The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) by Brad Magnarella (best business books of all time txt) 📕

circle, then centered myself. The potion I’d drunk an hour before to break up the fae magic was still working on me, still smoothing out the final wrinkles in my magical lines.

“Imitare,” I said.

“What?” Hoffman barked.

Vega shushed him.

“Imitare,” I repeated. Energy flowed through me like electricity, spilling into the circle at our feet, gaining strength. “Imitare.”

I repeated the incantation, eyeing the security feed from the vehicle checkpoint at the front of the building. For several minutes, I watched the cars pulling up to the mechanical gate.

“What is this?” Hoffman grumbled, looking at the growing light around his feet.

A moment later, I had my car: a black sedan with tinted windows. With each spoken Word, I had been fashioning a three-dimensional likeness of us in my mental prism. Now, with an uttered “Liberare,” I released the projection onto street level. And there we were on the monitor, as if we’d just walked out of the building. I squinted at our likenesses, impressed by the detail. It was as though the remaining fae magic that trickled through me was acting as a booster now instead of a foil. I manipulated the projections, walking us toward the idling sedan.

“Aprire,” I said.

The sedan’s rear door opened. I manipulated our projections to make it look as though we were ducking into the back seat. A moment later, an actual passenger got out of the front seat, looked around in confusion, then slammed the rear door before climbing back in.

The access gate opened, and the sedan slid into the flow of city traffic.

Three shadows darted up the sidewalk, paralleling the car. It had worked. The blood slaves had taken the bait. Exhaling, I broke the circle. The remaining energy puffed out into the room.

“It’s done,” I said.

“About time,” Hoffman muttered, jerking his arm from around my waist.

While he and Vega donned their helmets, I glanced over the schematic of the storm lines, noting the marks in red—their planned route to Ferguson Towers. The entry point was a drainage culvert on the East River, near Montgomery Street. I knew how to get there.

“Good luck,” I told them. “If you run into the creature, be sure to aim for the heart.”

19

A cold wind blew off the East River, batting my cinched coat and chaffing my cheeks. I could see the EPA man who had probably opened and closed the chain-link gate for Vega and Hoffman sitting in a parked van beyond, the orange ember of a cigarette drawing his face from the darkness.

I raised my gaze to where thick razor wire coiled along the top of the fence. Going over was out. I followed the fence until I could no longer see the van, and inserted the end of my cane into one of the lower links.

“Protezione,” I whispered.

The small orb of a light shield took shape, stretching the steel wire. I willed the orb out until the link gave. The fence began to rattle as I pushed more energy into the spell, links contorting and popping around an ever-expanding hole. At last, it was large enough for me to withdraw the cane and duck through.

Deepening the shadows around me with another Word, I slipped past the EPA van and down a short drive until I was standing beside Vega’s parked car, which faced the large drainage culvert.

The fence that guarded the cement cylinder stood wide, an open padlock hanging from one of the links. The security was as much to keep people out as to keep the ghouls in. Another reason I wasn’t going to let Vega tackle this alone. I just had to pray the projection spell had thrown Arnaud and the blood slaves off long enough to keep Vega’s son safe.

Straddling a trickle of slimy water, I entered the culvert’s open mouth. The space smelled like a public restroom. I called light to my cane and held it out. A round graffiti-tagged corridor swelled into view. I started forward at a fast walk, trying to ignore the fact I was going underground.

At a four-way intersection beneath what I guessed to be Madison Street, I began to turn left, but quickly killed my light and drew back. Vega and Hoffman were down there, about fifty yards away, headlamps shining into another corridor along the north side of the tunnel. They spoke in rapid whispers, but the acoustics were making an echoing confusion of their words.

I tiptoed toward them, using my cane to deepen the darkness around me.

“…sleeping bag over here,” I heard Vega say. She disappeared into what I realized wasn’t another tunnel, but a service room in the wall, a couple of feet off the floor. “And that looks like dried blood.”

“You think it’s the killer’s?” Hoffman asked.

“If the blood matches the saliva, we’ll have our answer.”

I was fairly certain what that answer would be. We were only a couple of blocks from Ferguson Towers, which made this a prime spot for a rogue blood slave to lair and rise whenever its hunger struck.

I pressed my body to the wall as Hoffman shone his light up and down the tunnel. He didn’t spot me, but he had missed something far more important up the tunnel—eye shine.

I yanked my cane into sword and staff.

“Illuminare!” White light shot from my orb and down the tunnel, past where Hoffman stood, hitting the creature bearing down on him. Only it was no blood slave.

Long hair draped glowing red eyes and a jutting jaw of bunched teeth. And the creature was too tall for a blood slave. It had to stoop as it ran toward Hoffman, long arms knuckling the floor.

Hoffman raised a hand to block my light, oblivious to the danger. “Croft? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Get down!” I shouted, following it with, “Vigore!”

A blast chased the light and roared down the tunnel. Thanks to remnants of the fae magic, the force quickly grew beyond my control. The force pummeled Hoffman, sending him tumbling toward the creature, who had steeled itself in a crouch, head bowed.

Oh,