Ella and I look at each other, nod, and reply as one, “Yes, sir!”
Erica chimes in a moment later: “Get in line, Crows. I got dibs on that ass.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Luck is only on my side in the most ironic situations.
We enter the Primrose house through the window Marcus blew out a few minutes prior. Stepping over glass and splintered furniture, Erica takes the lead as we advance. If another wizard or witch conspirator is hiding in a dark corner, Erica is the person most equipped to defend us against their attacks.
Ella has been at DSI for a long damn time, and I’m sure she could whip a practitioner’s ass under the right conditions, but we have too little time and we’re working with minimal information regarding Marcus’ mysterious underground group. We can’t afford to assume that anyone we come across will easily go down to a DSI handgun or a set of beggar rings or even Ella’s fists of fury. And let’s not get started on me—a strong wind could blow me over right now.
The living room is clear, and Erica signals for us to continue into the hall, to a door that can only lead to the basement. Ella and I fan out in different directions, guns raised, while Erica checks the locked door for wards. To no one’s surprise, the door is laced with three wards that would either electrocute or disintegrate anyone who tried to pick the lock or kick the door down. But the wards must be rudimentary, despite the danger, because after Erica explains what they can do in a hushed voice, she proceeds to disable them in less than fifteen seconds.
Scoffing, she presses her ear to the door, listening for any movement. “Clear,” she whispers. “Let’s hurry down. A lot of practitioners have multiple labs for research projects, so there could be several rooms down there, and each one could have warded doors.”
Ella and I fall back to Erica’s position as she carefully turns the knob. The door swings open, and we don’t die instantaneously, so I assume we’re good to go.
Erica creeps down the stairs first. I take the middle position at Ella’s insistence—the safest position. I don’t know whether she wants me there because she can hear my cracked ribs creaking louder than the old, warped staircase, or because it’s a habit for the hand-to-hand combat expert to take up the rear in case someone sneaks up from behind and tries to pick off the end of the line. Maybe both.
As it is, we reach the main basement unhindered. It’s a long, narrow room. Poorly lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling near the stairs. On the back wall, there’s a stack of soggy cardboard boxes that look like they haven’t been moved in years. Mold has crept up the sides in damp green splotches. The other three walls of the room are totally bare.
Which means the lab, or labs, must be hidden behind a secret door. Like Slate’s clock room.
“Damn,” Erica says. “I’ll have to use a location spell. Give me a minute.”
“We may not have a minute,” Ella retorts, shoving her gun into its holster. She presses a hand to the closest slimy wall and cringes. “Now would be a good time for that déjà vu, Cal.”
“Sorry, Ella. I still can’t control it.”
She points at the wall opposite her, and I march across the room. We start feeling along the cinderblocks for any switches to open hidden doors while Erica moves to the exact center of the room, closes her eyes, and chants under her breath.
I’m halfway to the corner when Erica’s mutters turn into swears. Her eyes flutter open, cheeks red from the effort of spell casting. “That ass,” she says. “He’s embedded markers in the walls to confuse standard location spells. And I don’t have any references with me to cook up a new one. We’ll have to find the lab the old-fashioned way.”
“Good thing we already started on that, huh?” Ella replies. “Thing about working at DSI is that you quickly come to realize magic is not always the answer.”
Erica purses her lips but doesn’t respond. She walks up to the wall in front of her and mimics what Ella and I have been doing for the past couple minutes.
Not wanting to get embroiled in the age-old bitch fest between DSI and the ICM, I bite my tongue and finish searching my own wall, then shamble off to the back wall where all the gross boxes are stored. It doesn’t look like they’ve been moved recently, but a simple magic trick could have covered up any tracks from the boxes or footprints on the dirty floor.
The room is quiet for another whole minute, except for the sound of me dragging boxes out of the way. Several of them start to break apart in my hands, mold smearing across my gloves. Ew. To distract myself from the nastiness, I make small talk. “Boy, I sure blew my promise to Cooper to sit this one out, huh?”
