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

how Vega and the NYPD operated. After surrounding the building, they would set up a perimeter. We’d be talking roughly twenty-five square blocks, since the suspect—i.e. me—was on foot.

The solution was to take to the air.

Angling my sword at the ledge, I shouted, “Forza dura!”

The force launched me across the alley. There was a four-story difference between the window ledge and my rooftop destination, and though I’d compensated for the flimsier energy here, I still came up short.

I braced against the incoming brick wall until pain exploded through my right shoulder. I’d had the presence to shape a platform of hardened air, only falling a few feet before it caught me. Pushing myself up, I summoned more platforms to act as steps until I was climbing over a retaining wall and onto the rooftop.

An instant later, police cruisers squealed into the alleyway from both ends.

I sagged with my back to the wall. I’d managed to escape the building without being seen, but that was just a start.

Touching the opal end of my staff to my throbbing shoulder, I panted words of healing. As a tepid warmth took hold, I considered my next move. Back in my apartment, I’d returned from the shadow present spontaneously, but that wasn’t happening here. I searched a night sky thick with clouds and industrial smoke.

Vega will be calling a search chopper, I thought, if she hasn’t already.

Meaning I needed to escape the perimeter before the chopper arrived. But escape where?

I crossed the roof of the townhouse until I was looking south. Past the spires of Midtown stretched the relative plains of the Villages. In the distance, a mass of skyscrapers marked Downtown. Sirens blanketed the length of the city, the forlorn sounds interspersed with cries and distant cracks of gunfire.

Who controlled this version of New York, I wondered? More importantly, did I have any allies?

I felt a stab of longing for my real wife as well as Bree-yark and Mae and our other friends, but right now, I needed to get somewhere safe. As I considered my options, I patted my pockets to ensure nothing had fallen out. When my keychain jangled, I narrowed my gaze at where Midtown College would be.

If the keys work here, I can take refuge inside the college.

With a running start, I shouted the Word for force and sent myself skyward, arcing over the street. A second invocation slowed my descent, and I landed at a run across the gravel rooftop of the next building.

I continued in this manner for six more blocks, arriving on the final roof as a distant chugging sounded. A chopper was coming in from the southeast, its powerful beam bathing entire city blocks, but I was outside its search radius. Good thing, because my throbbing right knee told me I was done roof-hopping.

I peered over the back of the building in search of a fire escape.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” a man’s voice growled behind me.

Jerking around, I saw that the five men had been concealed in the shadow of the building’s stair tower. Their silhouettes rose from camp chairs and upturned buckets, all of them armed.

Of course, I thought dismally.

I stepped back, a shield hardening around me, whatever good it would do. My encounter with Vega had shown that my protection here wouldn’t stop a full-blown assault. I would need to take the offensive, hit them hard. I had force, fire, and ice, and the right bottom pocket of my coat bulged with lightning grenades.

But as the men stepped out into the ambient light, they weren’t the homicidal thugs I’d been expecting. They were clean-cut. A couple wore office clothes: slacks and tucked-in shirts with the sleeves rolled up. I instantly pieced it together. This was a resident watch group for the apartment building.

Taking a huge chance, I slid my cane through my coat’s belt loop and showed my hands.

“I wasn’t trying to break in,” I said. “Someone’s chasing me, and I was looking for a way down.”

“Did we see you jump here?” one of them asked.

“Yeah,” I said, still breathing hard from the exertion and adrenaline. “I was over there.”

I indicated the rooftop across the alley. Fortunately, it was just high enough and the distance just narrow enough that someone desperate enough could have made the leap. The men must have done the same calculation because they didn’t question my claim. A couple of them covered the neighboring rooftop with rifles. The rest returned their gazes to me as if searching for a chink in my own clean-cut look. After another moment, the oldest man nodded, and they lowered their weapons.

“Knife wound?” he asked, squinting behind a pair of glasses.

I touched my cheek, encountering the burning line of dried blood left by Vega’s round. “Gunshot wound, actually.”

The men grunted knowingly.

“What the hell are you even doing out this time of night?” the spokesman asked.

The fifty-something-year-old looked like he could have managed a regional bank, but he also possessed a certain hardness. They all did. These were men who had families to provide for and protect, but who also knew that one careless moment in this version of the city and they could lose everything.

“It’s a long story,” I breathed. “I’m not from here.”

“I could have told you that.” The man cracked a smile for the first time. “Where are you trying to get to?”

“Midtown College.”

“Why do you want to go there?” he asked, an angle of suspicion returning to his voice.

“I know someone who used to work night security,” I lied. “It was the safest place I could think of.”

“Well, ‘used to’ would be the operative term. Midtown College went under years ago. It’s all abandoned buildings now—but that’s not to say devoid of life. Be glad you met us. A trip there, especially at this hour, would have ended really badly for you.”

I wondered if this version of the city had also suffered a major economic crash, but instead of recovering from it, as ours was, theirs had fallen