The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Page 5

  I threw myself from the path of its descending fist and landed in an awkward roll, clunking several times over my backpack. The gargoyle’s fist cracked into stone behind me, shaking the library’s foundation.

  Perhaps for my academic background, I had a bad habit of trying to make sense of situations that required a pure fight-or-flight response. But as I scrabbled to my feet, my mind was connecting the curtain of energy in the vault to the cursed warning to the bludgeoned looters. Had our presence downstairs triggered some sort of alarm? One that animated the gargoyles? I had seen some strange stuff in Grandpa’s study, but this was taking it to a whole new level.

  I stumbled backwards, my light swimming over the advancing gargoyle. Beyond the creature, Flor’s and James’s own lights lashed around. Rifle bursts collided with shouting, but I couldn’t tell how my travel companions were faring.

  Something rammed my back hard enough to rattle my teeth. I pawed to both sides to find I had not only backed into a wall, but a corner. The gargoyle stalked toward me, spreading its arms to prevent my escape.

  “Hey, can we talk about this?” I stammered.

  The gargoyle reached down and grasped my head like a basketball. The crushing pressure registered as bright lights behind my eyes. I didn’t know what kind of pounds per square inch we were talking, but it had to be testing my skull’s limits. Grasping the gargoyle’s wrist in both hands, I pulled myself up and kicked. Its stone stomach stopped my heel cold. The gargoyle responded with a knee that collapsed my own belly. Then it flung me away.

  I wrapped my head with my arms, sure I was going to splat into a pillar. Instead, I hit the ground pack-first and flopped onto my stomach. I lay stunned. Unable to move or breathe. The rifle bursts had stopped, and I couldn’t hear Flor or James. Just the gargoyle, its stone steps cracking toward me.

  You’re not exciting enough, my last girlfriend had said. All you ever do is read, she’d said.

  I winced and raised my face, the weak headlamp finding the creature’s knees. Beyond, I glimpsed one of the battered and dried-out corpses on the steps. God, I didn’t want to end up like those guys. I lifted my light to the gargoyle’s horned snout and narrow chiseled eyes. I didn’t suppose it would do any good to explain I was a researcher and not a looter.

  The gargoyle arrived in front of me and drew back a leg.

  “Hey…” I rasped, holding an arm out. “Easy there…”

  Its stone lips trembled from snarling teeth. I curled into a ball, anticipating the impact of the organ-crushing kick.

  Only it didn’t arrive. After another second, I peeked between my forearms. The gargoyle was frozen in place, balanced on one leg. Then, very slowly, it began to tip to the side. Its eventual collision with the floor snapped an arm at the elbow and shattered both fangs.

  I scrambled to my feet, expecting the gargoyle to rise again and resume its attack, but whatever force had possessed it moments before seemed to have broken apart like the statue.

  “Well,” James said, appearing from behind a pillar, “maybe not as skilled a toss as your cowboys, but it seems I lassoed the bugger all the same.” I had no idea what he was talking about until he crouched and fingered something around the gargoyle’s neck.

  I took a tentative step closer. “What is that?”

  “A rock salt necklace,” he replied. “Before you arrived in town, a villager talked Flor and me into buying a pair. Claimed it would dispel evil magic. They didn’t seem to be doing much in our packs, so I got the idea to throw one around his partner over there. I’ll be damned if it didn’t work.”

  I turned my head to where, across the room, Flor’s light illuminated the other gargoyle, also toppled.

  James clapped my shoulder. “Seems I got to yours just in time.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “The American is okay?” Flor asked, striding up to us.

  “I’ll live.” When I coughed, pain stabbed through my ribs. I nodded at a spot on her upper arm slick with blood. “What about you?”

  She shrugged it off. “A bullet graze.”

  I turned to James. “And you?”

  “Took a slight knock to the head. Nothing a little whiskey can’t cure.”

