Do I have something to prove? Yeah, I do.
I have to prove Cal Kinsey can and will protect Aurora from the vicious creatures of the night. And I’m damn well going to do it. Here and now.
Brendon stumbles out from behind a tree thirty feet ahead of us, his entire body engulfed in a faint orange aura. One of his arms hangs limp at his side, broken or dislocated in the explosion that killed the kids he used as naïve lambs, brought to the slaughter. His clothing is also burned, his shirt torn halfway off his body, one leg of his jeans shredded. From this distance, I can’t tell if he’s burned or not. He may have been able to raise a magic defense over his skin before the heat ate him alive.
Either way, you’re going down, pal. I point two fingers in a northwestern direction. Harmony recognizes my signal and breaks away from me, heading around in a wider arc to block Brendon’s escape. I push forward, faster and faster, and when I close the gap to twenty feet, my target finally hears my approach. He hobbles to a stop, hands on his knees, catching his breath, and for one, hopeful second, I think he’s going to surrender.
Then he whips around, raises his uninjured arm over his head, and yells an unintelligible word. Fire engulfs his hand, a whirling vortex the size of a bowling ball. Without hesitation at the prospect of killing another person, Brendon slings the fireball at my face. But I’m ready for it. I dodge with a swift jerk to the right and dash at a shallow angle toward an overturned tree supported by its neighbor. Up the trunk I go, five, eight, ten feet in the air. When I reach an optimal height, I leap from the trunk and dive toward Brendon. At the same time, I activate my beggar rings, drawing a small amount of energy into my electricity bands.
Brendon, who’s too tired and injured to move out of the way in time, can do nothing but yelp in panic when my slightly larger body slams into his chest full force, feet first, and drives him into the damp, mushy soil. I roll off him in a somersault, coming to a stop on my knees a few feet away. The college boy scrambles to recover, but the blow knocked the wind out of him. He rolls over onto his chest and raises a wildly shaking hand to try to burn my face off, but all he succeeds in doing is coughing his lungs up and setting his thumb on fire, like he’s offering to light a cigarette.
I knock his hand out of my face, shift closer, and jam my fists into both sides of his neck. Then I mentally mutter, Shoot. Electricity zips out of my rings and straight into Brendon’s body. His back arches, muscles convulsing, and spittle shoots out of his mouth as he chokes up air, unable to breathe. He spasms for eight seconds, until my rings run out of juice, and then he collapses, twitching, eyes rolling back into his skull. Unconscious.
Behold! Magic taser.
I stare down at him for a minute, hands still in the air, ready to punch his stupid, arrogant face in case he’s faking. But he’s soundly out, doomed to hurt like hell in the morning, so I sit back on my legs, knees two inches deep in mud, and suck in much-needed air. My chest aches something fierce, and I’m slightly dizzy. My visual magic sense cut out mid-attack, and my eyes struggle to readjust to normal vision. I screw them shut, feeling the edge of a headache creeping into my skull.
When I open them again, I do an obligatory check of my beggar rings, to make sure I didn’t break another set. They appear intact at first glance, but it’s too dark for me to get a good look at them. Using less energy lowers the risk of a total overload due to incorrect channeling—since I didn’t want to kill Brendon, I only harnessed enough juice for a taser-level hit—but it doesn’t eliminate the risk entirely. There may be itty-bitty fractures in the rings that require magnification to be visible. I’ll have to run them by R&D when I return to the office.
All in all, though, this little chase is shaping up to be my best fight (out of two) with DSI so far. I say it’s time to call it a night and—
“Cal!” Harmony’s blood-curdling scream echoes through the woods, bounces off the trees, pierces my ears so hard I feel it from my aching head to the sore soles of my feet. I sit up straight and whip my head to the left, searching for Harmony’s form in the underbrush. And I find it right where I expect it to be. She’s crouched, partially behind a tree, rifle at the ready, in the perfect position for an assist (had I needed one). She’s uninjured, and there’s nothing threatening in her immediate vicinity. I squint, searching her face, obscured by the darkness, to figure out why she’s…
She’s not screaming for help.
She’s screaming because I need help.
