Anne Bishop - Murder of Crows

“Is the girl going to be all right?” Stan asked.

The cop paused a moment, then lifted his hand and shook his head. After cleaning his hands with fresh snow, he rose and stared hard at Wild Dog and Howler. “What are you boys doing here?”

Stan just stared at the girl, then at the dogs. “Gods above and below, what got into them? And how did they get out of the yard?”

“We’ll take them in, get them tested. Find out if they went crazy for a reason.” The cop was talking about the dogs—sure he was—but he kept staring at Wild Dog. Then he looked at the dead birds. “Yeah, we’re going to need to do some tests.”

Wild Dog tried to field a story about just dropping by to see G-Man for a minute, but suddenly there were all kinds of official vehicles clogging up the street, and there were a lot of cops interested in hearing his story, and they wanted to hear it down at the station with his father present. That was why he ended up riding home in the back of a police car.

And that was why the police were right there with him when he walked into the kitchen and discovered that Priscilla had remembered a lot more about that night last week than he did, and that was why she brought her father’s shotgun when she came calling at his house this morning.

Late Windsday morning, Lieutenant Crispin James Montgomery parked the patrol car in the Courtyard’s customer lot, got out, and breathed in air that still had the bite of deep winter. That wasn’t surprising, considering the storm that had savaged the city of Lakeside at the beginning of the month—a storm that had proved to everyone living here that the shape-shifters and vampires who were the public face of the Courtyard were not the most dangerous terra indigene in residence. Enraged by the attack on the Courtyard and the death of one of their steeds, the Elementals, led by Winter, had unleashed their fury on the city and its residents in what newspapers and television newscasts had called the storm of the century.

Some buildings had been damaged or destroyed in that storm. Some people had been injured and a few had died. Whole sections of the city had been without power for days, and people had struggled to stay warm and fed while Lakeside was locked in by a record snowfall and slabs of ice that blocked all the roads out of the city.

Having spent every spare moment over the past two weeks reading up on towns that had been destroyed after a conflict with the Others, Monty knew the storm and the consequences could have been much, much worse. He wasn’t sure whom Meg Corbyn had talked to or what she’d said, but he would bet a month’s pay that she was the reason the ice slabs simply melted away one night, allowing needed supplies into the city. She had warned the Others of a poison that had been intended for the Elementals’ steeds. She had saved Simon Wolfgard’s nephew Sam during the attack on the Courtyard. She had won the trust of beings who rarely, if ever, trusted humans.

On the other hand, because she had been the attackers’ intended target, she had been indirectly responsible for the storm that crippled Lakeside, as well as the deaths of Lakeside’s mayor and the governor of the Northeast Region. But that was something only a handful of people knew. For everyone else, the official story was that a group of outsiders had come to Lakeside with the intention of stirring up trouble and had provoked the Others’ attack when they blew up part of the Courtyard’s Utilities Complex and killed several terra indigene . Since all the news reports made it clear that humans had started the trouble, there had been a wait-and-see truce between Lakeside’s citizens and the Others these past couple of weeks.

Maybe people were too busy making repairs to their homes and businesses and just wanted to get back to their lives. Or maybe they were making an effort to steer clear of the beings who ruled the continent of Thaisia. And not just Thaisia. The terra indigene ruled most of the world. As far as they were concerned, humans were another kind of meat, and the only difference between people and deer was that people invented and manufactured products that at least some of the Others enjoyed having. That was the only reason the Others in Thaisia leased tracts of land where humans could live and grow food, and supplied people with the resources needed to manufacture products. But people were still meat the moment they did something the terra indigene didn’t like.

That wasn’t an easy truth to swallow at the best of times, and given the information he was about to share with Simon Wolfgard, today was not going to be the best of times.

Monty walked past the seamstress/tailor’s shop and A Little Bite, the coffee shop that was one of the few Courtyard stores open to the general human population of Lakeside. When he reached Howling Good Reads, the bookstore run by Simon Wolfgard and Vladimir Sanguinati, he ignored the Residents Only sign and rapped on the door.

Simon approached the door and stared at Monty for a little too long, giving the police officer time to consider the contrast between the two of them. Wolfgard looked like a trim man in his mid-thirties with a handsome face and dark hair that was cut to match the persona of a business owner. Most of the time, he easily passed for human. Except for his eyes. The amber eyes never let you forget you were looking at a terra indigene Wolf, a predator—especially now that Wolfgard had given up wearing the wire-rimmed glasses that had been an attempt to make him look less dangerous. Monty, on the other hand, was a dark-skinned human of medium height who stayed trim only with effort. He hadn’t reached forty yet, but his short curly hair already showed some gray, and there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there a few months ago.

Finally Simon unlocked the door, and Monty slipped inside the store.

“Not open to human customers today?” Monty asked as Simon locked the door again.

“No,” Simon replied curtly. He limped over to a cart full of books and began redoing the display table in the front of the store.

Monty nodded to the young woman behind the checkout counter, one of the humans the Courtyard employed. “Ms. Houghton.”

“Lieutenant,” Heather replied.

She looked scared, and when she tipped her head toward Simon in a “pay attention to him, there’s something going on” sort of way, Monty wondered if the Courtyard’s residents had already heard the news or if Heather had another reason to be afraid.

After observing Simon for a moment, he said in a conversational tone, “Did you injure your leg?”

Simon slammed a book down on the table and snarled. “She kicked me off the bed! She was having a bad dream, so I tried to wake her up, and she kicked me off the bed .”

Monty didn’t have to ask who she was. He noticed that Heather, now staring at the Wolf with wide eyes, didn’t ask either.

“And then she acts and smells all bunny-weird about me being there in human form.” Simon dumped more books on the table. One slid off and hit the floor. The Wolf didn’t notice. “What difference does it make if I’m furry or not?” He pointed at Heather, and the look in his eyes made it clear he expected an answer.

“Aaaaahhhh,” she said, glancing at Monty. “Weeeellllll. When my mom takes a nap, our cat curls up with her, and my dad doesn’t care. But I don’t think he’d like it if the cat suddenly turned into a man.”

“Why?” Simon demanded. “The cat would just be a cat in a different form.”

Heather made a funny sound and didn’t answer.

Monty quietly cleared his throat before he said, “A form that would be able to have sex with a human female.”