He would pay for that later, he thought. Ciaran pushed himself to his feet, but his knee bucked beneath him. His shoulder throbbed, each pulse of his heart sending flames licking through his muscles. It would heal, though infuriatingly slow.
The hellhounds had bitten him a few times before. The wounds always burned like the flames of hell and healed slower than he would have liked, but they healed all the same. The curse wasn’t going to let him die. It was determined to hold him in his personal torment for as long as it could.
Lights flicked on in the house. Ciaran jumped into motion, throwing the corpse of the dead hellhound over his shoulders and disappearing into the night. His body screamed in rebellion, but it needed to be done. Each step was a feat of willpower. His heels dragged along the ground, but he managed it.
Ciaran hoped no one happened to peek out their windows in the middle of the night and see a man dragging a dead dog through town. In the woods, near a craggy ravine, he dumped the hellhound corpse. It wouldn’t help to scare the Carver witch. She didn’t need to see the monster.
He didn’t admit it to himself, but a part of him hoped to spare the woman the nightmare he was living. If he could get her to break the curse, everyone could go on with their lives as if it never happened.
Ciaran feared what the end of the curse might mean for him. His life had been extended by the enchantress’s power. His body healed incredibly fast and the shift between man and raven seemed to reset his body. It had taken forever to teach the magic around him to hold onto his favorite motorcycle jacket and boots.
Before that, his modern clothes would disappear, and his early turn of the century suit would return every time. It’d been a pain to keep replacing the lost clothes. Now, he shed his jacket to inspect the blood-soaked tooth holes. His fingers fit through the tears. The edges appeared to have been seared.
As he pulled it back over his shoulder, he wondered if the holes would close the next time he shifted. He wanted to tuck back into his raven form and fly back to the manor, but he didn’t have the energy left. His feet scuffed the ground with every step.
The town seemed to stretch forever. The streets seemed endless by foot. He could have sworn a scarecrow winked at him as he shuffled past. Finally, he found the Carver manor once again. Dragging himself up the porch, he stumbled toward the swinging bench seat and collapsed into it.
Not long later, sleep claimed him. Even immortal shifters needed to sleep.
Chapter Five
Samantha woke with a knot in her neck. It pulsed, sending pain up the back of her skull. She couldn’t believe she’d slept on the office couch for most of the night. At one point, she roused and made herself go to bed, barely stopping to take off her clothes before falling face first. It seemed the transition from couch to bed hadn’t helped.
Her body still hated her. She made her way down to the kitchen on auto pilot. She set her tea to steep before searching for a cannister of salve in the cupboards. There had to be a muscle relaxer in there somewhere. It wasn’t until she heard a groan outside that she remembered everything that happened the day before.
Samantha pulled her robe tight around her, obscuring the witch pun on her t-shirt nightdress, and ventured toward the front door. Ciaran was slumped on her porch swing. She leaned against the doorframe for a long moment, letting herself take in the dark hair falling over his perfectly carved face. His cheekbones were sharp lines that she wanted to run her fingers over.
The smell of pennies hung in the air. It made Samantha scrunch her nose and furrow her brow. Guilt slapped her when she saw the drip of something dark and viscous down the front of his jacket. She stumbled out of the house, lurching toward him and peeling back the leather.
Ciaran startled awake. He captured her wrist, fingers like steel around her. Samantha kept herself steady despite the thunderous thumping of her heart. His eyes bored into her, alight with the hottest blue fire. After a moment of studying her face, he fell back into the seat. His grip on her wrist loosened but didn’t fall away.
“What are you doing out here?” he grumbled, half the words slurred.
“Playing nurse, apparently. What happened to you last night? It looks like you went to a bar and picked a fight with a chainsaw.”
He laughed. His eyes fluttered shut. She thought he was drifting back to sleep before she realized he was watching her from beneath his dark lashes. Her heart gave another hard thump, this time making her stomach clench.
