And over everything – on every surface – were feathers. Dozens and dozens of greasy black feathers.
But no birds.
I couldn’t remember if the back door creaked, so I decided not to take the chance. The last thing I wanted to do was announce my presence and bring the birds flocking from wherever in the house they currently were. Instead, I carefully picked the larger slivers of glass from the wooden frame, and sat them down on the ground.
The wind grew around me as I worked. It only took twenty or thirty seconds to clear the worst of the glass, but by the time I had finished my fingers were numb with cold. I cupped them to my mouth and breathed on them for a few seconds, readying myself for what came next.
My entrance wasn’t as stealthy as I’d hoped. I pushed myself up on the narrow window ledge and kicked against the roughcast stone wall with both feet. As I leaned my body forward into the kitchen, my legs were forced to bicycle-kick in thin air for a moment. I hung there, feet flailing frantically, as I realised I was sliding headfirst into the house.
There was no way to stop. My arms buckled and my legs swung up and I was helpless to prevent myself face-planting on to the glass-covered table. I slid right over the top, bringing the table with me as I crunched on to the hard kitchen floor.
It probably hurt, but I had no time to dwell on it. I was on my feet in a heartbeat, readying myself for the crows. They were sure to have heard my entrance. They’d be here any second.
As I stood there, eyes locked on the door, my ankle nudged against something. I lashed out instantly with the foot, not taking any chances. The metal soup pot spun across the floor until it hit the stove with a hollow clang.
Cursing myself for being so jumpy, I reached down and grabbed another cooking pot. It was a hefty bit of cookware, and I needed both hands to swing it properly, but I was ready to bet it’d be an effective weapon against an oncoming bird.
Probably wouldn’t be so handy against a hundred of them, of course, but I tried not to think about that too much. It was better than nothing. Just.
The expected rush of flapping wings didn’t happen, and I crept over to where the kitchen led out into the hall. Tucking myself in close to the doorframe, I risked a peek round the corner.
The hall looked much like the kitchen. The floor was covered in broken trinkets and torn phone books and the shattered remnants of what had been Marion’s life. The same feathers were here, scattered haphazardly over the carpet and up the dark, narrow stairs.
My legs were trembling as I tiptoed across the hall to the bottom of the steps. Halfway there, I heard the sounds I had been dreading: a soft caw and the rustle of oily wings.
The sounds hadn’t come from the hallway, and they hadn’t come from up the stairs. But where had they come from? I stood in the middle of the floor, completely in the open, but frozen to the spot, listening for the noises to come again.
I didn’t have to wait long. An inquisitive croak to my right made me spin to face the living-room door. A fat, black crow sat just inside the room, its back to me. It had a lump of dark red meat pinned beneath its claws. The meat made a sticky schlop sound as the bird’s beak tore strip after strip away. After every bite, the crow tipped back its head and let the meat fall down into its gut.
I gripped the handle of the cooking pot until my knuckles turned white. I wanted to bring the pot down on the bird’s head – to squish the thing into the carpet. To make it pay for what it had done to the dog. And had I not been so terrified, I might have done just that.
Instead, I snuck over to the door, picking my steps carefully, trying not to make any sound. I made it without alerting the bird, but now I was less than a metre away from the thing. It had its head down, ripping into the meat. If it craned its neck back now to swallow another bite, it would surely see me.
With no time to lose, I reached for the handle. As the door began to pull closed, the bottom of it brushed against the carpet.
The sound startled the bird. It released its grip on the meat and flapped into the air. Twisting round, it fixed me with its glassy gaze and opened its beak wide. Small lumps of half-chewed flesh still stuck in its throat, and I knew that if I didn’t act fast, the next thing to go down that gullet would be me.
Panicking, I pulled the door closed much harder than I’d meant to. The slam seemed to vibrate the walls and floor, and echo around the house. There was no way the other birds wouldn’t hear it, but that no longer mattered. If, as I suspected, the Crowmaster saw through the eyes of his minions, then it was too late for stealth. The bird had seen me, so the Crowmaster would know exactly where I was.
