A Shadow of Crows

by Yasmine Galenorn

  And that was the truth. I hadn’t considered myself extremely vengeful. Up until I met Farthing, I had been holding out some sort of hope that I had read the situation wrong. That my parents had been killed by strangers. That hope had died when my grandfather had confessed to being part of their deaths, and when he told me that my mother’s parents had been part of it as well. There had been no joyful family reunion, nor would there ever be.

  “It’s never easy to face the past when it’s housed in the form of a murderer,” Yutani said.

  As I wove through the streets, following Herne’s car, I debated asking him how he was coping with his own discovery, but I decided to leave it be for now.

  “So, do you think we’ll catch him today?” Yutani asked.

  I shrugged, flipping the turn signal as I merged into the next lane.

  “We’re facing a psycho. I can’t see it being as easy as going up to Lucius’s front door and slapping cuffs on him.”

  “I see what you mean.” Yutani paused, then added, “Herne and I had a long talk yesterday. In case you’re interested, we came to an understanding. We’ll be able to rebuild our friendship, but it’s going to take some time. It’s not even that I feel he betrayed me by not telling me his suspicions. It’s that everybody seemed to be talking behind my back.”

  I gave him a quick glance. “Yutani, I knew about their suspicions, but trust me, it never seemed to be a subject for gossip. It only came out because he was worried about you. It wasn’t like anybody was sitting there, placing bets about when you’d find out.”

  “Thank you for telling me that. I didn’t talk to Herne about that so much. I didn’t want him to lie to me to soothe my feelings. But I wondered if I actually had been a regular topic in the office gossip mill.”

  Herne was pulling into a parking spot up ahead, in front of what looked like a Gothic Victorian mansion. As I eased into a parking spot two cars behind him, I turned off the ignition and turned to Yutani.

  “I will tell you one thing and I want you to believe me. Everybody in that office has your back. Everyone there considers you part of the family. I’m still an outsider, to a degree, but I’ve never met a group of people who care more about each other than the Wild Hunt. You and Viktor and Talia took Angel and me in when Herne brought us into the agency. Nobody’s been bad mouthing you.” I glanced ahead. Herne and Viktor were getting out of the car. “We’d better join them. And let’s hope this goes easier than my gut says it will.”

  Yutani reached over, placing his hand on mine and squeezing it gently.

  “I know you think that I looked down on you at first, that I didn’t think you were up to the job. The truth is, I’m not an easy person to get to know and I’m blunt. And I think you and Angel do a bang-up job. And…thank you for what you said.”

  And with that, we got out of the car and joined Herne and Viktor.

  THE HOUSE WAS both massive and spooky looking. The landscaping around it had been neglected. Patches of knee-high grass filled the front yard, interspersed with blackberry vines and overgrown ferns. The walkway up to the front porch was broken, with weeds poking through the cracks. There was a chain-link fence surrounding the lot, about five feet tall. It was sagging in some areas, and rusting in a few others.

  From where I stood, I could count three stories plus what looked like an attic nook on top of the house. It truly was an Addams family special, or worse yet—the Munsters; almost a parody of the Halloween haunted house.

  “Either he worked very hard to make his home unapproachable, or he really has ignored any upkeep. It’s a wonder the neighbors haven’t complained to the city.” I glanced around, then realized that the rest of the neighborhood didn’t look much better. “Well, even if they did, I don’t think they would have a leg to stand on. What the hell kind of neighborhood is this?”

  “This is the Bayberry neighborhood, and there’s a reason the area looks like this. This was where the Fae courts tried to funnel their poverty-ridden subjects whom they didn’t want cluttering up their cities. At one time it was a mishmash of Light and Dark Fae. There were a lot of calls to the police. The Fae eventually wandered off, replaced by equally destitute members of the shifter community. A few humans live here too. Lots of slumlord issues around here. I found that out when I was checking out the place yesterday,” Viktor said.

