Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8)

by Brad Magnarella

  “Let’s clear the lower level and head up,” the lead wereboar decided.

  I waited for them to lumber down the stairwell before invoking a shield over the entrance. It wouldn’t hold the bruisers long, but I only needed it to keep them off us until we could find Jordan.

  I led the way from our hiding place and up the stairs. The next level appeared to be the living quarters. Natural light entered through ports in the stone walls. Several potted trees rose and spread their leafy branches throughout a common area of wooden furniture. To one side, six cloaked figures conversed in low voices. Others went in and out of side rooms. We’d found the druids.

  I recognized several from the prison ship rescue in 1776 New York, but none of them were Jordan. I peeked down at the symbol on my hand. Pushing power into it would mean compromising our stealth magic, but with time ticking down until the wereboars came back, I decided to go ahead.

  The symbol began to glow at the same time the barrier over the lower stairwell shuddered. The wereboars had returned from the sublevel, and at least one was pummeling the barrier with his club. The next blows rattled the castle walls.

  The druids turned toward the stairwell, all peering past Gorgantha and me. Except for one. She squinted, then drew back, a quarterstaff seeming to manifest from the billowing flap of her cloak and into her hands.

  “Intruders!” she cried.

  The others moved into a defensive formation, quarterstaffs aimed outward. “Where?” one of them asked. The druid who’d spotted us lunged forward, magic gathering around the end of her staff.

  A force met her chin and leveled her.

  “Right here,” Gorgantha said, rubbing her fist.

  “Go easy,” I reminded her. “They’re friends, even if they don’t know it yet.”

  I’d pulled a tube of encumbering potion from my pocket. Uncapping it, I shouted an invocation. The potion frothed and jetted from the tube. I canted it back and forth, hosing as many of the druids as I could. Their slowing motion made it appear as if the air had become a thick mud they were attempting to stir with their staffs.

  The element of surprise was serving us well. Still cloaked in stealth magic, Gorgantha charged into the druids’ midst, yanking staffs from grips and shoving druids to the stone floor. When my tube sputtered out, I grabbed and activated another. This time I aimed it at the druids rushing in from the side rooms. Several shifted to their raven forms and scattered, presumably in search of backup.

  I managed to coat one with a jet of encumbering potion. Its slowing wingbeats failed to keep it aloft, and it tumbled to the floor. Gorgantha backhanded another into a wall. But two made it out, one disappearing up a stairwell and another out an observation port. A moment later, two shotgun blasts shouted.

  Attaboy, Bree-yark, I thought, picturing the plummeting birds.

  The symbol on my hand, which had been glowing softly this whole time, pulsed suddenly. It had established a connection with Jordan.

  “He’s upstairs!” I called to Gorgantha.

  I just hoped the power of the bond would be enough to shake Jordan from his time catch-induced amnesia as it had done with Seay.

  The mermaid tossed away a quarterstaff and stepped from the mass of druids writhing on the floor like slugs, too encumbered to push themselves upright. We were almost to the stairs leading up when I gasped from a hit of return energy. The barrier downstairs had failed. Hoofed feet pounded the length of the basement and climbed the next stairwell, accompanied by a storm of furious grunts.

  I cast another barrier behind us. It shook as the first wereboar collided into it. I’d burned through enough stealth potion by now that he caught my spectral form fleeing up the stairs with Gorgantha.

  “You’re dead meat!” he boomed.

  Gorgantha and I reached the next level as fresh pounding sounded below. This floor looked like an operations center, with tables spread out and maps affixed to walls. It was empty, though, and the bond was still pulling me upward. Taking the final stairwell three steps at a time, I dashed through an anteroom and out onto the castle’s observation deck. I was familiar with this part of the castle—I’d brought a high school date here once—and quickly oriented myself to our surroundings. The lake Gorgantha and I had arrived by stood to the north while the thick treetops of the Ramble appeared south of us.

  Pushing more power into the bond, I shouted, “Jordan!”

  Gorgantha called his name too. “It’s your old friends,” she said, “the Upholders!”

