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

each juggler’s chest. I hadn’t bothered calibrating—there wasn’t time. The result was a pair of cannonballs. The forces plowed the jugglers into the wall with bone-fracturing force and dropped them among their spilled blades. One groaned weakly while the other kicked the floor in agony.

The sword swallower looked from his downed companions back to Gorgantha—just as her fist arrived. The blow collapsed his grin into his neck and sent his feet out from under him. He landed on his back, gurgling for air. Gorgantha wasn’t done. She grabbed him under an arm and began dragging him.

“All right, lovely,” she said, mimicking him from earlier. “Fun and games are over.”

He was still clutching the long sword, but he couldn’t even raise it. The blade rattled across the floor impotently. At the tank, Gorgantha hooked her other arm between his legs and dropped him into the water, sword and all. She slammed the lid closed and locked it with a lever. The swallower ended up in a hunch, lips pulling at the few inches of air beneath the lid, one hand clawing the glass.

“Bitch,” Gorgantha muttered.

Clearly impressed with the mer’s work, Bree-yark sheathed his blade and followed her from the tank at a trot. Meanwhile, I slipped out of my coat, pried the daggers free, and was pushing my arms back through the sleeves when fire burst from the back door.

“Really?” I complained.

Drawing his coat over his head, Bree-yark lunged in front of Gorgantha to absorb the brunt of the attack. As the flames petered out, four men with shaved heads and missing eyebrows emerged. The frigging firebreathers. And judging by Bree-yark’s charred coat, they were breathing some heavy-duty shit. Gorgantha, with her sensitive skin, backed from their flickering torches and jugs of fuel.

“Not so tough now, eh?” one of them jeered.

Before I could force-blast the firebreathers into next month, Bree-yark charged. Legs churning, he went in low, coat still shielding his head. Eruptions of flames broke against him, but he didn’t slow.

“You wanna see tough?” he roared.

Three of the firebreathers were smart enough to backpedal through the doorway, but the one who’d spoken tried to get off another blast. Bree-yark reached him first. Seizing his arm, the goblin rotated several times, his large feet pirouetting over the floor, and released the airborne man into the doorway.

The firebreather’s jug smashed against the frame, and his torch landed in the spilled fuel. Flames burst over the sides of the door and up the plank wall. Bree-yark shuffled back and shed his smoking coat. Dragged by the legs, the downed firebreather disappeared beyond the spreading flames.

“You all right?” Bree-yark asked Gorgantha.

“Yeah, just a little dried out. Those were some dope moves.”

Bree-yark blushed. “Well, I could say the same about yours.”

The double doors we’d entered through began to shake.

“Don’t worry,” I said, looking over. “I locked it with magic.”

No sooner had the words left my mouth than the frame separated from the wall, and the whole doorway collapsed into the room. Biggs the ogre ducked through the wave of dust and faced us. He’d shed his jacket, and his unshouldered suspenders were dangling from his beltline like a ship’s rigging. He must have ditched his back brace too, because he was stooped, knuckles nearly scraping the floor.

Just keeps getting better.

His dull eyes roved from one of us to the other. He looked strong enough to, well, bust down a magically sealed door, but I wasn’t going to expend power on him. Not when we could outrun the cumbersome brute.

“Let’s go,” I called to my teammates.

I opened the backdoor onto a staircase just as Mimi zipped in behind Biggs, her beating wings trailing purple-silver light. She smacked the ogre in the back of the head as she passed him. “Why are you just standing there? Stop them!”

“Ungh?” Biggs asked.

Sighing, Mimi fired off a bolt. Though the dusty burst of light above my hand looked tiny, the force jerked the door from my grasp and slammed it shut again. I yanked on the door, but fae magic sealed it now. I glanced over at the fingers of flames spreading across the wall. Were we ever going to get out of here?

“Well, if it isn’t Miss Sell Out,” Bree-yark said.

Oh, not now, I thought, digging furiously for my cold iron amulet.

“And what are you supposed to be?” Mimi squealed, dispersing his glamour with the wave of a hand.

Bree-yark drew himself up. “Someone with more self-respect in his pinky finger than you have in your whole body.” That her whole body was only slightly larger than the finger in question stole some of the line’s zing.

“Ha! Self-respect and goblin don’t even belong in the same room.”

“I’m not the one whoring myself out for laughs,” Bree-yark shot back.

“Like you could whore yourself out for anything. Look at you!”

Bigg’s deep-set eyes rolled from side to side, as if following a ping pong match. Behind me, Gorgantha had begun tugging on the rear door. If I could feel the fire’s growing heat, she was suffering it fourfold. I needed to find the damned amulet, blast Mimi into Never Never Land, and unseal the door.

The amulet’s still in Bree-yark’s pouch, I realized.

I looked up as he swiped his blade at the pixie, her last remark apparently having struck a nerve. Mimi easily darted out of the way. I expected her to respond with a blast, but she only upped the taunting.

“What do a flower and a goblin have in common?” she asked. “A flower is pretty and a goblin is pretty ugly.”

For the period, that wasn’t bad.

“Bree-yark?” I called. “Mind tossing me your pouch?”

But he was swearing now and jumping up and down, blade whistling through the air.

“What do you call a wart on a goblin?” Mimi continued, zipping deftly around his futile strikes. “‘Poor thing.’”

Absorbed in their petty contest, the two were behaving as if half the freaking room wasn’t on fire. I was preparing to snag Bree-yark’s pouch with a force invocation when Biggs lumbered forward, arm swinging. I stumbled over