Page 4 of Flock Around and Find Out (Flocking It Up #3)

Galen’s house felt as it always did, something that reassured me. This had been the first place I’d gone when I’d really known what I was, after I’d changed, when everything had been so difficult and confusing. Back then, I hadn’t understood what about me was different—besides the fact I could turn into a crow—but the entire world had turned scary and larger and much more dangerous than it had been before.

And life had never been safe for me. That was for sure…

Galen had brought me here, assuming that the whole turning into a bird thing had pegged me as a were. He’d protected me, letting me rest in this home.

It still gave me some of those warm, fuzzy feelings, even after five years.

I didn’t bother to knock—I never had with him—and instead strolled into the house.

“You’re late.” The unhappy voice came from Galen, who stood, tapping his foot like an angry wife, while Porter ran his finger across the spines of the books on a large shelf against the wall.

“Looks like you did just fine on your own.” And, to be honest, I hadn’t wanted to come at all.

I’d seen a stray that first night, when it had attacked, when only Galen’s intervention had saved me. I saw no good reason to purposely get close to another one.

However, it seemed these two felt that any third party— even me —would ease the tension.

The things I did to avoid an all-out war…

“Basement, I’m guessing?”

Galen nodded. “We have three different subjects, all of them scheduled for execution. One is a wolf—newly changed. They were picked up only two days ago and had to have been changed only a week or less before that. We have a panther who had good control for a few years before this happened. They seemed unable to control their beast one morning. Lastly, we have a raven who is at least three hundred years old. Again, they’ve never struggled with control before, with resisting urges. I chose these three cases as they are all so different. All came from the California/Nevada/Arizona region, so we could get them here sooner. No connections that I could find between them.”

The raven caught my attention.

There were no werecrows, that much I knew. I’d asked Galen about it before, wishing that I could find others even a little like me. It might not be perfect, might not be exact, but a black bird was a black bird, right?

I tried to hold off on my excitement, to not let it show. I didn’t need them to realize how much that meant to me. For one, they’d only make fun of me.

Neither of them understood just how isolating and lonely it really was to not have others of my kind, to not have anyone who understood me.

I had Knot, but he wasn’t any help. He disappeared whenever he wanted—as he’d done since that last cryptic meeting we’d had—and he never made me feel less lonely. If anything, he annoyed me, since I was desperate for answers and connection where he seemed to hate both.

Galen lifted one of his eyebrows, telling me he’d caught my excitement. He’d explained to me before, after realizing I was from an entirely different clan, that I’d have nothing more in common with any were bird than I would with any bird from nature. I’d never cared to listen to good advice, though, so I smiled at him as though to tell him I’d be happy if I fucking wanted to be.

He let out an audible sigh before walking toward the basement. I let him go first because I wasn’t anywhere close to equipped to deal with strays. If they’d broken out or were feeling especially hungry, I’d much rather they run into Galen first.

We headed down the stairs, a slight anxiety eating at me from the last time I’d been here. I’d had a crazed werebear threaten me—and not just a little, ‘hey, maybe I’d like to kill you’ sort of threat, but the kind where he’d grabbed me and could have done exactly that.

So I wasn’t a fan of what we might find down here—black bird or not.

“You know,” I said, the words escaping me faster than my brain could keep up just to break those nerves inside of me. “You bring a lot of people to your dungeon basement. I never figured you were a kinky type. A basement dungeon would be something I’d expect from Kelvin, not you.”

“Do I really have to listen to kink talk?” The rough voice came from the dimness just past the light that spilled in from the stairwell. It sounded like a dry throat, one that hadn’t had their thirst quenched in days.

Which made me wonder if Galen was starving these Weres? He didn’t seem unnecessarily cruel type, but it was hard to be sure about anything anymore.

People constantly surprised me, and rarely in a good way.

We reached the bottom of the stairs and the person who spoke became clear. Thankfully, the cell looked less horrible than it had when Trey was here, back when he’d been so crazed that no furniture would survive. Instead, all the cells had blankets, mattresses on platform stands—probably so they couldn’t pick them up and throw them. It wasn’t that cold down here, either, which suggested that Galen had it heated.

A bottle of water sat inside the cell, beside the woman who had spoken. She had a pixie cut and oddly wide eyes, with freckles that spanned her cheeks. She was pretty in a strange, ethereal way. “Since I don’t think I get to participate, I’d rather you didn’t talk about such things,” she added, seated on the mattress, her legs stretched out.

“Is she not drinking water?”

Galen rubbed the back of his neck. “She is, but she roars so much that it strains her vocal cords.” Galen stopped in the center of the room, then pointed to each cell.

The pixie cut was the panther it seemed—I wasn’t sure if that was any more fitting—an older woman was the wolf, and that made the raven the young man who sat cross-legged on his bed, eyes closed.

It was strange to be reminded again that the age people appeared had nothing to do with their actual age. It was a lesson I struggled to learn time and time again. I still found myself surprised each time I spoke to some who looked young enough to possibly still need to ride in the back seat of a car only to discover they were hundreds of years old.

I doubted it would ever feel quite natural.

And, given they were Weres, all of them were significantly stronger than me.

Annoying.

