Songs of Sorrow Read online

  Songs of Sorrow

  Crows of Carnage Book 1

  Kate Nova

  WildFire Press

  Songs of Sorrow

  Crows of Carnage: Book 1

  A Why Choose Paranormal Romance

  KATE NOVA

  Stone Cold © 2020 Wildfire Press

  https://www.KateNovaBooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without authorization in writing provided by the publisher.

  This story is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, brands, incidents, and places are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, whether living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  16. Chapter 16

  17. Chapter 17

  18. Chapter 18

  19. Chapter 19

  20. Chapter 20

  21. Chapter 21

  22. Chapter 22

  23. Chapter 23

  24. Chapter 24

  25. Chapter 25

  26. Chapter 26

  27. Chapter 27

  28. Chapter 28

  29. Chapter 29

  30. Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other Books by Kate Nova

  Prologue

  Three crows circled above an empty field.

  The rain had just ended, but only a fool would believe it was gone for good—this was the Pacific Northwest, after all. Just a couple of hours outside of Seattle, this area had a dreary, moody reputation for a reason.

  A burst of sun shone between the puffy clouds, just for a moment, illuminating a man who was trudging home, cutting across the barren field after work, and in the distance, the spruces were emerald green against the hazy sky, the only color against the gray.

  The crows flew lower.

  The man suddenly looked up when he heard the sound of flapping wings and his pulse spiked when he saw the birds above him. He started walking faster—not running, not yet, not until he got to the trees that edged the field. He looked over his shoulder once more. Seeing the birds were zooming down from their position in the sky, he suddenly bolted, panicked, making his way through the pines, his brow furrowed in worry.

  The crows followed him, relentless in their pursuit.

  He scrambled over the rough forest terrain, leaping over roots. His panting was audible even over the crash of thunder as a new storm rolled in.

  “No!” he called out. “Get the hell away from me!”

  Still, no matter how fast he ran, the crows stayed close behind. They swooped beneath branches, flapping through the green foliage, descending lower and lower until their outstretched talons were nearly tangled in the man’s hair.

  And then the man tripped.

  An unseen root, which might have already been curled up at an angle out of the dirt, or maybe it moved independently somehow, through some unknown magic—but the man’s foot caught beneath it, and he sprawled out into the loam.

  “Get back, devil birds!” he choked out. “Tell Sarzeleth he can go to hell—”

  Within seconds, the crows were on him. Their sharp, black beaks pecked at his head and shoulders and he growled, swatting at them with his hands, trying to curl up in the fetal position and protect his head, but the crows were too fierce, too wild, too determined.

  The man twisted and snaked around on the ground, but despite all his flailing, he ended up flat on his back, exactly as the crows wanted. Two of the birds pinned his arms out to both sides, their claws scratching against the soft, vulnerable flesh of his hands, and their black wings beat violently, strong enough to rustle the nearby bushes.

  The third crow landed near the screeching man’s kicking feet, and when he finally lifted his head, the crow was no longer a crow.

  It was a man.

  Six foot three, a hundred and eighty pounds of pure, hard muscle, skin covered in an array of dark tattoos, and a face that was equal parts scornful and seducing—a crooked nose that had never fully healed from a sucker punch outside a dive bar, square jaw with dark stubble, and burning, laughing eyes. He glanced down at the man in the dirt, lifting one bulging arm to run a hand through his shaggy brown hair. “Did you really think you could get away with it?”

  “Please,” the man gasped, stuttering, mud smeared on his cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Liar,” said the tattooed man. “You’ve been dodging Sarzeleth for months—or are you going to tell me you moved into this shitty little town for the exciting nightlife?”

  “Please, you don’t understand. I just need a little more time—”

  “Sarzeleth says you’ve had long enough.” Another crow had shifted—instead of a sleek black bird, it was now another solidly built man, this one just north of six feet. His body was slimmer than the tattooed man’s; arms, legs and torso long and lean like a swimmer’s. “Almost three months. You made a deal, Samuel. Now it’s time to pay.” His dark brown hair fell across his hazel eyes, but he quickly brushed it away.

  Something in the man’s countenance changed just then. The worry and the fear that had creased his face twisted into anger. His lips curled up in a growl, his eyes flashing, and he bristled, thick fur growing from his knuckles and forearms at unreasonable rates—

  “Sevit!” shouted the third crow, who was also no longer a crow, but another man, this one around five foot eleven, with a stacked and chiseled midsection, bronze skin, and eyes like tropical oceans, turquoise and clear and compelling. His long blond hair was tied back in a knot at the nape of his neck, and he said the word with conviction, towering above the man.

