I had my armour on, so I couldn’t feel the concrete under my knees or the metal of the gun against my head, but in some way that mattered I could feel the weight. Perhaps it was all in the implication of a swift and easy end. The room was lit with two floodlights, left here by construction workers. One was aimed directly at the stairs, a blinding trap for someone like me who emerged from near total darkness. A crow hopped in front of me, cocking its head to stare at me with a single ebony eye.
Checkmate.
I raised my hands in surrender. The gun barrel shoved aggressively against the back of my head, forcing me to face the floor.
“Move again and I will end you. I don’t need two hostages. It’s merely a bonus,” the Crowman said with a faint Chinese accent. “That goes for you too.” This must have been directed at B. I could only see a shadow huddled in the corner of the room.
“It was foolish to think you could come rescue them. I was hoping for more and you gave it to me. So, who is your employer? The Gambler? The Eyes Wide Gang?”
I didn’t respond.
“Place your hands on the ground.”
I complied. He stomped down on my fingers, grinding them into the concrete painfully until my armour came away in pieces. Crows gathered curiously, picking up bone fragments and carrying them away.
“No tattoo,” he said. “Outside hires, perhaps?”
There must be some way to get out of this without risking a bullet getting buried into my skull, but I was having trouble thinking with the feeling like the gun was pressing directly against my brain.
Nell seemed to sense this as I felt a shift in her emotions. She had just done something, down below. Something violent.
“Do you know about the shipment?” he asked calmly. His tone made it clear that this was comfortable for him, he felt in control.
“Yes,” I replied. Lying here wouldn’t do me any good. Why else would we be here?
“Ah, so you can talk. Maybe you will be more useful than your friend, hm?”
B spoke, “Trust me, I do not know this guy.” They sounded stuffed up, like their nose might be broken. Still, they sounded familiar.
“Why do you know about the shipment?”
I kept quiet and was rewarded with a sinister chuckle.
“I can appreciate your loyalty, but you won’t win this way. The crows remember you.”
There was the sound of wings flapping and one of the crows landed on my shoulder. It gave a low croak that sent chills down my spine with how human it sounded.
“You were at the recruitment. You leapt from the building. I should have heeded the warnings about you.”
“You’re the reason we were found so quickly,” I said, piecing it together. “Who told you about me and Terry?”
The man didn’t respond.
I took a guess, “It was the Ghost Queen, wasn’t it?”
“It stings my pride to have the assistance of an outsider to the Jiezhi. I earned my place among the upper ranks with my loyalty and my fierce adherence to our codes. Not because I was given a helping hand from some Witch.”
That cemented it. Helen knew about me and Nell. She was seeding the other Rings with information, hindering our progress, ingratiating herself with them. And I still didn’t even know what she looked like.
“We were ready and you still slipped from our grasp. It will not happen again. When the higher ups hear that I alone captured the Bone Wolf, they will understand why I deserve to lead.” There was a fervor in his voice as he said those words.
“Having trouble gaining trust with that Shape of yours? I can relate,” I said sympathetically.
“It is better to be an honest crow than a deceitful magpie,” he intoned.
A gunshot rang out from the floor below us. The Crowman whistled sharply and the crows erupted into a frenzy of cries. An arm wrapped around my neck and roughly pulled me to face the stairs.
The murder of crows chaotically mobbed the floor below, occasionally flying up the stairs before wheeling around and diving back in. I knew from experience that it would be impossible to see down there. I wondered how his Shape worked. He had some way of getting information from the birds. Could he see through their eyes or was it purely a matter of intimately knowing their behaviour and cries?
“Your allies are still fighting back,” he muttered into my ear, “but it is in vain. I have already sent out a messenger bird. The main force will come and wipe them out.”
A figure rose out of the sea of feathers and dark moving shapes. He held a handgun wrapped in a piece of dark fabric. His face was covered by a black balaclava.
The Crowman saw him a second later and something heavy smashed into the side of my face. My vision grew spotty for a moment and I sagged, but he managed to hold me upright. I felt the barrel of the gun press against my head through the hole he’d made in my armor.
“No moving or I shoot your friend,” he ordered.
“You shoot him and I shoot you,” was the gruff response between heavy breaths.
I recognized the voice. “Richard,” I said.
