Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 49

(1)

The whole swamp seemed to lift into the air, propelled by titanic pressure from below. Crow felt himself rising into the night, hurtling through shadows and flame and confusion; he felt Val being pulled away from him, heard her scream. Mike was screaming, too. He pitched end over end and landed in a thick holly bush. The bush softened the impact, but Crow could feel something twist in his lower back. Dirt and wormy mud continued to geyser up, shooting high into the smoky sky before raining down heavily all around him. The corpses of the vampires were thrown around like dolls.

A great roar filled the air. Dirt and mud fell all over Crow; he sputtered and spit it out as he shouted for Val and tried to scramble around to find her. The act of turning sent daggers of pain through his back and stomach, pain darted and sparked along the backs of his legs. Fiery light swarmed like fireflies around his head, but there was a narrow corridor of clear vision and he strained to see what it was that had caused the fearful eruption. The muddy earth in the center of the swamp had been churned and torn away. Huge masses of it were clumped around, displaced and discarded, piled up to create a crater rim like the earthworks of a volcano. A few of the surviving vampires, seared and battered, crawled like grubs away from the hole.

There was another deep rumbling sound, and as he watched something impossibly massive began rising from the mouth of the crater. It rose slowly, unfolding from the mud, assuming a shape like a man’s and yet unlike anything that had ever lived. Legs like Greek columns lifted its bulk, and the colossal torso straightened by slow degrees to raise the gigantic head; vast arms stretched wide and as the monstrosity reached its full height it stood over fifteen feet tall. Its skin was mottled and slimy, covered with a pale and leprous flesh that oozed and glistened with open sores and pustules; its legs were like those of a great towering goat and seemed to be composed of twist upon twist of braided tree root and warped bone, all of it wrapped in layers of raw muscle fiber that shone wetly with blood and mucus. The torso itself was man-shaped, but its wet flesh was a horrifying patchwork of rat and dog skin, splotchy with patches of bloody fur. The shoulders were covered with writhing hair composed entirely of living maggots that were fused into the skin. The neck was as thick as a bull’s and was topped with a face more horrible than any medieval gargoyle: there were two burning red eyes that fumed and smoked and glared out over a boar’s snout on either side of which rose thick tusks. Thinner fangs, like those of a rattlesnake, curled downward on the insides of the tusks and hot venom dripped onto the heaving chest and sizzled on the squirming flesh. The beast’s brow was heavy and sloped, giving the skull a simian cast, but the ears were large and came to sharp points. Writhing atop the head was a gorgon’s nest of twisting snakes.

Crow stared up into the face of pure evil, and he could feel the hope run out of him like water from a punctured barrel. His mind twisted and struggled, trying to accept what he was seeing, and he knew terror on every level of his consciousness, from the coldest facets of his logical mind to the primal instincts buried deep within every cell. This was the face of nightmare defined, this was the dark at the top of the stairs, this was the monster in every child’s closet. This was the darkness of the human soul released and given immeasurable power; this was the human potential taken to the ultimate degree of corruption. This was the fear of death and all the monsters out of legend. This was the devil himself.

Here was the architect of all their grief, all of their loss. Here was the cruel intellect whose awful desires had conceived the campaign of hurt against the town and its people. This was Ubel Griswold reborn, the god of the dark new world to come.

(2)

Griswold looked slowly around at the devastation he wrought. He stood in a fiery temple whose smoky pillars seemed to lift the entire heavens. Beneath his skin the vermin of the earth writhed in constant agony so that his skin appeared to shimmer. When he looked out upon what his hand had made, he was well pleased.

Crow lay nearest, groaning, hands clamped to his stomach; Val was fifty feet away, slumped against LaMastra’s corpse. Ruger’s dead body lay over the rim of the crater and near it the werewolf crouched, still weak and bleeding, its yellow eyes filled with fear and hate. Mike was the farthest away, his sword hilt inches from his hand; his eyes were wide and staring and all hope was struck from his face.

Ubel Griswold threw back his head and laughed. It was a sound too deep, too loud, too jarring to be real. Crow jammed his fists against his ears and cried out as blood burst from his nostrils.

Griswold took a single step forward and the whole clearing shook; another step and the sound was like the fall of an artillery shell. Crow felt his body lift and thump down with each cloven footfall, and his mind rebelled against such a creature. The world was never meant to endure the weight of such a thing as this, and Crow knew that if it was here, if had been allowed to manifest itself, then everything was lost, that all sense and order were gone from the world.

