Maybe he was into that sort of thing. In that case, I wasn’t sure the Keeper and I would work. I refused to give men power. I’d seen the train wreck that could cause.
“You tell them to sit there?” My left eyebrow popped up on its own. How could he possibly control wild animals?
“They aren’t wild.” He snapped his finger once and the entire murder took flight. The beating of their wings was deafening. They swirled in circular patterns overhead, like scavengers scenting a dead animal, but faster. Their movements were sharp and precise.
Keeper stood, his frame powerful and taut, and looked to the woods beyond us. “We need to go.”
“Do we have to?” asked Pamela in a childlike voice. “I really want to stay with you.”
He smiled at her, glorious as the sunrise. “We have to get you back home.”
She gets to wake up? I pushed myself to stand. “Me too, right?” I smiled. He was going to help me leave this place, too. Right?
Keeper’s smile faded to one of irritation. His jaw muscle worked back and forth. “Of course,” he answered curtly.
Why was he so pissy with me and so sweet to Pam? It was rubbing me the wrong way.
Striding into the forest, we followed him blindly. Tweedle Dumb kept bumping into me as she danced through the trees. Where was whimpering Pamela? I preferred her to the Disney version I was faced with now.
A constant overcast sky closer to the city was one thing, but in the forest, it made everything dark. Shaded versions of reality twisted and climbed from the land. Large, unearthed roots made traveling difficult. Pamela had no trouble twisting through the tangled vines, and Keeper blazed a trail as if they weren’t there at all, as if he were made of stone.
“When I go home, will I be the same?” Pam asked.
Keeper shook his head. “You will be forever changed in small ways or large. Most remember portions of the journey.”
“What about my body?” she asked.
“It will recover if we can return you soon, though you’ll be in considerable pain, given your condition. He smiled at her again. It seemed all his smiles were reserved for her.
“How can you tell that by looking at her, or me?” I interrupted, making sure my hospital gown dipped low in the front, drawing his eyes toward my breasts for a second.
Completely unaffected, his eyes fell to the forest floor as he ducked beneath a thicket. “I’ve seen many souls cross the threshold, and each one bears a resemblance to their earthly body. As such, I can guess what your recovery will be like.”
Great. He can guess. He probably thought I would heal up and remember my journey and blah, blah, blah.
“I don’t think that at all. In fact,” he stopped, letting me catch up to him. “I can’t get a read on you. My pleas don’t work to cloud your mind.”
Pleas? Not spells? Maybe he wasn’t a wizard.
To that he snorted, so I continued my interrogation.
“You can hear my thoughts, but you don’t know if I’ll recover.”
Keeper shrugged. “You may not. This may be the next step in your journey. You wouldn’t be the first brought here against her will, only to find out that this is where you would have ended up in a few days anyway.”
A single crow let out a caw as Keeper held a vine overhead for us to duck beneath. “We should hurry. Follow him,” he instructed, pointing to the bird leading the others, and us.
“Where is he leading us?” I panted, struggling to keep up. Sweat beaded on my forehead, upper lip, lower back, between my breasts, and everywhere in between those places.
“A fissure is about to appear. He’s telling us where.” Keeper extended his fingers and then balled his fists, rushing after the bird. I was losing the battle. Somehow, Pamela could keep up just fine. She ducked under, jumped over, curved around, and stepped through the brush like it was nothing more than a field of delicate hay, swaying in the wind, more like water than plant and soil.
The two of them rushed ahead, leaving me in the shade. The crows followed their leader as well. A singular ebony feather fluttered toward me, and I caught it in my hand and held it up. The feathers shimmered. They sparkled black as coal, as rich as the fabric that had melted into my hand. I watched the feather harden, melt, and re-harden. Black held every color of the rainbow and for a moment, I could see them as separates and not as one.
“Keep up!” Keeper yelled over his shoulder.
I was trying. Before the feather fell, I was pushing hard toward them, but I stopped. I couldn’t move my legs any farther. They turned to stone. I looked down to confirm it, but only saw flesh, so colorful against the shadow of this place. So foreign.
