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

“Claudius,” I snapped.

“Can we talk in person? I’m having a hard time hearing you.”

“Sure,” I said, exhaling. “Did you have somewhere in mind?”

I was already cycling through nearby coffee shops and diners he could transport to when the connection disintegrated into static, and a portal the size of a doorway opened between me and a police SUV. At the other end of a tunnel, I could just make out Claudius. He was waving for me to come through.

“It’s safe,” he said from far away.

“Yeah, and so was the Hindenburg,” I muttered, clapping my phone closed.

I drew my cane into sword and staff, not believing I was about to trust a portal opened by someone who could barely manage a telephone, but it was that damned ticking clock. I needed help for the Upholders.

With a final glance around for whomever might have been watching me, I uttered a Word. The surrounding air hardened into a form-fitting shield. Mouthing a quick prayer, I stepped inside. A damp darkness pressed in from all sides, and the ground squelched underfoot. Where in the hell was I?

Better not to ask, I decided, upping my pace.

I was halfway to Claudius when something large flapped past my face. With a cry, I swung my sword around, but the creature had already disappeared into the darkness.

“Quickly!” Claudius’s voice echoed down the portal.

Another set of wet, leathery wings batted past. This time, a cord whipped around my throat.

“Respingere!” I cried.

The shield encasing me sent out a bright pulse. What looked like an albino bat with a long rat’s tail tumbled through the air with a shriek and disappeared. I glanced around in the shield’s dimming light, now wishing I hadn’t. More of the bat-like creatures circled a high ceiling of glistening stalactites. And did one of the stalactites just move?

The pulse from my shield had barely echoed away when a low rumble shook the cavern.

“Run!” Claudius yelled.

The cavern shook again, and I staggered for balance. Something crashed down behind me. I peered over a shoulder. One of the stalactites had fallen. Another landed in front of me and then righted itself. A dozen glowing eyes opened up and down its rocky face.

Well, isn’t that nice.

As I veered around the monstrosity, thin tendrils began whipping from its body. I nailed the thing with a force blast, knocking it over.

“Don’t look back!” Claudius shouted, waving both hands now.

I immediately craned my neck around. A wormlike creature large enough to fill the tunnel was contracting toward me. Its open mouth showed a humped gullet ringed with rows of nasty hook-like teeth.

A Chagrath? I thought in disbelief. He sent me through a portal belonging to a frigging Chagrath? Months before, I had consulted for my friend Jason, also known as the Blue Wolf, when he and his teammates faced a Chagrath in Mexico. One of the last creatures you wanted bearing down on you.

I aimed my sword back and shouted, “Fuoco!”

I rarely cast through the blade’s second rune, the one the efreet had activated, because it was too hard to control. But right now I was too pissed off to care. The rune spawned a flame of elemental fire. Determined to bring the force under my will, I repeated an incantation of control—which the fire ignored.

In a blinding flash, it roared the length of my sword and geysered into the approaching creature. The Chagrath screamed as bright orange flames broke around its mouth and down its throat. The creature’s body shrank back, sending a seismic wave through the cavern.

I stumbled, arms pinwheeling for balance, sword continuing to spew flames. The bat-like creatures shrieked and scattered as arcs of fire sent several up in torches. Even the stalactites were backing away. But the expulsive force was also shoving me from my destination. I shouted one charged Word after another, struggling to recall the elemental power, but it was as if it had a mind of its own.

Without warning, something seized my sword arm and yanked.

3

I landed on a stone floor, the sword clanging down beside me. The rune was dim again. Smoke floated from the cooling blade. When I turned my head the other way, I was eye level with a pair of feet clad in black socks and sandals: Claudius’s. He was standing over me in a satin robe cinched at his waist. In a panic, I looked past him, but the portal was closed. The worm hadn’t come through.

“A Chagrath’s lair?” I shouted. “What in holy hell, man?”

Claudius adjusted his round tinted glasses. “Sorry about that. It was the most direct route, and I thought we’d, ah, catch it sleeping.”

“Thought or hoped?”

“Hoped,” he admitted.

Grumbling, I pushed myself to my feet. I’d never seen Claudius’s workspace, and it looked like a cross between a poorly lit office and a medieval dungeon.

To my left, a massive desk was heaped with telephones, several of them ringing. Piles of notes sat in drifts around a desktop calendar that was five years old. The rest of the stone walls were lined with bookcases, their shelves holding dust-covered tomes and artifacts that buzzed with peculiar energies. Potted plants and small cages hung from a low ceiling. I turned to find one of the plants straining toward me, a mouth set in the center of its bright ring of petals leaking a foul-smelling drool.

“Oh, don’t mind him,” Claudius said. “Nipped me the other day, and now he has a taste for wizard’s blood.”

I leaned away from the plant’s straining lips. No wonder Claudius always sounded so damned out of sorts. This place was the picture of madness. The aging magic-user tilted his head now, curtains of dyed-black hair shifting around the sags of his questioning face.

“It’s Everson,” I said, preempting him. “Everson Croft.”

“Ah, yes, yes. Everson.” He mouthed my name a couple more times, as if to make it stick. “And how can I help you?”

My heart was still racing from the Chagrath encounter, and being