Demon Moon (Prof Croft Book 1)

by Brad Magnarella

  Two more shots sounded as I locked the door behind me.

  Then again…

  43

  The car’s accelerator and power brakes took getting used to. I had put too much weight on both starting out. Fortunately, the roads were clear at this late hour and Vega’s car was already banged up. By the time I skidded south onto Broadway, the Wall and the Financial District rising ahead, I had the driving thing down, more or less.

  With a straight shot to my destination, I leaned toward the windshield to check out the sky. For the first time in almost a week, the low cloud ceiling was breaking up. The hovering moon it exposed was red, frightfully large, and—behind a foreground of moving clouds—appeared to be rising fast.

  A distant shriek made my gorge rise. I swallowed against the cloying taste that still tainted my palate. Now two shrieks. Whether they were headed to Brooklyn or the cathedral, I couldn’t tell. I started flipping switches on the dashboard until one flashed red and blue lights between the headlights. I picked up speed, blowing through the dozen or so intersections south of Canal Street.

  At the checkpoint at Liberty, two blocks ahead, an armed guard moved into my path and held out an arm. A series of squat steel columns, meant to block vehicles, rose from the street behind him.

  Crap, I hadn’t seen those before.

  I held my velocity steady at forty, blooping the siren, like I’d seen Vega do that morning. I was hoping the guard would understand this was a police emergency and lower the bollards. The alternative, stopping and allowing him to put that camera on my face, was a nonstarter. I’d be detained for sure, if not shot.

  With a block to go, the guard thrust his palm forward twice, then raised his rifle to his shield sunglasses.

  He could also shoot me before I even got there.

  I powered my window down. But instead of slowing, I pressed the gas. The guard barked a halt command before the muzzle of his rifle began flashing. A hailstorm lit up the front of the sedan. Sparks flew and bits of bulletproof glass stung my face. I ducked until I was peering beneath the top of the steering wheel.

  The guard moved to one side, and a second guard stepped in from the other, rifle blasting. Amid the growing storm, something thumped deep in the engine, sending a jet of steam from the right seam of the hood.

  I grabbed my cane from the passenger seat and aimed it out the window.

  “Vigore!” I shouted.

  The force threw the guards back, automatic fire bursting skyward. The car needle had jumped past seventy, and the bollards were fast approaching. I pointed the cane at the street, angling it behind the front axle.

  Please, let this work, I thought.

  I called power to my mental prism and, with the glaring lights of the checkpoint feet away, boomed, “Forza dura!”

  The force that shook down my arm and into the cane emptied against the street. I was going for Newton’s third law: for every action, an equal and opposite reaction. The reaction, in this case, was immediate. The front of the car vaulted up and angled to the right. Something slammed the undercarriage hard enough to rattle my spine—the tops of the bollards. When the same columns hit the back tires, the sedan was thrown onto its front fender.

  My forehead cracked against the windshield, and my view of downtown Manhattan became asphalt and flying sparks. The car skidded on its nose for a good hundred feet, ever on the verge of upending, before slamming me hard into the seat, downtown Manhattan bouncing back into view. But the hailstorm had returned, this time lighting up the back of the car.

  I steadied my shaken-up eyes on the street ahead and pressed the accelerator. Movement! Crippled, granted—and something large and metallic was dragging beneath the car—but a check of the rearview mirror showed the checkpoint falling away, the flashes of muzzles getting smaller.

  I cranked the wheel right. The flattened tires thudded us behind a skyscraper and out of firing range. I slowed to get my bearings, then steered a stepwise route to reach the cathedral.

  Humping the sedan over the curb, I aimed the one functioning headlight at the front of St. Martin’s—and immediately saw my error. The bronze doors were closed and certainly locked. Worse, by having everyone cleared out, there was no one to invite me over the threshold. Assuming I could even force my way inside, my powers would be stripped to the bone and then some.

  I hammered the steering wheel. “Idiot!”

  I fought with the damaged car door, finally kicking it open. Red moonlight burned bright around me as I limped toward the cathedral. To my surprise, when I moved the police tape and pulled the right door, it swung outward. That was something, anyway. But now I had the humming threshold to consider. It had been weakened, but if it was keeping a demon caged, it remained plenty strong.

