Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8) Read online

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  I thought about Malachi, Seay, Gorgantha, and Jordan. “I made a promise.”

  “How are you getting there?”

  “I’m going to check with Claudius first,” I said, “see if he’s had any luck reaching the senior members of the Order. Then I’ll try the fae again.”

  I considered Arnaud’s claim about him being my sole key to the time catch, but I decided not to share. Vega was dealing with a lot right now, including morning sickness. Even if he could access the time catch, I had other options.

  “Think there’s anything to Arnaud’s insinuations about the fae?” she asked.

  “No,” I replied, but without the conviction I needed to feel. I consulted my magic again. It remained in the same neutral state it had been in all morning, no hard confirmations or rebuttals. “I can’t see the fae making a deal with a demon.”

  “Still, it’s strange they’re ghosting you.”

  “Well, they’re strange, period. I’ll get answers.” I gave Vega’s hand a final squeeze. “I should get going.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  “I will.” She joined me as I stood from the desk, and we kissed.

  My hand was on the door when Vega spoke again. “Is it safe for you to go back into the time catch?”

  When I turned, she was holding the broom to her chest. The honest answer was that it depended on whether the time catch was as unstable as Arnaud suggested. Or was he just seeding more doubt?

  “I’ll be better prepared this time.”

  She brought her fingers to her lips and waved. I was barely through the doorway when I heard her cleaning again.

  Outside 1 Police Plaza I ducked into a parking lot to call Claudius. As the line rang, I paced the asphalt, aware that every minute here was twenty or thirty in 1776 New York. Meaning the Upholders had been there for the equivalent of weeks. Throw in Arnaud’s suggestion about the time catch’s instability—

  Stop it, I cut in. He wants you to rush this. He wants you to screw up.

  I took a steadying breath, but as I exhaled, a prickling wave burned through me. My magic was talking. I spun and searched the parking lot, then the buildings across the street. The fight-or-flight response faded, but the message was all too familiar: someone had been watching me.

  “Ah, yes, hello?”

  I reoriented myself to the phone but continued to monitor my surroundings. “Claudius, it’s Everson,” I said. “Any luck reaching the Order?”

  “The Order…” His voice trailed off. “Wh-who is this again?”

  “Everson Croft,” I said sternly. “I talked to you yesterday. I was about to enter a time catch, remember? And you were supposed to be working on reaching the senior members of the Order, the ones trapped in the Harkless Rift?”

  I imagined him blinking in puzzlement. “Oh, right, yes, yes,” he said at last. “How can I help you?”

  God, his confusion was getting worse every day.

  “Did you or did you not reach the Order?” I asked as patiently as I could.

  “I’m afraid I hit a snag.”

  “A snag?”

  “Yes, well, I… Let’s see…” I could hear another phone ringing in the background. “Oh, what now?” he muttered, seeming to lose his train of thought.

  “Claudius,” I snapped.

  “Can we talk in person? I’m having a hard time hearing you.”

  “Sure,” I said, exhaling. “Did you have somewhere in mind?”

  I was already cycling through nearby coffee shops and diners he could transport to when the connection disintegrated into static, and a portal the size of a doorway opened between me and a police SUV. At the other end of a tunnel, I could just make out Claudius. He was waving for me to come through.

  “It’s safe,” he said from far away.

  “Yeah, and so was the Hindenburg,” I muttered, clapping my phone closed.

  I drew my cane into sword and staff, not believing I was about to trust a portal opened by someone who could barely manage a telephone, but it was that damned ticking clock. I needed help for the Upholders.

  With a final glance around for whomever might have been watching me, I uttered a Word. The surrounding air hardened into a form-fitting shield. Mouthing a quick prayer, I stepped inside. A damp darkness pressed in from all sides, and the ground squelched underfoot. Where in the hell was I?

  Better not to ask, I decided, upping my pace.

  I was halfway to Claudius when something large flapped past my face. With a cry, I swung my sword around, but the creature had already disappeared into the darkness.

