Shade Chaser (City of Crows 2)

by Clara Coulson

  “Then we better get on the ball and stop that summoning.” Amy steals one of my bacon strips. “Any chance we can find this backup supply of soul clocks?”

  Desmond hums thoughtfully. “Unless the soul clocks are in the aforementioned ‘secret house,’ I doubt we’ll be able to find them within our time limit. We’d be better off, I think, ambushing the rogues at the house before they have a chance to complete the summoning. That way, they won’t be alerted prematurely to the fact we’re onto them. If we tip our hand too soon, they may pack up and skip town, resurfacing later to conduct the summoning elsewhere.”

  “That’s true, Desmond.” I nudge my plate farther away from Amy. “But, even so, I don’t think we should wait until the day of the summoning to attack. If we wait until the last minute, after they have all their equipment and…ingredients…prepared, we run the risk of the summoning being conducted, successfully, during our raid. In which case, a significant number of DSI agents could get hurt or killed by Ammit.”

  Riker leans back against the seat cushion. “So the best course of action would be to stake out the property and launch an ambush sometime in the next twenty-four hours, after we confirm that the ICM rogues are inside. They’re bound to meet up at the house before the night of the summoning. They must still have things to prep—else they would have completed the summoning already.”

  “We need to keep in mind, however,” Ella adds, “that if we raid the house before the night of the summoning, it’s possible we might miss arresting a conspirator. We have no guarantee that the remaining rogues, however many there are, will all be present in the house at the same time, at any point leading up to the summoning.”

  Amy shrugs. “Even so, I think attacking in the next day or so is our best bet. Especially if the soul clocks are already there. We destroy the clocks and free the souls, there goes the summoning. There’s no way that a rogue or two, slipping through the cracks, will be able to piece the summoning back together anytime soon. It must’ve taken a ton of manpower to collect all those ‘sinful’ shades in the first place.”

  “All right.” Riker rubs his bloodshot eyes, then tugs out his phone. “First things first. I’ll send a scout team over to the property to check it out. A plainclothes team in a nondescript vehicle, driving around the neighborhood once or twice, parking in a nearby driveway.” He checks with Erica. “Think that’ll tip anyone off?”

  She replies, “Nah. Practitioners rely on their wards to protect buildings. Unless your guys are being super obvious about it, no one at the house will even bat an eye.”

  Nodding, Riker slips out of the booth, grabs his cane, and heads over to the empty side of the diner to make his call. While he’s gone, the waitress returns, somehow balancing five plates on two arms. She distributes them correctly to each person sitting at the table on her first try. She then asks if we need anything else, we decline, and she heads back over to her post at the front counter, just as Riker is returning with a pensive look on his face.

  The captain glides back into his seat and speaks at a low volume. “Called dispatch and had them direct the closest plainclothes team to the Primrose address. They’re only four minutes out. I gave the order for a rotational stakeout; the current team will stay on the house for two hours, then swap jobs with a second team, who’ll do the same thing. And so on and so forth until someone reports enough suspicious activity, comings and goings, for us to get a good idea of how to set up the strike operation.”

  “Hm,” Desmond says, chewing on a sausage patty, “you going to call in Ramirez’s team for the assist, or somebody else?”

  Amy tears a biscuit in half. “Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Didn’t we send Ramirez’s crew out to hunt for that Donahue guy after the auxiliary teams lost his trail?”

  Ella, poking at her eggs, sighs. “Right. His people have been up all night. We’ll have to call in someone else, or risk their exhaustion. Nakamura’s not back yet, is he?”

  “No.” Riker sips on a glass of orange juice. “He’s in Minnesota through next Wednesday. And our five other elite teams are in state but hours outside Aurora, working rural murders and missing persons cases. And, of course, Delarosa’s out of the question.”

  “What about Sing?” Amy asks.

  Desmond answers, “Still studying for the captain’s exam. She won’t get her own team until she passes next month.”

  “Still could use her though.” Amy chomps down on the biscuit. “Be nice if she could roll some heads for us.”

  Erica shoots Amy a concerned look.

