Confused, he plucks it out, checks the caller ID, looks even more confused, and then answers. “Riker. Is there an update on…What?” Riker slides out of the booth in a hurry, color draining from his face as the voice on the other end speaks. “Is there anyone close enough to assist?” A short pause, and Riker swears. “Mobilize all available teams and send them to the provided address as soon as possible. Tell the plainclothes that my team will be on scene in less than ten minutes, and to not directly engage the enemy. If the enemy advances on them, they should retreat without hesitation.” Not waiting for a response, he hangs up the phone and spins around toward Erica, betrayal carved across his face.
She drops her fork on the table with a clang and rises. “What is it?”
“You said they wouldn’t notice.”
Erica blinks a couple times before she understands the meaning. “What, you mean your plainclothes team was attacked at the Primrose house?”
“Yes,” Riker spits. “Two wizards engaged them less than a minute after they turned onto the street. They’re under fire, and one is already injured. We need to leave. Now. There’s no one else close enough to Primrose, or heavily armed enough, to assist them. We’re eight minutes out, and that’s cutting it close. So let’s go!”
Everybody clambers out of the booth in a rush, food forgotten, Ella throwing down a random wad of high-value bills to pay for the meal.
Nausea grips my stomach as a horrible thought assaults me, and I gag so hard I nearly vomit up all my bacon and eggs. “Wait,” I breathe out between heaves, “I don’t think the wizards caught onto the scout team. I think they were told the team was coming in advance.”
Six pairs of wet boots squeak to a stop on the floor, and everyone stares at me like I’ve grown two heads.
I gesture to Erica and say, “Remember what you told me the day I was kidnapped? About the Wolf information leaking out of DSI?”
Erica’s face scrunches up as she tries to remember—and then it hits her. Her mouth drops open, her eyes go wide, her face turns red, and she actually starts to shake. First in fear. And then in complete, unadulterated rage. There’s a moment I honestly imagine her exploding into an unstoppable inferno right there in the middle of a diner between a half-built toy store and a Laundromat.
Ella, halfway to the door, raises her hands, exasperated. “What, Cal? Spit it out. We’re running short on time here.”
“There’s a…” I swallow the rising bile in my throat. “There’s a mole in DSI. Who passes information to the ICM the same way Erica passes information to us.”
Amy buries her face in her hand and chuckles dryly. “Are you serious?”
Desmond frowns. “How long have you known this, Calvin?”
“Since right before I was kidnapped. I was going to discuss it with you, Captain”—I face Riker, who’s gazing down at me in horror—“during a one-on-one meeting that day. But then I got snatched by the Wolves, and I never had the chance to sit down and speak with you. I figured you’d want to deal with it privately, or with the commissioner, to avoid making too much noise and risk spooking the mole. You see…”
“Yes.” Riker pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yes. That was a smart decision, Cal. Not a mistake. You were right to withhold that knowledge, in case the mole bolted before we had a chance to investigate. But we can worry about the mole’s identity later.”
“Riker,” says a seething Erica, “the existence of the mole himself isn’t the point Cal is trying to make. It’s who the mole reports to that’s the problem.”
“How so?” Riker asks, inching closer to the exit.
Erica and I exchange glances, and my stomach twists into a tight knot.
“Captain,” I say in an uneven tone, “the mole reports directly to Allen Marcus. So…”
“If the rogue wizards at the Primrose house,” Erica finishes, “were informed of the oncoming plainclothes team, then that means Marcus told them.”
A long, uncomfortable silence follows that statement.
Cooper Lee, lingering at the back of the group, is the first one to respond. “Allen Marcus, the Aurora ICM leader, is in on the summoning plot?”
“No,” Riker says. Jaw locked. Shoulders taut. Eyes alight with a bright, livid fire. “He’s not in on it. He’s leading it. Just like Martinez was McKinney’s proxy, Halliburton was Allen Marcus’. He’s been playing us the whole goddamn time.”
