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

by Brad Magnarella

  “We’re at war, Everson. The most important one we’ll ever wage. We can’t agonize over every battle. That may sound heartless, but it’s the reality. What matters is that you know the truth and that you’re here.” He clapped my shoulders firmly. “And you’ve brought reinforcements.”

  I nodded, still not convinced I hadn’t screwed everything up. “This is James Wesson,” I said. “James, Connell.”

  As they shook hands, Connell said, “We followed you some years ago.”

  James gave him a suspicious look while my own brow creased in question. Then I remembered the Front’s ability to tap into the demonic realm. Like with Tabitha, they must have had a line to the demon who had taken possession of James when he was a teenager.

  “And you already know this one,” I said, cocking my head toward Tabitha, who had just descended from a tree. She stalked toward us, a “what the fuck have you gotten me into?” look souring her face.

  “Tabitha,” he said, “I’m Connell. Welcome.”

  She muttered something about not having eaten a decent meal in days.

  “Come,” Connell said, already striding from the clearing. “Let’s return to the palace. There’s much to do and not much time.”

  I started to sheath my sword before remembering my staff had disappeared into the portal with Lich. Damn. I slid the blade through my belt instead and hurried to catch up to Connell and the others.

  While James was taken to a dining room for a late dinner, Connell escorted me back to the infirmary. “You’re tainted with Whisperer magic,” he explained. “Not to the extent as before, but it’s in you.”

  “Probably during my exchange with Chicory—I mean, Lich,” I said, remembering how, among other things, he’d made me see my flight itinerary as a packing list.

  Connell nodded. “There’s no shame. It’s powerful magic.”

  “How about James?” I asked.

  “He’s fine, but your cat was infected. Her cleaning will be quick.”

  Lich must have retrieved Tabitha from my apartment on his way back to the safe house and used magic to convince her she’d never left, that she’d tended to me in my catatonic state. I removed my shirt and lay in my former bed. Arianna entered with a steaming basin of healing water.

  “Welcome back,” she said with the warmth of a mother. I noticed a thin tension around her eyes, though. Connell wore the same tension, but it was in the lines of his jaw.

  “The situation with Lich,” I said. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “It’s urgent,” Connell said. “Once Arianna finishes, we’re going to hold council to discuss the situation. In the meantime, I’d like to hear what happened out there, from your departure to your return.”

  I started telling them. When I got to my trip in Romania, I described the condition in which I’d found Lazlo’s body. I told them what Lazlo had said, including his request that I take his hair.

  “That may help us find Lich’s glass pendant,” Connell said, then frowned. “Lazlo fought in the war against the Inquisition, but he wasn’t a member of the Front. Your grandfather was very careful about who he selected. There were undoubtedly many good and powerful magic-users who never knew the true nature of the Order until it was too late. Your grandfather felt awful about that, but he feared that the larger the resistance, the greater the chance someone would undermine it from within. With so much at stake, he kept the resistance small.”

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  “What happened then?” Arianna asked.

  I described the attack by the shadow creatures as well as by Olga’s father later that night, drawing comparisons to the attacks James told me had happened near Elsie’s former home.

  “You’re right,” she said as she set damp towels over my injuries, the towels’ warm, healing water drawing the Whisperer magic from my system. “The shadow creatures use the portals between the fallen magic-users and the domain of Dhuul to spread fear and madness. The effects are local, but that will change when the portal to Dhuul is complete.”

  “It’s already changing,” I said, telling them about the situation in the city.

  “Then he may be closer to completing the portal than we feared,” Connell said.

  As Arianna incanted softly over me, I finished my account with the confrontation with Chicory at the safe house and why I’d become convinced he was Lich. The room wavered over their nodding heads. My eyelids grew heavy. As Connell’s and Arianna’s forms began to blur, I saw something I had received subtle hints of but never put together.

  I’ll be damned, I thought blearily.

