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

of small boats were flapping to the surface, their black bodies writhing over one another.

I scrambled to higher ground, water streaming from my hair and splattering onto the back of my hand.

But this water was bright red.

I raised the hand to my head and felt the slick skin of a leech. The creature, whose weight I had mistaken for water, extended down my back, its tail ending below my waist. Its mouth was attached to the crown of my head, sucking the life from me. I tried to peel the creature away, but it held fast. Panicked, I balled my hand into a fist and began hammering its head. It wouldn’t let go. I could feel its body warming and swelling against mine, bulging with blood. White spots danced around my vision.

Not thinking, Everson, I scolded myself.

I stopped punching and dug into my pocket until I encountered the bag of salt Olga had given me. Tearing it open, I grabbed a handful of the salt and threw it over my back. The creature slapped against me. I took a second handful and ground it against the leech’s head. The leech released me and flopped to the ground with a heavy thud. I staggered the rest of the way to the keep, stopping outside the portcullis. I felt faint and my legs were trembling. I’d lost a lot of blood.

I turned toward the battle that continued to flash and rage on the far side of the pit. They were counting on me, and I’d be damned if I was going to let a leech doom the mission.

I recited my centering mantra. My prism came back quickly, perhaps for the power of the collective, and fresh power crackled through me. With a whispered “Respingere,” I blew the excess water from me and then sized up the entrance. No wards from what I could detect. Lich must have limited his defenses to the barrier to his realm, counting on Dhuul’s shadow creatures to intercept anyone who made it through. Anyway, without the Banebrand weapon, what could anyone who entered actually do?

I tested the threshold with my cane. The opal end passed cleanly through.

I reactivated the hunting spell, waited for the cane to kick in my grasp, and entered Lich’s keep.

27

I hadn’t gone far when I began to encounter guards. The fish creatures appeared first, the same ones I’d been made to see in the Refuge when Whisperer magic had superimposed nightmares over my senses. Their large, incandescent eyes shifted wetly as they passed, their pupils flat lines.

I kept to the shadows, counting on the robe to hide me. When the creatures had gone, I moved on, the hunting spell tugging me deeper into the keep. One level up, I encountered a new variety of creature that oozed along on slug-like appendages. Blank eyes stared from gray heads without mouths.

I felt like I was walking backward along an evolutionary line. But that was Dhuul’s objective, after all. To devolve everything, return it to chaos. These creatures may well have been human once.

Where are you? came my father’s voice in my head.

Inside, I replied. The pull of the hunting spell is getting stronger.

Good, he said. Use the power of the collective as you need to.

I didn’t like the pain in his voice. How are you doing?

Don’t think about us, he said. Your focus is the glass pendant.

Before he could break away, I felt a member of the Front get buried beneath an assault of shadow tentacles. The Front was beginning to falter. I swallowed hard and broke into a run: down a corridor, up another flight of steps, the cane and the desperateness of the situation urging me on. Creatures stopped and turned, sensing my movement.

Screw ’em, I thought.

At what felt like the top level of the keep, I arrived in a room. I stopped and peered around. The space was crammed with bookcases heaped with old tomes and folios, papers spilling from them. Various writing implements, scrying devices, and spell items were scattered across tables. Chairs for writing and reading sat here and there. I picked my way further inside, half stunned.

I was in Lich’s library/lab, yes, but I was also in the de facto headquarters of the Order of Magi and Magical Beings. And it wasn’t the huge celestial hall I’d imagined, but a bachelor pad in need of housekeeping. My eyes fell to a half-finished letter to a magic-user regarding some request or other she’d made. Many of my own messages would have been sent to and from this same room. I felt like I was peering behind the curtain in Oz.

My cane tugged and pointed at the far side of the room. On a corner of one of the tables, a necklace with a lamp-shaped pendant hung from a small stand. A sickly orange light glowed through the pendant’s sides. The glass pendant, I thought in disbelief. I’ve found the glass pendant.

I glanced around. And still no sign of Lich.

I pulled the sack from my belt as I sped across the room. Setting the sack on the table, I reached for the glass pendant. Strong magic stirred inside it. Of course there’s strong magic, I thought, trying to talk down my wariness. It’s sustaining Lich’s life force.

I nodded to myself and lifted it from the stand.

The pendant began to scream.

I cupped a hand over it as though it were a mouth, but the screaming persisted. “Shut up,” I hissed, encasing the pendant in a shield, hoping that would mute the sound. But no luck. The alarm was magical.

I looked around wildly as footsteps slapped up the steps. The fish and slug creatures were emerging from the stairwell and entering the room, scimitars drawn. They advanced on the glass pendant, which was pulsing brightly enough to throw my shadow against the back wall.

“Vigore!” I cried, sweeping the cane toward the creatures. As the force toppled bookcases and shoved the creatures back, I reached into a pocket for the dragon sand. I