“Repeat after me,” he shouted.
We said the words. I had a hard time concentrating as the wind swirled through the windows, the door, the roof, sweeping past my cheeks like the beat of invisible raven’s wings. The shrieking increased. I wanted to put my hands over my ears. Then suddenly my chest began to ache as if someone, or something, had punched my solar plexus.
The witch was here.
“Do you see it?” Ian asked.
I shook my head, and the ache turned to sharp, shiny needles of pain. I fell to my knees; I could hear nothing but the thunder that pounded in my ears like the beat of my dying heart.
Ian fell onto on his back, eyes wide, face contorted. He groped at his chest. Beneath his palms, beneath the tatters of his shirt, his skin rippled and pulsed as something fought to break free.
“No,” I managed. “Take me.”
Laughter swirled around the room—both human and birdlike—mocking my foolishness. The Raven Mocker was going to take us both.
My chest on fire, my head threatening to explode from lack of oxygen, I reached for Ian’s hand. I was surprised when his squeezed mine.
“Say the words,” he whispered. “Believe the magic.”
I tilted my face to the night, felt the rain on my fiery skin. I shouted the words in Cherokee into the raging night. I knew what every single one of them meant.
The air hummed, electricity all around. Behind my closed eyelids I saw my great-grandmother leap onto a boulder, heard her growl at that bear. I knew she’d had magic, and I wanted magic, too. I would do anything to keep the witch from hurting the one I loved.
Ian cried out; a snarl burst from my lips. Feral fury, the need to defend my mate, a prowling wildness erupted within, and I opened my eyes.
The Raven Mocker hovered in front of me—a huge bird with a wingspan that brushed the walls of the cabin, red glowing eyes in a black beaked face; its shriek shook the mountain. The creature looked nothing like Quatie, not that a resemblance would have stopped me from doing what I had to do.
“Die,” I said in a voice that hovered between woman and beast.
Sparks blazed from the wings; lightning flashed above, seeming to spill a celestial glow in a column from the clouds to the earth; thunder rumbled, first loudly, then softer and softer until it blended in with the sound of the rain.
The Raven Mocker screamed one last time before crumpling to the ground, and the pain in my chest eased.
Ian struggled to sit up. I scooted closer, put my arm around him, and t
ogether we watched as the raven became Adsila, then her face took on the countenance of everyone she’d killed, ending with Katrine. I wondered if we’d ever find her body.
Last, she became Quatie again and I experienced a moment of sadness for the loss of the woman she’d once been; then she slowly turned to dust and blew away on the remnants of the storm.
“You did it.” Ian brushed his fingertips along my cheekbones, his expression full of wonder. “You have the power of a panther.”
I didn’t feel any different, although I could see a lot farther than normal in the total darkness of the mountain beneath a cloud-filled sky. I could hear tiny, furry things rustling in the bushes; I could smell them, too, and my stomach contracted in hunger. I had to fight the urge to run into that darkness and hunt those scrumptious creatures.
“How do I put myself back?” I asked, a little weirded out by the temptation to chase and to kill.
“Close your eyes and say, ‘Ahnigi’a.’ “
“Which means?”
“ ‘Leave.’ “
I did as he said, and when I was through I couldn’t see past the threshold or hear much beyond the whirl of the wind.
“You were amazing.”
He kissed me, and I clung. I’d nearly lost him. Hell, I’d nearly lost me. The remnants of what I’d done made me shaky, but I also felt stronger, better, more myself than I’d felt in my whole life.
“Ow.” Ian’s hand went to his damaged mouth.