Black Luck (Prof Croft Book 5)

by Brad Magnarella

  Something scurried into my peripheral vision.

  For an instant the storm broke. “Dammit!” Damien cried.

  Buster was out of his carrier. He’d come up behind Damien and snapped a claw into his Achilles’ tendon—not something the demon was immune to, apparently. Raw air rushed into my lungs as the pressure lifted from my neck. Buster dangled from Damien’s leg for a moment before dropping and trying to scuttle away. But Damien aimed a hand at him.

  And I aimed Grandpa’s ring at Damien. “Balaur!” I shouted.

  The power of the enchantment erupted from the embossed face of the rearing dragon and slammed into Damien. He screamed as his body erupted into bright flames. I pushed myself back, keeping the ring leveled at him.

  “No!” he screamed. “No, damn you!”

  I hit him with another dose. He ran around blindly as fresh fire billowed from his body. He flailed his arms, trying to find me. But he never came close. And he was slowing, his cries falling to mumbles.

  At last, he collapsed to his knees, then face down. The infernal storm broke apart, as though the portal to his realm had been slammed shut. The room fell strangely silent, the ringing fading from my ears.

  I watched for several more minutes as the fire consumed Damien. Buster joined me, peering out from behind my legs. When something moved off to our right, the clawdad and I both turned.

  “Goodness gracious,” Mae huffed, pushing herself up from behind a ruined display. She dusted herself off, then righted her walker and tapped it toward us. “Everyone all right?” she asked.

  I coughed to clear my throat. “Yeah. How about you?”

  “Buster and I took a hard fall, but I’m no worse for the wear.” Halfway to us, she stopped and stooped for the open carrier. Buster scurried up her gown and perched on her shoulder.

  “Well, Buster just saved my butt.”

  “You did?” Mae said to him, chuckling and scratching his head.

  Buster chattered something and wriggled his tendrils. When Mae arrived beside me, she looked at where Damien’s vessel continued to burn. I hadn’t wanted Jimmy to die, but I’d had no choice.

  “What in the hell did you do to him?” she asked.

  I looked down at my right fist. “There’s a power in this ring that my grandfather also stored in my coin necklace, as a backup. Turns out he also placed the power of the necklace in the ring. But enchantments react with the metals they’re stored inside, altering the effect somewhat. Damien adapted to the enchantment in the iron coin, but he wasn’t prepared for the same enchantment coming from the silver ring.”

  That’s what I’d been counting on, anyway: not luck, but the culmination of my study and experience.

  Mae sighed and shook her head. “I’ve got a lot to learn about magic.”

  I went over and retrieved her wedding band from the floor. “Speaking of rings, I’m really sorry about that.” I handed it to her. “I should have known better than to listen to him.”

  “Man did sound seven shades of shady,” Mae agreed, pushing her wedding band back onto her finger.

  I looked around until I spotted my cane. It was lying beside Babe Ruth’s baseball bat. I retrieved the cane and was sliding it back into my belt when the mic affixed to my shoulder crackled.

  “Hey, Croft, you still with us?”

  “I’m here, Hoffman. How’s it looking up there?”

  “The doors just came open. We’re working on getting everyone out.”

  I pumped a fist before asking, “How are we looking casualty-wise?”

  “Too early to tell, but we’ve got thousands streaming out and it looks like thousands more coming from the concourse. So I’d say limited. Did you find what you were looking for?”

  I glanced over at Jimmy’s body. “Yeah, I did.”

  “All right, good.”

  “Hey, Hoffman?”

  “What is it?” he asked suspiciously.

  “You helped save a lot of lives tonight.”

  He grunted. “I could probably say the same about you.”

  I recalled what the demon had said about Red Hook being a trap.

  “Have you heard from your partner recently?”

  “No. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Please do,” I replied urgently.

  “See you when you come up, Croft.”

  32

  By the time Mae and I reached the main concourse, police and emergency personnel were already inside. The dead we passed had been covered, but it wasn’t hard to imagine their shriveled corpses. As Mae averted her eyes, I reminded her—and myself—that it could have been so much worse.

  We emerged from the stadium to a throng of activity. Emergency vehicles were parked everywhere, red lights flashing. The news trucks had arrived too, and I recognized Andrea from Channel Four. Before the blonde anchor could spot us, I steered Mae away.

  I craned my neck in search of Hoffman. With the crisis over, I was thinking more and more about what Damien had said about the false trail he’d planted with the Ark and how he’d designed it to end in death.

  That was the route your partner took, the poor thing.

  My heart pounded sickly in my chest. He was a demon. Surely he’d been lying.

  I was about to radio Hoffman when someone called my name. I turned to find Vega limping through the crowd. Her face was blackened with soot and she’d been gashed above her right eyebrow. I ran to her, legs weak with relief. Arriving in front of her, I held her arms.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded solemnly. “And you?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  Her large eyes searched mine for another moment, then she slipped her arms around my waist and pressed her body against me. I held the back of her head to my chest and absorbed her solidity and warmth. I could feel the amulet pulsing beneath her shirt. It had kept her safe. Vega and I remained like that for the next minute, deaf to the chaos around us.

