Soul Breaker

by Clara Coulson

  The archivist is young, maybe a year or two older than me, with that blond hair, blue eyes, and soft face combo that would make most women label him “a sensitive guy” at first sight. He’s about ten miles off from the warrior type, skinny as a rail, below average height, and his face is so smooth that I seriously doubt he could grow facial hair if he tried. I wonder if they put him in Archives because he wanted a desk job, or if he got stuck here because he couldn’t compete with the more athletic men and women who typically make detective rank. Either way, he wouldn’t be sitting here if he wasn’t competent—DSI doesn’t do incompetent—and I need his help.

  I clear my throat to get his attention, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. For a second, I’m annoyed, but then I notice he’s wearing ear buds that are hooked to a phone sitting next to his mouse pad. He must be playing loud music. And his eyes are so focused on the left-hand screen, whatever project he’s working on, that he hasn’t noticed me moving in his peripheral vision.

  Well, at least I know this can guy can concentrate on assigned tasks.

  I stick my hand in front of his work screen and snap my fingers. The guy recoils and almost jumps out of his skin. He bats his wireless mouse with a flailing arm, and it flies off the desk, into a nearby trashcan. His chair rolls backward a couple of feet, and his eyes snap up to take in the form of the not-actually-a-scary-monster who came within two inches of giving him a heart attack. Note to self: don’t sneak up on this guy in the future.

  The archivist stares at me for a moment, breathing quickly. Then he reaches up and plucks his ear buds out. “Oh, I didn’t see you there, Detective.”

  “I got that.” I stuff my hands in my coat pockets and shrug my shoulders. “Sorry I scared you there, buddy.”

  “Not your fault.” He gives me a dismissive wave with his trembling hand. “I should have been paying better attention.” After retrieving his mouse from the trashcan, he closes the window he was working in, which appears to be a coding IDE. (I took an intro programming course at Stanford.)

  “So,” says the jumpy archivist, “you need something from the stacks?”

  “Uh, probably. I have a bit of a treasure hunt for you.” From my inside pocket, I pull out a couple of printed pictures, the mystery writing from the wall and the circle. I slide them across the desk toward the archivist. “Those are from a murder scene I was called in to work this morning. It involves an Eververse summoning. We haven’t been able to identify the language, and so we’re struggling to pin down the magic origin. We need to figure out what the writing says so we can get a better idea of the context of the murder. What creature was summoned. Who summoned it. Why the victim was targeted. That sort of thing.” I tap on the papers, then shift my gaze to the seemingly endless stacks. “Is that feasible? Searching the library for this writing?”

  The archivist grabs the papers and analyzes them for a moment. I notice he suppresses a cringe when he realizes the wall writing is in blood. “Hm,” he says. “It’s kind of hard to pin down stuff with that little to go on, since our collection is so extensive. But, weirdly enough, the symbols look familiar to me. They may have been in something I archived recently. I can check through the stuff I’ve shelved over the past month, if you have a few minutes to wait.” He nibbles on his lip and picks up a notepad. “If you’re too busy to stay, though, I can send you a report later. I just need your office email address.”

  “Actually, I do have some time.” I rest my elbows on the desk and smile at the small archivist. “Riker hasn’t given me any more errands to run yet.”

  He drops the notepad, and his eyes go wide. “Riker? As in, Nicholas Riker? You’re on his team?” His baby blues rove over my body, like my anatomy should be different due to my “elite” status. “You’re the new guy. The one who got assigned to Riker after last month’s graduation. Calvin something or other?”

  “Calvin Kinsey. I go by Cal. And, yeah, that was me. Lucky me.”

  “I’m, uh, Cooper Lee.” He stands up and offers me his hand. “And you don’t sound very enthused to be on Riker’s team. I shouldn’t have brought it up, huh?”

  I take his hand and shake it. “Not your fault, Cooper Lee. Everybody’s curious about the assignment. I’m curious about the assignment. The commissioner should have promoted somebody from a mid-level team to replace Bishop, not me. I mean, I performed well on my final exams, sure, but I’m not a prodigy who aced every test.” I scoff. “You should have seen my marks for beggar magic. I broke four rings.”