  A large raven burst from the trees, morphing into a human as he swooped down. He landed on the far side of the observation deck, cloak flapping, quarterstaff crackling with energy. The druid’s head was shaven to a brown sheen, but I recognized the glowing sigils at his temples and the intensity in his dark eyes.

  “I have no old friends,” Jordan said.

  41

  Before I could appeal to whatever memories he’d retained, Jordan’s staff arced into motion. I threw up a shield, absorbing his blast, but the attack wasn’t pure force. On impact, a faint cloud of druidic magic burst out. Some of it filtered past my protection. The observation deck fragmented, and I fought for balance.

  “You all right?” Gorgantha asked.

  “Yeah.” I blinked. “Some sort of hallucinogenic attack.”

  She swung toward him. “It’s us, dummy! Everson and Gorgantha!”

  Jordan continued forward, another charge building on his staff. “All I see are invaders.”

  Shaking my head clear, I pulled an encumbering potion from my pocket. Jordan was too distant to attempt to hose him like I’d done the others. Instead, I shouted, “Vigore!” and let the entire vial fly from my hand. But with my vision still out of whack, I missed wide and the vial shattered against a stone wall.

  Jordan thrust his staff, this time at Gorgantha. Once more, my shield stood up to the assault, but he’d smuggled in another follow-up attack. A dusty magic billowed past the barrier and stuck to Gorgantha’s damp skin like chalk.

  With a shouted Word, I sent a second encumbering potion at him. Jordan brought his staff around. Shatter, I thought urgently. Shatter and soak him. But instead of breaking the vial, the glancing contact sent it popping up like a foul ball. It smashed against a set of steps leading down to the park.

  Dammit.

  “I-I’m drying out,” Gorgantha stammered.

  When I glanced over, her scaly skin looked dull and brittle, and cracks were appearing along the lines of her muscles. Jordan must have used a desiccating spell. I jerked my head toward the parapet at our backs. “Go!”

  Gorgantha hesitated, but when fluid began seeping from her eyes, she broke toward the wall and hurtled it. A moment later, a splash sounded from the lake below.

  Hope to hell she’s all right. From halfway across the observation deck, Jordan thrust his staff again. This time I met his blast with one of my own. The collision sent us each staggering backwards, dust exploding between us. From the Ramble, I could hear the snorting stampede of returning wereboars.

  Yeah, just what I need.

  I looked around for Caroline, who was supposed to be nearby.

  “Don’t know who you are,” Jordan said. “But you’re about to get a painful lesson in why no one challenges the Raven Circle.”

  “I’m not here to challenge your damn circle,” I barked. “Think back, Jordan. You were part of a team called the Upholders. We went to 1776 New York to recover your druid circle, your wife. We found them on a prison ship in the East River. Time got screwed up, and you ended up here—in another time catch, about five years short of the present. Your real home is in Harriman State Park.”

  I was pushing power into our bond as I spoke. But though the symbol shone on his hand, it didn’t restore his memories as it had done Seay’s—or even give him pause. Jordan didn’t so much as glance down.

  “We came to get you out of here,” I said.

  “Oh, I believe that part.” Jordan thrust his staff again.

 
Already seeing his aim was off to the left, I darted right while drawing out another encumbering potion. But I realized too late he’d been positioning me. When I bumped up against the stone parapet, a mass of vines swarmed around my shielded body like a carnivorous plant on anabolic steroids.

  “Respingere!” I shouted.

  The pulse ripped through them, but the vines regenerated before I could break away. Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs leading from the park to the observation deck.

  Aaand that will be the wereboars, I thought grimly.

  But it was Bree-yark. The goblin swung the pump-action shotgun toward Jordan. “That him?”

  Before I could answer, or Jordan could react, a raven appeared from behind the castle’s conical tower. Still following my raven-shooting order, Bree-yark pivoted and fired. The raven shrieked as silver shot tore through its wings. By the time the plummeting bird hit the deck, we were looking at a human.

