City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set

by Clara Coulson

“I just have to figure out whether I’m willing to commit to such a big change, even a temporary one. On the one hand, I’ll be living in the frozen tundra for months, maybe even a year. On the other hand, I’ll be earning enough money to practically retire with, and I might help make an important breakthrough that saves the lives of countless DSI agents, like you.” He inhales sharply. “And Ella. And Amy and Desmond and Captain Riker. And everyone else, of course.”

  “Aw,” I say playfully, pinching Cooper’s cheek, “you want to save me? That’s so sweet.”

  Cooper bats my hand away. “Well, you saved me, remember? It’s only fair I return the favor.”

  “I specifically said you didn’t owe me anything for saving you, Coop, considering it was me who gave you Vanth’s key and got you kidnapped in the first place.” I flick his jaw. “So chin up and don’t get yourself in a tizzy over this fancy research project. If you don’t want to live in Siberia for a year, then don’t. I’m sure there’ll be other cool projects in the future; maybe the next one will be near a nice beach in California. You can join up with that group.”

  Cooper chuckles faintly and says, “Yeah, maybe.”

  But I can still see a gleam of uncertainty swimming in those baby blues.

  I make a mental note to discuss it further with him later. When we’re not tied up in this convention center mess.

  Riker sets the card back on the table, frowning.

  Desmond asks, “I don’t suppose you recognize the handwriting, Captain?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Riker says, “but I get the feeling you and Cal are onto something, with your theory about a personal connection.”

  “Any of the clues in the riddle strike you as familiar, boss?” Amy throws in, wringing a napkin in her hand.

  Riker thinks on it, mumbling quietly to himself.

  “What about dancers?” Ella scratches her chin. “Have we worked any cases involving dancers in recent years?”

  “There was that assault case next door to the Marconi Theater last April.” Amy releases the shredded remains of her napkin, and they flutter down onto her empty dinner plate. “One of the victims was an actor who’d been cast as the lead in a big musical production that opened at the Marconi the weekend after the assault. So maybe the theater is the next target?”

  “Could be,” Desmond says. “Or maybe it’s the dance department at Waverly College. Isn’t that close to the Hague dorm, where the whole Etruscan case started?”

  A sudden thought occurs to me, and I blurt it out like a moron: “The riddle could be referring to strippers.”

  Cooper and Ella stare at me, scandalized, while Amy barks out a laugh, Desmond covers a grin with the back of his hand, and Riker rolls his eyes and says, “Is that really the first thing that popped into your head, Cal?”

  “Well, no, it’s…” It’s what? I can’t think of a reason why strippers would come to mind. I mean, stripping is referred to as “exotic dancing,” and strippers certainly do a lot of pole dancing, but I myself have never been the sort of guy to hit up the strip club on Friday night. It’s not that I have anything against strippers, mind you. Rather, it’s that I have something against their typical clientele.

  Or, really, just against Jake from Stanford, who I punched in the face at his own bachelor party because he groped a stripper without her permission and slapped her hard enough to bruise when she yelled at him and tried to pull away. (And yeah, I did get uninvited from that wedding. Partially because Jake hates me now for helping that stripper level criminal charges against him. And partially because the wedding was postponed—due to Jake’s badly broken nose.)

  Anyway, beyond that particular incident, I don’t have any sort of history revolving around strippers. I think.

  But there must be something…something…

  What is it? It’s on the tip of my tongue.

  I part my lips, hoping the answer will roll out of my mouth—

  —and Ella’s phone rings.

  Ella swipes her phone off the table. “Oh, it’s Naomi. Maybe her team found something important at the convention center after all. Let me put it on speaker.” She taps the speakerphone option, then swipes the green answer button. “Hey, Captain Sing, did you—?”

  A voice that does not belong to Thailand native Naomi Sing screams over the line, “We’re being attacked by levitating zombies! We need backup now. Please, for the love of god, get somebody over here!”

  Everyone in the task room freezes and slowly locks eyes with everybody else, one after the other, as if questioning whether we all heard the same bizarre statement.

