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

In the rearview mirror, the wolves had arrived at the downed vehicles and begun leaping them. Something on one of the upturned trucks caught my eye: a cylindrical gas tank.

There she blows, I thought.

Bertha decelerated as I climbed onto the crash bars. Over the top of the equipment that rocked and jostled on the flatbed, I lined up my right palm with the tank and yelled, “Forza dura!”

The force of the invocation threw me back into the cab. Reclaiming the steering wheel, I peered into the side mirror. The vehicles, having been blown skyward, were now crashing down in a deafening wave. From inside the cacophony, a wolf yelped.

Should slow them, but I missed the damn tank.

The thought had barely formed when a white flash appeared amid the wreckage followed by a deafening detonation. An orange fireball swallowed the thrown vehicles and stormed down the tunnel. I crouched as it roared past, flames searing my arms and hunched-over back. I held my breath to the strangling heat while slapping out a small fire atop my hat.

After a moment, the flames receded along with the piteous cries of the wolves. With a choked gasp, I inhaled the stench of burning diesel and focused on the tracks ahead. They switched here and there, throwing us from local to express tracks and back. I had no control over the switches, just the steering to ensure Bertha’s rubber tires remained aligned with the rails.

It was a matter now of staying the course.

The next station was empty as well as the one after that. I had no way of knowing what was happening above ground, but my guess was that the NYPD, having sent the bulk of its force to Midtown, was now struggling to get officers into the Broadway line south of me, where many of the entrances remained sealed. If that held, and with the wolves no longer in pursuit, my chances of reaching Arnaud’s district were starting to look decent.

I checked the speedometer and then my watch. At our current speed, we’d be at the Wall Street station in under five.

As the seconds ticked by, my body felt like an exposed nerve. I marked off each station until I was coming up on Canal Street. Two weeks before, I had turned it into a ghoul crematorium. The station had yet to be cleaned. Bertha bumped over heaps of charred bones and through drifts of ash, the particles billowing up into the headlight beams.

I coughed as we thudded onward.

Only two stations from Wall Street. As Bertha rumbled through the Fulton Street stop, I rose from my seat to get a better look at the tunnel ahead. It ran around a bend, straightened, and then…

“Oh, shit.”

I slammed the brakes hard. Too hard. The load in the flatbed trailer pushed against Bertha’s rear, displacing the tires and metal wheels from the rails. I fought with the steering, but there was no correcting it. The truck and trailer jackknifed. I used the crash bars to brace myself as we capsized.

Bertha crashed and came to a sudden rest on her side. I’d managed to stay inside the cab, shocked but not hurt. I craned my neck to peer down the tracks. One of Bertha’s headlights illuminated what I’d seen a moment before: an imposing steel wall and a line of government security guards standing in front of it. Their eyes glowed above their aimed pistols.

Distant commands sounded behind me—NYPD officers entering from the Fulton Street Station. Crackling power rushed to my prism, but I held back. The second I cast, I’d be shot dead.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said tiredly, showing my hands. “I surrender.”

“Music to my ears,” a familiar voice said from the wolves. It was Flint, one of the wolves who had decked me in the West Village. On the outer edge of Bertha’s light, his lupine teeth flashed. If his brother was among the dozen-odd wolves stalking toward me I couldn’t see him.

“Where’s Tweedledum?” I asked.

“I’d be worrying about yourself right now,” Flint said with a snort. “I don’t get you, Croft. You had official protection. Why’d your dumb ass throw it away? What’d the vamps promise you?”

“Nothing,” I growled. “It’s a goddamned lie.”

“But at the first sign of heat, look where you ran.” He glanced around. We must have been at Liberty Street. Aboveground—and below ground too, evidently—stood the forbidding Wall.

“Like I had a choice,” I said. “The mayor’s office planted that story about me. But you probably already know that.”

“All I know are my orders.”

“To bring me in?”

His delayed response told me everything. “Yeah, to bring you in.”

I was being thrown to the wolves. Literally. Flint stepped forward, reached down, and seized my arm. His grip was crushing. I hooked an elbow around one of the crash bars and grabbed my wrist with the other hand.

“Let go,” he ordered.

“No.”

He would pry me away eventually, but my powers needed time to recharge. Then I’d figure out how in the hell to use them. I braced for a shoulder-dislocating jerk, but Flint’s grip relaxed. He raised his face and sniffed. I noticed some of the other wolves doing the same.

Flint was opening his mouth when automatic gunfire broke from the tunnel behind me. Wolves shouted and went down, smoke blowing from their wounds. Silver rounds.

A spray of blood hit me across the face. Flint released me, seizing his throat as he fell.

Within seconds, it was over. Pounding boots replaced gunfire. Men in body armor appeared, wrestled me from the toppled maintenance vehicle, and began running me toward the steel barrier. They weren’t NYPD, which the wolves had realized too late. I recognized them as members of the vampires’ private security force, the ones who guarded the Wall.

Behind me, single shots cracked as the mercenaries finished off the survivors.

Hydraulics sounded, and the steel barrier shuddered and rose. The guards hustled me into a corridor, the tracks replaced by cement flooring. After a couple of turns, we stopped in front of an elevator door. I