  “Delphine!” Jordan yelled.

  Shit. We’d just dropped his wife.

  “Hold fire!” I shouted at Bree-yark. But he’d left his feet and was flying through the air, the recipient of Jordan’s staff attack. The goblin landed in a tumble, body and shotgun rolling over one another.

  Jordan backed toward his wife, staff held toward me. Deciding I was too busy with the animation spell to threaten them, he knelt and began working to revive her.

  And I was busy. Even after another repulse invocation, the vines continued to pile over me. My shield buckled under the ever-mounting pounds per square inch. But I still had my encumbering potion in hand. I opened the vial, expelled it from my shielding, and watched the leafy mass consume it.

  Within seconds, the writhing and squeezing slowed until it just felt like I was buried under a pile of dead weight. The next pulse from my shield shoved the plant animation off me, and I was free.

  But now wereboars were stampeding up the steps, returning from their wild goose chase. Two more weres broke from the castle doors—the ones I’d trapped on the lower levels. As the hulking creatures arrived on the deck, they slowed to a menacing stalk. Eyes glared above tusked snouts. Truncheon-like clubs stood from fists. The wereboars’ collective snorts sounded like a tractor convention.

  “Bree-yark!” I shouted.

  The goblin, who was sitting up groggily, saw the danger and scrambled over until he was beside me. He swung the shotgun from one advancing wereboar to another, but there had to be at least twenty of them. My shield would keep them at bay, but long enough to shoot and force-blast them into submission?

  “Call them off!” I shouted at Jordan. “I’m just proposing we talk!”

  I couldn’t see him—the brutes had come between us—but I picked up his response: “Put them down.”

  Before the order could propagate through the ranks, I dug into a pocket and pulled out the lightning grenades from Everson’s stash. Angling my mouth toward Bree-yark, I said, “Take the ones from the castle.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  He turned and fired into the left one, pumped the action, and emptied another shell into his partner. Clubs clattered to the concrete, and the shrieking wereboars threw their hands to their smoking, silver-blasted faces. Meanwhile, the large pack that had come up from the park broke into a charge.

  Rolling the lightning grenades toward them, I shouted, “Attivare!”

  A biting scent of ozone cut through the air an instant before jags of lightning crashed down. The lightning impacted at the front of the charge, blowing wereboars every which way. Those still arriving reared back with piercing squeals. Half deaf and with an electrical buzz lingering in my teeth, I pressed the attack.

  Seizing an encumbering vial in each hand, I shouted, “Vigore!”

  The potions erupted into jets, and I rained them over the mass of wereboars. Having incapacitated the pair from the castle, Bree-yark turned and began blowing silver shot into the main pack.

  “Stop!” someone called. “Please, stop!”

  The plea was coming from where Jordan had been tending to his wife, but the voice wasn’t his. I signaled for Bree-yark to hold fire. The spreading wereboars turned—most in slow motion now—until I could see Jordan’s wife. Rising to her feet, she looked from the observation deck to Jordan.

  “Everson is our friend,” she said.

  “I still can’t…” Jordan trailed off. “It’s just so insane.”

  “Hey, I freaked pretty hard at first too,” Gorgantha assured him. “At least you weren’t in a damn fish tank.”

  We were gathered in a meeting room inside the castle. Following the ceasefire, events had de-escalated quickly. Jordan’s wife ordered the wereboars off and convinced her husband to stand down. Caroline had apparently gotten to Jordan’s wife in the park and restored her memories. Which was why Delphine had flown back—to tell Jordan who we were. Bree-yark muttered one apology after another for shotgun-blasting her, but it was my fault, and I let them know. He’d been following my orders.

  Caroline had arrived shortly after with Arnaud, and Delphine convinced her husband to allow Caroline to work on him. Meanwhile, Gorgantha climbed up from the lake. Her plunge had washed most of the druid spell off her, and it only took a dose of my healing magic to finish restoring her body from its desiccated state.

  “I’m really sorry, guys,” Jordan said.

