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

and threw my arms around her leg, pressing my cheek to the pleasant-smelling fabric of her slacks.

Her hand brushed my hair. “What’s wrong, Everson?”

I sniffled. “I was lost.”

She laughed softly. “Well, I found you, didn’t I? I’ll always find you.”

“How do we get out of here?”

“I can point the way, but I’m going to need you to be a brave boy and make the journey yourself. Can you do that?”

I clung to her more tightly. But a chill wind cut through me, and her slacks suddenly turned ragged and rancid. Her thigh, so soft a moment ago, became a bony ridge, hard against my cheek. The hand stroking my hair began to hook and pull. I leaned my face back and let out a hoarse scream. My mother was gone, replaced by an old woman with a long, crooked nose and wild shocks of gray hair.

“What’s wrong, Everson?” she cackled.

“No!” I wheeled to run, but the woman caught my wrist in a withered hand and yanked me back.

“Leaving so soon?” she said. “I wouldn’t think of it, a handsome young boy like you.”

“Stop!” I beat at her hand. “Let me go!”

When the necklace that hung between the woman’s baggy breasts shook with delighted laughter, I saw that it was made of small bones. Children’s bones.

“Let you go?” she asked. “Like this?”

I had been leaning back, and when she released my wrist I fell onto the rotten leaves. As I kicked myself away, the old woman lit up with more cackles, her mouth a graveyard of broken teeth.

“Stop,” I pled. “Leave me alone.”

“But don’t you want to play with the other children?” she asked, stalking after me. She pulled a dripping leather bag from a cord that cinched her waist and opened it toward me. From deep inside came a chorus of screams, the sound drawing ice-cold nails across my soul. “There are so many, Everson. And they’re always anxious for new playmates. Jump inside. Don’t be shy.”

This was a night hag, I realized. They visited their victims in nightmares, torturing their dream forms before stuffing them into a bag made out of stitched human skin. With enough visits, the sleeping victim would die.

And with that, I realized I was dreaming.

I fought to remember the chain of events that had delivered me here: creating a seam for the hag, calling her to my space with the lava rock, drinking sour milk to invoke the nightmare.

“Back off.”

Even though my voice sounded more adult, I was still scared witless. I struggled through the wet leaves, away from the nightmare creature bearing down on me with that awful sack. And then I felt the hard edges of something between my shoulder blades.

My necklace!

I dove a dream hand behind my neck. But before I could claim the powerful charm, the night hag took a giant leap. Her gnarly feet landed on my torso, pinning my arm beneath me. With a snarl, she crawled her hooked toes forward, the horny black nails gouging the skin of my chest.

“You’re going to join the other children,” she said, “and you’re going to enjoy yourself.”

I tried to worm my fingers farther down my back—I was only inches from the coin—but they wouldn’t budge. I tried to buck my body and shove the hag off me, but I couldn’t move. The hag’s weight on my chest had paralyzed me. Her eyes, once rolling with delight, sharpened to the malevolent blades of the criminally insane.

I listened for Tabitha, hoping she had heard me scream.

“Such a handsome-looking nose.” The night hag licked her sore-riddled lips with a black tongue. “I don’t suppose a little taste would hurt, hmm?”

She leaned lower, teeth drawing apart. A smell of bloating and decomposition broke against my face.

Might not be able to seize my charmed coin, I thought, but I can still cast through it.

I stopped struggling and focused on the coin’s symbol, squares offset to create a star-like pattern, lines to channel and focus energy. It pulsed like a warming ember beneath my back.

“So delicious.” Her tongue scraped along the bridge of my nose.

“Respingere,” I mumbled.

The force discharged through my dream body. It crashed against the hag’s chest like a fist, blue fire breaking briefly around the impact as she was thrown from me. She landed hard on her back. The paralysis broken, I sat up and pulled my necklace over my head, the heavy coin clenched in my palm.

The hag let out a withering scream. “You little bastard!”

She scrambled to her feet, jerked the dripping sack from her belt, and charged, fresh screams rising from the sack’s mouth. She opened the sack wider until it looked large enough to swallow me.

I held out the glowing coin and bellowed, “Intrappolare.”

A shaft of blue light slammed into the onrushing creature. She screamed as the force knocked her from her feet. I advanced, angling the amulet to direct the light over her, pinning her to the forest floor.

I had my night hag.

“Release me!” she screamed. “Release me, curse you!”

“I have a few questions first.”

Spitting, she writhed against the force and wrung her sack.

I channeled more energy through the coin. “I can do this all day, you know.”

She relented suddenly, her voice becoming a frail whimper. “You would torment an old woman?”

“You mean the one who just tried to eat my nose?”

Her face curled up again. “What do you want?” she spat.

“You’re not a faerie, but you roam the wilds of their realm. You’re aware of their comings and goings.”

“What of it!”

“I’m looking for a particular fae. He goes by the name Angelus.”

Her eyes showed a brief glint of recognition. “I know no one by that name.”

I shrugged and leaned against a tree. “How long we do this is up to you.”

“No, mortal.” Her lips wrinkled into a grin. “I have only to wait for you to awaken.”

“I’ll destroy you before that happens.”

She cackled. “You haven’t the power.”

“Oh?” I pushed more energy through the charmed coin. The shaft of light pinning the hag turned bright.

“Owww!” she howled, covering her