Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9)

by Brad Magnarella

  I sheathed my cane through my belt and pulled the sawed-off shotgun from its holster. I’d been carrying it under my coat for so long, it felt strange to have nothing banging my ribs. The hunting spell led me across the temple, toward a door I recognized as the storage room with stairs to the basement.

  I tested the door and found it barred solidly from the inside. From beyond and below, I caught a faint sound. A cry was tailing off into sobs that made both my arms break out in gooseflesh.

  Ludvig’s still alive.

  Though my pulse quickened, stealth remained the name of the game. Using a weak force invocation like an echo locator, I sent it under the door and into the space beyond. The lock was a bar dropped into a pair of brackets.

  Behind me, the door to the temple shook violently. Two shots sounded. My locking spell fractured, sending the energy rushing back into me. Heart banging, I snuffed out the ball of light just as the door flew open.

  A quasi military force stormed inside, covering the room with their rifles. Night vision oculars glinted as they spread apart, barrels panning back and forth. Sup Squad? I sidestepped toward the altar, fishing for another stealth potion. The time factor coupled with my casting had burned through enough of the first dose for its effects to begin thinning. If I didn’t conceal myself, it would only be a matter of time before—

  “Freeze!” one of them barked.

  The massive armored man rushed toward me, two members flanking him, while the remaining six continued searching the temple for accomplices. I summoned a form-fitting shield even though it would serve little better than cardboard against their high-powered rifles—or this guy’s bulky fists, for that matter.

  He stopped ten feet in front of me, rifle angled down at my forehead. “Drop your weapons!”

  I knelt carefully, placed my shotgun and cane on the ground, and knee-walked back from them, arms raised.

  “Hands on your head!” he shouted, looming over me.

  One of the flanking men lunged in and swept the gun and cane aside with a booted foot. The other began patting me down, but when he discovered how loaded my coat was, he pulled the entire thing off before searching my pants. When he finished, he zip-tied my hands behind my back.

  “We have him,” the big man radioed.

  Though the situation looked dire, I’d known this might happen. I released my hold over the many-many potion I’d drunk upstairs and felt it come alive in my system like a carbonated drink. And then fizz out.

  Are you freaking kidding me?

  The lights in the temple snapped on, and the shadow of my wife entered.

  37

  “Yeah, that’s him,” Vega said, holstering her sidearm. “Good work.”

  The large man backed away as she strode forward, his and his teammates’ rifles covering me from three angles. But I was watching Vega. She was still carrying that hard, beaten-down look that made my heart ache. She stopped in front of me, fists on her hips, the lines around her dark eyes narrowing.

  “Everson Croft,” she said coldly.

  Ricki Vega, I thought, my lovely wife.

  But I kept my mouth shut and focused on kickstarting the many-many potion.

  “You’re under arrest for the murders of Bear Goldburn, Robert Strock, and Walter Mims.” Though her lower lip wrinkled, I knew she was as disappointed with herself as she was disgusted by me. She’d had me the night before, and I’d gotten away, gone on to murder two more as far as she knew.

  “All clear!” the men called.

  They returned from back rooms, a pair taking positions in the temple while the rest joined the group around me. Their eyes were hidden by their helmet visors, but their jaws were matching blocks of contempt. The huge guy who’d first spotted me looked ready to stomp me with his size fifteen boots.

  But there was an odd glint in Vega’s eyes. It could have been that I was still semi-spectral from the stealth potion, but I believed it was something else. I didn’t know my backstory here—how my shadow had died, or if he’d even existed in the first place—but Vega would have investigated it, and she was trying to make sense of something.

  “Want us to tenderize him before throwing him in the wagon?” the large man asked.

  “No, I’ve got him,” Vega said, the hardness returning to her face. “Collect his things, but be careful. He was carrying explosives last night.”

  As she reached for my arm, I said, “You didn’t check the basement.”

  She stopped. “What did you say?”

  I jerked my head toward the door behind me. “Your men searched every room in here. Why not the basement?” I was trying to buy time, more for Ludvig than myself—he hadn’t sounded as if he had many screams left. If I could convince her to breach the door, Eldred would have to suspend the ritual.

  But Vega responded by pulling me roughly to my feet.

  “You were ordered not to, weren’t you?” I said. “Told it was off limits? You have to be wondering why. Could it be that Eldred murdered those three men, and he’s killing a fourth down there as we speak?”

  “Shut it,” she snapped.

  The semicircle of men parted as she tugged me toward the temple door.

  “The basement,” I repeated in a lowered voice. “Go look, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. He gave you my name because I was getting too close. He called you here last night and again tonight so I couldn’t stop him. Why else would I have come back? Look around at this place for crissake. He’s killing people for sacrificial organs.”

  Vega tightened her grip on my arm, but had it faltered?

  “Look, I know this isn’t what you signed up for.” The words came spontaneously, from a sudden need to connect with her. I was remembering Vega’s story about her father, a youth counselor who’d been killed trying to broker peace between warring gangs. When the entire 43rd Precinct showed up to his service, hats off, she knew at seventeen she wanted to be a cop. Gambling that some version of the story held true in this reality, I said, “I know it’s not what your father inspired—”

  The stock end of a rifle cracked into my side, and I staggered to the floor. When I squinted up, the huge guy was looming over me.

