“How does a nice filet mignon sound?”
33
The next day was one of those perfect late-September Saturdays, the air dry and clean but not yet cold, with the first fallen leaves beginning to swirl around the sidewalks. Vega, Tony, and I left the sidewalk near where we’d parked and joined a path that circled the playing fields at Prospect Park.
I took Vega’s hand in mine. Her son surprised me by running around and clasping my other hand.
“So was that the best pizza you ever had or what?” he asked, referring to our lunch stop. It had been a chain restaurant with a big cartoon mouse for a mascot. I could still taste the freezer burn on the crust.
“It’s, ah, officially in my top twenty,” I hedged.
“Hey, what’s this?” he asked, releasing my hand to reach into my coat pocket.
“Tony,” Vega scolded. “Don’t grab. Ask.”
“He did, technically,” I pointed out, which got me one of Vega’s deadpan looks. But when she saw the misty ball he was holding, her expression changed to one of surprise, then curiosity.
“Is that…?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“What is it?” Tony persisted.
“It’s called an emo ball,” I said. “It holds one of the most precious gifts in the world: the love of a mother for her son. An emo ball is the next best thing to having the living, breathing artifact.” As the mist shifted, the light inside glowed over Tony’s wonderstruck face.
“Whoa,” he said.
“Never take that love for granted,” I added.
“I thought it was destroyed,” Vega whispered.
“The object was, but not its Form.” I recalled the joy I’d felt when Arianna had produced the ball from her skirt. It contained the same warmth and vitality I’d remembered—maybe more so for believing I had lost it for good. “Arianna reminded me that my mother created the ball in a thought realm. As such, it can be reproduced here. Not by me, though. Not yet, anyway.”
Tony handed the ball back carefully. Ahead, a group of young kids were playing a pick-up game of soccer at one end of a field. Tony turned to his mother, eyes large and expectant.
“Go ahead,” she said before he could ask.
Tony took off, his curly hair fluttering in the wind.
“Well,” I said when Vega and I were alone, “we survived the week.” I regretted the word choice the second it left my mouth. We’d both come too damn close to that not being the case.
I started to stammer, but she spoke first. “I know what you meant. It helped having this to look forward to.” She squeezed my hand.
“Absolutely,” I agreed, smiling at her.
“But I want you to tell me what’s wrong.”
“The two of us together? How could anything be wrong?”
She stopped and faced me. “Your eyes, Croft.”
“Damn. That obvious?”
She nodded.
I considered how much to tell her, but I decided that if I was serious about this, us, it had to be everything. I inhaled and blew out my breath.
“I told you about Pierce’s painting, the necklace and the ring?” I waited for her to nod. “It revealed a few things: that Damien had another play, that it involved an actual ring, like mine. But when I faced him, I had a third insight. If Damien was locked in a mirror event, as Pierce put it, then maybe I was locked in one as well. I had destroyed the vampire Arnaud by using the power Grandpa had secretly stored in the pendant. But what if Grandpa had done the reverse? What if I could conquer this opponent by calling up the power of the pendant with the ring?” I paused. “It worked … but maybe not in the way I thought.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, enchantments can deviate somewhat depending on what metal they’re stored in. I reasoned that while Damien had adapted to the enchantment in the pendant, he’d have no defense against the same enchantment in the ring.”
“Different metals,” Vega said.
“Yeah, or different enchantments.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Explain.”
“I’m worried it was the Brasov Pact that lit Damien up.”
“But lit up is lit up, right?”
“Yeah, but if the Brasov Pact did the lighting, it would mean the demon had vampire in him. And judging by where the cursed artifacts were found, not to mention Damien’s familiarity with me, I have a nasty feeling I know which one.”
“Wait, you think Damien was…”
I lowered my eyes and nodded. “Arnaud Thorne.”
“How? You destroyed him.”
“Yes and no. Vampires are descendants of the earliest demons. When a vampire is destroyed, he’s cast down to whatever infernal pit his strain came from. The pits are horrible places. Take the worst torture chamber you can imagine, then multiply the pain and sadism by a hundred. Or better yet, don’t.” I grimaced as I remembered some of the descriptions I’d read that week. “Even a vampire as powerful as Arnaud is nothing to the demons that rule down there. They delight in the torture and humiliation they can visit on their weaker kin. Ultimately, the vampire is made a slave, or else his essence is pulverized and put to other evil purposes.”
“So how could Damien have been Arnaud?”
