By a stroke of luck, it turns out Mahoney defers to the mayor a lot more readily than he does DSI. All the shifter has to do is beckon for Mahoney to join his entourage when he and the rest of the targets mosey on by the gaggle of PD higher-ups gathered around a skinny potted tree. Mahoney excuses himself and shakes a few hands, then scuttles off to join the tail end of the fake mayor’s group as they break away from the bulk of the crowd and head for the stairs leading to the second floor.
Lassiter and I trail them at a reasonable distance, pretending we’re not overly concerned about their safety. We don’t want to tip off the targets that they’re in danger too early, or they might resist entering Lucian’s designated safe room, seeing as a strike team made up of European vampires, a detective on desk duty, and a young DSI agent on extended leave will not exactly inspire confidence or trust in the average person. I mean, hell, if I didn’t already know the intimate details of what’s going on, there is no way I would believe Lucian’s spiel about the upcoming assassination attempts without a great deal of cajoling. And we don’t have time to waste on such in-depth explanations.
The com in my ear clicks three times. A warning from Annette.
The Knights are here.
Lassiter and I exchange glances as we plod up the stairs behind the group, and I sweep my gaze over the atrium. In the south corner of the room, slinking out of a side hall that leads to the museum’s gift shop, are the two goons from the garage who failed to catch up to Foley. Their boss Norris might be a cooling corpse in that alley dumpster, but the Knights aren’t going to waste any resources tonight. They’ve come here in force. Every available mook is now somewhere in the building, ready to pounce, or hanging around just outside the museum, to stop and butcher any targets who attempt to flee.
The big unknown here is the starting points of Lizzie and the four other noble Knights. The major threats. Lucian wasn’t able to glean any details about the exact positioning of each Knight agent; he only learned where and how they were going to break in, and when and how they were planning to murder the political targets. So we could feasibly come across some of the Knights during our trip to the safe room. We have to be vigilant.
Once at the top of the stairs, the fake mayor leads the group into the east wing. We march about a hundred feet down the main corridor, passing enormous paintings and irregularly spaced statues on pedestals, before breaking off to the left and heading toward a narrower hall blocked by another rope barrier, this one sporting a sign that says EMPLOYEES ONLY. The shifter simply moves the rope barrier out of his path and motions for everyone to continue on. At this point, Lassiter and I are side by side about ten paces behind Mahoney and Ribald. Lassiter’s keeping an eye on the group while I continuously check over my shoulder to see if we are being followed.
No moving shadows or out-of-place blurs catch my notice, but I’m not convinced. The opposite, in fact. With their keen sense of smell, hearing, and sight, there’s no way all the Knights failed to notice their targets leaving the atrium together. Somebody should be pursuing us by this point, if only for reconnaissance. But even with my magic sense cranked up to its highest setting, a dull throb in my forehead threatening a migraine as I push it too hard, trying to peel off the outer layer of any nearby veils, I find absolutely no threats in our vicinity. The Knights, for whatever reason, aren’t taking the bait.
I’m missing something, I think, and it’s about to bite me in the ass.
Uneasy, I creep closer to the back of the group. Lassiter mimics me and tips his chin up to silently ask me what’s wrong. I move in a slow circle, stepping lightly so no one in the group will catch on to my discomfort, and scrutinize every inch of this largely unadorned hall with off-white walls and well-disguised doors. When none of those doors fly open, when no one ambushes us, when we don’t die in a flurry of knives and powerful, swiping hands, I switch my attention to the actual people in the group.
The shifter is still stoically leading the group toward the conference room, now visible at the very end of the hall. The police commissioner is walking with his arms crossed, a pinched expression on his face, troubled by the unknown nature of this impromptu meeting. The senator looks more annoyed than anything else, giving off the sense she had more important things to do, like make ridiculous bids on pieces of art that everyone only pretends to understand. The attorney general looks perturbed, hunched in on himself, as if he feels guilty about something; but I can tell from the pout under his mustache that he’s not guilty about anything abnormal. He probably lost a case recently and thinks the mayor wants to castigate him. And finally, the deputy mayor is still nonchalantly chowing down on her snack. She has one strawberry left. As I watch, she tosses it into her mouth with a sort of unconcerned ease that no one else in this group is demonstrating right now.
