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

enough energy for a banishment blast, I had another option: drawing power from Arnaud’s wards. It would mean weakening the demon-vampire’s restraints, but to spare my teammate and friend, I’d have to chance it. A silent flash detonated among the riders.

But it hadn’t come from me. A moment later, the riders thudded to the ground. Their horses remained a moment longer before bolting away. At their former center stood Malachi’s hunched figure.

I completed my run toward him. “Hey, are you all right?”

White light lingered in Malachi’s eyes as he looked around. Gorgantha stepped from her cover and peered from him to the fallen riders. “You were wondering how he’s survived all this time?” she asked.

Yeah, no kidding, I thought.

Somewhere along the line, his banishment abilities had reached apostle level.

“Hey, uh, Everson,” Bree-yark said, jogging up to us. “We’ve got more coming.”

I turned and swore. In the middle distance, a second wave of riders was approaching.

Malachi snapped his fingers as if suddenly remembering why he’d run toward us. “You wanted to know where to find Seay?” he asked, the light that lingered in his eyes dwindling to points. “This way!”

He took off toward the bluff. The rest of us exchanged puzzled looks and followed. When we reached the trees, Caroline emerged from her hiding with Arnaud.

“He just got up and ran,” she explained of Malachi.

“It’s all right,” I said. “He’s taking us out of here.”

Malachi led the way at a crooked run that was surprisingly fast. In fact, we had to call for him to slow down several times so we wouldn’t lose him. Behind us, the fresh wave of riders had reached the grove. Ahead, the woodland fell steeply to the Hudson. We were running out of real estate.

“Watch out!” Gorgantha called.

Malachi’s arms flew up and he dropped into a crevasse. The rest of us slowed to a stop and peered down. The fracture in the earth was rocky and littered with leaves, but there was no sign of our teammate.

“The opening is there,” Caroline said.

A moment later, I picked up the small fold of multicolored energy.

“Let’s go,” I said, relieving Caroline of Arnaud and waving the others down.

Bree-yark wasted no time jumping into the crevasse. Gorgantha, who looked skeptical, chose to scale her way down. Both disappeared into the fold. Caroline gave me a small wave and stepped from the edge.

I took one final look at the approaching riders, then seized Arnaud around the waist and dropped in too.

29

I crunched into a foot of snow and nearly fell, but Gorgantha was there to steady me. I held her arm and squinted past the icy pellets stinging my face.

By all appearances, we were on the same bluff we’d left behind, only it was daytime, and we were in the clutches of a winter storm. A bracing wind flapped my trench coat while snow fell in a steep slant over the wide river below. The far shore—what would become New Jersey—was a pale presence thick with trees. We were somewhere else in New York’s distant past.

“Can we go back?” Bree-yark asked.

The goblin stood in a shivering hunch, his back to the driving snow. Having shed his scorched coat at Barnum’s, which had been his glamoured bomber jacket, he was wearing only a tight undershirt. Large goosebumps covered his tattooed arms.

I looked past him to Caroline, who’d raised the hood of her cloak. Beyond her, Malachi was pacing at the end of the ledge we’d ended up on, muttering and ticking items off his fingers. When I called his name, he hustled over, apparently unbothered by the weather despite his ragged clothing.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Well, that’s the Hudson River, and—”

“I mean when?” I interrupted. “What year?”

He squinted upward, then shook his head in apparent frustration. “That escapes me, but it’s Dutch times.”

“Dutch?” Gorgantha said.

“And this is where Seay is?” I asked to be sure.

“She’s in the settlement, in the settlement with the others. In New Amsterdam.”

New Amsterdam had been the predecessor to New York City, a 1600s settlement on the island’s southern tip. “Then that puts her about six miles away, give or take.”

“What’s known as the Old Indian Trail runs east of here,” Caroline said. “It follows the general course of what’s now Broadway.”

“All right, good to know,” I said.

That would deliver us to the settlement, but we were looking at a three-hour hike in single-digit temperatures. I couldn’t shield us for that long. If Caroline had been at full strength, she could have warmed us, but she wasn’t, and my face was already going numb, my words turning mushy. Bad for casting.

“Is there somewhere we can shelter?” I asked Malachi.

He nodded readily. “There are some caves up this way, up this way.”

Like a skipping record, he was repeating words and short phrases. Another effect of jumping between time catches, evidently. Without waiting, he scampered down the ledge to the ice-crusted shore. The rest of us followed, me guiding Arnaud while Bree-yark told the winter weather all the things it could do to itself.

“Not far, not far,” Malachi kept calling back.

We soon arrived at a honeycombing in the bluff’s stone base. Malachi led us inside the deepest one, out of the elements. As I shook the snow from my coat, I noted the blackened fire ring in the middle of the floor and the wood stacked against a back wall. I scanned the cave again to make sure we were alone.

“Oh, that’s mine,” Malachi explained, retrieving a small box and a handful of kindling from behind the wood pile. “I’ve stayed here a few times, a few times.”

He opened the box to reveal steel, flint, and tinder. While he arranged the fire-starting implements, Bree-yark and I tee-peed the kindling inside the ring. Malachi got a spark to take, and we were soon blowing life into the budding flames. As Bree-yark began setting larger pieces in place, I saw the bloody gash on his neck where the bullet had nicked him. The ley energy was stronger in this period than