He was far too beautiful for his own good, she decided.
“Just let me look at your wounds. I could help if you let me.”
“Why would you want to help me? It was your family that cursed me in the first place. Don’t you all want me to suffer?”
Samantha didn’t want anyone to suffer. She didn’t want the thing curled inside her, such an integral part of her soul that she hated looking at herself some days. There were nights, when sleep was far away, when she wondered if the power passed down through her family was innate darkness or if the curse her great-grandmother had wrought stained them with something evil.
Samantha wanted to believe in the second, that they weren’t evil but living under a shadow. That belief made her want to help Ciaran, just to get rid of that shadow. But, she couldn’t figure out what made her touch him with such tenderness. He didn’t deserve her help. She really should have left him to bleed alone.
Yet, the thought of it felt evil. “Just shut up and let me help you,” she whispered.
She pulled her wrist from his hand. Her stomach flipped when his fingers lingered in hers. She tried to ignore the sensation, but it followed her into the house like a ghost. The feeling of his fingers in hers remained until she found a can of ointment and a box of bandages.
When she returned, Ciaran stood in the doorway. He leaned against the house as if he were suave, but she could tell it was the pain. His cheeks were flushed, and she saw the slight tremble in his lips. What kept him standing, she wondered? Was it sheer will?
“May I come inside, high priestess?”
She scowled at him. Like in the tale of vampires, once she invited him past her wards, they would no longer keep him out. Samantha had no qualms with treating him on the porch, but Mrs. Buchanan would creep by eventually. She would see the state of Ciaran and start to spread rumors, like the old lady loved to do.
Samantha sighed and hoped this was the right thing to do. Storming up to the doorframe, she touched her finger to the sigils wrapping the inside of the door. A fragment of her magic moved toward it with her new request.
The ward shimmered in her vision before settling back into place. Ciaran raised a brow. She wondered if the curse allowed him to see what she’d done.
“Well?” he pushed seconds before his knee gave out. Already leaning against the house, he didn’t fall. Quickly, he moved to make it seem like it was purposeful, hooking the foot behind the other.
In response, Samantha stepped outside and placed her smaller frame beneath his shoulder and helped him past the threshold. He let loose a heavy sigh, one that he probably didn’t want her to hear. From where she stood, she could see the holes in his leather jacket. They looked like…something had bitten him.
It made her look at him again. What had brought him to her doorstep? She’d assumed it was pure greed, not wanting to be trapped in the curse any longer. This made her wonder if there was something else happening that she wasn’t aware of. Later, she would put up more Halloween decorations while checking her lawn for blood.
For now, she had to focus on Ciaran. She helped him onto a kitchen stool and dropped the medical supplies on the island.
“Jacket off.”
His smile was weak. “You’re asking me to strip already. If I knew that was all it took to get inside Carver manor, I would have arrived naked.”
Samantha rolled her eyes for show, fighting back the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Don’t be smart.”
The jacket fell to the floor, making a wet sound as it
hit the wood. There would be a mess to clean later, but when Ciaran put all his weight on the island, she knew she had to deal with him first.
In his wet t-shirt, she could see the tattoos that wrapped around his arms. The tips of black feathers reached over the backs of his hands like fingers. The wings wrapped around his arms. They bound him. She found herself unable to look away.
Samantha had to shake herself and remember who this was. Her fingers grazed his bare skin while she helped him out of his black t-shirt. The muscles beneath rippled and mesmerized her. The tattoo continued on his back. The body of the raven spread over his muscles, the beak rising along his exposed neck.
Now, punctures marred the perfect picture, oozing blood. The skin around the wounds was charred and black. The smell of sulfur wafted from him. This was no dog bite, she realized.
“What happened to you last night?”
“Just a bar fight,” he said, repeating her joke from earlier.
She pressed her lips together and let his lie stay. There was no way in hell that this was the result of a bar fight. Not unless someone brought a pack of dogs to the bar, dogs that reeked of brimstone and left behind charred skin. While small towns were often strange like that, she would have heard of someone doing such a thing by now. There were no other spellcasters or creatures in her town.
