Bracing himself against the piano, Cobb pushed with his legs—and found that the piano rolled pretty easily on the white tile. Pistol clenched in his hand, watching for more of the Red Crow’s soldiers, Cobb started to push in earnest, trying to control the initial crazy swing of momentum that threatened to send the side of the piano crashing into the kitchen island.
When Cobb got to the area where he could push straight, he had to keep low to avoid more crows fleeing the screaming atrium for the safety of the open skies. Now that he was really moving, the piano was rolling too fast for him to stop. Doing his best to put on even more speed, he forced the juggernaut out onto the inner patio, the half-ton instrument knocking aside plastic deck chairs in its wake. The moment of truth was coming as he approached the twenty-story drop, right up to the glass and metal railings that guarded the edge. He shoved with all his might, screaming through clenched teeth, giving every ounce of strength he had as he approached the end of the world.
The piano smashed into the railing and through it, launching a spray of glass pieces and metal debris. At first Cobb thought he wasn’t going to make it, that the piano didn’t have enough speed to make it over the lip. But then the front leg went over and the whole thing abruptly tipped up, the row of black and white keys nearly taking off Cobb’s chin as he was thrown by the sudden change of momentum. With a scraping sound the piano slid forward on its belly before the back legs went up and over, then tumbled out and down to the ground far below. Cobb scrambled to a secure-looking portion of the railing, looking down twenty stories to where the Red Crow and the defiled tree waited—and watched as the piano tumbled end over end, accelerating through a storm of screaming, flapping crows.
With an amazing sense of satisfaction, Cobb watched it hit, heard it crash like a scream of every note from every bad song ever written in the history of the world. The shock of the heavy impact roared through the building, causing another whole section of busted railing beside him to fall out into open space.
But once Cobb was sure that he wasn’t going to fall, when the last of the pieces had finished their violent descent to the floor below, he looked over the railing to see what had happened. The Red Crow was just standing there next to his last lieutenant, looking up at Cobb, as if trying to discern what angry god had just hurled a piano at him. But just beyond the two of them, the piano was smashed into a million pieces across the floor of the atrium—and the totem pole had taken the brunt of the hit.
Before he could celebrate, a violent shock tore through him, ripping at the very fabric of his soul. For a moment he felt himself nearly tear free of Cobb’s body as the power of the Bitching Tree unworked itself. But then he snapped back, as Old Thom’s original spell held.
At the same time, all of the enemy crows in the air abruptly ceased their raucous cries and just fell. Then all of the screaming two-in-ones standing along the railings abruptly collapsed as well, falling senseless to the ground.
As the rain of falling crows ceased—his army slaughtered, his talisman destroyed—the Red Crow was still standing below, next to his last remaining lieutenant. He looked up at Cobb with silent rage, as if he were experiencing what it was to lose for the first time in his life.
Cobb waved at him and gave him a great big grin, reveling in his victory. Somewhere in the north he wondered if Torvo might be waking up, freed from the Red Crow’s spell.
His steps marked by fury, the Red Crow stalked into the shadows with his pistol in hand, his lieutenant close on his heels. Cobb heard the bang of a staircase door being kicked open, and knew he only had so much time to prepare.
A few moments later the fire alarm abruptly stopped, but Cobb could hear fire trucks coming in the distance, their sirens audible through the last open patio door. Desperately, he pulled the switch on the wall to see if he could trigger the alarm again, to bring help faster, but it was no use. The power to the little box could only be used once. Soon the Red Crow would be here and he would have to be ready.
Closing the front doors, he pushed the remnants of the couch up against it for good measure, to buy himself a little time. Then he grabbed his backpack, for he was sure he was going to need it.
“Thom! Are you alright?” he called as he ran down the hall to the master bedroom. He expected an answer from Old Thom, but wasn’t entirely surprised when he got none in return. Going into the cage room, he threw open the closet door. Cobb was overjoyed to see Old Thom laying there looking up at him—
But the light in the man’s eyes was different. This wasn’t Old Thom. This was the other man, the one that the Red Crow had put his king into. Now that the evil totem pole was broken, smashed into splinters, the human had surfaced, though barely alive, almost senseless from the trauma he’d endured.
