Crowbones

CHAPTER 84

Aggie

Moonsday, Novembros 5

Where are we going?” Aggie asked, stumbling despite Kira’s grip on her arm. “We shouldn’t be out here.”

Gonna gitcha.

“We’re helping Vicki,” Kira replied.

How were they helping Miss Vicki by walking toward the Mill Creek Cabins? And why did she feel so woozy and odd? She’d been feeling that way on and off since the night when they had stayed in Miss Vicki’s apartment. Something had happened after she and Jozi and Kira had drunk some of the special juice that Viktor had brought for Kira before Miss Vicki and Julian Farrow came upstairs. Something that she couldn’t remember. She couldn’t shift quickly or properly into her Crow form. She knew that was very, very bad, but somehow she just couldn’t seem to care about the bad.

And she couldn’t understand why she felt odd and woozy but Kira looked glittery-eyed and excited.

“No offense to your kind, but those Crows the professor chose as his new helpers just weren’t up to the job,” Kira said. “The only thing they managed to do was get killed. Well, one of them did kill your friend, but that’s not much of a thing, is it? Viktor and I helped lots of humans around the colleges die. The professor said we were his best students. Then he got annoyed with us. He said we’d done too much, drawn too much attention from the authorities, and they were asking questions about his experiments that he didn’t want to answer.

“He left,” Kira continued. “Left the college, left the town. Left us. That was a couple of years ago. We continued hunting for a while, but the leader of our shadow started asking questions too, became concerned that we’d been sneaking off to hunt on the college grounds. Then we heard the whispers about possible contamination from exposure to the wrong kind of humans.” She scoffed. “The professor isn’t the wrong kind of human. He’s brilliant, and he showed us that hunting could be fun and feel so good when your prey feels too good to care what happens. Just like you and Jozi the other night.”

Something in the flask that Viktor had given Kira? Something that made it hard for her to shift her form even now?

“I wanted to taste Vicki, but Julian Farrow got in the way of that. Julian and . . .” Kira shrugged, but she didn’t seem as excited anymore. She kept looking around.

Waiting to hear the rattle, rattle, rattle?

Kira wasn’t a friend. Not to Crows, not to Miss Vicki.

Had to warn Miss Vicki.

“No!” Kira said sharply, giving Aggie a hard shake that knocked the thoughts right out of her head.

“Where are we going?” Aggie asked again.

“We’re almost there,” Kira said just before Aggie felt fangs tearing at her throat.