Читать книгу I Am Called Shaman - Rebecca Reeves - Страница 5

Chapter Three

1:00 p.m.

David stayed behind me and we hiked in silence so Sundara could concentrate. We kept to the side of the narrow trail; the center was dusty dry, pummeled by decades of cowboys and cattle then hikers and mountain bikes.

The Cabela’s imprint was crystal clear, as was the dog’s two-nail autograph. Their story unfolded as we continued to climb. The dog had been full of energy on the way up. His tracks darted on and off the trail at intervals then disappeared into the chest high shrubs. Tired, and apparently content, he’d stayed close to his girl on their way back down. Many people had trekked through here yesterday, but they’d been the last to traverse this section of the Munds trail.

While David and I read the tracks on the ground, Sundara read the tracks in the air. I often wished that my gift included being able to experience her sense of smell, especially when the mock orange and mountain mahogany began to bloom, but I didn’t envy her today with the harsh smoke from the controlled burns. She sneezed, then trotted ahead with her nose held high, gathering intel even though her search wouldn’t officially begin until we were at the top of the mountain, upwind of the search zone. There, I would start her at the perimeter of the grid we’d plotted.

Sundara had to first recognize and eliminate all the common background smells, meaning the flora and fauna, then she could focus on the scents that did not belong, and by her training — that meant humans. By bringing her up the much traveled Munds trail, I was maximizing the use of the Sherlock Holmes theory by which all air scenting K9s were trained: eliminate all other odors, and the ones remaining must be the truth.

We were eliminating one scent trail at a time, beginning with the girl and her dog then a hiker who’d left the trail to pee, and so on, but my ulterior motive in requesting the Munds trail was the dense foliage. We’d locate the SK’s hide, I was sure of that, but I was also searching for animals that had seen the SK. If I found any witnesses to question, I’d need the foliage to conceal my activities from David.

Sundara had taken to the brush a while ago, but hadn’t reported anything yet.

Raven soared across the dingy sky with two red tail hawks. He stopped his forward momentum, tucked his wings, and performed two tight barrel rolls before plummeting to the earth. At the last moment, he spread his wings and glided over our heads. He landed in a tree about three-quarters of the way up the hill to the left of the trail. He had good news.

All searches are conducted on the buddy system. David and I were supposed to stay within sight, or at least sound, of one another. We were getting closer to Raven, and I still hadn’t figured how I was going to break away from David.

David stopped and scanned an area to the right of the trail. “Abra, let’s check out that boulder over there. It could have been a good platform to shoot from.”

“You mind if I wait for you here? I want to mark the trail where Sundara comes out at.”

“Sure, I’m not going far.”

As soon as he was a safe distance away, I stepped off the trail to the left and ran as fast as I could.

The tree Raven was perched in had grown out of a crack in the side of a rock formation; the formation jutted out from the side of the mountain like an upside down water glass. Its sheer vertical face was fifteen feet high, its sides slightly rounded. A deer path crossed underneath it. Sundara was waiting for me there.

I searched the ground for clues. The talus, a mixture of crumbling slate rock and bits of lava, didn’t hold a print well. It was like tracking over broken glass. The earth had been displaced, but the lines were ambiguous. The only print I was sure of was that of one bobcat.

Sundara urged me to the left side of the summit.

A human had gone up here. The footprints had been scuffed out, but he’d missed one. It stood out plain as day.

I lifted my foot and compared the prints. Mine was much smaller, but the tread was the same. The Vibram sole tread pattern is the most common on US-made boots — men’s, women’s, and children’s; a little detail I picked up when David had his favorite pair of boots resoled for the third time.

David was carrying our supply of yellow evidence flags, so I backed away from the print, gathered several stones, and built a makeshift cairn that would alert others to the evidence, if that’s what it turned out to be.

I went back to the summit. At the juncture where the escarpment melded into the mountain, the elements had formed a natural staircase. Sundara waited while I climbed the steps to the top of the outcropping.

The top was table flat, fifteen feet wide and twenty feet deep. I didn’t need my binoculars to see that this location had a clear line of sight to the girl’s camp. The humans below scurried about like a village of prairie dogs.

Hawk swooped down and perched behind Raven. She blended well in this environment with her cryptically colored, light rufous chest and brick orange tail. Her mate continued to circle above, calling to her with a distinctive, slurred squeal: “Keee-rrr.”

