Black Bird of the Gallows

by Meg Kassel

  “Doesn’t mean I’d be turned into that, too.”

  “Doesn’t mean you wouldn’t. Or something worse.” My words come out sharper than I meant. “Why take the chance, Reece? You were only going to leave, anyway. I wanted to protect you. I don’t want to be your weakness.”

  His body goes tense. I realize too late that “weakness” was, perhaps, a poor word choice.

  “Three or four lifetimes ago, I lived for five years after an explosion left me with one arm and third-degree burns over most of my body. My face was pretty much gone. Then later, in the Vietnam War, my legs got shot up, and I lay in the jungle for what felt like an eternity until I finally died from a parasitic infection. I’ve endured horrors, Angie.” He rakes his fingers through his hair. “So don’t talk to me about weakness. I’m stronger than Hank was, and I’ve been around a whole lot longer. You’re the one who gets only one life. That’s over the moment you get stung by one of Rafette’s bees.”

  I lower my head. “Fine. Rafette thinks I’m your weakness. Hank said Beekeepers are relentless. And the ancient creature that turned Hank into this twisted thing could be here, waiting for you to mess up.”

  His hands clench at his sides, but he can’t hide his shudder. “He was talking about a Strawman. No one has spotted one of them here. And I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t pull you out of the rubble, just got you out of the path of a Beekeeper mob.”

  “Are you sure those creatures will catch the nuance there?” I ask gently. “It would destroy me to see you end up like Hank. It would destroy me to see you becoming a Beekeeper. That is a hell you can’t die and be reborn from. It’s forever, apparently, and I put distance between us because Rafette thinks I’m important to you.” My voice cracks over the words, the only indication that they are important to me.

  Reece goes perfectly still. “You are important to me,” he says finally. “More important than anything any cursed creature thinks he could do to me.”

  Blood sings through my body. My heart stumbles behind my ribs, but I manage a messy reply. “Well then. That’s a problem.”

  “It is. A bigger problem than you think.” He slowly walks toward the bed, all lean muscle and sun-kissed skin. He keeps the hair over his eyes. “I don’t know if you’re ready for this, but I can’t hide it any longer.”

  Ready for what? My breathing goes wonky. I clamp my arms tighter over the sheet, but all he does is take a ratty throw blanket from the foot of the bed and pull it around my shoulders. Such a simple gesture, and so tender, it almost cracks me. Reece perches on the edge of the bed. Tense, as if he’s ready to bolt.

  I close my eyes against the threatening tears and bow under the light weight of the blanket. “Thank you.” I relax, as there’s nothing wrong with his face. It’s the same handsome one I’ve been looking at for the last month or so. But then, his hair shifts away from his eyes, and a gasp tumbles from my lips. I barely stop myself from jerking backward. My fingers tremble against my lips. “Reece…your eyes.”

  His eyeballs are solid dark red—the color of congealed blood. Because it’s his whole eyeball, it makes him look dead, at best. Demonic, at worst.

  He lowers his gaze to the bed, keeping his lids low. “I’m sorry. This is…what I am.”

  “I just…” I choke off. There’s no reassuring thing to say. “Why are your eyes like that?”

  He flinches, body curling away from me. “Harbingers of death not as pretty as you thought?”

  “Stop it.” I swallow. “It’s a reasonable question.”

  His shoulders slouch wearily. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I hate that you’re seeing me like this. I can usually control the eyes, sort of, but not when I’m this…charged.”

  “Charged?”

  He shrugs. “I’ve taken in a lot of death energy. My body is telling me it’s time to change into a crow and leave.” He brushes his fingers over the back of my hand, then quickly draws back. “You aren’t…You must be disgusted by me.”

  “I…” Am I? I’m totally overwhelmed. Shaken, for sure. Scared, oh yes, but that’s more to do with the danger at hand, not him. Disgusted isn’t a word that came to mind. My gaze traces over him. The familiar tousled head, high cheekbones. Other than those gruesome eyes, he’s still Reece, just a little more…otherworldly, for lack of a better word. His features are sharper. The way he moves is a little more birdlike, as if the boy and the crow are not entirely separate anymore.

