“No.” Riker snaps his fingers at his four subordinates and indicates we should start moseying toward the door. “He’s in over his head already, dealing with political negotiations. Plus, you’re the head of our medical department. I think you’re more qualified to manage this issue anyway.”
“Should I call the police too?” Navarro asks, half turned toward the quarantine area, his hands twitching like he’s aching to climb back into the uncomfortable hazmat suit. “Let them know there may be a developing medical crisis? Could only be a matter of time before more people fall ill. If we leave the PD unaware, they might be overwhelmed.”
“Cal,” Riker says, wagging his finger my direction, “that detective contact of yours, Lassiter, why don’t you give him a heads-up? The PD will be less skeptical on the matter if it comes from the mouth of one of their own. They never take us seriously until they can see the danger with their own damn eyes.”
“Will do.” I unclip my phone from my belt and scroll through my contacts.
“And after that,” he adds, spinning around to face the door, “go find Delarosa’s team. They’re on training duty this week, with a class of academy students, but the lessons are nothing an auxiliary team can’t teach. Tell Delarosa to head out on patrol. If this illness does spread, we could have panic in the streets, not only from human civilians, but also from the supernatural fare. I want our forces in place, just in case.”
I pass Newman and push the door open with my back as I hit the call button on my phone screen. “All right. I’ll do that too. Anything else?”
“Not for you. Head up to the task room again after Delarosa deploys. We’ll regroup and talk daily assignments there.” He tips up his chin at the rest of my team and opens his mouth to hand out a slew of other orders. But the door swings shut in front of me before I hear a word of it, and then I have a ringing phone to my ear, so I can’t focus on anything else.
Riker probably gives my teammates much cooler orders than me, but whatever. I don’t really care about being given menial tasks. I’ve had more than my fair share of excitement recently.
When I’m halfway to the elevator, Lassiter answers his phone with, “Oh, this ought to be good.”
I smack the elevator button. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Just got a call about some crazy threatening people at a deli on Wayland,” he answers drolly. “Turns out I’m the closest cop to the scene.”
“Isn’t that a job for the uniforms to handle?”
“You would think, but there was a house fire earlier this morning about five miles into the eastern burbs. A lot of uniforms are still on the scene. Four people died. Nasty business.” The sound of a crackling radio comes over the line. “Listen, I know you probably have something important to say about a rampaging supernatural threat or whatever, but I’m two minutes out from the deli, and I really need to wrangle this guy. Can I call you back after I arrest him? Say, twenty minutes or so?”
The elevator arrives and I step inside while considering the odds that the world will be overtaken by a deadly contagion and civilization will collapse in the next twenty minutes.
“Yeah, that’s fine.” I tap the floor button that’ll take me to the gym where the trainees usually assemble to have the tar beaten out of them by seasoned agents. “But try not to go over time, okay? There’s a developing problem, and it doesn’t appear to be supernatural. We might, uh, be calling in the CDC.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath, and then, “Shit. I’ll make it fifteen instead.”
He hangs up before I can respond.
Shrugging, I stick my phone back on the belt clip, trudge out of the elevator when it finally decides to rock to a stop, and make my way to the gym. When I’m thirty feet from the door, I hear someone inside yell like they’re in an anime boss fight, and I snort at the thought of some awkward trainee trying to take down one of Delarosa’s people with a convoluted Kung Fu move they saw in a movie once. The loud thump that reverberates through the floor beneath my feet seconds before I reach the door, followed by a pitiful groan, tells me I pictured the outcome of that mistake perfectly.
I reach for the door.
It bursts open as if kicked, and I wildly spin off into the wall, my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact, to avoid getting whacked in the face. Heart in my throat, I watch a young black woman dressed in a bright pink sports top and matching runner’s tights bound out of the gym with a high-pitched laugh ringing in her throat. She stops short when she sees me against the wall and blinks a couple times, like she’s trying to place me.
Then she gasps and covers her mouth with her hands. “Oh, my gosh. Cal Kinsey?”
