Purge City (Prof Croft Book 3)

by Brad Magnarella

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  The words weren’t just meant for Caroline, who had always helped me—how could I have forgotten that? The apology was also for my mother, who had sacrificed her life for my future. It was for my grandfather, who had protected me in ways I still couldn’t quite understand. My self-disgust took on the ponderous weight of disappointment.

  I had failed them. And in doing so, I’d unleashed a frigging shadow fiend.

  I’d also lost any chance at retribution against my mother’s killer, the head of a group that could still be plotting against the Order.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated, the darkness swallowing my voice.

  I sighed and touched the coin dangling from my neck. Whatever warmth I’d imagined emanating from the metal earlier was gone. I began to tuck it back inside my shirt—and froze.

  Ed.

  A strangled laugh escaped my throat.

  Ed! My golem! The one I’d animated to follow Hoffman. He could still be out there, the amulet that powered him dangling from his clay neck. When did Hoffman say he’d seen him? A week ago?

  I stood and paced in a circle, not wanting to get too excited, but not wanting to release the slender hope, either. As my golem, Ed would be accessible to me. That didn’t require magic, just focus.

  A kaleidoscope of colors danced before my eyes as I sat in my centering pose. It was a long shot—I hadn’t expected Ed to hold out for more than a few days. But hadn’t a rover or two tooled over the Mars surface years beyond their life expectancies? I was mixing robotics and magic in my thinking, sure, but still … I needed Ed to have that same plucky resilience.

  I took a calming breath, closed my eyes, and focused on my creation.

  A moment later, the world lurched into motion.

  “…matter of finding the right enterprise, you see what I’m sayin’?”

  Like coming to the end of a merry-go-round ride, the up-down, round-and-round motion slowed, then stopped. From what felt like the inside of a full-body cast, I peered out at a room of muddy shapes.

  I—I’m out of the vault. It worked!

  “And man, don’t listen to what they’re sayin’ on the streets,” the sleepy voice beside me continued. “Shit. There’s money to be made if you got the right enterprise. Then all you need is capital.”

  My, or rather Ed’s, legs were stretched out in front of me. I recognized the pants I’d given him, though they were caked with filth now. His shoes had either come off or been stolen. Two sets of gray, blocky toes stared back at me. Beyond his feet, the rest of the room came into dull focus. I was in a bedroom layered with mattresses and languid bodies. The bodies sprawled across one another, smoke drifting from their sallow fingers and lips.

  Somehow Ed had landed in a flophouse.

  Newspapers slid off me as I tested my right arm, then my left. The movements were stiff and clunky. I pawed my chest for the amulet. Still under the shirt, though the power that sustained Ed’s life was ebbing.

  When I tried to stand, an arm around my neck restrained me.

  “Hold on a sec, man,” the sleepy voice said. “You need capital, which means you got to look for investors. But it’s better to secure a loan, see? Then you don’t got to share ownership. Problem is, my credit’s shot to shit. Rap sheet don’t help none, either. That’s where I could use you.”

  The man leaning into me was gaunt, his eyebrows and mustache threadbare scratches on the skeletal contours of his face. With his free hand, he combed back a pile of brittle-looking hair. He blinked a few times, his hooded eyes like muscadine grapes in the deep pits of his sockets.

  I tried to tell him to let go, that I needed to take off, but all that emerged were lumpy mumbles.

  The man’s mouth stretched into a grin. “Yeah, man, you see where I’m goin’ with this. Fifty-fifty split. Even Steven. You secure the loans, I manage the enterprise.” He cinched me closer, until the bill of my Mets cap was indenting his brow. “Look man, I don’t say this to just anyone, but you got that look about you. I trust you. And I’ll tell you right now, I’m an honest Joe. I don’t lie, cheat, steal. None of that. Not anymore. That shit’s all behind me, sure as I’m sitting here.”

  I could have pointed out that he was sitting on a filthy mattress in a drug den, but the clock was ticking. I peeled his clammy arm from around my neck and struggled to my feet.

  Have to figure out where I am.

