Conspiracy of Ravens Read online

  And not silver, either—thank goodness.

  “What the hell?” he shouted, bolting to his feet and brandishing the knife toward the figure rolling out of the fire, coughing and moaning.

  “What? What is it?” Earl was up, sleepy as an owl, hopping back and forth with his knife out, too, although he was pointed in entirely the wrong direction.

  Rhett’s eyes flicked up irritably. “Whoever it is, they’re over there, on fire, and they’re a damn fool.” He rubbed the knife wound, already feeling his monster skin knitting it closed. If he’d been human, he might’ve lost a kidney, he figured. Instead, he just had an unsightly hole in his too-large shirt, damn it all. He stepped around the fire and kicked over the smoking, cloaked form. It landed on its back with a wheeze, and he toed it apart like he was fussing with a bug that wouldn’t unfold its legs.

  “Regina?”

  The woman’s pinched face was all filled up with hate, her hands clutched in fists. She kicked at his leg, and he stepped back and tried not to laugh at her pathetic clumsiness.

  “At least roll the damn fire out before you try to kill me again, woman.”

  She shook her head, stood, and tossed the smoking cloak down to the dust.

  “You deserve to die. Why won’t you die?”

  “Monsters like me don’t die as easy as we’d like,” Rhett answered. “A problem you know a bit about yourself.”

  Regina said nothing, just glared her rage. The night went suddenly cold and still. The three figures stood in the valley, the world frozen around them, the dark withstanding even the calls of locusts or birds.

  Rhett spit in the dust and settled hands on his hips. “Why do you want me dead, anyway? I saved your life at Reveille. I killed the Cannibal Owl, gave you your revenge. You should be saying thanks, not sneaking up at night with a knife.”

  The woman fumbled with her bodice, and Rhett sensed she was hunting for her next weapon of choice, pitiful but determined as she was. His instinct was to punch her like he would a man, but she was such a sad, broken, blundering thing. She’d probably shatter at the touch of his fist. Instead, he watched her carefully, muscles tense to repel whatever she next brought to bear against him.

  What she pulled out wasn’t a knife or a gun. It was a locket.

  She shoved it at Rhett, forcing him to take it or drop it. There wasn’t much light, but there was enough to see a man’s silhouette on one side, a roughly penciled drawing of a baby on the other.

  “They were mine, and now they’re both gone. And you’re still here. And I don’t want to be, anymore,” Regina said, deflating and hanging her head. “If you’d just been a little faster. Just a few days earlier. You could’ve saved them both. But instead, you took your damn time, and now I got nothing. We were going to San Anton. I was to be a rancher’s wife. That baby never even got to see the sunshine. My sweet Marjorie. Born under clouds, stolen in the night. I tried to find my peace. And then one day you walk back into town, expecting thanks?” The woman spit on Rhett’s cheek, and he wiped it away with his sleeve.

  “I can’t see the damn future, woman. I ain’t a god. I’m doing the best I can, just like you. Just like anyone. I’m just trying to find my way.”

  She swallowed hard and breathed out a sob. “Then take me with you. I don’t want to be here no more. House servant to a…” She shook her head. “Rocks for eyes and a beard. Not a proper Christian woman at all. Take me back to my people. It’s the least you owe me. I just want…I just want to be ordinary again.”

  Rhett looked at Earl, who shook his head.

  “Look here, now,” Rhett said softly, like he was coaxing a spooky mare. “You can’t go with us. You can’t keep up. We got no horses for you to ride.”

  Regina latched on to that like it was something close to hope. “You can walk. I can walk, too. I won’t slow you down none.”

  Rhett glared skeptically from her cavernous cheeks to her high-heeled boots. “We don’t walk. And we ain’t the sort of ordinary you’re looking for.”

  The scrawny creature stood up straighter, and her eyes took on a mad gleam. “You don’t take me with you, I’ll just keep walking. I’ll die in the desert, and it’ll be your fault. I’ll haunt you.”

