AlcyLeyva_AndThenThereWereCrows_EbookFormatting_Nook

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

  The elevator ride itself was extremely long. I mean that it didn’t last long, it just felt like I was in that stainless steel metal box staring at my reflection in its walls for forever.

  Stepping out, I was greeted by a thin Asian woman standing as a hostess by two wooden doors.

  I’m dreaming, I realized, and this calmed me.

  “Table for you and your guest?” the hostess asked, but I had no idea who she was talking about. I was there alone.

  “I’m looking for the morgue. The nurse sent me down?”

  “Of course. Follow me.”

  She grabbed two menus (still expecting me to arrive with company even though I was clearly alone) and led me through the doors and down another long hallway, but this one was filled with the sound of people talking and laughter seeping out of the rooms we passed. The place was pretty old, with gaudy carpets on their squeaky floors, tacky oil paintings of white people hunting and sailing and other irrelevant shit, and chandeliers of fake crystal. At the end of this hallway we stopped at two large white doors made of polished metal.

  Handing me the menus, which sported crimson leather jackets and the gold outline of a candle on their covers, and she quickly left me there. With no other option, I pushed open these white doors that were twelve feet tall. It was difficult. I heard the bones in my arms breaking.

  Inside was a long table made of white stone with tea cups turned over on black mats. The floors and walls were painted all white, and blank picture frames hung for me to question. The chairs sitting around the table were thirteen; long black fixtures without armrests and tall back ends that rose into the air. Of the thirteen, six sat on each side. The final one was right at the front.

  I’m early.

  You’re late, a whisper told me. So I counted the seats, lost count, and then just threw myself into any random one. Turning my cup over, I saw that it was large enough to be a sizable bowl. I poured myself some tea hoping to be able to speak before someone showed up. Using two hands, I gulped it all down.

  I heard chairs slide aside and asses land in them, but I couldn’t see who they were because the oversized cup was so big and I was still drinking.

  Then came this tap tap tap; a nonstop surreal sound that seemed to vibrate in my bones (if in my dreams I did possess such). Lowering the cup from my lips, I looked for the source of it. Tap tap tap tap. I looked to my right and saw nothing that could be making the sound. When I looked to my left, there he was sitting beside me. I dropped the rest of the drink on my lap.

  Mason Scarborough had his cheek firmly sitting on his fist, finger tapping against the smooth table, waiting for me to notice him.

  “Grey.”

  “You’re … you’re dead!”

  Mason stopped tapping. “I am. And thank you for that reminder, Grey. I do get so sentimental thinking about those days. Like a rising warmth in my chest. Almost like vomit.”

  “Oh.” I patted my chest and laughed to myself. “This is a dream. I’m in a dream. Like a drunky dream thing. God. Almost … yeah. Almost got me.”

  Mason was dressed in a way I had never seen. He wore a purple suit with thin yellow pinstripes. His hair, which I always remembered as something I can only describe as “hippy shaggy” was now tied back into this perfect blond ponytail.

  “You dressed for a funeral, Mason?”

  “You can say that, Grey. You can say that.” He still sat slumped over—one fist on his cheek and the other was placed on his knee, elbow sticking up in the air. A crow sat on the back of his seat; the number 4 etched into its eyes.

  The doors swung open and several people walked into the room. Each one wore clothes right out of the zoot suit era and each crow stood propped up on a shoulder. I recognized most without even trying: the bag boy/man with the number 2 crow wore a blue suit with white wingtip shoes; touchy feely Franklin’s fashionable tux matched the black feathers of his number 5 crow. Gary sat just to the left of Mason bearing his number 3 crow and a cheery wave in my direction. He wore an auburn blazer and tie. There was one heavyset Asian guy I couldn’t place at all. When he caught me staring, he turned his thin lips upward in a familiar smile.

  “Smile, Grey. You will live longer.” And he started laughing. The crow on his chair—which squawked along with him—sounded just like it was cracking up.

  “It’s you.”

