I reach the conference room door, grab the knob with my ruined hand, and before I can even think to hesitate, I heave the door open.
Chapter Thirteen
The conference room is empty. And covered in blood.
Red is smeared across every surface, from the broken table sitting against the wall, cracked down the middle like someone was slammed onto it, to the overturned chairs, cushions stained beyond repair. There are holes in the wall the size of fists, deep gouges in the tile floor the size of feet, and there are scorch marks arcing across the ceiling tiles where someone’s spell went awry and nearly set the building on fire. Out of all the damage, however, the most glaring bit is the missing north wall. Said wall is actually sitting intact against another wall in an adjoining hallway, the edges almost perfectly straight, like a giant knife cut the wall right out of the room and the hand of some god tossed it aside.
But, despite all this destruction, there are no bodies. No severed limbs. No indication that anyone died here. Foley was ambushed in the room, without a doubt, but he might have made it out alive.
Adjusting my grip on the gun, I cautiously step out into the adjacent hall, looking both ways for signs of enemies or friends. At first, nothing sticks out to me. The hall is quiet and still. But when I drop my gaze to the floor, I spy distinctive red footprints half hidden beneath the scattered debris that has spilled out into the hall. The prints, which look to be about Foley’s size, lead to the right.
I turn that way and sharpen my magic sense. A dissipating fog, partially green, partially yellow, forms before me, denser in some areas, thinner in others, marking a hard-fought battle as it proceeded down the hall. I follow the auras and keep an eye on the structural damage, searching for clues about what sorts of spells Lizzie and Foley may have thrown at each other, how each of them may have been injured during Foley’s flight from the conference room. I also search for any other auras hiding under the more powerful green-yellow haze. The sign that someone else might’ve been fighting too. Either with Foley, or against him.
One extra ally or enemy could’ve made all the difference.
I had a single job in all this. Protect Foley. And that’s the one thing I haven’t done tonight.
I hope I still have the chance to redeem myself.
The hall continues in one direction for almost a hundred feet before it veers to the left. I stop to peek around the corner, but this hall is empty as well, though littered with broken tiles, cracks dotting the walls, a door to a small room kicked in, revealing a couple desks and dormant computers. The fight stormed through this hall, but it moved on long before I got here. Vampires move so fast when fighting, they can probably cover the whole diameter of Aurora in a single battle, dancing down the highways at speeds faster than any car, jumping over three-story buildings with ease, pulling the kind of parkour moves most enthusiasts would literally kill themselves trying to master. For all I know, Foley and Lizzie are miles away from here by now.
I should’ve stayed with Lassiter and the targets. At least I could’ve helped protect them in case some of the Knights…
Powerful magic surges down the hall and hits me like I stuck my finger in a socket. I stagger back into the wall and have to brace myself with my arm to stave off a bout of dizziness, my chest tingling as if it just took ten thousand volts. The aura that accompanies the burst is a confusing rainbow of colors—which I think indicates several people casting the same spell at once—and I have to squint through the brightness to double-check that the new magic is coming from the same direction where Foley and Lizzie headed a few minutes ago. It is.
Several more people have joined the fight. It’s not over yet.
I blink away the cloud of magic energy and hurry down the hall, gun clutched so tightly in my hand my fingers are starting to cramp. I have one shot to mount an effective sneak attack against whatever enemies I find at the end of these snaking hallways. I have to make that attack count. If Foley and Lucian are still alive, I have to help them stay that way. If Lizzie’s still kicking and plotting to rip off Mayor Burbank’s head, I have to do all in my power to stop her. Even if it gets me killed. Which it probably will.
Oh, well. Everybody’s got to die sometime.
The hall curves to the right, and as I make the sharp turn and pick up speed, racing along, past innumerable identical white doors cut into matching white walls, everything around me blending together like I’m running in circles, my ears catch a faint, high-pitched whine in the air. I flick on my magic sense again, confirming that the cloud of magic is thickening, that I’m drawing closer to its source. The cloud is also pulsing now, as if strong bass beats are pounding the air. The pulses seem to be originating from the hall on the left at the next intersection.
