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

by Brad Magnarella

  “Hey, uh, I’m sort of weaponless.”

  With Grandpa’s ring secure on my finger, I was no longer so concerned about the vampires. Werewolves were another story. Arnaud stopped and looked me up and down.

  “I may have something for you in the armory,” he said.

  “Armory?”

  Without a word, he and Zarko sped from the office. I pursued them down the corridor and into the elevator. We descended and stepped into a bunker-like basement. I had to run to keep up as they traversed a long corridor. Another elevator carried us up a short distance.

  We stepped out into a warehouse-sized space. Colonies of blood slaves moved among rows of storage shelves. They no longer wore business attire, but suits of glittering chainmail. Several carried medieval weapons. As if silently summoned, one of the blood slaves darted over and stopped in front of us, chainmail hugging his body like a second skin.

  “Isn’t it beautiful? Titanium-silver alloy.” Arnaud ran his fingers across the blood slave’s chest, which, along with the shoulders and neck of his suit, featured extra plating. I noted he was wearing a blue armband with the corporate logo for Chillington Capital. In his hands, the slave clasped a pair of punching daggers—also silver. “Neither of our kinds react well to the element,” Arnaud went on, “but it is especially toxic to wolves. Imagine their shock when they seize this man by the throat. Zarko, be a dear and find a suit for our friend.”

  Zarko bowed. “This way, Mr. Croft.”

  I followed him to an open dressing room with racks and racks of armor. Locker room-type benches crossed the space in rows. Zarko left and reappeared a moment later with a chain mail suit.

  “I believe this is your size,” he said.

  I accepted the suit and stripped down to my shirt and boxers. The suit was cold going over my skin, but much lighter than I’d expected. Zarko turned me around several times, tugging the chainmail here and there, before securing the waist with a thick leather belt. I sat to don the chainmail shoes. When I stood again, I jogged in place and circled my arms a few times.

  “Not bad,” I said. “What about offense?”

  Zarko led me to the other end of the room, past racks of conventional weapons, to a display case that stood apart from the others. “These belonged to wizards once,” he said.

  “Donations, I assume?”

  I could feel Zarko’s grin behind me as I peered down at the items. There were wands of various woods and sizes, which I immediately eliminated from consideration—they took too long to train. No amulets for me, either. God only knew what kinds of enchantments hid inside them. I moved down to the weapons. There were no sword canes, but my gaze lingered on a pair of maces. I opened the case’s glass lid and picked one up. It was light in my grasp, easy to wield. I looked over the flanged metal head. Its ambient energy suggested silver in the alloy. Between the sharp edges were cloudy blue stones, five in all.

  I held the mace away from me and said, “Illuminare.”

  The weapon stiffened in my grip as a new energy coursed through it. The stones glowed, dimmed, and then burst with blue light. With another Word, I willed the light into a shield. I moved the mace into various defensive positions, assessing the shield for strength.

  After another moment, I nodded and dispersed it.

  I reached into the case for the second mace, this one featuring a single blue stone at the weapon’s apex. I looked from the stone to a blood slave trotting past in full armor.

  “A test?” I asked Zarko.

  “Very well,” he replied.

  I aimed the mace at the armored blood slave and shouted, “Vigore!”

  Like with the other mace, this one took a moment to process the peculiarities of my energy. Following a brief sputter, the weapon kicked in my hand and channeled the force. The emerging blast nailed the blood slave in the side and sent him skittering across the floor.

  “I can use these,” I said, fitting the maces into my leather belt.

  Though not my sword and staff, they were worthy replacements. I glanced over the rest of the weapons, but nothing grabbed me. Beyond the end of the display case, a large round door stood in a steel section of wall. It looked like the entrance to a bank vault.

  “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “Our contingency plan, Mr. Croft.”

  I turned at Arnaud’s voice to find the vampire transformed. Gone were the beige playboy suit and Italian leather shoes. He strode up in full armor, a burgundy cape flowing behind him. Banded mail gleamed over his forearms and chest. Beneath his chainmail suit, which flared into a long skirt, metal boots rang over the floor in a martial rhythm. He could have been Vlad the Impaler, on whom the original legend of Dracula was based.