“Because when I destroyed Arnaud, he was bonded to an ancient shadow fiend. I didn’t think about it at the time, but that might have afforded him some power down there. Enough, maybe, to have become something else.”
“Like what?”
“A demon.”
Vega fell silent long enough for me to become aware of the excited shouts from the soccer field. Tony had just scored a goal. The same child Arnaud had abducted the year before.
“Even if it was Arnaud,” Vega said quietly, “you sent him back, right?”
I remembered the hole Arianna had described in the burnt corpse of Damien’s vessel. A hole large enough for the germ of the demon to have emerged. She hadn’t found anything, but…
“Everson?” Vega prompted.
“Arianna thinks so, yeah. But just in case, I want you to have this.”
I removed the amulet from around Vega’s neck and replaced it with my coin pendant.
“I can’t accept this,” she said. “It belonged to your grandfather.”
I pressed the coin softly to her sternum. “It holds the power of the Brasov Pact. It’ll keep you safe.”
She looked down at my hand, then over at the soccer fields. At last she folded her hand around mine, and we resumed walking.
“Do you think this will ever end?” she asked after a long silence.
I knew she wasn’t just talking about Damien or Arnaud now, but all of it. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “All we can do is keep fighting. Keep pushing back. Just look around. Today the kids have the playing fields. Tomorrow it might be the woods. Someday, the entire city.”
“And we’ll never know if we give up.”
“That’s right.” I peeked over at her. “Or forget to love.”
Vega snorted. “I give you an opening to drop the L word, and that’s your move?”
Face warming with embarrassment, I waved my hands. “All right, yeah, that was pretty awful. Let me try again.”
“Forget it, Croft. You whiffed.”
“Hey, that was only strike one. I get two more chances.”
“Nope.” She smirked. “My game, my rules.”
“I’m calling foul.”
“Call it all you want.”
“Well, I love you. So there.”
“I love you too. But it still doesn’t count.”
I sighed in pretend exasperation. “Well, will it count in the morning?”
She gave me a sidelong look. “It might.”
“Cool,” I said, taking her hand again. “I can live with that.”
We rounded the end of the field behind the soccer net just as Tony kicked in another goal.
34
The East River
That night, while the city
slept, a small creature slipped from the dark waters and scrambled, shivering, over the rocks of a wooded island. Moonlight glistened from his gray, wrinkled skin.
At the tree line, he stopped and rose onto bony hind legs. His eyes were pale and bulbous, and in his still-developing vision, a mass of lights blurred to the south.
Manhattan, he tried to say, but the name came out a gargled whisper.
The creature swore and fell to his claw-like hands. So close to wielding the power he’d earned, so close to commanding it all. But here he was—a naked little being, hiding from the world.
Because of Everson Croft¸ he seethed, fresh hatred burning through him.
But you were reborn, he reminded himself in a gentler voice. You’re here. His plan had afforded him that, at least. And he had started out small before. He had grown, developed, amassed power…
He could do it again.
Something rustled in the grass to his right. The creature turned and pounced without thought. The rat was large, more than half his size. He thrust his face into the rodent’s dank-smelling neck, drawn to the pulsating jugular. Needlelike canines punched into the warm vessel. He sucked hungrily, delighting in the rat’s struggle, in its weakening shrieks and kicks.
When it was over, the creature rose from the dead rat and wiped the hair and blood from his mouth. Fresh vitality pumped through him. Maybe it was his ambition, but he felt a little larger. And when he peered south again, the mass of lights seemed slightly sharper in his vision.
Tonight, this wretched island, he thought. One day soon, the entire city.
Falling back to all fours, he scurried into the trees.
More Prof Croft Coming!
In the meantime, you can find him in the newest series in the Strangeverse…
Blue Curse (Blue Wolf, Book 1)
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Books in the Strangeverse
PROF CROFT
Book of Souls
Demon Moon
Blood Deal
Purge City
Death Mage
Black Luck
* More to come *
BLUE WOLF
Blue Curse
Blue Shadow
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Acknowledgments
Another Prof Croft installment, another talented group who helped bring it home. In no particular order, thanks to my beta and advanced readers, including Beverly Collie, Mark Denman, and Erin Halbmaier; to Team Damonza for yet another inspired cover design; and to Sharlene Magnarella for final proofing. Let’s do it again soon. I also want to thank James Patrick Cronin for his excellent narration of the Prof Croft series as well as the Blue Wolf audiobooks.
As always, many thanks to you for exploring this universe with me.
Best wishes,
Brad
Black Luck (Prof Croft Book 5) Page 24
