Soul Breaker

by Clara Coulson

  And that is when the boathouse explodes.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Screams in fire bathe the night.

  Between one blink and the next, the lakeshore morphs from a tense, quiet landscape into a raging, raucous battlefield. A shockwave rips across the air, knocks half the nearest agents off their feet. Smoke and fire plume up into the night. Burning, blackened boards and broken boats and oars rain down from the sky, sharp projectiles, and several of my comrades have to dive out of the way to avoid being skewered. My own feet deftly maneuver me out of the trajectories of the oncoming debris, around a small group of agents knocked senseless by the initial blast, and toward the fiery ruins of the boathouse.

  Smoke clogs my nostrils as I close in, choking me, and my eyes tear up, stinging as if washed in acid. But I push through, regulating my breathing to minimize smoke inhalation, and draw my gun the second my boots leave grass and hit damp sand. I pass the thickest veil of smoke, revealing the full, graphic view of the carnage where the boathouse used to be. Nothing remains of the building except the wooden support beams, now on fire, jutting up from the surface of the lake. A field of splintered wood floats in the water around them, and multiple bodies, broken beyond repair, bob within in it.

  But not all the kids died in the initial explosion.

  My eyes scan the debris-strewn water and count three struggling figures. They’re screaming in pain and fear, waving for help as they try to stay afloat. If no one comes to their rescue in the next few minutes, they’ll drown, too weak to swim to safety on their own.

  Two more of the students, however, have managed to haul their battered forms to shore. Veronica and the petite girl, I realize, both of them severely injured. Most of Veronica’s hair has been scorched off, and the right side of her face is already blistering; her right arm has also suffered a compound fracture, bone sticking out of her jacket sleeve. The petite girl is in even worse shape—she was impaled by a large, sharp piece of wooden siding that shattered when the spirit hit the boathouse. I can’t tell how long the piece is, but it’s sticking at least six inches out of her lower abdomen.

  Both of them need medical attention. Now.

  I skid to a stop in the sand next to where they lie, moaning and crying in agony, and tap my com twice for a direct message to operations command. “This is Kinsey. I’m first on scene. We need emergency medics at the beach. Two students down with critical injuries. And there are more of them alive, still in the water.”

  A brief pause over the airwaves, and Riker replies from his black van half a mile away, “Copy that, Kinsey. Medics en route. Is the spirit still attacking? Do you have a visual?”

  I look up from the two injured girls and search the water surrounding the ruined boathouse for the fire spirit, but its telltale red-hot glow is nowhere to be found. Either it zipped out of here after it wrecked the boathouse, or it’s hiding in the lake somewhere, too deep to be seen. “Negative, Captain. No visual. But I can’t confirm it left the scene. There was too much smoke.”

  “Understood,” Riker replies immediately, then switches to open com mode. “All agents, be advised: Use extreme caution when approaching the boathouse area. The fire spirit is unaccounted for. It may still be in attacking range.”

  Tapping once to switch my own earpiece to open com, I add, “We’re going to need people in the water. Some of the surviving students are too injured to swim to shore. Anybody out here got water rings in their set?”

  A reply comes through just as a dark blur streaks past me toward the lake. Naomi Sing. “I do, Kinsey.” There’s a flash of light around her hands, her beggar rings signaling an energy build, and the moment before her feet hit the water, she discharges the power. A frigid gust of air rolls across the surface of the water, freezing it solid eight inches deep to create a two-foot-wide path. It continually forms in front of Naomi as she darts across the lake’s surface toward the trio of students who were thrown farther into the lake by the blast.

  When she gets within a few steps of them, she slides to a stop and smacks her palms against the edge of the ice path, releasing another wave of energy that results in a circular ice platform large enough to hold all three students. Once it solidifies, she reaches into the water and hauls the flailing students onto the platform one at a time, checking their injuries with a deft eye in the process. After all three are safely aboard, she helps them to their feet and starts to usher them back down the path to safety.

  I sit on my knees in the sand, gaping.

  And here I thought I felt inadequate when we were hiding in the woods.

