AlcyLeyva_AndThenThereWereCrows_EbookFormatting_Nook

by And Then There Were Crows (retail) (epub)

  Barnem nodded. “You’ve proven that demons outside of contracts with people can blend in, so it’s a safe bet that no one at the event will know. We can sneak our demon guy in and have him lay low. If I can’t slay the Shade inside of Mason, then our friend here can eat it.”

  My roommate gave that last part two shadowy thumbs up.

  “So this is it, I guess.” I looked at the people I was planning this little adventure with and a thick migraine started to set in. Sure, for the first time in my life, I was onboard with people stepping in to help. But sitting in the room with me was a chicken-shit cultist, a useless demon, and the worst angel in the history of all angels ever. Regretting ever agreeing to this, I threw my head into my hands and hoped that my death would be a painless one.

  CHAPTER 25

  The event was pure spectacle; so much, in fact, that it was both gaudy and awe inspiring. The bookstore of Booke & Ende was a great looking one—not that I frequent them too much. However, it sure wasn’t the big, obnoxious ones that seem more like malls, or the tiny independents who sell six books in a space that smells like coffee and broken dreams. Booke & Ende was right in the middle: the second floor being a narrow balcony of tables and lamps; the main floor spanning outward with high ceilings and walls lined with books. Unfortunately, the entire space was filled with the most idiotic ignorance (redundancy intentional) I have ever seen in my life.

  The main area was adorned with full frontal Americana: glimmering stars hung from the ceiling; little mugs were handed out with 3D fighter jets that, when you turned them sideways, screamed across a nameless desert, their jet streams spelling “Liberty” across the blue sky; mobiles of miniature eagles spun to the tune of the “Star Spangled Banner”.

  But this was nothing when you considered what they did with the actual space.

  The floor was one giant American flag, with the stage being painted white with white seats— the audience rows were sectioned by colored stripes, both blue and red. The lectern from where Mason was going to speak was all flagged out. Just to the right, there was this strange box surrounded in a black curtain.

  It was the single ugliest thing I’d ever seen in my life, and the people around me were eating it up.

  We sat down—Donaldson, me, and my roommate, with a seat open for Barnem—in a red aisle.

  “You sure this was okay? Getting us in and all?” I whispered to Donaldson.

  “A perk for setting this whole thing up. A simple bookstore hookup,” he said, staring down at his mug. “Wasn’t easy, but I managed to squeeze out two more. Phil said he’s bringing a guest.”

  Before I could grill him on who this guest was, she sat right beside me.

  “Petty?”

  “Hey, sis.”

  I was so pissed that the words couldn’t come out, so I simply brandished a large fist in Phil’s face.

  “She insisted!” he exclaimed.

  “You brought my dead sister here?” Donaldson gave me a glance, and I fumbled around. Through clenched teeth and a fake smile I said, “I mean, she typically wouldn’t be caught dead here. Petty? Why the fuck are you here?”

  “I’m bored, Mandy. And Phil here hooked me up. What do you think?”

  I’m guessing she meant the makeup job. Her skin wasn’t a dark gray anymore. Most of it was under a sweater and coat, and her hands and neck were plastered with pounds of cover-up. “He painted my nails, and look …”

  Petty smiled. Her teeth weren’t black, but also not quite white either. “We used White Out,” she said enthusiastically. “And we couldn’t do anything about the eyes, so …” She tipped the sunglasses she was wearing so that I could see those dark, hollow pits. “Amazing, right?”

  Phil waited for a compliment. I just cracked my knuckles, making him flinch a bit.

  A few minutes later, Barnem walked in and took a seat.

  Taking a really good look at my row of miscreants, I groaned.

