Wraith Hunter: City of Crows, #3

Chapter One

The morning the convention center collapses without warning, I’m knee-deep in mud in a forest-turned-swamp, chasing a duo of bickering werewolves who wrecked a bar the night before during a fistfight spurred by a monumental helping of crappy beer.

And if this sounds like a ridiculous mission to assign to an elite detective team, that’s because it is. We’re being punished by Commissioner Bollinger for mucking up that Reeves arrest last month. Even though Reeves technically ran out in front of that ice cream truck of her own volition, and would still be alive if she hadn’t decided a little bit of jail time for helping Marcus track down the Ammit summoning instructions—we found messages about that on her phone, afterward—was worse than being a fugitive from the law indefinitely.

Honestly, what an idiot.

Though I do feel bad that she got run over by a truck. As does the rest of my team.

But apparently our guilt isn’t punishment enough.

So instead of sending us to investigate the apparent murder-by-magic on Tillman Street yesterday evening, Bollinger assigned the newly minted Captain Sing to that case and booted our asses out to the sticks to handle a minor public disturbance matter.

And that’s how, after a long, early morning of interviewing a bartender, twelve hungover patrons, and one prostitute who was…well, busy in a truck outside the bar at the time of the disturbance, I find myself trudging through sticky, cold, foul-smelling mud in the middle of some random Michigan woods. With two nude male werewolves about twenty feet ahead of me, scrambling to climb a rocky hill so they can shift into animal form without being swallowed by the earth.

There’s mud in my boots. There’s mud in my pants. There’s mud in every nook and cranny of my person it does not belong in. And I’m not happy about it.

But at least I’m not Desmond, who fell face first into the mud about forty feet back, and who Amy and Ella are apparently trying to free from its gross, mucky grip, judging by the panicked shouts echoing through the trees from somewhere behind me. And at least I’m not Riker either; he’s probably still at the bar, taking statements and being propositioned by a worryingly cheap prostitute.

Long story short, Team Riker’s having a bad day. A day I hope ends very soon.

Anyway, back to the naked assholes.

Regis Hartman and his cousin, Paul, who trashed a bar, fled the bar, transformed into giant wolves, and destroyed the parking lot full of cars outside the bar, clamber up the side of a low hill in an attempt to free themselves from the mud-swamp. Regis, the older of the two, kicks Paul in the face on his way up—maybe accidentally, maybe not—and Paul responds by grabbing Regis’ foot and using his Wolf strength to yank the man off the hill and back into the mud. Regis yells a string of swears at Paul, so nasty that his entire sentence would get bleeped out on a reality TV show.

Gee, I can’t imagine why these two got into a fight last night.

Nevertheless, I use their senseless bickering as an opportunity to play catch-up. With a tree as leverage, I haul myself out of the swamp on the far side of the same little hill, the mud making a heinous suction noise as it tries to hold onto my right boot. Thankfully, my tightly tied laces keep the boot on my foot, and I pull free from the muck with a loud squelch and stumble up onto the hillside.

Paul and Regis, about ten feet ahead of me now, spot me coming, and redouble their efforts to escape. If they manage to go Wolf before I reach them, they will escape, because my two weak human legs won’t be able to match speed with their powerful, furry four. A lesson I learned quite well when I escaped from McKinney’s torture shack last year. Wolves fast. Humans slow. Wolves strong. Humans weak.

But, hey, I still won that battle.

Just like I’m going to win this ludicrous pursuit.

As Paul drags himself out of the mud and crawls a few feet up the incline to give himself room to transform, I sprint toward him, my mud-filled boots squeaking every step of the way. Regis, still stuck in the swamp, rears up to try and wrench my feet out from underneath me, but his aim is off, and I evade his grasp. Then I lunge for Paul’s chest, a manic cry in my throat, and tackle the Wolf man with all my strength, launching him back first into the trunk of a thick pine tree.