“Hello, my friend,” I said. “What can you show me?”

I kneeled down as if praying, and held out my hand. When I opened my eyes, Hawk stood before me. She had done well through the winter, feeding on rabbits and rodents. Her legs were thick with the hard scales that allowed her kind to hunt poisonous snakes, snatching them off the ground in continuous flight then ripping their heads off.

I touched her wing to strengthen our connection, then everything around me faded into the mist, and I saw the world through her eyes. We looked down upon this tabletop from her aerie, set into a crevice in the uppermost basalt layer of Schnebly Hill.

Night. Her life mate was resting inside the stick nest, warming their three little eggs. She stood guard on the rim of the nest, mesmerized by the flickering campfire further down the hill and the human that passed in front of its golden glow every now and again. Movement near the escarpment caught her attention. She zoomed in on it.

Even with her binocular vision, she didn’t see well at night. Between the darkness and the distance, the figure was nothing more than a shadow within a shadow. It was, however, unmistakably human and male.

The human vanished then reappeared on the tabletop. He crept out to the edge. After some time, he opened his jacket. A rifle appeared. The human slithered onto his belly. The deadly black length of metal inched out over the precipice. He flipped the triangular hood of his jacket over his head.

“Keee-rrr, keee-rrr, keee-rrr!”

The panicked cries from above filtered into my awareness, and I jolted from the abruptness of Hawk’s retreat.

The thumping drone became a shrieking wind as the news helicopter assaulted nature, and caused even me, a human, to cower from its thundering madness. The interruption didn’t dampen my excitement. I was finally on the SK’s trail.

I knew I should alert David, but remembering Agent Delaney’s apparent ineptitude, I hesitated. Finding the hide would put the FBI one step closer to taking jurisdiction.

The FBI had been in charge of all the SK murder scenes, and, not only did my father’s killer still walk free, but, based on my research, they’d never found a shred of evidence that they could act on. Either the SK left nothing behind, or the FBI had missed clues. They weren’t referred to by the rest of the law enforcement community as the “Feeble Eye” for nothing.

I was in a race to close the distance between me and the SK, but I’d only get one chance at this scene. I needed details and I needed them fast.

I drummed my staff on the ground, tapping into my gift. Pulsating life forces surrounded me, growing louder, until they drowned out the helicopter. I picked through the heart signatures until I located the animals whose skills would best serve my purpose. They were huddled together in a decayed fallen log, sleeping with their first litters of the season. I woke the little critters and asked for their help.

David shouted my name from down the hill.

I wasn’t ready to share my find.

“Hey, Abra!” he called again.

Dang it, I couldn’t withhold this from David. “Up here!”

What the heck was taking the mice so long? I tuned in and found their fluttering heartbeats cowering near the base of the stair steps.

Oops, sorry. I tapped back into my gift and gave instructions to the other animals.

Raven took flight and glided down the hill toward Merry Go Round. Sundara trotted off to retrieve David. I sent an “off limits” message to the hawks who’d returned to the safety of their nest, then I reconnected with the mice. The coast is clear.

Deer mice are agile climbers, and a few seconds later, a pack of twenty brown rodents crested the path to the hide. They swarmed the spot where the SK had lain.

Deer mice, being nocturnal, see well in the dark, but sunlight blinds them somewhat. They kept their heads down and used their white gloved feet to scour the hide. It wasn’t long before I was rewarded with their excited squeaks.

Keeping to the far side of the tabletop where I was sure the SK had not tread, I crept to the mice. Two feet in from the edge, there was a slight indentation where the SK’s left elbow had been. There were two little dents further out. I’d been hoping for more.

David stomped on the talus below. His boots sounded rather pissed off until they stopped near the cairn I’d built.

I thanked the mice and warned them to get undercover.

Though the others had raced away, one mouse stayed. He rose up on his haunches and cheeped.

“What?” I asked.

His whiskers tickled at the indentation.

I leaned over and put my face next to his. Two dark hairs were partially buried in the shallow hole.

“You’re awesome, little one,” I whispered.

“What did you find?” David asked.

Mouse made a beeline between my knees and wedged himself under my ankle.

“Take a look,” I said.

David was an excellent tracker, his skills honed in the military as a means of survival. He studied the ground, tilting his head to get the right angle of light.