Lucretia Calhoun is the only member of the group, excluding the fake mayor, who is completely calm and collected. Which is odd because Deputy Mayor Calhoun is always portrayed by the media as flighty, easily startled, and constantly stressed. Strange how she seems a worse actor playing herself than the shapeshifter pretending to be Bur…
Oh, fuck. We’ve been had.
I shove my left hand inside my jacket and yank my handgun from its holster.
A fraction of a second too late.
In the time it takes me to aim the gun at the fake Calhoun, she distracts Mahoney—the only target likely to be carrying a gun—by throwing her plastic plate at his face, then wheels around and lunges for the fake mayor. The fake mayor, moving faster than any human being, sidesteps the attack but slams into the wall due to the narrowness of this hallway; which is why the fake Calhoun waited this long to make her move. His elbow punches right through the drywall as he tries to reel his arm back to strike out at the fake Calhoun, slowing him just enough to allow her to ram a foot into his gut. The blow propels the fake Burbank through the wall, into a darkened room, and debris from the wall blasts out into the air.
One large piece of rubble strikes Senator Ribald in the abdomen, and she falls to her knees with a cry of pain as blood gushes out from the deep laceration and soaks into her pale blue dress. Pillsbury, gasping, drops to his knees and tucks his hands under Ribald’s arms, trying to drag her backward as the fake Calhoun turns on the rest of the group.
All of that happens in the span of five seconds, and I can’t get off a shot during any of it because there are too many moving people between me and the fake Calhoun. They knew Lucian would make a play, I realize with a jolt of terror. After he survived the massacre, they knew he’d try to take them down, so they came up with a contingency plan. They killed and replaced the deputy mayor before the gala!
“Get down!” I shout at the scared officials, causing Pillsbury and Ribald to cover their heads and cower in fear. Mahoney, who stumbled to the side when the plate was thrown at his head, doesn’t budge. He gawks at the hole in the wall, believing he just watched Mayor Burbank die, and slowly tracks his gaze across the hall to the shifter, whose eerie, gleaming violet eyes are now on full display. Mahoney stammers out a broken string of curses, realizing he’s unwittingly walked right into a supernatural bitch fight—dude knows about the supernatural, and he hates it—and reaches for the gun hidden under his suit jacket. The fake Calhoun narrows her eyes and winds up her muscles to make a deadly dive for Mahoney.
Lassiter blows past me, swaying back and forth as his balance issues flare, and manages to ram into Mahoney’s side, knocking them both into the wall…and giving me a clear line of sight to the shifter.
I aim at center mass and empty the magazine.
Half the bullets go wide thanks to my weak right hand, but the rest puncture the shifter’s chest and abdomen, riveting her organs. She falls to her knees with a grunt and grabs at the weeping holes in her flesh, smearing blood across her hands and dress sleeves. Almost immediately, her body begins to warp, skin bubbling and jerking in odd directions, bones cracking loudly, colors changing in the blink of an eye.
Sha
peshifters can heal themselves by swapping forms, which means as soon as this shifter finishes putting on her new face, she’ll be good as new and I’ll be a schmuck with no bullets in my gun facing down a powerful supernatural creature. And I can’t use the shotgun in such close quarters because the spray might injure a bystander. Cursing, I reach into my suit jacket again, hunting for the spare ammo tucked into an extra pouch on my shoulder holster.
I find it, but I struggle to load the new magazine into my gun, the unpracticed fingers of my left hand fumbling the release switch, and my right hand too slow to respond when I go to shove the new magazine into place. By the time I’m locked and loaded, the shifter is back on her feet, wearing the visage of a broad-shouldered Asian woman who could bench press me with ease. She flexes her muscles, ripping the sleeves of her now ill-fitting dress, and makes to charge me just as I raise my gun to fire again.
