‘Wait!’ I yelped, shuffling backwards. ‘You need me. The Crowmaster told me everything. You need me alive.’
‘Alive, yes. Uninjured? Not necessarily,’ my dad said. He walked slowly forward, keeping pace with me. ‘Took me almost a whole day to travel all the way up here, but I knew you’d make the jump over eventually. I wanted to be here. Waiting.’
‘You came all this way just to beat me up?’
‘Partly that,’ he nodded. ‘Partly that. Mostly, though, I wanted to offer you one more chance to pick the right side.’ He looked off into the middle distance, then back to me. ‘I know I said I wouldn’t offer again, but I felt bad about that, Kyle, I really did. You’re my son, I shouldn’t have given up on you so quickly.’
My back hit the partially collapsed wall that would have made up one side of Marion’s kitchen. I had no choice but to stop. My dad stepped closer so his feet were next to mine. The full moon sat directly behind him, casting a ghostly white halo around his head.
‘So this is my final offer,’ he continued, creaking the leather around his fist to hammer home his point. ‘There’s a war coming, Kyle. Help me. Work with me. And I promise we’ll rule the world.’
I didn’t reply. There was something in the tone of his voice I hadn’t heard before. Was it… desperation?
‘So,’ he asked, with something bordering on compassion in his smile, ‘what do you say?’
‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’ I said. Though his features didn’t move, the warmth drained right out of his face. ‘Whatever your plan is – whatever you’re going to do – you can’t do it without me, can you? You’re scared it’s all falling apart.’
‘Scared?’ He rolled the word around in his mouth as he said it, as if tasting every letter. ‘What could I possibly be scared of?’
I pushed myself up using the wall for support. He didn’t make any move to try to stop me. ‘Me,’ I answered. ‘You’re scared of me.’
Just as I’d hoped, he hurled back his head and laughed. It was all for show, like a lot of the things he did, but I’d been counting on him doing it. I knew he wasn’t afraid of me.
But he should have been.
I swung hard with a rock I’d taken from the ground. He must’ve seen my arm move from the corner of his eye, because his laughter caught in his throat. Too late. The chunk of stone vibrated in my hand as it battered solidly against the side of his head.
A noise that was halfway between a gasp and a growl escaped his lips. He staggered sideways, his hand flying to his eye socket where the rock had caught him. His undamaged eye turned on me, hatred burning in its dark centre.
‘I’ll never help you,’ I told him. My insides felt like half-set jelly, so I was amazed by how confident my voice sounded. ‘I might not have any abilities here, but in my world I do, and I’ll use them to stop anything you send after me, including the Crowmaster. Understood?’
‘You’ve just made the biggest mistake of your life,’ my dad hissed. Trickles of blood were seeping through his fingers. I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about it. ‘I know you better than you know yourself, son. I’ve been planning this since the day you were born. You’ll help me. You’ll make that whole world burn. Whether you mean to or not.’
‘Don’t count on it,’ I told him, and before he could answer, I caught hold of a spark that flitted past behind my eyelids, and left that hellish place behind.
It was brighter back in the real world, but not much. The layer of cloud that covered the sky had grown thicker in my absence, blocking out even more of the sun’s light. A raw January wind whistled around me, nipping at my ears and nose.
But at least the wind was the only thing nipping at me. Even though I’d arrived back outside Marion’s house, I couldn’t see a single bird in the sky. That was either very good news, or very bad. Good because it meant I wasn’t currently having my tongue torn out, but bad because if the birds weren’t out here, then they were probably all waiting inside.
Ducking down low, I scurried over to the kitchen window and took a peek through the shattered pane. The kitchen had been virtually destroyed. The hanging pots lay scattered on the floor. The table where Marion and I had eaten our dinner was covered by a layer of shattered glass. All the little knick-knacks and ornaments that had sat on all the little shelves had been knocked over, smashed, or both.
And over everything – on every surface – were feathers. Dozens and dozens of greasy black feathers.
But no birds.
I couldn’t remember if the back door creaked, so I decided not to take the chance. The last thing I wanted to do was announce my presence and bring the birds flocking from wherever in the house they currently were. Instead, I carefully picked the larger slivers of glass from the wooden frame, and sat them down on the ground.
The wind grew around me as I worked. It only took twenty or thirty seconds to clear the worst of the glass, but by the time I had finished my fingers were numb with cold. I cupped them to my mouth and breathed on them for a few seconds, readying myself for what came next.
My entrance wasn’t as stealthy as I’d hoped. I pushed myself up on the narrow window ledge and kicked against the roughcast stone wall with both feet. As I leaned my body forward into the kitchen, my legs were forced to bicycle-kick in thin air for a moment. I hung there, feet flailing frantically, as I realised I was sliding headfirst into the house.
There was no way to stop. My arms buckled and my legs swung up and I was helpless to prevent myself face-planting on to the glass-covered table. I slid right over the top, bringing the table with me as I crunched on to the hard kitchen floor.
