Crow

For a long time, several thousands of years, a single man had been desperate for the power needed to defend his land from a tyrant that threatened to leave him and his people penniless and hungry. He had sought advice from many priests as to what he could do to stop the tyrant, to no success. However, one day he had come across an injured shape-shifter, who he had taken the time to heal despite how little time he had left to save his people.

Humbled by the generosity and suffering of the man, he had offered a solution to him; seek the great demon king to drive the man away in exchange for allowing his subjects to wonder the human world.
Desperate, the man took up the shape-shifter’s offer, and as he was brought deep down into the earth to see the demon king, be begged for the demon king to spare his people from the suffering at the hands of the tyrant.

The demon king agreed, and he descended to the human world and turned the tyrant into a demon that would forever remain under his thrall, incapable of disobeying. With the deed done, the demon king returned to his home of fire and mortar whilst his subjects entered the human world for the first time; demons, vampires, mermaids, werewolves, shape-shifters and witches over run the landscape and turned any and all humans that wanted it.

However, the humans were scared of the monsters that escaped the shadow realm, the land of the demon king, and started to hunt any and all of the ‘Shadows’ they could find. Angered by this, the demon king gave his subjects the ability to turn unwilling victims.

The man and his family were killed in the crossfire, and many humans died and turned because of his fool-hardy desperation to protect his family and people.

The Shape-shifter that had caused it all wept and waited to die in his guilt and grief for what he had caused.

That, dear children, is how the Shadows joined our world.

~*~*~*~

She had remembered it like it was yesterday; she had been young and naive, she had thought that some humans may be redeemable and not all of them feared her kind and would want her dead. She hoped like a dehydrated man lost in desert would hope to find water.

She had saved them once when they were being attacked by a paedophile, the man had managed to corner the boys in an alley and the eldest of the two, a boy with sandy blond dreadlocks, had pushed the terrified younger behind him as he glared and trembled in fear.

“L-leave us alone you creep!” She remembered flying over as he hissed at the man and she had been curious. No-one acknowledged her existence when she landed on the nearby roof in her avian form, even as she cawed in warning to the human man who had the boys terrified and backed into a corner.

She didn’t know what a paedophile was, she could barely write at that age, Shadows weren’t allowed to go to school, after all, but she could tell that the human boys were scared of him and that human adults were cruel and mean and none of the other shadows liked them.

So when the adult human advanced, she had left her perch and attacked his eyes, she had clawed in vicious triumph as she heard him curse and yelp as she scratched the skin around his eyes, and he yowled as she pecked his eye, making it burst and blood splatter across her face at the force. He had thrown her off, and she tumbled through the air before she transformed into her human form.

The man had shrieked at the sight of her, despite looking the same age the boys did (the human age of 12) and he ran back into the street, crying about crazy shifters and how Shadows are a menace to society.

“Pft,” the young shifter had snorted. “And he thinks I’m a menace to human society,” she muttered. Her inky black eyes sought out the shocked human boys, and she approached them warily; just because she saved them didn’t mean they would be nice to her, human children could easily be as mean as the adults. “Are you two ok?”

She tucked a mahogany lock of hair behind her hair as the two human boys slowly approached her. “Who are you?” the younger of the two asked, his hair smelt of dye, telling her that his hair wasn’t really black.

“I’m Crow,” she introduced herself warily by the name of the type of shapeshifter she was, she didn’t want them to be able to find her if they turned out to be bad. “Are you both ok?”

“Y-yeah,” the eldest answered. “But-”

“Good,” the young Crow had answered before she transformed again and took off into the air, the young boys could easily fend for themselves for there.

She had returned after 40 long years, and she barely looked 20 despite her real age. Shapeshifters were the only Shadows besides witches who weren’t immortal, and time had been good to her. Her lips were pouty, her hair was still a lush mahogany brown and her inky black eyes glittered.

Her skin had turned from pasty white to a light tan from being out in the sun, and she had a slender, delicate-looking body despite how she could easily match a fully-grown human man in terms of strength and she clothed herself in cheap by nice clothes. She usually wore skinny jeans with t-shirts and a hoodie. Being who she was, she rarely wore make-up, she couldn’t afford it.

Crow wasn’t sure why she kept coming back to this spot, she didn’t even know those boys’ names or whether they were alive, hell, she wasn’t sure if she would even recognize them now! They would start becoming old and grey now, in their fifties. She regularly went by the nickname she had given those two boys all those years ago, she was sure they would find it amusing if they would even remember her; trauma did strange things to the human mind.

She was in her avian form right now, her feathers gleamed and shone in the weak January afternoon light and she puffed up her chest in pride; she was the prettiest Crow shape-shifter to ever grace Berlin!