  “Contingency?” A horrible thought struck me.

  “I know you believe me a monster,” Arnaud said, picking up on the emotion, “but even I have my limits. As a werewolf-vampire hybrid she would have made a powerful weapon, yes, but you will not find my daughter inside. She is far, far from here. And though I’d rather not say where that is or what she is doing, I assure you that the mayor would be proud.”

  I relaxed at the knowledge that Alexandra was safe, likely in school somewhere.

  “As for the contingency, there is an element of kinship there, I suppose.” Arnaud lowered a studded metal helmet over his mane of white hair. His pale, predatory eyes peered from a pair of slanted holes. “Though let’s hope we never need it,” he said. “Have you found what you needed?”

  I nodded, touching my two maces. “This is just a defensive stand, right?”

  “Asserting our rightful place in the city,” Arnaud reaffirmed. “Men!”

  The blood slaves fell into formation behind him. From a side room, two more slaves appeared, straining to lead an armored warhorse. I stepped back as the giant black animal snorted and reared its head. I could see by its sunken red eyes that it had joined the ranks of the undead.

  Arnaud accepted the reins and climbed deftly onto the horse’s gilded saddle. Another blood slave handed up a long sword, which Arnaud held at his side. He trotted the horse toward a barren wall opposite the elevators. The rest of us followed. The horse stopped in front of the wall and pawed the floor with a thick hoof, its coat covered in an oily lather. From deep inside the wall, a pair of clunks sounded. Without warning, the entire wall fell out before a set of heavy iron chains caught it.

  Black smoke and battle sounds flooded in. Through a hazy light, I could make out several downtown buildings. One was on fire. The wall clanked out the rest of the way, like a drawbridge.

  Arnaud canted his head toward me. “Try to stay close, Mr. Croft.”

  The wall banged down to become part of a broad ramp that descended to Wall Street. Arnaud raised his sword straight overhead and aimed it forward. “To battle!” he cried as the horse charged outside.

  “To battle!” the blood slaves echoed and followed.

  I joined them, and we poured down the ramp.

  27

  Led by a vampire on an undead horse, our nightmare force emerged onto Wall Street. Around us, stone buildings rose steeply into smoke and coughing antiaircraft fire.

  In the adrenaline-pumping confusion, it took me a moment to get my bearings. The Federal Hall building coming up on our right helped. It was the site of the fae’s lower portal. The vampires’ security forces and blood slaves that ringed the building were facing inward, in case anything tried to come through.

  We veered left, pulling my eyes from the building. South?

  “I thought the fight was at the Wall!” I shouted up at Arnaud.

  “The other executives are taking their battalions there,” Arnaud said. “However, there’s been a breach in the subway line. A pack of wolves mean to attack from the rear. We’ll head them off at Bowling Green Plaza.”

  Though Arnaud wore an earpiece, he used it to communicate with his human security forces—the vampires were psychically linked to one another as well as to their slaves. So when Arnaud shouted
for his battalion to split up, I understood the verbal order to be for effect. He was enjoying playing general. The slaves coursed around us like quicksilver, disappearing into the canyons that ran every which way in the oldest section of the city.

  “Your hand,” Arnaud called, reaching toward me.

  I seized his plated arm shield, and he hefted me up behind him. I seized him around the waist, the muscles of the horse’s flanks surging like giant pistons. We emerged onto Broadway. Ahead, an attack helicopter pivoted around and came at us low. In a deafening burst, gunfire blew up chunks of asphalt.

  “They’re trying to strafe us!” I shouted.

  Before the lines of blown asphalt could reach us, Arnaud pulled the steed left, onto a narrow side street. The helicopter roared past. An explosive bout of antiaircraft fire sounded behind us.

  The horse snorted and sprinted on.

  “It seems the wolves are emerging,” Arnaud said over his shoulder.

