Chapter 1
A storm beneath the Thunder Moon is both rare and powerful. My great-grandmother believed that on that night magic happens. She neglected to mention that magic could kill.
Mid-July in northern Georgia was an air conditioner salesman’s wet dream. In theory, the creek behind my home should have been balmy. In practice, it wasn’t. Nevertheless, I dropped my robe and waded in; then I lifted my face to the full Thunder Moon and chanted the words my e-li-si, my great-grandmother, had taught me.
“I stand beneath the moon and feel the power. I will possess the lightning and drink of the rain. The thunder is your song and mine.”
I wasn’t sure what the chant was for, but it was the only one I remembered completely, so I said those words every time I came here. The repetition calmed me. The memories of my great-grandmother were some of the few good memories I had.
According to her, a chant spoken in English was worthless. Only one spoken in Cherokee would work. Unfortunately, she’d died before she could teach me more than a smattering of the language. I’d always meant to learn more, but I’d never found the time.
She’d left me all her books, her notes—what she called her medicine. But I couldn’t read any of the papers she’d gathered into a grade school binder, so they accumulated dust in the false bottom of my father’s desk.
I’d loved her deeply, and I mourned her every day. I missed her so badly sometimes a great black cloud of depression settled over me that was very hard to shake.
“Someday,” I whispered to the night. “Someday I’ll know all those secrets.”
Lightning flashed, closer than it should be. The moon still shone, though clouds now skated across its surface. Thunder rumbled, a great gray beast, shaking the hills that surrounded me.
The Blue Ridge Mountains had always been home. I could never desert them. The mountains didn’t lie, they didn’t cheat or steal, and, most important, they never left. The mountains would always be there.
They were as much a part of me as my midnight hair, my light green eyes, and the skin that was so much darker than everyone else’s in town. My ancestors had been both Indian and African, with a good portion of Scotch-Irish mixed in.
Once upon a time, the Scots had immigrated to Ulster and begun farming. When times got bad, as they so often did in Ireland, they’d come to America where they’d first been known as Irish. However, when the wave of Irish came after the famine it was no longer fashionable to be Irish—had it ever been back then? From then on the Scottish immigrants preferred to be called Scotch-Irish, not Scots-Irish as one would expect, but a purely American term.
My toes tingled with cold, so I rose from the water and snatched my white terry-cloth robe from the ground. I slid my arms into it, and the silver glow of the moon went out as if snuffed by a heavenly hand. The wind whistled through the towering pines, sounding like an angry spirit set free of bondage.
I stood at the creek and watched the storm come. I liked storms. They reflected all the turmoil I’d carried within me for so long. However, this storm was different from those that usually tumbled over my mountains—stronger, quicker, stranger. I should have started running at the first trickle of wind.
Lightning flashed so brightly I closed my eyes, yet the imprint of the sky opening up and the electric sheen spilling out seemed scalded into my brain. The scent of ozone drifted by, and the thunder seemed to crash from below rather than from above.
I opened my eyes just as the lightning flared again far too soon. A horrible, screeching wail followed, and a trail of sparks tumbled from the sky in the distance.
“I got a bad feeling.” I watched the roiling sky until the cell phone in my pocket began to buzz.
I don’t know why I’d brought the thing. Half the time I couldn’t get a signal out here. The trees were so high, the mountains so near. Often I got back to the house and realized I’d dropped the phone either at the creek or somewhere along the path. Nevertheless, I was too much my father’s daughter to ever leave home without it. Dad had been the sheriff in Lake Bluff, Georgia, too.
“McDaniel,” I answered, wincing as needles of rain began to fall, the wind picking up and driving them into my face.
“Grace?”
The connection crackled, the voice on the other end breaking up. Lightning flashed again, and I wondered if I should be out here with a cell phone pressed to my head. I started for the house and—
Baboom!
Thunder shook the earth. The wind whipped my long, wet hair into my eyes. The world went electric silver as lightning took over the sky.
“Grace! You there? Grace!”
I recognized the voice of my deputy, Cal Striker. Cal had spent most of his life in the Marines; then he’d retired after twenty and tried to relax back in the old hometown.
Except Cal wasn’t the relaxing type. I could understand why, after tours in Iraq, and most
recently Afghanistan, the pace in Lake Bluff had driven him bonkers. He’d begged me to hire him for the open deputy position. I’d been happy to.
“Right here.” I wasn’t sure if Cal could hear me. Above the wind and the rain and the thunder, I could barely hear me. “What’s the matter?”
“We’ve got—” Crackle. Buzz. “Over on the—” Snap. “—problem.”
Hell. What did we have on the where that was a problem? With Cal it could be anything. From a kitty cat up a tree to a domestic disturbance complete with shotguns, Cal handled every situation with the same calm surety.
Cal was a big fan of Chuck Norris, which had led to no small amount of teasing from the other officers, and someone had taken to leaving Chuck Norris jokes on Cal’s desk. I thought most of them were hilarious. My deputy did not.