Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8)

by Brad Magnarella

  “I can take them out,” I whispered back, “but it’s going to cause a huge stir.”

  “I only need to enchant one of them,” she said.

  Great, I thought, more magic we can’t afford to spend.

  The four patrolmen arrived around us and began shouting in Dutch. It wasn’t one of my languages of fluency, but I picked out enough German to understand the threats. Imprisonment and death by hanging topped the list, and we just happened to be standing fifty yards from the gallows.

  Rat Face arrived behind them, breathing hard. A too-big coat swam around his scrawny frame. “Struck me, he did,” he rasped. “Threatened to scalp me. Used Indian magic on me mates. All ’cause I said his missus was pretty.”

  Caroline stood calmly, eyeing the members of the patrol. It took me a moment to understand she was looking for the dominant member, the leader. After a moment, the stockiest of them, a man with salt-and-pepper hair, turned toward his associates and spoke sternly. The others put up what sounded like token resistance, but when he gestured to our accuser and made a face, they broke into laughter.

  Bingo. Caroline had found him.

  Rat Face looked around wildly as the patrolmen dispersed.

  “Oy, where ya goin’?” he demanded. “He attacked me! Did me bodily harm!” Realizing he’d lost them, he appealed to the gathering crowd. “Said he’d scalp the lot of us, he did! Then said he’d burn New Amsterdam to the ground!”

  Oh, you little liar.

  As the crowd pressed in, I whispered a Word. Power flowed from my glamoured cane, hardening the air around Caroline and me. Rat Face continued to talk, working the crowd into a murmuring mob. As I searched their faces, I saw more fear than anger—which I knew from experience could be twice as deadly.

  “Be ready to make a run for the boat,” I told Caroline.

  But before I could invoke a repulsive force, heads began to turn and the crowd backed away. As they spread out, a man paced toward us, stout and sturdy with authority. A purple coat hung to knee-length trousers that revealed a right wooden leg, carved and knobbed like a dining room table’s.

  “It’s the governor,” Caroline whispered. “Peter Stuyvesant.”

  “The Peter Stuyvesant?” I’d learned about him in high school, the last Dutch governor before England claimed the city and renamed it New York. In the modern era there was a street and park in Stuyvesant’s name, even a housing project. I was going to feel really bad if it came to blows.

  With each limping step, curtains of gray hair shifted around the governor’s somber face. When he’d come to within ten feet of us, he stopped and peered from the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat.

  “Is it true you do magic?” he asked in broken English.

  “He does, he does!” Rat Face cried, elated to finally have someone in authority interceding on his behalf. But Stuyvesant silenced him with a look. Rat Face stopped hopping and retreated into the crowd.

  “Speak,” he demanded.

  “We’re leaving now,” I said. “Returning upriver.”

  I pushed power through my wizard’s voice, but something was pushing back. Caroline must have felt it too, because I caught her subtle energy moving around the governor’s head, warping his large nose and heavy cheeks.

  Another enchantment we couldn’t afford.

  “Oh, but that’s not what he asked,” a slippery voice interjected.

  He had been moving silently through the crowd, and now he arrived behind the governor with his head servant.

  You have got to be kidding me.

  “No, that’s not what he asked at all,” Arnaud Thorne said. “Was it, dear Zarko?”

  “No,” his servant confirmed.

  Both vampire and slave were dressed for the period, though more extravagantly. Puffy sleeves bloomed from the cuffs of colorful coats. The gold buttons down their chests matched the shiny buckles on their shoes. Both wore wide-brimmed hats, similar to the governor’s, but while Zarko’s fit snugly over his monkish bangs, Arnaud’s sat at a rakish angle. His predatory eyes gleamed above his spreading grin.

  “Now, why not answer the governor truthfully, hm?” he said. “Then perhaps he’ll release you upriver.”

  As I looked over the three of them—one stout, two lean—I realized they were the distant figures I’d seen right after my encounter with the drunkards. The itchy feeling I’d gotten had been from vampiric energy. With his preternatural vision, Arnaud would have seen everything. He would also have sensed my magic, and he’d evidently shared his findings with the good governor here.

