City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set

by Clara Coulson

  A shot rings out. And another. And another.

  Three bullets smack into Ammit’s damaged face. One takes out an eye. The second, a chunk of her jaw. The third shears the flesh off the side of her head, ripping out six teeth with it.

  Stunned, Ammit staggers back, and Riker bolts up the instant her weight shifts off his chest. His illuminated sword arcs through the white haze and bites into Ammit’s right front leg, cleaving the lion paw off at the joint. The creature, unbalanced, stumbles away into the front yard of the house, an agonized wail breaking through the shrill shriek of the wind.

  When Ammit collapses, I turn my head to see who on earth landed those shots against the beast.

  And holy hell…

  It was Cooper.

  Crouched on one knee, he peers out from behind the front grill of Erica’s car, the gun Ella passed him earlier clutched in his shaking hands. His face is warped in terror, and he checks Riker’s hunched, hurting body three times, like he’s afraid he hit my captain by mistake. But his shots were flawless, and as his attention slips past Riker and lands on the struggling Ammit, he realizes this too. He shot true.

  He lowers the gun and lets out a halting sigh. Then he looks to me.

  Too shocked by his sharpshooting to come up with a coherent response, I give him a thumbs-up and a goofy smile that must look awful on my blood-covered face. (To be fair, though, the constipated smile Cooper returns isn’t much better.)

  Riker, face twisted in agony, clears his head enough to find his savior, and he too is shocked to see Cooper. His eyebrows arch, then relax. Through the pain, he manages to cast a grateful expression, which catches Cooper off guard. The archivist hangs his head in embarrassment, cheeks turning pink.

  If I wasn’t afraid my ribcage would collapse, I’d laugh right now. What a twist—

  Ammit roars.

  We all turn a second too late.

  The creature blows past Riker in a rage, running on three legs, and my captain with his bum knee can’t catch up in time to stop Ammit from charging at Erica’s car. At Cooper Lee. The archivist blanches and swings the gun up again, but his response isn’t fast enough. Ammit rams the car, and the car rams Cooper, and Cooper goes flying off into the snow with a panicked screech spilling out of his throat. The gun is torn from his grasp and disappears into a drift.

  Ammit climbs over the hood of Erica’s car, crushing the aluminum, and sets her sights on the flailing archivist.

  Riker is too far away.

  I’m too incapacitated.

  Cooper is too scared.

  Ammit growls and—

  A faint rumble shakes the earth. Then the ground beneath us violently quakes, throwing Ammit off the hood.

  The tremor sets off car alarms throughout the neighborhood. Windows crack. Trashcans overturn. Snow sails off tall trees, beating the ground below.

  The Primrose house is at the epicenter of it all, the entire structure trembling wildly. The yard in front of the porch sinks in, like something is digging out the soil beneath it. And then…

  I don’t know how to adequately describe what happens next.

  I’m pretty sure I witness an act of God.

  The yard explodes, slinging hundreds of pounds of dirt, snow, bushes, trees, and underground piping into the air. Leaving a fifteen-foot-wide hole in the ground so deep there is only darkness beneath the surface. As the damp earth and debris rain onto the street, buffeted downwind, a dirty, bloody form scales the rise of the hole and emerges from what used to be the summoning lab beneath the house.

  Erica the witch, injured but still kicking, drags herself onto the sidewalk, an unconscious Ella Dean in one arm. And in the other…is Allen Marcus’ soul.

  I don’t know how she captured his shade, and quite frankly, I don’t want to know. Because the second Erica steps into the street, she lets out a mighty, furious yell, and a pulse of power ripples through the air. Half the snow on the street evaporates instantly, revealing the asphalt beneath. Erica stomps her right foot on the ground, and a hundred streams of green lash out from her boot toward Ammit. The streaks encircle the beast, again and again, but don’t touch her, and I eventually realize they’re scorching deliberate marks into the asphalt.

  It’s a summoning circle.

  Or, more accurately, a banishment circle.

  Somehow, in the mere minutes we were in that basement confronting Marcus, Erica Milburn managed to memorize the exact layout of the summoning circle that must’ve taken hours for Marcus to paint correctly. Erica is smarter than him—much smarter.

