Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8)

by Brad Magnarella

  “We’ll start making our way downtown,” I said, “but we’re going to have to take a side trip to track Arnaud.”

  “No, we won’t,” Bree-yark said.

  Before I could tap into the wards that bound Arnaud, the goblin stuck his hand under a seat and hauled up the demon-vampire by the back of his neck manacle. I stared for a moment, not believing he hadn’t fled. Had his fear of Malphas’s demons overwhelmed all other instincts? Is that why he’d stayed? Or did he believe his best chance at freedom was the infernal deal he’d proposed to me?

  “Unhand me, you brute,” Arnaud hissed, swiping his manacled hands around.

  With a growl, Bree-yark shoved the demon-vampire up the aisle. “Do we even need him anymore?”

  I caught Arnaud as he stumbled against me. “What do you mean?”

  “If Caroline is sending us Osgood,” Bree-yark said, “having a demonic line is pointless now, right?”

  That got some mutters of agreement from the rest of the bus. Though Jordan and Gorgantha remained quiet this time, I could see by their eyes that they were ready to dispose of Arnaud too. Even Seay was giving him a black look. And Caroline was no longer here to defend me. My gaze returned to Bree-yark. I might have considered what he was suggesting if it hadn’t been for Arianna’s dream visit.

  Find Arnaud, she’d said.

  There was a connection between him and freeing the Order from the Harkless Rift, one I still hadn’t found.

  “He’s our backup plan,” I said firmly. “He’s coming.”

  Though Bree-yark grumbled, the others fell silent. They’d already experienced firsthand the consequences of not having a backup plan for returning to the present, and it had sucked big time.

  With no wereboar to drive us, I inherited the responsibility by virtue of being the last one to board. I settled into the air-cushioned seat, then pulled down a narrow seat beside me that was probably used for training.

  “Sit down,” I told Arnaud.

  Though no longer under Caroline’s enchantments, he complied. As I leaned over to strap him in, he hissed in my ear.

  “The alert was a freebie,” he said, referring to his warning that Caroline’s husband hadn’t been the demon. “The next time, it will mean invoking our little agreement. In exchange for my help, you’ll release me,” he reminded me. “Not only from these wards, but from any and all acts of retribution—by you, your Order, or anyone you can think to contract. For my part, I’ll promise to stay away.”

  I ignored him, telling myself it would never come to that.

  But had I ever thought he would end up sparing Angelus’s life?

  I looked out the driver window. The pileup against the side of the bus ran three and four cars deep. The backup extended for several blocks now, even overflowing onto the sidewalks. Several ambulance and police vehicles were trying to nose their way through, while a small army of first responders had already disembarked and were hustling through the backup to reach the accident scene.

  I do not want to deal with these guys.

  As instructed, the wereboar had left the bus running, and it only took a moment for me to orient myself to the transmission and pedals. By going into forward and reverse several times, I was able to separate from the wreckage by degrees. Soon, I had enough room to turn the bus south toward the empty road. As I accelerated, the frame squealed against the left front tire, drowning out the shouts of the arriving officers.

  “They’re going to be looking for a city bus,” I called.

  “We’re on it,” Seay answered. “Want anything special?”

  “Yeah, not a city bus.”

  Fae magic stirred, and when I checked the side mirror, I saw that I was now driving one of those pink party buses. I couldn’t complain though. The half-fae were also glamouring the traffic lights, giving me green clearance for as far as the eye could see. I only had to slow to round Union Square before picking up Broadway right before it angled south toward the spires of the Financial District.

  Beside me, Arnaud had fallen silent. Something in his small, pensive frown suggested the mortal he’d once been.

  I blew through the Village and Soho, and before long we were passing City Hall and the intersection where Barnum’s Museum had once stood. The formidable Wall loomed ahead along Liberty Street. Only there were four armed guards at the checkpoint, all signaling for me to slow down.

  C’mon, kid, I thought. Tell me you got there ahead of us.