Turning my magic sense off to clear my vision, I slow down, collect myself, and even out my breathing; I don’t want to give myself away to anyone’s vampire senses. The whine grows louder as I approach the intersection, first like there’s an enormous mosquito right next to my eardrum, then, when I’m only a few steps from the hall of interest, like someone is blowing an air horn in my immediate vicinity. Wishing I had some ear plugs, I creep up to the intersection, flush against the wall, and carefully peek around the edge.
The hallway has become yet another battlefield. Doors ripped out of frames and scattered across the floor, some in splintered pieces. White tiles crumbled to dust, leaving gaping wounds in the ceiling. Floor tiles similarly shattered, and at least one place where someone’s foot went all the way through, like that guy who tried to stomp on me in my apartment. Scorch marks on the walls, a few sections actively smoking, drywall ready to catch fire any moment and burn the whole museum down.
There’s a vampire near my end of the hall. His broken body is hidden behind a door that has fallen over on its side but still sits partially in its frame. It’s hard to tell through the thick layer of blood on his face, but I’m sure it’s Martine. He and Paula must’ve left the atrium shortly after the target group and tried to take their planned route to the safe room, meeting up with Lucian and Annette on the way—only for the Knights to ambush the entire team before they arrived.
Martine lets out a faint, wet gasp, confirming he’s not dead yet. But he’s lost too much blood to heal. He’s lying in a massive crimson puddle slowly spreading across the floor, soaking tiny pieces of debris bright red, filling cracks in the flooring, invading the nearby room. His skin, underneath the blood smeared across his entire body, is a ghostly white, and his amber irises have faded to a dull orange, pupils dilated, expression distant and falling further away with each stunted breath he takes. He’s on his last leg. I could feed him some of my blood to accelerate his healing, but…
I can’t expose myself in the hallway without blowing any chance I have of saving the day.
Because, at the opposite end of the hall, are the noble Knights and what remains of Lucian’s team. Lucian himself, Annette, and Paula, are trapped in the middle of a circle of magic that must be the very binding spell they were planning to use on the Knights. Just like Lizzie outsmarted Lucian’s use of a shapeshifter, so did she outplay him with his entrapment plot.
This is why the Black Knights recruited her, I realize with a growing sense of dismay. Not for her raw magic strength. Not for her boundless psychopathy. But because she’s a tactical genius. Because she knows exactly how to subvert and defeat the best of the best the noble vampire houses have to offer.
Lizzie Banks stands at one point on the circle, her right hand extended and surrounded by an undulating yellow glow, visible even with my magic sense inactive. Her left hand is pointed at Foley, who’s outside the binding circle. He’s pinned to the wall by another spell, this one shaped into a large yellow slab, and it looks to be slowly crushing him. The wall behind his back is spider-webbing in all directions, with a deep depression at the center threatening to give way any second and send Foley careening into a room. Foley’s face is frozen in a pained grimace, and blood is splashed acr
oss his cheeks, chin, and neck, where someone tried to rip his throat out.
The three vampires in the circle aren’t severely injured, but Lucian is sneering at Lizzie in a way that promises he’ll crush her skull and scatter her brains across the floor if he gets the chance. His fists are clenched so hard his nails have broken the skin of his palms, and small beads of blood drip from his fingers onto the white, glowing symbols of the binding circle beneath his feet. Paula and Annette look similarly furious, the former having ripped off the sleeves of her dress to display well-muscled and heavily tattooed arms, fists raised like she wants to punch someone out, the latter giving one of the other noble Knights the sort of murderous expression that would cause any normal man to piss his pants.
But despite their combined rage, they can’t act. Not to help the struggling Foley. Not to save themselves from the Black Knights’ wrath. Lucian needed five people to cast the binding spell in order to pin down five to seven noble Knights. The Knights now have five people running that same spell on just three vampires. The odds that Lucian and his two cohorts can break a binding spell fueled by these noble practitioners, one of which is the infamously talented Lizzie Banks…There’s no way.