“Bring her,” ordered Keeper from over the next hill. Thousands of birds swooped from the sky, swirling around and lifting me off the ground. “No!” I screamed, until I realized they weren’t attacking. They never touched me with their beaks or wings. I was levitating several feet off the ground and they were moving me, as if they were of one force and mind. The forest, as quickly as it began past the few houses at the outer edges of the city, disappeared. The crows deposited me gently onto the ground at the edge of a steep cliff. Far below was a ravine with jagged rocks and a flowing river of gray, frothy water swirling around them.
I collapsed, my mouth in a silent scream as pain tore through my body. Blinking away tears, I panted until the spell passed. “What the hell was that?” I rasped. Keeper and Pamela hadn’t seen what happened. “Didn’t you feel that?” I muttered. It was like being torn in half from the head down, but it passed as quickly as it came. The spell was gone. Maybe something happened to my body on Earth. If he was telling the truth, that could be it…
“It’s coming,” Keeper said, watching the sky.
Pamela squealed in excitement, rubbing her hands together rapidly. “I’m going home,” she said. “I can’t wait. I want to see my children, and my husband and my mother. She’s still alive, you know.” I didn’t, but I just nodded and tried to smile. Her excitement vanished in an instant. “You’re not coming, are you?” she asked, sadness seeping into her voice.
“Of course I am. My hospital room is right next to yours. We’ll go back together and then we can eat bland oatmeal and red Jell-O as we heal up. The nurses will make sure we have lunch dates.”
She smiled, but the outer corner of her eyes didn’t crinkle. She looked at the sky beyond Keeper as he kneeled on the edge of the rock cliff. He should really scoot back. A sizzling sound, like some giant amp was being electrified, filled the air. The sky faded to black and the black began to churn and sparkle. “I’ll try to remember you,” she said wistfully.
When the tearing sound began, I covered my ears, feeling something warm and wet cover my fingers and palms. When I pulled them away, blood covered my skin, dripping down my wrists toward my elbows and reversing their tracks when I eased my arms down again. Bright white light shone through a tiny, vertical slit in the ebbing black mass.
“Pamela. Come.” Keeper watched as she obeyed, walking toward him. He motioned for one of his flock. “Take her across the divide.”
Pamela followed the crow near the edge of the cliff. She was even crazier than the Keeper, going that close. There was nothing between the cliff and the tear but a trip to the bottom of that gorge, nothing but death. The crow hovered as if caught in a strong gust of air. Its wings didn’t beat, just stayed extended. Then it began to move forward, beating its wings once, twice. Pamela took another step.
I reached out for her. “Pamela. Don’t do it. You’ll fall!”
Keeper’s eyes dared me to speak again. Screw him. “You will die. Look down! Don’t step out there. This is a trap. He’s trapping you.” Why would he do this? Maybe the Keeper of Crows was more dangerous than Gus and Chester put together. What if he was sending her somewhere worse?
The fissure began to crackle; the light no longer a strong beam, but shattering into filtered shafts like sunbeams through clouds stretching to the ground. Pam stepped off the edge of
the cliff with complete faith in the crow she followed. The fowl disappeared through the fissure, and then Pamela disappeared, too. There was no sound, just an alteration in the light for a split-second as she passed through.
“Your turn,” Keeper said, standing and extending his hand to me. “Hurry up. It’s going to close soon.”
“I’m afraid!” I stared at the blood dripping down my arms. His eye followed and I could see the questions in them. That scared me more than anything. If the Keeper of Crows didn’t know why my ears bled at the sound of the ripping fabric, why would he want me to go near it? And if I stepped off this cliff, I would fall. I could feel it. I wasn’t like Pamela.
“You must be sensitive to the sound, but the fissure is the only way to cross the divide! You have to let me help you. This is the only way back home.” His brows touched one another. “You have to trust me. I did not let her fall, and I promise I will not let you fall.”