Her eyes are stuck, horrified, to something behind me, something tall behind me. A chill skitters up my spine, prickling like spider legs, and I feel it then, the massive looming presence standing still atop the cold, damp soil. It approached, invisible and silent, a phantom in the night. Though I know for a fact it can make a lot of noise if it wants to and by the laws of logic should make a lot of noise regardless. But Eververse creatures rarely follow logical rules. They don’t care for the mundane restrictions of life on Earth.
Slowly, I turn my head, peer over my shoulder, eyes trailing up and up and up until I find the familiar, ugly blue face of Charun the Etruscan Psychopomp, who’s staring down at me with a malformed expression best described as not amused.
Really, there’s only one thing I can say:
“So, we meet again.”
Chapter Nineteen
In the aftermath, there are three things I regret.
The first is Jack Brendon’s death. Not because I give a shit about his life—he would have spent the rest of it behind bars, for breaking the ICM’s strictest magic codes and for multiple counts of manslaughter—but because it’s Charun that rips Brendon out of my fingers. The blue death demon crushes my short-lived victory, strips me of redemption in the wake of my screw-up in the Memorial Garden. And, in the process, splatters my face, drenches my hair with the blood and brain of an arrogant boy a few crayons short of a box.
There’s a five-second delay after I spot Charun loitering behind me, after my humorless quip, during which my mind goes on the fritz and I gurgle out garbled syllables of fear and loathing—before my stupor is broken by a series of deafening rifle shots. Bullets zip over my head and eat fleshy chunks out of Charun’s torso. The demon, who’s a bit more susceptible to high-powered rifle rounds than my puny handgun ammo, staggers backward a couple of steps, grunting in pain, and grimy spittle clings to his boar-like tusks. Glowing eyes roll around in his oddly shaped skull until they land on the cloaked form of Harmony, still crouched in her cover location.
I take the split second he’s focused on Harmony instead of me to run like hell.
I hoist Brendon over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry, push myself up with exhausted legs, and race into some thick underbrush to my left. Charun, both hands now on his hammer, tears his gaze off my companion the instant I move, but Harmony stops him from following me with another four well-aimed shots, this time to blue ugly’s lower abdomen. Charun roars as blood streams from his wounds, soaking his dirty robe, and sets his sights firmly on the woman who’s dared to challenge him.
Once out of the immediate danger zone, I run at a shallow, diagonal angle, toward Harmony’s cover tree, far enough out of Charun’s path to escape into the densest brush before he can close the distance between us. I whistle three notes, high-pitched, at Harmony, a signal for her to abandon her post and retreat (that we often practiced in our mock combat sessions at the academy). Harmony takes the cue, slings her rifle around her shoulder, and darts off into the trees half a second before Charun shakes off his array of new bullet holes and gives chase. As soon as Harmony vanishes into the darkness of the night, out of my sight, I turn on my toes and sprint like a freaking madman in a completely different direction.
Charun can’t pursue us both at the same time.
So, naturally, he decides to go after me.
His lumbering form crashes into the underbrush forty feet behind me, but with the way the ground rumbles under the force of his furious charge, you’d think he was breathing down my neck.
/> I adjust Brendon on my shoulder, trying to ignore the worsening burn of overtaxed muscles in my neck and back. Brendon’s not a particularly large guy—he has a build similar to my own, lean and of moderate height—but he’s a total deadweight thanks to my magic taser shot a few minutes ago. Trying to navigate through the dark woods, filled with vines and bushes and trees with low-hanging branches, was hard enough without an extra body threatening to throw me off balance. My breath comes in shallow pants, and my legs wobble with every rapid, hard step across the damp earth.
But I do have one advantage: Even with Brendon slung over my shoulder, I can still navigate the cramped, dense underbrush better than the towering Charun. Over my heavy breathing and chest-pounding heartbeat, I hear the death demon collide with tree after tree, snapping branches the diameter of my torso, cracking trunks straight through, ripping up bushes and tangles of vines with his thick, meaty legs. With every impact, he howls louder, fury growing in his chest, and all the while, the gap between us widens.
