RAVEN AND HER FIVE DEVILS

I have always known my blood was wrong. Not wrong like sick. Wrong like... haunted. Like there was something else living inside it, listening, waiting. My mother told me on her deathbed. We were in St. Mary's hospice, the one that smells like boiled potatoes and bleach. She was thirty-eight but looked sixty. The curse does that. It eats the women in my family faster than it eats the men. "Don't open the attic, Raven," she whispered, her hand so cold in mine. "Not until you are twenty-one. And when you do, whatever you do — don't bleed on it." She died three hours later. On my eighteenth birthday. For three years I listened. I didn't go into the attic. I lived in our house on the edge of the town of Ashwick, the house everyone says is haunted, and I went to Blackwood Academy because the scholarship was the only way I could afford to stay. Blackwood is not a normal college. It's gothic, stone, towers that stab the grey sky, built in 1898 for children of old families who had too much money and too many secrets. They accepted me because my mother went there. Legacy, they called it. Curse, I called it. And for three years, nothing happened. No ghosts. No voices. Just me, my little house with peeling black wallpaper, my job at the campus library, and the feeling that something was watching me from the corner of every mirror. Until today. My twenty-first birthday. I woke up and the house was silent. Not normal silent. Dead silent. Like it was holding its breath. I told myself I wouldn't do it. I told myself all morning while I made coffee that didn't taste like anything, while I brushed my long black hair in the cracked bathroom mirror, while I stared at my eyes — silver-grey, strange, the same eyes every Cross woman has. Mom's eyes. At 11:47 PM, I went up to the attic. The attic door had never opened for me before. I tried, the year after Mom died. It was locked. No keyhole. Just wood that wouldn't move. Today it was open an inch, black air pouring out, cold as winter in August. "Fine," I whispered to whatever lived there. "You win." I pushed it. The attic was empty except for one thing. A book on a stone pedestal. No dust on it, which was impossible. The rest of the attic was thick with dust. But the book was clean, leather black and warm, like skin. No title on the cover. Just a symbol burned into it — a circle with five points, and in the middle, a raven with its wings spread. My mother's voice in my head: Don't bleed on it. My hands were shaking so hard. Because I suddenly knew, with a certainty that came from my blood, not my brain, what this was. It wasn't a book. It was a contract. A door. A cage. And whatever was in it was mine. I picked it up. It was heavier than it looked. The pages were not paper — they were something soft, like vellum. The first page was in Latin, which I recognized from my classes. Sanguis cruoris. Familia Cross. Blood of Cross. Family Cross. I flipped. Drawings. Five figures. One with black wings that filled the sky. One beautiful beyond reason with eyes that cried black. One with chains made of gold. One with a mouth sewn shut but smiling anyway. One with a crown of bones. Under them, one name: The Five Devils. Bound. Betrayed. Waiting. My heart was hammering against my ribs. This was insane. This was grief. This was loneliness making me see things. Then the last page. Blank, except for three lines in my mother's handwriting. Fresh ink, as if she wrote it yesterday. Raven — On your 21st, they will wake. Give them blood and they will be bound. Give them your heart and they will burn the world. Don't be afraid. They were waiting for you. — Mom Under it, an incantation. Short. Exsanguis meus. Exaudi me. Venite ad me, quinque mei. My blood. Hear me. Come to me, my five. I didn't mean to say it out loud. I swear I didn't. But my mouth moved, my tongue formed the strange, heavy words, and my hands — my stupid, shaking hands — knocked the rusty nail on the pedestal. It cut me. A deep, clean cut across the left palm. Blood welled, bright red, almost glowing in the dark attic. One drop fell. It hit the blank page. The page drank it. The book exploded into black flame. I screamed and fell back, but the flame didn't burn. It was cold, so cold it burned, and it rose in a column from the book to the ceiling, then spread like ink across the attic walls. Symbols lit up everywhere — the same five-pointed circle, now glowing red. And the air tore. I don't know how else to describe it. It was like someone took a knife and cut reality open in five places. Five vertical cuts, behind the pedestal, each taller than a man. And from each cut, something stepped out. At first they were shadows. Too tall, too broad, shapes that hurt to look at, with wings, and horns, and eyes that were not eyes. Then the black flame sucked in, and they became men. No. Not men. Men don't look like that. The first one to step fully into my attic was the one with the black wings. He was dressed in black — black pants, black shirt open at the throat, long black coat that moved even though there was no wind. His hair was black, cut short, and his face was... severe. Beautiful in the way a knife is beautiful. His eyes found mine and they were silver, like mine, but colder, older. Tattoos moved under the skin of his neck, words in a language I didn't know. He looked at my bleeding hand and inhaled, slow. "Twenty-one years," he said, and his voice was low, rough, like he hadn't used it in a century. "We smelled you for twenty-one years through the wood." The second stepped out of his tear. He was the opposite — white-blonde hair to his shoulders, skin so pale it almost glowed, lips so red they looked bitten. He was wearing what looked like a white shirt and black trousers, but his shirt was half undone, and I could see black veins under his skin. He was smiling, but it was not a kind smile. It was the smile of someone who wants something and knows he will get it. "She's small," he said, eyes roaming from my face to my