Soul Breaker Read online

  Soul Breaker

  A City of Crows Novel

  Clara Coulson

  Soul Breaker

  Copyright © 2015 by Clara Coulson

  Cover Design by Rebecca Frank at http://bookcovers.rebeccafrank.design/

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

  For more information:

  http://www.claracoulson.com/

  To contact the author, email [email protected]

  Contents

  Books by Clara Coulson

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  DSI Encyclopedia Entry #1831

  Prologue

  Two Years Later

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  The Story Continues

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  About Clara Coulson

  Books by Clara Coulson

  CITY OF CROWS

  Soul Breaker

  Shade Chaser

  Wraith Hunter

  Doom Sayer

  Day Killer (upcoming)

  TALES FROM THE CITY OF CROWS

  Dream Snatcher

  LARK NATION

  Hunter of the Night

  Speaker of the Lost

  Watcher of the Dead (upcoming)

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  To everyone on Facebook who put up with my whining when I was trying to write this book:

  Sorry!

  DSI Encyclopedia Entry #1831

  Spirit

  A spirit is a being from the Eververse that cannot create or maintain a corporeal form on Earth. To fully function in our realm, a spirit must possess an Earth-born host. Spirits can travel from the Eververse to Earth via a summoning circle or by possessing an Earth-born host in the Eververse and using a portal to cross the veil.

  Typically, spirit possession results in temporary memory loss and disorientation in the host, once the spirit leaves the body. However, more powerful spirits can cause permanent brain damage, including retrograde amnesia, partial or full-body paralysis, and psychosis.

  Prologue

  My partner dies two minutes to midnight outside a strip club in Gloston Square.

  It’s a Friday, early February, and the Square is all but deserted due to a curfew set in place by the Aurora Police—us—in conjunction with the mayor’s office. A curfew resulting from a rash of unsolved murders that have plagued the Square and surrounding neighborhoods since November. Bodies found in dumpsters, stuffed in storm drains, left to rot on the sidewalk, posed sitting up on benches. Etc.

  All of them mutilated and unrecognizable without dental records. All of them random citizens, wealthy and poor, young and old, male and female. Twelve in total. In four months.

  The most prolific killer Aurora has seen in fifty-seven years.

  Mac and I, we’re settled in our squad car, parked in a wide alley between the strip club, Arnette’s, and a barbershop that went out of business last decade that the city hasn’t been able to flip and sell. (Housing market crash, go figure.) The streetlights in the Square haven’t seen maintenance since the Stone Age, and the bulbs that still work are dimmed yellow through grimy glass covers. Pale light washes the sidewalks every six feet, creating large, shadowy gaps human eyes can’t penetrate. If there was an army of killers hiding in the line of scraggly trees and bushes someone dubbed a park, I’d never know it. Not until they charged the car, weapons raised.

  The radio is on—the regular radio, not the police radio—and Mac is flipping through country channels with poor reception, humming along to bars about pickup trucks and depressing divorce situations. I’d call him out for being annoying as hell, if I didn’t know he was doing it to stay awake and not to bug me. He’s been fighting a horrible case of insomnia since his wife left him two months ago and took the kids with her. And the house. And the car. And the family dog.

  Doesn’t help that he thinks alcohol is the trick to a good night’s sleep.

  Not that I’d ever tell him otherwise.

  We drew the short end of the stick tonight. Captain Delgado, our precinct’s iron-fisted ruler, ordered us to play the nightly watchdogs for the eastern portion of the Square, in place of the usual duo, Cranston and Lawler. One of them had a “family emergency” that prevented him from taking the monotonous night shift everyone at the office has come to loathe over the past several weeks.

  The killer never strikes in sight of our patrol cars, almost like he knows where we wait. Even though our hiding places are randomly chosen. The closest any cop has gotten to catching the guy was the time Sergeant Dana Morris found the sixth victim hanging from a tree half an hour after the murderer tore the poor man’s throat out.

  The Aurora PD, I hate to say it, is far outmatched by this serial killer. He’s smart, bold, crafty, and has a knack for going unseen, even in the most populated areas. Before the curfew was set, he’d walk among the bar and club crowds, an unremarkable face amid hundreds more. He’d pick a target, snatch the unlucky soul out from under the noses of people who should have seen something, heard something, sensed something was wrong…but didn’t.