  I kept my foot on the gas, but cast a shield over the front of the bus to be safe.

  When I got to within two blocks of the Wall, the guards raised their rifles. At one block, a force scattered them. A row of bollards that had begun to rise from the pavement behind them, sank again, clearing our way.

  “Hell, yeah!” I shouted, pumping a fist and pressing the accelerator.

  As our pink bus sped through the checkpoint, I gave a thumbs-up to the phantom in the control booth, a young man who looked remarkably like me. I then narrowed my eyes toward Wall Street, needing to reach our target before the time catch version of Arnaud reacted to the egregious breach of his domain.

  At the next block, the bedrock under Manhattan shuddered.

  Forget the damned vampire. The time catch is starting to fail.

  Pedestrians fell to the sidewalks and red brake lights glared ahead of us. I swerved around a line of cars pulling over, then slowed to push between a pair of cabs stopped in the middle of the street. Metal keened as the bus shoved them apart. I accelerated again, our destination just blocks away now.

  Hold it together a little longer, I told the time catch.

  A violent rumble shook the bus, tottering it onto one set of wheels and then the other. Ahead, the asphalt undulated like waves. Water shot from a sudden fracture in the street, soon joined by fire from a ruptured gas line.

  “Shit,” I muttered, veering onto Cedar Street.

  “The buildings are really swaying,” Bree-yark said in a worried voice.

  In the rearview mirror, I caught him angling his neck to peer upward. I straightened my gaze as chunks of masonry began landing around us. One flattened a sleek Mercedes Benz I was passing, its glass spraying the side of the bus. As I extended my shield to cover our rooftop, Malachi shoved his wild head of hair between me and Arnaud.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Oh, could be better,” I said, jerking our ride south to avoid a yawning crevasse.

  “At the next intersection, turn right,” Malachi said.

  “I was going to try to hook back up with Broadway.”

  He shook his head. “No, no, that way’s blocked.” He jabbed a finger at the upcoming turn. “Right, right!”

  I followed his direction. “Divine Voice?”

  “Divine Voice,” he said, his own voice wild with conviction. “It’s going to get us there.”

  After what I’d seen him do to the twin demons, I believed him. Still, the world was coming apart fast, and we were getting farther from our target.

  “Left!” he cried.

  “There’s no turn.”

  “Left!”

  I swerved onto the sidewalk, blowing through a line of vendor wagons. Hotdog and falafel carts exploded to either side of the bus, while their umbrellas tumbled past my view. The ground shuddered as two massive pieces of falling building burst against the road where I’d just been.

  “Good call,” I said in a shaky voice.

  From there, I followed every command Malachi gave, avoiding more falling building parts, while swerving around ruptures, geysers, and sudden gouts of fire. As smoke closed around us, his directions became even more essential. I found the switch for the headlights, but I could barely make out the street signs now.

  “The portal is at the bottom of an excavation site,” he said during a rare lull.

  “I thought it was at the Morton Building.”

  “Behind the Morton Building. It was a planned addition, planned addition.”

  “Financed by Chillington
Capital,” Arnaud put in, referencing his old firm.

  “Construction was put on hold during the Crash,” Malachi said, prompting Arnaud to mutter something about a spineless builder.

  “How deep a pit are we talking?” I asked.

  “The project had only begun,” Arnaud said. “So, not very.”

  “Turn!” Malachi called.

  I followed his jabbing finger to the right. Suddenly, we were rushing up on a block ringed in tall construction fencing and yellow signs. The street shook violently, and the rumbling around us turned into a roar. I didn’t have to look to know that buildings were coming down. Before I could ask Malachi what to do, the time catch itself bent. Our street fractured and canted down, sending us straight toward the fence.

  “The entrance!” Malachi shouted.

  I angled the bus toward a short ramp that ended at a closed gate in the fencing.

  “Hold on, everyone!” I shouted, peering up at the mirror. They were already hunkered down.

