Murder of Crows Page 7
Nathan bumped his head against her hip. When she didn’t move, he clamped his teeth on the sleeve of her coat and started pulling her toward the office.
“All right, all right, let me get my purse,” she said. “We can’t get inside without keys.”
He let her go but didn’t stop crowding her until she had unlocked the back door and they were both inside. Even then he stayed close enough to grab an arm or leg if she did anything he considered suspicious.
The prickling remained a torment as she unlocked the office’s front door and set up her clipboard for the day’s deliveries.
She’d given the warning. The prickling should be fading by now. The fact that it wasn’t fading made her wonder if the dream a few nights ago had been a real prophecy. After all, the skin that split along the curve of her nose hadn’t bled, and prophecies came from a cut that bled.
And she wondered if, by making that promise to Vlad not to cut her skin, the next warning would come too late.
• • •
After dropping Sam and some other pups at the Courtyard school, Simon drove toward HGR. When he heard the howling, he stopped the BOW and rolled down the window to listen as other Wolves took up the song. That first warning howl had come from the direction of the business district. Wasn’t likely to be John, so that left the Wolf on guard at the Liaison’s Office.
Simon shoved the door open and got out. Smarter to stay in the vehicle if he needed to move quickly, but he couldn’t stand being closed in until he understood what they were facing, especially since Wolves all over the Courtyard continued answering Nathan’s howl.
Before Nathan could reply, Vlad cut in.
A chill went through Simon. The Crows who were killed in Walnut Grove had been picking around the garbage when the dogs attacked.
No, he thought. No. Every week the Crows checked out the neighborhood streets around the Courtyard to see what humans had left at the curb that might strike their fancy. Anyone planning an attack would know where to find them—and what to put out for bait.
Just like someone in Walnut Grove had known what to put out in order to attract the birds.
he snarled, sending his words to every terra indigene within range.
He didn’t respond to the arguments or pleas coming from various Crows. He got back in the BOW and drove as fast as he could to HGR. That’s where the Crows would expect to find him.
After Julia told him which street had drawn more Crows than usual, she added,
He hesitated. Was this a challenge to his authority, an excuse to stay in order to snatch some coveted item, or the Crowgard’s need to have a report from one of their own?
Besides, he was going to be there too.
As soon as he reached the Courtyard’s business district, he parked his BOW near HGR’s back door just as Vlad stepped outside. He raised a finger to indicate the vampire should wait, then said,
“Did you tell Nathan to stick close to Meg?” he asked Vlad.
“I did.”
Since he didn’t think Vlad had intended for the Wolf to be underfoot, he said,
Simon told them about the Crows’ resistance to giving up this collection day and repeated his ultimatum even though they would have heard that part.
“What do you need?” Henry asked.
Simon looked at Vlad. “I’d like you to come with Blair and me. As a Sanguinati, you might notice something we miss.”
“All right,” Vlad said. “What about Meg?”
“I’ll close A Little Bite and help Nathan watch Meg,” Tess said.
Simon shook his head. “Better for you to stay open. If humans are watching to see what we do, let them think we’re not aware of the baited street and the trap yet.” He thought for a moment. Did Nathan really need someone else in the Liaison’s Office to help him watch Meg? Or would having Tess and Henry nearby be enough?
“Henry, I need you to handle the Crows and make sure they all return,” Simon said. “I gave Jenni and Starr permission to stay and watch the street. Something is wrong with Jake. Crystal is helping him get back to the Crows’ complex. Talk to their bodywalker. See if anyone can figure out what happened to him.” He looked over his shoulder as Blair pulled up in the
small passenger van they used when they needed to travel on human roads.
Blair got out of the van and slipped inside the Liaison’s Office. He returned a minute later with an armful of clothes, which he tossed inside the van.
Good idea, Simon thought. That way Jenni, Starr, and Julia could pull on some clothes if they needed to shift and talk to any humans.
Like Lieutenant Crispin James Montgomery? For a moment, Simon wondered if he should call Montgomery and tell him about the baited street.
