“Cobb,” came a strange voice behind him. It was a male voice, powerful, filled with authority. “That’s enough.”
Turning slowly, gun in hand, he saw there was nobody standing behind him. But when the voice spoke again, calling his name, he realized the noise was coming from a few steps away, from the man he’d gunned down. Approaching slowly, Cobb figured it had to be a radio of some kind—assuming that the Red Crow couldn’t use his magic to make himself invisible or inhabit the dead.
Moving over to the corpse, trying not to look too closely at the ruin of his skull, Cobb found the little black radio attached to the man’s belt. Taking the tool for himself, he retreated back to his safe space by the elevator, watching in all directions in case he had to shoot.
“Alright, Cobb. You’ve proved your point,” the Red Crow said over the box. “But you’ve seen the power I have firsthand. You’ve seen what I can do with my magic. What is it that you want, Cobb? What is it that I can offer you?”
Cobb thought about that and pressed the talk button, just like on the radio at Torvo’s house. “I want to win. To beat you.”
“You’ve already killed two of my men, so you’re doing pretty good so far. But I have a lot more men where they came from. I can always make more.”
“Why don’t you send your spirits after me?” Cobb mocked. “Wouldn’t they do the job for you?”
“I have to be in a state of trance for that,” the Red Crow replied, “which would leave me a bit too vulnerable for my tastes. So, we’re going to handle this like men.” The last word he said with great irony. “Let me ask you again, Cobb. What do you want?”
“You’re the enemy,” Cobb said. “I don’t make deals with the enemy.”
“What if I gave you Old Thom, Cobb? As a gesture of goodwill?”
This gave Cobb pause, broke his resolve a bit. When he didn’t answer, the Red Crow continued on like they were old friends. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll go downstairs with my lieutenants and you can go upstairs. My brother is waiting for you up in the penthouse suite, all the way up on the twenty-first floor. You can free him. Then we’ll start to negotiate in earnest.”
“I want my chainsaw back,” Cobb said, baiting him, knowing that the Red Crow would never allow him to cut down the source of his power.
“No,” the enemy replied. “That’s not an option. Besides, we’re almost done here. If you go away with Old Thom, in a day or two we’ll leave as well. You’ll likely never hear from us again.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“It’s really simple, Cobb. It’s about immortality.”
“You only get to live once.”
“As a crow, yes. Then as a man. Then as a crow and a man and so on and so on. Just as Old Thom used the magic of the tree to give you a human body, I use the same kind of magic to put myself and my lieutenants into bodies. Just as Old Thom summoned your human to act as your vessel, I used my magic to find a far more competent subject. This one is a drug dealer, a killer with weapons and soldiers who I could easily assimilate, who already knew violence.”
“You can’t cheat death,” Cobb reminded him. “Everybody dies.”
“Two of my soldiers died today. At your hand. They had been with me since … it’s so hard to keep track. They were friends of mine, and they were very loyal.” The enemy paused for a moment; it sounded like he was quietly talking to somebody else. “Alright, Cobb. I’m going down now. We’ll go to the atrium floor, then you can go up. You free Old Thom and then we’ll either deal or start one final game of hunt-and-chase. But for the next ten minutes, you’re safe.”
Cobb, pistol in hand, was already on the move. Opening the stairwell door quietly, he skulked his way up the steps, gun ready at every turn. He was excited at the idea of freeing Old Thom, even though he knew it was a trap. But if there was a chance of rescuing his king, he had to try.
At the top of the stairs he reached the twenty-first floor. Opening the heavy door a crack, Cobb saw that the layout was different up here. While the hall balconies still stretched around the inside of the building, each one perched over the twenty-story drop, over by a pair of wide-open double doors was a larger balcony, almost like an indoor patio big enough for a dozen people to sit on, complete with fancy umbrellas and little white chairs and tables. Compared to the spoiled rooms down below, everything here seemed organized and intact, fully in place.
