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

fell into a silent lockstep. I moved with them, as though carried by a cold, hypnotic force. As blood slaves, the men weren’t vampires, but vessels for Arnaud. A brood mentality, along with superhuman speed and strength, were just a few of the perks that came with the position. Perhaps a modest stipend.

We boarded an elevator that lifted off with smooth, stomach-dipping speed. The slaves, who probably had been finance majors at one time, fixed their gazes straight ahead. In the brushed steel doors, I studied their faces, their dead eyes. I’d heard that vestiges of humanity remained inside them, clawing the walls of their bodily confinement, screaming for release or death. All very much to the head vampire’s delight, I imagined.

I looked away, not wanting my compassion toward them to soften my guard. At Arnaud’s word, the same poor souls would be clambering over one another to rip out my throat. I was a little surprised they hadn’t tried yet.

At the top floor, we exited and proceeded down a hall of what appeared executive-level offices. Ahead loomed a stately set of doors, the wood oiled and dark. Outside the doors, ice-cold hands plied my cane away and stripped off my coat. They lifted away my necklace holding my charmed coin. Though I knew better than to resist, my heart pumped into full panic. All of the defenses I’d been counting on left with the departing men.

The blood slave who remained behind suppressed a smile. His face was youthful but his almond-shaped eyes were beginning to jaundice at the edges, betraying advanced age. His hair spoke to another era, the short black bangs combed straight down, like a monk’s. You can take the boy out of the Middle Ages, I thought, but you can’t take the Middle Ages out of the boy.

He bowed and opened one of the two doors.

Every instinct in me was demanding I leave, and yet…

The dim room beyond the doorway released a smell of leather and musk. At the other end of what appeared either a large office or small library, a huge brown-tinted window cut a tall man’s silhouette. For a vertiginous moment, the regal figure seemed to take his measure of me.

“Everson Croft,” a silken voice said. “Please, do come in.”

I was dimly aware of stepping over the threshold and onto soft carpet.

“You are either the most audacious human to request an audience,” the voice said, with a hint of tragic humor, “or, my poor boy, you have simply given up on life.” I only realized the figure had been standing with his back to me when he wheeled and a pair of predatory eyes flashed into view.

Behind me, the door slammed closed.

19

I watched Arnaud watching me. He wasn’t as tall as he had first appeared. Neither was he wearing the long-tailed black suit I thought I’d glimpsed when he turned. His suit was light colored and contemporary, the pale oxford underneath open to a criss-crossing of thin chains. Mane-length waves of white hair fell from a center part, brushing a silky red scarf that draped his shoulders.

The newspapers called him fashionable and rakish. I found vampiric far more fitting. The black eyes that stared into mine held no humanity—and hadn’t for hundreds of years.

“So, which one is it?” he asked.

My voice stuck in my dry throat. “I-I’m sorry?”

“Audacity or lost hope?”

Though Arnaud remained preternaturally still, I could sense a coiling in his muscles, as though he were poising to strike. I felt, too, that he wanted me to sense this. I stiffened in apprehension.

“Boldness or gloom? Because, you see, my boy, I have the cure for either.”

I searched my peripheral vision for anything I might put between us, but the bookshelf-lined room seemed to have stretched out, the corporate desk and plush leather chairs suddenly far away. I felt naked without my confiscated items.

Arnaud gave a knowing laugh. “Rest assured, Mr. Croft, your accoutrements are quite safe.”

Vampires weren’t psychic, per se, but they could detect the chemicals humans emitted as a byproduct of fear. They also enjoyed inciting them, the hormonal aerosol being almost as nutritive for a vampire as blood. I could all but feel Arnaud’s smooth tongue lapping up mine.

Gross.

“Security precaution, you understand,” he was saying. “With so much nastiness and loathing out there, one can never be too prudent. But between us, a bag of rice could hardly be considered harmful, now could it?” When he laughed again it was with a hint of derision. “Or helpful, for that matter. As though spilled grains would drive one to such distraction he would fail to finish what he’d set out to do.”

Okay, so I’d gone with an untested myth on that one. Holy water, however—

“But back to the question at hand.” Arnaud took his first precise steps toward me, pupils gleaming. “Was it daring or despair that brought you? Or perhaps something of both? I am a granter of wishes, you know.”

His velvet voice took on a low flutter of hunger as he crossed the office cleanly, effortlessly. In the next moment, he was too close. An oppressive atmosphere enveloped me. It was the enticing smell I’d picked up outside, but grown more penetrating and foul, as though it were covering up a stink of decomposition. I struggled to breathe, to think clearly.

“Oh, yes, wonderful wishes,” he purred.

He was at my back now, circling. The atmosphere was the vampire’s making, emanating from his pores like a toxic opiate. An intense drowsiness pulled at my mind with the promise of the warmest, most luxurious sleep.

“You are a little older than the boys I like to take in, but I would make an exception.” Something walked over my scalp like spider’s legs—his fingers, I realized. “Yes, I smell power in your blood, Mr. Croft. Pledge it to me, and I will grant you wealth, eternal life. You’ll never want again.”

I staggered to remain standing.

“One has only to … submit,” he whispered, the final word like a down pillow under my head. “There,