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

of me developed, I considered what I was doing. In the last couple of days, I had begun to see the eradication program as an opportunity to not only protect myself, but to get close to the Lady Bastet investigation. I needed info on who was behind the hit and why. I also wanted to recover my mother’s final hair. Obtaining either from Vega would be next to impossible, but Hoffman was another story. Mr. Moretti had already proven the man could be bought. I had considered waving some cash under Hoffman’s nose, but blackmail felt like a surer bet.

Plus it was cheaper.

“All right,” I said to the golem, who had been facing me patiently. “You’re going to tail Hoffman for the next few days. Any time he meets with someone other than fellow NYPD, I want you to snap a picture. Above all, be discreet. If he spots you, run.” I handed him several folded-over twenties and watched him insert them into his pants pocket. “That will cover cab fares. You’ll stop back here once a day to drop off the pictures and pick up fresh film. When you feel the amulet’s energy running low, I want you to return here for good. Understand?”

The instructions were basic, intended to ensure we were on the same page. If I had performed the spell correctly, enough of my own intelligence now echoed inside Ed’s head to steer him.

“Understand,” he repeated in a blocky voice.

I looked my creation over once more. He was too clunky to appear fully human, but that was hardly a deal breaker in New York. I placed a Mets baseball cap on his head, pulling the bill low to cast a shadow over his face. Then, wheeling him around, I swatted his clay butt.

“Go get ’em, tiger.”

10

I looked from my notes scattered over the lectern to the packed auditorium. The men and women sitting ramrod straight in dark blue uniforms had been selected from the NYPD’s elite tactical teams, the best of the best. True to Mayor Lowder’s word, they were all human. No werewolves. Even so, the Hundred was the most intimidating audience I had ever lectured to.

Sure ain’t Midtown College, I mused, thinking of my six students.

I tapped my notes into a pile and, assuming a professorial air, leaned toward the mounted microphone. The sound system whined feedback until I remembered my wizarding aura and backed away.

“Good afternoon,” I said.

The Hundred stared back with hard eyes and set jaws.

“Great. How about we dive right in?” I signaled to a technician. The lights dimmed, and everyone’s eyes shifted to the digital screen behind me. I didn’t need to turn to see the image of the gray monstrosity glaring back at them. I was pleased to catch a few winces.

“Ghouls,” I began. “They range in height from six to eight feet tall and can weigh in excess of five hundred pounds. But don’t let the size fool you. In addition to super strength, they’re twice as fast as all of you here. Note the razor-sharp claws and canines … A ghoul’s preferred diet is rotting flesh, but they’ll take whatever they can find, living or dead. When they hunt, it’s almost always in packs. For years they’ve gone after low-hanging fruit: drunks and junkies, mostly in the East Village and Lower East Side. But they’ve grown bolder in recent months, coming up earlier in the evening and venturing farther afield.”

I had the technician advance to an image of a bloody crime scene on a narrow street.

“Two weeks ago, scraps of an NYU student were found on Bond Street. Friends say she was walking home after a late-night party. The entire process from pursuit to capture to devouring probably took the ghoul pack less than a minute. Even armed with a snub-nosed pistol, the young woman had no chance.”

The audience eyed the image in rapt attention. I could feel their minds wrapping around the idea that they would be facing an opponent most of them had dismissed as fiction until only recently. Captain Cole, who had introduced me minutes earlier, leaned against a wall to my right.

I signaled for the tech to skip ahead several screens. There were more crime-scene images, but I’d made my point.

“All right, so here’s the defunct Broadway line and its east-west services,” I said, turning toward the map of subway routes in lower Manhattan. “Most of the ghouls are concentrated inside that red box, south of Fourteenth Street and west of Brooklyn. A couple of hundred, probably.”

“If these things even exist,” someone asked, “what do you need a SWAT team for? Why not just gas the lines?”

I focused on the back row until I could see the speaker, one of two plainclothes cops in attendance. “If it were only that easy, Detective,” I replied, suppressing a smile. Hoffman had come. “Ghouls can go for days without air, making them immune to the kinds of gases you have in mind. I should add that their regenerative abilities also make them immune to most weapons.”

“So what does that leave?” he asked. “Kryptonite?”

“Sunlight and fire,” I replied.

“Sunlight? In the tunnels?”

“Let the professor talk,” Captain Cole said sternly.

Hoffman scowled and settled back in his chair. I slid my gaze over to Detective Vega, who was sitting beside him. She looked back with a sour expression, clearly irritated by my inclusion in the eradication program.

“Thank you,” I said to Cole, lifting the long pointer I’d set against the lectern. “Sunlight won’t kill a ghoul, but it does weaken them. We can’t introduce actual sunlight into the tunnels, no. But full-spectrum, industrial-strength spotlights will do the job. Equipped with these spotlights, armed teams will drop into the lines here, here, and here.” I tapped the map at three of the line’s branches. “The teams will converge toward the Canal Street station, driving the ghouls out ahead of them. Lights will also be shone down through the vents to keep the ghouls from escaping up to street level. Once at