts.

  I padded naked into the hotel bathroom and pulled open the shower curtain. After we certainly cost the hotel a pretty penny in hot water usage, we dressed and grabbed a coffee and breakfast at a diner Brad was familiar with. They made a pretty decent omelet, which I ate while I pondered our burgeoning relationship. He’d brought clothes, more than one set, and a toothbrush. What did that mean?

  We headed to the prison in my rental. Brad had a few things to take care of at his office, and I was early for my appointment with Catherine. I was somewhat surprised I hadn’t seen the lawyer again. Maybe he was as freaked out by her as everyone else, including me. Plus, we didn’t really have anything to charge her with, though the lawyer was supposed to protect her from herself. No evidence had been found that she was even telling the truth, though, and eventually, if something didn’t come to light soon, Catherine Meara would be set free upon an unsuspecting world again.

  I braced myself for more acerbic comments from her about the subject of my sex life but as usual her mood was unpredictable. The snappy, bitchy mood from yesterday was replaced with the melancholy unhappiness she’d displayed when talking about her “pretty boy.”

  “My next raven was chosen by my dark lord and the Hermit card. I’d hitched as far as I could from where I’d killed the stupid girl but I got lost. I wandered for days in the woods, so thirsty and hungry. Can you imagine it? All these things I’d done, all I’d lived through, only to be lost in the forest. I felt forsaken, I felt the Goddess’s hand all around me, and her hatred of me. I was alone and cold and afraid, again. Have you ever woken to find yourself living in a nightmare? That’s what it was like. I wondered if the dark lord had forsaken me, but then on the magic day, the seventeenth day, I found the shack in the clearing, surrounded by smaller buildings. I’d survived on berries and leaves, and rain when it rained or dew from the trees when it didn’t. The shack was like a beacon of hope, a symbol of civilization, no matter how pathetic it seemed.

  “Smoke curled from the crumbling chimney. I was so cold, I wanted to rush to its source and bury myself in it. I haven’t lived this long, or done the things I’ve done, by letting misery cloud my judgment. I crept around the back of the building to a sagging window, looking inside for the source of the fire. There was an old man sitting there in a rocking chair next to a potbellied stove, covered with a quilt. He was reading a book, just rocking back and forth. It was late October, I think, by this time and cold as hell in those mountains. I shivered more at the sight of such warmth, a luxury I’d not known for a long time.

  “I made myself retreat to the woods, begging my dark lord to let me sacrifice the man and steal his fire. After many hours of hoping and praying, I finally heard His blessed voice whisper on the wind, sighing through the leaves of the trees with a sibilant whisper. He approved my choice and I was ecstatic once more, no longer feeling the cold, bathed in the glow of His love.

  “I waited until the old man’s light went out. Since there were no power lines to cut I assumed he used kerosene lanterns for lighting. It was very rustic, suitable for a hermit. I snuck into his house while he slept. He didn’t even lock his door. I was quiet and careful but it wouldn’t have mattered. He slept like an old tired man, snoring too loud to hear anything and sure he was safe in his own bed in the middle of nowhere.

  “I’d found a rope in one of the outbuildings and brought it in with me. He had an indoor garden in one of those littler shacks and I gorged myself earlier on hothouse tomatoes and strawberries. Another of the smaller buildings was clearly where he butchered meat, deer or such, since there were wicked looking meat hooks hanging from the ceiling and blood stains on the dirt floor. That room looked interesting but the dark lord whispered that it was not to be. I moved on.

  “Even better was the building which h
oused an old truck. It was pretty well maintained; it looked shiny, polished, and well cared for. I couldn’t tell you the make or year, but it was pretty old, maybe even a classic. I didn’t care what it was as long as it had four wheels and rolled me away from there.

  “The rope was in a building that served as sort of a shop. There were tools of all kinds stored in there, and objects made of wood. I stole the rope and while he slept, I tied the old man to the bed. He never stirred as I wrapped the rope around his body and the bed frame, over and over, until he was like a fly in a spider’s web. In a way, I guess he was.”

  “Catherine, do you have the names of any of these people? What was the old man’s name?” I was hoping she would give me something for Brad to go on, remembering our conversation the day before.

  “I don’t know the old man’s name. I never bothered to find out. My beautiful boy’s name was Jason. The stupid girl was Melissa. There are a few more whose names I do know, but each in their turn, Sophia.”

  “That’s fair enough, I guess. What happened to the old man?”

  “He drew the Hermit card, as I’ve said.”

  “Can you tell me more about what that means?”

  It means he lived and died right there in that little shack, like the hermit he was. It took him much longer to die than I thought it would, but finally he went. As always, I performed the ritual in blood. Then I left and took the old guy’s truck to Renovo. The dark lord said the next raven was waiting there, just south a ways. I dumped the truck in town, cleaned it of prints and signs of me, and let my feet take me where I was needed next.”

  “What do you mean, “It took him longer to die than you thought?”

  “Well, I always read that it takes the human body something like three days maximum to die of dehydration but he lasted almost two weeks strapped to that bed.”