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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2015
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Ferals: The Crow Talker
Text © Working Partners Ltd 2015
Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers, 2015
Cover art © Jeff Nentrup, 2015
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780007578528
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007578535
Version: 2015-01-20
With special thanks to Michael Ford
“Some of the victims were found with tooth marks on their bodies. Others had been dropped from great heights or were bloated with poisons found in their blood. To this day, no one knows what – or who – was behind the strange series of murders that swept through Blackstone that fateful summer.”
The Mystery of the Dark Summer by Josephine Wallace, Head Librarian, Blackstone Central Library
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
About the Publisher
Blackstone sprawled like a bacterial growth on all sides. Caw took in flashes of the city – skyscrapers rising to the east, and to the west, the endless slanting roofscape of the poorer districts and the smoking chimneys of the industrial quarter. In the north loomed abandoned tenements. The river Blackwater was somewhere to the south, a roiling sludge carrying filth away from the city, but never making it any cleaner. Caw could smell its fetid stench.
He skidded up against the dirty glass panel of a skylight. Laying his hands softly on the glass, Caw peered into its soft glow. A hunched janitor wheeled a mop and bucket through the hallway below, lost in his own world. He didn’t look up. They never did.
Caw took off again, startling a fat pigeon and skipping around an ancient billboard, trusting his crows to follow. Two of the birds were barely visible – flitting shadows black as tar. The third was white, his pale feathers making him glow like a ghost in the darkness.
I’m starving, muttered Screech, the smallest of the crows. His voice was a reedy squawk.
You’re always starving, said Glum, his wing-beats slow and steady. The young are so greedy.
Caw smiled. To anyone else, the crows’ voices would merely sound like the cries of regular birds. But Caw heard more. Much more.
I’m still growing! said Screech, flapping indignantly.
Shame your brain isn’t, Glum cackled.
Milky, the blind old white crow, drifted above them. As usual, he said nothing at all.
Caw slowed to gather his breath, letting the cool air fill his lungs. He took in the sounds of night – the swish of a car across
