Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9)

by Brad Magnarella

  “You don’t know what’s inside?” I asked, concealing my disappointment.

  “No, so I started rendering the symbols on the lid, testing their power.”

  I nodded, remembering how the drawings in his notebook had changed.

  “Nothing really happened except that over time I came to understand their features.”

  That was the enchantment bonding him more strongly to the item, infusing him with arcane knowledge.

  “I began adding some of the features to my existing runes, and whoa! I could create fire. The rune ignited half my bed that first time before I beat it out with a pillow. And with the rune I’d been using to move small objects, I could suddenly generate huge forces, even scarier in some ways than the fire. But when I added the features to my vagueness rune…” Excitement returned to his eyes. “I found myself in another reality, another version of the city. The same place, but really different.”

  He’d evidently become imbued with the magic that had coated me in the landfill, enabling my own journey to that other version of the city.

  “And excuse me for swearing, Professor, but that’s when shit got serious. The vivid dreams came back, only now they were about a big war.”

  “A big war?” I echoed, remembering what the Doideag had prophesied.

  “And not just any war. The Titanomachy.”

  The Titanomachy was the battle between the Titans, led by Cronus, and the Greek gods of Olympus, led by Cronus’s son, Zeus. The original clash of the Titans, it pitted the older generation of gods against the younger in the highest-stakes battle in Greek mythology, for control of the entire Universe.

  “At least that’s what I think it was,” he said. “I could see lightning bolts, the Hecatonchires were chucking stones with their hundred hands, cyclopes were running past. There was smoke everywhere and earth-shaking explosions and the shadows of giant, grappling gods. It was crazy. Also really scary.”

  “What were you doing in the dream?”

  “I was fighting in the freaking thing.”

  “And the obsession you described after the first dream…?” I asked carefully.

  Sven gave a solemn nod. “It came back. Not as insistent. Yet. But it’s there.”

  I trained my gaze on his pack. What in the hell was the Hermes box doing to him?

  “Twice I tried to ditch it in the other reality,” he said, following my gaze. “And twice it found its way back to me.”

  I remembered the first hit on the box the week before, when I’d gone to an alley and found nothing. The second time, Sven must have tossed it in a dumpster, which explained how it ended up in the landfill. Though I’d packed the box in salt and placed it in my casting circle, the threads to Sven remained. Which meant I’d been wrong about someone stealing the box from my lab; the box had stolen itself.

  But Sven had just confirmed something else.

  “When you said you found yourself in a different reality,” I said. “You’re talking about this one, aren’t you?”

  His dusky appearance was the first clue. I’d noticed it the other day in my classroom. Beneath the fluorescent lights he’d still appeared to be in partial shade, but at the time I hadn’t given it a lot of thought. It also explained why I hadn’t detected his magic. Its source was on the other plane.

  And then there was his account of the city. Though still dodgy, Manhattan wasn’t so dangerous that you couldn’t take a walk alone in broad daylight. People did it all the time. But not in the shadow present.

  Sven nodded. “Yeah. And this place is… It’s just…” His eyes glistened as he looked around the room. “It’s amazing.”

  “I can only imagine,” I said gently.

  It must have been like someone who’d been colorblind seeing clearly for the first time. And that was to say nothing of experiencing a version of the city that was considerably nicer than the one he’d grown up in.

  “Anyway…” He wiped his eyes. “I learned about you from a search at the New York Public Library. The one here,” he clarified. “There were articles about your role in the mayor’s monster-eradication program, and they said you were a professor at Midtown College. I wanted to check you out, so I audited your course—which I enjoyed, by the way, even if we see tricksters differently. When you brought up the grad assistance thing, I saw it as a chance to get your help. But first I needed you to take me seriously.”

  “The fire circle you left on my desk,” I said.

  He gave me a guilty look. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

  “Was the one you drew under my office door spur-of-the-moment too?” My voice turned hard as I replayed the explosion that had thrown me into a wall, incinerated my favorite coat, and ripped into skin.

  Sven looked down at his hands. “I can’t explain that. I was delivering your lesson plans. You weren’t there, so I slid them under the door. And the next thing I knew, I was drawing the rune. It wasn’t one I’d rendered before—a combo of force and fire. I even used tanzanite. I knew it might hurt you, but … it felt necessary.”

  “Like the compulsion of your stealing dream?”

  “Sort of, but different. Like I needed to do it in order to convince you of something important.”

  I thought about the aftermath, tracking the tanzanite to the Gowdie sisters, where I received the Doideag’s prophecy.

  “Well, just talk to me next time,” I said. “I’m not sure I’ll survive another round of convincing.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, his chuckle scared-sounding. “When I saw the police were after me, I knew I’d messed up. Knew I’d lost you as a potential source of help. I returned to my city, never planning to come back here.”

  “Why didn’t you look for my shadow?”

  A cloud passed over his already dim face. “You don’t, um, exist over there.”

  “I don’t?” Even though we were talking about a probable version of myself, a knot tightened in my gut.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think any magic-users do. Not ones like you, anyway.”

