The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1)

by Brad Magnarella

  “Oh, Jesus,” I whispered, bringing the back of a hand to my mouth.

  More cats littered the floor, all decapitated by a ripping force, hair everywhere. One severed head seemed to be watching me, the mouth opened in a frozen cry. I cut my gaze to the back room. From my angle, I could see a slice of the stone table and the shadow of someone sitting at it.

  Heart slamming, I eased toward the room at an oblique angle, sword and staff at the ready. I peeked around the doorway and froze.

  No.

  Lady Bastet was slouched back in her chair, eyes wide but not from entrancement. I entered the room. Spilled blood wrapped her neck like a wine-red cravat. I stepped closer, my breath stuck in my chest. Someone or something had slit the mystic’s throat.

  “Lady Bastet?” I whispered.

  No answer.

  My eyes fell from her bloodstained peasant’s blouse to her wrists and ankles. No bindings. No signs of struggle. The gold band in her hair hadn’t even shifted—which didn’t make any goddamned sense, not for someone so powerful. Had she been caught deep in spell work?

  Beyond my crackling shield, I took in the overturned shelves, shattered spell items, and scattered cat parts. The scene had the markings of a werewolf attack. Penny had been planning to order wolves here to find her daughter, but that had been before I’d put Penny in a coma. Had the mayor ordered the attack? Or was I looking at some kind of rogue event?

  I circled the room, opening my wizard’s senses. Lingering energy showed in fading, multicolored hues. The energy appeared to have originated from Lady Bastet in the course of her divination work. Magic-wise, I wasn’t picking up anything foreign, or even violent.

  I dispersed my shield with a sigh and drew a dog-eared business card from my wallet. I flicked it with my thumb a few times before nodding.

  “Did you touch anything?” Detective Vega demanded.

  Beneath midnight hair that had been stretched back into a ponytail, her professional eyes assessed the scene. She hadn’t been happy to hear my voice when I rang her from a payphone. To Vega’s credit, though, she hadn’t hung up. Now, she acted cold and clinical, as if we’d never worked together, never helped one another out. That stung in ways I hadn’t expected.

  “Touch anything?” I echoed. “No.”

  She stooped toward Lady Bastet and examined the neck wound. “You said the door was locked when you got here?”

  “Bolted. But her defenses were down.”

  Detective Vega seemed to ignore my last remark as she moved around the room, careful not to step on anything. “What were you doing here?” The question bordered on an accusation.

  “I asked Lady Bastet to perform a reading on something I dropped off earlier today.” As I spoke, Vega continued to survey the scene. “I was returning to see if she’d finished with it.”

  “What was the item?”

  “A strand of my mother’s hair.”

  Vega mumbled something about crime scene contamination, but she shifted her line of questioning. “And she was sitting here like this when you arrived?” she asked, standing to one side of Lady Bastet. “You didn’t pick her up off the floor or straighten her or anything?”

  “No.”

  “When you dropped off the hair earlier, did you come into this room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell if anything’s missing?”

  I looked around the trashed room. Was she serious? “Listen,” I said, stepping toward her and lowering my voice, even though we were alone. “Those werewolves we fought at the mayor’s mansion? I think they’re the ones who did this. Penny and her husband knew Lady Bastet put Penny’s daughter in someone’s care, but they don’t know whose. This could’ve been—”

  Vega shook her head irritably. “Just answer the question.”

  I gathered my nerve. If there was a time to have it out, it was now.

  “For what it’s worth, there’s not a day that passes that I don’t regret what I did,” I said, “that I don’t think about the danger I put your son in. So here it is again: I’m sorry. I really am. But can we set that aside for right now?” I cut my eyes toward Lady Bastet. “There’s a good chance we’re looking at the work of wolves. Which puts us in danger too.”

  Vega faced me, hands bracing her hips. “This is an official investigation, under the jurisdiction of the NYPD.” Her eyes bored into mine. “Other than the fact you were the first witness to the scene, there’s no we. Got it? Now, can you tell if anything’s missing or not?”

