Doom Sayer Read online

  Doom Sayer

  A City of Crows Novel

  Clara Coulson

  Doom Sayer

  Copyright © 2017 by Clara Coulson

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

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  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.

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  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.

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  For more information:

  http://www.claracoulson.com/

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  To contact the author, email [email protected]

  Contents

  Books by Clara Coulson

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  DSI Encyclopedia Entry #2998

  Prologue

  THREE WEEKS 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

  To Be Continued

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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 people who like change. There’s a lot of it in this book.

  DSI Encyclopedia Entry #2998

  Wizard

  (see also, Witch)

  A wizard is a male human being born with enough innate magical power beyond that of the average person to earn accreditation from the International Council of Magic.

  During childhood, wizards have limited abilities, but when puberty sets in, they gain access to the large pool of magic insulating the life force in their souls. At around the age of thirteen, wizards are apprenticed to master practitioners from the ICM and spend at least a decade in general training before pursuing a magic specialty.

  Upon successful completion of the rigorous exam given to all apprentices after general training, a wizard will be granted the status of “ICM Wizard,” an official designation that opens the door to higher-level learning, research grants, and other opportunities within the ICM’s vast global network of practitioners.

  A wizard who fails to pass their exam is given the label of “Null Wizard” and must successfully retake the exam before they can become a full-fledged wizard of the Council.

  Prologue

  The enemy’s base is full of chickens. Which would be very weird if the enemy’s base wasn’t a defunct farm thirty miles outside Aurora, Michigan.

  I’m crouched behind a tree, peeking around the trunk at the expanse of overgrown farmland before me, and trying my best to ignore the giant swarm of mosquitoes attempting to eat my face. It’s late July, deep summer, the hottest month on recent record for most of the United States, and every creepy crawly thing that hates the cold has dug itself out of the dirt in the middle of these humid woods to get on my nerves as I wait for the signal to move.

  The com in my ear periodically crackles with static as people tap their mics to double-check signal strength. Our last raid on a Methuselah safe house didn’t go so well—four agents seriously injured, two amputated limbs, one ruined eye, and a brutal concussion—so everyone’s on edge in the minutes leading up to go-time.

  About twenty feet to my right, behind a bunch of thick bushes, Amy sits on one knee, chin tipped down, lips moving silently in the fading twilight. It’s not a true prayer, I don’t think. More likely one of those good-luck rituals soldiers employ before heading into battle. She saw enough action in Iraq to make a habit of anything that keeps the nerves chilled as you race toward a potentially lethal battle.

  About twenty feet to my left is Desmond, his bulk barely hidden by his chosen tree. Unlike Amy, he’s totally still, his coattails not even twitching with his breaths. Back against the bark, eyes closed, facing the opposite direction from the farmhouse and barn we’re about to storm in force, he’s the picture of Zen. But I know from experience that his mind is racing at the speed of light. He’s simply rewired his nerves to focus on the inward expressions of terror in the face of imminent death.

  Beyond the limits of my sight, somewhere in the darkness of the woods, are Ella and Riker, huddled together as they review the logistics of the raid one last time. And on the opposite side of the semicircular cutout of woodland that creates the limits of the yard around the farmhouse and barn, Captain Sing and her teammates lie in wait as well. All five, like us, have taken strategic positions and have been ordered to perform specific roles during the raid.

  Two teams. Ten roles. One finely rehearsed attack plan. We’ve been preparing for this particular raid for weeks.

  Sounds a bit paranoid, I know, spending so much time going over the same thing again and again. Dozens of drills. Dozens of win and loss scenarios. Dozens of practice sessions coming up with contingency plans on the fly. Until we can act like a well-oiled machine, as if our goal as DSI agents is to raid old farms at nine o’clock at night.

  But our recent casualty rates have been, well, high isn’t an adequate word. So we aren’t taking any chances.

  The Methuselah Group has proven to be a vicious and virulent infection in Aurora. Every time we think we’ve identified a member or a base and immediately switch into attack mode, we find that somehow, someway, they’ve gotten three steps ahead of us again. And agents get hurt. And agents die. And DSI becomes that much weaker.

  Personally, I blame the mole. The mole we still haven’t found.

  I think he’s leaking intel like a sieve.

  But we’re going to find that bastard, I say to myself as I crush a mosquito against my cheek and smear its innards across my skin. We’re going to find him, and he’s going to suffer sevenfold for what he’s done.