  Riker is the first to react. He limps closer to the phone in Ella’s hand and replies, “Come again, Detective Adelman? Did you say levitating zombies?”

  “Yes, yes!” shouts a different man with a similar voice in the same thick Boston accent. The identical twins from Naomi’s team must be on the phone.

  The first guy speaks again. “That’s the best way we can describe them, sir. We have no idea what the fuck they are. They’re fast, they’re strong, and they look like zombies, literally, like rotting corpses come back to life.”

  The second twin adds, “And they can fly!”

  A woman in the background shrieks in terror, and a gun goes off six times.

  The first twin says, “We need reinforcements. Fast. We—”

  And the call cuts out.

  We stare at the silenced phone, the screen flashing a call ended message, for three seconds, five, eight, and then we’re all running for the door in a panicked scramble.

  All except Cooper Lee, who calls out after us, “Please be careful. Please!”

  Chapter Six

  Driving into a disaster zone in the middle of the night is a surreal experience.

  The dust cloud has spread across the city blocks surrounding the Wellington Center, and the headlights of our SUV illuminate the haze but can’t cut through it. It feels like we’re driving through a storm cloud, heading for the heart of a thunderous force, no way out, no way back, nothing visible around us but walls like shifting smoke. As we near the center, turning through the last intersection, emergency lights flare through the debris cloud. Red. Blue. White. Muted and dispersed. Silent fireworks in the murk.

  No one speaks as we approach.

  We’re decked out in our usual uniforms—there was no time to change—but yet again, we’ve donned the claustrophobic masks to keep our lungs clean. I feel like the world is closing in around me. A few times, I get tunnel vision, but I shake it off.

  I can’t afford to be distracted by panic attacks or any other symptoms of past trauma right now; I’ve got brand new trauma to process through the line, the severity depending on how well Naomi Sing and her team have fared against the mysterious “levitating zombies.” I can worry about my old wounds, physical and mental, while I run the usual gamut of nightmares later tonight. Or, more likely, with the way this day has gone, during a short nap at the ass-crack of dawn.

  The SUV screeches to a halt less than thirty feet from the line of emergency vehicles surrounding the perimeter of ground zero. Ella yanks the gear shift into park and cuts the engine, then turns to Riker for orders.

  The captain adjusts his mask—it’s the first time he’s worn one—and taps his mic button. “Since we don’t know what these enemies are, let’s keep it simple. Lethal force, unless they explicitly surrender. The Adelman brothers’ phone call made it quite clear these things attacked without provocation. It’s possible they are working with or for the people responsible for the destruction of the convention center. If we can take one alive for questioning, it’ll be a boon for the investigation. But do not, under any circumstances, prioritize capturing these creatures over the safety of our agents. Understood?”

  We all shout, “Yes, sir!”

  And Riker says, “Let’s go.”

  A moment later, we’re in the chaos again, dust clinging to skin, lights blinding eyes, masks restricting how deep lungs can breathe, and ears assaulte
d by a cacophony. Screams of pain. Shouts of panic. The undulating murmur of confusion.

  Clearly, the emergency responders on scene have no idea what’s happening. I hope the debris cloud has obscured the existence of these so-called zombies from those not in the know. The last thing we need is a hundred firefighters and EMTs and cops blabbing to the news about flying monsters at the epicenter of a terrorist attack. That would be on the national news by morning.

  I fall in line behind Ella and Riker as we approach the taped-off perimeter. I distinctly remember the unfamiliar fabric of the crisis suit against my skin, and am thankful I’m in my normal gear for this fight. I’m distracted enough by the scene itself—there are too many stimuli, tugging my attention a thousand directions—and one more pebble tossed against my back could easily throw me off balance. And if I get unbalanced during a battle with supernatural creatures, either I’ll end up dead, or somebody else will.