  “Hey, man, where you going?”

  Unaccustomed to piloting Ed’s body, I stumbled over an array of junkies in front of a window and parted the blinds’ plastic slats. The view was of a fenced back lot and a crumbling field of buildings. I wasn’t one hundred percent, but it looked like the Lower East Side.

  The man behind me tried to stand. “I haven’t told you my idea for our enterprise.”

  I emerged into a living room that featured a pair of old couches and another sprawl of bodies.

  “Soft pretzels, man,” he called from the back room.

  I searched the living room for a phone, but if there were any around, they were buried.

  Staggering through a stench of urine and sweat, I made my way to the front door and into a hallway. From there, I found a stairwell. I fell several times on my journey to the lobby. Ed had no sensation in his extremities and zero peripheral vision. It was a wonder he had managed these last days.

  By the time I reached the street, I was moving more like a man buzzed than blottoed. The street sign on the corner told me I was in the Bowery.

  Need to find a working phone.

  I lumbered south to Canal Street, aware that the fiend could return to the vault at any moment. I was on borrowed time, and little more. A payphone leaned at the corner. When I rounded it, though, I discovered that the receiver had been torn out. Wires sprayed from the bottom of the dented box.

  “Shit,” I managed to grunt.

  “Hey, there you are!”

  I turned to find the man with the soft pretzel plan hustling to catch up, his peeling loafers slapping the sidewalk as he lurched this way and that. He came to a wheezing stop in front of me, a filthy floral shirt hanging from the thin rack of his shoulders. “Why’d you bail, man?”

  Because I need to make a goddamned phone call, I tried to say. But with the amulet’s power ebbing, the only intelligible words that emerged from Ed’s mouth were “need” and “phone.”

  “The hell didn’t you say so?” Pretzel reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a flip phone, and pried it open. “Got it from my sister.” He squinted over the display as he coughed into his fist. “One bar of battery left, man.”

  I nodded and gave his shoulder an enthusiastic pat that almost knocked him to the ground. God bless this man. He handed over the phone, but my fingers were too fat to punch in the numbers. On my second try, I nearly dropped the phone. My clay face creased with stress.

  I don’t have time for this.

  “Here, man, give me the digits.” Pretzel took his sister’s phone back.

  With monumental concentration, I articulated each number. Pretzel entered them, then held the phone up to my ear. I felt the blood I’d used in creating Ed pumping through me. The call hadn’t gone straight to voicemail. For the first time in months, Caroline’s line was ringing.

  “Hello?” she answered.

  “Carllln,” I said, feeling like I was speaking through a mouthful of M&Ms.

  “Who is this?”

  “Eh-eh-sn.”

  “I can’t understand you.”

  In the background I heard heated conversation. The mayor’s distinct voice rose above the others—the sound of it, anyway. I couldn’t make out any words, but it told me Caroline was at City Hall. I tried to repeat my name, but the more I forced it, the more jumbled it came out.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m ending the call.”

  “Whu-ait!” My mind scrambled for some way I could get her to understand me.

  “Look, sir. I don’t recognize your number, and I’m in the
middle of something.”

  “Sub!” I blurted out. The old joke between us for all the times she used to cover my classes.

  A silence followed. “Everson?”

  “Y-ysh!” If Ed had tear ducts, I’m pretty sure they would have wept with joy.

  The voices around her diminished as though she were walking into another room. “Thank God,” she breathed. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

  Okay, she knew it was me, but how was I going to get her to understand a single thing I said. The situation was too complex to grunt out in monosyllables over a phone. If I was going to warn her, I needed a face-to-face.

  “M-meet,” I managed.

  “You want to meet? Where?” No hesitation.

  I thought for a moment. The streets around City Hall were probably closed. The checkpoints would be a nightmare. I came up with a place about halfway between us and within walking distance.

  “Clum-ba Pa,” I said.

  “I didn’t get that, Everson.”

  I balled up my fists and tried again. “Clum-ba-ba Pa.”

