Shade Chaser (City of Crows 2)

by Clara Coulson

  Tears gather in my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. I won’t give Ammit the satisfaction of watching me die in fear.

  The sharp teeth come into view as her mouth surrounds my skull, the smell of decay enveloping my face.

  This is it. This is really it. Where I die. How I die.

  In this goddamn basement, casually butchered by an Egyptian death monster.

  God, everyone, I’m so, so sorry. I couldn’t—

  Blinding red light bursts into brilliance on the first-floor landing, and someone lunges down the stairs. A thin sword flickers across my field of vision and eats into Ammit’s lion leg, slicing clean through the thick muscle. The beast recoils with a scream so loud I black out for a few seconds, and when I come to again, ears ringing, a man in a DSI coat is standing between me and Ammit. In his right hand is a sword shrouded in a red aura that appears to be shaped like a much bigger sword. A phantom sword. In his left hand is the scabbard for the sword, and that too has an aura, this one in the form of a shield.

  What I’m seeing doesn’t register until the man swings the sword again, nailing Ammit in the face. The blade makes contact at the edge of the aura, not the actual metal, and lobs off the end of her snout with laser-like precision. The dismembered flesh and bone lands in a squishy, gory heap next to one of the moldy boxes.

  Ammit shrieks again and retreats to the corner of the room, shaking her head as blood cascades down her jaw and neck, pouring onto the floor.

  The DSI man wheels around to face me, sheathing the sword in one fluid motion. The red aura dissipates as soon as the hilt of the sword touches the top of the scabbard, and the weapon is reduced to a recognizable object: a cane.

  Nick Riker stands above me, face flushed, breathing hard. “Cal,” he murmurs in shock. “My god, are you okay?”

  Holy crap, I think in my pain-induced haze, my captain has an enchanted fucking cane sword!

  I try to make a coherent response, but all that emerges from my bleeding mouth is a gurgle. My captain sweeps me up with a powerful arm and settles me gently over his shoulder. Riker’s not the largest man in the world, but he’s bigger and broader than me, and he has the strength to show for it. Even with his injured leg, he manages to carry me up the stairs swiftly enough to escape from Ammit before she attacks again.

  We reach the entry hall, and Riker strides out the open door, across the front porch, down the steps, and into the freezing night.

  “Cal,” Riker gasps out, a hint of pain in his voice, “what happened to Ella? To Erica?”

  I can’t bring myself to say I think they’re dead. “Trapped,” I manage to slur out. “Ceiling collapsed. Have to rescue them.”

  Riker stiffens. Even without seeing his face, I know that visions of Norman Bishop’s death flicker through his haunted eyes. “Right. We’ll go back to save them as soon as we get this monster contained.”

  “Ella said we n-need m-more ICM support.” Blood drips out of my mouth and streaks across my overturned face as I speak. “Need to hurry. Powerful. Auxiliaries here yet?”

  Riker reaches the sidewalk and takes a sharp turn in the direction where the SUV is parked. “The auxiliaries are two minutes out. We can fall back the second they arrive and get the wounded, including you, to the office. I’ll stay here and coordinate the containment effort for this creature. I’m loath to call in the ICM at this point, but I don’t see what other choice we have. We need to send this thing back where it belongs.”

  A slinking shadow near the front door of the house catches my eye.

  “Captain, she’s coming,” I say. “You have to hurry.”

  Riker glances over his shoulder as Ammit’s hulking form lumbers through the open door and out onto the porch. “Damn, this thing doesn’t give up, does it?”

  “Erica blasted it in the side, and it s-shrugged the blow off in seconds.” I’m beginning to feel lightheaded, blood running into my eyes. “Strong. T-Too strong, Captain. For you. Even with the s-sword. Be c-careful.”

  “Understood, Cal. I’ll—”

  “Riker!” The scream slips off my tongue and is swallowed by the wind.

  Ammit takes a running leap off the front steps, shattering the wood underneath her weight. She soars ten, fifteen, twenty feet into the air, covering the whole distance across the yard and to the sidewalk. Riker spots her coming, but there’s no time for evasive action. He spins around and throws me—just like Ella did—and I glide through the haze before I thump to a stop in a deep snowdrift ten feet away. I land face up, which gives me the full horrifying view of Ammit tackling my captain to the ground.

