City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set

by Clara Coulson

  “So, before I wrap this up,” says the shapeshifter, peering down at me with a sneer that looks less out of place on his new face, “let’s revisit our original conversation. Where is the pen, Kinsey?”

  “I don’t know,” I cough out.

  He drives his foot harder into my chest. “Give up, Crow, and tell me where it is. I refuse to spend all day and night searching your—”

  “I don’t know where it is!”

  His last string of restraint snaps in half. He lifts his foot high and then thrusts it toward my chest—

  The front door bursts open, edge skimming my ear, peeling off a fraction of an inch of skin. And an enchanted cane sword, glowing bright red, cuts through the air with a shrill shriek and lobs off the shapeshifter’s head.

  The head hits the floor and bounces into the kitchen.

  The body tumbles backward into the hall.

  Nicholas Riker looks down at me from the front doorway of Cooper Lee’s house and says, “Again, Cal?”

  Chapter Twelve

  St. Bartholomew’s is overloaded with victims of the convention center collapse, but Navarro takes me back to a curtained-off space anyway and quickly treats my injuries, throwing in a bit of his magic ointments here and there to help me heal and lessen my pain. It takes him over half an hour to pick all the glass out of my skin, and another twenty minutes to stitch the cuts in my palm and fingers from where I held the shard. After he finishes bandaging my left hand, he moves onto my right arm, and forgoes a cast only because I complain about reduced mobility.

  “I’ve given you a bone regrowth ointment, so the hairline fracture in your radius will heal slightly faster than normal.” He wraps a splint around my arm. “But be warned, Kinsey: if you take another blow to your wrist, you could end up with a compound fracture, and that’ll put you out of commission the same way your broken tibia did. So watch yourself, and try not to get attacked by another bat-wielding psycho. Or a werewolf. I don’t want that scare in one of my beds again.”

  “Understood, Doc.” I crack a weak grin and wiggle my eyebrows. “Say, you ever get any interesting results from that gallon of blood you conned out of me? Synthesize a vaccine for lycanthropy, maybe? If so, I want a share of your Magic Nobel Prize money.”

  Navarro looks at me sharply over the rim of his glasses—indicating that my DNA, which he thinks was altered by my trip to the Eververse, has been a medical dead end and not the breakthrough he wanted—but he doesn’t chastise me any further. Dark bags hang under his eyes, and his lids are so heavy I’m surprised he hasn’t fallen out on the floor. He’s probably been working nonstop since yesterday morning, as the victims of the Wellington attack have continually poured into Aurora’s hospitals.

  Last I heard, there were roughly a hundred and fifty injured survivors, all with varying degrees of injuries, some bearing minor cuts and bruises, others with their lives hanging in the balance. Every doctor, surgeon, and nurse in the city is working critical overtime to save their lives, and that includes Navarro, who normally spends his days patching up foolhardy DSI agents like me.

  The good doctor finishes with the last strap on my splint, and signals for me to get dressed. (Riker had my uniform brought over from the office while I was getting X-rays.) I grab the shirt next to me on the mattress and tug it on, careful to avoid jarring my sore nose, then snatch the black coat from where it’s folded over the end of the bed frame and slowly pull it up both my aching arms. Ironically, I can’t fit my gloves on either hand—the bandages and splint are in the way—which means they’ll be vulnerable for the rest of this case. But Navarro can only do so much, and I can’t keep him away from his other patients any longer to try and brainstorm a solution.

  Navarro, satisfied that I was able to dress myself, signs something on my chart. He slips the piece of paper from the clipboard and hands it to me. “Your discharge.” He yanks a prescription pad out of the pocket of his white coat and scribbles the name of a medication across the middle. He rips the page from the pad and offers that to me as well. “And here’s some pain medication, if you need it. Which you probably will in an hour or two. The local I used to numb your hand will start to wear off soon.”

  I fold both pages in half and stuff them into the same interior pocket where I kept the pen last night. “I’ll make sure to stop by the pharmacy before I leave the hospital.”