  He took a sharp right, and the small gated park near the Bowling Green station appeared ahead of us. Werewolves in their creature forms were bounding up from the subway entrance and emptying onto the brick plaza outside the green. Blood slaves swarmed in to meet them.

  With the preternatural speed of both creatures, the action was hard to follow. Claws and teeth flashed, blades glinted, smoke and blood erupted from locked and rolling bodies.

  The blood slaves were outsized but not outmuscled.

  Before I was ready, Arnaud charged his warhorse into the park. I worked one of the maces free from my belt while holding tight to Arnaud. The werewolves were wearing what looked like Kevlar suits, but Arnaud found their vulnerabilities with swift, precise strokes of his sword. I watched one werewolf fall away, his decapitated head hanging on by a thread of sinew. The horse trampled the wolf’s body. Other wolves retreated from the bite of Arnaud’s sword to regenerate—only to be piled on by blood slaves armed with punching daggers.

  But for every wolf that fell dead, two more seemed to appear from the subway.

  I twisted one way and the other, swinging the mace desperately. One blow caught a wolf across the jaw. Blood blew from his mouth like spindrift. Slaves pulled the wolf from the horse’s right flank, where he’d embedded his claws. I nailed another wolf behind the ear.

  This is insane, I thought, swinging at a third lunging wolf. I need eyes on every side of my head.

  By sheer luck, I glanced up in time to catch something plummeting toward the park.

  “Protezione!” I cried.

  The mace stiffened in my grasp and a blue shield appeared around us an instant before the mortar impacted to our right. The blast kicked us to the side, burying us in a wave of stone dust. Wolves and blood slaves that had been thrown skyward thudded down around us.

  The horse bellowed, hooves hammering the blood-slick bricks as it struggled to stay upright. I squeezed Arnaud tighter as he fought to bring the horse around. A second mortar landed, slamming into the park on our other side. The horse was blown from its feet, and I lost my hold. I rolled over several times, coming to a rest against a mangled blood slave.

  I peeked above his body. Through the thinning haze, I could make out the old U.S. Custom House across the plaza. I drew the other mace from my belt. The stone steps to the entrance would give me higher ground and protection from the rear. I’d be in a better position to cast.

  Shouting to reinforce my shield, I crossed the plaza at a run, ears still ringing from the twin blasts. I veered around blood slaves grappling with giant wolves and pounded up the steps. At a landing where a pair of columns climbed the building’s tall edifice, I turned to take in the scene from my new vantage.

  Not good.

  Arnaud and the blood slaves had recovered from the mortar shells and were re-engaging the wolves, but there must have been a second breach. A new wolf horde was swarming in from the east.

  “Arnaud!” I shouted.

  From his mount, the vampire turned his blood-streaked face. The eyes that met mine burned red from his helmet. Sword poised above his billowing cape, he could have been an angel of death. Arnaud wheeled the mount toward where I was pointing and saw the new front. From windows in the surrounding buildings, gunfire erupted. The vampires’ private security force!

  Several wolves tumbled from the charge. Blood slaves not entangled formed a wall to meet the rest, but the slaves were still outnumbered. And that wasn’t the worst of it—a third werewolf horde was coming in on their blind side. Who in the hell was coordinating them? And how?

  “Forza dura!” I bellowed.

  Power stormed from my mace and hit the incoming wave. Wolves were lifted from their feet and slammed into buildings. Several of the gunmen above switched their aim, lighting up the fallen beasts.

  The rest of the wolves recovered quickly. They split up, one group scaling the buildings to reach the gunmen, a second group bounding toward the battle in the green. From that group, half a dozen wolves splintered away and veered toward me.

  I checked my shield and set my legs. I’d spaced out my invocations enough to keep Thelonious at bay and to allow my power time to recharge. My magic still held plenty of steel. And whether it was the rush of battle or the sum of my frustrations, I was burning to let that steel rip.

  “Who’s first?” I shouted at the charging wolves.

