Grave Omen (Raina Kirkland Book 3)

by Diana Graves

  “She seems to think otherwise,” I said.

  “She does,” he looked down at the floor. “We enjoy each other’s company from time to time, but she knows that’s all it is.”

  I looked back at her and she was hot with anger. I could feel it. “I don’t think she agrees with you on that.”

  Alistair bent over and whispered in my ear so quietly that maybe, just maybe, no one heard it but me. “She warms my bed, but you warm my heart.” He trailed a finger down my jaw to my chin and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me. Looking into his true blue eyes, my legs felt a little weak. But he turned back to the table and took his seat beside the angry she-vamp.

  I stayed where he left me and watched him lean into her and whisper loud enough for every vampire to hear, but no humans. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself, acting possessive, like the jealous girlfriend. You begged to come, you said you could contribute. I don’t believe you. I think you came to keep tabs on me. But I’m your master and nothing more. Fly home.”

  “Alistair!” she whispered loudly so that it amounted to a soft shout.

  “FLY HOME!” he roared. Katie and I both jumped in our skin, but no one else moved.

  Roslyn looked horrified and I felt bad for her. She didn’t love him. Reading her thoughts, I knew that being with him was purely a status thing, but her embarrassment was almost too much to take. I looked away as she stood and ran out of the door. When I heard it close I looked back up to find everyone looking at me. The room was empty of everyone except those sitting at the table.

  “Are you ready to begin?” Damon asked me.

  I looked out over the people sitting at the table: Fillips, Mato, Alistair, Seth, Melvern, Olathia, Gabriel, Katie and Damon. These were my allies: two officers of the law, three master vampires, my doctor, my uncle, my sister and the father of my children. These people I could trust. I opened my mouth to speak when there were three loud knocks. The double doors opened on their own and Raphael was standing in the doorway.

  “Is this the Raina Kirkland fan club?” he asked with a long smirk.

  ALL FOR NAUGHT

  RAPHAEL TOOK ROSLYN’S seat beside Alistair and sat smugly for a moment, looking us over. No one said anything. The waves of warm electrified air were enough to steal my breath away. I felt bad for Mato and Alistair because of their proximity to him. The closer the demon the pricklier the air felt and both vampires looked uncomfortable as hell. Cautiously, I took my seat at the table.

  He looked at each person sitting at the table in turn. He made a different face for each of them ranging from a devilish smile or stifled laugh to a deep frown or aggressive soul-eating stare. He looked at me lastly with a grin. I didn’t understand the reason behind the faces he made or why no one was talking. Could they not talk? Or was it simply that no one broke the silence so the silence wasn’t broken.

  I was still half considering the near laugh he shot at Katie or the pure hate he seemed to have for Mato before he said, “You have nine loyal companions, Raina, just nine: three that you fucked and one that you’re about to, two of them are family, one’s your friend and a cop and the other two are only here because people made them come.” I’d only had sex with Mato and Damon, but I was sure the third he spoke of was Melvern. That only happened in my head. Even so I didn’t correct him on it. The sex felt real enough to me. But who was I about to sleep with?

  “Are you here to help or just make condescending remarks that piss me off?” I asked him. I heard Katie breathe in her shock at my frankness.

  “Can’t I do both?” he laughed. “Come on Raina. These aren’t the right people; well some are, but I’m sure you’d trade some out for others.”

  He was right. If I was being honest I’d rather have my Aunt Fauna here to replace Olathia, and as much as I didn’t like him, as an ex-bounty hunter, Ruy could contribute better than my doctor.

  “You don’t have to say a thing. I know exactly who needs to go where,” said Raphael and with a wave of his hand Olathia and Gabriel were gone.

  Melvern looked at the empty chair where Olathia had been sitting beside him and then back up at the demon as though he couldn’t care less, and maybe he couldn’t. However, Alistair stood and shouted at the demon.

  “What have you done with Gabriel?!” British accent and all.

  Raphael looked up at him from his seat, a toothy grin spreading wide across his face. “Those two are back where they belong; where they would have been had you not forced them to this table.”

