Medium Rare: (Intermix)

by Meg Benjamin

  All the while, the dull thumps continued from the front porch—birds throwing themselves against the walls, the door, the windows. Now and then, she heard glass splinter, but the shutters kept everything outside.

  Or anyway she hoped they did.

  When they’d covered all the windows, she stood in the middle of the room, hugging herself. The thumps seemed to be decreasing, little by little, but she still heard them. Whatever was out there hadn’t given up yet.

  She reached back to switch on the lamp again. A little light probably wouldn’t make much difference one way or the other.

  Evan stood in a corner watching her. “You want to tell me what’s going on here, Rosie?”

  Anxiety churned in her stomach. She really didn’t want to tell him anything. “I don’t know what made this happen. Truly I don’t.”

  “But you knew to put up the shutters.” His amber eyes seemed to burn in the dimness of the darkened room, almost like Helen’s glowing eyes in the other corner.

  “Of course.” She managed a decent imitation of indifference. “I didn’t want a living room full of dead birds. I figured the shutters would keep them out.”

  He watched her for another moment, eyes narrowed. She found herself wishing he’d put his arms around her again, but she was fairly certain he wouldn’t.

  “Maybe I should go home now,” he said slowly.

  She listened for a moment longer. No more thumps came from the porch. No more bird bodies struck the windows. She stepped to one of the side windows and peeked around the edge of the shutter. The moon shone brightly through the clear night sky. Not a wisp of fog remained.

  Rose exhaled. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath. “Whatever you want, Evan.”

  He walked toward the front door. “I’ve still got your kibble in the back of my car. I’ll carry it in for you.”

  “I’ll help.” Amazingly enough her voice sounded almost normal, despite the fact that her pulse still pounded like a jackhammer.

  She started to follow him out onto the porch, then collided with the wall of muscle that was his back.

  He stood frozen in front of her, one arm extended to keep her back.

  Rose looked down. “Holy Christ,” she whispered.

  The porch floor was covered in dark bodies. Those nearest the railings gleamed in the moonlight.

  “Ravens,” he murmured. “They were ravens. I didn’t know they even had that many ravens in all of San Antonio. Hell, I didn’t know they had any.”

  She swallowed. For a moment, she couldn’t say anything at all. The birds lay two and three deep around the windows, like sleek black cobblestones lining her front porch. “Holy Christ,” she whispered again.

  “A lot of them.” He shook his head. “It sounded like a lot, but I didn’t realize how many.”

  She concentrated on breathing. Something had flung scores of ravens at her windows, trying to get in. Now the broken, twisted evidence lay two-deep on her front porch. And whatever it was would probably try again, maybe with something bigger and nastier.

  Behind her, Helen stood in the doorway, growling.

  “You want some help cleaning this up?”

  Cleaning up. She hadn’t even thought about that until now. She couldn’t leave the porch in this state, could she?

  Helen growled again.

  “No, thanks. I’ll take care of it tomorrow.” Preferably in full daylight. With no fearsome thingies hiding in the bushes.

  “You’re sure? There’s a lot of birds here.”

  Rose closed her eyes. “It’s okay.” Maybe if she repeated it often enough, he’d believe it.

  He watched her for a moment, then shook his head. “This is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen, Rosie. You should call animal control. Find out why a flock of ravens chose to commit mass suicide on your front porch.”

  “Right.” And she’d share this with somebody official when Porky and Petunia fluttered across the evening sky.

  She watched Evan heft the massive bag of kibble out of the back of his SUV, then held the door for him to stagger inside. He dropped it in the kitchen.

  Helen looked at it with minimal interest, then padded back to the living room, restlessly.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You sure you don’t want me to stick around? In case anything else happens?”

  She shook her head. “Thanks for your help. We’ll be fine.” She managed a weak smile.

  He looked as if he felt like arguing, but then he shrugged. “Well, I guess I’ll take off, then. Thanks for a very interesting evening.”

  “Any time.” She watched him walk back down the steps, trying, as he did, not to step on any of the raven bodies that lined her porch.

  As the sound of Evan’s SUV faded in the distance, she walked back into the living room. Skag floated in front of the fireplace. “‘Interesting evening.’ Apparently, Delwin has a gift for understatement.”

  Rose folded her arms across her chest. “Care to explain what happened here tonight? I’m dying to hear it—perhaps literally, given the events of the past couple of nights.”

  He blew a ferocious cloud of cigarette smoke. “You were attacked. That much should be obvious.”

  “Why ravens?”

  “That, too, should be obvious. Ravens are messengers of death. Go-betweens linking the two realms. Shaman birds.”

  “And the attack was because? . . .”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure, Rose. I tried rummaging through the psychic energy, but something or someone had put up very powerful wards.”

  She shivered. “I don’t find that reassuring.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.” Skag flicked ashes into the fireplace. “At least you and Delwin seemed to be getting along.”

  A satisfying rush of angry heat replaced the chill she’d felt a moment before. “You were watching.”

  “Only at first. Once I realized where things were heading, I took my leave. Which, of course, turned out to be a mistake.” He blew another cloud skyward. “Not that I could have prevented the ravens, but I might have been able to alert you to their presence.”

