Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8)

by Brad Magnarella

  “Sure,” Caroline said, eyebrows raised.

  A violent tremor shook the cavern, sending me into a stumble away from her. When I fell, cold water gushed around my hands and knees and surged toward the fire. With a shout, Bree-yark grabbed Dropsy and jumped up. Malachi went into a rambling fit and scurried back, hair flying every which way.

  I peered toward the cave entrance at what was happening outside. But it made zero sense. The snow was falling horizontally, and the river seemed to be standing on end, the water along the shoreline crashing down. The cavern around us began to grind now. Stones cracked and plunged into the water.

  “What in the hell?” I demanded.

  I thrust my cane up, prepared to cast a shield invocation. And then, just like that, everything was back to normal. The water flowed back out, chased by smoke from the extinguished fire, and rejoined the Hudson. Caroline stepped from the wall where she’d braced herself and helped me to my feet.

  “The time catch is failing,” she said.

  Malachi splashed up beside us. “Just here, just here it is. This one isn’t very stable, never was, never was. We have to get to the next one.”

  “What about Seay and the others?” Gorgantha asked. She had grabbed Arnaud to keep him from being washed away, and now she dragged him by the arm as she joined us too. Bree-yark hustled up behind them.

  “Seay will come, Seay will come,” Malachi insisted.

  He waved his hands to get us moving toward the entrance, but the others turned to me for direction. I flinched at what I thought was another quake, but it was just my body trembling from the wet and cold.

  “Let’s head back up to the road,” I said, “see if the half-fae are coming.”

  If they weren’t, I was going to have a really tough decision to make. We filed out and climbed the bluff along the route Caroline and I had come down. Several trees had fallen, which made me worry for the horses. But they were standing where we’d left them, skittish, but no worse for the wear.

  “I’ll check the road,” I said, already hustling toward it.

  I activated the bonding sigil, but it responded weakly. I sent a summoning signal to Seay anyway. At the road, I peered south into the dusky whiteness. There was no sight or sound of her or the others.

  Dammit.

  I was hurrying back to my teammates when a force threw me into a tree. I wrapped the trunk with one arm and aimed my cane around, but it was the time catch going through another spasm. This time, the tops of the trees seemed to bend toward one another. When they eased back down, the landscape remained cocked at an angle. Leaning to my right to compensate, I lurched toward the others.

  “We can’t stay, can’t stay,” Malachi was telling everyone.

  Crazed or not, he was right. I’d never been in a failing time catch, but something told me ours could only tolerate so much twisting and bending before it split and succumbed to the vacuum that surrounded it.

  “Start heading toward the departure point!” I shouted above the wind and driving snow. “I’m going back for Seay!”

  Bree-yark faced me with bowed arms. “We don’t know how much longer this is gonna hold together!”

  “Exactly,” I said, taking the horse’s reins.

  Malachi jerked them from my grip. “I’ll go,” he said, clambering onto the back of the horse. “I know the ways in and out. We’ll meet you in Jordan’s time, Jordan’s time. It’s more stable.”

  I lunged for the bridle, but Malachi swung the horse from my reach.

  “You’ll find him in Belvedere Castle,” he cried over a shoulder. “The final jump is at the Morton Building.”

  Then he disappeared into a fierce swirl of snowfall.

  35

  Swearing, I looked from where Malachi had vanished to our one remaining horse.

  “Bree-yark and I can hoof it,” Gorgantha said.

  The goblin stepped up beside her importantly. “That’s right, you guys take the horse.”

  “It’s going to be a three-mile journey through snow,” I warned him.

  “We’re up to it,” Bree-yark assured me.

  I had no idea how his stubby legs were going to keep pace with Gorgantha’s powerful strides, much less the horse’s, but we were short of options. Caroline adjusted the saddle forward and mounted the horse. I set Arnaud, who still weighed next to nothing, behind her, then climbed on myself.

