Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8)

by Brad Magnarella

  I shrugged at Bree-yark—a little flattery never hurt—and then we waited. Around us, night deepened and ornaments tinkled in the breeze. Dropsy’s light shone toward the cottage with what seemed wariness. There was magic at work here, but it was strange and hard to nail down. It seemed to buffer us from the Fae Wilds while at the same time exposing us to something considerably more dangerous.

  “Hello?” I called.

  When no one responded, Bree-yark looked around. “Now what?”

  “Keep watch out here.”

  “You’re going to the door?”

  I pictured Arnaud in his cell, waiting for me with his legs crossed and that little grin on his lips.

  “I have to.”

  “I like you, Everson,” Bree-yark said. “Be careful.”

  He retreated with Dropsy to a large tree on the verge of the yard. When he whispered something to her, the lantern’s light dimmed, and they blended into the growing darkness. I scanned the cottage’s front porch. No protections.

  Swallowing, I drew my amulet and crept up the cobblestone path. The front door was slender, its frame canted to one side as if its designer was either whimsical or careless. But still no signs of wards or defenses, even up close.

  “Hello?” I tried again. “Crusspatch?”

  When no one answered, I winced and rapped the door with my cane. No defensive magic detonated, or even suggested itself. There was simply the plain sound of wood striking wood. With my final rap, the door opened a crack. A smell of smoke seeped out, and beneath it, something less pleasant.

  I pushed the door open wider until I was looking into a one-room cottage. A kitchen crowded with hanging pots competed for space with an oversized bed and a chair-crammed wooden table. Pegged shelves stood from the walls, holding books and an assortment of odds and ends. From a stone hearth, a pile of embers illuminated a single chair on a round rug where a figure sat with his head slumped.

  “Crusspatch?” I called.

  The man wore a colorful robe. Long white hair fell from under a stocking cap, draping his knees and nearly touching his slippered feet. A thick book lay off to one side, presumably dropped when he’d dozed off.

  “Crusspatch?” I tried, more loudly.

  When he didn’t respond, I eyed the threshold, then tested it with my cane. No protections, or at least none that I could feel. I wondered now if Crusspatch relied on his reputation to serve that function.

  The other explanation, of course, was that someone had already breached his protections.

  I moved the amulet across the cottage before stretching a leg over the threshold. Nothing blew up. Within a few cautious steps, I was close enough to prod Crusspatch’s shoulder with my cane. His head lolled, showing his face.

  I jumped back, a scream wedged in my throat. The fae exile’s mouth was open, jaw canted to the side. But where his eyes should have been were blackened holes. The smoke corkscrewing from them carried the stench of sulfur.

  A demon attack.

  “You’re too late,” someone spoke in a low male’s voice.

  Shouting the Word to activate my blade’s banishment rune, I dropped my amulet into a pocket and separated my cane into sword and staff. As I pivoted from the dead fae, my rune pulsed with holy power. But though the voice had spoken from mere feet away, I couldn’t see anyone in the sudden play of light and shadow.

  “Show yourself!” I called, heart pounding through the words.

  A scuff sounded, and a hooded figure who hadn’t been there a moment before stepped from behind the table. I pushed more power into the rune until the glow highlighted a blade-like nose and a chin of iron stubble.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  The hooded figure didn’t flinch from the light of banishment. “An ally.”

  I opened my wizard’s senses, but a powerful cloaking spell covered him. I was only seeing him because he’d allowed it. Whoever he was, his presence near Crusspatch’s body couldn’t have been a coincidence. We were either talking powerful demon or the fae who had fallen under shadow.

  “I need a name,” I said, pushing power into my wizard’s voice, “or so help me God, I’ll assume you’re a demon and treat you like one.”

  “Yeah,” Bree-yark barked.

  He arrived in the doorway, goblin blade glinting in my light. When the figure’s hands came up, I braced for an attack. But he drew his hood back by the sides. Dark hair spilled out, framing a rogue’s face with cunning black eyes. Regardless, I didn’t know him. Before I could say as much, he brought a finger to his lips.

  “You once called me ‘Sub.’”

  As I repeated the name to myself, the fae’s face began to smooth. His dark hair lightened and turned honey-blond. His lips filled out. I felt my sword arm sag as a pair of familiar, feminine eyes peered back at me.

  Holy crap.

  15

  I’d given her the nickname “Sub” back when we had neighboring classrooms and I would show up late to find her teaching in my place. She had been Caroline Reid then, my friend, colleague, and crush. We’d made love once. Now she was a powerful princess who had bargained away her feelings for me.

  She was also in the cottage of a dead fae.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked carefully.

  “Crusspatch was dangerous. He might have helped you, but not without harming you.”

  I glanced over at the slumped figure in the chair. My last hope to access the time catch. “So you killed him?”

  “I planned to intervene, not harm him. The deed was done before I arrived.”

  Caroline held my gaze as if inviting me to weigh the truth of her words. Two years had passed since she’d helped me cast Arnaud into the Below. But having spent most of the intervening time in Faerie, she’d aged ten times that. While her face remained fae smooth, a certain hardness possessed her blue-green eyes.

