He scratches the back of his neck. “This made the Federation’s cleanup job much harder, and I drew the short end of the stick, along with a few other agents of the noble houses. Our mission parameters? Go to America, wipe out the informant networks first, and then take out as many Methuselah members as possible.” He shifts toward me again, and I shift back on instinct. “To my absolute dismay, killing the informants turned out to be like killing cockroaches. No matter how many I took down, there were always more. There still are more, right now, a teeming infestation in Aurora. But my point is, two years ago, when I caught up with your cop partner, I was not…in a good mood. And that, regrettably, reflected in my methods.”
“Methods?” I say, a low whine under my words. “You eviscerated Mac and dropped his body from the fire escape onto our patrol car.”
Lucian coughs. “Yeah, that was a bit much, wasn’t it?”
Something snaps inside my chest.
I lunge forward and punch Lucian in the face with my left hand, tearing every stitch along the way. The vampire reels back, more in surprise than pain, and prods at the corner of his mouth, where a trickle of blood is leaking from his torn bottom lip. He looks at the blood smeared on his finger, then to my heavily bleeding left hand, then to my face, which I imagine is warped with a terrible rage, the fury and horror and pain pent up for two years inside me emerging in the most awful, primitive way.
“What,” the vampire drawls, “you’re not going to stab me too?” He gestures to the knife tucked securely in its sheath at my side. “Or maybe stab yourself? Because you’re already tempting me, kid, with all that blood on your hand. Let’s not forget I’m a vampire here, and I haven’t had a good drink in two days, because I’ve been super-duper busy with this convention center shit.”
I cradle my bloody hand to my chest and spit out, “What? Cooper’s blood wasn’t enough for you?”
He raises his hands in a gesture of admission. “I didn’t take much from him. He was bleeding internally because that stupid shifter they sent me from Europe couldn’t practice restraint to save his life. Which I guess is why he lost his head to your boss.” He runs his tongue along his bloodied lip. “Oh, well. There are more shifter mercs where he came from.”
My stomach drops out into cold, empty space. “Cooper’s bleeding internally?”
Lucian scoffs. “Not anymore. I fixed him. Your boyfriend’s fine.”
“Fixed him? You mean you…you fed Cooper your blood?”
“I don’t know any healing magic, so, yeah. Blood’s all I got. And as long as he doesn’t die in the next forty-eight hours, he’ll be right as rain.”
“Because if he dies with that blood in his system,” I growl, “he’ll end up a vampire too.”
“Come on. Cut me some slack here.” He plants his hands on his hips. “I’m trying to play nice because we have the same goal: stop the Methuselah Group.”
“If that’s the case, why didn’t you come forward sooner?” Anger simmers in my gut, and my splinted right hand aches to grab my knife. “You know where the DSI office is, surely, considering you sent your shifter henchman there to recover the pen.”
“Which he failed to do,” Lucian points out, “because someone beat him to it.”
The obvious answer clicks into place. “An agent of the Methuselah Group.”
“Right. Which means my entire spy network now has to abandon our primary means of sending secure messages.” He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a fountain pen that looks very familiar. “It’ll be a day, tops, before one of the MG agents cracks the security charm on the pen they recovered. So this is now a liability.” He casually tosses the pen into the nearby dumpster. “Which puts my team in a bind until we can come up with another airtight method of communication the Methuselah Group can’t easily tap. Of course, that’s not the only bind we’re in, thanks to the convention center collapse.”
“Those vampires, the ones who were meeting in the west wing…”
“Yeah,” Lucian says, a spark of anger in his voice now, “they were my agents. I’ve been critically shorthanded for months, since the MG activity ramped up, starting with that crazy Etruscan Psychopomp shit last fall. I requested additional hands from the Parliament as soon as the mission became too much to handle on my own, and they finally approved my request a few weeks ago. And then, then, my shiny new agents got blown up within six hours of landing in the United States. Needless to say, I was pretty fucking pissed when I saw that plume of smoke rising from the Wellington Center.”
“So you weren’t there?”