Griswold eyed them all with amused contempt. “What a collection of useless shit,” he said in a voice that boomed like thunder.

Crow remembered that voice, that thick accent, from a million years ago.

“Did you really have the conceit to think you could stop me? That you could stop my Red Wave?” He stamped down a yard from Crow’s head and the shock wave threw Crow five feet into the air. “I was leading armies before this sewer of a country was even born! I was with the Aryan hordes that burned Rome! I’ve walked a thousand battlefields, ten thousand!” He spat, and the spittle was alive with beetles and maggots. “You all deserve death just because you’re too stupid to be allowed to live.” Griswold said all this in a voice filled with contempt, but his face was bright with pleasure. He was enjoying this on a profoundly sexual level; this was better than anything he’d felt in thirty years. To smell blood on the air, to taste the richness of pain on his tongue—it was wonderful.

He bent toward Crow and pointed one taloned finger, and as Crow watched in helpless horror the finger extended, became one of the multijointed limbs that had sprouted earlier from the mud. The claw stretched toward Crow and touched him, but the touch was light, a caress. “Yesss. I know you. I know your blood. Your brother squealed like a little girl when I gutted him.”

He sneered with malicious delight as he turned toward Val. “I know you, too. I had your uncle. Very tasty. He screamed for mercy, did you know that? He begged and screamed and pissed in his pants, and I took him anyway. Weak, cowardly piece of garbage. But his blood was oh so sweet. And when Boyd killed your brother…I tasted that, too. It was delicious.”

He turned again, this time to the werewolf, who tried to stand erect, but failed and slipped back down to all fours. The werewolf snarled at him and Griswold shook his head slowly. “You disappoint me,” he said. “You were supposed to be at my side, and yet you turn on me. I even brought your woman here to be my sacrifice—a sacrifice I would have shared with you, and yet you kill my servants. That will cost you.”

Finally Griswold turned to Mike. “And you. My son. My betrayer. Dhampyr indeed! I may not be able to kill you, but I can hurt you. I can make your world a screaming hell until you take your own life. I will delight in finding ways to torment you, dhampyr. Perhaps I’ll lock you and your other father in the same cellar and see what happens. He isn’t evil, it seems, and that means he can kill you and it won’t harm me at all. Very droll, don’t you think? Yesss, I will lock you away together and wait until he gets hungry enough. That will be sweet.”

Crow saw Mike stare across the clearing to where the werewolf crouched, saw the sight of the creature register on Mike’s face, and Mike scrambled into a defensive crouch.

“I used his body once. I wore it like a suit of skin and in it I used your mother. Oh…she was sweet, my little dhampyr! Would you like to know the things she did? Would you like to know the things she liked? Would it shock you? Would it make you scream the way I made her scream?”

Mike snatched up his sword and rushed at Griswold. The sword flashed and Griswold reached down from his towering height and simply smashed the boy into the mud. The sword fell from his hands and he lay gasping in the muck, his eyes wide and staring from the enormity of the pain.

Griswold sighed. “God! I’ve wanted to do that since you were born, you worthless waste of blood.”

“Leave him alone!” yelled Crow as he lurched to his feet, took one decisive step toward Mike, and immediately fell flat on his face. He coughed and blood flecked his lips.

Griswold’s laugh shook the world. In the air above tens of thousands of crows screamed as the echo assaulted the sky. Around him the forest was ablaze.

Then Griswold bent down and from behind the ridge of the crater he lifted the limp, sagging body of Sarah Wolfe. Crow looked up and tried to call her name, but his voice was only a faint croak. Sarah stirred in Griswold’s grasp, but did not wake. Blood trickled from both of her ears; her eyes were half-open and sightless with shock.

“Ah, my sweet,” Griswold murmured, stroking her with a long talon. He sniffed at her, smelling her blood, and his eyelids fluttered as if he had just inhaled the most potent of opiates. “You are a gift for a god. Just a little sip, just a taste, and then I can leave this place. Just a tiny drop of your blood and I will leave here forever and this world will be mine.” He sniffed her again and then caught sight of Crow worming his way brokenly through the mud. “Did my son tell you what is going to happen? Oh, I know he looked into that schwartze musician’s mind—do you think he could have done that without me letting him? It amused me to have him look and to feel his pain at what he saw. Do you know what he saw? Shall I tell you? He saw the end of your world. He saw the coming of a new Dark Age. I will darken your skies and your lives forever. I will build my armies and spread out across the face of this world, and every nation will fall because they will not know how to fight what I am. Do you think the cross will stop me? I piss on your cross! Do you think garlic and rosewood will stop me? Weeds and garbage! I’m above such nonsense. There is nothing in your world that can stop me, and my army will be vast and powerful. How can your armies hope to stop mine with guns and tanks? I can raise all of the dead across the whole of the world. Every cemetery is a fresh battalion for me, and as I kill my enemies they will become my newest recruits. Nothing can stop me. Not now, not ever again.”

