Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8)

by Brad Magnarella

  I was also remembering how the 1660 version of Arnaud claimed to have had several encounters with a demon in the small settlement of New Amsterdam, but Seay reported none. Just a few run-ins with a crazy man, who had turned out to be Malachi.

  His burned skin glistened as he continued to squint at me in apparent confusion.

  “I don’t think you holy-blasted anyone,” I said, stepping back. “Not the soulless mobs, not the fae demons. The light you manifested was a cover to conceal the fact you were absorbing their infernal essences. And it got the rest of us to deepen our trust in you, to follow you without question.”

  I shifted to my wizard’s senses. It was Malachi, but through what must have been untold tortures, the demon had fragmented my friend’s mind and faith, giving himself gray regions to hide out in.

  “The only Divine Voice you heard was Malphas’s,” I said. “You’re his final demon.”

  By the time I refocused, a shrewd, almost gleeful look had come over my teammate’s face.

  “Admit it, Everson.” He tore the Bible in half and flung the pieces aside. “We played your ass like a fiddle.”

  In his grip, a fiery sword and shield roared to life.

  46

  By the demon’s smugness, I could tell he had wanted me to find out who Malachi really was. Just as he’d wanted me to understand how thoroughly his master, Malphas, had deceived me. Arnaud was right about demons. Incurable gloaters.

  “Do you have a name?” I snarled.

  “Yes, but you can call me Forneus.”

  Good, because thinking of the demon as Malachi sickened me. Distorted fragments of my old teammate remained—enough to have fooled me, to have fooled all of us—but the question now was whether he would survive a banishment. Or was this infernal parasite the only thing holding him together?

  “Malachi,” I shouted, “can you hear me?”

  Forneus laughed. “You might as well be talking to a vegetable. He hasn’t had an original thought in the equivalent of fifty years. I wouldn’t count on him starting now.”

  But I didn’t believe him. Malachi had leaked about the “Night Ruin,” and from there we’d pieced together what the demon Malphas was building.

  “You should also know the fae won’t be riding to the rescue,” Forneus said. “Now that they’ve served their purpose, we’ve sealed the time catch against them. It’s just us and your poor friends. Malphas’s elements.”

  “Vigore!” I shouted.

  Force and divine light stormed from my extended sword. But Forneus brought his shield up. The collision of holy and infernal energies threw off a crackling fount of sparks.

  I uttered another invocation, hardening the air around him. He cleaved it with a savage twist of his sword. Energy from the collapsing manifestation rushed back into me, stealing my breath. The field around St. Martin’s was enabling me to cast at a high level, but Forneus was matching it somehow.

  “You must be wondering how we got to Malachi.”

  I turned as he circled me, each of us looking for an opening.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “More of your master’s sparkling brilliance?”

  “We were lucky, actually. Following the mess with the time catches, Malachi came back to the city and wandered into Arnaud’s fortress. Upon entering his sanctum, he found the demon circle.”

  The same circle we’d arrived in when Caroline hacked Arnaud’s infernal line.

  Perhaps seeing my recognition, Forneus said, “Yes, the residual energy in the circle was intended for you, but Malphas saw how he could use Malachi instead, to prepare the way for your arrival. He was a servant of the Church, yes. But once inside the demon circle, the sorry mortal had no chance.” In Forneus’s eyes, I saw him reliving the evils he had visited on Malachi. My teammate’s burns, which had conveniently destroyed his bonding sigil, hadn’t come from any tenement fire. That whole story had been a fiction, fed to the tavern keeper, then fed to us. The flames had been infernal.

  “Once we’d broken your friend,” Forneus continued, “my master infused me into what remained. And together we embarked on a journey to map the time catches and locate your teammates.”

  Sounded like we were dealing with another shadow demon.

  “And you couldn’t bring my teammates here yourself?” I challenged.

  I wanted to fluster him. Demons didn’t like being called out for their weaknesses.