“No, see, I was out getting donuts. Literally. I was down the street at a donut shop, buying food for the meeting, so I could politely welcome my new associates into the fold. And then, boom. They’re all dead. Just like that.” A faint blush creeps up his neck. “I can’t believe I let those MG fucks get the better of me. I really can’t. But they did, and now I have no help, again.”
He huffs. “Anyway, rounding back to the beginning of our discussion, that’s why I’m here talking to you, the manpower problem. Because subtly pointing DSI in the right direction has been so useful in the past, I’ve decided to bring you up to speed so that you can more effectively muck up the MG’s plans in my favor.”
Silence envelops the alleyway as I slowly sift through all the claims Lucian has made in the past ten minutes. I’m conflicted, so conflicted, and there are a thousand emotions pooling in my stomach, choking my lungs, invading my thoughts, that I doubt I’ll be able to resolve them all in my lifetime, much less in the time I have to make a decision concerning how to act on the vital information I’ve received. I try my hardest to pick out the crucial points from the emotional storm. Namely, determining whether or not Lucian Ardelean, Federation spy, is lying to me.
He could be lying about everything, but there’s something infuriating in the way he talks, in his body language, something that strikes me as genuine. As hard as that is to admit. Because I don’t want to believe he’s being honest. I don’t want to believe that Mac—my friend, my partner, my mentor—was an informant, unwitting or otherwise, for the same people who’ve caused DSI, who’ve caused Aurora, so much pain over the past year.
But I can’t prove Lucian is lying, and all roads—the convention center attack, the summoning of Ammit, the theft of Vanth’s key—point to his story as being the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. So help me god.
“Okay, okay,” I murmur, “let’s say I believe you. That doesn’t preclude me from arresting you for murder, which you admit that you committed, and taking you to the office for additional questioning.”
Lucian smiles, like he sees right through me. “No, but this does.” He slips his hand into his coat again and pulls out something else familiar: the riddle card.
“Where’d you get that?” I ask, then almost smack myself. “You got it from the shapeshifter. He stole it from the office when he snuck in to find the pen.”
“Correct.” He waves the card in the air. “And I’ve spent the last few hours pondering this here riddle, which I eventually determined was centered around a place both you and I know well.” He tilts his head toward Arnette’s. “Riker’s team worked the case for a short period, a couple weeks, before the lack of leads pushed it onto the backburner in favor of more active investigations. You were, of course, not a Crow at that time.”
“No, because I was in the hospital having a mental breakdown.”
Lucian winces. “Was it really that bad, kid?”
“I have PTSD, you motherfucker.”
“Oh…” He fakes a cough. “Moving on. You’re not going to arrest me, or attempt to arrest me, because you only have about twenty minutes left to evacuate the strip club before it blows.”
“What?” My pulse jumps like I’ve been electrocuted. “The riddle gave us two days. We should have until tomorrow morning.”
“About that”—the vampire pointedly looks away from me—“I might have tampered with the wards before y
ou got here, and accidentally reduced the countdown to forty-five minutes.”
My jaw drops open. “You…Accidentally, my ass. You did it on purpose so I wouldn’t be able to pursue you.”
“No.” He points a finger at me. “You can still chase me. But the cost will be the lives of all the people in the club.”
“God!” I backtrack, bend down, and sweep up my gun, fighting the urge to empty another clip into the vampire’s smug face. “You’re a huge, festering dick, you know that? I honestly do not care if you’re fighting courageously in some secret three-way war with these Black Knights and the Methuselah Group—you’re a fucking pathetic excuse for a person, and I hope you die in the most horrible, painful way possible.”
Lucian blinks at me a couple times, and chuckles. “You’re not the first person to tell me that, kid.”
“And I won’t be the last, I’m sure.”
Still laughing, he sticks his hand inside his coat a third time and withdraws a blue envelope. “If it makes you feel any better, I did intercept this at the post office for your benefit. It was addressed to Riker again, and it was warded like the last one, with a location trigger: your captain’s office. I defused the ward for you.” He tosses the envelope at me, and I snatch it from the air with two fingers.
