He and Miri bobbed on twigs, so close their wings brushed. He may never have found them if something didn’t suddenly erupt from the beach like a black geyser, circle tightly, and then swoop back to the sand.
He winged to the spot, Miri diving in his downdraft. One of the boys hopped around the other. The second lay on the sand, his wing spread at an awkward angle. Even before landing, Trey shifted. His feet hit the sand hard.
“Cave.” He jerked his head at the cliffs behind him. Miri lifted immediately, and then circled when Jeff didn’t follow.
“I’ve got Vince.” Kneeling, Trey ordered the raven still hopping around the injured bird. “Go.”
Reluctantly, the boy launched into the air. Surveying the broken wing, he saw that Vince was awake, his black eyes pleading.
“Sorry, kid. This is going to hurt, but I gotta get you out of the wind.”
Vince shuddered, and Trey barked, “Don’t shift. That’ll make it worse.”
By the time he’d carefully lifted him, the boy had fainted. Which made it easier as he jogged across the beach, the bird cradled in one arm as he gingerly held the broken wing as still as possible.
Jeff crouched at the cave entrance, human, his face pale with anguish.
“It’s my fault.” He padded after Trey who gently lay Vince on the cave floor. The elements swirled outside with the ominous sounds of tree branches cracking cliffside.
Vince squawked, but his eyes remained slitted shut.
“We’ll talk about blame later." Trey vacated the spot next to Vince so his son could sit beside his friend.
Until he saw Miri still in raven form and her beak politely averted, he’d forgotten that he and Jeff were naked. Stifling a grin, he headed to the rear of the cave and rummaged through abandoned clothing. Returning wearing baggy jeans and a Bronco’s sweatshirt, he carefully laid out a longish flowered tank dress in a soft thin fabric and held up the hem so she could easily walk into it. After she shifted, he threw a fisherman’s sweater and shorts to Jeff.
At Jeff’s questioning look, he said, “It’s cold, gonna get colder, and your aunt is shy.”
Embarrassed, Jeff shrugged into the clothes. “Sure. Sorry, Aunt Miriam. I didn’t even know this cave was here and there’d be a stash of clothes.”
“Skellars beach was the big hangout when your dad and I were kids.” Miri’s cheeks darkened, and she held the clinging material away from her chest. “Really, Trey?”
He didn’t bother hiding his impish grin. “Looks good to me, but since we have impressionable children here … Jeff get Miri a sweater from the back.”
While Jeff trotted to the dark recesses of the cave, Miri added, “If you find a working flashlight, bring it.”
Still holding an arm across her chest, she squatted next to Vince and gently smoothed the feathers on his crown. “Not what you signed up for, was it, buddy? No worries. You may be grounded for a bit, but your dad’s on his way.”
Vince blinked at her and twitched pathetically.
“Here you go.” Jeff handed her a man-sized sweater, and she shimmied into it. It hung to her knees.
“Thanks.” She moved to stand next to Trey so Jeff could resume his spot next to Vince. When Trey smoothed her hair where the sweater had mussed it, she flicked a quick smile at him. He noticed Jeff watching them.
“Mr. Towe is coming?” Switching on the lantern he’d found with the clothing, Jeff sounded nervous. Miri winked at Trey and slipped to the cave entrance to give them a little privacy.
“Vince’s dad is bringing his truck.” Trey gave his son a pointed look. “We didn’t know what we’d find here.”
“Vince said at the wake that his dad was pretty mad after meeting with the sheriff.”
“Better start working on your apologies then. He should be here any minute.”
Jeff heaved a sigh. “Yes, sir.”
“Trey?”
At her soft warning, he joined her at the cave entrance. She stood in the leeway, half sheltered by the angle of the opening, but her hair whipped around her face.
“It may be longer than a minute before they can reach us.”
The woolen sleeve of her sweater covered most of her hand, but he could see where she pointed.
A line of trees had fallen across the lighted road, and sparks rose from a downed power line.