  His eyes narrowed. “I could have, but why use force when persuasion is far more efficient? And with you on the way, well…” He gestured around with his flaming sword. “Here we all are.”

  Something about his answer rang false, but I didn’t have time to dissect it. Because in the next instant, his face contorted in pain. His pants were growing out in the back, as if he were giving birth to a giant watermelon.

  What in the…?

  When his pants split open, a massive arachnid-like abdomen emerged and flopped to the street, still expanding. The legs that had once been Malachi’s burst apart, replaced by four segmented spindles on each side. Pieces of bloodied fabric and flesh fell as the spindles separated and lengthened into spider’s legs. They then pushed against the street, hoisting Malachi’s still-human torso into the air. I craned my neck back as I stepped away.

  Forneus looked like a grafting experiment gone horribly wrong, but I was seeing something closer to his true demonic form.

  “Now that you’ve delivered my master his elements,” Forneus said, “all that’s left for you to do is die.”

  He covered the distance between us in a fast skitter. Holding my ground, I pushed energy into my shield. His blade came off it in a plume of fire. But before I could get my sword into his abdomen and shout the banishment Word, Forneus continued past. We were talking a mid-level demon, tops. And with the amount of raw energy thrumming around my casting prism, it wouldn’t take much to expunge him.

  Then I can begin to heal what’s left of Malachi and search for the others.

  I just needed a damned opening. I considered launching my sword, but I’d used that move on another of Malphas’s demons, the one overseeing the half-fae. And Forneus’s flaming shield appeared poised to block whatever came at him.

  He chuckled now as he circled me. “You should have seen your stupid face when the Upholders were reunited. So confident, so full of yourself.” His swollen abdomen shook above the ground. “That was one of the greatest joys of my demonic life. You doing just as master intended and having no earthly idea.”

  I grunted into my next sword swing. He raised his shield, but not before an edge of holy light glanced off his shoulder. White flames erupted along his sword arm, and he skittered back with a scream.

  “Where does that rank on your joy meter?” I asked.

  His lips curled, and he yanked his abdomen back. It wasn’t until I was tugged from my feet that I realized that all the time he’d been circling me, he’d also been wrapping my body with infernal strands of energy. My body rotated now as his many legs went to work, turning me over in an attempt to cocoon me.

  “Respingere!” I shouted.

  The force that detonated from my shield ripped the strands apart and slammed me to the ground. Forneus went airborne and landed on his side several yards away. His spider legs righted him quickly.

  Seeing me down—and dazed—he rushed me, sword roaring with infernal fire. I gained my feet and parried his blow. I couldn’t see Forneus’s face, but I could feel his fury in the contact of our blades. Sparks from the collision fizzled over my shielded body.

  When he backed away, so did I, moving to the left to keep him out in front of me. I wasn’t going to let him circle me again. And with every backward step, I could feel the growing power of the St. Martin’s site behind me. Power I could use.

  With my next step, I left the dirt lane of Broadway and crunched onto uneven ground. When he’d first appeared, Forneus-as-Malachi had shied from the power of the St. Martin’s site, and he was hesitating now.

  Just need to lu
re him in.

  Alternately thrusting staff and sword, I released a series of invocations in succession.

  The first one bound Forneus’s left set of legs in hardened air. He staggered and swung his sword down to break up the manifestation. But a force blast was already slamming into his shield. With his legs still constricted, the violent collision of opposing energies knocked him onto his back.

  He leapt up quickly, unfettered legs spreading apart again, but now walls of hardened air were arriving from both sides. Grimacing with effort, he got his shield against one and his sword through the other. But the shock of the dispersing manifestations shook him, setting him up for the coup de grace.

  “Vigore!” I shouted, and opened my sword hand.

  White flames rippled as the blade shot toward him.

  And then past him.

  Forneus laughed. “What a pity.”

  I stumbled backwards into the roar of ley energy and fell, landing hard on one of St. Martin’s foundation slabs. Seeing his opportunity, Forneus skittered forward and leapt. His ponderous spider abdomen landed on my shielded legs, pinning me. Beyond him, my blade clanged against a copper panel. As he raised his fiery sword, I threw a hand toward his abdomen and shouted the Word for retrieve.

