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

destroy an object this powerful. I activated the second rune on my blade. As flames licked up, I pushed, directing the fire into the vat.

The heat excited the green currents, and they swarmed the scythe.

Behind me, the weak invocation walling off the hydra failed. I looked over as one of the serpentine heads seized Vega’s shoulder through the spilling sparks and flung her. She landed against a cavern wall and rolled to the floor.

“Ricki!” I shouted.

The hydra had started toward me, but I’d shown my hand. Its two dozen eyes narrowed maliciously through the gloom before rotating its heads toward Vega, who was still down and helpless.

I upped the power through the fire rune. “C’mon, dammit.”

But the gathered energy wasn’t strong enough, and the magic in the scythe was fighting back, resisting the efforts to break it down. The hydra began stalking toward Vega.

Shit, I thought, breaking off the fiery expulsion.

I slotted my sword and pulled out the shotgun. As I ran toward the hydra, I pumped the action, expelling the last shell, and aimed high. Salt and flames tore through the hydra’s dozen heads. Shrieking, it reared back its necks. Arriving in front of Vega, I sent a shell into the monster, sending it back another step. I pumped and fired twice more before checking on Vega. She was out, but breathing.

I eyed the recovering hydra as I pushed fresh shells into the gun. The attack wasn’t having the same effect as earlier. The flames were too fleeting. This was a more powerful version of the shifter than the one I’d scattered.

“When you’re out of salt,” one of the heads hissed, “I’ll still be here.”

I glanced over at Eldred—only he wasn’t where I’d dropped him. He’d staggered to the vat and was pulling the dripping scythe free. I rotated the gun toward him and fired, but the field taking hold around him scattered the blast. The field looked weak enough to take down, but not from my distance.

“Go on,” the hydra dared, half its heads peering at Eldred, “and I’ll rip her apart.” The remaining heads looked down at Vega.

She was a shadow, a probability. Whatever happened to her here would have no bearing on my actual wife. Even so, she was a shadow of the woman I loved more than anything, and I couldn’t separate the two.

I raised my weapon at the hydra’s grinning faces.

At the same moment, something kicked in a coat pocket.

Huh?

When it kicked again, I pulled out a bag of gray salt. I tore the shaking bag open with my teeth, spilling its contents. Something gold flashed among the salt crystals: a hand holding the end of a tusk. The protective pin Sunita had given me. It jittered over the ground, seeming to react to the shifter’s presence.

“Attivare!” I shouted.

I was acting on magical instinct, not sure what to expect. Certainly not what followed. A shadow of the four-armed elephant god Ganesh sprang from the pin and squared his growing body toward the hydra. The shifter’s smiles shrank as it backed away. Ganesh charged. With an ear-splitting bugle, he drove a tusk through the hydra’s chest. Necks and arms became entangled and serpentine jaws snapped.

The two fell to the ground, the cavern now shaking with their battle.

I picked up the pin and quickly attached it to Vega’s jacket before wheeling back toward Eldred. He’d raised the scythe over the spilled offerings, trying to resume the ritual. With Vega protected now, I sprinted toward him. He looked up as my sword came down. It flashed off the field, sending it into a wobble. I jumped back from his clumsy swing, but I could feel the scythe’s returning power.

“Do you like jazz, Everson?” he asked in a crazed voice.

I grunted into my next swing. The impact shook his shield again, but once more I was having to move away to avoid a counterstrike.

“I do, and it’s strange,” he panted. “Jazz would seem the antithesis of order, yes?”

Once more, we traded swings, but his field was strengthening. My blow barely affected it this time.

“But that’s what I enjoy,” he went on. “The suspense, the fear of uncertainty and chaos, only to arrive at the same satisfying conclusion as your more structured genres. The same can be said of tonight. It may not have gone exactly as planned, and yet Cronus will be restored.”

I ducked as the scythe whistled overhead, his last line pinging around the two questions the Doideag had posed:

Can a children’s love restore lost time?

Can the fleet of foot avert the crime?

Fleet of foot, I thought.

I searched for the silvery magic I’d been peppered with in the landfill. This time I found it, and I knew why. It was responding to the Hermes Tablet, which was in Sven’s possession right outside. Focusing into the magic, I infused it with energy. Immediately, my limbs began to lighten and my heart rate picked up.

Eldred’s next swing seemed to arrive in slower motion. I stepped aside and came back in, this time landing two sword strikes. The next time I managed four, then six.

Eldred backpedaled, wide-eyed, as his protection faltered. His tumor was lurching all over the place, pulling his facial features in grotesque directions. For an instant, the air distorted sharply around me, as if Eldred were trying to send me back to the actual present, but the Hermes magic negated it.

“The thing with jazz,” I said, grunting into still more swings, “is that some of it’s just crap.”

My next blow shattered the protection, the released energy knocking me back several paces. Eldred wheeled toward the mortician’s table and raised the scythe high above Ludvig’s neck. “Accept this potent life offering!” he shrieked to his god.

Too distant to block him, I thrust my staff. “Vigore!”

The released force shoved the table back. The descending scythe caught the metal edge and deflected at an odd angle. Eldred dropped to the floor, the bloodied scythe clanging from his grasp.

His neck hung to one side, partially severed by his own stroke.

Behind me,