  I fill her in: “Naomi Sing, Master of Blades.”

  The witch makes an Ah, got you face.

  Desmond taps his fork against his plate. “Could just call in a bunch of lower-level teams. We don’t have any other lowers who’ve worked alongside us as frequently as Delarosa and Ramirez, but maybe it’s time to train a few more in the ways of the dangerous elite cases. That way, if we have another Liam”—everyone winces—“we won’t be left shorthanded for backup when it comes down to the wire.”

  “I agree with you on that, Desmond,” Riker says, sliding his half-eaten plate of food to the middle of the table, “but I’m not sure this is the case to start that practice. We screw this up, we could be looking at a magic-based war in a residential neighborhood. And while I certainly trust you all, with your skillsets, to prevail in the end, I worry very much about the safety of bystanders…and of lower-level agents who don’t have this kind of field experience. One spell is all it takes. One blast of fire. One bolt of lightning. One vehicle thrown by telekinesis. Wizards and witches might not be as physically durable as Charun the Psychopomp, but strong practitioners can do just as much damage when cornered and desperate.”

  “Well,” Ella says, “you’re right, but that puts us back at square one. We can’t do this alone, Nick. We don’t have the manpower to hold a perimeter and subdue the bad guys at the same time.”

  My captain scratches his stubbly chin while he cycles through ideas. “How about we try…?”

  His phone rings in his pocket.

  Confused, he plucks it out, checks the caller ID, looks even more confused, and then answers. “Riker. Is there an update on…What?” Riker slides out of the booth in a hurry, color draining from his face as the voice on the other end speaks. “Is there anyone close enough to assist?” A short pause, and Riker swears. “Mobilize all available teams and send them to the provided address as soon as possible. Tell the plainclothes that my team will be on scene in less than ten minutes, and to not directly engage the enemy. If the enemy advances on them, they should retreat without hesitation.” Not waiting for a response, he hangs up the phone and spins around toward Erica, betrayal carved across his face.

  She drops her fork on the table with a clang and rises. “What is it?”

  “You said they wouldn’t notice.”

  Erica blinks a couple times before she understands the meaning. “What, you mean your plainclothes team was attacked at the Primrose house?”

  “Yes,” Riker spits. “Two wizards engaged them less than a minute after they turned onto the street. They’re under fire, and one is already injured. We need to leave. Now. There’s no one else close enough to Primrose, or heavily armed enough, to assist them. We’re eight minutes out, and that’s cutting it close. So let’s go!”

  Everybody clambers out of the booth in a rush, food forgotten, Ella throwing down a random wad of high-value bills to pay for the meal.

  Nausea grips my stomach as a horrible thought assaults me, and I gag so hard I nearly vomit up all my bacon and eggs. “Wait,” I breathe out between heaves, “I don’t think the wizards caught onto the scout team. I think they were told the team was coming in advance.”

  Six pairs of wet boots squeak to a stop on the floor, and everyone stares at me like I’ve grown two heads.

  I gesture to Erica and say, “Remember what you told me the day I was kidnapped? About the Wolf information leaking out of DSI?”

 
Erica’s face scrunches up as she tries to remember—and then it hits her. Her mouth drops open, her eyes go wide, her face turns red, and she actually starts to shake. First in fear. And then in complete, unadulterated rage. There’s a moment I honestly imagine her exploding into an unstoppable inferno right there in the middle of a diner between a half-built toy store and a Laundromat.

  Ella, halfway to the door, raises her hands, exasperated. “What, Cal? Spit it out. We’re running short on time here.”

  “There’s a…” I swallow the rising bile in my throat. “There’s a mole in DSI. Who passes information to the ICM the same way Erica passes information to us.”

  Amy buries her face in her hand and chuckles dryly. “Are you serious?”

  Desmond frowns. “How long have you known this, Calvin?”