  She holds out her hand, covered in blood, and the green streaks zip by, sweeping up droplets that they infuse into the burnt symbols on the street. In thirty seconds, maybe less, a fully formed banishment circle surrounds Ammit the Devourer.

  The creature takes a moment too long to recognize what’s happening, and when she tries to flee the circle, Erica shouts a word in that same garbled language Marcus used during the summoning. A ring of green shoots up from the outer boundary of the circle, sealing Ammit inside. The beast rams the shield, over and over, but it doesn’t budge. Ammit can do nothing but pace back and forth until Erica acts.

  Erica slowly rests Ella’s unconscious body on the ground and then pushes Marcus’ soul toward the circle. Marcus, whose translucent form is flailing about, clearly knows what’s going on, but he’s a shade now. He might retain some of his power as a wizard in his death, but he can’t stand up to the strength of a living witch like Erica. He can only tremble in fear as he passes through the boundary of the circle and is drawn forcefully down into a small, scorched square before the shadow of the prowling Ammit. The creature eyes him in distaste, spitting blood on the ground at his feet.

  With no hesitation, words of power spill off Erica’s lips, a perfect cadence. Many of the same words Marcus spoke earlier are laced into her spell, but it’s not the same incantation. Because it has the opposite intent. As she rolls over the spell she must have improvised, on the spot, while lying under tons of debris from the collapsed basement, she doesn’t stumble over a single syllable.

  Her inflection rises, and with it, all the lines and symbols of the banishment circle begin to glow, brighter and brighter. Her words take on more fervor, more force, and Ammit is suddenly rooted to the spot, unable to move an inch.

  In seconds, all the unstoppable power of Ammit the Devourer is reduced to an angry glare from one black crocodile eye and the weeping socket where the second eye used to be.

  Erica shouts the last sentence of the banishment spell.

  Ammit bows her head—then lurches forward and eats Allen Marcus’ soul so fast I almost miss it. The shade disappears down Ammit’s throat, just like all those poor souls from the clocks, and Ammit’s bloody lower jaw snaps shut with finality, having consumed the last sacrifice: the soul of its master on Earth.

  That’s the end of Allen Marcus.

  And also the end of Ammit’s rampage.

  The gaping portal in the ground opens up once more, directly beneath Ammit. She falls. My last glimpse of her is that one, bitter eye, glowering at the mortal realm in absolute revulsion, as she’s cast back into the solemn halls of Duat. Hopefully once and for all.

  The portal closes. The circle deactivates with a puff of smoke. Erica collapses to her knees.

  Silence envelops Primrose Street. Save for the wind. And the faintest vibrations of an army of DSI vehicles marching through the snow toward a battle that has already ended.

  We won, I think, my body going limp at last. By the skin of our teeth, we won.

  (Right?)

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I don’t quite pass out on the snow in the middle of Primrose Avenue. My vision fades to black a few times, always blurring back into color before I fall asleep. My arms and legs keep on twitching but stubbornly refuse to move at my command. My lungs continue chugging air in and out, but they aren’t happy about it, and they show their displeasure with sharp, stabbing pains across my chest. My mind attempts
to put two and two together, to piece the details of this case into one coherent narrative, but I come up with seventeen instead of four as the answer, and I believe it’s time to call it quits on “critical thinking” for now.

  In this aching, half-awake state, I idly watch and listen to the flurry of activity around me. Situated on a shallow bank, I spy a panting, exhausted Erica hobble up to Ella’s unmoving body. Despite her obvious fatigue and injuries—she must’ve broken something when Ammit threw her into the basement wall, and she’s bleeding from more places than I can count—she calls up another surge of magic energy and bends over the injured detective. I don’t know how proficient she is at healing spells, but Ella must be hurt enough to justify her trying regardless.

  Riker, to my horror, flips himself over onto his stomach and literally crawls toward the fallen Ella, his injured leg hardly moving, a deadweight. He drags himself to the woman who’s been at his side, his greatest support, for more than a decade, bites his tongue to hide a scream of agony caused by folding his bad knee when he sits up, and gently, cautiously takes Ella’s limp hand. Ella doesn’t respond, but I can see her abdomen rising and falling in a steady rhythm. She’s not dead. Yet.

