Prolog…                                           Cemeteries at night…                                  January 23^rd, 1997
 
 

     The first thing he was aware of was that the blindfold was too tight and the gag had been removed. His arms were held above him, with what felt like thin rope wrapped around and around the wrists. He could only guess about his hands, there were only dull aches at the ends of his wrists. The rest of him wasn’t much better. Pain was a constant in his tiny world.
     "Are you back with us boy?" a voice rasped out of the darkness. A vision of the speaker appeared within his mind. Long greasy black hair, chiseled features, massive muscles, and leather to cover the rest of the body. A massive rock hard slab of darkness that had come swooping out to kill him.
     He tried to reply, but a sharp lancing pain in his lungs when he drew in the breath caused him to start coughing explosively. It felt like something was lodged deep within his right lung. He could feel the object still jabbed between ribs. Took him a whole second to remember it was a knife.
     "God, it takes a hell of a lot for this one to die," another voice said. With the second voice came a second vision. A long gaunt wisp of a lady. Pale, black, thin, and once again covered in leather. She had been the one who had stabbed him first. He could still feel the short blade lodged in his right forearm.
     "Yes it does, Burns." The raspy voice replied. "Markus must have shot him at least four times already."
     "Six actually, Jester." This voice was different. Breathy and whispery. There was no vision to match this voice. The one called Markus must have been the one behind him during the fight. The one who had also shot Beth from the darkness of the alley behind the club. The cold one who had laughed at the dead around him. Oh gods how he wanted to see the bearer of that voice.
     "Then let us applaud this miracle of flesh," another voice said. There was a short round of quiet clapping. If he hadn’t been shot, stabbed, kicked, and generally hung out to die he might’ve laughed. After all, this was going to be his final performance. Years of life washed away merely because a friend wanted to step outside and have a smoke.
     "Just kill and get it over with," yet another voice said. This one was female too. Probably was the huge blonde that had gleefully killed John, his best friend. John, the stupid smoker. He had always told John that a cig would probably kill him. Who could have guessed…
     "Not yet, I want to savor this one." Markus replied. Once again he tensed. He had heard Markus this way before. Right before he had blacked out the last time. Now that had been pain.
     He started to laugh.
 
 