“Elbow, bipod, line of sight,” he said. “I think you got it, girl.”

“That’s not all.” I pointed to the hair.

“Holy sh — ” He yanked the radio off his belt. “Devlin to base. Copy.”

I coveted the two hairs. My fingers itched to take one. It held the SK’s essence, a piece of his soul. It would energetically connect me to him as sure any of the amulets attached to my staff.

It was tempting, but I was well aware of the repercussions. I’d listened to David rant through plenty of movies whenever a character messed with evidence in any way. In real life, it was an affront to the victim, akin to spitting in her face. If we caught the SK, and my larceny was ever brought to light, he’d walk right out of the courtroom a free man. Nothing I might gain from having one hair would be worth that cost, but there was something I was willing to risk.

I fished a plastic poopie-pick-up bag out of my gear pack. David was facing downhill toward the murder site, relaying our coordinates. While his back was to me, I slid my knife out of the scabbard fastened around my thigh and scooped dirt onto the blade from the section of earth where the SK’s scent would be the strongest. I poured the dirt into the baggie, and brushed away the marks I’d left on the ground. I was tucking the baggie into my pocket when David turned around.

“Do you know what this means, Abra?” he asked. “DNA. We finally have something on this guy!”

“I get it, but DNA won’t catch him.”

Sundara whined from the base of the stairs, impatient to get on with the hunt.

“She’s got his scent, David,” I said. “We’ve got to stay on it. No one’s ever been this close to the SK.”

“Abra, slow down, we’re hours behind him. Wait till the others get here then we’ll track him together.”

“We don’t have time to wait for them, or to do this on foot.” I put my fingers to my lips and let loose with a piercing, three toned whistle.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” David said. “I didn’t see her.”

“She knows to keep off the road and off the skyline.” Not to mention the natural camouflage of a pinto horse.

I scooped up Mouse, hid him in my hand, and hopped to my feet.

“He’s long gone, Abra, you know that.”

“Maybe, but his scent is still here. We have to run it down while we can.”

“Shit.” He knew I was right. He keyed his radio again. “Devlin to base, copy?”

I headed for the stairs.

“Jesus, Abra, be careful,” he said. “I want you to check in by radio every fifteen minutes.”

I hopped down the stone steps. I was so excited I kissed Mouse on the head before setting him down under a clump of yerba santa.

“Did you hear me?” David hollered.

I patted the radio at my waist. “Sure thing.”

Tiara’s rumbling hoof beats came to a stop on the old cattle trail. Tiara had the black and white coloring of a pinto, but her conformation clearly spoke of her Arabian bloodlines. She nickered when she saw me.

I grabbed a handful of black mane, threw a leg over her dappled back, and reveled in the moment.

The SK’s perfection was compromised for the first time.

1:40 p.m.

Once we crested the steep incline of Schnebly Hill, the ground had leveled out. We were back on the main road, well above the six thousand foot elevation mark, and deep into the ponderosa pines. Tiara and I were following Sundara at a slow canter.

David had called for a team from the sheriff’s jeep posse to buddy up with me. They were staying a long distance behind so their exhaust fumes wouldn’t interfere with Sundara’s scenting.

The road was rough, but the SK hadn’t made much effort to conceal his prints up here. Whenever I saw one, I dropped a yellow evidence flag. The grueling step by step search for forensic evidence would come later, for now, only speed mattered. The evidence would keep — the scent trail would not.

“Abra, report,” David radioed. I hadn’t checked in.

I whistled to Sundara and slowed Tiara to a trot while I fumbled for my radio. “We’re reaching the end of the road. Sundara is still on the scent.”

Both wolf and horse were suffering for it. The smoke was thicker up here and the girls were laboring to breathe. Tiara snorted, showering me in droplets from her irritated nasal membranes. I slowed her to a walk and rubbed at my own gritty eyes while we waited for David to respond. Just as I began to wonder if the batteries had gone dead, the radio crackled to life.

“ — on our — top but — reach you first — ” Static rendered his words gibberish.

I pressed the button on the radio twice without speaking to acknowledge the radio traffic then fastened it back to my waistband. The jeep was equipped with CBs and antennas. If there was anything I needed to know, they’d honk.

“Let’s go, girls,” I said.

We’d covered another mile or so when the pines opened into a small clearing. Sundara careened to a halt, sneezed, and put her nose to the ground. She went back to pick up the scent, retraced those steps, and then lifted her quivering nose to the air. When she came back to her starting point, she sat and woofed.