  We headed east over the misshapen landscape, a shield invocation keeping the cold off Arnaud. Gorgantha followed in the horse’s wake, while Bree-yark huffed and puffed behind her. I kept peering past them, hoping to see Malachi, Seay, and her friends charging up in our wake, but we were alone.

  The horse plowed through woods and meadows, across what would become Central Park, then into the future Upper East Side. When the East River appeared through the trees, Caroline veered north. We paralleled the thin stretch of Roosevelt Island, which sat mid-river, to where the shore bent out at the present-day mayor’s mansion.

  Caroline trotted the horse to a stop. Gorgantha and Bree-yark soon arrived beside us, the goblin panting like a bellows, steam rising from his soaked shirt. To his credit, he’d kept up. We were looking out over a narrow neck of the river, where the waters swirled and churned past a cluster of jutting rocks.

  “Hell Gate,” Caroline announced.

  I peered around until I spotted a small snow-covered boulder field glowing in the moon light. “The interface must be in there.”

  I dismounted and lifted Arnaud down. He wavered but remained upright. When I gave Caroline a hand to the ground, the demon-vampire looked at me intensely. I ignored him. The priority right now was getting out of this time catch.

  “Stay together,” I called as I seized Arnaud’s arm and led the way toward the boulders.

  I’d felt low rumbles on the ride here, but now they began to grow. Tree-trunks fractured like popping knuckles, and boulders shifted. I scanned the field through the whipping snow, looking for any traces of the interface. Behind me, Caroline held her hood over her brow to screen her eyes.

  “See anything?” I shouted.

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  Reality suddenly flipped on an axis toward the river. We began to slide. Boulders dislodged from their deep embeddings, and trees toppled. Pivoting my cane toward my feet, I cried, “Protezione!”

  The air hardened into a solid ledge, catching the five of us, along with a sheet of debris. I closed the shield around us as larger elements crashed and tumbled past. I looked back for our horse, but the poor thing was no longer there. I swore, even though she was part and parcel of the failing reality.

  A massive tree split against the peaked roof of our shielding, prompting Bree-yark to wrap his head in his arms. “Holy thunder!” he shouted as the tree fell to either side of us.

  Reality continued to rotate until we were perched on the equivalent of a cliff wall. Gorgantha stared between her webbed feet at the waters of Hell Gate raging below. The distorting forces were growing increasingly unruly. Molars clenching, I upped the effort to keep my shield from twisting apart.

  “There!” Caroline called.

  She was pointing at where the boulder field had been. With only a couple of the massive stones remaining, the interface was now in plain view. It pulsated in the ground like a large jellyfish, multi-colored and transparent. At over a hundred feet away, though, the challenge was going to be reaching it.

  “Hold on,” I said.

  Gotta turn this baby into an express elevator.

  Opening a hole in the floor of our protection, I aimed my sword down and shouted, “Forza dura!”

  The force that blasted from the blade cratered the river’s edge and produced a massive counterforce. Our conveyance rocketed upward, crashing through falling trees and debris—and overshot the target. With a second invocation, I hardened the air into a shelf below the interface. A plummeting boulder slammed into our ascent, and we landed hard on the shelf, ending up face to face with the swimming interface
.

  Praise be.

  I quickly locked us in place. On the ride over, my plan had been to hunker near the interface and wait for Malachi to return with Seay and the others. I squinted toward what had once been south, but it was a pandemonium of warping terrain and falling wreckage. My shield twisted savagely, spouting sparks over us. With a Word, I dissolved the wall of hardened air separating us from the interface.

  “Go!” I shouted, waving my teammates in.

  Bree-yark disappeared through the interface first, followed by Gorgantha, then Caroline.

  I took a final look south. Still no one. With a pit in my stomach, I seized Arnaud and pulled him through as the shield failed behind us.

  I face-planted into the ground, the rest of me landing at an odd angle that knocked the wind from my lungs. I rolled onto my back and gasped for air. The sun glared through leafy treetops, thawing my face and hands.

  Wherever we are, it’s not winter.