Porter walked first to the older woman, suggesting he probably wanted to check on them in order. He said nothing, as though they were beneath him or not worth his time.

Or, more likely, he only spoke to people whom he deemed he had something to say to. It was less about respect and more about efficiency.

He set a hand out, palm flat and toward the woman. Nothing shot from hand—no cool colors or flames—but a strange sensation moved through the air, as though sparks of electricity ran through it. I shivered.

Porter had used little power in front of me. He’d freed the wolves Kelvin kept at his property, but that was it. Other than that, a part of me wondered why he was head of their clan. It didn’t make a lot of sense, all things considered. He didn’t seem anywhere near as powerful as the others.

Then again, neither did I.

This reminded me yet again not to judge people by what little they chose to show me.

The woman didn’t react with more than a low growl, a warning as though she felt the intrusion and didn’t care for it, but neither did she find it overtly threatening.

Porter shook his had, like clearing something from it, then moved onto the panther woman with the pixie cut. He repeated the action, though she snarled a bit louder. Why? Was she more sensitive to it, or did it hurt in a way it hadn’t with the first?

We all stayed silent as he finished and moved to the last—the wereraven. The boy didn’t so much as open his eyes or acknowledge the strange probe, but his body did tighten, like tension held it that he didn’t want to admit.

When Porter finished there, his hand dropped, less controlled than the others. Had it taken more out of him this time?

He shook both hands, the action almost cute. “I’ve gotten when I can from them.”

“Any ideas?”

“It is the same energy I found in the animals.”

“I thought you already knew that?” I pointed out.

“All energy feels different. It’s how Spirits are made, after all, from energy derived from those clans. However, this energy is Were but feels…wrong. It’s thicker, like it’s coagulated. It doesn’t flow easily as it should. It has a scent to it that’s almost like rotting.”

“So something is wrong with their Spirit energy?” Galen asked.

“That is all that makes sense to me. I can’t explain why it is like that, what has caused it to become so, but I can only say what it feels like. I have never experienced something like this before.”

The raven in the cell laughed, the first time he’d broken the silence. “The young always forget too soon.”

Talk about freaky…

The words in a thick Louisianan accent took me off guard, reminded me that he wasn’t anything like what he seemed. It felt as though it had come straight out of some old Cajun swamp somewhere. He was at least a few hundred years old, and when beings got that old, it became difficult to tell for sure.

Just like humans, they liked to lie about their ages.

“What do you mean?” I asked, coming closer to his cell.

He opened his eyes, then narrowed them. “You smell wrong.”

“Rude to say, but okay.”

“She isn’t a were,” Galen explained.

“Obviously. Only a fool would confuse her for a were.”

“You know, you’re not great at making new friends. Or keeping old ones, I bet.” I crouched down to look him in the eye, hoping that might make the conversation a little easier. The way he stared back at me didn’t suggest it would, however.

“What did you mean about what we’ve forgotten?”

“Thick energy isn’t new.”

“I’ve never felt it,” Porter said, not like an argument but rather as though he needed to understand.

Again, the raven laughed, the sound lacking kindness. “Because the young always think what they see now is how it has always been. Their memories are too short. I recall, a very long time ago, that same thick energy. It coursed through the bodies of Spirits who fell sick, who struggled to survive day by day. They were dragons.”

“Dragons don’t exist,” I pointed out. “I know this because I wanted one, but Galen told me they weren’t real.”

A sharp look from Galen suggested I hadn’t helped our cause at all with that one.

“They don’t exist—now. They did, however, and for a long time they held power. There were never many of them, so they were rare, but they still existed, still had a place in our world.”

“Had? So what happened?” Porter asked, keeping us on track.

“The same thing that happens to all Spirits who have that illness. They died.”

“There’s no cure?” Galen broke in. “No way to save those who catch it? How does it infect others? How do we keep it from spreading?”

The raven shook his head, an unnerving smile on his lips. “You don’t understand. This isn’t an infection of the body, of the individual. You can’t stop it because it doesn’t spread, at least not the way you expect. It is an infection of the source energy, the Spirit energy that makes you a were. I’ve seen three clans fall to this in the past, and each time, it wiped out the entire clan until there was nothing left of them.”

I struggled to remain crouched, to not lose my balance as his words hit me, as the reality and gravity of what he’d said became clear.

Worse, he didn’t look all that upset over it. “You know that includes you, too,” I pointed out. Perhaps that was cruel, but the way he so easily accepted death pissed me off.

“Of course I know. I’ve been alive long enough to see exactly what happens to Spirits, what we do to others, to each other. I remember a dragon I took care of in his last days, the way he writhed in pain, consumed by it. He asked if this was a punishment, if it was the gods telling us we’d committed some unforgivable sin. I assured him no, that wasn’t it. We weren’t forsaken—that was unthinkable. Now that I feel it, though, now that I can’t grasp the control I used to have, now that the energy churns through me so slowly, sloshing around like milk left out to curdle, I wonder if he wasn’t right. Did we anger the gods? Did they turn their backs on us? All I know for sure is that I have seen this happen before, and I have never seen it solved or stopped. You should ready yourselves, because soon the council will lose another clan.”