  “Hello?” I called into the darkness. Nothing moved beyond the closed glass doors inside.

  I had some spell options, none great, but if that was what it was going to take…

  “Everson Croft,” someone called from behind me.

  I stiffened at the voice. If it was Chicory, I was a dead man. I’d thrown around enough magic tonight to power Yankee Stadium. And that was to say nothing of having defied the Order’s other mandate of staying off the cases. The fact I was standing at the cathedral threshold was proof enough of my disobedience. The Order would go straight to sentencing.

  But the voice that had called my name was younger than Chicory’s, more hollow-sounding. I turned. Oh, hell. Roughly a dozen young men in tailored suits and gelled hair were arrayed in the street in a semicircle, closing toward me. Vampire Arnaud’s freaking blood slaves.

  “You have something owed us,” the foremost blood slave said. It was Zarko. Even in the dimness, I recognized his short monk’s bangs. His jaundiced eyes dipped to Grandpa’s ring.

  “Look guys,” I said, “now really isn’t the time.”

  “Give it to us, and we will leave you in peace,” Zarko said.

  “How about just skipping to the leave me in peace part?”

  One side of Zarko’s mouth slid up as he stepped from street to sidewalk. I felt Arnaud’s venomous presence. “We will take it one way or another,” Zarko said. “And you do not appear in any shape to stop us.”

  I brought my fingers to where he was looking now. A wet gash smarted at my hairline, where my head had smacked the windshield. I looked past Zarko to the car’s pock-marked glass. With the high adrenaline of the encounter at the Wall winding down, pain pulsed in every part of my body. I felt as banged up and broken down as Vega’s poor sedan.

  “Can’t I set up a meeting with Arnaud to, you know…” A cold wind hit my sweat-soaked shirt and pants, shuddering out the rest of my sentence “…d-d-dis-cuss this.”

  Zarko and the rest of the blood slaves began to laugh. They had already seen my blood; now they heard my weakness. I was succumbing to shock. I aimed Grandpa’s ring at them.

  “Keep on g-giggling,” I warned, fighting to hold my voice and fist steady.

  Zarko hesitated for a half-step before striding on. “You haven’t the strength to overwhelm us all,” he—or more likely, Arnaud—decided. “Even with your family trinket.”

  He was right, of course. Though the ring was throbbing with the same urgency I’d felt in Arnaud’s office, I wouldn’t be able to channel the kind of juice needed to cripple this crew, much less destroy them.

  Which meant it was time to bluff. “Care to test that theory?” I asked, forcing my lips into a puckish grin.

  Before I saw him move, Zarko darted in, seized my throat, and lifted me. I choked on the crunch of cartilage and kicked weakly, tears springing from my surprised eyes. He hoisted me higher. I seized his ice-cold wrist in one hand and used the other to swing my cane at his head. But without leverage, I couldn’t land a solid blow. The contact mussed his hair—which was actually an improvement—but that was about it. Zarko didn’t even blink.

  “The ring,” he said.

  The other blood slaves pressed closer, but I noticed they kept
a respectful distance from the threshold at my back. That respect wouldn’t necessarily hold up. They were at Arnaud’s command. The second he gave the word, they would be on top of me, fighting over my wings and drumsticks.

  Meanwhile, my vision was doing strange things. I fought to focus down the length of Zarko’s arm to his waxy face.

  “The ring,” he repeated, the lines of his mouth a growing blur.

  A warm fog of sleep began to drift over my oxygen-deprived brain. But rather than seduce me, the sensation sent down an alarm. I hooked my cane over a thumb, extended the remaining fingers, and used my free hand to tug on the ring. It clamped down, as though refusing to be relinquished, but I refused to let up. With a final twist that nearly sloughed the skin away, I felt the ring release. I drew it from my finger and held it up for the blood slaves to see. I then threw my arm forward as hard as my throbbing shoulder would allow. Heads turned simultaneously and swiveled back to face me. I showed them my empty hand.

