Earl laughed.
Ledger wished it hadn’t. The birds in the trees rustled and chirped in agitated chorus as if they agreed with him.
“Deal,” it said as it let go of him.
The fact he was already leaning on the post was the only thing that kept Ledger on his feet. He rubbed his throat.
“Just to be clear,” he said, in a voice that sounded like he smoked sixty a day, “I keep my bones, I keep my life, you pay me, and you get out of Wren.”
Earl smiled lasciviously. “If you like his cock in you that much,” it said, “I could… fuck you. The things I could do, he’d… never even think of.”
That sunk right into Ledger’s unconscious for later. He could feel the nightmare his brain would script around it already. His balls tried very hard to crawl back up inside his body.
“Don’t fuck what you don’t understand,” he said. “The one piece of useful advice I ever got from my family.”
Earl snorted. “Then I’d never fuck anything,” it said. “You mortals with … your greed and your morals… in equal measure… never make any sense to me. Agreed.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” Ledger said.
Earl tsked and held up its hand, three fingers extended. “Three questions,” it said. “Three favors.”
“You’re going to be dead,” Ledger pointed out.
That made Earl cock its head to the side. “So?”
Ledger closed his eyes and rubbed his head. He’d have liked to have time to get this down on paper—and maybe get his lawyer to look over it. Since that wasn’t possible…
“Deal,” he said. The sinking feeling in his stomach said he’d missed something, something he’d regret, but too late for that. “Get out of Wren.”
Anger twisted Earl’s lips against its teeth at being ordered what to do. But the lure of its death won over pride, and it essayed a short little mockery of a bow, the gut wound on Wren’s stomach splitting open again with the gesture.
“If you’re lying,” Earl hissed as it straightened up. “You’ll wish you’d let me just take… your bones.”
Then Wren’s body dropped. He hit the ground with a thud, sprawled out inelegantly. The antlers that grew out of his skull turned to ash and smoke, just a sketch of them left on the dirt.
As one, all the birds abandoned their roosts in the trees. They swirled around overhead, hundreds of bodies moving as one. Back in the withered corpse it had started in, Earl lifted its head off the ground. It sneered at the birds and held up a hand in a derisive gesture of dismissal, and the murmuration was slapped out of the sky. Birds tumbled over each other, wings flapping desperately, as they were forced away.
Earl got to its feet, limbs and torso bent in alien, unnatural ways. Those dried-out eyes fixed on Ledger.
“Where’s my death?”
CHAPTER25
LEDGER POINTED ATDale, who clutched the spearhead in one bony, bruised hand. “He’s got it.”
Earl swung its head around, and its eyes passed over Dale like it couldn’t even see him. “Is this a joke?” it asked. “There’s nothing… Oh… that.”
It’s eyes finally caught on Dale, as if he’d just stepped into view. Then Earl turned back to Ledger.
“Who is that?”
Dale stepped forward. “Don’t lie.”
“I don’t lie,” Earl said. “I never… lie. It’s not… in me. I don’t know you.”
That awful tearless grief contorted Dale’s face again, and his lips peeled back from stained, worn teeth. He thumped his chest with one hand.
“You did this to me,” he forced out. “You… killed me. You skinned… skinned me while I screamed inside.”
