Riker shuffles to the door and yanks it open, then points to the empty hallway with his cane. “The cops will be at the Lombard intersection in fifteen minutes. Let’s gear up and get the SUVs ready to roll out.” He swivels the cane around toward Cooper Lee. “Except you. You’ve had enough excitement for one day. Go home, clean up the mess in your living room, and get some sleep. And for god’s sake, don’t open the door for anyone who might be a violent shapeshifter employed by shady vampires.”
Cooper almost melts into his chair in embarrassment. “Y-Yes, sir.”
I pat his shoulder in commiseration.
“A very productive meeting, team. Nice work.” Riker steps out into the hall. “Now let’s go save our city and put that bastard wizard back in the hole where he belongs.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The swing of a scythe severs the brachial artery in my left arm and leaves me bleeding out on a dirty locker room floor—but first, the weather!
We convene at the intersection of Lombard with four black SUVs and a bag full of charmed talismans created by R&D that’ll act as magic divining rods. So those unfortunate souls (everyone but me) who can’t see magic will be able to tell if Feldman’s wards are hidden in the buildings they inspect. The uniforms and detectives who meet us at the intersection are impressed by the number of guns we bring, but they’re not so enthralled when we hand out rocks along with instructions to check if they glow when in close proximity to walls.
My good friend Officer Ringer inspects his talisman with a skeptical eye. “Is this for real? We’re supposed to wave these rocks and hope they light up like glow sticks?”
“Actually,” Amy says as she passes behind him, “you should hope they don’t light up. Because if they do, it means you’re standing in the middle of a building rigged to explode.”
Ringer blanches. “Oh. I see.”
Ella breaks from a three-way conversation with Riker and Lassiter and steps outside the mixed group of DSI agents and cops, then claps her hands loudly to get our attention. Everyone is happy to stop throwing wary, awkward glances at each other as we turn to listen to Ella, who begins to scroll through a list typed into the note app on her phone. “Listen up, everyone. I’m going to split you, based on Detective Lassiter’s recommendations, into teams of four police officers and one DSI agent. Afterward, you should head to your assigned SUV—they’re numbered—where your DSI team leader will explain which buildings in the city you’ll be searching this evening.”
“Hold on,” says a female detective in a swanky suit, “are you telling me somebody has to take orders from that kid?” She points at me with a French-tipped nail. “He looks like he should still be in high school.”
“Excuse me?” I retort. “I graduated from Stanford, lady. How about you?”
She gives me a curious onceover, not sure I’m telling the truth. “Yeah, no. I’m not taking orders from you. And my educational history is none of your business.”
“My age is none of yours. This is DSI’s case, so we take lead on the search teams.” I maneuver around another uniform to stand directly in front of the woman, so she can’t pretend to ignore me. “If you’d rather sit on your ass and let a hammer fall on the city you vowed to protect because it hurts your poor little ego not to be top dog in one single law enforcement operation, then be my guest, Detective. And while you’re at it, why don’t you spend your luxurious off hours filling out a few job applications? Because clearly police work doesn’t agree with you.”
“What the hell would you know about police work, Kook?” She breaches my personal space, her face inches from my own.
“I was a cop. I know a lot.”
She recoils, taken aback. “You? A cop? Who would have let you into the—?”
A hand lands on the pressed shoulder of the woman’s black suit jacket. Lassiter. He tilts his mouth close to her ear and whispers in harsh, rapid tones, a few words loud enough for me to hear. Rookie patrol cop. Gloston Square. Partner killed in action. As he speaks, the woman pales, her gaze flicking from me to nowhere in particular, back to me, back to nowhere in particular, and again and again and again, until her eye movements grow so wild that she appears to make herself dizzy. When Lassiter finishes scolding her, he smacks her hard on the shoulder, a final warning, then moves off to stand next to Officer Ringer.
