Murder of Crows (6 page)

“She isn’t one of us, so you didn’t consider that the play and grooming and sleeping together would be thought of in that way, especially because she plays with other Wolves. But now that Sam is living with the rest of the Wolfgard, she only sleeps with you, and you were careful to stay in Wolf form. Until yesterday.”

“I just wanted to talk to her, to find out about the dream,” Simon protested. “She can’t communicate the way we do. How else could I talk to her?” When Henry just looked at him, he snarled. “It’s the fault of those stories humans write about Wolves and humans mating.”

“We have those kinds of stories too,” Henry countered. “But they are cautionary tales because they rarely end well for the lovers. And what about offspring?”

“I wasn’t planning to mate and have pups while I was leader of a Courtyard.” He’d been young when he’d set his sights on running a Courtyard, but even young, he hadn’t been foolish. A leader had to stay alert and aware of the enemy who lived all around his people, had to enforce rules and agreements. Had to decide if the humans needed to be exterminated. And a leader ran the risk of absorbing too much that was human, becoming too much like the enemy.

By rights he should be spending this summer in an earth native settlement in another part of Thaisia where he could run and roam and be a Wolf for days on end with no responsibilities. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not when the sickness that had touched humans and Others alike had shown up in a town too close to Lakeside.

“What should I do?” he asked.

Henry drank tea and said nothing for a minute. “You can’t take back the friendship you’ve already given without bruising Meg’s heart. But you can choose not to go beyond the friendship as it is now. And you
should
choose not to go beyond what has already been done. Meg has been free of her captors for only two months. She is just learning who she is. In that sense, she is a child as young as Sam, despite having an adult female’s body.” He sighed. “Be careful, Simon. We have contact with humans in ways no other Courtyard does, so what you do with Meg will ripple through the lives of humans and Others alike.”

“Can a friendship carry so much weight and survive?”

“I don’t know.” Henry pulled the mug from Simon’s hand. “But it’s time for you to find out.”

Promptly at four o’clock, Nathan gave Meg an accusing look and slunk out of the office’s front door, abandoning his duties as watch Wolf. At the midday break, it had taken Henry coming over and hauling him out by the scruff of the neck to get the Wolf to leave. Now … Well, he didn’t have his tail between his legs, but it was pretty close.

And that,
Meg thought,
means Simon is on his way over.
While she waited, she tidied up the already-tidy sorting room and sharpened a couple of pencils in anticipation of tomorrow’s work.

Talking with Merri Lee and Heather had felt good but hadn’t provided answers. The person who had the answers was the Wolf who walked in and was now standing on the other side of the sorting table. But after spending an afternoon thinking about males and sex and living in the Courtyard—and remembering some of the bad things that had taken place in the compound—she had an answer. She just wasn’t sure how he was going to respond to it.

“I like you,” she said quietly. “I like you a lot. And I want to be friends.”

He tipped his head and studied her. She hoped he wasn’t going to shift his ears. It was always disconcerting when Jester Coyotegard did that because it was hard to remember what you wanted to say when you were watching furry ears attached to a human head.

“But you don’t want to have sex,” Simon said.

She couldn’t find an image from her training that matched the look on his face. Disappointment? Resignation? Relief?

She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to have sex. I’m still learning how to be a person for myself. I’m not ready to … I’m not ready.”

“That’s fine,” he said quietly.

He gave up awfully quick,
Meg thought.
Was this so insignificant to him? Am I the only one struggling with this?
“You’ve had sex with humans, haven’t you?”

Simon shrugged, a dismissive gesture that bit her heart because it made her think that Merri Lee’s opinion of how the Others viewed sex with humans was closer to the truth than Heather’s. But she didn’t want it anyway, so what Simon thought of it shouldn’t matter.

“Terra indigene
females come into season only once or twice a year,” he said. “Having sex at other times is enjoyable. But those humans didn’t work in the Courtyard or live among us. It amounted to a couple of hours and some fun, and satisfying curiosity on both sides. Nothing more.” He paused, then added, “Having you as a friend is more enjoyable.”