This time, I played the smart retreat instead of the idiotic confrontation. Riker and Ella would be proud, I think.
I lick my lips, dry in the cool night air, and let a smile of triumph tug at their corners as I change my heading a few degrees. The Compton Street exit to the park is three hundred feet away, maybe less, and a couple blocks north of that exit gate, there’s a four-story garage with a number of DSI SUVs parked inside. The keys for these SUVs are hidden in faux bumper compartments for the convenience of agents on the run—DSI likes to plan for quick getaways, just in case. As such, all I have to do to get Brendon and myself to relative safety is run the equivalent of two school track laps, hop into a vehicle, and floor it back to the office.
The trees begin to thin out as I near the park gate, underbrush dissipating to a few weeds and tall grasses. My tired, half-stumbling legs all but fling me out of the woods, onto a weather-worn brick path, and I almost trip and fall at the change of terrain under my feet. But I hold it together and rocket toward the now visible exit: a pedestrian-sized opening in the park’s brick and iron fence, blocked off from vehicle traffic with short cylinders made of painted cement. The dim blue halos of the Compton streetlights illuminate the gate ahead of me like a beacon in the night. Fifty feet away. Forty. Thirty. Twenty-five. Twenty—
That’s when I spot the form crouched in front of the center vehicle block, hair in her face, clothes in tatters. She perks up at the sound of my approaching footsteps, pulls herself to her feet with the help of the block behind her. At first, with her burned face contorted into a hideous sneer, I don’t recognize her. But as my eyes adjust to the brighter light after my stint in the wooded darkness, a bell starts ringing in my head: the woman is Betty Smith.
Or should I say was Betty Smith?
Because when I stumble to a stop ten feet away from her, she hisses at me. And for a quarter of a second, I see another face superimposed on top of her fire-damaged flesh. It’s the same repugnant snake-haired creature I witnessed in Ally Johnston’s holding cell, the creature reflected in the broken glass before it blasted its way out of the DSI dungeon in a whirlwind of fire and fury.
The spirit. It must have jumped into Smith’s body after it blew up the boathouse and snuck away while the roiling smoke blanketed the shoreline. My heart drops at the sight of it, standing in my way, blocking my only viable escape route from the park. But I don’t feel fear or even disgust; I’m too drained to manage those emotions. Instead, a dose of weary frustration floods my veins, laps up the last ounces of adrenaline in my system. Another student’s life burned away by possession. Betty Smith will be a corpse soon, too.
I raise a trembling fist toward the possessed woman, beggar rings already charged. My lungs lock up, won’t inflate, and my shoulder strains under Brendon’s weight, but I refuse to let the pain topple me. In the distance still but getting ever, ever closer, Charun rages his way through the woods, obliterating entire trees with the swift, powerful blows of his hammer. I’ve got half a minute, tops, to get this spirit out of my way before Charun catches up to me again. If he gets within hammer-swinging distance of me, I’m dead.
I don’t really want to die tonight, so…
I mentally yell Shoot! and release a blast of force wide enough and high enough to take the spirit down no matter where it dodges. The wall of power ripples through the air, barreling at the spirit, kicking up loose bricks and ripping grass out by the roots.
But the spirit doesn’t even blink. Doesn’t falter. Wears a static, vexed expression on its stolen face. It lifts both hands, palms outward, shouts two words in what I assume is Ancient Etruscan, and then follows through with a swiping gesture to each side of its body.
Somehow, my wall of force splits in two. The halves fly harmlessly past the spirit and collide with the park wall on either side of the gate. Bricks crack and crumble. Metal bars warp. The walls shudder but don’t collapse, and what remains of my attack slips through the bars, continuing across the street until the energy is expended. It hits nothing of value and does no damage, beneficial to me or otherwise. Impact fully negated.
A choking sound fills the night, and I slowly realize it’s coming from my own throat. I stare at the spirit, shocked at its magic prowess, and it stares back at me, snarling. My brain rewinds to the scene in the infirmary, where Ella told me she took down Johnston with ease, and I wonder, for the first time, what the hell kind of awesome battle I missed between this spirit and my teammate. If the spirit is this proficient with magic, there’s no way it went down easy in the garden. A subtle awe overtakes me, shudders through my bones.
