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

there, I’d work my way south and west toward the piers with Jersey-bound ferries. The last step—catching a boat—would be the most difficult, but I’d worry about that when I got there. Which was feeling far from certain.

It was my phobia, dammit. After only a hundred yards, my lungs were already heaving for air. My chest wasn’t allowing enough oxygen in or poisonous CO2 out.

Growls sounded from the service tunnel behind me.

And then there was the matter of the werewolves.

I’d read about the effects of bright lights on their brain synapses and had been counting on a longer time to recover. Now I listened in horror to the sounds of cinderblocks grating and toppling. So much for that theory. The wolves had just joined me in the line.

Ahead, a door to an emergency staircase appeared, but I was still inside the cordon. If any of the downed officers had recovered enough to radio out, the street would be covered. I shed my coat—the lion’s share of my disguise—and slung it in front of the door. With any luck, the wolves would stop and sniff it and then expend time deciding whether or not I’d ascended.

I ran on. With each gasping breath, a cramp gored my side; spots danced around my vision. From around a bend, the yellow lights of another station glowed into view. Crap. I was coming up on Thirty-fourth Street, a station the Broadway line shared with an intersecting line.

But as I started to slow, I spotted a parked vehicle ahead.

What in the…?

The vehicle pointing away from me looked like a cross between a large dune buggy and a truck. A flatbed hitched to its back was loaded with equipment. I took quick stock of the large tires balancing the vehicle on the tracks, two sets of smaller metal wheels in place to keep it from derailing. It was an MTA maintenance vehicle, no doubt parked outside the station for easy access. Someone had spray-painted BERTHA on the side of the truck in big balloon letters.

A set of keys dangled from Bertha’s ignition.

Oh, hell yes.

Heart slamming, I climbed through the crash bars and slid behind the steering wheel. Behind me I could hear clawed feet pounding the tracks. The smelly coat hadn’t fooled the wolves. I seized the key in the ignition, said a quick prayer, and gave a twist.

No response.

“Oh, Bertha, please don’t do this to me.”

I could hear the wolves’ harsh panting now, echoing down the tunnel.

I looked around the cab for something I might have missed. The automatic gearshift beside my right leg was slotted in Drive. I pushed it to Park and twisted the key again. Bertha’s engine chug-a-lugged for several agonizing seconds before turning over with a throaty roar.

“Yes!”

I yanked the gearshift into Drive and pressed the gas. The metal wheels whined against the rails, and Bertha rumbled forward. I waited for the speedometer to edge past twenty before allowing myself a glimpse into the truck’s side mirror. For a blessed instant, the tunnel curving away behind me was empty.

And then it wasn’t.

The two wolves, in full wolf form, were speeding toward me like they were on a greyhound track, eyes burning with the hunt. In comparison, I felt like I was moving through thick mud.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I pled, putting more weight on the gas pedal, which was already to the floor.

The needle trembled to thirty, the vehicle rumbling as if it were going uphill. It was the load. Bertha was pulling several hundred pounds of equipment. I turned around, craning my neck to see the hitch to the trailer. I might have tried to crack it with a focused force blast, but without my cane, I’d be more likely to derail both truck and trailer.

I straightened and looked into the side mirror again.

The wolves were closer, tongues lolling as their huge paws slammed the crossties.

Bertha continued its sluggish acceleration into the yellow lights of the Thirty-fourth Street station. The columned landing was empty. From one story up, where the Sixth Avenue line ran, I could hear the dull echoes of a PA system and the din of commuters.

Shouts rang out: “There he is!” “Stop right there, Croft!”

NYPD officers were pounding down a stairwell and leaping busted turnstiles. I ducked low as I passed them. Shots popped off, flashing from the hood of the truck. I was almost clear of the station when a hard explosion rocked me. Bertha wobbled and canted left. A metallic keening sounded. In the side mirror I caught sparks spitting from her lower body.

Damn, they blew a tire.

The speedometer, which had been creeping up to forty miles per hour thudded back to the low thirties. Behind me, the wolves began to gain. Up ahead, NYPD officers would no doubt be scrambling to head me off. There was no going up an emergency staircase now, no making my way to the piers jutting into the Hudson. The New Jersey plan was scrapped.

That leaves the vampires, I thought grimly.

Fleeing to them would make me look guiltier than sin, yeah, but when the alternative was death…

Problem was, I was three miles from the Wall Street station. Not only that, I didn’t know what I would find when I got there. Given the vampires’ vast security apparatus, I had to assume they’d barricaded the station to prevent infiltration from below. But I had a more immediate problem.

In the upcoming station, an assortment of abandoned maintenance vehicles were clogging the tracks. I was on a collision course.

I stood and aimed a hand at them. “Vigore!”

Hot energy erupted from my palm. The vehicles capsized in a wave, derailed, but now littering the track. Seizing Bertha’s steering wheel in both hands, I ducked low as her large front fender plowed into the pile-up. Metal banged and whined. I braced for derailment, but Bertha held on like a champ, her mass heaving us through to the other side of the mess. The blown wheel in back clunked as I depressed the accelerator and urged us