The squall was upon them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Miri grabbed Trey’s arm, then dropped it, feeling heat rise in her face. She’d lost him long ago. Why was she still reaching for him?
Why had he taken her hand at Belle’s and smoothed her hair a few minutes ago? He had always been kind. Desperate to escape (hadn't she always run?), she asked, “Do you want me to fly up the beach access? I can find out how far back they are and let them know what’s going on.”
“No one’s flying in that.” As if to underscore his point, the next lightning flash illuminated an uprooted willow that bounced across the beach like tumbleweed. It slammed against the cliffs just yards from them.
Trey drew Miri further into the cave. “Nothing we can do for Vince till the doc sees him.” Trey studied the boys. “Maybe we can distract him.”
Unable to stop herself, she took his hand. How easily he twined his fingers in hers, how completely this man seemed to have forgiven her.
“What can I do?” she asked.
He swiftly kissed her cheek. “Welcome back to Ravenscar.”
As they returned to the boys, she called herself all sorts of names for daring to hope. She'd destroyed their trust. And how could she live in Ravenscar after killing the storyteller they needed?
Knowing all that, she didn’t wiggle from his grip. Instead she drank in his familiar comfort so she could remember this in the months to come, when she was once again living in lonely bedsitters and the guest rooms of foreign historians.
They sat cross-legged on the other side of the lantern from Vince and Jeffrey. Her throat tightened sympathetically seeing the ugly angle of Vince’s wing.
“What were you talking about so long over there?” Jeffrey said suspiciously.
“Power lines are down and the road blocked,” Trey said. “Wind’s gotten too bad to scale the cliff and we can't fly out.”
Jeffrey licked his lips. “I could try …”
Trey shook his head. “This squall is worse than the one that killed your mom, kid. We’ll wait till it passes.”
Miri flinched at the brutal reminder but except for looking even more guilty, Jeffrey seemed almost relieved at Trey’s words.
“That’s why …” He looked down at his friend who stared back at him unblinking. “I didn’t mean for Vince to get hurt, but …” He met his father’s eyes squarely. “I wanted to understand why she did it.”
“By doing the same fool thing?” Trey asked.
Jeffrey ducked his head. “At the wake, they were talking about her being sad after the baby was born. Everyone's saying or at least thinking she killed herself.”
“She didn’t,” Miri said.
Instinctively, she put her free hand over her nephew’s clenched fists. “She should have known better than to fly in a squall, Jeffrey, but she wasn’t trying to kill herself.”
He didn’t shake off her hand, but he eyed her warily. “How do you know that?”
She opened her mouth, but the words didn’t come. She almost wept at not being able to give her family comfort. She had the information but no way to speak.
“Trust your aunt,” Trey said. “She’s been at Belle’s all evening studying your mom. She knows.”
Jeffrey wouldn’t look at her. Seeing that his attention shifted elsewhere, she withdrew.
His gaze was on her other hand in Trey’s. “What gives with you two?”
“At the moment,” Trey said with commendable composure. “That’s none of your business. I’ll let you know when it is.”
Jeffrey rolled his eyes, and Miri almost laughed. For all her discomfort in discussing their relationship, this se
emed easier ground than talking about Elise’s death.
“Andrew McVey …” Jeffrey stopped suddenly, and studied Trey as if wondering if this was forbidden territory too. Trey nodded encouragingly.
“Someone at the wake said you were gonna be stuck raising Darby too.”
Miri’s heart wrung, hearing that resigned “too.” Poor kid to have two useless blood parents.
“Andrew talked to me about it,” Trey said carefully. “Seems to make sense. She should be raised with her brother.”
“How come it’s gotta be you?” Jeffrey burst out. “It’s not fair.”
Although his eyes remained watchful, Trey’s lips quirked. “I don’t know about that. You’ve been mostly easy. I’ve enjoyed myself. How about you?”
“You’re okay.” Jeffrey looked embarrassed. “But aren’t you getting too old to be raising a baby?”
Miri choked back a laugh while Trey gave him a severe look. “I’m thirty-two. Some folks don’t even start a family till they’re older than me.”
