Tales of Crow- The Complete series Box Set

by Chris Ward

  Seven years after the tragic events at British Heights, Jun Matsumoto is now the lead singer for Plastic Black Butterfly as they tour across Europe. Their shows bring them to the tiny town of Heigel, where a series of brutal animal killings have been followed up by the murder of an old local woman. The clues point to Jun’s old nemesis, Professor Crow. Despite the danger, Jun is unable to resist the chance to take revenge on the man who left so many of his friends dead. However, Professor Crow has his own scores to settle….

  Prologue

  Something in the Trees

  Gretel Brosnich, known to the town’s kids as “Hansel” due to the whiskers that hormone imbalances had caused to sprout from her chin, scowled as her foot caught on a tree stump hidden in the shadows falling across the path, almost causing her to drop the basket tucked under her arm. She stumbled forwards, bumping into a branch that poked out into the middle of the forest trail, and muttered a curse as she used her free hand to swat it away. Dry, leafless claws poked at her eyes as she turned back towards the town that ought to be close now and a sudden stab of pain raced up through her leg, dragging her downwards.

  She put down her basket and pressed her old hands against the soft mulch of the forest trail, taking a few seconds to rest. She sighed, glancing up at the sky, at the few wisps of cloud becoming tendrils of black shadows against a dark purple background. She was late and night was falling. She really didn’t need her ankle to play up now.

  Sixty years of following this trail out to the old stream on the other side of the headland, where the trout were plentiful all year round, and she was angry at herself for missing the stump she’d stepped over without incident a thousand times. She would have to limp back using an old branch for support and she had no choice but to do it in the dark.

  Gretel hated the forest at night. Even before the rumours of strange noises in the trees had begun to circulate among the older residents of the town, Gretel had been wary of the place. Lying in the shadows of the old castle perched precariously on the bluff overlooking the town, Wendelberg Forest had always had a reputation, although it wasn’t so much for Romanian vampires as for suicides.

  She’d come across a few disillusioned city folk necking in the forest in her time, and she’d done the only sensible thing—fleeced through their pockets for valuables and then left their putrefying corpses for the wolves. There were winter days when her stove was so low on fuel that she dreamed of finding another rich, dead loner with a wallet full of used notes like the one a few years back who had paid for the repairs to her roof. Unfortunately, loot hunters were ten times as common as the swingers themselves and many would steal from the living if they couldn’t find any pickings on the dead.

  Gretel fumbled around the base of the trees until she found a fallen branch sturdy enough to support her. Then she climbed to her feet and hobbled onwards, the branch under her left arm, her basket of fish and mushrooms tucked under her right. A few minutes later she reached a clearing and the trees opened out to reveal the towering bluff, by day grey like a thundercloud but by night as black as ink. Heigel Castle sat on top, crouched like a bird preparing to launch into flight. Despite daily tours bringing busloads of tourists to the area, Gretel had never been inside. Even into her seventh decade, the ash-coloured walls and the jutting turrets still gave her the shudders. The money it brought into the town was a blessing for some and a curse for others, but Gretel wanted nothing to do with it.

  Silhouetted against the darkening sky, she could only see its outline, but one taller turret of four that protruded out over the edge of the bluff appeared to be giving the middle finger to God. It was an abomination, ugly and misshapen like many of the trees that grew in its shadow and Gretel prayed daily that some freak earthquake might shake it from the ledge and turn it into gravel on the jagged rocks below.

  She pursed her wrinkled, wormlike lips and spat. She glared up at the castle, cursing it with all the heavy insults she had learned over her long life.

  And a dark window in one of the turrets winked back at her.

  Gretel stared, her mouth suddenly dry. The flash of light was already gone, but it had been there, she was sure of it.

  ‘Curse you, you evil bastard,’ she gasped, finding her voice again at last. She squinted upwards, and at that moment something flashed across the top of the trees, briefly obscuring her view.

  Gretel cried out and dropped her basket. She fell to her knees and felt around for it in the deepening shadows that had reduced the path to just shapes and shades, one old eye on the sky through the trees. The silhouette of the castle was already melting into the night as the sky darkened around it, and there was no more sign of the winking light.

  Her gnarled old hands began to gather the slippery fish her nets had caught, scooping them back into the basket along with the handfuls of mushrooms she had picked along the path. Despite her growing fear, she couldn’t afford to leave them behind. While it might be fine for some of the wealthy visitors to dine in the restaurants that had sprung up near the tourist hotel on the rise across town, she had lived off the earth her entire life and had no money to spare on anything nonessential.

  Kids these days had no idea. Growing up in the shadow of the Communist revolution, the drawn faces of their parents didn’t show what it was like to be eating boiled tree bark to survive. She huffed. Just once in a while—

  Something rustled in the trees to her right. She reached inside her tatty old shirt for the knife she always carried, and held it out in front of her with one hand while the other gathered the remaining fish. The animals that roamed the forest were shy and rarely approached humans, but even a blunt, rusty knife like hers ought to deter the brave.

  It wasn’t bears or wolves that worried her though. They never made a sound unless they were running away.

