The hardest part will be grabbing Navarro for a private conversation, but I’m sure Erica and I can manage that. One person to gag him and drag him, the other to hold the veil so we don’t randomly appear in the middle of a room. Yeah, that sounds like a…not awful plan.
“But in order for this to work,” I point out, “we have to get the Wolves on board. And Wallace and I haven’t had the best working relationship since that stunt he pulled after the Wellington attack.”
“Do you have a ‘best relationship’ with anyone though?” she teases.
My cheeks flush. “I have an excellent relationship with Cooper, I’ll have you know.”
Erica looks taken aback. “Wait. What sort of relationship?”
“Well, you know.” I bite my tongue. “The, uh, romantic sort.”
“No way.” She drops her pen on the table, her lips stretching back into a grin, her eyebrows rising in disbelief. “When did that happen?”
I clear my throat to buy myself time to come up with an answer that doesn’t make it sound as if I dropped Erica like a rock and then immediately picked up Cooper to replace her, but I can’t think of anything that doesn’t seem like an outright lie. “That would be about a week after the Wellington case wrapped up.”
Erica glances off to the side and does the math. “Oh,” she says, drawing out the sound, “you moved on a lot faster than I thought you would.”
“So you’re not upset I basically dumped you and ran?”
One eyebrow drops, the other arced high. “I dumped you, Cal. So I have nothing to be upset about, except maybe the fact that I’ve had a bit of a dry spell and could really use some good sex to blow off the pent-up steam from working under Delos for the past four months. But honestly, I’m way more excited than bummed to hear about you and Cooper.”
“Hold on.” I run a hand through my damp hair, confused. “Why are you excited?”
“Are you kidding?” She smacks the table with both palms. “Cooper’s been madly in love with you for the entire year he’s known you. He acts like you hung the freaking stars in the sky.” She barks out a laugh. “You remember when I drove him to Primrose Avenue? The whole time we were in the car, all he could talk about was you. Cal this, and Cal that, and—”
I lift my hand to cut her off. “I get the point. And, uh, I mean, I knew he had this hero worship thing going on, but…” The conversation in the closet a few days ago comes back to haunt me. “God, he really wasn’t exaggerating when he said he’s been in love with me since we met.”
Erica shakes her head. “He said that?”
“Yeah, right before I ran off and left him to deal with the consequences of helping me escape from Delos.” My heart sinks. “He’s probably wasting away in a holding cell right now, and he might’ve been outright fired by Bollinger.”
Erica’s amusement wanes. She reaches across the table and grips my hand. “Hey, don’t forget, he’s a lot more resilient than he looks. He shot an Egyptian death god, remember? He can handle a short stint in DSI timeout. After we deploy the counter-curse and mop up the rest of this mess—and hopefully get Delos arrested and thrown into a deep, dark pit in the process—we’ll get Cooper out, and you two can go back to being cute boyfriends.”
A long breath whistles through my teeth. “I hope it all works out that well, but with the way our previous engagements with the Methuselah Group have gone, I’m skeptical at best.”
She squeezes my hand before pulling away. “We’re not going to let them win, Cal. At least, I’m not going to let them win. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll put Delos in the ground, metaphorically or literally, depending on what the occasion calls for. That bastard deserves no better than a dirty death or permanent solitary.”
“Agreed.” I sit straighter in my chair and throw up my best attempt at a smile, ignoring the deep, throbbing headache around the laceration on my scalp. “So, back to the Wolves. I know Wallace’s phone number. I’ll give him a call, explain the situation, see if he’ll offer us the manpower—or Wolf power—we need to infiltrate the DSI office. Of course, he might want to meet in person…”
“If that’s the case,” she says, “ask him if he’ll bring you some clothes.”
I look down at my pink fluffy towel. “Yeah, that too.”
Erica chuckles, then grabs her pen to get back to the translation. “And while you’re doing that, I’ll finish decoding the counter-curse and get it ready to deploy. I don’t want to waste any time once we’ve gathered all the practitioner power we need.” She taps her finger against the scribbled line she stopped on when we started talking, lips pursed in thought. “Say, Cal, what made you decide to start dating Cooper?”
