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

casting prism. A pair of hands seized the front of my coat, jerked me from the vehicle, and pinned me against the car’s side. I stared at an unfamiliar face.

Wait … I do know you.

Stiles’s sunglasses had no doubt come off when I’d blasted him. Now, small, nervous eyes stared into mine.

“You couldn’t leave the Towers to us,” he said, a bloody cement rash glistening over his right brow. “You had to come and interfere.”

When he reared back to punch me again, I jabbed a thumb into his right eye. He grunted and released my coat. I dove for the open car door, for my sword, but he grabbed the back of my coat and swung me out. I slammed into the side of the van, head ringing.

I turned, fists raised, and threw a lunging punch. Stiles leaned away, a switchblade popping from his own fist.

We circled. I blinked sweat and rainwater from my eyes, tried to focus, but my head was too foggy to cast. The van’s front doors opened and closed, and two of Stiles’s armed henchmen took positions to box us in.

Stiles stepped forward and drove the blade at my gut. I skipped backwards, got my feet tangled, and fell to the street.

The ganglord stood over me. “I don’t know what the hell you are,” he said, holding up the blade. “But something tells me you still bleed.”

A shot rang out. Stiles staggered to the side. One of his hands drifted to his throat. When it came away, he stared at his palm for a long moment. A gout of blood spurted from his neck. He dropped straight down, collapsing onto the seat of his coat, then fell against the side of the van.

I turned. Vega’s pistol was pointing from the front door of the sedan. Stiles’s henchman moved toward her, rifles aimed.

“Stand down!” Someone hustled up from a side street, a shotgun raised. It was Rancho. “I’m next in command, and I don’t want any dead cops. Put Stiles in the van. We need to get him back to the Towers.”

The henchmen hesitated before lowering their rifles. They pulled open the side door of the van and lifted Stiles’s limp body. While they loaded him into the van, Rancho grasped my arm and hauled me to my feet. He helped me into the sedan, squinting into the backseat.

“You gonna be all right, Ricki?” he asked.

She nodded and lay back, the hand holding her pistol pressing against her stomach.

“Don’t worry about the Towers,” he said. “With Stiles out of commission, I’ll get them back under control.” His gaze shifted to me, and he lowered his voice. “Don’t let her die, motherfucker.”

I nodded, and he closed the door.

“I’m taking you to a hospital,” I said as I turned down Canal Street.

“You do, and I’ll kill you,” Vega whispered.

“Duly noted, but I’ve never treated a bullet wound before. And even if I knew what I was doing, my powers are all out of whack. I wouldn’t be able to put any healing magic to it.”

“There’s a medical kit in the trunk,” Vega murmured. “I’ll tell you what to do.”

I started to shake my head, but then I had an image of pulling up to an emergency room only to have Vega brace herself inside the car like a cat. I sighed. “All right. I’m staying at a place not far from here. But if I can’t help you, I will take you to a hospital. No more arguments.”

“Fine,” she said. “Just shut up and drive.”

I kicked the apartment door closed behind me and set Vega on the bed in the back room. The medical kit I’d pinned beneath my arm fell to the floor. I stooped over Vega and freed the Velcro straps of her vest. She inhaled sharply through her teeth as I peeled the vest away. She was wearing an army-green wife beater underneath, its stomach plastered with blood.

I steeled myself before lifting the hem of her shirt to her sternum and tucking it beneath her sports bra. Her stomach was awash in blood. An angry hole stared up at me from beneath her right ribs. It opened and closed like a small mouth with each pained breath.

Vega lifted her head to see. “Oh, crap,” she muttered, and let her head fall back.

Okay, that’s not very reassuring. “Listen, you’re going to be all right,” I said. “But you have to tell me what to do.”

“Bullet broke through the vest,” Vega whispered. “But I don’t think it made it through the muscle. Go ahead and open the kit.”

I opened the medical kit and dumped the contents onto the floor.

“Put on the blue gloves and grab the peroxide and some gauze.”

I sifted through the contents until I found the gloves in a plastic bag. I tore open the bag with my teeth and pulled the gloves on. I then ripped open a package of stacked gauze and twisted the cap from a brown bottle of peroxide. “All right,” I said. “I’ve got everything.”

“Pour the peroxide over the site.” She wrapped her fingers around the edges of the metal frame. “Need to disinfect it.”

“Do you want a countdown?”

She shook her head, eyes squeezed closed.

I tipped the bottle over her stomach, soaking it with peroxide. Her muscles clenched into a small six-pack as the peroxide foamed white in the wound. I wiped around the hole with a handful of gauze, sponging up the pink runoff. After several seconds, Vega let out her held breath in a grunt.

“Good, Croft,” she whispered. “Now find the extra long tweezers.”

“Got ’em,” I said, tearing away the sterile wrapping.

“Have to get the bullet out.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” I looked back down at the medical supplies. “Isn’t there something I can give you for pain?”

She shook her head. “When morphine started disappearing from the kits … NYPD stopped including it.”

“Wonderful.” I swallowed and held the tweezers over the wound. “Just tell me if you need me to back off, all right?”

She nodded.

I winced