bare legs — I was in an old t-shirt and shorts, I hadn't thought — to my feet. "The last Cross was taller. And meaner. I like this one better." Third. This one had to duck to get out of his cut. He was massive — six-six, maybe more, shoulders like a wall, skin tanned dark, covered in scars and in gold tattoos that looked like chains. His hair was dark brown, long, tied back. He wore no shirt, just trousers, and his chest was a map of old battles. When he looked at me, his eyes were amber, like a wolf's, and they did something strange to my stomach — they made me feel owned. "Mine," he said, simply. Like he was stating a fact. "Finally." Fourth. He was leaner, charming in a way that immediately made me want to step back. Dark auburn hair, messy, green eyes that glittered with mischief and filth. He wore a leather jacket, and when he moved, I swear I heard whispers. He looked at me like I was already naked, already his. "Don't be scared, little Raven," he purred, and his voice slid over my skin. "We are not going to eat you. Well — I might. A little." And the fifth. The air got colder when he came out. The black flame bowed away from him. He was the tallest. Seven feet if an inch. His wings — real, black, huge — were folded behind him, but I could see them, each feather sharp as a blade. He wore all black, crowned with something that looked like bone and shadow. His hair was black, his face was all angles and cruelty and impossible beauty. His eyes were red, not bright red, but dark red, like drying blood. Like my blood on the page. He didn't speak at first. He just looked at the book, at my hand, at me on the floor with my knees pulled up, bleeding and shaking. Then he knelt. The floor cracked under his knee. "Raven Cross," he said, and my name in his mouth sounded like a prayer and a threat at once. "Do you know what you have done?" I couldn't speak. I clutched my hand. He reached out — his hand was huge, claws instead of nails, but they retracted when he touched me — and took my bleeding palm gently, so gently it made no sense with how big he was. He brought it to his nose and inhaled. "You called us. With blood. With your mother's words. Do you know what that means?" The one with the moving tattoos — the first one — answered for me. "It means she is bound, Zade. She is ours. The contract is sealed." Zade. So that was his name. Zade's red eyes never left mine. "Say it. Say you understand." "I... I don't," I choked out. "I didn't mean... I thought... Who are you?" The charming one with green eyes laughed. "We are your fairy godmothers, sweetheart." "Silas," warned the silver-eyed one. "Don't." Silas winked at me. The silver-eyed one stepped closer, taking my other hand. His touch was ice. "I am Azrael. Devil of Wrath. This — " he pointed to the blonde, "is Caelum. Devil of Envy. The big one who says you are his is Malrik. Devil of Greed. The one who wants to eat you is Silas. Devil of Lust. And he — " he nodded at Zade, still holding my bleeding hand, "is Zade. Devil of Pride. He is our leader. We were kings. Now we are... yours." "Devils," I whispered. "Real devils." "Real," Malrik rumbled, and his amber eyes dropped to my mouth. "And hungry." I tried to pull my hand from Zade. He let me, but slowly, his claws brushing my skin and leaving five faint red lines that didn't bleed. "The women of your family bound us, Raven," Zade said, standing. He was so tall his wings brushed the low attic ceiling. "A hundred years ago, your great-grandmother made a deal. Protection for her bloodline. In exchange, we sleep until the twenty-first birthday of the last daughter. Then she wakes us with blood, and we serve." "Serve?" Caelum, the blonde envy devil, laughed, a beautiful, bitter sound. "He makes it sound noble. We don't serve, little bird. We possess. Your great-grandmother knew. She was smart. She gave us a pretty cage — your blood." Azrael's ice grip tightened on my hand. "You are cursed, Raven Cross. Your bloodline is cursed to lose everyone they love. We are the cure. While we breathe, nothing can kill you. Nothing can take you. But — " "But there is a price," Silas finished, kneeling beside me now, too close, his breath hot on my cheek. "You belong to us. Not one. All five." The book on the pedestal slammed shut on its own, then opened again to a new page. Words wrote themselves in my blood, dripping: Bound by blood. Sealed by kiss. The five shall keep. The one shall be kept. She is theirs. I stared at it, tears finally spilling over. "I didn't want this. I just wanted... I just wanted not to be alone on my birthday." Something in Zade's terrible face softened. Just a fraction. He reached out again, and this time, when his clawed hand touched my cheek, it was warm. He wiped a tear with his thumb. "You will never be alone again," he said, and it sounded like a promise and a sentence. "You will wish you were." Malrik moved then. He picked me up — one arm, like I weighed nothing — and started carrying me out of the attic. I should have screamed, fought. But I was cold, and bleeding, and his body was furnace-hot. "Where are you taking me?" I whispered. "To bed," he said. "You are bleeding. You are cold. You need to be tended. And then we need to teach you the rules." Azrael appeared at the top of the stairs, blocking us. "Rules?" Zade's voice came from behind, dark. "Rule one. She does not leave this house without one of us. Rule two. No male at Blackwood touches her. Rule three..." He looked at me in Malrik's arms, silver eyes, blonde eyes, amber eyes, green eyes, red eyes all on me at once, five devils staring at one girl in an old t-shirt with a bloody hand. "Rule three," Zade finished, his wings spreading and filling the whole attic with shadow, "no one, human or devil, takes what is ours. And you, Raven Cross — you are ours." Malrik carried me down into my dark house, and five devils followed, and I knew, with absolute, terrifying certainty that my life as the lonely, cursed girl was over. Something much darker had just begun.