  Pretzel pulled the phone from my ear. “I think he’s trying to say Columbus Park, lady.”

  I nodded fervently.

  “He’s saying yes,” Pretzel said. He stuck the phone back against my ear and bounced his eyebrows. “She sounds fiiine.”

  “Columbus Park,” Caroline repeated. “All right. I’m heading there now. I’ll meet you at the pavilion.” She ended the call before I could attempt to thank her. Probably just as well.

  Wavering on his feet, Pretzel slid me a wasted grin.

  “Need a wingman?” he asked.

  31

  Our staggering journey took us down Chinatown’s narrow streets. The amulet’s energy flagged and surged like a dying electrical appliance, and I had to lean on Pretzel for support several times. Thankfully, the sidewalks were empty, the shops closed—the thundering concussions from the battle that afternoon likely having driven everyone inside.

  Almost everyone.

  At the next intersection, a gang of young men in white suits appeared. I recognized them as White Hand enforcers, employees of Bashi. They patrolled the street in a V formation.

  Crap.

  I searched around for a place to hide. The gang spotted us and veered our way.

  Double crap.

  I didn’t have time to be interrogated. The amulet fueling me was already in the red, and if the White Hand decided to remove it, Ed would collapse into a mound of clay, and I’d land back in the vault. I lowered my head, hoping the gang would allow a pair of common vagrants to shuffle past. But Pretzel chose that moment to pick up his business pitch.

  “The thing with soft pretzels, man, is they don’t discriminate. They’re for everyone, you know? Race, age, creed—none of that shit matters. Come one, come all. The only thing might change is what’s put on ’em. Some like mustard, others like that horseradish.”

  The members of the White Hand surrounded us.

  “Oh, hey,” my partner said. “What do you guys like on your pretzels? Sweet and sour sauce?”

  Oh, Christ.

  The man in the lead position stared down at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “We’re goin’ on a date,” Pretzel answered proudly.

  “With each other?”

  The other gang members laughed. Not realizing we were the butt of the joke, Pretzel laughed along with them. The leader’s mouth didn’t budge. He had the deadened eyes of a killer. They cut over to me. “What’s the matter with your boyfriend?” he asked Pretzel. “Someone shoot off his tongue?”

  “Aw, he don’t say much,” Pretzel explained. “But when he does, pure genius, man.”

  “Is that right?” The leader drew a black Beretta from his waist band. “Let’s hear some of that genius, tùzi.”

  I looked past him. The park was only a block and a half away.

  “Hey,” he snapped. “I’m talking to you.” He flipped my bill and the Mets cap tumbled off my head.

  When the leader drew back, I raised an arm in anticipation of being pistol whipped, but his eyes were large and startled. Amid muttered swears, the others in the gang eased back too. The leader recomposed himself, his eyes going dead again. “Get out of our neighborhood,” he said to Pretzel. “I never want to see that deformed piece of shit around here again.”

  Pretzel gave his lazy smile. “Yeah, man, he’s cool.”

  I retrieved my hat as the gang moved on, their members peering back with unsettled looks. I leaned toward my reflection in a car window and understood. Out in the summer heat, and with the amulet flagging, Ed’s face had started to melt. One eye was a good two inches below the other, and what remained of his nose had skewed to the left of his lips. It was a disturbing sight. With a stab of self-consciousness, I replaced the hat and pulled the bill as low as it would go.

  Caroline was already at the pavilion when Pretzel and I shambled up. She must have sensed my presence in the pile of clay, because she hurried toward us. “Everson?” she asked.

  I nodded and gestured to my body. Just a loaner, I tried to say, but it came out a clumpy moan. Speech gone. Power spent. The park around us was beginning to feel insubstantial too, like a fading dream. For a moment, I felt the cold floor of the vault beneath me.

  No…

  Pretzel stumbled in front of Caroline. “I spoke to you on the phone, lady. I’m his business partner.”

  His voice brought me snapping back. As Caroline accepted Pretzel’s dirty hand, I pawed at my chest. Her head tilted in momentary question before nodding. She could see the energy that emanated from the amulet to power my form, could sense its weakening field.

