Shadow Duel (Prof Croft Book 9) Brad Magnarella (the best novels to read .TXT) 📖

the air around me as I approached the roadblock. Officers jumped from their vehicles and took positions behind opened doors, weapons aimed. I was relieved to see Vega wasn’t among them. I refused to harm even a shadow version of her, even if my life depended on it.

Shots sounded, and a bullet snapped past my head. I couldn’t tell if the officers were shooting at me or the Cerberus.

I pulled another lightning grenade from a coat pocket, chucking this one forward. It bounced toward the roadblock. The bolts that arrived from the dark mass of clouds overhead reached the grenade at the same moment it rolled under the centermost cruiser. The vehicle’s roof collapsed in a hammer-smash of blue and red lights, and then the entire vehicle detonated in a geyser of fire. The officers fell away.

Debris rained over my shielded body as I ran past them.

I cut left, taking the short block to Seventieth Street, then right again. I was on the final stretch. I passed a package store, Morton’s, that also existed in the actual present. The elevated West Side Highway loomed ahead. But it was the longest stretch, and I wasn’t sure I could make it ahead of the NYPD, much less the Cerberus. For the moment, though, I had the road to myself.

“C’mon, man,” I gasped, urging myself onward.

As my shoes pounded asphalt, I tried to ignore the spike in my knee and the goring pain in both lungs. I focused on the Hudson, less a river this far down than a tidal estuary that held huge volumes of Atlantic saltwater.

When I caught its briny scent, I pushed myself harder.

You’re going to get there, I thought. You’re going to get there.

My plan involved basic casting. Maneuver the Cerberus into position and blast him into the river. Nothing complicated. The salt and moving water would do the rest. I’d worry about the shadow NYPD later.

Incredibly, I still had the street to myself. The Cerberus must have stopped to engage the officers, tying up the reinforcements. Hell, I’d take it. But at that thought, a vehicle turned the corner and roared up behind me.

No, dammit. I struggled to find another gear, but I was spent.

“It’s coming, Ethan!” someone shouted. “Hurry, get in!”

I turned as a battered green SUV pulled up beside me, its passenger window smashed. Behind the steering wheel, Gil was waving desperately for me to climb inside. I peered back. Still nothing, but what was he doing out here? He’d been safe in the building. Gil leaned over and opened the door for me.

“C’mon!” he shouted.

“Keep going,” I panted. “Get out of here.”

I tensed to shut the door, but hesitated. A glistening streak covered the passenger seat. More blood dotted the windshield. When I looked back at Gil, he continued to wave, but the eyes behind his glasses weren’t right. They were too dark, the engorged pupils rimmed with slivers of smoldering light.

I lurched back from the door, fumbling to pull my cane into sword and staff.

Gil had been coming for me, but he hadn’t made it. I pictured his mangled body being yanked from the vehicle while this thing climbed into his place, assuming his likeness. I was dealing with a shifter.

The creature’s lips forked into a grin. “What’s wrong … Everson?”

Glass shattered and metal keened as the Gil likeness morphed back into a massive three-headed dog. I backpedaled toward the Hudson as the Cerberus shook off the ruined husk of the vehicle and pounced.

23

“Respingere!” I shouted.

The force from my shielded body knocked the Cerberus off course. But a paw, more lion’s than canine’s, raked me, leaving trenches of pain down the slats of my ribs. I reeled, an elbow pinned to my side. The Cerberus stalked around me. As if anticipating my plan, he placed himself between me and the Hudson.

“Who the fuck are you?” I growled.

“We could ask you the same,” the middle head said. “You’re out of your league, Everson Croft. You’re standing between armies, and you don’t even know it. Leave it alone.”

The Doideag’s words returned to me. If ye should fail and war should come…

But I was also thinking about the scrying spell. A couple times, Bear had noted an odd shine in Victor Cole’s eyes, and I remembered his prodigious strength when he’d lifted Bear from the car.

That hadn’t been Victor Cole.

“You’re the one who drove Bear Goldburn to the body shop. Hacked out his kidneys.”

“I drove him to the body shop, yes.”

“So who did the hacking?”

“The one I serve.”

“And who’s that?”

The Cerberus barked a laugh. “What was it that killed the cat? Oh, yes. Curiosity.”

His eyes narrowed suddenly, and he lunged. I swung my sword, shouting the banishment Word. Light flashed from the inscribed rune as the blade cleaved the Cerberus’s leading neck. He roared in agony, but a trailing head seized my leg. Pain speared the muscles of my thigh as I was lifted and flung. My shield blunted the impact against a building, but I landed hard, brain rattling in my skull.

Heavy pads pounded toward me as I pushed myself up. Though the streetscape had gone blurry, I could see the Cerberus incoming. His right head, the one whose neck I’d banish-cleaved, was flopping like a wet noodle.

I’d debilitated him.

I dug out my remaining salt and sent it flying. The Cerberus reared, squinting from the flames that broke across his faces. I ducked around and swung my blade, activating the banishment rune a second time as it disappeared into the left neck. I followed with a staff thrust to the shifter’s chest. A force bolt from the opal end shoved him away before he could grab me.

When we faced off again, two of his heads were lolling. I wasn’t in much better shape. A cut high on my brow was sending blood dribbling into my right eye; my ribs and right knee were throbbing; and my left thigh, where the Cerberus had grabbed me, was swelling to tire-like proportions.

I was also exhausted. The fact that