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

I had a groupie on my hands, basically.

“Listen, Meredith,” I said. “I’m going to have to answer your questions another time.”

She clicked to the center of the loft in a pair of strappy black heels, my words once again sailing right past. “Shall we relax on the couch?” she asked.

I tried to circle around to the front of her. “It’s not as relaxing as it looks, actually,” I stammered. My priority now was getting her back to the door. Which I’d left ajar, I realized.

While Meredith lowered herself, cooing over the soft cushion, I beat it back toward the foyer. The partially-opened door rattled in the doorframe, as though the window beside the staircase was open and pulling air from the corridor. That had never happened—

Something large landed in the hallway.

—before.

I got my shoulder into the door, forced it closed, and was snapping the bolts home when the thick wood shook against me. A moment later, a familiar pain jagged to the depths of my eardrums.

Only this shriek sounded more adult.

And there were two of them.

39

I backed from the shuddering door and turned to check on Meredith. I found her across the couch, palms clamped to her ears. I’d chosen index fingers to block my own. Thanks to the wards, the demonic register of the shriekers couldn’t penetrate the threshold, sparing my mental prism.

But the screams still hurt like hell.

During a brief lull, I shouted, “Get into the bathroom! Lock the door!”

When Meredith squinted up, I could see that terror had shattered her trance. She was probably beginning to wonder what the hell she was even doing here. She nodded rapidly and wobble-ran toward the back of the apartment.

I looked around for Tabitha, but she had taken off somewhere—maybe out onto the ledge, and who could blame her? With her feline hearing, the sound would have been doubly piercing.

A splintering crack sounded, and I wheeled around. I had enough time to note my front door bowing out before it was flying at me in two halves. The larger piece slammed into my left shoulder, spinning me halfway around. It took a moment for the rude clunk of dislocation to register, the bruising pain spreading from my shoulder into my neck.

I retrieved my fallen cane. In the next moment, light shields covered my ears like muffs. With the horrid sound stifled, I rammed the front of my shoulder into the steel beam that anchored the end of the kitchen counter, popping the humeral ball back into its socket. The shoulder was a recurring thing, the only upshot being I knew how to fix it. But that didn’t make it any less agonizing.

The world behind my closed eyes spun, and I clenched my jaw to the throbbing pain. With a cane tap and a spoken incantation, I initiated the healing to the strained and torn tissue. At last, I turned to confront my visitors.

Sweet Jesus.

If you took a man-sized bat, crossed it with a gargoyle molded by a demented sculptor in bloody tar, you’d be in the neighborhood of the kind of creature—correction, creatures—I was facing. The two were taking turns throwing themselves into the field that covered my threshold, sparks spattering their thorny black wings and screaming faces.

Their juvenile selves were almost cute in comparison.

But as big, powerful, and hideous as the grown shriekers were, they weren’t spell casters. Against my wards, it was force against force—and, like any wizard worth his salt, I’d infused my wards with years of cumulative energy. Out there, I’d be in a world of hurt. Inside my apartment, I was safe as houses. I had only to wait until dawn for the shriekers’ power to wane, whereupon they would flap off to their dark, damp hiding place to regenerate.

Problem was, I didn’t have until morning. I needed to get to the reanimated reverend before he killed Father Vick and the bishop and escaped into the world. I hesitated on that thought.

The shriekers showing up now wasn’t a coincidence. The reverend must have known I was a threat to him. My thoughts returned to Malachi eavesdropping on Father Vick’s and my conversation that morning. He would have heard us connecting the recent summonings, as well as Father Richard’s murder, to someone inside the cathedral. But how had the reverend known where to direct the shriekers, especially since Malachi hadn’t been staking out my apartment?

Working backwards, I searched my memory for anything I might have left at the cathedral for the reverend to cast from, some specimen that would have held a piece of my essence. I was usually exceedingly careful about such things.

I came up empty, empty, empty—until I arrived at the morning I’d viewed the crime scene. Before entering the sacristy, I’d donned a pair of latex gloves and had had a net pulled over my head.

Sweat and hair.

Assuming the reverend had accessed the bag, he would have been able to cast from either specimen. But mine hadn’t been the only bits of protective covering. Who else might the reverend have deemed a threat to his—

My heart missed a beat, then slammed twice as hard to catch up.

The lead detective. Vega.

I angled the phone on the counter toward me, already fishing Detective Vega’s card from a pocket before realizing the second I removed the shields from my ears, I wouldn’t be able to hear a thing over the shrieking. I lifted the phone, looked around, and then ran toward the bathroom, cord spooling out behind me.

As instructed, Meredith had locked the door. I waited for another break in the shrieking before knocking. “It’s me!”

The knob turned tentatively, and I dispelled my ear shields just before one of Meredith’s eyes appeared in the door space. Once inside the bathroom, I shut the door against a renewed cycle of screaming. Meredith had pushed a towel against the space at the bottom of the door to stifle the sound, and I shoved it back into place