  With a deep breath, I reach for his hand and thread my fingers through his. “I missed you, Reece.”

  He closes his eyes, lets out a shuddering breath. “I missed you, too.”

  That’s when I notice the heat. It radiates from him. I don’t mean normal body heat, either. The room is chilly. Suddenly, I notice the light steam coming off his skin—the same coming from my mouth when I speak. It feels like I’m sitting next to an attractive, boy-shaped wood stove.

  I pull my hand from his and press it to his forehead. “Reece, you’re burning up!”

  “No, it’s normal.” He keeps his head low. Hair shadows his eyes. “I mean, normal for me. I get warm when I…” He trails off. And there’s a tightness to the way he’s holding his body. It’s like he’s struggling to sit still.

  “So your eyes and your body heat are like this because you just…ah, fed?”

  His lips thin into a grimace. “You don’t have to find pretty words for it. My eyes change and my body gets hotter the more death I absorb.” He tilts his head to the ceiling and closes those gruesome eyes. “How can you not see me as a monster?”

  Granted, I am still disturbed by his eyes, but a monster, he is not. “Oh yes. You saved me from a dangerous mob, brought me someplace safe and dry, bandaged my cuts, and wrapped my ankle. Very monstrous of you.”

  A smile flickers over his lips, but he ducks his head. “Rafette told you a story. I have one for you, too. It’s also short, and one I know only because it’s been passed down from harbinger to harbinger. It started long before the curse found my wretched body.”

  “Where the curse came from?” I’ve wanted to know this for a while, but getting information out of Reece has never been easy. “And nothing about your body is wretched.”

  That surprises a hot flush out of me and a smile out of him. “Well, some of the story is the same as Rafette’s—there was a time when magic was real and the people who wielded it were powerful. It was science, really, but different from today. This magic-science was used across all social strata—peasants to kings—but the most powerful sorcerers worked in service to the great queens and kings of the time. Harbingers of death were created to scout for potential disasters in a kingdom. If an earthquake, or a hurricane, or an invading army was coming, harbingers could scent it and inform the king, who could then prepare.” Reece slouches forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “But merging a human being with a scavenger bird had an unintended side effect. The crows’ need to feed on carrion manifested in the harbingers’ need to consume the thing they were sent to help prevent—death. It kind of made them a failed experiment. They couldn’t just report back, they had to stay and consume the energy of death to survive. They frequently died, making them unreliable scouts.” He looks at me, and it’s all there—his expression is flayed open and exposed. Raw, vulnerable in a way I’m not completely sure how to handle. I feel like he’s as fragile as thinly blown glass.

  I deliberately spread my fingers over his jaw, his flushed cheek, letting his heated skin warm my chilled flesh. I tilt up his face, look him straight in those red-black eyes, and I do not flinch. “Thank you,” I say. “For telling me that story.”

  He leans forward, resting his forehead against mine. I feel his breath on my skin as he exhales a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry.” His voice is slurred and rough. “But you see, I should have been dead for nearly two hundred years. Instead, by chance, I was found by a curse and was turned into this. Not human, not immortal, but some cruel melding of the two. I endured two ce
nturies of horrors, and maybe it was all so I could be here with you. If my unnatural existence means nothing else, it means this. I get to be here, now, with you.”

  My heart pounds so hard, I can feel it beat in my toes. “I don’t understand your life. I’m only just beginning to understand my own, but I do understand having to pretend to be normal, even though the events of your past have made you into something that will always be different.”

  My hand slides down his neck, over his collarbone. He holds his breath until my palm stops on his chest, where his heart beats as hard and fast as my own. The moment hangs, an unanswered question, until I pull him forward and press my mouth to his.

  Reece makes a small sound in his throat, and his arms crush me against him. Desperate, fierce, as if he’d been starving for the contact. As if he’s been waiting for me to accept him, all his flaws and impossibilities included. I draw in a breath as his skin infuses mine with searing heat. It’s almost too much.