  “Good, because we have work to do.” Maybe it was pain endorphins, but my various injuries seemed to be having a sedating, focusing effect. Manuscripts or not, we still had to survive the night. “Three things, specifically. Number one, we need to block the front door. I don’t know whether the wolves would try to venture in here, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t. Two, we need to get those pickaxes Flor saw upstairs and break the gargoyles apart. Whatever the rock salt is doing may not last, and I don’t think any of us want a rematch.” I glanced at Flor, who was watching me intently. “And three—”

  A stuffy voice echoed from upstairs. “Where in the hell has everyone gone?”

  “Three,” I repeated, “we need to keep an eye on Bertrand.”

  11

  James volunteered to pickaxe the gargoyles while Flor and I dealt with the front door. Bertrand, who remained convinced the texts were somewhere in the monastery, went limping off with a make-shift torch in search of them. I let him, figuring it would keep him out of the way for the time being. It was the nighttime, when the rest of us would be sleeping, that he concerned me the most.

  I grunted to the top of the stones Flor and I had piled against the timber we’d stood over the entrance. Ribs protesting where the gargoyle had driven its knee, I hefted a chunk of fallen pillar into the final space.

  I exhaled. “There.”

  Flor blew a strand of hair from her eyes and assessed the pile, fists on her hips. “Now we use the rest of the timber to brace it.”

  I nodded wearily and climbed back down. Together, we stood a scavenged beam on end, wedged it against a fallen pillar set back from the entrance, and then lowered the other end against the piled-up stones at an angle. Opposite me, Flor seemed to be handling the work with relative ease. I caught myself admiring the slender muscles along her arms.

  “So…” I said as we lifted another beam, “now that there are no texts … want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

  “You do not give up, do you?”

  Her voice seemed to carry a flirtatious note of challenge. I peeked past the wooden beam to find the black eyes beneath her thick brows fixed on mine. A small smile teased her lips.

  “On some questions, no,” I said.

  “What difference does it make why I am here? Like you say, there are no texts.”

  “Maybe I just want to trust you.”

  Far away, a wolf’s howl went up. Flor looked from the sound to me, eyebrow cocked. “I saved you from them, didn’t I?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it. She had a point.

  With a cool dusky wind circling the courtyard, we set the final beam in place. Flor dusted off her hands and came forward until our legs were almost touching. “What is it you really want, Everson?”

  I didn’t realize I had been bracing my ribs on the right side until her hand slid under my sweat-damp shirt and over the ache. For someone who behaved with such dispassion in the face of danger, her palm blazed with heat. My body stiffened, then molded against her touch.

  “I work for collectors,” she said with a sigh. “A group with an interest in ancient texts and artifacts.”

  “Like a museum?” I asked, struggling to hold her face in focus. God, she felt good.

  “No, they are private collectors.” Her palm shifted to another sore spot. “They read the same article as you, James, and Bertrand. They hired me to see if the texts were here and to keep anyone from taking them.”

  I fought for a little analytical distance. Her secrecy, her military-grade rifle, her composure—and, yes, her terminal good looks. They all seemed consistent with someone who contracted out her services to the highest bidders. Which explained why she had been so concerned about Bertrand arriving here first.

  “Were you su
pposed to take the texts?” I asked pointedly.

  “I was only to keep them safe until the group could negotiate with the Romanian government for their purchase.”

  “Purchase?” Given their rarity, the texts would have cost a fortune. “Who is this group?”

  “I am paid to do a job, not ask questions.” She pressed closer. “Are you happy now?”

  “Almost.” I leaned toward her lips, a man anticipating his first taste of water after a six-month drought. I half expected a recoil and a sharp slap, but Flor’s eyelids softened. Her chin tilted upward.

  “I daresay, the wolves will have a devil of a time getting through that.”

  Flor and I jerked apart. A moment later, James appeared along the walkway, a pickaxe slung over one shoulder. Awesome timing, mate. He arrived beside us and looked the barricade up and down, nodding his approval. But when he turned to face us, his eyes were absent their usual joviality.