  “What do you care?” I shot back. “Tristan.”

  I was so frigging over these Arnauds from the past.

  “My, my, what a temper,” he said. “And a perfect command of the English language. Unusual for an Indian.”

  His teasing voice told me he knew we were anything but.

  It was up to Caroline’s enchantment now. If the governor dismissed us, what could Arnaud do? But the vampire’s misty powers of suggestion were countering her efforts. With a look of exasperation, she withdrew, her enchantment dispersing. Stuyvesant, who had been watching us with dulling eyes, snapped to with a sharp intake of breath.

  “We have an ordinance against magic,” he said. “It is not allowed here.”

  “And I believe they’ve just attempted it again,” Arnaud purred. “This time against you, dear Governor.”

  The flesh around Stuyvesant’s eyes balled up. “Is this true?”

  Without waiting for a response, he turned and limp-hopped away, crying out in Dutch. He was going after the patrolmen. I searched the crowd in the dim hope I might spot my grandfather. But he was still in Europe in the 1660s—I was sure of that. Instead, I picked out the cold gazes of blood slaves who stood from the crowd here and there. Two had headed off our Dutch traders to keep them from readying the boat.

  I glared back at Arnaud, Grandpa’s ring pulsing around my finger. “What do you want?”

  “The ordinance is in place for a reason,” he said. “Indeed, I advised the governor in the very matter.”

  I scoffed. “While he was under your influence, right?”

  Arnaud’s eyes glinted sharply as if appreciating the challenge. “Regardless, New Amsterdam only attained city status a few years ago. It’s young, vulnerable. But ah, the potential. Growing trade, budding businesses, everyone working for and in opposition to one another. The spirit of enterprise and opportunity is everywhere.” He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply as if he could smell it. “Now, my friend, imagine someone coming here with the advantage of magic. It would upset the balance. Nay, destroy it.”

  Yeah, just like you’re planning to do.

  As the apex predator, the vampire was poisoning the governor’s mind, weeding out potential rivals, all to monopolize the crown jewels of the city: trade and finance. They would become his fortress, one he would command for more than three hundred years, ultimately heading a cabal of vampires downtown.

  If he only knew he was looking at the two who would end his reign.

  “Allow New Amsterdam to grow and flourish,” he finished, “to become a city that rivals London or Constantinople. Then perhaps we can revisit the question of what’s allowed within its walls and what is forbidden.”

  “We’ll leave, then,” Caroline said. “No harm done.”

  “But who’s to say you won’t be back?” He arched an eyebrow. “And under a different guise? No, no, that won’t do at all. We must make assurances to our fledgling city. Isn’t that right, Zarko?”

  “Yes, master,” he hissed through his grinning teeth.

  “Did you know there’s been a demon about?” Arnaud asked abruptly.

  I’d been bracing my mind against his insinuative power, but now I faltered. “A demon?”

  “Oh, yes. A nasty, nasty character. I’ve had to run the devil out several times myself.”

  This had to be Malphas’s time jumper, setting the stage for his master’s arrival. But what could he have been doi
ng in 1660?

  Trying not to sound overly interested, I asked, “What did he want?”

  Arnaud chuckled. “What do all demons want? But that’s no concern of yours.”

  “We’re hunting a demon,” Caroline said. “It could be the same one.”

  “Well, I’m afraid the hunt is over for you, my love. Magic is an egregious offense, on par with conjuring.”

  He spoke as if he were closing and bolting a door. He wasn’t going to give us anything else on the question of the demon. When he reached for Caroline’s arm, I thrust out my fist with Grandpa’s ring.

  “Back off, or I’ll smoke your ass right here.”

  The vampire sprang behind his servant. But as he looked at the silver ingot with the rearing dragon, he relaxed and released a soft chuckle. “I thought your magic felt familiar. A fellow veteran of the war against the Inquisition. I believe we have an agreement not to meddle in the other’s affairs. Your name, please?”

  “Sure, it’s We Go Our Way And You Go Yours.”

  “Cleverly spoken, but your affront is against New Amsterdam, not me. This is for the governor to settle.”

