The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Page 9

  In the neighboring bedroom, I flinched as my gaze met my own hazel eyes in a mirror on the near wall. Gonna give myself a fricking heart attack. Opposite the mirror, an oblong table held a scatter of spell-cooking implements. A Bunsen burner stood on one end, its line snaking to a tipped-over propane tank. Beside the tank, a pair of legs protruded.

  I rounded the table and knelt beside the fallen conjurer. Parting a spill of dark, greasy hair, I took in a middle-aged male face with Coke-bottle glasses that had fallen askew, magnifying his whiskered right cheek. I recognized some of the conjurers in the city—or thought I did—and I’d never seen this guy. I straightened his glasses and patted his cheek firmly.

  “Hey,” I whispered.

  The man choked on a snort, then fell back into his mind-shattered slumber. He was alive, anyway.

  I raised my light to the protective circle the man had chalked on the floorboards and no doubt stood inside while casting his summoning spell. A common mistake. Chalk made fragile circles. And a circle only protected spell casters capable of instilling them with power. That excluded most mortals, who weren’t designed to channel, much less direct, the ley energies of this world.

  They can damn sure act as gateways to other worlds, though.

  My gaze shifted to a second circle near the table’s far end, this one with a crude pentagram drawn inside. From a toppled pile of ash and animal entrails, a glistening residue slid into an adjacent bathroom.

  Crap.

  I felt quickly beneath the man’s army surplus jacket and exhaled as my hand came back dry. The only reason he wasn’t dead or mortally wounded was the recentness of the spell. Demonic creatures summoned from deeper down underwent a period of gestation, usually in a dark, damp space, to fortify their strength. They emerged half blind, drawn by the scent of the conjurer’s vital organs, from which they derived even more potency.

  That I’d arrived before that had happened was to my advantage. I hoped.

  Rising, I crept toward the bathroom.

  4

  The trail turned dark red over the bathroom’s dingy tiles, gobbets of black matter glistening in its wake. By now I was more or less desensitized to the smell, thank God. Through the half-open door, my light shone over a dripping faucet. The end of a free-standing tub glowed beyond.

  With a foot, I edged the door wider.

  The trail climbed the side of the tub, spread into a foul puddle, then climbed again. This time into a torn-out section of tiling between the shower head and the hot and cold spigots down below.

  I adjusted my slick grip on the sword handle. The creature was inside the wall.

  My sword hummed as I channeled currents of ley energy. With a “Vigore!” I thrust the sword toward the hole.

  Tile and plaster exploded over my light shield in a dusty wave. A keening cry went up. In the exposed wall, wedged behind oozing pipes, I saw it. The creature had enfolded its body with a pair of membranous black wings. From a skull-sharp head of bristling hair, a pair of albino-white eyes stared blindly. Before I could push the attack, the creature screamed again.

  The jagged sound became a weapon. Waves as sharp as the creature’s barbed teeth pierced my thoughts and fractured my casting prism. I was dealing with a shrieker. A lower demonic being but ridiculously deadly—even to wizards.

  My light shield wavered in front of me, then burst in a shower of sparks. The energetic release thrust me backwards as the room fell dark, my right heel catching the threshold. A squelch sounded, followed by the shallow splash of the thing dropping into the tub.

  I flailed for balance but went down. My right elbow slammed into the floor, sending a numbing bolt up and down my arm. When metal clanged off behind me, I realized I’d lost my sword.

  Beyond my outstretched legs, claws scrabbled over porcelain.

  I kick-scooted away, sweeping an arm back for my weapon.

  Wings slapped the air, the wet sound swallowed by the shrieker’s next cry. Abandoning my search, I thrust my staff into the darkness above my face. The end struck something soft. A claw hooked behind my right orbital bone before tearing away, missing my eyeball by a breath.

  I felt the shrieker flap past me, still clumsy in its just-summoned state. No doubt going for the conjurer. But if I was going to stop it, I had to do something about the damned screaming.