I’m tempted to keep the argument going—I’m tired and grumpy and not in the mood for some ignorant asshat to question the authenticity of my authority—but I know better than to push my luck. Riker is watching me from his place near one of the SUVs, and Amy and Desmond are looking on, too, as they hand out the last few talismans, all of them wondering if the team baby is going to lash out at the mouthy cop and confirm, once again, how young and inexperienced he is.
I don’t.
I extinguish my anger the way you’d pinch a candle out, and brush by the lady detective as I return to the front of the crowd.
Ella waves her hands, annoyed by the whole display. “All right! That’s enough bickering. We don’t have time to waste here, guys. There’s a maniac trying to blow up buildings and hurt innocent citizens. So let’s put aside the pissing contest for now and stop him. Okay?”
A low murmur of “Yes, ma’am” washes through the crowd. Ella, satisfied that our whole operation isn’t about to self-destruct due to petty inter-organizational squabbling, hands out the team assignments. Thankfully, the lady detective is assigned to Desmond’s group, while both Ringer and Lassiter end up on my team; I may not exactly be friends with those two, but acquaintances who don’t entirely hate me are better than outright antagonistic strangers.
Groups finalized, Riker barks the order for everyone to load into their respective SUVs and head to their first assigned location. My team and I climb into a vehicle together, me at the wheel, quickly review the address for our first stop, already plugged into the GPS, and then zip off down the street with hardly a word between us. Like we’re a well-oiled machine, accustomed to joint missions. Like we get along.
Hah.
If only.
Our first location is Arnold Robertson Middle School, which would be terrifying if school was still in session. But all of Aurora’s schools have been closed since the convention center collapsed, over the fear that the “terrorists” who brought it down might try to attack other public places populated by large numbers of innocent people. So no children will be harmed during the making of our ward search.
I drive up to the school as a fine rain begins to fall from the overcast sky and park the SUV near the front doors of the two-story building, smack dab in the middle of the nearly deserted lot. Only one other car is parked in the vicinity of the school; it belongs to a custodian with the keys, whom Ella called before mission start. As my temporary team files out of the vehicle, said custodian stands up from where he was lounging on a sidewalk bench and walks over to greet us.
“You guys here for the, uh, inspection?” A quick glance at our apparel gives away our law enforcement status, and a visible shudder runs through the man’s body. “Do you need me to, um, well, come in with you?”
He’s clearly enthusiastic about that idea.
“No, sir,” Lassiter says. “You can stay in your vehicle while we conduct the inspection. We’ll come tap on your window when we’re done so you can lock the doors again.”
The man relaxes. “Sounds good.” He strides over to the left-most door and unlocks it. “Let me know if you need anything else,” he adds, hoping we don’t.
We enter the front hall of the school, the door clanging shut behind us, and huddle up for a quick conversation so we can break off into smaller groups and segment the building into search zones to make our workflow more efficient. To my absolute shock (shock, I tell you), none of the cops, including Ringer, jump at the chance to be teamed up with Cal Kinsey the Kook.
Lassiter hides a faint smile behind his hand when this unheard-of misfortune occurs, and stoically agrees to be my search buddy, like he’s making some
great sacrifice. I shoot him a good-natured glare and order the team to break up.
One group will search the upper floor, where most of the classrooms are, and the other group will stay downstairs and cover the gym, locker rooms, front offices, and science labs. Lassiter and I volunteer for the latter role. Because both of us know that the wards, if there are any, are more likely to be written closer to the foundation of the building, for maximum impact. And neither of us want our ignorant teammates to make the wrong move in the face of magic.
After all, among the cops, Lassiter alone knows what this mission is really about. (We can’t tell so many people the truth without the mayor and commissioner bringing down the hammer on Team Riker for policy violations.) The others only know that there’s a “bomb” in one of the buildings we’re searching tonight, and that the “devices” (talismans) they were given can sense it from a distance of twenty-five feet or less.
We gave them just enough information to keep them on task, but not enough to let them connect the dots.
I hope.
