Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9)

by Brad Magnarella

  Beware the shadow of many faces, the Doideag had said. But fear the master of many places.

  Strock’s role as president of an explorer’s club seemed to fit the bill for the second. I turned, but there was a void where he’d been standing. I looked around. He was no longer in the meeting room. I rushed to Ludvig, who remained parked beside the globe, smiling over the room as if he were among his dearest friends—despite that no one had approached him or appeared ready to now.

  “What happened to Strock?” I asked.

  “The club has a lounge upstairs with a bar. Some of the members go there after the meeting. Often before the meeting too,” he added with a conspiratorial smile. As I hurried away to the corridor of portraits in search of a staircase, I heard Ludvig exclaim, “Wait! It is only for members!”

  I needed to confirm the potion was on Strock. Then it would be a matter of staying close, determining how and why he’d killed Bear. I was fully aware I was on my own here. Hoffman and the NYPD weren’t going to touch someone of Robert Strock’s stature, not without irrefutable proof. And even then they might not.

  But there was also the Doideag’s prophecy about failure—wars coming, seas boiling, lands running.

  I’d take him down myself if I had to.

  I found a set of stairs leading up and took them two at a time. I’d gone halfway when someone called my name: “Everson Croft!”

  Vega?

  Last we spoke she was going to wait for my call before driving from her brothers’ to pick me up, but it looked like she’d come anyway. And she didn’t sound happy. Her approaching shadow grew in the corridor beneath me. As I descended, I noticed the lights along the stairwell had dimmed from golden to a grayish yellow.

  I arrived at the bottom of the stairs a few steps ahead of Vega. She stopped and trained her service pistol at my head.

  “Hey, it’s me,” I said, raising my free hand. I noticed she’d changed from her blues to her detective blacks. Had new evidence on the Goldburn case brought her? But what would she even be doing in the field?

  “Drop your cane,” she ordered, eyes cold and dark. “Lock your fingers behind your head and face the wall.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Do it!”

  It was my wife’s voice, my wife’s aura—but when my gaze traced her belly, my own stomach lurched.

  She wasn’t pregnant.

  Four backup officers were approaching from farther down the corridor. I squinted, trying to see if I recognized them, but the corridor was much dimmer than only a few moments before, and the runner had changed.

  The shadow present?

  I’d theorized that I’d crossed over in my apartment because my wards had preserved the weakness the perp had introduced to the boundary. So how could it be happening here, at the Discovery Society?

  “This is the last time I’m going to tell you,” the shadow Vega said.

  “Fine, but I have a right to know why you’re detaining me at gunpoint.”

  “You’re under arrest for the murder of Bear Goldburn.”

  21

  “What?”

  My stomach clenched with shock, but my mind was still working, struggling to make sense of what was happening. This version of Vega looked hard-bitten, the skin around her eyes heavy and stress-lined. She wore a dull band on her left ring finger, different than the one I’d given her. My heart staggered. Not only was this version of my wife not pregnant with our child, she was married to someone else.

  And she’s arresting me for Bear’s murder?

  I had a hundred questions, but I wasn’t going to get any answers from her. That would be the judge and public defender’s job—assuming I let her arrest me. And that was a hell no. Between the alt versions of my apartment and Vega, I was getting a good picture of the city in this shadow present, and it made the problems in the actual present look quaint in comparison. Prison would be a murder hole.

  “Protezione,” I uttered.

  Light burst from the opal end of my cane and gathered around me into a shield of hardened air. Vega responded by compressing her lips and firing. I grunted into a backpedal as the impacts flashed from my shield. I shouldn’t have felt them this much, but the energy in the shadow present was just that—shadowy. No matter how much I channeled into my protection, the energy lacked the same solidity.

  At both ends of the corridor, Vega’s officers had taken blocking positions. They shouted a cacophony of surrender commands. Vega’s next shot fractured my protection, the bullet searing my cheek.

  “Respingere!” I bellowed.

  Force and light burst from the shield, causing officers to throw forearms to faces and knocking Vega onto her back. I fled up the stairs. A minute earlier, I’d been intent on finding Strock. Now I just wanted to get the hell out of the Discovery Society and find refuge.

  At the top of the stairs, I drew my sword and spoke into the second rune. Activated by an efreet, it held the power of elemental fire.

  “Fuoco!”

  The rune glowed like an ember and fire crackled down the blade. I wasted no time bathing the stairwell in flames. Beyond the storm, recovering officers arrived at the bottom of the steps. Vega stood among them, the fire’s fury reflected in eyes that bore into mine. She shouted orders, and the officers split.

  They’re surrounding the building.

  As sprinklers activated, I turned and accessed the second-story corridor. Knowing the front of the building would be covered from the street, I ran toward the back, passing various rooms.

  My body might have been in flight mode, but my mind was still working furiously. Individuals in the actual and shadow realities were supposed to operate independently of one another, meaning the shadow Bear had been murdered too. And the shadow me had either committed the murder or been framed for it.

  But how had Vega known to find me in the Discovery Society? Had someone tipped off the police and ensured I’d be in the shadow present when they arrived? And what about Strock? He’d been carrying the potion I found in Bear’s system. How was he involved? Not to mention Sven Roe and the Hermes cult?