  Now, with no one on the streets at night (legally), the killer has taken to breaking into apartments in the Square and hauling people right out of their beds. How the heck he keeps getting past locked windows and doors with motion alarms, I will never know. Until he’s caught and made to confess his methods. If he’s caught and—

  There’s a loud screech, and I jump, tearing my gaze from the windshield. Mac’s finger is still on the volume dial, and he dons a sheepish grin. “Sorry, Cal. Hit the wrong button there.”

  “Sure you did, Mac. That’s just like you, forgetting which of two dials to use.” I reach across to the passenger side and flick his jaw. “And look at what you’ve done. Distracted me. I had my keen eyes on our potential crime scene, Mac, and now they’re off. The killer can roam free without being seen! You could have jeopardized someone’s life!” My voice drops an octave on that last sentence to mimic Captain Delgado’s tone at the department-wide watch meeting this afternoon.

  Mac picks up his Coke can and takes a sip. “So the good captain says, but I don’t buy it. If any of our tactics were having an effect on this bastard, he’d be locked up or dead at this point. We’re no better than dogs on a short
leash to this sicko. He simply walks around us, out of reach.”

  “No criminal is out of reach, man. All you need to do is stretch far enough.”

  Mac smiles, rueful. “Keep telling yourself that, kid. It’s nice to see some optimism on the force these days.”

  I adjust myself in the driver’s seat and tap on the steering wheel, gaze realigning with the edge of the Square’s small park. If the killer needs a quick getaway, he will take the park, as it’s a nexus between the different neighborhoods on all four sides of the Square.

  Only one problem: there are a dozen trails that cut through the park, and not all of them are visible from across the street. So I need to be vigilant. Search for any abnormal movements in the darkness.

  So far, though, I’ve seen nothing but a squirrel being snatched up by a large, menacing owl.

  “In the ten years you’ve been a cop, Mac, has the Aurora PD ever been optimistic?” I ask. “The first day I walked into the precinct, I was sure I had the wrong place. Had the atmosphere of the city morgue and a third the body count, and even today, I feel like I’m sitting in an accountant’s office whenever I’m doing paperwork. Why in God’s name is the PD so blue all the time?”

  He pulls a bag of chips out of the glove compartment and rips it open. “Nice pun.”

  “Thank you. I try.”

  “And to answer your question, Cal: The cops of Aurora don’t all start so cloudy in the mood department. It’s an acquired taste, born from a growing mountain of unsolved cases. More and more every year, like there’s a sign outside the city that says, Come to lovely Aurora, the Land of Rape and Pillage!

  “Don’t worry, kid. You’ll learn soon enough. Rookies always get the gist of it when their first body drops and there are no prints, no DNA, and no motives in sight.”

  “Gee, thanks. I’m so looking forward to failing at my job now.” I scan the tree line from east to west, again and again, then track my eyes across the street on either side of the park. But no one stands on the sidewalks or creeps at the alleyway entrances. No one emerges from the park bushes carrying a corpse. No one leaps from a second-story window with a struggling victim in tow. The killer is not here—

  No, that’s wrong. He’s always here.

  The killer is not present, is a more accurate way to put it. And he is not present because he knows we are. Somehow.

  Mac’s hand lands on my shoulder and squeezes, trying to produce some sort of comforting gesture. “It’s not about the individual failure kid. It’s systematic. We’re doing something wrong, somewhere along the line, all of us. And we can’t for the life of the department figure out what it is. These last ten years, the city has tipped toward some kind of hellhole, all sorts of monsters roaming around, committing every crime imaginable. Time-tested tactics suddenly don’t work anymore, and all the newfangled technology in the world can’t seem to remedy the shortfall.

  “It’s like crime is rapidly evolving around us. And no matter how fast we run, we can’t seem to catch up, can’t seem to…Cal?”

  I see something.

  Not someone.

  Something.

  And I never, not months later, not years later, truly figure out what it is I see, there at the edge of the trees, standing directly in line with the patrol car. The best way I can describe it…

  The gates of hell open up before me, a wave of heat, a wind of bile, a scream of agony in the night, and a creature from the black abyss steps out to greet me. It’s the personification of all that is unholy, all that is wretched, all that is wrong, all that tastes like salt and cyanide. All wrapped up in the form of a man in a long brown trench coat.

  A man of middling height and weight and build. With a ramrod straight posture that demands respect—no, submission, total and absolute. White gloves on his hands, mocking purity. A hat on his head like he’s taking a stroll through the park for simple pleasure. And perhaps that’s what it is to him. What he does next.

  Simple. Pleasure.

  Easy. Fun.

  Effortless. Murder.