While Ciaran leaned against the kitchen island, his breath shallow, Samantha tended to the wounds in his shoulder. Already, they were healing. Part and parcel of the curse, she realized. It must be what kept him alive all these years. Still, the wounds hadn’t healed fast enough to keep infection at bay. The wounds reeked, meaning the mouth of whatever had bitten him had been a petri dish.
Samantha cracked open a cannister of ointment. She’d made it to help with minor cuts and burns, but it would have to work here. Just to be sure, she pulled a bit of her magic to her fingertips and poured it into the ointment. It fired through the herbal oils, igniting the natural magic inside them.
Ciaran hissed when she touched one of the bite marks.
“Don’t be a baby,” she scolded him. He was a cursed immortal who’d suffered far worse than this and he was acting like he’d never had his blood drawn before. She highly doubted that was true.
“You try being attacked by two hellhounds in the middle of the night and tell me how you feel in the morning.”
There it was, the truth. Samantha said nothing. If she let him know he slipped, he would clam up for sure. Samantha had never given hell much thought. It was not a source of power her family had ever meddled in. Why it was haunting Ciaran, Samantha didn’t know.
“You didn’t have to invite me inside,” Ciaran muttered. “But you did, so I must thank you.”
Samantha’s finger slipped inside another of his wounds, spreading the ointment and reminding him that she was still not one to be reckoned with. He hissed accordingly and shrank away from her touch. When his gaze cut toward her, there was a strange smile on his face. It was a mix of annoyance and humor. Samantha found she liked it.
That was not a good sign.
Ciaran was cursed for a reason, she reminded herself. He’d had a hand in her great-grandfather’s death. He’d destroyed her great-grandmother’s life. Whatever nightmare he was living, he deserved it.
Samantha moved to tend the wounds on his chest. There were other scrapes and bruises scattered across his chest and ribs. To reach them, she had to push herself between his legs. It was a compromising position, but she was committed to aiding him and did her best to ignore the brush of his thighs against hers.
To say that Ciaran wasn’t a feast laid before her would have been a lie. Even as beat up as he was, there was a smolder in his eyes and a languidness in his body that begged her to step toward the heat. Samantha had to bite the inside of her cheek and focus on her pain to ignore the way he watched her.
“Do you have a name, so I can stop calling you witch?”
“Just call me witch. We aren’t friends.”
He leaned forward. The space between them shrank, the heat intensifying until it singed her skin. Samantha wanted to run, but she held her ground. His breath washed over her ear and down her neck. She realized that, from where she stood, he could see down the front of her V-neck blouse.
Yet, when she finally faced him, she realized his eyes were not on her breasts, but on the necklace that hung between them. It was a small locket with a bit of crystal embedded in the center, as if someone had stabbed it through. The thing did not open, so she had no idea what lay inside.
“That belonged to Imogen.” His voice was tight. His entire body tensed beneath her.
The mention of her great-grandmother’s name was not as bitter as she would have assumed. Instead, Ciaran’s voice had been strained by something else. It was loneliness, sorrow, grief, all those things and more.
It made her look at him differently. His words could have been a ploy, she realized. This man wanted something from her and so he tried to twist her view of him until he became the good guy in her eyes. It wasn’t a dumb plan.
“It did,” she responded. She laid her hand flat against a black bruise over his ribs and ignited the ointment.
Ciaran sucked in a deep breath. Silence hummed for a second, her hand still on his bare skin.
“It was her husband that put the crystal through the center of it. He was trying to kill your great-grandmother. Amazing that the stupid locket I gave her saved her life.”
Samantha stepped back. All of a sudden, the chain around her neck felt heavy. It was burdened with impossible things.
“Don’t lie to me. I’m not so stupid that I would fall for your tricks.”