I couldn’t see I-17 from here, but I could feel it. A constant drone hung in the air even when there were gaps between the clusters of speeding automobiles. I slid off Tiara, motioned to my jeep buddies to stay where they were, and checked the physical prints against the invisible scent trail Sundara followed.

The top set of tire tracks disappeared just beyond the elevated, protective berm where the dirt road gave way to asphalt, and the on-off ramps for I-17. From this juncture, the SK could have gone anywhere; left toward Canada, right toward Mexico. I-40 wasn’t too far up the road. He could be in California by now or somewhere near Texas.

The first thing a tracker learns is that a trail never ends, it continues for as long as the one you track continues to take breath. This trail didn’t end, but it was going to be a jump for me to relocate it. I had to do what Sundara had just done, backtrack.

According to the prints, he had walked to a large wheeled automobile then drove to the freeway. I couldn’t make out which ramp he had taken, north or south, and I didn’t waste my time trying to read the asphalt.

I was still nauseous from the impact of the wounded dog’s memories, and I shied away from using my staff to seek out heart signatures so close to the road where the speeding cars would assault my system like fingernails scraping over a chalkboard, but I had no other choice. I tapped my staff on the ground, and asked for any animals that might’ve seen the roaring beast that had parked here to sleep.

For most mammals there is an invisible line between the wilderness and the freeway that they don’t like to cross without a very compelling reason. The SK had parked in that no man’s land — or no animal’s land. Just as I was loosing hope of finding any witnesses, Fox stepped forward, eager to share. She led me back into the forest amid the safety of the trees before she sat and allowed me to approach.

I greeted her then reached out to touch the grizzled rust and black coat that acted as camouflage, and, between the dense wooly undercoat and the long, stiffer guard hairs, caused her to appear larger than she really was.

Foxes have acute hearing. Their ears act like mini antennae that allow them to pick up a mouse squeal at more than one hundred and fifty yards, so she’d known the two legged one was in the area long before she saw him. When the human’s footsteps came to a halt, Fox had stayed motionless, waiting for him to move on.

She showed me the truck. It had been parked innocently enough at the far edge of the clearing. It was a large two door pickup with a backseat, an early version of the trucks driven these days by construction workers and housewives alike. It looked old and worn, but serviceable.

Foxes also have excellent vision, and their catlike eyes are well adapted to their mostly nocturnal lifestyles. That was the good news. The bad news was that they’re colorblind. My best description of the truck was medium light, perhaps gray or tan, definitely not white, blue or black.

The benefit of Fox’s colorblindness is that it gives her a greater ability to see moving objects. When one sees in terms of light and dark, the contrast around the borders of an object becomes more pronounced. It was this special ability that allowed Fox to witness what she had.

The human head peeked out, at hip height, from behind the tree and watched the clearing where the beast slept. After a time, the two legged one returned to the road, and walked toward the beast.

I couldn’t believe my luck. The SK had passed within twenty feet of the concealed fox. His overall shape was tall and narrow, like the build of a runner, but sturdier. His clothing was dark. The hood of his jacket, a wide triangular cowl, made a gaping black hole where his face should have been. I was sure if I could have seen under the cowl, there’d be the moldy skull and hollowed out eye sockets of the grim reaper.

The SK opened the driver’s side door.

I groaned when the interior dome light didn’t come on.

The SK pushed his hood back, but it still enveloped a portion of his head and neck. He wore a baseball cap under the hood. He removed binoculars from around his neck and put them on the seat. He shrugged his jacket off of one shoulder.

I’d assumed the SK would have diminished with age over the past ten years. I’d been naively wrong. The dark outline of his arm stood out against the lightness of the truck. The arm was long and powerful; not the bulging muscles of a weight lifter, but the overall thickness that comes from a lifestyle that included vast amounts of physical labor.

He lifted the rifle strap over his head, and placed the weapon inside the truck.

Come on, come on, I silently chanted, wishing he’d light a cigarette or start the truck to turn on the heater so I might see his face in the dashboard light.

Fox cringed. My hands were pressing against her sides as if they could squeeze her memories out faster until I saw what I wanted to see. I relaxed my grip.

The SK lifted a canteen to his lips and tilted his head back.