  Less than a minute after Riker reaches Ella, the DSI auxiliaries arrive. Seventeen SUVs park behind ours, and a horde of black-clad agents spill out, armed and ready. They secure the area in an orderly fashion, searching for any threats that have yet to be neutralized. When they find no enemies remaining, they switch gears and head our way, medics at the lead.

  A few of them peel off to attend to Cooper, who’s still struggling to dig himself out of the snow. They help him up, and he spits out dirty ice, gasping for air. There’s a large, half-formed bruise on his cheek, his lower lip is busted and bleeding, and the arm that took the blow from the car is obviously dislocated at the shoulder, stuck in an unnatural position. But beyond those relatively minor injuries, Cooper is fine. The knot in my stomach untangles itself as Cooper yelps out, “Ow!” when the first medic touches his shoulder to examine the damage.

  God, he was lucky Erica swooped in to save the day when she did.

  We all were.

  I’ll have to make this up to her later, for all the shit she went through for us tonight.

  I can’t get another thought in before I, too, am surrounded by attentive medics and other auxiliaries helping out. They ask me a few standard questions regarding my body’s ability to function, and besides the one about still being alive, all my answers are no. Visibly frightened, the medics dig a foldable stretcher out of one of their bulky packs, and together, four agents slide me onto it with minimal pain on my part. (Minimal being I only scream once.) Then, two of the non-medics lift the stretcher carefully and take me away from the battlefield.

  We pass by my team’s SUV on our way to another empty one, and I glimpse several agents inside the vehicle, attending to the wounded Desmond and Amy, as well as the surviving plainclothes people. One medic shouts, “Clear for go,” to someone now sitting in the driver’s seat, and I figure they’re about to lock the vehicle down and head back to the office.

  The agents carrying my stretcher deposit me in the back of an SUV parked two blocks away from the Primrose house. To my surprise, I find Cooper beat me here. He’s huddled up in the corner, tears in his eyes as he cradles his newly relocated shoulder. One of the medics strapped a sling on his arm, but judging by the pained expression warping his face, he’ll need surgery to fix all the damage to his joint. Torn ligaments, probably.

  As my stretcher slides into the back of the vehicle, I peer up at Cooper’s battered face, now totally black and blue on the left side. With my voice that is moderately more intelligible than a zombie’s, I say, “Rough day, buddy?”

  Cooper jumps and stares down at me. He missed my entrance, lost in thought. “C-Cal? Oh, god. Are you okay? Do you have any serious injuries?”

  “Cooper, no offense, man, but what kind of question is that?” I let my gaze drift to the ceiling, ears half focused on the constant chatter outside. No one is shouting in panic, and no guns are firing, so I assume no new threats have appeared since I was taken out of play. “I basically am a serious injury at this point. I’m done for a month, at least. Probably six weeks, since I broke my goddamn leg.”

  Cooper winces. “Yeah, I doubt I’ll be back at the Archives anytime soon either. I can barely move my fingers.” To demonstrate, he attempts to make a fist with the hand sticking out of his sling, but only two fingers bend. He laughs humorlessly. “Good thing DSI offers excellent healthcare, huh? We’d be screwed if we were on regular insurance.”

  I produce my best grin, which isn’t saying much given my face is likely more bruised than Cooper’s. “True that.”

  Taking the deepest breath I can without rupturing a lung against my pointy, broken ribs, I switch subjects. “Hey, Cooper, before I forget in the chaos that’s undoubtedly about to unfold: I’m sorry I lied to you. About sitting this one out, sticking to the desk. If I’d meant to keep my word, I would have gone home after the breakfast meeting—but let’s face it. I’m a douche. A dumb fucking douche. I knew exactly what I was getting into by tagging along with the team, rolling right into this warzone, and that makes me a liar. And…I’m sorry. I know you were worried.” I chance a glance at him. “That’s why you came, right? Why you insisted on riding with Erica? Because you were concerned I’d get hurt? And then, hah, you got hurt, too?”