The fact the birds didn’t come whooshing down the stairs didn’t do anything to comfort me. If anything, it made my heart beat even faster. I should’ve been glad, but the fine hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I realised nothing was coming for me.
The birds were all up there, and they now knew I’d escaped, so why weren’t they coming? Why weren’t…?
I let the pot fall; took the steps three at a time. The smell from Marion’s remains hung in the air, thick and putrid and rotten enough for me to smell even through my blocked and broken nose as I powered up the final few stairs and on to the upper landing.
Empty. The upstairs hallway was empty!
I ran to the far end, shouting Ameena’s name, but knowing she wouldn’t answer. I knew the door would be open. Knew the room would be empty. Knew I’d been gone too long.
A tightness gripped my stomach and spread out through my body until my muscles were standing in knots. An emotion I couldn’t even name – not rage, not terror, but something much more – boiled my blood in my veins. The scream of something primal shook the walls, and although the sound was completely alien to me, I knew I was the one making it.
He had taken her. The Crowmaster. I’d promised her she would be safe, and he had taken her. I knew that handing control of my powers over to anger wasn’t a good idea, but not a single part of me cared. I had left her alone, and she had been taken. Another bad thing that was all my fault. Another person I cared about hurt because of me.
No more. Never again.
I turned on my heels and made for the door, the sparks glowing so brightly inside me I swear they lit up the room.
Just before I left the bedroom behind, I heard it. A knocking from inside the wardrobe. Soft and cautious.
My stomach tightened, ejecting a breath that was halfway between a laugh and a cry. I scolded myself for doubting her. Ameena was more than able to handle herself. What had I been worried about?
‘It’s OK,’ I said, about-turning back into the room, ‘the coast’s clear. The birds have gone.’
And then, without even pausing to consider the consequences, I took hold of the handles and pulled both wardrobe doors wide open.
Chapter Sixteen
FLAMING CLOSE
In hindsight, it’s easy to say I should have been more careful. I shouldn’t have just bashed on the way I did. I should have waited for Ameena to answer. I should have thought it through.
I should’ve done a lot of things. What I shouldn’t have done is open those doors.
They’d broken the window and punched right through the thin plywood at the back of the wardrobe. I pulled the wardrobe open expecting to find Ameena. What I found were birds. Six, eight, maybe twelve of them – it was impossible to tell. They were stacked on top of one another, the blackness of their bodies merging them into one big, feathery shape.
As the doors opened, the crows exploded into life. I stepped back, ducked, but they were already on me, flapping and shrieking like miniature demons. Claws tore at me through my clothing. A beak snapped shut just centimetres from my eyes. I twisted and writhed, batting at the birds with my fists, but they moved too fast for me to land a solid punch.
‘Getoff-getoff-getoff!’ I cried, throwing myself around like a rag doll. Every direction I turned, there was another bird, scratching me, pecking me, beating its wings in my face. I thoug
ht of Marion, and of the unnamed dog up there on the hill. Their bones had been virtually pecked clean, their flesh consumed by birds just like those on me now. Was that how it was going to end? Was I destined to wind up a mound of bloody scraps, miles from home in an unfamiliar house?
I crashed out of the room and into the hallway, clawing back at the crows, trying to catch them, pull them off me. One of the birds made a lunge for my hand. I heard its beak snap shut and felt a searing pain in the web of skin between my thumb and index finger.
‘That hurt!’ I snarled. I wriggled like some demented snake. Twisting and thrashing. And as the pain burned in my hand, a panic rose like acid in my stomach. I was going to die. I was going to die!
The stairs came upon me suddenly and I lost my footing, toppling sideways and hitting the steps hard. Two of the crows burst open with a sickening pop as my full weight came down on them. The others backed off, remaining up at the top of the stairs while I bumped and clattered my way down to the bottom.