  That explained why no one from the Order had contacted him. It did raise questions about what had happened to the magical community in the shadow present, but that was more a curiosity right now than a concern.

  “How did you find me last night?” I asked.

  “Right place, right time. I was out walking—thinking about you, actually. I was freaking out over the rune I planted, debating whether to go back and check on you. I hadn’t even gone home yet. I heard a bunch of commotion, went over to see what was happening, and there you were, on the sidewalk with the police incoming. I grabbed you to take you back, but I had to switch my focus from the vagueness rune to the transport version, which always negates the first. That’s when the pig saw and shot me.”

  “I appreciate the assist,” I said, even as my voice turned taut. “Just keep in mind that the woman you call a ‘pig’ was doing her job. She thought you were a threat.” Had I just stood up for shadow Vega?

  Sven gave me a strange look before shrugging it off. “Well, she’d seen me, so I couldn’t go back there. But the police were hunting me here too. Wanted in two realities,” he said in disbelief. “Bet that’s never happened before.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I muttered.

  “I used the vagueness rune to make my way down to Track 61. It’s where I’d go when I stayed here overnight. But I was hurting too much to draw a healing rune.” He winced at the memory and peeked at his sutured wound, which was already scarring. “I climbed into my bag, and that’s all I remember until I woke up here. I know I freaked when I first saw you, but I’m super glad you’re all right.”

  He made a whew gesture across his brow.

  I nodded, but I was thinking about how he’d found me in the shadow present. I doubted it was by accident. Like with the sigil under my door, he’d been compelled. Was the Hermes box trying to draw me into its web too?

  “You told me to avoid the Discovery Society,” I said. “Why?”
/>   “Remember how I described being transfixed on the mansion on Reade Street? Well, it was just the opposite with the Discovery Society. The first time I walked past, a voice urged me to keep going. Better yet, avoid it all together. And it felt like something was watching me through a window. I got out of there as fast as I could, my vagueness rune at full power, but for the next few blocks I was sure I was being followed.”

  “By whom?” I asked, anticipating a description of the perp.

  But Sven was shaking his head. “It was more a feeling than anything—heart pounding, senses at high alert. There were a couple people I suspected, but they either got into a cab or turned down another street.” He blew out a shaky breath. “All I can say is something bad’s happening inside that place.”

  I experienced a strange sense of déjà vu, not only with what Sunita had said about a dark presence, but what I’d experienced myself in the club’s basement.

  “And you’re talking about the one in your reality, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s it like over there?”

  “I didn’t know anything about it until a classmate of mine brought it up once. She said it used to be a meeting place for explorers and scientists, but they all got sacked, and the club went super-secret. No one’s really sure what goes on in there, but she said people started hearing chanting at night. She’s into wild conspiracy theories, so I brushed it off. But after my experience, I’m not so sure.”

  I considered the info. Our raid on the club here had turned up evidence of the potion, but I wondered what a raid on the shadow version would have revealed. If Sven’s friend was to be believed, Goldburn, Strock, and Mims were probably no longer members of the explorer-club-turned-cult, much less fellows. The NYPD would have deemed them random victims in a version of the city where random murders were commonplace, especially without a wizard consultant on the force.

  Which made Vega’s attempted arrest of me remarkable. We weren’t talking about an anonymous tip. The perp would have been influential for the police to have responded in force as they did.

  Fear the master of many places, the Doideag had said.

  I left that to marinate and reviewed everything else Sven had told me. As I did, I felt the information I’d assembled in the last couple days shift around like puzzle pieces, several of them clicking together.

  A change must have come over my face because Sven said, “What is it?”

  I nodded at his pack. “I think I know what’s inside the box.”

  33

  “You do?” Sven asked, pushing himself up in the bed.

  Though his color was hard to gauge, he looked stronger. A portion of both fluid bags had already dripped into him, and the glow of my healing magic was thinning, indicating it was past the heavy-lifting phase.

  “The symbols on the box, the ones you grafted onto your runes, go back to a cult devoted to Hermes,” I said.

  “Really?” It came out a stunned whisper, and understandably. I’d just told him that the runic magic he’d been practicing connected to a mythology he’d been fascinated with since childhood.

  “They were a thieves’ guild, in fact.”

  Sven nodded and recovered his voice. “Hermes was a patron of thieves.”

  “As well as of borders, which likely explains the ability to transit between your reality and mine.”

  “But the other manifestations don’t necessarily follow,” he said.

  “They do if you consider what’s inside the box. Have you ever heard of the Emerald Tablet?”

  “It was one of the early Hermetica translations.”

  “The most important Hermetica translation,” I stressed. “It became the foundation for alchemy in the West.”

  “As above, so below,” he recited. “Makes sense, then. Transforming pure energy into fire and force. But the texts appeared later, during the Hellenistic Period. Why would an ancient Greek cult build a chest to protect something that hadn’t even been written yet?” Though he was verging on argumentative again, the kid was sharp. Had he been an actual student, he would’ve made a great assistant.

