Never Look Back

“No, I’m not.” She resisted the urge to step back, to move away from him. “I don’t conduct ceremonies. I don’t cure the sick.”

“Your paintings are your ceremonies. Not all Apache shamans heal. Some are bringers of rain. Some have medicine over snakes. Others can shoot guns without touching the trigger.”

“And I give men wings?” She pointed to him, then smiled a little. “You fascinate me. The man and the raven.”

He smiled, too. The transformation made him look even more handsome. “You do that to me, as well. The woman and her paintings.”

She told herself this was fate. Part of her destiny. Something that was meant to happen. He’d clarified her confusion about her power. He’d called her artwork ceremonies, associating it with shamanism.

Given her magic new meaning.

Dear Reader,

A paranormal mystery and killer sex. What else could a woman like Allie Whirlwind want? How about breaking an ancient curse? And choosing between two men?

Alas, many of you have written to me, anxious for Allie’s story. And here it is, with some supernatural twists and turns. Although Allie was featured as a secondary character in Always Look Twice, my January 2005 Bombshell book, and in Apache Nights, my September 2005 Desire novel, her story stands alone.

In this tale, she battles shape-shifters, ghosts and witches, but it’s all in good, creepy fun, with a touch of eroticism tossed in. A Bombshell that goes bump in the night. A book that was a challenge to write and a joy to pass on to you. I sincerely hope that you enjoy it.

Love,

Sheri WhiteFeather

Never Look Back

Sheri Whitefeather

www.millsandboon.co.uk

SHERI WHITEFEATHER

lives in Southern California and enjoys ethnic dining, attending powwows and visiting art galleries and vintage clothing stores near the beach. Since her one true passion is writing, she is thrilled to be writing for Silhouette Books. When she isn’t writing, she often reads until the wee hours of the morning.

Sheri’s husband, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, inspires many of her stories. They have a son, a daughter and a trio of cats—domestic and wild. She loves to hear from her readers. You may write to her at: P.0. Box 17146, Anaheim, California 92817. Visit her Web site at: www.SheriWhiteFeather.com

To the readers who asked about Allie Whirlwind and are anxious to devour her story. Allie’s book was conceived from historical facts and paranormal fiction. It was written with the utmost respect to the American Indian and First Nations it represents. If I made any errors or depicted inaccuracies about those tribes, I apologize. Unfortunately, some of the research I uncovered contained conflicting information.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

The wind rushed through the window, sending a gust of air spinning through the loft where Allie Whirlwind lived.

Lost in a painting, she ignored it. She was putting the final touches on her current watercolor—a depiction of an angel.

But he wasn’t your ordinary, garden-variety angel. She’d given him a long, muscular body with enormous black wings. His hair, as dark and shiny as his wings, flowed long and free, the thick, rebellious strands heightened by a lavender-hued dusk. Piercing brown eyes, a sharp, straight nose and prominent cheekbones lent his face a fierce quality.

For his clothes, she’d chosen practical fabrics in pale colors. The tan shirt, faded from the sun and unbuttoned to his waist, bore the brunt of his labor, with ragged edges and frayed seams. The garment was torn along his shoulder blades, making room for his wings. On his feet, he wore work boots.

She’d dressed him like a turn-of-the-century farmer.

Puzzled, Allie tilted her head. Did her angel grow crops? Did he let the soil drift through his fingers?

Yes, she thought, gazing at his callused, dirt-smudged hands, he did. Was that strange for a celestial warrior? Allie didn’t know. She hadn’t figured out what tribe he was from.

She’d painted his image from instinct, from somewhere deep inside. Her artwork, the fantasy creatures she created, always came from her soul.

But this one…

She paused to add more light, more shadow. This one was supposed to protect her. She scanned the length of his body, his slightly scarred chest, his deeply bronzed stomach, the ripple of hard-earned, sweat-glistening muscle. He was supposed to boff her brains out, too.

With a girlish grin, she chewed on the end of her brush. It was a joke, of course. A lark between herself and her sister. Allie didn’t really expect him to come alive. If she wanted a lover, she would have to look elsewhere.