Then it happened. A large convoy must have passed by, because the ambient light suddenly increased and I was able to see that a beard covered the SK’s jaw.

Predatory glee bubbled up from my base chakra. The hair distorted whatever angles and planes might have been there, and it wasn’t enough to pick him out in a crowd, but with this ghost of a man, any scrap was a win.

The SK got into the truck. The engine roared.

Just as my heart began hammering in anticipation of getting a read on the license plate, he turned on his headlights and doused the back end of the truck into shadow.

The red taillights disappeared behind the berm.

Fox listened until she was sure the beast was gone.

The engine roared once again.

The SK had traveled north.

I leaned in close to Fox as if I could chase the fleeing truck through this other dimension. It was no use. I let go of her and shook the visions out of my head.

Sundara made a few charging lunges, parallel to the tire tracks.

“North narrows it down,” I said, “but he could be hundreds of miles away by now.”

The truck had to have been parked here for hours. No man’s land or not, someone had to see something that I could act on. If I could get a license plate number, I could call in an anonymous tip. A police APB would be the fastest way to find the truck, hopefully with the SK still inside it.

I thanked Fox and resumed my call for help. Chipmunk barked from midway up a pinion pine. I went to him.

Little critters are tough to read. Their thoughts and memories move as fast as their metabolism, making them hard to grasp, like watching a DVD on super-fast forward. I was able to ascertain that there had still been daylight when Chipmunk heard the truck arrive and park, but he’d been too far away from the SK for me to get any useful details, even if he had been focused on the human and not the magnificent, sharp winged bird that circled overhead.

Turkey vultures don’t kill their own prey, but that was not a distinction Chipmunk could make. The apparent threat from the sky had caused Chipmunk to abscond deeper into the forest, away from the SK, dashing my hope that he might show me more.

The vulture, however, I could talk to.

I went back out into the clearing and motioned to my jeep team to give me a couple more minutes.

As I raised my staff to call the scavenger bird, a caravan of black sedans and SUVs raced into the clearing; each came to a nose diving stop, each at a different angle.

I was lost in billowing clouds of dust.

2:15 p.m.

Agent Delaney had pushed me aside and ordered me to stay put.

David had been going over the few sections of tire tracks that Delaney’s caravan hadn’t destroyed. He was now over with Herb and Delaney. They were out of earshot, but I could tell by their body language that tensions were building.

I wasn’t as resentful about being excluded as I might have been. Raven was perched in a tree above them, eavesdropping for me.

Ravens are excellent mimics, able to reproduce an array of sounds, including the human voice. Most animals hear a human speak and it makes as much sense as the chatter of a house finch makes to us. Raven didn’t understand our language much better, but he could memorize a series of sounds for a short period of time.

The men parted like football players breaking out of the huddle. I slipped into the trees and concealed myself behind Tiara. Raven landed on my shoulder, careful not to grip me too tight with his sharp nails.

“Hi, Gaagii,” I said. Gaagii, pronounced gah-gee, is the Navajo name for Raven.

He didn’t waste time on greetings. The bits of conversation were already falling apart, the spaces in between, filling with static like when the radio reception gave out.

David: wheel base — SUV or truck

Delaney: I want — report — all car fires — hundred and fifty mile radius.

Herb: — saying that’s part of his MO?

Delaney: — found a few —

David: — didn’t think to mention till now?

Delaney: — need to know —

David: — thing else I don’t need to know?

Delaney: long shot — wouldn’t tie him to — never does.

I shared David’s frustration. If I’d known there was a possibility of a car fire, I could have had the birds up in the air the moment I learned of the murder. If the truck had still been burning, they could have spotted the plume from miles away, providing, of course, that it wasn’t mixed up in the smoke from the forest service burns.

I would have expected the SK to be fleeing as fast and as covertly as he could. Maybe he’d lit cars on fire in the past, but drawing attention to his location by sending up a plume of smoke, seemed too risky in this day and age of cell phones and ever expanding population…unless he had intentionally used the smoke from the controlled burns as camouflage.

Delaney had said a hundred and fifty mile radius. I cut that in half since I knew the SK had headed north. I considered how many of those miles would be covered in smoke. It was still too much wilderness to consider tracking on foot, and even in the best case scenario, my gift wasn’t strong enough to communicate with animals that far away.

Gaagii rubbed his head under my chin and purred like a big cat. We’d been friends for twenty-one years.