She wasn’t sure she believed him but didn’t feel she could ask. Not right now.

“Well, then. I guess that clears things up,” Meg said, wanting him to leave. “If you’ll excuse me, Simon, I have some deliveries to make, so I’ll close up the office now.”

“Sure. You need some help loading up the BOW?” The Box on Wheels was a small, electric-powered vehicle that was used inside the Courtyard.

“No, thanks. The packages aren’t heavy.”

He nodded once, then left by the back door.

Meg stayed in the sorting room until she was sure he was gone—and wondered when she’d started to cry.

Simon leaned against the back wall of the Liaison’s Office.

Done. Simple enough since Meg had done most of the work of setting boundaries around a friendship that had had none before. He should feel grateful, but what he wanted to do was raise his head and howl the Song of Lonely.

Couldn’t do that. Not here. Not today.

Just a misunderstanding. Nothing that was going to stir up the Courtyard or its more dangerous residents. From now on he would keep to the boundaries set by human males and females who were friendly but not friends.

But he would miss curling up with her in bed at night. He would miss that closeness. Would she still play with him, or was this friendship going to be confined to human form from now on? If it was confined to human form, would she let him lick the salt and butter off her fingers from the popcorn she ate on movie nights?

Probably not, and that made him sad because he really did like the way she tasted.

O
n Moonsday morning, Meg closed her apartment door, then muttered, “Garbage day,” and went back in for the paper bag she’d left in the kitchen.

In the compound where she had lived most of her life, garbage was collected by people who worked for the Controller, and the girls’ knowledge of how waste products were handled came through photographs or drawings of equipment and activities, or in a training video. Even now, she had only a vague idea of how humans dealt with all the debris that came from day-to-day living. She knew they recycled some things out of necessity, but she didn’t think they were as particular about the rest.

The Others wasted almost nothing, so living in the Courtyard meant that sorting garbage was not an all-in-one-bag exercise. Fruit and vegetable waste went in one container. Meat scraps went in another. Bottles were placed in one bin while cans and anything metal went in another. Catalogs that had to be exchanged in order to receive new copies went back to the Liaison’s Office, while other kinds of paper went into a
different
bin for recycling.

If they weren’t spoiled, cores and other bits of fruit were left on feeders scattered throughout the Courtyard—a food source for birds. If they were spoiled, they went into the compost piles. Edible vegetable bits were scattered on the ground near the feeders for squirrels and rabbits or whatever else liked that kind of food. Meat scraps were distributed in the Hawkgard’s area to feed the rats, which, in turn, kept the Hawks supplied with healthy meat since the rats didn’t wander into human neighborhoods where the food might be laced with poison.

By the time they were done sorting and recycling, the weekly trash for an entire complex usually fit into a big tote that was picked up and taken to the Utilities Complex for final disposal.

When she’d first moved into the Green Complex, she’d divided her trash into compost, garbage, and recycle. It was only in the past couple of weeks that Simon showed her the holding bins downstairs and gave her
all
the household containers she was now expected to use. At the time, she’d seen that expectation as another sign of acceptance. Now …

How do you mend a friendship?
she wondered as she locked up her apartment and went down the stairs someone had swept clean of snow so she wouldn’t slip.

She deposited her bag of garbage in the big tote that had been placed next to the road, then retraced her steps and went to the garages behind the complex to get her BOW and drive to work.

Spending time with Simon had been so easy. Now just seeing him felt awkward. And yesterday, Earthday, had been downright uncomfortable because she hadn’t been invited to go for an afternoon romp with him and Sam. And when Simon invited her over to watch a movie with them in the evening, he had stayed in human form and sat on the other end of the sofa instead of curling up next to her as a Wolf—something he’d done every movie night since the first invitation.

It was Simon as Courtyard leader and business owner being friendly toward an employee rather than Simon spending time with a friend.