  Riker’s voice comes over the com again. “I’ll hang back at the perimeter here and try to keep the emergency responders out of the general area where Captain Sing and her team are engaging the enemy. GPS tracking on Sing’s phone puts the team in the west wing near the northern border. So you four—”

  A cop spots us coming and holds up a hand to stop our advance. “Halt!” he shouts through his own mask. “There’s a disturbance of some kind in the area, reports of shots fired.” He gestures with his thumb to a loosely organized group of cops standing near an ambulance. “We’re corralling all available officers to…”

  Riker rips down the perimeter tape in one brutal tug and storms over to the cop, his cane sword clicking angrily against the uneven asphalt. “Tell your officers to stand down. Immediately. We’ve come to handle the ‘disturbance’—those are our agents out there. DSI. Order all your people to stay out of the affected area until such time as I, personally, instruct you otherwise.”

  Riker growls that whole speech through his mask, loud enough for the cop to hear the underlying threats, even over the chaotic noise of the scene.

  “I…uh…” The cop pretends to shake off the intimidation and collect himself. “Excuse you, sir. I’m Sergeant Adrian Kowalski, and I’m in charge of ground operations for all PD personnel on site. What they do is my decision, not yours. Who do you think you are?” He straightens his back and puffs out his chest, trying to exude strength and confidence. But Nick Riker is taller and broader and has a much bigger reserve of clout brewing in his core, pressurized and waiting for some poor sap to push the wrong button.

  Riker turns the knob for that clout valve a quarter of an inch. “I’m Nicholas Riker, DSI elite captain, second only to Commissioner Bollinger himself. And I’m also a long-time acquaintance of Mayor Burbank, who will be very, very pissed off if his already besieged disaster zone ends up a bloodbath by the end of the night because a bunch of idiots with overinflated egos refuse to let the proper authorities onto the scene in time.” Riker’s voice falls to pitch black. “Now get the fuck out of my way.”

  Kowalski seems to shrivel up like a worm left on a hot sidewalk. “I’m sorry, sir…I…”

  Something explodes in the distance, and the ground quakes beneath our feet. The massive piles of rubble shift wildly, and dozens of people, injured civilians and emergency personnel alike, shriek in terror as huge slabs of concrete come crashing down, shattering on the ground and slinging shrapnel through the air, as metal girders slip out of pinned places and careen through the haze, threatening to take off heads and impale chests, as new holes open up in the ground, nearly swallowing a group of paramedics busy carting a man off on a stretcher.

  Ella speaks over the com, “That came from the west wing. We can’t wait any longer. We need to get over there to support Naomi now.”

  But before we can even take off for the west wing, the assembled cops start to rush that direction, and the stammering Kowalski can’t compose himself enough to order his supposed subordinates to stop.

  So Riker does it for him.

  The captain rips off his mask, throws it to the ground, and shouts in a mighty, booming voice that must carry for a mile, cutting through the din like a knife through butter, “Stop!”

  The cops stop running. The firefighters stop shuffling toward a pile of smoking debris that just overturned. The paramedics with the stretcher who almost died a moment ago stop walking toward the nearest open ambulance. Everyone stops and stares at Nicholas Riker.

  “No one,” he continues in the same tone, “will go anywhere near the west wing until I say otherwise. Anyone who defies that order will find themselves behind bars by midnight. Am I clear?”

  Ella sidles up to Riker and mutters harshly, “Nick, put your mask back on. You might be breathing in toxins.”

  Riker doesn’t acknowledge her until every single emergency responder explicitly moves out of any path that might lead to the west wing. “I appreciate your concern, but by the time I develop cancer from anything in the air, I’ll be a wrinkled old man in a nursing home anyway. And quite frankly, cancer will probably be a better way to go than dementia.” He squeezes her arm. “Worry less about me, please, and more about our comrades fighting enemies of unknown power.”

  “Nick…” Ella grabs his hand before he can retract it. “Humor me, will you? Put the mask back on.”

  Riker sighs, disturbing a wisp of dust in front of his face. “I’ll put the mask back on as long as you and the rest of these slowpokes pick up the pace.”

  Ella’s smile is hollow. “Fair enough.” She glances at Desmond, Amy, and me. “Move out!”

