Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8)

by Brad Magnarella

  A charge went off in my chest. “What?”

  “It comes from the realm of the dead. It wants you or something of yours. That’s all I can sense.” When a comma appeared between her eyebrows, it took a moment for me to understand why her earlier show of concern had bothered me—she’d sacrificed her feelings for me two years before.

  “I’ll prepare the portal,” she said when I didn’t respond.

  As she strode from the cottage, her glamour returned, darkening her hair and restoring the roguish male features from before. Bree-yark waited until she was out of earshot before turning back to me.

  “I don’t trust her,” he whispered.

  “Well, I didn’t either at first, but she stood up to my banishment attack without so much as a frown, so she can’t be carrying anything demonic. Plus, everything she said makes sense.”

  “Of course it does. She’s fae.”

  “Half-fae,” I corrected him.

  He seized my arm and walked me to the far side of the cottage. “One of the things I’ve come to respect about you is your judgment. I mean, that whole thing with me and Gretchen? You’re no dummy. But fifteen minutes with this broad, and she’s convinced you to do the one thing you’ve been dead-set against? Sorry, Everson, but that doesn’t smell right.”

  Even though goblins held an inherent distrust for the fae, I considered what he was saying. Was she manipulating me?

  “Did you pick up any magic?” I asked him.

  “Just her glamour and some items she’s carrying.”

  “No enchantments, though?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But there’s more than one way to charm a person. Didn’t you say you two had history?”

  I pondered Caroline’s show of concern, comparing it to the last time I’d seen her. It had been after the big press conference when the mayor had restored my good name in the city. Our gazes met across the stage, hers showing a vanilla recognition but nothing deeper, all of her feelings for me wiped clean.

  Including concern.

  “All right,” I said, “maybe there’s a little bit of manipulation happening, but I still believe our goals align. I want to recover my friends and head off a demon apocalypse. Caroline wants to restore her kingdom. And if Arnaud is the only way, she’s going to need me to access him. She can’t penetrate the wards.”

  “Is he the only way, or is she just telling you that?”

  “Well, my magic’s not giving me a hard no.”

  “Is it giving you a hard yes?”

  The truth was, my magic was still in introspective mode.

  “Maybe not, but she warned me about the death thing stalking me.”

  “Sure she’s not behind that? Maybe as a way to rush your decision?”

  Bree-yark was making a lot of good points, dammit. “All right, look. Before I agree to anything, I’ll consult with someone else.”

  “Fine,” he grunted. “But I’m keeping an eye on this.”

  I walked outside and found Caroline in the front yard. She had placed a crescent gem on a small mound of earth. The white gem with glinting flakes looked a little like mica, but if it was indeed a lunar door, it wielded the power of an ancient fae god. I looked from the gem to the tops of the trees, where an enormous Faerie moon glowed silver-white.

  “The time is nearing,” she said.

  I stepped toward her. “I’ve come to a decision. I’ll return with you to our world, but I need to consult with someone before we go any further with this.”

  “Whom?”

  “Detective Vega. My fiancée.”

  I hadn’t proposed to her yet, but that title resonated more strongly than girlfriend.

  “Congratulations, and very well.” Something flashed across Caroline’s glamoured visage, but it was too fast for me to interpret. “I’ll ask something in return, then.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you leave behind the stone my husband gave you.”

  Damn, she sensed it. I reached into my pocket and palmed the calling stone, my insurance. If Caroline wasn’t herself, I could be chucking my one solid line of aid. Bree-yark was clearly thinking the same, because when I glanced over, he shook his head. I turned the stone over in my fingers several times.

  “The kingdom is using it to track you,” Caroline said. “They’ll know you’ve returned to your world and that you had help. They’ll connect the dots back to me. I admit, it’s for my safety as much as yours.”

  Was the stone acting like a GPS device, sending the kingdom my whereabouts? With my magic mute on the question, I went with my gut again. I pulled the translucent stone from my pocket and tossed it aside.

