Faith Hunter: Raven Cursed

Eyes gritty from lack of sleep, I knelt on the bank, jeans absorbing the wet from the river-slick rock. Just upstream from me, two commercial rafts slid under the bridge where a couple had been attacked before dawn, the screaming voices of laughing children tearing the air. Someone slapped a paddle onto the water, the sound echoing. My Beast flinched deep inside, but I didn’t react. I was too busy studying the scratches on the rock in the early morning light.

There were three parallel lines, the one in the center longer than the ones to either side. I put my fingers into the grooves, feeling the rough edges of the slashes. Using the excuse of a better view, I bent lower, getting my nose to the rock. I sniffed. The water smelled of iron and fish, sunscreen, treated sewage, chemicals, and age. The grooves smelled different. Still fishy, but with a particular, sour, dead-fish stench I recognized.

Grindylow, Beast thought at me. Water smells of grindylow, not vampire, not pigeons.

It took me a moment to understand. Beast was a literal creature, and the river was named the Pigeon. To her, it should either smell of the vampires who had been accused of attacking the boating couple just upstream of where I knelt, or of pigeons. Not a grindylow, a creature once thought to be mythical, from the U.K. by way of Africa and New Orleans. A grindylow brought unexpected, puzzling possibilities into the equation. I stared up at Stirling Mountain, wondering just how much responsibility for this attack rested on me.

I rose to my feet and dusted the wet grit off my hands, watching rafts float toward me. They were filled with families, church teens out on a field trip, college kids lazing away a September Saturday, the river guides looking young and carefree. The water of the Upper Pigeon River rippled and frothed at the end of the run, spilling out into a wide placid pool beneath the bridge where the attack took place, dividing around islands and curling into smooth eddy pools where commercial rafts could launch or be pulled up the banks. Just downstream the river dropped again, becoming the Lower Pigeon, a slower, easy-paced river.

I scuffed a boot heel over the three cuts in the rock. I had an idea what supernat had mauled the two last night, and it wasn’t a rogue-vamp. Proving that would make the local vamps and the parley safer. Despite the territory-marking sign and the grindy scent, the grindylow wasn’t the assailant either. Leo had made this my problem, and it was, but not solely for the reason he thought. Crap . This was gonna be a booger. And if I could prove it, it was my fault. A sense of dread settled in my gut.

I held out my hand for the photographs of the couple who had been savaged. The poor-quality, grainy, low-pixel-count photos were clear enough to make my knees weak. Yeah. Provided I could find evidence to support it, I knew what had attacked the couple, unlikely as that might actually be.

According to witnesses, the young woman, who went by the moniker Itty Bitty, had been attacked first. Though in her twenties, she was tiny enough to look like a very young teen—hence the nickname. In the photos, she was swathed in bandages, except for a few superficial wounds on one calf, and those were familiar. I had a few fading scars that looked similar. The man, her boyfriend, was former military, and his wounds were more severe. He’d defended her and paid the price. In the dark of early evening, neither had been able to identify the creatures that attacked them and pulled them under the water, mauling and biting. Itty Bitty had seen nothing at all; her hero boyfriend had reported hairy men, dogs, and vampires.

Without looking up, I handed the photos back to the deputy. “Yeah. I know what attacked the couple.” Holding in a resigned sigh, I pushed my sunglasses back over my eyes and tapped the scarred rock with my boot heel. “But it isn’t what made this.”

“So what did?” the cop asked. “Fangheads, right?”

I pulled my gaze from the water-washed rock to the river guides, the cop, whose name was Emmett Sontag, and my best friend, Molly—here for moral support and curiosity. “These three cuts were made by a grindylow.” At the guides’ blank reactions I said, “Grindys are like the enforcers of the were community. They kill weres who try to turn humans, and keep an eye out on the young weres to make sure they abide by were-law.” When they still looked blank I spelled it out for them, keeping my own reactions inside, hidden. “I think werewolves attacked the couple last night.”

“We got werewolves here?” a young guide said, his steel tongue stud catching the light. “Awesome.” He turned and looked around, as if seeing his workplace in a new and exciting way.

Molly’s eyes widened as she took in the implications of werewolves and a grindy in the Appalachian Mountains. From her mutating expressions, Molly was figuring out everything I just had, and most of that information was not something I was willing to share with the others. I caught her gaze, directed hers to the sheet of photos in the cop’s hands, and let her read my concern. Her gaze slid up Stirling Mountain, as mine had, worried. She did an eyebrow shrug, raising and lowering them in sympathy, saying clearer than words, This is gonna be a mess of trouble, Big-Cat.

I managed a defeated grin at the sentiment.

“Werewolves. Damn.” Emmett looked around, eyes narrowed, and rattled off a series of questions that suggested he was more than just gun, swagger, and belly. “Is this grindy thing dangerous? Can you prove it was werewolves? Do we need to pull the rafts?” He resettled his heavy utility belt, one hand on the butt of his 9 millimeter handgun. It was cop body language, looking for trouble and being ready for it. Not. A werewolf would eat his innards for dinner.

Pulling the rafts off the water would mean a financial hardship for the rafting businesses operating along the river. I started to say it was safe, but closed my mouth on the words. I had no idea what grindys ate, or whether they were primarily nocturnal. I was assuming that the grindy was here because of its life mission, but I’d drawn conclusions and made deductions before based on insufficient info, and humans got hurt. I didn’t want that happening here.

Having weres in the hills wasn’t gonna make the locals happy. Like the itchy deputy, local law enforcement types all over three counties were already agitated—passing out stakes, holy water, crosses, and garlic against vamps—and there was grumbling about taking down all the fangheads in an old-fashioned hunt. Now they’d be after weres too, and I had good reason to want them not to. I said, “Grindys don’t eat people, and werewolves are mostly nocturnal. Keep everyone off the water after sunset, but you don’t have to pull the rafts during daylight hours.”

Emmett didn’t like it. He wanted action, and he wanted it now, but he was also conscious of Cocke County’s economic situation. He pursed his lips, thinking, fingers tapping his gun butt with little pats of sound. “Mike, Dave,” he said, addressing two river guides, “you’ll see word gets passed? I’ll run patrol down here throughout the night, but I’d rather not have to arrest somebody or pull a dead stoner outta the water.”

The two men nodded. Mike Kohlenberger, also known as Jedi Mike, or the Old Man of the River, had over thirty years of rafting experience, and Dave was a raft guide, a Class-V kayak paddler, and a Level Four instructor—meaning the two were the best of the best. I’d met them back when I was a midlevel investigator at a security company, before I went out on my own. Someone in the small paddling community had been breaking into local businesses protected by RJY Securities and I’d been sent to look around. They weren’t friends, but, for business competitors, they had a good working relationship.