AlcyLeyva_AndThenThereWereCrows_EbookFormatting_Nook

by And Then There Were Crows (retail) (epub)

  “Mhm.”

  Donaldson rocked back and forth on his heels. “You could have told me,” he said, finally broaching the subject.

  “Nope!”

  “I was putting my life on the line that day. I mean, I didn’t know that of course. But it would have been swell to know.”

  “Duly noted.”

  “What’s your problem?”

  I pounded my head with my fists. “What’s yours? Social pariah? ‘Nope, I’ll just hang around’. Oh, your sister’s dead and now she’s not’? ‘Cool, bruh’.”

  He slid his hands in his pockets. “I’ve never said the word bruh, bruh.”

  “See? I-don’t-get-you.”

  He nudged me with his shoulder. “You don’t?”

  In the middle of our silence, Petty and Phil came up.

  “No, no, no. Go downstairs.”

  “Do I eat?” Petty asked.

  I rolled my eyes. “How would I know?”

  “It’s just that Phil …” She froze. “It’s just that we want to go out to get something to eat and—”

  “Oh helll no!” I stood in between them and nearly shook Petunia to death (again). “This guy is crazy. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Phil assured me.

  “He led to you being killed and consumed by a being of pure darkness.”

  Petty thought about it, ruminated, replied, “No relationship is perfect.”

  “GAH!” It was an epic gah. A final gasp at the heavens. I turned them both around and shoved them toward the door. “Go. Please go. Go. Shoo. Please. Please go shoo. Go before …”

  No sooner had I forcefully gave them their exit and slammed the door behind them than I spotted the demon sitting on the edge of the building right where I had been standing. With lavender-colored skin, his face was slender and human-like: chin, nose, mouth, ears. He even had a ragged mop of short black hair on his head that was punctuated by the elongated horns curving toward the night sky. His spaded tail wagged back and forth. His upper body had the build of a young man, which he had covered in my old S.O.a.D shirt. His lower body was back to the hooves, but now surrounded in black wool.

  “No, no. This was my time.”

  The demon turned his yellow eyes toward me. Now at their centers, there were tiny black dots which stood as its pupils. The dots rolled with stubborn attitude.

  He rose and walked up to me.

  Glaring, he put up one finger. Stuck to it was a sticky note.

  I plucked it off and read it.

  You suck.

  He had signed the bottom.

  D.

  He gave Donaldson a fist bump and strutted back to the edge of the building.

  “Worst roommate ever,” it said in a voice that sounded like a revving chainsaw. It then sprouted two black bat wings and took to the air, gliding around the building until it was out of sight.

  I yelled after him, “I don’t suck. I totally don’t suck. You know who does? The person who finishes the juice and puts the empty bottle back in the fridge. That’s who sucks, my friend. In some countries, that’s a war crime.”

  I turned to Donaldson to see if he was on my side, but instead he went back to staring at me.

  We were alone on the rooftop again.

  There was a long silence between us.

  “So I asked you a question,” he said.

  “Did you?”

  “RUN, BITCH! OMMAGAHD! RUN, BITCH! OMMAGAHD!”

  Donaldson gave me a crooked look.

  “It’s catchy,” I said, and quickly answered my phone. It was Petty. Again. “I already told you, sis. I’m really not up for this right now.”

  “Mandy.” Her voice sounded echoey, hurried. “Okay. I treated you like shit. I get that, okay? I know.”

  “Where are you right now?”

  “In the bathroom. Mandy, I need you to come downstairs, right away. Like now. Right fucking now. I’m in trouble.”

  I groaned. “Does it have anything to do with dark creatures pining for the fall of humanity?”

  “No, but—”

  “Byyye, Pettttty!” And I hung up.

  I hated myself instantly after and Donaldson could read it right on my face.

  “You should go. We can talk later. I’m sure there’ll be other romantic opportunities.”

