Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9)

by Brad Magnarella

  “Ghiaccio!”

  A subzero cone blasted from the tube and engulfed the second golem in a plume of steam. Still shaky from last night’s beating, I struggled to maintain the two invocations while expelling oxygen from the sphere around the first golem. Sweat poured down the sides of my face and around my clenched jaw.

  Shit, can’t do it.

  With a gasp, I released the sphere, sending out a burst of flames. My ice attack wasn’t faring much better. The golem was bracing against the blast with folded arms, the fire at his core turning brighter as it pulled in more magic. I tossed away the exhausted vial and sidestepped, placing several pillars between us. The golems resumed their attack, their fiery cables sparking and clanging against metal.

  I’d put down the landfill animation by dispelling the source of the magic, the metal box.

  Probably in the box car, I thought, but Red and Hot here aren’t letting me get any closer.

  Every time I stepped around, the golems did the same, blocking my path to the car and lashing their cables to keep me away.

  I drew the sword from my cane. The light from the golems swam around the blade’s second symbol, the one for fire. The rune was potent enough that I’d only developed the capacity to really control it in the last couple months. But would it be powerful enough to absorb two fire animations?

  One of the golems charged, giving me a chance to find out.

  I grimaced against the bite of steel across my shielded back and drove my sword into his gut. Fire wrapped the blade. Aligned to the rune, I spoke its word. For a dizzying moment, I was back in the rock quarry holding the efreet, a primal white flame, the heart of all flames, flickering in her eyes. A sharp whoosh brought me back, and I blinked to find the golem twisting and diminishing into the rune.

  It’s working, I thought through gritted teeth.

  More of the golem disappeared, until he was a messy whirlwind of flames.

  But as my blade went from red to a molten orange, my hope faltered. The handle was becoming uncomfortably warm. That hadn’t happened before. Wherever the fire was going, it wasn’t going there fast enough, and the backed-up energy was gathering in the blade. A blade whose metal was reaching its limits.

  Swinging my sword at the other golem, I shouted, “Disfare!”

  The gathered fire released with such violence that I staggered back and the engulfed golem dropped his cables. His contours wavered as the magic struggled to sustain his form. A couple times the golem disappeared altogether. At last, he succumbed for good, the torrent of fire sweeping him into nothing.

  “Hallelujah,” I sighed.

  I closed the rune and stood panting in the blistering space. Worried the animating magic would recover before I did, I limped to the back of the box car. At the top of three steps, a rear door stood ajar.

  Draining another warding sigil, I inched the door open, ready to spring back. But no more flames erupted. Across the dark interior, a ragged breath rose and fell. I grew out the light from my staff until a lump took shape in the far corner, a figure curled on his side in a dirty sleeping bag. Even in the light, he looked like a shadow.

  “Sven?”

  “Go awaaay…” he moaned again.

  He pushed a hand out, as if he were fighting something in a dream. The movement made him grimace and he clutched his shoulder. The protective animations may have been game for a fight, but he was in no condition himself, shifter or not.

  But I was becoming more and more certain he wasn’t the shifter.

  I dispersed my shield to lessen the chances of triggering any remaining sigils and made my way toward him. The backpack I’d seen him carrying the day before lay near the foot of his sleeping bag, a couple soup cans spilling from its open mouth. When I squatted beside him, I smelled blood.

  “Sven,” I repeated. “It’s Professor Croft.”

  Forgetting his pain from only a moment earlier, he attempted to shove me away with the same arm before contorting suddenly and dropping back into semiconsciousness. The kid was badly hurt.

  Regretting I hadn’t brought gloves, I inspected the shoulder of his gray shirt, black with blood, until I located a hole in the fabric. I ripped it open, laying bare a swatch of pale skin that turned gory around a gunshot wound. He mumbled feverishly as I peered under his shoulder. An exit wound had made an even bigger mess in back. Judging from the amount of blood-caking, the injury was hours old, and the droplets I’d seen en route indicated it had happened elsewhere.

  “What in the world have you been up to, Sven?” I whispered.

  Soft light swelled from my cane’s opal as I started into a healing incantation.

  He’d managed to make it down here without being seen, suggesting he’d been shot last night or early this morning, but his condition had worsened with blood loss and probably the start of infection.

  I stopped suddenly and stared at him.

  I was remembering the dark figure who’d grabbed me last night in the shadow present. Vega had fired at him twice, the figure crying out before dropping me again in the actual present.

  “Holy hell,” I said. “That was you.”

  Sven Roe had brought me back.

  31

  With layers of healing light swaddling him, Sven’s breaths deepened with his sleep.

  I lifted one of his eyelids to make absolutely sure he wasn’t the shifter before sitting back on my heels. I’d performed enough healings in my time that for the past twenty minutes my mind had been free to ponder. But I was still no closer to understanding who he was, why he’d planted a fire sigil under my office door yesterday morning, and then rescued me from the shadow present last night.

  Reaching over, I pulled his pack toward me, spilling the remaining soup cans. Inside the main compartment, I found a spare shirt, a toiletry bag, matchbooks, a portable music player, and a handful of scavenged things: among them, a bag of condiment packets. It was as if he’d packed hastily for a trip and then improvised once he’d gotten there.