  I flex my fingers, feeling my rings again, and curse my own piss-poor excuse for beggar magic. I could never replicate a move like Naomi’s without breaking my ring set. Again.

  Someone drops into the sand on the opposite side of the two girls—a medic, judging by the patch on his uniform sleeve. He begins to evaluate the students’ wounds with light, practiced touches. Without looking up at me, he says, “I’ve got them, Detective.”

  “Thanks.” I push myself to my feet, wiping the sand off my pants, and survey the smoky landscape again. In the wake of the explosion, agents are helping other agents to their feet, checking each other for injuries, escorting one another away from the blast zone. A few unlucky people took projectile debris to the face or neck, and are now on the ground, in the hands of medics or their comrades as unfortunately large splinters are yanked from their bloodied flesh with tweezers. Somebody who’s too far away for me to recognize took a whole board to the face, and his nose is so badly broken that blood has soaked his chin. He’s in the arms of two other agents, stumbling as he’s led toward our evac route from the park.

  Hands on my hips, I shake my head and sigh. This “raid” so far has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. We wanted a group of dumb kids alive to question, not a group of dumb kids dead in the water or heading to the ICU. Damn it.

  We were prepared for Charun to come lumbering up to the boathouse—that’s why we had so many agents, ready for a group defense against the Etruscan beast. A “spirit bomb” wasn’t on our radar because we figured the fire spirit had already possessed another body, thus limiting its ability to move unseen. Spirits can’t stay on Earth for too long without a physical form to inhabit. Our realm will degrade their integrity and eventually destroy them.

  I back away from the shoreline, leaving Veronica and petite girl to the medic’s caring hands. As I trudge into the tall grass that leads back to the woods, a few more medics rush by me, heading for Naomi and her trio of rescued students, who are closing in on the beach. Nearing the trees, I catch sight of Ella talking animatedly to Delarosa, both of them using wild hand gestures and bearing angry expressions. When the words “should have had scouts farther out” and “I told you we needed more manpower” reach my ears through the quieting air, I realize the two are having an argument about what we did wrong. So I turn on my toes and head a different direction before either of them notice me. Because I don’t want to see the aftermath of an argument between Ella Dean and anybody.

  Bits and pieces of various conversations float over my com, but there’s nothing in any of those snippets that hints at more danger, so I stroll back to the tree line, near the bush where I was hiding when this started, and then turn to take in the entire disaster. Smoke ripples upward into the sky, thinning out the higher it goes. Wooden detritus still on fire is strewn across the grass and shoreline, slowly burning itself to ash. The debris field where the boathouse used to be is beginning to spread across the lake, due to a strengthening breeze, the breath of another oncoming storm.

  Man, this day has—

  Somebody whistles. Above me. I snap my head up to see Harmony Burgess, who never moved from her sniper perch in the tree. She’s in a more relaxed position now, though, legs hanging from a branch, feet swinging in the air, back against the tree trunk. Her rifle rests in her lap at a shallow angle, and her fingers have slipped away from the trigger. She stares down at me, a weary
smile on her lips. “A real mess, isn’t it, Cal?”

  I roll my stiff shoulders. “I’ll say.”

  She nods at me. “You all right?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t get hit.”

  “Small blessings.” She gestures to the boathouse ruins. “You think any of those kids are going to make it? I checked them out with my scope. They’re all in pretty bad shape, it looks like.” Her fingers drum against the rifle barrel.

  “Hope so, but even if they make it off the beach, through the night, they’re in for a hell of a recovery period. Some of them, if not all, have life-changing burns.” I lean against the tree and exhale. “What did they steal, I wonder, that brought this level of retribution upon them?”

  Harmony hums. “Beats me. But whatever ‘treasure’ they pocketed on their insane trip to the Underworld must have been important. I can’t imagine Charun and our fire buddy would come up here to recover some meaningless trinket.” She shrugs. “It’s possible we may never find out. If any of those kids had the treasure on them, the fire spirit probably snatched it on its way…”

  A second of silence passes, and I glance up at her again to see why she stopped mid-sentence. “Harmony?”