Then again, for the last year, she’d been steeped in magic. Good magic. Bad magic. She’d seen it all. She knew anything was possible. In the past, her paintings had possessed paranormal powers. She’d done a portrait of her dead father that had attracted his ghost.

The wind swept through the studio once more, and Samantha hissed. Samantha was Allie’s cat, a finicky feline she’d found on the streets of Los Angeles.

The City of Angels.

She went back to her watercolor, shushing Samantha with a flick of her wrist, dropping a spot of paint on the already mottled floor.

The cat hissed again, only louder this time. She sighed, turning to face her pet. “Come on, Sam. It’s a nice spring breeze. A little air won’t hurt you.”

Perched on a cluttered art-supply shelf, the suspicious animal tensed, her sleek black body arching, her fur spiking on end.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a nice breeze. Maybe it was strong and aggressive. But it fit Allie’s angel. She could imagine him soaring into the sky, his arms raised to the heavens, his threadbare clothes blowing, his hair whipping like a midnight tornado.

Lord, he was gorgeous. Rough and primitive.

“If only you would come alive,” she said.

And that was when it happened, when her wish took a twisted turn. Without warning, the wind howled, pushing against the window screen, popping the device from its hinges. It landed at Allie’s feet, where the hem of her dress billowed, mimicking Marilyn Monroe’s fanning garment in The Seven Year Itch.

Talk about feeling sexy.

Samantha went into a tizzy, growling like a demon, her ears pinned to her pretty little head. But Allie didn’t scold her. Foolish as it was, she was too busy waiting for her angel, her heart thumping in anticipation.

Only, it was a big, black bird that flew into the loft and circled the studio, its wings whooshing past her.

Allie blinked. A raven?

So much for getting laid.

She looked up, watching the raven perch on a rafter, one of the highest spots in the studio. The cat hadn’t quit growling. She hated birds. And this big, bad baby was no exception. It stood about two feet tall, with an impressive wingspan.

“That’s not Zinna,” Allie told Samantha, as the wind calmed down. Zinna was Allie’s great-grandmother, a dead witch, an Apache shape-shifter who took the form of an owl. An evil spirit who’d tried to steal Allie’s sister’s soul.

Not that Olivia Whirlwind was easy pickings. The older sister was a kick-ass, gun-toting psychic who assisted law enforcement officials. Currently she was working on a covert FBI mission. Allie couldn’t reach her if she tried. But there was no need. Allie had this situation under control.

Samantha batted her paw in the air, ready to do battle. Convinced, or so it seemed, that the feathered creature was Zinna.

“That’s a raven,” Allie said, glancing up at the rafters. The bird was too far away to react to the sound of her voice, to make out her words. Not that it would know the difference. Allie often put thoughts in Sam’s head, assuming what her pet was thinking, but she wasn’t going to do that with the bird, too. “Ravens are part of the crow family. That’s not the same as an owl. Besides, Zinna’s magic was contained by a binding spell. She can’t hurt us.”

Samantha narrowed her wary green eyes. All right, so the cat had a point. The binding spell could wear off at any time. Zinna’s magic was too powerful to contain forever.

“Don’t worry. I’ve been preparing for Zinna, honing my skills.” Allie paused, smoothing her waist-length hair. “But that raven isn’t her. Nor did she dispatch it.”

Samantha gave her a look that asked, “How can you be sure?”

“I have witch radar.” Allie, who’d been dubbed Addle-brain by the man who’d trained her to fight, puffed up her chest. “It’s part of my magic.”

If Samantha had eyebrows, she probably would have raised them. Allie had just painted an angel and conjured a bird. That didn’t bode well for her magic, for the skills she’d been honing.

She copped a defensive stance. “This isn’t my fault. Birds fly into people’s houses all the time.” To prove her point, she made a grand gesture, trying to shoo the stupid raven back out the window.

But it flew straight at her instead. Startled, she smacked it with her flailing hands, sending the wild creature to the floor, where it landed on the linoleum with a thud.