  In the small pockets, I found a notebook and writing utensils, one of them the silver-flecked grease pencil he’d used to draw the casting circle he’d left me. I opened the notebook to discover practice drawings of other circle renderings. He’d penned little notes here and there, as I might have done.

  But how in the hell was he powering them?

  As the pages progressed, I noticed the patterns suddenly go from round to more angular, like those on the Hermes box.

  He has it, I thought with certainty.

  I stood and searched the rest of the car but found only mundane odds and ends. Outside, I crawled beneath the car and peered into various compartments. I was finishing up when the obvious struck me. Back inside, I unzipped Sven’s sleeping bag, and there it was, clamped between his knees—the small box. It was still in the salt bag, explaining why the citywide wards hadn’t detected it again and alerted me.

  I started to reach for it, then stopped.

  I thought about the powerful guardian animations I’d encountered, first in the landfill, then here. Those hadn’t come from Sven, but the Hermes box. For whatever reason, it wanted to be with him, not me.

  But for good or ill?

  The best answers would come from the kid himself, but that was going to be a while. My healing magic was having to pull triple duty—repair bone and tissue, restore a very depleted blood supply, and fight an infection.

  Maybe I could get some help with the last two. Surprised to find a bar of signal on my phone, I called Vega.

  “I located Sven,” I said, crossing to the far side of the box car.

  “You did? Is he in custody?”

  “Not exactly. We’re under Grand Central Terminal. He suffered a gunshot wound and is in bad shape.”

  “Who shot him?”

  “It’s, ah, sort of a long story, but it happened in the shadow present. He’s the reason I made it back. He grabbed and transported me somehow. He also has the box I recovered from the landfill.” I’d zipped Sven’s slee
ping bag up again, but I could still make out the small lump between his knees.

  “He was the one who stole it back from our apartment?”

  “I won’t know that until I can talk to him, and that’s where I need some help. A couple years ago, you called your EMT friend when you needed blood. We met him in a garage really close to here, in fact.”

  She had been shot by a gang boss at Ferguson Towers. I’d removed the bullet and commenced a healing spell, but she’d insisted on continuing before she had fully recovered, nearly passing out. That had been our second case together, and the first time I realized I had more than professional feelings for her.

  “Larry,” she said. “He and his wife were at our wedding,” she added thinly.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Well, do you think he’d be willing to treat someone off the books?”

  “Why off the books? If you’re worried about the NYPD, I can take care of that.”

  So much had just happened, I’d nearly forgotten about the police efforts to find him.

  “Because he’s hiding down here,” I said, glancing around the dark box car. “And I don’t think it’s just from the NYPD.”

  “All right, where are you exactly?”

  “An old line under Grand Central.”

  “That explains the connection. Is there a place you can bring him safely?”

  I peered out the car’s window. Even if I found my way back up, I’d be carrying Sven into one of the busiest train stations in the country. As my eyes traced the tracks into the darkness, an idea hit me.

  “Can you call the Waldorf Astoria and ask if their elevator to Track 61 still works?”

  Miraculously, the hotel had restored the elevator two months earlier with plans to begin offering tours of the historical oddity. After a hike down the tracks that involved shooing away rats and a wandering soul eater, I stood before a large metal door, cradling Sven, still in his sleeping bag. Machinery clanked and rattled somewhere overhead. Before long, the door opened to reveal a hefty gray-haired man wearing blue scrubs.

  “This our guy?” Larry asked from behind a wheelchair.

  “I really appreciate you doing this,” I said, carrying Sven past a mechanic and into a large cargo space. The elevator had been built to carry presidential limos.

  “Well, when Ricki asks a favor…” Larry paused to help me set Sven in the chair. “…she doesn’t really let you say no, does she?”

  “True enough,” I chuckled, shaking out my aching arms.

  Once Larry buckled Sven in place, he wasted no time inserting an IV cannula into his arm and attaching a bag of blood and a bag of saline. As the bags began to fill their drip chambers, the mechanic sent the elevator up. I’d carefully placed the Hermes box in Sven’s pack, leaving the soup cans in the car, and I adjusted it on my back now. Larry used the slow, rattling ascent to check Sven’s vitals.

  “How is he?” The strength of concern in my voice surprised me. But Sven’s youth coupled with the fact he’d pulled me from the shadow present made me responsible for him.

  “Pressure’s a little low, but the fluids will fix that. You seem to have a knack for stabilizing gunshot victims.”

  “Well, you learn from experience,” I hedged. Larry didn’t know about my magic.

  When the elevator stopped, the mechanic had us transfer to a personnel elevator. After a couple floors, he handed us off to a hotel official, who showed us to a room being watched by plainclothes officers.

  I didn’t know the rules on bragging about your spouse, so I didn’t say anything, but Vega had delivered on everything.

  Larry wheeled Sven into the room, and the two of us lifted him onto a sumptuous bed. While I removed his sleeping bag and arranged the covers, Larry transferred the fluid bags to a bedside pole and hooked Sven up to a monitor. He administered an antibiotic shot to his shoulder and cleaned the wounds.

