Night Rune (Prof Croft Book 8)

by Brad Magnarella

  I pulled him into a hug. “Anything you need, man, just let me know.”

  “Same for you, Everson. Anytime.”

  They left, passing a mostly empty table I’d reserved for the Order. Following Malphas’s expulsion, the senior members had repaired a chain of ruptures before returning to finish work in the Harkless Rift. Though the major tears were sealed, it was the constellations of minor ones that were taking forever to find and fix. Knowing the importance of the work, I noted their absence with silent thanks.

  Claudius was the only high-level member who could come. He’d brought a date, an older woman with a coif of frosted pink hair. The gingersnap lady. He smiled like a baby now as she spoon-fed him her coconut pudding.

  Across from them sat a young man wearing a cowboy hat and a smart linen vest. James Wesson was the magic-user who had covered the city’s outer burroughs before the Order sent him to western Colorado. I’d gone out there when he was still getting his feet wet, and we’d had a few adventures. He looked from Claudius and his date to me with a wtf? expression. I laughed and shrugged.

  James had also attended the Order’s ceremony that winter, which commended my efforts in repelling the demon Malphas and freeing them. Arianna hung a charmed medallion around my neck. Having insisted the honor be shared, I returned with additional medallions for Bree-yark and the Upholders.

  I turned my attention to the latter’s table now. Glamoured as a tall, striking woman, Gorgantha had come down from the Maine coast, where she’d returned with her fellow mers to rebuild their pod. She was giving Jordan and Delphine her skeptical face, then said something that made them all laugh.

  The druids had survived the collapse, save one. They journeyed back to their sacred woodland and tree in Harriman State Park. I’d gone up to visit once they’d gotten settled, and Jordan had delivered on the promised ale. It turned out he was a really cool guy when not stressed out of his head.

  Beside them was an empty setting with a medallion and a Latin Bible to honor our fallen friend Malachi. The one who had foreseen the demon apocalypse in his visions. The one who had founded the Upholders. He succumbed to Malphas, but not before assembling those who would ensure the demon master’s final ruin.

  Divine Voice, indeed, I thought.

  But with devastating loss had also come surprising life. Everyone at the table now turned toward Seay, who was coming back from the restroom cradling a freshly changed baby boy.

  Seay never mentioned the potion, and I never brought it up. Maybe she already knew I’d lied about what it could do. But against all odds, little Tyler had survived the transition, and that likely forgave everything. Seay had already sworn Vega and me to regular playdates when our daughter was old enough. She didn’t want to get stuck with the “yoga pants mafia,” as she called the mortal mothers her age.

  Tyler gurgled now as the others shook his little grasping hands and wiggling feet. I was smiling at them when I caught a large figure lurking behind one of the plants in back.

  “Mind if I step away for a sec?” I asked Vega with a sigh. “There’s someone here I want to talk to, and I may not get another chance.”

  “Only if you leave some collateral to prove you’re not running.”

  I kissed her. “I expect that back with interest.”

  “Be careful what you wish for on your wedding night.”

  “Ooh, wanna take Tabitha’s lead and ditch this joint?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get back.”

  With a laugh, I got up and circled the venue until I was standing on the other side of the plant. When I cleared my throat, the figure jumped.

  “They left,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Bree-yark and his girlfriend. The ones you were hoping to spy on.”

  My teacher, Gretchen, stepped from behind her cover. She was wearing a plain green housedress, probably chosen for its camouflaging properties, and a hat with a white plastic flower. She scanned the guests.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Well, what?”

  “Is she better looking than me?”

  “She makes him happy. That’s all that matters.”

  “So you’re saying she’s a cow.”

  “I’m saying you need to get over it.”

  Gretchen responded with a disconsolate grunt.

  “Where have you been, anyway?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her since our showdown in her kitchen. I sent her a wedding invitation, never expecting her to show, but I’d underestimated the pull of jealousy.

  “Around,” she said in a moping voice.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here. I never got a chance to thank you.”

  “For what?” she snapped.

  “For the massive assist. Yeah, don’t give me that face. You may not have known what you were doing, but coming from your magic, you knew it would help. The morning you transported me to the Met, you gave me a companion in Bree-yark, an enchanted item in Dropsy, and a major clue to Malphas’s plans—the Met was where I first learned about the Aristotelian Set. I wouldn’t have succeeded without them.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure, you don’t. How about joining us for some dessert?”

  “Good gods, no. Crowds and I do not get along.” She burped loudly and drew an arm across her mouth.

  “I would never have guessed,” I said.

  “I hope you’re not planning a long honeymoon.”

  “A couple of weeks on the Spanish coast. Why?”

  “Because we have training to get back to, and you’ve missed too much already.”

  It wasn’t worth pointing out that I’d only missed because she’d up and disappeared.

  “Just tell me when,” I said. “I’m anxious to jump back in.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  Oddly, I took the casual insult to mean I was forgiven.

  “Well, I have things to do,” she said abruptly, and disappeared.

  I turned from the empty space beside the plant and looked over the courtyard. My gaze lingered once more on all of our friends, colleagues, and teammates, some mortal, many magical, before returning to my wife. She was standing now and waving at me. It took me a moment to realize the music had started.