After our three teammates head to the second floor via a stairwell, Lassiter and I enter the admin offices and start to hunt for any sign of the wards. As I’m giving the principal’s office a look-see, Lassiter, at the secretary’s desk outside, says, “Still haven’t caught a break since Christmas, huh, Kinsey?” He glances up at me from where he’s waving his talisman in front of a file cabinet. “Bandaged hand. Bandaged nose. Splinted wrist. You don’t look as bad as you did the last time I saw you, but I can’t honestly say you look good either.”
“Yeah, I got jumped by a shapeshifter. It almost ended badly.” I focus my magic sense on the whole of the room, but there’s no residual magic close enough for me to grab hold of. “And the nose is from a run-in with a horde of bloodthirsty wraiths.”
Lassiter turns the talisman over in his hand, tongue caught between his teeth. “Okay. ‘Shapeshifter’ is self-explanatory, I think. But what the ever-loving fuck is a wraith?”
“It’s sort of a zombie. A body reanimated through necromancy.” I exit the principal’s office and pull the door to. “Don’t feel too stupid though. Nobody at DSI knew what they were either. We had to ask a practitioner to identify them.”
“These wraiths relevant to the case we’re working?” Lassiter stuffs the talisman back in his pocket as we converge in the waiting area in front of the secretary’s desk, catching the hint from my expression that there’s no foul magic in this section of the building.
“Unfortunately. We believe they’re our bad guys’ main muscle. They were sent to retrieve an important item from the convention center ruins, and some of our agents ran into them while combing the scene for evidence. They’re hard to kill—you need to chop their heads off or set them on fire—but once they’re down, they stay down. Probably their only redeeming quality.”
Lassiter leads the way back into the hall, scratching at his chin as he contemplates the existence of yet another bizarre creature. When we reach the door to the first science lab, the detective shrugs, not at me but at some unspoken thought, and I get the idea he argued with himself until he decided to file wraith into the Why not? section of his brain.
I don’t blame him. I feel the same way.
Why not have levitating zombies do your villainous bidding?
Over the next twenty minutes, Lassiter and I scour the science labs for any nasty magic, but all we find is a dusty plastic skeleton in a closet, shelves on wheels full of empty glass beakers I nearly run into and overturn because I can’t find the storage room light switch, a bin full of literal rocks that must be used in some geology class, and a large, peeling globe of the Earth that’s been outdated since 1975. After staring at the globe for a second, Lassiter and I both sigh in defeat and head to the hallway once more.
The only areas left to search on the main floor are the gym and its locker rooms.
The gym is expansive, so Lassiter and I split up to inspect opposite ends. I climb each level of the tall bleachers, my magic sense laser-focused as I hunt for even the tiniest whiffs of residual magic. Finding nothing, I stomp my way back down, then round the side of the bleachers and explore the shadowy, dusty chasm beneath them. But all I find there is crass graffiti on the wall, written in permanent marker, a pile of old cigarette butts someone’s been building over the school year, a condom (thankfully still in its wrapper), and the lingering smell of marijuana.
With a snort, I turn tail and emerge from beneath the bleachers, locating Lassiter on a low stage on the far side of the gym that must be used for school theater productions. When he looks my way, I shake my head to indicate I haven’t found anything, and he raises his talisman to show me he’s had no luck on his end either. No wards in the gym. Which means they’ve been planted in one of the locker rooms, or upstairs, against expectations, or…this school has miraculously escaped Feldman’s wrath.
As Lassiter and I walk over to the locker room entrances, him taking the boys’ side and me the girls’, I hope for the last option, hope the school will be spared, hope the children of Aurora won’t have to suffer in the course of a rogue wizard’s vendetta.
That hope, it turns out, is immediately dashed.
Because the second I round the corner into the main area of the girls’ locker room, my magic sense flares into overdrive. At the far end of the room, there’s a low doorway leading to what must be a bank of shower stalls. A telltale red glow resonates from within the smaller room, and even from thirty feet away, I can already trace the faint outlines of the complex ward symbols written on the walls.
