Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8) by Brad Magnarella (best e reader for academics txt) 📕

our world together a little longer. Stones rushed up from the collapsing platform, and I fell. Images of my teammates and Vega sped through my mind. But my final thought was of our little girl.

Safe now.

48

“It was foolish of me to carry that plate of gingersnaps inside,” someone said, “because it told her I was, in fact, home. Just one of those things I didn’t stop to consider. Like so many other things I do, I suppose.”

A slightly hunched man wearing a silk robe that matched his dangling curtains of black hair came into focus.

“So there she was,” he continued, “going door to door, window to window, shouting that she knew I was home. And I’m crouched behind the refrigerator like a spooked cat. You’d think after all these—”

“Claudius?” I interrupted.

He stopped pacing beside the full-sized bed I was tucked into and trained his tinted glasses on me. “Yes?”

“Where in the hell am I?”

My surroundings had the vanilla look of a guest bedroom.

“Oh, my place in Peoria. Or is it, ah—”

“Yes,” I said, “but what am I doing here?”

“I thought I explained all of that to you.” He blinked several times. “Didn’t I?”

“Maybe, but I’m not sure I’ve been conscious.”

“Hm, your eyes were open. Though that might account for the vacant stare.”

“What happened to the time catch? To everyone else?”

I shoved the covers off and sat on the edge of the bed. I was wearing wool socks and a black silk gown, one of Claudius’s no doubt. Underneath, my body felt roughed up and hollowed out. But I could also feel warm currents of healing magic running through me. Powerful elder-level magic.

I hesitated. “The s-senior members?”

Claudius chuckled. “Yes, yes, they’re out now. In fact, they’re the ones who placed you in my care.”

“How? The last thing I remember is the time catch collapsing.”

“When you destroyed Malphas, a powerful trap he’d set around the Harkless Rift came apart. You were correct about him being responsible for their confinement. Freed, the senior members went straight to the time catch. They were able to preserve it long enough to extract you and the others. They would have waited for you to awaken, but there are points along the rupture site that needed shoring up.” Claudius smiled broadly. “The Order is very much in your debt. You prevented a demon apocalypse.”

“I had help,” I said distractedly. “Where are the others?”

“They’re…” He glanced away. “They’re being cared for.”

“But not all of them made it,” I said faintly. “Did they?”

“Most will be fine. But no, some were beyond the Order’s help.”

I saw the light fading from Malachi’s eyes and Bree-yark lying face down on Broadway and the entire platform disintegrating…

“I don’t know the names of the fallen,” Claudius said, “or I would tell you.”

The room blurred, and I wiped my eyes. Claudius came over and patted my shoulder uncertainly.

“‘Find Arnaud,’” I whispered.

“What’s that?” He leaned nearer.

“When I asked Arianna how I could help her and the others, that’s what she told me: ‘Find Arnaud.’ It was by his hand we were able to collapse the portal and destroy Malphas. And that’s what freed the Order.”

I knew I’d done the right thing, but I was still thinking of the cost. With Claudius’s report that some hadn’t made it, the one faint glimmer of a silver lining was that maybe Arnaud had been among them. But I could still feel the demonic energy of the agreement that bound us, cold and jeering.

“Well, Arianna’s a sharp bird,” Claudius said. “She knows what she’s talking about. Oh, that reminds me!” He straightened suddenly. “She said there was something you needed to take care of when you awakened.”

“She did?”

He pulled me by the arms until I was standing, then signed in the air behind me. By the time he turned me around, a portal was yawning open.

“Wait,” I said, “what about my clothes?”

“They’re still in the dryer. Oh, but here’s your cane.” He inserted it into my hand.

Before I could ask where I was going, he gave me a shove.

“Good luck!” he called.

49

Following a series of somersaults through a cloudy vacuum, I landed in a familiar casting circle on a sheet of polyethylene in a large basement space. I was back in 1 Police Plaza, performing a half-split on the same spot we’d departed from.

Holy hell, I thought, wincing upright and straightening my gown.

The holding space was empty. The clock above the desk read 3:10 in the morning. So why had he sent me here?

“Welcome home.”

Vega uncrossed her legs and stood from a chair in the corner of the room dressed in her detective blacks. A rumpled blanket over the armrest suggested she’d been dozing. The sight of her sent a dozen raw emotions pouring through me. The net effect was an all-consuming numbness, and I drifted toward her like a man in a dream.

She pressed her cheek aggressively to my chest, fists balling up the back of my gown. My arms swallowed her. This was the moment I’d kept returning to over the course of the journey—through 1776, 1861, 1660, the recent past—this idea that she would be at the end of it. We remained like that for a long time.

“How did it go?” she asked at last.

“Malphas is gone, and the Order’s back. The demon apocalypse has been postponed indefinitely. So, about as well as it could have.”

She breathed a quiet thank God.

“How long was I away?” I asked.

She checked her watch. “Almost six hours.”

I snorted a laugh of disbelief and leaned down to kiss her.

“Is that Mr. Croft I hear?” someone called in a singsong voice.

I stopped and closed my eyes. It had come through the speaker to the cells.

“What’s he doing here?” Vega asked in a dangerous whisper.

I’d been hoping to savor a few more moments with Ricki before having to tell her what I’d done. But this is what Arianna had meant when she’d said that I had something to take care of. She must have noticed the infernal bond between the demon-vampire and