City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set

by Clara Coulson

  It has survived countless blizzards, at least one flood, caused by a busted water line, and two fires thirty years apart but both the result of an idiot tossing a lit cigarette too near the flammable piles of leaves that decorate the rolling green space around the building in the fall. The Wellington Center has seen tragedy, a shooting or three, and triumph—some of the biggest business deals in the state were drafted there—and never once has it failed to stand tall. Never once, until today.

  When Riker said three-fourths of the building had been completely destroyed, I honestly thought he was exaggerating.

  He wasn’t.

  Everyone from my van hesitates at the intersection, shocked at the sheer scale of the disaster. Suddenly, our heavy bags of medical supplies, compact stretchers slung over our shoulders, wrinkled, musty crisis suits…none of it seems adequate.

  DSI prepares its agents for bloody murders and vicious monsters, for powerful werewolves and swift vampires, for angry wizards and crafty witches. DSI does not prepare its agents for terrorist attacks. But the rest of Aurora’s law enforcement and emergency relief agencies can’t handle a catastrophe of this scale on their own, so here we are, in the belly of a beast we don’t know how to fight.

  An army of boots storms up behind us, the next van’s worth of agents on our tails, and the sound spurs us into action. As a group, the first wave, we march down Prentiss Avenue, passing coffee shops and clothing stores and gyms with expensive memberships, every building hastily deserted in the wake of the attack. Coffee cups still sit cooling on tables, half-eaten food beside them. Treadmills and bikes still have lit screens, waiting for fitness aficionados to return and finish their exercise routines. The floor of a doggy daycare, situated between a bank and a law office, is strewn with toys that no one bothered to put away before they fled. Thankfully, they took the dogs.

  Erica’s occult shop, too, is only blocks away from the business district. I don’t know if she was affected by the explosion and collapse, if she fled her shop, or if she was evacuated by law enforcement, or if she’s still there, unconcerned about the carnage so close to her doorstep. I tried calling her, twice, on the drive back to the city. But she didn’t pick up. And she hasn’t responded to my follow-up texts either.

  I’d be worried about her safety, but this behavior isn’t new.

  We haven’t seen much of each other since Primrose Avenue.

  It’s hard to pencil in casual sex on your busy calendar when your “boy toy” is a DSI detective and your entire professional organization (the ICM) thinks DSI is on a literal witch hunt in the wake of Marcus’ betrayal. Erica’s been trying to keep a low profile since she helped us take down Marcus and his cronies in that far-too-public battle on Aurora’s snowy streets. Because if the ICM High Court finds out about her involvement there, they’ll inevitably discover that she’s been passing Council intel to DSI for years. Her punishment will not be kind.

  So, no sex with Erica lately. No anything with Erica lately. Our sorta-kinda relationship appears to have fizzled out as fast as it sparked into existence.

  I miss it.

  And, you know, for a while now, that has truthfully been one of my bigger concerns.

  I wish it still was.

  Alas…

  As we approach the ruins of the convention center, the wall of airborne debris obscures the blue sky, and rippling shadows fall over us, stirred by the wind. Two blocks out from the center, a rain of ash and dust begins to fall, and visibility drops. I can’t even see the flashing lights of the hundreds of emergency vehicles that must be in the immediate vicinity of ground zero.

  One block out, Ella comes over our personal team channel, her tone strained, her words clipped. “Nakamura’s assignment map puts us in the west wing, which was the epicenter of the blast that took down the building. We can expect the highest casualties to be in that area, so if we find more people dead than alive, well…The priority is on the living, however few there are.”

  The rest of us don’t reply—I mean, Jesus, what do you say?—and Ella adds, “Don’t be surprised if we come across several other rescue teams as well: firefighters, cops, EMTs and paramedics. Every emergency responder in a fifty-mile radius of Aurora has been called to the scene. We’ll likely end up working with others frequently to dig people out of the rubble and carry them to safety. So play nice.”

  Amy’s voice grumbles over the feed, “Why do I feel like that was directed at me?” But her words lack their usual edge. She’s as anxious as the rest of us, despite her years in the army, despite dangerous tours in the Middle East, despite watching her Humvee convoy get blown up by a djinni. What does that say about this situation?