  The four of us charge into ground zero once again, crumpling the fallen police tape under our boots. As we rocket across the rubble, leaping over chunks of stone, rounding huge piles of twisted metal, skirting holes in the ground that drop into a black abyss, I sneak a peek over my shoulder. Before the haze becomes too thick to see through, I spy Riker bend down, grab his mask, and casually slip it back over his head.

  Bollinger was right.

  Riker is a reckless son of a bitch.

  But he’s also the most effective authority figure I’ve met in my entire life.

  Less than ten minutes into our desperate sprint, we reach the end of the north wing and rush into the most devastated area of the convention center. As we pass underneath an arch created by a tangle of half-melted girders, it’s like we slip through the veil into a different reality. The haze retreats, as if held back by an invisible force. The path ahead of us clears, revealing the full extent of the damage from the explosion. Rooms and halls and ceilings and floors reduced to nothing but a layer of fine dust, dotted with small bits of stone and hunks of warped metal.

  And in the middle of it all is Naomi’s team, facing off against an enemy DSI has never encountered before.

  There are six creatures. Garbed in ragged black cloaks. Arms and legs wrapped tightly in strips of dark cloth. Beneath their low hoods, all I can see is darkness and the green glow of eyes that belong to creatures of the night. They hover two feet off the ground and move through the air as if guided by an imperceptible breeze. Smooth. Swift. Silent.

  As my team races forward, trying to close the last forty feet between us and the combat zone, we watch, helpless, as one of the levitating zombies rams its foot into the chest of an Adelman twin. The man tumbles backward and skids across the dusty ground, toward one of the deadly holes that drops twenty feet into the basement level of the convention center. Just before the man slips over the rim of the hole and falls to his death, his brother makes a desperate leap and locks hands with him, yanking him away from the edge in the nick of time.

  But before the brothers can even breathe a sigh of relief, two of the zombies flit through the air and strike at them, wielding weapons that resemble old farming scythes. The twins scramble up and dive out of the path of the blades, but one scythe catches a twin in the arm, and he careens into his brother’s chest. They collapse, the injured one crying out as blood sprays from his arm and stains the white dust that blankets the
ground.

  The zombies close in for the kill.

  And we’re still twenty feet out.

  Shit, they’re going to…

  Five shots go off, nailing the two zombies center mass. The Chinese guy hops up from behind what remains of a metal door resting against an upturned support beam. He fires three more times, hitting the zombies with each shot, but the creatures hardly seem affected by their flesh getting gouged out by .45-caliber bullets. They pull away from the fallen twins and turn to the Chinese detective, gliding through the air toward him, scythes raised, ready to cut him down.

  The black woman with the glasses rolls out from behind a low pile of rubble, beggar rings charged to max, and roars in fury as she launches two streams of fire at the zombies.

  The zombies take the flames head on—and this, finally, affects them.

  Preternatural screams fill the night, sharp like knives. Everyone falters, my whole team stumbling, the black woman falling to her knees, the Chinese guy covering his ears and staggering back. Through squinted eyes, I watch the levitating zombies burn.

  The flames consume them in seconds, stripping away their cloaks and rags, revealing the full horror of the decaying bodies underneath. Mottled gray skin, covered in rotten welts and stretched too tight over warped, lumpy muscles, bulging in all the wrong places. Their heads are bald, their green eyes lidless, stuck in wide, awful stares, their mouths toothless and lipless, nothing but gaping black holes.

  They have no tongues either—but they still scream.

  The fire eats them, faster than it should, like they’re made of paper mache. In ten seconds, their writhing forms collapse, touch the ground for the first time. In fifteen seconds, their gray skin burns away. In twenty seconds, they stop screaming. In twenty-five seconds, they stop moving. At the thirtieth second, it’s like their bodies lose all integrity. They disintegrate into dust and scatter into the air.

  Everyone stares at the empty spaces left behind.

  The black woman comes over the com and shouts, “Everyone, use your fire rings! They’re susceptible.”