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

I cranked the wheel right. The flattened tires thudded us behind a skyscraper and out of firing range. I slowed to get my bearings, then steered a stepwise route to reach the cathedral.

Humping the sedan over the curb, I aimed the one functioning headlight at the front of St. Martin’s—and immediately saw my error. The bronze doors were closed and certainly locked. Worse, by having everyone cleared out, there was no one to invite me over the threshold. Assuming I could even force my way inside, my powers would be stripped to the bone and then some.

I hammered the steering wheel. “Idiot!”

I fought with the damaged car door, finally kicking it open. Red moonlight burned bright around me as I limped toward the cathedral. To my surprise, when I moved the police tape and pulled the right door, it swung outward. That was something, anyway. But now I had the humming threshold to consider. It had been weakened, but if it was keeping a demon caged, it remained plenty strong.

“Hello?” I called into the darkness. Nothing moved beyond the closed glass doors inside.

I had some spell options, none great, but if that was what it was going to take…

“Everson Croft,” someone called from behind me.

I stiffened at the voice. If it was Chicory, I was a dead man. I’d thrown around enough magic tonight to power Yankee Stadium. And that was to say nothing of having defied the Order’s other mandate of staying off the cases. The fact I was standing at the cathedral threshold was proof enough of my disobedience. The Order would go straight to sentencing.

But the voice that had called my name was younger than Chicory’s, more hollow-sounding. I turned. Oh, hell. Roughly a dozen young men in tailored suits and gelled hair were arrayed in the street in a semicircle, closing toward me. Vampire Arnaud’s freaking blood slaves.

“You have something owed us,” the foremost blood slave said. It was Zarko. Even in the dimness, I recognized his short monk’s bangs. His jaundiced eyes dipped to Grandpa’s ring.

“Look guys,” I said, “now really isn’t the time.”

“Give it to us, and we will leave you in peace,” Zarko said.

“How about just skipping to the leave me in peace part?”

One side of Zarko’s mouth slid up as he stepped from street to sidewalk. I felt Arnaud’s venomous presence. “We will take it one way or another,” Zarko said. “And you do not appear in any shape to stop us.”

I brought my fingers to where he was looking now. A wet gash smarted at my hairline, where my head had smacked the windshield. I looked past Zarko to the car’s pock-marked glass. With the high adrenaline of the encounter at the Wall winding down, pain pulsed in every part of my body. I felt as banged up and broken down as Vega’s poor sedan.

“Can’t I set up a meeting with Arnaud to, you know…” A cold wind hit my sweat-soaked shirt and pants, shuddering out the rest of my sentence “…d-d-dis-cuss this.”

Zarko and the rest of the blood slaves began to laugh. They had already seen my blood; now they heard my weakness. I was succumbing to shock. I aimed Grandpa’s ring at them.

“Keep on g-giggling,” I warned, fighting to hold my voice and fist steady.

Zarko hesitated for a half-step before striding on. “You haven’t the strength to overwhelm us all,” he—or more likely, Arnaud—decided. “Even with your family trinket.”

He was right, of course. Though the ring was throbbing with the same urgency I’d felt in Arnaud’s office, I wouldn’t be able to channel the kind of juice needed to cripple this crew, much less destroy them.

Which meant it was time to bluff. “Care to test that theory?” I asked, forcing my lips into a puckish grin.

Before I saw him move, Zarko darted in, seized my throat, and lifted me. I choked on the crunch of cartilage and kicked weakly, tears springing from my surprised eyes. He hoisted me higher. I seized his ice-cold wrist in one hand and used the other to swing my cane at his head. But without leverage, I couldn’t land a solid blow. The contact mussed his hair—which was actually an improvement—but that was about it. Zarko didn’t even blink.

“The ring,” he said.

The other blood slaves pressed closer, but I noticed they kept a respectful distance from the threshold at my back. That respect wouldn’t necessarily hold up. They were at Arnaud’s command. The second he gave the word, they would be on top of me, fighting over my wings and drumsticks.

Meanwhile, my vision was doing strange things. I fought to focus down the length of Zarko’s arm to his waxy face.

“The ring,” he repeated, the lines of his mouth a growing blur.

A warm fog of sleep began to drift over my oxygen-deprived brain. But rather than seduce me, the sensation sent down an alarm. I hooked my cane over a thumb, extended the remaining fingers, and used my free hand to tug on the ring. It clamped down, as though refusing to be relinquished, but I refused to let up. With a final twist that nearly sloughed the skin away, I felt the ring release. I drew it from my finger and held it up for the blood slaves to see. I then threw my arm forward as hard as my throbbing shoulder would allow. Heads turned simultaneously and swiveled back to face me. I showed them my empty hand.

Zarko released his grip, and I collapsed to the pavement. Leaving me in a heap, the blood slaves spread out into a search. The towers above me spun as my breaths returned in bruised gasps. I rolled to my side and shook the ring from my sleeve back into my hand.

One of the first sleight-of-hand tricks Grandpa had taught me.

I swayed to my feet. I’d bought myself a little time, a little breathing room, but not enough for spell-casting. As the blood slaves searched the street, I began calling