  Beyond them, a pale cloud of smoke and debris was charging toward us. We smashed through the gate at the same moment the cloud swallowed us. Darkness filled the bus. I stomped the brakes and incanted another layer of protection around us. The bus banged and rattled and then the nose veered down.

  Holy shit, we’re plunging.

  As I gripped the wheel helplessly, Malachi remained at my shoulder.

  “It’s okay, the portal is below!” he shouted. “The final reckoning is at hand, is at hand!”

  A dizzying show of lights rippled around us, and then blackness.

  45

  The cool breeze that brushed my face smelled of salt and marsh.

  Seized by a feeling of plunging, I shoved myself upright. The world rocked violently for a moment, but only in my head. I was sitting in the middle of a wide dirt road under a full moon. Stately buildings rose in a procession along one side of the thoroughfare, while the other side was a blackened ruins.

  This looked for all the world like 1776 New York. But where was everyone else?

  “Hello?” I called, grasping my cane from the ground beside me. “Seay? Gorgantha?” I wobbled to my feet. “Jordan? Malachi?”

  There was no bus, no druids or half-fae, no Upholders. A block away, my gaze stopped on a familiar foundation of stone slabs scattered with earth and cinder. The St. Martin’s site. Only I was viewing it from the north side now. It had taken one hell of a journey, but I was finally around the barrier.

  And alone.

  “Bree-yark?” I shouted, panic growing inside me.

  Wiping dirt from the bonding sigil on my hand, I pushed power into it. A moment later, I felt the faintest tug.

  Okay, I thought, exhaling, the Upholders are here somewhere.

  I pivoted in a circle, shouting their names again. “It’s Everson!”

  Still no answer, and the bonding sigil wasn’t giving me a direction. My trench coat rustled as I strode toward the St. Martin’s site and pulled my cane into sword and staff.

  Through my wizard’s senses, I watched ley energy gushing from the foundation. In four surrounding locations, dispersed energy was being collected, concentrated, and channeled back at the fount. Two of the locations were buildings on the far side of Broadway. The other two were structures that stood in the blackened field beyond the site, cleverly disguised to look like casualties of the fire. All four held the copper paneling Arnaud had installed, and all were active, creating the cross-like pattern my grandfather had observed.

  There were secondary and tertiary locations for energy amplification set farther back, but these four were the main ones. And presumably being operated by Arnaud’s replacement, Malphas’s final demon.

  Was he waiting for us? I thought with stinging dread. Did he get to the others?

  As I neared the St. Martin’s site, I felt the growing intensity Malachi had described. Raw, concentrated ley. But where was the platform he’d seen? Where were the containers for the essences Malphas had siphoned? Where was the rest of his Night Ruin?

  “Everson!” someone cried.

  I wheeled to find a lone figure running down Broadway, all ragged hair and tattered clothes. I breathed a silent prayer as Malachi covered the final block, but I checked his aura to be sure. The chaotic pattern was a match to my teammate’s.

  “Have you seen the others?” I asked.

  “No,” he panted as he arrived in front of me, his Bible clutched to his chest. “I was going to ask you the same, the same.”

  “This is it, right? The 1776 site?”

  “It looks different than the last time I was here, but yes. It has to be.”

  “What about the final demon? Can you sense anything?”

  He peered around, then shook his head.

  “Where did you end up?”

  “Couple blocks over, by New Dutch Church.” He pointed toward the northeast.

  “There’s a good chance we’re all scattered, then.” When I noticed Malachi shying from the intensity of the St. Martin’s site, I said, “How about you go look for the others, and I’ll start dismantling the copper panels, cripple the power source. It doesn’t look like Malphas has his Night Ruin up and running.” Until we found the others I was going to be on edge, but the fact we’d arrived here in time was a huge relief.

  But Malachi was peering back at me with a meditative face, the burned half shining in the moon’s glow.

  “Did you have another idea?” I asked.

  “When I was returning with Seay and the others, I had some time to think. And now I’m wondering, I’m wondering…” He rubbed his forehead agitatedly. “Did we just do Malphas’s work for him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Aristotelean Set, the five elements. He needed a container for the essences, right? What if the containers, the containers were us? Jordan, Seay, Gorgantha, Arnaud, and … and me, I guess?”