  When we reach the outer perimeter of the disaster zone, we find a police blockade, metal crowd control barriers and lines of yellow tape demanding that the general public stay out of the area. A cop in a suit similar to our own, his face obscured by an entire helmet, raises his hand to stop us as we approach. But then he spies the DSI emblem on our uniforms and visibly relaxes. He lifts the tape and waves us on through.

  The cops don’t hate the Kooks today.

  I’d call it a miracle if I wasn’t standing at the doorway to hell.

  The air clears slightly as we near the outer line of rubble, the debris cloud blown away from the epicenter since the bomb went off a few hours ago. I spy hundreds of suited shapes moving over the piles of stone and metal and plaster and glass that used to be the convention center. Many are carrying occupied stretchers away from the ruins; some of those stretchers contain living victims, bloodied and dirtied but still hanging on, while others contain only black body bags streaked with white-gray dust.

  The cries of the injured blend with the shouts of the first responders and the creaks and groans of shifting debris, metal girders and chunks of concrete no longer able to hold themselves aloft against the force of gravity. All the sounds are muffled to me, with my com and the mask partially covering my ears, and somehow, that almost makes it worse. All the horror compressed into static, like background noise, as if there’s so much terror and agony in six city blocks that my brain can’t even differentiate, like individual lives have been melted down into an indistinguishable mass of suffering.

  If there is a god, any god, I pray they’re standing near.

  Ella takes the lead as we pull around the north end of the building on our way to the west wing. I bring up the rear, Amy and Desmond a few steps ahead of me. The former keeps getting lost to my sight as she weaves around lumps of stone and twisted metal beams standing upright, her small stature rendering her no more than an agile ghost in the haze. The latter, on the other hand, seems to challenge the chaos with his imposing presence, his dark, sweaty skin streaked with gray, like war paint, as he charges through the debris, kicking heavy chunks of building material out of his path as if they’re no more consequential than office paperweights.

  And Ella, she moves like a leader, even through her fear, her sorrow, her uncertainty. Back straight, shoulders taut, head held high. Resolve unshaken.

  They’ve always made me feel like a novice, these teammates of mine with so much experience under their belts. But as I trail behind them through the disaster zone, trying my hardest not to weep as I pass the charred corpse of a young man being loaded into a bag by three cops, and a woman’s dismembered hand sporting an engagement ring, and a briefcase, expensive leather, just lying there, almost undamaged, on a slab of stone, like the man it belonged to sat it down and left to go to lunch…As I witness this carnage, and watch my teammates advance as if undaunted, I don’t feel like a novice.

  I feel like a child.

  And I can’t—

  Déjà vu.

  My boots skid to a stop on the rough ground, kicking up dust and sending small bits of stone skittering away.

  Over the past few months, with help from Navarro and my teammates, I’ve become more adept at mitigating the ill effects of my déjà vu “power” and maintaining the mental balance point needed to f
ollow through to where the intangible tug is trying to guide me.

  To some degree, it’s become second nature, obeying, without fault, the whisper in my head that doesn’t naturally belong there, the corner of my brain stuffed with bundled-up memories of the future I can’t readily access. It’s a part of me now, Vanth’s “gift,” whether I like it or not, and as a rule, I listen to all the warning bells in my head when I’m navigating dangerous situations. Including the supernatural bells.

  Even so, as I try to neutralize my thoughts so the déjà vu can take over, I feel a ripple of nausea in my gut. My heart is racing too fast, my pulse pounding too hard through my veins, and my thoughts are too scattered and frenzied to quell with any efficiency. This disaster is so far removed from my usual cases that I feel like I’m back at ex-Mayor Slate’s house, on that stairwell, attempting to coax myself to the balance point for the very first time.

  There’s nothing I hate more than regressing.

  It makes me feel so weak, like all my hard work since I joined DSI has been for nothing.