The fake mayor barrels out of the hole in the wall and broadsides the other shifter. She crashes into the opposite wall, which has no room behind it and is thus significantly thicker. Even so, the force of the impact leaves a crater in the wall, and the shifter woman slumps to the floor.
The fake mayor staggers backward and uses the edge of the hole in the wall to steady himself. He’s still wearing Burbank’s face, but his clothes are now torn, like they too were poorly fitted for a second. He must’ve changed forms twice in a row, going back to Burbank the second time to maintain the illusion that he’s the mayor in case he needs to lead any Knights astray in the near future.
Breathing heavily, the fake mayor works the kinks out of his muscles, which would’ve been pulverized by his attack on the other shifter were he a human being. He then steps closer to the downed shifter, who’s trying to get her bearings. She knocked her head against the wall and is now struggling to remain conscious. Can’t shapeshift if you’re dizzy and confused, I guess.
“This one’s known for taking on nasty contracts,” the fake mayor says, an edge to his voice that doesn’t quite match Burbank’s usual lilt. “I can almost smell the filth of her deeds steaming off her skin.”
The other shifter lifts her head and glares at the fake mayor. “You’re one to talk, you mangy dog. After what you pulled in Vietnam and Korea? And what about Afghanistan? You call that a clean deal?”
“We’re not here to talk about me,” the fake mayor replies, an undercurrent of warning in his tone. “Where are the Knights? And what’s the ploy here? Is it just you, or are there others waiting in the wings?”
“Like I’m going to tell you that,” she spits. “I’d rather have my spine ripped out than break my contract terms and surrender to you. Rip my head off and get it over with, you bastard.”
I glance back and forth between them, wondering how on earth they can recognize each other when wearing the faces of strangers. But that’s a question for another time. “We can’t stay here any longer,” I say to the fake mayor. “We need to get to the safe room before the Knights realize we overcame their shifter pawn and converge on us. We’re too exposed here. The hall’s too narrow. This isn’t a place we can win a fight with creatures that can move faster than us.” Faster than me, I should say.
The fake mayor nods. “You’re right. Let’s get this over with.” He reaches out to grab the other shifter’s neck. “I can always check later to see what—”
The other shifter, having subtly stuck her hand inside her dress pocket when we were speaking, yanks out a syringe and jams it into the fake mayor’s leg, depressing the plunger before he can react. He jerks back and rips the syringe from his leg, but even before he crushes the piece of plastic in his powerful grip, his reflexes have become noticeably slower. He staggers to the right and leans against the wall. The color drains from his face. He begins to shake uncontrollably, until he loses muscle tension and sinks to his knees.
“What the hell was that?” I shout at the other shifter.
“The perfect poison concoction to disable a shifter.” She grins in utter glee and plucks something else from her pocket. A GPS transmitter. “He’ll be out of the game for hours now. And my employers don’t need hours. They need about ten minutes—if that.”
A tumultuous crash sounds off down the hall…in front of me, not behind. Somewhere behind the door at the end of the hall. Where our safe room is supposed to be. And with a spike of absolute terror nearly ripping my spine in two, I come to understand how fully Lizzie Banks has outfoxed us.
She didn’t just predict that Lucian would attempt to stop the assassinations. She predicted that his plan to do so would necessarily involve her brother, but that he would still go out of his way to protect Foley during the operation. So she used a shifter playing Calhoun to lead her directly to the safe room where Lucian hid Foley, knowing that Lucian would want to gather everyone who needed protecting in one location so as to not risk spreading his small strike team over too large an area when the Knights showed up for the fight.
The sheer genius of that strategy combined with the shock of the revelation that Foley is now being attacked and may already be dead knocks me off kilter, and I accidentally lower my gun. The enemy shifter springs up with her one good leg, the other limply dangling behind her, and slashes at my throat with a sharp piece of debris she snatched off the floor. I break myself out of my stupor, but not quickly enough to avoid the attack. She’s too close. I’m too slow. Her makeshift weapon swings toward my neck—
A bullet eats into her forehead and blows out the back of her skull.