It probably hurt, but I had no time to dwell on it. I was on my feet in a heartbeat, readying myself for the crows. They were sure to have heard my entrance. They’d be here any second.
As I stood there, eyes locked on the door, my ankle nudged against something. I lashed out instantly with the foot, not taking any chances. The metal soup pot spun across the floor until it hit the stove with a hollow clang.
Cursing myself for being so jumpy, I reached down and grabbed another cooking pot. It was a hefty bit of cookware, and I needed both hands to swing it properly, but I was ready to bet it’d be an effective weapon against an oncoming bird.
Probably wouldn’t be so handy against a hundred of them, of course, but I tried not to think about that too much. It was better than nothing. Just.
The expected rush of flapping wings didn’t happen, and I crept over to where the kitchen led out into the hall. Tucking myself in close to the doorframe, I risked a peek round the corner.
The hall looked much like the kitchen. The floor was covered in broken trinkets and torn phone books and the shattered remnants of what had been Marion’s life. The same feathers were here, scattered haphazardly over the carpet and up the dark, narrow stairs.
My legs were trembling as I tiptoed across the hall to the bottom of the steps. Halfway there, I heard the sounds I had been dreading: a soft caw and the rustle of oily wings.
The sounds hadn’t come from the hallway, and they hadn’t come from up the stairs. But where had they come from? I stood in the middle of the floor, completely in the open, but frozen to the spot, listening for the noises to come again.
I didn’t have to wait long. An inquisitive croak to my right made me spin to face the living-room door. A fat, black crow sat just inside the room, its back to me. It had a lump of dark red meat pinned beneath its claws. The meat made a sticky schlop sound as the bird’s beak tore strip after strip away. After every bite, the crow tipped back its head and let the meat fall down into its gut.
I gripped the handle of the cooking pot until my knuckles turned white. I wanted to bring the pot down on the bird’s head – to squish the thing into the carpet. To make it pay for what it had done to the dog. And had I not been so terrified, I might have done just that.
Instead, I snuck over to the door, picking my steps carefully, trying not to make any sound. I made it without alerting the bird, but now I was less than a metre away from the thing. It had its head down, ripping into the meat. If it craned its neck back now to swallow another bite, it would surely see me.
With no time to lose, I reached for the handle. As the door began to pull closed, the bottom of it brushed against the carpet.
The sound startled the bird. It released its grip on the meat and flapped into the air. Twisting round, it fixed me with its glassy gaze and opened its beak wide. Small lumps of half-chewed flesh still stuck in its throat, and I knew that if I didn’t act fast, the next thing to go down that gullet would be me.
Panicking, I pulled the door closed much harder than I’d meant to. The slam seemed to vibrate the walls and floor, and echo around the house. There was no way the other birds wouldn’t hear it, but that no longer mattered. If, as I suspected, the Crowmaster saw through the eyes of his minions, then it was too late for stealth. The bird had seen me, so the Crowmaster would know exactly where I was.
The fact the birds didn’t come whooshing down the stairs didn’t do anything to comfort me. If anything, it made my heart beat even faster. I should’ve been glad, but the fine hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I realised nothing was coming for me.
The birds were all up there, and they now knew I’d escaped, so why weren’t they coming? Why weren’t…?
I let the pot fall; took the steps three at a time. The smell from Marion’s remains hung in the air, thick and putrid and rotten enough for me to smell even through my blocked and broken nose as I powered up the final few stairs and on to the upper landing.
Empty. The upstairs hallway was empty!
I ran to the far end, shouting Ameena’s name, but knowing she wouldn’t answer. I knew the door would be open. Knew the room would be empty. Knew I’d been gone too long.
A tightness gripped my stomach and spread out through my body until my muscles were standing in knots. An emotion I couldn’t even name – not rage, not terror, but something much more – boiled my blood in my veins. The scream of something primal shook the walls, and although the sound was completely alien to me, I knew I was the one making it.
He had taken her. The Crowmaster. I’d promised her she would be safe, and he had taken her. I knew that handing control of my powers over to anger wasn’t a good idea, but not a single part of me cared. I had left her alone, and she had been taken. Another bad thing that was all my fault. Another person I cared about hurt because of me.
No more. Never again.
I turned on my heels and made for the door, the sparks glowing so brightly inside me I swear they lit up the room.
Just before I left the bedroom behind, I heard it. A knocking from inside the wardrobe. Soft and cautious.
My stomach tightened, ejecting a breath that was halfway between a laugh and a cry. I scolded myself for doubting her. Ameena was more than able to handle herself. What had I been worried about?
‘It’s OK,’ I said, about-turning back into the room, ‘the coast’s clear. The birds have gone.’
And then, without even pausing to consider the consequences, I took hold of the handles and pulled both wardrobe doors wide open.