  But I can’t stop it. The nausea roils, and I clench my teeth to prevent myself from vomiting in my mask. I can’t take it off—I might inhale a thousand toxins in the air, and…

  Calm the fuck down and concentrate, Kinsey!

  I shut my eyes, losing sight of my teammates who are now several yards ahead of me, unaware I’ve stopped following. I slow my breathing and try to imagine I’m at a typical crime scene and not the worst disaster in Aurora’s history. I pretend I’m at a local business, or a sprawling park, or a bar in the sticks, where a supernatural crime has occurred, and Riker, leaning on his cane, is staring at me, waiting to see if my déjà vu kicks in so that we can discover clues that might otherwise be missed.

  To placate him, I stroll around the entire crime scene, stepping over a murder victim’s body still being examined by my teammates. About halfway across this imaginary crime scene, the déjà vu rises from its cage in my mind, and I immediately stop, walking, breathing, thinking. I stop and let the déjà vu take control, because if I interfere in any way, I’ll disrupt the power’s chances of leading me to the gold nuggets hiding in the dirt. I straddle the balance point by doing nothing at all, and the tug, like a string tied to my brain, pulls me along toward an area of the crime scene largely ignored because…

  My eyes pop open, revealing the expanse of the convention center ruins, my teammates no more than outlines in the haze now. The tug in the center of my forehead jerks me to the right, and I obey without complaint, without any response at all except to turn my feet and walk. Over two massive slabs of stone I climb, and down into a pile of black-streaked papers fluttering in the wind. Ahead sits a twisted metal file cabinet, one side melted from the blast that leveled the building. And beyond the file cabinet is a hole in the ground. Or, more accurately, a hole in the ceiling of a basement-level hallway that didn’t completely collapse—or hasn’t yet.

  The tug stops when I’m three feet from the hole, and the déjà vu retreats.

  Carefully, I shuffle closer to the opening, testing the ground with each step to make sure I don’t fall through. It seems solid, but buildings in this state are always death traps, so I spread my legs wide, as if I’m crossing thin ice, and approach the hole in an awkward waddling motion. A foot from the rim, I’m close enough to peer inside, so I bend over and tap the button for a small flashlight attached to my mask. The light clicks on, illuminating the hallway below.

  Lying in plain view is an unconscious woman dressed in a navy blue business suit. Her chest and face are drenched in blood, and fine gray dust blankets her form. At first, I can’t tell if she’s alive or not, as the hole in the ceiling is about twenty feet from the tile floor she’s sprawled across. But, as I’m debating whether or not to try my luck by sinking to my knees on the unsteady ground, the woman coughs, a weak, hacking, breathless sound, as if her lungs are straining to work under heavy damage. Shattered ribs, I guess.

  But the woman is alive, and she needs—

  “Cal!” a demanding voice calls over my com. “Where the heck are you?”

  Ella.

  I hit the button for my mic. “Hey, I’ve found an injured woman lying in an intact basement hallway. You need to backtrack a bit—I let you guys get ahead of me when I had a déjà vu episode. Ping my location with your phone.” I double-check to make sure my phone, with GPS active, is still attached to my tool belt. “We’re going to need to repel down to the hallway’s floor to get this lady out, so it’ll take all four of us. Desmond has the ropes, right?”

  Desmond answers, “Correct, Calvin.”

  “Okay,” Ella says, “I’ve got your location on my phone screen. We’ll double back and catch up with you in a minute or two. But Cal, honestly…” Irritation seeps into her voice. “I know your déjà vu power requires the utmost concentration, but please give us a little warning next time before you disappear behind us. Thought you’d been crushed by falling debris or something.”

  “Sorry, Ella.” My cheeks warm. “Maybe I should stay in the middle of the group, eh?”

  “Or maybe we should put a leash on you,” Amy retorts, her snort crackling over the feed. “I swear—hey, wait. I think I see you up ahead.”

  I peer over my shoulder. Sure enough, when another breeze blows by and lightens the haze, I spy Amy, trailed by Desmond and Ella, heading my way.

  As they near me, I hold up a warning hand. “Can’t see how far the intact part of this hallway extends, guys. Be careful. The ground might be unstable in any direction.”

