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

“So hungry,” he moaned.

The thing about hibernation was that the vampire emerged weak. If we had been mortals, no problem. He would have devoured our blood to the last drop and gone back to sleep. Unfortunately for him, he’d awakened to a pair of magic slingers.

“Tell you what,” I said. “You help us, and maybe we’ll help you.”

James shot me a consternated look, but I shook my head, letting him in on the bluff.

“What do you want?” the vampire moaned. The wounds I’d inflicted across his face were puckering grotesquely along the edges. His body was trying to heal them, but he lacked the regenerative power.

“Information,” I said. “You’ve been down here, what, a month? In that time, has anyone else been down here?”

“No, now feed me.”

His hand crawled toward my leg. I stepped on it. “Think harder,” I said, his fingers crunching beneath my shoe. It was cruel, but this creature had done far, far worse in his lifetime.

His scream was thin and piercing.

“One person,” he said when he’d caught his breath.

A charge went through me. “Who?”

“I didn’t see them, I was sleeping. Now let me feed, curse you.”

“But you sensed this person. What did you sense?”

I kept my ring trained on the vampire as his mouth opened and closed, fangs thirsting for blood. “Death and decay,” he panted. “Ruination. Now let me feed!”

James raised his eyebrows. “Lich?”

I’d never told Chicory about this place, but he could have picked it up from my thoughts. Either that or one of the magical items Arnaud had taken—and that I’d subsequently given to Chicory—had left a trail of some kind, one the mage was able to trace back here. Either way, Lich had beaten us to whatever had remained of the magical stash, maybe even found the weapon in question. That would certainly explain his confidence.

“Crap,” I spat.

“You promised you’d help me,” the vampire hissed. “You promised.”

“You’re right,” I said tersely. “Vigore.” The force from my blade lifted the vampire and dropped him back into the trunk. I tossed in some dragon sand after him, shut the lid with another force invocation, bound it with a locking spell, and shouted, “Fuoco!” The vampire unleashed a withering scream as flames burst through the seams in the trunk.

“That’s helping him?” James asked.

“Putting him out of his misery, anyway,” I muttered. “Not to mention his blood slaves.” I imagined the mortals whom the vampire had hollowed out either dying at last or regaining their humanity in the steel shipping container that held them in the city. With the way things were going, though, it felt like pulling them out of a frying pan and into the fire.

James turned from the burning trunk and peered around. “So, that’s it, I guess. No magical weapon.” He paused, head cocked as though trying to sense something. “But there is magic kicking around down here.”

And now I picked it up too, a shallow pulse. We followed the pulse to its source—three symbols on the back wall. The symbols had been drawn in dark red ink, and the faint magic was emanating from their lines. James parked his shades atop his head and leaned in.

“Looks like a sigil,” he said.

“It does, but I don’t think that’s what it is,” I said. “I mean, there’s magic, but it’s not coming from the symbols. It’s maintaining the symbols, making sure they can’t be washed away.”

“Yeah?”

And now I sensed something else. “My grandfather drew them,” I said. “It’s hard to explain, but there’s a familiarity to the magic, something I’ve felt with other items he enchanted.”

“What do the symbols mean?”

“It’s Akkadian cuneiform,” I said as I studied them more closely. “Phonograms.”

“And for us non-PhD types, Prof?”

“Sorry, they’re sounds.”

“What do they mean?”

“That’s the thing, they don’t mean anything. They’re just random syllables. Gug-lugal-i,” I whispered, careful not to push any power through them. “It would be like saying la-de-da in English.”

“I don’t remember anything like that from my training,” James said.

“And I don’t recognize it from my spell books.” Still, something about the symbols resonated. Not on a magical level this time, but from a more intellectual space, as though I should have known what they meant.

“We could always test them,” James said. Before I could stop him, he was repeating the sounds, releasing them as an invocation. I flinched back, hardening my light into a shield.

But after several seconds, nothing happened.

“It was worth a shot,” James said with a shrug.

“What? A shot at getting us both killed?”

“Dude, you need to relax.”

“Relax?” I could feel a vein throbbing in my right temple. “You don’t go around channeling random sounds. You had no idea what might have been stored inside those symbols.”

“Maybe something good,” he said.

“And maybe something that would have cooked us like McCrispy over there,” I said, jerking a thumb at the smoking trunk.

“Let me know when you’re done lecturing.” James wheeled toward the ladder.

“Hey!” I grabbed his shoulder. It was as much my anger at his cavalier attitude as the hopelessness of our mission. When he spun on me, I was surprised by the intensity in his blue eyes.

“Listen, man,” he said, leveling a finger at me. “We didn’t find the weapon, and you know it. Not here, not at the house. The outing’s been a bust. Which means it’s time to start rolling the dice, hoping to hell we get lucky. And if that involves testing out random sounds, then yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m not gonna sit around, waiting to be eaten by what’s-his-name.”

“Dhuul,” I said.

“Whatever. We done here?”

I stayed glaring at him, but he had a point. “Just give me a head’s up next time, all right?” I said with a sigh.

James dropped his shades over his eyes and climbed the ladder, his orb floating up above him. I turned back toward the small room to glance it over and read the symbols a final time. Why had Grandpa written them? Why would he have wanted them to endure? And where had I seen them