“Uh, yeah?”
She catches the door as it swings back around, looks from that door to me and back to the door, and smacks herself in the cheek. “Oh, jeez. I’m so sorry. I should’ve looked through the window before I kicked the door open. Did I hit you? Are you hurt?”
I ignore the dull ache in my shoulder. “No, I’m fine.”
“Good. Great. Awesome.” She looks anywhere but my face, a flustered grin tugging at her lips. “Again, so sorry. I totally didn’t mean to do that. Complete accident.”
“Okay. No big deal.” Past her, through the open door, I spy Delarosa and his three team members correcting the defensive stances of a line of trainees. There’s a conspicuous gap in the line, and I track it back to a scruffy-faced white guy about thirty laid out on the sparring mat, staring up at the ceiling in a daze. “Is he okay?”
“Hm?” She looks over her shoulder. “Oh! Yeah, actually, about that. I’m supposed to go to the infirmary and drag a doctor back here to look at him. We tried to call up to the infirmary, but apparently everyone is busy or something, so I get to play the errand girl.”
Since now is not the best time to visit the infirmary, I decide to strike up a conversation instead of letting her scurry off. Just long enough for Navarro to clean up the quarantine mess. Our medical staff is efficient. They should almost be done.
“Hah, I know that feeling,” I say while I scrutinize the guy on the floor. He’s not seriously injured…I don’t think.
“Wait, really?” The woman gawps at me. “But you’re an elite detective. You’re on Riker’s team. You don’t do any menial work. Right? You just kick ass and take names and save people.”
Oh, man, if she only knew.
“Well, it’s not all fun and games, you know?” I reply, humoring her. “Even elite teams have boring stuff to do on a regular basis. Paperwork. Patrols. The works.”
“Huh.” She appears slightly crestfallen at that revelation. “So it’s not glamorous at all then, being at the top of the totem pole?”
“Sorry to say, you’re totally off base.” I pretend to scratch the back of my neck while I prod the forming bruise on my shoulder. Ouch. “Us elites are as mortal as the rest of you.”
She doesn’t seem convinced, brows furrowed, lips pursed. “But, I mean, you’re you.”
“I’m…me?” I peel myself off the wall and take a step toward her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
A sense of propriety must strike her like an anvil, because she suddenly clams up. “Well, you know, I mean, the stories they tell…”
“What stories? Told by who?”
She tugs nervously on the interwoven bun of braids sitting low on the back of her head. “Lots of stories. And pretty much everyone.”
“What kind of stories exactly?”
“You know”—she bites her lip—“like that time you went to the Eververse and saved that archivist from Etruscan Psychopomps. Or the time you got kidnapped by werewolves, escaped, and then defeated your captors in an epic solo battle. Or when you tag-teamed with that vampire spy to defeat the wizard who blew up the Wellington Center. Or when—”
“That’s enough.” I hold up my hands to ward her off. “I get the idea.”
“So, yeah, seeing you in person for the first time is…” She makes absolutely no attempt to h
ide the fact she checks me out, and then nods in approval. “Wow.”
“Okay, you have me at a disadvantage.” I shrug off her admiration and throw up my best friendly smile. “You know all about me, but I don’t even know your name.”
“Oh, right!” She giggles. Honest to god giggles. “I’m Zhane Carpenter.”
Doesn’t ring a bell. I urge her with a hand motion to add a few more words, so it actually makes an explanation.
“Wait, you didn’t hear?” she says, peering over her shoulder at the various agents and trainees in the gym. “I’m the ‘new guy’ on Captain Delarosa’s team.”
Time slows to a crawl as my brain works through that statement as slowly as possible, trying to avoid the inevitable outcome. Zhane Carpenter, a recent academy grad, obviously, has been assigned to fill the empty spot on Delarosa’s team. The reason Delarosa’s team has an empty spot is because their fifth man died last year. That fifth man was Liam Calvary, a rookie agent no older than the woman I’m currently talking to. Liam Calvary, who was brutally murdered right in front of me by a werewolf named McKinney.