Captain Nicholas Riker, in his full furious glory, storms past Ella, kicks open the diner door, and strides out into the frigid, blustery night. The last thing I hear before the door swings closed behind him is a guttural growl more vicious than any werewolf could make, barely forming human words:
“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
By the time we turn onto Primrose Avenue, Riker’s rage has abated enough—thanks to Ella’s calming words—for him to design a raid plan that doesn’t involve shooting Allen Marcus in the face seventy-two times with a high-powered rifle. From my seat in the SUV, squeezed in between Amy and Desmond, I can see half of Riker’s scowl, and I know he still wants to smear the wizard’s brains across the pavement. But he’s not a DSI elite captain for nothing. He reins himself in as we charge through the deepening snow toward 5786. And when the battle scene outside the house appears through the white haze at last, Riker has bolted down all his negative emotions.
Riker’s scowl morphs into a cold, calculating expression. “Our first objective is to extract the plainclothes team from the scene. Once they’re out of danger, we secure the perimeter, enter the house, and arrest Marcus and whoever else is inside. I want Amy and Desmond on vanguard; defend Ella and me as we get our people out of the danger zone.” His hard eyes peer back at me through the rearview mirror. “Cal, I want you to take the driver’s seat when I get out. Evacuate the plainclothes team as soon as they’re secure. Take them to the office for medical attention. I don’t want you on the battlefield with your injuries, understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Normally, I’d argue about being left out of the main action, but Riker has a point. I can’t run in my condition, much less fight. Not to mention I don’t have beggar rings right now—I can’t challenge practitioners without magic support. And beyond all that, I promised Cooper yesterday that I’d sit on the sidelines for the rest of the case and let my teammates handle the major risks. Cooper’s a few minutes behind us, riding with Erica, so he’ll be close enough to see me if I act stupid and get myself hurt or killed.
If I disappoint Cooper here, after he called me his hero…
The SUV growls to a stop fifty feet away from the skirmish. Through the windshield, while we’re unbuckling our seatbelts, we watch in abject horror as a wizard dressed in gray shoots a ball of fire at a red compact car. The impact shatters every window, slinging half-melted glass in all directions. Flames consume the interior of the vehicle, blackening seat cushions and spewing smoke. Four of our agents are huddled behind the car during this explosion, and one of them, a young man, takes a face full of glass, collapsing backward into the snow. Blood sprays across the white ground—a shard struck an artery.
We’ll never get him to a doctor in time. He’s going to die.
Like Liam.
Amy roars beside me, then rips her door open and charges out into the blizzard. She’s so light that she seems to glide atop the snow banks as she crosses the distance between our SUV and the gray-garbed wizard faster than an Olympic runner. The wizard spots her coming at the last second, but he can’t conjure up another powerful spell fast enough to stop her.
Beggar rings fully charged, she leaps and slams into his chest feet first. Then, as he collapses under her brutal kick, she dives forward and rams both her fists into his face. Her rings discharge a powerful electrical attack, blue sparks lighting up the night. The man’s body convulses wildly, limbs flailing. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.
He goes limp.
Amy spits in his lifeless face and rises.
&nbs
p; A second wizard, dressed in blue, descends from the front steps of 5786. As he moves along the salt-slicked sidewalk toward Amy, two parked cars drift up into the air, a visible red aura encompassing them.
Desmond and Ella scramble out of the SUV and take off down the block, guns and rings at the ready.
The blue-clad wizard yells something, and both cars crumple under the weight of an invisible force. Glass cracks. Metal shrieks. The smell of gasoline permeates the air. And the cars ignite into flaming metal meteors, large enough to level the entire neighborhood if hurled at the wrong velocity.
But the blue-clothed wizard never gets the chance to wreak havoc.
Erica the witch pulls her car up next to the SUV and is out in a literal flash, her form blurring as she magically speeds toward the Primrose house. She yanks five streetlights straight out of the asphalt with a powerful spell, her earthy green aura wrapping around the groaning metal and glass.
The wizard with his manufactured meteors whirls away from the oncoming DSI agents to challenge Erica’s much bigger threat.