  “Really wish you would have taken me up on that offer. We could have really kicked these guys’ asses. Team Grey for Life!”

  The other folks in attendance just grumbled. Each crow held fast to their perches on the back of their owner’s chair. Around the odd table, only three seats were empty.

  “Okay. Let’s not waste any more time here.” As he said this, the large doors flew open once more. Quickly, Mason grabbed me from my chair and dragged me to the floor, pinning my head to his hip as if keeping me from seeing who had walked in. I tried to struggle, but in this dream, old fragile Mason seemed to be freakishly strong. I was able to make out, just beyond the space beneath the table, the lower-half of the room’s new arrival.

  “Yo,” D called to everyone in the room, and all at once, the other crows screamed at him. From what I could see, D was wearing an all-black suit with a vest. He slowly approached the table and carefully tucked his hands into his pocket with his usual laidback flair. Even in my dreams, D was kind of a dick. With his face not obscured, I tried to get a better view from under the table, but Mason’s grip on my head was too tight.

  “Ah. And now arrives our gracious host,” Mason muttered, though his face showed very little care that D had arrived. “It’s been so long. I wonder if you would be so kind to fill us in on your progress.”

  “You don’t order me around, anymore. I’m in charge,” D snapped. “Besides, there’s nothing to report. The see-er has been quiet and they don’t give wrestling on Thursdays anymore which has thrown my whole schedule off.”

  “Yes, yes.” The giant crow on the back of Mason’s seat eyed my roommate intently. “You must be in limitless torture in the living world. What news do you have to end all of this?”

  D’s hands flew from his pockets and suddenly the table nearly exploded over me as he shouted, “Let me remind you your place. I’m working on it and it will all be over soon. That’s all you need to know.”

  It was the most vicious and violent I had ever heard my roommate become. A crack had formed right down the center of the table and tiny splinters rained down into my hair.

  Unimpressed, Mason replied, “I’m sure. And what of the ‘white knight’?”

  This immediately rattled around in my head. Where had I heard someone called a knight?

  The people around the table began laughing.

  “He isn’t going to be a problem,” D replied, going back to his casual tone. This only enraged the Shades again and the room was filled with their cries. “Calm down,” he told them. “Like I said, I have him. And since it’s my time to be in charge, you have no say in this. You do as I say.”

  This silenced the birds immediately.

  Mason sat up straight. “You’re leaving?”

  He was, in fact, and he walked straight for the door. But as he set his hand on it, without turning to face us, he said, “I only called you here to tell you that this’ll be the last time our cheery little group’s going to meet. After tomorrow night, things will end, one way or another.”

  “Oh, let’s be honest.” Mason smiled and slid his eyes toward me. “Can we be sure you will do what needs to be done? Can you kill Amanda Grey?”

  D froze.

  As I waited for him to respond, my body seemed to work on its own. I found myself standing, pushing my chair back. I couldn’t stay quiet anymore. Dream or not, I wasn’t going to be ignored. But something was behind me. Something fluttered just behind my ear and pecked at my shoulder.

  Turning to face it seemed like it took age
s. I felt as if time had ruptured, leaving my body floating on its own. I was turning to see, turning to come face-to-face with the one thing I never wanted to know. The one thing that had been haunting me for weeks. More than weeks. Maybe my entire life. I was turning but not fast enough. I broke a sweat in the short span, ripping against my muscles, shattering my bones.

  And that’s when I came face-to-face with my biggest fear.

  Its large beak.

  Its black feathers.

  Its red eyes with the number 7 printed boldly in it.

  A crow stood upon my chair.

  I screamed and D finally noticed me. His face contorted. Fire and ash poured from his eyes and mouth like a swelling furnace.

  As he launched himself across the long table, the world exploded around us. Suddenly, I started bleeding from the forehead and my nose. Pain swelled throughout my body as the table, the walls, and the figures in their chairs, fractured into tiny floating fragments, as if the entire thing were a reality imprinted on glass.