     Markus calmly whipped out the last of his knives as the young man tied to the tree started to laugh. The boy couldn’t be more than twenty-two. The way he had handled himself in the fight though, now that had been amazing. Like Jacky Chan smoking crack.
     "Aye lad, laugh while you can." Lizard said. She stood there at the edge of the clearing staring with hatred at the boy. The boy had managed to somehow kill Defile, her boyfriend. She was the one who had asked for the Lost’s leader to finish it. She was also the newest member of the now tiny gang.
     Markus slid calmly up beside the boy and leaned against the tree. The kid was still laughing. Even with three knives in his upper torso he could draw a breath. It was frankly amazing that anything human could still be alive like this. Don’t even bother thinking about the gunshot wounds.
     "You really have pissed off Lizard me boyo," Markus whispered. He slowly slid down the tree and stared intently at the boy’s right leg. The tight jeans outlined the muscles well enough for Markus to pick his spot.
     "And frankly, I don’t like you either," Markus laughed as he slid the five inch blade underneath the vastus internus muscle. To his surprise the boy didn’t even stop laughing. Damn it that had to hurt!
     Markus stopped laughing and ripped the knife free. That stopped the laughter. Muscle and skin parted as the blade exploded outward in a massive arc. Markus had those thin wiry muscles that looked small, but could outperform body builder muscles. Just like the boy.
     "Frankly, I can’t say that I like you all much either. You kill my friends and then get mad because I happen to be able to fight. I mean let’s get real here," the boy whispered. Then, he began laughing again.
     "Shit!" Burns yelled into the night. "What the fuck does it take to kill this fucker?" she asked no-one. Markus simply sat and stared at the wound he had just made. No way! No fucking way could the kid be laughing like that. The little bastard couldn’t be that tough.
     "I know," Lazarus said as he stepped forward and drew his pistol. The Desert Eagle .45 made two large thunderclaps of sound. Markus leaped back.
     Bullets smashed through ribs. Blood fountained out into the air. Splinters exploded from the tree as the bullets smacked into the bark behind the victim. The boy merely swung, his laughter stopped instantly. It was over.
     "Oh great!" Boneman screamed. Boneman was the idea man of the gang. It was him who had made sure that the guns for the job were bought and issued out to the troops. It was also him who had cautioned that no one bring their favorite weapons to the fight. Lazarus had used the same gun a few weeks ago to rub out a small time storeowner and his family. Now the cops would have another link to try and connect to the Lost. Like life wasn’t interesting enough with this shit already.
     "You fucking moron!" Markus lashed out. A splash of blood had fallen across his Harley boots. He had paid a hundred fifty for the damn things! Instantly his own gun, a Glock twenty-two was pointed at Lazarus’s head.
     "Christ man, I knew you were dumb but hell," Burns said as she threw her hands into the air. Her black nails gave off purple winks as moonlight flickered off of them.
     "Shit man!" Lazarus screamed. He dropped the gun and threw his hands out. He had good reason to be scared. The body on the tree had merely broken Gunhead’s spine, and Markus had shot him without a thought. Markus hated leaving troops behind to be interrogated.
     "Oh man," Markus screamed holstering his gun. This was simply too much. A twenty thousand dollar job gone to shit and back. Four deaths in his gang, and five bodies that were not sanctioned by the big men back home. "Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!" he began screaming into the sky.
     The remaining five members stood watching him dance around in fury. It took a bubbly gasp from the piece of meat hanging from the tree to make Markus stop.
     "What da Fuck?" Markus whispered as he spun around.
 
 

     The pain was gone. After the two bullets had gouged out massive hunks of his chest, there was simply no more pain to feel. No physical pain that was.
      He gasped and tried to suck in more breath. Coughing was the best he could do. He felt the bubbles of blood break apart over his lips. He could tell that it wasn’t good. Trying to suck in another breath proved it. So began his final fight for life. He threw his entire will into trying for a single breath. He channeled every bit of rage he could, letting all the injustice wash over him. Fanning the flames of his soul for that last damned breath. For that last gasp at life.
     A vision of birds flapping erupted across his mind. It looked like a thousand black birds flying across a black sun in a black sky. Never before had he even guessed that there could be so many hints of darkness. A darkness that rolled and shifted with every flap of the multitude of wings.
     The breath slowly slid down into the shattered left lung. Air sacs filled and distended with the last breath of a dying man. Red blood cells gleefully sucked at the oxygen clutching it tight to themselves with their hemoglobin. Arteries pulsed and throbbed spilling their precious substance out through the myriad holes punched into their haven of flesh.
     And in the end, as death came calling for him on the wings of a giant black bird, he was able to breathe out and form substance of his last breath. A pale thin sound that painfully slid from his ruined body. His last gasp.
     "Death, welcome me home."
 