Cobb didn’t see any enemies but waited a few heartbeats just to make sure. When he felt he wasn’t being watched, he let himself through the door and quickly moved to the edge of the indoor patio, hunkering down by one of the fancy little tables.
His radio crackled. “We’re down here, Cobb. Take a look. All four of us.”
Risking a peek, Cobb took a look over the railing and saw four tiny men standing at the bottom of the well. Three wore dark suits and the fourth wore a suit the color of blood. The last man, radio in hand, waved up at Cobb—and Cobb had to resist the ridiculous human urge to wave back. It was definitely him, his enemy, the evil man from his dreams.
Not wanting to waste any more time, Cobb made his way through the open double doors into the suite, knowing that he had at least a minute before any human could scale that many stairs at speed. Inside the apartment everything was luxurious, clean and white, without damage or ruin. The floor was white and smoothly tiled, making every drop of color in the room leap out to the eye. The long white couch in the living room area was pluffy and the square coffee table in front of it was littered with delicate coffee cups, naked-lady magazines and laptop computers. On the kitchen island, the sink had a pile of plates and dirty dishes surrounding it, with a metal roasting pan perched on the edge. A large white piano sat in the back corner by the windows, a magnificent instrument that Cobb had no idea how to play.
Through the giant, twelve-foot-high plate glass windows Cobb could see the outside patio, with more little tables and deck chairs surrounding a swimming pool filled with shimmering water. Potted trees waved gently in the breeze, the susurrus of their rustling leaves audible through each of the three sliding glass doors that led out onto the deck.
There was nobody to be seen, and no crows either.
After closing and locking the front doors leading out to the atrium, Cobb moved down a long hallway leading away from the kitchen. There were a number of doors on the left side of the hallway, with a wall of glass panes facing the outdoor patio on his right.
The first door on the left was just a bedroom, empty, save for some clothes and rumpled sheets on the bed. The second was much the same, except for a pair of handcuffs attached to the bed railing. The third opened into a comfortable bathroom, while the fourth opened into a bedroom that smelled of rotten food.
But when he made his way into the largest bedroom at the end of the hall, its contents shocked Cobb. While windows lined one wall in the same manner as the hallway, including a sliding glass door that led out to the patio, cages sat stacked on the floor by another wall, all filled with crows, two or three each to a cage. As he entered the room, the crows just lay there, not moving, breathing but barely alive. Next to a sliding door leading into a private bathroom was another cage, this one hanging from the ceiling hook by a chain. This cage was round and very ornate with a funny wire door. Inside was another crow, unmoving, laying in a puddle of feathers.
Below the cage was a man sitting in a chair outfitted with wheels, a man with a grizzled beard, a green coat and dirty blue jeans.
“Cobb,” Old Thom said with the man’s mouth. “You idiot.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Cobb told him, coming over to his king, trying to figure out what he was seeing. “Get up.”
“I can’t. They put me into the body of a man that can’t walk. This is a trap.”
“Well, I’m getting you out of here, anyway.
“That’s the trap, you see?” Old Thom insisted. “It can’t be done. Not with the elevators turned off.”
Cobb shook his head, not wanting to listen.
“I’ll carry you.”
“Down twenty flights of stairs? Don’t bother.”
“Cobb,” the radio crackled with the Red Crow’s voice again. “Time’s up. We’re coming up a little early. I’m assuming by now you’ve found my plaything.”
Cobb pressed the button on the radio. “Fuck you.”
“You can’t get him out alive.”
“No,” Cobb said, holding down the button. He leveled the gun at the bed, just a few feet to the left of his king. “But I can make sure that you can’t hurt him anymore.” Cobb pulled the trigger twice, firing two shots into the mattress. Old Thom reflexively screamed at the sound of the double blast, the shots loud enough in the small room to set Cobb’s ears ringing.
“Oh, good for you,” the Red Crow exclaimed after a moment. “Now that’s the kind of cold-blooded reliability that I can respect. Is there any chance you want to change sides, Cobb?”