  “Quickly!” Claudius’s voice echoed down the portal.

  Another set of wet, leathery wings batted past. This time, a cord whipped around my throat.

  “Respingere!” I cried.

  The shield encasing me sent out a bright pulse. What looked like an albino bat with a long rat’s tail tumbled through the air with a shriek and disappeared. I glanced around in the shield’s dimming light, now wishing I hadn’t. More of the bat-like creatures circled a high ceiling of glistening stalactites. And did one of the stalactites just move?

  The pulse from my shield had barely echoed away when a low rumble shook the cavern.

  “Run!” Claudius yelled.

  The cavern shook again, and I staggered for balance. Something crashed down behind me. I peered over a shoulder. One of the stalactites had fallen. Another landed in front of me and then righted itself. A dozen glowing eyes opened up and down its rocky face.

  Well, isn’t that nice.

  As I veered around the monstrosity, thin tendrils began whipping from its body. I nailed the thing with a force blast, knocking it over.

  “Don’t look back!” Claudius shouted, waving both hands now.

  I immediately craned my neck around. A wormlike creature large enough to fill the tunnel was contracting toward me. Its open mouth showed a humped gullet ringed with rows of nasty hook-like teeth.

  A Chagrath? I thought in disbelief. He sent me through a portal belonging to a frigging Chagrath? Months before, I had consulted for my friend Jason, also known as the Blue Wolf, when he and his teammates faced a Chagrath in Mexico. One of the last creatures you wanted bearing down on you.

  I aimed my sword back and shouted, “Fuoco!”

  I rarely cast through the blade’s second rune, the one the efreet had activated, because it was too hard to control. But right now I was too pissed off to care. The rune spawned a flame of elemental fire. Determined to bring the force under my will, I repeated an incantation of control—which the fire ignored.

  In a blinding flash, it roared the length of my sword and geysered into the approaching creature. The Chagrath screamed as bright orange flames broke around its mouth and down its throat. The creature’s body shrank back, sending a seismic wave through the cavern.

  I stumbled, arms pinwheeling for balance, sword continuing to spew flames. The bat-like creatures shrieked and scattered as arcs of fire sent several up in torches. Even the stalactites were backing away. But the expulsive force was also shoving me from my destination. I shouted one charged Word after another, struggling to recall the elemental power, but it was as if it had a mind of its own.

  Without warning, something seized my sword arm and yanked.

  3

  I landed on a stone floor, the sword clanging down beside me. The rune was dim again. Smoke floated from the cooling blade. When I turned my head the other way, I was eye level with a pair of feet clad in black socks and sandals: Claudius’s. He was standing over me in a satin robe cinched at his waist. In a panic, I looked past him, but the portal was closed. The worm hadn’t come through.

  “A Chagrath’s lair?” I shouted. “What in holy hell, man?”

  Claudius adjusted his round tinted glasses. “Sorry about that. It was the most direct route, and I thought we’d, ah, catch it sleeping.”

  “Thought or hoped?”

  “Hoped,” he admitted
.

  Grumbling, I pushed myself to my feet. I’d never seen Claudius’s workspace, and it looked like a cross between a poorly lit office and a medieval dungeon.

  To my left, a massive desk was heaped with telephones, several of them ringing. Piles of notes sat in drifts around a desktop calendar that was five years old. The rest of the stone walls were lined with bookcases, their shelves holding dust-covered tomes and artifacts that buzzed with peculiar energies. Potted plants and small cages hung from a low ceiling. I turned to find one of the plants straining toward me, a mouth set in the center of its bright ring of petals leaking a foul-smelling drool.

  “Oh, don’t mind him,” Claudius said. “Nipped me the other day, and now he has a taste for wizard’s blood.”

  I leaned away from the plant’s straining lips. No wonder Claudius always sounded so damned out of sorts. This place was the picture of madness. The aging magic-user tilted his head now, curtains of dyed-black hair shifting around the sags of his questioning face.