  And then, suddenly, Donaldson’s face came into view. I realized that I wasn’t in the chair or in the weird room anymore. I was sprawled out on flat cement.

  “Grey.” His voice sounded drowned out. “Grey.”

  “I’m here, I’m here. Keep your shirt on.”

  Donaldson looked up at the broken window that I had obviously fallen from and then took a look around. “Is D here? He must have caught you, right? How else could you survive—”

  “He’s not. Just … just pull me up please.”

  The sound of loud explosions and falling brick gave me a perfect “Previously On…” to remember what was at stake. I wasn’t sure what the hell just happened or where I had gone, but all of it was blatantly real. Mason, D, the crows. Putting this to the side for the time being, I started focusing on the here and now. The Shade was attacking. The same Shade that was absent from the meeting had come to face me head on. It blindsided me. Cain set herself to fighting it right after Petty—

  “Oh fuck.” I quickly tested my legs. While I was beaten up and bleeding in a few places, I could still move. What the hell did happen to me?

  Out in front of the building, there was utter chaos as folks and families streamed out of the front doors. I saw all of the families that had lived in that housing complex as if it were a generational practice. Lou was helping people clear out, and one explosion after another sent bricks and entire walls falling on whoever was nearby. He held his stomach tightly with one arm, a crimson stain blossoming through his T-shirt. Wherever I had gone, it seemed like no time whatsoever had passed.

  Someone grabbed me from behind and I quickly swung my hands. Used to that reception, Donaldson easily sidestepped it.

  “Grey! It’s me. Remember? Just back there.”

  “Shit!” I grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him along. I searched for Petty toward the side of the next door community garden. When we eventually found her, I nearly threw up on myself. Petty had fallen on the white picket fence squarely and taken two spikes: one through the chest that had tented up the back of her shirt, and a second through her upper thigh. The wood had not gone through cleanly and had snapped off.

  With two hands, Donaldson and I steadied her up. There was no blood, but her black skin had been shredded. I turned her over to reveal her sporting the same terrified expression she wore during our entire conversation upstairs.

  “You’re going to hell?”

  Remembering where I had just come from, I told her, “Petty. Now’s not a good time.” I couldn’t tell her too much. I didn’t know how. I looked around. Still no sign of D.

  “Another demon? I thought we caught them all!” Petty groaned, though I’m sure this was far from what she really wanted to ask.

  “Must’ve followed me here. Can you stand on that?”

  “I can run,” she replied. But then she saw me staring up, looking up at the broken window.

  “How’d you get down here so fast? Did you fly out of that window? I heard a window break and something land nearby.”

  Before I could come up with a proper response, the wall of my parents’ apartment burst outward. And with all the debris, Cain toppled onto the concrete beside us. There was a metal pipe jammed into her collarbone, but like Petty, it was a bloodless affair. It instantly struck me again how different she was from Barnem. The guy had blood and guts, flesh and blood (I know. I’ve seen them). So what made the two so different?

  The Angel of Death noticed us gawking at her, rolled, snagged both of our hands and started running. I tried my best to pull out of her grasp, but she had me locked in her grip around the wrist.

  “No time for heroics, darlin’. Who the hell is this?” she asked, pointing back at Donaldson who was barely keeping up beside us.

  “He’s fine. And you can let me go.”

  “No can do, gorgeous. I promised Barnem I’d keep you alive until he got back on his feet.”

  Even though I felt greatly outmatched by the thing thrashing around my apartment, mainly because this was an attack just like the first two demons—out of nowhere—I found myself flying without that safety net. D was definitely not showing up and I still had to wrap my mind around what I had seen, what I had found out about myself, back in that other world. Still, I wasn’t ready just to stand around seeing the complete destruction of the place I called home for twenty-something years.

  “Let go of me,” I insisted again. “I’ve fought enough of these assholes already. We can’t let this Shade—”

  “No, Grey,” Cain said, and for the first time, her voice held an ominous tone. “Not this time. I already told you that this isn’t that type of game anymore. What just attacked us, what tried to rip you apart in that room, wasn’t a demon. That was an angel.”