The air rushes out of his lungs in a strangled gasp, and his eyes roll back in his head as he nearly faints. But I don’t slack up. Before his butt even sinks to the ground, I grab his arm, tug him forward, swing him around, and, with my knee jammed into his lower back, slam him onto the rocky hillside face down. Next, I rip my cuffs off my tool belt and bind the werewolf’s wrists.

Paul Hartman, I spit, you are under arrest for destruction of private property, assault and battery, and creating a public disturbance. I grimace at the taste of mud on my tongue, from where it spattered across my face during the chase. You will be transported to the local jail for holding, and you will stay there, without incident, supernatural or otherwise, until such time as your bail is posted. During this holding period, you may request a lawyer, from a private firm of your choice, or provided by the Michigan Lycanthrope Criminal and Civil Attorneys Office. I bend closer to the wheezing man’s face, his nose still pressed against the rock-strewn earth. Do you understand, buddy?

After a moment, I hear a resigned, muffled, Uh-huh.

"Good. Now, as for you, I continue, raising my voice as I tilt my head to face Regis, who’s trying to sneak past me on his hands and knees. So help me god, if you try to run again, I will pull out this gun—I reach down and flip my dirty coattail aside, revealing the handgun strapped to my thigh—and empty a full clip into your fast-healing werewolf ass. And you can spend the next thirty minutes rolling around on the ground in pure and utter agony as your gluteus maximus gradually pushes the bullets out of your flesh. Got it?"

Regis gawks at me in terror, then looks away, rubbing his chin with a mud-streaked hand. Uh, sure. I got it. I’ll just…sit right here. He rolls over and plops his naked butt on the hill, wincing as his tender flesh comes into contact with a couple of pointy stones. And inadvertently flashing his family jewels at me in the process. His mud-covered family jewels.

Ugh.

I don’t get paid enough for this.

A few minutes of awkward silence pass, as I wait for the rest of my team to reach the hill so we can drag these bozos back to town. Amy and Ella are only fifteen feet off, red in the face, eyes alight with fury, both of them wading slowly but surely toward the hill, both of them slathered up to their necks in mud, from where they had to crouch to help Desmond up after he fell. Desmond himself is farther behind them, his DSI uniform slicked with so much muck that I doubt it’ll ever come clean. He may have to order himself a new one. (Hell, let’s make it a group order. We might get a discount that way. And we won’t have to smell like swamp for the rest of our lives.)

Suddenly Paul, still pinned underneath me, mumbles, Say, what happened to my truck?

Huh? I glare down at him in disbelief. You mean the one you crashed into a guardrail a mile back, which started this whole absurd footrace?

Yeah?

I…you… I resist the urge to swat the back of his head. You totaled it. It’ll be at the junkyard by dinnertime.

Well, that sucks, Regis says while scratching some flakes of half-dried mud off his chest. Didn’t you just finish paying that thing off, cousin?

Last month, Paul says. Guess we’ll have to bum rides off Paolo until—

You know, I cut in, I think you two have bigger problems to worry about than what mode of transportation you’ll be using to get around town from now on. Considering you’ll probably be prohibited from getting around town for some number of months, or even years.

You think we’ll be in jail that long? Regis asks.

Suppressing a groan, I reply, You punched a busboy in the jaw so hard it knocked out four of his teeth. I shove my knee harder into Paul’s back. "And you smashed a pitcher of beer over a waitress’s head. She has a concussion."

Both Wolves appear to have a profound revelation, like they didn’t truly understand until this exact moment why a team of DSI agents spent an hour pursuing them, first by vehicle, and then on foot, to arrest them for last night’s smorgasbord of shenanigans. Regis murmurs an Oh, that’s right, and cousin Paul follows up with a Don’t actually remember that part.

Dear god, someone relieve me of these morons, or I’m going to lose my mind.

Thankfully, Ella and Amy reach the hill before Paul and Regis decide to have another engaging conversation in my presence.

