City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set

by Clara Coulson

  Either way, I have to get out of this situation. Now.

  Donahue hits the window again, and a massive spider web crackles across the glass.

  One more try. And he’ll be through.

  The Wolf staggers back, blood soaking his snout, and positions himself for the final charge.

  I sling the duffle over my shoulder and pray I time this correctly.

  With hatred brimming in his eyes, Donahue digs his claws into the snow, growls, and launches his enormous body at the center of the cracks in the window. His snarling face grows larger and larger in my vision, teeth bared, ready to shear my head clean off my neck with one violent snap of his jaws. His head whips forward, inches from the glass—

  And I spring the switch on the door.

  The release charge detonates, and the weakened window explodes outward in a wave of deadly shards. Donahue doesn’t even have time to look scared before a hundred pieces of sharp glass eat into his face, flaying the flesh off his skull, severing half an ear, shredding his nose, and slicing through the soft bulb of his left eye. Thrown off balance by the assault, he crashes headlong into the side of the SUV, breaking at least one bone with a resounding crack. His Wolf body slumps onto the snow, soft cries bubbling up his throat as the pain sets in.

  But the injuries won’t last long.

  I hurl myself out the empty window and somersault onto the half-shoveled sidewalk, using the duffle bag to soften the impact. The force of the landing jars every one of my injuries—Ow!—but not enough to tear any stitches or worsen my hairline fractures. As I scramble up, I keep my eyes trained on Donahue, who’s finally realized my ploy and is trying to force himself onto his feet.

  His head is craned over his shoulder at an awkward angle that would probably break a human neck. His left eye is a red, gushing mess, but his right is still alight with the same fury as before.

  He’s not giving up that easily.

  I pick up the duffle bag and shuffle away through the snow, intending to round the trunk of the SUV to catch Marcus’ attention. He can’t ignore my plight if he sees Donahue within spitting distance of the crowd in front of the grocery store. (Got to have that plausible deniability if you want to conceal the fact you’re an unrepentant asshole.)

  But when I’m mere steps from passing the taillight of the vehicle and moving into the open, a powerful gust of wind from the oncoming winter front hits me at exactly the wrong moment, as I’m sliding across a patch of pure ice. I slip and fall flat on my ass.

  A vicious snarl breaks through the weeping wind, and a Wolf-shaped shadow eclipses my own. I wheel around and cover my body with the duffel bag in the nick of time, as Donahue’s enormous, frothing jaws bite right through the fabric and into the gifts inside. Flowers crunch. Candy bags rupture. Two lovely vases shatter. The Wolf rips the bag out of my hands, enraged, and shakes it the way a dog shakes a well-abused toy, before tossing the bag fifteen feet across the snow, far out of reach. My ruined gifts scatter across the sidewalk.

  My back is pressed against the cold ground. Donahue’s colossal paws land on either side of my head. His wounds weep blood far too close to my own, hot red drips steaming as they hit the snow. I have nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. No weapons to defend myself with.

  The heartbeat that gave me away pounds faster and faster inside my chest. Fuck. Now what? Think. Think. Think, Kinsey!

  Donahue looms over me, a growl under every ragged breath, and his remaining eye meets my own as his lips draw back again to reveal the same bloodstained teeth, sharp and powerful. And this time, there’s nothing between them and the tender flesh of my throat.

  My brain goes on the fritz, thoughts falling away into static, and I can do nothing but open my mouth to scream in terror when Donahue drops his head and snaps his jaw—

  A bullet eats a hole in the werewolf’s shoulder, flesh and blood spraying into the wind. Donahue recoils in pain, crying out, and stumbles away from me, back toward the alley. Another round slams into the sidewalk near the Wolf’s front paw, flinging snow and ice. A third skims along Donahue’s ribcage, leaving a bloody streak stripped clear of fur.

  The Wolf panics at the onslaught and scampers into the shadows of the alley—but not before a fourth and final shot buries itself deep in his hindquarters. A broken howl of agony chokes his throat, and Donahue flees.

