Velvet Haven (18 page)

“I made a deal with Pretty Boy Sanchez, you know,” Rowan murmured sleepily. “He let me go only because I promised I’d convince you to go out with him.”

Mairi smiled and shook her head. “You see me with a doctor?”

“Actually no, I don’t, but he’s desperate, and I didn’t want to spend a night in the hospital, so I figured the deal was the way to go.”

Mairi turned her econo-compact onto Sanctuary Street. The street sign made her recall it was the spot where Lauren’s murderer had dumped her body. She couldn’t let the image of the girl’s mutilated body go. The symbols were always there in the back of her mind, haunting her, just like the memories of her dream lover. Somehow the two were linked. She felt it in her gut. Years of listening to that sixth sense had served her well in her nursing career. But Mairi didn’t know what to make of this crazy night.

“Wow, this is some good shit,” Rowan grumbled. “What’d they give me this time?”

“A little Valium and lorazepam cocktail. You’ll sleep well.”

“Sorry for interrupting your evening with Mr. Hottie.”

Mairi pressed her eyes shut. She purposely hadn’t allowed herself to think of Bran or his amazingly skilled mouth. “Don’t sweat it. We were just talking.”

She thought she heard Rowan snort. “Convo interruptus. It was damn bad timing on my part, wasn’t it? I can’t tell you how bad I feel.”

Mairi laughed. “Seriously, don’t.”

“Never know where that conversation could have led you.” Rowan yawned, then followed with a deep sigh. “I really appreciate you letting me crash at your place tonight, Mairi. I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything. That’s what friends are for, right?”

She glanced back to see Rowan nod. “Better than friends. We’re family.”

Mairi swallowed hard and dropped her gaze to the road. She’d never been one for praying, but she’d begun the night Rowan had told her of her tumor. Every night since she’d prayed and bartered with God to save her best friend. They
were
family. Mairi’s mother was gone, and her dad, well, who the hell knew where he was?

“I saw you in the vision tonight.”

“Yeah?” she replied, mindlessly rubbing her wrist. It still tingled from when Bran had closed his fingers around it.

“Uh-huh. It was strange because I never see you in my visions. It’s always people I don’t know, in a place that’s mystical and . . . different. I don’t think it’s Earth.”

Mairi was afraid to ask exactly where Rowan was transported during her visions. She didn’t think she could bear it if it was heaven.

“I think it’s the afterworld, you know? It’s so beautiful and green. Lush. Peaceful. But you were there, standing in a wooded grove. I saw you with Mr. Hottie. What’s his name?” she asked sleepily.

“Yeah. You were together. I couldn’t figure it out, how you were there in the afterlife.”

“Maybe it was because we were in the club and you were thinking about me?”

Rowan shrugged, her head lolling to the side. “He was protecting you from something, but I don’t know what.”

“It was just an aura, Rowan. It wasn’t real.”

“So they tell me. Mairi?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you know that in the Druid religion, the name Bran means raven? The Celts believed that the raven ruled the Otherworld.”

“Really?” Rowan was a walking encyclopedia of pagan knowledge. How she remembered it all baffled Mairi. For as long as Mairi had known Rowan she’d been into the occult.

Mairi smiled to herself, remembering the day they had met in the library at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. They’d been eight and Rowan had been reading a book, her little legs swinging back and forth, too short to touch the ground. She’d looked up and her green eyes had been glowing.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she’d said as if she’d known all along that they were fated to meet.

They’d been the best of friends ever since. Rowan had been a ward of the school, abandoned on the steps at age five by her mother. Mairi had used the school as a sanctuary from her abusive, alcoholic father.

“In my vision, Bran was standing beside you, and he had . . . wings. Black wings, like a raven.”

“What the hell?” Mairi slammed on the brakes as a black shape appeared in the middle of the road. The car came to a lurching halt. Through the swishing wiper blades and the steady stream of rain, Mairi squinted and saw some kind of animal lying in the middle of her lane.

“What happened?”

“Something’s on the road.”

“Oh,” she heard Rowan mumble. Glancing in the mirror, she saw her friend draw the blanket up around her shoulders. Her head rested against the window and her breathing was slow and deep. The drugs were finally working.

Glancing back out the windshield, Mairi saw that the shape was that of a large bird. She couldn’t drive over it, nor could she leave it there. She’d always had a soft spot for animals, and the way the black feathers blew in the wind reminded her of the feather that had skimmed down her arm outside Velvet Haven.

She thought back to Rowan’s bizarre vision. For a fleeting second she believed her friend, before hard logic smashed the thought. Tumors could provoke all kinds of crazy ideations and visions that didn’t make any sense. Still, though, there was no denying that something strange was in the air. Unbuckling her seat belt, Mairi reached for a towel that she’d swiped from St. Mike’s and opened the door. She ran to the bird and bent down on the cold, wet road. She saw chest movement, rapid and shallow, and realized the bird was still alive, although its wing was badly mangled. Picking it up as gently as she could, she felt its beak pierce her hand. There was still fight in the thing if it was able to bite her.

“Stop that,” she said gruffly as she handled the bird more carefully. “I’m only trying to stop you from becoming tire splat.”