  In a short span of time, my life had gone from fairly simple—sure aggravating, sure nerve wracking, but ultimately simple—to this hideous freak show. I had gone from a darling recluse to the most popular anti socialite on the planet. And now these people were sitting beside me

  Barnem shook his head at his surroundings but seemed to be in a good mood. That is until he leaned forward to tell me something. Spotting Petty sitting next to me, he nearly lost it. He got up, sat down, slouched, got up again. The Town Hall had already started so I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the blaring of “America the Beautiful”. It involved a lot of cursing, I’m sure. She wasn’t part of the plan and, to him, this whole thing had just gone to shit even before we made our move. A small security detail descended on him, forcibly asking the Seraph to sit down. A few seconds later, he was dragged out kicking and screaming.

  The event started with ten people in suits walking on stage. They remained standing as an announcer came over the sound system. After some garbage, he finally got to the point of the entire night.

  “And here he is. The ‘tell-it-how-it-is’ man of the people. The absolute voice of our nation. The man with the vision to make our city the greatest single populated state on the planet. The future mayor of this great state, Mason Scarborough!”

  I didn’t think anything could be stranger than the decorations around us, but Mason turned out to be the strangest. He walked up to the podium still decked out in his pirate getup from The Captain Show. Same black tights and shiny shoes. Same stupid hat with curling feather. He was dressed as a clown with a spray tan while taking the stage as a politician and no one seemed to care. The damn place went wild.

  With him were the children from the TV show; stern looks in their eyes, weapons still in their hands. Caitlyn (with a Y) stood along the edge of the stage like she had been doing this since ’Nam.

  The audience went wild. Women, men, children. There were two large television screens on either side of the stage which were focused on Mason’s citrus-colored face.

  “Why the hell is he so orange-y?” Phil whispered.

  “It’s like I’m looking at the sun if the sun gave itself cancer.”

  The five of us laughed. Caitlyn (with a Y) made the gesture that she was keeping her eyes on us.

  To the right of his lectern, the box beside it came alive. The black curtains on it parted and exposed a small stage. And out popped Cracker Barrell the parrot puppet.

  Mason cleared his throat. “Dearest constituents and voters, I stand before you on the edge of a great change in our great city. Tomorrow, because of your support, your votes and furious calls, I will assume the city appointed statehood of Mayor of New York City.”

  The crowd cheered.

  Mason lost it.

  “Don’t cut me off! What is it with people cutting me off before I finish speaking?” he screamed.

  The crowd was eerily quiet. Mason dropped his head. “Right. Please, all of you, punch yourselves in the face.”

  Everyone looked at each other.

  Mason repeated himself. “For the sake of this country, you must punch yourself in the face.” There was a long pause, and then he added, “Go on. I’ll wait.”

  One by one, the crowd did as they were told. First only a few people. Then ten or twenty. Then the sounds of each knuckle meeting face passed along the audience like a wave of brutality, rolling like wild popcorn bursts. Some landed on the chin, some on the eye or cheek. Luckily, Mason had specified only one punch, but each one was hard, forceful. A baby nearby was barely managing to make a fist.

  My small cohort was the only one not to follow suite, possibly because of our connection to my roommate. Well, actually I had forgotten about Donaldson. Unable to resist, the place where fist met his cheek bruised instantly.

  Petty looked at me and whispered, “What’s the plan here? How are we going to take him down?”

  “We are doing nothing!” I
hissed back. “We are not a we. You need to go home and let we, I mean us handle this, okay? I know what I’m doing.”

  “Fine!” Petty pouted and crossed her arms.

  “Fine!” I turned to Phil. “What the hell should I do?”

  His terror-filled face said it all.

  I had to step up and address my team of misfits. “Okay. Okay. Let’s not freak out here. So Mason can influence whoever the hell he wants and there are about a thousand people here. What do we have? A bunch of nobodies. All right. That’s fine. That’s cool. Plan hasn’t changed. We’re still just going to wait until his little speech is over and pounce on him after. Find a nice quiet spot. Should be possible, right?”

  Satisfied with the crowd’s silence, Mason continued. Using a clicker, the image of New York City came up on the large televisions as he spoke.

