I stumbled clumsily through the woods, clattering into trees, tripping on weeds, barely staying upright. I was no longer even sure where I was running to, but I knew exactly what I was running from.
She’d been my friend. Maybe my only friend. And now she was… she was… I couldn’t bring myself to think about it.
I staggered on, but at every step I was bombarded by another image of Ameena. Her wide grin that made her nose crinkle up. Her boots under my mum’s coffee table. The feeling of her shoulder against mine as we’d looked out through Marion’s window.
I heard the monster shout with Ameena’s voice somewhere behind me – not too far away. A knot of anger bunched my stomach up tight, and my feet decided to stop moving all by themselves.
The voice called my name again, closer still, directly behind me. I tucked myself in behind the thick, straight trunk of a towering tree, bunched my fingers into tight, tight fists, and waited.
For almost a minute I stood there, my legs cramping painfully as I struggled to stay motionless and hidden. My breath rattled in and out, surely loud enough to give me away. I could do nothing to quieten it, though, and when I heard the murderer’s footsteps thudding closer and closer, each breath came louder still.
When the rustling of the grass was almost beside me, I leapt out of my hiding place, head down, shoulder out. The thing wearing Ameena’s body let out a gasp of shock. It couldn’t move fast enough to dodge my charge, and its ribs made a satisfying crunch as my shoulder slammed against them.
The pain from my injuries was nearly overwhelming. It stopped me concentrating, made it impossible for me to use my powers. That suited me fine. I didn’t want to use the power. I wanted to pound on the monster, punish it with my bare hands, make it realise the mistake it had made by taking Ameena away from me.
I would make the Crowmaster beg, make him plead with me to spare him. And when he’d done that – when he’d wept and screamed and cried out for me to let him live, I’d say just one word.
I’d say ‘No’.
My charge didn’t take as much out of it as I’d hoped. It twisted Ameena’s body, deflecting the brunt of my attack and sending us both spinning down on to the forest floor.
‘Have you gone mental?’ Ameena’s voice demanded, as we both scrabbled to get up. The Crowmaster was still trying to trick me, still trying to make me believe I was attacking my friend. I blocked it out and focused on the fight.
We were halfway to our feet when I drove my fist hard against what had once been Ameena’s cheek, dropping down and letting my weight add power to the punch.
The Crowmaster glared at me through Ameena’s eyes. ‘Right,’ he said, still sounding exactly like her, ‘that’s it.’
A jab to my throat left me gasping for air. I was too busy choking even to try to defend myself when the thing in Ameena’s skin leapt on top of me, pressing a knee hard against my chest. I fought hard, kicking and pushing, but the tightness in my throat and the pressure on my chest kept me pinned down.
‘Spectacular a hissy fit as this is, we don’t have time for it,’ her voice growled.
‘I’ll kill you,’ I hissed. ‘I swear I’ll kill you for this.’
‘For what? What are you spazzing out about now?’
‘You don’t care, do you?’ I snarled. Tears ran in different directions down both sides of my head, pooling in my ears. ‘You took her away from me, and you don’t give a damn! She meant something to me – she meant everything to me – and you used her like… like…’
I wilted beneath the puzzled gaze of those eyes, so brown as to be almost black. ‘You didn’t have to kill her,’ I mumbled. ‘You didn’t have to kill Ameena.’
‘Er… hello? What? Listen, kiddo, I don’t know what you think has happened, but I’m pretty sure I’m not dead.’ She glanced up into the darkness lurking between the trees. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
Kiddo. She’d called me ‘kiddo’. I hated it when she called me ‘kiddo’. She always called me ‘kiddo’.
But no, it was a trick. He was messing with my head.
‘You’re not her,’ I said through clenched teeth. ‘You’re the Crowmaster.’
‘I’m not the Crowmaster!’ she retorted, almost smiling at the suggestion.
She didn’t smile for long. The spindly fingers crept like an insect through her hair, yanking her head backwards before either of us could react. The weight lifted from my chest in a sharp, sudden jerk. Ameena bit her lip, trying to resist screaming or swearing. Or both.