Jeffrey didn’t look convinced, but he shrugged. “I guess it’s okay by me then if she comes to live with us.”
“Thanks for giving me permission, son.”
Jeffrey shot him a quick look as if wondering if Trey was making fun of him. He added defensively, “It’s just that they were saying at the wake …” Then stopped at the shared look between Miri and Trey.
“What?” he demanded.
Trey leaned over to clasp his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have left you alone at the Corbins’.”
“I’d forgotten how much our people like to gossip.” Miri went quiet for a second, thinking that if a storyteller had been present, there would have been less time for the villagers to be gabbing. Another guilt to lay at her door. “What were you saying, Jeffrey?”
“That they were talking about Dad, that he was the last of the Romero line, and that he should be making his own babies, not raising McVeys.”
Trey threw back his head. “What is it with people being so concerned with my private affairs?”
“And what is so wrong with McVeys?” Miri demanded.
That shocked Trey and Jeffrey into silence. Even Vince half-raised his head in surprise.
“I mean,” she said. “Aren’t McVeys the best that our people have to offer?” She jumped to her feet and paced back and forth in the light.
The other three watched her uneasily. Jeffrey couldn’t contain himself.
“Are you making a joke, Aunt Miriam? Everyone knows that McVeys have no honor, that they’re always causing trouble, and that there’s too many of ‘em.”
She wheeled and stabbed the air with her hand. Jeffrey’s eyes widened, and Trey slid around the lantern to sit next to him.
“Ha,” she said. “And who is everyone?”
Without waiting for an answer, she said, “They teach you anything helpful in school, Jeffrey? Like why we’re so different from humans? Like where our people came from?”
Even as the males looked unsettled by the passion in her voice, she was amused to see a calculating look in Jeffrey’s eyes. Obviously interested in her take of the McVeys, would he pass up an opportunity to complain about his school?
He shrugged. “The teachers are pretty fair. I mean, humans don’t talk about all their origin stories, right? Our teachers do. So I’ve heard them all: from us being an evolutionary branch of homo sapiens, to us being subjected to natural or unnatural mutations, magic, and religion. They even let Vince share his we-are-aliens theory.”
Vince cawed in protest.
“That’s facts and conjectures, Jeffrey,” Miri said. “Truth you learn from stories.”
“But Aunt Miriam, we haven’t had a teller since …”
She waved off his excuse. “You can read, yes? You’ve seen other storytellers on cable? The holo-theater at the community center is still open?”
Jeffrey shot a look at his father who smiled at him. He even turned to Vince who cocked his head. His shoulders hunched in a harassed way.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finally admitted. “What truth?”
Exaggerating her disappointment, she sighed and leaned against the cave wall. “You think all ravens are like Huginn and Muninn?”
“Odin’s ravens who brought him news from Midgard?” Jeffrey’s lips twisted scornfully. “Nah.”
“You think all ravens are like the one Noah sent out after the flood to bring news of dry land?”
“Pastor Newman says …”
Feeling fierce, Miri launched herself from the wall. “I asked what you thought.”
He gulped. “I guess not.”
“How about the ravens on Viking, Roman, and Yakut battlefields? How about ravens who protect their tribes and humans in Portugal and England? If we are the convergence of men and ravens, we are not all about messages and omens, are we?”
“No.” His voice sounded unsure.
Miri knelt in front of the lantern and felt the light warm her face. Softening her voice, she said, “Belle’s house is filled with stories of McVeys. As ravens, they fought in King Arthur’s Welsh army under his knight Owain, plucking out the eyeballs of their enemies. McVeys carry the blood of conquistadors, those of raven people, who walked in the company of the mission fathers. They married native raven women who brought their own stories of tribal battles and the graves of warriors. In rancho days and in the gold rush, they protected this valley. I’ve read the tombstones of those whose bodies we buried in big caskets and small caskets. Sheldon McVey, Loren McVey, David McVey. Only twelve when he died, Loren saved his mother and baby brother, when a striker came across our valley and invaded the first Ravenscar home he came across. That baby brother was Andrew McVey’s great-great (I can’t remember how many greats) grandfather. Seventeen when Ravenscar buried him in a big casket, Matthew McVey pulled twenty-four people from the waters, when the creek flooded the valley in 1892, before he himself drowned. I’m mighty grateful for Matthew, because five of the twenty-four were Corbins."
