Murder of Crows (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 2) (12 page)

He died screaming, his chest bursting open, as the crow ripped out his heart and turned it to ashes before my eyes.

I stood on the porch, the beaded bag in my hand, shaking as the adrenaline dump hit me in the aftermath of using so much power.

The crow, which I guessed was Not Afraid, looked up at me and cawed, his huge black wings spread.

“It is done,” I said. “Justice is done.”

“No.” Jasper was the first to reach Sky Heart’s body. He waved his arms at the giant crow as though he could shoo it away. “NO!” he cried again.

The crow looked at me and something in its gaze warned me, but not soon enough.

Not Afraid beat his wings and flew up into Jasper’s face, his talons hooking into my father’s chest. Blue fire spilled around them and Jasper screamed in pain.

I gathered my magic but couldn’t blast the crow without hitting Jasper. I jumped off the porch and attacked the crow with my hands, tearing at his feathers. Cold burned me, icy fire rippling up my arms. More on instinct than with clear thought, I thrust the beaded talisman around Not Afraid’s neck.

The Crow shrieked and shifted. Now I wrestled with Not Afraid himself. He looked fifteen but his body had a strength I couldn’t match. Jasper went down and Not Afraid shoved me off, then came after me, ripping the talisman bag from his neck. He was free of my father. Free and clear for me to blast the shit out of him.

I summoned my power and sent a bolt of pure force at him. It should have ripped him apart, but he merely staggered and then laughed. His hands and face were covered in blood. My father’s blood or Sky Heart’s, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter.

“You broke your oath,” I said as I struggled to my feet.

“I had a prior oath.” He grinned at me, his gaunt and bloody face a death mask. He reached into his shirt and pulled out a small rectangular piece of paper, tossing it onto the ground.

I ignored it and lunged for him, sending another bolt of power at his face. His eyes flared blue and he shifted to a giant crow again even as he leapt to meet me.

Wolf sprang between us, her huge body slamming into the crow and knocking it aside. I twisted and managed to avoid colliding with her as well. She spun and snarled, spit dripping from razor-sharp teeth as long as my fingers.

Not Afraid beat his wings and lifted into the sky, circling once and then glowing with bright blue fire before disappearing into the sunlight like a ghost.

I let go of my magic, falling against Wolf’s warm body as exhaustion hit me like a drunk driver with a lead foot. My foggy brain realized someone was crying, pleading over and over for someone not to leave them.

Jasper. I opened my eyes.

He lay in a spreading pool of blood, his chest ripped open, his heart a smoking ruin within a mess of pink lung tissue and too-bright red blood. I knew he was dead. Even a shifter can’t heal a vital organ destroyed by fire.

Pearl knelt over him, his head in her lap, smoothing her hands over his hair again and again, her pleading a high keening, the words blending and melding until they meant nothing. Emerald stood behind Pearl, her face pale with shock, her green eyes wide and unseeing. As I watched, shudders and shakes took over her body and she dropped to her knees and clung to her mother.

Movement to my side caught my eye as something fluttered on the ground. The paper that Not Afraid had removed from his shirt.

Slowly, as though I had aged a thousand years, I staggered over and picked it up.

It was a post card.

I crumpled the post card in my hand, igniting it with a thought as I let it flutter toward the ground again. It was ash even as it hit.

A scream that shifted to a high-pitched snarl was my only warning. Em rose to her feet and sprang at me, shifting in midair into a white wolf. I threw my hands up and pushed magic out into a shield in front of me.

She bounced off the shield and twisted, landing on her feet. She sprang again and again I forced her away.

“Em,” I yelled. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Snarl. Leap. Bounce. Twist. Repeat.

Then people around us started shifting, turning into crows. They rose as a black swarm into the sky and descended at me, dive-bombing me like I was a bird of prey.

I pulled my power around me like a dome and hunkered down, throwing everything I had into keeping the shield up. Through the barrage of black wings I caught Pearl watching, Jasper’s head still in her lap, and I silently pleaded with her to stop this, to call them off.

She shook her head and looked away from me, her face quickly lost in the slam and flurry of winged bodies.

I couldn’t hold the shield forever. They wouldn’t be able to kill me, but I had no idea what happened to a sorceress who is torn apart. How long would it take to regenerate? Years? What would that pain feel like? Would I be conscious?

Em’s wolf body slammed into my shield again and this time I felt the reverberation right down into my bones. I was going to lose it soon, there was too much physical force being thrown against me.

The deep coughing roar of a lion echoed through the camp and suddenly the crows all came to earth, changing as they touched down back into their human forms. Em hit my shield one last time and rebounded, turning even as she twisted in the air back to a teenage girl.

A huge white tiger leapt between Em and I. Alek. I dropped my shield and called out his name.

He shifted to human and looked around, taking in the two mutilated corpses and the cluster of angry shifters. Carlos, still in his lion form, prowled through the People, cutting a line between them and where Alek and I stood.

“What happened here?” Alek said. His voice was deceptively soft, but carried some of the tiger’s growl still in it, a dangerous tone.

“She broke the wards,” Pearl said, pointing at me. “She allowed the evil in.”

“That’s not the whole story,” I protested. “Sky Heart has been killing the fledglings who don’t turn into crow. He murdered dozens of them. I have seen their bones. He admitted as much to me, to all of us, before Not Afraid killed him.”

Alek turned and looked at me, disbelief and a deep sadness in his eyes.