My memories of the time in the torture shack and the terrifying chase that followed my escape from McKinney’s clutches beat at the gates to the back of my mind, where I banished them months ago. Swallowing hard, I kick those gates until the memories quiet down and then force a chipper smile onto my face so painfully fake even a child could spot the tension from twenty feet away.
“Well, it’s, ah, nice to meet you then, Zhane.”
She wilts at my reaction. She thinks I don’t like her.
I open my mouth to tell her otherwise, to explain a modicum of the truth in words that don’t burn too hot, but my voice fails me. Zhane takes this as a sign our conversation is over, hides her disappointment behind an equally fake smile and a clipped “See you around,” and dashes down the hall toward the elevator, leaving me to catch the gym door and curse myself for upsetting a perfectly nice woman who’s done nothing wrong.
One day, I will stop allowing Liam’s death and all that followed from getting the better of me. But today, I can only hang my head in shame, make a mental note to apologize to Zhane later, and shuffle into the gym with as much enthusiasm as a deflated basketball.
Delarosa calls off the training lesson while I convey Riker’s orders, and more quietly, the reason behind them. He makes a call to an auxiliary team that was supposed to start their patrol shift in ten minutes and redirects them to the gym to take over the trainees, then sends his teammates to the lockers to gear up. “We got this, Kinsey,” he says, patting my shoulder. “Let me know if there are any developments.”
“Absolutely,” I reply, and turn to leave.
Back in the hall, I waffle on whether to take the elevator or the stairs. I don’t want to risk running into Zhane as she’s coming back from the infirmary—because I’m a coward, and I haven’t thought up a good way to apologize without bumbling through an explanation of my post-traumatic stress disorder—but for all I know, she took the stairs herself. She had runner’s thighs underneath those runner’s tights, and I got the sense from her tall, lean-muscled frame that she’s always been the athletic type.
I wonder what her story is, I think, finally choosing the elevator out of sheer laziness. Every DSI agent has a story. And maybe when I finally grow a backbone and correct her terrible first impression of me, I’ll learn that story.
The elevator arrives with an uncomfortably loud clank, and the doors struggle open. No one’s inside, Zhane or otherwise, so I make to waltz in and smack the button for the fifth floor. But I don’t even pass the threshold before my phone vibrates on my belt, and I pluck it off to find Lassiter’s name stamped across the screen. The clock above his name proclaims that it’s been thirteen minutes since his previous call. Even more efficient than promised.
I answer it. “Hey, Lassiter, so now that you’re—”
“Kinsey!” he shouts against the backdrop of a roaring inferno and the wails of a dozen car alarms. “We’ve got a big fucking problem.”
Chapter Four
Wayland is on fire when we arrive. The deli and four other buildings on the street are awash in flame, their structures burning so hot they’re already collapsing. Thick smoke is billowing into the air and spreading across the Aurora skyline, caught in the strong morning breeze. Debris is strewn across the road two blocks in each direction, broken chairs and tables from the deli, hammers and nails and paint supplies from the hardware store next door, glass from a dozen windows, glittering red from the glow of the fire. And among the debris are bodies. Some are moving. Some are not.
The SUV skids to a stop half a block from the deli, and we all pour out of the vehicle into the chaos. I count eight civilians down, three on the sidewalk opposite the deli, five in the street—I imagine the latter were thrown from the sidewalk next to the deli when the building exploded, and are the most severely injured.
Amy and Desmond, a few steps ahead of me, reach the nearest injured person, an elderly woman, and after checking her for obvious spine injuries, quickly pick her up and move her onto the relatively clear sidewalk in front of a bank with cracked but intact windows. I pass them as they’re carrying her off and check a young white man ten feet closer to the deli, but as I squat to take his pulse, I notice his neck is hitched at a dangerous angle. I take his pulse anyway, but I find what I expect. He’s dead.