‘That’s right, you ain’t,’ the scarecrow said, his face split into a grin, that horrible laugh of his hissing in Ameena’s ear. SS-SS-SS-SS-SS! ‘I am!’
I don’t remember getting up. One moment I was flat on the ground, and the next I was standing there in front of them both, the pain that had been ravaging my body a rapidly fading memory.
The Crowmaster had one of his pets perched on his shoulder – a fat, ugly brute with blood on its beak. Its head twitched at every little movement I made, and I knew the scarecrow was watching me through the crow’s eyes.
Ameena was staying unusually quiet, and I only had to glance at her to realise why. One of the Crowmaster’s long black fingernails was pressed against her throat. It dug in deeper with every breath she took, until a trickle of red crept down her neck.
‘Let her go.’
‘Now why would I go and do a thing like that?’ the scarecrow sneered.
‘It’s me you want, not her. Let her go.’
‘That’s one mighty big head you got there, boy,’ he hissed. ‘Some folks might think you’re somethin’ special, but me? I don’t care one little bit.’ He hocked up a mouthful of black saliva and spat it on to the ground at my feet. ‘I let this one go on purpose, see? Thought it’d be a real hoot to let you think she was me. Thought you might slit her throat and bleed her dry, or at least beat on her until she stopped beating back.’
He pressed his talon harder against Ameena’s throat, making her eyes bulge. ‘But instead what do you do? You cry like a baby and get your ass whupped by a girl. Man, that was a disappointing moment.’
‘What is it you want?’ I asked.
‘I already got what I want, boy,’ he smirked. ‘Thanks to your daddy I got me a Get Outta Hell Free card. Now all I gotta do is kill you and there ain’t no way hell can follow me here.’
‘Then let Ameena go,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to hurt her.’
‘Oh sure, I don’t have to,’ he grinned, ‘but I bet it’ll be all kinds of fun.’
His empty eye sockets widened and that flesh-crawling laugh hissed from his wide cavernous mouth. He yanked harder on Ameena’s hair until she couldn’t help but scream. His hand drew back, the stupidly elongated fingers splaying out, the claws extending to their full terrifying length, aiming for Ameena’s exposed throat.
He was halfway through the movement, too far into it to stop suddenly. That was my cue. Clenching my fist, I did something I never anticipated I’d ever find myself doing.
I punched a crow in the face.
The Crowmaster may have been expecting me to attack him, but he wasn’t prepared for me hitting the bird. Nor, it seems, was the bird. It flipped backwards off its master’s shoulder, squawking and flapping as it tried to slow its fall.
Still seeing through the crow’s eyes, the Crowmaster became instantly disorientated. His ragged nails swished narrowly past Ameena’s throat, throwing them both off balance. Ameena twisted her shoulder into him and bent at the waist, letting his momentum carry him up and over her back.
Even before the scarecrow hit the ground, Ameena bounded over to where the bird had landed on the forest floor. Lifting her boot, she brought it down hard on the crow’s head.
‘Have some of that!’ she cried triumphantly, before a sudden fluttering filled the forest behind us.
‘Move!’ Ameena cried, catching me by the arm. Before I knew what was happening, I was fleeing again, hurrying through the trees, ducking and jumping and weaving through a denser and denser jungle of roots and weeds and thin, tangling branches.
That sound – that rhythmic rippling of rapid applause – was growing louder, the birds quickly closing the gap between us.
Ameena moved through the trees like a shark through water, cutting effortlessly through the forest and pulling away from me with every bound. The mass of pain that I’d temporarily managed to forget about now came rushing back, making my head throb and my chest burn and my limbs turn achingly heavy.
I would have given up then, I’m almost certain. With the crows screeching behind me and my legs buckling beneath me, I would have surely collapsed to the ground and let them do whatever it was they were going to do.
I would have died there in the clawing darkness of the woods, had I not seen the clearing through a gap in the trees. ‘Over there!’ I shouted, my voice little more than a loud croak. Ameena turned and followed my finger, which was pointing ahead and to her right.
It took her a moment to realise what she was looking at, but then she banked sharply and began to run faster. I was already crashing after her, and together we hurried towards the clearing.
And towards the towering mast that loomed imposingly at its heart.