Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9) by Brad Magnarella (ereader with android .txt) 📕

the corridor, pieces of door clattering around me. In the instant before the detonation, I’d sensed a pressure change and invoked a shield. But the explosion arrived too fast. I only managed a flat barrier, and now fire surged around the edges, sending the arms of my coat up in flames.

Teeth grinding, I pushed back against the still-surging fire while struggling to shape the edges of the shield around me. Boosted by some sort of accelerant, the flames disintegrated my sleeves and ripped into skin.

Holy hell, that hurts!

My vision blurred with tears as I focused past the pain and fought for every last joule of energy I could gather. I channeled it all into my protection. A moment later, the shield snapped into place around me. I chased out the oxygen with a Word, withering the flames that wreathed both arms and had begun climbing my pant legs. They dwindled to smoke, but the world around me still looked like an inferno.

If I don’t act, I thought, gasping, it’ll take down the entire college.

Inside the thinning air of my confinement, I shouted, “Respingere!”

The pulse that detonated from the shield blew the flames back enough for me to stand and disperse my protection. Scorched air billowed around me. I seized a vial of ice crystals from a coat pocket.

“Ghiaccio!” I bellowed.

A cone of subzero frost shot from the tube and met the returning fire in a great plume of vapor. I forced the fire back further, directing the blast along the doorframe, where the flames were most intense. By the time I’d exhausted the tube, the fire was a paler version of itself.

A second tube finished the job.

Sagging against the wall, I waved the smoke from my face and inspected my throbbing arms. The burns were bad but appeared limited to second degree. Hovering the opal end of my cane over one arm and then the other, I spoke words of healing. Soothing light haloed the weeping areas like gauze.

With a long exhale, I peered around as fire alarms began sounding. Through the thinning smoke, icicles dripped from the splintered doorframe. Thick burn marks curled up the walls alongside patches of frost. In my office, it looked like a bomb had gone off. My desk was flat on its back and books lay everywhere. Shredded papers fluttered down, several on fire, while water dribbled from ceiling sprinklers.

“So much for organizing,” I muttered, still half dazed.

I’d been hit by a concussive force, slammed into a wall, and half broiled, and it had all happened fast. Mere seconds from start to finish. Before I could get my bearings, doors opened along the corridor. Professors poked their heads out, some exclaiming over the explosion’s aftermath, while others just peered from behind thick lenses like owls. A couple emerged to check on me.

“I don’t need an ambulance,” I assured them. “I’m okay.”

“What’s going on out here?” a new voice called above the alarms.

“Was okay,” I amended.

Professor Snodgrass came bustling through the small congregation. He looked from the damage to me and back.

“What’s this?” he demanded. “What did you do?”

“I was nearly cooked. Do you want an apology?”

“No, I want to know who’s responsible for the destruction!”

I stared, not believing I’d ever felt sorry for this pathetic piece of—

“Ah, there you are, Everson!” someone called breathlessly. “Are you all right?”

I turned to see Claudius stumbling toward us as if he’d just been ejected from one of his portals. His presence was an immediate comfort. As he approached, he shook what looked like small slugs from his dyed-black hair, organisms from whatever realm he’d transited through. They dissolved as they struck the floor.

“I heard the explosion, and then your line went dead,” he said.

He skipped back from something underfoot, then stooped to pick it up. He handed me my flip phone, which had been blown from my ear during the explosion. I opened it, surprised to find it still worked.

“Who are you?” Snodgrass asked Claudius.

The elder member of my order was dressed in a black silk robe that matched his socks and lanky curtains of hair. The fact he’d come straight here, not even sparing a few seconds to step into slippers, moved me. But as far as Snodgrass was concerned, Claudius wasn’t faculty or staff, and he sure as hell wasn’t a student.

“Oh, ah, I’m an associate of Everson’s,” he replied. “Well, friend, I suppose. You’d consider us friends by now, right?” he asked to be sure.

“Of course,” I said.

“How did you even get in here?” Snodgrass demanded, his voice verging on shrill.

Claudius adjusted his blue-tinted glasses as he peered down at him. Completing his assessment of the man, he brushed a couple stray slugs from his shoulder in Snodgrass’s direction before returning his attention to me.

“So what happened?” he asked.

“Booby trap.” Following his example, I sidestepped from Snodgrass. “The moment I turned the key, I felt something trigger, like a sigil. It sucked in the surrounding energy and released it as high-concentration incendiary magic. If I hadn’t summoned a shield, you’d be sweeping me into a dust pan.”

“Ooh.”

He ran his gaze down the door frame, paused at the fractured bore space for the bolt, then squatted and searched along the floor. Realizing he was being ignored, Snodgrass scowled and paced off. The other professors peeled away to evacuate.

“Ah, here it is,” Claudius said at last.

I took a knee beside him and squinted at the spot on the floor beside his trembling finger. The fire had burned most of it off, but an edge of the sigil remained, under where the door had been. The instant the door moved, it had triggered. But it was fading now as the magic that once sustained it bled away.

“Hmm, quite powerful,” he remarked.

“Any idea where it came from?”

“Drat. I was about to ask you that very question.”

I lowered my head for a better look. “Do you see this part?” I traced over the edge of the sigil with a fingernail. “It has the same sharp angle as the patterns