“Uh, well, he…” The blush returns with a vengeance. “He asked me out, actually. I was kind of moping after the Wellington case, and Cooper dragged me to Spring Fest, demanding I be his date. I almost said no, to be honest, even though I do like Cooper. I was just so upset at the way everything with Feldman ended and wasn’t in the mood to have fun. But then…”
“But what?”
“I remembered what you wrote. In that letter you left me.”
Erica’s whole face brightens. “Ha! I knew it. All you needed was a good kick in the ass.”
“Hey! You—”
“Hush now, hot Crow. I’ve got work to do.” She points at me with the ink-stained tip of her pen. “You, on the other hand, need to go call the Wolf man and get yourself some pants.”
Chapter Sixteen
The arrangement with Wallace proceeds smoothly. I call him up, give him the rundown on Delos, and we sketch out a plan to gain access to the DSI office. Wallace has a Wolf pal whose family owns a small warehouse, which we’ll use as a base of operations for our “attack.” Wallace and a few others will man this command center, and three teams, consisting of four werewolves each, will travel to different locations in the city, sparsely populated areas with no risk of civilian involvement, and start wreaking as much havoc as possible. And for a gang of three- to four-hundred-pound Wolves, that is a lot of havoc.
Once the DSI building clears, Erica and I will sneak in under a veil, find Navarro, and get the ball rolling on the counter-curse. By the time the DSI teams realize they’ve been duped, after spending at least an hour wrangling a bunch of rowdy werewolves, Erica and the minor practitioners should already have the counter-curse active across Aurora. As people start getting better, thus proving we have good intentions, Erica will present Delos’ grimoire to Commissioner Bollinger and Mayor Burbank. Those two will raise hell with the ICM High Court. And that’ll be the end of the mind-breaking bastard, once and for all.
Or so I hope.
I sleep fitfully through the night, curled up on the lumpy bed, tangled in the sheets. The pain meds have worn off, but I don’t want to take more at the risk of messing with my head. I need to be in the best shape possible when we enact this little scheme of ours. There are no second chances here. If we fail to stop the curse, get captured, get our butts tossed in jail, then Delos will win the day, and with that victory, the shadow of war will fall across the supernatural world. Which just so happens to overlap with the human world.
As the sun peeks over the horizon, slipping through the window blinds, I give up trying to sleep and rise. On the nightstand are a pile of clothes that Wallace sent over with a runner last night, along with two handguns that have “mysteriously” had their serial numbers filed off. I’m not going to ask Wallace where he got them—there are varying degrees of criminal activity in every community, supernatural and human—and I’m not going to feel bad about using illegal weapons either. Without my beggar rings, I’ll be at an extreme disadvantage in a fight with anyone who has more firepower than a regular cop. In other words, everyone involved in today’s activities.
I need all the help I can get.
Fully dressed in clothes a size too large, I head to the window, raise the blinds, and press my forehead against the cool glass. Aurora is a dead zone, devoid of activi
ty. The streets should be filled with cars, commuters heading in to work, but there is only silence and stillness. Delos and his MG thugs have scared all the innocent civilians into the darkest corners, infected them with an illness they don’t understand, and worst of all, ruined the illusion that Aurora has become a safer place since the Wellington Center collapsed. People were so antsy for months after the attack, and just as they were calming down…
However this day ends, I promise myself, Delos will fall.
“What’re you looking at?” Erica asks, leaning her head backward over the armrest of the couch. (I told her she could take the bed, but she rejected the idea because of my injuries.) She rolls over onto her stomach, tossing off her blanket in the process, and props her chin on her hands, blinking the sleep from her eyes. “Anything interesting?”
“No,” I answer solemnly, “nothing at all.”