I already had. I’d fallen straight into Hell. Heights and me? We loathed each other. Not only did he want me to follow his bird, but he also wanted me to step off a fucking cliff into thin air. I didn’t have that kind of faith. Not in him. Not in crows. Not in anything.
I paced back and forth in a frustrated path. The air began to sizzle again. “Hurry!”
“No!”
He stalked toward me and grabbed my wrist. I beat on his knuckles as hard as I could, bruising my own. “What are you doing? Let me go!”
“Time to go home, Carmen.”
Tears warmed my cheeks. I shook my head back and forth. “I don’t want to go like this. I don’t want to step off the edge.”
“This is the only way,” he said simply.
The fissure’s light began to fade. He motioned to a crow and then did the unforgiveable. He dragged me off the cliff’s edge. My feet dug into the soil, pebbles trickling to the ravine below, bouncing off rocky cliffs and into the churning water. “No!”
His crow disappeared into the fading light. As Keeper pulled me toward the barrier, stepping beside the fissure himself, he shoved me toward the bright slice of light. I cursed him as he pushed my back.
I couldn’t pass through. The light repelled me, like it was positively charged and I was negative. I didn’t disappear like Pamela, a flutter of shadow. It wasn’t my fault. I should’ve been pushed through. He certainly pushed hard enough, but I might as well have been trying to shove my way through a brick wall. I knew then that the only wall between me and Earth was myself.
It was the fabric. It wouldn’t let me pass. Not even the tip of my pinky. An invisible barrier stopped me from going home. Keeper released my hand and stepped away from me. Looking down, hovering in the air, I panicked. The fissure snapped closed behind him. I couldn’t breathe. Not enough air. Nothing. And then I fell.
My hospital gown flapped in the wind. I clawed for something, even the jutting rocks, anything that would break my fall, but I found nothing. A strong hand found mine and Keeper’s voice split through the whistling air. “Come.”
The sudden descent stopped. For a moment, we floated in a tight, dark tunnel of air, the outside of which was comprised of flashes of beating black feathers. Then the crows raised us, out of the ravine, out of the air, onto the land. I collapsed in a heap of overwhelming fear and liquid aggravation.
Keeper sat next to me, wrapping his arms around his knees.
“Why? Why wouldn’t it let me through?” I croaked, trying to calm myself. Sitting up straight, I rubbed my arms quickly.
“You’re supposed to be here, though I don’t understand it.”
“Is it the blackness inside me?”
He shook his head. “Everyone sins. You’re no darker inside than anyone else who crosses, Carmen.”
“I’m not talking about my soul or sins, or whatever. I’m talking about the stuff back there, the fabric or veil, or whatever Gus called it. When he pulled me through, I grabbed it—the sides of the opening—and then it ripped and a piece tore off. When I opened my hand, it soaked into my palm.”
Keeper laughed, a deep chortle that caught me off guard.
Pushing myself to my feet, I stood and walked away, back toward the forest that I doubted I’d ever find my way out of. His footsteps soon followed me. “You aren’t serious,” he asserted. “No soul is strong enough to tear the veil.”
The hell I’m not.
He placed his thumbs on my temples and stroked gently, speaking in the language I didn’t understand and closing his eyes gently, the long lashes fanning his cheeks. His tattoos fluttered wildly on his chest. I clasped his wrists and tried to pull away from him, but he was in some sort of trance.
His grip on my head tightened uncomfortably and then painfully. I jerked him hard, but nothing would snap him out of it. He squeezed tighter. I slapped the side of his face, a red streak blooming across his cheek. What the hell was this? I did the only thing I could think of to wake him. Maybe he was Sleeping Beauty. Pressing my lips to his, his thumbs released my head. His eyes were open wide as they churned in color; indigo, emerald, a deep purple that was almost black. An immediate sense of relief washed over me as his grip slackened.
“Don’t ever do that again.” He pointed his finger at me, moving several steps away.
I wheeled around on him, my finger in his face this time. “You were squeezing my head off! And what the hell was that? You were in a trance or something. Wake up. This is not a joke. I need you to send me back home. Is this some sick, twisted way that my body is saying it’s staying in the coma or something?”