  Navarro nods. “Okay, back on your feet, Kinsey. Your captain and Detective Dean are anxiously waiting for you in the hallway.” He backtracks and grabs the end of the curtain, then rounds the bed with the curtain in tow until my minimal private space is assaulted by the hustle and bustle of an overwhelmed ER. The dull cacophony I had seemed so isolated from during my treatment suddenly beats against my eardrums like a hammer, and there are too many bodies moving, on their feet, on gurneys, in wheelchairs, for me to catalogue at once.

  I shut my eyes, trying to filter out the abundance of stimuli. When I open them again, I make a point of staring at the scuffed tile floor as I slide off the bed and begin a slow, limping shuffle toward the wide, fluorescent-lit hallway I vaguely recall Desmond and Ella carrying me down when we arrived. I was pretty out of it after the adrenaline of the fight wore off; my hands were not too happy about the abuse, especially the three dozen glass bits embedded in my skin.

  Before I reach the hallway, dodging nurses and doctors and patients as I go, I pause briefly and call over my shoulder, “Oh, and thanks for the quick work, Doc.”

  Navarro doesn’t respond, but I feel his discerning gaze on me for just a moment. Then he’s swept back into the chaos of the emergency room.

  Riker and Ella are seated on a bench halfway down the hall. The captain is tapping his cane against the floor in a slow cadence, while Ella sits with her arms and legs crossed, sporting a distant gaze that implies she’s lost in thought. Riker is the first to notice me coming, and he nudges Ella, who snaps out of her trance and bounds off the bench, flying across the tiles toward me.

  She takes my hands in hers and examines the splint and bandages. “Are you all right? What’d Navarro say about your injuries?”

  “I’ll live, Ella,” I reply, glancing at Riker over her shoulder. “I’ll be all healed up in a couple weeks.”

  My captain finally stands, using his cane as leverage. “Something you want to say to me, Cal?”

  “Uh, only thank you, Captain. For saving my life.”

  Riker shrugs. “If anything, you should be angry at me for not sending support to you sooner. If I’d been able to kick down the mayor’s stonewalling and pull the nearest agents off their alternative work duties, you’d have had backup in two minutes, not ten. And maybe you wouldn’t have ended up on the floor with a shapeshifter’s foot in your sternum.”

  “Nick,” Ella scolds, “you can’t blame yourself for the current situation. Burbank said no, and we couldn’t override him, and that was how things were. We got to Cooper’s house as fast as possible, and we saved our teammate. We did well. Don’t underplay the victory.”

  “Would have been more of a victory,” he says, “if we’d been able to capture the shifter for interrogation.”

  “If that’s how you want to ride in the future”—Ella lightly smacks his bicep—“you’ll need to pick a weapon that isn’t a magic sword.”

  Riker averts his eyes and mumbles, “Fair assessment.”

  I clear my throat. “Um, hey, are there any updates about Cooper?”

  “I’m afraid not, Cal,” Ella says, somber. “Amy grabbed Delarosa’s team as they were coming off shift at the convention center and sent them out to search Cooper’s home and neighborhood, but last time she called to report in, about five minutes ago, they hadn’t yet found any signs of him.”

  Riker’s heavy hand lands on my shoulder. “And that’s a good thing. Cooper went directly home after he left the office, so the shapeshifter must’ve confronted him at home. It’s unlikely that the shifter would have taken the time to transport Cooper’s body a significant distanc
e just to play a short-lived ruse with you a couple hours later. As such, if we don’t find Cooper anywhere near his house…”

  “He’s probably still alive?” I try to internalize that idea, but my pounding heart rejects it. All I can imagine is Cooper hurt, Cooper dead, Cooper slowly decomposing in a place no one will ever find him.

  Riker nods. “Don’t give up hope until we know for sure, okay?”

  “Objectively, I know I shouldn’t, but I…Why do people always get hurt—why does Cooper always get hurt—when I find important pieces of evidence? I feel like fate is trying to tell me something about my future as a detective.”

  “Oh, Cal, don’t think like that.” Ella embraces me, running her fingers soothingly through my hair. “You might be a little rough around the edges, but you’re a great DSI agent. And you’ll only get better as time goes on. Don’t let the actions of these people, these criminals, cause you to lose faith in yourself. You’re an elite detective because you deserve to be, and—”

  Riker’s phone buzzes, and we all stiffen, anticipating another bad-news blow to darken our day. The captain mutters a curse, grabs the phone from his belt, and answers with a curt, “Riker.”