  A few seconds later, as I’m lying on the snow, panting both in horror and relief, a quick-moving shadow passes over me. A man in casual winter clothes darts toward the opening of the alleyway. But he stops before he even makes it to the dumpster five steps down the passage. Though I can’t see into the alley from my current position, I can guess why: Donahue has vanished. Even injured, he was able to run fast enough in Wolf form to reach the adjacent street before the shooter caught up. There’s no way the man can capture him now. He’ll either have a safe hiding place or a getaway ride stashed somewhere nearby.

  Donahue may have been McKinney’s mook, but he’s not that stupid.

  I shut my eyes and force my racing pulse to calm the heck down. Fingers shaking, I check my exposed face and neck for any werewolf blood near my recent lacerations, but I feel nothing except my own sheen of sweat cooling on my cheeks.

  Boots crunch across the snow toward me, and I sense the presence of the unknown shooter as he crouches next to me. He’s breathing pretty hard too, I notice. Winded, maybe, from running up to help me. Or perhaps exhilarated.

  I open my eyes to check out my savior.

  My hero.

  Captain Juan Delarosa.

  Delarosa yanks down his blue scarf, revealing the shadow of a beard. “Are you okay, Kinsey?” he says. The gloved hand holding his gun trembles wildly, and he looks over his shoulder three times in two seconds, as if he thinks Donahue might round back on him and pounce.

  His eyes are bloodshot and red-rimmed, indicating he hasn’t slept well (or at all) in several days. And the distinct odor of alcohol rolling off his skin tells me he was probably at that seedy bar down the street when DSI suddenly rolled up to Stein’s and ruined his attempt to drink himself under the table.

  Given the way he wobbles when he leans closer to check me for injuries, I’m surprised he managed to land a shot on Donahue at all. I would be impressed, really, and congratulate him, if my stomach didn’t sink through my spine and into the frigid ground below at the mere sight of the captain whose subordinate I failed to save.

  Every puff of his beer-ridden breath drives my guilt deeper and deeper into the snow, especially when I catch him wiping a stray tear off his cheek, poorly disguised as scratching an itch. He’s in this state because Liam Calvary is in the morgue. And Liam Calvary is in the morgue because I couldn’t stop McKinney from murdering him in cold blood.

  I miserably failed to protect Liam—but his captain saved me anyway.

  My tongue tries to find words, any words, but all I manage to blurt out is, “I’m sorry!”

  Delarosa recoils at the volume of my voice, nearly losing his footing. “Huh? Sorry for what, Kinsey?” He slurs a bit on my name. “Wasn’t your fault that goddamn Wolf came after you.”

  “No. Not that…I meant…” All the moisture in my throat dries up, and I choke on air.

  Delarosa’s drunk brain takes a few good seconds to process the meaning of my garbled words. His mouth drops open in a hushed oh, and he finally loses his balance, thumping back onto mushy snow that must soak through his worn jeans. But he doesn’t appear to mind. His free hand rubs his stubbly cheeks, while his tired eyes cycle through more emotions in half a minute than a stone-cold sober person could manage in hours. Anger. Sorrow. Remorse. Self-loathing. (To name a few.)

  He eventually settles on shame. “Kinsey,” he says, slurring worse this time, “you weren’t responsible for what happened to Liam. You’re a rookie, and so was he. It’s the job of us ‘old fogies’”—he chuckles softly; old fogies must’ve been Liam’s joke—“to take care of new recruits until you all get the practice, the experience, you need to su
rvive these hellish cases. You’re not expected to be able to defeat a pack of violent werewolves as a third-class detective. And, just being months on the job, you’re certainly not expected to be able to n-neg-nego—worm your way out of an impossible hostage situation.”

  The captain sniffles, nose bright red from the cold. Or from recent crying. “Now, I don’t blame Amy and Ella for your abduction either. Of course not. They were outnumbered. Badly. It was…it was no one’s fault. No DSI agent’s fault.” His tone hardens. “The only fault lies with the Wolves. The Wolves, and especially that motherfucker McKinney.”

