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

Before I could answer, or Jordan could react, a raven appeared from behind the castle’s conical tower. Still following my raven-shooting order, Bree-yark pivoted and fired. The raven shrieked as silver shot tore through its wings. By the time the plummeting bird hit the deck, we were looking at a human.

“Delphine!” Jordan yelled.

Shit. We’d just dropped his wife.

“Hold fire!” I shouted at Bree-yark. But he’d left his feet and was flying through the air, the recipient of Jordan’s staff attack. The goblin landed in a tumble, body and shotgun rolling over one another.

Jordan backed toward his wife, staff held toward me. Deciding I was too busy with the animation spell to threaten them, he knelt and began working to revive her.

And I was busy. Even after another repulse invocation, the vines continued to pile over me. My shield buckled under the ever-mounting pounds per square inch. But I still had my encumbering potion in hand. I opened the vial, expelled it from my shielding, and watched the leafy mass consume it.

Within seconds, the writhing and squeezing slowed until it just felt like I was buried under a pile of dead weight. The next pulse from my shield shoved the plant animation off me, and I was free.

But now wereboars were stampeding up the steps, returning from their wild goose chase. Two more weres broke from the castle doors—the ones I’d trapped on the lower levels. As the hulking creatures arrived on the deck, they slowed to a menacing stalk. Eyes glared above tusked snouts. Truncheon-like clubs stood from fists. The wereboars’ collective snorts sounded like a tractor convention.

“Bree-yark!” I shouted.

The goblin, who was sitting up groggily, saw the danger and scrambled over until he was beside me. He swung the shotgun from one advancing wereboar to another, but there had to be at least twenty of them. My shield would keep them at bay, but long enough to shoot and force-blast them into submission?

“Call them off!” I shouted at Jordan. “I’m just proposing we talk!”

I couldn’t see him—the brutes had come between us—but I picked up his response: “Put them down.”

Before the order could propagate through the ranks, I dug into a pocket and pulled out the lightning grenades from Everson’s stash. Angling my mouth toward Bree-yark, I said, “Take the ones from the castle.”

“Got it,” he said.

He turned and fired into the left one, pumped the action, and emptied another shell into his partner. Clubs clattered to the concrete, and the shrieking wereboars threw their hands to their smoking, silver-blasted faces. Meanwhile, the large pack that had come up from the park broke into a charge.

Rolling the lightning grenades toward them, I shouted, “Attivare!”

A biting scent of ozone cut through the air an instant before jags of lightning crashed down. The lightning impacted at the front of the charge, blowing wereboars every which way. Those still arriving reared back with piercing squeals. Half deaf and with an electrical buzz lingering in my teeth, I pressed the attack.

Seizing an encumbering vial in each hand, I shouted, “Vigore!”

The potions erupted into jets, and I rained them over the mass of wereboars. Having incapacitated the pair from the castle, Bree-yark turned and began blowing silver shot into the main pack.

“Stop!” someone called. “Please, stop!”

The plea was coming from where Jordan had been tending to his wife, but the voice wasn’t his. I signaled for Bree-yark to hold fire. The spreading wereboars turned—most in slow motion now—until I could see Jordan’s wife. Rising to her feet, she looked from the observation deck to Jordan.

“Everson is our friend,” she said.

“I still can’t…” Jordan trailed off. “It’s just so insane.”

“Hey, I freaked pretty hard at first too,” Gorgantha assured him. “At least you weren’t in a damn fish tank.”

We were gathered in a meeting room inside the castle. Following the ceasefire, events had de-escalated quickly. Jordan’s wife ordered the wereboars off and convinced her husband to stand down. Caroline had apparently gotten to Jordan’s wife in the park and restored her memories. Which was why Delphine had flown back—to tell Jordan who we were. Bree-yark muttered one apology after another for shotgun-blasting her, but it was my fault, and I let them know. He’d been following my orders.

Caroline had arrived shortly after with Arnaud, and Delphine convinced her husband to allow Caroline to work on him. Meanwhile, Gorgantha climbed up from the lake. Her plunge had washed most of the druid spell off her, and it only took a dose of my healing magic to finish restoring her body from its desiccated state.

“I’m really sorry, guys,” Jordan said.

He had been holding his head in his hands, and now he looked up from the table. Delphine remained beside him stroking his back, while two more druids sat to his left. Everyone from my team, including a muzzled Arnaud, took up the table’s remaining seats. We even gave Dropsy a place when she began fussing in Bree-yark’s pouch. Now the top of her glass face poked above the table.

“I remember everything now,” Jordan said. “But how in the hell did I forget it in the first place? How did I forget the Upholders?”

“It’s just a feature of these time catches,” Caroline said.

“Yeah, it would have happened to any of us,” I said. “Go easy on yourself.”

When his searching eyes met mine, he nodded back in what appeared gratitude. He and I had already exchanged bro hugs, which told me he was truly himself. His mind was just processing the aftershocks.

“You were telling us how you got here?” I prompted.

“Yeah, right.” He inhaled sharply as though to anchor himself. “After leaving Brooklyn in 1776, we tried to get up to Harriman State Park, but we kept finding ourselves in different times. When we got to this one, we decided to set up base in the park and go about it more systematically—we were under the impression there was a portal back to the present, that it was just a