  My com comes alive with a burst of static, Riker on the mic. “Final countdown starts now. Sixty seconds. Proceed on my signal.” A pause. “Cal, you’re sure about the wards, yes?”

  I settle my eyes on the farmhouse, barn, and unkempt yard surrounding them, forcing my magic sensing ability on and off several times, checking and rechecking for any potentially dangerous wards. But I don’t see anything I didn’t see when we first set up shop—two wards over each house door and four woven around the big barn doors—so I reply softly, “No change. My earlier configuration stands.”

  “Understood.” The mic goes silent for almost half a minute, and then my captain starts the fateful th
irty-second countdown.

  As the seconds tick by, I check my beggar rings to make sure they’re fully charged, slip one of my handguns from its holster, and shift my stance so I’m more in line with the barn doors. My job is to make a beeline for the barn, along with Desmond and two members of Naomi’s team. Everyone else will take the house.

  If everything goes as planned, we’ll have the property secured in under three minutes.

  If everything goes sideways, that cruddy burger I ate for dinner on the drive here will probably be my last meal.

  “Ten.” Riker’s voice sharpens beneath the static. “Nine. Eight. Seven.”

  I tense my muscles.

  “Six.”

  Amy braces her palm against the ground.

  “Five.”

  Desmond turns around.

  “Four.”

  I begin to rise.

  “Three.”

  Raise my gun.

  “Two.”

  Dig my boots into the soil.

  “One.”

  A moment of absolute silence.

  “Go!”

  The distance between the trees and the barn blurs by me, and as I close in on the front wall, red paint faded, peeling, flaking, on a weather-weakened section of old paneling that’s probably been rotting for fifty years, I hold out my left hand, activate my rings, and unleash a wave of force. It slams into the rotten section of wood. The boards implode, splintered shrapnel tearing through the air, and the new hole left behind reveals the wide barn interior cast in a dim yellow glow.

  Leaping through the hole in the siding, I somersault once, spring up into an offensive position, and point my gun at anything that moves. Which turns out to be a lot of things. Because the barn is full of chickens.

  There are, like, thirty chickens.

  Just walking around, clucking away, pecking at feed scattered across the dirty floor.

  Desmond bounds into the barn two steps behind me, then falters when he spies a brood of docile chickens instead of the army of rogue magic practitioners we were expecting. From the rear of the barn, the Adelman brothers burst in simultaneously with a force blast of their own, only to shuffle to a stop as they too are astounded by the dozens of harmless birds moving about the building.

  All four of us stand there for ten full seconds, expecting this to be some kind of ploy. But no sorcerers leap out from behind the stored hay bales in the corner. And the floor doesn’t open up and swallow us down into a dark, endless pit. And the roof doesn’t collapse. And the building doesn’t spontaneously catch fire and burn us all alive.

  The only thing that happens is that a chicken wanders over and starts pecking at my boot.

  I stare at it for a moment, lips pursed, then look up at my confused raid mates. “Unless the chickens are grenades in disguise, I don’t think there are any active threats here.”

  Desmond sighs and taps his mic. “No hostiles in barn. Moving to secure building.”

  “Seriously?” Joe Adelman says, scratching at the puckered scar on his neck.

  “You’re not going to make us round up chickens, are you?” adds his twin, Jake, who is also scratching his neck but has no scar.

  (Honestly, the scar is the only way I can tell them apart.)

  Desmond shrugs. “We need to take stock of everything. But I guess we can leave the chickens for last. Let’s start by thoroughly searching the premises for any inanimate objects of interest.”

  “Got it,” the twins say in unison. Then they turn lockstep and move to check all the stables on their end of the barn.

  I tip up my chin to acknowledge Desmond’s order—he’s in command of the team baby while Riker and Ella are away—and move to rifle through the large hay bales stacked four high. As I feel between the bales for any hidden items that could’ve been left behind by magic practitioners, I keep my ears alert for urgent messages over the com.

  The barn was marked as secondary to the farmhouse, on account of the varying activity levels our stakeout agents witnessed over the preceding weeks. The suspected MG members appear to use the barn sparingly, probably for complex spell setups that can’t be constructed in the cramped old house. Therefore, any contact with hostile elements will be more likely to occur in the house.