  A wistful expression washes over his exhausted face. “Captain Riker hasn’t let me in on all the case details since he booted me off the roster. But yesterday, he met with me after lunch, and gave me enough to subdue my curiosity.” He swallows thickly. “He told me McKinney died. The night you were rescued. That he died at the construction site where you were found.” The gun slips out of his fingers, and both his hands land on my shoulders. “Did you…Did you kill him, Kinsey? Did you kill the bastard who murdered Liam?”

  “I…I did…” My words emerge as a whisper, my mind haunted by the memories of that fiery night at the construction site. I remember the weight of the metal pipe. Remember the way my muscles screamed when I thrust it down into McKinney’s chest. Remember the Wolf man dying before me, nothing but the light of the flames left in his vacant stare. “Yeah, I killed him.”

  Delarosa embraces me, breath hot in my ear. And for a fleeting second, he sounds completely sober when he says, “Thank you.”

  Then he releases me into a sitting position, one hand on my arm to keep me from sinking down into the snow bank again.

  At the same time, three people storm around the back of the SUV, armed to the teeth. Ella, who’s leading the charge, stops short when she spots Delarosa next to me, instead of the enemy she must have been expecting. Amy and Desmond, not far behind her, lower their weapons after the same moment of surprise.

  Delarosa points a thumb over his shoulder. “One Wolf. Escaped through the alley. Long gone now, but you might get lucky tracking him with the snow.”

  Amy nods to Ella and says, “Want me to get the auxiliary guys on it?”

  “Yeah, go,” Ella replies, sticking her gun back in its thigh holster.

  Amy disappears around the SUV, heading toward the grocery store, while Desmond trudges over to the alley, following the blood trail Donahue left behind. “Somebody nailed him,” he mutters, impressed. His eyes find the discarded gun on the snow. “Not too shabby, Captain Delarosa, considering your current state.”

  Ella maneuvers around the captain and swipes his gun off the sidewalk. “You’re not supposed to carry this in public when you’re on bereavement leave, Juan,” she says, but not hard enough to bite like her usual criticism. “You know the rules.”

  Delarosa hangs his head. “I know…”

  “Hey, now.” I brace myself against the SUV and shakily stand up. “Poor judgment aside, he was the only one who came to my rescue. If he hadn’t been armed, Donahue would have killed me.”

  Ella fingers the gun for a tense moment, then offers it to the captain. “Stick it back in your coat, or wherever you had it concealed.” She sighs. “Be quick about it. Nick’s heading this way.”

  Delarosa blinks up at her in obvious shock—Ella usually plays by the rules. Hesitant, he accepts the gun and slips it into a hidden pocket inside his heavy black coat, right as Riker is turning the corner around the SUV. “Thanks,” he whispers under his breath, and Ella acknowledges she heard him with a nod so slight that anyone more than two feet away wouldn’t catch it. And yet, somehow, that little nod carries a lot of meaning. Namely that Delarosa will owe her for a long, long time, and he better damn well not complain when she asks anything of him, no matter how awful.

  Delarosa accepts his fate with a tired smile.

  Riker comes to a halt, his shiny new cane somehow balanced against a slick patch of ice. His focus tracks from the blown-out window, to me leaning against the SUV, to Delarosa being at a crime scene he wasn’t invited to, to the bloody trail leading into the alley—and then, naturally, back to me again. As his jaw tightens, a large vein bulges on his temple, and his lips purse so hard it’s a miracle they don’t detach from his face.

  “Calvin Kinsey,” he thunders out, so loud it dampens the freaking wind, “what the fuck didn’t you understand about Stay in the SUV?”

  I muster a sheepish grin. “Funny story, Captain. You see, there was a Wolf, and…” I suddenly remember something rather important. “Marcus, that little shit!”

  Using the side of the SUV as support, I shamble over to the back end of the vehicle and peek at the light pole where Marcus was invisibly loitering before Donahue’s attack. He’s not there anymore. Instead, his now visible self, decked out in a stylish pea coat and a plaid cap, is rounding up all the bystanders outside Stein’s using hand gestures that imply more than simple suggestion. By that, I mean his fingers are literally sparking with magic as he casts some kind of compulsion spell to lure in all the onlookers so he can wipe their minds of the whole grocery store debacle.

  I growl out, “What a tool.”