  Forneus hesitated and turned.

  My returning sword skewered his gut, the end of the blade punching out his low back. Bullseye. With a shriek, he twisted back toward me. My sword handle protruded from his navel, a thick black liquid oozing around it.

  Seizing the handle, I shouted, “Disfare!”

  Banishment energy flashed from the blade’s topmost rune, but something was pushing back. With the volume of ley energy storming around me, I’d only opened my casting prism a crack. I braced myself now as I willed it wider. The light of banishment swelled from the blade, engulfing the demon to his fraught eyes.

  Forneus held his form, though.

  He shouldn’t be this strong, dammit.

  Malphas, I thought suddenly. He’s forcing energy through the demonic line, matching me.

  I searched until I found the opening in Forneus where infernal energy was pouring in. It might have been helping his demon, but it made Malphas vulnerable. By forcing enough banishment energy back through the opening, I could cripple the demon master, if not destroy him. Then I could recover my friends, dismantle the site, and return home.

  The thought of Vega’s embrace filled me with renewed conviction.

  With a prayer to Saint Michael, I adjusted my grip on my sword handle and threw my prism wide.

  Only once before had I attempted to channel a raw fount of ley energy. I’d been facing the demon lord Sathanas. I was green then, my abilities limited. If it hadn’t been for divine help in the form of Father Vick, I would have failed. My casting capacity had since grown, and I was facing a demon master, not a demon lord.

  But it was just me this time.

  The deluge of raw energy drowned out all else. Amid the thrashing and smashing, I struggled to maintain my casting prism, to funnel power through the blade’s banishment rune and down the demon line, but the prism was already starting to shake apart. The effort to hold it together was agony.

  At the other end of the connection, I felt Malphas recoil.

  Confidence surged through me, and with it strength. That’s right, you son of a bitch.

  Malphas recovered, pushing back with his considerable infernal might. Though every cell in my body was screaming for me to close my mental prism, to shut it down and let go, I refused, even as the pain became excruciating.

  This was for my teammates. For Vega and Tony. For our daughter.

  Forneus’s hands seized the sides of my head, his murderous eyes inches from mine.

  I drew a giant breath and boomed, “Disfare!”

  Forneus withdrew and came apart. The banishment invocation continued down the demonic line, bowling through Malphas’s resistance. At the other end, something massive screamed, and an implosion, deep and violent, followed. The time catch shuddered for several seconds before falling still.

  I sat up in the center of the St. Martin’s site, still clutching my sword.

  “Malachi?” I called weakly. But whatever had remained of my friend was gone.

  Swallowing a thick knot of grief, I stood on shaky legs. That had taken everything I had, but I’d felt the result. The demon Malphas was either destroyed or I’d dealt him a critical enough blow that he was being torn from his perch and cast down the ranks. Either way, he was no longer our problem.

  I peered around 1776 New York, the setting lonely and unpeopled under a full moon. My bonding sigil continued to glow faintly, telling me my teammates were near. I may have delivered them to Malphas unwittingly, but I’d denied the demon the chance to use them as containers for his infernal portal.

  “So suck it,” I muttered at his memory.

  But now I remembered something. When I’d asked Forneus why he hadn’t brought my teammates to this site himself, he’d claimed my persuasion would be more efficient than his force. I understood now why that had bothered me. All of the elements Malphas had needed were already there for the taking: Gorgantha for Water, Seay for Air, Jordan for Earth, Malachi for Spirit, and Forneus as a medium for Fire.

  He hadn’t needed me.

  I hesitated. Unless he did.

  I thought about my prayer to Saint Michael and the power I’d just channeled. What if I was meant to be the container for Spirit? What if the demon master’s manipulation hadn’t ended with us arriving here. What if, once more, I’d given Malphas exactly what he wanted? He was a demon master after all.