After gingerly closing the closet door again, having no way to help the old man, Cobb went to the round cage hanging from the ceiling.
“Please be alive … please be alive …” he begged as he spun the cage a bit, so the little wire door faced him. He prayed that there would still be breath within the feathers. He would need his king to tell him what to do next, how to fight his evil brother, because the battle was not over.
To Cobb’s elation the crow moved. Opened an eye. Breathed. Moved a leg. Tested his good wing, then fluttered his bad one. Old Thom stood up, looking warily at Cobb through the bars of the cage.
Putting the gun and his pack down on the bed, unfastening the door of the prison, Cobb reached in and gingerly picked up the crow with both hands. Carefully drawing the bird out, he was amazed at how small it was, at how light and delicate it was in his fingers. Cradling it to his chest, the crow half-dead from dehydration, he opened the sliding glass door and went out onto the abandoned patio. To his relief there wasn’t an enemy crow in sight, not by the pool and not on the roofline of the suite’s eaves. Out in the light of day the crow blinked its eyes and started to panic, but Cobb shushed it as he went over to a deck chair. Carefully, he set the little lump of feathers down on a towel, telling it to stay, telling it to—
The crow got up and determinedly flew past him, one wing ragged, one wing true. It struggled back into the bedroom and landed on one of the cages. With its beak it began tugging desperately at the twists of wire that locked the last surviving members of its flock in place. Their feathery bodies were all rousing now, their spirits returned from the humans they’d been imprisoned in below.
Looking through the glass windows toward the living room, toward the apartment’s front doors, Cobb knew that he didn’t have much time. Running back into the master bedroom, ignoring Old Thom’s panicked cries, Cobb opened the cages one by one, letting all of the inhabitants stumble and soar free. Old Thom stayed with him on the cages, hopping from box to box, scolding him until the job was done.
When the last crows were freed and had flown out into the open air, Cobb followed Old Thom as he flapped back to the patio, back to stand on the back of the deck chair, still weak in body but strong in heart. That’s when Cobb realized that the other crows of his flock were circling overhead now, tawing for Old Thom to come, to get away from the humans to the safety of the wide blue world. But Cobb couldn’t leave, because his spell was different than the Red Crow’s; his magic came with a different cost.
“There’s no going home for me,” Cobb said. “Hawna was right. There is no going back.”
In response Old Thom shook his beak, his eyes showing grief, loss.
“I’m still glad you chose me,” Cobb told him calmly, from the heart. “I’m glad I could come back to save you. To save those I could. To break the Red Crow’s spell.” He looked up at the crows circling over his head, his kin and family, for the long years of his life now beyond speech and roost and touch.
Then there came a bashing sound at the front door of the living room, followed by a hail of gunshots. Frightened by the noise of the gunfire, with a flutter of feathers Old Thom was up and over the edge of the railing and gone, gliding out and down toward the city below. As Cobb
moved to the railing to see them go, he watched as the survivors of his flock looped and circled down after their king, tawing, joyous, alive—and free.
Torvo should also be free, Cobb reminded himself. And Hawna too. That was part of the price, even though he was trapped on a rooftop twenty stories up, with wolves howling at his door.
“Crows can’t swim,” he said sadly as he watched his family go west, toward home. “And men can’t fly.”
Going back through the patio door into the master bedroom, he stood just around the corner, hoping the wall would give him some small amount of cover. Hearing footsteps in the living room, he fired a volley of blind shots to scare them off—but the mechanical machine gun poured rounds back, blasting dozens of holes into the wall.
“Cobb,” the radio at his belt said when the stream of bullets stopped. It was the Red Crow, his voice sounding different now. More petty. Weaker.
