Brown walls stood around me as sentinels, trapping me within. I sat there, free to go; yet I was their prisoner. I considered that survival is only temporary and said so:

"Survival is only temporary." I told my crow. We were alone until the door opened.

"Death will always happen, my Lord." Cory tilted his head, considering that he might not understand my meaning, so he asked: "Won't it?"

I nodded. Then the door opened and a startlingly young and pretty investigator walked slowly in and sat across from me. She offered me a paper cup with water in it. I took it and sipped it. She had two files with her. One was light blue and thick and belonged to her and the other was a thin police file made by Detective Winters.

"I am Agent Saint." Agent Saint introduced herself. "My friends just call me Maia. I don't mind the informality." She smiled.

"You already know who I am." I pointed at Detective Winters's file. It was the John Monica murder case and she had brought it out for me.

"You are the primary suspect in the murder of John Monica." Agent Saint was still smiling somehow and it made her look wise and serene. "I am not investigating a local murder. I am investigating a series of murders committed by a team of suspects. They are serial killers, and when I heard they are here: I flew."

Cory tilted his head with interest and looked at her, examining her carefully.

"Okay?" I asked with a drawn out tone. I wasn't sure how I could help her or what she wanted from me. I had already given all the details I could after they let me wash the blood off of me.

"Ask her if her partner has any questions about your statement." Detective Winters urged me.

"Does your partner have any questions?" I asked.

Her smile faded slightly as though my interest in talking to someone else bothered her. Then Cory interrupted:

"How did you fly?"

"What?" Agent Saint was startled by the words of my crow and stared at him for a few seconds. Then she looked at me as it occurred to her that it must be some kind of trick. But she was not so sure and she asked: "Did you just speak to me?"

"I did. I am under an enchantment and I can speak perfectly well." Cory told her.

"Amazing. Well, my partner does not believe in magic." She stood as if she was going to go and then sat back down and changed her smile slightly. "You are unfamiliar with FBI procedure; although I am guessing you spent a lot of time with Detective Winters."

"Tell her you learned nothing about police procedure because I was so unorthodox." Detective Winters suggested.

"He did things his own way. I only learned about his own methodology." I told Agent Saint. She seemed to appreciate this and mentioned in return:

"I do things my own way, also." Agent Saint admitted strangely. "That is why I am assigned to this case. The best have achieved nothing over the last fifty years." She pursed her lips while mentioning this detail. While the timeline loomed in my imagination she continued: "They brought me out of a basement and made me lead investigator because I made some breakthroughs. But then I made no more progress until you came along. You have met them, seen them, survived them. I want you with me from now on, that is how I am going to find them."

"I want to be helpful." I told her.

As a gesture she took the heavier blue folder and set it atop the police file on the murder I had committed. "You are going to be in protective custody, my custody. You will agree to this and to whatever I say." She opened the folder and removed two pieces of paper and had me sign them both. Her smile warmed when I did this. To her, I represented her best lead in the case. And something more, she knew I meant to catch them and that I would be very useful to her.

"Your crow speaks." She looked at Cory.

"I can speak." Cory spoke defensively. "But you cannot fly."

"I rode in an airplane. Saying 'I flew' is a way of saying that. He knew what I meant." Agent Saint gestured towards me. Cory looked at me to see and I nodded that she was right.

"I would have guessed that." Cory claimed. He sounded embarrassed somehow. I'd never known him to seem demoted before. I looked again at Agent Saint and wondered what sort of person she was. She seemed kind and warm and intelligent. She had described her relationship with the FBI as though she were not respected or accomplished, however. It seemed like a contradiction.

"I survived because Cory told them I was harmless and they believed him. At the time it was true, but now I am not just me anymore. I have taken in the warrior spirit of Detective Winters. They will not spare my life a second time." I sipped the water she had given me.

"That is why you handled the body?" Agent Saint asked, nodding appreciatively at my easy candor. I sounded crazy and yet she treated my words like facts.

"Tell her that they can make her weapon and all its special ammunition fall apart into individual components with a mere spell." Detective Winters wanted me to say.

"They can cast a spell and make your gun fall apart." I told her. "You have a big gun in your car, I presume?"