  Cooper Lee grimaces. “That must have cost you some points.”

  “Yeah, about half of them.”

  He tilts his head to the side. “So, then, why put you on Nick Riker’s team?”

  “Beats me.” I rap my knuckles on the desk. “Seems like a pretty bad move, considering Riker’s current emotional state.”

  The little archivist sinks back into his chair and wrings his hands. “Poor Captain Riker. I’ve helped him on a number of past cases—he’s always been nice to me—but I haven’t seen him since he returned from France. Heard he’s been really depressed.”

  “Did you know Bishop?”

  “Yeah. Bishop was the guy Riker used to send down here to collect stuff. We chatted quite a bit. He was nice, too.” A sad smile spreads across his face. “I guess you’re the collector now. Bishop’s replacement.”

  I grip the edge of the desk. “I don’t want to be Bishop’s placement.”

  Cooper clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “You might have to be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well”—he spins his chair around, one full circle—“that could be why they put you on Riker’s team. Because you’re similar to Bishop. They want to fill the gap. To help the team recover.”

  I chew on that idea for a moment. “Maybe so. Maybe not. Either way, I have a murder to solve, and there’s a dangerous Eververse creature still roaming the streets. So let’s see if we can figure that language out. What do you say?”

  Cooper Lee looks over his shoulder at the imposing rows and rows and rows of texts. “I say, give me twenty minutes.”

  Chapter Seven

  Cooper Lee returns in twelve minutes with six hefty books that look so heavy I’m worried they might crush his small frame. He drops them on the work table where I’ve seated myself and hunkers down across from me, double-checking the printed photos one last time before he folds them up and pushes them aside. “So,” he says, “these are some texts on ancient cultures that I’ve handled in the past couple weeks. I’m pretty sure the language in your pictures is from an extinct civilization, but I’m not a hundred percent sure of the regional origin. The books all contain examples of the languages for the societies they discuss, so if we quickly skim through, we should be able to ascertain whether our dead language belongs to one of these cultures. Once we figure out which one, we’ll know the magic origin, and then we can do more specific research on what type of creature the killer could have summoned.”

  I rest my cheek on my hand and flick the dusty cover of one of the enormous books. “Quickly, you said? There must be four thousand pages of material in these books.”

  Cooper fights a cheeky grin. “Quickly if you know how to navigate these texts. You learn quite a bit about research skills when you work in Archives.”

  “So, you do this sort of thing every day?” I lean back in the creaky wooden chair. “Spend hours reading through old books? And you like it?”

  Pulling the top book off the pile, he replies, “I like to do my part. You know, to help keep Aurora safe. And it just so happens I’m pretty good at this Archives thing.”

  “So you’re going to stay here for the rest of your working life? Flipping through books?” I grab another volume and slide it to my side of the table. It weighs about twenty-five pounds.

  “Well, this isn’t my only job. You interrupted me in the middle of my other job.”

  “What, coding?” With gentle fingers, I flip the peeling cover ope
n and peek at the yellowed pages inside. “You build websites or something?”

  “Apps. I’m an app designer. And let me tell you, it pays a lot better than this job.” He chuckles and starts to peruse the table of contents in his chosen book.

  “Yet you’re still here.” I let the cover of my book drop, and it closes with a soft thump. “You say you like to do your part, but why do you think this is your part?”

  His demeanor shifts from relaxed to tense before I even finish the question, and he sucks in a deep breath. “Because it has to be somebody’s.”

  “But why—?”

  “Why are you here?” He slams a weak fist on the table. “You’re a good-looking, athletic guy, and since you passed the academy, I assume you’re pretty smart. So why aren’t you in a well-paying professional job, taking your pick of romantic partners, living the good life?”

