Lucian lets out a string of swears in a language I think is Romanian. He rushes for the shower area in a high-speed blur, rounding the corner of the stall so fast that in order to stop himself from spinning out of control, he has to grip the metal partition, which crumples under his fingers like it’s made of cardboard. He vanishes inside the stall, and a moment later, a different magic begins to undulate through the room, cobalt blue flashes dyed violet as they cut across the vibrant red glow of the wards.
Next to me, Lassiter pulls out his phone and hits the speed dial for one of his cop colleagues. When the person picks up, Lassiter barks out, “Evacuate the building! We have an immediate bomb threat.” Then he hangs up, returns his phone to its prescribed pocket, and calmly says to me, “Say, Kinsey, shouldn’t we be running for our lives right about now?”
“I’m guessing you can see the wards?” There’s a point at which powerful magic becomes visible to the human eye, magic sense or no magic sense.
“If by ‘wards,’ you mean the freaky red marks on the walls that look like something you’d use to summon Satan, then yeah.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” I reach out and grasp the sleeve of the detective’s coat. “And your assessment is correct. We should definitely be running for our lives right now.”
The wards flare brighter.
Lucian curses from inside the shower stall.
And that’s our cue.
Lassiter and I swing around and take off. We exit the locker room, make a sharp left, and barrel out a back door that leads to the fenced-in track and field area. It’s raining hard now, grass wet beneath our boots, but we don’t slow, even as we start to slip, because a bruised ass isn’t worth getting blown up over. We hop the low chain-link fence, sprint across the sandy track, and run halfway across the field—
—before Lucian, dashing at top vampire speed, tackles us from behind and shouts, “Get down!”
The instant my face smacks the damp soil, a fifth of the middle school explodes.
Chapter Twenty-Three
You know the shit’s really hit the fan when you break out the pump-action shotgun.
Once the debris settles, Lucian rolls off Lassiter and me, and we all sit up to take stock of the damage done to the school. Most of the building remains intact, to my relief. There’s a gaping hole in the side of the gym where the locker rooms used to be, but the heavy rain is quickly dousing the fire inside. Barring any other unforeseen circumstances, it should be possible for the city to fix the damage without demolishing the entire building.
Small miracles.
Lassiter wipes water off his face and fumbles for his phone, redialing the same number he called before we fled the building, desperate to find out if his colleagues escaped in time. I watch him with bated breath until someone picks up. Lassiter says, “Is everyone all right? Are you outside?”
A woman’s voice on the other end replies in the affirmative, stating that the three cops are safe in the parking lot in front of the building.
Lassiter instructs his coworkers to wait for him to come around, hangs up the phone, and presses it to his forehead, whispering a prayer of thanks. He stands up and says to me, “You should get a DSI response team over here, so we can contain the scene. We don’t know where that wizard maniac ran off to, or if there are other zombie wraith creatures in the area. I think—”
A bright yellow beam eats through Lassiter’s thigh. The detective wheels around and collapses with a scream stuck in his throat. Lucian flies to his feet, tracking the beam to its origins. He snaps his fingers to get my attention as he points to the eastern end of the track, where a dense patch of woodland is warded off by the same low fence that surrounds the rest of the track and field area. Barely visible through the thick trees is none other than Feldman, huffing and puffing and clearly injured but still up for another fight.
I crawl on my knees toward Lassiter, who’s clutching his injured leg, face warped in agony. “Let me see it, buddy. Let me see it.” I coax Lassiter’s hands away from the wound and check it thoroughly. The beam burned a huge chunk out of the side of his thigh, but the aim wasn’t perfect. It missed the bone and major blood vessels by a wide margin. Lassiter might be in a great deal of pain, but he’s not going to die on this rain-soaked field in the middle of this godforsaken guerrilla fight.
I grasp his shoulders and speak in a calming voice. “Hey, Lassiter? You’re going to be fine, okay? We’re going to get you off the field and reunite with your friends, and they’re going to take great care of you. I know your leg hurts like a bitch, but it’s not a fatal injury.”