But I don’t have time to dwell on Ella’s apparent superhuman skills.
Charun crashes out of the woods, onto the path, covered in crushed leaves and broken sticks, smeared with grime. He huffs and puffs and shrieks out a string of guttural Etruscan swears, then shakes off what debris he can, sweeping his enormous hands over his arms and face.
The hammer, set on the path beside him, is now covered in a fine coating of bark bits and brown, leafy sludge. Once Charun finishes his half-assed cleaning ritual, he picks his weapon up again. And redirects his attention to the trapped DSI agent with an unconscious college boy on his shoulder.
My heart flutters in my chest. There’s no way out of this. With Charun on one side of me and the spirit on the other, I can’t make a break for it via the path in either direction. And since Brendon’s deadweight slows me down, I can’t move quickly enough to reach the woods again before one of the Etruscan monsters lands a killing blow. At the same time, my beggar rings—now cracked from my useless force ring attack—don’t have the firepower necessary to stall Charun for more than a minute, and the spirit has already demonstrated its ability to negate my attacks with little effort. I still have my handgun, but it won’t penetrate Charun’s skin, and I doubt the spirit will let a bullet pierce its incredible magic defenses.
A few knives. A smoke bomb. A flashlight. A flask of holy water. A pair of handcuffs. A few basic medical supplies. And a couple of charmed knickknacks good for detective work but worthless in a life-or-death scenario. That’s all I have on my tool belt. None of it will save me.
The DSI academy thoroughly prepared me for vampires and werewolves, witches and wizards, the occasional ghost. But there was nothing in my textbooks on defeating creatures from the Etruscan Underworld. Nothing to prepare me for a showdown against a ruthless fire spirit and its big blue ugly companion with a big-ass hammer.
I swallow, but the spit sticks in my throat, and I gag. I’m going to die here. I’m going to die in the next minute and a half, and someone’s going to come along and find my crushed corpse on the—
I mentally smack myself. I can’t lose my cool now. Think, Kinsey. Think. What do you have at your disposal besides your DSI tools? What can you use to distract…?
Oh.
Oh!
Talk about a light-bulb moment.
As Charun raises his hammer to make a death charge at my head
, I wheel back around to face the fire spirit, who’s now sitting on the cement block. One hand drops to its side when I turn, a red aura around its fingers, expecting another beggar ring attack. But instead of throwing one of my last good beggar charges in the trashcan, I pick something a bit more solid to launch at the violent spirit’s face:
Jack Brendon.
With a mighty heave and a guttural yell, I throw the unconscious college boy at the fire spirit. The second he leaves my grasp, I point both of my hands at his airborne torso and Shoot! a blanket of force at his form, soft enough not to kill him, hard enough to propel him forward at ten miles per hour. The spirit, who did not see a human projectile coming, fumbles the catch. Brendon’s torso slams into the spirit full force, and they tumble in a heap over the cement block, landing on the brick path with a dull thump. Sorry for the bruises, Brendon.
At the same time they’re falling, I whip around on my toes and launch myself toward Charun, who hesitated at the sight of my unusual choice of weapon. The death demon shakes off his confusion a second later and twists his upper body, winding up to deal a vicious hammer blow to my oncoming form. But I remember, distinctly, from the garden, how fast Charun can swing his hammer, and under my half-caught breath, I count down, all the while charging up my rings with as much energy as possible.
One shot. That’s all I have left before they break again.
Charun, annoyed at my antics and ready to be rid of me at last, waits until I’m within his perfect striking distance. Then, with a bellowing roar, he brings the hammer around and down with both hands in an attempt to turn my skull into a liquid mash of burst brain and crushed bone. But the blur of the hammer in the corner of my eye matches my predicted attacked time, and with every ounce of strength left in my legs, I jump—over the hammer and onto Charun’s arm. I use that arm as a stepping-stone and leap off, into the air, above his head, upside-down, a flip that puts my fist-locked hands two inches from his mucked-up hair.
City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set Page 13