  “Should I put shutters on the other windows?” Rose glanced toward the back of the house.

  “It wouldn’t hurt. They’ve attacked both the front and rear entrances as well as the front windows. The rear windows could be next.”

  She sighed, turning back toward the hall closet. “Put up shutters. Clean up ravens. I’m going to have to hire a handyman to keep up.”

  “There’s always Delwin,” Skag purred.

  She shook her head. “I doubt Delwin will ever set foot in this house again. He took off like a bat out of hell after I told him to go.”

  Skag frowned. “Bats wouldn’t actually live in hell, you know. Much too warm. And there are other things here that Delwin has a serious interest in. I assume he’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Don’t put any significant money on it.”

  She rummaged through the pantry until she found a box of trash bags. If she loaded up the bags with dead ravens and then dropped them on the curb for garbage pickup, maybe nobody on the block would notice that something weird had happened at the Riordan house. Again.

  Helen fell into step behind her, toenails clicking briskly on the hardwood floor of the hall.

  Rose turned to glare at the dog. “Forget it, Helen. You’re not going to eat them. Believe me, they wouldn’t be good for you. Probably loaded with supernatural parasites or something.”

  Helen gave her a bright-eyed look. Maybe supernatural parasites were like garlic salt for hellhounds.

  She sighed. “Fine. You can help.”

  She reached into the box and pulled out a trash bag, shaking it open with one hand while she unlocked the front door with the other. And then she stopped, staring.

  The porch wa
s empty.

  Behind her, Helen gave a low, rumbling growl.

  Rose swallowed as her heart accelerated again. She ran her hand along the wall behind her for the porch light switch without taking her gaze from the wooden surface that had been covered with gleaming black bodies only minutes ago.

  The light didn’t change anything. The ravens no longer blanketed her front porch.

  She took a deep, shuddering breath, checking the edges of the light. Then she moved carefully to the point where the porch curved around the corner of the house and looked down the far side. Still nothing.

  “Okay, I am not going insane. Evan saw them, too, Goddamnit.” For a moment she wished profoundly that Evan Delwin were standing on the porch with her, even though it would give him solid proof that she wasn’t what she seemed. Not that he hadn’t already had more than enough proof in that regard.

  Beside her, Helen began to bark, the sound sharp with warning.

  “Hush,” Rose snapped, “you’ll wake the neighbors. Or, anyway, you’ll wake something!”

  Somewhere above her she heard the whir of wings.

  Quickly, she turned and ran for the door, grabbing Helen’s collar at the last minute to drag her in. The whirring increased, accompanied by a raucous caw.

  Rose reached to slam the door behind her and then flattened herself against the wooden panels as something large and black flew by her face.

  Helen leaped forward, barking ferociously.

  A raven the size of a small buzzard perched on the newel post of the staircase, staring down at Helen.

  “Moron,” the bird remarked distinctly.

  Chapter 13

  Evan woke up pissed, which was not the best way to start the day. He hadn’t slept well. He’d spent his dream time in the dungeon with Addison again, watching him swat away monsters while delivering dire pronouncements about Rose Ramos.

  Rose Ramos. He didn’t want to think about her yet. He planned on doing some serious reassessing of their current working arrangement after his morning coffee, weighing up pluses and minuses. On the plus side, there was the fact they seemed to be unearthing some very interesting leads from William Bradford’s early life, particularly his possible connection with Alana DuBois. In fact, he was almost ready to fill Harry Dominguez in on some of the details. More and more it looked like whatever had happened to Alana DuBois hadn’t been good and was possibly fatal. And the fact that whatever had happened to her happened after she’d called him about Bradford could be more than a coincidence.

  On the minus side, there was a lot of weirdness going on around Casa Ramos. Attacks by ravens. Fog. An orange-eyed dog that might have been a lot of things but wasn’t Fido. Evan didn’t do weirdness as a rule. As a rule, he was the voice of reason in an unreasonable world. And the voice of reason didn’t seem to belong at Rose’s place.

  He took a deep breath and blew it out. There was also Rose herself. He couldn’t decide whether to put her, with her honey-colored hair and emerald eyes, her lips that reminded him of raspberries, into the pluses or the minuses. Maybe both.

  On one hand, he was fairly certain she was lying to him, or anyway not telling him the whole truth about herself, including the mysterious Locators, Ltd. that apparently made enough money to keep her in a King William mansion.

  On the other hand, there was, well, Rose. The generous curves of her body. The faint scent of lavender lingering around the long fall of her hair. The way his body temperature seemed to spike a couple of degrees every time he was in the same room with her.

  Kissing Rose Ramos was like stepping onto a roller coaster at Six Flags. A mixture of terror and delight. Under normal circumstances he’d probably treat her like she was plutonium, someone who came with a lot of potentially toxic baggage. But these weren’t really normal circumstances.

  He decided to have breakfast at Mi Tierra—at least during the middle of the week the crowds weren’t as big as usual. Over chilaquiles and coffee he weighed his options.

