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

who was still trembling on the ground, and thrust the amulet at the banshee’s yawning mouth.

“Disfare!” I shouted.

A blue blast discharged from the iron in a silent roar. But instead of scattering the being as I’d hoped, the force sent her tumbling off into the trees. I stooped and helped Bree-yark to his feet.

“The heck happened?” he moaned, clamping his brow.

“You succumbed to the banshee’s scream. No shame in that, but we’ve gotta make tracks.”

“Is she destroyed?”

“Displaced,” I said. “She’ll be back.”

“Everson … your hand.”

I followed Bree-yark’s wincing gaze to my amulet hand. The skin over the knuckles was blackening, thick puss oozing from a network of soggy cracks. I moved the glowing amulet to my cane hand and splayed my fingers. The veins were darkening, turning the color of ink. A piece of flesh fell from my fifth knuckle, exposing a white knob of bone. But I didn’t feel a damned thing.

“Did she touch you?” Bree-yark asked.

“I must’ve made contact when I blasted her.”

I angled my cane down and uttered words of healing. The cane’s opal glowed softly, enveloping my hand in a cottony light. But though the black ink stopped spreading, the tissue wasn’t repairing. I pushed more power through the spell, but the necrotizing effect of the banshee’s touch dug in.

This would require powerful fae magic to cure.

And I could already see the damned banshee circling back.

“Stay close,” I said to Bree-yark, who had pivoted toward her spectral form.

At my word, light pulsed from my cane and hardened into a shield around us. I fed it additional protection through the iron amulet—and just in time. Though muted, the banshee’s scream punched through my mind like a hot spike and shook our protection. Bree-yark’s hands went to his ears.

The scream tailed off, but not the banshee. Her approach was more cautious this time, eyes fixed on my still-glowing amulet. Even so, I wasn’t sure I could repel another direct attack. The invocations and spells I’d just cast in a rapid sequence had cost me energy. Maybe too much energy.

“If she was flesh, I’d give her a taste of goblin steel,” Bree-yark growled. “Then she’d have something to scream about.”

“She was once,” I said, cycling through everything I’d read about the beings.

According to legend, banshees had been fae of extraordinary beauty and conceit. In death, however, their whole-soul obsession with themselves made them susceptible to an ancient curse said to reside in the darker forests of Faerie. The curse twisted those fae inside out—their ghastly, shrieking insides becoming their immortal forms, doomed to wander an eternal darkness. I could only imagine the kind of individual we were talking about, given how self-absorbed most fae already were.

The banshee dove in.

“Respingere!” I cried, sending light and force from our shield.

The banshee withdrew and hovered a safe distance away, watching.

“Holy thunder, she’s ugly,” Bree-yark muttered.

I resumed parsing through my knowledge of all things banshee until one feature of their condition suggested a weakness. And it related to what Bree-yark had just said. “Do you have water on you?” I asked.

“Yeah, a whole skin.”

“Grab it.”

While he did, the banshee swayed back and forth, as though searching for an opening.

Bree-yark held up the swollen skin. “Got it.”

“Pour it out.”

“Onto the ground?”

“The shield, technically, but yeah.”

He upended his skin until water began glugging out. Our shell of hardened air buckled slightly as the water landed. At one time I hadn’t been able to cast or hold invocations in the presence of liquid, the medium too disruptive to the conduction of ley energy. But with time and practice, I’d prevailed.

And a good thing.

I repelled the banshee’s next slashing attack with another pulse. But she veered back around, the eyes that peered at us radiating the most unnatural hatred. She wasn’t leaving here without a kill.

“Water’s all out,” Bree-yark said.

I glanced down at the puddle around our feet.

“Good, now jump straight up on my word. Now!”

As our feet left the water, I shouted, “Protezione!”

A second orb of hardened air manifested inside our original protection, and we landed on dry shield. I grew it out until the water flattened between the two layers. I pushed harder, forcing the water into a paper-thin sheet that separated us from the banshee. The inrushing specter stopped suddenly and hovered inches away.

Take a good look, sweetheart, I thought.

Beyond the water, her head tilted one way and the other. She raised a taloned finger in front of the shield, then lowered it suddenly. Her mouth fell as her expression shifted from belligerence to naked horror. In a cyclone of hair and ragged robes, the banshee fled into the trees, a forlorn wail trailing after her.

I waited until I could no longer hear her before dispelling the shield. The sheet of water splashed to the ground.

Bree-yark chuckled in disbelief. “What the heck just happened?”

“Banshees still think they’re the femme fatales they were in life,” I answered wearily. “Her reflection revealed what she really was. When that sank in, well…” I gestured toward her path of flight. “She flipped.”

“Freaking brilliant, Everson.”

Though I nodded in response to his shoulder punch, it was too early to celebrate. I had a hand that was half rotted, and I’d just broadcast our presence to the rest of Kinloch Forest in giant stadium lights.

I activated another cocktail of protective potions, and we drank them quickly. I then recalled the power from my cane and amulet, snuffing their light. Darkness collapsed around us. “We need to get moving,” I said. “Even if it means feeling our way along the path on hands and knees.”

“Um, the forest might have other ideas.”

Snaps sounded, and a faint luminescence grew over Bree-yark’s face. I spun to find tangles of roots ripping up from the ground and taking large humanoid shape, a green swamp-like gas enveloping them.

13

“Oh, c’mon,” I complained. “Now what?”

“Tanglers,” Bree-yark said with a grin. “And good news. These guys can be cut.”

He lunged past me. Roots and earth flew as he ripped his jagged blade through one of the tangler’s midsections, effectively