  Following our confrontation with Lich, I had watched the other men of the Front, especially the older ones. I had sized them up, studied their eyes, the angles of their faces, all the time ignoring the man beside me. Now, I could see it clearly in his fading stance, so similar to my own.

  Connell is Marlow, I thought as I drifted off.

  Connell is my father.

  22

  I was awakened by an automaton removing the towels from my body. The room was dark save for the two moons glowing through an open window. I sat up on the edge of the bed and inhaled through my nose. I had been cleansed, the Whisperer magic purged from my system.

  The male automaton handed me my shirt.

  “Thanks,” I said before I could catch myself. I was talking to a magic-imbued machine. And thank God, I thought, thinking of the automatons I’d decapitated and gutted on my first visit to the Refuge, believing them the enemy. Those could have been members of the Front. Or my father.

  “I’m to take you to the council meeting,” the automaton said.

  “Okay.”

  I finished dressing and followed the automaton from the infirmary room. We walked down handsome stone corridors and climbed several stairways. As the automaton’s gears whirred quietly, the revelation I’d had before falling asleep spun through my thoughts. I felt both a short-breathed excitement to see Connell and a deepening anxiety. What did you say to a father you’d never met? Hey, Pops, how’s it going? We should, you know, go fishing sometime?

  Before long we arrived in the altar room on the top level, the same room where I’d seized what I’d believed was Lich’s book. Whisperer magic polluting my senses, the room had appeared evil then, with its gunked-up statue pillars and foul pool. Now, it appeared grand.

  Around the room, the massive statues of the nine First Saints gleamed marble-white, their hewn forms and faces speaking to power and wisdom. The raised pool at the room’s center was still long and rectangular, but its water was deep blue and lined in handsome stones. More than twenty magic-users sat around the pool, including James, who was easy to pick out with his cowboy hat.

  Connell and Arianna sat on the pool’s far side in robes. My heart gave a hard double thud when Connell raised his eyes to mine. “Have a seat, Everson,” he said, indicating a place across from him.

  I settled in beside James.

  “Too bad you missed dinner,” James whispered. “They had a killer spread.”

  “Tabitha must have been in seventh heaven,” I muttered, imagining her in a food coma on a plush bed somewhere.

  “She could barely walk afterwards,” James affirmed.

  I peered around. The other members of the Front were men and women of varying ages and races, some recruited by my grandfather, no doubt, others born and trained within the Refuge. I considered how remote the highest echelons of the Order had always felt to me. Now, for all intents and purposes, I was sitting among them.

  Connell stood. “The situation is more dire than we feared,” he said. “Though our efforts slow Lich’s progress, they cannot staunch the outflow of Whisperer magic. That magic is pouring into the world, beginning the dissolution, a process that will gain momentum as it deepens and spreads. Lich has only to bide his time, but he appears intent on hastening that process.”

  “How so?” a woman asked.

  “When Lich was forced from the Refuge earlier tonight, he took Eve
rson’s staff with him,” Connell said. “I believe that was intentional. The staff’s magic acts as a beacon. He’s taken the staff to where he’s building his portal to Dhuul, a parallel realm, not unlike the Refuge.”

  “I’ve been there,” I blurted out. “Lich transported me there earlier tonight, or at least my astral form. He was preparing to claim my soul.” For the benefit of the other magic-users, I described what I had seen.

  Connell nodded gravely. “It is Lich’s home. It’s where he’s most potent. And he plans to lure us there to destroy us and complete his work. Perhaps it is his way of getting the last laugh—using the souls of those who resisted him to finish the portal to his master.”

  I considered how the power possessed by those in this room would be greater than the remaining magic-users in the world. It wasn’t a stretch to think their souls could accomplish Lich’s objective the instant he claimed them.

  “So what do we do?” a young-looking man to my right asked.

  “What we must,” Connell said. “We fight him there.”

