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“Nah, that’s enough to get anyone’s motor running. Near-death-experience sex. I meanthat.”
She points at my phone, hooked up to the sound system. Outside my voice continues its endless loop of apology and explanation.
When the wind picks up, Jayla says, “Even Mother Nature is trying to drown you out.”
“Hey, as long as it works—”
A smack at the window has us all jumping. A dark shape swoops past. When we realize it’s a crow, Jayla mutters, “Now you’re driving the local wildlife to commit suicide.”
I shake my head. “That’s the problem with large windows. I’ve installed a few things that cut down on the fatalities but—”
Another crow flies at the window. This one swerves at the last second and then hovers there. The sight makes my skin creep. Can crows hover in flight? When it opens its beak and squawks, we all jump.
“Is it supposed to do that?” Jayla asks.
I hurry over to the phone and stop the recording. “It must be sending a weird frequency to birds.”
My voice stops. There’s a moment of complete silence. Then a sound outside the windows. A steady drumbeat. I start toward the windows.I get three feet before Kit stops me. He nods toward the deck, and I remember Garrett and step back. Then something catches my eye—a black cloud heading for the house. My stomach plummets.
Please no more storms, nothing that will stop help from arriving.
It’s not a cloud, though. It’s inky black and undulating like a wave, that drumbeat drawing closer.
“Birds,” Kit says beside me. “It’s… birds.”
He’s right. A flock of crows is heading straight for the house. Again, my brain can only throw up questions. Do crows flock? I’ve never seen it like this—a huge undulating wave of birds flying over the—
The flock swoops toward the house. Kit yanks me back as the first birds hit the bank of windows. They smash into it hard enough that I think I’ve killed an entire flock of crows. Something in the broadcast frequency brought the birds crashing into our windows, breaking their necks.
But the crows don’t break their necks. They hit the windows with their wings, smacking it as they hover there, a black mass covering the entire wall of windows. They smack the glass with their wings and claw with their talons and peck with their beaks.
“What the hell is happening?” Jayla whispers.
Nothing natural. That’s obvious. At first, the birds peck and beat erratically but, like drummers finding a rhythm, within seconds every wing hits in sync. They stop clawing and pecking, and they hover there—impossibly hovering, their bodies still as only their wings move, striking the glass together, like a heartbeat that reverberates through the house.
Slap-slap-slap.
Jayla jams her hands against her ears. “Are they trying to break in?”
“Where can they get in?” Kit says quickly, turning to me. “Where do we have vulnerabilities?”
“Nowhere. Everything’s sealed up.”
That’s partly for energy efficiency—critical with an off-the-gridhouse—but it’s also for pest control—critical with a house surrounded by wilderness. Every spot I could get a fingertip through has been sealed or screened.
“They can’t get inside,” I say. “Not unless they break the glass, and they don’t seem to be trying—”
The crows scream. In one voice, they let out a deafening sound like the scream of an eagle, getting louder and louder until we’re running for Madison, hands jammed over our ears.
Then the lights go out. One second the house is ablaze, and we are running. Then it’s pitch black. I hit something and go flying. Hands catch me. Kit’s hands. A light appears, and I look over to see Jayla lifting her phone. I open my mouth to say something, but the screaming of the crows drowns me out.
I fumble past the table I’d tripped over, and I’m almost at Madison’s side when the screaming stops. The beating stops. Everything stops.
I slowly turn toward the windows to see the crows in flight. Some land on the deck railing. The rest fly to trees or rocks and perch there. They all watch us. Dozens of black eyes stare at us, not a single feather fluttering, not a talon lifting to readjust its hold. They are perfectly, unnaturally still, black figures lit only by the barest wash of moonlight.
Silence falls. Complete silence, and darkness broken only by Jayla’s flashlight.
“I thought you said we had enough power.” She pauses and then snorts. “And that’s a ridiculous thing to say, isn’t it? We just had crows doing a synchronized drum dance against the windows. Obviously the power didn’t coincidentally turn off.”