  “It’s Everson,” I said, preempting him. “Everson Croft.”

  “Ah, yes, yes. Everson.” He mouthed my name a couple more times, as if to make it stick. “And how can I help you?”

  My heart was still racing from the Chagrath encounter, and being underground wasn’t helping. Neither was the incessant ringing of the telephones or the mewling cries of the plant jonesing for my blood.

  “Is there somewhere saner we can talk?” I asked.

  “Saner?” Claudius glanced around before an idea appeared to strike him. “Yes, follow me.” As he turned to lead the way, I noticed the back of his head was bald, the hair completely sheared off.

  “What happened to your hair?” I asked.

  He brought a hand to the crown of his head. “What about it?”

  “In back.”

  His fingers jumped as they encountered the bald skin. He felt around it for another moment, then gave it several pats.

  “Oh, yes. That. I was testing possible routes to the Harkless Rift. One realm was made of a living jelly. It gave every indication it would let me pass, but then turned testy when I started wading through it. I’m lucky that’s all it ate off.” He led the way up a spiral staircase that ended at a landing. “After you,” he said, holding a door open.

  I hesitated before stepping through a rack of winter coats. Half expecting to emerge into another nightmare realm, I was surprised to find a suburban-looking living room, sunlight glowing through a picture window. Claudius shuffled past me.

  “I’ll put on some tea,” he said. “Have a seat.” He waved toward a couch with floral upholstery.

  “Where are we?” I called.

  “Home sweet home.”

  “Right, but where?”

  “Oh, ah, outside Annapolis, Maryland,” he said as he disappeared into a kitchen. “Or is it Peoria, Illinois?”

  I could hear him considering the question in a mutter beneath the opening and closing of cupboards. The living room, with its matching furniture set, cream carpeting, and generic landscape prints, looked shockingly pedestrian. Compared to the basement, we could have been in an alternate universe.

  The doorbell rang. “Claudi-poo!” a woman’s voice called.

  From the kitchen, a metal teapot clanged to the floor. “Don’t answer that!” Claudius called.

  I craned my neck around. Through the diaphanous curtain, I made out the profile of a squat woman with a coif of frosted pink hair. She was holding a tinfoil-covered plate to her chest. The doorbell rang again.

  “I have your favorite treat!” she sang.

  The kitchen went very quiet. I caught myself hunkering from her view.

  After another round of bell-ringing, the woman said, “Well, fudge!” and clopped off.

  Moments later, Claudius peered from the kitchen on hands and knees. “Is she gone?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  He retreated, then emerged upright carrying a platter with a teapot, cups, and cream and sugar. He arranged everything on the coffee table, then shuffled to the door, opened it furtively, and retrieved the plate the woman had left on the stoop. Returning, he removed the tinfoil from a heap of golden cookies.

  “She’s in my book group,” Claudius explained, setting the plate beside the tea platter. “Recently widowed. Had me over for dinner last month, and I’m afraid I let things go a little too far. Makes a tasty gingersnap, though.” He popped one into his mouth and poured the steaming tea. “Now,” he said as he settled into a soft chair with his cup and saucer. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “So, no luck reaching the Order?”

  “I’m afraid not. The senior members accessed the rift through their collective powers. I’m not near that level, and my few attempts at shortcuts didn’t go so well.” He patted the back of his head, producing a slapping sound.

  “Any idea how they got trapped?”

  Claudius slurped his tea and made a thoughtful face. “I guess I haven’t really considered it. Or if I have, I’ve forgotten.”

  “Could a demon have done it?”

  “A demon? It’s possible, I suppose.”

  Assuming Claudius had also forgotten the story about Arianna visiting my dream and telling me to find Arnaud, I recounted it for him. I also told him about my adventure in the time catch. “So I have Arnaud,” I finished. “And somehow that’s supposed to free Arianna and the other members of the Order. But there’s been no follow-up from her. I’m guessing because she can’t reach me.”

