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

nowhere close to Elder-level magic. And even though I’d nailed the stealth potion this time, it had its limits. Time, for one. It would probably hold up thirty minutes before petering out.

Meaning I had to hoof it.

At the bottom of the ravine, I rock-hopped a stream and came upon an old path winding alongside the waterway. That I’d found the path at all told me it was still in use. By what, I couldn’t tell. Whether it was a trick of shadow, one set of prints looked awfully trollish.

I followed the path, hoping druids used it, too.

Druids weren’t wizards, but they were wizard-like. They drew energy from nature essences, ancestral worship, and, in some cases, ancient gods. They were also big into consulting stars for omens. But that was all generalization. Like any class, druids came in different flavors—and if the group I was seeking had bludgeoned the rector, then I was dealing with one of the more homicidal variety. Nigra Terra of Roman times was supposed to have engaged in human sacrifice, even using human skin as parchment for its sacred texts. If we were talking about a descendant group, I hoped they’d at least updated to bond paper.

The path passed beneath a crumbling stone archway, fallen stones piled to one side, before seeming to end in a small clearing of boulders. The trees bordering the clearing looked impassable. I expended precious potion time searching the area but found no signs of anything. I was preparing to return down the path when it occurred to me to check for a veiling spell.

“Svelare,” I said, sweeping my glowing cane in a slow circle.

One by one, boulders loomed from the darkness and receded into shadow. I had almost completed the circle, when a boulder set back behind some others seemed to ripple.

Hmm?

I was moving toward it when a whisper rose on the wind.

“We see you, fiend.”

My heart beat into my throat as I killed the light. I looked around but could make out no one and nothing. Just the shadows of boulders. A chill energy swirled through the clearing. Druid magic? As I returned my gaze to the rippling boulder, it straightened into the silhouette of a hooded, scarlet-robed figure.

I separated my cane into sword and staff. “Who are you?” I demanded.

“We are death to your kind,” the figure whispered.

The death part was troubling enough, but we? I ventured a peek around.

Okay. I was surrounded by robed figures. I must have triggered a spell planted on the trail. Veiled, the druids had waited for me to walk into their midst. Like a dummy, I’d obliged—and lit my staff. With the druids’ attention now focused on me, I could feel the magic I’d pushed into my potion thinning. So much for sneaking in and out. But if dialogue proved more expedient for learning what I’d come to find out…

“Wait,” I said as the robed figures moved nearer. “I’ve come to warn you.”

The whisperer, who I took to be the head druid, let out a chilling laugh. “And he will appear unto mortal eyes as saintly, and earnest and righteous will seem his pleas, but do not be ye deceived, for he ariseth from the darkest pits and bringeth death and ruin. So the stars have foretold it.”

I realized he was quoting from early pagan scripture, an omen that spoke to the return of Sathanas, demon lord of Wrath, the last to be cast from the world by Michael. I’d discovered in my research that the early druid cults defined themselves in part by the stars they consulted. The stars used by one cult in particular pointed to the present age for Sathanas’s return. That cult was Nigra Terra: Black Earth.

“Whoa, there,” I said. “I’m not the death and ruin guy, I promise. I’m a wizard, a magic user like yourselves—”

“Who comes bearing the stink of demon.”

I paused to sniff my shoulder. Damn. Not only was my stealth spell starting to wear off, but the smell from my shrieker encounter three nights before lingered like cheap perfume.

“I can actually explain that,” I said.

“Can you explain, oh wizard, why you were seen fleeing a demonic summoning?”

I hesitated. These guys read the Scream?

“Since you ask, yes,” I said, “but that’s not why I’ve come. There’s talk among city officials of cracking down on magic users. I’m not sure to what lengths they’re planning to go—mass evictions, arrests, worse—but I’m trying to warn all of the groups I know before it happens. We need to unify.”

It was a whopper of a tale, but if it gibed with the Black Earth’s reasons for killing the rector—the voice behind the campaign to crack down—maybe they would reveal as much to someone who appeared sympathetic.

“Yes, we have heard.” My pulse ramped up in anticipation of a confession. I’d finally have something for Detective Vega. “But the city and church are not the threat,” the druid continued. “It is you, fiend.”

My shoulders sagged. Or not.

I tried to see the situation from the druids’ perspective. Per their star charts, the return of Sathanas was nigh. Now, in the midst of a spate of shrieker summonings, a man wanted by the police, and smelling like demon, suddenly turned up on their doorstep, claiming to offer help.

Sketchy as hell. I got it.

As though picking up my thoughts, the druid said, “Yes, unify us so you may betray those with the power to stop you. We are not so easily fooled.”

The bloody message on the rector’s robe notwithstanding, I decided this Black Earth wasn’t responsible for his murder. The cult was too obsessed with preventing Sathanas’s return, and compromising the power of the cathedral would only empower a demon lord. “Black Earth” had either been written as a red herring, or it meant something completely different.

Either way, I wasn’t going to fight these guys.

“Great,” I said. “Well, think I’ll head on home, then.”

The robed figures shifted into my path. The head druid spoke at my back, but he was no longer using English. I