“Nick. I’m glad that it’s you and not B.”
“How did you get past the crows?” I asked.
Richard didn’t move a muscle as he kept his gun trained on us. “Didn’t really. Just covered anything shiny and crawled through. They’re just dumb birds.”
The Crowman shouted something in Mandarin, then switched and said, “How?! My men are still holding out on the first floor.”
Richard barked out a laugh and I felt the Crowman stiffen. “That isn’t what I would call it. Did your crows tell you that?”
“Richard,” I said.
“What?”
“Listen carefully.”
The Crowman shoved the gun harder against my temple. “No talking!” he shouted. He was losing control.
I met Richard’s eyes. I didn’t doubt that he had killed the man downstairs. I saw no mercy in his expression, but I did see his hesitation. Both of the men didn’t want to be the one to break the stalemate.
“Remember the discussion we had about trust?” I asked.
“No.”
“Graham told the crew that we needed to have trust in one another. He demonstrated that quite dramatically.”
Richard looked confused. “I don’t understand.”
Stars exploded into my vision as the Crowman pistol whipped me. “Shut up!”
I gritted my teeth. “You remember that happening, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So, I need you to trust me, just like Graham.”
Understanding dawned on Richard’s face. His gun lowered ever so slightly. “Seriously?”
I braced myself. “Yes.”
The Crowman had switched to ranting in frenzied Mandarin.
“You’re sure?”
“I trust you.”
Richard squared off and shot me in the chest.
I heard the bang and felt the sharp tug at my chest. The force of the blow made my muscles give out and I slumped over. The Crowman reacted, whistling and pointing the gun at Richard over my shoulder. Buzzing with adrenaline, I seized the arm, pulling him down with me. The gun fired as the crows rose up like a storm from the lower level. They filled the space, blanketing the floodlights with the sheer number of their bodies.
The Crowman tried to throw himself away from me and I only held on by a few fingers caught on his sleeve. Crows descended on us, pecking away at any exposed skin. I felt like I was holding my breath, except I wasn’t trying to. Pain radiated from my entire chest, as if the bullet had bounced around inside me.
“Nick!” Richard shouted.
I couldn’t find the breath to respond as I wrestled with the Crowman. With a surge of effort, I rolled on top of him. Blindly, I sought his mouth, then shoved my fingers into it. He bit down and I forced another layer of bone out of my skin, pushing his teeth apart.
Then I leaned over and rapped my armored palm against the concrete.
There was a rustle of something being dragged across the floor and then Richard appeared, covering us in a slashed piece of orange tarp.
Talons scrabbled on the exterior, trying to get at us. Richard turned on the flashlight on his phone, illuminating our makeshift tent.
We waited for the storm to die down, with the Crowman gagged by my fingers. Liquid rose in my throat and I coughed. Droplets of blood painted the front of the Crowman’s jacket. His teeth were grinding against my armored fingers. I managed to take the tiniest of breaths.
“Fuck,” I wheezed.
Richard pulled back the slide on his gun to examine the chamber, then pointed it at the Crowman.
I forced another word out, “No.”
Richard scowled at me. “No? We have to.”
“No.”
Richard scoffed. “So you just hold him there until you bleed out? Is that the plan?”
I just coughed in response. The Crowman had gone still.
“Don’t kill-” I said weakly.
“Stop trying to speak. I think your lung is punctured,” Richard said angrily. “Listen to me for a goddamn second, you naive sack of shit. You waltz in here, into my world and think you can play by different rules. It’s eat or be eaten. This pure-minded vigilante ‘I’m not going to kill’ shit, it’s despicable. There’s plenty more bullets for you to take from people less charitable than me. And the number of guns pointed at you is only going to go up, since you don’t have the spine to finish the job!”
The crows began to calm down, their loud caws turning into more muted noises.
“Don’t fall asleep on me,” Richard quietly muttered as he hesitantly raised a corner of the tarp and then when nothing shot through to attack us, he lifted it off entirely.
I focused on my breathing, blinking back spots in my vision. The emotional pulses from Nell reassured me.
I looked over to where B was huddled over their laptop, too absorbed in what they were seeing to worry about the scratches and cuts all over their face.
My gut sank as I recognized them.
Ah fuck, this was going to get complicated.