  They take the hint and slow their advance, testing each step before they commit. Desmond, as the heaviest of us, ends up moving the slowest, and Amy and Ella reach me long before he does, circling around the opening in the ceiling to get a good look at our victim.

  Ella frowns, her face streaked with sweat under her mask. “You sure she’s alive?”

  “She coughed a minute ago. My guess is that she’s suffered severe chest trauma. So we’ll need to be diligent when we haul her out. If she’s got broken ribs, jarring her during transit could hammer bone shards into her organs.”

  Amy cringes. “That’s a nice image.” She nods at Desmond, who’s finally caught up. “So you and Ella will lower Cal and me into the hallway, right?”

  Ella throws Amy a hard look. “We shouldn’t send Cal. He might—”

  Desmond fakes a cough to interrupt and says, “Ella, I don’t believe this is the time to focus on that particular issue. Cal is the better choice for this scenario.”

  That particular issue being the fact that Ella has been overprotective of me in dangerous situations since the Ammit case, where she was forced to drag me into Halliburton’s house with her and Erica, despite my injuries from McKinney’s extended torture, because Riker reinjured his leg trying to rescue our plainclothes agents from a magical onslaught. I almost died in that house. And so did she, considering that the basement collapsed on top of her. But she seems intent on ignoring her own near-death experience, in favor of blaming herself for nearly getting the team rookie eaten by an Egyptian death monster with a crocodile head.

  “Ella,” I mutter, well aware Amy and Desmond can hear me over the com, “I might be a bit heavier than you, but you can bench forty pounds more than I can. It makes more sense to send Amy and me down there, with you and Desmond here to pull us up—in case, you know, the hall’s unstable. If something does go wrong down there, I won’t be able to respond as quickly as you, and the victim might be the one who pays the price. We’re here to rescue her, not protect ourselves.”

  Ella stares at me, her eyes heavy with a mix of hesitation and respect. A moment of silence passes, nothing but faint static on my com, and she sighs. “All right. Desmond, pass me one of your repelling ropes. I’ll hook to Amy, and you hook to Cal. Let’s get this woman to safety as fast as possible. With so much activity in the area, any intact pockets of the building could collapse at a moment’s notice. We need to be precise and efficient. Under
stood?”

  “Understood,” I reply.

  Amy and Desmond nod in agreement.

  Side by side, Amy and I repel off the edge of the hole in the ceiling and descend into the hallway, nothing between us and a deadly fall except a couple ropes clipped to our belts and the hopefully steady ground Ella and Desmond are standing on as they lower us toward the injured businesswoman. We pass by air vents, bent and dented, exposed wiring that might still be live, and two small, broken pipes, spraying a fine mist of dirty water.

  It’s humid in the hallway, and my mask fogs up; I have the urge to rip it off and toss it aside, but, again, toxic particles in the air. If I’m going to die of anything anytime soon, it’ll be when a supernatural monster rips my head off as I’m valiantly trying to save the day, not when I’m lying in a hospital bed, riddled with multiple cancers.

  I check the injured woman below us. We’re so close now that I can see her shallow breaths. She, unlike us, has no protection from the debris in the air, and I hope we can get her out of here fast enough to save her from the fate of a terminal illness. I mean, Christ, she already had a building blow up in her face—her skin is burned in red, raw patches, her suit charred in places—and she probably has so many broken bones and bruised organs that she’ll be in the hospital for months. (Assuming she survives at all.) If she goes on to develop cancer from this…

  What kind of sick joke is that?

  Amy lands half a second before me. She unclips the rope from her belt, then slides the compact stretcher off her shoulder by its strap and starts unfolding it so we can load the woman on. My feet hit the floor with a soft thump, unsettling the thick layer of dust, and a moment later, I’m crouched beside the injured businesswoman, checking her over for injuries I couldn’t see from the air.

  Up close, I spy a head wound, bloody and gruesome at first glance. But when I cleanse it gently using some sterile water and gauze from my medical bag, I find that it’s a shallow laceration. Her skull is still intact.