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

I’d accessed the stairs and was halfway down. The walls were fire-damaged from the storm I’d unleashed the night before. The carpeting had since been removed, exposing old wood that, without the potion, would have creaked beneath my weight.

I emerged onto the ground floor, where more devotees were stationed along the hall of portraits. I slipped past them like a specter. Engaging these guys would only slow me down and sound a major alarm. Like the single-minded tug of my cane, my goal remained getting to the basement.

I moved more quickly now, becoming increasingly conscious of the passing seconds. How much longer did Ludvig have? Or, God forbid, was the ritual already complete? The passing portraits weren’t of famous explorers and researchers anymore, I noticed, but staring men and women. Their plaques bore no names, just the same eerie title: Moró. Greek for baby.

The flag had changed as well, to a black banner with a crisscrossing of scythes.

“SOCIETY OF CRONUS,” it read.

Farther down the corridor, the portraits grew larger and the titles took on military ranks. It culminated in an entire section for the leadership. The Society’s president, listed simply as “Eldred,” looked much as he did in the actual present, except that his combed-back hair was jet black and the mole beside his nose had ballooned, its weight pulling down the lower lid of his right eye.

Four portraits beneath showed the rest of the cabinet. His number two, a balding man with a long face, was the only one smiling. Crescents gleamed around his irises.

Beware the shadow of many faces.

For better or worse, my assumptions were bearing out so far.

The door to the library was closed and locked. I retrieved my vial of dragon sand, shook out two granules, and placed them in the keyhole. I looked down the corridor before whispering, “Fuoco.”

The granules superheated until a transparent finger of white fire jetted from the keyhole. It was the visual subtlety I’d wanted, but I hadn’t factored in the corridor’s acoustics. The flame’s steady hiss reverberated from the walls, drawing the closest devotee’s attention. The portly man hiked up his pants and began to amble toward me.

Shit.

The flame had disappeared back inside the keyhole, but smoke was beginning to curl out, and I could hear the metal bubbling in the door’s locking mechanism. The man had his walkie-talkie in hand, ready for action, while his other hand gripped his holstered pistol.

The thing with stealth potions was they made you inconspicuous more than invisible. Once a person knew where to look, the gig was up.

Aiming my cane at the runner along the floor, I whispered, “Vigore.”

The force shoved the rug into a small hillock, which the man met with his next step. He stumbled and went down swearing. Another devotee hurried over to help him. I used the distraction to open the door, slip inside the library, and seal the door with a locking spell.

Outside, I could hear one of them saying, “I knew this was a tripping hazard waiting to happen.”

The lights were out in the library. I listened into the darkness before casting up a crackling ball. As its illumination spread, I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was to see that the library had become a temple. Gone were the bookcases and taxidermy mounts. In their places stood rows of wooden pews and a large altar that featured the same crisscross of scythes on the flag, only these were dripping.

Yeah, that seems normal.

My ears rang with the ominous silence as I peered around to orient myself. If the NYPD were here, they were likely covering the outside of the building. The same wouldn’t be true of the shifter.

I sheathed my cane through my belt and pulled the sawed-off shotgun from its holster. I’d been carrying it under my coat for so long, it felt strange to have nothing banging my ribs. The hunting spell led me across the temple, toward a door I recognized as the storage room with stairs to the basement.

I tested the door and found it barred solidly from the inside. From beyond and below, I caught a faint sound. A cry was tailing off into sobs that made both my arms break out in gooseflesh.

Ludvig’s still alive.

Though my pulse quickened, stealth remained the name of the game. Using a weak force invocation like an echo locator, I sent it under the door and into the space beyond. The lock was a bar dropped into a pair of brackets.

Behind me, the door to the temple shook violently. Two shots sounded. My locking spell fractured, sending the energy rushing back into me. Heart banging, I snuffed out the ball of light just as the door flew open.

A quasi military force stormed inside, covering the room with their rifles. Night vision oculars glinted as they spread apart, barrels panning back and forth. Sup Squad? I sidestepped toward the altar, fishing for another stealth potion. The time factor coupled with my casting had burned through enough of the first dose for its effects to begin thinning. If I didn’t conceal myself, it would only be a matter of time before—

“Freeze!” one of them barked.

The massive armored man rushed toward me, two members flanking him, while the remaining six continued searching the temple for accomplices. I summoned a form-fitting shield even though it would serve little better than cardboard against their high-powered rifles—or this guy’s bulky fists, for that matter.

He stopped ten feet in front of me, rifle angled down at my forehead. “Drop your weapons!”

I knelt carefully, placed my shotgun and cane on the ground, and knee-walked back from them, arms raised.

“Hands on your head!” he shouted, looming over me.

One of the flanking men lunged in and swept the gun and cane aside with a booted foot. The other began patting me down, but when he discovered how loaded my coat was, he pulled the entire thing off before searching my pants. When he finished, he zip-tied my hands behind my back.

“We have him,” the big