  “My wife told you to shut it,” he growled.

  The throbbing became an afterthought as I stared between him and Vega. His wife?

  “Jag—” she started to say, but the many-many potion chose that moment to activate. Like a pack of Mentos dropped into a bucket of Diet Coke, it frothed violently inside me. Vega and her husband jumped back as two likenesses of me ballooned from my sides and assumed independent form.

  “The fuck?” Jag muttered, moving his rifle barrel across the three of us.

  Two more likenesses popped from the existing ones, and then two more from them. In the span of seconds there were more than a dozen of us. But the duplicating was just getting started. In another moment, a mass of Everson Crofts blocked Vega and her husband from my view.

  About freaking time.

  As the temple filled with more of my likenesses, I gained my feet and squeezed my way through them and away from the Sup Squad. Shown to me by Gretchen just last month, the many-many potion was part manifestation, part enchantment. The likenesses weren’t designed to attack, just confuse and take up space. Great for arrests-in-progress. And they were duplicating extra fast now.

  A shot sounded, but most Squad members were engaging them with punches and rifle blows. I tapped into three of the manifestations, and they met me at the door to the storage room. One was carrying my coat, the other my cane and shotgun. A third circled behind me and snapped the zip tie binding my wrists.

  “Thanks, boys.”

  I claimed my coat, donning it and pulling out a tube of sleeping potion.

  Being manhandled was fun and all, but because I can’t have you guys following me…

  I activated the potion and aimed it into the temple. As vapors began issuing from the tube, I summoned a force and swung the pink torrent that erupted back and forth, coverin
g everyone and everything. Beyond the manifestations, I could hear members of the Sup Squad thudding to the floor.

  I caught myself hoping Vega’s landing wasn’t too hard.

  I dropped the empty tube and held my breath as the sleeping vapors eddied around me. Reclaiming my cane and shotgun, I turned back to the door. Through a combination of invocations, I directed a force beneath the door, bounced it off a wall of hardened air, and slammed it into the bottom of the lever bar. As the bar hopped from its brackets, I yanked the door open and sealed it behind me.

  Let’s go, I thought, heart pumping in my tightening chest, shield crackling around me.

  I descended the stairs and emerged into what should have been the basement. I slowed, my shield’s light glowing over massive stalactites and stalagmites, pale mist swirling through the damp air. I was in a cavern.

  More precisely, I was in a version of Cronus’s underworld prison, Tartarus, which was bleeding into the shadow present and probably had been for some time. Following the ritual, it would be fully present, along with the god himself. Tartarus would return, but Cronus would remain.

  Where was the ritual happening?

  I drove my light out, only for the glare from the mist to reduce my visibility. Spectral faces appeared, confirming something I’d suspected about the space, and then melded back into the drifting fog.

  I withdrew my light and with a steadying breath blocked out everything except the hunting spell. Within several steps, a figure appeared in a hollow. He was trussed up in a standing position, wrists bound behind him, his lean body angled forward. Hanks of light-colored hair hung over his face.

  “Ludvig,” I whispered.

  I lifted his lolling head. The collar of his shirt was blood-soaked. A deep wound across his neck opened like an evil grin. Dammit. I looked down. No blood on the ground, suggesting it had been collected in a receptacle and spirited off to join the other victims’ 7Rb-rich organs for the ritualistic offering.

  His hair shook, startling me.

  “Ludvig?”

  A low gargle became words: “Help me…”

  “Hold still, man. I’m right here.”

  The opal in my cane glowed as I uttered words of healing. I had to at least start the process, stabilize him. It would cost precious time, but I couldn’t leave him here to die. I lifted his head and passed my cane over his wound. When he grimaced, I remembered the debilitating potion Bear had been given, how, in his memory, I’d been unable to move a muscle. So either the potion was waning or something else was happening.

  “You’re going to be all right,” I assured him, raising his eyelid with a thumb before lowering his head back down.

  “Don’t leave me…”

  “I’m not going anywhere, man.”

  Backing up several steps, I slid my cane through my belt. Ludvig’s head came up. He stared from my shotgun to me, revealing the shining crescents around his irises. I squeezed the trigger. The shifter screamed as the blast of enhanced rock salt tore through him and erupted out his back in shadowy flames.

  Costing me precious time had been the whole point.

  “You almost had me,” I grunted, pumping the action. “Almost.”

  The next blast sent the shifter to the ground, where he began contorting into grotesque shapes. The flames licked over features that were human one moment and bestial the next. Screams became barks which turned into serpentine hisses.

  The attack was having an effect on the environment too. Around us, the cavern was faltering, exposing a basement like the one I’d explored in the actual present.

  The far side was taken up by a stainless steel work area with a large refrigerator and instrument cabinets. Eldred stood at a mortician’s table in a black apron and gloves. His subject was shadow Ludvig, the real one this time.

  Ludvig was shirtless and on his back, a metal tube running from his neck to a vat on a large burner. I didn’t have to look inside the vat to know it held Bear’s kidneys, Strock’s liver, Walter’s lungs, and was filling with Ludvig’s blood. Above the chugging of a small pump, I could hear the blood trickling in. An archaic casting circle surrounded the steaming receptacle.