  “Since right before I was kidnapped. I was going to discuss it with you, Captain”—I face Riker, who’s gazing down at me in horror—“during a one-on-one meeting that day. But then I got snatched by the Wolves, and I never had the chance to sit down and speak with you. I figured you’d want to deal with it privately, or with the commissioner, to avoid making too much noise and risk spooking the mole. You see…”

  “Yes.” Riker pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yes. That was a smart decision, Cal. Not a mistake. You were right to withhold that knowledge, in case the mole bolted before we had a chance to investigate. But we can worry about the mole’s identity later.”

  “Riker,” says a seething Erica, “the existence of the mole himself isn’t the point Cal is trying to make. It’s who the mole reports to that’s the problem.”

  “How so?” Riker asks, inching closer to the exit.

  Erica and I exchange glances, and my stomach twists into a tight knot.

  “Captain,” I say in an uneven tone, “the mole reports directly to Allen Marcus. So…”

  “If the rogue wizards at the Primrose house,” Erica finishes, “were informed of the oncoming plainclothes team, then that means Marcus told them.”

  A long, uncomfortable silence follows that statement.

  Cooper Lee, lingering at the back of the group, is the first one to respond. “Allen Marcus, the Aurora ICM leader, is in on the summoning plot?”

  “No,” Riker says. Jaw locked. Shoulders taut. Eyes alight with a bright, livid fire. “He’s not in on it. He’s leading it. Just like Martinez was McKinney’s proxy, Halliburton was Allen Marcus’. He’s been playing us the whole goddamn time.”

  Captain Nicholas Riker, in his full furious glory, storms past Ella, kicks open the diner door, and strides out into the frigid, blustery night. The last thing I hear before the door swings closed behind him is a guttural growl more vicious than any werewolf could make, barely forming human words:

  “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  By the time we turn onto Primrose Avenue, Riker’s rage has abated enough—thanks to Ella’s calming words—for him to design a raid plan that doesn’t involve shooting Allen Marcus in the face seventy-two times with a high-powered rifle. From my seat in the SUV, squeezed in between Amy and Desmond, I can see half of Riker’s scowl, and I know he still wants to smear the wizard’s brains across the pavement. But he’s not a DSI elite captain for nothing. He reins himself in as we charge through the deepening snow toward 5786. And when the battle scene outside the house appears through the white haze at last, Riker has bolted down all his negative emotions.

  Riker’s scowl morphs into a cold, calculating expression. “Our first objective is to extract the plainclothes team from the scene. Once they’re out of danger, we secure the perimeter, enter the house, and arrest Marcus and whoever else is inside. I want Amy and Desmond on vanguard; defend Ella and me as we get our people out of the danger zone.” His hard eyes peer back at me through the rearview mirror. “Cal, I want you to take the driver’s seat when I get out. Evacuate the plainclothes team as soon as they’re secure. Take them to the office for medical attention. I don’t want you on the battlefield with your injuries, understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” Normally, I’d argue about being left out of the main action, but Riker has a point. I can’t run in my condition, much less fight. Not to mention I don’t have beggar rings right now—I can’t challenge practitioners without magic support. And beyond all that, I promised Cooper yesterday that I’d sit on the sidelines for the rest of the case and let my teammates handle the major risks. Cooper’s a few minutes behind us, riding with Erica, so he’ll be close enough to see me if I act stupid and get myself hurt or killed.

  If I disappoint Cooper here, after he called me his hero…

  The SUV growls to a stop fifty feet away from the skirmish. Through the windshield, while we’re unbuckling our seatbelts, we watch in abject horror as a wizard dressed in gray shoots a ball of fire at a red compact car. The impact shatters every window, slinging half-melted glass in all directions. Flames consume the interior of the vehicle, blackening seat cushions and spewing smoke. Four of our agents are huddled behind the car during this explosion, and one of them, a young man, takes a face full of glass, collapsing backward into the snow. Blood sprays across the white ground—a shard struck an artery.

  We’ll never get him to a doctor in time. He’s going to die.

  Like Liam.

  Amy roars beside me, then rips her door open and charges out into the blizzard. She’s so light that she seems to glide atop the snow banks as she crosses the distance between our SUV and the gray-garbed wizard faster than an Olympic runner. The wizard spots her coming at the last second, but he can’t conjure up another powerful spell fast enough to stop her.