“Not fatal,” he groans out, eyes still screwed shut, “but maybe final.”
I know what he means. Injuries like this can kill a cop’s career. If I send him off for standard medical care, he’ll probably end up benched for life, all because he decided to help the hapless Cal Kinsey on a dangerous case. Damn it. I need a better solution.
“You’ll have time to worry about that later,” I say. “Right now, we need to get you out of here before that ‘maniac’ takes another potshot at us.” I look over my shoulder at Lucian, stomach churning at what I’m about to ask. “Can you spare any more blood?”
Lucian glances at me, surprised I’d request that kind of help, but he acquiesces without complaint. He whips a knife out of a hidden sheath in his coat, slits his mostly healed wrist open again, coats the blade with his blood, and then offers the blood-slicked blade to me. “Anything else, while we’re at it?”
I snatch the knife from him and tuck it under the tail of my coat to protect it from the rain, disgusted I’m actually accepting vampire blood as a legitimate medical aid. But I clamp down on the frothing bile in my gut and reply, “Can you give me enough cover to get him out of here? We should be fine as soon as we clear the fence and reach those bleachers.” I nod at the tall white bleachers about fifty feet away. The sidewalk leading around the school, back to the front parking lot, is shielded by them.
“Sure, kid. I was going to rip that asshole a new one anyway. I’ll make sure he doesn’t get a clean shot at you two.”
I bite down on my tongue until it burns before I allow myself to say, “Thanks.”
Lucian winks at me again, then speeds off toward the waiting Feldman. Meanwhile, I help Lassiter to his feet and half drag, half carry him across the field, hoping Lucian makes good on his word so we don’t end up charred Swiss cheese. We make it about five feet before the ear-splitting shriek of metal breaks the air, and I look over my shoulder just in time to watch, in shock and awe, as Lucian heaves thirty feet of chain-link fencing out of the ground and casts it aside. When the fencing lands on the soaked grass, it curls up into a ball, like a shriveling spider, and I realize that Feldman must have spelled it to try and trap the vampire.
Guess it’s time for plan B, you bastard, I think as Lucian stomps back onto his warpath toward the rogue wizard.
I push on, trying to move Lassiter quickly enough to get us to safety without injuring his leg further. Leading him to a gate in the fence, I flip up the latch, kick it open, and drag him through—
A ground-shaking boom rocks the earth beneath my feet, and Lassiter nearly slips out of my grasp. Because I do not want to see what’s happening behind me yet, I bend down, and in spite of the detective’s grumbling, sling him over my shoulder in a pose reminiscent of a fireman’s carry. He’s heavier than me, and I’m not at full strength, but I manage to force my way through the last twenty-five feet of our trip to the bleachers by internally shrieking at myself like a pissed-off banshee.
Not exactly positive reinforcement, but it works.
After I set Lassiter down against one of the metal bleacher supports, I lift the knife from where I was shielding it and hold it in front of his face. I say, breathless, “Here, lick the blood off this.”
Lassiter stares at me. “Um, what?”
“Just do it, will you?”
He gives the bloody knife a skeptical look. “I would prefe
r not to.”
“Do you want your leg to heal or not?”
His gaze drifts to the horrendous hole in his thigh. He reluctantly accepts the knife. “If I turn into a vampire, I’m coming after you.”
“That’ll only happen if you die within forty-eight hours of consuming it.”
Lassiter’s lips twist down, repulsed. “Oh, really? You learn something new every day.” He stiffens like someone’s about to jab a needle into his arm, and before he can talk himself out of it, he runs one flat side of the blade down his tongue, spins it around, and does the same to the other side.
A couple seconds pass where nothing happens—and then he jolts the same way I did earlier.
I watch his wound closely, and as soon as the skin and muscle start to regenerate, I pull Lassiter’s arm over my shoulder and cajole him into standing up again. We’re limping off toward the parking lot a moment later, moving at a noticeably faster pace this time. When I side-eye the detective, I find him gawking at his thigh in shock, as if he’s witnessing God himself descend from the heavens.
