Book of Souls: A Prof Croft Prequel

by Brad Magnarella

  Late in the afternoon, James signaled to us. “It should be just over the pass.”

  Thank God. The dread of camping in the forest again had been building in my head like a migraine. There was still the journey back to the village, of course, but I’d worry about that in a few days.

  Behind me, I could hear Bertrand grunting to catch up, probably in hopes of overtaking us, but James and Flor were too far ahead. Before long, their voices rose in excitement. When I arrived at the mountain pass, I saw why. Where the trees began to thin, a sizeable stone structure took shape against a cliff face. A thrill of excitement broke through me.

  Dolhasca, the forgotten monastery.

  “Wait!” Bertrand called after us. “We should enter by seniority!”

  I ignored him and began picking my way down toward the others. The large monastery had been built like a fortress, tall stone walls with a crenellated tower at one corner. The rear of the building ended at the cliff face, as though the mountain had sheared it in half.

  “Seems we aren’t the first ones here,” James said when I arrived beside him.

  He was examining a doorway that looked to have been bricked over but later broken down, toppled stones cast to one side. I tilted a nearby stone with a shoe, revealing a deep pocket of earth underneath.

  “This happened a while ago,” I said.

  “Looters,” Flor announced, in what sounded like disdain. “They are everywhere.”

  “Well, let’s just hope they left the manuscripts alone.”

  “You don’t sound very optimistic,” James said.

  “Because I’m not.” I donned my headlamp. “The manuscripts would have been worth a fortune on the black market.” And if they had been sold on the black market, I could kiss the Book of Souls goodbye. I would never be able to track it down in the dark network of buyers and sellers.

  Flor stepped forward. “I wonder if they are the same ones who wrote this.” I followed her squinting gaze to a message scrawled beside the door in what looked like charcoal. “Prekliaty.”

  “It’s the Slovak word for cursed,” I said.

  “A warning?” James frowned. “Seems odd for looters to leave a public service announcement.”

  “Or maybe the message was intended to keep looters away,” I said. “As a scare tactic.” I looked from the message back to the busted-up stones. “Though a lot of good it did.”

  “Enough talk.” Flor snapped on a headlamp and stepped through the opening.

  “Wait,” came Bertrand’s voice, his head appearing above the pass. “I don’t have a light!”

  James filed in after Flor, and I took up the rear. We soon found ourselves on a covered walk that framed a stone-riddled courtyard. The open space had probably been a garden at one time, and it wasn’t hard to imagine robed monks strolling sedately along its paths.

  “Let’s split up,” I said, peering down the covered walk to our right and left, picking out the shadows of doorways. “We can take a quick inventory of what’s here before Bertrand arrives.”

  James nodded. “I’ll search the tower, if you and Flor want to begin down here.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said. “And Flor, we’re just looking right now. Not taking, okay?”

  “Screw yourself,” she snapped and marched away.

  “Well, good luck everyone,” James said merrily before departing.

  I set off in the opposite direction as Flor, my ego smarting from her parting words. What was it about me that put women off? My sarcasm? My face? As I shone my light overhead, the questions dissolved from my thoughts. Though the monastery had appeared forbidding from the outside, handsome stonework adorned the interior, including the walkway’s vaulted ceiling. Romanesque pillars stood every fifteen feet or so, though several had toppled.

  Not a bad place to hang out for a few days.

  I shot my beam into doorways, illuminating what looked to have been prayer cells and former dormitories, all empty now save for scattered rubble and fallen timber beams. In the wall opposite the one we’d entered through, an arched doorway opened into the cliff face. From either the chill air or my own foreboding, my arms broke out in fleshy bumps.

  I ducked into the doorway and soon emerged into a room at the far end of a corridor. My beam found a gruesome monster’s face. Stifling a yell, I swung the beam over and hit the creature’s twin. I staggered backwards, nearly falling.

  I hesitated, my heart slamming—and then let out a shaky laugh.

  Gargoyles.

