Last night, I heard a crazy woman playing the Güiro in the middle of the night in a dark alley. – So what, you ask? It was the sound of death, and I think I died. 

Cato woke with the fortune cookie slip still crushed in his fist and the Güiro’s dry rasp still scraping the inside of his skull. The words had burned into his vision, even when he closed his eyes. He didn’t believe in fortune telling. But this message, probably typed by some bored factory worker thousands of miles away, had sunk its claws into him and refused to let go.

He kissed Ellen’s sleeping face and slipped out of the bedroom. The morning felt off-key, a song played one semitone wrong. He grabbed his bottled coffee and was halfway out the door when she appeared behind him, drawn by the aroma, her hair flattened on one side. He waved. She waved back with a look that said fix whatever this is. She hated the nights he thrashed and muttered in languages she didn’t recognize.

Outside, heat slapped his face and carried a cocktail of city smells: stone, gas, dirt, sweat. Beneath them lurked something he knew too well. The faint, sweet-sulfurous scent of demon, like overripe fruit.

His father had been here.

It was always the same pattern: the lingering scent, shadows that moved independently of what cast them. The demon rarely showed himself, but his presence weighed on the air like a storm front. He only visited when something was about to happen, or when he needed a favor.

First the fortune cookie, now this. Cato’s stomach turned cold and familiar. He hoped the feeling was wrong, though it never had been.

He jogged toward his favorite park, looking for a bench and some quiet. At the first crossroad, three crows passed overhead. One tilted its head and looked straight at him, with an intelligence no bird should have. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand. When he looked again, it was still staring.

Then one screeched, and the sound ran down his spine like ice water. They weren’t flying; they were circling, mapping him.

They dove in a perfect triangle. Cato threw up his arms, but they were already on him, pecking, scratching, screeching in voices that sounded almost like laughter. He sidestepped and hurled his coffee, the lid held, and the crows dodged it with supernatural grace.

One drove its beak into his neck. A single cut opened, and yellow blood trickled out. Not red. Never red. The crow screeched in triumph as if it had won some cosmic lottery.

They knew. They would keep at him until they were certain, and he couldn’t let them get a second taste of what flowed in his veins. He slapped a hand to his neck, but the wound was already closing. Still, the crows struck again, from the left, from above, forcing him back one step and then another, until he stumbled off the curb and into the path of an oncoming car.

The impact threw him across the asphalt. The crows’ screeching rose to a roar of delight. A human body would have broken. His hadn’t.

He lay panting on his back. You can’t hide from your fate, Ana had told him years ago. And if you try, it will hunt you down like a wild animal. He should have listened to her. He dragged the slip out of his pocket. Your fate will catch up with you. The ink seemed to pulse.

He rolled over and stood. The crows had settled on a street lamp, silent now, watchful as sentries.

“Are you alright, mister?” a shy voice asked behind him.

Of course. Someone had witnessed his collision with destiny. He turned, ready to assure her he was fine and she should check on the driver instead, but the woman staggered backward, her face draining of color. His eyes were still yellow, glowing with the light that marked him as something other than human. She stared with the wide-eyed recognition of someone seeing a thing that shouldn’t exist in daylight.

He left her frozen and went to the car. The driver was pale as bone. When Cato opened the door, the man vomited.

“Well, well, my son. You did a great job here.”

The voice behind him was smooth as expensive whiskey and twice as dangerous. Cato didn’t turn. He knew the face would wear its usual expression of amused disappointment, yellow eyes searching for something they’d never found in all these years.

“Nice to see you too, Father. Can you help with this, or did you just come to gloat?”

“There’s way too much human in you, Cato.”

“I’m not like you and I never will be.” He finally turned to face the man he admired, feared, hated, and sometimes even loved. Yellow eyes bored into him, and his own began to burn in answer. “So are you going to help or not?”

His father adjusted his immaculate black suit and glanced at the crows with something like pride. “You do realize the crows of fate have found you now. They won’t leave you alone. Call me if you need guidance. As for this little mess, I think you can manage by yourself.”

He stepped into a building’s shadow and was gone, leaving a trace of brimstone and a cold tingle down Cato’s spine.

Cato looked at the driver, covered in vomit and confusion, then at the woman. Time for damage control.

“You’ll be fine,” he told the driver, and the man’s shaking stopped as if a hand had pressed down on it.

Then he walked over to the woman. He didn’t hide the glow in his eyes this time. He leaned into it. Her terror hung between them, and he could feel exactly where it was attached, like a thread he could pull.

“Could you call an ambulance?” he said, and his voice came out warm and low, with something layered underneath. “The car hit that lamp pretty badly, and someone should check on the driver.”

Her eyes went soft and unfocused. The memory slid off her like water off glass. She blinked, nodded, and fumbled for her phone. “Ambulance. Right.”

He had done this before, more often than he liked. It never got easier to watch.

The crows screeched, and the lamp crumpled sideways, scattering them into the air. At least now it looked like the car had hit something solid.

Cato tasted sulfur and destiny on the morning air. Time to go home and talk to Ellen. Time to drop the facade and see if she could handle the truth about what he was.

Overhead, the crows circled, waiting to see what he would do next.