  “Keep talking,” I said, holding the ring steady. “This baby is just itching to go boom.”

  “If I understand your unusual speech, you’re threatening my life.” He tsked twice. “Attempt it, and the city will become a savage dog pack. Especially with you being hostile natives. Even were you to escape its walls, all of New Amsterdam would be on the hunt, leaving you nowhere to hide. Even glamoured.”

  He’d called my bluff. Incinerating him would endanger our hideout as well as Seay’s chances of reaching us.

  And while we’d been talking, the town’s patrolmen had returned. Stuyvesant was behind them, shouting and pointing. I remembered reading that he’d commanded an attack on a Caribbean island, and he looked the part now. Arnaud’s blood slaves made their way to the front of a crowd that was fanning to the sides in a clamor. Amid the shouting, I kept hearing a single word: “Executiepeloton.”

  Firing squad.

  “They’re preparing our execution,” I told Caroline. And with the fluctuating nature of the ley energy, I didn’t know how many musket balls my shield could repel before we’d be able to get out of range.

  “Or,” Arnaud stressed above the commotion, “you can work for me.”

  As he turned to ply another affirmative from Zarko, I glanced at Caroline. Her eyes cut meaningfully to the left. The patrolmen, eight of them now, were standing and kneeling in two rows, muskets in firing position. Stuyvesant stood beside them, poised as though preparing to give the command. But that’s not what Caroline was indicating. At the back of the crowd that had amassed behind the firing squad were several of Seay’s friends. When Arnaud caught my nod at Caroline, he mistook it for acceptance.

  “A wise choice,” he purred. “Now, relinquish the ring, and I’ll call them off.”

  I looked between Stuyvesant’s firing squad and Arnaud and his blood slaves. The second group was the bigger threat. And the easier to eliminate.

  “All right,” I said.

  I brought the fingers of my left hand to the ring, twisted the ingot, and held out my fist.

  “Zarko?” Arnaud said through grinning lips. The blood slave stepped forward. But when I opened my hand, nothing fell into his waiting palm. I had an instant to relish the surprise on Arnaud’s face as I aimed my right fist at his chest. Sleight of Hand 101. The ring had never left my finger.

  “Balaur!” I shouted.

  The power of the Brasov Pact gathered in the silver face and released with a ground-shaking whoomp. A storm of force and fire enveloped the vampire, flinging him through the air. He attempted to land nimbly, but I’d put everything into that Word, and the momentum carried him ass over ankles. He slammed against one of the counting houses and collapsed in a swirl of flames.

  A moment of profound silence followed where you could hear the soft brush of landing snowfall, then all hell broke loose. Amid the screaming, shouting, and scrambling, a voice belonging to Stuyvesant rose into a single, sharp command.

  “Schiet!”

  Smoke billowed from the shooters’ position in a collective crackle.

  My shield was up, and I’d been pumping as much energy into it as I could, bracing for the inevitable volley, but not a single musket ball impacted. The patrolmen had aimed past us, toward the water, where I could see the likenesses of the Algonquin Caroline and me fleeing. As the patrolmen reloaded, Stuyvesant watched the glamours—courtesy of Seay’s friends—with vindictive eyes.

  Caroline pulled my arm. “This way.”

  She’d become a Dutchwoman in a pink petticoat and gown, a bonnet covering her pulled-back hair. I’d been glamoured into her male counterpart, minus the pink. We hurried from the wharf as part of the scattering crowd, making for a street that ran past the fort.

  “This leads to Broadway,” Caroline panted. “And Broadway will take us north, out of the city.”

  Another series of shots sounded. I looked back in time to see the likenesses of Caroline and me succumbing to a volley of musket balls. We fell from the pier’s edge into the East River, the water carrying us under and away. Stuyvesant nodded at a job well done.

  Spotting one of Seay’s friends beyond the shooters, I gave her a thumbs-up. They’d executed the glamour beautifully. Arnaud was dead, but so too were the perpetrators. There would be no “savage dog pack” hunting us.