Though she wanted to. She wanted to believe he could be a good man while her hands were still on him. Her stomach tightened and she fought to pull herself away to no avail.
***
Ciaran was not lying. Though, he could tell the witch was not going to believe him. He would have a story for her if she would just listen. It seemed that the truth had been warped over time. Perhaps Imogen had tried to save face before her children and wove a tale that cast Ciaran as the bad guy in the situation.
He didn’t blame her. What happened had been so long ago. His anger for her always flared hot before fading into a lonely bitterness. He’d done what he could to save Imogen, but she’d still left the curse on him, as if even she couldn’t stand what he’d done.
Now, he let her great-granddaughter tend to his wounds. It was a strange situation. In this witch’s face he could see Imogen’s eyes. To have the old enchantress look at him again filled him with a great many emotions.
None he would give foundation to. He shoved them into a dark corner of his mind to stay there. Yet, when the witch looked at him from beneath her eyelashes, her hand still warm upon his ribcage, a new set of emotions unfurled inside him.
Without thinking, he reached for her. His hand cupped the side of her face. She was surprisingly compliant in his hand as he pulled her toward him. Her lips were already parted when he kissed her. She tasted of herbs and the cool wind of an autumn night.
His tongue pushed past her lips to take in as much of that taste as he could. Her hand on his ribs tightened. Pain flared for a moment, the bruise still not quite healed, but it did nothing to stop him. He wanted as much of her as he could get. He would never get his fill of this witch.
Then, she stumbled back. Her lips were swollen from his kiss, but her eyes flashed with anger.
Ciaran knew he’d screwed up. This wasn’t part of the plan. He couldn’t believe what he’d done. There was supposed to be nothing between them. She was a means to an end and nothing more. That was the only reason he’d protected Carver manor the night before. Ciaran lied to himself over and over.
“You’re a piece of work,” she growled as she gathered her things and stormed from the room.
He wanted to give chase, to see where he could lay her down and explore the rest of her body. The urge was stronger than anything he’d ever know
n. He almost wanted the inbetween to rise and save him from himself.
Slowly, mindfully, he rose and stalked after her. She was in the parlor, emptying the contents of a plastic storage bin onto the floor.
Chapter Six
It was the first day she hadn’t seen Ciaran. There’d been no sign of him in the tree outside her house. He hadn’t even been lurking on her porch when she stepped outside. She’d sighed, but not out of relief. A part of her secretly wanted to see him again. Her lips begged for the return of his kiss. All night, her body had ached for his hands on her.
She was an idiot, and she knew it. Samantha hadn’t been particularly good at the dating scene. Most of the local men knew she was a Carver. They didn’t want to date a witch, terrified that she’d try to sacrifice their soul or something. Outside of town was harder. She didn’t have the most reliable transportation.
It had gotten her to the market that day, where she loaded a cart full of white pumpkins, but as she walked through the shop, she worried it wouldn’t start when she tried to leave. The thing was capricious. She needed to win this haunted house contest this year and replace her junker of a car with the grand prize.
It would be difficult to get her house in order while Ciaran was hovering overhead. Now that he’d left, perhaps chased out of town by hellhounds, Samantha could focus on what was important.
The air at the market smelled like tart apple cider and pumpkin pie. She grabbed a few cider donuts to nibble on as she shopped, reminding herself every few moments to let the cashier know she’d eaten three. As she stood in line, she leaned against the cart and tried to conjure an image of the scariest haunted house. It wasn’t like she had anyone who would help her, no one that would get dressed up and stand in the shadows to jump out at people. Not like the witches did when she was young.
Samantha sighed. When she looked up, the man in line in front of her was turned around, his eyes on her breasts. She immediately straightened and adjusted the neckline of her shirt. The man didn’t look away until she felt a heat singe her shoulder. The man’s eyes flicked to someone beside her and quickly away, turning so fast that he ran his cart into the heels of someone in front of him.
The Raven Curse Page 3