Cobb didn’t respond and took his finger off the radio button. As Old Thom started to talk, started to tell him what had happened, Cobb heard a noise from outside that sent chills up his spine. Shushing his friend with a hand gesture, he listened until he identified exactly what it was. From outside the open sliding glass door, he could hear the sound of wings and fluttering on the roof above. Lots of wings.
“Shit. His army’s here,” Cobb swore under his breath.
“Of course they are,” Old Thom told him. “You’re here.”
Thinking on his feet, he closed the door to the patio, then bent down to help Old Thom out of his chair. “Come on. Let’s get you into the closet. That will keep you safe in case they get inside.” Cobb glanced at the rest of the crows, knowing them now to be from his flock. But knew there was nothing he could do for them at the moment.
“How did you like Alaska?” Old Thom joked as Cobb hauled him across the room by the armpits, the old man’s unresponsive legs dragging behind him.
“It was hard. Torvo taught me a lot, though.”
“I can tell.”
“Did you choose this human for me?” he asked his king. “Cobb? As the one I would take?”
“No,” Old Thom said, as Cobb set him down gently amid the hanging clothes and a well-ordered line of leather shoes. “When I called, he came to us of his own free will.”
“How many of us are left? How many of us got away?”
“This is it, Cobb. Just the ones in this room. The rest are slain, eaten, or have been taken as breeding slaves.”
Cobb blinked in shock, remembering the sky filled with thousands of crows when Old Thom held court, how every branch of the Bitching Tree had been covered with kin. Now these thirty or forty were all that remained?
“Why is he even doing this? Why has he taken the Bitching Tree?”
“He used the Bitching Tree many years ago to become human, to make hosts for his lieutenants. But with the new talisman he’s making, he can bring any crow across whenever he wants, as long as he acquires enough human vessels to put them in. Crow to human, human to crow, he can move them back and forth as he pleases, using a rite that doesn’t sew you into either skin or feathers. While his talisman doesn’t have the permanence of the original rite, the one that I used on you, now that he has the totem pole he won’t be the only immortal; his army will be as well.” The old man let out a long, tired sigh. “But you should go now. If you can’t beat the Red Crow today, then you should flee and fight him a different day.”
“I’m not going anywhere. He hurt you. He hurt Torvo. He might have hurt Hawna, too, the one that I …” He caught himself, but then knew he meant it. “Love.”
“Then go kick his ass,” Old Thom told him after a moment, giving him a knowing smile. “Good luck, Cobb.”
“You too,” Cobb told him as he closed the closet door—even as he heard the entire flock of alien crows abruptly take to the air above the building, tawing challenge as they raised up in a storm of feather and beak and talon.
Twelve
Cobb ran for the living room with his gun and his backpack, hoping he could close all of the patio doors in time. Even as the deck darkened under a cloud of wings, he slammed closed the first of the three sliding glass doors. As he reached the second, crows began to batter off the glass windows, leaving bloody red streaks, trying desperately to find a way through. He tried to reach the third door, but he couldn’t get there in time—and a swarm of enemy crows poured in, circling the room with mad, screeching cries. As the fluttering tidal wave rolled in, dozens more every second, Cobb threw himself down on the kitchen floor to avoid being shredded by the airborne horde.
Crawling on all fours now, Cobb could hear the room filling with crows. With a red-hot shriek of pain, he felt one’s talons rip right across the top of his scalp, through the double hats he wore, ripping out a tuft of his hair. He could hardly hear anything for the screaming din, could see nothing above him but a rippling wave of blurring black shapes.
He knew that he had to get the crows out, or he had to get out. They were starting to land now, awkwardly fluttering down onto the furniture and the kitchen counters, knocking plates and wine bottles to the floor in their attempt to reach him. One even knocked the roasting pan off the kitchen counter with its clumsy landing, revealing the scattered, picked-over carcass of a crow that the enemy had cooked and eaten. Cobb thought about running for the front doors and wondered if he could open them and get to the safety of the atrium in time, but figured it would take him right into the path of the Red Crow’s well-armed lieutenants.