  “They’re in bed,” Melvern said without much inflection.

  “Yes.” Raphael looked at me. “And who do you think should take their seats?”

  “Fauna and Ruy,” I said.

  “A skilled witch and an almost legendary huntsman, very good,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you’d want Ruy here, given your strained relationship,” said Melvern.

  “Our little drama aside, I value his skill set, which includes a sharp mind. I don’t need him to like me to work with him,” I said.

  “I misjudged you, Raina. You are a businessman,” said Raphael before he waved his hand and Fauna and Ruy appeared in the empty chairs. Ruy was in his pajama pants and nothing else. His long black curly hair was hanging just past his shoulders. Fauna was naked and wet, obviously taken mid shower or bath. They both made sounds of alarm but Ruy was the first to start yelling profanities.

  “Calm down,” said Mato.

  “I will not calm the fuck down. What the fuck is going on?” Ruy bellowed.

  “We’ve been invited to a meeting of sorts, you buffoon,” said Fauna. She sat tall and unashamed of her nudity. “I suppose it’s the smirking demon that brought us here. You conjured us; could you conjure some clothes as well? This old castle’s a bit chilly.”

  “My lady,” Raphael said with a flirtatious smile. “I never could refuse a beautiful witch.” He bowed his head and she was wearing a stunning royal purple robe with elegant embroidery that left much of her breasts bare. Her long red hair was dry, a mess of curls. She gave him pursed lips and a raised eye brow, the signature Kirkland look. “Spectacular,” he said eyeing her for a time.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “So why are we all here? What’s this meeting about? And who the hell invited a demon?” asked Ruy. He was trying to appear calm and collected but what he managed was something almost funny: red face, tight lips and flared nostrils.

  “It’s about the case I asked you to work with us on,” Fillips said. “The perps have made it personal by targeting your soon-to-be stepdaughter.”

  Ruy sighed loudly, “What you mean to say is that Raina made herself a target.” He gave me a smug, resentful face with a tight jaw. I wanted to show him a rude hand gesture. My fingers twitched with the impulse, but I didn’t do it. He wasn’t completely wrong. Just being alive was target enough. I looked down at the table, closed my eyes and took some calming breaths.

  “That’s absurd!” said Fillips.

  “It’s not,” I said quietly. All their eyes were on me and I forced myself to meet them, to look them in the eyes, one by one. “To make a long story very short, I’ll just state the facts and then I’m going to ask you for help.” And I did. Sticking to the facts, I told them everything that seemed even the slightest bit relevant; what I was, what that meant to the gods and who the people were that the gods charged with my death. They were killers in every sense of the word. They lived to kill and killed for a living and they weren’t the sort to give up. They were the sort that killed entire families. I looked directly at Fillips when I explained exactly who she pulled out of that river, an unfortunate woman who just so happened to share my name.

  “And the other bodies, they were her children and husband, weren’t they?” she asked.

  “Yes, the men who hunt me will want to destroy my lineage.”

  “Isobel?” Mato asked with fear in his voice and eyes. He really cared for her and that made me think better of him.

/>   “Maybe,” Katie spoke up. “Only a handful of people even knew Raina was pregnant; close friends, family and EI officers. Then again, the text is vague on the subject, so there really is no guarantee that the killers will stop at Raina and Isobel.” She put her purse on the table and pulled out the leather bound book, Igigi.

  “I thought you agreed to keep your little sister out of all this shit?” spat Ruy. “It was part of our deal. You broke it; you’re out of the wedding.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the wedding, you idiot!” I roared. My chest was rising and falling with heavy breathing. “This is life and death. It takes precedence over everything. I will not let these monsters kill my children!” I didn’t realize I was standing until Damon put a hand on my arm to calm me. I sat back down and Katie opened the book.

  There were papers scribbled with notes in the book. “This book goes into detail about the ritual; the rules the hunters must abide by.” And for a good fifteen minutes Katie and Damon educated everyone on all the details of the ritual. Katie even created hand-outs for everyone as a visual aid. She pulled them out of her purse and handed them around the table, half fact sheet, half map with connect-the-dots in a crescent or bow shape over Western Washington.

