“Cooper, no offense, man, but what kind of question is that?” I let my gaze drift to the ceiling, ears half focused on the constant chatter outside. No one is shouting in panic, and no guns are firing, so I assume no new threats have appeared since I was taken out of play. “I basically am a serious injury at this point. I’m done for a month, at least. Probably six weeks, since I broke my goddamn leg.”
Cooper winces. “Yeah, I doubt I’ll be back at the Archives anytime soon either. I can barely move my fingers.” To demonstrate, he attempts to make a fist with the hand sticking out of his sling, but only two fingers bend. He laughs humorlessly. “Good thing DSI offers excellent healthcare, huh? We’d be screwed if we were on regular insurance.”
I produce my best grin, which isn’t saying much given my face is likely more bruised than Cooper’s. “True that.”
Taking the deepest breath I can without rupturing a lung against my pointy, broken ribs, I switch subjects. “Hey, Cooper, before I forget in the chaos that’s undoubtedly about to unfold: I’m sorry I lied to you. About sitting this one out, sticking to the desk. If I’d meant to keep my word, I would have gone home after the breakfast meeting—but let’s face it. I’m a douche. A dumb fucking douche. I knew exactly what I was getting into by tagging along with the team, rolling right into this warzone, and that makes me a liar. And…I’m sorry. I know you were worried.” I chance a glance at him. “That’s why you came, right? Why you insisted on riding with Erica? Because you were concerned I’d get hurt? And then, hah, you got hurt, too?”
Cooper’s bruised face takes on a pensive expression. Then he shakes his head. “Give me a little more credit than that, will you, Cal? And while you’re at it, stop throwing all the blame on yourself.” He runs his tongue across his split bottom lip. “Yes, you broke your promise, and that was a shitty thing to do. But at the same time, this was an extenuating circumstance, one of those scenarios you can’t predict, can’t prepare for. If you hadn’t come here, then Riker and the team may well have lost. You played a pivotal role in keeping them alive. Had you gone home, done nothing, and then found out your team had been killed because they were too shorthanded to win a battle against such a powerful enemy…well, that would have haunted you forever, would have been your biggest regret.”
He reaches out with his working hand and rests it gently atop my head. “So, yes, you lied to me, but you did it for a good reason. And I can’t fault you on it this time. Next time? We’ll see.”
He pauses, and then his tone shifts into something between contemplative and mortified. “And as for me tagging along on this near-suicide mission—that wasn’t your fault. That was my fault. Because you might be a dumb fucking douche, Cal Kinsey, but clearly so am I. See, I insisted on coming along because I wanted to help, given you were so shorthanded. Me. The researcher. With the mighty power of books at my disposal. Me. Helping you. The elite detectives. I was actually stupid enough to think I could make a difference.”
“But Cooper…you did make a difference?” I’m not sure where this is going. He was invaluable in the final minutes of the fight with Ammit. “You shot the shit out of that monster, man. It was awesome!”
Cooper’s cheeks turn pink—the parts that aren’t blue, I mean. “About that. See, until twenty minutes ago, I hadn’t actually shot a gun since my annual refresher class, last year. I had one eye closed and was shaking like a leaf the whole time I was firing at Ammit. I was a hundred percent sure I was accidentally going to kill Captain Riker. God, it was awful. I could just picture his head—”
“Cooper!”
He shuts up and reclaims his good hand, rubbing his chin in embarrassment. “Sorry. Babbling. I know. I was…this is not my typical workday, okay?”
“Not mine either, pal.”
“Are you sure? You don’t look that much worse than you did post-Charun fight, so…”
“Hey! That’s cold.”
Cooper shrugs with one shoulder, and a shy smile creeps across his face. “Say, if I helped as much as you claim I did, does that make me your hero now?”
I stare at him, and then match his smile. “Not quite, Coop. I wasn’t the object of your epic heroism, remember? If you’re anyone’s hero, you’re Captain Riker’s.”
Cooper’s jaw drops open in shock. “Holy crap,” he whispers, “you’re right. Think I can milk that for special privileges?”