“Fuck, Kinsey,” he murmurs. “I…I don’t know how to process this.”
And yet, he’s self-aware enough to admit it.
“Don’t worry, buddy.” I pat his back as I lead him around the side of the school. “You’ll figure it out eventually.”
When we reach the parking lot, Lassiter’s colleagues, loitering near the SUV, notice us and run over to help. As soon as Lassiter’s in good hands, I jog to the SUV and wrench the back doors open. Climbing inside, I rifle through the various weapons we loaded up earlier and settle on a pump-action shotgun, as many rounds as I can carry on my person, and a nice, sharp machete I’m pretty sure Amy snuck into the mix. (Machetes aren’t standard issue.)
Shotgun in hand, I clamber out of the vehicle, kick the doors closed, and yank my phone off my belt, dialing Ella’s number before I shove the phone between my ear and shoulder so I can load the gun while I talk. When Ella answers in the middle of ring seven, she gives me a rather acidic greeting I suspect is the result of something happening on her end of the line. But if her part of this mission was going as badly as mine currently is, she’d be manically energized and on task, not pissed off, so I assume my cry for help is the more important of the two situations.
“Ella,” I say, “I need all the backup you can send. Feldman is here, at the middle school. He blew up part of the building with his wards, and now he’s out back, fighting—”
Another bone-shaking boom erupts somewhere behind the school, and two flaring magic auras, red and blue, ripple forty feet into the air, tinged violet where they meet, where Lucian and Feldman collide.
“Lucian Ardelean showed up—I think he was following me—and now he and Feldman are embroiled in what I can only describe as a magic duel. They’re tearing up the field and woods behind the school, and they’re not being particularly discreet about it.”
I glance at the cops, who are gaping in confusion at the fading auras in the air.
Those two boneheaded duelists are slinging around so much power that half the normal folks in the city could spot their magic a mile away.
“I’m gearing up now to confront Feldman myself. Hopefully, Lucian and I will be able to take him in a two-on-one fight, but there were wraiths hiding in the school, and I’m worried there might be more in the immediate area. If civilian first responders show up on scene, somebody could get killed. I need reinforcements ASAP.”
Ella is silent for nearly a full minute before she comes over the line with instructions. “Naomi and Ramirez will be there in five minutes or less. They’re the closest teams to your location. I’m rerouting everybody else to the school as well, but Desmond, Amy, and Nick are all twenty minutes out from you at least, and I’m twelve, maybe ten, at top speed. Do what you can to quell the fight between Ardelean and Feldman, but don’t risk your life, Cal. Stay out of the line of fire.”
A car door slams shut on her side of the phone, and a moment later, an engine rumbles to life. She continues, “Magic-on-magic fights are fast-paced, volatile, and completely unpredictable to non-practitioners like us. So keep your distance, play it smart, and…” She sighs. “Cal, I know how important it is to you to fit the ‘hero’ mold, but this is not the time to be impulsive. Strategize and think fast to play the best moves, not the most obvious ones. Remember the academy lessons where you studied combat strategy, finding the weaknesses in your enemy’s defenses. With Ardelean acting as Feldman’s main focus, you have the opportunity to catch him off guard with one effective strike. Use that opportunity. Don’t waste it. Okay?”
My chin tilts up toward the cloudy sky, cold rain washing over my face. I take Ella’s words to heart and shake off any spark of ire regarding the fact she doesn’t entirely trust me to act in a responsible manner. Because I know I haven’t acted in a responsible manner throughout this case. Not at the convention center, where I wandered away from the team. Or at Arnette’s, where I confronted Lucian alone. Emotions running high, I’ve let my haunting memories get the best of me, many times, too many times, and it’s reflected poorly on my performance as a DSI detective.
If I want to be taken seriously as the elite agent I’m ranked as, if I want Ella and Desmond to stop tiptoeing around me, making choices that ensure my safety more than their own because they think the “team baby” can’t take care of himself, if I want Amy and Riker to meet my gaze on level with their hard, experienced eyes, instead of looking down at me as if I’m an unruly child…I need to act like a true detective and not a boy with a chip on his shoulder playing dress up.