  “Our city. For years it’s been the home of countless indecencies. It houses the most liberal trolls of our nation. The big ‘fat cats’ of Wall Street control our very lives.” He stared out into the audience for effect. “But that is only because we let it. We must bring the decency back. We-must-make …”

  The crowd responded with the rest of the asinine slogan, “Make New York Nice Again!”

  “Where was I?” Mason asked. “Oh right. I plan to make New York City the model state for the entire world. Once we reach that amazing existence, I will make sure we stay that way. And there’s only one way to do that.” Mason pressed the clicker again and a large circle was raised around the image of the city. “We will build a wall. We will keep the rude, obnoxious people out. And we will make up for the foolishness of our previous leaders!”

  The audience started clapping as a man was led on stage wearing a black hood over his head. His arms were lashed behind his back. They kicked him to the ground and he knelt to the gasp of everyone watching.

  The hood came off and the Mayor, Mason’s brother, stared back at us. He had tape over his mouth and a terrible bruise around his temple.

  Petty and Phil glanced at me, but I was panicking, too.

  “But first, some house cleaning,” Mason said before coming out from behind the lectern, removing a pistol he had wedged into his belt, and firing it point-blank into his brother’s head. There was an violent spray of blood as Collard rocked back and then collapsed.

  “That execution-style murder was crackerlicious!” Cracker Barrell exclaimed to the laughter of the audience.

  Mason belted the gun again and walked back to the microphone. “Tomorrow, I win the seat of mayor. But I have decided that waiting for such a time wouldn’t be prudent.” He paused and licked his lips. “Well, I hope no one made plans tonight because we must overthrow every power in the state by morning.”

  A huge clamor broke out. Several doors opened and four carts were wheeled into place at the front of the stage by security guards in SWAT gear. Each cart was overflowing with lead pipes, bats, butcher knives, barbed wire. A small bar opened up on the side, setting out homemade molotovs.

  “Begin with local law enforcement and then work your way up. If you have a gun at home, on your wall, in a closet, bring it out and use it. If this government wants to take your arms away, then you send them the bullets first. Gut every last one of them. String them to light posts. That will show those religious freaks, those pagan zealots, faceless terrorists, those politico talking head wackos what happens when you make the citizens of this magnificent place angry. We will burn this entire city to the ground. Let’s see those bastards try to blow us up then! A broken bone heals stronger and … he who laughs last. And so on.” Mason shrugged and drank from a water bottle. “Please listen to Cracker Barrell for further instructions.”

  “Line up, mateys, one by one,” the puppet squawked as everyone began standing. “No pushing. No shoving. There are enough weapons to go around. Please be considerate and leave the lighter weapons for the children. We ordered pizza!”

  The crowd celebrated, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the free pizza or the free tools to physically maim other human beings.

  Donaldson got up and started filing in with everyone.

  “Okay, this sucks,” I said, and noticed everyone looking at me for guidance. My roommate was even staring at me with his big, yellow eyes while fiddling with his shadowy fingers.

  “All right. It’s fine. We’re still good. No need to panic, right? We still have the element of surprise. We just need to …” I watched the lines forming, on the left for the weapons, on the right for pizza. Both ran close to the stage. “We just need to get in a line. I’ll take the right with Beelzebub here. Petty and Phil, take the left.”

  Phil looked up at the security guards. “They’re armed. Mason is armed. Shit, that little five year old with the missing front tooth is armed.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything if they aren’t expecting us. You two make a distraction when you’re close enough. I don’t care what it is. Then that leaves it open for us to rush the stage and tackle Mason. He’s the one we need here. The moment our guy eats him, everyone will snap out of it. Mason is the key.” It sounded like nonsense gobbledygook logic to me, but everyone quickly got up and moved into position. “Wait! No one has a better plan? No rebuttals? Oh, god. We’re going to die.”