  Samuel’s fury surged, and with a grunt of frustration he pounded the ground with his fists—but his fur had vanished, and his canines shortened back to ordinary length. The short spell spoken by the man with the turquoise eyes had halted his transformation—he couldn’t shift into the monster that was his second form. Not while that spell held him. There was nothing about him now that looked even remotely terrifying—he looked, once again, like a very sad, very scared, very broken man, quivering in the dirt beneath these three reckoners.

  “All right,” he finally gasped. “All right. Just—just give me a week. That’s all I ask. One week to get my affairs in order.”

  “You get two days,” the tattooed man said, and reached down to pull the man’s shirt up to his chin. “Sarzeleth’s patience is running low.”

  “What are you—” the man started, and then a shrill scream came out of him, echoing off the trees, drowned out by only the rumbling of thunder.

  The other two men glanced at each other and held their breath—they hated this part. The smell of scalded flesh always made them nauseous, and the screams stayed with them even as they slept, turning into distorted nightmares.

  “There,” said the man with the tattoos when he was finished, and stood back up to examine his handiwork. “A little reminder, so you don’t forget what is expected of you.” He’d burned a pair of runes into the man’s chest, a symbol which allowed Sarzeleth to keep track of him, no matter where he tried to hide—all he had to do was draw
his own runes inside a pentagram, and a portal would open.

  Samuel was quivering now, trying to breathe as the pain subsided and the charred skin healed. “You—you’re nothing but fucking animals,” he spat as he scooted back from them and used a spruce trunk to help himself up to his feet as he clutched his chest. “I’m just a father who was trying to help his family—”

  “You’re a fool who made a deal with a demon,” the tattooed man snarled, “and now you’ll suffer the consequences.”

  With that, the three men shifted into crows again. Their job was done, their message successfully delivered. Soft, thick feathers pushed out of their skin and just as quickly as they had shifted, they were airborne.

  The man scurried off through the forest, blood leaking through his shirt in hazy red reflections of the runes beneath.

  The crows soared through the trees until they were back in the company of clouds again.

  It was a long way back to where they’d come from, a clearing in a small grove of pines in a forest so humble, it was nicknamed the Thicket—and when they landed, they immediately shifted back into their human forms.

  Alex stretched his tattooed arms wide above him, and when he turned back around, he was grinning—but the others were shaking their heads in annoyance.

  “What?” he asked, but the smirk on his face told them he knew exactly what they were going to say. “What the hell did I do now, Gunner?”

  “Do you have to look so damn happy when you mark them?” Gunner asked, a flash of irritation swirling in his turquoise eyes.

  “Hey, forgive me for trying to find the silver lining in this shitty situation, all right?” Alex lifted both his hands, as if to show his innocence. “I gotta say though; skin is so much more pliable than I ever imagined—”

  “Alex, stop. You told him he had two days. You know damn well that Sarzeleth is coming to him tonight at midnight.”

  Alex shrugged his shoulders. “I know, but at least this way he won’t see it coming. Now what, Gunner? You’re looking at me like I’m the fucking devil.”

  They all thought the same punchline: you’re not the devil; you just work for one. But Gunner still glared at Alex.

  “That man’s children were starving.”

  “Because he gambled away their entire fortune!” Alex kicked at a pebble, sending it flying into the trees. “I’m not the bad guy here, okay? He made a deal with a demon, same as we did—I’m just the messenger. You should know better than to look into those we have to mark.” He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration, a vein throbbing in his tattooed neck. “The less we know about any of them, the better. Right?”

  Gunner’s shoulders slumped. He stared down at the dirt. “I overheard Sarzeleth talking. I don’t want to know these things any more than you do.” He sat down right where he was, his arms draped over his knees. “I wish I could know who these people are before they make their bargains with that son of a bitch. So we could warn them…”

  He didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to.

  They all wished for the same thing.

  That the people who came to Sarzeleth, the demon who lived in the ramshackle old house in the middle of the Thicket, for deals, for bargains, for exchanges… They wished they could stop it from happening, force them to turn around and go home. Deal with whatever their situations were, find another way out of it—because it wasn’t worth it.

  All three men knew that better than anyone.

  “So we could tell them how long eternity is,” muttered Alex.

  “Too long,” agreed Gunner. “But we dug our graves. Now we have to lay in them.”

  Alex kicked another pebble, then spun around and glanced at the third man. “Well, Owen? Have anything to say?”

  Gunner, too, turned his sights on Owen, who stood and stared out at the trees, his hazel eyes scanning the distance. The constant cloud cover in this area sometimes looked like an artificial night, making everything much darker—but the moon had appeared, balancing on the horizon like a dime. Owen’s eyes widened as he looked at it, and, shaking, he spun around, facing his friends.