What a bastard, I think, targeting school kids.
I turn back toward the entrance of the locker room, stick two fingers in my mouth, and let out a high-pitched whistle. A signal to Lassiter. Then I march forward into the dim shower area lit only by the magic pulsing through the wards, and grope along the walls until I find a light switch. I flip the switch—and nothing happens. I flip it again—and nothing happens. I squint at the switch, wondering if it’s been dead for sometime, and if all the female athletes have been showering in the dark because the school can’t spare the funds for an electrician.
Annoyed, I grab the flashlight from my belt, flick it on, and continue farther into the room.
I quickly scan the vast map of wards, searching for the countdown circle I saw at Arnette’s. I find it in the third shower stall on the right, visible past a half-drawn curtain. Yanking the curtain out of my way reveals the constantly shifting numerals.
Unlike at Arnette’s, there’s no empty space to the left of the countdown, which I take to mean there are several hours remaining before the wards activate. If there’s enough time, I speculate, Riker might be able to request aid from R&D and…
Every shower curtain in the locker room moves at once, rusty metal rings squealing as they’re dragged along the rods. And then a dozen rippling shadows emerge from the darkness within the stalls. In that moment, that terrible, awful, no-good, very bad moment, I suddenly realize that, for no reason, all the shower curtains in the room were fully drawn, except for the one partially covering the countdown circle. Like a piece of cheese luring a mouse to its doom.
I walked into the most obvious trap in the world.
“Oh, fuck,” I mutter.
And the wraiths attack.
I dive to the right, barely avoiding a scythe blade that shears through the plastic curtain of the stall in front of me. Only for another scythe to come swinging around from the opposite direction. It glances off the sleeve of my reinforced uniform coat, leaving a noticeable impression in the fabric and bruising the skin beneath. The hit knocks me off balance, but I recover by dropping into a somersault then springing back up in a half-crouched run that causes two more scythe blades to cut the air above my head. With the shadowy forms of the wraiths trying to surround me, and with no beggar rings to my name, I make a break for the exit to the shower area.
Low groans wash through the group of wraiths when they realize I’m at
tempting to escape, and the four closest to the doorway try to block me in. But I race straight toward them, whip out a gun, take aim for the black voids beneath their heavy hoods, and fire, again and again, sweeping my weapon left to right and right to left, until I hit all the wraiths at least once. It’s not enough to incapacitate any of them, but the force of bullets biting through their rotten gray matter sends them spiraling away from the exit, just far enough for me to drop into a slide and skid across the tile floor underneath them.
In the locker room, I bounce up and scramble for the narrow hall that leads out into the gym. Hopefully, Lassiter and I will be able to evacuate the other cops—
A person strolls into the locker room. It’s not Lassiter. It’s a middle-aged man with a graying, trimmed beard, a receding hairline, and a snide smirk glued to his face that speaks volumes of how he perceives his “ingenious” plot to kill his enemies, the vampires, and at the same time exact vengeance on the uppity Crows who threw him in jail three years ago. I recognize his face from the mugshot in the case file: Patrick Feldman, ICM wizard, jealous husband, werewolf killer, and, most recently, magical terrorist whose actions have shaken the city of Aurora to its very core.
I halt before him, hyperaware that the wraiths, his wraiths, are seconds behind me and clearly have orders to kill me on sight. Raising my gun, I say, “Patrick Feldman, you’re under arrest for…”
Feldman chuckles and waves his hand in a manner that implies my words are no more significant to him than the crawling ant he stepped on a moment ago in the parking lot. “Oh, save the spiel, Crow boy. I’m not up for a high and mighty lecture today. I just stopped by to deliver a message to that arrogant bastard, Riker, and those three schmucks he has dancing to his strings.” He takes a menacing step toward me, and I sense the buildup of magic resonating in his bones. “The message is simple, so simple even a babbling infant like you can deliver it.”
City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set Page 78