  Riker says, “Excuse me?”

  “That bastard Marcus heard Donahue attacking me—he must have, with all the noise—but he didn’t lift a goddamn finger to help me. I almost died, and that…” My body winds up for an angry march over to that smarmy wizard, but my captain grabs the back of my coat before I can take the first step.

  “I’ll speak with him about it, Cal,” Riker responds. More subdued than I would expect after his show of authority against Marcus at Jameson’s.

  “Speak with him?”

  “Cal,” Riker says, with emphasis, “we’ll discuss it later.”

  “What…?”

  Ella clears her throat, and when I glance at her, she nods to something down the street, near the entrance of the bar where Delarosa was binging. And where another crowd of bystanders had been watching the grocery store carnage unfold.

  An older man in a long tan trench coat, with a tweed hat and a fancy cane of his own, spectacles perched on his nose, is talking animatedly to the witnesses in front of the bar. And every one of those poor schmucks looks like a zombie. Slack posture. Open mouth. Vacant eyes.

  He’s magicking their memories away, same as Marcus is doing to the people outside Stein’s.

  I murmur, “Is that…?”

  “Wizard Ambrose, dispatched by the High Court.” Riker frowns. “He showed up the day after you were kidnapped and has been hounding the mayor’s office about Halliburton ever since.” He leans toward me and adds, quietly, like he thinks Ambrose might hear from forty feet away (and hell, maybe he could), “I’ll get on Marcus’ ass for his complacency after Ambrose leaves for Europe. Trying to argue with both of them at the same time is like trying to break through a brick wall armed with a spoon.”

  “Ah,” I say. “Now I understand.”

  “Good.” Riker pats my shoulder, a little too hard. “Now get in the goddamn SUV, and stay there until we reach your apartment.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  My jailers, Ella and Desmond, accompany me upstairs and down the hall of my apartment building to the little place I call home. When we turn the corner onto my wing of the floor, I spy someone propped against my front door, a blue backpack at his feet. At first, with the thick knitted scarf and matching beanie obscuring his hair and face, I don’t recognize the guy, but as I near my apartment with my teammates hot on my tail, familiar blue eyes glance my way. Cooper Lee raises his gloved hand and waves hello.

  “Huh? Cooper?” I trudge the last few steps to my door, hand in my pocket in search of the keys. “What’re you doing here?”

  Cooper tugs his scarf down and nods in greeting to the duo hovering behind me. “I got a text that said you were attacked by Wolves again,” he states. “Followed by a request for a sleepover at your place.”<
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  I glance over my shoulder at Ella. “You called Cooper to babysit me?”

  “Well, clearly you need someone with you twenty-four-seven, Cal,” she says, “because every time we turn our heads, something tries to kill you.”

  “Oh, come on.” I drop my damaged duffle bag of gifts on the carpeted floor. “I’m not five, you guys.”

  Desmond snorts. “That argument would be more effective if you didn’t use that toddler tantrum tone.”

  I open my mouth to argue, but Ella brandishes the open palm of Shut the fuck up, Cal. “Cooper’s staying with you tonight. Final decision. If nothing breaks into your apartment in the middle of the night and attempts to eat you, then you can boot Cooper out in the morning.” She turns toward Cooper and adds, “Sorry about this. You can mark it as overtime if you want.”

  Cooper shakes his head. “No, it’s fine, Ella. I wasn’t doing anything tonight anyway. Archive requests have died down recently, a lot, so I’m actually short on work.” He picks up his backpack, revealing a brown paper grocery bag that was situated behind it. Tapping the bag with his foot, he says to me, “I picked up some food on the way here. I figured since you hadn’t been home in a while”—he cringes, realizing he just reminded me of my kidnapping—“you probably didn’t have much to make fresh meals.”

  While Cooper Lee cooking me dinner sounds awesome (because I can’t cook worth a shit, let’s be honest), it bothers me that he spent his hard-earned money on what looks to be a lot of high-priced groceries. “You didn’t have to do that, buddy.” I pat my pockets, searching for my wallet. “Let me pay you back.”

  He grabs my wrist. “Cal, don’t worry about it. Really.”