  Zarko released his grip, and I collapsed to the pavement. Leaving me in a heap, the blood slaves spread out into a search. The towers above me spun as my breaths returned in bruised gasps. I rolled to my side and shook the ring from my sleeve back into my hand.

  One of the first sleight-of-hand tricks Grandpa had taught me.

  I swayed to my feet. I’d bought myself a little time, a little breathing room, but not enough for spell-casting. As the blood slaves searched the street, I began calling energy to my prism. I was spent but not empty.

  I backed from the church threshold on shaky legs.

  “He still has it,” Zarko announced.

  Time’s up, I thought.

  With the rapid patter of leather soles closing, I launched into a run and shouted, “Penetrare!” Light in the form of an arrow’s head took shape around my cane. Holding it in front of me, I stooped low, shoved with my right foot, and plunged head first into the roaring threshold.

  44

  I didn’t hurt. There was nothing to hurt. I was disembodied, detached. Anchored to no one and nothing. I drifted without sight, sensing darkness all around. The darkness seemed to shift like the black sands of a far-off shore—or the folds of the Grim Reaper’s robes.

  At that second image, I paused. Wait a second…

  I’d been under no illusions my invocation would pierce the threshold—I had just needed the field to yield a little at the point of contact. I was even prepared for some god-awful pain. But straight to death? Seriously?

  Son of a bitch.

  So now what? Was there supposed to be a light or something?

  At the thought, one appeared. But it wasn’t the divine illumination I’d imagined. This light was pale yellow and fluttered like a candle’s flame. It seemed to turn a corner before drifting toward me.

  I blinked twice. I had eyelids, apparently. And a cheek, which was flattened to something hard and cold. I wasn’t dead, just badly stunned. The effort to lift my head opened the storm gates of hell. I writhed around my gnashing teeth and gnarled cries, disembodied no more.

  Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap…

  It felt as though someone had flayed me open, pounded my insides to liquid, shoveled in hot coals, and then stitched me back up again, poorly. Death would have been a mercy. I stomped the floor and punched the air, as though to beat back the agony. Exhaustion eventually did the job.

  I lay panting on my back as the pain slipped off by degrees and a coolness settled in.

  I raised my head. Beyond my outstretched legs, energy hummed over the open doorway and night. No sign of Zarko and the blood slaves. They had either left me for dead, or Arnaud had recalled them to pursue me another day. Either way, he wasn’t going to have them test a cathedral threshold. I only had a little demon-like energy in me; they carried it in spades.

  I remembered the candle flame and turned back to the glass doors. The light was gone now, but I hadn’t imagined it.

  I found my cane and pressed myself to a knee. While I waited for the room to stop spinning, I performed a self check. I was crippled, bleeding, in shock, and stripped of all powers, save the small reserve holding Thelonious at bay. Otherwise, I was fine.

  Standing all the way, I brought my face to the glass door. I could make out the cathedral’s cavernous nave, rows of pews proceeding to the raised chancel. Above, the stained-glass faces of saints were being tinged red by the demon moon, as though possessed themselves.

  The candle-bearer was gone, but I knew who it was. That Father Vick was still trapped inside was a good sign. It meant the demon hadn’t carried out the sacrifice yet. But he’d seen me, I was sure.

  There was no time to lose.

  I tried the doors. Locked. The plate glass didn’t look very thick. I stepped back and brought my heel forward with everything I had. The glass shattered to my knee, taking some more skin with it. Reaching a hand through the opening, I fumbled for the bolt, turned it, and stumbled inside.

  Glass crackled under my soles as I got my footing and looked around. I staggered down the corridor to the interior courtyard, crossed the blood-red flagstones, and pushed open the door to Father Vick’s apartment.

  I flipped the light switch, but the power must have gone out. By the ambient moonlight, I could see he wasn’t here. I took a leather-bound Latin Bible from Father Vick’s desktop and then rifled the drawers of the desk until I found a silver crucifix. Turning to leave, my gaze fell to his white handkerchief. I lifted it from the object it had been draping and stumbled backwards at the sight of a nightmarish face.