  “Because two years ago, I was a rookie cop, and my partner was murdered by the vampire killer that tore up Gloston Square. The vampire who hasn’t been caught.” I drum my fingers in sequence on the cover of the book, fighting back the urge to watch that memory again. To relive the sights and the sounds and the smells. To relive the horror that left me a sobbing ball of shaking limbs, curled up next to a dumpster, until the men and women in black coats arrived to hunt for the vampire who was long, long gone.

  Cooper finally peels his gaze from his own text and gapes at me, jaw straining. “You were…that was you? You were the cop who survived that night? You were the one who saw…?”

  “Yeah, I saw the bastard. And I saw what he did to Mac—his body landed right next to me.”

  Cooper makes a choking sound. “I’m so sorry. That must have been awful.”

  “And now you know my sob story. What’s yours?”

  The archivist pulls away from his book and casts his eyes at a nearby stack. But he doesn’t see the texts on the shelves. He sees something much farther away, drifts off into a time and place far removed from the DSI Archives. “When I was little,” he says, “I lived in a tiny town way out in the country. A town situated between the territories of two, rival werewolf packs.”

  Oh. I know where this is going.

  “The packs got into a territorial dispute one night, and it blew up into a full-on battle across the countryside. That same night, that same time—such a coincidence—my parents were driving home from the county fair, with me in the back seat. To get to our house, we had to take a heavily wooded back road. Lots of sharp curves. No streetlights.” His breath hitches. “My dad made a left turn, around a dense patch of trees, and then, before anybody could react…two fighting wolves crashed out of the woods, right into our car. We flipped. Twice. Slid off the road. Into a ditch.” His voice grows quieter with each word. “I survived, broken wrist and a few cuts from all the glass. My parents, on the other hand, weren’t so lucky. My dad’s skull shattered when he hit the dashboard, and because the wolves rammed the passenger side of the car, my mom suffered a broken neck and died instantly. I was securely in my toddler seat, so, so—”

  “That’s enough. I’m sorry for bringing it up.” A frothing guilt churns in my stomach.

  Way to be a dick, Kinsey.

  Cooper rubs his watery eyes with the back of his hand and nods at me. “It’s okay. It’s not like you dredged up a story I haven’t told a dozen times. You and I have two of a thousand terrible stories. People don’t end up at DSI because they want to risk their lives fighting monsters. They come here because their lives get derailed by the supernatural world they didn’t know existed. And then they can’t let it go. They can’t let the monsters get away with it. Like you can’t let that vampire get away with killing your partner. We’re all the same here.”

  I slide my hand across the table and take hold of his. His fingers are cool to the touch. “Yeah, I guess we are, aren’t we?”

  He nods, and we both make a silent agreement to steer clear of this subject in the future.

  Good plan.

  I reach for my discarded book and say, “So, let’s get down and dirty with this research, and then—”

  “Calvin Kinsey!” a woman’s voice calls out. It rebounds off the stacks, echoing, echoing, until the words are too soft to interpret. I push my chair back and rise, peering across the expansive room, over the tables and chairs and shorter shelves and soft-light lamps, and locate someone near the entrance, hands on her hips. She’s dressed in full combat gear, which means she’s a detective, but from this distance I can’t make out her face.

  Cooper stands up, too, and follows my line of sight. “Is that…Ella?” A smile breaks the lingering sadness in his face, and he rounds the table, taking off for the woman at the entrance. “Ella!”

  The woman turns our direction and waves. “Cooper Lee! Hey!”

  I follow Cooper at a slower pace, making my way across the carpeted floor. As I near the woman, I realize I do recognize her. Not from a personal meeting but from photographs. It’s Ella Dean, another member of Riker’s team, my team. The fiercest hand-to-hand combat specialist in the department, she’s earned eleven commendations from the commissioner, closed twenty-six cases by herself, plus another forty with her teammates, and is among the longest-tenured agents of the Criminal Investigations Division. She graduated from the academy before she could even vote.