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  He seemed to will his mouth into a smile. “Couldn’t be better, mate.” He clapped my shoulder with a little too much enthusiasm. “Hard work breaking up those gargoyles, but it’s done.”

  Great. He had seen our near kiss, and now he was jealous. As if there wasn’t already enough tension among the four of us.

  “Where is Bertrand?” Flor asked.

  We all peered around. A moment later, the Frenchman appeared at the far end of the courtyard. He had done away with his crutches and was limp-hopping toward us, a sweaty sweep of hair dangling over his eyes.

  “Where are they?” he demanded. “Where are the texts?”

  “We told you,” James said. “The library and vault were empty when we arrived.”

  “That is a lie!” He stopped in front of us, the muscles around his eyes trembling with anger. “You took them!” He pointed at Flor but swept his arm back and forth to implicate all of us.

  I stepped forward. “You need to calm down, bud. No one took anything.”

  “But they are here,” he said. “I can feel them.”

  Flor waved a dismissive hand. “You are crazy.”

  His eyes jerked around until they locked on our packs, which we’d set beside a pillar. He hopped over and began tugging at the zippers of Flor’s pack. “We will see who is crazy.”

  James seized the scruff of his jacket. “It’s not polite to root through other people’s belongings, mate.”

  Bertrand flailed his arms around, catching James in the mouth. James recoiled, the back of a hand to his lower lip, then held out both fists in a classic boxer’s stance. Before I could intervene, Flor was behind Bertrand, a black pistol jammed against the back of his head.

  “Let go of my pack.”

  I rushed up, palms showing. “Hey, hey, hey. Let’s all just take a few deep breaths here. Bertrand, put her pack down.” From his stooped-over position, Bertrand grunted and released the pack. “Okay. Now Flor. Let’s put the gun away, hm?” Her lip curled, but she stepped away, clicking on the safety and holstering the pistol in the back of her pants.

  I lowered my hands carefully, as though any sudden movement could shatter the fragile peace.

  “I am not sharing my food with him,” Flor declared.

  “Neither am I.” James glared down at Bertrand. “The mad bastard bloodied my lip.”

  “I do not want the food of rogues,” Bertrand spat back. “It will probably be poisoned.”

  “Guys, look,” I said. “Like it or not, we’re stuck with one another until we make it back to the village. We’re going to have to figure out a way to get along. I mean, it would be a shame to have survived the wolves and gargoyles only to end up killing each other.” I chuckled at my own joke, but no one else joined in.

  “But I know you have the texts,” Bertrand said to us through clenched teeth.

  “Here,” Flor snapped. She unzipped her pack and, its mouth open for all to see, shoveled her hand around the contents: wads of clothes, a gas stove, metallic packets of food. “There, do you see? No texts, you crazy man.”

  Bertrand’s lips pressed together.

  To further dispel the tension, I opened my pack, too. While doing my own digging, my fingers encountered something cold and metallic. I withdrew a cone-shaped bullet, one that must have punctured my pack when Flor was shooting downstairs. I held it up in front of my face. Was that silver?

  Flor’s hand closed around it. “I am sorry about that.”

  “What about his pack?” Bertrand asked, cutting his eyes to James.

  “Sorry, mate, but you don’t get anything from me by throwing tantrums.”

  Flor sighed at the absurdity of what Bertrand was asking. “Do you think I would have let James take anything? Besides, I already checked.”

  James stared at her. “You did what?”

  Bertrand pulled at his chin, no doubt recalling the sensation of a pistol against the back of his head. At last, he gave a single nod. “Fine.” He straightened and tugged his jacket down. “But that does not change the fact that the texts are here. We will continue our search in the morning.”

  With that, he limped off to a prayer cell he’d apparently claimed for his quarters.

  “Did he say ‘we’?” James asked, glancing at the blood on the back of his hand. His bottom lip was beginning to pouch out where Bertrand had struck him. “Since when are we a team?”

  I snorted. “Since he realized we’re his best chance of finding whatever he’s looking for.”

  Flor hoisted her pack onto a shoulder and hefted her titanium case. “If he wants to stay, it is his funeral. I am leaving in the morning.”