  My body broke out in a sweat as I recalled the nightmare realm. The creatures going up and down the stairway that spiraled into the pit had seemed endless. And the whispers… If we didn’t fall to Lich or the creatures, we’d be seduced by Dhuul’s magic.

  “He’s confident,” Connell went on. “Perhaps overconfident. Not only does the staff enable us to track him, he has lowered the defenses to his realm, where he likely keeps his glass pendant. Nothing prevents our passage. This is the first time he’s given us this kind of access. It’s a trap, yes. But we must use that to our advantage somehow. With time running out, we have no other choice.”

  I watched Connell as he spoke, the way his hands clasped behind his low back, the fingers of his right hand hooking his left thumb. The same gesture had bothered me days earlier because it was how I clasped my own hands when I lectured.

  “But we’ve still no weapon,” an older man said.

  Weapon? I thought.

  Connell turned to James and me. “Though it may sound like a contradiction, Dhuul requires an organizing force to reduce our world to chaos. Someone to build the portal, harvest the souls, carry out certain rites and magic. Lich is the key to Dhuul’s designs, even in these last stages.”

  I nodded, understanding he was filling us in on something the others already knew.

  “In Lich’s hunger for supremacy, he made a deal with Dhuul and became an undead being. The power that sustains him lives inside a pendant protected by a rare and indestructible enchantment. Your grandfather divined as much. But through his research, he also discovered that the Elders designed a weapon to pierce any magic, no matter how powerful. The Banebrand. It was a fail-safe so that a single magic-user couldn’t become invincible. Your grandfather believed Lich stole the Banebrand and then lost it, which was part of the weapon’s magic: to not end up in the hands of the one wielding the abusive power.”

  “That’s why my grandfather was collecting magical artifacts during the war,” I said, remembering what the vampire Arnaud had told me. He claimed that Grandpa had used the Brasov Pact to steal from his fellow magic-users. “He wasn’t stealing. He was searching for the Banebrand.”

  “Yes, during the war and for long after,” Connell said. “That was why, while we used Elder magic from here to push back against Lich’s efforts, your grandfather remained in the world. He devoted his life to finding the artifact that would destroy Lich’s glass pendant and deny Dhuul access to the world.”

  I thought about the business trips Grandpa would frequently take, allegedly for purposes of insurance.

  “I assume he never found it?” I said.

  “That’s what we’d like to ask you,” Connell replied.

  “Me?”

  “There was no description of the Banebrand in the archives,” Arianna said. “Only what it was designed to do. Your grandfather was able to detect and retrieve many artifacts over the centuries, but discovering their true purposes was another challenge. He spent his final years going over and over what he’d amassed. But after Lich sealed us in the Refuge, we lost contact with your grandfather. Though he had taken possession of a familiar, our contact to that creature’s realm became hazy and indistinct. Not like the line we later established to Tabitha.”

  I thought about the chilling voice I’d heard in Grandpa’s trunk the time I’d snuck into his study.

  “Did he ever say anything to you?” Connell asked.

  “Say anything?” I let out an involuntary laugh. “I can probably count the number of actual conversations we had on two hands, and they had nothing to do with magic or magical artifacts.” Looking back, I got the impression he’d wanted to steer me as far from the subject of magic as possible. Probably to keep me off Lich’s radar. “And then he died unexpectedly,” I finished.

  Something flickered in Connell’s eyes.

  I stiffened. “Wait, it was unexpected, right?”

  “We believe it was premeditated,” Connell said.

  A chill crawled down my spine. “You mean someone killed him too?” How hard would it have been to manifest a bee in the face of an oncoming driver at the moment Grandpa stepped into the street? Not hard at all. It was something even a junior magic-user could have managed.

