Purge City (Prof Croft Book 3) Read online

  I snorted. “Well, that’s not gonna happen.”

  “All right.” He clapped once. “It sounds like we have an agreement.”

  I sighed and sheathed my sword.

  “Let’s get this over with.”

  3

  The blood slave held the door open for me, and we stepped into the dim bar. An assortment of fans blew around the stink of spilled beer, wet cigarettes, and what smelled like vomit from a back bathroom.

  “Charming, isn’t it?” Arnaud said through his slave, then glided toward the long bar. At one end, a trio of barflies sagged on stools, faces transfixed on the glow of a baseball game. The bartender, a hefty man in an undershirt with muddy sweat stains beneath the pits, stared at the game too.

  “Ahoy, there!” Arnaud called with false cheer.

  The bartender’s head was eggplant shaped, broad at the jaws but smaller and shining around his crown. It rotated slightly as he shifted his smallish eyes toward us, his bulk remaining aligned with the mounted TV.

  “My associate and I could use a cold drink on this hot day. A pair of scotch on the rocks, if you will.” Arnaud scanned the top shelf of liquor bottles before stopping and pointing at a dusty bottle with a red label. “That one will do. And make them doubles, my good friend.”

  The bartender screwed up his eyes as though trying to decide whether Arnaud was toying with him. When the vampire set a pair of fifty-dollar bills on the scratched bar, the bartender must have decided he didn’t care. Heaving himself from his languid lean, he plodded over to the bottle Arnaud had indicated and began pouring our drinks.

  “Not the quickest study,” Arnaud said to me as he climbed onto a stool, not bothering to lower his voice. “But beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “You said ten minutes,” I reminded him as I took the neighboring stool.

  “Let’s see…” Arnaud checked his slender wristwatch. “Yes, perfect timing.”

  As the bartender set our drinks in front of us, Arnaud pushed one of the fifties forward. “This will cover our beverages as well as a generous gratuity—despite that you only poured one shot apiece and then attempted to disguise the deception with common tap water.”

  The bartender’s face clenched. “You calling me a cheat?”

  “This…” Arnaud tapped the second fifty, ignoring the bartender’s show of aggression. “…will be for additional services provided.”

  The bartender’s gaze fell to the bill. “What services?” he asked suspiciously.

  Arnaud broke into sudden laughter. “Oh, no, no. Nothing like that, my strapping friend. No, we would just like to procure your television for a short while.”

  The bartender’s head twisted to look up at the TV. On the screen, an outfielder fielded a fly ball. When the bartender turned back to us, his brow was a bed of confusion lines. He scratched his stubbly chin.

  “He’d like to change the channel,” I said, acting as translator.

  “The Mets are playing,” the bartender said, as if that settled the question.

  “And playing delightedly, I have little doubt.” Arnaud checked his watch again. “However, we are interested in something for which time is of the utmost essence. And what we’re offering in exchange is more than sufficient compensation. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Can’t do it,” he said. “Those guys at the end of the bar? The only reason they come here is for the games. They’d kill me.”

  The smile on Arnaud’s face stiffened, and before I could anticipate his next words, he seized the bartender’s throat. “I assume you’re speaking figuratively in regards to your friends,” Arnaud said in a fierce whisper. “I, however, am not, so I advise you to listen carefully.”

  The bartender gargled, his bald head already turning red.

  “You are going to accept our payment,” Arnaud said, “and you are going to change the channel, or I will crush your windpipe and end your pathetic life right here. Do you understand?”

  “Hey, c’mon,” I whispered, unlocking the sword inside my cane, ready to step to the man’s defense.

  The bartender pawed toward Arnaud’s face, but a crunch of cartilage made him reconsider. He nodded desperately, his bulging eyes beginning to weep. In Arnaud’s eyes, I saw a hunger to kill. But in the next moment, his hand popped open, dropping the bartender on the bar.

  “Jesus,” I breathed, notching my sword again. I peeked at the patrons. Their gazes hadn’t moved from the television.

