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

I threw myself flat an instant before a blade broke through my shield. I’d been around fae glamours enough now to have sensed the subtle distortion at my back. When the male twin materialized, he was grinning wickedly. I scooted back and leveled my sword at him, banishment light already bathing the length of my blade. But in a blur of his sickle, my sword went clanging from my grip.

I still had ahold of my iron amulet and shouted until power haloed the metal and then my body in a field of blue light. The twin drew back, his free arm across his face. He might have been a demon, but he was still packaged in a fae’s body.

“Turn that off,” he hissed.

“Yeah, or what?” I said, upping the power.

Behind me, Caroline cried out. I looked over to find a sheet of her hair wrapped in the female twin’s fist. The demon’s lips pinched upward as she raised her blade and said, “Or your friend loses her head.”

43

I looked around desperately. Angelus, who was still recovering from the attack through his heart vow, remained down, his skin a sickly shade of blue. The battle out in the street had turned against the druids, who were in retreat. Bree-yark had dropped his shotgun to drag Gorgantha to temporary safety behind a bus shelter—she was moving at least, but it didn’t look good for the allies. Not good at all.

My eyes cut to where I’d contained Arnaud, but he was no longer there. The manifestation I’d used to bind him to the door must have fallen when the twin sliced through my shield. The little bastard had fled.

But at that moment we had bigger problems.

“Turn it off,” the demon-fae backing away from me repeated.

His sister yanked Caroline’s hair, drawing a small cry from her. The demon’s blade was still raised, the edge glimmering with the same magic that had disintegrated the wereboar. A dusty cloud of his remains happened to blow past us at that moment.

“Yeah, yeah, all right,” I said.

I withdrew the power from my amulet as slowly as I thought I could get away with. I still had one last recourse—my magic’s wisdom. Focusing past the adrenaline-fueled pounding in my head, I listened.

My magic nodded.

That’s it? That’s all you have to say?

When my magic nodded some more, I lost it.

Well, what the fuck’s that supposed to mean?

The last of the blue halo glimmered back inside the amulet.

“Toss it aside,” the demon above me ordered.

I complied weakly, watching it roll and then rattle to a rest. At the first opening, I’ll reclaim it with an invocation. The demon-fae swept his blade toward the amulet like a golf pro teeing off, and an invisible force launched it into the sky. Or not, I thought as the amulet disappeared from view.

The wail of approaching sirens grew through the silence.

“Everson Croft,” the demon said in a taunting voice. “The wizard who doesn’t quit.”

Though his twin had relaxed her grip on Caroline’s hair, her blade remained poised above her neck like a guillotine.

“What do you want?” I growled.

The male demon signaled to the fae, and in the next moment, Jordan and the druids were bound up in enchantments. Bree-yark and Gorgantha too. Caroline, Angelus, and I remained unfettered, but Angelus was in critical shape, and the twins had Caroline and me under the threat of their sickles.

“We’re going to play a game,” my demon said, tossing his blade from hand to hand. “It’s called the Will of Croft. Your tenacity, while admirable, can’t go unpunished. The game is simple. You choose the order in which your comrades die, and their deaths will be swift. No tortures, no cruelties, no pain. The only catch is that those tortures they would have undergone will be conferred to you.”

“How original,” I said dryly.

There had to be a reason my magic was acting so damned nonchalant. I scanned the empty sidewalks down both sides of Broadway. Here and there, faces peered from windows, but they were no one I recognized.

“Pay attention!” the demon shouted.

He extended a hand toward a street-level drugstore. The plate glass window shattered as a man in a blue business suit came flying out. The demon-fae caught him around the neck and drove his blade into the man’s gut. With a severed cry, the man crumbled to powder. Even though we were in a time catch, I reacted, reaching an impotent arm toward the victim. The demon grinned as he wiped off his hand on his hip.

“A little demonstration of the kind of swiftness I’m talking about,” he said. “So go ahead, choose your first one.”

“Release her…” Angelus said.

He had struggled to his hands and knees and was pawing toward the female demon, fae energy warping the air around his outstretched fingers. The demon brought her blade down. Angelus’s severed hand fell to the street. Caroline cried out as her husband pulled his arm to his body and collapsed again.

“Choose,” the demon above me repeated impatiently.

Past him, down Broadway, someone peered around the cornice of a building and quickly withdrew. It was me, Everson.

Is he the answer, somehow?

“You’re not paying attention!” the demon roared.

He thrust his arm back. Stonework crumbled from the cornice, and then my time catch counterpart was sailing through the air, coat flapping. Like the businessman moments before, Everson landed in the demon’s grip.

The demon paused, looking between us. “Well, isn’t this interesting.”

“No!” I cried.

He drew back his blade—and the whole block went bright white.

I crouched against the street, arms over my head, but the light vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. In the place of the demon was a smoking pile of sulfurous debris. A figure stood beside the remains, but it was no longer Everson. A glance back showed me that the female demon had been smoked too.

Freed, Caroline wrapped an arm around Angelus and spoke into his ear. The remaining fae were down as well, no longer a threat.

The figure approached me. “I believe this belongs to