  At thirty-eight, she’s tall and lean and fit, well muscled under her gear. Her dark hair is cropped short in a stylish pixie cut, a common feature of female agents, to prevent nasty monsters from ripping her scalp off. A small white scar rests next to one of her bright hazel eyes, and another decorates the curve of her chin, the remnants of some fight that almost went terribly wrong. Despite the claims of Erica the witch, Ella Dean does not at all resemble a weather-beaten piece of driftwood. Many a man (and woman) would call her beautiful.

  I’m one of them, for the record.

  Ella embraces Cooper in a tight hug and nuzzles the side of his face. “Oh, Coop. It’s so good to see you! You have no idea how much I’ve missed our lunches. I’m so tired of French food.” She releases him and pats him on the shoulder.

  Cooper is elated, shifting from one foot to the other, like he’s about to hop six feet into the air. “When did you get back? I thought you were on mission for another month.”

  Ella lifts up one of her arms, revealing two splinted fingers and a series of fresh bandages curling around her hand and down her wrist. “Broke a nail, unfortunately. The French branch decided they’d beaten me up enough, so they released me early. Desmond’s on lead now, sweeping up the rest of the dirt. Work’s almost done. Just a few stragglers left to hunt down. The rest of the team should be back in a couple of weeks.”

  Cooper pouts at Ella’s new injury but takes her other hand. “I’m so glad you’re back. After Nor…” He bites his tongue.

  Ella grips Cooper’s hand tightly. “It’s all right, Coop. You can say his name. Norman. Norman Bishop. Bravest man I’ve ever known, facing down six ghouls with nothing but his beggar rings, all out of juice.” She closes her eyes for a moment and forces the memories into the box she’s constructed to hide them away. Compartmentalization. You either master it, or you have a mental breakdown. (As I’ve learned all too well.)

  “Anyway,” she continues, “I am back to stay. For the foreseeable future. And starting tomorrow, we are back to our regularly scheduled lunches.”

  “Not today?” Cooper asks.

  “Sorry, Coop. The minute I stepped into the office, Nick threw a new case at me. Some murder down at Waverly College. Real nasty. I’m supposed to pick up our new guy, and…” Her eyebrows perk up, and she finally tears her gaze off Cooper Lee to acknowledge me. I’m standing about ten feet away, leaning against a table, giving her a little wave with my fingers.

  “And you,” she adds after a second of awkward silence, “must be Calvin Kinsey.”

  Chapter Eight

  Ella and I make our way to the Franks’ family home, in a gated community on the eastern corner of Aurora. I’m
in the driver’s seat, weaving my way through midday traffic, while Ella sorts through a printed copy of the case files, compiled by Delarosa’s team when they did their preliminary sweep after I left the crime scene. For the first fifteen minutes of our half-hour trip, Ella hums and oohs and ahs as she pores over the photos I took this morning and skims the initial statements from the parents, the college staff, and the students who were in and around the Hague dorm at the time of the murder. She doesn’t say a word to me until we hit the final stretch of road that leads to the Highwood Glen community.

  “So, Cal, I checked your personnel file on my way down to Archives.” She stuffs all the papers in the folder they came from and tosses the package into the back seat. “Nice exam scores, overall. Impressive hand-to-hand and weapons combat results. Academic achievement above average.” A smile tugs at her lips. “But I do feel the need to ask: What on Earth happened to your beggar magic scores? You got a fifteen-point deduction. You use the wrong element or something?”

  I grip the steering wheel and stare straight ahead at the winding two-lane road. Leave it to the first teammate I meet to pick on me for that screw-up. “I wish it was that simple. I broke my rings.”

  Ella prods at the splint on her fingers and whistles a low note. “How’d you manage that? Channel the energy wrong?”

  “So the exam proctor said.”

  “Did you struggle with beggar magic through training?”

  “Yup. Same problem. Ruined six sets of rings. Professor Morse got pissed at me after they broke the second time. She told me to stop treating them like toys.” The woods thin out for a mile, revealing a wide field of thick grass rustling in the autumn breeze. Beyond it, the golden gates of Highwood Glen stand proud, restricting access for the unworthy. “I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was trying my best. I still can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong.”