Keeper of Crows (Keeper of Crows #1)(18)

Pamela followed the crow near the edge of the cliff. She was even crazier than the Keeper, going that close. There was nothing between the cliff and the tear but a trip to the bottom of that gorge, nothing but death. The crow hovered as if caught in a strong gust of air. Its wings didn’t beat, just stayed extended. Then it began to move forward, beating its wings once, twice. Pamela took another step.

I reached out for her. “Pamela. Don’t do it. You’ll fall!”

Keeper’s eyes dared me to speak again. Screw him. “You will die. Look down! Don’t step out there. This is a trap. He’s trapping you.” Why would he do this? Maybe the Keeper of Crows was more dangerous than Gus and Chester put together. What if he was sending her somewhere worse?

The fissure began to crackle; the light no longer a strong beam, but shattering into filtered shafts like sunbeams through clouds stretching to the ground. Pam stepped off the edge of the cliff with complete faith in the crow she followed. The fowl disappeared through the fissure, and then Pamela disappeared, too. There was no sound, just an alteration in the light for a split-second as she passed through.

“Your turn,” Keeper said, standing and extending his hand to me. “Hurry up. It’s going to close soon.”

“I’m afraid!” I stared at the blood dripping down my arms. His eye followed and I could see the questions in them. That scared me more than anything. If the Keeper of Crows didn’t know why my ears bled at the sound of the ripping fabric, why would he want me to go near it? And if I stepped off this cliff, I would fall. I could feel it. I wasn’t like Pamela.

“You must be sensitive to the sound, but the fissure is the only way to cross the divide! You have to let me help you. This is the only way back home.” His brows touched one another. “You have to trust me. I did not let her fall, and I promise I will not let you fall.”

I already had. I’d fallen straight into Hell. Heights and me? We loathed each other. Not only did he want me to follow his bird, but he also wanted me to step off a fucking cliff into thin air. I didn’t have that kind of faith. Not in him. Not in crows. Not in anything.

I paced back and forth in a frustrated path. The air began to sizzle again. “Hurry!”

“No!”

He stalked toward me and grabbed my wrist. I beat on his knuckles as hard as I could, bruising my own. “What are you doing? Let me go!”

“Time to go home, Carmen.”

Tears warmed my cheeks. I shook my head back and forth. “I don’t want to go like this. I don’t want to step off the edge.”

“This is the only way,” he said simply.

The fissure’s light began to fade. He motioned to a crow and then did the unforgiveable. He dragged me off the cliff’s edge. My feet dug into the soil, pebbles trickling to the ravine below, bouncing off rocky cliffs and into the churning water. “No!”

His crow disappeared into the fading light. As Keeper pulled me toward the barrier, stepping beside the fissure himself, he shoved me toward the bright slice of light. I cursed him as he pushed my back.

I couldn’t pass through. The light repelled me, like it was positively charged and I was negative. I didn’t disappear like Pamela, a flutter of shadow. It wasn’t my fault. I should’ve been pushed through. He certainly pushed hard enough, but I might as well have been trying to shove my way through a brick wall. I knew then that the only wall between me and Earth was myself.

It was the fabric. It wouldn’t let me pass. Not even the tip of my pinky. An invisible barrier stopped me from going home. Keeper released my hand and stepped away from me. Looking down, hovering in the air, I panicked. The fissure snapped closed behind him. I couldn’t breathe. Not enough air. Nothing. And then I fell.

My hospital gown flapped in the wind. I clawed for something, even the jutting rocks, anything that would break my fall, but I found nothing. A strong hand found mine and Keeper’s voice split through the whistling air. “Come.”

The sudden descent stopped. For a moment, we floated in a tight, dark tunnel of air, the outside of which was comprised of flashes of beating black feathers. Then the crows raised us, out of the ravine, out of the air, onto the land. I collapsed in a heap of overwhelming fear and liquid aggravation.

Keeper sat next to me, wrapping his arms around his knees.

“Why? Why wouldn’t it let me through?” I croaked, trying to calm myself. Sitting up straight, I rubbed my arms quickly.

“You’re supposed to be here, though I don’t understand it.”

“Is it the blackness inside me?”

He shook his head. “Everyone sins. You’re no darker inside than anyone else who crosses, Carmen.”

“I’m not talking about my soul or sins, or whatever. I’m talking about the stuff back there, the fabric or veil, or whatever Gus called it. When he pulled me through, I grabbed it—the sides of the opening—and then it ripped and a piece tore off. When I opened my hand, it soaked into my palm.”

Keeper laughed, a deep chortle that caught me off guard.

Pushing myself to my feet, I stood and walked away, back toward the forest that I doubted I’d ever find my way out of. His footsteps soon followed me. “You aren’t serious,” he asserted. “No soul is strong enough to tear the veil.”

The hell I’m not.

He placed his thumbs on my temples and stroked gently, speaking in the language I didn’t understand and closing his eyes gently, the long lashes fanning his cheeks. His tattoos fluttered wildly on his chest. I clasped his wrists and tried to pull away from him, but he was in some sort of trance.