  Bree-yark grumbled, but having made my decision, I felt better.

  Caroline tilted her face back. I followed her gaze to the moon. It orbited faster in Faerie than on Earth and had nearly cleared the trees. Off toward the lake, I picked up the gleeful singing of sprites, but Caroline must have cast a protection, because their song had no ill effect. As the shadows of treetops withdrew from the yard and more moonlight moved in, the crescent gem began to glimmer.

  “The portal will open here,” Caroline said, gesturing to the concave side of the gem.

  Foot by foot, the moon’s radiance overtook the yard. When it reached the mound, the gem seemed to absorb the glow until it was emitting the same light as the moon itself, only more brightly.

  “There,” Caroline said.

  Indeed, a shadow was opening in the mound on the concave side of the gem.

  “You may enter now,” she said. “I’ll need to go last to recover the lunar door.”

  “If you’re playing some kind of game, lady…” Bree-yark grumbled.

  “I assure you, I’ll be right behind you.”

  The goblin gave me a doubtful look, but I nodded for him to go ahead. He stepped into the shadow with Dropsy and disappeared. Before following him, I peered back at Caroline. She’d restored her own visage just enough that her blue-green eyes glimmered back at me. Maybe it was an effect of the moonlight, but there was something in the look that recalled the late night she’d come to my apartment.

  I dropped my gaze to the portal before my feet.

  Hope you know what the hell you’re doing, Croft.

  Then I entered too.

  16

  A cold, splintering rain stung my hands and face as I staggered for balance across hard pavement. The enchanted moonlit yard was gone. In its place swirled brick walls and an odor of decomposing garbage.

  “Whoa, there,” Bree-yark said, grabbing my arm in one of his large hands.

  I splashed through a puddle before coming to a stop, but it took another moment for the vertigo to wind down. I’d gone through four portals that day, five if I counted Gretchen dropping us behind the Met, and my brain and stomach were telling me that was at least four too many. This time we’d ended up in a narrow alleyway at night, a chain-link fence at one end and a dimly lit street at the other.

  “Any idea where we are?” Bree-yark asked, water dripping from his jutting brow.

  I swallowed my nausea and tuned into my wizard’s senses. “Judging by the ley energy, somewhere in the upper half of the city.”

  “Yeah, and judging by the smell, not the ritzy part.”

  Dropsy rotated in Bree-yark’s grip as though trying to get her own bearings. Fog plumed from her glass face. I peered up to see if I could spot any familiar landmarks, but the buildings on either side were too tall. The arrangements of their windows suggested apartments. A low cloud ceiling drifted past our wedge of sky, the moon glowing dimly beyond. Compared to Faerie’s version, it looked sad and puny.

  “Damn,” I muttered.

  “What?” Bree-yark asked.

  “I told Vega not to worry about me until seven tonight, and it’s probably past that.”

  The lunar door must have sent us through time as well as space to line up with the moon’s position here. When I pushed back my sleeve and found a naked wrist, I remembered I’d left my wa
tch in Bree-yark’s vehicle, along with my cellphone.

  “So where’s Goldilocks?” Bree-yark asked.

  “If she said she’s coming, she’s coming,” I replied testily.

  “Hey, I’m not trying to start anything. I’ve just had enough dealings with the fae in my hundred-odd years to be, you know, thoroughly distrustful of them. Then you throw in a demon’s involvement—”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  I stepped away from him and tuned into my wizard’s senses again. A pink orb swam into view. Fae nexus, I thought. Much like the wards my Order maintained throughout the city, the orb was one of several focal points of fae power. Glamoured, it was so transparent as to be nearly invisible. But it was clearly active.

  I returned to Bree-yark bearing a steaming neutralizing potion. “There’s a fae ward here,” I said. “Caroline probably needed it as a focus for the portal, but it could be chatting with its neighbors.”

  “Told you I didn’t like this,” he grumbled as he tilted the tube to his pursed lips.