The rumble of an engine caught her attention, and a posh, silver car stopped outside the alleyway and a tall man with stubble on his cheeks got out, the man’s eyes were a deep gold and it made Crow nervous; the man was some kind of Wereanimal, most likely a werewolf. Weres looked down on their shifter cousins because they were not only so much weaker than them, they also blended in much better than them, and shape-shifters liked them even less.

The man observed the surrounding alley, he was looking for something. Curious herself, she looked around for anything that could be of interest, but she found nothing besides a few mice, and when she turned to look at the Were again, he was looking directly at her. She squawked in shock and the Were smirked, his teeth were all pointy and sharp, like a shark.

She mentally cursed herself all types of fool, revealing her intelligence to a Were was the most stupid of things to do! She opened her wings and prepared to take off but before she could, a large hand wrapped around her delicate bird legs (when had the Were moved?) and immediately she knew she was caught.

She viciously pecked at the Were’s hand which did little to loosen his grip, and he brought her inside the nice car. She cawed angrily at being manhandled like this, but the Were paid her no mind as he commanded the driver; “Return back to base.”

Crow had a feeling that it was only going to get worse from there and she stopped struggling, although she kept giving the Were the evil eye, as much as she could in her weak crow form. The Were seemed to know what she was doing and merely smirked at her.

She huffed her annoyance. Asshat, she mentally cursed.

~*~*~*~

The drive felt longer than it was and as soon as the car stopped, Crow sent a vicious peck to the Were’s hand just to make her opinion of him clear. The Were wasn’t amused at all, and he glared at her before he opened the door. She squawked in outrage as he walked by his hands by his sides, swaying her back and forth as she hung sideways; not nice.

Crow hadn’t known that it would be possible to get motion sick in this form, but she had just been proved wrong. She sent another peck to the Were’s hand, who shook her brutally in revenge. She decided just to remain silent and maintain what was left of her dignity.

In the meantime, she observed her surroundings. They had entered a large abandoned factory that looked to have been recently refurbished on the inside with gothic-Victorian design all over the place. The carpets and walls were either red or black, with paintings hung up in golden frames. Shadows of every kind crawling all over the place and it made her all the more nervous, there had been rumours of powerful twin vampires holding territory and employed every type of Shadow imaginable.

Crow shivered in anxiety, was she here to be offered ‘employment’ too? She tried in vain to remember their names, and she cursed herself for her inability to remember names oh she was fine with directions and figuring out her location, but not names.

The first thing she was going to do once she got out of this strange place was bang her head on a wall.

Eventually the Were stopped by a pair of very elaborate doors and he knocked firmly, the sound echoed through the near-empty corridor and if she could, Crow would roll her eyes; this seemed more like a dramatic supernatural movie than a real threat.

“Come in,” a smooth male voice commanded from the other side, and Crow’s heart leapt to her throat as Were did just that, and she cawed her displeasure. In the center of the room was a royal red sofa with golden inlay and two very pale men sat there, with both male and female Shadows and humans knelt at their feet, eager for their favour.

Crow felt sick at the sight of the adoration in their eyes, they were most likely under the vampire thrall, used to keep their blood donors in line, and her terrified black eyes met the violet of the vampire twins. Although they dressed different, she could easily see how they were related.

The smaller of the two had his hair tied back in corn crows and he wore his clothing, all black and grey, slightly baggy with white sneakers. The taller of the two had his hair long and a pale blond, his clothing was very extravagant and in with the latest fashion magazines from what she could see. All silver and black and shiny with thick sole boots.

The Shadows and humans at their feet turned to her curiously.

“I brought her as requested sirs,” the Were folding Crow spoke before he let her go. She squawked in shock and she flapped her wings to give her a decent landing before she returned to her human form and sent the Were a scathing glare. “Quite the feisty one, she put up a struggle when I came to collect her.”

“More like kidnap, asshat,” Crow muttered spitefully as she rubbed her numb ankles to return the life to them. She fidgeted on her feet as the pin and needles sensation spread throughout her legs.

The smaller of the two, the vampire with corncrows, chuckled in amusement whilst his brother spoke; “Thank you Bushido, you may leave,” he turned his gaze to those grovelling at his feet. “You will leave as well.”

Crow shuddered in disgust at their submissiveness as they slunk away reluctantly, their eyes glaring at her in accusation for taking their time away from the two vampires. She wave them the bird in response. Once the vampires ‘admirers’ had gone she turned her eyes to the two and she glared at them. “Who are you and what do you want from me?”

The blond smiled without humour. “Don’t you remember us, Crow?”

Crow scowled. “Obviously not.”

Within moments the vampire with the corncrows was in front of her, and she had to repress a flinch of fear as he grasped a lock of her elbow-length hair and he pressed it to his lips and kissed it. “Don’t you remember 40 years ago, you saved the lives of two twin boys?” Crow felt her gut turn as it started to dawn on her what they were hinting at. “We tried to search for you for a long time, and now we’ve finally found you.”

Crow felt like she was going to be sick.