  “There, there, my friend,” Arnaud said, patting the bartender’s heaving back. “Take a moment to collect yourself—a glass of water, if you need it—then kindly change the channel to four. Oh, and the shotgun you’re reaching for is no longer beneath the bar. I removed it earlier in the event negotiations failed. I’m pleased we were able to arrive at a mutual understanding.”

  Arnaud slid the other fifty forward. The bartender stopped groping under the bar. He pulled a dish towel from his sagging pants to wipe his face, eyeing the fifty as though it might bite him.

  “Go on,” Arnaud said, “you’ve earned it.”

  The bartender took the bill and shoved it into a pocket. Protests rose from the barflies as he reached up and changed the channel. The ballgame flipped to a young woman making an impassioned plea to a grim-faced man over the custody of their child.

  “A soap opera?” I said.

  Arnaud held up a finger. “A moment.”

  Seconds later, the soap opera switched to a feed of Mayor Budge Lowder standing in front of a podium stacked with microphones.

  “We interrupt this program for a special news conference,” an off-camera news anchor said. “The mayor is set to announce what he is calling a ‘brave, new initiative’ that could mean sweeping changes for the city of New York. We go live now to City Hall.”

  As Budge wiped a cowlick of hair from his pudgy face and adjusted his round glasses, my thoughts cast back to the showdown at his mansion. Vega and I battling the mayor’s wife and her werewolf brethren; Budge shooting me; me shooting his wife; Vega negotiating our release by blackmailing Budge and Penny with information we discovered during our investigation.

  As it turned out, we hadn’t had to worry about Penny. The shot that had ruptured her aorta had sent her into a coma, where she still remained. All summer long, Budge had been keeping the public abreast of her condition. It seemed to have had an effect, stalling his falling poll numbers despite the multitude of problems besieging his crumbling metropolis.

  I guessed sympathy still held sway.

  “How’s everyone doing?” Budge asked from the podium. “Good, good. As always, I’ll start with an update on my beloved wife, after whom so many of you have been asking and offering your well wishes. At last count, we’ve been sent enough plants and flowers to turn Central Park into a profitable nursery.” He chuckled with the crowd of reporters, then paused as though to gather himself. “Penny remains in a coma, but her doctors say she’s stable. In fact, they’re telling me I should talk to her because she can probably hear what I’m saying. So I’ve been telling her a few things. First, that what happened to her is my fault.” He raised his hands to the murmured protests. “No, listen, listen. All you’ve been told was that she fell into a coma, but you don’t know how she ended up there. I think it’s time you heard.”

  “Here it comes,” Arnaud said above his glass.

  “What?” I asked nervously.

  “The Big Reveal.”

  “My wife was attacked,” Budge announced.

  The blood fell from my face. He’s going to out me, I thought. He’s going to implicate me in his wife’s attempted murder. Probably Vega, too. And with all of the sympathy pouring toward Budge and his wife, the city will eat us alive. My eyes shot toward the door.

  Arnaud’s cold fingers rested on my forearm. “A moment.”

  On the television, Budge patted the air, assuring the press he would answer their burst of questions after he finished his announcement. “Yes, she was attacked,” he continued. “But h
ere’s the thing. The entire City of New York is under attack. I’d heard the rumors and reports. But I ignored them. It took what happened to my dear wife to finally see the light. I’m talking about supernaturals. Beings that shouldn’t exist. But I’m telling you, they do exist, and they’re here. They’re in our city. And they threaten each and every one of us.”

  Instead of quieting the reporters, Budge used their swelling voices to bolster his own voice, like a preacher at a tent revival. “Many of you have seen them. Some of you have been pursued by them. A few of you have lost loved ones to them. But not any more. Not in my city.”

  In recent months, I’d observed an increasing number of ghouls scavenging the East Village garbage piles, a story even serious papers were starting to pick up. The monsters had graduated from the tabloids.

