“That is a question I won’t degrade myself to answer.”
“So, yes.” I spit across the table. It splatters on the metal surface, leaving a string of blood-tinged mucus. “But you didn’t get punished for your actions during the war, did you? Either because the High Court thought you were too valuable or…because you wiped all memory of your involvement from the minds of everyone who knew.”
“I won’t confirm or deny that allegation either.” Delos eyes my spit with distaste. “Not because I care whether or not you know, but because we’re running low on time, and this chat has to come to an end so I can get to work.”
Fear grips my heart. “What work?”
“My work on you, Kinsey. I didn’t pay a million dollars to stick you in a cell and throw away the key.” He tucks his hand into his jacket pocket and pulls out a thin stack of photos in a plastic bag. Opening the bag, he removes the pictures and spreads them out across the table. Every last one is a picture of me and Lucian standing in close proximity to one another, appearing as if we’re engaged in conversation. In one, taken from behind, Lucian has his arm around me; it was snapped at Spring Fest, when Lucian walked up to taunt me and Vincent Wallace. But from the angle of the picture, with my face obscured, it almost looks like we’re friends.
Understanding swamps me, and a panic attack blossoms in my chest, pushing out toward my head, blackening the edges of my vision. “You’re not trying to set me up to look like a Methuselah conspirator. You’re trying to set me up as a vampire flunky. You’re going to pin the curse on the vampires, a curse that you created, and then make it look as if I had a stake in it. No, as if DSI had a stake in it. Which will erode the already weak trust between the ICM and DSI, and the strained cooperation of the ICM and the Vampire Federation. And that’ll make practitioners defect to the Methuselah Group en masse, thinking the vampire conspiracy is real and that DSI has thrown in lots with the vampires.”
I clench my fists so hard my nails tear into my palms. “Lucian was right. This is just one big recruitment campaign.”
“The campaign to end all campaigns,” Delos agrees, his winning smirk smeared across his face again. “How can any of those weak-minded peons continue to doubt the vampires are out to get them, when their neighbors are dropping dead from a curse created by the vampire spy Lucian Ardelean and deployed by his co-conspirator, Cal Kinsey?” He relaxes into his chair, a haughty posture, like he’s inherited some vast fortune and beat out dozens of others in a hotly contested will. “And the best thing about this plan, Kinsey, is that once I reprogram you to believe you are Ardelean’s conspirator, the fact that you were indeed patient zero will simply prove the story to be true, beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
Air clogs my throat, and I gasp. “What? That’s bullshit. I don’t have the curse.”
“Of course you do.” Delos shifts forward and rests his chin on his hands. “Or should I say, you did. Until it activated, after its three-week time delay, while you were waiting in line at a breakfast restaurant a few days ago. After which it split into numerous smaller copies of itself and jumped from you to the nearest available hosts, again and again and again until the original magic store powering its activation depleted to almost nothing. The remainder of that almost nothing then reorganized itself into a subtle ‘vaccine’ that protects you from future infection. You were an asymptomatic carrier, and now you are, suspiciously, the only one immune. The perfect delivery system.” He winks. “And the perfect patsy.”
Oh, god.
I can’t breathe.
That woman and the wizard at Kelly’s. I infected them. They’re both dead because of me. And everyone in the DSI infirmary…I probably infected half the staff while they were testing me. I was a walking plague vector. Jesus Christ. All those people.
“You bastard!” My booming voice reverberates off the walls and slams into my eardrums. Delos doesn’t flinch. But I continue anyway. “How dare you use me like a weapon. I’m not your goddamn toy.”
The man draws his lips into a thin line. “Yes, Kinsey, you are. You are my plaything, a doll of sorts. I’ll bend you and shape you to my will. I’ll break you and reassemble you into the form I require. I’ll manipulate you into any role I need, until I no longer have use of your services. And then I will throw you in the garbage, like a crumpled piece of trash. You’re no different than any other pawn I’ve sacrificed. You’re not special. You’re a Crow. Pretending you hold power while really you grasp at straws.”
Delos pushes his chair back and turns as if he’s going to rise and move closer to me. Put his hands on me. Use his mind magic on me.