And that hurt. It surprised her how much feelings could translate into physical hurt.

“You started this,” she muttered as she drove to the office. “You’re the one who made a big deal out of … something.”

But Simon hadn’t tried hard—hadn’t tried at all, really—to convince her that his being in her bed as a naked human had been totally innocent. If fact, he’d seemed relieved to have an excuse to back away from being friends with her.

“Think of something else.” She parked the BOW in the garage behind the office, checking the vehicle’s power bar before shutting it off. Didn’t need to charge it, so that was one less task to do before she could go inside and open the office in time for the morning deliveries.

Not many deliveries since the storm earlier in the month. Lots of stores were claiming to be out of stock of any item ordered by someone in the Courtyard. Seeing those same items listed on sale in the
Lakeside News
wasn’t easing the tension between humans and Others. If human businesses claimed goods were in short supply in order to avoid selling to the
terra indigene
, how long before the
terra indigene
cut off the resources to make those items and turned the short supply into a reality?

If that happened, everyone would be picking through the garbage for anything still usable.

The pins-and-needles feeling filled her arms so suddenly, she dropped her carry bag and purse in order to scrub at her skin through all the layers of clothes. That prickling under her skin used to happen just before she was cut for a prophecy. Now that she was living in the Courtyard, it happened a lot. Sometimes it was a light prickling that went away after a minute. Sometimes it acted like a detector, easing or disappearing altogether when she went into a different room or stepped away from a particular person.

And sometimes the pins-and-needles feeling became a painful buzz that told her
something
was going to happen. And the only way to find out was to cut her skin to see the visions and speak the prophecy.

She stood outside waiting to see if the feeling would fade or intensify.

Then she heard the Crows cawing nearby. Jenni and her sisters, heading out to …

She cried out as the prickling became the painful buzz.

“Meg?”

She looked up and saw Vlad leaning out the open window of HGR’s upstairs business office. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nathan racing around the corner of the Liaison’s Office.

“Meg?”
Smoke flowed out of HGR’s window and down the side of the building. Vlad in his other form.

Meg closed her eyes, doing her best to ignore Vlad, who was now flowing toward her, and the Wolf who was crowding her.

In another moment or two, they would both shift to human form and demand to know what was wrong. Before she could tell them,
she
had to figure out what was wrong.

She’d been thinking about garbage, so she began recalling every training image that was related to garbage or collecting garbage or the containers for garbage and recycling. Something about metal garbage cans buried in snow or shiny in the sun? No. The black, wheeled totes like they had in the Courtyard? No, but … Garbage truck. The clang of cans, the sound of the brakes or hydraulics or whatever it was that made that distinctive sound you could hear a block away. Feathers and blood in the snow and …

“Jenni!”
Meg screamed. When Vlad, now in human form, grabbed her arms, she grabbed fistfuls of his black turtleneck. “That was the sound. In the dream. The garbage trucks.
That was the sound.
The Crows have to stay away from the garbage cans, the trucks, all of it. If they go near them, they’ll die, Vlad.
They’ll die!
”

She jolted as Nathan suddenly howled. Moments later, he was answered from the Utilities Complex, from the Wolfgard Complex, from wherever the Wolves were taking care of business in the Courtyard.

“I’ll deal with this,” Vlad said. “Can you get into the office by yourself?”

“Yes, I—”

“No cutting, Meg. Promise you won’t use the razor.
Promise.
”

“I promise. For now.”

Not good enough. She saw that in his dark eyes even before he pointed at Nathan and said, “Don’t let her out of your sight.” Then Vlad ran to A Little Bite’s back door. Moments after that, she saw a Hawk flying away from the Courtyard and realized Vlad must have sent Julia Hawkgard to find Jenni.

Nathan bumped his head against her hip. When she didn’t move, he clamped his teeth on the sleeve of her coat and started pulling her toward the office.

“All right, all right, let me get my purse,” she said. “We can’t get inside without keys.”

