Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9) by Brad Magnarella (ereader with android .txt) 📕

he snarled. “C’mon, his place is hot with stolen shit from the club, and you said it yourself—one of those things was probably cursed. Sent him on a killing spree. We’ve got our guy.”

“The items don’t fit what we’re looking for,” I said. “And ‘our guy’ wouldn’t have surrendered to the police so easily. He needs the blood from his final victim.”

A door opened, and Vega walked in carrying a folded piece of paper.

“How’s it going with Lassgard?” she asked.

“Better if your husband wasn’t being such a tool,” Hoffman said.

“He got you this far, didn’t he?”

While Hoffman grumbled, she opened the piece of paper.

“The info on the Fludrocortisone,” she said, as I stepped around to peer over her shoulder.

“It’s a low blood pressure med, but it’s also prescribed in cases of orthostatic intolerance. The doctor admitted it’s a fallback when the problem can’t be diagnosed.” She looked up at me. “Eldred was having blackouts.”

My heart skipped. “When did they start?”

“Last month. He told the doctor he’d hear buzzing and then have about two minutes to lie down before he passed out. The episodes ranged anywhere from twenty minutes to a couple hours. It started suddenly with no triggers that he could think of. All of his scans and EEGs came back fine.”

I turned to Hoffman. “Is the Sup Squad still at the Discovery Society?”

“Should be,” he grunted.

“Tell them to detain Eldred.”

He looked from me to the interview room and back. “What the hell for?”

The explanation fit with something Claudius had said at the Waldorf: If you existed in one realm but not the other, you traveled back and forth as you were. If you existed in both, you shifted from one form to the other.

“Because Eldred’s shadow is the killer,” I said.

While Hoffman called the Sup Squad, I explained my thinking to Vega.

“The Cronus artifact I had in mind never arrived here. It arrived there, in the shadow present. Eldred’s shadow found it, and it compelled him. Just like the Hermes Tablet compelled Sven. The difference is that Sven doesn’t exist here, so he’s able to travel between the two realms. Eldred does, so his shadow has to occupy his form.”

“Explaining his sudden blackouts,” she said, nodding.

“I think the shadow Eldred had the artifact for a while. The shapeshifter is probably its guardian, much like the animations are for the Hermes box. He used the artifact and shifter to assume power there, transforming the Discovery Society from a scientific organization into a cult to Cronus.” I was going off what Sven’s classmate had told him.

“Eldred became the ‘master of many places,’” I continued. “‘Many places’ signifying the nature of the club. When the faith in Cronus reached a certain pitch, he was ordered to perform a powerful ritual that involved harvesting pure organs and blood.” My words were coming faster as I tried to keep pace with my avalanching thoughts. “But, clean or not, the shadow organs weren’t going to be potent enough—he needed the real articles. So he brewed a potion that would bind the fellows to their shadows, possessed the actual Eldred to slip the potion to them here, extracted the organs back there, and voila. He has the organs without leaving any evidence of his crimes in our reality.”

“But what was it about the fellows?” Vega asked. “Why harvest from them and not easier marks?”

“I think it relates to something Sunita told me. She said Bear was obsessed with a gene called 7Rb, a variant of what’s known as the ‘explorer gene.’ He was funding research into it. The gene only exists in a small percentage of people, and in addition to exploration, it’s believed to spur innovation, one of the most important assets in Bear’s industry. He wanted to develop a therapy that could maximize the gene’s expression. Sunita said his profile for the gene was off the charts. Given Robert Strock’s and Walter Mims’s pedigrees and achievements, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same were true of their 7Rb expressions.”

“And you think they were singled out for that?”

My magic had been nodding along with me the whole time, and it wasn’t stopping.

“That particular variant didn’t appear until about twenty-five hundred years ago, which also happened to be the height of ancient Greek culture. You won’t find this in any of the scientific journals, but I think the variant is an artifact of intense worship to one of the gods of travel, quite possibly Hermes. If so, its offering would give the Cronus essence a boost of god vitality. He was Hermes’s grandfather after all.”

Hoffman lowered his phone and stepped toward us. “They found Eldred.”

“Good, we should put him in one of the warded cells in the Basement,” I said. “That should keep his shadow from…” I tailed off when I saw Hoffman shaking his head.

“He was swinging from a belt in his apartment.”

I stared at him. “Eldred killed himself?”

“Well, he wasn’t trying to grow another inch.”

“What does it mean?” Vega asked me.

An icy hand gripped my heart. “It means his shadow has completed his work here. He’s bonded the final victim.”

Snapping my eyes closed, I tuned into the amulet I’d given Sunita. It wasn’t signaling a hit on the potion, thank God, but I pulled out my phone and called her anyway, my pulse thumping in my ear.

“Hello, Everson,” she answered.

“Are you still wearing the amulet?”

“Yes, I’m looking at it right now. Is everything all right?”

I was panting, but I couldn’t help it. “It’s not glowing?”

“No, it’s been dim since you gave it to me.”

“And you feel all right?”

“Fine, except that you’re starting to scare me.”

“I’m sorry.” I exhaled, scrambling to think. “The club members. Do any of them have explorer pedigrees?”

“Most are researchers. Well, except for Ludvig—his great grandfather was the famous expeditioner—but he’s not officially a member.”

I turned slowly toward the one-way mirror. Ludvig was still at the table, staring soberly at his cuffed hands.

“Why?” Sunita asked.

Ludvig looked up as I entered the interview room.

Exploration is in my blood, I heard