  She waited a few seconds, but there were no further noises. Putting the last of the fish back into the basket, she pushed herself up and started off again down the path, holding her knife in her left hand, the blade pressed against the tree branch tucked under her arm. Her ankle screamed at her, but it was nothing. Her sister—bless her soul—had lost half a foot to a landmine during the revolution and had still hobbled the three miles to the river every day. Gretel staggered on.

  The path, which had been steadily rising up towards the base of the bluff began to angle back down towards the town. The trees were thicker here as she moved away from the bluff’s sunlight-sucking wall, and the path in places was overgrown. The castle on the ridge was no longer visible, and with the last vestiges of light gone from the sky, the path was no more than a lighter shade of grey between two walls of black.

  After another ten minutes of careful progress the first lights of the town began to wink at her through the trees and Gretel began to think she might make it. Heigel was more of a village than a town, just a handful of streets of old, battered houses bookended on one side by the bluff and on the other by the new tourist street and its centrepiece hotel. Her own ancient, tumbledown cottage was less than half a mile away, the safety of the heavy wooden door and the warmth of the stove so near she could almost hear them calling. She dreamed of the smell of fish sizzling in the pan on the hob, and could almost taste the hot, oily meat in her mouth. Sat in her chair with the little black and white TV flickering in the corner, the nervousness she now felt and the pain in her ankle would soon be forgotten.

  ‘Ugh!’

  She gasped and stumbled again as her foot struck something lying on the ground in front of her, something that felt different to the stump she had tripped on before. A tingle of horror tickled up her arms. The thing on the ground was not hard and cold like a stump or a rock, it was warm and soft.

  The dark was so deep now that she could no longer see the ground below her. The distant twinkle of the town lights were no comfort at all as she slowly bent to her knees and reached out to touch the thing lying in the path.

  Soft fur brushed her fingers and she jerked her hand away.

 
Hoarse breathing came from all around her, and it took a moment for Gretel to realise it was her own.

  Many years ago, she had stood out at the front of her house and watched government-loyal militants shoot her husband for being an alleged dissident. They had turned the gun on her and she had stared them down, defiant. One had come forward and grabbed at her dress, possibly to rape her—she had been younger then, and to desperate men the horrors of war had made even her sour face attractive—but she had spat in his face and kicked him where he would remember. He had beaten her with the butt of his gun until her blood stained the soil at her dead husband’s feet, but she had refused to shed a tear or cry out, refused to bow to their violence. Eventually they had moved on, and eventually she had found her way back to her feet.

  The thing lying on the path was dead. Dead things couldn’t hurt her. She let her fingers move over the animal’s body, searching for its shoulders, legs, face.

  It was a grey wolf, native to these parts, not much larger than a hunting dog. Its body was still warm, but only when Gretel reached down below its snout did she understand how it had died.

  Blood oozed from the wound where its throat had been.

  Another rustling came from overhead, followed by a second sound in the trees behind her. Gretel jerked around, feeling for the knife she had set down.

  ‘What the hell are you?’ she muttered, shaking her head. Nothing in these parts killed wolves, not even bears. They shared the top of the food chain and they stayed out of each others’ way. Something savage and vicious had killed this animal, something far too quick for it to escape, and there was nothing in these parts outside of storybooks capable of doing that.

  Storybooks….

  The thing was on her in a rush, before Gretel could even cry out. Strong claws dug into her shoulders and then long, sharp teeth sank into her neck. There was pain, of course, but more than just pain there was a blinding white sheet of terror pulled down over her eyes as the monsters from her childhood nightmares returned to haunt her. This was a terror beyond that of the soldiers as they had held a gun to her husband’s head, or the horror of a military-issue boot swinging towards her face as she lay bloody and beaten on the ground, this was a child’s primal terror that those monsters your parents used to scare you with really did exist.

  Even as the word vampire dribbled out of her mouth in a bloody trickle, she heard a screeching wail rattling through the forest, loud enough it seemed to shake the trees themselves.

  As the unseen creature savaged her, the last thought to go through her mind was that the noise didn’t sound like the cry of bats associated with the legend, but rather like the cawing of a crow….

  Part I

  The Forest of Bad Things

  1

  The band on tour in Romania

  ‘Thank you, and goodnight.’

  Jun Matsumoto raised a triumphant hand into the air as the crowd roared in appreciation. As sweat trickled down his face, he stared out through the glaring spotlights at the crowd of two thousand Romanian metalheads, most of whom were punching the air or shaking devil horns at the stage. Jun allowed himself a brief grin, then turned away from the microphone and headed back into the shadows at the side of the stage. Their hired drummer and bassist had already headed for the dressing rooms and as Jun reached the doorway behind the drums he glanced back to see Ken Okamoto, Plastic Black Butterfly’s heroic guitarist, giving one last salute to the crowd, his instrument held above his head like a warrior’s sword.

  Jun smiled. This meant so much more to Ken than it did to the rest of the band. As Ken turned away from the crowd he saw Jun watching and flashed a private wink. Then together they headed backstage.

  Jun gave a tired sigh as he slumped down into the comforting folds of a couch in the band’s allocated dressing room. Through the walls came the muffled, discordant guitar strums and the thud of someone hitting the drums as the roadies for the next band on the festival bill did a final tune up.