Amy stomps up to Regis, leaving huge globs of mud in her wake. You little dicks. I ought to break every bone in your bodies for making us follow you into this shit. She raises her fist. I swear I’m going to—

Ella grabs her wrist. You’re going to take them back to the SUV, and drive them to the county jail, without committing any unwarranted acts of violence against criminals already in custody. She throws a reproving look at Amy. Isn’t that right, Detective Sugawara?

Fine, whatever. Amy tugs her arm out of Ella’s grasp and drops it to her side. But you’re a hypocrite, you know? You’ve totally roughed up suspects during interrogations before.

We’re not interrogating these two. We already know what they did—it’s on the security tapes. Ella makes a tut-tut motion with her index finger. And even if we didn’t, it’s not that kind of case. Save your fists for the serial killers and, you know, the Eververse creatures that feast on human flesh. No point in risking a disciplinary report on these schmucks.

Hey, says Paul, I’m not a schmuck.

Yeah, you are, cousin, says Regis.

Amy snaps, Oh shut up.

To my surprise (and relief), they do.

Ella asks, You okay, Cal?

Peachy keen, Ella Dean. I smile at her. Bitterly. Besides the fact I need new pants.

God, Amy moans, me too.

We’ll get there, guys. Ella gestures to the idiot werewolves. As soon as we get these two behind bars where they belong. How about we hurry that up?

Agreed, Amy and I say in unison.

With the three of us—four, when Desmond arrives—we make quick work of the Wolves, double-cuffing them, shackling their feet, and marching them, two guards on either side, the long, elevated, and moderately dry way back through the woods, until we reach the roadside where the pursuit began.

The crashed truck still sits against the guardrail, its front end crumpled, like we left it. The DSI SUV still sits on the left-hand shoulder, intact, like we left it. A couple of local cops, who were following us during the road portion of the chase, are blocking both lanes with their patrol cars a quarter mile down, in case of a shootout, or some other sort of battle—that part of the scene is like we left it too.

The only thing that isn’t like we left it is Riker.

Because we didn’t leave the captain on the roadside—we left him at the bar, where the chase started—and yet, here he is, leaning against the side of the SUV as he speaks in hushed, grave tones to someone on the other end of a phone call. When we guide the Wolves over to the SUV, Riker raises his hand and gives us the wait signal, then says a quick goodbye to whoever he’s talking to, ends the call, and stuffs the phone in his coat pocket.

For a long moment, he stares off into the woods, like he’s trying to process some important (and upsetting?) news. But finally, he pulls himself out of his reverie and turns to us—and promptly does a double-take. What the hell happened to you?

Desmond vainly wipes a smear of mud off his cheek. Woods must’ve flooded during a recent storm. The low ground was nothing but foot-deep mud.

And guess who decided to run right through it? Amy says, staring down Regis and Paul.

Damn, Riker mutters. You’ll need to clean up before we head out into the field again. He leans casually to one side, trying to hide the fact he’s taking weight off his damaged knee, which he still requires pain meds to manage on a daily basis. All right. New plan. Go hand off these two felons to those patrol officers down the road. We’ll head straight back to Aurora with no detours and send out a lower-level team to follow up on this case as soon as we have the chance.

Ella frowns. Did something happen, Nick?

Riker eyes the two Wolves. We’ll discuss it on the ride back.

But what if these two try to slip the cops? Amy asks, not-so-gently elbowing Regis in the gut. The Wolf growls in response, but Amy silences him with one of her prize-winning scowls. They’ve already proven they’re not to be trusted. We gave them the opportunity to surrender without a fight, and they chose to run. If they go Wolf on those uniforms…

Riker holds up his hand to quiet Amy. He pushes away from the side of the SUV, disguises his obvious limp as best he can (I don’t know where his magic cane sword has run off to), and shuffles over to the two Wolves. The captain’s not quite as tall or broad as the ever-imposing Desmond, but the expression he sews onto his face—one that promises unimaginable consequences for defiance of his coming orders, lips and eyes all sharp, soul-piercing angles—is more than powerful enough to scare anyone, human or otherwise, into absolute compliance.

