Shade Chaser (City of Crows 2)

by Clara Coulson

  “Shit,” I say. “Did he get away?”

  “Oh, hell no. Nick and I flew over to the DSI branch in London and spent three weeks tracking him down. Dragged his ass back here to face the proper justice system. Judge Barlow—who’s in the know—gave him life, despite the pleas of his ICM-provided defender. He’s at Preston Super Max, in the practitioners’ cellblock.” She smirks, a hint of pride in her dimples, and runs a hand through her short hair. “Anyway, since then, we haven’t trusted them enough to let them anywhere near the core of a murder investigation involving an ICM member. Protecting your own doesn’t fly when the person in question is a criminal.”

  “So I’m guessing we should expect interference from them during this case?”

  Ella sighs. “If they’re not badgering the mayor’s office by dinnertime, it’ll be a miracle. With our luck, they’ll have Ambrose on a flight to Michigan in the next half hour.”

  “Which is why,” Riker speaks up from behind us, “we should get on the ball.”

  “This Ambrose guy is bad news?” I ask.

  “Less the man himself and more who he represents.” Ella turns toward the circle of death, examining the bodies again. “He’s some administrative busybody for the High Court. He’s not one of the High Wizards though. They never show up in person. They just have their assistants call us incessantly and occasionally dispatch Ambrose to rankle us.”

  Riker snorts. “The ICM’s top leaders are far too important to mingle with the riffraff.”

  “Although, that might be a godsend.” Ella chuckles. “Given how annoying Ambrose is, I can’t imagine how insufferable the High Wizards and Witches themselves are. I swear, sometimes the ICM seems less like a professional practitioner organization and more like a bunch of self-important snobs doing magic tricks in their parents’ basements, and—”

  “Oh ho, lamenting the ICM again, are we?” says a man from the stairwell. A second later, Desmond’s hulking form descends from the darkness into the storeroom. He slips off the last step and stoops low, hopping his way across the X’s on the floor until he’s situated between Ella and Riker. Steadying himself, he straightens up. His shaved head just fits in the gap between two ceiling beams. A sparkling grin stretches across his face. “Hah! Perfect!”

  Ella scratches at the pale scar on her chin. “Did you pass Marcus on the way in?”

  “Oh, yes. He looked positively irate.” Desmond smiles and glances at Riker. “You tell him off, boss?”

  Riker shrugs. “What else was I supposed to do?”

  Desmond gives Riker a thumbs-up.

  Ella bats his hand back down. “Enough of that. Where’s Amy?”

  “Finishing up with Mark Jameson.” (The current owner of the bar and grill.) “Man got a bit emotional, so Amy had him write stuff down instead of talking during the interview. Apparently, the employee who walked in and found the bodies this morning is his nephew, and the poor kid is traumatized.”

  Riker nods. “If we didn’t do this all the time, it would traumatize us too.”

  Doesn’t it? flitters briefly through my mind, but I hold my tongue.

  Ella, who I suspect thinks the same thing I do, clears her throat and asks, “Where’s Schultz?”

  “The ME is en route,” Desmond answers. “She called as I was heading down here. ETA ten minutes.”

  “Good.” Ella gestures at the bodies. “As soon as we get these guys out of here, we’ll have the techs come in, clean up the space, and take all the evidence back to our labs. You know, it’s kind of nice not to have to share our evidence with the cops.”

  “Don’t get used to it.” Riker grabs an object leaning against a wooden crate. His cane. “After this, the status quo will return with a vengeance. Burbank only lets us disrupt police procedure when a victim is a ‘big name’ and he needs a fast resolution. ‘Small fries’ get buried under the PD’s investigations, now and forever. Because the one time they didn’t…I’m sure we all remember the Rimbauer Incident.”

  Ella and Desmond cringe, while I stand there like an ignorant fool because I have no idea what Riker is talking about. Although Rimbauer does sound sort of familiar. Maybe my academy teacher mentioned it during our mandatory seminar on DSI’s history.

  “What happened with that?” I ask. “Did we almost get exposed?”

