He couldn’t see a fucking thing. Just darkness and the vague tidal motion of the crops as the wind brushed over them. That was because there was nothing there.
That was probably what Bell’s victims had thought before he got them.
Ledger shook his head to dislodge that paranoia and turned his attention back to the road. He bounced on the balls of his feet for a while and then pulled his phone out of his pocket. It felt like he’d been here for half an hour, but the display marked the time as six minutes past midnight.
Three minutes since his last message had been left on read.
Call or not? Ledger swiped idly through his notifications as he tried to decide the protocol for when the hot boy you asked out to do necromancy on bone dust and asphalt didn’t show up. Ten minutes?
Fifteen sounded… either right or pathetic.
Ledger grunted as he put his phone back in his pocket. The politics of how long to wait were easier to navigate when it was just business and you’d not dreamed about your associate’s tongue in your mouth.
He took one last look up and down the road.
Nothing. The half-rusted Tires for Sale sign on the forecourt of the old Wallace gas station creaked where the wind caught it. In the back of Ledger’s brain, the part of him that was determined to freak him out noted that would be a good place to hide. If you were a murder-hobo.
Enough.
Ledger turned and trudged back toward his car. He was halfway back to the rental when he saw the headlights appear at the end of the road. Too high-set to be Wren. Ledger stepped back from the edge and lifted his hand to shield his eyes as the truck sped toward him.
It kicked up a cloud of dust on the way by, and Ledger turned his head to the side, one eye squinted shut against the cloud of gravel that hit him. Behind him, a flock of small birds was startled from their roosts for the night. Tiny dark-feathered bodies surrounded Ledger, tossed about by the truck’s backdraft. They felt like soft bean bags as they bounced off him, warm and light, and tumbled over each other as they jostled to try and gain air.
One didn’t make it. It bounced off Ledger’s shoulder and then dropped. He caught it without thinking. It lay in his cupped hands, and he could feel the banded tan feathers tickle his skin where it quivered. It blinked at him with a little black eye, its pointed beak gaping open to reveal a thin pink tongue as it gasped for air. Then it stopped.
Its feathers still moved, ruffled by the wind of the passing truck. Then the truck was gone, and it went still. Ledger stared at it for a moment as he wondered what to do with it.
He looked up to see if the other birds were still in view, but there was no sign of them.
Ledger stroked his finger over the little bird’s breast feathers. It had already gone cold. He supposed he could toss it into the field, but before he could, the smell of something old and rancid washed over him, teasing the back of his sinuses.
His stomach turned, and he gagged. Sour bile stung the back of his throat, but he couldn’t taste it over the smell of rotted blood and salted meat. His hands curled protectively around the little corpse as if it was somehow important.
The roadkill on the other side of the road—dog, coyote, or whatever it had been—jerked as if something had kicked it. Then it stretched out a broken paw and dragged itself along the asphalt. Bones cracked and tendons snapped, audible in the quiet, as it got rigor-locked limbs under it. Patches of rotted, mangy hide dropped to the ground as it staggered forward, the flesh underneath scabbed with dirt and pebbles. After a couple of steps, it was yanked up onto its back legs, the grate of bone ground against bone loud, and a slurry of pus and raw meat spilled out of its split-open chest cavity and onto the ground.
Ledger took a step back. He knew better, but he did it anyhow. One step, and then another, until he stumbled back into the fence that divided public land from private crops. The urge to break and justruncramped in his chest like a muscle.
Before he could, Wren grabbed the back of his neck. His fingers were hard and warm as he scruffed Ledger like a dog and walked him back to the edge of the road.
“I thought this wasn’t your first time,” he said in Ledger’s ear.
Ledger had been so caught up in the thing on the road that he’d not even seen Wren arrive. Yet there he was, his pickup parked behind Ledger’s rental.
“This?” Ledger said. His voice was cracked, and it felt like the words were stuck in his fear-dry mouth. “No. No. It’s definitely the first time for this.”
Wren chuckled. His hand tightened, the pinch of his fingers painful enough to make Ledger wince and tilt his head back to try and ease it. Wren leaned in, his lips almost touching Ledger’s ear.
“Don’t show fear,” he said, his voice low and serious. His breath was soft and damp against Ledger’s skin. “Don’t ask more than three questions. Don’t be grateful.”
Two more steps and Ledger’s toes nudged the crumbled edge of the road. Wren nipped his ear, a quick, hard bite, as he let go of Ledger’s neck.
“I’ll take that,” he said, reaching down to pluck the little dead bird from Ledger’s palm. The delicate edges of its wings flickered briefly, and then the bird crumbled to smoke and ashes under Wren’s touch. The smoke lingered around his fingers, threads of it caught on his knuckles as he pointed at the dead thing. “We’re nearly ready.”
Fragments of dust and chips of…. bone, it was bone… skipped and skidded along the road to burrow through the thing’s hide and flesh. It twitched and jerked as it remade itself with each step, tattered hide splitting to make room as it got taller and broader and sickly familiar.
It wasn’t Bell.
The eyes were still an animal’s eyes, dead and colonized by insect eggs, but it had stiff nailless human fingers on one hand, and half of its jaw had oddly placed human teeth. The tongue had been eaten long before any of them got there, but a fresh, useful human one flapped out of the thing’s broken muzzle.