  “So basically a trailer trash neighborhood, without the trailers?” Yutani said.

  Viktor nodded. “It’s not just poverty that runs it down, either. A lot of gang fighting, illegal drug activity, and the occasional pimp’s flophouse.”

  Since prostitution was legal, the only pimps left were ones who trafficked in sex slaves, and sold them cheap. Or ran underaged rings, or fetishes that were so dangerous they were outlawed. They moved from flophouse to flophouse, pulling up stakes every time they thought the cops might be onto them.

  I blinked, wondering what had happened to all the neighborhood renewal projects that the city government talked about. There had been a big push a few years back to revitalize the poorer areas of the city, but given that the mayor’s office was as corrupt as law enforcement, I suspected that the money earmarked for said revitalization had gone straight into the pockets of the vampires who were pulling the strings behind the curtains. Just like the Fae influenced the cops, the vampires influenced the mayor and the city council.

  “Are we ready?” I asked.

  Herne nodded. “Let’s go get our man.”

  As we headed up the broken walkway, picking our way through the weeds and overgrown tangle that sprawled across the sidewalk, I kept an eye on the windows, but there was no sign of movement, no sign of life. When I reached out attempting to sense any movement or energy, the entire house felt dead. Houses could feel abandoned, and desolate, but they usually had a mournful sense about them. Right now, I sensed only decay and death.

  “There’s something wrong here,” I finally said. “I know he’s not supposed to have any magical abilities, but I sense some sort of magic around this yard.”

  Herne’s gaze darted around, and he held up one hand first pause. After a moment, he said, “I understand what you’re saying, but this is the only choice we have. If he’s not here, were going to set up a stakeout.”

  “What if he’s on the trail, already looking for a new victim?”

  “We can’t cover the entire beach trail. We don’t have enough manpower. If he’s not here, we’ll decide what move to make next.” Herne gave me a shrug, and I realized he was right. There was no way we could cover the entire Beach Trail, so taking it one step at a time was the only thing we could do. The cops weren’t going to help us, although realizing they wouldn’t hinder us either made me feel better.

  As we ascended the porch stairs, they creaked beneath our feet and I saw several broken boards.

  “Be careful, there are some rotten planks on this porch, and you don’t want to —”

  Before I could finish speaking, Viktor suddenly plunged through the floor, the boards splintering as he crashed through a rotten patch. He shouted, disappearing into the hole.

  “Viktor!” Herne raced forward, stopping as his foot began to splinter another board. He backed up quickly, going down on his knees to spread his weight out, much like someone trying to spread their weight out on ice over a pond.

  Yutani leapt over the railing into the yard, and I realized he was looking for a way into the crawlspace under the porch. I wasn’t sure what to do, but a glance at the door showed no sign that anybody inside had heard us.

  “I’m all right, I think,” Victor’s voice trailed up from below. “But you need to come down here.”

  “I found a way in,” Yutani called.

  I glanced at Herne, then at the door. “If Lucius is in there, he’s going to hear us. I’m skirting around back to make sure he doesn’t escape that way.”

  “Be careful,” Herne said. As I started to head around the side, I saw where Yutani had found the openin
g into the crawlspace that led to beneath the porch. He was peeking in, and as I passed he motioned for me to join him.

  “I was going around back —” I started, but Yutani shook his head and again, beckoned me over with a finger.

  “Lucius is probably out, or you can bet we’d have seen him by now. You need to see this. So does Herne.”

  Herne joined me, and we followed Yutani beneath the porch, brushing away spiderwebs and stray leaves. The smell was dank, and heavy pall of decay hung in the crawlspace. At first I thought it might just be sour earth, but then I recognized that scent. It reminded me of the decay that we had smelled when we found Ulstair’s body.

  “Crap. That’s the smell of death.” I saw a flashlight beam flickering ahead from where Viktor was crouching on the ground. Above him, light emanated through the hole in the porch. He trained his beam on a patch of earth next to him, and Yutani pulled out his own flashlight, strengthening the light so that we could see easier.