  I looked at the vampire’s burning body. Several bystanders were heaving snow over it, but the flames, born of enchantment, persisted. Though I’d only blasted a time catch version of Arnaud, it still felt good.

  Something rammed into my shielded jaw, shaking my vision. I pulled up, holding Caroline’s arm for balance. Zarko was in front of us, his preternatural senses seeing past our glamours. But what in the hell was he doing alive? He should have succumbed to mortality when Arnaud fell. A quick glance around showed a dozen more blood slaves, several I’d spotted in the crowd, converging toward us.

  “You hurt master,” Zarko said.

  “That’s a shame,” I replied. “I wanted to kill him.”

  When he and the others rushed in, I shouted a Word. The shield protecting Caroline and me pulsed with white light, knocking the blood slaves back several yards. I drew my sword, already grimacing at the thought of so many decapitations. My gaze fell from the blade’s banishment rune to the fire rune.

  Incineration would be more efficient…

  But the problem, as always, would be control.

  Shouts sounded. I glanced around to find the group heaping snow on Arnaud rearing back from a blooming fireball. The charging blood slaves pulled up suddenly, hands to their chests and heads. Already, their faces were shriveling, bodies contorting. Some aged in years, others in decades or centuries.

  But one by one, they dropped.

  “About damned time,” I sighed.

  “Let’s go,” Caroline said, skirting Zarko’s desiccating corpse.

  We ran past the fort and around a large marketplace, where Broadway opened out. The wide thoroughfare extended past gardens and gabled homes to a gate in the same wall we’d seen from the river. I was dreading the idea of a six-mile hike back to the caves, when a pair of horses, fully saddled, trotted into our path.

  “They’re enchanted,” Caroline said, smiling.

  Once again, Seay’s friends had come through.

  “Remind me to treat the entire gang to ice cream when we get back to the present,” I said.

  Caroline and I mounted the horses and took off. Ahead, a pair of keepers opened the gate at Wall Street, and we were soon galloping from New Amsterdam and along a well-trodden road into the snowy beyond.

  33

  My enchanted horse followed Caroline’s—a good thing, because my equine experience amounted to a two-minute pony ride at a Long Island fair when I was a kid. My sole job now, as then, was to hold onto the reins. The snow-covered road ran past small farming communities and
large estates. As we galloped beyond rolling countryside and into woodland, Caroline relaxed our glamours.

  “The caves are close,” she called back, her hood fallen from her streaming hair.

  The road angled through what would become the Upper West Side, and I could see the Hudson River through breaks in the trees. On the other side of a meadow, Caroline stopped and dismounted. I followed her example, landing on the snowy ground. We tethered the horses out of the weather and climbed down toward the river.

  “We’re back,” I called to alert the others, but no one answered.

  When I didn’t spot Gorgantha near the cavern opening, my mind went into panic mode. I scanned the breadth of the river, but no mer head broke the surface. Had something happened? Dropping the final few feet, I peered into our shelter. A small fire was still burning in the very back, but my teammates weren’t around it.

  “Hello?” I called.

  Off to the right, a pair of squash-colored eyes glowed into view. “Over here, Everson.”

  My pent-up breath let out with a silent thank God. But I didn’t like the worry in Bree-yark’s voice. As my vision adjusted to the dimness, his squat form emerged. Gorgantha and Malachi were beside him, looking down at something. I cast a ball of light as I approached them, Caroline following.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “He just … fell over,” Bree-yark said.

  Arnaud’s restrained body lay at their feet, not moving.

  Gorgantha looked back at us. “We tried sitting him up, but he won’t stay.”

  “Might be dead,” Bree-yark grunted.

  They made room for me as I knelt down. Arnaud was on his side, facing the fire, but his dim eyes seemed to be absorbing the light instead of reflecting it. I looked over the rest of his face. The skin had gone a deep yellow and drawn taut against what passed for bones. He can’t be dead, I thought desperately as I propped him against the wall. He’s our way home. His head sagged over his chest.

  “How long has he been like this?” Caroline asked.

  “About a half hour,” Malachi said, digging his hands into his long hair. He began pacing in nervous circles. “I didn’t touch him, didn’t touch him.”