  Blood dribbled down the side of my face as I sat up. Praying the shrieker wasn’t rounding back on me, I jammed a finger into each ear. With the screaming muted, I repeated a centering mantra. Within seconds, the mental prism through which I converted ley energy into force and light reconstituted. A white orb swelled from the end of my staff, illuminating the apartment once more. I quickly touched the staff to each ear, uttering Words of Power. Shields of light energy covered them like muffs, blocking out the shrieker’s cries.

  I scooped up my sword and raised both sword and staff, expecting to find the shrieker hunched over the splayed-out conjurer. But the conjurer was alone, the shrieker nowhere in sight. The animal entrails were missing from the summoning circle, though, meaning it had fed.

  Not good.

  I raised my light toward the windows to ensure they were still intact. Remembering the blown-open front door, I hurried to the main room, terrified the creature had gotten out and into the city’s six-million-person buffet. I ducked beneath the clothesline and felt the newspapers at my feet gusting up. I spun to find the abomination flapping at my face.

  “Vigore!” I cried.

  The wave-like force from my sword blasted the shrieker into a corner of the ceiling. It dropped onto a radiator, then tumbled wetly to the floor. I repeated the Word, but the shrieker scrabbled behind a wooden chair and darted into the bedroom. The chair blew apart in its stead.

  I pursued and, guessing the creature’s next move, aimed my staff at the near window. “Protezione!”

  The light shield that spread over the glass held long enough for the shrieker to bounce from it. The shrieker launched itself at the window beside it, but I cast first. More sparks fell away as it beat its wings up and down the protected window like a flailing moth.

  “You’re not going anywhere, you little imp.”

  Only it wasn’t so little anymore. The bed jumped when the shrieker dropped onto the headboard, taloned feet gripping the metal bar. The white caul over its eyes was thinning, too, goat-like pupils peering out. As I crept nearer, the creature’s appearance stirred in me equal parts fascination and revulsion. Its wings spread to reveal a wrinkled body mapped in throbbing black vessels.

  Okay, now it was just revulsion.

  The shrieker put everything into its next scream. The light energy over my right ear broke apart. A sensation like shattered glass filled my head. Hunching my shoulder to my naked ear, I threw my weight into a sword thrust and grunted as hot fluid sprayed over me.

  The shrieker fell silent, staring at me as though trying to comprehend what I had done. Its eyes fell to the sword, which had skewered its chest and driven a solid inch into the wall behind it. But it wasn’t enough to physically wound such creatures. They had to be dispersed.

  “Disfare,” I shouted, concentrating force along the blade.

  The shrieker’s wings trembled, then began to flail. Unfortunately, the more power it took to summon a creature into our world, the more power it required to send it back. And the homeless appearance of the conjurer aside, some damned powerful magic had called this thing up.

  “Disfare!” I repeated, louder.

  The shrieker thrashed more fiercely, the tarry fluid that bubbled from its mouth drowning its hideous cry. But its form remained intact. And I was pushing my limits, a lead-like fatigue beginning to weigh on my limbs. The shrieker’s wings folded down, and a pair of bat-like hands seized the blade.

  “What the…?”

  The creature gave a pull and skewered itself toward me.

  “Hey, stop that!” I yelled pointlessly.

  I pressed my glowing staff against its chin, but with another tug, the s
hrieker was an inch closer. It snapped at my staff with gunky teeth, then swiped with a clawed hand, narrowly missing my reared-back face.

  I considered ditching my sword, but then what? I wasn’t dealing with flesh and blood here. The second the shrieker came off the hilt, it would reconfigure itself, becoming larger and more powerful. And if it overwhelmed me, the conjurer would be next, followed by the head-bangers one floor down. An image of the party as a bloody scene of carnage jagged through my mind’s eye.

  “DISFARE!” I boomed.

  A tidal wave of energy burst from my mental prism, shook down the length of my arm, through my sword, and then out the creature. I squeezed my eyes closed as the creature’s gargling shriek cut off and an explosion of foul-smelling phlegm nearly knocked me down.

  There was a reason I’d waterproofed my coat, and it wasn’t for the shiny look.