  But I assured him, “No. No there won’t. Because this isn’t even romantic. It’s … it’s …”

  Behind Donaldson’s head, a streak flew across the sky. I had never seen one before, so I blinked as I tracked it flying across the horizon.

  A shooting star.

  Donaldson was looking somewhere else and missed it, but had the same shocked reaction. And then I spotted a second. And a third. Stars started falling from the sky, slow at first, but then picking up speed, leaving trails against the night like claws on canvas. There were dashes of light everywhere and it was impossible to see where the stars were landing because they made no sound on impact.

  That was the night a third of the stars were stricken from the night sky.

  Donaldson and I quietly stood there watching the sky fall.

  When I got to my apartment, Petty was standing in the living room talking to someone relaxing my father’s loveseat. It wasn’t the demon or Phil. Even when he turned around to greet me, I almost didn’t recognize who he was until I really focused on his face.

  By then, the second familiar face came out of the bathroom.

  “Mandy! We’re home!” Dad yelled as Mom came and hugged me around the waist.

  CHAPTER 28

  He woke up screaming, clawing at the night air. Sitting up in bed, he saw that there was a perfect halo of sweat and urine soaked into his expensive sheets.

  He sat there, listening to his own breathing in the quiet of his chamber. There were candles all around the room, tiny tongues of flame that broke up the darkness. He had been sleeping with them, against the council of his advisors and the house crew. The agreement to have one attendant peek in every hour to relight or just check in on the candles was hard fought but earned. Ever since the visions had gotten worse, over a month ago, and since they all came as dreams, he had started distrusting the darkness when he awoke.

  “Grey, what have you done?”

  He said this aloud both to hear his own voice and to break up the dense silence around him. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he reached out and fumbled for his glasses. By the time he found them and slipped them onto the bridge of his nose, the posted guard gave his door a light rap and asked him if everything was all right. He assured the young man that he was not in any immediate danger but needed an attendant.

  The visions had gotten worse. Everything. Everything was spinning out of control. But it all was so clear. He couldn’t forsake his calling. Not now.

  Calling off the attendant, he washed himself with a wet rag and went to his writing desk, a large oak monstrosity that he liked to avoid because he always felt small sitting at it. From the lowest drawer, he produced a small box with an ivory handle and set it onto the bed. There were four latches and a combination lock he had to get through, but he did so with ease. This was something he had been practicing since the visions surfaced.

  Inside, in small velvet pockets, were two pistols. Gold leaves had been fashioned on the barrel and the handles themselves had Latin script wrapped around in loops. Looking at these marvelously crafted weapons of salvation, he wondered what had gone wrong with humanity. How had the evocation of the End of Days come so soon, so promptly? It was almost as if some stupid idiot had flicked a switch, like he had started it all on his own. On purpose? Was this a grand scheme or just dumb luck? He would have to go. He would have to go there and decide the fate of this person immediately.

  He tucked both weapons into the band on his waist, threw his robe over them, and rushed out of his c
hambers, startling the guard. The young man began running beside him.

  “Pack my bags and order a flight,” he told the guard. “I’ve put this off long enough.”

  “Your—” He stumbled over himself, tripping trying to keep up, but only avoided falling flat on his face because the man, twice his age, caught him.

  The man smiled at him. “What is your name?”

  The guard stood up straight. “My name? Oswalt Krug.”

  The older man smiled. This man who was supposed to serve as his guard was so young, so nervous. He reminded him much of his own childhood in service, flying on blind faith and a need to work for others. In the wake of the horrors he saw in his visions, his heart opened to this young man in a way he could not even explain. Krug, he knew, was a name tied to Germany. So he spoke to him in his most polished German.

  “Oswalt.”

  The sound of his mother tongue, the one he had probably heard in his home as a child, settled the young man. He had such coldness in his eyes, but not in a way that it should be feared. He believed and he believed with all of his fiber. Straightening himself, he replied, “Y-yes, Your Holiness?”