“What?” Ella asks, as she clears her own wall and turns to join me at the back. “You made a promise?”
“To stay at my desk like a good little agent until Navarro gave me the okay to return to field work.” I grimace. Navarro. Oh, he’s going to kick my ass when he finds out about this.
Ella passes me and grabs the lip of the nearest box. “I’m sorry then, Cal, for dragging you into this. If Cooper gets upset with you, please don’t hesitate to throw the blame on me. In fact, I’ll speak with him after all this is said and done. Okay?”
“You don’t have to—”
She holds up a hand. “Also, I’m truly sorry we’ve flubbed this case so bad that I had to choose an injured rookie to accompany me on a high-stakes raid.” She drags the box out of the way in one swift motion, then glides forward and takes hold of a second. “I got so accustomed to dominating dangerous cases over the past decade that I became…I suppose complacent is the word. And then Norman happened, which threw Nick off his game. And then the damn Etruscan case blew up in our faces and pissed off the mayor and—”
“Ella”—I yank the last box away from the wall—“I’m not mad at you. Or Riker. The Etruscan case wasn’t your fault. And neither is this fiasco. You ever faced a conspiracy like this before?”
She runs a hand through her cropped hair, the short strands stained with blood and dirt. “No. Not even close. Not in my whole career.”
“Then you have nothing to be ashamed of. You can’t prepare for the unknown, not really.” I spy a defect in a cinderblock near the floor and kneel in front of it. “I couldn’t prepare for Gloston Square. Cooper couldn’t prepare for that Wolf running into his parents’ car. Riker couldn’t prepare for that cave collapse in France. And none of us, except the villains, could have prepared for the shit we’ve been through this week.” My finger slips under the chip in the stone, revealing a switch half the width of my thumb. “So don’t beat yourself up. That being said…”
I flip the switch, and a skinny door in the middle of the wall clicks open.
“…I’ll still take you up on that offer to assuage Cooper’s anger for me. Because I could really use another well-cooked dinner after this bullshit is over.”
Erica walks up behind us. “Can you weirdos stop being so tragically heroic? It’s annoying.”
We both stare at her, eyebrows raised.
She lifts her hands in surrender, then drops all the humor in her tone. “We may have taken too long.” Her fingers curl into fists, and small green sparks dance across her knuckles. “The summoning can’t be more than two or three minutes out, if it’s not already underway. We need to go in guns blazing.”
Ella offers me a pensive smile as she tugs her gun from its holster again. “If Cooper refuses to cook for you, Cal, even after I talk to him, I could always whip you up a little something. I make a mean omelet.”
She grabs the edge of the heavy door and lugs it wide open.
The room beyond is even darker than the main basement, lit by nothing but candles in scattered jars and an authentic oil lamp running low on fuel in the middle of a wooden table. Ella immediately moves to enter in a fight stance, gun at the ready, but my hand shoots out and grabs her shoulder before her foot can cross the threshold.
“I don’t have the best track record with secret doors.” I nod at Erica. “Might want to check for
wards first.”
Ella suddenly recalls the exploding clock disaster, judging by her pained expression, and steps away, ushering Erica forward. The witch examines the door closely, then smacks the doorframe with an open palm, whispering something in a language that doesn’t sound like it was made for human tongues. My magic sense, still active, catches subtle green waves rippling through the stone. They hit two wards, which flare bright white as they deactivate.
“Should be good,” Erica says and steps through the doorway to prove her point.
Ella and I follow her into the room. It appears to be some kind of study. Magic manuals are stacked on rickety shelves, gathering dust. The worktable sporting the oil lamp is strewn with disorganized papers, some printed, others handwritten, and others still ripped out of old, yellowed books. Another table along the back wall displays a collection of jars, tins, and bags—each contains some type of ingredient Erica likely sells at her occult shop for the practitioner clientele.
Among all the crap in the room, however, it’s what’s above the back table that catches my attention: a large corkboard. Numerous printed pages, scribbled notes, hand-drawn pictures, photos, and even stories cut from the local newspapers decorate the board.