“I can’t risk it, buddy. It’s too much ground to cover, even for you.” I walked to a low hanging oak branch. “Step up.”

Gaagii tightened his grip on my shoulder.

“I said no.” I tilted my shoulder and Gaagii stepped off, muttering under his breath.

I met David out in the clearing.

“You doing okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “What did you find out?”

“Freaking Delaney.” He filled me in on the altercation that Gaagii had just relayed. “Maybe the car fires are a long shot, not a reliable MO, but we wasted hours. We could have had the search and rescue air group up all day.”

“You’re still going to call them in, right?”

“Dad’s coordinating with the incident commander in Prescott now, but by the time they scramble the team, considering the terrain and the radius we’re looking at, there’s just not enough daylight left to do much.” David rubbed his eyes. “I swear Delaney is useless. He totally mucked up the egress tracks when he pulled in. At least the place where the vehicle was parked is okay, so we can get plaster casts of the tire treads. There might be some credible evidence there if we happen to find the vehicle and tires intact.”

“And not melted down,” I said.

“Exactly. Anyhow, we’ll run down a list of all the vehicles reported stolen in the area. When the lab gets a look at the cast, they’ll be able to narrow down what kind of car we’re looking for. That’ll help.”

It was in times such as these that I most wished I didn’t have to keep my gift a secret. How much time would it save if I could tell him what Fox had shown me?

“I’m sorry, Abra. I’m venting,” David said. “We just have to work with what we’ve — ”

About thirty ravens had gathered together. They flew in a lazy circle above the trees. Others were flying in from all directions to join up with the ebony vortex.

“They’re doing a wheel,” I said.

“I’ve never seen one so big,” David whispered in awe.

Even the overzealous agents from the city stopped what they were doing and gaped at the rare spectacle.

The wheel hovered above us, growing and picking up momentum as hundreds of wings created its own lift. It was like watching a category three tornado in slow motion.

“Come on, people,” Agent Delaney yelled. “We’re not on safari here.”

“I need to check on Tiara,” I said.

Gaagii was still on the branch were I’d left him. Fox, using her back claws like a cat, had climbed up into the tree. She was perched in a notch near the raven.

“Called in reinforcements, did you?” I asked.

Gaagii lifted his shiny, black head and puffed up his chest feathers.

“Very impressive,” I admitted. With that many eyes in the sky, the odds of finding a burned truck went from about nil, to remotely possible, providing the SK had abandoned the truck a reasonably close distance from here.

Fox pawed at my arm. She wanted to help in the search.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm,” I said, “but Gaagii has given me enough to worry about with the ravens.”

Gaagii bobbed his head. I deciphered his pictures. The canopy of trees would thicken further to the north. Fox would be able to see and smell things on the ground that would be hidden from the sky.

He was right. Her kind has extraordinary hearing and sight, but the sense of smell is their keenest sense of all, and though foxes rarely venture out of their own territories, they are capable of covering long distances.

The band around my chest tightened another notch. My only hope of getting back on the SK’s trail while it was still warm was to put innocent beings at risk. Letting Fox go would be risking one more, but working as a team, the whole group would be safer.

I loosened a black feather from my staff.

“Come here,” I said to Fox.

I attached the feather to the scruff of her neck with a length of waxed jute. “This will act like an antenna. It’ll help keep you better connected with Gaagii. I want you to stay together, and I don’t want you taking any unnecessary chances.” I paused. “Do you two hear me?”

I waited for their affirmation before continuing. “If you find the truck, Gaagii, I’ll need landmarks to know where it is, so give me a high aerial.”

Gaagii ruffled his wing feathers.

The talisman secured, I stepped back, and looked at them; so confident, eager, determined. A tear rolled down my cheek. I swiped it away, and swallowed a lump of foreboding. “Get back as fast as you can.”

Gaagii purred and leaned forward. I rubbed my cheek against his.

“Blesséd be, my friend,” I whispered.

With that, they shot out of the tree. Fox took to the ground, her bushy tail straight back like a rudder. Gaagii took to the air, wings pumping to gain altitude. He flew toward the wheel.

A murder of ravens. Not a flock of ravens; a murder of ravens. I shuddered at the distinction.

The wheel in the sky broke apart with a riot of shouts both human and avian.

The birds took to the north and disappeared into the smoke.