Purge City (Prof Croft Book 3)

by Brad Magnarella

  Several wolves tumbled from the charge. Blood slaves not entangled formed a wall to meet the rest, but the slaves were still outnumbered. And that wasn’t the worst of it—a third werewolf horde was coming in on their blind side. Who in the hell was coordinating them? And how?

  “Forza dura!” I bellowed.

  Power stormed from my mace and hit the incoming wave. Wolves were lifted from their feet and slammed into buildings. Several of the gunmen above switched their aim, lighting up the fallen beasts. The rest of the wolves recovered quickly. They split up, one group scaling the buildings to reach the gunmen, a second group bounding toward the battle in the green. From that group, half a dozen wolves splintered away and veered toward me.

  I checked my shield and set my legs. I’d spaced out my invocations enough to keep Thelonious at bay and to allow my power time to recharge. My magic still held plenty of steel. And whether it was the rush of battle or the sum of my frustrations, I was burning to let that steel rip.

  “Who’s first?” I shouted at the charging wolves.

  I didn’t get the chance to find out. From around both sides of the Custom House, a new force appeared. Clad in the same chainmail as the foot soldiers in Arnaud’s battalion, the blood slaves wore green armbands that bore the insignia of their vampire’s firm. Bristling with swords and daggers, the slaves collapsed into the wolves at the base of the stairs.

  The Undertaker galloped past them on a blood-red steed, a barbed lance braced between arm and armored chest. He grinned over at me before diving into the main battle. Wolves screamed as he skewered them two and three at a time and flung them from his path.

  Never thought I’d be happy to see that creep, I thought.

  I was looking for where I could help out when a snarl sounded below me. The giant red wolf that had been leading the charge shook himself from the bloody melee and bounded up the steps. His baleful eyes fixed on mine as he slowed to a hunched stalk. I recognized those eyes.

  I met Evan’s stare. “You miss your dead brother, huh? Maybe I can fix that.”

  The challenge pierced his human and animal mind, and he sprang. I brought a mace around and slammed him with a shield invocation. He staggered back, then lunged again. I met him with a Word—“Respingere!”—and blew him aside, his back cracking against the base of a statue.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” I asked.

  Anger seethed in Evan’s eyes as he circled out in front of me, looking for an opening.

  I didn’t wait. Thrusting one mace toward his legs, I hit him with a force blast. With the other mace, I brought the shield down on his head, pinning him against the landing. Evan snarled as he struggled to free himself. I walked toward him, shaping the shield into a stockade that wrapped his neck and wrists. Blood soaked his coat as he barked and thrashed, fury engorging his eyes. I honed the edges of the shield until they were razor sharp.

  “Sorry, pal,” I said. “Bad day for revenge.”

  I raised the other mace and, with a force invocation as a propellant, brought it crashing down on the back of his skull. The metal flanges sank into bone, and the wolf’s head sheared off at his neck. I dispersed the stockade as the wolf’s two parts thudded to the ground.

  Blowing out my breath, I lifted my gaze to the battle. One less wolf, but still plenty more. Several had reached the gunmen in the windows and were hurling them to their deaths. The rest swarmed the plaza and park. Arnaud and the Undertaker fought with their mounts back to back, the Undertaker wielding a black broadsword now. But even with the reinforcements, we were outnumbered—and losing. I watched the way the wolves moved, ever shifting and reassembling, concentrating their attack where the vampires were weakest.

  I looked around, trying to pick out whomever was coordinating them.

  Did werewolves have the same psychic linkup as vampires? I didn’t think so. Which meant…

  My gaze dropped to the severed head at my feet. In the hair around the wolf’s ear, I spotted what I was looking for. After ensuring no wolves were coming, I knelt and worked my fingers into the blood-matted hair. A crescent-shaped band had been affixed behind his ear. I worked the band free. With it came two slender filaments, one emerging from the wolf’s ear canal.

  The filament that had been in the wolf’s ear ended at a small speaker. Very carefully, I brought it to my own ear.