  Almost. A trill of fear and nervous anticipation moves through me. Suddenly, I don’t know what to do. Or what not to do. Kissing him like this is like teasing a starving, wild thing, shot full with strange power. His hand finds my thigh under the blanket and slides toward my hip. He’s barely human right now, but rather something wild and dangerous and uncertain in a way that should terrify me, but doesn’t.

  I slip my arms around his neck and tangle my fingers in his hair.

  His tongue slides against mine as his mouth slants deeper. The heat of his skin turns mine feverish. The taste of him—bright and effervescent—turns my thoughts soft and tangled. The aches of my body are a distant echo. We press together so close, the combined pounding of our hearts beat like riotous drums.

  When I pull back, my hands tremble on my throbbing lips—lips swollen and foreign-feeling. His gruesome red eyes are hot and intense and a little afraid.

  “The world reeks of death and pain, and you smell like life and joy and everything I can never have.” He rests his forehead against mine. “I hate this. I hate what I am, that I can’t stay with you, Angie.”

  I gulp back a wave of sadness. I know he can’t stay, and hearing it again sends an ache through me worse than all my injuries. “We’re together right now.”

  He runs a hand down my arm. “Promise me, what little time we have left together, you won’t push me away again.” He sighs against my neck. “I’m not your enemy. I can’t bear to be treated like one.”

  A promise I can make. His hair sifts through my fingers. “Okay.”

  His lips replace breath against my skin. I let my fingers slide down his back. The hot cage of his arms tightens, and I stop thinking in sentences. I want—oh, how I want…

  Reece’s head snaps up. He cocks his head in a sharp, lightning-fast way, just like a bird.

  My reeling head struggles to compose itself. “What is it?”

  His own breathing is harsh, labored, but he eases back, a finger pressed to my lips. Silently, he slips away and edges to the door. He stands there and listens, then returns to me with a pinched expression on his face. He shifts to the wall and peeks out the open window.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. “Is Rafette here?”

  “No, another one. He’s curious, maybe.” He crosses the room, tosses my clothes to me. “Get dressed, just in case. I have to go.”

  I clench my still damp jeans. “Go where?”

  Without a word, he scoops me into his arms—covers and all—and holds me close. His pulse pounds in perfect rhythm with mine. “I want you to stay right here,” he says. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. It’s important that you stay as high up as possible.”

  I rear back, goose bumps erupting over my arms. “Why?”

  He sets me back. “I’ll lead him away from here, even though he’s probably going to leave soon, anyway. To catch the rest of it.”

  “The rest of what?”

  He pins me with those red-black eyes. “The landslide damaged that hydro dam. Lake Serenity isn’t stable. We could see it from the air—it’s likely to go, and it’s going to do so magnificently. The landslide was part one. Part two is going to happen at any moment, and you must keep to high ground before it does.”

  “High ground? That would mean…” No, no, no. My blood turns to ice. “But my friends are down there, in the valley.”

  “Hopefully, most of it will be diverted to the highway, and the lowest lying areas, but…” He glances at the window, conflict flexing in the muscle of his jaw. “I’m sorry, Angie, people are going to be in the way of this.”

  “What are you going to do?” I ask.

  The worst thing about Reece’s eyes like this, is I can’t tell exactly where he’s looking. With no whites, his eyes appear sightless. Right now, however, I know he’s looking right at me, trying to decide something. He glances out the window and makes an impatient sound. “I’m sorry about this,” he says. “I don’t want you to see this, after Hank, but…”

  “See wh—” But black, oily mist is coiling out of his mouth before the words finish. I stand, transfixed, as Reece closes his eyes, and the black vapor envelops his body. His transformation is smoother, faster than Hank’s was, but no less dramatic. Reece’s arms stretch smoothly into sleek, jointed wings. His fingers splay into long black feathers and for a moment, he looks every inch the dark tortured angel. His face is a pained grimace, then it’s gone, engulfed in that black stuff. In a sudden rush, his body collapses, folds into itself. Compressing down, smaller, smaller. Then, the mist is gone, and standing in the circle of Reece’s ill-fitting jeans is a sleek black crow. He studies me with dark red eyes, and I get now why those jeans didn’t fit and why he didn’t bother with a shirt. Every time he changes back into a human, he has to find new clothes. Sometimes, other people’s clothes.