  “What happened?” I asked at last.

  “The suspect was hiding in a basement. Pierce went after him, but there was an explosion. The windows shattered for blocks. When we got inside, the suspect was in pieces, and Pierce was dead.”

  I swallowed hard on a tide of grief. Just as Damien had intimated, not only had he meant to lead us to Red Hook, he had intended to kill us when we arrived—apparently by using Quinton as a high-powered infernal bomb. His painting altered, Pierce hadn’t seen the ambush coming.

  “I was able to recover this.” Vega stepped back and pulled a Ziploc bag from her pocket. Inside, I could see the silver necklace. She had packed it in salt, just like I’d taught her.

  “Good work,” I said, accepting the bag. I placed it in a coat pocket near the salt-filled bag that held the ring. I would give them to a high-level member of the Order when one arrived.

  “So it’s done?” she asked.

  I looked over at Yankee Stadium. The Order would be able to tell me for sure, but I nodded. The enchantment in Grandpa’s ring had blasted Damien back to his realm and slammed the door in his wake. The demon had been hurt. He would need time to recover. In the meantime, the cursed items would be sterilized and the channels he’d arrived by filled in.

  “Everson?” I turned to find Mae tapping her way up to us. “I don’t mean to interrupt your reunion with this pretty thing, but it’s past my and Buster’s bedtime, and I’m getting a little chilly.”

  “Oh, Mae, this is Detective Vega.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Mae said.

  “And this is Mae Johnson. My partner.”

  Vega cocked an eyebrow at me as she shook Mae’s hand.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said to her. “Listen, I know we’re going to be tied up for a few days with all of this, but how about stealing a few hours at Prospect Park this weekend? You, me, and Tony.”

  Vega’s eyes glistened above her weary smile. “I’d like that.”

  I leaned down and kissed her. Screw the PDA agreement. Judging by the force of
her return kiss, Vega felt the same. When we separated, I brushed a strand of hair from her gashed brow and held her sooty cheek.

  “Talk soon,” I said.

  “Talk soon,” she agreed, and returned to work.

  A police officer gave Mae and me a lift back to her apartment. I escorted her inside and up to her unit. “Well, Everson,” she said, accepting the carrier. “You sure know how to show an old gal a good time.”

  “I’ve still got it,” I quipped, making her laugh. “In all seriousness, Mae, what happened tonight … I couldn’t have done it without you. I mean that. Those imps would have eaten the stadium alive.”

  “And don’t forget about Buster.” She held up the carrier.

  “Of course not.” And to think I’d nearly banished the nether creature that would spare me from Damien. I poked a finger through the mesh door to scratch his head, but Buster backed away and snapped a claw at me.

  Mae chuckled. “He’s getting a little cranky. We made a good team tonight, though, didn’t we?”

  “Damn good.”

  I thought about what Arianna had said about my future team finding me one by one. I’d be lying if I said I had pictured someone like Mae, but here we were, on the back end of a mission accomplished.

  “Hey,” I said before she could disappear into her apartment. “Would it be all right if I called on you in the future?”

  “I’ll beat you over the head if you don’t. But to be honest, I’ll have to take things on a case-by-case basis. I’m a little old for this city-saving stuff. Older than I realized. Tonight taught me that.”

  “It takes a different kind of endurance,” I agreed. “Heck, I still get tired. You might feel differently about it in the morning.”

  “Which for me is only a few hours away. Night, Everson.”

  “Goodnight, Mae.” I kissed her cheek and then closed the door firmly behind her.

  I didn’t want Buster to get out.

  For the rest of the week, the city was abuzz with the “Massacre at Yankee Stadium.” Just over five hundred fans lost their lives that night. Way too many, but I found consolation in knowing that if Damien had carried out his full plan, it would have been a hundred times that.

  Plenty of cameras and phones had caught the imp attack, but as often happened when extra-planar beings with their extra-planar auras took form in our world, the images were blobby. With the blobbiness, rumors began to spread that the attack had never happened, that it had all been a staged event. Websites and online videos sprang up ascribing various motives to city and federal officials. Never mind the parade of eyewitnesses or interviews with the victims’ families. That was all part of the conspiracy too, the doubters claimed. The doubts became even more widespread when witnesses described a man encased in golden light flying around the concourses.

  Probably just as well.

  But in fairness to the doubters, I suspected Mayor Lowder and his team of planting some of the early rumors to keep the developers from backing out. Right now, Budge needed to preserve the redevelopment projects more than he needed credibility with the public.

  Naturally, the NYPD was busy that week. I only got to talk to Vega here and there. The period was busy for me as well. Arianna from the Order arrived the morning following the attack. I gave her the ring and necklace to inspect. Before neutralizing them, she scanned the city for other artifacts bearing the same energy signature, but she found no trace of Damien’s presence. Neither could she determine the provenance of the common items.

  She did find something, though. In the charred remains of Jimmy Land, a small hole snaked to his core. “As if something had burrowed out,” she said. With the five hundred souls Damien claimed that night, a germ of the demon’s essence may have taken root in our world, she explained. But Arianna doubted it had been able to maintain itself once out. Most likely it evaporated within moments. And indeed, a search had turned up nothing.