  “…Alpha Three, move now. Flank them north. Alpha One … south … bef…”

  The tinny voice crackled as my wizard’s aura killed the communication device. But I had already recognized the voice’s cadence. I examined the other filament, which ended at a dead lens.

  “Well, hello there, Captain,” I muttered and tossed the smoking device aside.

  That explained the coordination between the NYPD and wolves. But Captain Cole would have to be lupine himself to command them, and I’d never sensed an aura around him. I thought about the powerful enchantment Arnaud had mentioned and remembered the ring with the dark gem Cole wore on his pinky finger. Besides controlling the wolves, it must have concealed his own wolf nature.

  Across the plaza, the ferocious battle raged on. Arnaud and the Undertaker continued to hack and slash, but their slave battalions were dwindling. The wolves were too well coordinated. I looked high and low.

  Where are you, Cole?

  I knew from our work on the eradication campaign that he liked to site himself near the action. And what Vega had said on the phone about him being “down” at command-and-control seemed to confirm he was close. But how close?

  I thought back to the view from Arnaud’s office window earlier. That tenting I’d glimpsed at the southern end of City Hall Park … I had assumed it was part of a construction project, but it was the same military-drab color as the tenting used in the other campaigns.

  That’s where he was, I decided. Close to the campaign but shielded by the intervening skyscrapers.

  I cupped my hands to the sides of my mouth. “Arnaud!”

  The vampire discerned my voice amid the chaos and looked up. His mount reared as he swung it toward me, hacking and trampling a swath from the battle. I met him at the bottom of the steps. He was covered in gore, his mane of hair soaked in blood. Aiming a mace, I blasted back a pair of wolves that had broken from the battle to pursue him.

  “You’ve found something?” Arnaud asked.

  “There’s a tent at the southern end of City Hall Park,” I panted. “Captain Cole is inside, coordinating the assault. He’s the one controlling the wolves.”

  Arnaud’s eyes sharpened in understanding. But as he activated his earpiece, I thought about the police officers and technicians who would also be in the tent. And if Vega had ended up there for any reason…

  “Wait!” I said. “No mass casualties. Have a sniper take him out.”

  Arnaud nodded and gave the order. His blood-bathed horse snorted, eager to rejoin the battle. I looked past Arnaud in time to see the Undertaker and his mount falling. The aging vampire’s wailing cries pierced the snarls and barks of the wolves diving down to tear into him.

  With the Undertaker’s final moan, his blood slaves regained their mortality and stopped fighting. The ones he’d turned centuries before shriveled and broke apart. The younger ones aged, some crooking into the shapes of old men, others staring around in shock, wondering what kind of nightmare they had awakened to. The wolves showed no mercy.

  Arnaud’s remaining slaves continued to battle fiercely, but the force had been halved. A mass of wolves, more than a hundred strong, turned toward us. Arnaud’s mount grunted and stamped the bricks at its feet. I squeezed the leather-bound grips of my maces.

  “Stay behind me,” Arnaud said, raising his sword.

  The wolves’ grizzly snouts peeled from their fanged teeth.

  I threw up a shield invocation, knowing it would only buy us a few minutes. There were too damned many. They charged en masse—then stuttered to a stop. Muzzles lifted to the scents of death and carnage, then began to sniff one another, growls rippli
ng in their chests.

  “It seems you were right,” Arnaud said. “I just received word the captain was taken out. An inter-pack alliance on this scale is unnatural. I suspect we’re about to see it unravel.”

  A savage bark sounded, and a wolf seized another by the throat. More barks erupted as wolves from rival packs clashed, claws and teeth ripping into one another.

  “Encircle them!” Arnaud called to the surviving blood slaves.

  The slaves complied, several limping into position on mangled legs. The battle among the wolves was as brutal as it was quick. As maimed wolves attempted to escape their attackers, the blood slaves drove silver weapons into them. This went on until the final wolf was slain.

  I relaxed my tensed arms as my gaze ranged over the slaughter. At the edge of the park, the Undertaker’s mount had been dismembered, the Undertaker no doubt somewhere among the remains.