A short silence, and we share a laugh.
“Oh, Cooper. There’s that sass again. You really need to bring that out more. It’s great.”
Cooper rolls his eyes. “You keep pulling these near death experience stunts, and you’ll find out just how sassy I can be, Cal Kinsey.”
“I’d say I’m looking forward to that, but…” I tilt my chin down, gesturing to all of me. “I can do without a full-body cast. Plus—”
Someone knocks on the back door of the SUV. I look up, expecting to see an auxiliary standing outside in the building blizzard, about to announce we’ll be heading to the office shortly. But instead of an agent, it’s Erica the witch.
She looks worse for wear, her new bruises standing out starkly against her tan skin. Her hair is a tangled, dirty mess, streaked with half-dried blood, and she has a black eye so swollen it looks like somebody took a bat to her face. But out of all of us—save Cooper—she’s in the best condition, still walking and talking. A miracle. Or maybe the result of the true power of an ICM practitioner.
(Then again, Marcus didn’t fare quite as well, so perhaps the witch is an exception after all.)
I swallow the taste of copper and greet her. “You all right? After…that?”
She leans against the doorframe and gives me a fifty-fifty gesture with one hand. “Ribs are broken. Think I’ve got a concussion coming on, too, after I smacked my head on the wall in the basement. And, of course, my magic reserve is worryingly close to zero. Banishments are not my strong suit.”
“Could have fooled me,” I mutter.
“Hey,” she replies, “didn’t say I was bad at them. Only that I prefer other disciplines.” She glances at something to her left. “Okay, looks like you all will be heading out in a couple minutes. So we need to wrap up this convo.”
I clench my teeth, or rather, what’s left of them. “Got something you need to say?”
“Oh, do I.” She smacks her cheek and sighs. “But some of it can wait. Two things can’t though. Firstly, this is probably a given, but if anyone from the ICM comes knocking, don’t mention my involvement in this disaster. Everyone who saw me here is either dead, or one of you Crows, so I expect a little discretion on your part. And I know you’re not the person to ask for that, Cal, but Riker’s out of it, the rest of your team is half dead, and I don’t know any of these other weirdos. So, help a girl out?”
I nod the best I can lying down. “Of course. I’ll do whatever I can to erase any mention of your involvement from the case files. And once Riker is back on his feet, or at least at his desk, I’ll make sure he plays defense for you.”
“Thanks.” She raps on the carpeted floor with her knuckles. “I appreciate that. Especially since we still don’t know how high this goes in the ICM. No point in painting a target on my back quite yet. I have a feeling there’s a hell of a lot more going on here than we’ve discovered so far.”
“Glad I’m not the only one with that feeling.” I tip my head back and groan softly at the ache in my…everything.
Picking up my slack, Cooper asks Erica, “What’s the second issue?”
Erica quickly scans the area, searching for eavesdroppers. “The enemy. The whole reason Marcus and Halliburton and those damn Wolves undertook this insane plot in the first place. I’ve been trying to tell you since last night, but things kept getting in the way…”
I lift my head again, spurred to attention by the bleakness of her tone. “What about the enemy? Do you know who they are?”
“I have an educated guess.” She dons an expression you could only describe as desolate. “Throughout
the turbulent history of the global supernatural community, spanning over two millennia in written records, there has been a prominent pattern of war among the major species. Whenever two of the Big Three have joined forces, it has always, always been for the purpose of fighting the third. So if the humans and the werewolves are working together in secret to perform illicit magic, predicated on the idea that a great and powerful enemy is about to rise up and burn the whole world down, then it can only mean that enemy is…”
A cold like nothing on this Earth freezes the blood inside my veins.
And I whisper aloud the one word I fear more than any other:
“Vampires.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Let’s start with the good news: no one on Team Riker died. (Hooray!)
Unfortunately, that’s about all the good news in Aurora right now.
The bad news?
Where to start…
Firstly, my entire team is on medical leave for six weeks.