  As perhaps further evidence that the demon was history, Becky’s inheritance fell into jeopardy when the state of California determined that her grandparents’ will was a forgery. Similarly, the member of the Ark who had won the state lottery was scammed out of her winnings. And the member Becky had called “the second coming of Jimi Hendrix” fell off the stage at the end of a late-night show, shattering his guitar and the bones in both hands. Suspect to begin with, demon deals needed a demonic presence to sustain them.

  No more demon, no more deal.

  Arianna spent two days sealing the hole back to his realm. When she returned, I sensed there had been more to Damien’s plan than she was telling me, but only because she had questions of her own that needed answering first.

  On her last day, Arianna performed Pierce’s final rites. We held them at his house, just the two of us and Pierce’s wrapped body. To think Damien had claimed someone as powerful as Pierce sobered me. I remembered Pierce’s final words to me: “You and I are going to be a force in this city.” That hit me right in the feelings. He went up in a transparent blue flame that reminded me of a Himitsu painting, simple and yet beautifully layered.

  I was thankful I’d made my peace with him.

  Arianna ended her visit by giving me some updates on the Order’s work. The damage around our world was more extensive than first thought, hence the scarcity of Elder members. The good news was that the Order had located more magic-users, and several had begun their training. In the near term, the Order would be depending on our scattered numbers more than ever.

  “And my team?” I asked.

  “They’ll come,” she assured me.

  Gretchen Wagonhurst returned from the faerie realm that Friday with a haircut and a fae tan, which was to say her skin was a shade lighter. Sort of an esoteric joke. She made no mention of the case and seemed to have forgotten all about my black luck. Instead, she announced she was moving into Pierce’s house, something she’d apparently worked out with the Order. I can’t say I was sad to see her go.

  But as I watched her pack, I remembered her whole spiel on our first day of training about not being a mentor:

  You know, the wise hag who gives you cryptic clues that sound like nonsense until the final act when you’re staring death in the face, and then—whammo!— a flashbulb goes off, all those clues make perfect sense, and you save the day.

  But that was more or less what she had done, though it had been far from clear at the time. The black luck she’d given me had compelled me to go out to close the loops—actions that had turned out to be key in finding and repelling Damien. I thought back over them.

  The third loop had involved the mirror event Pierce had picked up in the painting: the pendant and the ring. That led to the insight that Damien had another play. The second loop alerted me that the ley lines were off; I later pinpointed Yankee Stadium as the epicenter of the disturbance. And the first loop led to me bringing Mae along, someone who could control nether creatures.

  “Thank you,” I told Gretchen.

  She blinked over at me. “For what?”

  “Helping me. You made sure I had everything I needed to solve the case.”

  She finished stuffing her clothes into the suitcase. “I told you I’m not that kind of teacher.”

  “Sure you’re not.”

  “If you learned anything, though, I hope it’s that your luck quotient is only a handicap if you have to depend on it. Your magic’s always talking to you. It’s a matter of learning to listen. That’s how you become your best magic-user.”

  I nodded in understanding. “Kind of like seeing the world as a Himitsu painting.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but sure. Practice, practice, practice will only get you so far. It can actually have a stunting effect after a point. Professionally and personally.”

  “That’s why you took my Magical Me book.”

  “That trashed thing? You can have it back if you want.”

  I followed her cocked head toward the divan. The taped-up book was being used as a leveler aga
in, the leg planted smack in the middle of Jocko Wraithe’s plastic grin. Gretchen was right. There was faking it, and then there was making it. For the past year, I’d been doing too much of the first. The weekend had shown me that. I left the book where it was.

  When Gretchen hefted her several suitcases, I offered to help, but she tottered past me. “We should probably set up some kind of training schedule,” she said. “I don’t work weekends or the first, second, and fourth Mondays of the month. I’m away most Fridays too, more so now. And Thursdays can be iffy, especially in months ending in r or y. I’ll give you a call.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Hey, I take back what I said earlier.”

  “What? About Lich being a better trainer than me, or that I’m batshit crazy?”

  “You heard that too, huh?” I blushed as I hustled around her to open the door. “Look, I’m glad you’re my mentor.”

  “Well, I still think you’re going to be a project. But as long as you do exactly what I tell you…” She left it at that, breaking wind as she heaved herself into the corridor. I quickly shut the door.

  “Is she gone?”

  I turned to find Tabitha entering through the cat door in the window.

  “Mostly,” I replied, grimacing and waving a hand in front of my face.

  Tabitha hopped onto the divan and plopped down with a sigh. “I know I complain a lot, darling, but I rather enjoy it being just the two of us. It will be nice having things back to normal.”

  I nodded vaguely, even though I was sure things were going to be far from normal for awhile. Especially if doing exactly what Gretchen told me was anything like last weekend.

  “Oh, and I’d just die for one of your meals tonight,” Tabitha added as she settled into the depression on her perch. I looked from Tabitha to the wrecked kitchen. I’d have to clean it up sooner or later, I reasoned. Plus I was craving some home-cooked food myself.