  “We believe your grandfather killed himself.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Probably because Lich was closing in,” Arianna said. “For centuries your grandfather’s advantage was Lich’s single-minded obsession with bringing Dhuul into the world and growing his own power. When your grandfather convinced him he could no longer contribute to the Order, Lich’s interest in him faded. It was how your grandfather was able to work unnoticed for so long. It was also how he kept your mother’s presence a secret. He waited until she was much older to train her to control her magic, just as he had planned to do with you. Eve was the one who insisted on acting as the courier between our realms so your grandfather could concentrate on locating the artifact. Not long after, and unbeknownst to us, Lich deduced the source of the magic that was frustrating his efforts to open the portal. He waited for the next passage into the Refuge, when the membrane would be weakest. That happened to be your mother’s. He entered behind her, killing her and several magic-users before we were able to destroy his form. Once reconstituted, Lich set his power obsession aside long enough to look around. He discovered someone had been gathering magical artifacts in secret.”

  “And Lich started searching for him,” I said, remembering the visitor Arnaud had spoken of, the man who had come asking about artifacts stolen during the war against the Inquisition.

  “Your grandfather persisted in his work for as long as he could,” Connell said, “but when Lich got too close… You see, Lich would have performed a mind flaying, something your grandfather couldn’t have resisted. Any and all information would have passed to Lich. That your grandfather ended his life before that could happen suggests he was protecting something.”

  “Maybe just me,” I offered.

  “Maybe,” Connell agreed. “But he might also have found the artifact and begun his search for Lich’s glass pendant. Did he say anything to you, anything at all? Think hard now.”

  “No,” I replied, “but I do know where he was storing the artifacts.” I told them what Arnaud had shared about Grandpa making periodic visits to Port Gurney and about the basement-level vault in the bar.

  Connell nodded. “He moved the artifacts several times during his time in New York. After Lich sealed us in, your grandfather tried to tell us of a new location through his familiar, but as Arianna said, the connection was poor. And the communication only operated in one direction, so we had no way to tell him we never received the information. Very good, Everson.”

  “Well, before we get ahead of ourselves, Arnaud’s blood slaves broke into the vault and cleaned it out. Arnaud had a few magical items in his armory, but I turned those all over to Chicory.” Which probably explained Lich’s present confidence,
I thought, wanting to kick myself.

  “It’s worth investigating, anyway,” Connell said.

  “But … can’t you just manifest this Banebrand weapon?” I asked. “You know, think it into being.”

  “We can manifest objects,” Arianna explained, “but we must supply the magic. And the kind of magic of which we’re speaking came about through a collective effort by the Elders. It is beyond us.”

  I glanced around the table of magic-users. Expecting to be met by the stern, judgmental faces I had long associated with the Order, I was surprised to find expressions of acceptance—even despite that I had destroyed the Elder book and allowed Lich into their realm twice.

  You’re one of us, they seemed to be saying. Our struggle is mutual.

  My gaze returned to Arianna and Connell. “If there’s a way to keep my return to the world from allowing Lich back in,” I said, “I’ll go to the vault and see what I can find. There were some items at the safe house, too. I can bring everything back here for you to examine.”

  Arianna looked at Connell, who nodded. “Lich is waiting for us at the pit to Dhuul,” he said. “The passage back should be safe, but you’ll still need to be careful. The world is fast disintegrating.”

  James stood and adjusted his hat. “Then what are we waiting for?”

  “You’re in?” I asked in surprise.

  “Hey, this is exactly the kind of gig I signed up for.”

  I nodded, grateful for the company. When I turned back to Connell, something like pride shone in his eyes. “Excellent,” he said. “Before you depart, would you mind if I used your memory of Lich’s realm for a rendering?”

  “A rendering?”

  As Connell walked around the table, the water began to shift as though trying to assume shape. And then I understood. Connell wanted to create a likeness of the realm for their planning.

  “Oh, yeah, yeah, of course,” I said.

  I started to stand, but he gestured for me to remain sitting and placed a hand over my brow. His palm was warm with magic. I helped him by remembering the experience, the nightmare pit, the hills of fungal growth, the building opposite me. He extracted the information gently, his other hand extending toward the pool, where a three-dimensional likeness was beginning to take shape.