No. The lieutenant wasn’t a hairless gibbering monkey like so many humans were, and he had helped protect Meg when she was in the hospital, but that didn’t make the man part of the Courtyard. Besides, the Crows had followed orders, so nothing had happened that required the police.
He would go to the baited street first. If he saw something pertinent, then he would call Montgomery.
“Nyx will come up to the office and stay with Meg,” Vlad said, breaking into Simon’s thoughts. “Grandfather Erebus is concerned about our Liaison. If something is wrong, Meg might tell another female something she wouldn’t tell Nathan.”
Nothing to be said about that, not even by the leader of the Courtyard. But Simon noticed that Tess’s hair had turned solid green and was tightly coiled— a sign she was feeling agitated or uneasy.
Only Henry knew what Tess was, but Simon had his own thoughts about that and was certain having her uneasy about the Sanguinati could be dangerous for everyone. A shape-shifter had little chance of surviving a fight with a Sanguinati. Would a vampire be able to survive a fight with an earth native like Tess?
He hoped that was a question that would never be answered.
“We have to go.” As he and Vlad got in the van, Simon heard the bitter cawing of the returning Crows.
A moment after that, Julia Hawkgard screamed,
• • •
Monty rapped on the doorframe before entering Douglas Burke’s office.
The patrol captain of the Chestnut Street station was a big man with neatly trimmed dark hair below a bald pate. His blue eyes, like his smile, usually held a fierce kind of friendliness. Today the smile was absent and the eyes looked sad as he handed a piece of paper to Monty and said, “We got an answer.”
Monty read the paragraph, then read it again. “This happened on Trickster Night?”
“Yes,” Burke replied. “Months before our friends in the Courtyard gave us that cryptic warning.”
Not exactly cryptic. A few weeks ago, Meg Corbyn had cut her skin because she’d sensed something wrong in the back room of the Liaison’s Office and couldn’t identify the source of her uneasiness. The resulting visions and prophecy had revealed poison in the sugar lumps she usually gave the Courtyard ponies on Moonsday. Among the images she’d seen was a skeleton in a hooded robe, passing out sweets to children, and those children dying in the same way the ponies would have died. Simon Wolfgard had told him what Meg had seen on the chance that the police might find the place and the person in time to save the children.
But it had already happened months ago in another city.
If the police in that city had had access to a cassandra sangue like Meg Corbyn, could that tragedy have been averted? Or would a different blood prophet have seen some other prophecy, and the children’s deaths would have occurred anyway?
And was justifying the use of one group of humans for the benefit of the rest of them the reason a law supporting benevolent ownership had been passed in the first place? Was the argument that these girls would cut themselves anyway and keep cutting until it killed them sufficient justification for restricting their lives and using this compulsion for the good of government or profit?
Maybe it was better for everyone that the only blood prophet in the city of Lakeside was surrounded by the terra indigene.
“Lieutenant?” Burke said.
“Sorry, Captain. My mind wandered.” Monty set the paper on Burke’s desk.
Sighing, Burke sat back and linked his fingers over his abdomen. “My people immigrated to Thaisia from Brittania a few generations back, and I still have family over there. Went over to visit in my younger years and have kept in touch with some of my relatives, especially the ones who work in law enforcement. Brittania is about one-quarter the size of Wild Brittania, so the people there have few illusions about what watches them on the other side of the agreed-upon boundaries. Those of us living in cities like Lakeside have that in common with them.”
Not sure where this was going, Monty just nodded.
“According to my cousin Shady Burke . . .” Burke’s smile warmed for a moment. “Shamus David Burke, an officer of the law in Brittania. Usually goes by Shay, but there was already a Shay at his first posting, so my cousin was called Shay D., which quickly became Shady.”
“Unusual name for a police officer,” Monty said.
“He’s quick with his tongue and quick on his feet. Has to be one because of the other.” Burke’s smile faded. “Anyway, Shady is very good at mixing in where he can hear things of interest. Lately he’s been hearing rumors that somewhere in the Cel-Romano Alliance of Nations there is a factory building airplanes—machines that can fly.”
Still not sure where the conversation was going, Monty said, “Is that a problem?”