  I walked up to the devilish works of stone, the pair crouched on a pair of pedestals that flanked a descending staircase. The details were impressive, down to the fangs that extended to the gargoyle’s knobby knees. The statues seemed at odds with the rest of the monastery, but my concern lay with the stairs. My heart rate kicked up as my headlamp wavered into the black maw. As much as I hated the word, I had a phobia of being underground. A condition that made it feel as though someone was sitting on my chest. Already, I found myself struggling to inhale a full breath.

  I was debating whether or not to descend when, on a lintel above the steps, I caught sight of a chiseled word:

  Scriptorium

  The library!

  In my excitement, I almost called for James before realizing I couldn’t do so without alerting Flor. Bertrand, too, if he had made it inside by now. Still not knowing their designs on the texts, I couldn’t take any chances—especially with Flor bearing a high-powered rifle.

  Her echoing voice sounded from the courtyard. “Everson? Where are you?”

  Before my phobia could reclaim me, I hurried down the steps, through cold currents of air and a growing odor of what smelled like garbage. I was nearly to the bottom when my beam illuminated the smell’s source. Two bodies stretched across the stairs while a third rested on the library floor, face up. Flashlight parts lay scattered, broken plastic glinting around metal tubes.

  I clapped a hand over my mouth and braced myself against the wall. They were the first corpses I had ever seen. When my heart settled, I stole up to the closest pair of bodies. Faded clothing draped what remained of them, their dried skin vacuum sealed to bone, skulls wispy with hair. From up the stairwell, footfalls echoed, and a pair of lights swelled into view.

  “Down here,” I wheezed.

  James squatted beside the body on the library floor, lips frowned. “Bruising over the face and torso, like the others. Broken limbs. Crushed skull.” He pinched a faded red sleeve. “Judging by the attire, I’d say gypsies.”

  “Look at this.” My headlamp swam against the edge of a step, revealing a black dagger with a broken blade.

  “Looters,” Flor decided for the second time that afternoon. “I found a room with their things. Bedding, pickaxes, backpacks.”

  “Anything in the packs?” I asked hopefully.

  “Just clothes and extra batteries, some rotten food.”

  I felt my optimism crumple into a wad as I worked out what had likely happened. “Someone in their party must have murdered the other three and then made off with the loot. Probably the manuscripts, given that it happened down here.” I eyed the rifle slung across Flor’s back, wondering if that had been her intention. After all, she seemed to know a lot about looting.

  “No. There is bedding for four upstairs,” she said. “And there are still four bags.”

  James stood and shone his light around. “Suggesting there must be a fourth body somewhere.”

  “Or the fourth person escaped,” I suggested.

  “Escaped what?” Flor snapped.

  I was thinking of the scrawled message outside the front door—cursed—almost certain now the fourth looter had left it after fleeing whatever had killed his companions. But I didn’t say anything.

  “Well, we’re here in any case,” James pointed out with a smile. “What say we have a look about?”

  The library was just large enough for us to spread apart while keeping an eye on one another, which we all seemed to be doing. Thou
gh whether for each other’s safety or from suspicion, I couldn’t say. Pillars and empty shelves loomed in and out of view. I toed through the dust on the floor, turning up small brass nails and, in a far corner, a leather cover.

  The three of us met in the rear of the room, where an archway stood over another stairwell. James was leaning toward a stone in the wall beside the opening, running a finger over a faint engraving.

  “Vault of forbidden texts,” I translated from Latin.

  “This is it,” Flor declared. She started down, James and I following closely.

  “It’s funny, mate,” James whispered to me. “If the texts are forbidden, I would have expected a thick door, a hidden wall, something to keep people from nosing about. But there were no signs the stairwell had been broken into.”

  I nodded. That was bothering me too. We arrived in a lower chamber, passing through what felt like a chilly curtain of energy. Our lights sliced around a cylindrical room the size of a gazebo. Deep shelves had been cut into the stone wall—all of them empty.

  “Mierda,” Flor cursed.

  “This is a disappointment,” James agreed.