"No. They cannot make my weapon fall apart. I am aware of some of their abilities. I have chosen a new weapon that is not mechanical." She stood and reached behind her lower back. Then, in a blur, she thunked a blade into the metal table. It was a heavy and razor sharp combat knife. It resembled a kukri styled weapon. I was very startled by the speed and ferociousness of this gesture, with no regard to the table she had just put a hole in.

"I doubt that will be enough." Detective Winters complained.

"It will take more than a blade." I reluctantly told her.

"I've got you, old man." She grinned and walked over to me. She put one hand on my shoulder strangely.

"I am younger than you, I think." I muttered.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"I know, but you look very old and you didn't age well. You look like shit." She spoke quietly, honestly.

"Agent Saint, I am lucky to be alive. You must be very careful."

"Death will always happen." Cory stated and clicked.

"Death always happens." Agent Saint repeated with bemusement. She gathered up the folders, freed her weapon and sheathed it under her suit jacket in an upside down sheathe on her back and gestured that she wanted me to come with her as she opened the door. I got up and collected Cory to my shoulder and we left with her.

She drove a white Prius and had kept the windows down. Cory flew from my shoulder and then went into the back. Agent Saint looked sidelong at me and said:

"You can ride up front."

"I prefer the back." I told her. She stopped and her smile vanished completely and I knew this is how she would command me:

"Whatever I say, you will do." And she unlocked her vehicle with the frequency operated button she held. The car chirped and Cory repeated it with interest and said to me, as I got in:

"The car spoke, it asked us to leave its branch." He said, quite bemused by the sound.

"Its just a report from the unlocking of the doors." I sounded moody. I didn't like getting bossed around.

"Oh." Cory sounded disappointed and stopped his excited hopping on the back seat.

Agent Saint got in and pushed a button to start the car. The engine barely made a sound. She said absently: "This is exactly like the one I have at home."

"That all you miss, at home?" I started a conversation that I hoped would allow me to tell her about Persephone and Isidore.

"Are you asking about my personal life, Mr. Briar?" Her smile returned.

"Are we back to using formalities?" I used one of my crow's mannerisms as I replied.

"No, Lord. I live alone. This is my life."

"Hunting witches?" I lipped, whispering it quietly.

"Solving Federal crimes." Agent Saint said quickly. "Usually without going out of my office, which is in the basement, literally."

"They don't fire you for doing things your own way?" I asked.

"My way closes cases." Agent Saint sounded distant and then she offered: "I don't have any friends. I've never even had a boyfriend."

"You're a nerd!" I exclaimed.

"Yes. My IQ is probably about twice what yours is. And I am still waiting, you know." She boasted and blushed. Then she stopped talking. It felt awkward.

"I am not, uh, waiting for anything. I have a newborn daughter here and Detective Winters kinda kept me from her." I changed to the part I wanted to discuss.

"She is a virgin." Cory clicked with amusement. "Her blood is clean. She has pure and holy blood, still. Because she is chaste."

"That's enough." I silenced him by clicking twice at him with my own tongue on the roof of my mouth. He gave me a strange look like I was disregarding something vital, staring the way he does when I have irritated him somehow. "I am sorry. Cory presumes many things and then makes such statements."

"You understood that I meant that? When I said 'I am waiting'?" Agent Saint asked Cory, perplexed by his intelligence.

"Not until my Lord said the opposite. He had sex and then he smelled different." Cory ignored my apology and answered her. "The blood of a virgin human has some magic properties."

"Like what?" She asked.

"It is pure. All things that are pure can conduce magic." Cory explained.

"I sometimes have visions." Agent Saint claimed. "My grandmother said they would continue as long as I was untouched. She had them too."

"Okay, Cory." I sighed and then interrupted with: "I would like to spend more time with my family."

"I am afraid not, Lord. Protective custody, witness protection, you know? Do you want them to come for you when you are with them?" Agent Saint sounded deadly serious.

I said nothing back. My eyes were watering. She had said that fifty years had gone by. How could end such a saga? I felt small and helpless and unfit for the task.

"Tell her you believe in her abilities and that you also believe she can keep you safe." Detective Winters offered.

"I don't." I said to Detective Winters out loud. Agent Saint thought I was talking to her and patted my knee reassuringly.