As I maneuver around the central worktable toward the wall, the flickering lamplight brings the board’s content into stark relief: headlines about the exploding boathouse in Holden Park, pictures of the college kids who were lured into the underworld heist (and paid the price), blurry security cam images of Charun stalking through the streets (which should have been wiped in the cleanup efforts), and…of course.
A graphite drawing of Vanth’s key, in the middle of it all.
My hand moves on its own, brushing against the thick drawing paper.
Ella walks over to me. “Cal, you okay?”
“No…” I stare at the damp streak on the paper left by my wet fingers.
“We don’t have time to stall, you two,” Erica hisses, already heading toward another door on the left wall; this one is in plain sight. “What’s up?”
A deep shudder runs through my core. “If Marcus is involved in this case, then he must also have been involved in the Etruscan case. Even if Halliburton was the contact point for the kids who stole Vanth’s key, Marcus would have known what their primary objective looked like.”
“Why is that important right now?” Ella murmurs in my ear. “We really can’t stall anymore.”
“I’m sorry. I know. I just realized…” Dread settles in my gut. “I had the key, in my hand, that night at Holden Park. And Marcus ran right by me when he arrived to fight Charun. He…Would he have…?”
Erica answers my unspoken question. “He would have killed you. If he’s willing to steal souls, sacrifice fellow practitioners, and risk his own life to summon Ammit—then yes, Cal, he would have killed you that night, if he had seen that key in your hand.”
“Ah. I see. Guess I was lucky, huh?” I stare at the drawing in the middle of that board of tragedy.
Then I reach out and rip it free, crumpling up all that remains of that godforsaken key.
Without another word, I lumber toward the second door, check with Erica—who shakes her head; no wards—raise my gun, turn the knob ever so gently, and kick the damn thing open as hard as I can without shattering every bone in my leg.
On the other side of the second door is a blindingly bright room. Hundreds of candles are arranged on the floor in intricate patterns, like tessellations, casting a powerful orange glare. Along the far wall are the remaining soul clocks, stacked the same way they were in Slate’s secret basement room. Now, however, they glow deep blue, even brighter than the candles, all the hour hands striking twelve, the minute hands spinning around and around.
And in the center of this colorful chaos, his shoes on the outer rim of a massive summoning circle drawn in blood, stands Allen Marcus. Head bowed. Eyes closed. Hands pressed together like he’s praying.
The moment I step into the room, Erica and Ella on my heels, Marcus’ head snaps up, eyes wide, pupils lit by the fires of hell themselves. He shouts a rapid incantation in a guttural language, which I realize might be rushed Egyptian. His shoulders tighten harder with each syllable, lips straining like the words are heavy weights on his tongue. Sweat pours down his face from the magical exertion of trying to pull an ancient beast from its slumber. The man looks ready to unravel at the seams—and it strikes me, standing there in awe and terror, as the blur of Erica blows past me into the room, and Ella fires the first shot at Marcus, center mass…
Of course, summoning Ammit was never meant to be done by a single person.
Whoever or whatever this enemy is, they are so fearsome, so powerful, so dangerous, that Allen Marcus is willing to stop the beat of his own heart to bring this summoning to fruition.
And he does too.
Erica almost makes it. Fifty-odd candles fly into the air as she shears through the army of flickering lights on her warpath toward Marcus. Fists raised, crackling with green energy. Fury carved into her face.
Ella’s bullets soar past her, heading straight for Marcus’ chest, but the wizard is too prepared to be put down by a handgun. The bullets ding off an invisible magic shield and ricochet into the cinderblock walls.
Marcus flinches, trying to maintain concentration, his words growing faster and louder and more demanding. Until the instant when Erica, more a haze of a human being than a physical form, because she’s moving so, so fast, reaches the edge of the summoning circle.
In that moment, the last syllable of the summoning incantation rolls off Marcus’ tongue.
A crack like thunder breaks the air. Erica is flung backward by a powerful shockwave that knocks Ella and I off our feet. The witch careens into one of the clock stacks, toppling it, soul clocks shattering into splinters when they hit the floor.