He let her go but didn’t stop crowding her until she had unlocked the back door and they were both inside. Even then he stayed close enough to grab an arm or leg if she did anything he considered suspicious.

The prickling remained a torment as she unlocked the office’s front door and set up her clipboard for the day’s deliveries.

She’d given the warning. The prickling should be fading by now. The fact that it wasn’t fading made her wonder if the dream a few nights ago had been a real prophecy. After all, the skin that split along the curve of her nose hadn’t bled, and prophecies came from a cut that bled.

And she wondered if, by making that promise to Vlad not to cut her skin, the next warning would come too late.

After dropping Sam and some other pups at the Courtyard school, Simon drove toward HGR. When he heard the howling, he stopped the BOW and rolled down the window to listen as other Wolves took up the song. That first warning howl had come from the direction of the business district. Wasn’t likely to be John, so that left the Wolf on guard at the Liaison’s Office.

he called.

Nathan howled.

Simon shoved the door open and got out. Smarter to stay in the vehicle if he needed to move quickly, but he couldn’t stand being closed in until he understood what they were facing, especially since Wolves all over the Courtyard continued answering Nathan’s howl.

he asked.

Before Nathan could reply, Vlad cut in. now
. But it’s collection day, and the damn Crows aren’t listening! I sent Julia after Jenni and her sisters.>

A chill went through Simon. The Crows who were killed in Walnut Grove had been picking around the garbage when the dogs attacked.

he shouted.

she replied in a greedy tone that said she would ignore him for as long as possible.

No,
he thought.
No.
Every week the Crows checked out the neighborhood streets around the Courtyard to see what humans had left at the curb that might strike their fancy. Anyone planning an attack would know where to find them—and what to put out for bait.

Just like someone in Walnut Grove had known what to put out in order to attract the birds.

Simon shouted. She’d agreed to pay attention, which wasn’t the same thing. Right now, he was hoping she didn’t remember that.

shinies,
Simon.>

And he was going to find out who had baited those trash cans. He swore silently and viciously. If he wasn’t getting through to Jenni, he wouldn’t get through to the rest of the Crowgard. So he’d stop trying to reason with them.

he snarled, sending his words to every
terra indigene
within range. forever.>

Multiple cries now because the Crows knew he meant it. Give up the shinies and other treasures today, or be sent to
terra indigene
settlements in the wild country, where the pickings would be slim. And they knew him well enough to understand that he wouldn’t just ban them from Lakeside. If they disobeyed him, he would use his influence with every Courtyard leader in the Northeast Region to ban the Lakeside Crows from
every
human city in this part of Thaisia.

He didn’t respond to the arguments or pleas coming from various Crows. He got back in the BOW and drove as fast as he could to HGR. That’s where the Crows would expect to find him.

he called.

she replied.

Shinies and a toy in plain view. How many building sets had the Crowgard ordered from the nearby toy stores in the past month or so? Meg would know, but he suspected there had been enough for humans to guess that at least some of the Crows would be drawn to the box if it was sitting in the open.

After Julia told him which street had drawn more Crows than usual, she added,

He hesitated. Was this a challenge to his authority, an excuse to stay in order to snatch some coveted item, or the Crowgard’s need to have a report from one of their own?

Besides, he was going to be there too.

As soon as he reached the Courtyard’s business district, he parked his BOW near HGR’s back door just as Vlad stepped outside. He raised a finger to indicate the vampire should wait, then said,

Blair asked.

Satisfied that the Courtyard’s dominant enforcer was on the way, Simon turned to the next Wolf on his list.

the Wolf replied.

“Did you tell Nathan to stick close to Meg?” he asked Vlad.

“I did.”

Since he didn’t think Vlad had intended for the Wolf to be underfoot, he said, then nodded to Tess when she came out of A Little Bite, shoving her arms into her coat. Moments later, Henry opened the wooden gate at the back of his studio’s yard and joined them.