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

stared at my dazed and blood-spattered reflection in the metal, dimly aware I’d lost my fishing hat.

The doors slid open, and my mirror image was replaced by a familiar figure. Immaculate, pale-faced, and featuring short, straight bangs, the blood slave flashed a wicked grin.

“Welcome to the Financial District, Mr. Croft,” Zarko said. “Mr. Thorne has been expecting you.”

25

Still stunned from the chase, I rode the elevator with Arnaud’s head blood slave in a buzzing silence. It was only when the doors opened on the top floor, and Arnaud’s musky scent whisked in on the icy, climate-controlled air, that I realized we were in the vampire’s building.

Zarko led me down the hallway toward Arnaud’s office. Well before we arrived at the forbidding double doors, however, the blood slave stopped and turned toward another office. Producing a key, he unlocked and pushed open the door to an executive-level suite.

“There’s a washroom in back, where you’ll find a change of clothes,” he said.

“What do I need to change for?”

I followed his gaze down my front. My sweat-sodden shirt was half unbuttoned, the sleeves and stomach stained with soot from the tunnels. Grease smeared the thighs of my pants.

“A high-level meeting,” Zarko answered.

“With Arnaud?”

He leaned forward just enough to give a single sniff. “You should avail yourself of the shower as well,” he said before stepping back, bowing, and closing the door behind him.

Vampires and their decorum.

But Zarko was right; I smelled like a bag of garbage left out in the sun.

Inside the bathroom, I found a dark suit hanging from the door beside a huge walk-in shower. I stripped off everything except my amulet and turned the controls to hot. Steaming water washed over me. I soaped and rinsed while I chanted Words of healing, blood and the filth of the tunnels sliding into the drain.

The shower was restorative, but I kept a keen vigil on the locked bathroom door. I had escaped the NYPD and wolves, yeah, but I wasn’t exactly safe. I was in the stronghold of a killer—and naked in more ways than one. I bore no ring, no silver, nothing to keep the vampires off me. If Arnaud decided he wanted me dead, I was dead. Simple as that.

That I was here at his invitation offered little comfort. He would protect me only as long as he could use me. I didn’t know what he had in mind, but I had a feeling I was about to find out.

I cut the water and grabbed the towel hanging on the shower’s back wall.

I also have a feeling I’m not going to like it.

“Mr. Croft,” Arnaud said with exaggerated pleasantness.

He stood from the head of a long, coffin-shaped conference table. He wasn’t alone. Eight other faces turned toward me. I recognized them from the news and covers of business magazines. They were the heads of New York’s giant financial institutions. Unlike Arnaud, they wore dour suits, ties cinched to their throats. Like Arnaud, they were all vampires.

I stiffened as their hungry eyes fixed on me.

Arnaud opened a hand toward the empty chair at the other end of the table, directly opposite him. “Please,” he said, “come in and join us.” He nodded at Zarko to close the door.

I willed myself forward, hoping my tailored vicuña suit radiated the control and confidence I presently lacked. The vampires’ predatory gazes followed me as I fumbled to pull the chair out and sit. I scooted forward with just as much clumsiness, then cleared my throat.

“Thank you,” I said in a hard voice, which came out false-sounding.

“Several of you remember the wizard Asmus Croft, with whom we joined forces in Europe some centuries ago,” Arnaud said, adjusting his earpiece as he sat again. “Everson Croft is his grandson. I’ve had the pleasure of his—how shall we say—collaboration in recent months. And here he is again.”

To my right, a graying vampire with a lean undertaker’s face made a noise of interest. He looked like a creature who lured children into alleyways with promises of candy, then stared, smiling, into their dimming eyes as he strangled the life from them. His cheeks began to dimple.

I quickly averted my gaze.

“Did I not anticipate this day, Mr. Croft?” Arnaud asked over his steepled fingers. Before I could answer, he directed himself to the others. “You see, when the poor boy and I last spoke, I told him that should we ever meet again, it would be because he had come to me.” His eyes cut back to mine. “Mr. Croft was dubious. Fortunately for him, we were monitoring the encrypted police frequencies to know he had arrived at our doorstep.”

The vampires sniggered in a way that said they knew the stupidity of mortals all too well.

“I also anticipated the developments taking place in the city, but we’ll get to that in a moment. First, I want to make one thing clear. As long as Mr. Croft is here, he is under my protection.”

He spoke the words as though staking a claim. I understood then that the suit I wore was more than a clean change of clothing. In vampire society, it was a mark of ownership.

I shifted, the silky fabric suddenly stifling.

Arnaud stared around the table. Each vampire nodded his understanding of the claim, some more reluctantly than others, it seemed—especially the undertaker vampire beside me. Harsh energies moved throughout the room. A reinforcement of hierarchy?

When at last the energy settled, Arnaud’s gaze returned to me. I read the glint in his stare: Do not test me, Mr. Croft, for I am the only thing keeping them from your wizard’s blood.

I nodded, hardly aware I was doing it.

“Now to the business at hand,” he said, breaking his eyes from mine. “The day has come, gentlemen. With one hand, City Hall is prying away the financial ties that have kept the city in our debt, and with the other, it seeks to drive the proverbial stake through our chests.”

“The blasted werewolves are behind it,” the youngest-looking vampire