Death Mage (Prof Croft Book 4)

by Brad Magnarella

  And now I picked it up too, a shallow pulse. We followed the pulse to its source—three symbols on the back wall. The symbols had been drawn in dark red ink, and the faint magic was emanating from their lines. James parked his shades atop his head and leaned in.

  “Looks like a sigil,” he said.

  “It does, but I don’t think that’s what it is,” I said. “I mean, there’s magic, but it’s not coming from the symbols. It’s maintaining the symbols, making sure they can’t be washed away.”

  “Yeah?”

  And now I sensed something else. “My grandfather drew them,” I said. “It’s hard to explain, but there’s a familiarity to the magic, something I’ve felt with other items he enchanted.”

  “What do the symbols mean?”

  “It’s Akkadian cuneiform,” I said as I studied them more closely. “Phonograms.”

  “And for us non-PhD types, Prof?”

  “Sorry, they’re sounds.”

  “What do they mean?”

  “That’s the thing, they don’t mean anything. They’re just random syllables. Gug-lugal-i,” I whispered, careful not to push any power through them. “It would be like saying la-de-da in English.”

  “I don’t remember anything like that from my training,” James said.

  “And I don’t recognize it from my spell books.” Still, something about the symbols resonated. Not on a magical level this time, but from a more intellectual space, as though I should have known what they meant.

  “We could always test them,” James said. Before I could stop him, he was repeating the sounds, releasing them as an invocation. I flinched back, hardening my light into a shield.

  But after several seconds, nothing happened.

  “It was worth a shot,” James said with a shrug.

  “What? A shot at getting us both killed?”

  “Dude, you need to relax.”

  “Relax?” I could feel a vein throbbing in my right temple. “You don’t go around channeling random sounds. You had no idea what might have been stored inside those symbols.”

  “Maybe something good,” he said.

  “And maybe something that would have cooked us like McCrispy over there,” I said, jerking a thumb at the smoking trunk.

  “Let me know when you’re done lecturing.” James wheeled toward the ladder.

  “Hey!” I grabbed his shoulder. It was as much my anger at his cavalier attitude as the hopelessness of our mission. When he spun on me, I was surprised by the intensity in his blue eyes.

  “Listen, man,” he said, leveling a finger at me. “We didn’t find the weapon, and you know it. Not here, not at the house. The outing’s been a bust. Which means it’s time to start rolling the dice, hoping to hell we get lucky. And if that involves testing out random sounds, then yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m not gonna sit around, waiting to be eaten by what’s-his-name.”

  “Dhuul,” I said.

  “Whatever. We done here?”

  I stayed glaring at him, but he had a point. “Just give me a head’s up next time, all right?” I said with a sigh.

  James dropped his shades over his eyes and climbed the ladder, his orb floating up above him. I turned back toward the small room to glance it over and read the symbols a final time. Why had Grandpa written them? Why would he have wanted them to endure? And where had I seen them before?

  Gug-lugal-i.

  Repeating the syllables silently, I followed James up the ladder.

  25

  By the time we reached Brooklyn, the fires had spread. We’d had to detour twice thanks to roving mobs and entire sections of highway in flames. Our argument back in the vault felt petty now, a sentiment James seemed to share. He didn’t make a fuss when I mentioned needing to stop at Vega’s to check on her son and sitter. I directed him through the streets of Williamsburg until he was pulling up in front of her apartment building.

  I stepped from the car and squinted into the blowing smoke. The street was quiet, but I could hear the chaos mere blocks away. Vega’s son and sitter wouldn’t be safe here much longer.

  “C’mon,” I said to James.

  He finished casting a shield spell around his car and caught up to me at the building’s front steps. I looked up and down the steel monster of a front door. “Damn, forgot about that,” I muttered.

  When James started to raise his wand, I stopped him. “Breaking the lock will get us inside, but it will also make the residents more vulnerable.”

  I was considering what to do when I heard the bolts turning. A lucky break. I stepped back as the door opened and a woman wearing a crooked headscarf slipped out. I caught the door before it closed behind her.