  He could ask Rose to give him an invoice for her time and tell her he didn’t need her services anymore. He had a feeling she wouldn’t be too surprised after last night. That would undoubtedly be the smartest thing to do, even if it did depress him to contemplate it.

  Of course, he could also go on with the investigation of Bradford just as he’d been doing before, using Rose’s help, and see what else he could find out about Alana DuBois. Although it might well mean more attacks of the unreasonable.

  Amazingly enough, he was leaning toward door number two. Despite raven attacks and devil dogs—despite his own misgivings about relationships with women who told him lies—he really wanted to see Rose again.

  ***

  Rose had breakfast with her rapidly increasing menagerie. Helen finished two bowls of kibble and regarded Rose’s bowl of granola hopefully. The raven drank part of Helen’s water, ate some of Helen’s kibble, and now perched on the back of one of the kitchen chairs, watching them both with hard, bright eyes.

  Rose turned to Skag. “I don’t suppose you know what ravens eat. And if you say ‘their victims’ again, I’ll send you back to the living room permanently.”

  He shrugged. “They’re carrion birds, but this one is probably in its own category. I’ve no idea what you feed a spirit raven.”

  She took a deep breath, pressing her lips into a thin line, but she knew she had to ask. “What makes you think it isn’t a real bird?”

  “Real is such an elastic term,” he drawled. “This bird is real enough, but my guess is it won’t be any more visible to the general public than the hellhound. It’s another spirit animal.”

  “Helen,” Rose said absently, “the hound’s name is Helen.”

  He waved an impatient hand. “Don’t become attached, Rose. Spirit animals are notoriously fickle. They emerge at significant points in one’s life and then vanish when their function ceases to be important.” He pointed his cigarette holder at Helen. “She’s not a pet, Rose, she’s a symbol.”

  Helen glanced at him with her orange eyes, then returned to her third bowl of kibble.

  “All right, Lenore’s not a real raven, but why is she here? And what happened to all the ones that were killed on the front porch last night?” She set the remains of her granola on the floor for Helen, rescuing the plastic bowl before the dog could munch it up.

  “Lenore?” His cigarette holder moved up to an acute angle. “The raven?”

  “Lenore,” she said firmly. “If she’s living here, she’s got a name.”

  “How do you know it’s a she?”

  Her lips twisted slightly. “She’s living in the Riordan house. That means she’s female, okay? Answer the questions.”

  Skag shrugged. “The raven is here for some purpose, of course. As I said, spirit animals emerge when needed. Since no havoc has occurred in her wake, I assume she’s benevolent, although with ravens it’s sometimes hard to tell.”

  Lenore cocked her head in his direction. “Moron,” she intoned crisply.

  Rose gave him a bland smile. “It’s the only thing she says. You’d be surprised how well it fits into the conversation.”

  Skag drifted to a chair opposite Lenore, floating slightly above the seat. “As to what became of the other ravens, I assume they weren’t really ravens but rather malevolent energy sent against you in raven form. Like the hellhounds.”

  “The hellhounds weren’t real? Funny, they seemed real enough at the time. Or real enough for ghost dogs, that is. You thought so, too, as I recall.”

  “Oh, the malevolence was real enough. Had they caught you, they would have torn you to pieces, as hellhounds do. But real hellhounds attack the wicked, which, whatever one believes about your personal preferences, you are not. I assumed their actions were some kind of aberration until this one adopted you. You notice that Helen has no particular need to nibble on your toes.”

>   Helen sniffed curiously at the granola bowl, ignoring him. After a moment, Lenore spread her wings and joined the dog next to the bowl, plunging her beak into the remaining milk.

  “So Helen’s the real thing, but the others weren’t? And Lenore’s a real spirit raven but the ones last night were fake?” Rose felt slightly dizzy. “And this means what exactly?”

  Skag tapped ghostly cigarette ash in the general direction of the floor. “It means someone is trying to impede your investigations at the very least. And it means you either have powers I wasn’t aware of that brought these spirit animals to your defense or someone else is involved here beyond our paltry selves. But first things first. Given the level of attacks so far, I’d say we need to examine our defenses.”

  “You don’t think whoever it is has decided to give it up after two unsuccessful assaults?”

  He blew one last cloud of smoke at the ceiling. “I never engage in wishful thinking, Rose.”

  ***

  After he finished breakfast, Evan cut over to Commerce Street, enjoying the clear October sky. The temperature hovered in the low eighties—last night’s fog was a distant memory. He heard children’s voices from the Milam Park playground. Glancing across the street he saw grackles strutting around the base of a stone gazebo.

  Grackles. Not quite as large as ravens—or as black. His shoulders tightened, but he shook it off.

  Something niggled at the back of his mind, and his steps slowed. Marcella Draper. Something she’d said. Some storefront over near Milam Park, sort of down toward El Mercado.

  A storefront. He crossed the street and began to amble down Commerce, taking brief detours along side streets then back again.

  Finally, he found the kind of street he was looking for. A block with a couple of blank windows, empty buildings. One storefront had a printed sign in the window with letters that looked like dripping blood. He moved closer to read.

  What do the Spirits have in store? Find out from a real medium! For more information, contact Augie, Nightmare on Novalis, 555-2132.