He slings one of the meteors at the witch. The blazing sphere burns through the air, melting snow in its wake. But Erica punts all four tons of fiery doom with her foot, fortified by a blast of pure force, and the meteor shoots up at a seventy-degree angle, disappearing into the snowy sky. Its fiery shell flickers through the low-hanging clouds as it arcs downward, and then it crashes harmlessly into the woods half a mile away.
Erica’s momentum doesn’t even slow. She drives straight toward the wizard, streetlights flying in behind her, leaps into the air, spinning as she goes, and makes a slicing motion with her right hand that flings all five light poles at the wizard’s prone body. He takes one to the leg, one to the shoulder, two to the chest, and one to the face. When his body hits the ground, half his bones are mush, and his crushed skull weeps brain matter into the powdery snow around him.
The second meteor drops to the ground with a mighty boom but harms no one.
Erica slides to a stop at the base of the steps to the Primrose house. She doesn’t even glance at the dead guy as she walks up to the front door and starts analyzing the exterior for dangerous trap wards.
Still in the SUV, I lean back in my seat and whisper, “Holy shit.”
I’ve seen Erica in action before, when she fought Charun, but she’s a whole different beast when she’s angry. And boy is she angry. (I would be too if I found out my boss was a lying, scheming douchebag who’d been playing me like a fiddle for several years. Thankfully, my boss is a decent guy.)
Riker peers over his shoulder at me from the driver’s seat, just as stunned as I am at Erica’s awesome display. Clearing his throat, he says, “I’m going to help carry the injured back here. You take the wheel, Cal, okay? I want this vehicle ready to go in case there are more practitioners lying in wait.”
He gestures to the burning compact car, where Ella, Desmond, and Amy are tending to the injured plainclothes agents. Amy has stripped off her coat and draped it over the poor man whose throat was slashed by the glass. There’s nothing anyone can do for him now.
I nod at my captain. “Will do.”
Riker opens his door and clambers out of the SUV. He tucks his fancy new cane under his arm as he hobbles off toward the burning car. As soon as Riker is out of the way, I climb between the front seats and situate myself on the driver’s side, one hand resting on the gearshift so I can make a fast getaway.
When I lean over to grab the door and yank it shut, I spy a familiar face staring at me from inside Erica’s car. Cooper. He’s in the front passenger seat, still belted in, a terrified expression etched into his pale face.
Battlefields are not an archivist’s forte.
Why didn’t you go home, Cooper? I want to ask him. He had the option. He could have stayed at the diner and called another cab. But he begged Riker to let him tag along, and Erica gave him the green light to ride with her.
Is it me, Coop? Did you force yourself to come here because you’re worried about me? After the kidnapping. After the second assault by Donahue. Is he so scared I’m going to die here, on this snow-filled street between two rows of pretty townhouses, that he overrode his own fear so he could go to war?
If I was a better “hero,” would he have gone home, safe and sound, where he belongs?
I bite my tongue and try to muster a reassuring smile. If I can get him to think—
The living room window of the Primrose house shatters outward, and a spell ripples through the air, blasting into the flaming compact car on the opposite side of the street. The driver’s side of the vehicle crumples with a screech, and the metal peels back until it exposes the fuel tank hiding underneath. The tank ruptures, spraying gasoline onto the snow, up toward the curling flames already consuming the car. The fire tastes the fuel—and screams.
In the blink of an eye, the blaze expands into a roaring inferno. Flames lash out into the night. The car disintegrates, a dozen explosions slinging shrapnel through the air and throwing people off their feet.
Amy, closest to the car, is slung backward into a nearby wooden fence. Her already injured arm snaps in half on impact, and blood stains her cast dark red in the firelight. She cries out and slumps onto the snow-covered sidewalk, patches of exposed skin burnt red.
Desmond, who was carrying an injured plainclothes agent, is no luckier. He shields his charge with his own body, pieces of half-melted metal bouncing off his back. His protective coat holds at the onslaught—until a sharp piece of aluminum finds an opening created by the gusting winds. It impales him through the back, in his lower right abdomen, narrowly missing his spine. His agonized groan is swallowed by the screaming fire, but no one can miss the sight of the large man collapsing onto his side, hands pressed against his wound to stop the spurting blood.
