High Society (The High Stakes Saga #3)

My tongue felt thick and swollen in the desert that was my mouth. Heavy eyes blinked to clear my vision, but saw nothing but a bright, blinding gray. Bright gray… with roots. No, not roots, but a broad circle of mostly bare tree limbs framing the sky. Stiff leaves blew across the sky as the wind tore the few that were left from their branches. A thin layer of fog stretched among the trunks and lay cold and wet over me. Sunlight was just beginning to evaporate the mist.

Crows cawed from their perches, the rattle of their claws shifting across the branches as they stared down from above. One bird cried out to another. And another. My eyes tracked them.

Caw.

Caw. Caw.

It was a huge murder of crows.

Why are there so many?

Some flew into the sky, circling until the invisible rings they flew in felt like nooses. Others dove to the ground, pecking at the dirt nearby.

The explosions that greeted me upon my arrival had stopped and the earth was quiet, except for the crows that moved restlessly along the grass and branches, and the ones that circled and cawed and pecked.

For a moment, I relaxed and breathed it all in. Nice and deep and slow.

Until something else surfaced. Beneath all the other smells…the dry grass, the desiccated autumn leaves, and the smoke trails… lurked something familiar. I closed my eyes and attempted to place the scent, then tried unsuccessfully to move. The smell was somehow more unpleasant than my unfortunate condition.

I need to get out of here. Now.

Pain lanced and throbbed a steady rhythm through my head, and my hands and arms ached with pain that would not ebb. My back was numb. I couldn’t move my legs, but my fingertips flinched at my command.

How long have I been out?

A male groan cut through the crow song, sending a few of the fowls skittering skyward.

I remembered that Titus had locked arms with me and Abram when we jumped together from the crow’s nest of Enoch’s ship. I tried to speak, but only a dry squeak came out. Clearing my throat and trying to will some saliva into my mouth, I finally managed a raspy, “Titus?” I could see a body lying to my left, and I hoped it was his. “R’you okay?” I slurred.

Titus answered with another groan, this one quieter but more urgent than the last. His breathing was wild and ragged.

“Calm down. We just landed,” I told him, still unable to move my neck or head. My fingers flinched toward him. My suit had activated and I could feel myself strengthening, but it wasn’t a fast process. In fact, it seemed to happen slower with each jump.

“Can you see anything?” I asked.

The Compound had a spacious lawn on one side, but if we’d landed there, we would be able to see the building. We’d see a lot of buildings. And here, the only thing in the clouded sky were branches and birds. If we were back home, and the theory of connection to our targets was right, then we could have landed near our targets and not necessarily close to the Compound itself.

Or did linking arms change things? Because of our connection, did we get pulled to an area situated between the three targets? Was Abram lying on the other side of me? Was it him moaning and mumbling? I couldn’t tell who it was, just that the voice was deep.

He mumbled something unintelligible. His tongue must feel strange, too.

The sound of unfurling feathers came from beside me. A crow let out a loud caw before snapping its beak and tearing at something. Was it tearing at Titus? “He’s not food,” I scolded. “Shew!” I waved my fingers as emphatically as I could, trying to get rid of the fowl, when my hand flinched. My body was healing.

The creature’s claws bit into the soil and trampled the grass as it hopped around. I froze. In the distance someone wailed, but the sobbing quickly turned into a frantic pant, becoming blood-curdling shrieks that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

“Who’s there? Abram?” I yelled.

Just as suddenly as it began, the screaming stopped.

I could see the bird bouncing beside me in my peripheral vision, pecking at something. Another crow landed beside my leg and nipped at my suit, pinching the skin of my thigh with its sharp beak. “Ouch, damn it! I’m not your food.”

Undeterred, the bird kept nipping. I continued to yell at it, trying to shoo it away with stiff fingers and hands before my arm decided to join the party. The bird stopped nipping when I gave it a sloppy slap.

The groaning started again from my left.

I strained, trying to raise my head. A fraction of an inch didn’t help much, but I kept trying. Straining more, I finally managed to tilt my head to the left where one of the figures lay. But it wasn’t Titus lying next to me. Nor was it Abram.

A scream tore from my throat as I realized the crow was pecking at the eyes of a young boy who couldn’t have been more than thirteen. A discarded tricorn hat lay beside his head. The bird was perched on it, teetering with its movements as the crow tore at the young boy’s eyelids.