Cobb took up the radio and pressed the button. “Yes, enemy?”
“This ends here,” the Red Crow told him.
“It probably does.”
“Before we finish all this up, I wanted to ask you one thing.”
“What is that?” Cobb said.
“Why did Old Thom choose you?”
Cobb laughed. “Because I could fly! Because I could fly better than any of the rest of my kin. I would taunt the ground and fight the wind to earn every ounce of speed I could take.”
“He chose well. You’ve put up a hell of a fight.”
“I have a lot to fight for.”
“This won’t stop me. There will be other sacred trees. There are other sources of power.”
“Yes,” Cobb said, still watching the front door. “But you’ll never have mine.”
“No,” the Red Crow laughed. “I won’t.” Cobb could hear someone cocking a gun in the background where the Red Crow was. “But now we end this.”
“If you insist,” Cobb said—just as he realized the Red Crow’s last lieutenant was standing in the open patio doorway, gun in hand. Before Cobb could do anything, the man fired, his bullet tearing through Cobb’s shoulder.
Cobb swung around, screaming challenge at the enemy. Firing blindly, both of them emptied their pistols at near point-blank range. The other man went down first, three of Cobb’s bullets blasting through his rib cage. But Cobb was hit again, the left side of his ribs blossoming with screaming fire.
Cobb slid down the wall, mouth gaping at the pain, leaving a terrible bloody streak behind on the paint. Nothing had ever hurt or burned so bad; nothing had ever made him wish he was drowning in Torvo’s freezing stream again.
The radio crackled, the Red Crow’s voice came, tinged with trickery. “You still there, Cobb?”
Cobb managed to pick up and click the button on the radio with a bloodstained hand. “I got your fucker.”
The Red Crow sighed. “And then there were two. Just you and me.”
Cobb looked both ways, first toward the hallway then out toward the patio, knowing that this position, this bit of cover was impossible to hold. As if in answer, a rain of pistol bullets from the hallway forced him away from the doorway, his body jerking aside just in time as the empty cages at the other end of the room exploded into metal bits. The determined assault kept up for a good five seconds, preventing him from firing back.
Knowing that he was outgunned, Cobb grabbed his pack and dragged it into the attached bathroom. He slid the flimsy door closed, leaving behind red handprints on everything he touched. Unable to stand, clenching his jaw against the pain in his chest and shoulder, he slid himself on the tile until he was tucked between the toilet and the tub. He knew he was running out of time.
After ejecting the empty magazine and putting his last one in, he rooted deeper through his backpack, needing an advantage, an edge over the killer that was coming for him. He pulled out the safety goggles and the full can of pepper spray. Even though it meant putting down the gun for a moment, he put the goggles over his eyes, struggled with the rubber strap, then picked up the gun in one hand and the can of spray in the other.
Another series of bullets blasted through the bathroom door, through the wall above the sink, the wild spray shattering squares of shower tile and mirror glass. The toilet tank broke right behind his head from a stray ricochet, sending cold water flooding beneath him, across the floor of the room. But Cobb didn’t make a sound. He sat shaking with weapons in both hands, waiting for when his enemy would be stupid enough to open the door.
“Cobb,” the Red Crow said through the door after a little while, but Cobb didn’t bother to answer.
“Cobb,” the Red Crow said again, waking him from the edge of losing consciousness. Cobb shook his head, amazed that he could sleep through so much pain.
“What?”
“I just want to let you know that when we’re done here,” he shouted. “I’m going to Alaska after this. I’m going to kill Torvo personally. I’m going to make his daughter my breeding slave. Then I’m going to start all of this over again with her, so I can have a new body again in twenty years. In a body that is young and strong and not ravaged by the weakness of old age and death. You weren’t strong enough to stop me, Cobb. I just wanted you to know that before you die.”
“You can’t stop a river,” Cobb shouted back. “Nobody can. Not even you. You just have to out-think it. You just have to out-think the river.”