  The crow—Reece—hops to the windowsill. No mystery now why it was kept open. He gives me a long, last look, spreads his wings, and glides from the apartment.

  I tug the blanket around my shoulders and rush to the window. The lone crow glides low over a figure in the parking lot below. That other Beekeeper, I’m assuming. I can’t see his faces from this distance, but his head turns as Reece flies on without looking back, banking sharply to the west. To the center of town. The figure turns away from the Mountain View Apartments and follows him.

  But shortly afterward, a man walks into the parking lot. He tugs his wooly hat low over his forehead and looks up, slowly.

  Rafette.

  I shift away from the windows and slam against the wall, breathing hard. A million bucks says there aren’t too many open windows in the building, making it pretty obvious which apartment I’m in. And he does know I’m in here. Trapped.

  Footsteps crackle over the broken pavement. The door squeaks as it turns on its hinges. Rafette is inside. Coming for me—the one he believes can persuade Reece to take on a curse worse than the one he already has.

  30- part two

  I’ve never dressed so quickly. My aching body complains about the haste, but my bruises haven’t gotten the memo that this hellish adventure isn’t over yet. I dash to the window and haul myself onto the fire escape—my only way out, with Rafette inside somewhere. I step over a dead houseplant with a few dozen cigarette butts stuck in the soil and hurry down the zigzagging steps and landings. It’s not quiet business. The rickety setup rattles under my feet like a metal skeleton. But slowing down isn’t an option.

  Keep to high ground…

  My feet hit pavement. The ankle hurts, but I run on it anyway. The alternative will hurt more. I would give anything to trade these miserable boots for something practical.

  The only advantage here is that the rain has finally stopped. I run-limp across the parking lot, feeling absurd anger toward the handful of parked cars I don’t have keys to. I run straight over the spot where I watched that drunk guy crash his car—suddenly a lifetime ago—and scramble over the flattened chain link fence. It hadn’t been repaired, thankfully. The bloodstains are long since wa
shed away, but as I race across the empty highway, the doomed driver’s skid marks are still visible on the pavement. That would have completely freaked me out a week ago. Now, I pass with barely a glance. The memory of that night is nothing in comparison to the past twenty-four hours, or what I’m likely to see in the next twenty-four.

  I dart across the four deserted lanes. The whip-whip-whip of helicopters is constant, but they are too far away to see me. They come and go, circling the epicenter of the landslide. The only thought in my head is to get away and get to higher ground, but my options are pitiful. If I had headed toward town, I’d run into the other Beekeepers, and this way, it’s just the southern foothills of Mt. Franklin. I look back at the Mountain View Apartments and choke back a cry.

  Rafette stands in the open window of the apartment I just came from. I throw myself behind a shrub and try to be still. It’s a good distance, but I can’t be sure he didn’t see me. Probably watched me the whole way. My stomach drops like a stone, and the thought invades: he’s stronger, faster than you. You stand no chance.

  Rafette spreads his arms and tilts his head back. He looks like he’s worshipping a god, but then, all of a sudden, his body bursts apart in what looks like a cloud. I stare, mouth gaping, and wondering what the hell just happened, when that little dark cloud writhes in a weird way and begins moving toward me.

  Wait. This isn’t a cloud. It’s a swarm of bees. Rafette just turned into a swarm of bees, and he’s coming for me. Just when I thought I’d seen it all. I cover my head with a whimper and hope the pain isn’t too bad. There’s no escaping this.

  Suddenly, a chorus of caws fills the air. I look up to see several dark shapes diving toward the bees. The swarm breaks up as the crows swoop at them. They’re creating confusion.

  They’re giving me a chance.

  I look up at Franklin and steel myself. People hike this mountain. The view’s amazing, from what I hear, but they do it from the other side—where there’s a managed trail, a gentler slope, and pretty trees to walk through. Here, it’s just loose rock layered on a slippery incline. No one hikes this, but I don’t have time to trek a couple miles around to find the trailhead. I need to go up. Now.