The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) by Brad Magnarella (best business books of all time txt) 📕

I swallowed dryly. “Who?”

“Your buddy,” she replied. “Father Vick.”

The name horse-kicked me in the chest. For a moment, the apartment tilted. I clasped my cane in both hands, as though to anchor myself. But it made sense, didn’t it? The illness, the bleeding, and now this revelation of Father Vick’s unwillingness—or more likely, inability—to leave the cathedral.

The demon hadn’t reanimated the long-dead rector. The demon had found a new host.

Vega emerged in her professional attire, hair stretched back and banded off.

“Ready?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, Detective,” I said, then whispered a Word. The force from my cane shoved Vega into the corner of the living room. A second force straightened the scuff her shoes had made in the copper circle.

“Croft, what—!”

I closed the circle with a more powerful incantation. When Vega lunged forward, she rammed shoulder-first into an invisible force and rebounded. What the fuck? she mouthed, looking up and down the field that bent her image slightly. She slapped the field twice, then drew her pistol. The shots sounded like distant fireworks, flattened bullets falling to her feet.

“I’m really, really sorry,” I said so she could read my lips.

You son of a bitch, she mouthed, murder in her dark eyes. She drew her smartphone, but the circle’s energy had killed it.

Confident she’d be safe, I wheeled and jogged toward the door. The field was strong, but temporary. Two hours, tops. If the demon went down—no, when the demon went down, I amended—so would the phalanx of shriekers, who were bound to him. One more reason to not fail.

My gaze moved over the framed photos and scattered toys.

Actually, two reasons, when I considered a young boy would be without a mother.

I stopped at the kitchen to collect the keys Vega had dropped on the counter. Now it was a matter of seeing if what I had observed Meredith doing in the police cruiser would translate into my being able to drive the detective’s sedan. I could only imagine the knives Vega was staring into my back. Hopefully, she would forgive me when this was all over.

Two more shots sounded as I locked the door behind me.

Then again…

43

The car’s accelerator and power brakes took getting used to. I had put too much weight on both starting out. Fortunately, the roads were clear at this late hour and Vega’s car was already banged up. By the time I skidded south onto Broadway, the Wall and the Financial District rising ahead, I had the driving thing down, more or less.

With a straight shot to my destination, I leaned toward the windshield to check out the sky. For the first time in almost a week, the low cloud ceiling was breaking up. The hovering moon it exposed was red, frightfully large, and—behind a foreground of moving clouds—appeared to be rising fast.

A distant shriek made my gorge rise. I swallowed against the cloying taste that still tainted my palate. Now two shrieks. Whether they were headed to Brooklyn or the cathedral, I couldn’t tell. I started flipping switches on the dashboard until one flashed red and blue lights between the headlights. I picked up speed, blowing through the dozen or so intersections south of Canal Street.

At the checkpoint at Liberty, two blocks ahead, an armed guard moved into my path and held out an arm. A series of squat steel columns, meant to block vehicles, rose from the street behind him.

Crap, I hadn’t seen those before.

I held my velocity steady at forty, blooping the siren, like I’d seen Vega do that morning. I was hoping the guard would understand this was a police emergency and lower the bollards. The alternative, stopping and allowing him to put that camera on my face, was a nonstarter. I’d be detained for sure, if not shot.

With a block to go, the guard thrust his palm forward twice, then raised his rifle to his shield sunglasses.

He could also shoot me before I even got there.

I powered my window down. But instead of slowing, I pressed the gas. The guard barked a halt command before the muzzle of his rifle began flashing. A hailstorm lit up the front of the sedan. Sparks flew and bits of bulletproof glass stung my face. I ducked until I was peering beneath the top of the steering wheel.

The guard moved to one side, and a second guard stepped in from the other, rifle blasting. Amid the growing storm, something thumped deep in the engine, sending a jet of steam from the right seam of the hood.

I grabbed my cane from the passenger seat and aimed it out the window.

“Vigore!” I shouted.

The force threw the guards back, automatic fire bursting skyward. The car needle had jumped past seventy, and the bollards were fast approaching. I pointed the cane at the street, angling it behind the front axle.

Please, let this work, I thought.

I called power to my mental prism and, with the glaring lights of the checkpoint feet away, boomed, “Forza dura!”

The force that shook down my arm and into the cane emptied against the street. I was going for Newton’s third law: for every action, an equal and opposite reaction. The reaction, in this case, was immediate. The front of the car vaulted up and angled to the right. Something slammed the undercarriage hard enough to rattle my spine—the tops of the bollards. When the same columns hit the back tires, the sedan was thrown onto its front fender.

My forehead cracked against the windshield, and my view of downtown Manhattan became asphalt and flying sparks. The car skidded on its nose for a good hundred feet, ever on the verge of upending, before slamming me hard into the seat, downtown Manhattan bouncing back into view. But the hailstorm had returned, this time lighting up the back of the car.

I steadied my shaken-up eyes on the street ahead and pressed the accelerator. Movement! Crippled, granted—and something large and metallic was dragging beneath the car—but a check of the rearview mirror showed the checkpoint falling