Death Mage (Prof Croft Book 4)

by Brad Magnarella

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “West Midtown, south of Forty-second.” I filled her in on where we were going and why. “Are we okay driving straight to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, or should we try another route?”

  “You should be all right if you hurry,” she said. “There are rioters all along Forty-second Street, and they’re moving south. Another group is coming up from Gramercy.” I could actually hear them: shouts and screams punctured by the sounds of things breaking. I could also hear the strain in Vega’s voice.

  “How’s the NYPD holding up?” I asked.

  “We don’t have enough officers to contain them. The rioters are charging the cordons and breaking through. We’ve tried gas, rubber bullets, real bullets. Nothing’s deterring them. And the one’s we’ve hauled in are going absolutely nuts. Budge is asking the president for National Guard troops, but I’m starting to wonder if that will be enough. Croft … whatever’s happening out there, it’s starting to affect normal people.”

  I remembered the aging woman in the pants suit at the gas station, the way her pupils had seemed to flatten as she lowered the lighter toward the pool of gasoline…

  “Once we find the Banebrand weapon, we’re going to the source,” I promised her.

  “And that will end this?”

  I considered the odds: venturing into Lich’s turf, where he was expecting us, surviving long enough to find his glass pendant and destroy it—all assuming, of course, we obtained the Banebrand weapon first. So, a thousand to one? Ten thousand to one?

  “Only if we succeed,” I answered honestly.

  I waited for Vega to ask me the likelihood of that success, but she only blew out her breath. I glanced back at the car and caught James puffing a joint. I turned up a hand and mouthed, The hell are you doing? He smirked and shot me with a finger pistol.

  “I should let you go then,” Vega said.

  “Is your son someplace safe?”

  “He’s at the apartment with Camilla.”

  She hadn’t really answered my question, but I picked up the undercurrent of worry. Her apartment was too close to the city, the chaos.

  “We’ll swing by on our way back,” I said. “Check in on them.”

  “No, Croft, that’s not—”

  “I’m not asking,” I interrupted.

  Behind me, James laid on the horn. When I looked, he was stubbing out the joint in the ashtray and jabbing a finger past me. I craned my neck around the phone stand. “Crap,” I said. Then to Vega, “I’ll call you later.”

  I hung up and backed away from the mob running toward us, their screams an insane squall. Windows broke in their wake; awnings burst into flames. Men and women shimmied light poles, rocking them until they crashed over the street. A hydrant burst, jetting water twenty feet into the air.

  I climbed into the car and slammed and locked the door. “Protezione,” I called.

  A glimmering shield grew around the Firebird, which James had already thrown into gear. He sped toward the mob, a hailstorm of bottles, concrete chunks, and other thrown objects breaking around us. A blue USPS mailbox landed on the shielded hood and tumbled over the roof. Within seconds we were close enough that I could pick out the crazed faces.

  James wasn’t slowing.

  “Hey, wh-what are you doing?” I shouted, throwing my forearms to my face.

  But instead of clunking through bodies, the car took a hard right, rear wheels screaming, and then a just as sudden left that fishtailed us the other direction. I lowered my arms to find us on a parallel street. Straggling members of the northbound mob armed with pipes wheeled toward us.

  James let out a “Yee-haw!”

  Without slowing, he cut around them as they tried to dart in front of the car. Pipes banged off the windows and clunked under the tires. Gunfire erupted, flashing from the shield. Twice James had to drive up onto the sidewalk to avoid hitting someone, but within another few seconds we were past the mob, their mindless screams trailing in our wake. In my rearview mirror, I watched them turn and resume their assault on the street and buildings.

  “Good God,” I muttered. “It’s like Zombieville out there.”

  “So seriously, man,” James said, shifting into a higher gear. “What’s up with you and Vega?”

  I looked over at him. “Me and Vega?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I have an idea, but is now really the time?” I flinched as James squealed onto a street with a new wave of rioters, slammed the brakes, threw the car in reverse, and accessed the next block.