We make a breakfast of energy bars and bottled water, and turn on the TV to get a grasp of the current state of the city. The death toll from the curse has finally breached a hundred. Twenty children are among the dead, including three infants and five teens who just graduated high school a couple months ago, who were only two or three weeks away from heading off to college. Pictures of the dead flash across the screen, the newscasters looking despondent as they read each name and give a short description of the person’s life. The life cut short.
When they reach a toddler, a five-year-old girl whose birthday was last week, something loudly crunches in the room. I glance down to see I’ve crushed my bottle, water spilling over my hand and dripping onto the floor. I set the bottle on the dining table and wipe my hand off with a paper towel. Erica glances at the puddle on the floor but says nothing.
So I ask, on the verge of growling, “Are you ready to go?”
She replies, “As ready as you are.”
Another long walk under a veil ferries us to the warehouse address. The two entrances are guarded by at least ten Wolves. Half of them are loitering under the protection of an enclosed bus stop, the other half under the awning of the Italian restaurant half a block farther down the street.
The sky spits light rain on and off as Erica and I close in on the building, but this time around, she added another element to the veil to keep us dry so we don’t have to spend the rest of the day working in damp clothes. However, this alteration appears to have created a vulnerability in the veil, because the second we step onto the sidewalk in front of the warehouse, every Wolf in the vicinity starts sniffing the air. Our scent is bleeding through the veil.
Undaunted, Erica drags me up to the smaller of the two entrances, a bent metal door on the north face of the building. A passcode box is attached to the doorframe, and Erica quickly enters the nine-digit code that Wallace relayed to us last night. The red light on the box turns green, the door unlocks, and we slip inside the musty warehouse.
Most of the main floor is filled with old wooden shipping crates and empty cardboard boxes, but as Erica is busy stripping off the veil, I spy an alcove built between two of the crate stacks. The telltale glow of LCD screens creeps across the floor from inside the alcove, and several shadows cut across the light as the veil recedes and the Wolves pick us up with their ears in addition to their noses. Three of them peek around the edge of the crate wall, eyes glinting with that yellow sheen that haunts my nightmares. One Wolf, a short man with light brown skin, maybe Indian, steps out from the alcove, sizing us up.
“Hey, Wallace,” he calls toward the computer lights, “I think our guests are here.”
Vincent Wallace hurries out onto the floor and approaches us. He notices my large variety of injuries and frowns at me. “I hear you had quite an ordeal yesterday, Kinsey.”
“Oh? I’d love to hear Delos’ version of that story,” I say.
Wallace smiles faintly. “A DSI traitor and his rogue witch accomplice assaulted several practitioners during a jailbreak. That was the line from the mayor’s office this morning.”
Erica snorts. “Creative.”
“Bullshit, you mean.” Wallace scratches the back of his head. He looks as depressed as he usually does, clothes unkempt, the shadow of stubble prickling his cheeks. There’s a deep exhaustion written into his expression, and I can only imagine what the past few days have been like for him. Wallace has spent months campaigning extensively to help collect enough donation money to rebuild the Wellington Wallace Convention Center and pay out large sums to the survivors of the collapse and the families of the deceased. And now, a hundred more citizens are dead, over six hundred are sick, and Aurora is unraveling at the seams.
“Did you ever believe it?” I ask, curious. “The stuff about me?”
Wallace shakes his head. “Not a chance, Kinsey. We might not be friends exactly, but even knowing you only in a peripheral fashion, it’s obvious you’re far too noble to ever conspire against the people you call your allies. And more so, you’d never hurt innocent civilians. No way.” His frown deepens into a scowl. “Delos, on the other hand, has been a smug snake since the moment he set foot in this city. I knew there was something wrong with him, something more than the usual arrogance exhibited by ICM practitioners…”
He glances at Erica. “No offense.”
She shrugs. “I don’t disagree with you.”
Wallace wrings his hands. “I’m just sorry I didn’t figure Delos out myself. I’ve had three meetings with him since he took over leadership of the city’s ICM chapter, and though my Wolf senses raised the alarm every time, I could never quite penetrate his veneer, peel back his body language and figure out what makes him tick. He’s too good at obfuscating his thoughts, his feelings. He wears this mask of a typical High Court partisan, down to the lofty speech and the flat morals and the insistence that no other supernatural community should ‘butt in’ on ICM business. A mask that has no doubt shielded him from suspicion. In addition to his tendency to wipe problematic memories from people, of course.”
