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

Spotting one of Seay’s friends beyond the shooters, I gave her a thumbs-up. They’d executed the glamour beautifully. Arnaud was dead, but so too were the perpetrators. There would be no “savage dog pack” hunting us.

I looked at the vampire’s burning body. Several bystanders were heaving snow over it, but the flames, born of enchantment, persisted. Though I’d only blasted a time catch version of Arnaud, it still felt good.

Something rammed into my shielded jaw, shaking my vision. I pulled up, holding Caroline’s arm for balance. Zarko was in front of us, his preternatural senses seeing past our glamours. But what in the hell was he doing alive? He should have succumbed to mortality when Arnaud fell. A quick glance around showed a dozen more blood slaves, several I’d spotted in the crowd, converging toward us.

“You hurt master,” Zarko said.

“That’s a shame,” I replied. “I wanted to kill him.”

When he and the others rushed in, I shouted a Word. The shield protecting Caroline and me pulsed with white light, knocking the blood slaves back several yards. I drew my sword, already grimacing at the thought of so many decapitations. My gaze fell from the blade’s banishment rune to the fire rune.

Incineration would be more efficient…

But the problem, as always, would be control.

Shouts sounded. I glanced around to find the group heaping snow on Arnaud rearing back from a blooming fireball. The charging blood slaves pulled up suddenly, hands to their chests and heads. Already, their faces were shriveling, bodies contorting. Some aged in years, others in decades or centuries.

But one by one, they dropped.

“About damned time,” I sighed.

“Let’s go,” Caroline said, skirting Zarko’s desiccating corpse.

We ran past the fort and around a large marketplace, where Broadway opened out. The wide thoroughfare extended past gardens and gabled homes to a gate in the same wall we’d seen from the river. I was dreading the idea of a six-mile hike back to the caves, when a pair of horses, fully saddled, trotted into our path.

“They’re enchanted,” Caroline said, smiling.

Once again, Seay’s friends had come through.

“Remind me to treat the entire gang to ice cream when we get back to the present,” I said.

Caroline and I mounted the horses and took off. Ahead, a pair of keepers opened the gate at Wall Street, and we were soon galloping from New Amsterdam and along a well-trodden road into the snowy beyond.

33

My enchanted horse followed Caroline’s—a good thing, because my equine experience amounted to a two-minute pony ride at a Long Island fair when I was a kid. My sole job now, as then, was to hold onto the reins. The snow-covered road ran past small farming communities and large estates. As we galloped beyond rolling countryside and into woodland, Caroline relaxed our glamours.

“The caves are close,” she called back, her hood fallen from her streaming hair.

The road angled through what would become the Upper West Side, and I could see the Hudson River through breaks in the trees. On the other side of a meadow, Caroline stopped and dismounted. I followed her example, landing on the snowy ground. We tethered the horses out of the weather and climbed down toward the river.

“We’re back,” I called to alert the others, but no one answered.

When I didn’t spot Gorgantha near the cavern opening, my mind went into panic mode. I scanned the breadth of the river, but no mer head broke the surface. Had something happened? Dropping the final few feet, I peered into our shelter. A small fire was still burning in the very back, but my teammates weren’t around it.

“Hello?” I called.

Off to the right, a pair of squash-colored eyes glowed into view. “Over here, Everson.”

My pent-up breath let out with a silent thank God. But I didn’t like the worry in Bree-yark’s voice. As my vision adjusted to the dimness, his squat form emerged. Gorgantha and Malachi were beside him, looking down at something. I cast a ball of light as I approached them, Caroline following.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“He just … fell over,” Bree-yark said.

Arnaud’s restrained body lay at their feet, not moving.

Gorgantha looked back at us. “We tried sitting him up, but he won’t stay.”

“Might be dead,” Bree-yark grunted.

They made room for me as I knelt down. Arnaud was on his side, facing the fire, but his dim eyes seemed to be absorbing the light instead of reflecting it. I looked over the rest of his face. The skin had gone a deep yellow and drawn taut against what passed for bones. He can’t be dead, I thought desperately as I propped him against the wall. He’s our way home. His head sagged over his chest.

“How long has he been like this?” Caroline asked.

“About a half hour,” Malachi said, digging his hands into his long hair. He began pacing in nervous circles. “I didn’t touch him, didn’t touch him.”

After what Malachi had done to the soulless mob, he possessed the capacity to kill the demon-vampire, but I believed him. This was Arnaud being cut off from the infernal realm coupled with the cold draining off his energy more than I’d realized. With nothing to replenish his lifeforce, he’d gone critical.

His body hadn’t begun to sublimate yet, but that wouldn’t be long in coming.

“I’m going to have to loosen the wards,” I said. “Let enough infernal energy back in to restore him.”

Dammit. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, because it wasn’t just a simple case of loosening the wards. I was also going to have to ensure his line to Malphas wasn’t reestablished, or the demon master would recall him. Then we’d be stuck in this clusterfuck of failing time catches without a ride home.

To this point I’d managed to keep my homesickness at bay, but now an image of Vega holding our infant girl in a blanket flashed through my head. I didn’t want to miss that. Pulling myself together, I turned to Caroline.

“Will you need to remove the enchantments?” I asked.

She nodded. “Most of