Page 44 of Corvus and the Broken God

I had an idea of how to really scare him. If it would be enough to save his life, I wasn’t sure. But it wouldn’t work if we were indoors. “Lead the way.” I held out my hand, pointing to the door. He moved quickly, eager to show me or maybe to get away from the house.

Camazotz was closing in, and at first, I feared we were out of time. I felt his attention on me as if he were watching from nearby, most likely from the tops of the trees. When he didn’t approach us, I figured he was watching to see how I handled the problem, so I studied Darryl as I moved in his footsteps. He was tall, about six-foot-one, and built like someone who hiked the mountain trails regularly. Possibly weighing two hundred pounds or just under. For what I was planning, I’d need to be bigger than I’d been the day before. Then again, it depended on what he had planned for me.

The bright sunshine warmed my face, reminding me I hadn’t been outside all day, but the cheer it inspired wouldn’t fuel me. I needed to be ruthless. He led us out the main gates and over the creek, but instead of taking me down the steep driveway, he veered off to the north and up to a promontory, the only ground higher than the house. His steps grew longer, and I had to jog to keep up.

He took us up a rudimentary path with a noticeable walkway despite the lack of maintenance. None of the house’s inhabitants relied on paths to get where they needed to go. We preferred to fly instead of hike up mountaintops. His familiarity with the terrain made me think Darryl had been up here regularly. He would’ve had to wait until he saw us in town, or he’d been spying for a while. Maybe there was another path leading in, which I would need to find and make impassable.

Finally, we cleared the crest of the path, reaching the highest point of Camazotz’s mountain. I slowed to catch my breath and take in the dramatic scene before me, the valley to the south spectacular in its unspoiled beauty. Breathing in the magic of the place, I understood in my bones why he loved this place. Over my shoulder, I could see the top of the tower. A large bird perched in the highest tree. He was watching us.

“Morgan, look at this.” I turned with a frown, Darryl’s grating voice tainting the spiritually charged vantage point.

He stood by a mound covered in rocks the size of grapefruits. Symmetrical indentations of where they had previously been half-buried, now only a pockmarked half-mound, showed where they had been dug up. The rocks were pulled to the side, the site desecrated by the man in front of me. He waited only to see that he had my attention before kneeling and moving more rocks to the side. He kept at it until most were off the mound, then looking back at me and motioning me close. I approached with trepidation, still holding the skull.

“There are at least three other bodies buried here,” he said. I looked down at the disturbed earth.

“See, here and here. That’s what the skull looked like before I dug it up the other day.”

I leaned closer, unable to look away. The round bone nestled in the earth looked about the same size as the head I held in my hand.

“Who knows how many are here,” he said, reading my own thoughts.

“What are you planning to do?”

“I’m going to take that one to the sheriff. Then he will have to come up here. You have somewhere to go, right? I don’t want you to be here when they arrest him.”

“Arrest him? Seriously, Darryl, this skull isn’t fresh. It could’ve been here for hundreds of years.”

“Are you willing to risk it?”

My mind raced. I looked up at the sky. Where was my Monster, and did he actually expect me to handle this disaster? No, he just wanted to erase the problem. “What does the sheriff think?”

“He doesn’t know anything yet. I needed proof of something sinister happening up here, and now I have it.”

“Have you told anyone else?”

“Not yet. I just saw Benjamin in town and thought I would come up and warn you. I didn’t have to give you the courtesy.”

“So, you had the skull already but didn’t tell anyone.”

“What are you saying, Morgan?”

He finally looked at me. I had already started changing. My legs stretched and thickened, strong muscles built in my thighs, arms, and core. Wings burst from beneath my shoulder blades, trapped for a few breaths before shredding the back of my shirt. My eyesight sharpened. Darryl watched in horror as I loomed over him.

Did you honestly think it was all a hallucination? That we issue empty threats. My voice boomed in his head. He stepped back and shrank in on himself, now smaller than me by at least a foot. This next part was tricky, since the last thing I wanted was to strengthen our bond, but I needed to know what he was thinking.

I pushed inside his head, to the place where his fear had shut down rational thought.

Calm down, Darryl. Keep it together. You’ve let me down once, but I need to know something for certain.

His knees buckled, and he went down to the ground, finally understanding the depth of his error in coming to warn me. I leaned down, keeping our eyes connected, listening closely to what his brain told me. He stood frozen in fear on the outside while desperately trying to come up with a way out of this on the inside. I didn’t have to listen for long. His thoughts betrayed him.

“I-I-I promise not to tell anyone, Morgan. Let me g-g-go, and you’ll never see me again.” Except that was not what he was thinking. He planned to tell me whatever I needed to hear to make his escape and, in his mind’s words, bring down the wrath of God on our house. I couldn’t let it happen.

“Okay, fine,” I said, out loud this time, to ease his fear. I might have looked like the devil’s bride, but for the next few moments, I could not act like a monster. And his fear was upsetting. “Get up. But this is your last chance, understand?”

“Yes, oh, thank you, Freya. I can’t tell you…”

As soon as he was upright, I grabbed him, just under his armpits, kicking off and flapping until I caught the wind. He weighed me down, almost dragging us back to earth, but my increased wingspan and added muscles made it just possible to hoist both our bodies into the sky. Darryl froze again, forgetting to fight me until I dove toward the edge of the cliff. If I dropped him near the edge and someone found him, they would think he fell or was pushed. Damn, I should’ve thought of it sooner.