Black Feathers Read Online Free Page B

out a folding table, the empty sidewalks filled with people. There had been no signal save the arrival of the van, but a crowd quickly formed around the back doors.
    Cassie recognized some of them from outside McDonald’s that morning. Unlike that pre-dawn crowd, though, everyone waiting around the van was quiet. There was no shouting, no pushing, nothing louder than scattered, hushed conversations. People milled about a little, but they quickly formed into asingle line that snaked along the sidewalk to the table. “Come on,” Skylark said, standing up as the two men lifted a huge pot onto the table. “We should get in line.”
    “What is this?” Cassie asked as she followed Skylark, who high-fived a few people as they moved through the crowd.
    “The Outreach van,” she said as they joined the line. “Soup and bread, sometimes clothes. Condoms if you need them.” Skylark shrugged. “They come every night. And hey, if you’re here at Christmas? I hear they do turkey.” There was a bitterness in Skylark’s voice that Cassie hadn’t heard before.
    But she understood it all too well. Christmas was a week and a half away, but it seemed a lifetime. The thought that she might still be out here, sleeping on the streets, begging for change, made her almost hunch over with pain.
    But where else would she be?

    From the cold of the concrete park, he watched.
    He stood in the shadow of the fountain, the Darkness watching out of the dark. He wasn’t hiding; he didn’t need to hide. People would see him, but their glances would slip off him, not really registering him.
    He was perfectly camouflaged.
    It was all part of the hunt: concealment, observation, tracking.
    Watching. Waiting for the perfect specimen.
    She was easy to see against the backdrop of the crowd milling around the back of the van. She shone with a strength that was dizzying.
    Her inner light separated her from the herd, drew the Darkness to her.
    He watched as the girl took her bowl of food, her piece of bread. Her smile, even in the distance, was dazzling.
    She led another girl into the breezeway adjoining City Hall, and they both sat down with the group of people already there.
    The other people in the breezeway barely registered to him; they were dull, drab things, the little light left within them guttering like pale candles, brighter when they laughed, quickly fading.
    The girl, though …
    He had been watching her for several nights, following her movements. It hadn’t been difficult: with a light as bright as that, she could be seen for blocks.
    He had watched, and he had waited.
    He could have taken her any time, but he was pleased that he had waited. The girl was shining more brightly than he had seen before, arcing white as she leaned against the girl beside her, almost blinding as she laughed.
    And the girl she was with …
    The new girl was like nothing he had ever seen.
    There was a rich orange light to her, and it took him a moment to register: This new girl was like a banked fire. She didn’t shine—she burned.
    A crow descended, arching black against the curve of a street light, and landed on the concrete edge of the fountain.
    It too watched the girls.
    The bright white of the first girl
    —
Skylark,
the crow said—
    Skylark, and the slow, deep burn of the new girl …
    He looked at the crow, but the bird had nothing to say.
    The two of them, these two girls.
    It was almost too much for him to bear.
    “Not yet,” he whispered, and the words were like smoke from his mouth.
    He drew his collar up tighter around his throat and turned away.
    “Not yet,” he repeated.
    It wasn’t just the kill that was important; anyone could kill.
    It took a special man to hunt.

    When Cassie and Skylark reached the front of the line, the man behind the table was scraping the inside of the huge pot with a metal ladle. “I’ve got enough for one more bowl of soup,” he said, shrugging. He was wearing a knit cap and a hoodie over an old concert