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

“You sure you want the attention a couple of dead detectives are going to bring?” I asked.

“Oh, the attention won’t be on me, Mr. Croft. By the time the bodies are found, my associates will be long gone, and it will be your evidence investigators will discover around the victims.”

“Bullshit.”

“Five seconds, Mr. Croft.”

I took a quick peek at Vega, then Hoffman. I stopped and looked at Vega a second time. Behind her, several figures were easing up the tunnel. More blood slaves?

“Three,” Blondie said. “Two…”

One of the figures aimed what looked like a shotgun.

“All right, all right,” I said. “You want my choice?”

“One.”

I thrust my arms out, driving both palms into Blondie’s chest. Caught by surprise, he teetered back on his heels, arms flailing for balance. I crouched and turned as the shotgun went off, shots nailing my whipping trench coat, one grazing my hip in a bright flare. The blast blew Blondie halfway around, tearing skin from his face, as though by a sandblaster.

I dove for my sword, grasped the handle, and rose to face Vega’s blood slave. But he had released Vega and was sagging, a long, slender blade skewering his chest from behind. The sword’s owner gave the blade a hard twist and then drew it free. When the slave splashed to the tunnel floor, I did a double take at the female figure now beside Vega. Remembering Hoffman, I wheeled toward him. His blood slave was down too, gargling and pawing at a dagger in his throat.

A slender figure arrived above him, leather glistening in the detectives’ headlamps, and drove another dagger into the slave’s heart. He twisted the blade each way and pulled it out.

“Goodnight, sweet prince,” he said, drawing a forearm across his brow.

The shotgun went off a second time, and Blondie landed on his back beside me, his chest blown open.

I looked from the downed blood slaves to the new arrivals. As Vega went to help Hoffman up, I retrieved my staff, calling light to it. The three figures that glowed into view were instantly familiar: a towering tattoo-faced man holding a pump-action shotgun, a rail-thin woman with spiked pink hair, and a lithe man in leathers, his hair dyed neon green.

“…the hell?” I whispered.

Tattoo Face squinted at me before his face lit up like a bulb. “I don’t believe it! Mr. Wednesday Night!” He hustled over and wrapped a huge arm around me, pulling me into a crushing side hug.

“You know each other?” Vega asked.

“He came to one of our house parties back in October,” Tattoo Face said. “The guy’s a freaking animal.”

Blade’s pink lips smirked. “You should see him when he disrobes.”

My cheeks blazed as Vega looked from the punks to me in puzzlement. I hurried to explain. “They lived below someone involved in that case we worked together in the fall. I sort of … bumped into them.” I left out the part about Thelonious paying our world a visit, downing a bottle of cheap liquor, crashing their party, and then depositing me on a mattress, half-naked, with Blade.

Vega nodded slowly as though I’d explained absolutely nothing.

I looked from the shotgun Tattoo Face held, to the leather-wrapped sword handle showing above Blade’s left shoulder, to the pair of ninja swords Green Hair had sheathed across his back in an X. I was still trying to figure out how and why they had ended up in the storm line.

Vega showed her badge and introduced herself and Hoffman. “And your names are…?”

Acting as spokeswoman, Blade stepped forward. “This is Bullet,” she said, slapping the back of a hand against Tattoo Face’s chest. “I’m Blade. And our sometimes guitarist over there is Dr. Z.”

Green Hair bowed slightly.

Hoffman limped forward. “How ’bout giving us some real names,” he said, his throat still hoarse from being stepped on.

“How about we don’t,” Blade said. “And I never heard a ‘thanks’ from you.”

“You have permits for those weapons?” he demanded.

Vega shook her head for him to back down. “We appreciate you helping us out,” she said to Blade. “But we do have to know what you’re doing here. You’ve walked into the middle of a murder investigation.”

I caught Bullet and Dr. Z glancing over at one another.

Vega must have caught it too. “Something you guys want to tell me?”

“Have you found anything?” Blade asked.

“That’s not something we can discuss with the public,” Vega said.

“Why?” I asked Blade. “Are you looking for someone?”

It had taken me a few moments, but I had connected their presence to the weapons they carried to the skill they had just shown in destroying the blood slaves. They might have been punk rockers for kicks, but they were vampire hunters by trade. They were trying to track down the killer.

Blade’s dark eyes met mine. “That’s not a matter we can discuss with the public.”

Vega opened her mouth to say something when her phone rang. She drew it from a back pocket. “Vega,” she barked, pulling off her helmet. “What?” Her face went pale in the light of my staff. “All right, stay in the apartment. I’ll be right there.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Vega jammed her phone away and began running back toward the main line.

“Hey, what happened?” I asked, splashing to keep up. I heard Hoffman laboring into a limping run behind us.

“Some men grabbed Tony,” Vega said.

“Tony?” I struggled to place the name.

“My son.”

A boulder dropped into my stomach.

Oh, shit.

21

When we arrived at Vega’s apartment, the door was hanging from one hinge, and a middle-aged woman, who I guessed to be Tony’s babysitter, was pacing and sobbing hysterically.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” Vega said, her voice as tight as a suspension cable on the George Washington Bridge.

When the woman wheeled toward us, her face was a disaster of mascara and bloated eyelids. “Oh, Ricki,” she said. “Oh, Jesus. They come and—and they take him.”

“Who came, Camilla?” Vega demanded.

“I didn’t see,” she said. “I go to bathroom. Tony asleep over there.” I followed her trembling finger to