  I didn’t get the chance to find out. From around both sides of the Custom House, a new force appeared. Clad in the same chainmail as the foot soldiers in Arnaud’s battalion, the blood slaves wore green armbands that bore the insignia of their vampire’s firm. Bristling with swords and daggers, the slaves collapsed into the wolves at the base of the stairs.

  The Undertaker galloped past them on a blood-red steed, a barbed lance braced between arm and armored chest. He grinned over at me before diving into the main battle. Wolves screamed as he skewered them two and three at a time and flung them from his path.

  Never thought I’d be happy to see that creep, I thought.

  I was looking for where I could help out when a snarl sounded below me. The giant red wolf that had been leading the charge shook himself from the bloody melee and bounded up the steps. His baleful eyes fixed on mine as he slowed to a hunched stalk. I recognized those eyes.

  I met Evan’s stare. “You miss your dead brother, huh? Maybe I can fix that.”

  The challenge pierced his human and animal mind, and he sprang. I brought a mace around and slammed him with a shield invocation. He staggered back, then lunged again. I met him with a Word—“Respingere!”—and blew him aside, his back cracking against the base of a statue.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” I asked.

  Anger seethed in Evan’s eyes as he circled out in front of me, looking for an opening.

  I didn’t wait. Thrusting one mace toward his legs, I hit him with a force blast. With the other mace, I brought the shield down on his head, pinning him against the landing. Evan snarled as he struggled to free himself. I walked toward him, shaping the shield into a stockade that wrapped his neck and wrists. Blood soaked his coat as he barked and thrashed, fury engorging his eyes. I honed the edges of the shield until they were razor sharp.

  “Sorry, pal,” I said. “Bad day for revenge.”

  I raised the other mace and, with a force invocation as a propellant, brought it crashing down on the back of his skull. The metal flanges sank into bone, and the wolf’s head sheared off at his neck. I dispersed the stockade as the wolf’s two parts thudded to the ground.

  Blowing out my breath, I lifted my gaze to the battle. One less wolf, but still plenty more. Several had reached the gunmen in the windows and were hurling them to their deaths. The rest swarmed the plaza and park. Arnaud and the Undertaker fought with their mounts back to back, the Undertaker wielding a black broadsword now. But even with the reinforcements, we were outnumbered—and losing. I watched the way the wolves moved, ever shifting and reassembling, concentrating their attack where the vampires were weakest.

  I looked around
, trying to pick out whomever was coordinating them.

  Did werewolves have the same psychic linkup as vampires? I didn’t think so. Which meant…

  My gaze dropped to the severed head at my feet. In the hair around the wolf’s ear, I spotted what I was looking for. After ensuring no wolves were coming, I knelt and worked my fingers into the blood-matted hair. A crescent-shaped band had been affixed behind his ear. I worked the band free. With it came two slender filaments, one emerging from the wolf’s ear canal. That filament ended at a small speaker. Very carefully, I brought it to my own ear.

  “…Alpha Three, move now. Flank them north. Alpha One … south … bef…”

  The tinny voice crackled as my wizard’s aura killed the communication device. But I had already recognized the voice’s cadence. I examined the other filament, which ended at a dead lens.

  Well, hello there, Captain, I thought and tossed the smoking device aside.

  That explained the coordination between the NYPD and wolves. But Captain Cole would have to be lupine himself to command them, and I’d never sensed an aura around him. I thought about the powerful enchantment Arnaud had mentioned and remembered the ring with the dark gem Cole wore on his pinky finger. Besides controlling the wolves, it must have concealed his own wolf nature.

  Across the plaza, the ferocious battle raged on. Arnaud and the Undertaker continued to hack and slash, but their slave battalions were dwindling. The wolves were too well coordinated. I looked high and low.

  Where are you, Cole?

  I knew from our work on the eradication campaign that he liked to site himself near the action. And what Vega had said on the phone about him being “down” at command-and-control seemed to confirm he was close. But how close?

  I thought back to the view from Arnaud’s office window earlier. That tenting I’d glimpsed at the southern end of City Hall Park … I had assumed it was part of a construction project, but it was the same military-drab color as the tenting used in the other campaigns.