“I’m going to come in on three, Cobb. One …”
Cobb raised his weapons, barely able to lift the gun.
“Two …”
Cobb pressed down the nozzle, spraying out a seemingly endless blast of aerosolized liquid. It spattered the broken mirror, the door, even the towels on the far wall. Already his face and hands burned from the spray misting in the tiny room, but he had suffered far worse with Torvo out in the trees of Alaska. At least the plastic goggles allowed him to keep his sight. He held his breath, knowing that the moment he breathed in again his life would be done.
“Three.”
As the door slid open, the Red Crow burst in, pistol in hand, his face a mask of inhuman rage—but rage that instantly turned to horror as the pepper spray mist robbed him of his sight, burned his nose and mouth, clawed down into his lungs. In response, both of them fired at exactly the same time, the shared blast of gunpowder in the tiny bathroom the loudest thing Cobb had ever heard.
As the Red Crow’s bullet blasted through Cobb’s chest, Cobb smiled as he saw his own shot had pierced his enemy right through the center, right through the heart. The man, shocked at the sudden blow, stunned at the arrogance of such a mortal wound, slid down the wall, knocking down towel bars until he came to rest splay-legged, mirroring Cobb’s own position. But even through the terrible mist, Cobb could see that the Red Crow wasn’t breathing, he wasn’t coughing—he was dead, gone, a threat no more to the mortal world.
“Hawna,” Cobb said with his last breath—and the bloody coughing fit that followed ripped him apart, chewing him into pieces until he was dragged down into the black.
Thirteen
After a long time, Cobb felt himself move into a starry place, beyond the feathers, beyond the egg, beyond the stone. He was in shadow, in transition. He could feel his soul moving on, the stars around him whispering his final moments with tongues of light.
“Cobb?” he called out to his human, his desperation echoing in the dark. “Cobb? Cobb! Where are you!”
“I am here,” called out a voice. But it wasn’t his human, but a tall woman standing among shadow, barely discernible in the starlight. Her voice sounded as old as the world.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“You are here.”
“Who are you?” he asked. But then he knew the truth. “I’m dead. You are Mother Death. This is the end. My end. Just like in the stories.”
“You are correct,” said the woman’s voice, coming closer now. Cool fingers touched his beak, stroked his feathers with a familiarity that took him back to his first struggles beyond the
egg, the first time he embraced the taste of breath, witnessed the glorious light of day. He remembered now that crows were her favorite. From beginning to end, in all the stories, they were always hers.
“Am I supposed to be here?” he asked.
“You opened the door,” she replied softly. “You both did. You and your human did what I could not. You brought me one who I could not catch, for he lived many, many years past his due.”
“Good,” the little crow said with great relief. “Then he will not have Hawna. He will not have Torvo.”
“That is true. But what about Kory?” she asked teasingly. “Is she not your love, my little two-in-one?”
“No,” he said with regret. “Kory’s heart was for him. The picture I brought in my backpack was for him, for the human that I stole. In case I died, in case I went away and he woke up again, I brought the one thing that he would need to remember, to remind him of the woman he loved, who loved him. It was the best I could do, for she was the twin of his heart.” He fought against tears, thinking of what to say. “But Hawna is my heart. As long as she is safe, I am safe. As long as she breathes, I may rest. That is all I need.”
“But, my little crow, Kory refused my second door. She has waited in the dark all this time for her mate to come. Now that you are here, now that you are unentangled from your human, they are finally united, and will walk together through my feathers into what lies beyond.”
“Really?” Cobb said, sitting up, standing up, in front of her in the dark. “They’re together? They’re safe?”
“Yes. But now, we must be quick. I have a body on the brink of death, its owner thankful for everything that you’ve done. Would you take it, my little crow, even though you will fly no more?”
“I would,” Cobb told her gratefully. “Even though I will fly no more.”
“Then you shall return and you shall honor me with your life.”
“I will! I will! But I have one question!” Cobb said, knowing he was begging.
The Bitching Tree Page 27