  And what had he mockingly called me in my vision? The great savior?

  As the horrifying questions corkscrewed through me, something red strobed against my face. I jerked back with a grunt and peered around, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. As the strobing continued, something bumped the side of my head.

  Open your eyes, a child’s voice whispered.

  Open my eyes?

  47

  Open your eyes, the voice repeated.

  Already, the St. Martin’s site was beginning to blur and come apart, but not in the way of a time catch collapsing. More like in the way of a dream dissolving. I put my will now into coming out of it.

  The result was like awakening to a nightmare.

  I was on my back, staring up at a rotating black sky. Harsh energies burned through the atmosphere, the stench of ozone so thick I could barely breathe. I’d been here before, in two separate visions.

  This time, though, it was real.

  This was the true 1776 St. Martin’s site, not the mirage Caroline, Bree-yark, and I had seen from the other side of the boundary upon first arriving, and not the hallucination I’d just left. Forneus’s hybrid form lay off to one side, his spider’s legs drawn in, infernal smoke drifting from his body. Others lay around me, oblong forms in the dark.

  I tried to sit up, but I was bound. Something flashed several times and nudged my head again. I looked over to find an antique lantern peering up at me.

  Dropsy?

  She hopped back a step and expanded her light, revealing a raised platform, round and built from stone. Her light passed over the other figures: Seay, Arnaud, then Jordan. I had to crane my neck back to see Gorgantha, who was behind me, the four of them forming a cross-like pattern around me. Fluid-filled cocoons encased us to our necks. Cocoons made from sticky strands of infernal energy.

  Containers, I understood. Spun by Forneus.

  Thick cords joined us and ran to levels below I couldn’t see.

  I shouted my teammates’ names until my vocal cords went raw, but I could barely hear myself above the roar of ley energy and the sizzling and crackling overhead. If can shout, I can cast. Inside my cocoon, my hands were gripping my sword. I could even see the faint glow of the banishment rune.

  “Vigore!”

  Raw energy poured through my casting prism, but instead of blowing my container open, the power from
my blade shot along the cord to Arnaud. Infernal power pushed back. At the same time, I felt currents of elemental energy running from Jordan’s, Seay’s, and Gorgantha’s containers toward us.

  I pulled back in horror, understanding now what Malphas had created.

  We were the five elements of the Aristotelean Set, alright. Only this living alchemical symbol hadn’t been designed to create balance, but opposition. Between light and dark, Heaven and Hell, Spirit and Infernal Fire.

  Through my blood line, I was connected to Michael, a First Saint. Arnaud was bound to Malphas, a demon master. The other three—Jordan, Seay, and Gorgantha—were acting as earthbound grounding elements, their containers bolstered by the druids and half-fae, who must have been on a lower level, as well as the claimed souls of the merfolk. Their job was to hold the Aristotelean Set together while I channeled high-octane Spirit energy and Malphas pushed back through his line to Arnaud with Infernal Fire.

  That opposition, pushed to its limits, had created the implosion I felt. The energy of the implosion had overwhelmed Forneus, whose toxins had induced my hallucination, and who had likely been speaking right above me the whole time, goading me into attacking, but it hadn’t touched Malphas.

  It had freed him.

  Above, a deep tear sounded.

  From the center of the rotating sky, winged figures began to appear. Shriekers, by their piercing cries. The first of Malphas’s arriving legion. I strained against my confinement, but I couldn’t move.

  The visions had been telling me something, dammit. In the one behind the Met, Malphas had pierced my forehead with a talon, rendering me powerless. I assumed he’d smashed my casting prism—but he’d thrown it wide. An aim he just achieved by getting me to believe I could destroy him through Forneus.

  I turned to Dropsy and shouted, “Can you get me out?”

  I didn’t know what the enchanted lantern could do, but she’d surprised me before. She hopped around my confined body as though assessing the situation. High above, the ripping continued. More shriekers and winged devils circled like arriving carrion birds. And now I could see a pinpoint of sulfurous yellow light.