He closed his flaming eyes for a moment and drew in a deep lungful of air through the dripping nostrils of his porcine snout. “Can you smell the fire and blood? That is the perfume of Armageddon.” He opened his eyes and raised Sarah once more to his mouth. A fat, mottled tongue lolled out and licked her throat. Even unconscious she gagged and shifted instinctively away. Griswold looked down at the werewolf, his voice filled with mockery. “To think I was going to share her with you. I was going to let her death be the bond between us. I would have made you a general in my army, equal to Wingate and Ruger. Together we would have washed all the nations of the world in blood. But you are too stupid, too small of mind to understand or appreciate those gifts. Well, see your woman die! See how her blood will set me free, set me on the road to conquest!” His mouth yawned wide and the serpent’s fangs dripped with venom and Sarah’s eyes snapped open and she shrieked with such a deep and overwhelming terror that it filled the whole world and lifted up into the smoky air.

The werewolf’s shriek was almost human as it leapt at Griswold.

If Terry’s mind was still in that hulk of a body, then at that moment, hearing those words, it snapped. Hate can sometimes transcend everything, even injury and fear of the grave. Love is a powerful a force than can move mountains.

As Griswold bent to consume Sarah, Terry Wolfe threw himself at Griswold, slashing and tearing and biting in an insane frenzy of murderous need; his talons opened great rents in the diseased hide and instead of blood it was a torrent of ants and spiders and roaches and slugs that poured from the wounds.

But love and hate were not enough and in the perverse scheme of things on which the universe was built this was not Terry’s fight to win; as powerful as he was, he was no match for the thing that Ubel Griswold had become.

Griswold bellowed in pain and struck out at the werewolf, knocking it dozens of feet through the air; his monstrous hand opened reflexively and Sarah dropped to the torn mud by the massive goat legs, and she lay there as still and silent as the dead. Griswold bent toward her and then recoiled when new pain flared in his chest as Val knelt by the edge of the crater with Crow’s Beretta held in both hands firing spaced shots, punching dark holes in Griswold’s flesh, trying to hit a heart that didn’t exist. There was no blood for the garlic to pollute, no nervous system for the oil to disrupt—but Griswold’s flesh was alive and he could feel pain, even if he could not be killed. He swiped angrily at Val and she scrambled backward, but not fast enough. Just the edge of Griswold’s massive hand struck her forearm, but it was enough. There was a loud crack! and the pistol dropped into the mud. Val screamed as she fell, clutching her broken arm to her stomach.

“Val!” Crow yelled. “Look out!”

Val looked up as Griswold took another thunderous step forward and reached for her, but she was already slithering away through the mud, pushing herself backward with her heels. The huge cloven hoof came down right where she had been and the whole floor of the Hollow shook. Val stumbled to her feet and ran.

The werewolf lunged again, and as it attacked, Crow could see that half of its face was smeared with fresh blood and one ear was hanging by a few red threads; but the claws and fangs were undamaged and it flew at Griswold with supernatural ferocity, catching the towering monster in the back. Griswold hissed in pain and staggered with the impact; he reached around with both hands, trying to dislodge the werewolf, but the creature had buried its fangs into the putrid flesh of Griswold’s waistline and was shaking its head back and forth, worrying the flesh into tatters. Griswold tilted backward as if overbalanced by the werewolf’s weight, and for a moment Crow’s heart leapt in his chest. It looked like the werewolf was winning, was ripping the giant down, was killing him. Griswold tipped backward and only as he fell did Crow realize that Griswold was making himself fall. His gargantuan body crashed backward onto the ground with the werewolf under him. Tons of weight crashed down onto the werewolf’s chest and drove Terry’s body inches into the mud. Crow could hear the snap of bones and a canine yelp of pain.