  “There’s no shame in it, man,” he said, not missing a beat.

  I relaxed my grip on the armrest. “We work together, that’s all.”

  “But you feel something for her.”

  “I feel what I’d feel for anyone I worked closely with. I might even develop feelings for you some d—look out!”

  More bullets flashed off the shield. James swerved to avoid a group spilling from a Thirty-fourth street subway entrance, then down-shifted and turned north.

  “Naw, man, this runs deeper than that,” he said. “Every time you say her name, your eyes do this thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “This tiny shift. It’s your tell. Saw it when you first brought her up at the pool hall. Didn’t think much about it till a few minutes ago when you wanted to rip me a new one. And bam, there it was again.”

  “Whatever,” I said, my face growing warm.

  He turned toward me. “Say her name.”

  “What?”

  “Just say it, man.”

  “Hey, would you watch the road?” I cried.

  James swerved at the last moment, avoiding a toppled light pole, then turned back to me. He made small steering adjustments without looking, his tires clunking over debris and glass. “C’mon, man, I want to see.”

  “Vega,” I said quickly, for no other reason than to get us across Midtown in one piece.

  James leaned back and laughed. “I knew it. You’ve totally got a thing for her.”

  “If my eyes did anything, it was only because you made it awkward,” I stammered.

  “What’s the big deal? You like her. You’ve got good taste.”

  I grumbled. My eyes did a lot of things without my knowledge, apparently. Was I developing feelings for Vega? It had only been a month since Caroline had had her feelings for me wiped clean. I hadn’t gotten over that, not yet. So how could I have a thing for Vega? And yet … I did care about her. And yeah, I looked forward to seeing her now.

  “I respect her,” I allowed at last.

  “Respect her,” James echoed. “Have you told her?”

  “Told her what?”

  “About your, cough, respect for her.”

  “For God’s sake. Has it occurred to you that the city is literally falling apart?” As if on cue, James turned a corner and sped past a blazing building. Bricks landed on the shielded roof.

  “I’m just trying to help a wizard out,” he said, switching the vent setting to Recirculate as the smoke outside thickened. “You’re not the smoothest number. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m an academic. I know that.”

  “My advice, then? Start simple. A casual dinner, maybe. Or drinks. See what kind of chemistry you two have outside work.”

  “Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?”

  “You talking about finding the Banebrand weapon?”

  “Yeah, the small matter of finding the Banebrand weapon, something even you’re skeptical about. Oh, and then there’s the whole destroying Lich’s pendant and closing the portal to Dhuul. Otherwise, yeah, we’re golden. I’ll go ahead and make that dinner reservation.”

  James shrugged. “You were the one who brought it up. I was just trying to help.”

  I stared at him in disbelief, but we were arriving at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, which had to have been a record for an west-east traverse of Manhattan. Once through, we had the highways t
o ourselves. James shut up, thankfully, and urged the Firebird past one hundred. Other than distant pockets of fire, the destruction was nothing like what was happening in Manhattan, but that would change as the disorder spread. I imagined the world and everyone I cared for, Vega included, reduced to a mindless soup for the Whisperer to feed on.

  Please let the Banebrand be in the vault, I thought.

  24

  James steered through the empty streets of Port Gurney, the Firebird’s beams sweeping past boarded-up buildings and weedy lots. A pack of feral dogs scattered ahead of us, their backward-peering faces lean and fearful.

  “Sure this is the place?” he asked.

  “The town took a hit when the shipping industry crashed. It’s been a downhill ride ever since. There,” I said, pointing out a leaning strip of buildings that made up the town’s waterfront. “The name of the bar was the Rhein House.” As James turned, I rolled down the window and squinted in search of a sign. A smell of seawater and sewage wafted into the car.

  “I see it,” James said, and took a sharp turn in front of a building on the end of the strip. The front window had been smashed, but the hand-painted letters “RH” still showed in the upper left corner of the glass.

