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

What now?

But it was Gorgantha. Dropping a torn-off grate, she pulled me into the cylinder after her. Her strength overwhelmed the remaining tendrils, which went snapping from my legs in putrid bursts of plant matter. More leafy arms searched after me, but they soon faded in our wake.

As darkness closed around us, my muscles tingled with returning blood. My lungs began to ache for oxygen. The small dose of encumbering potion was wearing off. Before I could panic, Gorgantha pulled me from the water and helped me to my feet. I sputtered and wiped my eyes as water cascaded off me. We must have been on the sublevel, but I couldn’t see a thing in the pitch black.

I invoked a pair of shields around us and pushed power into them. The fields glowed, exposing a dank cinderblock room with a stairwell and a separate closet for a pump. I saw where Gorgantha had ripped off the grate that had once covered a large drain in the floor. The shields warmed us until we were damp rather than dripping, which had been the point. I didn’t want a water trail giving us away.

I recalled power from our protection until the room fell black again. Gorgantha took my hand, the darkness not an issue for her mer vision, and led me toward the stairwell.

“We tripped a ward coming in,” I whispered, “so expect company.”

My invocations had burned through some of our stealth magic too, so I took another hit of potion and passed the rest to Gorgantha.

The ascending stairwell delivered us into a large basement. Light from a staircase opposite us limned the room. A neat arrangement of wooden crates and large sacks filled most of the space, their contents giving off plant and herbal smells.

I scanned the room for wards as we walked along a central aisle. Though the potential for magic hung thick, no dangers appeared in my wizard’s vision.

“That company you mentioned?” Gorgantha whispered. “It’s coming.”

Faint snorts and snuffs sounded, and soon large shadows filled the stairwell ahead. Damn, wereboars. My heart kicked into a flip-flopping rhythm as I motioned for Gorgantha to follow me down a side aisle. We concealed ourselves behind a stack of crates as two wereboars entered the basement. Beside me, Gorgantha swore under her breath. They were frigging huge.

The creatures wore hoodie shirts with the sleeves ripped off. From the ends of tusked snouts, porcine noses snorted this way and that. They stalked down the center aisle, clubs hanging from arms packed with muscles. As I shrank further back, Bree-yark’s story about one of these things taking down an ogre didn’t seem at all farfetched.

The lead wereboar stopped and stuck his snout down our side aisle and snorted several times. The stealth potion was designed to hide scent too, but these guys could pick up smells from five miles away. The wereboar straightened and pushed the hood from his head, revealing a thick mohawk of bristles above a pair of beady eyes. When he switched the club to his other hand, I braced for battle.

“Anything?” his companion asked in a gruff voice.

“Naw, this is bullshit,” he said. “The action is down in the Ramble.”

He was talking about the wooded area where Caroline’s glamour had led the others. I relaxed my grip on my sword, even as my pulse continued to slug in my ears.

“Let’s clear the lower level and head up,” the lead wereboar decided.

I waited for them to lumber down the stairwell before invoking a shield over the entrance. It wouldn’t hold the bruisers long, but I only needed it to keep them off us until we could find Jordan.

I led the way from our hiding place and up the stairs. The next level appeared to be the living quarters. Natural light entered through ports in the stone walls. Several potted trees rose and spread their leafy branches throughout a common area of wooden furniture. To one side, six cloaked figures conversed in low voices. Others went in and out of side rooms. We’d found the druids.

I recognized several from the prison ship rescue in 1776 New York, but none of them were Jordan. I peeked down at the symbol on my hand. Pushing power into it would mean compromising our stealth magic, but with time ticking down until the wereboars came back, I decided to go ahead.

The symbol began to glow at the same time the barrier over the lower stairwell shuddered. The wereboars had returned from the sublevel, and at least one was pummeling the barrier with his club. The next blows rattled the castle walls.

The druids turned toward the stairwell, all peering past Gorgantha and me. Except for one. She squinted, then drew back, a quarterstaff seeming to manifest from the billowing flap of her cloak and into her hands.

“Intruders!” she cried.

The others moved into a defensive formation, quarterstaffs aimed outward. “Where?” one of them asked. The druid who’d spotted us lunged forward, magic gathering around the end of her staff.

A force met her chin and leveled her.

“Right here,” Gorgantha said, rubbing her fist.

“Go easy,” I reminded her. “They’re friends, even if they don’t know it yet.”

I’d pulled a tube of encumbering potion from my pocket. Uncapping it, I shouted an invocation. The potion frothed and jetted from the tube. I canted it back and forth, hosing as many of the druids as I could. Their slowing motion made it appear as if the air had become a thick mud they were attempting to stir with their staffs.

The element of surprise was serving us well. Still cloaked in stealth magic, Gorgantha charged into the druids’ midst, yanking staffs from grips and shoving druids to the stone floor. When my tube sputtered out, I grabbed and activated another. This time I aimed it at the druids rushing in from the side rooms. Several shifted to their raven forms and scattered, presumably in search of backup.

I managed to coat one with a jet of encumbering potion.