  Cooper’s bruised face takes on a pensive expression. Then he shakes his head. “Give me a little more credit than that, will you, Cal? And while you’re at it, stop throwing all the blame on yourself.” He runs his tongue across his split bottom lip. “Yes, you broke your promise, and that was a shitty thing to do. But at the same time, this was an extenuating circumstance, one of those scenarios you can’t predict, can’t prepare for. If you hadn’t come here, then Riker and the team may well have lost. You played a pivotal role in keeping them alive. Had you gone home, done nothing, and then found out your team had been killed because they were too shorthanded to win a battle against such a powerful enemy…well, that would have haunted you forever, would have been your biggest regret.”

  He reaches out with his working hand and rests it gently atop my head. “So, yes, you lied to me, but you did it for a good reason. And I can’t fault you on it this time. Next time? We’ll see.”

  He pauses, and then his tone shifts into something between contemplative and mortified. “And as for me tagging along on this near-suicide mission—that wasn’t your fault. That was my fault. Because you might be a dumb fucking douche, Cal Kinsey, but clearly so am I. See, I insisted on coming along because I wanted to help, given you were so shorthanded. Me. The researcher. With the mighty power of books at my disposal. Me. Helping you. The elite detectives. I was actually stupid enough to think I could make a difference.”

  “But Cooper…you did make a difference?” I’m not sure where this is going. He was invaluable in the final minutes of the fight with Ammit. “You shot the shit out of that monster, man. It was awesome!”

  Cooper’s cheeks turn pink—the parts that aren’t blue, I mean. “About that. See, until twenty minutes ago, I hadn’t actually shot a gun since my annual refresher class, last year. I had one eye closed and was shaking like a leaf the whole time I was firing at Ammit. I was a hundred percent sure I was accidentally going to kill Captain Riker. God, it was awful. I could just picture his head—”

  “Cooper!”

  He shuts up and reclaims his good hand, rubbing his chin in embarrassment. “Sorry. Babbling. I know. I was…this is not my typical workday, okay?”

  “Not mine either, pal.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t look that much worse than you did post-Charun fight, so…”

  “Hey! That’s cold.”

  Cooper shrugs with one shoulder, and a shy smile creeps across his face. “Say, if I helped as much as you claim I did, does that make me your hero now?”

  I stare at him, and then
match his smile. “Not quite, Coop. I wasn’t the object of your epic heroism, remember? If you’re anyone’s hero, you’re Captain Riker’s.”

  Cooper’s jaw drops open in shock. “Holy crap,” he whispers, “you’re right. Think I can milk that for special privileges?”

  A short silence, and we share a laugh.

  “Oh, Cooper. There’s that sass again. You really need to bring that out more. It’s great.”

  Cooper rolls his eyes. “You keep pulling these near death experience stunts, and you’ll find out just how sassy I can be, Cal Kinsey.”

  “I’d say I’m looking forward to that, but…” I tilt my chin down, gesturing to all of me. “I can do without a full-body cast. Plus—”

  Someone knocks on the back door of the SUV. I look up, expecting to see an auxiliary standing outside in the building blizzard, about to announce we’ll be heading to the office shortly. But instead of an agent, it’s Erica the witch.

  She looks worse for wear, her new bruises standing out starkly against her tan skin. Her hair is a tangled, dirty mess, streaked with half-dried blood, and she has a black eye so swollen it looks like somebody took a bat to her face. But out of all of us—save Cooper—she’s in the best condition, still walking and talking. A miracle. Or maybe the result of the true power of an ICM practitioner.

  (Then again, Marcus didn’t fare quite as well, so perhaps the witch is an exception after all.)

  I swallow the taste of copper and greet her. “You all right? After…that?”

  She leans against the doorframe and gives me a fifty-fifty gesture with one hand. “Ribs are broken. Think I’ve got a concussion coming on, too, after I smacked my head on the wall in the basement. And, of course, my magic reserve is worryingly close to zero. Banishments are not my strong suit.”

  “Could have fooled me,” I mutter.

  “Hey,” she replies, “didn’t say I was bad at them. Only that I prefer other disciplines.” She glances at something to her left. “Okay, looks like you all will be heading out in a couple minutes. So we need to wrap up this convo.”