  “You should go back in,” James said to the woman. “It’s too dangerous out here.”

  When the woman turned toward us, I recognized her as Tony’s sitter. “Camilla?” I said. “Where are you going?”

  She gestured absently. “I go … I go…”

  “Camilla,” I said, taking her by the shoulders. “Where’s Tony?”

  “Tony?” Her expression was vacant, her pupils flattening like I’d seen in the eyes of the woman at the gas station. Shit. Camilla was falling under the influence of Whisperer magic.

  I pulled her back into the building, shorted the magnetic lock on the glass door inside, and with James following, climbed the steps to Vega’s floor. Camilla complied, occasionally mumbling something in Spanish. At least she hadn’t turned violent yet … I hoped. When we reached Vega’s apartment, the door was open. I handed Camilla off to James.

  “Tony!” I called, making a quick circuit of the apartment. The boy was nowhere in sight. Panic pumped through me. Though I’d only met Tony twice, I felt a responsibility toward him. In part because I’d imperiled him, but largely because he was the most important thing in Vega’s world.

  “Tony!” I called again.

  From back in the kitchen, I could hear James trying to coax the boy’s whereabouts from Camilla, but her responses weren’t even in Spanish anymore. She was just babbling. Not good.

  “Tony, it’s Everson Croft. I’m a friend of your mother’s.”

  I heard a spring squeak in Vega’s bedroom and returned to find Tony’s curly head peering from underneath the bed. “Mr. Croft?” he asked. When he squirmed all the way free, I was there to lift him up.

  I looked him over to make sure he was all right. “What happened?” I asked.

  He cinched my neck with both arms. “She stopped making sense,” Tony whispered. “Started picking at her arms and saying strange things, screaming at nothing.” At that moment, Camilla screamed from the kitchen. Tony flinched and squeezed me tighter. “Like that,” he said.

  I held him another moment before setting him on the edge of the bed. “I want you to stay here, okay?”

  He nodded uncertainly. “You gonna help her, Mr. Croft?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  I entered the kitchen to find Camilla sitting in a chair, bound by silver cords of energy. A muzzle of energy covered her mouth, silencing her screams. “She started flipping out,” James said, “scratching herself.”

  I looked at the bloody jags down both her arms. Her pupils were nearly flat lines now. I thought of the woman at the gas station again. Her eyes had looked exactly the same, but when that pothead had slung his arm around her, she’d seemed to snap out of it, her pupils dilating again. I hesitated on that image, remembering the smoke drifting from the guy’s long hair and jacket.

  I suddenly remembered something James had told me.

  “When Chicory last visited you,” I said to him now, “you told me he mashed his thumb between your eyes.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But nothing happened,” I said.

  “Nothing I could feel.”

  “Do you have any more of that stuff you were smoking earlier?”

  “Yeah, but … you really think now’s the time?”

  “Go ahead, light it up. You said you were high when C
hicory stamped you, right? I think there’s something in cannabis that throws off Whisperer magic. That’s why you were never affected.” James was patting his pockets now, and I gestured for him to hurry. At last he found the half-smoked joint, lit it with his wand, and took a few uncertain puffs.

  “Blow it on her,” I said.

  James leaned down and released a stream of smoke that broke against Camilla’s muzzled face. We both stood back and watched. After several seconds, her face relaxed, pupils returning to their spheroid shapes. She blinked several times and looked around in confusion.

  “Release her,” I said.

  James flicked his wand, and the muzzle and bindings dissolved.

  “Mr. Croft?” she said, rubbing a wrist. “What are you doing here?”

  “What happened, Camilla?” I asked.

  “I … I don’t know. I watching T.V. with Tony and then … I must fall asleep. I wake up here.”

  “But you feel all right?”

  “Sleepy. But yes, I feel all right.”

  “Keep an eye on her,” I said to James, and picked up Vega’s phone and dialed her cell.

  “Camilla?” she asked when she answered.

  “No, it’s Everson,” I said. “I’m at the apartment. Tony’s fine.”

  “Thank God,” she breathed. “No one was answering the phone.”