Desmond lost a chunk of his intestines and earned a large, jagged scar across his lower back. Amy’s broken arm required invasive surgery and had to be fitted with a much bigger cast. Ella earned herself a concussion and so many cracked bones (not to mention the internal bleeding) that Navarro demanded she be on bed rest for three weeks, no exceptions. Riker reinjured his leg—again—so badly that he had to be shipped to a special facility that deals with complex knee injuries. That facility is in Ohio.
And me? I had my tibia shoved back into place, got fitted with an even larger cast than Amy, had a pair of crutches tossed at my head (literally), and was, after a week in intensive care, finally screamed out of the infirmary by a pissed-off Navarro, who told me he’d kill me himself if I came back to the office anytime, for anything, in the next month.
And, oh, that’s only the beginning.
The even worse news?
The ICM is having a nervous breakdown. After it came out that Marcus spearheaded Ammit’s summoning, along with Halliburton and at least two other practitioners in Aurora, the entire community went berserk. Arguments that devolved into fistfights. Protests that devolved into riots. And the great Wizard Ambrose, claiming he had no connection to Marcus’ summoning scheme whatsoever, fled back to the safety of the High Court’s headquarters in Europe, leaving Aurora with no ICM leadership to speak of.
The hundreds of practitioners in the city and its suburbs have collectively jumped ship on the whole magic society thing—fearing more rogues in their midst—and broken down into virtual gangs based on magic disciplines, family lines, friendships, and other forms of nepotism. As of yesterday, there have been at least twenty-seven incidents of gang-on-gang violence, the different groups accusing each other of being in on the “Marcus Plot,” as they’re calling it.
In the week following the summoning of Ammit, fourteen DSI agents have been injured, one critically, while breaking up fights between ICM practitioners on the snowy streets of Aurora. With my team out of the running, and an uptick in supernatural cases outside the city as well, our forces have been severely overtaxed.
Cooper, who’s been reporting all this internal strife to me, since I was grounded by Navarro, tells me there’s a rumor going around the office: if the streets don’t calm down by Christmas, Mayor Burbank is going to inform the entire Aurora Police Department about the reality of the supernatural super-community, so that the PD can back up DSI during these ICM bitch fights for the foreseeable future.
Boy, that’ll go over well.
And you know what? That’s not even the worst news.
The worst news is that, despite all the shit my team went through during the Ammit summoning, despite Liam Calvary’s murder by McKinney, despite the death of the plainclothes agent outside the Primrose house (his name was Aidan Walker, by the way), despite Erica risking everything to take down one of her own, despite all this carnage and panic in the wake of the revelations that have shocked the Aurora ICM community…we still don’t know who murdered the Jameson trio. The triple homicide is unsolved.
I honestly don’t think it was owl man—although I still don’t understand his role in all this. (I haven’t seen him since that night he helped me escape from McKinney and friends. For all I know, he’s left Aurora, his mission, whatever it was, completed.)
I don’t think the killer was a werewolf either, or a practitioner. And I certainly don’t think it was a normal human. If Erica is right about the enemy being the vampires, then maybe it was one of them. Maybe they sent an agent to wipe out the Jameson trio, thinking their deaths would prevent Ammit’s summoning. Maybe…
You know what? I’ll worry about it later.
I have a promise to actually keep right now. As much as this particular promise annoys me.
At noon on this overcast Monday, I park my truck in a street-side space across from a small diner called Dot’s. It’s on the very edge of Aurora proper, one of the few indie establishments in the city to survive the mass franchise expansion over the last decade.
After I pop the door open, I maneuver my cast-covered leg out of the vehicle, then bend over and grab my crutches from the passenger seat. The snow has been plowed recently, but the road is still slick, so I carefully cross the street with my attention focused on every bumpy patch of ice on the asphalt.
When I reach the sidewalk, a nice passerby opens the door to Dot’s for me. I thank him and enter. As the door swings shut behind me, the bells stuck to the glass with a suction cup jingle, announcing my arrival. A waitress behind the counter points to a sign near the door: PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF.
After a quick scan of the restaurant, I move through the obstacle course of tables toward a big booth in front of a window. My left crutch catches a chair leg, and I stumble, but I right myself at the last second to prevent a humiliating fall. Reaching the booth at last, I sigh in relief, set my crutches against the side of the table, sit, and grab the menu in front of me.