He looks each of the Wolves in the eye, and says, "You will go to the county jail with the patrol officers. You will not harm them. You will not try to escape from them. And you most certainly will not kill them. After you get to the jail, you will stay there. And you will be on your best behavior. You will cooperate with the guards, with your lawyers, and with the criminal justice administration all the way up to the judge who sentences you for your crimes. His tone darkens. If you fail to do any of these things, I will personally escort you both to hell."

Riker doesn’t ask if they understand.

The answer is written all over their faces.

Desmond, Amy, the captain says, take them over to the patrol cars. He looks to Ella and me. You two, get the SUV warmed up, and do a GPS search for the quickest route back to Aurora. It took us four hours to get here. I want us back in no more than three.

The whole team, I know, can feel the shadow of something big creeping toward us from the horizon, so we don’t question Riker’s orders. Desmond and Amy deliver the idiot Wolves to the cops, who praise the team’s valiant efforts in capturing who they believe are stupid, drunken exhibitionists with a penchant for fistfights. I hop into the front passenger seat of the SUV, and quickly use the GPS panel on the console to find all the routes back to Aurora, then sort them by current traffic conditions to narrow them down. And Ella returns to the driver’s seat, buckles herself in, and waits for everyone else, a pensive expression marring her face, darker than the streaks of drying mud.

She’s worked under Riker for a long time. Out of all of us, she probably has the best guess for whatever not-so-great news Riker learned during his mystery phone call. But something in her eyes, something deep and troubled, ties my tongue, and I can’t bring myself to ask for her opinion. So I select the best route on the GPS screen and sit quietly. As the seconds tick by, and I watch Amy and Desmond shake hands with the officers and turn back toward the SUV, a cold, frothing dread begins to pool in my gut.

I don’t experience the déjà vu this time, but I don’t have to.

As the rest of the team loads into the vehicle, Riker squeezed between Amy and Desmond so he can rest his bad leg between the front seats, as Ella pulls the SUV away from the curb and floors it, propelling us down the road in the direction of our beloved city, as our captain closes his eyes and wets his lips, building his resolve to speak in the silence, to cut through tension thick enough to suffocate us all…

…I already know that his words will tilt my world off balance, and leave me desperately clinging to the edge of the Earth.

And they do.

They do exactly that.

Nicholas Riker clears his throat and states in a calm, even tone, "Thirty-eight minutes ago, the Wellington Wallace Convention Center in downtown Aurora partially collapsed, trapping an estimated five hundred people in the rubble. Casualty counts are currently unknown. All city organizations that include emergency response procedures in their training regimens—such as police, firefighters, and DSI—have been ordered to send any and all available personnel to the scene to assist with search and rescue operations.

While the cause of the collapse has not yet been confirmed, early reports indicate a massive explosion in the west wing of the building was responsible. This explosion is believed to have triggered cascading structural failures in the west, north, and south wings of the building. Only the east wing of the convention center remains intact. The rest of the building has been completely destroyed. He bites his tongue, a hollow pause. As of this time, the mayor’s office is treating the incident as an intentional bombing…that is, as a terrorist attack against the city of Aurora, Michigan.

Chapter Two

The back of the van is stifling.

Sixteen people, dressed in black, crammed into a space meant for eight. Gone are the slim leather coats—mine’s probably in a washer somewhere, having the mud sucked out of it—replaced with wrinkly jumpsuits, pulled by the dozen from boxes stacked five high in a half-forgotten basement storage room. As if pretending we’d never need crisis suits would prevent the crisis itself. Gone are the weapons too; we’re only allowed one pistol for protection. Anything else we carry must be rescue equipment or first aid supplies.

Gauze has never felt quite so heavy.