She gasped, stunned by the force with which she’d hit it. Even Samantha reacted with a you-killed-it meow. Of course, Sam sounded happy. Ding dong, the bird is dead.

“I didn’t mean to.” Guilty, Allie knelt over the fallen raven.

Samantha abandoned her post to get closer to her mistress’s kill. Whispering an apology, Allie stroked the bird, and it opened its eyes.

It was stunned, not dead.

Oddly enough, the raven simply stared at her, as though it understood her apology. A strange chill crept up her spine. But before she had time to analyze the feeling, Samantha grabbed one of its tail feathers with her teeth and yanked as hard as she could.

Suddenly the bird rose to the occasion, diving at Allie and taking a screw-you bite out of her arm.

Damn. She jerked back, realizing she’d taken a hit for something Samantha had done. The cat seemed to sense it, too. She took off running with the feather in her mouth, and within the blink of an eye, the bird was back in the rafters, tracking the cat from above, waiting to make its next move.

Clever beast.

Allie’s arm was bleeding like a bitch. She wrapped a small towel around the wound.

And while Samantha leaped from shelf to shelf, Allie searched for something to attack the raven, something that would reach the rafters, which wouldn’t be an easy task in a loft with museum-height ceilings. But what else could she do? By now, the bird was dive-bombing Samantha, behaving like the star of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. And its caw. Lord Almighty. It sounded like the messenger of death.

And then she recalled that in some forms of folklore, ravens were omens of death.

Like owls.

Shit.

She warned herself to stay calm, to think clearly. Wasn’t Raven the creator of the world to some of the Northwest Indians? Wasn’t he highly revered?

Of course Allie wasn’t from a Northwest tribe. Anxious, she scrambled to remember what ravens represented in her culture. She was half Chiricahua Apache and half Oglala Lakota Sioux, and sometimes their traditions didn’t mesh.

To the Apache, crows were associated with the hunt. The appearance of a crow was a good sign. But did that go for ravens, too? Allie didn’t know. She found a broom and swung at the bird, missing it by a long shot.

Wily beast.

As for the Lakota, she couldn’t remember what ravens meant to them. Or maybe she never knew to begin with.

Samantha knocked over an entire shelf of acrylic paint, scattering the tubes all over the floor. The oils came next. Then the cat dumped a bottle of brush cleaner, where it spilled into a pool of clear liquid.

That was Allie’s downfall. She took another missed swipe at the raven and hit the brush cleaner, sliding like a skunk on roller skates. With a feminine-pitched screech, she slammed into a sturdy oak cabinet, where her head rammed the wood.

She could have sworn she saw stars. The room was starting to spin. She glanced around for Samantha and noticed the cat was hiding behind the biggest chair in the studio. But the bird was no longer stalking her.

And then Allie realized why. The raven was shifting, transforming into a man.

No, not a man.

Her angel.

It was him, right down to the smallest detail. As enormous black wings empowered him like a magic cloak, she watched him as closely as her fading vision would allow. He seemed disoriented, confused by his celestial state. He simply stood in the middle of the shambled studio, staring at the painting that depicted his image. Even in all the chaos, the watercolor remained unscathed.

Allie fought to stay conscious, to touch him, to talk to him, but she couldn’t hold on. She drifted into oblivion, her head throbbing, her arm still bleeding from his bite.

When Allie regained her senses, she didn’t know how much time had passed. All she knew was that the sun continued to shine, sending daylight streaming into the room. She fought a wave of nausea and squinted through her delirium. As her eyes focused, she looked around.

The angel was missing.

No, not missing.

She glanced up and saw that the raven was back. There he was, in the rafters once again.

Good God.

Taking a chance, she stood up, holding on to the cabinet she’d slammed into, using the wooden structure for support. The raven watched her from above, and the cat was still hiding under the chair.

Allie didn’t know what to think. Had she imagined the bird’s transformation?

No, she thought. His shape-shifting had been too real. Too powerful. For a few stolen moments in time, he’d become her angel.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice echoing in the spacious room.

Silence met her call. Then a sudden dash of wings. The raven rushed past her, making her hair flurry around her face.

