Grave Omen (Raina Kirkland Book 3)

by Diana Graves

  I looked away again because Nick’s emotions toward Adia were too strong to block. He hated her. There was no real rhyme or reason to it. He just hated her. She didn’t infect us, she had no say in the matter, but he hated her nonetheless.

  “You haven’t asked about Katie,” I said. I wanted to change the subject but I’d just changed it from one woman he hated to another. But the hate he felt toward Katie was weaker and mixed with a kind of disappointment and regret.

  “You’ve kept me up to date on her through your emails.”

  “Well, I have some happy news. She’s met a boy.”

  “Oh, goody!” Nick joked.

  “It’s Everett,” I smiled.

  “What?” he nearly shouted. “Everett, that little dweeb?”

  “It’s been years since you’ve seen him. He’s a big dweeb now. And I think he’s good for her. He’s kind and patient and that’s what she needs right now.”

  “He’s also a wizard, Raina. How can she accept that?” he said with some thoughtfulness in his voice.

  “She’s changed. Hell, I’m not even sure if the Katie we used to know was ever the real Katie,” I said, and silence grew for a time before I finally broke it. “Tell me about Orestes. What did the Nascosto have to say about him?”

  “All they know about him are a lot of convoluted stories that contradicted each other at times. The majority of the stories were familiar to me. They spoke of his tragic family and his ruthlessness. His father killed his sister as a human sacrifice to Artemis and so his mother killed his father. Apollo then ordered Orestes to kill his mother and uncle. This all drove him quite mad of course. He was put on trial for murder and acquitted. He was then ordered to perform trials in order to rid himself of the madness. This is where the stories begin to contradict each other and go off in strange directions. Some legends say he killed his cousin’s fiancé on their wedding day and stole her away for himself. Yet, they also spoke of a romantic relationship between him and his best friend, Pylades. Another says he journeyed deep into the land of barbarians to retrieve a relic for Artemis and while there he was reunited with his sister who did not die after all. Maybe both are true. At some point he established Artemis’s sanctuary on the north shore of Lake Nemi, where countless human sacrifices took place for a very long time.”

  “Um, okay, that’s all messed up and whatnot, but how does that help us?” I asked. “And where does Trivia come into it?”

  “Artemis goes by many names all over the old world; Trivia is just one of them. She is diva tryformis, a try-goddess; god of The Hunt, the moon and the Netherworld. She’s the mother of witches and queen of the fey. She guards the veil between our plane of existence and the next.”

  “Wow, just think, all that badassness wanted me dead not twenty-four hours ago.”

  “Well, that’s all they know about him. If we’re to believe Raphael, sometime between then and now he became Trivia’s pet hunter, as mad as ever,” said Nick. His voice was closer. I looked down and found him leaning over the driver’s seat to hand me the pitcher. “You should take this back in,” he said, and I bent over and took the empty pitcher. It was still pretty heavy.

  “You two are pathetic,” came Raphael’s voice and again I jumped, hitting my head on the door frame again.

  “Damn it!” I said with a hand on my head. I looked for the demon and found him leaning against another car. He looked as pretty as ever, wearing nicely pressed trendy clothes; geek chic. His legs were crossed at his ankles as he stared at me from behind pink-tinted round glasses that matched his hot pink silky bowtie.

  Nick got out of the car and came to my side with that dizzying speed the undead are capable of. “Pathetic?” he questioned.

  “I thought I could leave you two to it, but evidently I was sorrowfully mistaken, wasn’t I? All you found on Orestes was some poorly written half-truths that any moron with access to the internet could have easily found. Hell, our sweet Katie has done far greater sleuthing than either of you.”

  “What is he talking about?” Nick asked me.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it. Katie’s my apprentice. She wants to be a hunter, like me. I gave her a task. A desk job to keep her safe. I asked her to investigate the mass murders and find out the who and why of it all. She’s brilliant, really. She deduced on her own that this had to be some kind of cult activity so old that there were no records of it ever happening before. She found an old book on the gods in the library, but she couldn’t check it out. We’re going back tomorrow.”