Amy and Desmond sit across from me, shoulders locked in stiff positions, sullen expressions partially obscured by their unwieldy masks. The plastic apparatuses have such limited room for your eyes that, through my own mask, I can’t even glimpse Ella seated directly to my left, or the metal racks stuffed with medical supplies to my right. I have no peripheral vision at all, really, and it’s making me feel claustrophobic.

I’m afraid too, with my view of the world so narrow, afraid that I won’t be able to find the injured among the ruins. Afraid they’ll die, alone, in pain, because Cal Kinsey can’t wrap his stupid head around working in a protective mask, of all things. Eververse monsters? Check. Werewolves? Check. Face masks? No, that’s where I flounder. That’s where I fail.

I can’t believe I’m saying this—but I’d like to go back to the mud-swamp now.

I’d rather deal with idiot werewolves all day long than walk straight into the disaster that is the Wellington Wallace Convention Center. Or, rather, what’s left of it.

So many lives, hanging in the balance, and one misstep—

My breath hitches, chest tightening. But it’s all right. No one hears.

The com in my ear is set to receive only. The mic is in my mask, and has a button.

So nobody can hear my fear.

And I can’t hear theirs either.

The van takes a sharp right turn, and Ella’s arm bumps my own. When I don’t respond, her fingers skim across my creased pants leg and come to rest atop my tightly wrung hands. I can’t feel the warmth of her skin through our thick gloves, but the gesture calms my racing pulse regardless, and I give her a small nod of thanks.

There is one consolation—minor as it is—for this horror show I’m about to witness:

I don’t have to witness it alone.

The van pulls to an abrupt stop, and my com crackles to life as an authoritative voice booms through the feed. Listen up, teams! Captain Nakamura. Who’s the onsite lead for this new shift of DSI search and rescue efforts. Last shift’s lead, Naomi Sing, and the fifteen teams working under her, are currently being rotated out of the field. By the time we get to the convention center, on foot, a few minutes from now, the last of them should be pulling out, so we can take their place in a smooth transition.

I’m not sure how I feel about working under Nakamura on a mission of such vital importance. But Riker, thanks to his knee, got commandeered for central command, a task force of DSI and PD higher-ups, as well as other important city officials, who are working out of the mayor’s office to keep the relief operations running efficiently. So Nakamura’s all I’ve got right now, and I have to obey his instructions. Even though I’m not digging his gruffer, rougher command style.

Maybe I’ll defer to Ella instead. She usually picks up Riker’s slack.

Nakamura rattles off a list of safety precautions he’s repeated four times since we left HQ, and finishes with a warning: And for god’s sake, do not, under any circumstances, take off your masks until you are outside the specified danger radius and have been through the initial decontamination procedure. We have no idea what kinds of particulates are in the air right now, and we’re not taking any chances with your health. You all know what happened to the 9…

I can almost hear the man bite his tongue through the com feed. But he doesn’t need to finish that sentence. Because he’s right.

We all know what happened to the 9/11 first responders.

Never forget.

The com cuts out as Nakamura switches his mic off, and silence falls across the lines of men and women, huddled, cramped in the back of the DSI van. The vehicle shifts, back and forth, back and forth, and I feel the vibrations of slamming doors through my boots, as Nakamura and his right-hand man, King, exit the cabin and head around to let us out, to force us into the sort of nightmare no one should have to remember beyond a troubled sleep.

But I guess the joke’s on us, huh?

We’re DSI. Nightmares are our business.

The van’s back doors swing open with a mighty creak. Nakamura’s face peers up at us through his own mask. He taps the mic button again, and his voice comes through loud and clear and barely hiding panic. Team leaders, now is the time to switch on your personal channels. Keep the main channel running in the background, but do not utilize it unless you encounter a situation you cannot handle without backup. We don’t want any emergencies getting drowned out by too much chatter on the feed. Got it?

We all nod, sixteen heads bobbing in unison, struggling to rise with the added weight of thick plastic and whatever material is built into the air filters designed to keep us cancer