Dawn Slayer

by Clara Coulson

  Shit. They planned this perfectly. We walked right into their trap.

  I push my legs to the limit to catch up to Barnett, pinpointing her position by following the crunch of her boots on the layer of sleet that has blanketed the road since the plows last came by. When I reach her side, I say in a harsh whisper, “They’re trying to drive us toward the repair shop. We need to get past one of the SUVs and leave the neighborhood through a route that doesn’t take us anywhere near the shop.”

  I can’t see Barnett’s face under her veil, but I can picture it. Confusion. Disbelief. Anger. In that order.

  “Why the hell is DSI driving us toward the repair shop?”

  “Because,” I say between stilted breaths, my lungs hitching less from exertion and more from the growing horror in my gut, “DSI Moscow has been working for the Children of Enoch the entire time.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Barnett and I never get the chance to pull a Lucian and blast one of the SUVs out of our way. The reason being that, while Barnett is still trying to process the damning revelation that just spilled from my lips, the SUV in front us violently explodes.

  The DSI team that was taking cover behind that SUV and preparing to threaten us into surrendering is killed instantly, and the shockwave destroys everything in a half-block radius. Walls shatter as easily as windows. Entire buildings are knocked off their foundations. The asphalt of the highway peels away from the earth.

  I manage to pull up my shield before the wave hits me, but the explosion is so powerful that it overloads the spell in the medallion. The shield shatters into glowing fragments of energy. And the shockwave slams into my chest full throttle, nearly disintegrating my ribcage and liquefying my organs. I tumble through the air with no control, spinning head of over heels. Until finally, the ground races up to meet me, and I greet it with no cushion at all.

  My body immediately goes into shock. The next several minutes are consumed by a haze of pain and partial consciousness.

  When I come to again, I find myself lying in a puddle of water in a small concrete lot that looks strangely familiar. I don’t try to move. I can feel my broken bones wriggling back into place beneath my muscles, hear my joints as they pop back into the slots where they belong, sense the tears in my skin slowly knitting themselves back together. The pain is unbelievable, and sitting up will only exacerbate it. So I remain motionless on the ground, looking for all the world like a corpse.

  To take my mind off the agony of my injuries, I observe everything within my field of vision. My memory is as fragmented as my body, and I can tell by the smoke and fire nearby, by the scent of charred flesh that may or may not be mine, by the distant wail of sirens, that something has gone terribly wrong with whatever I was doing before I hit the ground.

  I bring up the last thing I remember clearly: Barnett and I were going to stake out the repair shop, and then…and then…DSI Moscow showed up.

  DSI Moscow, who’s been conveniently showing up to every skirmish involving Dawn Slayer since yesterday morning. DSI Moscow, whose team led by the blond captain somehow survived encountering the merciless cloaked man, even though they were already too injured to fight when he walked out the theater’s door. DSI Moscow, who made no mention of a shapeshifter when they interrogated me, even though they raided a shapeshifter’s flophouse room yesterday afternoon. DSI Moscow, who arrived far too quickly at the nameless park where Lucian and I had our showdown with the cloaked man. DSI Moscow, who managed to completely surround the much larger Izmailovsky Park with minimal notice.

  DSI Moscow, who could’ve used their local information network to find out where Foley and the House Tepes agents were staying in the city—thus giving the Children of Enoch the opportunity to knock down the door of the Hyatt’s presidential suite and abduct the young Lord Tepes.

  From the moment I first ran into them, DSI Moscow has been backing up the Children of Enoch. Every single time the Children failed to procure the sword themselves, DSI would swoop in as part of a secondary attempt to subdue the Children’s enemies and obtain the sword through seemingly legal means. If I had allowed DSI to arrest me at Izmailovsky Park instead of taking the out that Annette provided, DSI would have stolen the sword from me, processed it as evidence, and sent it off to their evidence locker. Only the sword never would have made it there. One of the Children would have intercepted it somewhere along the way.