  “Listen, I think we’ve found a way to control the mobs.”

  “Really? How?”

  “Has the Narcotics Division made any marijuana busts lately?”

  “Marijuana busts?”

  “And I mean big, as in bales of the stuff. You’re going to need as much as you can get your hands on.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Listen, I only have a few case studies to go on, but I believe there’s something in cannabis that alters brain chemistry, changes it in a way that doesn’t let the bad magic take hold. Makes the insanity go away. If you can get it in the air, light it, and drop it over the city…”

  “You’re asking me to fumigate New York City with pot smoke?”

  “It’s a temporary solution until we can tackle the problem at the source.”

  “Hold on,” Vega said. I heard her shout something into the mass of voices around her. When she came back on, she said, “I got some funny looks, but the wheels are in motion. They’re desperate.”

  “Good.”

  “How’s it look around there?” she asked.

  I peered down through the security bars of the nearest window. The mobs were arriving on the block. Several floors down, a window shattered. Fires blazed from parked cars. James’s car was surrounded, the mob trying to bang their way through the glimmering shield.

  “Could be worse,” I said, which was never a lie. “But listen, I’m going to have James stay here to look after Tony and Camilla. Problem is, that leaves me without a ride. Any chance the NYPD could send a chopper?” There was no chance of driving back through the city now.

  “Consider it sent,” Vega said, no hesitation. “They’ll pick you up on the roof.”

  “Thanks.” I almost ended the call there. “Hey, listen. If for some reason I don’t, you know, make it back, I just wanted—”

  “Shut up, Croft. I’ll see you soon.”

  Despite everything, I smiled.

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  With a relentless blast of air, the chopper set down on the apartment roof, landing lights glaring. James had agreed to stay behind, as much to keep Tony and Camilla safe as to give the city a wizard presence, someone Vega could call if new issues arose. James’s ready acceptance of the role suggested he didn’t think he would have been much help in the fight against Lich. I knew the feeling because I was thinking the same thing about myself.

  I climbed into the back of the chopper and strapped myself in.

  The woman pilot turned to face me. “Where to?” she shouted.

  “Gehr Place in New Jersey,” I shouted back. “You can set me down in the cemetery across the street.”

  She nodded, replaced the cup over her ear, and lifted off. When the helicopter cleared the surrounding rooftops, it batted west, through smoke and toward the apocalyptic scene that was Manhattan.

  Welcome to the End of the World Tour, I thought. Sponsored in part by Everson Croft.

  It still killed me that I had been manipulated into destroying the Elder book. As I looked over the spreading flames, I struggled for how I might have seen through the artifice, done something different. My hands balled into helpless fists. The copilot, a young man, turned around. “You the one who said we should dust the city with pot smoke?”

  I nodded tiredly and awaited the inevitable deriding.

  “Department thought it was crazy,” he shouted. “So they tested it out on a group they’d arrested earlier. Filled their holding cell with smoke. Know something? It calmed them right down.” He smiled wide enough to reveal his crooked lower teeth. “I believe you’re onto something.”

  I nodded back, but the drug wasn’t a permanent fix. Something told me that as the Whisperer magic strengthened, it would overpower whatever blunting effect the cannabis was having—no pun intended. Which meant we couldn’t fail. Despite what James had said in the vault, I’d managed to hold on to the remote hope that Lich had overlooked something, that one of the items I’d dropped in the magic sack was the weapon that would destroy his pendant.

  The key was in the syllables Grandpa had left behind: Gug-lugal-i.

  Minutes later, the helicopter set down in the cemetery, both officers wishing me luck. I waved as they lifted off again, and I ran down the street to the safe house. From overhead, I had marked the mobs’ progress by the fires. They hadn’t pushed this far into Jersey yet, but they’d be here soon enough.

  At the front door of the safe house, I stopped to make sure Lich hadn’t returned. I sensed nothing. That disturbed more than relieved me. He had made no effort to stop us, which suggested he hadn’t needed to.

  I made my way down to the basement and stood in the casting circle.