  “You’re right to ask that. The known texts were based on earlier ones. There’s a tale left out of the main Greek myths that says Hermes stole pieces of universal knowledge from his aunts and uncles, the major gods of Olympus, and put them on a sacred tablet. It was named, appropriately enough, the Tablet of Hermes. And it was from this tablet that the later texts sprung, including the famous Emerald Tablet. They’re what gave humankind science, philosophy, medicine, alchemy. I’m starting to think the devotees in question were the Attican cult.”

  Sven’s eyes widened. “The tablet is in that box?”

  “At least a fragment of it,” I said. “If so, it holds Hermes’s essence.”

  “I’ve been carrying the original Hermes around this whole time?” he practically shouted.

  “Yes and no. It’s too deep to get into right now, but the short version is this. Mythology uses one name for gods like Hermes, but there are actually several variants, depending on the cult who worshipped him. The collective belief in a god creates the template; cultic rites and worship carried out over time shape the god into specific beings. So, yes, you’ve been carrying a version of Hermes in your pack.”

  As Sven stared at the pack, the monitor on the bedside table showed the uptick in his heart rate.

  “What does he want with me?” he asked.

  I had a couple theories, but I didn’t want to scare him. Sven might’ve been gifted, but he was still a kid.

  “I’m going to call some associates,” I said. “I want them to take a look at the nature of the bonding.”

  Claudius arrived first, stumbling from a portal before he turned sharply.

  “Back!” he snapped, kicking a chirping ball of fur that had rolled out after him. “Back inside!”

  He signed the portal closed before more of the critters could spill out. After shaking hairs from the hem of his robe, he angled his blue-tinted shades around the room. I expected some explanation for the fur balls, but when he spotted me, he only muttered something about pet dander and sneezed.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said.

  “It’s always a pleasure.” He wiped his nose. “And your young charge?”

  “Over there.” I gestured to the bed. Sven was sitting up now, eating a hamburger I’d ordered from room service.

  Claudius tucked his curtains of black hair behind his ears in order to see better. “Ah, yes, yes.”

  I made their introductions, then watched carefully to see whether Claudius remembered what I’d told him over the phone. But he got right to work, inspecting the salt-packed box I’d pulled from Sven’s pack and placed beside him on the bed. In his heyday, Claudius had been an expert in complex bindings.

  Light flashed, and now Gretchen was standing in front of me.

  “Where is he?” she said without preamble.

  “There.” I gestured to the bed again. “Can you check his soul while Claudius finishes inspecting the bindings?”

  She looked around and lowered her voice. “I meant Bree-yark.”

  “I said he might be here later.”

  Which wasn’t true. When I’d left the park with Hoffman earlier, Bree-yark had taken Tabitha back to my apartment, where he planned to spend the rest of the day. I hadn’t felt right dangling him out there as Gretchen bait, but she’d acted indifferent when I called and asked for her help. Now, not only was she here, but she’d changed outfits since the park, opting for a pink cloche hat this time.

  “His soul’s fine,” she said.

  “Are you sure? You barely glanced at him.”

  “Well,” Claudius said, straightening from his stoop, “this is certainly one for the books.” He shuffled over. “Oh, hello, Gretchen! What a delight!” He gave her hand a long kiss, causing Gretchen to straighten proudly.

  “At least he knows how to greet a woman,” she said to me.

  I looked betwee
n them, the two most powerful members the Order could spare. “What did you find, Claudius?” I asked impatiently.

  He released her hand at last and rubbed his chin. “The box has him bound fairly tightly. I could attempt to undo it, but here’s the dilemma. If I fail, it could do irreparable harm. And if I succeed, he won’t be able to access the magic to return.”

  “He’d be stuck here?”

  “I’m afraid so. The thing with the two realms is this: If you exist in one but not the other, you travel back and forth as you are. Provided you have the ability.” He gestured to Sven and me as examples. “However, if you exist in both, you shift from one form to the other. Do you follow me?”

  “I hadn’t realize that,” I said. “But what does it have to do with the binding?”

  Claudius started to answer, then stopped and screwed up his face. “Hmm, it seems I lost my train of thought, but the fact of the matter remains. If I did manage to free him, he wouldn’t be able to return home.”

  I looked over at Sven, who was still eating. He may have preferred this version of the city, but he’d spoken of a mother in the shadow one.

  “Let’s hold off then.” I turned to Gretchen. “And you’re sure his soul’s all right?”

  “Yes, Gretchen, what do you think?” Claudius asked solicitously.

  Without Bree-yark here to impress, I could tell she’d been readying a flippant answer, but flattered by Claudius’s attention, she gave Sven a second look. “Sure. If the box doesn’t keep wrapping him like fishing line. Much more, and he’ll be soul-strangled, and soul deaths are agonizing.”

  I patted my hand toward the floor for her to keep it down, but that’s what I’d been afraid of. “Is it trying to hurt him?” I whispered.

  “I don’t think so,” Claudius interjected. “It just appears to be clinging to him desperately.”

  A knock sounded, and an officer escorted Mae Johnson inside. As usual, she’d brought Buster in his pet carrier.

  “What’s she doing here?” Gretchen snapped, not bothering to lower her voice.