Griswold rolled over and got to his knees. The werewolf was nearly buried in the mud, pushed deeply into the swampy earth in a tangle of fur and blood. Sharp edges of white bone stood like cactus needles all along the creature’s body, and the chest labored to breathe with tattered lungs. Griswold reared above him and curled his right hand into a powerful bucket-size fist, then with a growl of triumphant hate he punched downward, driving the fist into the werewolf’s chest. The whole rib cage exploded in a spray of blood. A pitiful howl of defeat and agony burst from the creature’s mouth, propelled by a bright red jet of gore. Griswold grinned and punched down again and again and again. Blood splashed the entire clearing and bits of bone flew up and bounced off Griswold’s chest.

Crow was sickened by what he saw, but was helpless and compelled to watch.

Griswold paused for a moment to admire his work. The werewolf was clearly dead, its body destroyed beyond any hope of its superhuman ability to cure. Its spine was shattered in a dozen places, its skull was smashed in, the heart and brain pierced. Griswold peered at the beast and a look of pleasure dawned on his features, then he and Crow watched as a sudden and awful change came over the werewolf. In the space of just a few seconds the thick red fur was sucked back into the body, the musculature shifted, and the shattered bones reoriented themselves even; it was as if Crow was watching some splatter-house film speeded up to superfast motion. In just seconds the werewolf completely vanished and the man emerged.

Crow looked down at the dead man and his heart tore itself to pieces. “Oh my God…Terry!”

Griswold laughed as he raised his fist for a final blow. He put all of his incalculable strength into it and slammed down so hard that blood flew everywhere and the ground shook with earthquake force and the body of Terry Wolfe was driven totally into the ground, out of sight, buried forever in the wormy earth.

“Be damned,” Griswold snarled, “as I was damned.” He punched again, driving the corpse farther down. “Be buried, as I was buried.” And a final earth-shaking blow. “Be forgotten, as I was forgotten.”

Crow looked up at the giant and then down at his own empty hands. His shotgun and pistol were gone, his sword was broken. All he had left was the dagger in the sheath on his belt. A good strong weapon, the blade coated with garlic. He drew it and looked at it. It was a pitiful toy matched against the monster that Griswold had become.

“God help me,” he prayed as he rose to a trembling crouch.

A gunshot startled him and he saw that Val had found the pistol and was holding it in her left hand, her right curled protectively around her stomach. She stood well back from Griswold and was again firing well-aimed shots, hitting every time. Griswold roared in renewed anger and hauled his great bulk to his full height and took a step toward her, but she ran. He lumbered after her, taking a single step for each half-dozen of hers. She ran toward the fires and dodged around them, and Crow scrambled after, calling her name. He realized what she was doing: she was trying to get to the gasoline sprayer, but Griswold was already closing in, bending to grab her.

Crow broke into a run, feeling pain shoot down his legs with each step, feeling something slide hot and wet in his stomach. He was closer to Griswold than he was to Val, and he caught up first. He raised the dagger. “Leave her alone!” he bellowed and drove the blade into the back of Griswold’s right knee. The point of the dagger stabbed deep, severing corded muscle and tendon, and the goat leg buckled and Griswold went down onto the knee; the motion tore the blade out of Crow’s grip and caused the dagger’s point to drive deeper into the joint. Griswold swung around and grabbed at Crow. Crow tried to run, but Griswold was too fast and Crow cried out as the huge hand clamped like a vise around his waist. He was snatched off the ground. He beat at the fist, but he might as well have been beating on a chunk of granite.

“CROW!” he heard Val cry and he looked down to see her fumbling to reload the pistol, making a clumsy job of it with one good arm.

“I’ll tear your soul out of you for that!” promised Griswold and he squeezed harder still. Crow gritted his teeth and tried to beat at the hand, but the pressure only increased. Blood drowned Crow’s vision and roared in his ears; he heard a sound and realized that it was his own voice, screaming a high, shrill note of agony as the fist squeezed tighter and tighter until the bones in Crow’s hips began to crack. Crow could feel his legs dying, he could feel the nerves rending as the bones shifted and splintered.

“Oh…God!”

Griswold leaned close and laughed. “I spit on your God!”

Crow heard a feral growl and turned to see Mike Sweeney slowly rising to his feet, lips curled back from his teeth, his face a mask of unfiltered hate. He clawed through the mud until he found his sword hilt and tore it free.