She took a breath. Seeing Jeffrey lean towards her, the lantern light glow in his eyes, she felt a sudden joy surge through her and fill her voice. “And I’m thankful for Andrew’s uncle Timothy as he dug my father from the landslide and others too. He levered up a boulder that pinned his school-mate, Jonas Stevens, and held back that chunk of granite that broke Jonas’s ankle. They didn’t have time to shore it up with all the rocks still coming helter-skelter down the mountain. Covered with sweat and his hands bloody from the coarse-cut board he used to hold that boulder, he must have stood against it for nearly an hour till other men, including other McVeys, pulled out Jonas. Then, tragedy upon tragedy, the board snapped in his strong hands and the boulder rolled back upon him, killing him instantly. It was Andrew’s father, Reggie McVey, who flew to the station to tell his father that Timothy was dead, Andrew’s father’s father being the sheriff at the time. And Reggie flew back and carried messages from landslide to town to landslide till a falling rock struck him. They found him hours later, and it were touch and go whether he’d live or whether McVeys would be burying both brothers, one in a big casket and one in a small casket.”
She relaxed and exhaled with a smile. “But Reggie lived.”
Miri reached over the lantern to touch Jeffrey’s cheek. “And glad I am of that, because without Reggie, there’d be no Andrew. Without Andrew, there’d be no Jeffrey.”
Her hand clasped Jeffrey’s hand. “And without McVeys, the warriors and protectors of this valley, there’d be no Ravenscar.”
She caught Trey’s eye as he squeezed Jeffrey’s shoulder.
“Perfect,” he mouthed.
When Jeffrey lifted his head, she saw a peace in his face that hadn’t been there since she’d met him.
“So McVeys are kind of like superheroes,” he said. A wealth of satisfaction colored his voice.
She tried not to laugh when Trey said firmly, “Let’s not go that far.”
“Most people have the pot
ential to be heroes,” she said diplomatically. “But McVeys are usually first on the scene.”
As if she’d given him his cue, a large raven swooped from the darkness and the howling wind. In a whirl of black, a broad-shouldered man stepped into the cave.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Trey sent Miri to the back of the cave to find sweatpants for his foster brother.
“What took you so long, Andy?”
“Power line down,” Andrew McVey said succinctly. “And did you see the storm out there?”
Sketching a brief glance at Jeff, he knelt down next to the injured bird. “Dang, little dude. That’ll bench you.” He shot a look at Trey. “Vince is the only decent catcher on his team.”
Trey shrugged. “Squall will do that to you.”
Miri returned with sweatpants that had an oil stain down one leg. Face averted, she handed them to Andy. “Only thing in your size,” she said as an apology.
“Thanks.”
After pulling them on, he asked, “The rest of you okay?”
Jeff answered for them all. “Only Vince was hurt.”
For the first time, Andy looked directly at Jeff. “A stupid stunt. You know that?”
“Yeah.” Instead of ducking his head, he met Andy’s gaze steadily. “I already told Dad that it wouldn’t happen again.”
“Good.” Andy turned to Trey. “The others will have tethered the ropes by now. They can lower a stretcher down for the kid and I’ll ride up with it so it don’t bang against the cliff too bad. Doc’s farther down the road but I got my 4X at the top.”
Of course he did.
“You want us to follow you out?” Trey asked.
Andy shook his head. “If you three can handle it, best you wait here for another half hour. Winds are dying down, so you can fly out then.”
“We can handle it,” Jeff said confidently. Trey tilted his head inquiringly at Miri.
“Piece of cake,” she agreed. She sounded hoarse.
Trey said to Andy, “Got any water?”
The Last Storyteller (Ravenscar Shifters Book 1) Page 4