He sighs. “I wish I had pressed him harder, the bastard, or maybe just punched him in the face until he revealed his true self. Then we wouldn’t be standing here right now, with citizens dropping like flies and a price on Kinsey’s head.”
Erica crosses her arms. “If you’re at fault, Wallace, then so am I. As are all the non-rogue practitioners. And the goddamn vampire spies sneaking around. And literally everyone on the straight and narrow who’s seen Delos since he stormed into town and didn’t immediately peg him as a villain.” She gives him a sympathetic look. “He’s been getting away with this for decades, and no one, until now, has gotten the better of him. It’s pointless to play the blame game when Delos has been playing a game of treachery at a level so high that not even the High Court has managed to outmaneuver him.”
I clear my throat to cut off Wallace’s reply. “Erica’s right. We can mope about our personal failures later, over bad beer and soggy French fries, if you like. At least, that’s what I’ll be doing when this is all over.” I clap my hands together to center everyone’s attention on me. “Now, we need to set this plan of ours in motion, save the city from the curse, and bring Delos down for good.”
Wallace takes on an air of mild amusement and nods slowly. “Of course. Let’s get started. I’ve got everything set up already. If you’ll follow me.” He waves us forward, and we trail him into the alcove between the towering crate stacks. As I suspected, a table supporting a line of desktop screens stretches across the back wall of the claustrophobic space. Each screen displays four windows, and each window is playing what looks like a live security cam feed from somewhere in the city. The cam feeds must correspond to the locations the Wolves are planning to “attack.” And the person seated at each computer, I guess, will play the role of coordinator for each “attack team.”
“I’ve already sent out all the teams,” Wallace says to us. “They’re waiting for my go order, and then they’ll get the party started. I’ll do that as soon as you two are in position outside the DSI office.” He walks over to the
table, picks up two small, round pins, and offers them to us. “These are body cams with live feeds, which I’ll be watching myself.”
Erica and I take the pins and find convenient places to clip them onto our clothing.
“So you’ll be watching us advance into the building?” Erica asks.
“Yes.” Wallace gestures to the three people who spotted us coming into the warehouse, the Indian man, a young Hispanic woman, and a buff white guy I imagine has eight different gym memberships. “If we see events at the DSI building going south,” Wallace continues, “the four of us will come to assist you. Obviously, that’ll blow the whole distraction plan, but I figure that as long as we get you into the building, to the DSI doctor you need to speak with, then you can probably manage to deploy the counter-curse. You’re a crafty one after all, Kinsey. I’ve seen you in action.” He tips his chin to Erica. “And I’ve heard some, ah, enlightening stories about your skills, Ms. Milburn.”
Erica smirks. “And by that, you mean terrifying stories?”
Wallace looks the other way and fakes a cough. “Anyway, this building is only a quarter mile from the DSI office, which is why I picked it as our base. So we’re in a good position to help you if you encounter too much resistance when you try to get in.” He taps the only blank computer monitor on the table. “Your cameras also have mics so I can better assess what’s going on, especially if the feed gets too jerky while you’re running or fighting. Rest assured, we will be there if you need us.”
“Thanks, Wallace,” I say.
The Wolf man dips his head, a silent apology. He wants to make up for his behavior during the Wellington disaster, regarding the werewolf spies he refused to tell us about until we arrested him and threw his ass in the DSI dungeon. I mentally tick the checkbox in my head that says, Wallace has done enough to earn my forgiveness, not only because it’s true—we’re in a massive bind, and he’s helping us tremendously—but also because I can’t afford to be petty in my choice of allies right now. Not with so much corruption running through the practitioner community. Not with Delos pulling so many strings, jerking people around like marionettes.
Doom Sayer (City of Crows Book 4) Page 17