  I opened my eyes to a steamy, tar-spattered room and exhaled. The shrieker was gone, cast back to its hellish pit.

  But at a price.

  The edges of my thoughts swam in creamy waves, a sensation that heralded the impending arrival of Thelonious. That incubus spirit I called up a decade ago? He was still around, clinging to my spirit like a parasite. Despite that he was thousands of years old, I pictured him as a cool cat in black shades and a glittering ’fro—probably because he shared a name with a famous musician. And my Thelonious had a jazzy way about him. As long as I didn’t push my limits, I could keep him at bay. Cross that line, and I became a vessel for Thelonious’s, ahem, festivities.

  And yeah, I’d just crossed that line.

  More creamy waves washed in. I would have to work quickly.

  The demonic gunk was evaporating as I drew my sword from the wall. I cleaned the blade against the thigh of my coat, resheathed it, and then returned to the fallen conjurer. Still out. I shone my light over his table, pocketing samples of spell ingredients for later study.

  “But where oh where is the recipe?” I muttered.

  I stopped at the flaky ashes of what appeared to have been a piece of college-ruled paper. The spell must have contained an incineration component, meant to destroy evidence of its origin.

  “Naturally.”

  Sliding my cane into the belt of my coat, I stooped for the conjurer. “Up you go,” I grunted. His head lolled as I carried him into the bedroom. I set him on the mattress, arranged his arms and legs into a semblance of order, then shook out the sheet and spread it over him.

  His mortal mind was blown, but not beyond repair.

  I touched my cane to the center of his brow and uttered ancient Words of healing. He murmured as a cottony light grew from the remaining power in the staff. The healing would take time, which was just as well. In a few more minutes, I wouldn’t be in much shape to question him.

  “I’ll be back in a couple of days,” I told the snoring man.

  The creamy waves crested, spilling into my final wells of free will. There was no good place to go now except away from people. I was turning to leave when my—or I should say, Thelonious’s—gaze fell to the space beneath the bed. A half-full bottle of tannic liquid leaned against one of the legs.

  I felt my lips stretch into a grin. Bourbon, Thelonious purred in his bass voice.

  My final memory of that night, the fire of alcohol in my throat, was tottering down a hallway toward a shaking generator and the siren screams of a pink-haired punker named Blade.

  Ooh, yeah…

  5

  Swollen eyelids cracked open onto a room wall-papered in album jackets and cast in the gray light of morning. I was on a mattress on the floor, no doubt in the punk rockers’ apartment. I managed to extricate my naked torso from a tangle of sheets and sit up. The room revolved, making my brain hurt.

  “Sweet Jesus,” I muttered, dragging a hand through my salt-stiff hair, then clamping my temples.

  A mean smell of smoke lingered in my sinuses and beneath it, the cloying stink of last night’s shrieker. Not a pleasant combo, especially when you threw in a cheap eighty-proof hangover.

  At least the apartment was quiet, everyone probably still asleep.

  I drew the sheets from my legs. Evidently, I’d managed to retain my boxers and a single gray sock. That didn’t always happen. Oh, wait. I looked again. The sock wasn’t mine.

  Time to go.

  I stood and began shuffling around in search of my clothes and cane. My goal was to get at least ten blocks away before anyone awakened. Lord only knew what Thelonious had gotten up to last—

  “Morning,” a woman’s voice said.

  I wheeled to find pink spikes of hair jutting from a narrow tube of bedding at the mattress’s far side. The hair framed a face that, despite its resting surliness and dozens of painful-looking piercings, possessed a hard beauty.

  My cheeks burned with blood. Did we…? Had we…?

  She must have read my panic. “Relax.” Thin, tattoo-stained arms emerged from the sheets and stretched overhead. She continued to speak as she yawned. “I don’t do charity cases.”

  I felt my brow furrow. “Charity?”

  She smacked on the last of her yawn. “I did fix your eye, though.”

  My hand floated to where the shrieker had gouged me. The place beside my right brow was padded with gauze and tape. “Thanks?” I said.

