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

“I’m … I’m afraid I don’t recognize you,” I said.

He released his hair from his sagging face. “No one does.” Then very softly, “It’s Malachi.”

Malachi?

I dropped to my knees and seized his hands. Where the bond would have been was more fire-scarred skin. Pushing his hair from his face, I searched one gray eye, then the other. Age had paled the irises, but I could see the resemblance to the young man I’d known. I switched to my wizard’s senses. Amid the chaotic pattern of his aura, I picked out familiar touchstones, including currents of St. Martin’s, where he’d spent so much time.

“Malachi Wickstrom?” I asked.

A light took hold in his eyes. “You remember?”

“Malachi Wickstrom of St. Martin’s Cathedral?” I asked. “Of the Upholders?”

Clutching my hands, he sprang up and began shuffling his bare feet back and forth over the plank floor. “Yes, yes! You’re the only one, but you remember!” He leaned his head back, his mouth opening to reveal a set of teeth ground down to pebbles. “He remembers!” he cried to the heavens.

Stunned by the revelation that this old man was somehow my teammate, I let myself be carried into his dance. But how in the hell was that possible? Malachi stopped suddenly and gripped my wrists.

“I chose you,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, the smell of gin breaking against my face. “Just as I chose the others. But time is short, is short.” He looked wildly around. “The elements of the Night Rune gather.”

“The Night Rune?”

“Come!” he cried.

He released me and dug under his mattress, eventually emerging with a Latin Bible that looked like it had survived hell. But even tattered and burned, I recognized it as the same one he’d carried into the time catch. He ignored the shoes at the foot of his bed and staggered past me, bare feet scuffing toward the door.

“Hold on a sec,” I said, catching his arm. “You need to fill me in on what’s going on.”

Malachi thrashed his bony arm with surprising strength. “Time is short!” When I didn’t release him, he started swatting my hand with the Bible. “Let go of me, dammit! Time is short!”

“Time for what?”

“To reach St. Martin’s in, in, in 1776!”

I hesitated. “You know where the 1776 St. Martin’s site is?”

He nodded fervently, sending his wild hair everywhere. “And the others!”

“The others—you mean the Upholders?” I stammered. “Seay and Jordan?”

“Yes, yes, but time is short, is short!”

“I understand, but let’s sit down for a minute.”

“No, the elements of the Night Rune gather!” he screeched. “The apocalypse is nigh! The demon apoc—”

Without warning, he swooned in my grasp. I caught him before he collapsed to the floor and lowered him down to the mattress. He was still breathing. The combination of elation, exertion, and inebriation had overwhelmed his aging body. When I examined his face again, I could see Malachi more clearly.

But what in the hell could have happened to him?

Heart thudding, I called for Caroline.

28

I stood back from the bed as Caroline worked on Malachi, fae energy already bathing his head. I’d called Gorgantha too, knowing she would want to see her teammate. When she arrived with Arnaud, I left the door open to keep a line of sight on Bree-yark. He remained on watch outside, Dropsy glowing sedately in his grasp.

“Damn!” Gorgantha exclaimed.

“I told you he’d aged,” I said in a hushed voice.

She lowered her voice to my level. “Aged? He looks like a troll. How did this happen?”

“That’s what Caroline’s checking out. But he claims to know where Seay and Jordan are.”

“Then why aren’t they here?”

“Same thing probably happened to them as you—being in the time catches too long. I’m guessing Malachi tried to get through to them but couldn’t. He said I was the only one who remembered him.”

Gorgantha thrust her lower lip at Malachi. “How did he remember?”

Still in her male glamour, Caroline sat back from him. “Because he never spent enough time in one time catch. Driven to stop the demon apocalypse, he’s been jumping from one to another. The upshot is that he’s retained his memories—or most of them. But the transitions also sped his aging.”

“How many transitions we talking?” Gorgantha asked.

“Hundreds, possibly thousands,” Caroline said.

Gorgantha’s eyes popped wide. “Thousands?”

“It may sound implausible,” Caroline said, “but the time structures are hopelessly distorted down here.”

“And he’s survived?” I wondered aloud.

“He’s created a mental map of the time catches,” Caroline said, eyes closing again. “Quite comprehensive. So, although his thoughts are fragmented, I believe he knows where to find the others and the St. Martin’s site. I can’t see details of the map, unfortunately. His mind is too … chaotic. He’ll have to lead us.”

“Is he in any condition?” I asked.

“My enchantment will restore what it can. But he’s made these journeys before.”

I looked down at Malachi, who rested quietly now. The picture of what he’d become—a crazed mind inside a wasted body—kicked me in the heart. I remembered the timid acolyte he’d been at St. Martin’s. He led me to the cathedral’s catacombs, where I managed to channel the power of the church into the demon lord Sathanas.

When visions of an apocalypse began visiting Malachi’s sleep, he became a de facto demonologist. He located Gorgantha, Seay, and Jordan, whose groups had been infiltrated by demonic Strangers, and he created the Upholders. Then, for reasons he’d yet to fully divine, he recruited me. By that time a zealotry to stop the demon apocalypse gripped him. But he retained an innocence that made me feel responsible for him, like an older brother for his younger sibling.

On the straw-tick mattress, the scarred corner of his mouth twitched.

“Did you find anything about a Night Rune?” I asked Caroline. “When talking about the apocalypse, he said ‘the elements of the Night Rune gather.’”

She shook her head as she rose. “His thoughts are too tangled. Restoring them is beyond the magic I can invest, perhaps beyond any magic. I’ve smoothed as much as I could. He