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

she swung the blade toward me. I jumped away, but too slowly. A force blast numbed my right side and knocked me the length of the room. I landed on my back and skidded across the floor several more feet. When I came to a stop, I lifted my head. The woman was rushing Chicory from behind.

I stretched a hand toward her and shouted, “Vigore!”

But the energy that stormed through my prism died inside me, stolen by the magic-cleaving power of my own sword. The woman closed in on my mentor and drew back the blade.

“Chicory!” I cried.

But among the detonations of magic, he couldn’t hear me. I recoiled as she drove the blade forward, my mind supplying the crunch of flesh and bone as the blade disappeared into his back.

That didn’t just happen, I thought. That couldn’t have just happened.

Chicory sagged, his wand clattering from his grasp. The blinding magic around him blinked out, and the room fell dim. The woman withdrew the sword, and I watched in horror as my mentor collapsed to the ground.

Chicory? I called through our rapport.

But the connection was severed, the pressure behind my eyes and inside my ears releasing like a dying breath. The Death Mage looked down at Chicory, then over at me. I imagined the smile behind his mask. The same smile he’d worn while watching my mother burn.

I stood slowly. “Think that’s funny?”

The room wavered with odd colors, like the ones I’d seen in the dream of the forest. I took a drunken step forward. I would die too, but not before ripping the mask away and beating his grinning face to a pulp.

Marlow sent the Order her ashes in a trash bag, I remembered Chicory saying, referring to my mother.

“You think that’s fucking funny?” I asked more loudly, breaking into a shambling run.

Marlow’s frowning mask continued to watch me. The colors of the room grew more intense and discordant. They spiraled around, making my head pound. I was no longer aware of the other magic-users, couldn’t even see them. The room seemed to have been reduced to a crazy, spiraling tunnel, Marlow at its far end, but growing larger, getting closer.

“I’ll show you funny,” I promised.

The pounding swelled in my head. I staggered and willed myself upright again. I was going to reach him, dammit … was going to tear the mask away … was going to pound his…

And then Marlow was right in front of me, uttering something I couldn’t understand.

With a clawed hand, I stretched for his gold mask and collapsed into blackness.

8

I was in a dark forest, running for my life, but everywhere I turned, there were the black-robed creatures, their fish eyes staring, mouths opening and closing, scimitars slashing. Everything hurt. God, everything hurt, down to the marrow in my bones. But I had to keep running, had to find the place in the forest where Chicory would bring me back. Most of all, I had to escape the whispers.

Everson … erson … son.

Sweating and shaking, I doubled over and vomited up a green bile that seemed to come from a deep and evil pit inside me. I willed myself to stand and run, to push my way past the fungus-coated trees and festering pools where wretched things lived, past the jabbering, stabbing creatures, none of which seemed to end.

But every so often they would end, and I’d find myself in a clearing, and I would fall onto my back, succumbing to the pain and exhaustion. My mother would be speaking over me, wiping my face with a clean, cool cloth, while sun shone down through her hair, turning it a radiant white.

“Help me,” I would mumble. “Help me to the place where I can go back.”

She would only smile and continue to speak in what I realized was a chant as soft and melodic as a lullaby. But as the chant carried me into sleep, I would find myself back in the dark forest, running for my life, trying desperately to evade the evil creatures and the whispers.

Especially the whispers.

Everson…

I cracked open my swollen eyelids. I was on my back, tucked into a bed of white sheets. A light dew of sweat coated my body. When I swallowed, my stomach felt as tight as a stretched drum.

“Everson,” the person repeated.

My head swam when I rotated it. A woman was rising from a chair to my left, the sunlight through a window behind her infusing her hair with hazy white light. Morning light. I fought to think back.

The forest, the creatures…

No, that hadn’t been real. I’d been dreaming. Or more accurately, nightmaring.

I strained to remember how I’d gotten here. The evil ceremony, Lich’s book in flames, my confrontation with the Dark Mage. The horrible image of a blade—my blade—crunching through Chicory’s back. And then my effort to reach the mage, to rip the mask from his face, only to fail, to fall.

Had I died? Had the experience in the forest been some kind of purgatory? Was this my… I squinted at the woman. …mother?

“You’re awake,” she said in a strong, maternal voice.

I peered around the small room. Walls of handsome stonework shone white up to a high ceiling. Colorful rugs covered the floor. I’m not in the palace anymore, that’s for damn sure.

I looked back at the woman. “What is this place?” I croaked.

“It’s an infirmary,” she said.

“Infirmary?”

“We had to sedate you for several days while the poison was purged from your system.”

Though fresh air breezed through the room’s open windows, I picked up an odor of illness. I remembered the vomiting from the dream—or whatever that had been. Poison, she’d said. I struggled again to think back.

“What happened to the Death Mage? Those … those creatures. How did you get me out of there?”

“We’ll answer all of your questions, but first you need to eat.”

I watched her as she stepped from the sunlight and walked around the bed. Without the backdrop of light, her face aged, her cheekbones becoming more stark.