  Do not engage her, Angelus had warned. She is not herself.

  I could feel the weight of the calling stone in my pocket. By holding it and speaking the word, I could summon him. As casually as I could, I moved the sword from my damaged right hand over to my staff hand.

  “You’re supposed to be missing,” I said.

  “My kingdom is compromised. I left of my own free will.”

  “Compromised how?”

  “A demonic presence moves among us.”

  That jibed with what I’d gathered from Pip and Twerk’s warning, but I needed an assurance that she wasn’t the one doing the moving among. She remained strongly glamoured, either to hide from her kingdom or to conceal the truth from me, possibly both.

  “Your husband’s looking for you,” I said.

  Like I’d done with Angelus, I watched for her reaction, but she only nodded. “He doesn’t see the danger.”

  “So you’ve been, what, hiding out in the Fae Wilds?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  I slipped the hand into my pocket. “Me?”

  “Osgood said you would come here.”

  My suspicions spiked. I hadn’t even been considering this trip when I’d gone to the fae townhouse that morning. But as my fingers closed around the stone, I realized that Osgood would have overheard the Upholders and me discussing the Crusspatch option the day he’d intruded on our meeting. With my aid from the fae cut off, he might have divined that I would revisit that option.

  “Why not just go to my apartment?”

  “The portals between our worlds are being watched.”

  “Why are you helping me?” I asked pointedly.

  “Because the demon threat is real, and the answer is in the time catch.”

  My magic had given me its first strong assertion when I’d said the same thing to Gretchen that morning.

  “How do you know?”

  She peered over at Crusspatch’s body. “Because something is intent on preventing your return.”

  “There are no other fae who can send me? What about Osgood?”

  Despite my suspicions of h
er, fresh hope crackled inside me. If she had been in contact with Osgood, maybe the powerful fae butler was back in play. But Caroline quickly smothered the notion.

  “The entire kingdom is compromised. I can’t discern friend from foe, and Osgood is no longer under my orders.”

  I turned the stone over in my fingers. Who to trust? Caroline or Angelus?

  When I glanced over at Bree-yark, he appeared as baffled as I felt.

  “I know our past is … complicated,” Caroline said, “but I need you to trust me. As your friend.”

  She was suddenly right in front of me. Her touch was gentle, even as she drew my hand from my pocket. An instant before the stone came into view, I let it tumble from my fingers, back into the well of fabric.

  “Friend?” I said. “We haven’t spoken in years.”

  Instead of replying, she gazed at my hand, turning it one way, then the other. The white knob of bone still showed where the rotten skin had fallen from my fifth knuckle. Concern lines creased her brow.

  “Banshee?” she asked.

  “Yeah, in the Kinloch Forest.”

  A warm force spread across my hand, thinning away the healing magic I’d applied. The damaged tissue suddenly felt raw and exposed. Caroline brought my hand to her stomach, folding her own hands over it.

  “The purging will be harsh,” she said, “but you must not pull away.”

  She was handling me with the familiarity of an intimate. And that was the problem. She looked and felt like the Caroline Reid I remembered. Almost human. But in the next moment, a dark throb of pain stole my breath. I felt the banshee curse spreading, eating through the rest of my hand, laying bare veins, muscles, bones. Sweat sprang from my brow, and I braced my teeth against a scream.

  “Everson?” Bree-yark said from the doorway. “You all right?”

  I was on the verge of tearing the hand away—the throbbing had deepened until I could hardly stand it. But Caroline pursed her lips and sent a soothing current of air into her cupped hands. The pain abated. When she separated her palms, my own hand was whole again. I raised it, flexing my fingers and then turned it over to inspect the knuckles. The skin was restored, smooth as a newborn’s.

  She had healed me.

  “You’re fortunate you caught it when you did,” she said. “The banshee’s curse nearly entered your bloodstream. Had the poison reached your heart, you would have joined the undead in the Fae Wilds.”

  “Not exactly how I was planning to spend retirement,” I muttered. “Thanks.”

  Her soft smile lulled me once more into the illusion of our former friendship. We could have been at our favorite Midtown deli, but the fact was we were standing next to the body of a murdered fae. Smoke continued to wisp from his eye sockets.

  “There is another way to get there,” Caroline said.

  I looked over to find her gazing at Crusspatch too.

  “And what’s that?”

  “Arnaud Thorne.”

  The name landed like a shot in my gut.

  “I know how that must sound,” she said. “But he—”

  I swung my cane toward her and shouted, “Disfare!”

  Holy power blasted the length of the cane, swallowing Caroline in a cone of white light. I’d been fifty-fifty on the odds of her being demon possessed. But her “solution” to accessing the time catch had just tipped those odds to ninety-ten in favor. A banishment attack would settle the question.

  Bree-yark stepped into the room, one hand shielding his eyes, the other clutching his blade. I listened past the blast for screams, but all I heard was the flapping of her cloak. After another moment, I recalled the power. Dimness returned to our space, and Caroline was standing where she’d been, golden hair fluttering back over her settling cloak. No sign the invocation had harmed her.

  “Satisfied?” she asked.

  Bree-yark looked from her to me as I lowered my cane.

  “Why Arnaud?” I asked.

