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

I seized his plated arm shield, and he hefted me up behind him. I seized him around the waist, the muscles of the horse’s flanks surging like giant pistons. We emerged onto Broadway. Ahead, an attack helicopter pivoted around and came at us low. In a deafening burst, gunfire blew up chunks of asphalt.

“They’re trying to strafe us!” I shouted.

Before the lines of blown asphalt could reach us, Arnaud pulled the steed left, onto a narrow side street. The helicopter roared past. An explosive bout of antiaircraft fire sounded behind us.

The horse snorted and sprinted on.

“It seems the wolves are emerging,” Arnaud said over his shoulder.

He took a sharp right, and the small gated park near the Bowling Green station appeared ahead of us. Werewolves in their creature forms were bounding up from the subway entrance and emptying onto the brick plaza outside the green. Blood slaves swarmed in to meet them.

With the preternatural speed of both creatures, the action was hard to follow. Claws and teeth flashed, blades glinted, smoke and blood erupted from locked and rolling bodies.

The blood slaves were outsized but not outmuscled.

Before I was ready, Arnaud charged his warhorse into the park. I worked one of the maces free from my belt while holding tight to Arnaud. The werewolves were wearing what looked like Kevlar suits, but Arnaud found their vulnerabilities with swift, precise strokes of his sword. I watched one werewolf fall away, his decapitated head hanging on by a thread of sinew. The horse trampled the wolf’s body. Other wolves retreated from the bite of Arnaud’s sword to regenerate—only to be piled on by blood slaves armed with punching daggers.

But for every wolf that fell dead, two more seemed to appear from the subway.

I twisted one way and the other, swinging the mace desperately. One blow caught a wolf across the jaw. Blood blew from his mouth like spindrift. Slaves pulled the wolf from the horse’s right flank, where he’d embedded his claws. I nailed another wolf behind the ear.

This is insane, I thought, swinging at a third lunging wolf. I need eyes on every side of my head.

By sheer luck, I glanced up in time to catch something plummeting toward the park.

“Protezione!” I cried.

The mace stiffened in my grasp and a blue shield appeared around us an instant before the mortar impacted to our right. The blast kicked us to the side, burying us in a wave of stone dust. Wolves and blood slaves that had been thrown skyward thudded down around us.

The horse bellowed, hooves hammering the blood-slick bricks as it struggled to stay upright. I squeezed Arnaud tighter as he fought to bring the horse around. A second mortar landed, slamming into the park on our other side. The horse was blown from its feet, and I lost my hold. I rolled over several times, coming to a rest against a mangled blood slave.

I peeked above his body. Through the thinning haze, I could make out the old U.S. Custom House across the plaza. I drew the other mace from my belt. The stone steps to the entrance would give me higher ground and protection from the rear. I’d be in a better position to cast.

Shouting to reinforce my shield, I crossed the plaza at a run, ears still ringing from the twin blasts. I veered around blood slaves grappling with giant wolves and pounded up the steps. At a landing where a pair of columns climbed the building’s tall edifice, I turned to take in the scene from my new vantage.

Not good.

Arnaud and the blood slaves had recovered from the mortar shells and were re-engaging the wolves, but there must have been a second breach. A new wolf horde was swarming in from the east.

“Arnaud!” I shouted.

From his mount, the vampire turned his blood-streaked face. The eyes that met mine burned red from his helmet. Sword poised above his billowing cape, he could have been an angel of death. Arnaud wheeled the mount toward where I was pointing and saw the new front. From windows in the surrounding buildings, gunfire erupted. The vampires’ private security force!

Several wolves tumbled from the charge. Blood slaves not entangled formed a wall to meet the rest, but the slaves were still outnumbered. And that wasn’t the worst of it—a third werewolf horde was coming in on their blind side. Who in the hell was coordinating them? And how?

“Forza dura!” I bellowed.

Power stormed from my mace and hit the incoming wave. Wolves were lifted from their feet and slammed into buildings. Several of the gunmen above switched their aim, lighting up the fallen beasts.

The rest of the wolves recovered quickly. They split up, one group scaling the buildings to reach the gunmen, a second group bounding toward the battle in the green. From that group, half a dozen wolves splintered away and veered toward me.

I checked my shield and set my legs. I’d spaced out my invocations enough to keep Thelonious at bay and to allow my power time to recharge. My magic still held plenty of steel. And whether it was the rush of battle or the sum of my frustrations, I was burning to let that steel rip.

“Who’s first?” I shouted at the charging wolves.

I didn’t get the chance to find out. From around both sides of the Custom House, a new force appeared. Clad in the same chainmail as the foot soldiers in Arnaud’s battalion, the blood slaves wore green armbands that bore the insignia of their vampire’s firm. Bristling with swords and daggers, the slaves collapsed into the wolves at the base of the stairs.

The Undertaker galloped past them on a blood-red steed, a barbed lance braced between arm and armored chest. He grinned over at me before diving into the main battle. Wolves screamed as he skewered them two and three at a time and flung them from his path.

Never thought I’d be happy to see that creep, I thought.

I was looking for where I could help out when a