  “Do me a favor and pack your bag as well. I am appointing you as my attendee. I will need someone to trust.”

  Oswalt lightly bowed his head. His demeanor now changed, the young man was ready to stay by the older man’s side. “I will. And where should I tell the plane we are going, Your Holiness?”

  “To the belly of the beast, young Oswalt,” the Pope told him as they matched cold stares. “Queens, New York.”

  CHAPTER 29

  I set my keys into the door and just stood there, giving him a big enough window, a freaking invite with his name splattered all over it, to draw closer to me. After a long night of partying, we both reeked of alcohol. I could smell it on him as he pushed up on me from behind, curling his arms around my waist. With my hair loose, he set his chin into it and inhaled. Before he could push in farther, I spun around and playfully tapped his lips with a soft finger. This made him laugh and lean in, but I turned the doorknob before our lips could meet and we both stumbled into my apartment.

  I tossed my keys off to the side and watched as he took in the aesthetics of my apartment.

  “Nice place you got here.” The vodka shots he had downed were strong, but I guess not strong enough for him to follow up and say, “You got a hole in your kitchen wall.”

  He then broke out laughing, and so did I. Kicking off my heels, I brushed them to one side and slid onto my couch. I lifted up my dress enough to scoot my exposed legs underneath me. He came and joined me.

  “I gotta say something. Can I say something?”

  “Please do.” I carefully plucked my gold earrings off and jingled them in my hands.

  “It’s just … ah, I dunno. You don’t seem like the kind of girl that’ll scoop up some random guy in a bar and bring him all the way home.”

  “Well,” I said, resting my head on the side of the couch, “first of all, I’m a woman not a girl. And second of all …”

  “Second of all?”

  “That makes me capable of doing what I want, when I want to do it.”

  I was afraid that this might have been going a bit too hard, that it might rub him the wrong way, but he just flashed his smile and nodded. “It’s just not safe, you know. How do you know I’m not some crazy psycho?”

  I pouted. “Are you a crazy psycho?”

  He sighed and closed his eyes, resting his head at the same angle as mine. “I am, actually. And I’ve come to murder you, Amanda Grey.”

  I chuckled. “Have you?”

  “But not before I gut you. Rip you open.”

  “Mhm.”

  “Yank your guts out with my bare hands.”

  “Ooo.”

  “Dig out your eyeballs and skull fuck you.”

  “Not really hygienic, but not here to judge.”

  “Bleed you into your tub just to wash my balls in it. Smash all of your teeth in with a hammer. Tear your skin off and use it as wallpaper to decorate your shitty little apartment.”

  “Ah well. What was your name again?”

  “Franklin.”

  “Right. So, Franklin, I get you want to kill me. Zero spoiler warning there. But don’t talk shit about my apartment.”

  From behind, Petty drove the aluminum bat right across the space between his neck and his cranium, resulting in the clop sound of meat and bone. His entire head bent off to the side, which would have killed a normal son of a bitch outright.

  Son of a bitch, he was. Normal, he wasn’t.

  With his neck broken and the bone poking out into the air, his right arm shot out and grabbed me by the throat. His left arm snatched the dented bat from Petty’s hands. Instantly, a second set of arms, these with ash-colored skin and thick muscles, sprouted out of his chest. Arm #3 grabbed Petty in the same chokehold and #4 wagged its finger at me and then fixed Franklin’s slicked black hair, even with his head slouched onto his shoulder.

  “Tsk tsk, Grey,” he muttered. As he stood to his feet, we were both picked up off the ground, hanging there like Christmas ornaments. “Good try. A for effort. But you should never use yourself as bait.” He looked back at my sister. “Or at least bring better backup.”

  His second left arm hoisted the bat back and clobbered Petty across the face with it.

  “Ow,” she said, but didn’t mean it. Her black skin was caved in and the blow had seemingly broken her skull, but Petty being a vessel for a demon and all? You could tell that it was only an inconvenience. Franklin held her by the throat, but Petty no longer breathed air, so it wasn’t doing anything other than keeping her in place.