  Riker manages to pull his cane sword again, and the red aura flares up as Ammit’s claws swipe at his face. He blocks the deadly blows with the magic shield, but there’s nothing he can do to stop the creature’s bulk from colliding with his chest and sending him sprawling back into the dense snow cover. Ammit is heavier than a werewolf, and Riker sinks, slowly, surely, into the white, his arms straining to hold the sword and shield up against the monster’s weight.

  I try to move, but my body doesn’t respond. I’m out of energy.

  Fuck, I have to get up! I have to save him.

  My fingers finally twitch at my insistence, but my legs don’t budge, and my torso only replies with a deep, aching shudder from chest to abdomen.

  Riker groans in pain as Ammit reels up and slams her paws against the shield, driving him deeper into the snow.

  Come on, Cal. Do something. Anything.

  My eyes flick left and right, searching for something I can use to distract Ammit. I find a gun, the grip sticking out of the snow. One of my teammates must have dropped it during the fight with the wizards earlier. It’s roughly two feet away from me. I can reach it. I must reach it.

  I focus on moving my right arm only, inching it toward the gun, until my fingers brush the grip. Almost there.

  Riker screams, and I yank my gaze back to my captain to see Ammit stomping on his injured leg with her hippo foot.

  That bitch.

  My hand wraps around the grip, and I force my elbow to bend inward, lifting the gun into the air. A little more. Just a little more, and I can—

  A shot rings out. And another. And another.

  Three bullets smack into Ammit’s damaged face. One takes out an eye. The second, a chunk of her jaw. The third shears the flesh off the side of her head, ripping out six teeth with it.

  Stunned, Ammit staggers back, and Riker bolts up the instant her weight shifts off his chest. His illuminated sword arcs through the white haze and bites into Ammit’s right front leg, cleaving the lion paw off at the joint. The creature, unbalanced, stumbles away into the front yard of the house, an agonized wail breaking through the shrill shriek of the wind.

  When Ammit collapses, I turn my head to see who on earth landed those shots against the beast.

  And holy hell…

  It was Cooper.

  Crouched on one knee, he peers out from behind the front grill of Erica’s car, the gun Ella passed him earlier clutched in his shaking hands. His face is warped in terror, and he checks Riker’s hunched, hurting body three times, like he’s afraid he hit my captain by mistake. But his shots were flawless, and as his attention slips past Riker and lands on the struggling Ammit, he realizes this too. He shot true.

  He lowers the gun and lets out a halting sigh. Then he looks to me.

  Too shocked by his sharpshooting to come up with a coherent response, I give him a thumbs-up and a goofy smile that must look awful on my blood-covered face. (To be fair, though, the constipated smile Cooper returns isn’t much better.)

  Riker, face twisted in agony, clears his head enough to find his savior, and he too is shocked to see Cooper. His eyebrows arch, then relax. Through the pain, he manages to cast a grateful expression, which catches Cooper off guard. The archivist hangs his head in embarrassment, cheeks turning pink.

  If I wasn’t afraid my ribcage would collapse, I’d laugh right now. What a twist—

  A
mmit roars.

  We all turn a second too late.

  The creature blows past Riker in a rage, running on three legs, and my captain with his bum knee can’t catch up in time to stop Ammit from charging at Erica’s car. At Cooper Lee. The archivist blanches and swings the gun up again, but his response isn’t fast enough. Ammit rams the car, and the car rams Cooper, and Cooper goes flying off into the snow with a panicked screech spilling out of his throat. The gun is torn from his grasp and disappears into a drift.

  Ammit climbs over the hood of Erica’s car, crushing the aluminum, and sets her sights on the flailing archivist.

  Riker is too far away.

  I’m too incapacitated.

  Cooper is too scared.

  Ammit growls and—

  A faint rumble shakes the earth. Then the ground beneath us violently quakes, throwing Ammit off the hood.

  The tremor sets off car alarms throughout the neighborhood. Windows crack. Trashcans overturn. Snow sails off tall trees, beating the ground below.