Then he saw his salvation next to the door—it was one of the fire alarm boxes with the glass and the funny handle. But from here it looked like there weren’t any cut wires, no smashed drywall, that it was still functional. This suite was a safe space for the Red Crow, away from the filthy two-in-ones trapped below, where he could live a cultured life.
Bracing himself for what he was about to do, Cobb brushed away one pecking interloper, then sprinted for the switch. He got there just in time for his outer parka to be swiped and scratched by at least a dozen birds, one of which tenaciously clung to his shoulder, trying to tear holes in his cheek with its sharp beak. He shoulder-checked the wall intentionally, crushing the frail bird to death, even as he smashed at the alarm glass with his fist until he finally broke it. Knocking aside the stray pieces of glass, he jammed down the red switch inside.
He’d expected a siren, or maybe a set of sprinklers to add to the chaos. But the earsplitting, reverberating screech that suddenly came from everywhere, vibrating his skull from the inside out, was a piercing, terrible sound. While he didn’t like it, the crows hated it—and all of them were now in flight, doing their best to escape the horrible noise.
He unlocked and threw open the doors to the atrium, ducking as a flood of crows blurred past him into the open area, seeking refuge from the deafening screech. But there was still no escape for them, for the noise was sounding throughout the entire tower, in the rooms, in the atrium, in the stairwells with emergency lights pulsing throughout. Crows and two-in-ones alike screamed for mercy, begging for the terrible noise to stop!
Retreating back into the living room, his skin stinging and bleeding from a dozen scrapes and scratches, Cobb threw himself beneath the piano, out of the way of the flights that were still trying to leave the space. He took a fresh magazine from his backpack, popped out the empty, dropped it into his backpack’s pocket, then slammed the filled one home. He knew the Red Crow’s lieutenants had to be close—and now the double doors were wide open, providing an easy way in.
It didn’t take long for the men to arrive. The lieutenant with the machine gun stepped inside the doorway and fired a bunch of shots at where he thought Cobb was hiding, blasting holes through the long white couch, scattering stuffing into the air. Amid all the noise and tumult, Cobb took careful aim and returned fire from his hiding place, hitting the enemy in the chest with two of the six rounds he fired.
The black man ran across the room, gun in hand, and Cobb watched as he slid
to cover behind the far side of the kitchen island. Cobb thought about it, about how the other lieutenant had shot through the couch—and fired the rest of his rounds right through the side of the island, to where he thought the man was kneeling. The first bullet he fired evoked a cry of pain and outrage—and the last one in the clip abruptly silenced the man’s cries. Cobb, not having time to feel good or bad about what he’d done, popped out the empty magazine and slid in his next fresh one. Two clips gone, two to go before he would have to find somewhere safe to reload.
As the last of the crows fled, the reverberations of the screaming fire alarm were starting to make Cobb’s skull hurt. Getting up from beneath the piano, leaving his backpack behind for the moment, he went over to the kitchen nook, gun at the ready. But when he came around the corner, the lieutenant there was clearly dead, all full of terrible holes. When he checked the other man by the door, he wasn’t breathing either.
Looking out into the atrium, the space still crazy with flying crows and screaming two-in-ones, Cobb didn’t see any other attackers up on his level. Yet. Looking back into the suite, he tried to figure out what weapons he still had left in his backpack. He had more pepper spray and another air horn, and almost two whole boxes of bullets. While he could live without the whackety stick he’d dropped downstairs, he’d lost his chainsaw, the one tool that he would need to destroy the root of the Red Crow’s power.
That’s when he realized that he was staring at the answer, that it was right in front of him. The heavy piano was on wheels—and the doorway was wide enough for him to push it right through.
When Cobb leaned against the side of the heavy instrument, it rolled a bit. He plotted a possible course through the furniture, past the dead lieutenant just outside the door, to where he had a clear runway toward the railing that guarded the edge of the inner patio. But he would need a running start; he would need to get as much momentum going as possible to allow the heavy thing to smash through the railing.
The Bitching Tree Page 26