  Furious that the first person he wanted to murder was un-murderable, he launched her across the room and she crashed against the wall by the back room. Petty hopped up, cracked skull and all, and dusted herself off.

  “You’re an idiot if you think I’m the backup,” she laughed. And then pointed to the door to our back room.

  But no one came out.

  She looked at me with her dead eyes and then back at the door. “One sec.” She opened the door and disappeared for a few seconds. She then came out and walked up to the spot where I was hanging and whispered, “Yeah. Um. He’s missing. What was Plan B?”

  I coughed. I wheezed. I turned purple. Purpler.

  Franklin tried to curse at us, but Petty told him to shhh while she deciphered my message.

  Petty stared at me intensely. Blinked. “Yeah, no. Don’t understand you.”

  “Tha-wuth-plen-beee,” I squeaked out.

  “Oh.” Petty pulled out her cell phone and began typing. Even with arm #4 giving her another hefty swat that sent her flying across the room again, Petty hit the wall like a bullet but managed to hang onto her cell phone.

  “Petty!” I gasped.

  She held up a broken finger for an extra second and continued typing.

  A long minute later, my roommate walked in. With ripped jeans and a thrift shop bought military jacket over his skinny frame, he calmly strode in and paid us no mind. I could have strangled him if, you know, I wasn’t being strangled.

  Petty jumped up and finally became useful. Reaching into the black floppy hair that was covering all but one of his purple eyes, she tugged his earbuds out and shouted, “You’re late!”

  He groaned. “Late for?” Turning his head, he finally spotted me hanging from the demon’s clasp like a fish on a hook. “Was this today?”

  “It is! It was!” Petty exclaimed.

  He yawned. “You said Thursday, no?”

  “Et … ehhhhh … et.”

  He only squinted at me. “What is she trying to say?”

  “I have no idea, it’s probably that it is Thursday! Today is Thursday.”

  “No it isn’t.”

 
Franklin, caught up in the whole debate, chimed in. “No. She’s right. It’s Thursday.”

  My roommate strode up to him. He gave him a once over, scratched his chin, and then gingerly tore one of the arms from the socket. Franklin roared as a hot jet of black blood sprayed up to the ceiling.

  “Please stay out of this,” my roommate said, pointing the stump at him.

  Franklin dropped me and started flopping on the ground as his wound gushed. I took a second to gather myself and got to my feet. “That’s it! House meeting!”

  “What?” Petty exclaimed.

  “Right now?” was my roommate’s bored response.

  “Right. Now!”

  Petty and my roommate looked at each other and groaned. My sister pulled up a chair and sat down. Meanwhile, my roommate plopped right down on Franklin’s chest. It took me a few seconds to realize the sound I just heard were a few ribs breaking.

  “We have rules in place—” I started to say, but my roommate cut me off.

  He shot his hand into the air. “I move to have Grey voted out of leadership of the household. All those in favor …”

  “We are not voting on that,” I said, and Petty quickly lowered her own hand. Taking a few breaths to get back to a normal talking voice, I resumed. “There are rules in place. I thought this was obvious. And they are in place for all of us to be safe. Safety and just general courtesy. I ask you to close your door when you get dressed. I ask you to be on time when we are attempting to catch a demon. I ask that you knock before walking into the bathroom. And recently, the sulfur smell. The sulfur smell has just been getting worse.”

  “That’s not me,” my roommate stated when he saw that I was eyeballing him. He was still holding Franklin’s arm and was playing with it, seeing the hand flop back and forth. Ever so often, he would dangle the severed arm in a way that it slapped the possessed man below him on the face.

  “Oh. That’s me,” Petty admitted sheepishly. She still sported the caved in skull. Her eyeball was drooping out onto her chin. “Phil’s dad is into taxidermy, so he picked up a few things. It’s to curb the rotting. Some of my back keeps peeling off. And my teeth—”