Shaking his head, he muttered, “No, this is much worse than that. I don’t even know how it’s possible.”
“Why were you squeezing my freaking head so hard?” I rubbed my temples.
“I was watching your memory.”
“Of the veil?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t believe me? I’m a lot of things, Keeper, but I’m not a liar. And stop reading my thoughts. Stop looking into my memories. If you don’t know how to help, can you please find someone who can?”
He shook his head slightly. “I’ll see if I can get some answers, but just remember that not every answer is the one you want or expect.”
“You remember that, too,” I warned him. Enough of this shit. I walked back into the woods. There had to be another way. If Keeper wouldn’t help me, someone else would. He couldn’t be the only person in this place who knew the way home.
7
I didn’t make it very far away from him before thorns clawed at the sad scrap of fabric barely covering me. Stupid hospital gowns, washed thin and thread-bare. I was tangled to the point that it was going to tear completely away and my skin would be scratched. These things were like tiny rabid dogs, clawing at everything in their path. I hated dogs. And kids. And old people. And men. But especially Keepers and cawing birds. Those bastards were still swirling overhead.
“Want a puff of my soul, you freaks?” I taunted at the sky.
They cawed as one, loud and dramatically annoying.
Keeper emerged from the darkness, plucking the thorns from my gown. “You need better clothes.” He didn’t even get poked.
“What? You don’t like my fashion sense?”
He huffed, remarking, “I’ve seen better,” and then patiently tore away the offending briars and freed me.
I stared at his arms, with not even a bloody trickle pouring from his skin. Of course he would be good at not getting shredded. He was good at everything. He snorted as though he knew it was a fact, glancing at the torn fabric lying in tatters around me. I was pretty sure he’d gotten a good look at my ass in the process.
“I did,” he said matter-of-factly.
Hope you liked it, bud.
“I like to see you so worked up.” Keeper smiled and ticked his head. “This way. We need to be on guard. The fissure will draw attention from those we don’t want to encounter.”
“More assholes like Gus and Chester?”
He shook his head
. “Worse. The Lessons are more frightening than any merchant, and Gus and Chester were small time, at that. The true merchants have great ships. They’re like the pirates of your world.”
“Pirates?”
“Of old, yes. They especially like booty,” he said with a grin.
My mouth gaped open. “Holy shit. Did you just make a joke?” His smile was like a burst of sunshine, and his chuckle led the way out of the forest. I was determined to keep up with him and determined to hear the deep timbre of his laughter. It was one of the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard. Happy looked good on the Keeper of Crows. I wanted to see him smile again.
As the undergrowth thinned, Keeper drew the sword from his back.
“What is it?” I whispered, struggling to keep up with him. The skin on the bottom of my bare feet stung with each step. The soles of my feet were sliced open from all of the twigs and briars. Dried blood mixed with fresh along the soles. Between my arms and feet, I was a bloody mess.
“Don’t you smell him?”
“Smell who?”
“The demon.”
“Demon? Like a real freaking demon?” I whisper-shrieked.
He motioned for me to come closer. A scent, like that of singed hair, assaulted my nose. I covered it with my hand and tried to blink my eyes. They stung like I was too close to a fire. Keeper stopped just inside the tree line and watched the field beyond, where an intense orange glow lit the gray. The grasses were on fire.
Do we need to run? I stared at Keeper, begging him to answer. He grabbed my hand and held it stiffly, as though it were painful for him to comfort me. Heat flamed between our intertwined fingers and electricity sparked between our palms. For a moment, I watched our hands, waiting for them to ignite, for smoke to pour from the space between them.
I hated fire. And smoke. And demons. Dimitri was a demon, straight from Hell. I knew getting blow from him was going to burn me and it did, in the worst way possible.
Keeper motioned for me to keep quiet, and as much as I wanted to watch him purse those full lips, I wanted to watch the demon even more.
Keeper of Crows (The Keeper of Crows Duology Book 1) Page 6