Keeper of Crows (Keeper of Crows #1)(32)

“What is my father doing here? If he can live on Earth, why cross back and forth? What’s in it for him?” Because there had to be something lucrative for Father to give it his attention.

Michael was silent for a long moment.

“What’s going on, Michael?”

He turned around and pinned his eyes on me, royal purple and roiling. “He’s establishing an empire.”

“He’s making an empire. A kingdom in Purgatory?”

“Yes, and right now, I cannot stop him.”

“But Purgatory wasn’t meant to be ruled. Right?”

“Right,” he agreed, turning his back to me again.

“How is he—?”

Suddenly, Michael ran toward me, lifting me up and racing toward the steps. “Upstairs! Lock the door, move furniture in front of it, just don’t let anything in until I say. Okay?”

I nodded. Looking past him out the glass front door, I saw a Lesson. This one had no mouth, just skin stretched taut over where his mouth should be. When the creature tried to smile, his cheek bones stretched the skin further, revealing purple and blue veins that forked across his pale face. His eyes, every part of them, were black. Soulless. Evil.

He pressed his hands against the glass, fingertips leaving black smudges across it. Michael released a deep, reverberating growl before running toward the Lesson and leaping across the couch. The door shattered when he burst through it, but the Lesson’s throat was in his fist in a fraction of a second. I could swear time stood still, and that the shards and splinters of glass were still falling as I took my first step upstairs.

“RUN!” he yelled. It was hard for a girl to run without knowing what she was running from, so I looked past him again. Big mistake.

Lessons. Some with ears and eyes that oozed black tar-like fluid, and some like the one Michael held with his feet flailing above the ground—no mouth at all. They were all over the yard, running toward the back porch and Michael. He needed help!

“No! Carmen, no! This is my purpose! Go upstairs, now!”

No way, Michael. You can’t handle all of them. There are twice as many as last time!

I looked for a weapon and found a broom in the corner. Better than nothing.

In an instant, there was a loud caw from outside as the crows came to defend their master, individually and as one ferocious group. Feathers rained from the sky, and each time one touched a Lesson, the Lesson’s skin began to sizzle and steam from the contact. The ones who could yell, did. The ones who couldn’t, jerked and writhed on the ground. Then the crows began to swoop down in groups of thousands, carrying the Lessons away, their screams rising into the air as they were taken into a vortex of flying dark feathers and sharp beaks.

Michael stepped outside, watching the melee unfold. I relaxed my grip on the broom handle and lowered it to my waist. Bad move.

It grabbed me from behind, somehow having snuck up behind me. He didn’t make a sound, because he couldn’t. He had no mouth. I tried to hit him with the broom, but he was at a weird angle and I couldn’t get leverage. Looking over my shoulder, I could taste the sulfur on his fingers as they covered my lips, just before I parted them and bit down hard. He slammed my head into the drywall as I screamed for Michael. A very angry Keeper rushing to help me was a powerful sight to behold.

He lifted the Lesson with one hand, crushing his throat with a sickening series of cracks and pops. “You chose to follow the wrong leader,” Michael told him, calling his crows as he carried him out the back door, glass crunching beneath his boots. The crows carried the Lesson away and Michael strode to me, his hands feeling my body for damage. Up and down. Around. “Are you hurt?” he said frantically, his eyes wild.

Feral.

“I’m not hurt.”

I was panting, my breaths fueled by adrenaline and his hands on my body. He finally began to relax his muscles, but didn’t take his hands away from me.

“You could have been killed,” he breathed against the column of my throat.

“I’m fine.”

“You shouldn’t try to defend me. It’s my job to defend you.”

“Am I your assignment?”

He didn’t answer, just held me.

“Am I your assignment, Michael?”

“No,” he admitted, tilting his head so that his lips hovered over mine.

“Good,” I breathed. And then I waited, hoping he would lower his lips to…

And when he finally closed the distance, his breath hot on my lips, I thought the Lessons would be safer. Because Michael, the way his eyes swirled, the way his muscles rippled beneath the skin…he was far more of a threat.

I could lose my heart to him.

As soon as I thought the words, I felt the connection sever. He stepped away, raking hands through his hair.

“You can’t. I can’t.” He liked that word. Can’t.

I hated it.

Keeper retreated to his room, and then I heard the lock engage. If he thought I was a girl who gave up easily, he was mistaken.





13





I woke in the dingy gray bedroom with a headache that stabbed straight to the core of my brain. A single crow stood guard on the bedrail at my feet. He didn’t make a sound except for shuffling his feet from one side to the other. I groaned and let my head fall back onto my pillow. No gray light filtered in through the disgustingly dirty window. The bitter taste of Hell lingered on my tongue.