Griswold turned toward him, a mocking laugh on his lips, and then Mike was at him. The sword slashed in under Griswold’s reaching hand and cut the kneeling giant across the inside of his undamaged leg; immediately that leg buckled and Griswold began to cant sideways. His hand opened and Crow felt himself falling, felt his body land, but he felt it only as a jolt to his upper body; his lower body was dead. He thumped down and saw Mike dodge in again, saw the sword flash out again and another long line open in Griswold’s stomach, near where the werewolf had cut him, though those earlier cuts had long since healed. The same torrent of squirming insects poured out, and Mike danced around them, cutting and cutting. All the time Mike kept screaming “NO! NO!” over and over again at the top of his voice. He was mad, insane, driven to a point of rage beyond anything he had ever imagined, beyond anything Crow had ever witnessed.

Griswold struck at him and again Mike went down, but the boy’s rage was so great that he clawed his way back to his feet and attacked again. Each time his sword licked out another gash appeared on Griswold’s body. Lice and maggots and worms spilled out into the glow of the brush fires and burning corpses. Mike came in again and slipped on a twisting pile of centipedes and started to go down; Griswold howled in triumph and reached for him, moving faster than anything his size should be able to. His hand closed around Mike’s waist the way it had ensnared Crow, but at that moment Val opened up with her reloaded pistol. The first two shots hit Griswold in the face and he reared back in pain, pawing at the damage. Mike seized the opportunity to slash downward with the sword over and over again, half severing the thick wrist. The tendons parted and the hand sagged open, spilling Mike to the ground. Instantly the boy was up again, his fury unabated, his killing frenzy stoked even hotter. The sword slashed and slashed and great stinking chunks of Griswold flew into the night, landing with wet thuds on the torn ground, or falling into the fires, where they popped and sizzled.

“Val!” Crow yelled, “The sprayer…the sprayer!”

He didn’t know if she heard him or had just run out of bullets, but there were no more shots. Mike was still fighting, still holding the moment. Crow looked wildly around for a weapon and saw something on the ground near him; he set his teeth against the pain and used his hands to pull himself toward it. He grabbed it, kissed it, and rolled onto his back, bracing the butt of the Roadblocker against the ground.

Griswold’s roars were ear-shattering; they tore chunks out of the night. And each one sounded stronger. Mike’s arm was tiring, his strength failing, and Griswold was regaining his strength despite the wounds the dhampyr inflicted. Whatever supernatural force the boy possessed was not doing the job; he just wasn’t causing enough damage.

Crow pulled the trigger of the big Mag-10 and the recoil buried the stock four inches into the mud. The bear-shot caught Griswold under the chin and snapped his head back like a boxer’s when he stepped into an uppercut. Half of Griswold’s porcine snout was gone, the raw meat seething with insects.

The air in front of Crow shimmered—just like it had after LaMastra died—and for a moment, just for a fraction of a second, Crow thought he saw a man standing there. Gray skin that had once been chocolate brown, intelligent eyes that were now dusty, a smile that Crow still remembered after all these years. The Bone Man looked at him and his mouth formed the words, “Little Scarecrow.”

The Bone Man turned and leapt at Griswold, flying high into the air as if he had no weight. Then he was gone, but Griswold staggered as if struck and Crow knew that the Bone Man had dealt his blow. But there was far more to the Bone Man’s attack than that. Suddenly the air was filled with a new sound and Crow looked up as the air was rent by the screams of ten thousand birds and the dry, hysterical rustle of countless wings. The night sky above the clearing coalesced into a funnel of black that spiraled down and down and down as all the night birds of Pine Deep came at the Bone Man’s call.

Griswold turned his ruined face upward—a face that even now was starting to reconstruct itself—and Crow saw fear on those features. Real fear. Crow jacked a round into the breech and fired again just as the wave of crows hit Griswold like a fist. The combined impact drove Griswold to the ground with a thunder that shook the valley. Hundreds, thousands of the birds died in that first moment, their skeletons shattered as they hit, but the birds kept coming in wave after wave.

Crow jacked another round and fired, knowing that the blast would kill some of the birds, too, but it had to be done. He fired, pumped, fired.

Mike stood his ground on the far side, slashing at his father’s flesh, releasing the vermin, watching as the crows attacked them.

There was a hissing sound and Val was there, the spray tank on the ground where she’d dragged it, the pistol grip in her left hand, the gasoline splashing Griswold’s torso and throat and chest.