  “Right, well you can count me in,” James said.

  I felt their gazes cut to me. But my own eyes were on the flickering light in the doorway Bertrand had disappeared through. They are here. I can feel them. The Frenchman had looked fit for a Parisian asylum, and yet … I felt something, too. The feeling was hard to explain—an insistent tapping at the base of my skull, an electric tingling over the hairs of my body—but what I sought was here, resonating with some essential part of me, beckoning.

  “Everson?” Flor said.

  I blinked from Bertrand’s flickering doorway to the cold reason in Flor’s eyes. I hesitated slightly before nodding.

  “Yeah. I’ll go in the morning too.”

  12

  I zipped my jacket to my throat as I scuffed a slow patrol around the courtyard. James, Flor, and I had split the night into three shifts—as much to keep tabs on Bertrand as the monastery—and I had the midnight to three a.m. Except for the whistle of cold wind, Dolhasca was silent. No wolves at the door, no gargoyles in the library.

  As I walked, my thoughts drifted like the membranes of mist wrapping the stone pillars.

  I wondered about the pull of the monastery, about my conviction that the texts were here somewhere. And that energy in the vault? The last time I had felt anything like it had been in Grandpa’s study.

  Grandpa had never talked about that night again. In fact, scarcely a week after he sliced—and then apparently healed—my finger, the old East Manhattan townhouse he had owned for decades went on the market. A month later, we moved into a house in a boring suburb on Long Island.

  Nana explained that Grandpa wanted to slow down, to cut back on his work. “We’re both getting a little too old for the bustling city,” she said. “And the schools are better out here.”

  Grandpa did seem to be home more. And I noticed early on that he left the door to his new study unlocked, often open. But it was a plain study, without a mysterious trunk or even bookcases. Just a desk with a typewriter, surrounded by a few metal filing cabinets. I never heard chanting or chilling voices from that study. Never experienced any strange energies. Gone, too, was much of the fascination and fear I used to feel in the man’s presence.

  Maybe I was just growing up.

  The summer before I left for college, I came home from a date around midnight. I snapped on the living room light, surprised to find
Grandpa in the easy chair beside the front window, wearing one of his dark linen suits, long legs crossed. He had never waited up for me before, but I didn’t get that was what he was doing. He blinked sedately in the sudden light.

  “Oh, hey,” I said.

  He nodded and said quietly, “Everson.”

  He brought his far hand from the side of the chair to his lap, and I saw he was palming a snifter of cognac. He swirled it gently, then took a sip. I had never known him to drink.

  “Well, I’m gonna head up to bed,” I said.

  I had just reached the staircase when he spoke through his thick accent. “You are intent on returning to the city.”

  I twisted to face him. “Huh?” He so rarely remarked on my life, it took a moment to process his words. “Oh, yeah. Midtown College is one of the few with advanced programs in mythology studies. And I’ll be on scholarship, which will offset the cost of—”

  “You like the myths,” he interrupted.

  “Well, myths, iconography, symbols, ritual practices. Yeah.”

  “Why is that?”

  Grandpa had always seemed distant. But it was the distance of one whose mind was other places. Maybe it was the tilt of his head now, but he looked different, as though he were more fully inside himself. I released the banister and took a step toward him.

  “Because mythology speaks to something deeper,” I said. “Something not quite seen. Like a huge ocean beneath a thin mantle.” I watched Grandpa regarding me, a tuning fork-like resonance seeming to ring between our eyes. And was that a small smile on his lips? “Sometimes I feel that if I could, I don’t know, learn the language of myth, I could access that place.”

  Grandpa’s chuckle sounded hollow and knowing. He set the snifter on an end table, beside an old framed photo of his daughter, my mother, and beckoned with a pair of fingers. “Come here, Everson.”

  As I drew nearer, he held up both hands, palms showing, then moved one hand over the back of the other in an elegant gesture. When he showed me his palms again, a necklace and round pendant were in his right one.