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

Around the pit’s inside was a staircase that spiraled down. Creatures like the ones I’d encountered in Romania, all tentacles and shaggy bodies, trundled up and down in a nightmare procession. But most disturbing to me was the hole itself, a growing portal to Dhuul.

I could hear the being’s wet, horrid whispers now, issuing from the depths. The sound pulled and dug at my mind from all sides, like something chewing on rotten meat.

Hands clamping my temples, I backed away, squishing through the toadstools that swelled and stretched toward a forest like the one I’d seen in my nightmares. Across the pit stood a forbidding stone fortress, from where I guessed Lich oversaw his excavation project.

“Are you ready for immortality?” he asked.

The mage was looming over me, an astral projection—like myself, I realized. Our bodies were still in the safe house. Lich’s long-fingered hand writhed toward my head like tentacles. He began to chant, his voice aligning with the whispers climbing from the pit until they were one.

I struggled to wrench myself away, but a force pierced my soul like the hooks in the mouths of the shadow creatures I’d faced in Lazlo’s cellar. Only these hurt worse. Much worse. I squirmed, teeth gnashing, half insane from the pain. The hooks began to jerk and pull. I tried to draw back, but they had my soul. I could feel them drawing it out of me.

“Are you ready to become a god?” he pressed.

“No…” The word squeezed from my throat, a strangled cry.

The tugging stopped. I squinted my eyes open to find that Lich was no longer chanting. His head was tilted to one side as though listening. In the next instant, the world seemed to rip open. Wind roared around me as a pair of silver bolts slammed into Lich’s head.

The hooks released my soul, and I crashed back into Chicory’s bedroom, back into my body. More wind cycloned around as I pushed myself into a sitting position. An entire side of the house had torn away, as if by a storm. Beside the toppled lab table, Lich was on his knees, clasping his smoking head.

“C’mon!” someone shouted.

James was standing in the yard, energy crackling from his wand, waving for me to follow him out. I found my cane and staggered to my feet. I was about to run toward my fellow wizard when I remembered what Connell had said: You’ll have no defenses against his magic out there.

Though my staff still refused to release the sword, I noticed that the shield Lich had erected over the doorway had fallen, probably when he went down.

“This way!” I shouted back at James.

A hand on the top of his cowboy hat, James climbed inside, shot a worried glance at Lich as he crossed the room, and followed me down the hallway. I threw open the doorway under the staircase. “Illuminare!” I shouted. Light swelled from the orb as James and I raced down the staircase and across the basement’s earthen floor. At the basement’s far end, the casting circle was still intact.

“Inside the circle,” I panted.

James followed me into the etched circle, and we turned toward the staircase. “So, double bluff?” he asked.

“Double bluff,” I confirmed.

From the stairs, a pair of glowing eyes approached. I aimed my trembling cane at it. “Is someone going to tell me what in Lucifer’s name is going on?” Tabitha asked, her orange coat emerging into my light.

“Quick,” I said, waving to her, “get inside!”

To Tabitha’s credit, she picked up her pace to a heavy trot and even jumped over the edge of the circle so as not to disrupt it. “Ooh, who’s this?” she asked, blinking up at James.

“James Wesson,” he said, affecting a slight drawl. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

“Believe me, the pleasure’s entirely mine,” Tabitha replied.

“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

“Your pager,” James said, gesturing to my pocket. Sure enough, there was a heavy lump there again. “When I asked to hold it back at the bar, I slipped a hair of dog ear between the device and case. Gave me something to eavesdrop through for the last few days, make sure you were shooting straight. When I heard Chicory denying all the things you’d done, I knew the fix was in. I tracked the hair here before the magic over the house had ramped up to full strength.” He looked around. “But now what are we doing?”

Arianna had said I was to return to the portal on my side and they would transport me back to the Refuge. I was about to tell James as much, when the house began to shake. Debris rained from the rafters overhead. At the far end of the basement, a green glow descended the stairs.

“Cerrare,” I shouted, snapping the circle closed.

But had I just protected us, I wondered, or trapped us?

Lich appeared at the center of the sickly orb of energy, the outstretched fingers of one hand writhing toward us. I felt the magic penetrate the circle, penetrate our minds. Tabitha’s hair puffed out, and she let out a low yowl. Even James looked uneasy as he edged back a step.

C’mon, already, I thought desperately toward Connell and Arianna.

“You’re only fleeing the inevitable,” Lich said. “If not here, then there…”

With the next blink of my eyes, we were in the forest in the Refuge. Connell, Arianna, and a small army of magic-users surrounded the clearing, wands aimed toward us. James adjusted his cowboy hat as he turned in a circle.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

“Stand clear!” Connell shouted.

I became aware of a ripping sound above me. Tabitha bolted from the clearing first. James and I followed, taking up positions behind the ring of magic-users. Above the spot where we had been standing, reality itself was tearing open onto a growing black portal.

Calling power to my prism, I readied my cane.

Lich was coming through.

21

Lich’s eyes burned yellow, his red robes flapping around him in the widening portal