Crow fired his last shot and dropped the gun. He dug into his pocket for his lighter and started crawling again, needing to be near for this. Mike was sobbing as he hacked at Griswold; Val was screaming. The noise of the birds was maddening, and throughout it all Griswold’s voice shook the heavens and his fists smashed down and slaughtered the birds.

Crow yelled and he tasted blood in his mouth as he flicked the lighter on and slammed it down onto the gas-soaked mud.

“Go back to hell!”

The night opened its great dark mouth and roared with a tongue of flame. A sheet of fire shot into the air and Crow rolled away, beating at the flames on his arm and hair. Val dropped the sprayer and rushed to him, and they clung together in the furnace heat. Griswold roared in terror and pain as the fire attacked him like a living thing, like a white-hot predator. Together they crawled over to where Sarah lay, and when Crow pressed his fingers to her throat, there was a slow but steady rhythm.

The heat slammed into Mike like a fist, but he stood his ground. Even when his eyebrows singed to ash and his hair began to melt Mike held fast and his sword cut and cut through the flames. Mike knew—if he knew nothing else in life for sure—that this was his moment. This truly was what he was born to do. Griswold had not yet fed on Sarah Wolfe’s blood; he had not yet tasted the innocent blood that would send his power soaring off the scale. He could still be hurt, as the flames were hurting him; and he could still be killed, as Mike so dearly wanted to do. If the sword in the hands of a dhampyr was a holy weapon, then so was the fire so long as he touched it, shared the essence of what he was with it. And with the birds. He felt the wings brush him and he knew that it was deliberate, that something—or perhaps someone— was orchestrating the moment. The air shimmered around him and Mike thought he heard the sweet sound of blues music like a calming eye of this dreadful storm. The music put iron back into his muscles and deep in Mike’s soul the eye of the dhampyr finally and completely awoke. Power raced through him like lava, burning through his veins, igniting in his muscles, and as he renewed his attack the inferno around Griswold flared brighter, and the birds plunged and died.

Ubel Griswold screamed even louder, a shriek that rose up to the heavens.

The fire burned Mike’s sword black as it cut, and then the metal began to glow as if it had been buried deep in a forge. He rent and tore at his father as the crows in the air ignited and fell onto Griswold, their own mass adding fuel to the blaze. Thunder cracked above and lightning forked through the sky as if nature itself, finally appalled at the perversity of what had come to life in Dark Hollow, now cried out in protest.

Griswold climbed back to his feet, a flaming god wreathed in fire; he opened his mouth to cry his rage and the flames flooded inside. He thrashed and beat at the birds and the fire, but the fire burned with a greater will even than his. As Val and Crow watched, Griswold’s mighty legs buckled and he dropped to his knees. For a long time he knelt there, burning, his arms still flailing, but with each moment there was less power in his fight, less belief in his own survival. Val and Crow lay there in the mud and the blood and watched the oldest evil, perhaps the oldest sentient thing on earth, burning to death as above them the remaining night birds circled and circled endlessly.

All around Griswold, around the swamp and through the woods to where his house still stood, the trees were on fire. Despite the thunder and lightning, the clouds overhead had parted and a swollen orange moon rode the heavens above the pyres of Halloween.

Mike’s clothes were catching fire, but he stepped closer still so that he could bring his sword high over his head and with a final grunt of effort he chopped down, cleaving between the horns and cutting all the way into Ubel Griswold’s brain. There was a burst of black light that flashed outward and struck Mike like a shock wave so that he staggered back, his eyes rolling up in his head; his sword fell from his twitching fingers as he stumbled backward and finally fell.

It seemed to take forever, but Griswold finally toppled forward onto his face and as he did so the force of will that held his shape together failed. The flesh blackened and burned away and the millions of insects that made up his body popped and hissed and steamed as they were charred to ashes. What the fire did not consume the surviving birds did.

After thirty years of planning, after centuries of hunting as man and wolf, after the meticulous ambition of the Red Wave, Ubel Griswold was dead and all his dark dreams with him.

Crow heard a sound and saw that Mike was crawling painfully toward them, and when he was near Val and Crow pulled him close and slapped out the embers on his clothes. He curled up like a child against them, weeping uncontrollably, clinging to them with absolute need, and they in turn held him, and each other.

“Now it’s over…,” Crow whispered, kissing Val’s face, her hair.

She pressed his hand to her chest over her heart.

Above them the thunder boomed again and the clouds closed once more, and then the rain fell as if Heaven itself wept.