  Pulling her hand from Pretzel’s, she stepped in close and pressed her palm to the amulet. Maybe it was seeing Caroline through Ed’s eyes, but she looked even less human now, more fae. From the amulet, a scent of honeydew rose and a soft, prickling wave swept over my skin. My body began to straighten and tighten, facial features migrating back into place. As the recharge finished, I decided that, yes, Caroline was definitely more fae.

  She stepped back, eyes dark with concern.

  “Thank you,” I said, the words wooden but much easier to form.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  I looked over at Pretzel, who was staring up at Caroline with a dreamy expression. “Hey, mind giving us a minute?” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, sure.” Pretzel staggered off several paces before turning. “Ask if she’s got a friend,” he called back in a loud whisper. He found a park bench and collapsed onto his back.

  I looked at Caroline again. “I’m at Arnaud’s.”

  “I know. We’ve been trying to get you out of there.”

  “The situation’s become more complicated,” I said with a wince. “Arnaud … bit me.”

  Caroline’s face paled. “Bit you?”

  “He took over my mind and forced me to call up a shadow fiend. I couldn’t stop him. I’m pretty sure he intends to turn the fiend loose on the city after it takes care of the trolls. And me.”

  Caroline searched my eyes, appearing to weigh the information.

  “I’m not asking you to help me,” I said. “I’ve blown my chances, and it’s too dangerous anyway. But I can tell you something Arnaud never intended for anyone to find out. He bound the shadow fiend to himself in a way that makes it dependent on his life force. This guarantees the fiend will remain loyal to Arnaud, but it’s also an Achilles heel.”

  “Kill Arnaud, and the fiend perishes,” Caroline said.

  “Exactly. Meaning there can’t be any more negotiations with the vampires. Arnaud has to be destroyed.”

  Caroline nodded. “We’ll take your heed.”

  “Good,” I said, noting how she was even starting to talk like a fae. “And, look, whatever happens … I want you to know I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.”

  “It’s not your fault. I gave you ample reason to distrust me.” Caroline smiled tightly. “The fae and
their secrecy … I wasn’t to discuss my involvement in the mayor’s programs with anyone else. Nor was I to intervene directly in the outcomes of those programs.”

  “You saw the potential for complications, though,” I said.

  She nodded. “Including the vampires trying to twist the eradication program to their own ends. That story about you … I knew where it originated. But Captain Cole reacted first, preempting the mayor. He organized the hunt for you and lay siege to the Financial District. City Hall had to play catch up.”

  The war has begun, I remembered Arnaud telling me as his building shook.

  “Arnaud fired the first shot, didn’t he?” I said, coming to yet another realization of how thoroughly I’d been duped. She nodded. “So Budge’s offer to end the siege in exchange for my extradition…?”

  “Was to get you to safety,” Caroline affirmed. “We were in the process of clearing your name.”

  “And the trolls?”

  “Sent to help you.”

  I shook my head in anguish. Who knew how many would die before the shadow fiend—and Arnaud—could be stopped. If they could be stopped. And all because I’d wanted to prove Caroline wrong.

  She cupped my chin and raised it until our eyes aligned. “When we spoke in your classroom a few weeks ago, I told you I had worked out an exception in your case. I was given three chances to intervene on your behalf. The first was convincing Budge to negotiate for your release, the second was deploying the trolls. Everson, I still have one more chance to help you. If you’ll let me.”

  “At what cost to you?”

  The skin between her brows dimpled.

  “Oh, c’mon,” I said, “I know the fae well enough to know there are no freebies. I mean, you gave up your mortality to help your father. What did you have to give up to help me?”

  She hesitated. “My feelings for you.”

  That was why she’d kept her distance. She had known this moment was coming.

  “And with this third chance, the deal’s sealed?” I asked. “The feelings go away?”

  The moisture in her eyes answered the question for her. I looked over her face, trying to frame it in my memory: every perfect line, every sensual color, from the blush of her lips to the blue-green spires of her irises.