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

“Bree-yark!” I called, right before he disappeared from sight too.

“Go,” Caroline said. “I’ll stay with Arnaud.”

Drawing my cane into sword and staff, I started after the goblin. I soon arrived at the corner he’d rounded to find ramshackle buildings crowding a narrow lane. Several of the windows above featured propped elbows and grim faces. I spotted my teammate at the lane’s far end, where it curved from view.

“Bree-yark!” I shouted again, this time trying to push power into my wizard’s voice, but I was half-gagging from the stenches.

When he ignored me, I raised my sword—I’d knock him down if I had to. But the blade was jostling too much, and an errant shot could take down one of the teetering structures along with everyone inside. I upped my speed instead, adjusting my strides to avoid seeping channels of raw sewage.

Where the lane ended, a soot-covered church rose. Half a double door was rebounding from the urchin’s headlong entrance. Bree-yark, who had gained on him, was almost to the door himself. Before I could shout or cast a barricade, the goblin lowered his shoulder and barged in after his quarry.

A disintegrated faith littered the church grounds like fallen ash. In its place, a malignant energy had crept up the walls, causing the spire with its broken cross to look like an infernal horn and the smashed windows to stare madly.

Dammit, Bree-yark.

At the church’s threshold, I gathered what little ley energy there was, hardened the air into a defensive shield around me, and peered into the darkness. The goblin’s panted breaths echoed ahead, each one jarring as if he were descending a staircase. Drifting in on cold, unseen currents came whispered voices and hushed giggles. The unnatural sounds sent goose pimples rushing the length of both arms.

“Illuminare!” I shouted.

A weak ball of light discharged from the opal end of my staff and illuminated the church’s interior. The space was narrow but deep. Ragged black drapes hung from rafters and skirted a floor whose pews and wooden planks had been removed, exposing layers of excavated earth. The air inside wasn’t as foul as it had been in the streets, but its staleness had a throat-gripping quality. The space was devoid of anyone, the whispers I’d heard seeming to have retreated into holes dug here and there.

With another Word, I activated the banishment enchantment on my blade and picked my way forward.

What kind of hellhole did you land us in, Bree-yark?

The goblin’s grunts sounded from the far end of the church—only now they were returning. Moments later, he batted past the drapes. I noticed he wasn’t carrying Dropsy. When his squash-colored eyes met mine, they were huge.

“There’s a freaking vampire in here!” he gasped.

“Wonderful,” I muttered.

That explained the big hole in the ground, not to mention the suffocating atmosphere: the church had been retrofitted into a giant tomb. Grandpa’s ring came to life, pulsing with power, meaning the bloodsucker in question was related to a signatory of the Brasov Pact between wizards and vampires.

I aimed my fist with the ring around the room as I retreated toward the door. Bree-yark scrambled up the final level of excavation and was almost to me when the church door slammed shut. My ball of light shrank to a sputtering point. I pushed power into the invocation, but the air seemed to thicken around it. The best I could manage was a feeble glow that cast everything in brown shadows.

“Door’s locked,” Bree-yark grunted, tugging on the handle.

My wizard’s senses showed brambles of vampiric magic growing along the frame.

“Fear not, travelers,” a sultry voice called in a vaguely Irish accent. “No harm will befall ye here.”

Rustling sounded, and I turned to find the long drapes drawing apart. Across the church, a female vampire sat on the altar. She was middle-aged and lean, dark-red hair spilling over the shoulders of a black dress. The dress’s top was open to her pale sternum and girded bodice-tight above her waist before ending at her knees in a frilly hem. Laced up her shins were a pair of black boots. The thick heels kicked against the altar’s side like cudgels.

“Indeed,” she continued, “ye’ll not find better sanctuary in the city.”

“I seriously doubt that,” I said.

The sealing magic over the door was weak. At my word, it fell apart.

“Yer looking for someone,” the vampire called. “Perhaps Hellcat Maggie can help.”

I’d pulled the door open, the pale sun like needles against my eyes, but what she said made me hesitate. When I looked back, a small army of children had emerged from the holes and taken up positions in the shadows around her. They were boys and girls, at least twenty of them, none older than ten. The youngest looked four. As I took in their small, pale faces, anger roared inside me.

“Like you helped them?” I growled.

“The orphans? Don’t be so hasty to judge dear Maggie. Each one was sick, starved, and broken. Harry here was ravaged by consumption. And I found little Fiona in a trash bin at night, being nibbled on by rats.” Bracelets jangled around Maggie’s wrists as she stroked the hair from a girl’s brow.

“So you made them your slaves?”

Maggie stopped kicking, her expression pinching around a pair of razor-thin lips. “I delivered them from death, traveler. And I made sure no one would hurt them again. Though a few fools have tried,” she added darkly.

Unlike the urchins I’d seen in the street, these children were well dressed, their faces scrubbed and hair combed. The youngest girls wore ribbons. But the fact they were cared for didn’t change that this creature had made them her undead slaves, and not out of charity. She was using them to enrich herself, our stolen lantern being just one example.

But even as I trained my ring on her, I reminded myself that I was witnessing an echo of a reality. Nothing I did here would change what had already happened. And the fact I’d never heard of Hellcat Maggie in the modern