  Not exactly what I’d been picturing, but a ritual offering was a ritual offering.

  I sent a final shell into the burning shifter, the salt scattering him into smoke, but there was no time to celebrate. Eldred’s back remained to me as I moved toward him. He was whistling a tune, just as he’d been when he extracted Bear’s kidneys in Wilson’s Body Shop. Headphones covered his ears, which brought to mind the albums I’d seen in his apartment. But I didn’t like this show of vulnerability.

  Either the guy’s delusionally overconfident, or he’s got an ace up his sleeve.

  I reholstered the shotgun and drew my cane into sword and staff.

  “Entrapolarle,” I whispered.

  The air around Eldred hardened, but only momentarily. A sharp force cleaved my magic, causing me to draw a hissing breath. That’s when I spotted the small scythe resting on a tray beside him. It was the artifact that had come to the Discovery Society in the shadow present, the one that had bonded shadow Eldred and ultimately compelled him to kill. Its blade gleamed in the harsh light of the work area, casting a protective field.

  “Eldred!” I shouted.

  He paused and straightened. Pulling his headphones down around his neck, he turned partway toward me.

  “Ah, Everson,” he said, returning to work on the tube in Ludvig’s jugular. “I thought you might show up.”

  The seal on the tube was loose—I could hear the sputter of leaking air—which was slowing the blood-draining. Ludvig looked catatonic and deathly pale, but he was still breathing. If I could get close enough, I could start a healing spell. The protective field from the scythe bent around them, though, glinting occasionally.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Completing my offering to Cronus.”

  “Why?” I growled. “So he can wipe you and everyone off the face of the Earth?”

  “The moment Prometheus created his version of humans, we were lost. Laws became necessary to control them, then more laws. And when the order broke down, all our exalted species could manage was complete and utter chaos. You’ve seen our version of the city. Yours is only a crisis away from the same. Much better to start over, return to the way things were. A single race of obedient humans.”

  “And you’re okay with being purged?”

  “It’s the only way,” he said, as if the answer were self-evident.

  Cronus may have been speaking through him, but I suspected that Eldred the control freak had been a ready vessel.

  “Truth be told, you alarmed me last night at the club,” he said. “I’d no idea how you knew to go there, but when I saw your name on the list, the mayor’s beloved wizard, I figured it could only be for one reason. I brought you here and thought that was that.” He was confirming he’d supplied my name to the police and then pulled me into the shadow realm where they were waiting. When they failed to apprehend me, he released the shifter.

  “I didn’t count on you having help,” he chuckled, referring to Sven pulling me back out. “But that’s all behind us now. It was never personal, Everson. Like you, I was assigned a task, one I’m also duty bound to fulfill.”

  “Duty bound? You murdered three people, and you’re killing a fourth.”

  “I’m honoring them.”

  “Really.”

  “Think about who these men are, Everson, what their blood represents. They come from lines of mapmakers, discoverers, and creators. They take unknowns and turn them into knowns. In so doing, they bring order to the world, something I value greatly. Indeed, I love these men. I love what they represent. Lacking their gifts, I was happy to serve them for as long as I did. But even these luminaries with their god-blessed blood couldn’t forestall the descent into disorder and chaos. Until now—as honored offerings to Cronus.”

  As Eldred stepped back, I noticed that the
sound of leaking air had stopped. The blood trickling from Ludvig into the vat became a steady pour. The casting circle glowed deep red and the gathering steam turned dark. The cavern features, disrupted by the shifter’s demise, hardened again.

  Eldred peeled off his gloves and lifted the small scythe reverently from the tray.

  “This kind of legacy,” he said, staring at the blade, “these men could never have achieved in life.”

  When a low rumble shook the basement, Eldred turned toward me. The growing mole I’d seen in his portrait had become a pendulous tumor mapped with purple veins and covering half his face. A smile grew beneath it.

  “He’s coming,” he said.

  38

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Eldred said.

  I didn’t know whether he meant the scythe’s blade, which he’d resumed staring at, or Cronus’s impending arrival. The basement cavern rumbled again, making his tumor jiggle.

  Not long ago, I would have thrown everything I had at the protective field around Eldred and the scythe, hoping something, anything, would bring it down. In fact, a part of me still wanted to do just that but, I would only exhaust myself. And trusting my magic meant believing it had provided me everything I needed.

  While Eldred had been talking, I’d been taking stock, gathering all the shadowy energy I could.

  I thought about what Sunita Sharma had told me regarding the building’s history. Troubled orphans locked away in the basement. The god seed in the 7Rb gene variant may have attracted the Scythe of Cronus to the club, but it was the energy down here that had enabled its ancient power to take hold. Cronus was a swallower of children after all—his own, the eventual gods of Olympus. And I didn’t doubt his most zealous cults had made sacrifices to him in kind.

  The spectral faces I’d seen, which continued to drift around the cavern, all belonged to children. Not spirits, but embodiments of the intense fear and loneliness their seclusion had imprinted on the space.