  Finding nothing stuffed between the bales on the top three rows, I crouch and prod the gaps between the bottom bales. When I reach the second to last bale, I spy an indentation in the dirt underneath it, too patterned to be a natural occurrence. I remove the three bales above the bale of interest, drop them off to the side, and then carefully tip the remaining bale backward, revealing the extent of the marking pressed into the dirt. I recognize it immediately: a shoeprint. Large and broad. Almost certainly from a man’s shoe.

  With a practiced quickness, I tug out my phone and snap a few pictures of the print. An analyst can probably track down the brand and make of the shoe, but if it’s a mass-produced style—and it almost certainly is, with bespoke shoes way out of the average person’s price range—then we won’t be able to find out who bought the pair. Even so, if we arrest any person of interest we think might be connected to the Methuselah Group, then we can potentially use their shoe collection to incriminate them.

  A very minor piece of evidence, but evidence all the same. We need every advantage we can get, no matter the size, considering how well the rogues have outmaneuvered us thus—

  “Everyone, retreat to the minimum safe distance. Now!” shouts Naomi Sing over the com line.

  Electricity arcs down my spine, and I leap up, swivel on my toes, and rush back toward the hole in the front wall of the barn. Desmond and the Adelman brothers mere steps behind me, I sprint out into the tall grass, kicking up weeds and bugs and at least one snake, retreating toward the predetermined rendezvous location. As I’m nearing the tree line, I watch black-clad forms clamber out of the front windows of the farmhouse and jump straight through the screening on the porch, the weak, rusted metal breaking with a screech that echoes through the quiet night.

  I count the bodies between my breaths, and glance behind me to make sure my three raid mates are still up and running. When I reach the final tally, ten, including me—everyone is safe—I increase my pace and cut through the tree line at a sharp angle, low branches skirting the exposed skin of my face and neck. One of them nicks my ear, drawing a thin line of blood, but I ignore the burn and follow my orders. Not thirty seconds after evacuating the barn, I reach the narrow clearing and stagger to a stop.

  Desmond and the Adelman twins stop behind me, all three looking as perplexed as I feel.

  Because none of us can see any signs of danger in the immediate area. Even if the house team encountered something or someone dangerous inside the building, wouldn’t its presence be evident by this point, so long after the retreat order was given—?

  The farmhouse erupts into a massive ball of fire. Through the gaps in the trees, I see the shockwave coming, but it’s so close I don’t even have time to duck and cover before it slams into my chest and knocks me on my ass. Everyone goes down, Desmond staggering to his knees beside me, the much skinnier Adelman twins toppling over as if clotheslined by a professional wrestler.

  Leaves rip free from branches. Branches rip free from trunks. I cover my face as the debris pelts me like heavy hail, my reinforced coat holding up enough to prevent any cuts but leaving me with more than a handful of bruises to frown at in the mirror tomorrow morning.

  My ears ring as the massive boom resounds through the area. My skin sweats as the heat engulfs the clearing. My eyes, nearly blinded by the brightness of the blast, blink away white spots as they try to track the remains of the farmhouse, which are now raining from the sky, smoking and charred and sharp enough to impale any unfortunate person in their trajectory.

  Cursing, I roll onto my knees and push myself up, searching the yard for the agents who didn’t make it past the tree line before the explosion.

  Amy, the smallest of them all, is curled up in the fetal position right at the
edge of the trees, but even as I zero in on her, she unfurls and peeks back at the crater where the house used to be. Uninjured.

  Captain Sing, Newman, and Li are huddled together on the ground about ten feet behind Amy, all three of them already moving. A piece of burning wood struck the ground right next to Li’s head, missing him by so few inches that the flickering flames probably seared his skin. Lucky.

  Finally, I find Riker and Ella, the former protecting the latter with his broader frame, closer to what’s left of the farmhouse than anyone else. They’re already inside the widening cloud of smoke billowing out from the fiery crater, a toxic fog, and I can hear at least one of them coughing over the din of the falling debris and the crackling flames.

  “Desmond,” I call behind me, “I need you to help the captain.”

  He heaves himself up, shaky but still composed, and spies our teammates in distress. “Let’s hurry. If that smoke gets too thick…”

  We take off in unison, flying by Amy and most of Naomi’s team toward the thickening smoke. Five feet from the edge of the haze, I suck in the biggest breath I can take without my lungs popping, narrow my eyes so the smoke won’t completely wreck my vision, and steel myself in case I find Ella and Riker seriously injured. Then I pass into the gray, Desmond right behind me, cross the remaining distance to my teammates, and slide to a stop on one knee next to Ella.