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

Forneus held his form, though.

He shouldn’t be this strong, dammit.

Malphas, I thought suddenly. He’s forcing energy through the demonic line, matching me.

I searched until I found the opening in Forneus where infernal energy was pouring in. It might have been helping his demon, but it made Malphas vulnerable. By forcing enough banishment energy back through the opening, I could cripple the demon master, if not destroy him. Then I could recover my friends, dismantle the site, and return home.

The thought of Vega’s embrace filled me with renewed conviction.

With a prayer to Saint Michael, I adjusted my grip on my sword handle and threw my prism wide.

Only once before had I attempted to channel a raw fount of ley energy. I’d been facing the demon lord Sathanas. I was green then, my abilities limited. If it hadn’t been for divine help in the form of Father Vick, I would have failed. My casting capacity had since grown, and I was facing a demon master, not a demon lord.

But it was just me this time.

The deluge of raw energy drowned out all else. Amid the thrashing and smashing, I struggled to maintain my casting prism, to funnel power through the blade’s banishment rune and down the demon line, but the prism was already starting to shake apart. The effort to hold it together was agony.

At the other end of the connection, I felt Malphas recoil.

Confidence surged through me, and with it strength. That’s right, you son of a bitch.

Malphas recovered, pushing back with his considerable infernal might. Though every cell in my body was screaming for me to close my mental prism, to shut it down and let go, I refused, even as the pain became excruciating.

This was for my teammates. For Vega and Tony. For our daughter.

Forneus’s hands seized the sides of my head, his murderous eyes inches from mine.

I drew a giant breath and boomed, “Disfare!”

Forneus withdrew and came apart. The banishment invocation continued down the demonic line, bowling through Malphas’s resistance. At the other end, something massive screamed, and an implosion, deep and violent, followed. The time catch shuddered for several seconds before falling still.

I sat up in the center of the St. Martin’s site, still clutching my sword.

“Malachi?” I called weakly. But whatever had remained of my friend was gone.

Swallowing a thick knot of grief, I stood on shaky legs. That had taken everything I had, but I’d felt the result. The demon Malphas was either destroyed or I’d dealt him a critical enough blow that he was being torn from his perch and cast down the ranks. Either way, he was no longer our problem.

I peered around 1776 New York, the setting lonely and unpeopled under a full moon. My bonding sigil continued to glow faintly, telling me my teammates were near. I may have delivered them to Malphas unwittingly, but I’d denied the demon the chance to use them as containers for his infernal portal.

“So suck it,” I muttered at his memory.

But now I remembered something. When I’d asked Forneus why he hadn’t brought my teammates to this site himself, he’d claimed my persuasion would be more efficient than his force. I understood now why that had bothered me. All of the elements Malphas had needed were already there for the taking: Gorgantha for Water, Seay for Air, Jordan for Earth, Malachi for Spirit, and Forneus as a medium for Fire.

He hadn’t needed me.

I hesitated. Unless he did.

I thought about my prayer to Saint Michael and the power I’d just channeled. What if I was meant to be the container for Spirit? What if the demon master’s manipulation hadn’t ended with us arriving here. What if, once more, I’d given Malphas exactly what he wanted? He was a demon master after all.

And what had he mockingly called me in my vision? The great savior?

As the horrifying questions corkscrewed through me, something red strobed against my face. I jerked back with a grunt and peered around, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. As the strobing continued, something bumped the side of my head.

Open your eyes, a child’s voice whispered.

Open my eyes?

47

Open your eyes, the voice repeated.

Already, the St. Martin’s site was beginning to blur and come apart, but not in the way of a time catch collapsing. More like in the way of a dream dissolving. I put my will now into coming out of it.

The result was like awakening to a nightmare.

I was on my back, staring up at a rotating black sky. Harsh energies burned through the atmosphere, the stench of ozone so thick I could barely breathe. I’d been here before, in two separate visions.

This time, though, it was real.

This was the true 1776 St. Martin’s site, not the mirage Caroline, Bree-yark, and I had seen from the other side of the boundary upon first arriving, and not the hallucination I’d just left. Forneus’s hybrid form lay off to one side, his spider’s legs drawn in, infernal smoke drifting from his body. Others lay around me, oblong forms in the dark.

I tried to sit up, but I was bound. Something flashed several times and nudged my head again. I looked over to find an antique lantern peering up at me.

Dropsy?

She hopped back a step and expanded her light, revealing a raised platform, round and built from stone. Her light passed over the other figures: Seay, Arnaud, then Jordan. I had to crane my neck back to see Gorgantha, who was behind me, the four of them forming a cross-like pattern around me. Fluid-filled cocoons encased us to our necks. Cocoons made from sticky strands of infernal energy.

Containers, I understood. Spun by Forneus.

Thick cords joined us and ran to levels below I couldn’t see.

I shouted my teammates’ names until my vocal cords went raw, but I could barely hear myself above the roar of ley energy and the sizzling and crackling overhead. If can shout, I can cast. Inside my cocoon, my hands were gripping my