     "Cemeteries at night, always give me a hardon," Boneman laughed as he finished strapping the nylon cord around the corpse’s chest.
     "Christ Boneman, maybe we should call you Boner!" Lizard shouted at him. She sat, more like perched, on a giant marble tombstone. Laughter from the rest of the tiny group filtered out of the darkened trees that dotted the tiny cemetery. Lizard wanted to be away from the main group, and that left over near the cliff edge that the mountaintop cemetery bordered. Unfortunately she had to share the tiny space with a bird brain and a bird’s feast.
     "Relax lizard. Keep shouting like that and you might wake the dead." Boneman laughed. While the rest of the group had a little jokefest about the massacre back near the vehicles he had cooked up a master ending to the suckwad night. Since this was about the only real tough peace of flesh the Lost had ever met it was fitting to send the sack’o bones out with a little style.
     And style it was. The body was upright, spiked to an improvised frame of branches. A giant T frame held up the arms and kept the legs straight. Knives were driven into the wrists and ankles pinning the body to the frame. Nylon cord bound the chest to the frame. Boneman admired the effect. Unfortunately the wood had been too short to tie up the head also. It just lolled there facedown. It kinda ruined the religious effect that Boneman was trying for. So hard to do quality work with such a short budget.
     "Tell me once more why you’re tying that sack of shit up," Lizard said. She reached down and shifted the pistol jammed into her belt a little to the side. Boneman let his gaze linger up from her hips to her chest while she was absorbed with the movement. Heh, heh. Boneman was starting to feel a little happy with the sack of shit himself. Now that Defile was out of the way…
     "Satanists kill local kids, desecrate cemetery. Film at eleven," was all Boneman said back. He hoped that she got the idea. If the police simply thought that a religious cult was in the area than they would most likely look for a young teenage group. Not a bunch of well paid mercenaries that took contracts for hire around the area. Who would have thought that Colorado was so good for business. Or that Denver was so bad about drug cartels and gang wars. Hell, it was getting better than Columbia in the heartland of America.
     "Shit," was all Lizard whispered before she stopped fiddling with her firearm. Boneman smiled. She really did have a nice pair of tits.
     "Shit is right. But, this shit is the clincher. Simply make a stupid corpse hang from a rope, and all is well with the world."
 

     "Now look at that!" Boneman laughed as he dragged the group to the edge of the cliff. There the corpse stood framed by the moon, hanging from the oldest tree in the cemetery. The frame slowly swayed in the light wind and the dark form swung side to side.
     "A work of art," Markus laughed as he watched the limp form swing. It struck him kind of odd though. Boneman had said he was gonna try for the Satan angle, but this was nothing like it. Actually the body kind of reminded him of something else.
     Maybe it was the way the elbows sagged downwards, and the head lolled. It looked more like the body was flying like a bird did. It just struck him that way.
     "Looks like a bird flying," Jester said startling Markus. When he looked at Jester he saw Burns next to him nodding. Great, maybe he wasn’t so crazy. Then again, saying that Jester’s thought processes were anything close to sane was a stretch also. Burns wasn’t a prize either. Shit!
     "Well shit we can always change it," Boneman said starting to walk over to the hanging frame. The wind picked up suddenly. The body began swinging faster.
     "Fuck it already!" Lizard shouted. Boneman simply laughed at her and walked right up underneath the body. He reached up to still the swinging frame. The wind had other ideas as a large gust pushed the frame out over the edge of the cliff just out of reach. Boneman reached out a little farther.
     Markus was not really surprised when the cord snapped. There was the brittle crack of a whip and then the sharp cry of Boneman as the body suddenly vanished from before him. The hissing rope swished past Boneman and whip snapped against his outstretched hand.
     The others quickly rushed to the edge en masse. They looked out into the night as the frame struck the edge of the rocky cliff and then shot forward with a violent force. To those who were watching it looked like the corpse flew down into the night. It was swallowed by the shadows. A big black winged shadow speeding out of their lives.
     But Markus saw nothing of that. Something deep inside of him twisted when the body vanished over the edge. His legs froze to the ground even as he willed them forward to watch the body with the rest. Some part of him realized the moment. Something deep and dark within him recognized it for what it was.
     It was the moment when he saw the crow perched on the tree the body had been on. That was when it all clicked for him. There had been no bird there an instant before. The exact second that the frame had dropped, the crow had simply arrived. Like a hallucination staging a grand appearance.
     That was when he realized that he had signed his death. The whimpering of Boneman as he cradled his wounded hand only added to the effect.
     Sometimes, Markus thought, I wished I wasn’t so damned perceptive...

Kind of based on the world of the Crow

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