No Humans Involved
Page 82

A soft sound came to my left, so faint that I first mistook it for the rustle of a leaf. Then I heard Jeremy, softly calling my name.
I leapt to my feet and hurried toward the sound. Jeremy was walking toward a garden of rosebushes, moving fast, his gaze on a shifting patch of earth. Something small and gray darted back and forth as if pushing the dirt away.
Jeremy slowed. "Isn't that the spot where-?"
The ground erupted in a flurry of dirt. Even Jeremy reeled back.
"Raw-raw-raw-"
The garbled raucous cry echoed through the garden as the dirt continued to fly, the thing at its center moving so fast it was only a blur under the geyser of dirt. I saw something long and flat and broad, flapping against the ground. A wing.
The dead bird. The one Jeremy had uncovered and I'd reburied.
Once I realized what I was seeing, I could recognize all the parts- the eyeless head lolling, neck broken, one leg grabbing dirt, trying to find its grip, the other leg jabbing at the earth, the claws gone, wing beating frantically, trying to take off. The bird kept screaming in fear and pain, battering itself against the ground as it tried to make its broken body work. The stink of it filled the air, that horrible rotting-
"Jaime!" Eve's voice was harsh at my ear. "Send it back."
All I could do was stare at the bird.
"Goddamn it, Jaime. Send it back!"
I snapped out of it then, my lips flying in the invocation that would free the bird's soul from its body. The garbled screeching stopped and the tiny corpse fell to the earth, dirt raining down on its still form.
For a moment, nobody moved. Even Jeremy seemed shocked into speechlessness.
Life from death. The darkest power. In my hands.
After a moment, Jeremy moved in to clean up. He said something to me and I responded, but I don't know what I said. I walked past him, as stiff and unseeing as a sleepwalker. He caught my arm, tried to get me to stay, but I mumbled something-again, I don't know what-and kept going.
I walked back to my ritual setup and dropped to my knees. A rock jabbed into my shin hard enough to cut me. Warm blood welled up. I couldn't find the energy to wince.
"It's over," Eve said, from somewhere close. "Yeah, it was bad, but it's over and the bird's free and it happened so fast it probably doesn't remember anything."
She kept reassuring me that the bird was okay, but we both knew that when I closed my eyes, I didn't see a broken and rotting bird, screaming and flapping in terror. I saw a child. Until now, I'd only imagined what I intended to do to these children. Now I saw it, heard it, smelled it.
"We'll find another way." Jeremy's voice, somewhere above me, his words drifting past.
Eve said nothing, but I could feel her tension as she held her tongue.
"We'll find another way."His voice was beside me now, as if he'd dropped to his knees.
"He's right," Eve said finally. "This was a bad idea-"
"No. I'm going to do it."
"You don't need-" Jeremy began.
"Yes, I do." I followed the sound of his voice, forced my gaze to focus and saw him crouched beside me. "This time I'll release the soul as soon as we see something. We don't have time to back off now and do more research. Better to-" I swallowed, "-just do it and do it fast."
Jeremy hesitated, then nodded. "Would you like me to go? Leave you be?"
"No." I met his gaze. "Please don't."
So, with him beside me, and Eve scouting, I began again. My heart beat so hard I could scarcely breathe. When I closed my eyes, I saw the bird again. Every time a child's ghost touched me, I jumped, as if in guilt.
"Take some time," Jeremy murmured. "Everyone inside is busy packing. No one's going to bother us."
When I couldn't relax, Jeremy tried distracting me with a story from his youth. Any other time, I'd have hung on his every word, sifting through the tale for insight. But, even though his story took place in his late teens, it made me think of childhood. Of the children. And underscoring his words, I heard them whispering.
As I leaned forward, sweat dripped onto the chalk symbol. I picked up the chalk to fix it, but my fingers were trembling so badly I snapped the piece in two. Moving to grab the fallen end, I accidentally erased the chalk edge with my knee.
"Here," Jeremy said, reaching for the larger piece of chalk.
I managed a weak smile as he filled in the missing parts. "Now I'm a true celebrity necromancer. I even get professional artists to draw my symbols."
A joke weaker than my smile, so I didn't blame him for not smiling back. When I looked, though, he seemed not to have heard at all, but had withdrawn into his thoughts. After a moment, he lowered the chalk to the paving stones and drew something to the side of my ritual setup.
"Remember those runes I mentioned? The ones I see?" he said as he drew. "This is one of them. Not for protection, but for calming."
He finished the simple design, then took my hand and laid it on the symbol.
"Now, maybe these are just part of some secret code I found on a cereal box when I was a boy but-" He met my gaze. "I think-I feel-there's more to them than that."
And as I knelt there, his hand light and warm on mine, the rough stone beneath, the edges of the rune running past my ringers, I could feel the anxiety and panic seeping from me, as if drawn into the stone.
I began the incantation, my hands on the rune, his on mine, and the words flowed with a confidence I rarely felt.