She let go of the cabinet, spinning around to question him again. But it did no good. He soared straight out the window, taking the route from whence he’d come. And then she lost sight of him. He wasn’t even a speck on the horizon. He’d flown completely away.

She took a minute to catch her breath, to ward off the lingering dizziness, to walk to the bathroom and splash some water on her face. Last year, she’d lived through some craziness with her sister, fighting bewitched creatures Zinna had conjured.

But this seemed strangely erotic. As confusing as it was, she couldn’t stop the heat that spiraled through her body, the attraction that left her wanting him.

Her angel.

She bandaged her wound, and once she got her sea legs back, she returned to the studio and set about cleaning up the mess, wiping the spilled liquid and putting the shelves in order.

Samantha crept out from under the chair with the bird’s feather in her mouth, moving like a jungle cat, slow and steady, her shoulders arching, her rangy muscles bunching. Drama queen, Allie thought. The shape-shifter was gone.

Gone.

The word reverberated in her brain. She took the feather away from Sam, putting it in the oak cabinet for safekeeping. She needed to find out who or what the angel was. At this point, she didn’t know if he was a manifestation of her magic or if he’d existed before today—if his image, the details she’d painted, went beyond the strokes of her brush.

She reached for the window screen, intending to replace it. But she changed her mind. She left the window as it was, just in case he decided to return.

To come back to her.

Samantha meowed, grabbing her attention. She blinked and scooped up the cat. She didn’t need to worry about leaving the window open. Aside from it being too high for Samantha to reach, Allie and her sister lived on the fourth floor in a commercial building, a downtown loft in the Los Angeles Fashion District that was located above a trendy shoe store and a gourmet coffee bar. Home invasion robberies weren’t part of their realm.

Then again, Kyle Prescott had broken in one night. Of course, Kyle hadn’t been robbing them. He was Allie’s trainer, an Apache militant who’d staged an attack. At times, she thought he was the toughest, most capable man on earth. And other times, she thought he was as dense as a rusted doornail. But the feeling was mutual. The nickname Addle-brain had come from him.

She closed the studio door and carried Samantha down the hall, placing her on a velvet sofa. The living room had been decorated with rich fabrics and mystic accents. The walls were covered with a mural she’d painted, with unicorns and fairies and an armor-clad knight slaying a dragon. Luckily none of those beings had jumped to life.

Allie wished she could call Olivia, but her sister wasn’t available. So she dialed Kyle’s cell phone number instead.

He answered on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“It’s Allie.”

“I know. I saw your name on the caller ID. What’s up?”

She decided not to waste any time. “Do you know anything about ravens?”

He made a perplexed sound. “What?”

“Ravens. Those big, black birds. One flew in my window today.”

“Damn it, Allie. Did you do something weird?”

“No.” She wasn’t about to tell him about the raven’s transformation. Not because he wouldn’t believe her. He’d been involved in combating last year’s witchery, and he knew she’d been experimenting with her magic. But she wanted to keep the angel a secret, to let her romantic notions linger. Everyone had a partner but her.

Kyle was married with a baby on the way. He’d wed a homicide detective, a lady Allie respected and admired. She’d helped them get together, in the same way she’d helped Olivia commit to her FBI lover. Allie liked playing matchmaker. She’d always believed in love.

Kyle’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Are you sure you didn’t do anything weird?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t lying. Not completely. She was simply omitting a few details. “I’m just curious about ravens now.”

“Then you should talk to Daniel Deer Runner. He’s a member of my Warrior Society.”

How was one of Kyle’s hard-edged militants going to help? She wasn’t looking for someone to hunt the bird down and kill it. “Why should I talk to him?”

“Because he’s half Lakota, like you, but he has a tribal affiliation with the Haida Nation, too. Raven is a demigod to them, a major part of their mythology.”

Her pulse jumped. Any little bit would help. She reached for a pen and paper. “What’s his number?”

“Hold on. I’ve got it programmed in my phone.” A second later, he rattled it off.

Allie jotted it down. Then she drew a black bird on the paper, coloring its wings with bold marks. “What does Daniel do?”