  The corridor ended at a closed door. I hit it with a force blast and shouldered through the splintered wood into an office. A window overlooked an alley that ran between the back of the row of townhouses and the one behind it.

  I stepped back and shouted another invocation. The force shattered the window but failed to blow out the security bars. Extending my staff between two of them, I summoned a shield and strained to grow it out and force the bars apart.

  C’mon, dammit.

  The aged bars yielded with a pair of surprising snaps and clanged down into the alley. I squeezed through the tight space until I was standing on a window ledge.

  As fire alarms began to sound in the club behind me, I peered both ways. No police lights yet, but I knew how Vega and the NYPD operated. After surrounding the building, they would set up a perimeter. We’d be talking roughly twenty-five square blocks, since the suspect—i.e. me—was on foot.

  The solution was to take to the air.

  Angling my sword at the ledge, I shouted, “Forza dura!”

  The force launched me across the alley. There was a four-story difference between the window ledge and my rooftop destination, and though I’d compensated for the flimsier energy here, I still came up short.

  I braced against the incoming brick wall until pain exploded through my right shoulder. I’d had the presence to shape a platform of hardened air, only falling a few feet before it caught me. Pushing myself up, I summoned more platforms to act as steps until I was climbing over a retaining wall and onto the rooftop.

  An instant later, police cruisers squealed into the alleyway from both ends.

  I sagged with my back to the wall. I’d managed to escape the building without being seen, but that was just a start.

  Touching the opal end of my staff to my throbbing shoulder, I panted words of healing. As a tepid warmth took hold, I considered my next move. Back in m
y apartment, I’d returned from the shadow present spontaneously, but that wasn’t happening here. I searched a night sky thick with clouds and industrial smoke.

  Vega will be calling a search chopper, I thought, if she hasn’t already.

  Meaning I needed to escape the perimeter before the chopper arrived. But escape where?

  I crossed the roof of the townhouse until I was looking south. Past the spires of Midtown stretched the relative plains of the Villages. In the distance, a mass of skyscrapers marked Downtown. Sirens blanketed the length of the city, the forlorn sounds interspersed with cries and distant cracks of gunfire.

  Who controlled this version of New York, I wondered? More importantly, did I have any allies?

  I felt a stab of longing for my real wife as well as Bree-yark and Mae and our other friends, but right now, I needed to get somewhere safe. As I considered my options, I patted my pockets to ensure nothing had fallen out. When my keychain jangled, I narrowed my gaze at where Midtown College would be.

  If the keys work here, I can take refuge inside the college.

  With a running start, I shouted the Word for force and sent myself skyward, arcing over the street. A second invocation slowed my descent, and I landed at a run across the gravel rooftop of the next building.

  I continued in this manner for six more blocks, arriving on the final roof as a distant chugging sounded. A chopper was coming in from the southeast, its powerful beam bathing entire city blocks, but I was outside its search radius. Good thing, because my throbbing right knee told me I was done roof-hopping.

  I peered over the back of the building in search of a fire escape.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” a man’s voice growled behind me.

  Jerking around, I saw that the five men had been concealed in the shadow of the building’s stair tower. Their silhouettes rose from camp chairs and upturned buckets, all of them armed.

  Of course, I thought dismally.

  I stepped back, a shield hardening around me, whatever good it would do. My encounter with Vega had shown that my protection here wouldn’t stop a full-blown assault. I would need to take the offensive, hit them hard. I had force, fire, and ice, and the right bottom pocket of my coat bulged with lightning grenades.

  But as the men stepped out into the ambient light, they weren’t the homicidal thugs I’d been expecting. They were clean-cut. A couple wore office clothes: slacks and tucked-in shirts with the sleeves rolled up. I instantly pieced it together. This was a resident watch group for the apartment building.

  Taking a huge chance, I slid my cane through my coat’s belt loop and showed my hands.

  “I wasn’t trying to break in,” I said. “Someone’s chasing me, and I was looking for a way down.”

  “Did we see you jump here?” one of them asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, still breathing hard from the exertion and adrenaline. “I was over there.”

  I indicated the rooftop across the alley. Fortunately, it was just high enough and the distance just narrow enough that someone desperate enough could have made the leap. The men must have done the same calculation because they didn’t question my claim. A couple of them covered the neighboring rooftop with rifles. The rest returned their gazes to me as if searching for a chink in my own clean-cut look. After another moment, the oldest man nodded, and they lowered their weapons.

  “Knife wound?” he asked, squinting behind a pair of glasses.

  I touched my cheek, encountering the burning line of dried blood left by Vega’s round. “Gunshot wound, actually.”

  The men grunted knowingly.

  “What the hell are you even doing out this time of night?” the spokesman asked.

  The fifty-something-year-old looked like he could have managed a regional bank, but he also possessed a certain hardness. They all did. These were men who had families to provide for and protect, but who also knew that one careless moment in this version of the city and they could lose everything.

  “It’s a long story,” I breathed. “I’m not from here.”

  “I could have told you that.” The man cracked a smile for the first time. “Where are you trying to get to?”