  The Primrose house is at the epicenter of it all, the entire structure trembling wildly. The yard in front of the porch sinks in, like something is digging out the soil beneath it. And then…

  I don’t know how to adequately describe what happens next.

  I’m pretty sure I witness an act of God.

  The yard explodes, slinging hundreds of pounds of dirt, snow, bushes, trees, and underground piping into the air. Leaving a fifteen-foot-wide hole in the ground so deep there is only darkness beneath the surface. As the damp earth and debris rain onto the street, buffeted downwind, a dirty, bloody form scales the rise of the hole and emerges from what used to be the summoning lab beneath the house.

  Erica the witch, injured but still kicking, drags herself onto the sidewalk, an unconscious Ella Dean in one arm. And in the other…is Allen Marcus’ soul.

  I don’t know how she captured his shade, and quite frankly, I don’t want to know. Because the second Erica steps into the street, she lets out a mighty, furious yell, and a pulse of power ripples through the air. Half the snow on the street evaporates instantly, revealing the asphalt beneath. Erica stomps her right foot on the ground, and a hundred streams of green lash out from her boot toward Ammit. The streaks encircle the beast, again and again, but don’t touch her, and I eventually realize they’re scorching deliberate marks into the asphalt.

  It’s a summoning circle.

  Or, more accurately, a banishment circle.

  Somehow, in the mere minutes we were in that basement confronting Marcus, Erica Milburn managed to memorize the exact layout of the summoning circle that must’ve taken hours for Marcus to paint correctly. Erica is smarter than him—much smarter.

  She holds out her hand, covered in blood, and the green streaks zip by, sweeping up droplets that they infuse into the burnt symbols on the street. In thirty seconds, maybe less, a fully formed banishment circle surrounds Ammit the Devourer.

  The creature takes a moment too long to recognize what’s happening, and when she tries to flee the circle, Erica shouts a word in that same garbled language Marcus used during the summoning. A ring of green shoots up from the outer boundary of the circle, sealing Ammit inside. The beast rams the shield, over and over, but it doesn’t budge. Ammit can do nothing but pace back and forth until Erica acts.

  Erica slowly rests Ella’s unconscious body on the ground and then pushes Marcus’ soul toward the circle. Marcus, whose translucent form is flailing about, clearly knows what’s going on, but he’s a shade now. He might retain some of his power as a wizard in his death, but he can’t stand up to the strength of a living witch like Erica. He can only tremble in fear as he passes through the boundary of the circle and is drawn forcefully down into a small, scorched square before the shadow of the prowling Ammit. The creature eyes him in distaste, spitting blood on the ground at his feet.

  With no hesitation, words of power spill off Erica’s lips, a perfect cadence. Many of the same words Marcus spoke earlier are laced into her spell, but it’s not the same incantation. Because it has the opposite intent. As she rolls over the spell she must have improvised, on the spot, while lying under tons of debris from the collapsed basement, she doesn’t stumble over a single syllable.

  Her inflection rises, and with it, all the lines and symbols of the banishment circle begin to glow, brighter and brighter. Her words take on more fervor, more force, and Ammit is suddenly rooted to the spot, unable to move an inch.

  In seconds, all the unstoppable power of Ammit the Devourer is reduced to an angry glare from one black crocodile eye and the weeping socket where the second eye used to be.

  Erica shouts the last sentence of the banishment spell.

  Ammit bows her head—then lurches forward and eats Allen Marcus’ soul so fast I almost miss it. The shade disappears down Ammit’s throat, just like all those poor souls from the clocks, and Ammit’s bloody lower jaw snaps shut with finality, having consumed the last sacrifice: the soul of its master on Earth.

  That’s the end of Allen Marcus.

  And also the end of Ammit’s rampage.

  The gaping portal in the ground opens up once more, directly beneath Ammit. She falls. My last glimpse of her is that one, bitter eye, glowering at the mortal realm in absolute revulsion, as she’s cast back into the solemn halls of Duat. Hopefully once and for all.

  The portal closes. The circle deactivates with a puff of smoke. Erica collapses to her knees.