I run my thumb over the flap; it hasn’t been opened, but there’s a black, charred symbol overtop the sticker seal, indicating it was previously warded. “Another riddle? Another attack?”
Lucian says, “Probably. It’s a good thing though.”
“How?”
“Because it means a major player in Aurora’s MG faction is slipping up.” The vampire starts to swagger back toward the opening of the alley. “By branching off the convention center attack to pursue a personal vendetta against your boss, this guy is giving us an opening to track him down. And if we catch him, we can wring out the identities of all his MG associates. We have a chance to blow the lid on the whole operation, tackle the entire Methuselah infestation in Aurora.”
At the threshold between the alley and sidewalk, Lucian pauses to give me a mock salute. “So best of luck with your investigation. I’m looking forward to the amazing Team Riker solving the case and saving the day. Until you make more headway, however, I’ll be off pursuing different leads.” He turns to his left and strides off down the street, calling to me one last time as he vanishes from sight. “And good luck with the whole club evacuation thing too, kid. Strippers and their johns can be some stubborn shits, you know?”
And then he’s gone. The vampire who killed Mac. The vampire who scarred me forever. The vampire I swore I’d kill. The vampire I now know I can’t kill, because he represents a major effort to stop the rogue practitioners who’ve harmed my beloved city more than he ever did. Lucian Ardelean’s serial murders were horrifically shocking two and a half years ago, and left Aurora in a state of fear. But the Methuselah Group’s vicious plots have led to the slaughter of college students, the murder of more than one DSI agent, and now, death on a scale this city has never witnessed before.
Lucian Ardelean is a sick bastard, but the Methuselah Group is worse.
So this is what it means, I think as I turn around to race back to the entrance of Arnette’s, this is what it means to choose the lesser of two evils.
Chapter Sixteen
A bouncer punches me in the gut, so I knee him in the balls.
Running on an adrenaline high from my aborted fight with Lucian, I dash to the front entrance of Arnette’s. Somehow, I have to convince all the patrons and staff they’re in danger. (The general public doesn’t have a great track record for humoring DSI.) And I don’t have enough time on the clock for an extended argument. So I need a quick, effective option to incite an evacuation.
But first, I have to get inside the building.
Which may not be so easy, I realize, as I spy two huge bouncers (like, Desmond-sized bouncers) hanging just inside the glass front doors. I’m decked out in full DSI gear, not the type of guy you’d peg as a private party attendee, and there’s no way these mooks will let me in without a thorough interrogation. So I’ll need to muscle my way past them. A tall order, considering each one weighs about sixty pounds more than me.
I pause a few feet in front of the entrance, wondering if my DSI academy training was up to par. I’ve fought werewolves and big blue monsters and spirits and magic practitioners thus far in my career, but I was allowed to shoot those things. I can’t shoot normal civilians, and if I threaten to, I’ll get in trouble. I could push them out of the way with a force ring blast—it’s invisible, so they can’t claim they saw magic—except I broke my rings and haven’t gotten replacements yet. All I have on me is the gun, the knife, and my own two fists.
Think fast, Cal, the clock is ticking.
Oh. Screw it. I’ll fight my way in.
I storm up to the front doors and yank them open, ignoring the sharp sting in my left hand, then enter the building like I own the place. The bouncers, who were conversing with each other in low tones, are momentarily taken aback, shocked that someone who doesn’t belong in their fine establishment would try to prance on by them. They block the interior entrance to the club, another set of doors, and cross their arms, each of them eying me with confusion and a splash of distain.
“Club’s not open to the public right now,” says the one on the left. “Come back later.”
“Too bad, buddy. I have business here now.” I press forward, but neither of the goons budge.
The one on the right takes a hard look at my clothes. “Hey, isn’t that a DSI getup? You work for those ghost hunters or whatever?”
“We’re not ghost hunters, and you’re in my way.”
“Well, tough shit.” Left guy rolls his shoulders. “Our job is to be in the way. We don’t let riffraff in, kiddo, and that includes you DSI weirdos. So why don’t you turn around and head back to whatever abandoned church you freaks hang out in?”