  “Poor Luther,” Arnaud said without a trace of sympathy. “It seems the rest of us will have to divide his assets.” He looked down at me. “Well done, Mr. Croft. The assault on the Wall has disintegrated as well, I’m told.”

  “So … what now?” I asked.

  “We return to my offices and await the mayor’s call.”

  “It’s over?”

  “Listen. Do you hear that?”

  I stopped breathing and immediately understood what he meant. No shooting. No explosions. No shouts, snarls, or death cries. A deep, snowy silence had descended over lower Manhattan.

  “It’s the sound of success,” he said, grinning. “Come, let us negotiate the terms of our future. Swiftly now.”

  Arnaud extended an arm toward me.

  Ready for the alliance to end, I clasped his blood-caked hand and straddled the mount.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  28

  Trailed by the remaining blood slaves in Arnaud’s battalion, we rode back to Wall Street. Fires burned here and there. Chunks of building littered several of the streets. But except for the crackling of the horse’s hooves over glass, the downtown remained eerily silent.

  We turned a corner and came up on Federal Hall, with its pillared façade and bronze statue of George Washington. Blood slaves and private security forces still ringed the building. A handful of carcasses lay across the street—bullet-riddled wolves reverted to their human forms—telling me the bulk of their attack had not penetrated the core of the Financial District.

  “Anything?” Arnaud called up.

  Several of the security forces stared back with shield sunglasses and shook their heads.

  It looked as though the fae had stayed out of this one, which was not overly surprising. When it came to human affairs, their M.O. was to operate just out of sight, advising here, injecting money there. And they tended not to use magic unless threatened. The anxiety that Caroline and I might become actual adversaries let out a little. I exhaled a shaky breath as two more depleted slave battalions appeared, both led by vampires on horseback.

  Arnaud trotted up to the closer group. “I understand we lost two defending the Wall.”

  The mounted vampire, who was too battle spattered for me to recognize, nodded. “Francis went down near the West Side Highway,” he said. “Gordon was impaled on Maiden Lane.”

  “Victory always comes at a cost.” Arnaud said.

  The vampire farther back galloped forward. “Why stop here?” he demanded, eyes blazing inside his helmet. I recognized the young vampire, Damien, by his voice. “There remains a city to conquer!”

  Arnaud looked as though he was going to respond, no doubt to talk him down, but he canted his head suddenly. I followed the vampire’s gaze toward Federal Hall, where the security forces had fallen into crouches, automatic weapons aimed at the building. And then I heard it too—a dull, concussive sound, like something trying to pound its way out of a giant tomb.

  The horses grunted and drew back.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, peering around.

  The blood slaves looked jittery, eyes fixed on the building. A deep snap sounded, and then another. A member of the private security team emerged from beyond the pillars. “The slabs are fracturing,” he barked. “Whatever’s coming up is moving ten tons of reinforced concrete.”

  Coming up? The fae were sending something through the portal?

  “Hold your positions!” Arnaud said severely, but I caught an odd strain in his voice. When his horse shuffled back another foot, Arnaud cracked its head with the pommel of his sword. “You too, cursed beast.”

  Arnaud must have had the portal sealed, but all manner of powerful beings dwelt in the faerie realm. Another pair of snaps sounded, followed by the unmistakable sound of heavy stone grating against heavy stone. From inside Federal Hall gunfire exploded. Other automatic weapons joined in. A man’s scream rose above the noise and was just as suddenly strangled.

  Anxiety sawed on my insides as I flipped through a mental reference of fae creatures.

  Arnaud’s men backed out between the pillars, guns cracking. A giant shadow pursued them. It wasn’t until the shadow ducked beneath the pediment and rose to its full height that I recognized the iron-haired monstrosity.

  “Oh, shit,” I muttered.

  “Does this present a problem, Mr. Croft?” Arnaud asked, holding his slaves back.

  “A mountain troll?” I let out a harsh laugh. “Only if you expect to kill it.”