  The person on the other end spends about a minute speaking nonstop, before allowing the captain to get another word in.

  “I understand,” Riker says, scowling. “We’ll review the security tapes as soon as we have a chance.” He ends the call and turns to us. “That was Desmond. I sent him to the office to follow up on the pen, and he confirmed what the shapeshifter said during the attack at Cooper’s house. According to the log, Cooper Lee was the last person to check the pen out, at 3:48 AM.

  “Desmond reviewed the badge records too. Cooper’s ID was last used to exit the office at 3:27 AM. Which means that, yes, Cooper definitely went home at the same time Cal did, and he didn’t return afterward.”

  “So someone falsified the lockup log to make it look like Cooper decided to check out the pen,” Ella says. “Because you can’t check anything out from the evidence lockup without signing the digital log. And using a valid employee ID to do so.” She begins to pace back and forth. “Sometime after the pen was stolen by this unknown individual, the shapeshifter, wearing someone’s face, we know not who, also came looking for the pen. Only to discover someone else had beaten him to it.”

  “And he thought it was Cooper”—I slump against the wall—“because Cooper’s name was the last one listed in the log. So he went to Cooper’s house to get the pen back, but Cooper didn’t have it, so he did…something to Cooper, assumed his appearance, and asked me to come over to the townhouse, thinking I had the pen instead, since he knew Cooper and I work closely together.”

  Ella shudders in disgust. “I do not like the idea that a creepy shapeshifter was stalking us for an indeterminate period of time.”

  “I don’t like the idea that the vampires were the targets of the convention center attack,” Riker says. “But Cal’s conversation with the shifter implies exactly that, and we’re going to have to run with the concept until we unravel the ever-lengthening maze of mysteries surrounding the attack and all involved parties.”

  “Where do we start?” Ella cracks her knuckles. “How do we even look into the vampires? We have no leads regarding any current vampire activity in Aurora. All we’ve had on the radar for the past several months is ICM infighting, werewolf infighting, and practitioner/werewolf intercommunity fighting.”

  “Werewolf…” I murmur, and a revelation springs out of the corner of my mind. “Call Natalie Schultz.”

  “The ME? Why?” Ella asks.

  “Because, as part of the search and rescue operations, Schultz is probably cataloguing the exact location of where each and every body brought to the morgue was found in the disaster zone. To make it easier for victim identification, and ultimately, so the authorities can more closely examine who was doing what where when the attacked occurred.”

  Riker raises an eyebrow. “I’m not sure where you’re going with this, Cal.”

  I make to snap my fingers, but remember my skin is stitched up, so I point at Riker’s face instead. “Call Schultz. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.”

  The captain looks skeptical, but he humors me, dialing the ME’s direct line. He hits the speaker phone button, and we all listen as the call rings twelve times in a row. But just as it seems we’re going to get bumped into voicemail, the line stops ringing, and a drawn-out sigh blows through the speaker. “Natalie Schultz, Chief Medical Examiner. And this better be good, Riker. I walked out of one autopsy eight minutes ago, and I have another starting in five. If this isn’t vital to the survival of the free world, I’m hanging up.”

  I hook two fingers around Riker’s wrist and draw the phone closer to me. “Actually, Dr. Schultz, I’m the one who asked the captain to call you.”

  There’s a long pause on the line, then Schultz hisses, “Calvin Kinsey, so help me god, if you tell me there’s another shapeshifter hiding in one of my freezers…”

  “Well, there is a shapeshifter en route to the morgue”—I hear her gasp—“but it’s definitely dead this time.”

  Riker adds, “I put the head in a separate bag. It’s coming to you cold, I promise.”

  Schultz performs a series of cadenced breathing that sounds like something she learned from a meditation book. “Okay, okay. I’ll trust you this time. But if you’re not calling about the incoming shapeshifter stiff, why are you bugging me?”