  DSI Moscow is acting as the Children of Enoch’s personal army. And the worst part is, most of them don’t even know it. Most of them are just following orders, and assuming that those orders are being passed down from trustworthy people in high positions of authority.

  It’s like Delos’ machinations all over again. The top of the organization ladder is corrupt. It—

  A pained groan alerts me to the presence of someone nearby. Tilting my head up as far as I can with my back still broken in at least two places, I locate Barnett, no longer hidden under a veil.

  She’s lying on top of a hard-packed snowbank about ten feet away. She looks better than I feel, with a few broken fingers and an indeterminate number of forming bruises and weeping cuts on her face. She must’ve cast a better shield than me, one that didn’t collapse, and used it to cushion her landing.

  Barnett takes a few more minutes to collect herself and then rolls off the snowbank. She lifts her head slowly, as if it weighs fifty pounds, and looks around with bleary eyes made blood red by burst vessels in her sclera. Blood also drips from her ears, her eardrums perforated by the explosion. As she attempts to shift into a sitting position, she almost tips over, unbalanced.

  Eventually, she regains enough of her bearings to locate me lying nearby. She mumbles something, but I don’t hear it over the ringing in my ears. So I merely stare at her, uncomprehending, too drained to try and read her lips.

  Barnett frowns at me and flicks her gaze to the right, where she apparently notices something of great concern. Her eyes widen slightly, her blood-streaked lips part in a soundless gasp, and a ghost of a shudder runs through her body from head to toe.

  She looks back to me, now frantic. This time, she enunciates more clearly so I don’t have to tax my brain to understand her. “Kinsey, we’re in a bad position. We need to get the hell out of here.”

  Out of where? The fire from the SUV explosion is contained to a smattering of buildings a few blocks away. The roiling black smoke is being drawn west by the wind, away from wherever the two of us landed. We’re in no danger of burning or suffocating here. So why is Barnett so worried?

  My eyes dip toward the concrete underneath my aching body.

  Why is it so familiar?

  I have a nagging feeling I’m missing something important.

  With a monumental effort, I force myself to roll over onto my back. All the busted bones in my body scream at the motion, but I don’t let the garbled sound out of my throat. Not even when the hilt of the sword in the bag still strapped to my back jabs a shattered vertebra and shifts a piece of bone an inch farther out of place. I don’t let out any noise at all. Externally. Internally, on the other hand, every single alarm I have is blaring so loudly I can’t think.

  I can’t think of anything except how utterly fucked we are.

  Barnett and I are currently situated less than twenty feet away from the entrance to the auto repair shop. We landed on the pavement right in front of the building. By design, it must’ve been. No way it was a coincidence. The Children set off that car bomb when they did because Barnett and I were in the perfect position to get thrown toward the repair shop.

  The whole thing, from the DSI agents pinning us between a set of narrow alleys and the office building, knowing we’d go through the office building to get to the main street and give ourselves breathing room for our escape, to the three SUVs blocking the routes out of the neighborhood and causing us to slow down right as we crossed in front of the vehicle rigged to blow…all of that was an elaborate mouse trap. And we fell for it like the little mice the Children o
f Enoch think we are.

  Now we’re in the lion’s den with no plan, no backup, and no way out.

  With no warning, a rectangular prism made of energy encompasses the repair shop and its small parking lot. The view of the world beyond the prism blurs, and the sounds of the crackling fire from the SUV explosion fade out completely. This is another rendition of the illusion spell that was used to obscure the sights and sounds of the confrontation Lucian and I had with the Children in that little park.

  Anyone outside the prism, I assume, will see a false projection of the repair shop. One that shows nothing but a closed business and an empty concrete lot. Even if the remaining DSI agents walk right past, they won’t notice Barnett and me being slaughtered by the Children.

  The DSI agents will never know they contributed to our murders, or any of the deaths they’ve been misled into causing for however long the Children have been tugging on their strings. The Children have made unwitting killers of people who live to protect. And that makes me more furious than anything else about this situation.