Damn it.
I rise and move on.
Before I reach the third person, a middle-aged black woman clutching her bloodied, broken knee, two more SUVs pull up behind our own. Naomi and Delarosa. Their teams file out simultaneously, and with a shouted order from Naomi, eight agents spread out across the disaster zone to start checking the rest of the victims and carrying the survivors a safe distance away from the consuming fire. Naomi and Delarosa themselves hang back for a moment with Ella and Riker, who are eying the burning deli and conversing about how to approach the place while it’s hotter than an oven.
According to Lassiter’s phone call—which cut out mid-sentence, much to my worry—the “crazy guy” in the deli turned out to be a wizard. When Lassiter confronted him and attempted an arrest, the guy went berserk and launched a volley of powerful fire spells. One of those spells struck a gas line, and the whole building exploded. Lassiter managed to dive out the door and shield himself behind his car in the nick of time, but most of the deli patrons weren’t so lucky. We’re looking at a death toll of two dozen, maybe more, just from the initial blast.
And we don’t yet know if the wizard succumbed to the fire. If he’s still in there, shielding himself from the heat and smoke with his magic, we could be looking at a nasty fight. A fight we’ll have to end very, very fast. Because the clueless first responders, the cops and the medics and the firefighters, will be here any minute. If they get caught in the crossfire…
I reach the woman with the broken knee, and as I’m calmly coaxing her to remove her hands from the injury so I can take a look and perform first aid, another agent crouches next to me. It’s Zhane Carpenter. “Ma’am,” she says in a tone far removed from her giggling fangirl voice, “you’re going to be just fine, okay? Me and my colleague need to get you off the street, over to the sidewalk, so you’re safe from the fire. Do you understand?”
The woman, breathing heavily, struggles to nod. “Yes, but my knee hurts so much.”
Zhane pulls some first-aid equipment off her belt and addresses me coolly. “Cal, how about you hold her knee still so I can wrap it?” She’s still upset at my earlier behavior, I can tell, from the way she avoids meeting my eye, but she won’t let that override her professionalism in the field.
She’s going to be a good detective.
“Sure thing.” I gently grasp the woman’s leg, one hand below her knee, one above, my thumbs pulling back the tattered fabric of her navy suit pants to reveal the mangled knee beneath. There’s bone showing through, the skin over the kneecap torn away by the impact of some sharp object, maybe glass,
maybe metal, the kneecap itself clearly cracked. But the blood flow has stalled, which means the poor woman won’t bleed to death before the paramedics arrive. She might not walk away from this nightmare, but at least she’ll live.
Zhane expertly wraps the woman’s knee in a thick layer of gauze, and then together, we help her up and carry her over to the growing crowd of injured in front of the bank. After depositing her, we turn back to the road covered in charred debris and hunt for anyone else who isn’t already being attended by other agents. As I’m scanning the farthest side of the deli, where a poor skinny tree on the sidewalk is currently burning to a crisp, I spy a pair of shoes sticking out from behind a car parked under the flaming foliage. A simple black car that looks very much like something a plainclothes cop would drive.
“Shit!” I take off, Zhane calling after me, and cross right in front of the shattered windows of the deli, the interior of the building nothing but three walls of rippling fire. I see blackened bodies in there, nearly unrecognizable lumps on the floor, and no obvious signs of a living practitioner. But I know better than to think a lack of visual contact means a hostile wizard isn’t still in the area. The veiled wizard in the woods who nearly killed me during the pursuit of Patrick Feldman taught me that lesson.
The heat is intense, the smoke pungent, and sweat breaks out across my entire body as I jog by the building, less than five feet from the outer wall. Please don’t explode again. Please don’t explode again. As soon as I’m out of a direct line of sight from the windows, I slip my tense hand from the grip of my holstered gun and shift it back to the compact first-aid packet on my belt. I’m going to need those supplies.
Doom Sayer (City of Crows Book 4) Page 5