Which means, that to have the remotest chance of salvaging this operation…I’m going to have to come up with a plan to break the binding spell, free Lucian’s team, and save Foley Banks.
Well, who doesn’t love a good challenge?
I take stock of my resources. A handgun I can barely shoot straight. A shotgun only effective against vampires in close-range combat. A fancy suit, now stained and torn from the fight with the enemy shifter. A pair of expensive shoes I can hardly run in. An empty shoulder holster currently chafing my ribcage. A brain that is capable of some level of critical thinking. And the element of surprise. That’s it. Everything I have on my person.
But what about my environment? There’s an overturned door close by, plus one nearly dead vampire. There’s a ton of other rubble from the destructive battle, big chunks of drywall and broken boards and bent nails. There’s a sagging ceiling that could be brought down with the right amount of force, and a floor that could collapse if you apply a certain weight. I don’t see anything, however, that I can manipulate in my favor, other than searching Martine for an extra weapon. Thing is, vampires are more likely to carry blades than guns because of how fast they move. And a blade is useless for a normal human fighting a vampire.
Come on, Cal, I berate myself, there has to be something else. You beat McKinney at his own game. Escaped from the torture shack, outran him and his henchmen in the middle of a snowy patch of woods, killed him and one other and severely injured the remaining Wolf. And you did all that after three days of abuse. You weren’t even wearing shoes. If you can think your way out of that hopeless a situation, then you can think your way out of this one. You didn’t pass the DSI academy with flying colors for not…
DSI.
Holy crap.
I’m a moron.
I sink to my knees and crawl around the corner, using the propped-up door as cover. When I reach Martine, I pat each of his pockets—I silently apologize for violating his person while he’s in the process of dying—until I find a cheap burner phone tucked into a hidden pocket in his suit jacket. Plucking the phone out, I retreat through the intersection, hop up, and backtrack down the hall the way I came. Until I’m far enough away that I’m convinced my voice will be hidden from the vampire’s enhanced hearing by the shrill whine of the binding circle.
I dial a number from memory and hold the phone to my ear. At first, the dialing tone is muted, and I realize I still have the com in my ear. I pluck it out and throw it over my shoulder. Useless now. If I try to contact Lucian and his comrades using the com, Lizzie and the Knights will hear my voice through the speaker, giving me away. Even the tapping code we used earlier might do it. Lizzie is no fool. It’s a wonder that shapeshifter got the better of her back at the abandoned office building.
The phone rings eight times, and I’m about to hang up and try general dispatch instead when someone finally answers. “Who is it?” barks Riker in his grouchiest voice.
“Captain,” I say out of habit.
“Cal? Is that you? Where the hell are you, and what—?”
“Riker.”
My hard tone stops him short. I’ve never spoken to him like that before.
“Listen to me very carefully,” I continue. In five clipped sentences, I lay out the current situation at the museum. “You need to send all available teams. Right now. As far as I know, all the political targets are still safe, but that will change very fast once the Knights finish off Lucian’s strike force and Foley Banks. I’d guess we have five minutes or so before that happens. More if I can manage a good distraction. Less if they get tired of my antics and rip my head off.”
“Cal, don’t—”
“No,” I cut him off again. “I’m not going to hide in a closet and protect myself, Commissioner. I have to do whatever I can to try and save Foley Banks, even if it kills me. The future of House Tepes rests on what happens here in the next few minutes, and the loss of Tepes to Lizzie Banks is a much bigger defeat than the loss of Mayor Burbank and the other Aurora political targets in danger tonight. I can’t stand here and do nothing. As soon as I get off the phone with you, I’m moving in to do…something. I haven’t figured out what yet.”
But I do have a burgeoning idea.
The binding spell. Five people. What happens if one or more of them stops contributing?