  As my breath returned, I pushed myself upright. Arnaud, who had landed beside me, did the same. Caroline was already on her feet, checking on Gorgantha and Bree-yark. The two staggered from some bushes, Dropsy peering from the top of Bree-yark’s pouch. An asphalt walkway wound past our weedy patch of lawn. Modern buildings rose beyond the trees, and I could hear car traffic. We were in one of the city’s parks. More importantly, we were in a time catch that wasn’t falling apart.

  “Everyone all right?” I called hoarsely as I gained my feet.

  “Better than a few second ago,” Gorgantha said, giving her head a quick shake.

  Bree-yark was rubbing his right hip, but he grunted his assent.

  “How about you?” Caroline asked. She had the concerned look I’d grown accustomed to, but now it had me bristling with suspicion again.

  “Fine,” I said, spitting dirt and dead grass from my lips and brushing off my coat. “Any idea where we are?”

  “Schurz Park,” she said, “just below the mayor’s mansion.”

  When I peered around, I found the East River sparkling through a span of trees. Geographically, this time catch lined up with the last one. I turned toward the street now. “That puts us at about East Eighty-seventh.”

  “And where did Malachi say Jordan was?” Gorgantha asked. “Some sort of palace?”

  “Belvedere Castle,” I said. “It’s in Central Park.”

  “What would he be doing there?” Bree-yark grunted.

  I had the same question, Belvedere Castle being a mostly decorative building that offered some nice views. “My guess is he tried to reach Harriman Park, but couldn’t because of a time interface. The castle might have been the only refuge he could find. Of course, there’s no telling how long he’s been here.”

  “Must be after the recent Crash, then,” Caroline said.

  Half of Bree-yark’s brow ridge went up. “How do you figure?”

  “After the Crash, the city slashed the Parks and Rec budget, and that included security,” she explained. “The only way he and the other druids are living there is if no one’s visiting the park and no one’s in authority to kick them out.”

  As she talked, I noticed the fresh graffiti covering a stone wall.

  “Means the park’s gonna be hella dangerous too,” Gorgantha said. “Should we wait for Malachi and Seay?”

  Bree-yark slid me a grim look. The chances of Malachi and Seay having escaped the failing time catch were toward the none side of slim, but I didn’t want to have to tell Gorgantha that. I swallowed back an upwelling of grief and anger.

  “Malachi will know to look for us at the park,” Caroline replied.

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah. We can walk there in thirty, but let’s hail a cab.”

  “A’right,” Gorgantha said. “Though you might wanna stick some clothes on me.”

  Before Caroline could cast a glamour, I took her hand. “That thing I wanted to ask you about in the cave? Do you have a sec?”

  It was time we couldn’t afford, but I didn’t want to keep doubting her, either. That would only undermine what remained of our team. I signaled for the others to keep an eye on Arnaud as I walked off with her a short distance.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  I stopped and faced her. “Arnaud claims his memories of 1776 weren’t wiped. He’s saying you made that up.”

  “Is he also saying I’m the demon?”

  “He suggested as much.”

  “Well, I’m not.” A weariness weighed on her eyes that convinced me even more than her denial. Add to that the fact she’d been unphased by my banishment attack at Crusspatch’s cottage—

  “But yes,” she said, “I lied about his memories being scrubbed.”

  I blinked twice. “What? Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want to worry your fiancée.”

  “Vega?”

  I thought back to the holding area at 1 Police Plaza. When Vega asked how long I’d known Arnaud offered a way into the time catch, Caroline had covered for me. She may also have sensed my dilemma over the stability factor. Tell Vega? Remain silent? I’d gone with the second, obviously. And now Caroline was claiming she’d followed suit. Lying so she wouldn’t have to announce that the time catch was as unstable as Arnaud had claimed.

  “I also wanted to verify his memories,” she said, “ensure they weren’t lies. Which we were able to do in his office.”