“Yes, ma’am,” I reply curtly to Ella’s speech, and hang up the phone.
Then I tug the forend of the shotgun backward and forward, loading a round into the chamber. I turn and march off the way I came, passing the group of cops who are now carrying Lassiter toward the SUV for first aid, and who watch me in both fear and fascination as I pass by armed with a shotgun and a machete. I head around the school, off the sidewalk, onto the grass, retracing the trampled steps from my flight with the injured detective. I reach the low fence, the gate still hanging open, and stop, right there, not a step farther, to observe the fight between titans that has continued in my absence.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt smaller in my life.
Scorched streaks, wide as cars, zigzag across the grassy field for fifty yards, as if lightning struck the ground and raced toward some unseen conductor. Another thirty feet of fencing has been ripped out of the soil and now lies crumpled in the middle of the track. At the far end of the track and field area, near the woods, Feldman and Lucian are still facing off, but unlike in the locker room, where the vampire had the clear upper hand, in the wider space outdoors, they appear evenly matched.
As I watch them duke it out like furious, unrelenting wolves, the reason why is clear: Lucian is physically stronger and faster, by a wide margin, but Feldman is a far better magic practitioner. Every time Lucian blurs into a streak, lunging for the wizard, Feldman responds by invoking the speed spell I first witnessed Marcus and gang use in the fight against Charun in Holden Park. He blurs too, and retreats from the oncoming vampire, entrenching himself at a distance that makes it impossible for Lucian to launch a close-quarters attack. And because Lucian carries no long-range weapons, he has no choice but to fruitlessly try to close that distance, again and again.
It’s not a tactic to wear Lucian down—vampires have too much stamina for that to be a feasible plan for any human opponent—but rather, I realize, a tactic to buy Feldman enough time to figure out his enemy’s weaknesses. Once he identifies a crack in Lucian’s defenses, he’ll throw his offensive magic into high gear and go for the kill.
A chill that has nothing to do with the weather skitters up my spine.
Feldman is a competent combat practitioner, much more so than Marcus, who fell to Erica’s onslaught in minutes. If Feldman hadn’t ended up in jail, I wonder, would he have been tapped to lead the local Methusela
h faction instead of Marcus? Would we have fought him instead at Primrose Avenue? (And would his competence have killed us?)
I always thought it odd, how a group of rogues, whose activities thrive in the dark, would pick someone with such a public face as Marcus to be their front man. But maybe they didn’t have a choice, because their first pick wound up behind bars right around the time they needed him to take charge. Maybe Marcus was always second fiddle, a runner-up who paid the price of the winner’s indiscretions, who forfeited his own life for a cause that didn’t even think he was fit for the job.
Don’t get me wrong. Marcus deserved his pathetic death in that basement.
I just think it’s pitiful that he died, and the Methuselah Group didn’t even flinch, didn’t even care. They replaced him with the better choice they’d wanted all along as soon as the vacancy opened up.
That’s cold. Bitingly cold.
And it says a hell of a lot about the kind of people running Methuselah.
We need to defeat Feldman, here and now, and we need to break him in interrogation, and we need to dismantle the rogue faction of practitioners in this city, and we need to make sure they never rise again. Or else, I know for certain, the Wellington disaster will seem like a drop in the bucket compared to what comes next, compared to the ultimate fate of Aurora, Michigan.
I also know for certain that fate now rests on my shoulders—because I am the only DSI agent here.
Shit.
Lucian makes another run at the wizard, but Feldman is ready this time. Instead of zipping away to safety, he ducks under Lucian’s attack—the vampire is wielding what looks like a wicked dagger—and shoots one of his signature laser beams at his opponent’s vulnerable left knee, lagging behind the rest of Lucian’s body to keep him anchored so he won’t swing wide. The beam doesn’t sever Lucian’s leg, but it burns right through his knee cap, and the leg loses purchase against the ground, folding in on itself.
City of Crows Books 1-3 Box Set Page 80