  He had been holding his head in his hands, and now he looked up from the table. Delphine remained beside him stroking his back, while two more druids sat to his left. Everyone from my team, including a muzzled Arnaud, took up the table’s remaining seats. We even gave Dropsy a place when she began fussing in Bree-yark’s pouch. Now the top of her glass face poked above the table.

  “I remember everything now,” Jordan said. “But how in the hell did I forget it in the first place? How did I forget the Upholders?”

  “It’s just a feature of these time catches,” Caroline said.

  “Yeah, it would have happened to any of us,” I said. “Go easy on yourself.”

  When his searching eyes met mine, he nodded back in what appeared gratitude. He and I had already exchanged bro hugs, which told me he was truly himself. His mind was just processing the aftershocks.

  “You were telling us how you got here?” I prompted.

  “Yeah, right.” He inhaled sharply as though to anchor himself. “After leaving Brooklyn in 1776, we tried to get up to Harriman State Park, but we kept finding ourselves in different times. When we got to this one, we decided to set up base in the park and go about it more systematically—we were under the impression there was a portal back to the present, that it was just a matter of finding it. We didn’t realize it was like you described, everything stuck together in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Problem was,” Delphine said, “there was already a gang of wereboars here. Thinking they were smalltime, we drove half from the fort and charmed the other half for security. You know, to keep the freaks and nasties away. It was only going to be temporary, but it turned out they were part of a secret network.”

  A network Everson apparently hadn’t known about it, I thought.

  Jordan gave an exasperated snort. “Yeah, and when word reached the rest of the network that the boars were in our service, they assumed there had been a power transfer. Before we knew it, we were the head of a citywide syndicate. We went along with it at first, mostly to avoid a major power struggle.”

  “Remember now, we weren’t planning on staying here,” Delphine put in.

  “And then we just … forgot.” Jordan’s expression turned incredulous again.

  “Is that why you went with the tough boss look?” Gorgantha asked.

  “Oh, this?” Jordan rubbed his glistening pate. “Naw, that had to do with something else that came up.”

  Delphine smirked. “He got gum stuck in his hair.”

  “Yeah, but then I decided I liked the look.” He poked her side playfully.

  When Delphine laughed, I caught myself grinning. Even though they’d
landed in an impossible situation, they’d endured it together. By their distorted experience of time, that had been almost two years ago.

  Jordan squared his shoulders back toward us. “So, do we know where Seay and Malachi ended up?”

  I felt my smile shrink. “We found them, actually.”

  “No shit?”

  With the others’ help, I gave Jordan and the druids a summary account of everything that had happened. Jordan listened with his usual intensity. When we finished, he tapped his steepled fingers against his chin.

  “So we have no idea if they made it out of 1660?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, glancing over at Gorgantha. “But they may have left by a different route. Malachi had already given us the portal location for 1776. The Morton Building downtown. They could be waiting for us there.”

  “And we don’t know how much longer this period is going to be solvent,” Caroline added. “The collapse of 1660 likely started a chain effect that will gain momentum as it rolls through the remaining catches.”

  “So obviously the sooner we can all get there,” I said, “the better.”

  “And that’s where you believe the demon boss is planning his big move?” Jordan asked.

  “Arnaud confirmed that he placed the copper plates to boost the site’s ley energy.” When I looked over at the demon-vampire, he was staring back at me. “And I haven’t discussed this with everyone yet, but I have reason to believe Malphas was interested in your races for their elemental properties.”

  “Explain,” Jordan said.

  The small furrow returned between Caroline’s eyebrows. “Yes, please do.”

  “Malphas acquired rights to the Strangers through three different demon masters. The ones who infiltrated the mer, half-fae, and druids. Races that correspond with Water, Air, and Earth. That’s why Malphas was holding them—holding you,” I amended, gesturing to Delphine and the druids. “To draw out those essences. Malphas wields Infernal Fire through the final demon, who’s probably already at the St. Martin’s site. All he needs now is Spirit to complete his five elements, his Aristotelean Set.”