  “Raina is paraphrasing and doing a horrible job of it at that,” began Raphael, but my phone rang before he could insult me further. It rang a second time and he pointed at my purse, “You should get that. It’s important, and it showcases my point perfectly.”

  KILLING RAINA KIRKLAND

  THE SOUND OF Detective Fillips’ frantic voice would haunt my nightmares. “Raina! Raina!” she shouted, hysterical to the point of an uncharacteristic shrillness. “Are you okay? Tell me you’re alive! I just pulled a woman out of Green River. She has your name etched into her chest and that’s the only part that’s intact. They’re butchered; a whole family hacked into pieces! At least, we think it was a family. There are at least enough pieces here for two adults, male and female and three kids, maybe four. Fuck! This can’t be you I’m looking at! Oh God Raina, pick up the fucking phone!” I realized only then that I hadn’t said anything when I accepted the call. I’d dropped the pitcher and she heard it break. “Raina?”

  “Goddess,” was all I could utter.

  “Raina, are you okay?” she asked.

  I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I looked at Nick. He heard everything with his vampire hearing. He could see the weight of the guilt and shock both bearing down on me. It was a breaking load. And I thought my brain was in a reckless sort of fog before. I couldn’t breathe let alone think.

  Raphael grabbed the phone from me. “I’m sorry,” he said in a playful voice. “Raina can’t come to the phone right now. She’s about to shit herself. I’ll have her call you back later. Toodles!” And he hung up on her and handed the phone back to me with too much force. It fell through my fingers and broke on the pavement. He spread his arms out, as if to say, all this I should have known and could have prevented. Just that simple gesture was enough to send me over the edge.

  I rushed him. I grabbed him by his clean, pressed clothes and slammed him against the car. He was laughing. There was no way I could have done that if he didn’t let me but I was too angry to care. I growled in his face. I felt myself slipping into a sort of madness.

  “Stop laughing! People are dying and you’re all too happy. You had a point to make so make it! Say what you’ve come to say! Do it. Do it now! I’m tired of your fucking games!”

  “Young Katie already told you, stupid witch,” and in Katie’s voice he said, “‘It just seems these people are making the murders harder than they have to be. It feels, I don’t know, almost as if they’re going out of their way to do things a certain way, you know?’ Orestes and the men who follow him are constricted by the ritual. He’s not simply going against orders and off the map. He’s playing his part, Raina, and that means he has to do things a certain way. He can’t just kill you the easiest possible way. And all he has is a name and a general region laid out by the sacrifices. Do you know exactly how many women named Raina Kirkland live in the crescent shape Katie so cleverly discovered? There were two—now there’s one.”

  I let go of him and looked at Nick. It took me a few attempts but eventually I could talk. “What’s the killing ritual? What are the rules?” I was looking at Nick but I was talking to Raphael. I needed to see a kind face then, not the demon’s offensive mug.

  “I’m a demon, not the Encyclopedia Britannica. You and Katie can figure that out together tomorrow.”

  Nick stepped up then. “We don’t have time for your games. Tell us what you know!”

  I looked back at Raphael because he was laughing again a
nd it didn’t match the situation. It was a joyous sound. “Oh, oh, that’s rich. I’m sorry, but if you could see this from my perspective you’d see the humor in your words. Oh, golly.”

  He was laughing still while a couple of ladies walked by us to get to their car. Nick hid his face from them but I watched them closely, attentively enough to probably have freaked them out a bit.

  I took in a great breath and let it out slowly. My eyes softened because again I felt tired, too tired to be angry with him. “Please, help us,” I asked calmly after the ladies pulled out of the parking lot and drove away.

  Raphael gave me raised brows. “I like you better angry—.” He walked a few paces away from us and straightened out his outfit.

  “Raphael!” I called after him and he turned around, but his face seemed hidden by some trick of shadow.

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t have meddled. Thomas would still be living with a single Damon in Bastion Fatal, safe from the wrath of gods and their pets. You’d probably be bedding that vampire.”

  “Mato?”