  There was no compromise on her face. I blew out an exasperated breath as I turned from Vega to the table. The scrying globe was in front of Lady Bastet, the covering cloth folded neatly to one side. I scanned the table’s stone surface for my mother’s hair. Not there or on the floor around the table. My eyes ranged across the room’s wreckage once more.

  “Nothing obvious,” I said.

  “Holy shit,” someone exclaimed from the main room, no doubt finding the dead cats.

  I turned as the person scuffed toward us, his body soon filling the doorway—its width, anyway. When he saw me, he scrunched up his face like someone had punched him in the nose. I squinted back in disbelief.

  “Hoffman?” I said. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

  “It’s Detective Hoffman,” he answered. “And I could ask you the same. Thought we eighty-sixed your contract.”

  I turned to Vega. “But he was selling info to Moretti!”

  “Yeah, or maybe I was setting him up,” Hoffman shot back. “Ever think of that, smartass?”

  By Vega’s narrowing eyes, I guessed that she had reported her partner only to see him slapped on the wrist and sent back to work. It was tough times for the department—personnel cuts, waning public trust. The last thing they could afford was another investigation into police corruption.

  “Is the door secured?” Vega asked him.

  Hoffman gave me a final scowl. “Yeah, got a couple of uniforms out front. What’s going on?” He looked down at Lady Bastet and grinned around the gum he was smacking. “Someone get upset over his fortune?”

  Vega observed my balling fists and stepped between us. “We’ll call if we have any more questions.”

  I continued to glare at Hoffman, who ambled around the scene, still wearing that stupid smacking smile. Vega’s words only sank in when I’d forced a calming breath. “Wait, that’s it?” I asked her.

  “You’re dismissed,” she affirmed.

  I made sure Hoffman was out of earshot before lowering my voice. “Look, I think we need to collaborate on this one. Find out if it really is the work of wolves and, if so, what they’re up to.”

  “I said you’re dismissed.”

  “Allow me to translate.” Hoffman sauntered up behind her and jerked his thumb toward the door. “Take a hike, jackass.”

  I searched Vega’s face for any sign that she might want to tell me something away from her partner. But her visage remained hard, hostile. Could she still be that angry with me?

  “Fine,” I said, “but if you have any questions—”

  “I already said we’d call you.” Vega turned away.

  When Hoffman did the same, I unsheathed my sword and flicked my wrist. The path of the blade cut just behind Hoffman’s left ear. I caught the tuft of hair that fell from his curly brown wreath.

  Might come in handy.

  7

  It was full dusk when I reached the sidewalk. Headlights swam up and down the street as my cane tapped a hollow rhythm beside me. I needed to be back there, helping with the investigation. I needed to be doing something, dammit.

  But Vega wouldn’t allow it.

  I racked my brain for a spell I could cast, one that would point to the killer. But lacking a target item, I came up blank. Did I even need a spell? I wondered. The crime scene had Penny’s wolves written all over it. That filled in the who. But ignoring the why for a moment, how would they have breached Lady Bastet’s defenses? How would they have overpowered her?
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  “Mr. Croft,” a deep voice called.

  I peeked back. The broad-shouldered man was mostly in silhouette, but I could make out the dull glint of a badge, and it wasn’t NYPD. Shit. Penny’s pack worked in government security, and there wasn’t a chance in hell this man appearing on the heels of Lady Bastet’s murder was a coincidence. I lifted my shirt away from the revolver holstered above my hip. For the last four months, I hadn’t left home without it, a silver bullet in each cylinder.

  “Mr. Croft,” he called again, walking faster. “Need to have a word with you.”

  “I don’t know any Mr. Croft,” I called back. “You’ve got the wrong person.”

  My heart thumped as I moved my cane to my front and readied a shield invocation. I could probably take him, but I wanted to reach the next intersection, where traffic was flashing past. The wolf would be less likely to shift in the open, giving me an advantage.

  He wasn’t going to let me get there, though. The man bounded past and wheeled, a feral light burning in his eyes.

