The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Brad Magnarella (ink book reader txt) 📖

wad as I worked out what had likely happened. “Someone in their party must have murdered the other three and then made off with the loot. Probably the manuscripts, given that it occurred down here.” I eyed the rifle slung across Flor’s back, wondering if that had been her intention. She seemed to know a lot about looting.

“No. There is bedding for four upstairs,” she said. “And there are still four bags.”

James stood and shone his light around. “Suggesting there must be a fourth body somewhere.”

“Or the fourth person fled,” I suggested.

“Fled what?” Flor snapped.

I was thinking of the scrawled message outside the front door—cursed—almost certain now the fourth looter had left it after fleeing whatever had killed his companions. But I didn’t say anything.

“Well, we’re here,” James pointed out with a smile. “What say we have a look about?”

The library was just large enough for us to spread apart while keeping an eye on one another, which we all seemed to be doing. Though whether for each other’s safety or from suspicion, I couldn’t tell. Probably both. Pillars and empty shelves loomed in and out of view. I toed through the dust on the floor, turning up small brass nails and, in a far corner, a leather cover.

The three of us met in the rear of the room where an archway stood over another stairwell. James was leaning toward a stone in the wall beside the opening, running a finger over a faint engraving.

“Vault of forbidden texts,” I translated from Latin.

“This is it,” Flor declared. She started down, James and I following closely.

“It’s funny, mate,” James whispered to me. “If the texts are forbidden, I would have expected a thick door, a hidden wall, something to keep people from nosing about. But there were no signs the stairwell had been broken into.”

I nodded. That was bothering me too. We arrived in a lower chamber, passing through what felt like a chilly curtain of energy. Our lights sliced around a cylindrical room the size of a gazebo. Deep shelves had been cut into the stone wall—all of them empty.

“Mierda,” Flor cursed.

“This is a disappointment,” James agreed.

Disappointment? My heart felt as though it had been pulled from my chest and set adrift. With no living family to speak of, the Book of Souls was to have been my line to Grandpa, to who he was. Not the bull about him working in insurance, but who he had really been. Why he spoke in unusual tongues. Why strange forces held his door closed. Why things in his room talked and changed. And why, on the night he had caught me in his study, he had spoken with such gravity about the responsibilities of “those of our blood.”

“Do you hear that?” Flor asked.

James and I followed her dark gaze to the ceiling. A moment later, I heard it too. Clunking footsteps, crossing the floor of the main library. Too heavy to be Bertrand’s.

I swallowed dryly. “Were either of you expecting company?”

10

Flor signaled for us to kill our lights. When we did, a coal-black darkness collapsed against us. In the absence of sight, my hearing sharpened. I could make out Flor’s and James’s shallow breaths, and one floor up, those heavy footfalls, coming nearer.

Two sets of them.

Fabric whispered—Flor sliding her rifle around to her front. “We are too vulnerable down here,” she whispered. “We need to go up, see who it is.”

I felt Flor edge past me, her foot scuffing lightly onto the bottom step. I swam an arm after her until my hand met the stairwell’s cold wall. I ascended slowly, aware of Flor’s progress ahead and James’s behind, glad as hell we had all come together.

But who were we dealing with? Fellow researchers? More looters?

Not realizing the stairs had ended, I stepped awkwardly and stumbled against Flor’s back. Holding her taut shoulders, I stared around the darkness as James bumped up beside me. I had expected to see flashlight beams or candles out ahead of us, but I couldn’t even hear the footsteps anymore.

“One o’clock,” Flor whispered.

I released her shoulders and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Fingers on your light switches.” Flor’s quiet voice hummed with tension. “Now!”

Our lights blew open the darkness at the same time. And there they were—the frigging gargoyles from upstairs. With the sound of grinding stone, their heads swiveled toward us.

“Mother f—”

Explosions from Flor’s rifle obliterated the rest of my mind-blown expletive. Sparks flew from the charging monstrosities and bullets caromed, one whining past my head. But I couldn’t move.

“Spread out!” Flor called.

With the gargoyles almost on top of us, something kick-started in my brain. I took off to the left, weaving around pillars, my headlamp jostling madly. Okay, this makes no sense. No flipping sense whatsoever. When I turned to check on the others, one of the gargoyles rose over me.

I threw myself from the path of its descending fist and landed in an awkward roll, clunking several times over my backpack. The gargoyle’s fist cracked into stone behind me, shaking the library’s foundation.

Perhaps for my academic background, I had a bad habit of trying to make sense of situations that required a pure fight-or-flight response. But as I scrabbled to my feet, my mind was connecting the curtain of energy in the vault to the cursed warning to the bludgeoned looters. Had our presence downstairs triggered some sort of alarm? One that animated the gargoyles? I had seen some strange stuff in Grandpa’s study, but this was taking it to a whole new level.

I stumbled backwards, my light swimming over the advancing gargoyle. Beyond the creature, Flor’s and James’s own lights lashed around. Rifle bursts collided with shouting, but I couldn’t tell how my travel companions were faring.

Something rammed my back hard enough to rattle my teeth. I pawed to both sides to find I had not only backed into a wall, but a corner. The gargoyle stalked toward me, spreading its arms to prevent my escape.

“Hey, can we talk about this?” I stammered.

The gargoyle