  I hurried through the crowd, absorbing their cheerful congratulations and shoulder claps, and met Vega in time for our first dance.

  “I’m back,” I said.

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  Blue Curse

  (Blue Wolf, Book 1)

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  Blue Wolf Book 1

  I watched the burqa-clad figure drift from one side of the dirt road to the other, coming nearer. She looked like a green specter through my night-vision goggles. A singing green specter. As she drew even with the compound two blocks from my position, I could hear the wavering notes rising above the clamor of the compound’s generator.

  “Nice pipes,” I muttered.

  Curling a finger over the trigger of my M4, I raised the rifle from the woman toward the rooftop of the cement building that stood above the compound’s high walls.

  A magnified guard appeared in my sight picture. He leaned over the north side of the rooftop, an AK-47 propped against his shoulder, then called to a second guard behind him. The two peered down on the woman, unescorted and apparently drunk, out in the middle of the night. In the suburb of the conservative Waristani city, that would draw anyone’s attention.

  Which was the whole point.

  I centered the crosshairs on the nearer guard’s head. “Mario in sight,” I whispered into my headset.

  “Roger that, Captain,” Segundo, my team sergeant and second-in-command, answered. “I have Luigi.”

  “On three, two, one…”

  Our M4s coughed a single round apiece, Segundo’s from three blocks away. In sprays of glowing green mist, the guards we’d nicknamed Mario and Luigi dropped from
sight.

  “Move,” I ordered, stepping from the corner of my building.

  Four men in black camos and body armor followed me, weapons at the ready. We crossed the road and jogged the next block at a crouch, then proceeded single file along the compound’s outer wall. The woman who had distracted the guards met us. She shed her burqa and became Sergeant Calvin Parker.

  The lankiest member of Team 5, Parker was the only one who could have passed for a female. I nodded at my cultural affairs officer to tell him good job. The young black man gave me a wry look as he ditched the burqa and readied his rifle and gear. He hadn’t been thrilled about the role.

  I gave the signal, and two of my men dropped off to establish perimeter security. On the other side of the compound two men from the split team were doing the same. Ten feet from the compound’s north gate, my senior engineer moved to the front, pulling out C-4 charges to place on the hinges.

  “Hot on the north,” he said over his radio.

  “Hot on the south,” an engineer on the split team answered.

  We crouched away, and both doors detonated. The hammering of the compound’s generator helped cover the dry bangs, but we still needed to move fast.

  I took the lead, rushing low through the smoky doorway, three men following. We were in the compound’s west outer courtyard. I spotted the two guards immediately. They were beside a small outbuilding, fumbling their AK-47s into firing positions. We had interrupted their smoke break—one of many that aerial surveillance had shown us. Our rifles coughed. Each guard was hit at least twice before he collapsed to the ground. At the same time, suppressed shots echoed from the east courtyard. Not a single burst of answering gunfire so far.

  Good. Execution is on point.

  I led my team to the southern end of the courtyard where Segundo’s team was mining the metal door to the inner courtyard. The engineers cleared the blast area. Another dry bang. Segundo and I shared the lead through the acrid smoke. We were eight strong now, two members remaining behind to secure the outer courtyard.

  The main building rose ahead. Light slivered around the seams of a covered window on the third floor. I was cycling through the building’s layout in my mind when the front door opened.

  Segundo and I greeted the armed guard with a single shot apiece to his chest.

  We stepped over his prone body and into the first floor. The rooftop generator that shuddered through the concrete building encased us in a wall of pounding, disguising the noise of our entry and movement. We had cut power to the sector an hour earlier for just that purpose.

  I spotted the staircase to the second floor at the far end of a corridor, doorways opening off it. I circled a pair of fingers to remind my team of the two guards still on the floor. They appeared from a back room a moment later, armed but unaware the building had been breached. We dropped them and cleared the remaining rooms. One man remained behind while the rest of us filed up the stairs.

  Two guards saw us coming onto the second floor. Our suppressed gunfire cut their alarmed cries short. A third guard poked his head from a doorway. I squeezed my trigger before he could duck back to safety. Through my night-vision, the corridor glowed green with spattered blood.

  All twelve guards were now accounted for. But had their shouts penetrated the din of the generator? Only one way to find out. I signaled for two of my men to stay behind to check the rest of the floor while I led Segundo and Parker to the top level.

  From the shadow of the stairwell we peered onto a narrow corridor with two closed doors. Light glowed beneath the one on the right. Beyond, I could hear the shouts of men arguing. Segundo grinned broadly. They had no idea an American Special Ops unit was at their doorstep.

  After clearing the other room, we stacked on the door. I signaled for Segundo and Parker to cover my breach. Flipping the night-vision goggles from my eyes, I seized the handle and threw the door open.

  For a moment, the six men sitting around the lamp-lit room on rugs didn’t notice me. Several were arguing, the sleeves of their loose shirts and gowns shaking as they pointed accusing fingers at one another, eyes blazing above their shouting mouths. I recognized all of the men, but at the moment, I only cared about the one I had singled out with a red laser dot on his chest.

