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

pavement as the final shield manifested. The station was boxed in. I could feel the ghouls ramming against my magical defenses, trying to escape. I pushed more energy into the shields as I awaited the final word. It came only a moment later.

“All teams clear,” the tech called.

I shifted my focus from the shields to the dragon sand scattered over the station floor. Four hundred ghouls versus a two thousand-degree inferno? I was putting my money on the inferno.

“Fuoco!” I shouted.

In an explosive instant, the dragon sand ignited. The intersection shook. Up and down the street, red-orange flames jetted from vents. And now a roaring chorus took up, the dying cries of ghouls.

But I couldn’t relax just yet. I’d felt the shields bow out from the explosion. If even one of the defenses failed, the ghouls could escape the inferno and regenerate. I went sigil to sigil, reinforcing the enclosure with spoken Words.

North and southbound lines … check. Westbound line … check. West entrance to the station … check. East entrance to the sta—

Something rammed into my side, spinning me in a half circle. I lost my balance and fell to the street. I also lost the Word, having only uttered half of it. I looked around for my assailant and found one of the cameramen running toward the subway entrance. His half-exposed belly swung side to side as he moved in for a better shot. That’s what had felled me.

Swearing, I realigned my thoughts with the sigils over the station’s East entrance. Oh, crap. My fragment of a Word had not only failed to reinforce the shield; it had dissolved it.

“Cerrare!” I cried.

The shield crackled and spread back into being, but I felt it crunch through bone. Ghouls had already begun to escape. I opened my eyes to the station’s east entrance. The shadowy pit glowed with fire.

The cameraman had reached the sidewalk and was aiming his backup camera down the station’s steps. He couldn’t have known what he was looking at. He was still filming when the first blazing ghoul appeared. With a fiery slash, the ghoul opened the man’s stomach. The man dropped to his knees, his innards gushing out, then collapsed beside his smashed camera. Three more ghouls scrambled over him, igniting his hair and clothes.

Behind me, members of the news crews began to scream.

“Get back!” the mayor was hollering. “Everybody back!”

Driven to blind rage by fire and pain, the four ghouls oriented to the panicked sounds—and charged.

12

“Vigore!” I cried.

The force that shook from my sword slammed into the lead ghoul. He roared as he was blown backwards, red fire pluming upon his collision against the metal entranceway that framed the stairs to the station.

A moment later, he was back on his feet.

With a shouted “Protezione!” I threw up a shield across the street. Because of the energy I’d just expended, the manifestation was weak. The charging ghouls crashed through it.

What now? I thought as I backpedaled.

The ghouls were close enough for me to smell their burning flesh. Flesh that, beneath the thinning flames, was beginning to regenerate. I cast my staff aside and gripped my sword in both hands. Attempting to decapitate four rampaging ghouls was tantamount to suicide, but there were innocents behind me.

Automatic gunfire chattered from either side. The ghouls flinched from the impact of bullets. Armored vehicles were rolling in, backup members of the Hundred firing from the vehicles’ sides.

“Their heads!” I shouted in reminder. “Aim for their heads!”

If the hollow-point bullets could penetrate the creatures’ dense skulls, they might inflict enough brain damage to drop them. At that thought, two of the ghouls’ heads exploded in rapid succession. The flaming creatures collapsed to the street. A third ghoul joined them.

The ghoul I’d knocked into the station’s entranceway did not, however. With a bellow, he lowered his head, impervious to the bullets blowing bits of flaming flesh from his hide.

My backward jog turned into a backward run, until I rammed into the mayor. His broad back remained to the ghouls as he pushed his arms toward the news crews, yelling for them to disperse. He ignored his security detail, one of whom had wheeled the Escalade around while another was trying to pull him toward the vehicle’s open passenger door. I could see on Budge’s corpse-white face that he believed he was watching his campaign swirl down the drain in front of the very opinion shapers he’d invited to the event.

I regained my footing as a foul heat seared the side of my face. Shoving Budge forward, I spun with my sword. The blade flashed, catching the ghoul’s incoming arm at the wrist. A flaming hand dropped to the street, not far from where Budge and the security man had tumbled down.

The ghoul jerked back his spouting arm and let out a window-shaking howl. The gunfire had stopped, I noticed, the ghoul too close to the mayor for the Hundred to risk another fusillade.

“Christ Almighty!” Budge exclaimed, seeing the creature up close for the first time.

The ghoul, who had been thrashing in a circle, oriented to the sound and lunged. I reacted, swinging my sword like a golfer teeing off. I saw immediately that I’d gone too wide. The blade cleaved into shoulder but then rang off a knot of bone, implanting itself in the ghoul’s thick neck.

Yes!

The ghoul stumbled to his knees. I twisted and sawed, trying to complete the decapitation, but the blade became wedged between a pair of vertebrae. I grunted with effort as flames and noxious fumes burned around me.

Without warning, pain exploded through my left calf. I looked down to see the flaming hand I’d severed seizing my lower leg. The detached appendages of ghouls, as well as various undead, could do that, but it was one of those things you always imagined happening to someone else.

I kicked my leg, but the fingers bit fast, nails sinking through skin and muscle. I shouted and reversed course, trying to yank the blade free now. But the vertebrae