  Silence envelops Primrose Street. Save for the wind. And the faintest vibrations of an army of DSI vehicles marching through the snow toward a battle that has already ended.

  We won, I think, my body going limp at last. By the skin of our teeth, we won.

  (Right?)

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I don’t quite pass out on the snow in the middle of Primrose Avenue. My vision fades to black a few times, always blurring back into color before I fall asleep. My arms and legs keep on twitching but stubbornly refuse to move at my command. My lungs continue chugging air in and out, but they aren’t happy about it, and they show their displeasure with sharp, stabbing pains across my chest. My mind attempts to put two and two together, to piece the details of this case into one coherent narrative, but I come up with seventeen instead of four as the answer, and I believe it’s time to call it quits on “critical thinking” for now.

  In this aching, half-awake state, I idly watch and listen to the flurry of activity around me. Situated on a shallow bank, I spy a panting, exhausted Erica hobble up to Ella’s unmoving body. Despite her obvious fatigue and injuries—she must’ve broken something when Ammit threw her into the basement wall, and she’s bleeding from more places than I can count—she calls up another surge of magic energy and bends over the injured detective. I don’t know how proficient she is at healing spells, but Ella must be hurt enough to justify her trying regardless.

  Riker, to my horror, flips himself over onto his stomach and literally crawls toward the fallen Ella, his injured leg hardly moving, a deadweight. He drags himself to the woman who’s been at his side, his greatest support, for more than a decade, bites his tongue to hide a scream of agony caused by folding his bad knee when he sits up, and gently, cautiously takes Ella’s limp hand. Ella doesn’t respond, but I can see her abdomen rising and falling in a steady rhythm. She’s not dead. Yet.

  Less than a minute after Riker reaches Ella, the DSI auxiliaries arrive. Seventeen SUVs park behind ours, and a horde of black-clad agents spill out, armed and ready. They secure the area in an orderly fashion, searching for any threats that have yet to be neutralized. When they find no enemies remaining, they switch gears and head our way, medics at the lead.

  A few of them peel off to attend to Cooper, who’s still struggling to dig himself out of the snow. They help him up, and he spits out dirty ice, gasping for air. There’s a large, half-formed bruise on his cheek, his lower lip is busted and bleeding, and the arm that took the blow from the car is obviously dislocated at t
he shoulder, stuck in an unnatural position. But beyond those relatively minor injuries, Cooper is fine. The knot in my stomach untangles itself as Cooper yelps out, “Ow!” when the first medic touches his shoulder to examine the damage.

  God, he was lucky Erica swooped in to save the day when she did.

  We all were.

  I’ll have to make this up to her later, for all the shit she went through for us tonight.

  I can’t get another thought in before I, too, am surrounded by attentive medics and other auxiliaries helping out. They ask me a few standard questions regarding my body’s ability to function, and besides the one about still being alive, all my answers are no. Visibly frightened, the medics dig a foldable stretcher out of one of their bulky packs, and together, four agents slide me onto it with minimal pain on my part. (Minimal being I only scream once.) Then, two of the non-medics lift the stretcher carefully and take me away from the battlefield.

  We pass by my team’s SUV on our way to another empty one, and I glimpse several agents inside the vehicle, attending to the wounded Desmond and Amy, as well as the surviving plainclothes people. One medic shouts, “Clear for go,” to someone now sitting in the driver’s seat, and I figure they’re about to lock the vehicle down and head back to the office.

  The agents carrying my stretcher deposit me in the back of an SUV parked two blocks away from the Primrose house. To my surprise, I find Cooper beat me here. He’s huddled up in the corner, tears in his eyes as he cradles his newly relocated shoulder. One of the medics strapped a sling on his arm, but judging by the pained expression warping his face, he’ll need surgery to fix all the damage to his joint. Torn ligaments, probably.

  As my stretcher slides into the back of the vehicle, I peer up at Cooper’s battered face, now totally black and blue on the left side. With my voice that is moderately more intelligible than a zombie’s, I say, “Rough day, buddy?”

  Cooper jumps and stares down at me. He missed my entrance, lost in thought. “C-Cal? Oh, god. Are you okay? Do you have any serious injuries?”