  Her body has stiffened, and her sharp eyes are focused on the opposite shoreline. She doesn’t move at all for fifteen seconds, and then she brings her rifle up in a swift motion to peer through the scope. “Uh, Cal?”

  “Yeah?” I try to match her line of sight, but my eyes, while good, don’t have enough visual acuity to break through the shadows on the other side of the lake.

  “Did you happen to count all the bodies in the water?”

  “Um, no. I only counted the moving bodies.”

  “I think you may have missed one.”

  “What now?”

  Harmony lowers the gun from her face and throws a look my way. “Jack Brendon is still alive.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I repeat, we are in pursuit of Jack Brendon. He is alive and on the move, west bank, heading into the park in the direction of the Compton Street exit. Request immediate backup.” I spit the words into my com as Harmony and I round the last bend to the area where Brendon climbed out of the lake. In the time it’s taken us to get here, Brendon has vanished past the tree line, but according to Harmony, he was slow moving, likely injured. We should be able to head him off before he escapes—unless he has enough magic juice left to stall us.

  “Copy that, Kinsey.” Ramirez’s voice comes through my earpiece. “Dean and Delarosa are en route to assist. ETA six minutes.”

  My feet pound into the damp ground, kicking up soil, as I take a sharp right turn toward the trees. Lungs burn, ribs ache, sides in stitches. I haven’t run this fast since my first sprinting exercise in the academy, well over a year ago. But I don’t let the physical toll hold me back. I push my tiring legs onward, clamber up the shallow hill to the edge of the tree line, and dash into the dark woodlands beyond. My vision instantly goes black, the remaining glow from the boathouse fire obscured by the evergreen foliage on this side of the lake. Harmony swears from somewhere close behind me, her eagle eyes hampered by the lack of light as well.

  “Should I pull my flashlight, Cal?” she says in between gulps of air.

  “What?” I ask. “You’re taking orders from me?”

  Her fist collides with the exact center of my back—hard, ow!—despite the fact she can barely see me in the pitch-black night. “Funny. You’re elite now, Kinsey. That technically puts you in charge until a senior agent arrives. So: flashlight or not?”

  Hah. Me in charge. Who’d have thought? “Can you follow me without one?” The shapes of towering trees, thin tendrils of thorny vines, and shadows of bushes and shrubbery begin to resolve around me as my eyes adjust to the darkness. “I don’t want to tip off Brendon to our pursuit, lest he decide to throw a nice fireball at my face.”

  “I can follow. But can you lead?”

  I throw her a grin over my shoulder, though I don’t know if she can make it out. “My sight’s getting better. I can navigate well enough. And I have a trick for tracking down Brendon—”

  A sharp-edged branch swipes my right cheek as I dart by, and I hiss at the sting. Warm blood dribbles down the side of my face. But I shake off the pain, blink a couple of times, focus on the terrain in front of me, and search for that faint whiff of magic I know Jack Brendon left behind.

  Seconds tick by where nothing happens, where I see nothing but vague outlines and hear nothing but my own breathing and the pounding of my boots on the ground. But then, like a spark, I catch Brendon’s scent, and an orange-tinted residual magic trail lights up the path ahead of me, zigzagging through the trees, curling through the air. “Got you, bastard.”

  “Cal?” Harmony asks.

  “He left a magic signature. He doesn’t have enough practice to cut his energy flow off completely after he performs a spell. Either that, or he’s too panicked right now to notice he’s leaving us a neon-colored breadcrumb trail. Follow me, weapons ready.” My feet switch direction, bearing right, and I increase my speed, barreling through the shadowy woods fast enough to break something if I screw up and collide with a tree. But we’re less than half a mile from the Compton exit, so we need to catch up to Brendon. He could have a car waiting.

  Harmony lets out a mildly impressed hum. “Guess that magic tracking class wasn’t a total waste, huh, Cal?”