  Plump with a purple vest and trim gray goatee, Zarbat was trying to restore order. He glanced up at me distractedly, then away. I could almost see the image of a massive armed man registering in his brain. His eyes worked their way back to me. One by one, the other men followed the aim of his ashen face. The shouting fell to murmurs, then died.

  Zarbat peered past me, as though expecting his guards to come to his defense. Instead, he saw Segundo and Parker, the three of us holding enough firepower to liquefy the room. The men understood this. They cast nervous glances around, none of them moving or saying a word. Glass tea cups rattled on saucers, and the plywood over the window shook as the generator hammered on.

  At last Zarbat licked his thick lips and tried to smile. “Jason Wolfe,” he called in his refined voice. “I didn’t realize you were coming. Have a seat. Here is the tea you like.” He reached for a pot in the middle of the gathering.

  “It’s not that kind of visit,” I grunted.

  “Oh?” He withdrew his hand and swallowed dryly. “Well, then. What brings you here?”

  Six months before, when my team had been assigned to work with him, Zarbat had been one man. No army, no weapons, and little to no credibility with the ethnic tribe of his birth. Now he had all three—in spades. The last because we’d credited him with the overthrow of the Mujahideen in southern Waristan when, in fact, he had been safe at our base in nearby Afghanistan. We’d flown him in at the tail end of the battle to pose with an assault rifle and the militia we had trained. Zarbat never fired a shot nor was he ever shot at. His U.S. education and influence among a handful of Washington decision-makers had served him well. Until he got greedy.

  “The gentleman to your left brings us,” I said.

  I knew from our intelligence that Elam, one of the leaders of the Mujahideen insurgency, didn’t understand English.

  “Ah, yes,” Zarbat replied. “We were just discussing the terms of his surrender.”

  I shook my head. “You and the representatives of the other four tribes were to meet in the capital this weekend to elect a government. Instead, you and Elam have been plotting their assassinations so the country would descend into chaos and you could present yourself as the only stabilizing figure. With the grand council off the table, the U.S. would have no choice but to name you interim leader. Your first move would be to grant amnesty to the Mujahideen fighters, more than tripling the size of your armed forces. From there, you would assume complete power, all while assuring the U.S. you remained a loyal ally.”

  Some U.S. leaders would have been willing to live with that, if only to see a conclusion to the war. In the end, more hawkish voices had prevailed.

  Zarbat’s face flushed. “That’s preposterous.”

  “We’ve been monitoring your communications for the last month.”

  Zarbat peered past me, as though looking once more for his guards.

  “We also know you doubled your security for tonight’s meeting, instructing them to kill anyone who tried to enter. ‘Even the Americans?’ they asked. ‘Even the Americans,’ you answered.”

  “Jason,” he said, tilting his head companionably. “I do not doubt the power of your intelligence services, but you were my advisor. You know me. Does that sound at all like something I would do?”

  It did, in fact. I had never trusted Zarbat.

  But instead of saying that, I turned to Segundo. “Take Elam into custody.”

  “With pleasure,” he said, his Colombian-born machismo coming through.

  I covered the room while Segundo lifted the Mujahideen leader roughly to his feet, patted him down, and then placed him in flex cuffs. Elam protested in bursts of Pashto as Segundo dragged him from the room.

  “This will a
ll get sorted out,” Zarbat said calmly, refilling his tea cup. “You will see.”

  I looked at Parker, who besides being our cultural affairs officer was also our interpreter. “Ask him,” I said.

  Parker turned to the young man seated to Zarbat’s right—his second in command—and posed the question in Pashto: “Are you ready to lead?”

  Despite his small build, the young man had the bearing of a prince. His penetrating brown eyes moved from Parker to me. “Yes,” he said in accented English.

  “What’s this?” Zarbat said, alarm entering his voice for the first time. “You’re replacing me?”

  “Uncle Sam thanks you for your service,” I said.

  My M4 coughed twice. The shots slammed Zarbat against the wall, the tea he’d just poured splashing across his lap. My superiors hadn’t considered him an intelligence asset. The Mujahideen leader would prove more valuable in that department.

  I lowered the rifle as Zarbat’s body slumped to a rest and motioned the young man, Mehtar, over.

  He stood, adjusted his turban, and stepped toward us. While the three seated men—local officials—wrung their hands and murmured worriedly, Mehtar remained stoic. Though he had no ties to the U.S., he was a natural leader and, from my estimation of having worked with him, someone we could trust.

  I angled my mouth toward Parker. “Tell him that the declaration will be that Zarbat was killed by a Mujahideen leader, who is now in custody. He will use the tragedy to rally support around himself. The U.S. will provide him with whatever resources he needs. A security detail is arriving as we speak, and an advisor will be along shortly. Top officials will meet with him in the capital this weekend.”

  When Parker completed the translation, Mehtar took my hand. For an uncomfortable moment, I thought he was going to kiss it. Instead, he bowed low and said, “This is great honor for me.” He then turned to the seated men and spoke rapidly.

  “He’s having them prepare Zarbat’s body for a procession tomorrow,” Parker explained.