The injured plainclothes woman, sporting burns and deep lacerations and even broken bones, scrambles up to help the man who was helping her only seconds before.
Riker and Ella barely escape without serious injury. They dive behind a snowdrift with their own plainclothes casualties in the nick of time. As soon as the shrapnel clears, they’re up again to survey the damage.
Ella passes the man she was helping to Riker and rushes back toward the car, Amy and Desmond’s names rolling off her panicked tongue. But Riker, with his injured leg, finds himself stuck in place. A plainclothes woman is leaning on him for support, her leg busted, while the man Ella was aiding is on the verge of passing out, face covered in blood from a brutal head injury. Riker can’t carry them both back to the SUV.
He needs help.
I’m out of the SUV and moving toward my captain before my brain even catches up to the action. A car door pops open behind me, and I peek over my shoulder to see Cooper Lee fumbling his way out of Erica’s car to support me.
The words No! Stay there! form in my mouth, but they gum up the back of my throat and won’t pass my lips. Because Cooper has the right idea—with this many injured, we need all the free hands to haul the casualties off the battlefield. Including the little archivist who’s never been in combat in his life.
God, if he gets hurt…
I shake off the fear and hurry over to my boss. Riker spots me coming, swallows his criticism of me leaving the SUV, and nods at the man with the head injury. I sling the guy’s arm over my shoulder, ignoring the ache in my ribs and legs and every other body part, and guide the poor guy toward the SUV. His feet drag through the snow—he’s off balance, his concussion worsening by the second—but Cooper comes to the rescue and supports the man’s right side. We exchange a glance, a promise to talk later, but don’t speak, and together, we carry the man to the backside of the SUV.
I heave open the double doors, revealing the empty back area of the vehicle. It’s big enough to convey four, maybe five people off the battlefield. Cooper climbs into the SUV, taking the injured man’s arms while I grab his legs, and we carefully lift the guy up and situate him on the carpeted floor.
As Cooper is maneuvering around the man to jump out of the vehicle, Riker hobbles around the doors with the other plainclothes agent. She’s breathing heavily, face contorted in pain. And as Cooper and I take her from my captain, I realize why: a compound fracture. Her femur sticks out of a ragged tear in her jeans.
Cooper whispers, “God,” at the sight of the bloody bone and squeezes his eyes shut as he’s setting the woman down next to the man with the concussion.
I hate to ask him this, since he’s clearly squeamish, but…
“Cooper, you still good to go with that field medic training?”
His pale face snaps up. “Huh?”
“Can you stay in the back with these guys?” I point to the medical kit attached to the wall. “Do whatever you can for their injuries until we get them to the office?”
Cooper glances from the badly broken leg to the gory concussion, and what little color was left in his cheeks drains to pure white. “I…well, I…” He presses his hands over his eyes and sucks in a shaky breath. “Y-Yes. Of course, Cal.” Then his hands slowly rise to the medical kit, and he unhooks the clasps, lips trembling, jaw set, like he’s trying his best not to break down in tears in the middle of this nightmare.
And shit, I don’t blame him. If I wasn’t so pissed off at Marcus right now, I’d be crying too.
Amy. Desmond. These poor fucking plainclothes agents.
I step away from the SUV, into the frigid night, snowflakes sticking to my clothes, skin, hair—but I don’t even feel the ice. My eyes drift to Riker, who’s breathing hard, his new cane clenched in his right hand. His face is bright red, a pained red, and he’s favoring one side. He must have strained his injured leg again while carrying the woman. Too much weight for a knee held together by titanium screws.
“Captain, you should take the wheel and drive back to the office. I’ll go help Ella get Amy, Desmond, and the remaining agent. And you can…”
Riker holds up an index finger and stares at me with repressed fury. “You’re in worse shape than I am, Cal. You should not be on this battlefield. You are on medical leave.”
City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set Page 48