Shit. I have to stall him.
“How did you infect me with the curse?” I blurt out. “We’ve never met. Not really. Closest I’ve been to you before today is twenty feet away, around a corner, watching you through a window. What gives?”
Delos almost stands up, but decides to humor me and readjusts his body to face me. “I thought the ‘three weeks’ timeline would’ve given you that answer, but apparently I expect too much from your…intellect.” He sniggers. “It was the farm raid, Kinsey. The whole thing was a setup. The curse was stored inside the barn. In particular, it was stored inside a chicken, and transferred to you when you burst into the barn like a silly action movie hero.”
I rack my brain, trying to remember what the heck he’s talking about. And then it comes back to me. Before the farmhouse bomb blew, I was in the barn with Desmond and the Adelman twins. All we found in the building was a single worthless shoeprint…and a bunch of chickens, inexplicably left to roam the barn and peck at everything in sight. One of them walked over to me and pecked at my boot. That was it. That moment. When the chicken touched me. It specifically walked up to me—to transfer the curse.
Weakly, I murmur, “A chicken? Really?”
Delos doesn’t laugh. “Nothing is out of bounds for spell storage, Kinsey. Inanimate objects or living creatures, it doesn’t matter. Everything can be spelled. I’ve killed people with spells embedded in jewelry, in books, in scurrying mice, in candles, in car seats, in remote controls. Everything can be a weapon if you wield it the right way. Even a stupid, harmless-looking chicken. In fact, the more disarming the object, the better. The attacks your enemies least suspect are always the most devastating.”
“You’re a…” I bite my tongue until it hurts. “You’re a goddamn psychopath.”
He blinks exactly once. “If you say so. But bear in mind the fact you already hate me makes my job even easier. When I’m done with you”—he rises from the chair, his shadow cast on the wall behind him looming larger than it should—“you’ll hate every magic-using human on this planet, and you won’t give a damn about the non-magical ones either. All you will care about is that you get yours from Ardelean, a large sum of money, some lofty favors, a special placement for you in the new world order the vampires are seeking to establish. The fact that yours doesn’t exist, and that Ardelean is no great orchestrator of a vast conspiracy is irrelevant. What matters is that you will look guilty, and so will he, and so will DSI. And that appearance of guilt will lead to the irrevocable breakdown of supernatural inter-community relations.”
Delos makes his way around the table toward me, one stilted step at a time, the fear that must be drowning my eyes fueling his amusement, his pleasure, as he creeps ever closer. He’s done this a thousand times, hasn’t he? Destroyed people. Rewritten them. Permanently wiped all the hopes and dreams, all the history, the sum total of a human, their personality, and replaced it with a tainted design of his own making. A fate literally worse than death. Because in death, you still exist, you’re still you. You just cross the veil and live somewhere else for all eternity.
But this? This is being wiped out of existence altogether, being replaced by a doppelganger wearing your skin, the way a shapeshifter kills or kidnaps and then inserts themselves into a person’s life, their friends and family none the wiser. This is knowing your body will be used like a puppet and being unable to stop it.
This is being stripped down, like a hundred layers of paint, until all that’s left is the bones beneath, bare and ready to be repainted with blood.
I don’t want to go out like this.
I’d rather have died at McKinney’s hands, knowing my teammates would avenge my death. I’d rather have been gutted by a wraith, knowing DSI would go on without me and win the day. I’d rather have lost my head to Vanth’s sword and spent my afterlife in the Etruscan Underworld, knowing that at least Cooper would live on. I don’t want to be mind-wiped into the Manchurian candidate. I don’t want my friends to suffer at the hands of a fake wearing my face. I don’t want to cease to be.
But Delos will never let me leave this room intact, and I’m powerless to fight him.
“Don’t look so glum, Kinsey,” the bastard says as he stops beside me, hands rising to grip my head. “Once I get your taped confession regarding your involvement in the vampire conspiracy, I will, shortly thereafter, have a ‘miraculous breakthrough’ in the creation of the counter-curse I have been working on so diligently by order of Mayor Burbank these past few days. All the sick will be healed. The epidemic will cease. The city will be saved. I will be its savior. And the non-magic humans will rest easy, never knowing a fantastic war is brewing in the streets until it blasts down their front doors.”