  I got out of the car and, wand and sword readied, listened a moment. Except for the wind and the slapping of the sea, the town was quiet. But something was telling me to be wary.

  “Door’s unlocked.”

  I jerked at James’s voice and found him already stepping into the bar. I hurried to catch up. Glass crunched underfoot as I stepped into the orb of silver light growing from his wand. The establishment was a leaf-blown space where I imagined tables had once stood, photos from the old country adorning the sooty brick walls. A U-shaped bar took up the far side of the room, ringed by stools bolted into the wooden floor, though several were missing. I imagined Grandpa sitting on one of the stools, ordering a stein of beer, then using illusory magic to go down to the vault to add to his collection or perhaps examine the magical artifacts already there. My gaze shifted to a corridor to the left of the bar.

  “Access to the basement is probably back here,” I said.

  James followed me into the bar’s former kitchen. The stairs down were beside a cleaned-out pantry. I took a tremulous breath—why did everything important have to be in basements?—and led the way down. The basement was a dank, concrete space. Rats skittered from the expanding glow of my wand, taking refuge among heaps of trash and old furniture. James sent a bolt after one and chuckled when it zapped the rat’s hindquarters.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “is this boring you?”

  “Hey, just trying to keep my skills honed.”

  “Well, how about looking for the vault?” I snapped. The uneasiness I’d felt outside was still swimming through my system like a harsh stimulant. I was in no mood to play babysitter. I moved from James and began scanning the walls. He took the hint and began doing the same, moving in the other direction. When we met on the far wall, he shook his head.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  When Arnaud had told me about the vault, I’d pictured it in a wall. Maybe that was the wrong assumption.

  “Vigore!” I shouted, sweeping my sword in an arc. James jumped out of the way as the heaps of refuse blew toward the staircase. Clusters of squealing rats spilled out and scattered, chasing down their former refuge. A moment later I spotted the vault door in the floor where one of the piles had been sitting. The door was made of cast iron with a lever handle.

  “Looks like someone’s already been in there,” James remarked.

  “Blood slaves,” I said, sensing the residue of the old locking spell. “They must have overpowered the spell.” Which had no doubt weakened with Grandpa’s death, I thought. He’d probably saved his most powerful locking enchantments for the items themselves—like the vampires’ Scaig Box that had held a shadow fiend. And hopefully whatever held the Banebrand.

  I double-checked the door for traps before gripping the lever and giving it a hard yank. The door clunked loose and opened onto a cylinder with a metal ladder leading down.

  “Hold on,” James said. He cast a silver ball of light and, with a small flick, sent it down the cylinder ahead of us. A skill he must have learned during the five years of training I’d never received. About fifteen feet below, the light spread into a room of which I could only see a small section.

  I climbed down the ladder first, the skin across my chest stretching tight, breaths thinning, and ducked into a bunker-like room. I turned toward the hovering ball of light, and my heart sank. Against the far wall lay a scatter of metal boxes inside which the magical artifacts had no doubt been stored. The open boxes had been picked through, if not by the blood slaves then by whomever had come after them. Gone were the wands I’d imagined, the amulets and charms and enchanted blades. All I could find among the boxes was a dagger the size of a letter-opener.

  “Think that’s the weapon?” James asked.

  I turned the rusty dagger around in my hand. I sensed no magic or enchantment in it. The blade’s tip had bent, and the blade was dull. Was that the point? I wondered. For the weapon to appear ordinary to anyone who found it? Was the magic hidden deep inside it? I looked over the dagger once more, made a dubious face, and placed it in the sack.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “There’s still this.”

  I turned to where James’s ball of light was hovering above a trunk set in a corner. With its black wood and battered metal, I recognized it immediately as the steamer trunk that had once sat in Grandpa’s attic study. I’d always wondered what had become of it. But as I looked at it now, I had no hope it would contain anything. The central lock was busted and both hasps open. James lifted the lid and then jumped back with a sharp holler.