  Rhett chuckled darkly. “For one thing, threats don’t work on me. For another, I been haunted, and I know damn well you can’t do it. So you go on and do with yourself what you will, but know that it’s on you. I saved your life once. That don’t mean I owe you a second time. If you ain’t got the good sense to stay in a safe place, living a safe life, then you’ll get what’s coming to you. And I’m keeping your knife.” He glanced at Earl, who stood, feet planted and face hard, waiting. “You ready to move on, Earl?”

  “That I am.” Earl reached into his bag and pulled out the cans of peaches. “No offense, miss, but we’re on a mission and can’t be slowed down. Head back home now. Better safety than glory, eh?”

  Regina wouldn’t take the peaches. She leaned over, dusted off her cloak, checked that it was no longer smoldering, and put it on. “If I can’t haunt you dead, I’ll haunt you alive. So go on, then. Your guilt will dog your every step until I collapse.”

  Rhett shook his head. “I liked you better when you was in a family way.”

  “You’re not alone in that. I had hope, then.”

  She sounded enough like a ghost, damn her. Rhett kicked dirt over the fire and started walking. Earl was right behind him, and Regina trailed in their wake, sobbing softly.

  By midmorning, Regina was just a smudge on the prairie, long behind them and fading fast, and Rhett was heavy with what might’ve been guilt.

  “Oh, hellfire,” he muttered. Stripping off his clothes, he tossed them and Regina’s knife at Earl, took a running start, and leaped into the sky. Wheeling around, his eye scraped over the scrawny figure stumbling over rocks in long skirts and a broken boot. But he was something else now, something that didn’t care about the woman’s plight.

  Or, to put it more accurately, he only cared that she might die in a convenient place, and that he’d be the first one there to find her.

  At least, that’s what the great bird told himself.

  Days later, when he next heard a donkey’s bray, Rhett spiraled down gently and landed in a pretty green copse around a sweet little creek at sunset. The area was familiar in a menacing sort of way, and he spun around until he got his human bearings. That blackened stain over yonder had once been the siren’s town, Reveille. His time there had been brief and victorious, if you considered killing a siren, having first cut of spoils, and saving an ungrateful pregnant woman’s life victory. Now it was just a reminder of what he was trying to get back to: life among the Rangers, fighting things that had the good sense to wear their evil on the outside. He sighed. If only the Rangers weren’t so hell-bent on burning every place they left behind, he and Earl would have had more than enough food and supplies to continue their journey in slightly more human comfort.

  “It all burned down to nothing.”

  Rhett spun in surprise to stare at Regina, who was studying what was left of Reveille. Her back was to him, her thin arms crossed over her bony chest. Earl struggled into his clothes, and Rhett hurried to join him, suddenly embarrassed to be nekkid in front of Regina. Strangely, being bare in front of Earl no longer bothered him. In accepting Rhett as Rhett from the start and helping him better understand how to shift, Earl had earned an unusual sort of respect in Rhett’s estimation, and Rhett didn’t so much care if the Irishman saw the lady parts he wished to hell he didn’t possess. But Regina…

  Well, if Regina considered Rhett a man, he didn’t want that to change when the woman saw what he kept hidden under his clothes.

  “Captain burns everything,” he said, once he was properly covered. “Helps keep the other monsters in line. A warning, like.”

  “Monsters?”

  Rhett exhaled in a huff and stood beside her. “Don’t be a fool, woman. You been living with dwarves, and you watched me chan
ge. You know we ain’t human. Might as well call us monsters as anything else. The thing that built this town—well, it was more monster than most, I reckon. I watched it eat my friend’s face off.”

  “My time here felt like a dream. Maybe a nightmare. They were good to me, though. Kept me fed. Treated me like a queen.”

  “And how’d that work out for you?”

  In response, she wobbled and swooned. Earl caught her but couldn’t hold her up and had to guide her to the ground like a spilling sack of potatoes.

  “I reckon she needs water,” he said. “She got to mumbling nonsense.”

  “She does tend to do that, water or no.”

  Earl tipped the last drops out of the water skin and into Regina’s mouth, but there was barely enough to wet her tongue. Cussing in his own language, the Irishman used his knife to tear holes in the peach can. He scooped out a handful of slimy orange fruit and motioned for Rhett to hold out his hands. Without much choice, Rhett slurped down the overly sweet slivers as Earl tried to force the juice from the can directly into Regina’s mouth. She spluttered at first but then figured it out. Earl ate some peaches, too, then jerked his chin at the creek. Rhett shrugged and picked up the skin and the empty can for more water.