  “Protezione!” I called, throwing a shield of light between us and drawing the revolver.

  He tilted his nose up and sniffed the air. “Yeah, it’s him,” he called past me.

  Huh?

  I was halfway into my turn when a blow from a second wolf crushed the side of my head. My legs jiggled for a moment, and I fell to the street, revolver tumbling from my grip as my failed shield rained over me.

  Voices, low and murky, seeped into my hearing. I squinted my eyes open. I was sitting in a padded chair in a small room. A warehouse office, judging by the corrugated metal and piles of old file boxes. Moths batted around a dangling bulb, some as large as sparrows. When one fluttered too close to my face, I tried to swat it away, but my arm wouldn’t budge.

  Head throbbing, I looked down at my wrists. Plastic zip ties secured them to the armrests. A second pair bound my ankles to the chair’s legs.

  Well, shit, I thought groggily.

  I listened to the voices. I couldn’t make out words, but they were coming from beyond the office door. Men’s voices. Two sets. Probably the werewolves who had ambushed me. Meaning if I didn’t want to end up like Lady Bastet, I needed to get the hell out of here.

  And without making a lot of noise.

  My cane was nowhere in sight, my coin pendant absent from my neck. I trained my attention inward, to my casting prism, and found it fractured and wrapped in fog. When I tried a centering mantra to restore it, my lips wouldn’t separate. A strip of tape held them closed.

  Great, someone knows who they’re dealing with.

  After attempting to create a pocket inside the tape using my tongue, I gave up and studied the chair’s armrests. The foam padding around the right one had disintegrated down to a hard edge of metal. Sharp enough to cut through the plastic restraint? I moved my right arm back and forth in a minute sawing motion, a few millimeters each way, all the restraint would allow.

  The voices drew nearer, their owners now casting shadows against the doorframe.

  Crap crap crap crap.

  I relaxed my arm as the werewolf I’d met in the alleyway entered, still in human form. He had dark red hair and arms the size of my thighs, though better sculpted. He was followed by a second hulking werewolf, no doubt the one who had smashed me in the head. They looked like brothers, especially in their matching security guard uniforms. I took an immediate dislike to both of them.

  “Sleep well?” Brother One asked, smirking as he adjusted the belt holding his service weapon.

  “He’s up,” Brother Two called to someone behind them.

  I had been puzzling over who had ordered Lady Bastet’s murder. Now I had a gut-wringing feeling I was about to find out.

  “What’s this?” a man’s voice demanded. Between the brothers’ shoulders, I caught a flash of lenses. A moment later, a pudgy figure shoved his way past the wolves. “Is he alive?”

  It was Mayor Lowder.

  Sorry to break it to you, sweetie, I thought to an imagined Caroline. But contrary to your assurances, I’m not only a target of the mayor’s eradication program, but part of phase one testing.

  “He didn’t cooperate,” Brother One said.

  “Did he attack you?” Budge asked.

  “He pointed a Smith and Wesson at him,” the wolf replied, nodding at his brother, “packed with silver.”

  “We confiscated it,” Brother Two said with a grin. “Then ran it over.”

  The revolver had cost me a small fortune, but its condition was the least of my worries at the moment.

  Budge stopped in front of me, hands on the hips of his baggy trousers. He studied the right side of my face, the side that had absorbed the brunt of my fall. It felt stiff with blood. Budge sighed and looked over the rest of me. “Well, untie him, for God’s sake. He looks like an Italian sausage.”

  Not the next words I’d been expecting.

  The wolves looked at one another before stalking forward, fierce yellow nails emerging from the ends of their fingers. The same nails that had sliced Lady Bastet’s throat?

  They wedged their nails under the restraints and ripped away the plastic ties. Within seconds, I was free—but not free from danger. The wolves loomed over me, hatred shining in their flaming irises. I was the killer of their brethren, after all, maimer of their leader.

  I leaned back as Brother One reached for my face. With a flick, he snagged a corner of the tape and tore the whole thing from my mouth. I licked lips that felt raw and swollen.