  My own, I quickly realized, staring back from the foggy glass of a scrying mirror. But the flame that fluttered up over my shoulder did not belong to me. Neither did the hooded head it illuminated.

  My heart slammed as I spun, but it wasn’t Father Vick I faced.

  “What are you doing here?” Malachi asked.

  45

  “No one’s supposed to be in here,” Malachi said in a cold monotone. The light from the candle swam in his watery gray eyes. His gaze was bolder than it had been that morning. I dropped my own gaze to his other hand, but it was hidden by the sleeve of his robe. A black robe, I noted.

  “Where are they?” I demanded.

  “Who?”

  “Father Vick and the bishop?”

  “Haven’t you heard.” He drew nearer. “They’re missing.”

  His voice held its monotone as his narrow face fluttered in and out of the hood’s shadow. I caught a whiff of sour breath. With the backs of my legs pressed to the desk, I was boxed in.

  “Why didn’t you evacuate with the others?” I asked, looking for his hidden hand again. He wasn’t who I had expected to find, and there was something off about him. He seemed … haunted.

  “I hid,” he said, pressing nearer. “I needed to atone. I think I’m the cause of what happened.”

  “What you found in the archives,” I said.

  He stopped, his eyes seeming to sharpen in surprise.

  “Bartholomew Higham, the fifth rector,” I continued. “The Church believed he’d become demon possessed. They killed him, but didn’t perform an exorcism, or didn’t perform it correctly.”

  “Father Vick didn’t seem to think it had been done right,” Malachi said. “But Father Richard said to leave it alone. They argued terribly. And then—”

  The flesh of Malachi’s other hand hit the glow of the candle. I lunged forward, managing to catch his wrist. Even in my sorry state, I was able to drive Malachi back. We toppled over the corner of the bed and landed hard on the floor. The candle clattered off somewhere and went out.

  “Help!” Malachi cried in the darkness, trying to pry my fingers away.

  Teeth clamped around one of my knuckles, and I stifled a yell. I climbed my fingers to his hand, finding it empty. I proceeded to pat him down as best I could, which must have felt to the kicking, writhing acolyte like a sloppy grope. Satisfied he wasn’t holding anything dangerous, I used the bed’s footboard to pull myself up. Malachi scooted back befor
e stopping to regard my offered hand.

  “Sorry,” I said, breathing hard. “I thought you had a weapon. And with everything that’s happened…”

  He looked at my hand another moment, his hood fallen away from his long hair, and then let me help him to his feet. As he recovered the candle and relit it, I watched him closely, trying to make sense of his presence. In the light of the new flame, I saw what I had misinterpreted moments before.

  It wasn’t possession written on Malachi’s face, but the dull lines of inebriation.

  The atonement he’d mentioned apparently involved helping himself to the communion wine I smelled on his breath. The kid was one shade shy of blotto. And who could blame him? He believed he’d set in motion a chain of events that had led to Father Richard’s murder and now the disappearances. I guessed that around the time I was crashing through the threshold, he was downing his fourth or fifth chalice of St. Martin’s red. The light I’d seen was him coming to investigate the noise before ducking away. As someone who knew the cathedral better than most, he would have had plenty of hiding places to choose from.

  Which meant he could help me.

  “The place Higham stored the bones,” I said. “Where is it?”

  “The catacombs,” Malachi answered. “But the entrance was closed off after Higham’s execution. The site was decreed a sanctum of evil. I’ve already checked it out. There’s a solid wall over the entrance.”

  “Show me,” I said.

  He picked up the urgency in my voice and nodded quickly. Cupping a hand around the flame, he wheeled toward the door. As I shambled after him and across the courtyard, I was afraid to look up. Afraid the demon moon had reached its zenith. Afraid I had lost Father Vick for good.

  The air seemed to thin as we hurried down a stone stairwell in the corner of the cathedral, but that was my phobia at being underground kicking in. The darkness wasn’t helping. A nauseating blend of heat and cold prickled over my tightening chest. I began to wheeze.

  Malachi turned his head. “Do you need to rest?”