Keeper of Crows (Keeper of Crows #1)(53)

“What is your name?” I asked the fowl.

One hundred eleven, it answered in my mind. They were numbered.

“How many of you exist?”

It stepped farther down my finger, perching near the second knuckle. Seven thousand, seven hundred, seventy-seven.

“Am I your Keeper?”

The bird cawed loudly once. All other swirling birds echoed above us.

My boots clacked loudly across the cobbled streets as I wound through the labyrinth. I was the Keeper of Crows. I was… the Keeper of Purgatory.



Souls peeked from windows in the buildings that rose into the sky. I heard every hushed whisper. They wondered who I was, how I’d killed Malchazze, why the crows answered to me, what had happened to the Keeper. The answer was simple. I happened. And it was time they knew who held the power.

I stood on the balcony and looked below. With my mind, I called the Lessons to the Meat district and told them to wait for me there. The streets were desolate, wrinkled gray paper tumbling down the streets. Foul-smelling liquid trickled along the sides into sewers. Waste. This part of the city was a wasteland. It was time to clean it up.

There was a square of concrete, cracked and bleeding weeds, each as gray as the pavement. The sky roiled along with my heart. This was where they hurt my mother. This was where they would pay for it.

Tar-filled eyes and ears, mouths covered with flesh, the Lessons waited as I climbed onto a fire escape to speak with them, to give them their orders.

“You are to hurt no ordinary soul. If you harm a single, innocent soul, I will end all of you. You are to take out the trash. And by ‘trash’, I mean anyone who owns, trafficks, or tries to sell one of these souls as slaves, for sex or otherwise. You are to end the merchants. Send them all to Hell.”

With that order, they went to work. Raiding the buildings, they dispatched the occupants according to my instructions. I felt the souls. They weren’t being harmed. I could feel them all, I realized. Every single soul in Purgatory had a distinct taste, and I felt them on my tongue. The most bitter were bursting on it; those who traded people for sex and goods, those who hurt my mother. More fireworks. Wisps of light flew into the air, bursting, my crows swallowing them whole and then carrying them through the veil only because I allowed it. The veil was strong, but I made it flexible again. I wanted the garbage out of this place.

I didn’t realize I’d unsealed it enough for an archangel to enter, but Gabriel landed on the ground in front of me, his broadsword raised and ready to slice through any threat. When he found none, his eyes landed on me. “What are you doing?” His eyes were wide. “Where is Malchazze? Michael said you were in danger.”

“Michael was wrong.” I felt the sword of Lucifer warming the bones of my spine. It ached to split Gabriel in two. “I don’t need your help. Leave, Gabriel.”

Gabriel’s long hair curled across his face in the wake of the feathers and wings above. “Where is Malchazze? Did you end him?”

“We did—the birds killed him, actually.” I climbed down from the fire escape and walked to him. His tattoos swirled, more gray than black like Michael’s. They matched his wings, his eyes. A million questions rolled through his eyes, but I didn’t want to answer a single one of them.

Gabriel looked to the castle above us, a sliver of dark stone peeking through the city streets. Muttering a curse, he listened to the buildings around us. “Why are the souls being dispatched so quickly?”

“I’m doing what no one else had the balls to do. I’m cleaning up Purgatory, starting with the garbage.”

He looked at the tagged brick around us, and then at the ground, littered with glass and dark feathers. “Carmen, there are risks—”

From the street came a loud, echoing hiss. A snake, black and glittering as the veil itself slithered through the debris. Gabriel tensed, used his wings to propel him off the ground, and slashed at the serpent. The animal vanished in a haze of dark smoke, a sickening laugh filling the air.

“Seal the veil again,” he commanded.

“Where will the souls go? Don’t the crows have to carry them away?”

“They’ll hold them until you unseal it, but please trust me when I say that was just a test. The next step is Lucifer showing up himself. That sword is bound to him, and him to it.”

When his feet found the concrete, I finally relaxed enough to ask, “Is he okay?”

“Who?” Gabriel asked.

“Michael.”

“He was okay when I left him.” I didn’t like the harshness of his voice.

“Are you angry about the Lessons?”

He sheathed the sword at his back. “I’m not angry with you, Carmen. I’m in awe. And I don’t understand what just happened.”

“You sound pissed.”

He shook his head. “For so long, I’ve wondered who would be able to defeat your father, who would mend the horrors in Purgatory; make it what it once was and what it was intended to be. I thought Michael would do it.”

“That’s the trouble with you angels,” I said, watching his head tick to the side. “You only know how to follow rules.”

His eyes latched onto mine, roaring like a fierce storm. “Is that why Michael risked everything to break them with you? Did you trick him to make a point, Carmen?”