  Desmond bellows out another laugh, but this one is dry and…kind of nervous. “Oh, Calvin. Trust me, you don’t want the details on that one.” He reaches behind Ella and punches my shoulder. In a way I’m sure is supposed to be playful and friendly. But it just so happens that I’m standing at the exact wrong angle, with my feet in the exact wrong position, that all two hundred twenty-five pounds of Desmond produces the exact wrong amount of force, and causes me to stagger backward.

  My boots hit the edge of the blood pond.

  And I slip.

  And I fall.

  I don’t know if the high-pitched shriek that emerges from my throat does so before or after I hit the floor, but either way, it’s an apt description of the way I feel as I’m covered in the blood (oh, and shredded entrails) of three decaying corpses. And, holy fuck, it gets everywhere. On my face. In my hair. In my ears. Up my nose. All over my uniform. And the only reason it doesn’t get in my mouth is because I seal my lips and teeth so tight I’m pretty sure I chip a molar.

  I come to rest in the middle of the blood pond in the contorted pretzel shape of a professional gymnast, my limbs frozen in shock after flailing the whole way down. Several seconds of complete and utter silence pass me by, during which my teammates stare at me in horror, mouths agape, eyes wide, unmoving, as if even they, with years of experience, have no idea what to do in this god-awful situation.

  Finally, a low whine works its way up my throat and emerges through my bloodstained lips as a pitiful, “Help me.”

  “Oh, dear god. Are you okay?” Ella steps up to the edge of the blood pond and offers me a hand. “Here. I’ll help you up. Take it slow.”

  I reach out with a shaking hand, trying really hard to ignore the sensation of blood soaking through my clothes—don’t get me started on the smell—and attempt to grasp Ella’s hand. But I’m about half a foot too far away from her to grab hold, and so, groaning in disgust, I roll over onto my knees, picking up even more blood, and try again. Only for the hand I have braced against the floor to slip out from under me. My forehead smacks the floor, flinging blood everywhere, and Ella yelps, jumping back to avoid the spray.

  “Oh, jeez,” Desmond mutters. “Let me get him, Ella.”

  I snort out a glob of half-coagulated blood, whimper, and then pray to whatever gods are out there that the third time really is the charm. Then I open my eyes, blinking away a haze of red, and press my blood-covered hands against the floor, preparing to prop myself up. But a split second before I rise to take Desmond’s hand and get pulled to safety—I notice something.

  My eyes are, on the off chance, directed at the gap underneath one of the sugar racks that the headless man is situated between. The lights illuminating the scene don’t quite reach all the way to the wall, blocked by the bottom shelf, but the dusty space is lit enough for me to see the strange, deep gouges in the stone wall. They trail about six inches across the wall, at a downward angle, tracking back toward the headless man’s badly broken arm. They look like…claw marks?

  “Uh, Cal?” Desmond calls out behind me. “You all right?”

  “Wait a minute,” I respond. “Something here is…off.”

  “Huh?”

  I abruptly sit up, ignoring the blood altogether (or at least pretending to), and crawl closer to the headless man’s body. His injuries don’t appear to have been inflicted by claws. The cuts are single strokes, maybe from the blade of a large knife. But if he wasn’t attacked by claws, then where did the marks on the wall come from? Unless…

  I stare at his disheveled clothing, eying each tear, the way his pants and shirt are twisted, almost as if he was nude at some point and someone did a poor job of redr
essing him after his death. Or maybe, maybe—maybe he wasn’t nude at all. Maybe he came into the basement wearing the clothes, wearing a human shape, only to change into a different shape in an attempt to escape or fight back during the attack that killed him.

  Passing over the decapitated head in his lap, I search his pants for the clue I need to prove my hunch.

  And there they are: holes in the fabric punched outward, not inward, as if something with claws burst out of the denim.