Now Burke gave Monty the typical fierce-friendly smile. “A hardship for the people, I would think, if another industry wants a share of the metal and fuel available to the nations. Shortages and stricter rationing would be just the start of the troubles there.”
For a moment, Monty considered the wonder of traveling through the air, high above the ground. The closest thing to air travel in Thaisia was hot-air balloons. Most of the time the balloons remained tethered to prevent them from wandering over land that belonged to the Others. Sometimes photographers or moviemakers were permitted to float over the wild country to take pictures and film herds of animals or places on the continent that humans couldn’t see any other way. Those trips were strictly supervised, of course, because the Others would never permit anything on or above their land that might pose a threat to them. “Why didn’t the terra indigene forbid such a machine from being made in the first place?”
“Cel-Romano is the largest land area in the world that belongs to humans, and those boundaries haven’t altered since the first record of human history. Gods below, the boundaries were set even before humans spread out to reach what we call the wild places. The Others understood before we did how much of the world the human race could claim, and they haven’t given humans a single acre more. One-third of all the humans on Namid live there. The terra indigene don’t care what humans do within the boundaries of human land, but the moment human activity touches their pieces of the world . . .” Burke gave Monty that fierce-friendly smile again. “Maybe the Others don’t know about the airplanes yet. Maybe they know but don’t care as long as the flying machines remain within the boundaries of Cel-Romano. But when ships sailing the Mediterran and Black seas can easily provide transport to all the nations, one has to wonder how the manufacturing of airplanes at this time might be connected to the Humans First and Last movement. You remember that slogan, Lieutenant?”
Monty felt a shiver of alarm. “Yes, I remember. Our previous mayor was trying that out as his campaign platform.” The mayor had died in the storm that had almost buried Lakeside, but he had died in his bedroom. Winter and some other Elementals had come calling on His Honor. So had the Sanguinati.
“Humans First and Last has become a rallying cry throughout the Cel-Romano Alliance,” Burke said. “Speakers are mesmerizing crowds, exciting them with the idea that they can have more. And since the nations in the Alliance have had a habit of expanding their cities and building over good farmland, even the wealthy there can’t always buy enough food anymore.” Burke’s smile faded but the fierceness remained. “That’s not a bad incentive if you’re looking
to start a war.”
“War?” Monty groped for the visitor’s chair and collapsed into it. “You think there’s going to be a war?”
“Shady and some of his contacts believe the Cel-Romano Alliance is heading that way, if for no other reason than to winnow down their population. I just don’t think their leaders realize how much winnowing the terra indigene can and will do.” Burke paused. “There is no indication that the people in Tokhar-Chin or the human sections of Afrikah are aware of what is happening in Cel-Romano . . . or would be willing to risk their own people. And the humans who live in Felidae or Zelande are too far away to become involved in a confrontation with the Others living in the wild country beyond the Mediterran and Black seas.”
“What about us?” Monty asked. Gone over wolf was a drug that hyped aggression to the point where self-preservation wasn’t a consideration. That wouldn’t be a bad drug to have if you were looking to start a war. Was its appearance in some Thaisian towns at a time when trouble was stirring elsewhere in the world just a coincidence, or was Thaisia the testing ground for a bigger conflict?
“For now, war, like the airplane, is just a rumor floating to us from the other side of the Atlantik. Let’s hope it remains nothing more than a rumor.” Burke rubbed the back of his neck. “Lakeside is in the extraordinary position of actually having a dialogue with the Others who run the Courtyard. As long as we have that, we have a chance of protecting our own city. Maybe protecting even more than that.”
Monty felt a weight settling on his shoulders. He and his team were the contacts between the police and the Courtyard’s leaders. Elliot Wolfgard, Simon’s sire, was the consul who met with human government, but it was Simon who made the decisions that affected humans as well as Others.
“I’ll . . .” Monty began.
Kowalski suddenly appeared in the doorway, all the color drained out of his face. “Lieutenant, we’ve got trouble.”
• • •
Blood and black feathers in the snow. Broken bodies.
Flanked by Blair and Vlad, Simon walked down the middle of the street and looked at every dead crow.