We arrived at a small diner not too far from Bell Creek, near evening. We went in and were seated by a waitress who did not care what we thought of her. She looked at us, Agent Saint so young, in her perfectly fit suit and me in my old clothes and haggard appearance with a crow atop my head, some of his shit drying on my locks.

"Dead ends are sometimes secret entrances." Agent Saint smiled with a new smile, this one very affectionate and conspiring. She looked like a girl for an instant, childish in her gaze. Yet those same eyes had seen their share of horror.

When the waitress came back Agent Saint flipped a photo out of her jacket like a card trick and asked: "Have you seen this man before?"

"I told the cops who he was with." The waitress chewed the inside of her cheek and then her own tongue. There was gradually something very dark and different about the look in her eyes.

"Must go now!" Cory squawked in terrified native Corvin. I stood suddenly as Cory spread his wings and sailed for the front door. My chair fell back and clattered.

The waitress just stood there like nothing had happened. I backed away slowly from her, unsure if she was the reason for such alarm in my bird. I noticed that her facial expression never changed. She wasn't even looking at the photo or at us or at anything. Then her face changed slightly, her mouth twitching into a queer smile.

"Ma'am, please step back. Just step back, ma'am." Agent Saint lost her smile. She also felt alarmed as the waitress slowly turned her head all the way to one side and stuck one hand straight forward and took the photo and cast it aside. A voice seemed to come from within her throat, the sound coming more from the side of her head than her mouth in a deep voice:

"Got you, little witch hunting bitch. Knew you'd come. Knew you would." And the outstretched hand swung with stiffness across Agent Saint's face. Blood spurted from her cheek and eyelid all over the table as the long nails on the waitress raked her. Then the waitress lifted a ceramic coffee mug she had poured hot water for tea into earlier. She brought it down with fury onto Agent Saint's head, knocking her from her chair.

I was glad we weren't at the diner's bar or in a booth. I hefted my chair during the assault on Agent Saint and brought it crashing down on the back of the head of the waitress. She crumpled to the floor, her neck broken. I looked around the diner and noticed the cook and the cashier were like her. Of course there would be three enemies here.

"I'm paying, so get whatever you want." Agent Saint moaned from the floor. She sat up, stunned. Flesh hung from her cheek in shreds and her eyeball was dripping. The cook came barreling towards me with a meat tenderizer raised. I couldn't move fast enough and he struck me on the side of my head, knocking me aside as he went for Agent Saint.

"Get up!" Cory called to her, urging her to react. She was too slow and the weapon struck her alongside her shoulder. I heard a sickening crunching noise as the bone and the handle of the weapon snapped.

"Look out for the other one, coming up behind you!" Detective Winters guessed. I tried to turn as I staggered and was tackled to the ground by the cashier. She was thin and weightless though she fought as a wild cat, clawing and biting me from atop. "Punch her in the jaw, dammit!"

I managed to give her a weak left hook and broke some knuckles. She fell off of me and hit her head on the corner of the divider. I tried to get up and felt her claws and teeth in my shoulders and neck. "Now back her up into the window, just throw yourself backwards!"

The window didn't break with the first impact. I had to throw us back into it a second time for that. Then I was laying atop her looking up at a streetlight that lit the parking lot. Cory flew out the broken window over me and back to the car. I tried to get up and found my aged body depleted of energy.

Agent Saint appeared over me, holding her knife in her good hand. Blood dripped from it. She had killed the cook. Her undamaged eye gleamed with terror. She was in shock. She told me I could pay if I wanted to and then she dropped her weapon and fished her key-fob out and went to the car to sit down.

I managed to roll off of the cashier and realized she was still breathing. I tapped her cheeks lightly and dim and dying awareness came to her eyes. She just laid there for a moment and then started crying weakly. I heard a soft click and knew Cory was beside me.

"You are still alive, for now." He told her.

"No, I am free from that shadow, the one in my mind, whispering. It started to scream at me when I saw you. I am so sorry." The cashier wept and strained herself to speak. "I didn't mean to, I am so sorry."

"You're free now." I told her quietly. "You cannot hear the voice. Not anymore. You are free now."

"I am. Thank you." She gasped and her eyes became silent. I gently closed them.

Then Cory advised her ghost: "You are dead now."