  “How long have you known all of this?” Fillips asked me once all the information was presented to them. There was just a hint of irritation in her voice.

  “All of it? Not long. Piece by piece we got the full picture over the last few days,” I said quietly.

  “Days! You kept information from us for days?!”

  “What good would it have done you? I didn’t know what the murders meant until after the last sacrifice was performed. I didn’t know anyone besides me and mine were in danger until after the woman was found dead. So, in what way would telling you what little information I knew when I knew it have done anybody?”

  “You still should have told me what was going on. Let me be the judge of what’s important or what’s useful!” Her eyes softened. “I know you don’t trust me, Raina.”

  “It wasn’t trust issues that made me keep things to myself. It was guilt,” I said quietly.

  “No one blames you,” said Damon. “You should have come to us.”

  “Should have, could have, would have,” said Raphael.

  That made me look at him as a thought came to mind. “You once told me that demons can’t see the future, but you see all the pieces on the table.”

  He smiled, “And here I thought you weren’t even listening to me.” He frowned. “You didn’t listen well, though. I said that I see all the pieces on the board, not the table.” He shook his head.

  “Whatever, can you see Orestes and his men? Do you know where they are?” I asked.

  “If we know where they are, we can hunt them,” said Mato and he and Ruy exchanged knowing grins from across the table. Guess they like hunting, too. Like calls to like, I suppose.

  “Sadly, as thorough as young Katie’s research is, Gods don’t share everything with humanity. One tidbit of info left out of that fancy book was that no one can find the hunters. They’re virtually un-huntable. You can’t seek them out. They seek you out or you don’t see them.”

  “Shit,” said Seth.

  “Tons,” said Raphael matter-of-factly.

  “So, we can’t find them and even if we did, we can’t kill them,” said Alistair. He didn’t look defeated; he looked as though he was thinking very hard. “If we can’t kill them, perhaps we can contain them?”

  “Good luck with that,” said Raphael. “Even if you manage to find them, they’re warriors of unmatched skill and cunning.”

  “For someone who can’t see them, you seem to know a good bit about them,” said Fauna.

  He shrugged, “What can I say? Heaven and Hell are full of gossipers.”

  “No one travels in this day and age without leaving behind a digital trail. There has to be a way of tracking them,” said Fillips. “There has to be some way of finding them.”

  I looked around the table at my most loyal friends and family. They were all smart, capable people, but they weren’t willing to admit that there was a way to find the hunters.

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I said. “You only see them if they seek you. We use me as bait.”

  “No,” said many of them at once, some louder than others. Raphael and Ruy alone seemed happy with the idea of putting me in harm’s way.

  “I’m not sacrificing myself,” I said to calm the protest. “But that just solves half of the equation. We know how to get them where we want them; what next?”

  “I don’t think capturing them is an option,” said Damon. “We have to kill them.”

  “How?” asked Ruy.

  “That’s obvious too,” said Katie. “Isn’t it? We can’t shoot them, burn them or blow them up, but if they break the rules then they’re human.” Raphael clapped for her but the rest of the table was quiet.

  “What rules can we make them break?” asked Mato when the demon stopped applauding.

  “This late in the game, most of the rules deal with how to dispose of the bodies, but if we can somehow get them to leave the region and hunt Raina and Isobel outside the crescent shape then—”

  “They’re easy pickings’,” I said with a smile.

  “They were chosen by the gods to hunt in their name for a reason and it wasn’t because they were easy to kill,” said Raphael. “Didn’t I just say that they were skilled warriors? I thought I just said that.”

  “Okay-not easy, but easier than before,” I said. “How do we trick them into thinking they’re in one place, when they’re really in another?”

  “That depends on how they know where they are. Do they use the stars? If that’s the case, they chose the wrong place to hunt. Washington has the worst case of cloud cover,” said Ruy.