  One of the shop’s garage roller doors rises from the ground with a piercing screech that goes unheard outside the prism. Standing just inside the garage are three people wearing gray cloaks. Two golems stand sentry behind them, one hulking beast on either side, their black eyes focused on Barnett and me in the way that predators with teeth focus on fresh meat.

  Behind the trio, dimly illuminated by the old fluorescent ceiling lights, sits Foley. He’s bound to a metal chair by a set of thick steel chains, his posture slumped, his chin resting against his chest. Most of his skin is a mottled red, the same sort of burns left on my wrist after my brief exposure to the golem poison.

  At some point during or after his abduction, they must have sprayed him with the poison in an attempt to make him compliant, but my blood in his system negated most of the ill effects. He still doesn’t look well, but he’s not dying. Not yet.

  The biggest golem I’ve seen so far looms over the back of Foley’s chair, its huge clawed hands held aloft, each hovering far too close to Foley’s head for comfort. The threat is clear. If Barnett or I make a single wrong move during this farce of an exchange, the golem will either crush Foley’s head between its hands or decapitate him with its razor-sharp claws.

  The trick is that there’s no right move to make. The Children of Enoch want all three of us dead, and dead we’ll all be in a few minutes. Unless Barnett and I can come up with an extremely clever plan, without speaking to each other, in less time than it takes the Children to compel me to hand over the sword by threatening Foley’s life.

  The instant that sword leaves my possession, all bets are off.

  I close my eyes and just breathe, until the churning detritus in my head settles on the bottom, allowing me to think clearly.

  You’ve been in dire straits before, Kinsey, and you’ve gotten out of them. No situation is totally hopeless. There is a flaw in the Children’s strategy, and you can exploit it. All you have to do is find it. So pay attention to every minute detail of what happens next.

  Releasing one last deep breath, I open my eyes and look at my enemies.

  The two cloaked people we are familiar with have stepped out of the garage.

  The woman cautiously approaches Barnett, her fingers aglow with that rust-tinged aura, her breathing heavy and loud, like her airway is compromised. The man heads toward me at an even slower rate, his gait slightly uneven, his head drooping to one side. Both of them are still suffering from the injuries they’ve accumulated since we started clashing yesterday. Further proof that whatever powers these Children of Enoch possess, rapid healing isn’t among them. A fault in their biology I hope will help me win the day.

  The woman comes to a halt about four feet from Barnett, and the man stops slightly farther from me, wary. For almost half a minute, no one says or does anything but let a thick layer of tension settle between us and them. And it’s within this tension, this fog of tight unease that pumps adrenaline through the veins and tightens the muscles like stretched rubber bands and discomfits the rational mind, that I find my first opportunity to throw my enemies off kilter.

  The more uncomfortable I can make them, the more likely they are to make a mistake.

  Swallowing a cry of pain, I push myself up to my knees, peer up into the swirling darkness of the cloaked man’s hood, and say, “Hello, Volkov.”

  The cloaked man stiffens, and doesn’t respond.

  “You’re wondering how I know it’s you, right?” I continue with an overly casual air. “The truth is, I didn’t know for sure. Not until you just gave yourself away by reacting as if I said the correct name.”

  The cloaked man’s hands curl into fists, but he still says nothing.

  “If you’re confused as to how I came to suspect your identity, the answer is simple: you got too involved with me during my visit to DSI yesterday.” I hawk a glob of blood onto the concrete in front of his boots, and lick my torn lips clean with a dry tongue. “Despite coming into contact with DSI multiple times in the hours preceding my arrest, I never once saw you among any of the teams I encountered. Not at the satire theater. Not at the flophouse. Not at the little park that’s now a smoldering crater. You weren’t there. Anywhere. Yet for some reason, you showed up to interrogate me, and the whole time, you acted as if I’d personally offended you.”

  The cloaked man’s hands unclench in increments, as if he’s itching to throw a death spell at my face.

  The implicit threat doesn’t deter me from speaking. “Because I did personally offend you, didn’t I? I injured you in that park, in an embarrassing way. And you were so pissed at me for getting the better of you that you lashed out at me the only way you could while I was in DSI custody—by threatening to ruin my reputation.” I choke out a contemptuous sound. “That was a low blow, and petty to boot.”