A haughty laugh briefly rises above the binding circle’s noise. Lizzie, wrapping up a taunt to either Foley or Lucian.
Resigned, Riker says, “Cal, I just sent out an office-wide alert. Everyone on duty within ten miles of the city will be en route to the museum in the next few minutes. Please, for the love of god, try to stay alive until they arrive.”
“I always try to stay alive, sir. It’s just that sometimes, I slightly miss the mark.”
“Is this really a time for joking?” he hisses.
“Don’t you remember what I said about my sarcasm? That day in the elevator, when we were heading out to the wizard versus werewolf fight at Stein’s Groceries? After I escaped from McKinney’s torture shack?”
Riker is silent for a moment. “I remember.”
“Same thing applies here. In fact, I think it might apply more than usual.” I unbutton my stuffy suit jacket and slide it off my shoulders, then unstrap my holster and toss both items onto the floor. They’ll only get in my way from this point on. “When you’re in a situation that will almost certainly result in your death, you need humor more than you do at any other time in your life. At least, that’s how it works for me. If it wasn’t for the occasional off-key joke in dark moments, I probably would’ve gone crazy years ago.”
“I’m not convinced you’re sane right now, to be honest, Cal.” Riker’s voice is distorted by a faint burst of static. Signal interference. He’s in an elevator or stairwell. “Charging into the middle of a vampire slugfest with no backup…”
“Someone has to.”
“I know, but—”
“There’s no one else. There should be—you all should be here—but there’s not because I was too dumb to find a way to get you involved without risking premature exposure of Lucian’s plan and blowing this operation even worse than it’s already been blown.” My resentment for everything that’s happened over the past twenty-four hours boils over like a pot of water left on a hot stove. It steams out of me in bitter syllables. “And now the shit’s hit the fan, and the whole city, the whole world, sits on the fulcrum between safety and absolute ruin. And Cal Kinsey, the guy who ends up in the infirmary on every case he works, is the only one who can tip the balance. What a grand joke this is, huh, boss?”
Riker says, exasperated, “The whole world is not your responsibility.”
“So everybody keeps saying. And yet—”
Lizzie laughs again, and this time, it’s accompanied by
Foley screaming.
“I have to go,” I finish. “See you on the other side, Captain.”
“Cal—”
I hang up the phone and throw it on top of my discarded suit jacket and holster.
Reassured that DSI is on the way, I duck into the closest room and seek out a simple object that will help me clear the building of the civilians in the atrium. That’s where I assume the turned Knight mooks are now, securing the staircases that lead to the second level, in case the gala attendees hear this commotion and get the bright idea to try and investigate. The easiest way to get those rich socialites out of harm’s way, I figure, is to make them think they might be in danger from a threat they believe in: fire. So I locate the fire alarm switch on the back wall of the narrow meeting room, round the table, flip up the plastic cover, and yank the lever down.
The fire alarm goes off with a loud squeal, and emergency lights in the hall start blinking.
That done, I head back down the hall to the battlefield. At the intersection, I plaster myself to the wall and eavesdrop on the conversation, straining to hear above the din of the alarm combined with the binding circle’s whine. Though I only catch every third word, it sounds like Lizzie is asking Lucian if he has another agent in play, someone who’s been waiting in the wings as a contingency. She didn’t anticipate that anyone would survive the encounter with her hired shapeshifter—supernatural creatures never think mere humans can survive their onslaught—which means that she won’t anticipate my impending attack either.
Cautiously, I peek around the corner again, finding the scene similar to the one I left a short while ago. Foley is bleeding in more than one place now, the spell crushing him against the wall having warped and almost severed one of his arms; that accounts for his scream. Lucian, Paula, and Annette are still trapped in the circle, but they’re huddled together in the middle, desperately trying not to come into contact with the cylindrical field of white light that has now risen up from the circle’s inner ring. I take that to mean it will kill them if they touch it.
Day Killer (City of Crows Book 5) Page 16