But Erica doesn’t go down. She rolls feet over head and springs back into a fighting position. Her entire form is encapsulated by her green aura. She huffs out an angry breath—and all the candles in the room are snuffed out at once, plunging the lab into an inky blue brilliance.
“Too late, Milburn!” calls Marcus over the growing roar from the circle. His voice isn’t menacing. Only tired. “When you arrive in your afterlife, my dear, you might want to think long and hard about the consequences of aiding and abetting great nuisances like DSI.”
“Nuisances?” Erica mutters darkly. “Is that all you think they are?”
“Honestly, woman,” he nearly spits, watching Erica as she shakes off the sting from the weeping cuts on her face and neck. “I would never have guessed you were this damn stupid if I hadn’t seen you making a fool of yourself outside, fighting right alongside those pathetic excuses for—”
“Hey!” I heave my aching body onto my feet again in a swift move I hope looks painless and easy. (It’s not.) “I don’t appreciate it when douchebags pretend I’m not in the room while they denigrate me. You want to insult me, bitch, then look me in the eye and spew your shit.” I slowly raise my gun, aiming at the space between his eyes. “Or shut the fuck up, pretend your balls haven’t shrunk into prunes, and fight me.”
Marcus’ face scrunches up like he ate something bitter, and he throws his gaze across the room to pick me out from the shadows near the door. “You want to die first, Crow? I’ll happily oblige.”
Ella staggers up next to me and whispers, “A little overboard there, Cal.”
“A little distraction too.” I smirk.
Between blinks, Erica vanishes from the overturned clock stack and reappears less than a foot behind Marcus, body wound up for a vicious kick. Marcus, who’d taken his eyes off Erica for the first time since she entered the room, reacts a half-second too slow. He dives to the left as Erica’s foot breaks his magic shield like it’s tissue paper. She nicks his right arm, just barely, with the heel of her boot…
…and what would’ve been a bruise if the kick had been mine morphs into the equivalent of a grenade exploding next t
o Marcus’ tender flesh.
His coat sleeve is shredded. His flesh peels off his muscles, his muscles off his bones. Veins burst. Blood spurts. The wizard wheels away, unbalanced, a shriek on his lips as he trips over a candle and falls on his ass with a fleshy thump and the snap of a prominent bone.
Erica staggers to a halt near the edge of the circle, then spins around and storms toward the fallen wizard. Marcus clutches his bloody arm, a red stain pooling beneath him alarmingly fast, and tries to scramble away from his impending doom. But there’s nowhere for him to go. Ella and I have the exit blocked. All he can do is lean against the wall and sneer through his graying beard.
“As I said, Milburn”—he nods at the circle—“you missed your chance to stop me. Kill me if you want, but all the orders were written into the circle or the incantation. Ammit will rise from the Eververse and destroy our enemies, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
Erica looms over Marcus now, her face painted with hellish blue highlights. “Why is it, Marcus, that you keep speaking like we’re embroiled in some kind of war?” Her fists clench at her side, the green magic energy sizzling so loud it overtakes the growl from the magic circle. “Who is this enemy, and what have they done to us to deserve such vicious retaliation, to the point where you, of all people, would throw away your career, your reputation, your life? Huh, Marcus?” Her voice rises scarily close to a scream. “What the fuck is going on, you bastard? How could you do this? Trap these people”—she points to the clocks—“in such a heinous way? Conspire with the Wolves? Drag the normals into this? What is wrong with you?”
Marcus is trembling now. Not from fear. The pool of blood is growing too wide. Erica nearly ripped his arm off. He’s bleeding to death.
Even so, his voice is steady when he replies:
“Milburn, my dear, we are at war. Or, at least, we will be soon. What we’ve feared for so many years will finally come to pass. Fire and brimstone will rain down upon us, practitioner blood will paint the streets, and all that’s left of your so-called normals will be the shadows of their souls scorched black into their bedroom walls.
Shade Chaser (City of Crows 2) Page 24