  Disappointment? My heart felt as though it had been pulled from my chest and set adrift. With no living family to speak of, the Book of Souls was to have been my line to Grandpa, to who he was. Not the bull about him working in insurance, but who he had really been. Why he spoke in unusual tongues. Why strange forces held his door closed. Why things in his room talked and changed. And why, on the night he had caught me in his study, he had spoken with such solemnity about the responsibilities of “those of our blood.”

  “Do you hear that?” Flor asked.

  James and I followed her dark gaze to the ceiling. A moment later, I heard it too. Clunking footsteps, crossing the floor of the main library. Too heavy to be Bertrand’s.

  I swallowed dryly. “Were either of you expecting company?”

  10

  Flor signaled for us to kill our lights. When we did, a coal-black darkness collapsed against us. In the absence of sight, my hearing sharpened. I could make out Flor’s and James’s shallow breaths, and one floor up, those heavy footfalls, coming nearer.

  Two sets of them.

  Fabric whispered—Flor sliding her rifle around to her front. “We are too vulnerable down here,” she said softly. “We need to go up, see who it is.”

  I felt Flor edge past me, her foot scuffing lightly onto the bottom step. I swam an arm after her until my hand met the stairwell’s cold wall. I ascended slowly, aware of Flor’s progress ahead and James’s behind, glad as hell we had all come together.

  But who were we dealing with? Fellow researchers? More looters?

  Not realizing the stairs had ended, I stepped awkwardly and stumbled against Flor’s back. Holding her taut shoulders, I stared around the darkness as James bumped up beside me. I had expected to see flashlight beams or candles out ahead of us, but I couldn’t even hear the footsteps anymore.

  “One o’clock,” Flor whispered.

  I released her shoulders and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Fingers on your light switches.” Flor’s quiet voice hummed with tension. “Now!”

  Our lights blew open the darkness at the same time. And there they were—the frigging gargoyles from upstairs. With the sound of grinding stone, their heads swiveled toward us.

  “Mother f—”

  Explosions from Flor’s rifle obliterated the rest of my mind-blown expletive. Sparks flew from the charging monstrosities and bullets caromed, one whining past my head. But I couldn’t move.

  “Spread out!” Flor called.

  With the gargoyles almost on top of us, something kick-started in my brain. I took off to the left, weaving around pillars, my headlamp jostling madly. Okay, this makes no sense. No flipping sense whatsoever. When I turned to check on the others, one of the gargoyles rose over me.

  I threw myself from the path of its descending fist and landed in an awkward roll, clunking several times over my backpack. The gargoyle’s fist cracked into stone behind me, shaking the library’s foundation.

  Perhaps for my academic background, I had a bad habit of trying to make sense of situations that required a pure fight or flight response. But as I scrabbled to my feet, I couldn’t keep my mind from connecting the curtain of energy in the vault to the cursed warning to the bludgeoned looters. Had our presence downstairs triggered some sort of an alarm? One that had animated the gargoyles? I had seen some strange stuff in Grandpa’s study, but this was taking it to a whole new level.

  I stumbled backwards, my light swimming over the advancing gargoyle. Beyond the creature, Flor’s and James’s lights lashed around. Rifle bursts collided with shouting, but I couldn’t tell how they were faring.

  Something rammed my back hard enough to rattle my teeth. I pawed to both sides to find I had not only backed into a wall, but a corner. The gargoyle stalked toward me, spreading its arms to prevent my escape.

  “Hey, can we talk about this?” I stammered.

  The gargoyle reached down and grasped my head like a basketball. The crushing pressure registered as red lights behind my eyes. I didn’t know what kind of pounds per square inch we were talking, but it had to be testing my skull’s limits. Grasping the gargoyle’s wrist in both hands, I pulled myself up and kicked. Its stone stomach stopped my heel cold. The gargoyle responded with a knee that collapsed my own belly. Then it flung me away.

  I wrapped my head with my arms, sure I was going to splat into a pillar. Instead, I hit the ground pack-first and flopped onto my stomach. I lay stunned. Unable to move, breathe. The rifle bursts had stopped, and I couldn’t hear Flor or James. Just the gargoyle, its stone steps cracking toward me.