  “Hey,” one of the barflies said, “you remember that thing that chased us down Avenue C a couple months ago?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” his buddy replied. “Big and ugly, with long arms. Think it was one of them supernaturals?”

  The bartender shushed them.

  “That’s the second thing I’m telling Penny while she’s fighting for her life,” Budge continued. “That the monster who attacked her isn’t going to get away. We’re going to hunt him down, along with every other supernatural that has infested our city, and we’re going to eradicate them.”

  “Damned straight,” the third barfly said.

  “So I stand before my city today to announce the creation of a one-hundred person force within the NYPD.” He turned and opened an arm toward a late middle-aged black man with a somber face and thick mustache. “Headed by Captain Lance Cole, the Hundred will lead the effort to root out and destroy the supernatural scourge on our city. The monsters are the true root of evil. Not taxes or the lack of city services or any of the peripheral issues my opponent would have you believe. Once the monsters are eradicated, once the streets and parks are safe, I promise you, the people and businesses that fled will come storming back, restoring our great city to glory.” He threw his arms out with this final pronouncement.

  “So now you see,” Arnaud said as Budge began to take questions.

  I swallowed and tried to find my voice. “Yeah, but he spoke of monsters, not wizards.”

  “You know as well as I that he’s not going to distinguish between the two. Not after what befell his wife.”

  “No thanks to you.”

  “Be that as it may, the question now is how you plan to negotiate the new terrain.”

  I looked down the bar to where the bartender had wandered over. He and the patrons were huddled in conversation. As I turned back to Arnaud, my head ached with the beginning of a migraine.

  “I feel an offer coming,” I said.

  “Or perhaps a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “Let me guess, a new pact between wizards and vamps.”

  “Aligning to defend our rightful place in the city,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I’m not getting mixed up with you again.”

  “I don’t see that you have a choice, Mr. Croft—that is, unless you elect to flee. But I sense that would be difficult for one whose power derives from the unique energies of the city.”

  He was correct to the extent that a wizard’s power adapted to the environment where he practiced, to the particular pattern of ley lines. One could relocate, sure, but it took time to shape the new energies fully to his purposes—especially for a relatively new practitioner like me.

  “If you do remain,” Arnaud continued, “I am the only one with a fortification and sufficient personnel to defend it.”

  “Then why do you need me?”

  “Because in the fever of war, favors are called in, strange alliances take shape, the opposition swells. Just look at any of history’s great conflicts. We might soon find ourselves at a disadvantage.”

  “And you think I can do, what?” I said. “Round up the local wizards and march them to the Financial District? Tell them, hey, we’re joining Team Vampire?”

  Though I picked up magical auras around the city, I didn’t know who and who didn’t belong to the Order. My organization was highly compartmentalized, either to protect its secrecy or to decrease the chances of magic-users banding together to rebel. Both explanations made sense. I was sure I wasn’t the only one to have questioned the Order’s authority.

  “It’s above my wizarding level,” I said.

  “Very well,” Arnaud replied curtly. “I suppose it will take circumstances to convince you. Until then…” He finished his drink, dropped a twenty in front of me for the promised cab fare, and slipped off his stool. Before I could say anything, the door to the bar opened and closed in a flash of sunlight, and Arnaud was gone.

  I moved my untouched drink around a small pool of condensation, the class I was supposed to teach on the bottom rung of my concerns. On the television above me, Budge rattled off more details about his eradication program—dollar amounts, federal funding. Arnaud had forecast the development, sure. But that didn’t mean I had to rush into an alliance with him, did it?

  No, I decided. I only need to inform the Order and await instructions. Which I’ll do right after my class.

  I stood from my barstool, collected the twenty, and turned, only to be met by a meaty hand against my chest. I fell back onto my stool. The bartender rose over me, two of the patrons from the other end of the bar on either side of him. I looked around for the third guy but couldn’t see him.

  “Who was your friend?” the bartender asked.

  I glanced toward the door Arnaud’s blood slave had departed through. “Friend? I hardly knew the guy.”

  “Well, you came in here with him,” the bartender said.

