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

dropped the empty tube and held my breath as the sleeping vapors eddied around me. Reclaiming my cane and shotgun, I turned back to the door. Through a combination of invocations, I directed a force beneath the door, bounced it off a wall of hardened air, and slammed it into the bottom of the lever bar. As the bar hopped from its brackets, I yanked the door open and sealed it behind me.

Let’s go, I thought, heart pumping in my tightening chest, shield crackling around me.

I descended the stairs and emerged into what should have been the basement. I slowed, my shield’s light glowing over massive stalactites and stalagmites, pale mist swirling through the damp air. I was in a cavern.

More precisely, I was in a version of Cronus’s underworld prison, Tartarus, which was bleeding into the shadow present and probably had been for some time. Following the ritual, it would be fully present, along with the god himself. Tartarus would return, but Cronus would remain.

Where was the ritual happening?

I drove my light out, only for the glare from the mist to reduce my visibility. Spectral faces appeared, confirming something I’d suspected about the space, and then melded back into the drifting fog.

I withdrew my light and with a steadying breath blocked out everything except the hunting spell. Within several steps, a figure appeared in a hollow. He was trussed up in a standing position, wrists bound behind him, his lean body angled forward. Hanks of light-colored hair hung over his face.

“Ludvig,” I whispered.

I lifted his lolling head. The collar of his shirt was blood-soaked. A deep wound across his neck opened like an evil grin. Dammit. I looked down. No blood on the ground, suggesting it had been collected in a receptacle and spirited off to join the other victims’ 7Rb-rich organs for the ritualistic offering.

His hair shook, startling me.

“Ludvig?”

A low gargle became words: “Help me…”

“Hold still, man. I’m right here.”

The opal in my cane glowed as I uttered words of healing. I had to at least start the process, stabilize him. It would cost precious time, but I couldn’t leave him here to die. I lifted his head and passed my cane over his wound. When he grimaced, I remembered the debilitating potion Bear had been given, how, in his memory, I’d been unable to move a muscle. So either the potion was waning or something else was happening.

“You’re going to be all right,” I assured him, raising his eyelid with a thumb before lowering his head back down.

“Don’t leave me…”

“I’m not going anywhere, man.”

Backing up several steps, I slid my cane through my belt. Ludvig’s head came up. He stared from my shotgun to me, revealing the shining crescents around his irises. I squeezed the trigger. The shifter screamed as the blast of enhanced rock salt tore through him and erupted out his back in shadowy flames.

Costing me precious time had been the whole point.

“You almost had me,” I grunted, pumping the action. “Almost.”

The next blast sent the shifter to the ground, where he began contorting into grotesque shapes. The flames licked over features that were human one moment and bestial the next. Screams became barks which turned into serpentine hisses.

The attack was having an effect on the environment too. Around us, the cavern was faltering, exposing a basement like the one I’d explored in the actual present.

The far side was taken up by a stainless steel work area with a large refrigerator and instrument cabinets. Eldred stood at a mortician’s table in a black apron and gloves. His subject was shadow Ludvig, the real one this time.

Ludvig was shirtless and on his back, a metal tube running from his neck to a vat on a large burner. I didn’t have to look inside the vat to know it held Bear’s kidneys, Strock’s liver, Walter’s lungs, and was filling with Ludvig’s blood. Above the chugging of a small pump, I could hear the blood trickling in. An archaic casting circle surrounded the steaming receptacle.

Not exactly what I’d been picturing, but a ritual offering was a ritual offering.

I sent a final shell into the burning shifter, the salt scattering him into smoke, but there was no time to celebrate. Eldred’s back remained to me as I moved toward him. He was whistling a tune, just as he’d been when he extracted Bear’s kidneys in Wilson’s Body Shop. Headphones covered his ears, which brought to mind the albums I’d seen in his apartment. But I didn’t like this show of vulnerability.

Either the guy’s delusionally overconfident, or he’s got an ace up his sleeve.

I reholstered the shotgun and drew my cane into sword and staff.

“Entrapolarle,” I whispered.

The air around Eldred hardened, but only momentarily. A sharp force cleaved my magic, causing me to draw a hissing breath. That’s when I spotted the small scythe resting on a tray beside him. It was the artifact that had come to the Discovery Society in the shadow present, the one that had bonded shadow Eldred and ultimately compelled him to kill. Its blade gleamed in the harsh light of the work area, casting a protective field.

“Eldred!” I shouted.

He paused and straightened. Pulling his headphones down around his neck, he turned partway toward me.

“Ah, Everson,” he said, returning to work on the tube in Ludvig’s jugular. “I thought you might show up.”

The seal on the tube was loose—I could hear the sputter of leaking air—which was slowing the blood-draining. Ludvig looked catatonic and deathly pale, but he was still breathing. If I could get close enough, I could start a healing spell. The protective field from the scythe bent around them, though, glinting occasionally.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Completing my offering to Cronus.”

“Why?” I growled. “So he can wipe you and everyone off the face of the Earth?”

“The moment Prometheus created his version of humans, we were lost. Laws became necessary to control them, then more laws. And when the order broke down, all our exalted species could manage was complete and utter chaos.