The bird stopped and she felt it stiffen in her hands as if rigor had just settled in. Then it cocked its head and looked up at her, as if it was listening. Toweling off the excess wetness from its feathers, she was careful to avoid its wing.

Brushing her hand through the feathers to make sure most of the water was gone and her upholstery was going to stay relatively dry, Mairi noticed the silver stripe that ran along its back. It had been partially buried beneath wet feathers, but now that they were all unruffled, the stripe was clearly visible.

Oh, shit! It was the bird from the club.

“Why are you out here by the hospital?” she asked, as if speaking to a bird were perfectly normal. “You’re blocks away from the club.”

The bird didn’t answer. Not that she expected it to. Cradling it to her chest, she ran back to the car and carefully placed it on the passenger seat. She thought about taking it to an animal shelter, but she knew they’d only put it out of its misery. For some reason, she couldn’t stand the prospect. There was something about this bird that she liked. It made her feel calm.

She thought back to what Rowan had said, and an image of Bran looming over her, licking her sex, fired up in her brain. “Stupid,” she muttered as she buckled her seat belt and pulled the gear shifter into drive.

So he gave her a hell of an orgasm; it didn’t mean he was keeper material. Hell, he was nowhere to be found when she had left the club with Rowan. For all she knew, he’d gotten what he wanted out of her and taken off without a backward glance. Damn, she wished she could remember the events after that blinding orgasm.

What the hell had happened to make her forget?

She looked down at the bird as she drove, studying the gray mark. “I don’t know anything about birds,” she grumbled. “How the hell am I gonna fix your wing?”

Mairi looked at the bird. God, now she was hearing things.

“Mairi?”

She startled at the sound of Rowan’s voice. “Yeah?”

“Do you believe in fate?”

“No.”

“You should, because yours is staring at you right now.”

From the shadows of a building, Suriel watched Mairi head back to her car. The raven was in her hands, just as he had planned. He watched her carefully place the bird on the seat. A softness in him warmed his usually cold insides.

He had intended for her to find the Sidhe king. It was their fate.

He knew that now. Although he’d wanted desperately to keep Mairi from the Sidhe, it was not to be. His purpose in her life was ending.

A hollowness filled him as he finally accepted the truth. Unknown to her, he had been at her side since birth, watching over her, guiding her. He hadn’t always understood his purpose in her life, just that He had willed it so. And now He had shown Suriel the path her life would take, and the part he would play in it. A damn millennium here on Earth, with no fucking contact from anyone from above, and tonight he gets a message that Mairi’s path lay with the raven, and not him.

He still didn’t want to accept that his precious human was meant for Sidhe scum. They all believed him responsible for the ills that had befallen Annwyn. But it wasn’t as though he’d barged through the veil and slaughtered everyone in sight. He hadn’t brought locusts and plague. He’d had sex with a goddess. And
she
had seduced
him
. Yet the raven despised him as though Suriel alone were responsible.

He hated Annwyn and all its inhabitants. He hated the goddesses the most. He blamed them for his fall. He’d had over a millennium to reconcile himself to his actions. Yet a thousand years later he was still embittered.

Except for when it came to Mairi. She was the key to his redemption. She was what was left of the good in him. She was the healer that the raven would need to save himself from Morgan’s curse. He had a role to play in both their lives, if only the raven would not be such a pigheaded ass as he usually was.

He wanted out.
Needed out.
He was tired of this existence. And at last he had found a way.

Mairi had the book of the prophecy. She could interpret it, the Scribe’s coded message. A flame and an amulet and a divine trinity, which would lead the way to both artifacts.

He didn’t give a shit about the amulet. He wanted the flame. Which meant, of course, that once he delivered Mairi over to the raven, his connection to the Sidhe king was not over. To find redemption, Suriel knew, meant discovering the identity of the Destroyer and obliterating him from both Annwyn and Earth.

But first he must unite with the king of Annwyn, meshing both their worlds to one single purpose: uncover the identity of the Dark Mage, and destroy his apprentice.

Only then would God welcome him back home.

After tucking Rowan into her bed, Mairi went in search of her dog’s old crate. She needed
something
to put the bird in.

“That’s enough,” Mairi snapped, tugging on Clancy’s collar. “You don’t have to show your teeth; believe me, the birdie knows who’s boss.”

Her huge Irish wolfhound gave a throaty snarl, his long canines bared, staring at the bird, who was standing on her kitchen counter proudly, as if egging Clancy on.

“You must have a death wish,” she muttered, scooting the bird farther back on the counter. “He can reach up here, you know. Just look away and show him you know he’s in charge and he’ll go lie down.”

The bird cocked its head to the side and studied her. His eyes actually looked as though they narrowed at the insinuation that Clancy was top dog.

“Fine, then, become the midnight snack,” she griped as she left them to duke it out.

She found the old crate in a closet and wandered back to the kitchen with it. The metal box crashed to the floor, clanging on the ceramic tiles, as she took in the scene before her. Clancy was sitting on his haunches, ears back almost flat against his head. One paw was extended as he whimpered in supplication at the bird’s feet.