She topples at my feet, and doesn’t get back up. As I watch in stunned silence, the Asian façade slowly dissolves, skin melting away into some clear, viscous fluid, eyes disintegrating into purple muck, organs liquefying into pink meaty piles that resemble ground beef, bones remaining intact but changing from white to a silvery shade that almost seems to hint at a metallic nature. In ten seconds, there’s nothing left of the shapeshifter but a pile of literal goo and strange bones gleaming brightly under the white ceiling lights.
Holy shit. The last time a shifter died in my vicinity—when Riker killed the one who pretended to be Cooper—the body didn’t decompose this way until after it arrived at the morgue. (Natalie Schultz had a fun time with that, I heard.) Whoever shot this shifter must have hit the brain in the exact spot that triggers the transformation process, and because it had no directions for how to change shape, this is the result. Oh, dear god. That’s disgusting.
Slowly, I crane my neck to peer over my shoulder.
Commissioner Mahoney stands in the middle of the hall, smoking gun outstretched, face red as a beet, mouth struggling to hide the fact he’s about to retch. “Son,” he says in a low tone, pointedly staring at me so he won’t have to glimpse the freaky corpse on the floor, “would you mind telling me where the hell the real Mayor Burbank is?”
I drop my gun to my side, suddenly bone tired. “Safe. He’s safe. But the rest of you are not.”
Mahoney’s eyes widen, and he looks to Pillsbury and the bleeding Ribald. “We’re targets? For assassination?”
“Yes, sir,” answers Lassiter, standing behind him. “We were trying to lead you to a safe place.”
“Why didn’t you inform me this was happening?” he snaps.
“Because,” I say, “every major government office in this city is currently infested with vampire spies.”
Mahoney’s mouth goes slack. “You’re fucking kidding.”
“I sincerely wish I was.”
Another loud crash echoes down the hallway, and dread almost chokes me.
Gingerly stepping over the weird shifter corpse, I walk up to the fake mayor, whose skin is a startling shade of white. He’s sweating heavily, teeth clenched, hands clutching his arms, eyes screwed shut in pain. “Are you all right?” I murmur.
“I-I will be,” he stammers. “This shit hurts, but it’s not fatal. My body can process the poison over the course of three or four hours. I’ll recover. But not in time to help you any further. You need to go on without me. I’l
l drag myself to a safe spot and hunker down, leave the building the first chance I get, wearing an inconspicuous face.” He points in the direction of the safe room door, sitting serenely at the end of the hall as if nothing devastating is happening beyond it. “Go. Save the world, Crow.”
“Lassiter”—I face the conference room door, gun clutched in a hand that can barely aim it, lungs burning from inhaled debris, vain hopes and prayers shrieking on repeat in my head, begging for a world in which Foley is not yet dead and House Tepes is not yet lost and the Knights aren’t that much closer to winning their war—“I need to go to the conference room. Foley’s in danger.”
I look to the hole in the wall, at the dim room behind it, and see that there’s a door on the other side, which, going by my memory of the main corridor’s layout, must lead to another side hall. “Take Mahoney and the others.” I step forward once. “Go through to the next hall.” I point at the hole in the wall as I take a second step. “Find a new safe room. Make no sound at all. As long as they can’t find you, they can’t kill you.”
“Kinsey,” Lassiter says grimly, “if you walk into the middle of a vampire brawl, you’re going to…”
“I know.” I don’t turn around. “But that’s my job, remember? I’m a Kook. This is what we do. Protect the innocent. Play the hero. Save the world. And die in the process.”
Lassiter goes to say something else, to try and convince me to stay with the group, hide away in a hole until all the fighting is over, until a new, darker dawn breaks and I have to face a world I couldn’t protect. So I take off running for the safe room before he speaks, refuse to listen when he yells after me, focus all my attention, all my emotion, the growing hatred for the Knights, my worry for Foley’s safety, my fears for the future, into my futile, lone charge toward a lethal battle I can’t possibly emerge from victorious.
Day Killer (City of Crows Book 5) Page 15