  “What is it?” I asked, remembering the sniveling voice I’d heard in the same trunk years earlier. But the bone-white creature that sprang out was no familiar. He perched on the edge of the trunk, bloodshot eyes flicking between us. When his pale lips began to bulge, I saw what we were dealing with.

  “Vampire!” I shouted at James.

  The creature sprang and rammed face-first into James’s shield. He hissed and scratched at it, a ragged business shirt and slacks covering his emaciated body. And now I recognized him. The vampire was a former CEO of one of the financial firms in downtown Manhattan. I’d sat with him in Arnaud’s conference room, fought alongside him against the wolves.

  Grandpa’s ring pulsed around my finger. I aimed it at the vampire and shouted, “Balaur!”

  The force from the ring nailed him and, in a burst of fire, slung him into the far wall. The vampire lay writhing, his face torn as though by dragon talons, smoke billowing from his body.

  James and I stood over him. “So this is where you’ve been hiding out,” I said.

  “A drop,” the creature groveled. “A single, blessed drop. Please. Your blood is potent, and I am so hungry.”

  He gripped my pant leg, but I kicked his hand away. He was one of the two former CEOs who had escaped following the battle against the city and, by the looks of it, had planned to remain in hibernation until the threat passed, maybe even for several years. He’d probably learned about the vault from Arnaud when the vampire had reclaimed the Scaig Box.

  “So hungry,” he moaned.

  The thing about hibernation was that the vampire emerged weak. If we had been mortals, no problem. He would have devoured our blood to the last drop and gone back to sleep. Unfortunately for him, he’d awakened to a pair of magic slingers.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “You help us, and maybe we’ll help you.”

  James shot me a consternated look, but I shook my head, letting him in on the bluff.

  “What do you want?” the vampire moaned. The wounds across his face were puckering grotesquely along the edges. He was trying to heal them, but he lacked the regenerative power.

  “Information,” I said. “You’ve been down here, what, a
month? In that time, has anyone else been down here?”

  “No, now feed me.”

  His hand crawled toward my leg. I stepped on it. “Think harder,” I said, his fingers crunching beneath my shoe. It was cruel, but this creature had done far, far worse in his lifetime.

  His scream was thin and piercing.

  “One person,” he said when he’d caught his breath.

  A charge went through me. “Who?”

  “I didn’t see them, I was sleeping. Now let me feed, curse you.”

  “But you sensed this person. What did you sense?”

  I kept my ring trained on the vampire as his mouth opened and closed, fangs thirsting for blood. “Death and decay,” he panted. “Ruination. Now let me feed!”

  James raised his eyebrows. “Lich?”

  I’d never told Chicory about this place, but he could have picked it up from my thoughts. Either that or one of the magical items Arnaud had taken—and that I’d subsequently given to Chicory—had left a trail of some kind, one the mage was able to trace back here. Either way, Lich had beaten us to whatever had remained of the magical stash, maybe even found the weapon in question. That would certainly explain his confidence.

  “Crap,” I spat.

  “You promised you’d help me,” the vampire hissed. “You promised.”

  “You’re right,” I said tersely. “Vigore.” The force from my blade lifted the vampire and dropped him back into the trunk. I tossed in some dragon sand after him, shut the lid with another force invocation, bound it with a locking spell, and shouted, “Fuoco!” The vampire unleashed a withering scream as flames burst through the seams in the trunk.

  “That’s helping him?” James asked.

  “Putting him out of his misery, anyway,” I muttered. “Not to mention his blood slaves.” I imagined the mortals whom the vampire had hollowed out either dying at last or regaining their humanity in the steel shipping container that held them in the city. With the way things were going, though, it felt like pulling them out of a frying pan and into the fire.

  James turned from the burning trunk and peered around. “So, that’s it, I guess. No magical weapon.” He paused, head cocked as though trying to sense something. “But there is magic kicking around down here.”