Dazed, I somehow managed to roll to my feet. I grabbed for the cooking pot I’d dropped earlier; turned with it; swung wildly. A charging bird went down with a satisfying clang, but the others were already making their way down the stairs.
Once again, I let the pot fall. I ducked into the kitchen, through the back door, and out into the world beyond. All the while a drumbeat of greasy wings followed close behind.
I pulled the back door behind me, just before the crows could make it out. The window was still broken, of course, but hopefully it’d take their bird brains a few seconds to realise that fact.
I could see smoke pouring from the broken living-room window. The crows had trashed the room when they’d charged through it, knocking everything to the floor. A toppled armchair had landed in the fire and was now blazing brightly on the floor. I looked up at the old timber house. It wouldn’t stand a chance.
And nor would I, if I didn’t think of something fast. If only I had the mobile phone. It had proved to be the best weapon against the crows – maybe if I still had it I wouldn’t be in this mess. If only the Crowmaster hadn’t smashed it. If only…
The forest on the hillside seemed to draw my eyes to it. I took a few faltering steps in that direction, as if being pulled in. There was something about the trees. Something that my subconscious had already realised, but which the rest of my brain was struggling to…
To…
My God, I thought. Of course!
I hesitated just long enough to get my bearings, then broke into a run. Hope surged through me, powering my exhausted legs onwards up the hill, away from the house. Behind me, the crows were already beginning to find their way out through the broken kitchen window. That was the bad news.
The good news loomed in the distance ahead of me, standing tall and rigid and shiny above the treetops.
I sprinted towards the forest, headed in the direction of the mobile phone mast. I scrambled up the hill on all fours, using grass and bracken for handholds where I could, digging my fingers into the dirt when there was nothing to grab on to. My feet kicked furiously, slipping more often than not on the slick, muddy soil. It was slow progress, and by the time I’d made it in among the trees, my legs were caked with damp dirt.
I wasted half a second looking back over my shoulder. The birds were still flying around the outside of the house, soaring and diving in ever-widening circles. They were searching, I realised. Searching for me.
It took some effort to stop myself cheering. If they were searching, then they didn’t know where I was. I’d done it. I had escaped!
For now, at least.
Ducking low, I pushed further into the woods, not walking, but not quite running, either. The smells of the forest closed in around me. The sweet scent of pine. The faint eggy stink of rotting leaves on boggy ground.
The forest had its own soundtrack too. The swishing of branches, the gasping of the wind, the melodic tweeting of distant birds – birds I could only hope had no plans to kill me. The sights, the smells, the sounds, they all combined to give the impression the woods were another world, unrelated to the one beyond its borders.
My trousers were wet from the grass. They slowed me down, but I tried to keep up my semi-running pace as I clambered over the trunk of an uprooted tree and hauled myself further up the hill.
Reaching the top of a low ridge, I turned and looked back the way I’d come. I could make out parts of the house through gaps between some branches. The fire had caught hold and most of the upstairs looked to be alight. I was relieved to see the birds were still flapping around the burning building, still too stupid to figure out where I’d gone.
Wheezing and breathless, I half sat, half perched on the trunk of another fallen tree, and tried to figure out what to do next. I’d only come into the forest in the hope that the mobile phone mast would have the same effect on the crows as my phone had, but now the birds weren’t following me, getting to the mast didn’t seem to matter. Finding Ameena, that was what was important. But where would the Crowmaster take her?
I don’t know how long I sat there, half watching the crows buzzing like flies around the smouldering skeleton of Marion’s home, half just enjoying the feeling of air flowing freely into my lungs. All the while I was thinking. Wondering. Where would he take her? Why would he take her?
An acrid smokiness had flavoured the air in the forest now. It mingled with the other scents. The pine. The rotting leaves.
