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

my words as I tried to redirect the invocation, but the ogre wasn’t aiming for Bree-yark.

“You’re mean,” he rumbled.

“Hey!” Mimi cried, casting a protective sphere the instant before the ogre’s hand closed around her. Bursts of fae light flashed between his clenched fingers, but he was apparently immune to her magic as well as her screaming threats. Beyond him, an army of footsteps stampeded across the theater stage.

“Go,” he said. “I’ll stop ’em.”

I gave him a salute. “Thanks a lot, Biggs.”

“Yeah, thanks, big guy,” Bree-yark said. “And I’m sorry about, you know, what I said.”

Though his insults had been directed at Mimi, they’d included Biggs by association. In the same waving gesture, the ogre told him it was all right and to get going. With Mimi’s energies diverted to freeing herself, Gorgantha overcame the sealing enchantment. When the door broke open, I took the lead down the stairs.

Finally, I thought, blowing out my breath.

Gorgantha followed me, and Bree-yark moved in behind her. At each floor, I cast a locking spell on the door to the stairwell to avoid further encounters. Above us, bodies thumped and rolled. Several shots sounded, but unless the security were wielding iron rounds—which I doubted—Biggs would be fine. I was more worried about the upbraiding he was going to get from Mimi when he released her.

At least she’ll be able to put out the fire.

I was thinking of the pixie’s powerful enchantments, which would include frost, when a series of explosions sounded, rocking the stairwell. I’d forgotten all about the building’s gas line. I imagined the pipe-fed lanterns throughout the museum erupting and spewing flames over wood and drapery.

“Keep going!” I shouted at Bree-yark, who had paused to peer up.

At the ground floor, I flung a door open onto a large loading area. The space was clear, workers apparently having heeded the alarm still clanging away inside. I led the way down a short flight of wooden steps to a cobbled lane.

Panting, I waited for Gorgantha and Bree-yark to catch up. Blown-out glass littered the narrow street, while smoke gushed from the top-floor windows.

The museum had already begun evacuating when I shattered Gorgantha’s tank. If Caroline had exited with the crowds, she and Arnaud would be on Broadway by now. But the three of us couldn’t very well circle the building to meet her: a marked man, a goblin, and a six-and-a-half-foot mermaid. There was also the matter of retrieving the locket for Hellcat Maggie, but not without getting Gorgantha somewhere safe first.

I was considering where that might be when a shout went up. At the other end of the street, a group of men in navy blue caps and frock coats turned the corner and stampeded toward us.

“The po-po,” Gorgantha muttered.

Sure enough, the copper stars pinned to their chests marked them as Vega’s distant predecessors, early NYPD. But even in official attire, the crew looked rough-and-tumble, more likely to billy-club the peace into a crippled heap than preserve it. Lips snarled under broken noses and from jagged teeth.

“Here we go again,” Gorgantha said, drawing her webbed hands into reluctant fists.

In the light of day, I could see the toll that captivity had taken on her. Her muscles lacked solidity, and her turquoise color had dulled to a depressed grayish blue. And then there were the nasty burns.

Another police unit appeared at the opposite end of the street, bringing their numbers to a healthy dozen. Bree-yark, still hot from his melee with Mimi, drew his blade and growled, “Their funeral.”

“Be ready to run, guys,” I said.

“Run?” Bree-yark echoed indignantly.

But the question remained, run where? We were at the beating heart of a mega city. We needed to find refuge, and I didn’t know 1861 New York well enough. The immediate issue, though, was the cops. With a whispered Word, I hardened the air into shields on either side of us. Could I summon enough force to scatter the officers senseless? After my recent string of casting, the thought alone exhausted me. If Thelonious hadn’t suspended our agreement, the depraved incubus would have been knocking about now.

A door across the street opened and a little girl’s face appeared. “Come.”

It took a moment for the dull eyes to register. One of Maggie’s blood slaves.

I waved Gorgantha and Bree-yark toward the door. “Go!”

I had to give Bree-yark a shove to get him moving. By the time we arrived at the door, the first cops were colliding into the shields. The rest pulled up. While some pawed the invisible barrier, mouths gaping, others glowered as if the shield were a perversion and began beating it with their clubs.

That’ll keep them busy.

Passing through the doorway behind my teammates, I slammed the door and locked it with magic. Bree-yark pulled Dropsy from his pouch, her eager glow illuminating a flight of steps that dropped us into a basement crowded with crates. Ahead of our sphere of light, the girl’s dust-colored ponytail flipped back and forth.

We broke from the building, crossed a wide street—pedestrians and carriage drivers too transfixed on the smoke and clamoring of a major fire to notice us—and descended into the basement of a second building. The girl navigated the subterranean corridors like she’d done it a hundred times.

At the next building, she led us through a side door but upstairs this time. After several floors, the girl slowed and walked us into an empty room, the scent of stone dust suggesting recent construction.

I was startled to find Hellcat Maggie sitting in a large window opposite us, one leg perched on the sill, her prosthetic leg swinging below her skirt. Her eyes lingered for an extra beat on Gorgantha before moving to me. Maybe I’d overestimated her fear of Grandpa’s ring. Extending an arm, she unfurled her long nails.

“The locket.”

“We, um, didn’t get that far,” I said.

“It’s still in there?” When she turned toward the arched window, I inched forward. The window gave us a vantage over Barnum’s Museum. Red flames lashed through the smoke that was pouring out from