  There, next to Viktor, were the skeletal bones of the hand, poking out of the ground.

  “Another murder victim?” I asked, thinking no sane person would hide a skeleton beneath their porch. It couldn’t be from natural causes, either. Nobody dug a hole underneath the porch and lay down in it to die.

  “It has to be. But we found all the reports they had of missing men, so who is this? The skeleton looks older, like it’s been here for some time.” Viktor looked up at Herne. “I thought he was dismissed as a priest just a few months back?”

  “That’s what the Morrígan said. But then again, remember, he was accused of attacking several members of TirNaNog. What if he’s been killing for some time? He could have been targeting an entirely different victim profile before being replaced by Garrison pushed him over the edge.” Herne looked around. “I wonder if there any more bodies buried here.”

  Viktor flashed his light toward the back of the house. “The crawlspace goes on for quite a ways. I have the feeling that this guy, or woman, isn’t alone down here. Let’s get inside the house.”

  We headed out from beneath the crawlspace, and this time we moved around back. The kitchen door led directly into the house, with no porch in between. Two steps led to the door, from a concrete patio that was as cracked as the front sidewalk. The backyard looked as desolate and overgrown as the front, and the trees felt angry to me. I reached out, trying to sense their nature, but pulled away when I sensed how twisted and dark they were. They felt as tainted as the house did.

  “This land is saturated with evil energy,” I said, not wanting to sound dramatic and yet — it was the truth. “Everything on the lot feels tainted. Whether it’s because of what he’s been doing, or something else, I don’t know.”

  Herne tried the doorknob, but it was locked. Yutani motioned him aside, and pulled out a set of lock picks. He made quick work of the deadbolt and the door sprang open. As Herne stepped in to what appeared to be the kitchen, I gave one last look to the yard, and followed him. When we were all inside, Viktor shut the door.

  We were standing in a large room, a kitchen that looked straight out of the 1930s. A big wood cookstove stood in one corner of the room, and it was obvious that it had been in use recently because a skillet sat to one side. The stove made me uneasy, there was a lot of cast-iron in it, and I tried to stay away from it.

  “How Lucius even uses that, being Fae himself, I don’t know. Getting near it makes me queasy.”

  “Maybe he’s got somebody here with him,” Herne said, looking around.

  The rest of the kitchen seemed just as old, although I knew it couldn’t be. The countertops were covered with some sort of linoleum or Formica, and the cupboards had once been white but now were a muddy gray from years of use. Nothing had been updated, it seemed, except for a chest freezer that stood in one corner of the room, near a kitchen table. The table was about the size of a card table, only it was solid wood and had three older chairs with vinyl seat coverings on them.

  Something about the freezer caught my attention. I hesitantly walked over to it, not wanting to open it and yet drawn to do so. As I lifted the lid, the room began to spin. I realized I was staring at roughly packed freezer bags filled with hands and feet. I let out a shriek and dropped the lid, stumbling back.

  “Crap, I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t think anybody’s home,” Yutani said. “Or if he is home, he’s in hiding. We made plenty of noise, so if he has a secret cubbyhole in which to hide, he’s probably already there.”

  “What did you see in there?” Herne asked, crossing to lift the lid. He shut it very quickly, turning around, his face pale. “Well, we have an answer as to whether he’s been killing more than just Ulstair and those other men. Apparently he has a taste for flesh.”

  I let out a soft groan, not wanting to think about the body parts in that freezer. All I wanted to do was to catch Lucius and turn him over to the Morrígan.

  There were two doors out of the kitchen. One led to a formal dining room and the other to a back staircase. We began to search through the house, room by room. Like many Victorians, this house was tall and narrow, with only three or four rooms per floor. Other than a powder room and the kitchen, the main floor had a dining room, a parlor, and what looked like a small office. There didn’t seem to be a basement, or if there was, the door was hidden. But because so many houses in the Seattle area didn’t have basements because of all of the urban flooding, I rather doubted this one did.