  I was down to the dregs of my own potion when I caught movement near the mouth of the alley. Four figures were separating from a pile of garbage. I wheeled toward them, a shield crackling to life around us. Spiking another of my empty tubes against the pavement, Bree-yark fixed Dropsy to his belt and readied his bow.

  The figures’ shambling approach had me thinking zombies, my mind quickly attaching them to Caroline’s warning about my hunter being from the realm of the dead. But as the figures entered an amber cone of streetlight, I could see wool hats, newspaper-stuffed coats, and dragging pant cuffs.

  “Bums?” I asked.

  “Glamoured fae,” Bree-yark answered.

  Crap, he was right. A very thin, very faint sliver of magic glimmered around them. And the four were spreading out, blocking our escape. I glanced back. Beyond the chain-link fence two more glamoured fae were approaching. I peered up, weighing the odds of gaining a rooftop with a force invocation, but the buildings were too damned high. The group of four were about fifty yards from us and closing.

  “Must’ve been staking out the nexus points,” I muttered, palming the cold iron amulet in my pocket.

  “Yeah, either that or your friend set us up.”

  “Listen, there are two behind us,” I said, ignoring his remark. “Can you take leftie?”

  We needed to move this fight from what felt like a claustrophobic shooting range to somewhere with better cover. And the alley beyond the fence opened out in a series of angles in the buildings’ brick sides.

  Bree-yark nocked an iron-tipped arrow. “Just give the word.”

  Bolts of silver light slammed into my shield as the four approaching fae unleashed an attack. Our protection wavered and shed sparks, but courtesy of the neutralizing magic, it held.

  “Now!” I said.

  Bree-yark and I spun toward the other end of the alley, the goblin’s arrow already whistling from his bow. It threaded a diamond in the chain-link fence, and thudded into the shoulder of his target. The fae fell with a cry. Aiming my amulet to the right, I shouted, “Attivare!” A column of blue light shot from the charm and pummeled the second fae. He reeled backwards and went down with a hard splash.

  I took off toward the fence, Bree-yark’s bare feet slapping at my heels.

  More blasts nailed my shield from behind. I incanted to reinforce it, but the potion fortifying me against fae enchantments was nearly exhausted. Shaping a force from my reserves, I aimed my cane at the approaching fence. The booming release flattened it in eruptions of metal links and concrete.

  Bree-yark and I trampled over the fence and between the two fallen fae. The glamours that had made them appear common vagrants were dissolving now, revealing the elvish blue-skinned beings they were. Henchmen from Angelus’s kingdom? The ease with which they’d gone down pegged them as lower-level, but there were still four at our backs, and my shield was starting to glimmer out.

  With a muttered invocation, I took the hardened air and spanned it across the alley behind us. I then shoved Bree-yark toward a recess in the building to our right, while I stumbled toward the one opposite his.

  “Use the light as a blind!” I shouted.

  “What light?” Bree-yark barked back.

  The fae’s next assault took down the shield in a brilliant curtain of sparks.

  “Gotcha,” he said.

  Nocking another arrow, he let it fly. The iron-tipped projectile punched through the light show and into the side of a disoriented fae, dropping him. Bree-yark let out a triumphant bark. “Want some more?” he called to the others.

  I felled another fae with an amulet blast. But as my light blind glimmered out, the two remaining fae sighted on us. I ducked back an instant before a bolt nailed the corner of my building, blasting me with brick dust. Bree-yark poked his head out, then withdrew with a grunt as his own corner was hit.

  We need another distraction.

  I was wrist deep in a pocket of lightning grenades when the air warmed, and faint streams of gold and turquoise flowed past. When I noticed the fae had stopped firing, I peeked out cautiously. The lights were swimming around their heads. As the fae swooned and collapsed, the mesmerizing lights coalesced into the shape of a flowing hooded figure.

  “It’s safe,” Caroline called to us, hardening into form.

  Bree-yark looked over at me. Even across the alley, I could see the doubt in his eyes.

  Raising a hand to tell him it was all right, I stepped from my cover. “Why the hold up?”