  Within moments, the wooden rafters and earthen floor disappeared, and I was standing in the moonlit clearing in the Refuge. “How did it go?” Marlow asked. He was alone this time.

  “We took what we could find,” I said, holding up the sack. “A few items at the house, and one at the vault in Port Gurney. An old dagger. Unfortunately, the vault had been raided. And it sounds like Lich went down there as well. But there were some Akkadian syllables my grandfather had drawn on a wall: Gug-lugal-i. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Marlow repeated the syllables as though testing their power. “It’s not a sound I’m familiar with, no.”

  My heart sank. If one of the most powerful magic-users didn’t know what it meant, who would?

  Marlow accepted the sack and beckoned for me to walk with him.

  “And James?” he asked.

  “He stayed behind to help out in the city. That was sort of an executive decision on my part. I hope that was all right.”

  “A good decision,” Marlow said.

  I looked over at him. I’d become so conditioned to being berated by the magical society to which I thought I’d belonged that being commended was almost jarring. And coming from my father…

  “How does it look up there?” he asked.

  “Honestly? Bad and getting worse.” I described the scene going and returning. “But through a series of, um, happenstances, James and I discovered that cannabis frustrates the effect of Whisperer magic.”

  “Cannabis,” Marlow repeated reflectively. “We’ve been working on various spells and potions as a prophylactic against Dhuul’s influence, but that’s not an ingredient we’d considered.”

  “Its effect may only be temporary.”

  “That may be all we need,” Marlow said.

  He closed his eyes and a vibratory energy moved around him. We were emerging from the forest and entering the plain. The rocky hill and palace rose out ahead of us, backlit by t
he twin moons. The serenity was as much a shock to my system as the chaos had been only minutes before. To fill the silence, I asked, “Are you going to miss this place?”

  Marlow opened his eyes again and smiled faintly. “A part of me will, yes. It’s been my home for centuries now. But the point of coming here was never to stay. It was to defeat Lich so we could return to the world and resume the important work of the Order.”

  His robe whispered as he walked. Something told me he could have transported us to the palace—we were in a thought realm, after all—but that he had wanted to steal a few minutes alone with me.

  “How old was I when I left here?” I asked.

  “Barely one. In fact, your grandfather spirited you out right before Lich sealed us from the world. This was shortly after Lich’s attack. Your mother and I had discussed what we’d do if he ever found our refuge while you were still young. We decided you would be placed in your grandparents’ care. Your grandfather was very powerful, and your grandmother, though not a full-blooded magic-user, had some veiling spells in her repertoire. With Lich’s focus largely in parallel realms, we felt you’d be safest with them.”

  “Wait, my grandmother was a magic-user?” I rifled through my memories. She had never demonstrated any magical abilities—none that I could remember. But veiling spells were often subtle.

  “And a wonderful cook, too,” Marlow said. “I’ll never forget her blueberry cobbler topped with homemade ice cream.”

  I smiled. That had been one of my favorites, too. But I caught a note of loneliness in Marlow’s voice.

  “You still miss her,” I said. “My mother.”

  “Every day, Everson.”

  I wanted to ask him what she was like, but the question felt strangely personal. Like I’d be prying, even though he was my father. My father. I still couldn’t get my head around the idea that this man strolling beside me was him. No longer an idea, no longer a lie, but a living, breathing presence.

  “How did you meet?” I asked.

  “Your grandfather introduced us on Eve’s first visit to the Refuge. She was preparing to take over his role. He asked me to give her a tour of our realm, explain what we were doing, that sort of thing. I was exhausted that day. I’d been up late the night before doing spell work and frankly wasn’t in much of a mood to play guide. But your mother had this effect on me—call it magic,” he said with a laugh, “as though our auras were in constant resonance. By the end of her visit, I felt more … alive than I had in a long time. My efforts here, which had taken on the dull weight of drudgery, assumed fresh purpose. You have to remember, we’d been working against Lich for hundreds of years and couldn’t claim much more than a stalemate. But with your mother’s arrival, the work felt brand new. She restored me.”