  I peer over my shoulder at my teammates, who are gawking at me in absolute disgust. Because I’m nonchalantly sitting in a pool of blood, poking at a headless corpse. And that’s pretty disturbing behavior, even for me, to be quite honest. But I’m on a roll here, and it’s helping me somewhat ignore how super fucking gross I feel right now, so…

  I point at the decapitated head and say, “Guys, this dude was a werewolf.”

  Chapter Six

  The task room is abuzz when I amble in with fresh clothes and damp hair. But the chatter dies in an instant when the closing door alerts everyone to my presence.

  Desmond looks everywhere except my face, still wearing the same apologetic expression he’d slipped on as we left the bar and grill, after saying he was sorry, seventeen times, for “forgetting” I’m sixty pounds lighter than him and punching me a tad too hard. Amy, similarly, ignores my existence altogether, because the first thing that came out of her mouth when I trudged sopping wet up the basement stairs at Jameson’s was a shocked, “Shit, I thought there were only three victims.” And I swear to god, I will not forgive her for that comment for at least two weeks.

  Delarosa, whose team has been called in to assist us in the investigation, sits directly across from Amy at the table, sporting a look somewhere between amused and disturbed.

  As I take my seat next to Ella, she checks me over with subtle glances. Like she’s searching for any smears of red I might have missed in the shower. She doesn’t find any—I know this because I checked myself, after scrubbing my skin raw for twenty minutes straight. So she clears her throat and gestures to the papers strewn across the tabletop in front of her.

  “All right. Let’s get started. Nick’s on the phone with Mayor Burbank and the commissioner right now, discussing security around the crime scene and related areas, so we’re going to move on to initial assignments without him.” She grabs the keyboard and mouse in the middle of the table, nodding to the projection screen on the wall, where a case summary someone wrote up is displayed. “Currently, we’ve identified two out of three victims: Ben Halliburton, a local ICM wizard, and Arthur Slate, the former Aurora mayor.”

  Delarosa reels back like Ella punched him. “No way. Ex-Mayor Slate is dead?”

  “So it seems,” Ella replies. “He was found with the other two bodies at Jameson’s early this morning. There appears to have been a quick, violent attack, likely by a supernatural being, or multiple beings. The storeroom was left remarkably intact despite the level of violence, which suggests to me the killer was very fast. Either that, or they were unseen. Maybe wearing a veil or some other kind of illusion magic.”

  “Uh, actually…” I say.

  “Yeah?” Ella looks at me.

  “Sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier, but I was kind of, you know, Carrie by Steven King.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Just tell us, Cal.”

  “I didn’t sense any magic in the storeroom.” I rap my knuckles on the table. “Except a faint trace. Weeks old. So, not only did the killer not use any magic, but the high-level wizard didn’t either. Whatever hit him happened so fast he didn’t even have time to throw up a protective shield, or counterattack, or do anything—other than curl up on the floor and die.”

  No one speaks for a moment.

  Then Liam Calvary, the youngest member of Delarosa’s team, whispers, “That’s freaky.”

  “You’re telling me,” Delarosa says. “I know of several supernatural speedsters. But something that can one-up a trained wizard like that? That’s one nasty motherfucker.”

  “Indeed.” Ella pulls up a folder of crime scene images. “Brace yourself. This one’s bad.”

  The first shot is a wide view of the storeroom, showcasing the entire scene, blood pool included.

  Delarosa pales. “Jesus, Kinsey. You fell into that?”

  “Don’t even start, man,” I reply. “It’s over and done with. Moving on.”

  Desmond, a few seats away from me, faintly whispers, “So sorry.”

  Ella flips through the full slideshow of pictures, reviewing all the gruesome injuries along the way. The second-to-last picture in the bunch is of the claw marks I found on the wall under the sugar rack, lit up with the flash of the camera. Ella zooms in on the image and points at the screen. “Before the ME arrived to pick up the bodies, Cal spotted these on the wall.” She flips to the last picture, a close-up shot of the claw holes in the dead man’s jeans. “Looking closer, Cal figured out our third victim was a werewolf.”

  “Wolf?” Delarosa leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “What the hell kind of business could a wizard, a Wolf, and ex-Mayor Slate have in common?”