“How about no?”
Tick, tock, Kinsey. You’re running out of time.
I spring forward, aiming to squeeze between them and break for the doors, but right goon sees me coming and drives his fist into my lower abdomen. The punch jars every injury I’ve acquired in the past twenty-four hours. But in the same instant, my lingering anger at Lucian Ardelean flares up like someone poured gasoline on the fire. I spin around, grab the bouncer by his shoulders, and ram my knee into his crotch.
The bouncer flies back, smacks the interior door, and sinks to the floor with his hands cupped over his balls, a shrill cry on his lips. Before the other goon recovers from the horror of seeing his colleague bested by a “freak,” I leap overtop the fallen man, push through the door, and sprint down the front hall of the club. The unhurt goon yells after me, but I don’t look back. A second before I turn the corner into the club’s main room, I hear the guy calling for backup over a radio.
The main room is crowded with young men, and at the central front table sits a guy who looks way too much like Jake from Stanford, ogling a topless stripper spinning on a pole. I skirt around the back of the party group, and though a few men at the outer ring of tables spare me a glance, no one tries to stop the mysterious figure dressed in black from crossing the room and barreling through the narrow door hidden behind a column, marked BASEMENT. The door clangs shut behind me, and I find myself on a claustrophobic set of stairs, dim overhead lights barely illuminating the way down.
At the bottom of the staircase, where it lets out into a dark basement, I spy what I need to clear the building: a fire alarm pull switch. The bright red box sticks off the side of the wall, reminiscent of the ones I saw in school when I was growing up. I hurry down the stairs toward it, and when I hit the last step, I rest my bloodied fingers on the white T-bar but don’t pull it immediately.
First, I activate my magic sense. And then I stare out into the basement room as the full weight of the danger sinks into my pores. The wards are written into all four walls, a vast, illegible map of comple
x, curving symbols glowing a faint red in my magic-heightened vision. On the right-hand wall, in the middle of a large circle of complicated geometric shapes, is what appears to be a countdown. It’s in a language I can’t read, but with each second that ticks by, the symbols change. There are only three symbols too, I note, despite there being space for several more in the circle.
My free hand sinks to my phone, and I contemplate the probability that Erica will be able to guide me through deactivating the wards, or sabotaging them enough to prevent their end game, in the short time I have left before they blow up the strip club. But then I remember Erica’s behavior at the diner, her fear of Iron Delos and the threat he poses to all Aurora practitioners, and realize there’s a very low chance Erica will even answer if I call.
The personal risk is simply too high, and I can’t demand that she sacrifice herself for my cause, even if it’s a good one. Erica never had to help DSI in the first place. That was her choice, and it’s already cost her a great deal. If I try to force her hand here, it could cost her everything.
No, I think, I have to solve this problem myself.
I just wish I could save the building somehow. Strip club or not, the owner doesn’t deserve to see his business go up in smoke. But, as I’ve learned well over the past year, sometimes you have to sacrifice lesser things in order to save the more important ones.
I pull the fire alarm.
The shrill screech of the alarm fills the basement and stairwell, creating an overlapping echo that throws me off kilter. Emergency lights flash above me, a strobe effect, white spots dancing in my vision. Upstairs, the bass-heavy music playing as the backdrop for the strip show abruptly cuts out, and a monotone voice comes over the speakers, repeating the same two sentences over and over: A fire has been reported in the building. Please evacuate through the nearest exit immediately.
After one last, longing look at the wards that have bested me, I clamber back up the stairs and open the basement door a crack to peer out into the main room. The party attendees have risen from their tables, and some of them have hesitantly started for the doors, but the strippers are standing still on the stage, unsure of how to proceed, and the bouncer I left unharmed is blocking the hall to the front entrance, along with an older man who must be the owner. The owner is saying something to the patrons, waving his hands in a placating manner, and I realize in frustration that he’s trying to convince them not to leave the building.
City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set Page 73