  You’re not exciting enough, my last girlfriend had said. All you ever do is read, she’d said.

  I winced and raised my face, the weak headlamp finding the creature’s knees. Beyond, I glimpsed one of the battered and dried-out corpses on the steps. God, I didn’t want to end up like those guys. I lifted my light to the gargoyle’s horned snout and narrow chiseled eyes. I didn’t suppose it would do any good to explain I was a researcher and not a looter.

  The gargoyle arrived in front of me and drew back a leg.

  “Hey…” I rasped, holding an arm out. “Easy there…”

  Its stone lips trembled from snarling teeth. I curled into a ball, anticipating the impact of the organ-crushing kick.

  Only it didn’t arrive. After another second, I peeked between my forearms. The gargoyle was frozen in place, balanced on one leg. Then, very slowly, it began to tip to the side. Its eventual collision with the floor snapped an arm at the elbow and shattered both fangs.

  I scrambled to my feet, expecting the gargoyle to rise again, to resume its attack, but whatever force had possessed it moments before seemed to have broken apart like the statue.

  “Well,” James said, appearing from behind a pillar, “maybe not as skilled a toss as your cowboys, but it seems I lassoed the bugger all the same.” I had no idea what he was talking about until he crouched and fingered something around the gargoyle’s neck.

  I took a tentative step closer. “What is that?”

  “A rock salt necklace,” he replied. “Before you arrived in town, a villager talked Flor and me into buying a pair. Claimed it would dispel evil magic. They didn’t seem to be doing much in our packs, so I got the idea to throw one around his partner over there. I’ll be damned if it didn’t work.”

  I turned my head to where, across the room, Flor’s light illuminated the other gargoyle, also toppled.

  James clapped my shoulder. “Seems I got to yours just in time, too.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “The American is okay?” Flor asked, striding up to us.

  “I’ll live.” I coughed weakly, my ribs flaring with pain, and nodded at a spot on her upper arm slick with blood. “What about you?”

  She shrugged it off. “A bullet graze.” />
  I turned to James. “And you?”

  “Took a slight knock to the head. Nothing a little whiskey can’t cure.”

  “Good, because we have work to do.” Maybe it was pain endorphins, but my various injuries seemed to be having a sedating, focusing effect. Manuscripts or not, it was still crucial we get through the night. “Three things, specifically. Number one, we need to block the front door. I don’t know whether the wolves would try to venture in here, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t. Two, we need to get those pickaxes Flor saw upstairs and break the gargoyles apart. Whatever the rock salt is doing may not last, and I don’t think any of us want a rematch.” I glanced up at Flor, who was watching me intently. “And three—”

  A stuffy voice echoed from upstairs. “Where in the hell has everyone gone?”

  “Three,” I repeated, “we need to keep an eye on Bertrand.”

  11

  James volunteered to pickaxe the gargoyles while Flor and I dealt with the front door. Bertrand, who remained convinced the texts were somewhere in the monastery, went limping off with a make-shift torch in search of them. I let him, figuring it would keep him out of the way for the time being. It was the nighttime, when the rest of us would be sleeping, that he concerned me the most.

  I grunted my way to the top of the stones Flor and I had piled against the timber we’d stood over the entrance. Ribs protesting where the gargoyle had driven its knee, I hefted a chunk of fallen pillar into the final space.

  I exhaled. “There.”

  Flor blew a strand of hair from her eyes and assessed the pile, fists on her hips. “Now we use the rest of the timber to brace it.”

  I nodded wearily and climbed back down. Together, we stood a scavenged beam on end, wedged it against a fallen pillar set back from the entrance, and then lowered the other end against the piled-up stones at an angle. Opposite me, Flor seemed to be handling the work with relative ease, and I caught myself admiring the slender muscles along her arms.

  “So…” I said as we lifted another beam, “now that there are no texts … want to tell me what you’re doing here?”