  “Not nearly as bad as I was expecting,” he remarked.

  As he sutured the healing wounds closed, he said, “Oh, hey, forgot to ask Ricki. How’d you like that thingy we got you for your wedding?”

  “Oh, it was … great,” I replied, my face already warming. I had no idea what he was talking about. “Much appreciated.”

  “Use it?”

  “Yeah, a few times now.”

  He turned to me, his brow creased. “How’s that possible?”

  Before things could go from socially awkward to disastrous, Sven stirred and opened his eyes. Larry tied off the suture and clipped it. “He’s all yours,” he whispered. “If you need me, I’ll be outside.”

  I waited for him to close the door before approaching the bed.

  Sharpness was returning to Sven’s dark eyes. He peered at me, then around the room. I could all but read his thoughts, especially when he began feeling around his legs, the sudden movement jiggling the fluid bags overhead.

  “It’s in here,” I said, raising his pack.

  Sven stopped searching for the box, but wariness remained in his eyes. I placed his pack on a chair close enough to calm him. Hopefully, the box too. I didn’t need it throwing up any more guardians.

  Sven stared at it for several moments, long enough for the bags to go still again, before licking his bottom lip and returning his gaze to mine. I caught the craving—needing something but wishing he didn’t. When I shifted my senses to the astral realm, I could see the threads now that bound him to the box.

  He cleared his throat, bringing me back.

  “Hi, Professor.”

  32

  “Hi, Sven,” I said. “But that’s not your name, is it? And you’re not really my student.”

  I doubted he was nineteen either, but that wasn’t high on my concern-list at the moment. Though his eyes remained fixed on mine, I could tell his mind was darting around in search of an answer.

  “No,” he finally admitted.

  “Then let’s start there. What’s your real name?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve been using Sven Roe. For the sake of consistency I’d like to keep using it, at least until this is over.”

  “Until what’s over?”

  He glanced toward his pack. “I’m not sure.”

  “How did the box come into your possession?”

  “I found it.”

  “At the Discovery Society?”

  “No, but you shouldn’t go there.”

  “Why not?”

  “You just shouldn’t.”

  He was being evasive, and I thought I knew why.

  “The police search has been called off,” I told him.

  “But I’m in your custody, right?” he said, confirming he’d caught wind of the hunt.

  “You’re in my care. You’re not under arrest, though, no. Whether it stays that way is up to you.”

  Understanding the deal, he nodded. “I stole the box, last month. From a mansion in Tribeca. It was in the owner’s private collection.”

  “So you’re a cat burglar?”

  He let out a dry laugh. “No, Prof. I’d never stolen anything before in my life. I mean, beyond the odd pack of gum when I was a kid. Wish it had stayed that way. Guess I should start at the beginning?”

  “Please do.”

  “About a year ago, I found an old rune book in Benson’s Books on Ninth. It spoke to me. Not literally. It spoke to me like mythology does. In fact, I was there hunting for a rare book on Sumerian myths.”

  I almost asked him if it was the one by Fleming, but I didn’t want to interrupt.

  “Anyway, I got the rune book—paid for it—and started practicing. The runes were pretty basic. Bending light, jiggling small objects, that sort of thing. Parlor tricks that I could sort of do, but not great. The big leap happened with the final rune, Vagueness. Once I got that one to work, I could walk all around the apartment without my mom noticing. She even called me for dinner a couple times when I was standing right next to her. It also helped with some problems I�
��d been having.”

  “Bullies?” I asked, noticing the lateral crook in his nose.

  “Street gangs. I had the rune tattooed on my thigh in silver ink. Cost half my savings, but it was worth it. Whenever I saw the Skulls or Boyz coming, I could invoke it and walk right past them.” His eyes shone at the memory. “It was like having an invisibility cloak. I started taking longer walks around the city. Seven, eight, ten miles at a time. I even went out at night, got into historic places I wasn’t supposed to. That’s how I fell in love with New York, as messed up as it is.”

  He and I had some things in common, but I didn’t want him getting too comfortable yet.

  “Did you use the vagueness rune to steal the box?” I asked.

  The excitement left his eyes. “That rune and a couple others, yeah. I can’t even really explain how it happened. I was taking one of my walks, and I found myself in front of a mansion on Reade Street. Nothing about it stood out from the others, but I couldn’t stop staring. When I finally continued, it felt like a voice was calling me back.”

  The Hermes box, I thought.

  “That night, I dreamt I broke into the mansion. It was incredibly vivid—from which runes I used, to my path through the house, to entering a walk-in vault and retrieving a little metal chest.” He glanced toward his pack again. “The next morning I thought, ‘Huh, weird dream.’ But it stayed with me, only it was more like, I don’t know, an obsession. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Every day the pressure around it built and built until it felt like if I didn’t do what the dream showed me, I’d go insane.”

  He was describing an enchantment, no doubt given off by whatever was inside the box.

  “So one night, I did it,” Sven said simply. “I stole it. The trunk was exactly where it had been in the dream. By the time the adrenaline hangover went away, the obsession was gone. Still, I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the chest. I tried to open it a few times, but the lid wouldn’t budge.”