  “Your powers of observation are astounding,” I told him.

  “I’ve never seen anyone move that fast,” he said.

  “Yeah,” one of the barflies put in, a man with a trucker hat and thick beard.

  “Really?” I said. “It probably just seemed that way because the rest of us were moving so slow.”

  The patrons’ brows beetled as they tried to puzzle that out. The bartender’s eyes didn’t shift from mine, though. He loomed nearer.

  “The boys and I have been consulting,” he said. “We think he might be one of those supernatural freaks the mayor’s talking about. And you know what? We think you’re one of them too.”

  “Me?” The metallic bite of adrenaline filled my mouth as my gaze jumped between them. Who were these losers—one with a head shaped like an eggplant—to call me a freak? Power stormed toward my prism.

  But when I caught a whiff of leather and musk, I realized what Arnaud had done. He’d exuded an aerosol that was releasing hormones into our systems: raw fight or flight. It was the same reason he’d manhandled the bartender into changing the channel instead of using his vampiric powers of persuasion. Arnaud wanted to incite a confrontation, to underline his point that the city was aligning against us. Though my heart pounded with an urge to clash, I settled back into my seat. I’d played into Arnaud’s hands once. It wasn’t happening again.

  “Look guys,” I said, forcing a calming breath. “I’m flesh and blood, just like you. I didn’t come in here to cause trouble—which would be pretty hard for someone like me anyway.” I held up my cane as proof of disability.

  “Hey, Bill!”

  I looked over to see the third barfly, the one I’d lost track of, emerging from the back of the bar carrying a shotgun. The stock end of the gun dripped water. “It was sitting in the crapper. That joker must’ve dropped it in there when he came in earlier to use the bathroom.”

  Bartender Bill scowled. “Bring it here.”

  “This cane belonged to my grandfather, actually,” I said, pushing energy into my wizard’s voice, willing their attention back to me. “Part walking aid, part novelty item. Can you make out that stone?”

  The three barflies looked at one another, then at the white opal.

  “What about i
t?” Bill growled. He had seized his gun and begun wiping the stock dry with his towel. I noted the tremor in his hands, the quavering edge to his voice. Arnaud’s toxin was still pumping through him. He wasn’t going to allow me out of his bar without a fight.

  “If you look closely enough,” I said, “you can make out Playboy’s Miss June, 1948.” Gathering energy, I watched Bill’s eyes. When at last they squinted toward the opal, I shouted, “Illuminare!”

  An intense light flashed against their faces. Shouts went up from the recoiling men. I climbed onto the bar to escape their semicircle. Bartender Bill groped toward me, but I was already into the first steps of flight. Ashtrays and beer bottles flew from my feet. The shotgun went off, and a shelf of liquor bottles erupted. Glass and alcohol rained over my back.

  At the far end of the bar, I jumped down. Bill swung his shotgun toward the sound.

  “Vigore!” I shouted, using a force invocation to shove two of the stumbling barflies into Bill. The bartender lumbered backwards, the shotgun blowing fire into the ceiling. Chunks of plaster rained over them.

  I opened the door onto the bright blur of the West Village and then sealed the door behind me with a locking spell. Hailing a passing taxi, I climbed in, my back wet against the seat.

  “Where to?” the cabbie asked.

  “Midtown College,” I panted. “I’m late for a class I’m supposed to teach.”

  “Looking like that?”

  I followed his squinting gaze to my liquor-soaked shirt. Great. Blood from the exploding glass stippled through the fabric over my left shoulder. My back was probably bleeding too.

  “Just drive,” I said. “Fast.”

  As the cab pulled away from the curb, I peered around to ensure Bill and the others hadn’t escaped the bar. But more generally, I was looking to ensure the eradication program wasn’t underway. What that would even look like, I had no idea. A police force in specialized gear? Mystics and diviners rousted from their shops? Magic-users in arm and leg shackles, tape over their mouths? I scooted to the middle of the backseat, out of view of a city that suddenly felt hostile.