  CHAPTER 38

  We didn’t stop running for blocks and blocks. Until there was fire in my joints; bile in the back of my throat. When we did finally find someplace to crash, the sun was setting in the distance. From where we were, the New York skyline was barely visible. But above the skyscrapers, the sun seemed to be rocketing back into the sky, which was redder than usual, instead of setting downward like science had originally scripted it to be.

  Tucking our little party in a small kids’ park, we all collapsed by the swings. Only Cain seemed completely unaware that a ten block run should have had her hunched over, throwing up her guts. She was too busy looking at the sky.

  “Tonight’s the night, Grey. You either …” She stopped as if just noticing the metal bar jutting out of her chest. She tore it out with one hand and let it clang against cement. “You either catch the final Shade or this is the last night of human existence.”

  Donaldson, out of breath, waved at her. “I’m sorry. And you are?”

  “Oh. Cain. Ex-Angel of Death. Jeffrey Donaldson, right? Yeah, yeah. You were part of my district.”

  “District?”

  “Mhm. You never knew your dad, but he’s dying. Moved out to Chicago. Caught the cancer. Your mom is already dead. Brain aneurysm at forty-nine. Now that one I remember.”

  Donaldson looked like someone had slammed into his lungs with a baseball bat. “What did you— Want to tell me how know that?”

  Cain fiddled with her hair. “Oh. Yeah, sure. I collected her soul when she croaked. That was me. I took your mom away from you.”

  It was like a switch being flicked on. Donaldson, fatigue and all, got right up in Cain’s face.

  “I’m going to ask you again and you’re going to give me some proper answers.”

  Laughing, Cain threw her hands up. “Careful there, tiger. You’re cute, but you ain’t that cute.” It took wedging my body between them just to douse the situation.

  “Oh right. That’s a bit of a faux paus, dead mothers and stuff.” Cain shot out her hand so that Donaldson could shake it. “I’m not used to the human aversion to
death. Was in the business too long. No hard feelings.”

  Donaldson slapped her hand away, causing Cain to scratch the back of her blonde head with it instead. Just like Barnem, she seemed completely disconnected from human emotions. Maybe even more so than the grumpy Seraph. “C’mon. I didn’t kill them, just collected for the greater good. And at minimum wage. Now if you want to be pissed at something—”

  “What’s going on, Cain? Why did you say that was an angel, Cain?”

  “Because it was, Grey. Your dinner guest must have sicced it on us after he left.”

  Part of me thought this was only remotely possible. Sure the old man had shown some restraint with us, with D, and he even called off his guard dog at the last possible moment. But he said that he came over just to meet us? To meet me? I get coming to see D for yourself, but what I couldn’t wrap my mind around was why was I so important? I’m the screwup in this whole equation. And if he really wanted us dead, why send the angel afterwards?

  And then I finally remembered. The feeling I was getting. The slow crawl of something in my skin. It felt like a panic attack, but so different. So concentrated. And then the white space. The whisper.

  I had a Shade in me.

  Maybe this entire time.

  Maybe my whole life.

  I tried not to show it in my face, but Donaldson must of caught the fear welling up in my expression because he came and stood by me.

  “So what’s the plan?” Petty sat up from the ground and dusted herself off. We all stared at her. “What? This is all fine and dandy. So and so wants us dead. Blah, blah, blah. At this point, get in line.”

  Cain didn’t respond; she simply turned toward the setting sun to watch it bleed into the sky in crimson trails. It was a severed boil on the face of a dying planet. After a long pause, she said, “I remember this. Remember all of this. It’s like … like the old days. God’s wrath was everywhere, let me tell you. You couldn’t get through one week without a plague. You could be sitting down to a decent lunch, all by yourself, and by the time you roll out your cheese and wafers, boom-boom-boom, leprosy. Locusts. It made dating impossible.” And then, hilariously she added, “And the traffic!”