“You’re a sick piece of shit.” I spit at him again. This time, my bloody saliva sticks to his pristine white shirt.
Delos glances at the stain, and his nostrils flare in annoyance, but that liquid smirk creeps up his cheeks anyway. “Hmpf. I suppose I’ll give you that one last act of defiance. Small favors.”
His hands suddenly latch onto my head, and I jerk back in the chair, but I’m bound too tightly, and I can’t move out of the way. As his nails bite into my scalp, drawing blood, putting pressure on my skull, as magic wells up inside his palms, ready to discharge into my brain, Delos says evenly, like we’re still having a chat and he’s not trying to destroy me, “You know, when I was first told about you last year, I never imagined you’d be so useful. But my little bird inside DSI has told me all sorts of delightful things about the rise of your reputation, how you’ve become a virtual folk hero to those beneath you in rank. I admit I didn’t give you much thought until you sensed my veil that day I killed Feldman, but after I lost my chance to kill you, I gradually came around to the idea that you would be the perfect pawn to hinge this scheme on. Everybody loves Calvin Kinsey. He’s charming. He’s funny. He’s a hero.”
Delos drops his face close to mine, his breath ghosting across my skin. “It will be my utmost pleasure to watch your little tower of fame come tumbling down, and take all of DSI with it, as you spiral into infamy and disgrace.”
Terror clogs my throat, my heart on the verge of exploding, but I manage to sneer out anyway, “You’re going to lose, you know? One way or another, you’re going to lose, and you’re going to die.”
Delos only smiles as his nails bite deeper into my skin. “Ah, I do enjoy it when they show bravado until the very end.” He chuckles. “Now, Kinsey, why don’t you open up?”
Magic strikes my brain like a jackhammer, and my vision flares to white, but my consciousness doesn’t fade, even as the feeling of biting fire ants fills my skull from the neck up. In quick succession, all my other senses cut out too, until there’s nothing but the pain. More pain than McKinney dealt me in three days of torture. More pain than I’ve ever felt in my life. I can’t think about anything except my own suffering, even as the pain resolves into the overpowering sensation of someone literally rooting through my brain matter, as if Delos has sawed my skull open and shoved his hands inside.
But the brain has no nerves. It cannot feel. What I’m sensing is Delos rooting through my mind. The physical manifestation of a soul-jarring violation reverberating all the way back up to my nervous system, setting every nerve on fire as if I’m being immolated, spattered with gasoline and set alight. This is the sensation of a soul trying desperately to save itself from a magic attack so foul, so wrong, that it threatens to erase my very essence. This pain is the sound a soul makes when it screams.
I feel the exact instant when Delos reaches my memories. Flashes of my past start to ripple across my shorted senses, hazy and imprecise as if viewed through an old TV. My latest encounter with Lucian sticks to the forefront for a moment—Delos wants to know what we spoke about, I vaguely realize—and then time jumps back. To the fight with Feldman months ago. To my trip to the Etruscan Underworld last year. To Mac’s death long before I ever joined DSI. To…
The memories fade like cigarette smoke, and Delos reaches further into my head.
The tendrils of his magic brush up against an imperfect sphere tucked into the back of my mind. Like a rubber-band ball, tightly wound, a solid weight that sticks out among the ephemeral thoughts and memories that float freely in the void inside my head. A sphere that has not always been inside me. Rather, it’s something I acquired on my ill-fated trip to recover Cooper from Charun and Vanth, when I offered to trade myself for Cooper, offered my life for his, even though we barely knew each other, because I was the reason he was abducted in the first place. Something I acquired when Vanth swung her sword to behead me for a crime I didn’t commit, only for Aida, her king, to spare my life at the last possible second. Something I acquired when that mighty sword, teeming with magic beyond human comprehension, grazed my neck.
In that moment, my life flashed before my eyes. My past and my future.