  Beggar rings fully charged, she leaps and slams into his chest feet first. Then, as he collapses under her brutal kick, she dives forward and rams both her fists into his face. Her rings discharge a powerful electrical attack, blue sparks lighting up the night. The man’s body convulses wildly, limbs flailing. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.

  He goes limp.

  Amy spits in his lifeless face and rises.

  A second wizard, dressed in blue, descends from the front steps of 5786. As he moves along the salt-slicked sidewalk toward Amy, two parked cars drift up into the air, a visible red aura encompassing them.

  Desmond and Ella scramble out of the SUV and take off down the block, guns and rings at the ready.

  The blue-clad wizard yells something, and both cars crumple under the weight of an invisible force. Glass cracks. Metal shrieks. The smell of gasoline permeates the air. And the cars ignite into flaming metal meteors, large enough to level the entire neighborhood if hurled at the wrong velocity.

  But the blue-clothed wizard never gets the chance to wreak havoc.

  Erica the witch pulls her car up next to the SUV and is out in a literal flash, her form blurring as she magically speeds toward the Primrose house. She yanks five streetlights straight out of the asphalt with a powerful spell, her earthy green aura wrapping around the groaning metal and glass.

  The wizard with his manufactured meteors whirls away from the oncoming DSI agents to challenge Erica’s much bigger threat.

  He slings one of the meteors at the witch. The blazing sphere burns through the air, melting snow in its wake. But Erica punts all four tons of fiery doom with her foot, fortified by a blast of pure force, and the meteor shoots up at a seventy-degree angle, disappearing into the snowy sky. Its fiery shell flickers through the low-hanging clouds as it arcs downward, and then it crashes harmlessly into the woods half a mile away.

  Erica’s momentum doesn’t even slow. She drives straight toward the wizard, streetlights flying in behind her, leaps into the air, spinning as she goes, and makes a slicing motion with her right hand that flings all five light poles at the wizard’s prone body. He takes one to the leg, one to the shoulder, two to the chest, and one to the face. When his body hits the ground, half his bones are mush, and his crushed skull weeps brain matter into the powdery snow around him.

  The seco
nd meteor drops to the ground with a mighty boom but harms no one.

  Erica slides to a stop at the base of the steps to the Primrose house. She doesn’t even glance at the dead guy as she walks up to the front door and starts analyzing the exterior for dangerous trap wards.

  Still in the SUV, I lean back in my seat and whisper, “Holy shit.”

  I’ve seen Erica in action before, when she fought Charun, but she’s a whole different beast when she’s angry. And boy is she angry. (I would be too if I found out my boss was a lying, scheming douchebag who’d been playing me like a fiddle for several years. Thankfully, my boss is a decent guy.)

  Riker peers over his shoulder at me from the driver’s seat, just as stunned as I am at Erica’s awesome display. Clearing his throat, he says, “I’m going to help carry the injured back here. You take the wheel, Cal, okay? I want this vehicle ready to go in case there are more practitioners lying in wait.”

  He gestures to the burning compact car, where Ella, Desmond, and Amy are tending to the injured plainclothes agents. Amy has stripped off her coat and draped it over the poor man whose throat was slashed by the glass. There’s nothing anyone can do for him now.

  I nod at my captain. “Will do.”

  Riker opens his door and clambers out of the SUV. He tucks his fancy new cane under his arm as he hobbles off toward the burning car. As soon as Riker is out of the way, I climb between the front seats and situate myself on the driver’s side, one hand resting on the gearshift so I can make a fast getaway.

  When I lean over to grab the door and yank it shut, I spy a familiar face staring at me from inside Erica’s car. Cooper. He’s in the front passenger seat, still belted in, a terrified expression etched into his pale face.

  Battlefields are not an archivist’s forte.

  Why didn’t you go home, Cooper? I want to ask him. He had the option. He could have stayed at the diner and called another cab. But he begged Riker to let him tag along, and Erica gave him the green light to ride with her.