  We ascended the main staircase to the second floor. There, we found a library and what looked like two bedrooms and another bathroom. One of the bedrooms looked like it was being used, but the other was dusty, filled with cobwebs and dust bunnies, and the comforter on the bed had a half-inch layer of dust on it. We went into the library, poking around. I found a datebook, but it was open to March rather than September, and it seemed like the last appointment entered had been close to the spring equinox. In fact, the last appointment read, “Meeting with the Morrígan” and after that, there were no more entries.

  “I think I found the date when the Morrígan kicked him out of the priesthood. The library looks unused otherwise, but could there be a secret entrance to a room in here?”

  Yutani closed his eyes. “I don’t think so. When I think of the outside and what we’re seeing here on the inside, I don’t think there’s space enough for a secret entrance. Possibly a narrow staircase? But that would have to be it.”

  We ransacked the rest of the room but found nothing else. As we headed to the third floor, my stomach began to tighten. The energy grew heavier, and once again I felt a feeling of dread. Before I could mention it, though, Viktor spoke up.

  “There’s something really bad up there,” he said. “Even I can feel it.”

  “That goes for me too,” I said.

  Herne nodded. “There’s heavy magic hanging in the air. If Lucius doesn’t use magic, then he’s had some help.” As he finished speaking, the stairway opened out into what looked like a second parlor. There were three other rooms off of the parlor, and yet another staircase that had to lead to the attic nook. The parlor itself looked relatively benign, furnished with old furniture and heavy draperies, all cloying with a dank smell. But there was something underneath the dampness, another scent that smelled familiar.

  “Blood,” Yutani said. “I smell old blood.”

  He gravitated toward one of the doors, and when he approached it, we readied our weapons.

  Yutani smashed the door open, but inside was a bathroom. The tub was stained with dried blood, as was the floor. Splatters painted the walls, in a sickening array of designs. On one wall, the rough drawing of a crow with wings spread out was outlined with blood. Runes were etched around the outside, glyphs that I recognized as Turneth, the Dark Fae dialect. I stared at them, able to read them.

  “It’s a prayer to the Morrígan. It’s a prayer begging her to forgive him and take him back.”

  As we stared at the mess, Yutan
i cocked his head.

  “I hear something upstairs. Come on,” he said, heading out of the bathroom and toward the stairway leading up to the attic. We followed, and I wondered if Lucius had holed up there, waiting for us. But as we reached the top of the short staircase and Yutani threw open the door, a flurry of wings rustled, as a flurry of crows came swooping down to attack us.

  “Cover your eyes,” Herne said, as he raised one hand. I obeyed. A crow landed on my head, trying to pick at my face, and I tried to knock it off while protecting my face. The next moment, there was a brilliant flash that I could see even behind my closed lids, and Herne let out a loud cry. I wasn’t sure what spell he cast, but the crow on my head momentarily stopped, and I managed to slam it against the wall. A moment later, I opened my eyes to find a group of stunned crows littering the floor. Yutani quickly shut the door to the attic as we attempted to regroup.

  Chapter 20

  “WHAT DO WE do about these crows before they wake up?”

  My face felt wet, and I reached up to wipe a trickle of blood away from my forehead where the crow had managed to wound me. It didn’t feel deep, but it was bleeding at a pretty good clip, given head wounds and hands always bled heavier.

  “I don’t know, but unless he’s hiding somewhere, Lucius isn’t here.” Herne glanced at the crows. “They have been trained to attack. Either that or he has them under some sort of spell. I hate to put them down until we know which it is. For now, move them to one of the bedrooms and close the door.”

  We quickly shifted all the crows and slammed the door before they could wake up. My cell phone—my work phone—rang. I blinked, I’d forgotten to put it on mute when we entered the house. As I pulled it out, the caller ID read: Angel.