  As I looked from Malachi to the St. Martin’s site, icy fingers crawled down my back.

  “What if that was his plan?” he pressed. “What if that was the reason for manipulating you into coming back the way you did?”

  “Manipulating…?” A flash of irritation hit me. “The hell are you talking about? He was trying to block me.”

  “Or did he just narrow your choices?” He raised a finger. “To one?”

  Though still peeved, I considered the steps the demon Malphas had taken. Removing Osgood as an option for my return, alienating Caroline, and then murdering Crusspatch.

  That had left Arnaud—a demon he couldn’t reach, because of my wards and sigils, but that perhaps he still needed? And when I asked Caroline how she knew about the demon lines, she said Osgood had left the information for her to find. But what if one of the demon twins had in fact left it?

  “The rest of us were already here,” Malachi went on, “in 1776 New York, but then you captured Arnaud, and the time catches collided. I don’t believe Malphas was expecting that, expecting that. But like a powerful demon, he adapted. When we became separated, he needed someone to find us and bring us here. Someone we trusted.”

  I was caring less and less for his suggestion that I’d been an unwitting pawn in Malphas’s plans. But I thought back to how we’d found Gorgantha and Malachi in 1861. Hellcat Maggie had intercepted us, sending us on a mission that led to both teammates. That had seemed a lucky stroke, but what if Malphas’s final demon had pointed the vampire at us?

  And upon finding Malachi, we’d effectively acquired a guide. Locating Seay and Jordan would have been impossible, otherwise.

  But there was a problem with the theory.

  “Then why send his soulless mobs after us?” I asked. “Why try to stop us?”

  “No, no, I think he wanted to speed us along,” he said, pumping his elbows in a running motion. “Keep us moving.”

  “Because of the instability of the time catches?” I mused aloud.

  “Though maybe he sped their demises too,” Malachi said. “He did get us to jump from 1660 to the p
resent to 1776, bam, bam, bam.”

  “Still, it seems too risky. The whole thing.”

  “Maybe another reason for placing it in your hands. You seem to succeed where so many others would have failed.”

  “That doesn’t explain the fae intercepting us, though.”

  “Yes, I’ve been puzzling over that.” Malachi paced in a circle, rubbing his ear. “The demon twins corrupted Angelus through their common bloodline. Still, he’s a powerful fae, and then there’s his love for his wife. Those factors may have overwhelmed the demonic influence, but what did Malphas care if Angelus reclaimed his wife at that point? She’d already served her purpose, and it would mean one less wild card at the end. That was the plan, I believe. Take Caroline and let the rest of us go on our way. The attack, the battle—unexpected, but you wouldn’t have held your own against them otherwise.”

  “We didn’t,” I said, feeling vindicated to have something solid to push back with. “They overwhelmed us and would have slaughtered us if you hadn’t shown up and holy-blasted…” I trailed off, seeing my teammate with fresh eyes.

  “What?” he asked.

  Malachi had freaked out when I suggested we skip to here before recovering all of our teammates. The Upholders must face the forces of the demon apocalypse together, he’d insisted. He was also the one who had rescued Seay from the collapsing time catch and then steered us unerringly through a failing downtown Manhattan. And he seemed to have deduced an awful lot about Malphas’s plans.

  I noticed something else too.

  “You’re not repeating yourself anymore.”

  His mess of hair spilled to one side as he cocked his head. “Huh?”

  “Ever since we found you, you’ve been skipping like a record. But start pontificating on Malphas’s brilliant deceit, and presto—you smooth out. Not only that, you actually sound lucid.”

  Though the lion’s share of ley energy was being redirected at the St. Martin’s site, an energetic field had taken hold around it, one I could draw from and draw powerfully. I summoned a form-fitting shield and activated the sword’s banishment rune until the entire blade sang with resonant white light.