  Before walking away, he stopped, hands on his hips, and stared at the two of them splayed on the ground. “How’d she get this far, donkey-boy? She was half-dead, last time I was on two legs. It’s been days since Burlesville, ain’t it?”

  Earl shook his head, looking mournful. “I carried her, if you must know. Don’t weigh nothing, the poor thing.” He looked up, eyes pleading. “I got sisters, lad. This woman…she stinks of tragedy, does she not? If the Rangers will help me, maybe they can help her.”

  Rhett snorted and took off for the creek. “Tender heart like yours is bound to get broken. Rangers kill what needs to die. They don’t carry what’s not willing to live and fight.”

  The walk to the creek was quiet and pretty, at least until the stench from Reveille caught up with him. The siren and her husband had taken what they’d liked from their victims and dumped their bodies into a trench out back. The Captain had set the trench on fire, along with the rest of the town, but there was enough unburned meat left to raise a hell of a stink. After he’d wordlessly delivered what he could of the silty water to Earl and the near-dying girl, he moseyed toward the death-black boards poking up out of the prairie like rotten teeth and shifting in a downright unnatural way as the harsh wind shuddered through.

  Set against the hot haze of sunset, the town’s dark bones seemed to squirm. Rhett’s footsteps slowed at first, and he cocked his head, willing his good eye to focus and stop telling him lies. Hellfire, how he wished for a gun belt hanging loose on his hips, his trusty pistol heavy in his grip. Because what he was seeing couldn’t be the truth.

  Mist wavered off the ground, and the town swayed back and forth as if breathing. A strange rustling quickened his steps until he was running, flailing his arms and shouting.

  It was crows. More crows than he’d ever seen. Bigger crows than he’d ever seen.

  As he approached, they took off as one, a violent tornado of cawing and wings and feathers that swirled up from the ruined town, hurtling out of the death pit and up from the skeletal trees to fill the sky, almost as dark as midnight but not nearly as friendly.

  “Get on with you!” he shouted.

  The cloud of crows made strange patterns in the sky, heaving apart and surging together as if of one mind and aiming for Rhett, skimming so close overhead that he felt his hair ruffled by clutching claws. He longed to shift into what now felt like his true form and cut a swath of murder through the lesser birds, but something held him back. They couldn’t hurt him. They weren’t people armed with silver. They were just crows, carrion birds in funeral black without the patience and dignity of vultures. The sleek bastards churned and whirled and wheeled and shimmered toward the dark edge of the sky, diving into the horizon and disappearing, far away.

  All around Rhett, the prairie went quiet. He reached for his hair, certain he’d find it stuck full of oily black feathers after such a ruckus. And yet…there were no feathers to be found anywhere. Not on the ground, even. Nor the white splatters he’d expect from what had to be hundreds of the damn things. The trench had been cleaned down to fire-blackened bones.

  Walking toward the remains of the saloon, he felt as if he were being watched, as if something savage still lurked among the charred timbers. The Rangers had set the fire in the back room, where the siren and her man had neatly stored all the loot stolen from the bodies of the cowpokes and tinkers drawn to her foul song. Rhett’s sensible heart ached for the tidy piles of fine saddles, warm cloaks, and boots cobbled to fit folks who weren’t dwarf-sized. Nothing was left but ashes.

  Except—there. In the corner where the pocket watches and such fripperies had been. Was that a wink of metal? Rhett’s fingers tightened on Regina’s little poke knife as he edged into the murky shadows. Something moved, right where he was looking, and a bit of darkness detached and took to the sky with a sudden violent flapping. Another crow, clutching something in its beak. A chunk of molten gold or chain, maybe? But such creatures always coveted shiny baubles. Rhett scooped up a lump of charred wood and aimed it at the bird, which dodged the throw neatly and fled into the clouds, cawing its displeasure.

  “Smug bastard,” Rhett grumbled.

