Page 13 of Collected By the Crow

“No. His dying breath cursed me with these deformities. Had he not died halfway through, I would’ve become a crow.”

“Oh.” It was definitely a sore spot. She surveyed the mess of a room again. “Why haven’t you gotten rid of all this?”

He paused a moment, utterly still and quiet. When he spoke, the words came as though they pained him. “When I question my decision, I think of this room. I did what was necessary.”

If this was the reality he’d lived in, no wonder he wasn’t thinking about the patriarchy. If he’d truly lived through things like this, human problems were far from his mind.

Qadaire reached toward her and she accepted his hand. He curled it inside his elbow and led her back to the hallway.

“Hey, listen.” She paused their stride and fidgeted with the hem of her oversized nightshirt. “The reason I was wandering around your house. I’m sorry. I think I’m just worked up about all this, and it doesn’t help how unbelievable this situation is. I mean . . .” She accidentally glanced at his bare torso, the rippling muscles there, including an extra set of pecs for his extra set of arms. “You didn’t deserve that. Hell, you probably couldn’t have changed much anyway. The patriarchy has survived worse than a well-intended scientist.”

Qadaire’s expression didn’t shift from stony detachment. Once again, it was like she was talking to the offensive gargoyles out front. As the silence stretched on, her heart pounded a little harder. Was he angry? Would he suck her blood? Her lips tightened and sank toward her chin.

He grunted. His bottom pair of arms crossed over his torso, mirroring her stance. His upper right hand rose, hovered in the air, then dropped. His left raked over the feathers on the back of his neck. His frown returned in full force and he nodded, then proceeded down the hallway. It was the most expressive she’d seen him yet.

“We good?” she asked.

“Yes. Good.”

Okay then. She’d met some awkward folks, especially coming from her field. She’d always preferred animals to humans herself, the main reason she’d gone to vet school. When she went on for her pathology degree, she was isolated further, from bustling vet clinics to a quiet lab. But this hermit took the cake. He had all the social skills of a cactus. It made her want to smile.

When they reached the bedroom, she paused with the door ajar. “You really killed him? The descendant of Dracula?”

Qadaire nodded.

“You must be pretty powerful, then.”

“I am far from who I once was.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.” She stepped into the room and started to close the door, peering around it to say, “See you in the lab tomorrow?”

Another curt nod. She closed the door and rolled onto her back. She was now convinced he was what he said he was. Despite that he was more gentle than the powerful vampire he might’ve once been, she couldn’t forget that he was dangerous.

And yet. . .

He was not afraid to stand up for what was right. To fight for those who couldn’t. Even those he’d never seen or spoken to. That level of compassion, it couldn’t be wielded by someone evil. Right?

She was nauseous. Lingering disgust over the awful paintings and the wicked science experiments. Fear to be in the presence of a life-consuming being. Respect for a man—vampire—who refused to be a bystander. And something else, in the periphery. It all congregated in her gurgling belly.

“Scoot over.” Cass nudged Zero, who was fast asleep regardless that she’d skipped their nightly reading.

The smell of Qadaire’s pillow was rich, like budding maple trees. She fell into sleep, with dreams of roaming hands and falling leaves.

Chapter Eight

Qadaire

Bereft of his bedroom, Qadaire stayed in the study. He didn’t require sleep as often as humans, so there he was, pacing and flipping a particularly shiny gold coin over his knuckles.

He stopped at the window, where a few crows huddled in the corner, watching him. “I should kick her out in the morning. This is no place for a human.”

He glowered at the crows and their raspy objections. “I am a threat to her and she doesn’t even seem to care!”

Whether his friends agreed or not, he knew. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his body parts to himself, not with how her aroma taunted him, how her insightful questions challenged him intellectually, how the chorus of her blood sang in rounds. He imagined pulling her close, his lower hands on her waist and his uppers buried in her slick black hair. How the slope of her jaw would feel under his fingertips. How her fingers would feel buried in his feathers. How his fangs would feel plunged into her supple flesh.

“Enough!” he barked. The gold coin flew across the room, smashing a glass cupboard to pieces. He growled and retrieved it from the floor. He stood and considered the broken cabinet, where a stack of board games sat on the shelf. His head tilted. He grabbed the top one, a card and dice game, and set it aside. The next was a character-piece game with challenge cards and a tiled road. The third was a marble game, the fourth a satirical murder mystery. The last, a critical-thinking game of mathematics.

Did she like games? He fussed with his arm feathers until they lay flat. Would she play with him? He glanced at the window, where one crow remained.

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