  “What, no. I give you more credit than that. I was referring to Alistair.”

  “Then you give her no credit at all,” Nick spat.

  “We’re just friends,” I said, but I shot Nick a wary look. Yup, he did not look pleased. He looked betrayed.

  “Friends?” he asked. “How can you be friends with that monster after what he did to me?”

  “Friends can easily become lovers and what’s a few days of mind numbing torture between friends, am I right?” Raphael joked. “Come kids; keep your eyes on the prize. Orestes is going to come for you and he means to kill you all, not just Raina.”

  “He cut me, Raina, he cut me with silver and tied me up for hours while he raped and murdered people right in front of me. And you’re friends with him; the man who did all of that to me, after what I’ve given up for you? I have no home, no real freedom!”

  Raphael was smiling. He’d meant to bring up my relationship with Alistair to piss off Nick, but for what reason, to what end? For Goddess’s sake, damn this scheming demon! I didn’t have time for this.

  “I didn’t ask you to kill those people, Nick.”

  “Nil, for fuck’s sake, my name is Nil; not Nick, not Nicholas. Nil!” he shouted mere inches from my face. “I never thought you’d betray me, Raina, not you.”

  “We’re getting a little off topic here,” interjected Raphael, still smiling, but we ignored him.

  “Nick, he’s changed. He’s not the same man who did that to you.”

  Nick shook his head with a deep frown and eyes on the ground. “No, no. He’s a monster.” He looked up at me then and there was such pain in his eyes that I had to look away. “I can’t be around you right now. I’m sorry.” He backed away from me.

  “Nick?” I called out, but he turned and ran and then he was gone, just gone. I looked after him, feeling like shit, but not sure how to fix it. Alistair had saved my life time and time again. The moment Adia left him he was there for me, always. No favor was ever too big. He couldn’t help what the madness had made him do, right? I closed my eyes, so I didn’t see Raphael approaching from behind.

  With his hands clasped behind his back he set his head on my shoulder. I jumped and looked at him before shoving him off of me. “Why did you do that? You knew he hates Alistair!” I shouted.

  “You’re always good for a show,” he said, I didn’t respond. “Don’t worry about old Nil. He’ll come back. He just needs time to get over the worst betrayal he’s ever experienced by the only person in the whole world he still loved. That’s all.” I gave him a mean look. “What?”

  I just kneeled down and started picking up phone and glass fragments off the pavement. I pocketed my sim card. I’d need that when I got a new phone. Raphael bent down, too, but not to help. He just watched me.

  “Is this how you deal? You tidy up, like some 1950’s housewife.”

  “No,” I said, but I kept my eyes down to hide the tears. “I don’t want to drive over this shit when I leave this fucking place.” I stood up and threw the glass and plastic away from my car.

  “Hey, come here,” the demon said as he stood up and spread his arms open. “Come on, we’re going to hug it out.”

  I gave him a cocked eyebrow. “No.”

  “Yeah,” he said beckoning me with his hands. “You need it, bring it in.”

  I couldn’t get the look of ‘what the fuck’ off my face as he stepped forward and embraced me. His hug was warm and tight and I was stiff in his arms. I tried pulling away but he tightened his grip on me. A car pulled up and a group of women stepped out of it and made their way toward the entrance of the club and still, Raphael hugged me.

  “You can let go any time,” I said.

  “Not until you relax into it. Hug me back.” I rolled my eyes, still wet with tears and wrapped my arms around him. Awkwardly, I set my head on his shoulder. “There, there, Ray,” he said, using my mom’s nickname for me. Intellectually, I knew the thing holding me was a soulless, dangerous, evil demon from hell, but in that moment it almost didn’t matter. I did need to be held. I hugged him a little tighter and he rocked me a little, back and forth. I was losing my mind. How can someone know they’re losing their mind and not be able to stop it? “It’s all going to be okay,” he said.

  “How do you know that?”

  He pulled away a little so that he could look at me. “I don’t know that, but sometimes I forget how fragile you things can be,” he said with a shake of his head.

  I gave him a mean pout. “You things?”