  Glamoured in her male guise, Caroline strode toward us. “I was partway through the lunar door when I recognized the ambush. I backed out in time to escape detection and returned when their focus was elsewhere.”

  I gave a dry laugh. “A little warning would’ve been nice.”

  “Yeah, and you sure took your sweet time getting back here,” Bree-yark added.

  “A lunar door holds the consciousness of its creator god,” she said. “Every passage requires a negotiation. I arrived as soon as I could.”

  Bree-yark gave a skeptical grunt, but her claim lined up with what I’d read about lunar doors. She peered at the downed fae, then over at the hovering nexus. “The kingdom is covering all transport points,” she said. “Even potential ones. They’ll soon discover they lost their sentry. We must go straight to Arnaud.”

  “We had a deal,” I said. “Vega first.”

  Caroline trained her glamoured eyes on mine. “The kingdom suspects I’m in Faerie. Once they know I’m here, no amount of fae magic will hide me. If we’re to enter the time catch, it must be now.”

  “Not before I talk to my fiancée.”

  “Everson, there isn’t time.” Her plea sounded more human now than fae. “Please.”

  I glanced over at Bree-yark, who had come up beside me, his face set in a scowl.

  I was beginning to think we’d hit an impasse when something occurred to me. “What if I can keep you safe while I talk to her?” I asked.

  The skin between Caroline’s brows furrowed again. “How?”

  We caught a taxi from what turned out to be a neighborhood north of Harlem. Caroline enchanted the driver so he wouldn’t see anything that would stand out in his mind, least of all a goblin holding a lantern that couldn’t sit still. The enchantment also gave Caroline and me the opportunity to discuss our plans openly.

  When we reached 1 Police Plaza, I arranged passes for Caroline and Bree-yark and had the guard alert the Basement we were on our way. As we stepped off the elevator, I greeted the members of the Sup Squad. Armed and armored with Centurion’s monster-slaying tech, they looked formidable.

  “How’s he doing?” I asked, referring to Arnaud.

  “Doing?” one answered brusquely. “He’s just sitting there.”

  Another gave me a look that suggested having six of them on the prisoner was a waste of personnel. The exchange reminded me how, underneath their impressive gear, the members of the Sup Squad were still very human. I th
anked them anyway and led Caroline and Bree-yark into the holding area.

  “Here it is,” I said to Caroline, opening an arm toward the cell beside Arnaud’s.

  The day before it had held a newly minted vampire, released when the Sup Squad gunned down his master, restoring the young man’s humanity. The cell featured some of my most powerful wards. But more important in Caroline’s case were the dislocation sigils that would hide her from the rest of Faedom.

  She looked them over now and nodded. “Yes, this will do.”

  “I’ll power down the holding wards, but with the way everything is configured, other wards will have to stay up.”

  “I understand.”

  Caroline waited for me to perform the incantations before stepping inside. She took a seat on the bench against the back wall, the wards dissolving her glamour. Her hair and eyes lightened inside her hood, taking on the colors I knew.

  I left the door open—there was no need to lock her inside. Still, she was putting a lot of trust in me. Maybe it was in the hopes I would reciprocate.

  “She’s not being held,” I reminded the two officers at the desk. “This is just temporary.”

  One nodded her understanding, but the male officer became distracted by Bree-yark. After making a circuit of the holding area, the goblin had hopped onto a chair and was massaging his right foot. Dropsy, whom he’d set beside him, hopped around the chair, training her light this way and that.

  “Oh, they’re with me,” I said.

  “Apparently so,” the male officer grunted.

  “Hey, would you mind calling Detective Vega?” I asked.

  I was not looking forward to our talk. Anything that involved keeping Arnaud alive was going to be thorny, but taking him with us into the time catch? I could already see the blowtorches in Vega’s eyes. But before either officer could lift a phone, footsteps entered the holding area.

  “You don’t need to call her,” she said. “I’m right here.”

  17

  “I came this close to phoning your emergency contacts,” Vega said.