  “No, probably not,” Claudius muttered. He was squinting at a note his amour had tucked among the cookies. I caught a couple R-rated words. Claudius flinched before disappearing the note into a jacket pocket.

  “What if Arnaud’s master trapped them?” I asked.

  “His master?” Claudius frowned as he polished off another cookie.

  “Malphas,” I continued. “He’s ambitious, powerful. He was manipulating energy in the time catch, we think to create a portal he could enter by. What if he knew that the biggest threat to his plan was a response from the Order?” I was presenting the questions more to myself than Claudius, who appeared more interested in the refreshments. “What if he was the one who trapped them in the Harkless Rift?”

  “I don’t like where this is going.”

  I looked up from my tea, surprised to find him regarding me sternly. “Where what’s going?”

  “You’re wondering if the solution is to offer Malphas’s servant to him in exchange for the Order’s release.”

  I stared at him for another moment. That was exactly what I’d been thinking, because why else would Arianna have directed me to find Arnaud? “It would be bargaining with a demon master, sure…” I began.

  “Never a good idea.”

  “Well, I happen to agree, but if it leads to the Order’s release…”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  Neither would Vega, I thought, remembering our talk in her office and the way her protective instincts had flared up. She would never forgive me for releasing Arnaud, no matter what we received in exchange. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how, once freed, the senior members of our Order would be able to enter the time catch and recover the Upholders, not to mention boost our firepower against the demons.

  After another moment, I exhaled. “All right,” I said in concession. “I’ll wait for Arianna’s guidance. But in the meantime I have to recover the others from the time catch. That’s non-negotiable.”

  “You mean 1776 New York?”

  Maybe it was the high volume of ginger he was consuming, but Claudius’s mind seemed to have sharpened in the last few minutes.

  “Right,” I said. “Is there any way you can—”

  “Get you there?” Claudius finished for me.

  After the Chagrath’s lair, I couldn’t believe I was even considering the question, but I gave a slight nod.

  “Well, I’ve never attempted a portal to a time catch. I’d need time, no pun intended, and even
then there’s a good chance you’d lose a lot more than the hair off the back of your head. Have you tried the fae?”

  “They’re ignoring me.”

  “Hm. Then maybe you should consult your teacher.”

  “Gretchen?” I snorted. “She’s worse than they are.”

  “She was rather brusque when she called this morning.”

  I straightened so suddenly, I spilled half my remaining tea. “Gretchen called you this morning? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Well, I don’t know.” He paused to dip a crescent of cookie into his cup. “I suppose because you didn’t ask.”

  “She’s back from Faerie?”

  “She suggested as much.”

  I dug out my phone and accessed the number I’d managed to wheedle from Gretchen, but no one answered. Swearing, I stood and looked around. Where did Claudius say we were? Maryland? Illinois?

  “How do I get back to New York? And don’t tell me through the Chagrath’s lair.”

  “No, no, don’t worry.” Claudius finished his cookie before setting his tea down and dusting the crumbs from his lap. “I have a direct portal to Gretchen’s place. But here, take some gingersnaps. I’ll eat them all otherwise.”

  “Yeah, there’s not really time.”

  But he’d already set a pile of cookies in the center of the tinfoil and was folding it into a clumpy package. He handed it to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, quickly pocketing the cookies in my coat. “Do we need to go back downstairs?”

  “No, no, right here is fine.”

  Claudius signed in the air and turned me around. A portal stood inches from my nose. Before I could weigh the wisdom of chancing another of Claudius’s portals, the fleshy-looking void sucked me inside.

  “Good luck!” he called in a fading voice.

  4

  I had no idea what kind of portal I’d entered, but it felt like being squeezed through something’s digestive tract. Before I knew it, I was being shoved out the other end with explosive force, landing hard on my hands and knees.

  “Holy hell,” I grunted.