  “What did you see this time?” Gunner asked. Alex scoffed to himself—he had a harder time believing in such things as visions, even despite the unusual pathways his mortal life had taken. But even he cocked his head, listening to Owen with one ear.

  “The girl,” Owen murmured, and lifted a single scarred hand to rub his forehead as though the vision had given him a migraine. “The one I’ve been dreaming about… She’s coming.”

  Alex smirked. “Right, sure she is. When, exactly?”

  Owen’s answer was almost blown away by the coming wind: “Soon.”

  Chapter 1

  Jude

  “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  After a few years of friendship, I should have known better than to listen to Hannah when she described any outing with these words. Usually it meant trouble, which, to be fair, was exactly Hannah’s idea of a good time. Like the time she invited me to join her and her flame of the week and his twin brother on a double date which started with drinks at a hot new club and ended with one of the guys trying to ice skate on a frozen pool cover in someone’s backyard.

  Or the time she wanted to hike the Hoh River Trail, but hadn’t broken in her boots, and so I ended up carrying her the last quarter mile home so she didn’t have to step on the mossy rocks or the dirt with her bleeding feet. Or my twenty-seventh birthday last year, which—well, I’m going to shield you from that one. Let’s just say it involved a very different kind of brownie than I thought I was ordering.

  All of those were events that Hannah begged me to do with her, and she used these same words every time: “Come on, Jude! It’ll be fun!”

  So, it was reasonable that I would be at least a little wary when she dangled the tickets in front of my face with that usual disclaimer. “Fun” for Hannah almost always ended in disaster for me.

  “No, it won’t,” I said firmly, predicting Hannah’s next words, to the beat.

  “You never do anything fun with me anymore,” she grumbled, pouting like a toddler.

  I reached around behind her for the coffee pot and refilled a few mugs at the counter. “I’m working an extra shift with you right now. Isn’t that fun?”

  Hannah rolled her eyes and followed me, tickets still in hand; I’d already pointed out that she’d gone to unethical lengths to get a hold of them. Instead of casually asking me how I’d managed to acquire a pair of tickets to the famed Rockfest, a Pacific Northwest specific rock and roll festival that had been sold out for weeks now, Hannah had seen the return address, freaked out, opened my mail, and brought the tickets to work to confront me directly.

  “It’s Rockfest, Jude! Come on!” Hannah growled, completely ignoring the line in front of the cash register that was now three customers deep. “You can’t let these tickets go to waste!”

  “It’s just not my scene anymore,” I replied, tuning her out. I concentrated on taking the order of the person in front of me, but not even the shock of this woman’s order (non-fat frappe with extra whipped cream and chocolate and caramel sauce) could mask my obvious lie.

  Hannah hadn’t fallen for it, anyway. “Yes, it is.” She tagged along behind me to the blender and raised her voice as it churned up ice, skim milk, and a pre-made mixture of coffee flavor and more sugar than one person should consume in a single day. “Loud music. Light shows. Leather pants. Hot, sweaty rock stars… This is right up your alley.”

  Not anymore, I wanted to mumble.

  Last year, yes—I would have jumped at the chance to go to Rockfest. I would have been the one who camped out for the tickets, waiting carefully until the underground music festival left enough breadcrumbs for me to figure out when and where it would be held. I would have been delighted to figure out the clues, to track down the secret website, to solve this labyrinth and claim the tickets as my prize. The whole point of Rockfest was this litmus test—if you couldn’t find it, you did
n’t deserve to be there, a sentiment I fully agreed with last year. And I would have deserved it.

  It should have been me dangling those tickets in front of Hannah, begging her to come with me. Not the other way around.

  No, another voice inside of me said. It should be you up on that stage tonight. And you know it.

  “Are you guys talking about Rockfest?” Casey, the part-time ranger, full-time pothead who had just showed up to take over for the afternoon shift, asked as he clocked in. “You have tickets? Seriously?”

  “See?” Hannah said to me. “Even Casey would give up one of his hippie-dippy evenings mushroom-hunting in the woods to be able to go.”

  Casey chuckled. “I’ll buy them off you. I’ve been on the waitlist for a month—I’ll give you a thousand bucks.”

  Someone in the line whistled.

  I rang them up, trying to ignore Casey—and Hannah, who snorted at the offer. “A measly grand? Tickets are going to be hawked for twice that—”

  “A thousand each,” Casey clarified, desperate. “Please, Jude. Rancid Magic is going to be there.”

  “Everyone’s going to be there,” Hannah smirked, “and even if you offered her ten grand apiece, you can’t use them.” She held up the tickets, which each had a very important-looking white stamp across the front that read PRESS.