Four minutes later, my lunch buddy arrives.
Detective Matt Lassiter looks as tired as I feel. He tosses his beanie on the table and flops down, boneless, rubbing the heavy bags under his eyes with his middle fingers. His dark hair, streaked with gray, sticks up at the ends from the static of his hat, but he doesn’t seem all that concerned about his appearance. He shakes his head, blinks blearily at the ceiling a few times, and finally casts his gaze on me. It lingers on my visible injuries—the facial bruising, the bandages, etc.—then flicks to my crutches before settling firmly on his own menu.
“Doesn’t look like dropping you off at the DSI infirmary did much good, Kinsey,” he says. His voice is dull, even more exhausted than his face. “You’ve got more injuries than you did the last time I saw you.”
I run my finger down the offerings on the laminated menu. “Yeah, well, there was another incident I unfortunately got involved in shortly after I was released from the infirmary.”
Lassiter hums. “Would that incident be related to Primrose Avenue?”
“You guys get dispatched there?” I ask, tapping on the listing for today’s lunch special. A hearty vegetable soup and a large, toasted sandwich. I could go for some warmth.
“We got some calls in from concerned neighbors, but when our uniforms showed up, DSI had the entire street blocked off. Wouldn’t let us in for anything until they cleared the area of what I suspect to be evidence of a very violent battle.” Those judging eyes land on my bruised face again. “For all the trouble you went through, I hope you bastards at least won.”
“We did.” I glance at the waitress heading our way. “In a manner of speaking.”
Lassiter and I place our orders—I notice he picks the most expensive meal possible, probably because I’m paying—and the waitress smiles and walks off.
“Okay,” the detective says, crossing his arms. “Let’s cut to the chase. Tell me what the hell is happening in my city. All of it. Don’t skip anything. I want to know what you Kooks do, really. I want to know what the heck happened to you, really. And I wan
t to know what’s causing this sudden, ridiculous surge of violent crime on my streets, really. No excuses. Tell me the truth. Tell me about this supernatural shit.”
I lock my fingers together and peer out the window as I consider his demand. The day outside is cold and bleak, and I don’t mean the weather. “All right, Lassiter. I’ll tell you everything, but only if you know what you’re getting into. Once you learn all this, you won’t be able to ignore the strange occurrences in Aurora anymore, the weird happenings that everyone else can dismiss because they’re so sure their reality is ‘normal.’ Every odd detail you’ve ever picked up on during an investigation, every unexplainable thing you’ve witnessed going about your daily life—you’ll gain the power of hindsight after you learn the truth, and it’ll change the way you view your entire life. You ready for that?”
Lassiter stares at me in surprise. Not shock, just surprise, like he wasn’t expecting so eloquent a speech from the young and brash Cal Kinsey. Then he smiles, his dimples deep, crow’s feet trailing out from the corners of his weary eyes. “Look, kid. I’ve been a homicide detective for eighteen years. I’ve seen children’s corpses left rotting in ditches, pregnant women ripped apart by jealous ex-boyfriends, teenage girls gang-raped to death and tossed nude into fields, dismembered limbs in trash bags, and a thousand other nightmare scenarios. You want to tell me that, in addition to the all-too-human monsters roaming in the shadows of our fair city, that there are also werewolves and ghosts and vampires? Go ahead, Kinsey. You can’t knock me off my rock. I’ve been chained here way too long.”
Now it’s my turn to stare at him in surprise. I knew he was a savvy cop and a bit jaded—most senior cops I met during my short stint at the PD were—but for him to be so sure, unshakeable in his belief, that his experiences in Homicide are worse than (or equivalent to) any reality about the supernatural world I can throw at him…That’s wise, grounded in a way I didn’t expect. An ability to compare vastly different events on the same scale, to understand the relativity of personal experiences without first running straight into the knee-jerk denial of the supernatural most people cling to—that’s a power even I lack.
Shade Chaser (City of Crows 2) Page 27