  “Your stuff’s over there.” She jutted her spade-shaped chin, also pierced, at a wooden dresser in the corner. My clothes were folded neatly on top, my cane lying horizontally over the stack. “But let’s get one thing straight. You were responsible for the strip tease, not me.”

  Not knowing how to respond, I nodded meekly. I heard her resettle on the mattress.

  “Hey, listen,” I said, shaking out my trousers and stepping into them. I’d already swapped the gray sock for my own. “Blade, right? Whatever I did last night, Blade, I’m really sorry. I’m not normally like that.”

  I buckled up and patted my pockets, relieved to feel my wallet and keys. That didn’t always happen, either.

  “I don’t know too many who are,” Blade said in a smoky voice. “You’re a real original.”

  “What exactly did…? Forget it. I don’t want to know.”

  She smiled mysteriously and propped her elbows behind her. “So, what’s your name?”

  Inventing one felt like too much work. “Everson,” I replied.

  “And where does Everson dwell?”

  “West Village.” I jerked my head, though I had no idea which direction was which.

  “Really?” Interest glinted in her dark eyes as she watched me configure my tie into a Windsor knot. “You strike me as, I don’t know, more Midtown. When you’re sober, anyway.”

  “I actually—” A dreadful realization struck me. I grabbed my mechanical watch from the dresser and stared at its face. “Oh, crap.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m late.” I snatched up my coat and cane and made for the door.

  “For what?” Blade was sitting up now, sheets pressed to her stark breastbone.

  “My morning class.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “You’re a student?”

  “No,” I called back. “Professor.”

  6

  It was a quarter past eight when I slipped into the hallowed halls of Midtown College, the first classes of the day already underway.

  I stopped off in the faculty bathroom upstairs, where I kept a spare toiletry bag, relieved to find the room empty. There hadn’t been time to go home, and I already knew by my reflection in the subway’s scratched-up window that I looked a wreck. The bathroom mirror confirmed this with even more candor.

  In the space of a minute, I pulled a wet comb through my hair, washed my puffy face, and jagged a toothbrush around my mouth. I finished with a few drops of Visine in each eye. The demon gunk had evaporated from my coat, but the same couldn’t be said for the blood on my jacket collar. Rubbing it with a wet paper towel only smeared it around.

  Maybe it was time to stow a spare set
of clothes up here as well.

  I arrived at my classroom to find Caroline Reid sitting at the head of the circular arrangement of desks, lecturing on something. Which was to say she was covering my ass again. She glanced over and caught me watching her through the door window. Her lips tensed into a smile that barely dimpled her cheeks and fell far short of her blue-green eyes.

  Caroline was a brilliant scholar of urban history and affairs. Her classroom/office was adjacent to mine, which I think we both considered my blessing and her burden. More than once I’d entertained the thought of being more than friends, but I was smart enough to know that feeling wasn’t mutual. Besides, she was currently seeing some accountant stud—an oxymoron, I know.

  Caroline stood and smoothed her coffee-brown slacks as I opened the door. “And with that, I’ll hand off to Professor Croft,” she announced.

  “Much obliged, Professor Reid,” I said. “Truly.”

  She looked over my stained and crumpled shirt as she approached, her own shirt a neat beige blouse, waves of golden hair shifting over the shoulders. I adjusted the knot of my tie, as if it made any difference.

  “Heads up,” she whispered, when she’d drawn even. “Snodgrass is on the lookout for you again.”

  My stomach sank at the mention of our department chairman, but I didn’t let it show.

  “Appreciate the warning,” I whispered back. Her faint honey scent reminded me that for the last ten hours I’d inhaled nothing even remotely pleasant—and no doubt smelled the part.

  “Just be careful,” she said.

  “Will do. And hey, I owe you for…” I nodded toward the classroom.

  “All right, but this is the last time.” She raised her slender eyebrows. “I’m serious.”

  She’d been threatening to let me hang for more than a year now, but I didn’t dare point that out. Instead, I thanked her again, bowing slightly. She gave a final tight-lipped smile that said, You’re better than this, before stepping out. That stung. Of course she knew nothing about my second job and how close the greater East Village had come to being shrieker meat.