  The cloaked man has gone very, very still.

  “Oh, come on. Enough with the cheesy villain costume. I know it’s you under the hood, Volkov.” I shake my head, doing my best to pretend that the motion doesn’t make me dizzy. “You weren’t with any of the DSI teams that kept showing up at the perfect moments to make my fights with the cloaked people that much more difficult to survive…because you were the cloaked guy I was fighting. You were coordinating the DSI teams the whole time, either by phone or by radio. You probably pretended that you were running the ops from a mobile command center, with none of the agents privy to the fact that they were actually helping the guy who was causing most of the chaos across their beloved city.”

  I glance at the cloaked woman, who hasn’t budged since I started talking.

  “Well, almost none of the agents. I imagine there are a few more members of the cloaked crew floating around inside DSI.” I turn my head toward the woman. “Which one are you? Irina, maybe?”

  Sparks arc between the woman’s fingers, faint crackles the only noises in the gaps between my words. After what seems to be a period of intense consternation, the woman lets out a loud huff and tugs her hood off. Revealing she is, in fact, Irina. The redheaded agent who escorted me out of the DSI Moscow dungeon at Volkov’s behest.

  Her nose is swollen from a bad break, and the entire left side of her face is a mottled purple. Trophies from the battle at Izmailovsky Park.

  The cloaked man makes an animalistic sound at the sight of Irina’s exposed face, and then rips his hood off as well.

  Aleksei Volkov stares at me with eyes like burning coals. Over half the skin of his face is badly burned, parts of his cheeks seared so thin you can almost see into his mouth. He bares his teeth at me, and in the process, tears his blistered lips wide open. Blood and fluid run down his chin as he sneers, “Get up.”

  Steeling myself, I follow his command. Broken bones jab at my torn muscles, and my torn muscles pull on my half-mended skin. But I don’t allow myself to stumble, and I don’t allow the faintest moan of pain to pass my lips. I maintain eye contact with Volkov as I stand up straight and g
rip with a bloody hand the strap of the duffle bag on my back, the bag that contains the prize for this deadly contest.

  “We’re a little early for the exchange,” I say. “Sure you don’t want to break for lunch?”

  Magic energy discharges from Volkov’s fist and blows a hole into the concrete beside him. “One more smartass comment, and my next blast will be aimed at your head.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no.’”

  His hand shoots up, lavender energy gathering in his palm, but I don’t flinch.

  For good reason.

  The third cloaked person says in an authoritative male voice, “That’s quite enough, Aleksei. There’s no need to be so uncivil when we have the upper hand.”

  Volkov freezes, fury warping his burned face in a way that must hurt like hell. For a half-second more, he holds the energy within his hand, his fingers trembling from the effort. Then he lets out a ragged breath. With it, the energy dissipates harmlessly into the air, a lavender cloud tainted by particles of rust. “Go inside,” he barks at me. “Now.”

  Irina gestures for Barnett to do the same. Defiance flickers across the witch’s face, but she doesn’t follow through on the urge. No doubt she’s calculated the probability of us surviving a fight with three Children and three golems in our current conditions.

  Barnett hauls herself to her feet and sets off with such force in such close proximity to Irina that the tails of her cowboy coat slap the other woman in the stomach. Irina takes a reflexive step back and almost slips on the icy concrete. Barnett gives her a smug side-eye and marches toward the garage.

  I don’t test Volkov with a similar gesture of insolence; I’ve already nudged him to the edge of his restraint. Instead, I walk past him with my head held high, as if I’m going to a ceremony in my honor rather than a meeting with those who want me dead.

  Barnett and I stop side by side in front of the one man still wearing a cloak. Even before he reaches up, clicks the clasp at his neck, and lets the entire garment slide off his shoulders in a rustle of heavy fabric, I already know who I’m going to see when the shadows beneath the hood vanish into the ether.