  Damon sat up a little straighter and cleared his throat. “The sacrifices cleansed that land, making it holy. In essence the priests made the entire region into Trivia’s temple.”

  “Yes,” said Katie. “Killing Raina inside the region is akin to killing her over the altar. Killing her outside the temple is an affront to Trivia, an insult. Hunting outside the region isn’t strictly against the rules, but it’s almost never done simply to ensure that the target isn’t accidently killed outside the region.”

  “So, strictly speaking, they could be hunting her right now?” asked Seth.

  “No,” said Damon. “They wouldn’t risk it. There’s no time limit for The Hunt. They’re immortal. They can out wait her.”

  “That still doesn’t answer the question of how they know where their boundaries are,” said Ruy.

  Katie started flipping through the pages of the book. “This is why I insisted we take this book. We can take as many notes as possible, but you never know what questions may need answering.” She turned the page and skimmed it with her finger running down the length of the page. “Ah, this paragraph talks about the huntsmen. Loosely translated it says: With the land clean, they can physically feel the presence of their patron god or goddess watching over the ritual. The god is their guide.”

  “But Trivia gave it up,” I said.

  “Without their Goddess’s presence how can they know?” asked Mato.

  Fillips raised her hand before suggesting, “Global positioning system, GPS? There was a good window of time between the last sacrifice and Trivia calling it all off. Who knows how many hours these hunters had total knowledge of what the region was. They could have easily mapped out the coordinates of the sacrifices and input them into any smart phone or GPS device.”

  Ruy’s hands hit the table with a loud smack! “Shit. I know how to get them where we want them. GPS Spoofer. If we know they have a device, we can hijack the signal and make them think they’re somewhere they aren’t.”

  “But I’ll have to be inside the region in the first place to get them to come to us,” I said.

  “Yes, and then we can make them chase after you and once they cros
s that invisible line, Boom!” said Fillips. “We’ll shoot them full of led, they die, the end.”

  Mato inclined his head toward her and whispered, “We’re officers of the law.”

  She didn’t look at him. Her face was serious, yet unfocused, when she said, “After what these men have done, I think we’ll be easily forgiven for ending them. Hell, we may even get a medal.”

  “How will they know where I am once I enter the region again?”

  “They’ll know because they know where you are now,” said Raphael. “They’ve probably already searched your home, your mother’s home, your aunt’s home. They probably even followed your family here as far as they dare. I’d wager that they have all the main roads off this mountain being monitored. If you leave Darkness, they’ll know it.” Yikes! A chill ran up my spine. “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Raina’s safe, everyone is safe for the moment.”

  Seth shook his head before destroying our bubble with logic, “But Katie just said that hunting outside the region isn’t strictly forbidden. Meaning, they haven’t broken any rules until they kill Raina outside the holy land.” Fillips’ head hit the table in defeat.

  “She’ll just turn into a vampire,” Raphael offered. “I say we give this GPS plan a try. That book is an ancient text, badly translated into French.”

  “We need a definite plan,” said Alistair through tight lips. “These are too many ifs and maybes, nothing solid, nothing reliable. I’m not satisfied with this bait and chase. Putting Raina in real danger? I won’t allow it.”

  “Alistair,” I tried to reason.

  “No!” He stood from the table abruptly and walked away a few paces before turning back around. “This is madness! None of this makes sense. Why would these chosen men not obey their God? Why would they risk their lives to kill a woman they’ve never met? For the thrill of it?”

  “Mad men incite madness,” Melvern said.

  Damon stood to calm Alistair and I might have joined him but what Alistair said made sense. Why hadn’t I asked the same questions? Too much was going on, too many emotions, too many tragedies, just too much. I hadn’t really had time to think. Every time I had a moment to myself with just my own thoughts in my head something always distracted me. I felt like I was on an emotional rollercoaster from the moment Fillips called me about the case. Everyone was talking at once, arguing, debating, brainstorming, but I was just thinking, thinking about why, why would Orestes want to hunt me so badly? Why would he kill that other woman? Raphael said there was no time limit to the hunt, so why the rush to kill? None of it made sense.