  “I need you to check something for me real quick,” I say, “regarding the, uh, ‘body map’ you’re making, the thing that lists where all the different victims you’re working on were found. You are drawing up one of those, right, to get an idea of how the attack affected people in different parts of the building?”

  Schultz hums sourly. “Yeah, I’ve got something like that in the works, but it’s in my office, and I’m down on the autopsy floor right now. Can this not wait?”

  Ella says quietly, “We believe there may be an impending second attack, Doctor, and we’re in need of some information regarding the victims that may shed light on the identities of the attackers.”

  “A second…?” Schultz curses. “Oh, of course. Just what I need. More bodies.” Something clatters on her end of the phone. “Give me a minute to get upstairs, and I’ll give you whatever information I can.”

  We wait, listening to the sounds of Schultz click-clacking in her heels down a hall, then riding a rickety elevator upstairs.

  She speaks again over the jangling of the keys to her office. “Okay, I’m here.” A door opens and slams shut. “What info do you want?”

  “Last night,” I say, “Vincent Wallace told me that you confirmed four werewolves died in the attack, and he implied they were found in the ruins of the west wing, where the explosion originated.”

  There’s a rustling of paper, what must be Schultz’s body map. “Yeah, he stopped by yesterday with the suspicion that some of the earliest bodies brought to the morgue might have been Wolves. I did some preliminary checking—over my lunch break, mind you—and confirmed they were, in fact, werewolves, so that Wallace would stop badgering me about it. I think he needed to report the impact of the attack on the Wolf community to his superiors or something.”

  “Okay, good.” I consider my next few questions. “So, can you tell me where these Wolves were before the explosion, based on where they were found in the rubble?”

  Schultz sighs again. “That’s a tall order, Kinsey, but I can approximate.”

  “That’s fine. Go ahead.”

  “All right.” Some scratching noises filter through the speaker, and I imagine Schultz sketching on her map with a pencil, retracing the movements of the Wolves’ bodies. “My best guess puts the Wolves in the second floor hallway of the west wing, somewhere between conference rooms 228-A and 231-C.”

  “Wait,” Ella says, brows furrowed. “All four of them were together in the same area of the hallway at the time the building came down?
”

  “Yes,” says the ME. “They were found practically side by side in the rubble.”

  “Schultz,” I cut in, “were any other bodies found in that area?”

  “Several.”

  “How about any other groups of bodies?”

  Schultz pauses, paper crinkling as she checks the map again. “Um, there was one other group—I think. There were some body parts, very charred body parts, belonging to six different people found in an area that roughly corresponds to conference room 228-A. I told the cops that these six people might have been meeting in that particular room, but I can’t be a hundred percent sure. The epicenter of the explosion was in the immediate vicinity of 228-A, so those body parts could have potentially come from people above that room, below that room, right outside that room, etc.”

  “Trust your gut, Schultz.” Nervous excitement bubbles in my stomach. “You’re right. They were in 228-A.”

  “How do you know?” she asks.

  “Call it a hunch,” I say, and hit the end call button.

  “What hunch is that, Cal?” Riker says.

  “The dead werewolves weren’t that close to 228-A by accident.” I meet my captain’s shrewd gaze. “They were sent in an official capacity by the Lycanthrope Republic to spy on the vampires meeting in that room.”

  Riker tosses his phone to Ella—she catches it like she saw it coming—and claps me softly on the shoulder. “Good work, Cal.”

  “You want me to call Naomi?” Ella waves the phone in the air. “Ask her to bring in Vincent Wallace for questioning?”

  “Yep,” says Captain Riker, a rumbling note of danger in his tone, “and tell her not to bother being gentle with it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The last time I was in the DSI dungeon, a possessed girl caught fire and nearly burned the place down. That cell where Ally Johnston died is still under repair. I walk past it on my way down the hallway of holding rooms, until I come to the door of an undamaged cell sitting wide open, as if it knows it’s waiting for a new arrival. Inside the room, Riker is already seated at the table, his cane propped up against the table’s edge, his hands interlocked on the tabletop, his dispersed reflection in the table’s polished metal surface cast in a pale glow by the bright overhead lights. Ella, restless, circles the table once every thirty seconds, her boots padding softly against the floor.