  ‘Great show,’ Ken said, sitting down on the couch beside him. ‘Just brilliant.’

  Jun smiled. ‘Who’d have thought it, eh? Plastic Black Butterfly going down a storm on the European metal circuit?’

  Ken laughed. ‘They always did have great taste in music over here. And they’re loyal to their bands. In the States and Britain they forget you quicker than the previous day’s weather. And back home … it’s all pop crap now.’

  They had last toured Japan three years ago, when their new album, Crushed and Regenerated, had come out. The album and the tour had bombed, and only in part because Ken was the last original member of a band that had once filled arenas all across the country. However, Jun, the new lead singer, had possessed a steel for the fight when Ken had been ready to give up and go into production or studio work. Still only twenty-five, Jun began writing lyrics to Ken’s music, writing this time in English, a language both he and Ken had spent a considerable time trying to learn, and then suggested making a concerted effort to break into the Eastern European rock market. Japan was done, he said, while America and the UK had never even nibbled. Eastern Europe—the festival circuit in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland—was the place to revive their fortunes. They had hired Hayden, a German drummer, and Rik, a Polish bassist, got themselves a small record deal on a Polish label, and set out on tour.

  This was their second tour in three years, and gate receipts were double those of the first tour. They were now headlining minor stages at festivals and getting higher up the bill on main stages. Plastic Black Butterfly, for all intents and purposes, was a new multi-national metal band with a young and charismatic lead singer. The future, once so bleak, was shining brighter than the sun often did through the ripped tint on their shabby tour bus’s windows.

  ‘Are you going out to the signing tent later?’ Ken asked.

  Jun shook his head. ‘I’ll leave it to Hay and Rik.’

  ‘You should, you know. I worry about you sometimes.’ He grinned. ‘When I was younger I was always ready to hang out with the fans, if you know what I mean. You could find yourself someone young and pretty.’

  Jun shook his head. ‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a beer and go back to the hotel. We’re on the road early tomorrow. At least it’s not an overnighter.’

  Ken stared at him until Jun looked away. ‘This isn’t about her, is it? You need to get over it, Jun. It’s not healthy to hold on to someone so long.’

  Leave it, Ken. Please.

  Jun shook his head and stood up. He turned back to Ken and tried hard to keep the sharpness out of his voice. ‘It’s got nothing to do with Akane. I’m just not in with the groupies thing. I’ll see you later.’

  Ken watched him go. It was a conversation they’d had multiple times. It made him sad to see a young man with Jun’s talent so reluctant to enjoy the spoils of his success. In the early days of the band’s original line-up they had rampaged, enjoying the parties, the girls, and the drink, but Jun—at twenty-five, younger than Ken had been on Plastic Black Butterfly’s first major tours—had the mind-set of a weary old man, despite the flair he displayed on stage. As a singer he was O-Remo’s equal and at times better, but off stage he was quiet and withdrawn, spending most of his time in his hotel room or tucked into his bunk on the tour bus. When they had a stopover in some out-of-the-way town, Jun would often disappear all day, off on some mission that the rest of them weren’t privy to. Ken understood what was going through Jun’s mind—he had been there too, after all—but there came a time when you had to let go and move forward. Jun raged on stage every night, but when he stepped away from the crowd he disappeared back into his own secretive world.

  Ken’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket and smiled at the picture on the screen, of a beautiful woman in her late thirties holding an equally beautiful child in her arms.

  The message was from Karin.

  How was the show? I’ve put Nozomi to bed. When will you be back? x

  He smiled. Like Jun, he would be
heading back to the hotel shortly, where his wife—former pop starlet Karin Kobayashi—and his seven-year-old daughter were waiting for him. Of course, at the age of forty-two, he had an excuse to give the partying a miss.

  Away from the venue, the streets of the small Romanian city of Cluj were dark and quiet, the way Jun liked it. He had no longing at all for the endless flashing neon and crackling amplified voices that filled Japanese cities. Once, he had thought nothing of it, but now he enjoyed the peace he found in Europe and the time it gave him to think.

  They had been on tour for three months now, throughout the long, cool summer, playing a mixture of festivals and smaller headlining shows. Jun and Ken had personally chosen the locations for each appearance, trying to allow fans in more remote regions the chance to see them, giving it back, as Ken said.

  Often, they found themselves sleeping on the tour bus as they travelled overnight to the venue for the following day’s concert, as even simple expenses such as hotels could eat into the profits of a tour, but tomorrow was a day off, so they had booked a room for the night. Hayden and Rik were staying at a travel lodge near to the town’s train station, but Ken and Jun had rooms at a quieter family-run hotel on the city’s outskirts, on a road heading up into the craggy Carpathian Mountains. Ken had been surprised at Jun’s choice of lodgings, a solid hour on foot from the venue, but only until he had seen the view for the first time.

  Sitting on the top of a long, flat hill, the hotel faced north towards the mountains, and as the sun set behind them the peaks rose up into the orange-yellow sky like black fire. Jun had told Ken the scenery would inspire his songwriting, and Ken had been unable to argue.