Keeper of Crows (Keeper of Crows #1)(64)

“I know, dear. But you need the best care possible to recover from this.” Her eyes flicked to the nurse and then to the screen. “I’ve given the okay for them to move you to a new unit.”

“I’m not crazy,” my scratchy voice pleaded.

“I know—”

“You don’t know!” I kicked and flailed. “Because you won’t listen.”

“Call psych and ask the on-duty if they want us to tranquilize her before we send her up.”

The nurse nodded. “Will do.”

“I don’t need tranquilizers. I’m not an animal. What is wrong with you people?” I shouted. Then the tears began to flow. When they started, gut-wrenching sobs wracked my body. My tired body. I was so tired.

Tired of yelling. Tired of fighting. Tired of hurting. My leg hurt so badly. My head throbbed.

“Just let me out of here,” I sobbed dejectedly.

The doctor turned to leave, but looked over her shoulder. “I’m afraid we can’t until you’re stable.”

“I am stable. Send me home.”

“With the man you believe is the antichrist?”

Fuck my life. I had no home now. Gabriel told me it would be this way. That things would be different, that time would be strange. It sure as hell was. He was right. Where was he?

“Gabriel?” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Gabriel? Michael? Where are you? Are you close? Can you hear me?”

The nurse stepped back into the room. “You can’t yell like that,” he admonished.

“I sure as hell can! GABRIEL!”

Another nurse jogged to the doorway. “Psych said to sedate her.”

“Fuck, no! No! Gabriel! GABRIEL! Help me!” The male nurse and two more came into the room, but it would take more than that to hold me down. I fought them, and then two more showed up. My arm was held still, their bodies weighing me down, weighing my body down, and then the medicine was pushed into my arm. Tranquilizer. Sedation.

Quiet.

Peace.

“Gabri—”

The nurse shook his head as he climbed off me and turned to his co-workers. “Is it a full moon? The crazies are in full effect.”

They chuckled as they left me. In my mind, I called for Michael. Called for Gabriel. Called for my crows to pluck the nurses’ eyes out.

I’d… kill them… all.



I woke in another room, my arms and uninjured leg still restrained. I was in the psych ward with doors that locked and only the smallest of windows through which the staff spied on their patients. I hated them all. Everyone who worked here.

The doctors were all a joke. My father had probably hired them to treat me like I’d lost my mind. How was he alive? I saw his body. I saw the feathers buried in his chest. I saw his soul fly, and then I sent a crow to gobble it up and spit it into Hell. I saw it.

“I saw it!” I screamed. “Gabriel!”

For days I screamed for Gabriel, Michael, Malchazze…anyone who would tell them I was right, that I wasn’t crazy. No one came.

Eventually, my body healed and they couldn’t keep me in the ward anymore, so my father paid for me to be transferred to a mental health facility. I was bundled up in an ambulance and taken there against my will.

Obviously, screaming wasn’t working. I was never going to get out of there if I didn’t shut my mouth, so that was what I decided to do. While the ambulance rocked over bumps and pot holes, I decided to keep quiet, to observe and figure a way out of this situation. Freedom. Tasting freedom would be worth the lying it would take to get out, and then I just had to bide my time. I had to live out my natural life—I couldn’t end it prematurely—and then I could be with him, and him with me. He would love me forever and I would love him.

I couldn’t wait to see him, so I kept quiet. The gravel under the tires stopped crunching when the brakes squealed and the vehicle came to a stop. The medics slammed their doors and opened the rear of the car, blinding me with the evening sunlight. The mental hospital looked more like an old brick boarding house. A painted-white, iron cross stood sentry over the grounds. I knew I’d been sent there for a reason. It was a sign that Michael was watching over me. Maybe I’d see him, perhaps catch a glimpse somehow. We couldn’t talk, but could I see him? Just once?

I wanted my crows to circle the cross, to give him a sign that I knew he’d sent me here for a reason, but they didn’t respond. They must be busy, or maybe they were stuck in Purgatory. Did I make the veil available for them, or were they trapped?

They eased my gurney to the ground and then unfolded a wheelchair. My leg was in a white cast and the hospital gown barely covered me, having come undone in the back. The medic was overweight by a hundred or so pounds, but his smile and eyes were kind. Wes was his name, according to his badge.

“We have to take the bed back, but the doc thought you’d be more comfortable lying down for the ride. It probably kept your foot from swelling in that cast. It’ll sweat though,” he chatted merrily.

Fuck casts and sweat, I thought. Where was Gabriel? I wasn’t forbidden from seeing him. Where in the world was he? Was he on assignment in some remote part of the realm? Fighting evil? Flying around in Heaven? Why couldn’t he come visit me?

The sound of popping gravel caught my attention as they helped me into the wheelchair and adjusted the footplates, easing my foot and cast onto them. I looked behind me as they wheeled me onto the concrete ramp and pushed me around the turn toward the front porch. From the rafters on the porch’s cover flew a dove. Its gray feathers told me Gabriel was close. I searched for him, finding only my father’s face. The silence ended in that moment.