  The copper plates and their placement. By Arnaud’s own admission, that had been the extent of what he knew of Malphas’s plans for the St. Martin’s site. The rest was guesswork. His demon master had managed his scheme well.

  “I’m sorry,” Caroline said. “I should have told you.”

  “Was there anything else in his memories?”

  “Nothing useful.”

  “Nothing about a Night Rune?”

  She shook her head. “That didn’t come up.”

  “He claims his master mentioned it,” I said, “but he could also have heard us talking. He’s been conscious most of this time.”

  Caroline’s brow furrowed. “He has?”

  “At least partially.”

  “Damn, something must have shifted with his draining energy. I’ll need to monitor my enchantments better.”

  “It might have been for the best,” I said. “My magic suggested Arnaud had something to say worth hearing.”

  “Did he?”

  “Well, he claims he was enslaved to Malphas and that he wants to see him destroyed as much as we do.”

  “Should we believe him?”

  “A dangerous proposition, but the brand on Arnaud’s neck lends credibility to the enslavement part. I don’t doubt he was mistreated, either. That’s consistent with what I know about demons. So if a and b are true, I’m also inclined to believe c, him wanting Malphas destroyed. Arnaud’s nothing if not vengeful.”

  “What’s he offering?”

  “At this point only theories,” I said, not ready to go into them.

  She peered past me at where he was standing with the others. “He must have an angle.”

  “Oh, Arnaud always does. We’ll need to keep eagle eyes on him.”

  “So are we good?” she asked.

  When I looked back, Caroline was watching me carefully. We were at a juncture where I had to decide whether I was going to trust her or not, and then stick with that decision. Waffling would only undermine our chances of success.

  I pulled her into a hug. “We’re good.”

  The strength of her return embrace told me just how much she’d needed that.

  “Thanks for looking out for me and Vega,” I said.

  “Of course.” When we separated, her nose was ruddy and she sniffled once. “Belvedere Castle?”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Oh, you’re not going anywhere.”

  I turned to find a group of hoodlums climbing the steps from a lower tier of the park. The six of them barely looked teenaged, but that could have been an illusion created by their baggy pants and oversized jerseys
. Judging by the brands and styles, Caroline had the period right.

  “This is our turf,” the lead one said. “And you’re trespassing.”

  I searched his and the others’ hands, but none were wielding weapons.

  “C’mon,” I whispered to Caroline, a shield already hardening the air around us.

  I’d blast them if they came closer, but I doubted they would. This was a territorial display. A good thirty yards separated us, and running wasn’t considered cool. We’d reach the street before they reached us.

  “You owe a tribute,” the leader called. “To the Raven Circle.”

  I’d been turning with Caroline, but I stopped now and squinted back at them.

  The Raven Circle was the name of Jordan’s druid group.

  36

  None of the hoodlums gave off druidic energy, but before I could ply them for info about this Raven Circle, Bree-yark shouted from behind me.

  “You want a tribute?!”

  A fist-sized rock shot past me and nailed the leader in the forehead. His sunglasses fell from his head in two pieces, revealing a pair of upturned eyes. He toppled straight back. Stunned by the sudden attack, the remaining hoodlums stood there instead of catching him. His body tumbled down the stone staircase.

  “Anyone else?” Bree-yark barked, loading another rock into his sling.

  A gunshot cracked in answer. Someone in the back of their pack had pulled a snub nose revolver from his pants. Before things could get out of hand, I swung my sword toward them and shouted, “Vigore!”

  An arcing force discharged from the blade. Hoodlums went airborne, raining hats and shoes as they flipped over one another and disappeared down the hill they’d just climbed. Judging by the thudding bodies and wailing that followed, they were in no shape to pursue us. The Raven Circle name-drop was still bugging me, but if this was post-crash New York City, we’d already been in the park too long.

  “Everyone all right?” I asked as I returned with Caroline toward the others.

  Gorgantha relaxed her bowed arms. “Yeah, but I wasn’t gonna feel right about smacking down a bunch of babies. Glad I didn’t have to.”