  I blink, and the man who was fifty feet away now stands not five steps from the hood of the patrol car.

  I recoil, yelling, “Mac, get your gun! There’s a—!”

  But by the time I open my mouth to say my partner’s name, it’s already too late. The man in the trench coat has vanished from sight. The patrol car’s passenger door hangs wide open. And Mac, all two hundred pounds of him, has been snatched from his seat, the seatbelt strapped securely around his torso…shredded like tissue paper.

  Impossible speed. Impossible strength.

  Inhuman.

  That’s why we can’t catch him, I realize, as my body spirals into panic mode. Hand reaching for my belt buckle. Legs flailing every direction. Trying to escape the car that offers no protection. That’s why he always gets away. Why we chase and chase him and never seem to gain an inch. He’s been playing with us this entire time. Playing like a cat. Playing like we’re mice. Predator versus prey.

  The buckle comes unclasped, and I prop the car door open, draw my sidearm as I rise into the dingy alley. There is no sound. Not a car on the street. Not a carrying voice. Not the approach of too-quick footsteps. Not the rush of air before a rapid, unstoppable attack. There is nothing—no monster, no Mac, and for a moment, no me. Calvin Kinsey becomes a quivering nonentity in the face of fear so vivid he cannot even breathe.

  And then the stretched band of reality rebounds in my mind, and I snap out of my daze. I raise my gun, flick off the safety, and shuffle my way around the vehicle. Search for any sign of the man-who-is-not-a-man and my partner who may already be dead in his hands.

  A low mist hangs over the trash-strewn pavement beneath my feet, curls around my polished shoes. Cold air crawls across my cheeks, and my breath puffs white when I exhale. It is so humid, I feel the caress of moisture on my skin, sweat beading on my neck despite the temperature. A shiver slithers up my spine.

  I don’t know how long I stand there in the alley, gun pointed at nothing but the overflowing dumpsters behind the car. But after an eternity in what must be minutes, maybe seconds, the man in the trench coat finally breaks the silence with an action of taunting finality. I hear the subtle whoosh, and though I’ve never heard such a sound in real life, that damn, half-comedic, cartoon sound of a deadweight falling, my brain knows what it is, what I will see when I swivel around on my feet. And it screams at me: Don’t do it, Cal!

  But I do it anyway. Because I never listen. Especially not to myself.

  I turn on my toes in time to see Mac’s mutilated body slam into the top of the car, bounce off, roll down the back windshield, slip over the edge of the trunk, and come to a bloody, squelching stop at my feet.

  His face is gone, torn away. His stomach is an empty cavern. All his limbs are broken, twisted, and his neck is bent at an awkward angle.

  I don’t know which injury killed him. I don’t know which came first. What I do know is that the thing standing on the top level of the fire escape turned Mac from a man to a meat puppet in the same span of time it takes the average person to unlock their front door. And he did it, every deadly blow, every rip and break and tear, without making a sound audible to me, standing four stories below.

  My gaze ascends from the body of the man who was my only friend to the form leaning casually over the railing of the fire escape, peering down at me with mild interest. I cannot see his face clearly in the night, but I know from the gleam of his fangs in the yellow dimness of the streetlights, the reflective shimmer of fresh blood on his chin and cheeks, that he is smiling brighter than the sun could ever shine.

  He chuckles, shakes his head, and says to me, “Better luck next time, kid.”

  And before my finger pulls the trigger of a shot that would have nailed him right between the eyes, he jumps twenty feet in a single bound, to the roof, and strolls away.

  Whistling a hymn on high.

  Two Years Later

  Chapter One

  Few p
arents send their kids to college to get murdered by a monster. So I figure that Mr. and Mrs. Franks, the parents of Jason Franks, freshman at Waverly College, will be pretty surprised to find out their son got killed in his dorm room last night by an as-yet-unknown murderer. Thankfully, death notices aren’t my job, so I won’t have to watch them swim in grief.

  No, my job is to find the monster. And maybe kill it back.

  I pull the little black hybrid car into an available street-side parking space, cut the engine, and sit there for a minute, eyes on the surrounding college grounds. I was at Waverly for two years before I transferred to Stanford, and the campus hasn’t changed all that much. There’s a new addition to the library visible through the thinning autumn foliage, and someone finally put in an actual brick sidewalk to replace the dirt paths behind the line of aging dorm buildings. But other than those few minor adjustments—oh, and the dead body on the third floor of the Hague dorm—Waverly College still looks like a snotty prep school from the mid-nineteenth century.