“He’s a veterinary technician at the zoo.”

She looked at Samantha. The cat was curled into a ball, napping on a gold-tasseled pillow. “So he would know about real ravens, too? And not just the mythological kind?”

“That’s why I recommended him.”

“Thanks, Kyle.”

“Sure.”

She said goodbye and disconnected the line, preparing to call Daniel Deer Runner.

For now, he was just what Allie needed.

The following day at five-thirty, Allie arrived at Daniel’s house. He lived in an average district of North Hollywood, where nondescript homes blended into each other. But not Daniel’s. His in-need-of-repair structure sat on a bed of dying grass and flourishing weeds, with a weathered tire hanging from a solitary tree.

She exited her economy car and noticed that he drove what she called a terrorist van. The white, nearly windowless vehicle was parked in an oil-stained driveway.

His house was even worse than Kyle’s, and that wasn’t an easy feat. Kyle was a junk dealer.

She trudged up the walkway, dodging loose stones and chipped cement. She rang the bell, but nothing happened. Figures. It was broken.

As she knocked on the door, she noticed a brittle green hose rolled up in the dismal flower bed. An ugly brown spider had built its home in the center of the hole. She made a disturbed expression. She hated bugs.

“You must be Allie,” a deep voice said.

She jerked to attention, unaware that the door had swung open. “And you must be Daniel.” He looked like a Native American nerd, with a solid, six-foot-plus frame and horn-rimmed glasses. His medium-length kettle-black hair was combed straight back, revealing a square jaw, a flat-bridged nose and killer cheekbones.

Did he think the glasses made a pseudo/L.A./artsy statement?

Behind the dorky specs, he checked her out. His gaze swept the long, lithe length of her, taking in her Southwestern flair—the loose cotton fabrics and silver-and-turquoise jewelry she’d bought at a pawnshop.

She assessed his style and noticed that his white, button-down shirt and shrink-to-fit Levi’s were clean and pressed. She thought it was weird when people ironed their jeans, but at least he hadn’t put a crease in them. On his feet, he wore a pair of high-top, black-and-white tennis shoes.

“So what do you think of my house?” he asked.

Allie didn’t know what to say. She glanced at the garden hose. Its occupant had disappeared.

“That bad, huh?” He gave her a goofy grin. “And here I thought this place was a chick magnet.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “Not quite.”

“Was it the spider that ruined it for you? He and I are buds.” He turned to look at the web and noticed that it was vacant. “Traitor.” He grinned at Allie again. “I should have known better than to trust an arachnid.”

She almost laughed. Maybe the arachnid didn’t want to turn into an arachnerd by living so close to him. “You’ll have to be more careful next time. Choose your friends a little more wisely.”

“No kidding. Do you want to come in?”

“Okay.” Strange as he was, he was starting to grow on her. He smelled like Brylcreem, a men’s hair product that had been around since the ’50s. Her dad had used the goop, too.

“I just moved here,” Daniel said as she crossed the threshold. “The landlord offered me a deal on the rent if I fixed it up. I already started on the inside.”

Allie looked around. The chestnut-colored carpet and beige drapes were old, but she could tell that the walls held a fresh coat of paint. He’d decorated with light-toned woods, a tan couch and a leather recliner. A few leopard-print pillows were tossed in for good measure.

It needed a bit more color, maybe a splash of red, but overall it wasn’t bad.

“Do you want a soda?” he asked.

“Sure.” She followed him into the kitchen, where ancient white appliances, a chipped sink and a vinyl floor with an avocado-green pattern from the ’70s had been scrubbed clean.

He opened the fridge and handed her a generic cola. “I bought those peel-and-stick squares for the floor. But I haven’t had time to rip up this stuff yet.”

She fought the urge to move closer to him, but she knew it wouldn’t ease her soul. The smell of his hair was making her homesick for her childhood, for the innocence that had been long since shattered.

As silence engulfed them, he watched her flip the tab on her soda and take a drink. Allie wasn’t the self-conscious type, but his scrutiny was a bit too intense.