  “He has a direct line to the time catch. Malphas made it so for all his demons.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Osgood. He left the information for me to find.”

  “And only two demons remain,” I said, catching on. “Arnaud and the one who infiltrated the fae.”

  “Yes. Which is why I’m going with you this time.”

  I blinked at the unexpectedness of her announcement.

  “You were correct in your letter,” she said. “The plans of the demon Malphas threaten Faerie. Indeed, it’s already begun. I have an interest in what happens. But once Malphas discovers you’ve re-entered the time catch, he’ll send the final demon to stop you. One who wields fae powers. He’ll be too formidable for you alone.”

  “He won’t be alone,” Bree-yark said, stepping up beside me.

  The gesture warmed me as I turned back to Caroline. “So you know this fae?”

  “Well enough,” she said.

  “Royalty?”

  “Yes.”

  And someone pretty high up if he’d managed to turn Angelus against his own wife, but I didn’t say that. I was thinking more about the nauseating prospect of having to bargain with Arnaud and what he would demand in exchange. A process that had the very real potential of turning Vega against me.

  “Short of his freedom, Arnaud’s not going to agree to help us,” I said.

  Caroline’s irises darkened, and power stirred behind them. “He won’t have a choice.”

  “You can do that? I mean, access his connection to the time catch?” I had known advanced fae possessed the ability to repurpose portals for their own use, but I hadn’t guessed Caroline to be that far along. She must have cultivated some damned powerful contacts in Faerie, just as she had in our world.

  “If he’s subdued,” she replied, “yes.”

  Though she didn’t say it, I picked up a suggestion of that’s where you come in.

  “All right, assuming we go the Arnaud route,” I said, a part of me wanting to vomit on the words, “there’s the little problem of returning to our world. You said yourself that the portals between here and there are being watched, and I can vouch for the speediness of the reaction force.”

  I remembered how quickly Angelus and his fellow roc-riders had arrived. That had worked to our benefit the last time, but if Caroline was telling the truth—and after the failed banishment attack, I was leaning much more toward the idea she was—I doubted another run-in with Angelus would go so well.

  “I know a way that’s better hidden,” she said.

  “How far away are we talking?” I asked.

  “Within the half hour.”

  Bree-yark’s brow furrowed. “That close?”

  Given the vastness of Faerie, I shared the goblin’s skepticism.

  “Not close,” Caroline said. “Soon. The portal works off the moon’s position.”

  Instead of allaying my skepticism, her answer only deepened it.

  “A lunar door?” I all but cried. “You have a lunar door?”

  I’d heard rumors of the gems, but they were said to have all been destroyed, if they ever existed in the first place. That was why the portals in Upper and Lower Manhattan were so valuable to the kingdoms that controlled them. Hell, the portals were the reason Caroline’s mother had betrothed her to Angelus.

  “Someone smuggled one to me, yes,” Caroline said.

  I deduced that someone to be Osgood, maybe another reason to trust Caroline.

  “If he gave you a lunar door ,” I said, “why can’t he help you into the time catch?”

  “Because the kingdom expressly forbade him. They issued the order after learning he’d helped you and the others. He is magically bound by such orders, whether they are influenced by demonic powers or not.”

  I had guessed rightly about that.

  “And you were singled out for asking Osgood to help us?” I asked.

  For the first time, her eyes glimmered with moisture. “Perhaps now you understand my situation.”

  I did.
She might have left of her own free will, but she was also in danger. Her only hope for restoring her kingdom, and her place in it, was to end Malphas’s menace. And that meant entering the time catch by the only means left. I could use her help, but I had to ensure we wouldn’t be working at cross purposes.

  “I have friends to recover,” I said.

  “I understand. What did you find when you went the last time?”

  “Strangers. One each holding the half-fae and druids. Arnaud was there too, manipulating the ley lines around St. Martin’s Cathedral. Or the plot, at least. The church burned down in the Great Fire of 1776 along with half of downtown. I think he was working on a portal for Malphas to enter the time catch.”

  “And from there, our world.”

  Finally, someone who understands the situation and the stakes.

  “That’s my guess too,” I said. “But I’m not sure how Malphas plans to follow through without Arnaud at the controls. He must have found a replacement. Probably why he’s being so protective of the time catch.”

  “I can attempt to access Arnaud’s thoughts, understand what he was doing there.”

  “That would help.” And it sure as hell beat attempting to finesse that info out of him.

  “But I’ve little doubt the answer will be St. Martin’s,” she said.

  “The power source.”

  “If we can cap the well, Malphas will have nothing to draw from.”

  “That should also restore stability to the domain.”

  “Making it safer to recover your friends.”

  For the first time, I smiled.

  Bree-yark cleared his throat. “Hey, uh, mind if I have a word with you, Everson?”

  “Oh, Caroline, this is Bree-yark,” I said, remembering myself. “Bree-yark, Caroline.”

  The goblin hesitated before sheathing his blade and accepting her offered hand. “A pleasure,” he grunted.

  She nodded before shifting her eyes back to mine. “I know you have much to consider, but our window for action is small.” She appeared to hesitate before adding, “You should know too that something hunts you.”