But my brain, my sad little human brain, still bound by living cells, couldn’t handle all those memories, couldn’t sort through the information and slot it all where it belonged, because it didn’t belong. So instead, it all ended up in the back of my head, accessible only in the barest way possible: through short bursts of déjà vu.
Delos brushes memories of a life I haven’t lived yet. And he shouldn’t do that.
Dread surges through me, overwhelming the pain as if I’ve jumped into an ice bath, and I try to shout at him, No, don’t! Don’t touch those! But the words fail me, and he touches them anyway. Touches them curiously at first, a gentle prodding. And then, harder. And then, harder. And then, even harder, in annoyance that they won’t yield to his demands. Finally, he throws the sum total of his magic strength at the memories I should not have.
And with a flourish that is not unlike the Big Bang, the sphere explodes.
Chapter Twelve
I wake to ash-fall sewn inside a long-forgotten dream. Or should I say a nightmare? A recurring nightmare. One of those abominable childhood memories that haunt you in your darkest moments, that batter down the doors you locked them behind the moment you grew old enough to repress experiences instead of dwell on them. One of those nasty, lingering shadow creatures that latch onto your neck in your moments of greatest weakness and strangle you until you cannot breathe. This dream…I replayed it a million times before I forced myself to lock it away. And yet, here it is, unfolding around me all over again.
Except this time, there’s something different about it. There’s a lot different about it.
I blink into awareness, standing next to a familiar fire hydrant. A few steps away, opposite the hydrant, there’s a wooden bench with metal legs. I’m only marginally taller than the back of this bench, my line of sight even with the highest board. Something about that detail strikes me as odd, and it takes me a second to remember that I’m twenty-three years old, an adult, and while I’m not a tall man, I’m not that short either. My vantage point should be way higher.
But it’s not, because in this dream, in this nightmare, in this memory, I’m eight years old. Which is a strange thing for me to remember at a time like this, strange because in the past, I’ve never been aware I was dreaming, never been aware I was remembering events long past until the moment I woke up crying, shaking, a scream lost in my throat. Now, however, I’m fully aware. Aware of my surroundings. Aware of the situation. Aware of the giant wall of flame consuming the bakery directly across the
street from where I’m standing.
Aware that in a matter of minutes, my mother will be dead, and there’s nothing my eight-year-old self can do to save her.
My body makes a sniffling sound without my input, and I realize this iteration of the nightmare is more like a ride-along. I’m seeing through my own eyes, but my body and my mind are disconnected. My child self is controlling every moment, every stifled sob, every shudder, scared because a fire is raging in front of him and his mother is inside, trying desperately to save the last employee stuck inside the burning building. Little Cal is terrified, but I’m not. I’m more confused than anything else.
This isn’t how my nightmare of this day unfolds. How it’s supposed to unfold.
In front of the bakery, there should be five employees, injured but alive. In reality, my mom dragged them out of the burning building, one at a time, dropped them off at a safe distance, and then went back inside to save the rest. At this point in the memory then, mere minutes before my mother dies, they should still be in front of the bakery, coughing up a storm from minor smoke inhalation but otherwise unharmed. And yet, as Little Cal stares fearfully at his mother’s place of work, and the apartment he’s lived in all his life, perched above it, consumed by fire, he sees no one standing in the street. No one at all.
Where are the employees? Why has the layout of the dream changed? Because I’ve gotten older? Because my memory is fading? Because…
Iron Delos, I suddenly recall. I was strapped to a chair in his personal dungeon, and he was attacking my mind. He hit the bundle of memories I was “gifted” by Vanth, and then…then what? I passed out? I got flooded with those memories? Is that why I’m here now, trapped inside another repetition of my mother’s death scene?
Little Cal begins to tremble harder, his cries growing louder, causing my view of the bakery to jostle as the flames fan across the roof, eating everything in their path. In reality, the building burned to the ground in a straightforward way—the firefighters, who took almost twenty minutes to arrive, couldn’t save anything—but even as I watch now through my younger self’s eyes, more strange details stick out to me. The building is shaking, as if struck by an earthquake. And there are shadows moving beyond the doorways and windows, shadows that correspond to living creatures and not the wily flickering of fire.
Doom Sayer (City of Crows Book 4) Page 13