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

reached down and grasped my head like a basketball. The crushing pressure registered as bright lights behind my eyes. I didn’t know what kind of pounds per square inch we were talking, but it had to be testing my skull’s limits. Grasping the gargoyle’s wrist in both hands, I pulled myself up and kicked. Its stone stomach stopped my heel cold. The gargoyle responded with a knee that collapsed my own belly. Then it flung me away.

I wrapped my head with my arms, sure I was going to splat into a pillar. Instead, I hit the ground pack-first and flopped onto my stomach. I lay stunned. Unable to move or breathe. The rifle bursts had stopped, and I couldn’t hear Flor or James. Just the gargoyle, its stone steps cracking toward me.

You’re not exciting enough, my last girlfriend had said. All you ever do is read, she’d said.

I winced and raised my face, the weak headlamp finding the creature’s knees. Beyond, I glimpsed one of the battered and dried-out corpses on the steps. God, I didn’t want to end up like those guys. I lifted my light to the gargoyle’s horned snout and narrow chiseled eyes. I didn’t suppose it would do any good to explain I was a researcher and not a looter.

The gargoyle arrived in front of me and drew back a leg.

“Hey…” I rasped, holding an arm out. “Easy there…”

Its stone lips trembled from snarling teeth. I curled into a ball, anticipating the impact of the organ-crushing kick.

Only it didn’t arrive. After another second, I peeked between my forearms. The gargoyle was frozen in place, balanced on one leg. Then, very slowly, it began to tip to the side. Its eventual collision with the floor snapped an arm at the elbow and shattered both fangs.

I scrambled to my feet, expecting the gargoyle to rise again and resume its attack, but whatever force had possessed it moments before seemed to have broken apart like the statue.

“Well,” James said, appearing from behind a pillar, “maybe not as skilled a toss as your cowboys, but it seems I lassoed the bugger all the same.” I had no idea what he was talking about until he crouched and fingered something around the gargoyle’s neck.

I took a tentative step closer. “What is that?”

“A rock salt necklace,” he replied. “Before you arrived in town, a villager talked Flor and me into buying a pair. Claimed it would dispel evil magic. They didn’t seem to be doing much in our packs, so I got the idea to throw one around his partner over there. I’ll be damned if it didn’t work.”

I turned my head to where, across the room, Flor’s light illuminated the other gargoyle, also toppled.

James clapped my shoulder. “Seems I got to yours just in time.”

“No kidding,” I said. “Thanks.”

“The American is okay?” Flor asked, striding up to us.

“I’ll live.” When I coughed, pain stabbed through my ribs. I nodded at a spot on her upper arm slick with blood. “What about you?”

She shrugged it off. “A bullet graze.”

I turned to James. “And you?”

“Took a slight knock to the head. Nothing a little whiskey can’t cure.”

“Good, because we have work to do.” Maybe it was pain endorphins, but my various injuries seemed to be having a sedating, focusing effect. Manuscripts or not, we still had to survive the night. “Three things, specifically. Number one, we need to block the front door. I don’t know whether the wolves would try to venture in here, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t. Two, we need to get those pickaxes Flor saw upstairs and break the gargoyles apart. Whatever the rock salt is doing may not last, and I don’t think any of us want a rematch.” I glanced at Flor, who was watching me intently. “And three—”

A stuffy voice echoed from upstairs. “Where in the hell has everyone gone?”

“Three,” I repeated, “we need to keep an eye on Bertrand.”

11

James volunteered to pickaxe the gargoyles while Flor and I dealt with the front door. Bertrand, who remained convinced the texts were somewhere in the monastery, went limping off with a make-shift torch in search of them. I let him, figuring it would keep him out of the way for the time being. It was the nighttime, when the rest of us would be sleeping, that he concerned me the most.

I grunted to the top of the stones Flor and I had piled against the timber we’d stood over the entrance. Ribs protesting where the gargoyle had driven its knee, I hefted a chunk of fallen pillar into the final space.

I exhaled. “There.”

Flor blew a strand of hair from her eyes and assessed the pile, fists on her hips. “Now we use the rest of the timber to brace it.”

I nodded wearily and climbed back down. Together, we stood a scavenged beam on end, wedged it against a fallen pillar set back from the entrance, and then lowered the other end against the piled-up stones at an angle. Opposite me, Flor seemed to be handling the work with relative ease. I caught myself admiring the slender muscles along her arms.

“So…” I said as we lifted another beam, “now that there are no texts … want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

“You do not give up, do you?”

Her voice seemed to carry a flirtatious note of challenge. I peeked past the wooden beam to find the black eyes beneath her thick brows fixed on mine. A small smile teased her lips.

“On some questions, no,” I said.

“What difference does it make why I am here? Like you say, there are no texts.”

“Maybe I just want to trust you.”

Far away, a wolf’s howl went up. Flor looked from the sound to me, eyebrow cocked. “I saved you from them, didn’t I?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. She had a point.

With a cool dusky wind circling the courtyard, we set the final beam in place. Flor dusted off her hands and came forward until our legs were