Crowbones

CHAPTER 12

Windsday, Grau 31

His brain didn’t work right anymore. Even so, as he approached the body that was hidden by darkness but still too close to the house, he knew he had to be careful. If the Sanguinati found him too soon, all his effort would be for nothing. He couldn’t let that happen.

His brain . . . blinked . . . as it sometimes did these days. One moment he was alone, and the next . . .

A long black cape covered a slender female body. One of her hands held a gourd. The other held a short-handled scythe.

She stared at him without any pity for what he had become. Then she shook the gourd. Rattle, rattle, rattle.

A warning? Like the things she had left behind?

He raised a hand and pointed toward the spot where a Sanguinati and a human had removed the warning. “They . . . work together. Help. Protect. Good.” He struggled for words, but he wasn’t sure it mattered. She was primal, feral. An Elder. A Hunter.

Dangerous.

Was she here to find him? Or was she hunting someone else?

Maybe, if he told her why he had come to The Jumble, she wouldn’t interfere.

A pouch with a cross-body strap carried everything he’d had with him when he’d eluded his keepers in order to reach this place. He opened the pouch and removed a folded sheet of paper. Unfolding it, he showed her the drawing, then pointed toward the main house. “Reader . . . lives here. I come . . . to keep watch. To . . . warn. Protect her.”

He wondered if she understood. He wondered if she cared about anything beyond the hunt.

He carefully folded the paper and put it back in the pouch.

She held out the gourd and gave it a little shake. Not a threat.

“Warning?” He took the gourd and shook it. Rattle, rattle, rattle. Yes. This sound would warn.

He pointed to what was left of the body. “Worked . . . alone?”

She shook her head.

“Worked . . . with others?”

A nod.

“Police . . . need to find.”

She tilted her head, a silent question.

“In village. I know . . . place.”

She attached the scythe to her belt. Then she stared at him for a long time before she removed the cape of black feathers and put it around him, securing the clasp made of woven pieces of leather.

He felt protected—connected—in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time.

After swiftly hollowing out the torso, she picked up the body with one hand—and he led her to the place in the human village where the police would find it.