  I stood behind the demon on line and we moved with the crowd, slowly at first, only steps at a time. At the other end of the hall, Phil and Petty were moving a lot faster. They were faking a pretty hilarious conversation, with Phil jumping around like an idiot and Petty throwing her head back to laugh.

  It was pretty convincing.

  I tried getting their attention, but they just kept going on and on. By the time I realized why it seemed so natural, Phil was given an axe, Petty a stick wrapped in barbed wire, and then they walked away, completely forgetting what they were there for.

  Not that it would have mattered much because the next thing Mason said was, “Can someone do me a favor and kill Amanda Grey? Yes, the woman standing right there. And her demon friend, too. I would appreciate it.”

  CHAPTER 26

  As the entire crowd turned on me, I barreled my way to the stage. Someone tried to swing a long chain at me but it smacked the person behind him instead. Shoving a few others down, the ones in line who were slower to react, toppled a large section over, giving me some room.

  There was a commotion on the other side the stage. Petty and Phil must have gotten their lives together in time to actually participate in the fracas. Then a voice was shouting over all the others, this one coming from the entrance, as Barnem seemed to be raising his own hell. The combination of all three was an unplanned, unmitigated disaster. But it got me where I needed to be.

  On stage with Captain Cross.

  “You don’t need to do this, Mason. People are screwed up without you treating them like puppets. You’re talking about killing innocent people. Thousands.”

  Mason’s tangerine face barely registered anything past his frown. “You’re trying to appeal to my humanity?”

  “No I’m not,” I said plainly, and then asked, “Is it working?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Oh.”

  “But it’s an honorable attempt coming from you. I know all about Amanda Grey, and I expected far less from an uncouth, reckless young lady.”

  “You’re welcome.” I said kept an eye on the audience. The bodyguards were pushing through the mob. They were going to be on me in mere seconds.

  Mason rolled up the sleeve on his right arm, pulled the Cracker Barrell puppet on it, and propped up his elbow to make the parrot stare at me as he spoke. “This is my humanity, Grey. Do you know how many years I gave to trying to change this world through its youth? When the real problem lies right up top. Politicians are just children playing dress up. It doesn’t take a demon to see that. So what if a few thousand people lose their lives? What matters is—”

  “W
ow, Mason!” I yelled. “That’s great. Tell me more.”

  The gamble paid off. Mason blew his top, screamed, started pacing. But before I could charge the guy, one of the SWAT guys leapt in from my blind side and grabbed my ankle while reaching for his gun. But then the demon’s mouth closed around his head and clamped down. The wriggling body emptied an entire clip into the air. The shots must have woke a few people up because a panic broke out. Only a few people were still ready to fight. The others were rushing toward the exits, trampling each other just to get away.

  I spun around and stormed toward Mason.

  He lazily held up a hand. “Stop.”

  I slowed my running.

  I took one extra step.

  I stopped right in front of him.

  And then I punched him in the throat.

  His white wig spun like a top as he shuffled backward. This was the perfect opportunity for my roommate to eat him while he was off balance. But I turned around and it was still trying to pry the dead SWAT guy from his teeth. Noticing me watching, he held up one finger.

  “One minute? We don’t have one minute!”

  In the back, Barnem was fighting his way up but making little progress. Phil and Petty were busy wrestling with two security guards. Well, Phil was in a chokehold and Petty was on the guy’s back.

  “Kick his ass, Mandy!”

  “Still don’t need your help, Petty!”

  Mason caught me with a sucker kick to the lower back and I went down.

  Barnem was shouting my name, and though I could hear the bodies he was managing to throw around, his voice was still far away. So as I turned around and felt the barrel of the gun Mason had set against my forehead, I was quietly able, within those fractions of a second, to quickly skim through my life and summarize it into two letters.

  Eh.

  Two shots rang out and I flinched. Only after the second did Mason’s head snap back, followed by his body tipping into the lectern and then the puppet theater. The entire set piece—wood panels and curtains—collapsed on him in a heap.