Despite the distance, if I listened carefully, I could even make out the occasional faint hiss and crackling of the flames as they consumed what little was left of the house. Like the smell of the smoke, the sounds felt like alien invaders, out of place among the swishing of branches, the gasping of the wind and the melodic…
My stomach twitched and my throat tightened. The birds I’d heard twittering in the distance were twittering no longer. Their music had given way to an empty, chilling silence.
I stood up slowly, being careful not to make any sudden movements. My head stayed level, facing straight ahead, but my eyes pointed upwards into the shadowy treetops. I didn’t want to find it, but the sinking feeling in my gut told me I would. Sure enough, there it was.
It was perched high up on a branch, its black eyes fixed on me. I tried to act as if I hadn’t spotted it. Tried to appear as calm as I could, while inside my heart tried to punch a hole right through my chest.
The crow extended its wings and I braced myself, expecting it to make its dive. It quickly folded them in against its back, though, and even as I began to edge away from it, the bird made no move to follow.
I made it several metres further up the hill, still walking backwards, still watching the bird. I could barely make it out now, its dark shape blending with the shadows of the tree. Not that I was complaining, but I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t coming after me. Why wasn’t it giving chase?
The reason hit me like a kick to the stomach, forcing a gasped ‘No!’ out through my trembling lips. I couldn’t see Marion’s house any more, but I didn’t have to see it to know the birds were no longer circling. I could hear them sweeping up the hillside, tearing through the forest, a tornado of thrashing black. The bird hadn’t attacked for one simple reason. It was waiting for backup.
Cursing myself, I turned and scuttled up the hill, through the trees, dragging myself along by low branches and exposed roots. I shouldn’t have stopped. I should never have rested.
But I had stopped. I had rested. And as death closed in on a hundred beating wings, I feared it would be the last stupid mistake I ever got the chance to make.
Chapter Seventeen
DEMON IN DISGUISE
The faster I tried to run, the more the trees fought to slow me down. Bare, spindly branches whipped at me, tearing at my hands and face like tiny claws. The steep forest floor seemed to be growing around me, wrapping itself around my wrists and ankles, gripping me, holding me back. I didn’t even try to delude myself. There was no way I was outrunning the birds.
<
br /> A nano-second before I heard the first caw, the sparks electrified my skin. The sudden shock made my legs kick out and I leapt like a startled frog, covering over two metres in a single bound. Right behind me, the first of the following crows crashed, beak-first, against the hillside.
Another jolt buzzed through me, and this time I was hurled to my right. A second bird failed to pull up in time. It gave a startled squawk as it slammed into the scrub beside me.
Slowing only to boot the beast as hard as I could, I kept moving. The ground was rising sharply, becoming almost a wall of dirt, held together by the roots of a huge tree that towered above me.
Kicking my feet in against the muck, I caught a trailing root and climbed. One metre. Two. I was over halfway up the curved wall when the next bird came at me. Again, the electrical buzz zapped through me, but this time there was nowhere to go. I could only keep climbing as the crow swooped at me, its curved claws outstretched.
I ducked my head, protecting my face. Pain exploded at the top of my spine as the crow’s talons dug into my neck. Clinging on to the root with one hand, I threw the other back over my head, fist clenched. The punch missed the bird and threw my balance off. Helplessly, I spun so I was facing away from the embankment.
For a moment I thought the forest was alive. Birds moved on almost every tree, hopping over one another, pushing others aside as they jostled for position. An audience, fighting among themselves for the best view.
I spun further, still holding on with one hand. I cried out as the crow dug its claws in deeper, and almost didn’t hear the irritated croak the bird gave. I quickly realised why the bird had made the sound. My half-turn had bumped the thing against the wall of soil.
I gritted my teeth and twisted at the waist, swinging myself back around towards the wall until I could press my feet flat against the steep curve. The bird gripped tighter and the wave of pain almost made the muscles in my arm give up. But I clung on, knowing I’d probably only get one chance to rid myself of this nasty pain in the neck.
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