  “Second time I’ve used tracking for this case, believe it or not. Has its advantages.” I finger my gun in its unclipped holster and home in on the magic trail, following every twist and turn, matching Brendon’s every movement through the woods. I quiet my breathing, ignoring the dull burn in my lungs, and listen for the telltale sounds of clumsy human flight across a complex obstacle course, intent on finding the asshole who led his college peers to death’s door like a perverted shepherd.

  Determination floods my exhausted muscles, driving me onward. Last time I fought, I almost knocked myself out of the game by taking Charun on alone. I miscalculated, misjudged the situation, let my brashness, let my fear override my ability to think logically in combat. I blew my first real battle so badly it’s a miracle Riker didn’t boot my ass out the door.

  But that was yesterday. And every day is a new beginning.

  I won’t fail again. I have backup this time, and I’m up against a human foe. I don’t care how big a magic punch he packs, Jack Brendon will not slip out of my grasp. Not like Charun, who brutalized Alicia Wilkins and Jason Franks. Not like the fire spirit, who left Ally Johnston a crumbling husk. Not like the vampire in Gloston Square, who slaughtered Mac while I stood there helpless. No more corpses at my feet. No more souls damned on my watch.

  Do I have something to prove? Yeah, I do.

  I have to prove Cal Kinsey can and will protect Aurora from the vicious creatures of the night. And I’m damn well going to do it. Here and now.

  Brendon stumbles out from behind a tree thirty feet ahead of us, his entire body engulfed in a faint orange aura. One of his arms hangs limp at his side, broken or dislocated in the explosion that killed the kids he used as naïve lambs, brought to the slaughter. His clothing is also burned, his shirt torn halfway off his body, one leg of his jeans shredded. From this distance, I can’t tell if he’s burned or not. He may have been able to raise a magic defense over his skin before the heat ate him alive.

  Either way, you’re going down, pal. I point two fingers in a northwestern direction. Harmony recognizes my signal and breaks away from me, heading around in a wider arc to block Brendon’s escape. I push forward, faster and faster, and when I close the gap to twenty feet, my target finally hears my approach. He hobbles to a stop, hands on his knees, catching his breath, and for one, hopeful second, I think he’s going to surrender.

  Then he whips around, raises his uninjured arm over his head, and yells an unintelligible word. Fire engulfs his hand, a whirling vortex the size of a bowling ball. Without hesitation at the prospect of killing another pers
on, Brendon slings the fireball at my face. But I’m ready for it. I dodge with a swift jerk to the right and dash at a shallow angle toward an overturned tree supported by its neighbor. Up the trunk I go, five, eight, ten feet in the air. When I reach an optimal height, I leap from the trunk and dive toward Brendon. At the same time, I activate my beggar rings, drawing a small amount of energy into my electricity bands.

  Brendon, who’s too tired and injured to move out of the way in time, can do nothing but yelp in panic when my slightly larger body slams into his chest full force, feet first, and drives him into the damp, mushy soil. I roll off him in a somersault, coming to a stop on my knees a few feet away. The college boy scrambles to recover, but the blow knocked the wind out of him. He rolls over onto his chest and raises a wildly shaking hand to try to burn my face off, but all he succeeds in doing is coughing his lungs up and setting his thumb on fire, like he’s offering to light a cigarette.

  I knock his hand out of my face, shift closer, and jam my fists into both sides of his neck. Then I mentally mutter, Shoot. Electricity zips out of my rings and straight into Brendon’s body. His back arches, muscles convulsing, and spittle shoots out of his mouth as he chokes up air, unable to breathe. He spasms for eight seconds, until my rings run out of juice, and then he collapses, twitching, eyes rolling back into his skull. Unconscious.

  Behold! Magic taser.

  I stare down at him for a minute, hands still in the air, ready to punch his stupid, arrogant face in case he’s faking. But he’s soundly out, doomed to hurt like hell in the morning, so I sit back on my legs, knees two inches deep in mud, and suck in much-needed air. My chest aches something fierce, and I’m slightly dizzy. My visual magic sense cut out mid-attack, and my eyes struggle to readjust to normal vision. I screw them shut, feeling the edge of a headache creeping into my skull.