  He smiled. “There’s my angry little spitfire. Now, back to business, yes? Right now Orestes probably thinks he killed the right Raina. You should have at least a couple of days before he hunts again. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he’s going to be angry when he realizes he chose poorly. I mean, he’s used to hunting demigods that are trying to hide who and what they are by playing the normal every day human types. He probably didn’t think a demigoddess would put herself so plainly in the local news, like yourself.”

  “I don’t put myself anywhere,” I said.

  “Yeah, whatever,” he said as though he didn’t believe me. “I suggest you and Katie get cozy with that book she found in the library. Until next time, bye-bye!” he said before he just up and vanished.

  UNWANTED COMPANY

  I REALLY HAD no idea what made me think I’d come home to a calm house, where I could enjoy a hot shower and a warm bed. A family had been slaughtered, and my name was carved into someone’s chest. Doctor Gabriel’s orders to relax just seemed more and more useless to me. Four unmarked police cruisers were parked in my drive way and almost all the lights were on in the house. I parked the car along the curb and started up the walkway to my home. I had to admit it. I needed their help and I couldn’t leave them in the dark about anything. The gods already knew what I was, so where was the danger in coming clean? People wouldn’t like it. They’d fear me. Fear me enough to leave me the fuck alone? Probably not. But if Orestes was coming after my family, they had to know why and I had to ask Fillips for help. Keeping secrets at this point would be beyond stupid, especially since Nick ran off. I took a deep breath. I had some explaining to do…

  Before my hand could grasp the handle to the front door it opened and Damon was standing in the doorway. I only had a second to say, “Hi,” before he embraced me tightly.

  His voice broke when he asked, “You’re okay?” He kissed me half a dozen times before he released me and held me at arm’s length to look me over.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s get into the house.”

  He gestured that I should walk ahead of him, but leaned in to me and whispered, “Everyone is on edge. The police and hunters are restless. Your family is scared. Mato and Alistair are arguing.”

  “Why is Alistair here?” I asked while I walked into the house, but Damon couldn’t answer me. The moment I came in I was bombarded by people: Fillips, Uncle Robert and
Katie. They were all talking at once. Beyond them I could see Thomas sitting on the stairs, looking at me with tears in his eyes. “I need to talk to my son. Wait in the living room, please.”

  I moved past them and kneeled down in front of Thomas. Katie and Damon stayed in the foyer while the others moved down the hall and into the living room.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Where were you?” Thomas asked me.

  “I went to visit Uncle Michael” I said, and he wiped his eyes and smiled.

  “You mean, Mick,” he corrected me. “Why is everyone freaking out? They made me think you were dead or something.”

  “I’m perfectly fine. This is just police business. You know I help them out sometimes. But you have a busy day tomorrow, huh? School, a wedding and then trick or treating with me and Katie.” I looked up at Katie standing within ear shot. “Why don’t the two of you get ready for bed while I talk with the police?”

  Katie gave me a nod and looked to Thomas. “Come on then,” she said with a smile and I watched them ascend the stairs. I stood and kept looking on until I heard his bedroom door close behind them.

  “Raina!” Fillips shouted from the living room. She was frowning at me but there was some tenderness in her eyes, relief at seeing me maybe. Looking past the detective I could see that my living room was full, standing room only.

  Damon stepped ahead of me. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and I made my way into the living room.

  There were eight or so EI officers and three bounty hunters that were crowded around my coffee table and sofa. Where the forth hunter was I didn’t know. The three that were in my house were the worst of the four: Ass hole, Knight and the unremarkable non-descriptive fourth guy, who was a quiet little troll who gave me dirty looks. I wasn’t particularly fond of the overly friendly Mr. Henry, but at least he was something different from the hate-filled bullies standing in my living room. Mato stood with the police in his usual trench coat, dress shirt, jeans and cowboy boots with all his long dark hair tied back, leaving his beautiful open face free of distraction. The hunters, Mato and the police all had the same look to them; fresh from a gruesome crime scene, they looked tired, anxious and ready for a fight.