“You let him in?”

“Yes,” I said. I spread my hands, half reaching for Alek as I stared up at him, begging him to believe my good intentions. “We made a deal. He could get his justice, then he would rest and the People would be left in peace. He gave me his oath.”

“He broke an oath?” Alek looked like he wanted to understand, but he stayed where he was, and I dropped my hands.

“He had a prior oath.” I couldn’t share my suspicions about Samir’s involvement, not here in front of everyone. “He betrayed me and killed Jasper.”

“You stupid girl,” Pearl said. She rose to her feet after gently setting Jasper’s head on the ground. “Not Afraid is an evil spirit. That is no boy. I saw him die more than a century ago. Whatever that is, it cannot be him.”

“You heard Sky Heart,” I said. “You heard him. He killed those children. Why do you think Shishishiel has abandoned you? Why did the great Crow not stop this?”

I knew it was unfair to invoke their missing guardian, but I had been trying to help them. They couldn’t see that. They could only see the dead bodies. They hadn’t seen the bones. Hadn’t seen how many more deaths I was trying to prevent.

Gasps and questions from the crowd turned quickly to angry murmurs and Carlos roared again, quieting them. I stood up, every muscle protesting and my head pounding like it was going to explode.

“Go,” Pearl screeched at me. “Go from here, killer. We will take care of our own, as we always have.”

Alek reached for me then, his hand closing on my upper arm as he stepped in close. “Get in the truck,” he murmured. “I will get you out of here in one piece if I can.”

I looked past him, forcing myself to see Jasper’s body. For fourteen years he had been my father. For more than thirty after that, he had been as good as dead to me. Then I had learned he wasn’t even my birth father.

But he had come to me for help. Not Alek, not the Council of Nine. Me. He’d been so desperate, but also trusting that somehow I could come here and make things better.

I had failed him. I had seen only what I wanted to see, believed what I wanted to believe. He had paid the price for it. He was the one walking along the road to hell my good intentions had paved.

“No,” I said, blinking away tears. I had no right to grieve for this man. But I did have the duty to set things right, to fulfill the promise I’d made him by coming here. Samir was somehow at the root of this, I could feel it. My guess was he had raised Not Afraid from the dead, reuniting him with Blood Mother and setting them loose on my family.

“No,” I repeated, pulling my arm out of Alek’s grip. “I am going to kill Not Afraid and lay Buttercup’s spirit to rest once and for all. No one else dies.”

“You do not have that right,” Pearl said.

“I have every right. Jasper begged me to come and I promised I would help. I am going to end this. I will not break my word.” I started walking, glaring at the crowd, daring them to get in my way.

“Wait,” Alek said, coming up beside me. “We will come with you.”

“What if he comes back here?” I said. “Who will protect them?”

I didn’t think Not Afraid would come here. I was pretty damn sure where he had flown off to. But Alek couldn’t come with me. This was my fight and I didn’t know if I could protect him, too. Or even if I could win. I didn’t want to worry about him.

And there really was a small chance that Not Afraid would double back, counting on me to try to follow him and instead coming to finish killing the People.

“Carlos,” Alek said. “He’ll stay.”

“Because he was so effective against this guy before?” I hated the mean whine in my voice, but I had to convince Alek to stay out of my way.

Carlos snarled at me.

“Fuck you,” Alek said. I was pushing him away, as obviously as the physical distance opening between us. I wanted his anger. I needed him to stay here. Stay safe, away from me.

“Please,” I whispered, turning to Alek. “Please protect them. Don’t let anyone else die.”

It was underhanded and totally manipulative and I felt terrible pulling the trick, but it worked. There was enough truth in my pleading, in my grief, that he fell for it. That or he gave up on me. I didn’t want to know.

“Fine.” The finality in his tone was like charging into a wall.

“Wolf,” I called and this time she appeared. She seemed to recognize what I wanted and bent low so I could drag myself up onto her back. There was no way in nine hells I was getting back to the cave without help. My body was exhausted, my magic a weak throb inside of me. I hoped I could find a second wind somewhere on the run there.

Wolf and I plunged through the crowd and no one made a move to stop us. Soon the cool forest canopy closed over us. I clung to Wolf’s fur and tried to think about how in the power of the Universe I was going to kill a man who was already dead.

The rocks in the ravine looked like poorly cut gravestones jabbing through the inconsistent moss and grass clinging perilously to their edges. The cliff loomed, the tears streaking its face glinting in the sunlight. It cast a shadow over its base, as though deliberately hiding the pit of bones there.

Wolf stopped at the treeline again and I slid off her back. My legs felt like rubberbands and my head still ached, but I was more rested than I would have been if I’d run here under my own power. I was grateful that Wolf was with me.

Back to normal, she and I against Samir. Or in this case, one of Samir’s stupid plots.

Not that stupid
, a treacherous voice inside me whined,
you fell for it
.
This is what you get for not running when you had the chance
.

“It ain’t over yet,” I said aloud.

Wolf and I picked our way across the ravine to the cave. I had hoped that Not Afraid would be outside, though fighting him in the open would give him the advantage of flight. Wolf had managed to rebuff him when he was in his crow form. Carlos had said that he didn’t think the boy was a shifter. I figured that he had lost that power when he died and was brought back. The diabolical crow form was probably Blood Mother giving him her power, which meant that in that form, Wolf could hurt him.