  Ella shrugs. “That’s what we need to find out. Amy?”

  Amy gathers the papers in front of her, the notes from the Jameson interview, and quickly scans for the highlights. She sits ramrod straight in the chair, a habit she must have picked up during her years in the US Army. (According to the water cooler gossip, she retired after an incident in Iraq involving an angry djinni who blew up a convoy of Humvees. Another perfect fit for this office full of weirdos with tragic pasts. Myself included.) Tugging at a loose lock of dark hair, she starts running through her notes out loud:

  “Mark Jameson’s nephew arrived at the bar and grill early this morning, about five AM, to start restocking all the kitchens for the morning breakfast rush. He went down to the storeroom at approximately quarter after, where he found our three victims. The maintenance man who closed the restaurant at twelve AM the night before claims that he checked the entire building before he left for the night. There was no clandestine meeting taking place in the storeroom when he locked up.”

  “So,” Delarosa says, “that means the victims broke into the bar, met in the basement, and were then murdered between the hours of midnight and five AM.”

  “We can narrow it down a little further,” Desmond throws in. “A lot of the blood spatter was already dry when the nephew arrived. So a better guess would be between midnight and three AM. The ME will confirm a more precise time of death when she gets through the autopsies. But I think a three-hour range is good enough to work with for now.”

  “I agree.” Ella clicks out of the crime scene photos and pulls up a map. “As you pointed out, Juan, we need to figure out why the three of them were holding a secret meeting at Jameson’s. Because more than likely, whatever they were discussing, or whatever transaction they were making, is what put a target on their backs. Since the killer didn’t leave any obvious clues to their identity, we’ll have to walk the slow and steady.”

  “Ah,” Delarosa says. “So we’re checking out the homes?”

  “Right. We’ve got two locations to investigate. Prelim teams are already securing the perimeters.” She types in an address, and the house pops up on the map. “Ex-Mayor Slate lived on Cranston Street, in one of those remodeled townhouses. I’ll take Cal, Amy, and your boy Liam there with me, and we’ll pry the place apart for clues to what our beloved ex-mayor might have gotten himself mixed up in. Meanwhile…”

  She types in a second address, but it’s not anyone’s house. It’s some kind of public community center. “I want the rest of your team and Desmond to go meet with the local Wolf rep. You guys have handled several werewolf cases in the past—except for Liam, being a rookie—so I want you all to use that experience to tread carefully. Got it?”

  Delarosa holds up his hands. “You know me, Ella. Cool and collected.”

  “Except for the time Ramirez sprayed your lu
nch with that super-hot pepper extract,” Amy quips.

  “Hey, now.” He frowns. “You better not still have that video.”

  “Oh? And if I do?” She grins in a way that suggests she’ll post it on YouTube in a heartbeat if he dares to tick her off. Ever.

  For some reason, he changes the subject. “So, what about the ICM guy? We’re not sending anyone to his place?”

  Ella huffs. “The prelim team we sent to Halliburton’s house reported that they couldn’t get in. It’s warded against intruders. We had one of our R&D practitioners take a look at it, but it’s high-level stuff. Which means we need a wizard or witch to open it. Which means we need to appeal to the ICM through official channels. And that’s no deal right now because…”

  “Marcus threw a fit when you booted him from the crime scene earlier,” Delarosa says. “Regret that?”

  “No,” Ella snaps. “Not at all. After that stunt they pulled with Wizard Vickers, they don’t deserve our trust. Not in this kind of investigative capacity. If Halliburton was involved in some supernatural criminal enterprise, then they will do everything they can to keep it quiet, up to and including destruction of evidence. Because publicly announcing that the ICM has the occasional bad apple, like every other group in the world, is apparently devastating to their reputation in the global supernatural community.” She says devastating with a nasally accent that must be a mockery of someone. That Ambrose guy, maybe.

  “So,” she finishes, “if I have to choose between blowing off the front of Halliburton’s house with a wrecking ball, or begging the ICM for help, I will drive the freaking crane myself.”