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

as I lowered the tweezers into the opening. I tried not to touch the walls of flesh, as though involved in a macabre version of Operation.

I had only gone in a few millimeters when I encountered something foreign beneath the pool of blood. Vega’s stomach tensed as I tried to grip the object with the tweezers.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Just grab it, dammit. Grab it and pull it out.”

I pressed the tweezers in more deeply, got a solid grip, and drew the flattened chunk of metal free.

“It’s out!” I said, like someone who had just landed a fish.

“We’re not done,” Vega panted. “Look for a package labeled Celox.”

I dropped the bullet and tweezers in the wadded-up gauze and looked through the contents of the medical kit. “Celox… Celox… Okay, found it.” I picked up the metallic pouch.

“It’s a coagulant,” Vega said. “Pour it over the wound.”

I opened the pouch too aggressively. The corn-meal-like granules spilled across her stomach, clumping where it met blood. Using a finger, I shoveled the Celox into the wound until it was full, then patted it down. I looked at Vega’s face. She was sweating heavily, a forearm to her brow.

“Hey, hey, are you all right?”

She waved weakly toward the medical supplies with her other hand. “Just dress it.”

I covered the wound with a small stack of gauze and then affixed the gauze with a compression dressing. I reinforced everything with medical tape. It didn’t look half bad, but the mess around her was another story. I appraised her soaked vest, the pile of dirty gauze. She had lost a lot of blood.

“Just need a little rest,” Vega said. “Then we’ll talk to a blood slave.”

She wasn’t going to be in any condition. “Why don’t you let me?”

“Forget it.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s not your son.”

I covered her with a clean sheet I had grabbed from my apartment and looked at her pallid face. A fresh wave of guilt at endangering her son, endangering her, crashed through me. She needed to be in a hospital. She needed blood.

I pulled my cane from my coat belt and looked at the opal. What was the bigger risk, attempting or not attempting to heal her through magic?

“Try it,” Vega mumbled, an eyelid cracking open. “I’m going back out there regardless.”

I had no doubt she would.

Setting my legs apart, I touched the end of the cane to the mound of dressing beneath the sheet. I leaned back against the power flooding toward my prism as I incanted, allowing only the smallest trickle through. The orb glowed softly, enveloping Vega in a thin, cottony haze of light. She murmured as her eyelids trembled closed.

I pulled energy back from the spell and broke it. The room dimmed again. I had given her as much magic as I was willing to risk. Hopefully it would be enough to jump-start the healing.

From one floor down, the room shook with the march of footsteps and doors opening and closing. The vampire hunters were home. I wanted to remain with Vega, to monitor her condition, but a quick trip downstairs could help fill in some holes in the Ferguson Towers murders. Such as why Bullet, Blade, and Dr. Z had been tracking the creature.

Vega had curled onto her side and seemed to have drifted off, her vulnerable body rising and falling in an even rhythm.

“I’m going to step out, but I’ll be right back,” I whispered. And then I did something I never would have attempted while Detective Vega was awake. I leaned down and kissed her cheek.

27

“Mr. Wednesday Night,” Bullet said upon answering the door, but without his usual enthusiasm.

“Mind if I come in?” I asked.

The giant of a man frowned his tattoo-patterned face and looked behind him, as though seeking approval from someone beyond my view. “Yeah, sure,” he said, opening the door wider.

Blade and the green-haired Dr. Z were sitting on a couch, holding half-eaten slices of pizza. They had changed out of their battle gear. Blade now sported a camouflage tank top and Dr. Z a hooded shirt. Bullet joined them on the end, setting his shotgun beside the couch. Blade jutted her chin toward a greasy pizza box standing open on the coffee table. “Help yourself,” she told me.

“Thanks, but I’m watching my complexion.”

“How about a beer, then?” Dr. Z offered.

“Yeah, guess I could use one of those.” I pulled a gold can from the six-pack on the table and settled into an old rattan chair facing the couch, the exhaustion of the day weighing on my bones. I cracked the tab and took a long drink. The beer went down warm and thick.

“Let me guess,” Blade said, watching me lower the can. “You’re a Jehovah’s Witness and you want us to take a look at some pamphlets.”

“I’m a consultant for the NYPD, and I want to know what you were doing down in the storm lines. Armed with silver weapons,” I added.

“I thought you were a professor,” Bullet said, biting into his pizza, the cheese stretching into strings as he drew it from his chomping jaws.

“I’m that, too.”

“All the shit going on in this city,” Dr. Z cut in, “and you’re worried about us?”

“Look, you guys aren’t in any trouble. In fact, I think we’re after the same thing.” The three of them fell silent, suddenly more interested in their dinner. “All right, why don’t you start by telling me what happened after the detectives and I left? We all thank you for bailing us out, by the way.”

“We followed a blood trail,” Blade said.

“Detective Vega hit the creature with a silver bullet,” I said, nodding for her to continue.

“Well, by the amount of blood, I’d say she hit it pretty good. But the trail led to a mainline where water was really gushing, probably from an opened hydrant. That’s where we lost the trail. And in that maze, forget it. We must have been down there for two hours before deciding to pack it in.”

“The creature killed again,” I said.

The three of them