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

imagined tables had once stood, photos from the old country adorning the sooty brick walls. A U-shaped bar took up the far side of the room, ringed by stools bolted into the wooden floor, though several were missing. I imagined Grandpa sitting on one of the stools, ordering a stein of beer, then using illusory magic to go down to the vault to add to his collection or perhaps examine the magical artifacts already there.

My gaze shifted to a corridor to the left of the bar. “Access to the basement is probably back here,” I said.

James followed me into the bar’s former kitchen. The stairs down were beside a cleaned-out pantry. I took a tremulous breath—why did everything important have to be in basements?—and led the way down.

The basement was a dank, concrete space. Rats skittered from the expanding glow of my wand, taking refuge among heaps of trash and old furniture. James sent a bolt after one and chuckled when it zapped the rat’s hindquarters.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “is this boring you?”

“Hey, just trying to keep my skills honed.”

“Well, how about looking for the vault?” I snapped.

The uneasiness I’d felt outside was still swimming through my system like a harsh stimulant. I was in no mood to play babysitter. I moved from James and began scanning the walls. He took the hint and began doing the same, moving in the other direction. When we met on the far wall, he shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said.

When Arnaud had told me about the vault, I’d pictured it in a wall. Maybe that was the wrong assumption.

“Vigore!” I shouted, sweeping my sword in an arc. James jumped out of the way as the heaps of refuse blew toward the staircase. Clusters of squealing rats spilled out and scattered, chasing down their former refuge. A moment later I spotted the vault door in the floor where one of the piles had been sitting. The door was made of cast iron with a lever handle.

“Looks like someone’s already been in there,” James remarked.

“Blood slaves,” I said, sensing the residue of the old locking spell. “They must have overpowered the spell.” Which had no doubt weakened with Grandpa’s death, I thought. He’d probably saved his most powerful locking enchantments for the items themselves—like the vampires’ Scaig Box that had held a shadow fiend. And hopefully whatever held the Banebrand.

I double-checked the door for traps before gripping the lever and giving it a hard yank. The door clunked loose and opened onto a cylinder with a metal ladder leading down.

“Hold on,” James said. He cast a silver ball of light and, with a small flick, sent it down the cylinder ahead of us. A skill he must have learned during the five years of training I’d never received. About fifteen feet below, the light spread into a room of which I could only see a small section.

I climbed down the ladder first, the skin across my chest stretching tight, breaths thinning, and ducked into a bunker-like room. I turned toward the hovering ball of light, and my heart sank. Against the far wall lay a scatter of metal boxes inside which the magical artifacts had no doubt been stored. The open boxes had been picked through, if not by the blood slaves then by whomever had come after them. Gone were the wands I’d imagined, the amulets and charms and enchanted blades. All I could find among the boxes was a dagger the size of a letter-opener.

“Think that’s the weapon?” James asked.

I turned the rusty dagger around in my hand. I sensed no magic or enchantment in it. The blade’s tip had bent, and the blade was dull. Was that the point? I wondered. For the weapon to appear ordinary to anyone who found it? Was the magic hidden deep inside it? I looked over the dagger once more, made a dubious face, and placed it in the sack.

“Probably not,” I said.

“There’s still this.”

I turned to where James’s ball of light was hovering above a trunk set in a corner. With its black wood and battered metal, I recognized it immediately as the steamer trunk that had once sat in Grandpa’s attic study. I’d always wondered what had become of it. But as I looked at it now, I had no hope it would contain anything. The central lock was busted and both hasps open. James lifted the lid and then jumped back with a sharp holler.

“What is it?” I asked, remembering the sniveling voice I’d heard in the same trunk years earlier. But the bone-white creature that sprang out was no familiar. He perched on the edge of the trunk, bloodshot eyes flicking between us. When his pale lips began to bulge, I saw what we were dealing with.

“Vampire!” I shouted at James.

The creature sprang and rammed face-first into James’s shield. He hissed and scratched at it, a ragged business shirt and slacks covering his emaciated body. And now I recognized him. The vampire was a former CEO of one of the financial firms in downtown Manhattan. I’d sat with him in Arnaud’s conference room, fought alongside him against the wolves.

Grandpa’s ring pulsed around my finger. I aimed it at the vampire and shouted, “Balaur!”

The force from the ring nailed him and, in a burst of fire, slung him into the far wall. The vampire fell to the floor and lay writhing, his face torn as though by dragon talons, smoke billowing from his body.

James and I stood over him. “So this is where you’ve been hiding out,” I said.

“A drop,” the creature groveled. “A single, blessed drop. Please. Your blood is potent, and I am so hungry.”

He gripped my pant leg, but I kicked his hand away. He was one of the two former CEOs who had escaped following the battle against the city and, by the looks of it, had planned to remain in hibernation until the threat passed. He’d probably learned about the vault from Arnaud when the vampire had reclaimed