  “Don’t just stand there, Flint,” Budge snapped. “Go get him a drink.”

  “A drink?” Flint asked.

  “There’s an old vending machine around back,” Budge said. “See if there’s anything left inside. You too, Evan.”

  The two wolves growled down at me before pacing away.

  “You’ll have to forgive them.” Budge dragged another office chair from the side of the room and sat on the front edge of the seat. “Big dummies. I just wanted them to pick you up so we could chat.”

  “In a warehouse?” I asked skeptically.

  “Yeah, well, this is sort of off the record. I couldn’t have you coming to City Hall. Not without upsetting the rest of the pack.” He dipped his head so he could see my downcast face better. “Hey, I really am sorry about the rough treatment. You gonna be all right?”

  Though the mayor was playing Mr. Nice Guy, I knew his game. He wanted to extract some sort of information before giving the kill order. Like he’d no doubt done with Lady Bastet.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  Budge leaned to one side as though taking his measure of me. “Look, I’m not gonna bullshit you, Everson. I’ve got a list of reasons to want you gone, the top one being that you damned near killed my wife.”

  “Well, you damned near killed me. Makes us even, right?”

  Budge smiled. “I have a private firing range I go to every Saturday, ten a.m. Over two hundred rounds a visit. Been doing that for at least twenty years now. I’m a damned good shot from fifty. You were about, what, twenty feet away when I pulled the trigger that morning? What I’m saying is that if I’d been shooting to kill, you’d be worm food right now.”

  A ghost pain throbbed in my right chest where the bullet had entered. I touched a hand to the spot and gauged Budge’s distance. He was close enough that I could reach him before he drew a gun, pound him to the floor. The problem would be the wolves. With their preternatural senses, they would hear the commotion. I was in no condition to outrace them—and without my sword, gun, or magic, in even less condition to fight them.

  “The truth is, Everson, I like you,” the mayor went on. “No, I’m serious. You helped my stepdaughter, and you seem like a genuinely decent person. Plus, you’ve got some good people out there vouching for you.”

  Caroline, I thought with mixed emotions.

  “I also happen to know you do a lot of good work for the city.” He tipped me a conspiratorial wink. I stiffened when I
realized he was referring to my duties with the Order: banishing nether creatures, closing their portals to our world. But who in the hell could have told him about that? Not even Caroline knew the extent of my work. We hadn’t gotten that far.

  “It’s all right,” he said, showing a hand. “Your secret’s safe.”

  The wolves returned, Flint holding a green can. He was slightly bigger than his brother, and I pegged him as the older one. “There was only one drink left in the machine,” Flint said, “diet ginger ale.”

  “Fine, fine.” Budge took the soda and shooed the wolves back out of the office. “Here.” He cracked the tab and handed the can to me.

  The aluminum was hot in my grip, and the ginger ale went down warm, but I was too thirsty to care. Who knew how long I’d been conked out and pouring sweat before the mayor showed up? I drank down half the ginger ale, then lowered the can to my knee and burped.

  “Better?” Budge asked, in a concerned voice.

  “I would be if I knew what the hell you wanted.”

  “I’m getting to that.”

  I couldn’t stand the dancing around anymore. “Did you know Lady Bastet was killed earlier today?” I said.

  “The mystic in the Village?” The mayor’s face scrunched up as he loosened his tie and used his collar to fan his neck. “She was the one who changed my stepdaughter back, right?”

  I nodded slowly. I was usually good at reading false emotions on a person’s face, but the mayor appeared surprised by the news, saddened even. Maybe a group of Penny’s wolves had gone rogue.

  “Any suspects?” Budge asked.

  “None that I know of,” I answered carefully.

  “Damned shame.” Sullenly, Budge wiped his brow with a forearm. “Too much of that sort of thing happening in the city. I’m not sure if you caught my press conference earlier today.”

  “I did,” I replied. “Round up the supernaturals, throw them in an oven, save the city.”