  “Midtown College.”

  “Why do you want to go there?” he asked, an angle of suspicion returning to his voice.

  “I know someone who used to work night security,” I lied. “It was the safest place I could think of.”

  “Well, ‘used to’ would be the operative term. Midtown College went under years ago. It’s all abandoned buildings now—but that’s not to say devoid of life. Be glad you met us. A trip there, especially at this hour, would have ended really badly for you.”

  I wondered if this version of the city had also suffered a major economic crash, but instead of recovering from it, as ours was, theirs had fallen into deeper misfortune. In any case, I could strike Midtown College from my choices.

  “Thanks for the warning. Would you guys mind if I stayed up here? I’m still pretty rattled, and I need to figure out my next move.”

  And up here felt a lot safer than down in the streets. But maybe my trip to the shadow present was a blessing in disguise. If I was still here come morning, I could venture to the rundown version of my apartment and install the wards to prevent the perp from using it to circumvent my protections in the actual present.

  “Got a name?” the man asked.

  “Yeah, sorry—Ethan,” I said.

  There was a manhunt on for me, and Everson was too uncommon to be throwing around.

  “Gil,” he said, shaking my hand. He introduced me to the others, but with everything happening, I only half heard their names.

  I followed them back to where they’d been sitting. The arrangement of seats gave them angles on every part of the rooftop. Gil pushed out an upturned tar bucket with a foot and nodded that it was mine. I sat beside him.

  “Had much trouble here?” I asked.

  “Nothing like the massacre two summers ago.”

  The rest of the men murmured somberly.

  “Massacre?”

  “A werewolf got into the building and ravaged the fifth floor,” he said. “Wasn’t till Jerry from 212 arrived with a rifle full of silver buckshot that we were able to drive it out. They found its body the next day in Riverside, but the damage was done. Six dead from the attack. Nine mauled. The Sup Squad took them away for treatment, but you know what that means. So, basically fifteen dead.”

  “The Sup Squad,” I echoed.

  “They come armed to the teeth, but we learned the hard way they only show up after the fact. At least for shmoes like us. The trick is to never need them in the first place.”

  “What else do you have running around here?”

  Gil gave a hollow snort. “You name it. If it eats human flesh, blood, or soul, it’s got a home in the city.”

  I shook my head. No wonder poor Ricki had looked so beaten down. I’d been considering whether it would be wise to try to locate my shadow self for help, but with all the supernatural threats here, there was no way he’d believe I was who I claimed to be. It had been hard enough in the time catch when the city was largely functional. I switched mental gears and decided to take a shot in the dark.

  “Hey, did I read that Bear Goldburn was murdered?”

  “Tech guy?” Gil nodded. “They found his body at a collision shop out in Brooklyn.”

  I stiffened. “A collision shop?”

  “Yeah, someone did a real job on him. Didn’t look like a sup attack either. Knifed out his kidneys and left him for dead.”

  “And on the same day he was canned as CEO,” one of the men added.

  I was too shocked to even nod. My scrying spell hadn’t misled me. It had captured Bear’s final moments—only it had been his shadow.

  But why had the spell jumped tracks like that? And how had the actual Bear Goldburn turned up dead in his penthouse with his kidneys missing? The two Bears were independent entities. What happened to the shadow B
ear shouldn’t have had any effect on the actual Bear. And yet, clearly, it had.

  “Any suspects?” I ventured.

  “Code red,” one of the men said in a lowered voice.

  We all turned to where he was rising from his seat and aiming his rifle. Something large had climbed onto the rooftop and was stalking toward us.

  22

  The men spread apart and covered the incoming figure. It was dark and hulking, as if the night itself had taken form. Beneath a ridged back, multiple legs stalked forward, like a muscular version of a giant spider.

  “Stay back,” Gil told me.

  But I’d already drawn my cane into sword and staff. “Entrapolare,” I whispered.

  Dull light glimmered, and the air around the creature hardened into an enclosure. The creature stopped and raised its front three legs. Except they weren’t legs, but canine heads that had been sniffing the rooftop. Three sets of eyes smoldered red.

  “Holy fuck,” one of the men murmured.

  Cerberus?

  The heads erupted into a thunderous fit of barking. As the watch group opened fire, I reshaped my invocation to brace the creature from the sides. His giant paws raked up gravel and sheaves of tar paper while silver rounds tore through his body, sending out bursts of smoke. The Cerberus wasn’t flesh.

  He also wasn’t succumbing to the attack.

  Errant shots struck my magical restraint, making it wobble. With the next volley, the Cerberus wrenched free and sprang at us. A man shrieked as one of the heads jerked him from his feet, thrashed him savagely, and flung him from the rooftop. The fading scream was almost as bad as the thump and sudden silence. The remaining men backpedaled, one fumbling his reload, sending shells clattering over the rooftop.

  The Cerberus sighted on him and leapt.

  “Not this time,” I grunted, as he collided with a fresh shield. “Everyone inside!” I shouted.

  The Cerberus scrambled to his feet among the spilled sparks. Whatever this being was, he was beyond the watch group’s means to put down. For the first time, they seemed to notice I was wielding a glowing sword and staff.