  He picked through what was left of the saloon and found nothing of any value, just twisted clumps of junk and charred boards. After a violent kick that sent black wood skittering, he headed back to fix whatever abomination of a fire Earl had managed to scrape together.

  The damn crows could have what was left of Reveille, and be welcome.

  After an uneasy sleep around a poorly made fire, Rhett woke up hungry. He gladly took his knife out onto the prairie, alone, cut his finger as bait, and caught two fanged jackrabbits. Upon returning, he had no choice but to share his kill with what he considered a ball and a chain: a starving, heartsick woman and the foolish, stubborn Irishman who’d brought her into their uneasy truce. The widow’s food was gone, and the rabbits were thin and gristly. The water was clean, at least, and the crows had the good sense not to return. The next day, Rhett waited until Regina was off to squat in the bushes before he shoved his clothes at Earl and took to the sky, glad to be unburdened by so many cumbersome feelings.

  He lost track of the days that went by like that, soaring overhead and keeping pace with a steadfast donkey slowed down by the dead-eyed woman clinging to its sweaty back. In the rare moments Rhett walked on two legs, hunting for food to keep them alive, the sorry pair forced remembrance of another woman riding a wet black steed, dogging Rhett’s every step. The Injun woman’s ghost was gone, but the weight of responsibility remained. Coyote Dan had told him he couldn’t outrun his destiny, that no matter how much he’d like to pursue a normal life, Rhett would be compelled to end the monsters that wrought havoc. Even out here, in the middle of nowhere, he’d managed to find the two most pathetic, helpless critters alive. Soon, at least, the Rangers would share this burden.

  It was a fine afternoon when he finally spotted a curl of white smoke and flapped ahead to note the familiar ranch house swarming with men. Returning to the donkey, the bird that was Rhett let out a horrific squawk and jerked his head toward their shared goal.

  The Durango Rangers Las Moras Outpost.

  Uncertainty made his flight path erratic. He had a powerful yearning to be there, but not as he was. Not as…this. But the donkey had his clothes in his saddlebags, and the Rangers still didn’t know what he looked like as a human in his altogether, and he wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. He settled for gliding in wide circles, stopping once to snatch a pigeon out of the air and swallow it whole just to quiet his nerves.

  When he heard braying, he hurried to the ground beside Earl with an inelegant, lolloping landing. He hastily changed into a human, and then into a clothed human, careful to keep
his back to Regina, who was all aquiver with worry and of too sensitive a constitution to look anyway.

  “This isn’t a city,” she said.

  “Nobody promised you San Anton, woman,” Rhett said gruffly. “Our aim was the Rangers, and that’s what we found. You’re their problem now.” He turned to Earl, who was shaking in his damn boots. “You going to piss yourself, donkey-boy?” he asked, not unkindly.

  Earl shook his head and mopped sweat off his face. “It’s one thing to seek and another thing entirely to find. You got to understand, lad. The Rangers are the only ones who can help me, but I’m scared to death of ’em. Not so kind to monsters, are they? And not terribly big fans of the Irish I’ll bet, neither.”

  “They accepted me.”

  Earl’s smile was wry, his cussedness shining through his fear. “And then they left you behind, didn’t they? I saw that town. Burned to the ground, monsters and innocents alike. I can only hope they’re feeling charitable today, eh?”

  “All you can do is tell the Captain the honest truth and hope he sees it the same way you do.”

  “Then lead on. At the very least, I could use a damn drink.”

  As they walked on, Rhett was painfully aware of the picture he presented. Hatless, filthy, wearing too-wide dwarf clothes stained with his own blood, dragging along a woman the Captain had already scraped off once and a donkey feller who could drive anyone crazy with his yammering. He might’ve slowed down if he hadn’t been desperately hoping that Sam was just around the bend, not to mention maybe Dan and Winifred. The three of them balanced out the annoyance of Jiddy and some of the other, less friendly Rangers. Well, and at least Delgado was gone. The son of a bitch had taken Rhett’s right eye, but Rhett had taken his life, so that weighed ever so slightly in Rhett’s favor. Hell, maybe the Rangers had a new cook who wouldn’t shoot anybody.