  I glimpsed the troll’s volcanic gray face before he hefted an arm to keep the gunfire from his recessed eyes. With a grunt, he seized George Washington’s upper body. Stone erupted from the foundation as the ten-foot-tall statue broke free. The troll wielded it overhead like a club, then swung it in a fierce arc, taking out two of the gunmen.

  “Attack!” Arnaud called to his slaves.

  Regenerated from their fight against the werewolves, the slaves surrounded the troll, blades glinting. Half a dozen of them slipped behind the creature, darted in—and exploded into flames.

  For the first time, I noticed the way the air warped around the troll.

  “It gets better,” I shouted. “The troll’s wrapped in some kind of enchantment, probably put there by the fae.” An enchantment that torched the undead, apparently.

  Leaving the blood slaves to burn, the troll bounded down the steps with surprising speed, swinging the statue again. More gunmen went airborne, their bodies broken. The rest retreated around the corners of buildings. The troll puffed his cheeks. When he blew out, the fae aura bent with the force of the gust, igniting a swath of blood slaves ahead of him.

  For the first time, Arnaud walked his horse back. I followed the angle of his head to where two more mountain trolls were emerging from Federal Hall, their stony bodies glimmering inside the fae enchantment.

  “Wonderful,” I muttered.

  The trolls assessed the scene and split up, running after the blood slaves like they were chasing mice.

  Damien, the young vampire, had seen enough. With a cry, he dug the metal spikes on his boots into his mount and charged. The statue-wielding troll turned toward the piercing sound and roared, revealing a set of tombstone teeth. Damien evaded his downward swing, the statue busting into the street behind him. He charged past the troll and sliced his sword at the tendinous pocket behind the monster’s knee. The blade fractured into pieces. When Damien brought the horse around, I could see flames licking out from beneath his right gauntlet.

  Damien’s eyes burned red as he let out a furious scream. The troll lunged toward him.

  “Vigore!” I shouted, aiming one of my maces. But the force that rippled through the air dissipated upon reaching the troll’s enchanted protection. I thrust forth the other mace. “Protezione!”

  The shield that manifested over Damien burst apart beneath the troll’s descending fist. Damien’s scream was severed as the blow crushed his head and battered him and his mount against the blacktop. Both broke into flames. The horse’s legs kicked for several beats, like a dead insect’s, before falling still.

&n
bsp; “My magic’s no good!” I said. “And unless you have cold iron…” But Arnaud was already moving us away.

  “Retreat!” he called, charging toward his building.

  The wall we had emerged from earlier remained down. Our footfalls stampeded up the ramp and into the armory, a handful of gunmen at our backs blowing cover fire. I doubted it would do much against mountain troll hide. The bulk of us inside, the wall jerked from the ramp and embarked on a clanking rise as the chains retracted, pulling the wall back into place. Outside, the trolls ran toward us, their horny nails gouging up chunks of asphalt.

  “Quickly!” Arnaud called.

  One of the trolls seized a gunman who’d been left behind. I looked away, but not before he’d pushed the gunman into his chomping mouth. The statue-wielding troll brought George Washington down on a crippled blood slave, crushing him. He then swung the statue around, caving in the corner of a building across the street. The third troll broke into the lead and charged. The wall slammed closed ahead of his outstretched fingers.

  A moment later, the armory shuddered around us. Weapons fell from shelves. The trolls were attacking the outside of the building. Blast-resistant stonework or not, the mountain trolls would eventually get inside or bring the entire building down on our heads.

  Arnaud dismounted and helped me down. A pair of blood slaves led the torn and bloodied beast away. The other slaves traded their silver blades for those forged from iron. Arnaud stared around for a moment. When his eyes locked on the other vampire’s, I caught something I’d never observed in their kind before. Uncertainty. That uncertainty was also manifesting in their blood slaves, who, though freshly armed, backed from the shaking walls.

  “Come, Mr. Croft,” Arnaud snapped.

  I followed him to the vault-like door I’d observed earlier. His contingency plan. Trepidation shook through me as he seized the hand wheel. The round door released from the wall with a dull bang and swung outward. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the tomb-like chamber.