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

Malachi returned with looked sturdy enough, but I doubled it over before threading it through the ring. I passed the folded-over end to Malachi and took the loose strands in my own hands. We backed from the door at an angle until the cord was taut and even.

“Ready?” I asked.

He nodded, and we began to pull. Our strength was well short of demonic, but working together, pained grunts bouncing off the basement walls, we managed to walk the door out a few inches. I handed my end of the twine to Malachi and wedged my cane into the narrow space. With him pulling and me prying, we created an opening that looked large enough to edge through.

I held the candle inside and groaned. Rough-cut stairs spiraled down into more darkness.

“Want me to carry these?” Malachi asked, stooping for the Bible and cross.

“Hand them to me once I’m through. You’ve got another candle, right?” I’d encountered one during my pat-down of him. “Good. Use it to see your way back up, then get as far from the cathedral as you can.”

“But I—”

“Forget it,” I interrupted. “You have no idea what’s down there.”

I peeked through the opening once more. If I failed, which felt almost certain, I didn’t want Malachi to be in the path of an emerging demon lord. The apocalypse that followed would likely consume him along with the rest of the city, true, but I was still holding out hope that the Order would get their heads out of their collective asses before that happened.

“Where should I go?” he asked.

I fished through my pockets until I found Detective Vega’s card. “Call this number. Someone named Hoffman will probably answer. Tell him you got left here, and he’ll send someone to pick you up.”

He nodded as he accepted the card, emotion trembling through him for the first time. I slid my cane inside my belt and squeezed through the opening. The effort left me dizzy. Malachi passed me the Bible and silver cross. I took them and then touched the flame from my candle to the wick of his.

As the light suffused his young face, I saw in his eyes something I recognized. “Listen to me,” I said. “Passion led you to uncover those things in the archives, not sin. You’ve no fault in this.”

The words seemed to fortify a layer of my prism. Maybe because they were words I would have liked to have been told ten years ago. Instead, the Order black-marked me. I didn’t want Malachi shouldering the same guilt.

He nodded and wiped his watery eyes with the back of a hand. “Please help them.”

“I’ll do everything I can. Now go.”

I turned from his diminishing scuffs and peered down the steps. Better to perish in conviction than live in cowardice, right? I felt too queasy to answer. Drawing a diver’s breath, I started down.

46

The spiral staircase ended at a cave-like corridor that diminished into darkness. I struggled to control my gasping breaths so I could listen. Easier said than done. The pressure in my chest wasn’t just my anxiety talking now. The air was heavier than in the basement, from being shut away for so long, no doubt—but an oppressive evil lived here as well.

Noises began to take shape. Things skittering here and there, and farther away, what sounded like speech, low and garbled.

It wasn’t human.

“You wanted to join the big leagues, Everson?” I whispered over a tremulous breath. “Batter up.”

I raised the candle and proceeded down the corridor. Within several paces, I saw what the corridor really was—an ossuary for the remains Reverend Higham had piled down here. They sloped toward the floor in great drifts: dusty-brown arm and leg bones, tossed-off pelvises, sections of vertebrae. And skulls. Everywhere. No matter where I looked, a host of them stared back with ghastly sockets and withered teeth.

My heart slammed harder. As decent as these people may have been in life, I wasn’t ready to join their ranks. Especially not when a shiny red centipede slid from one of their ear canals.

Ahead, the corridor bent around a corner, and the speech I’d heard earlier picked up again. The words were nonsensical, guttural grunts in a language I’d never heard or read. And they warped the atmosphere, twisting up my guts and making my eardrums ache. Though I couldn’t interpret them, it was clear the incanted words were intended to gather power.

I stopped to make sure I had everything I needed: religious text, silver cross, holy water, cane. Four checks, even though the last wasn’t much good in my weakened state. I would attempt the exorcism alone if I had to, though I was counting on Father Vick’s help. Assuming enough of him remained.

Where the corridor ended, I peered around the corner. The candle light swelled into a large grotto, revealing the missing church officials.

The bishop was a woman, I saw. She lay supine on the floor, gray hair piled under her head, back arching in spasmodic thrusts. Her closed eyes suggested she was either unconscious or entranced. The black-robed figure standing over her swayed with his back to me, those awful sounds emanating from his bowed head. He’d been incanting in the dark this whole time, which felt freaky as shit.

I swallowed hard on a knot of fear and grief. Man, I had wanted so badly to be wrong.

“Father Vick?” I called into the echoing space.

If he heard me, he gave no sign. His robe continued to shudder with his guttural chants. Steeling my nerves, I stepped into the grotto. Off to one side were the blue bits of protective clothing Vega and I had donned and the demon had used to guide his shriekers. They would be at the detective’s apartment by now.

I reached up with a shaking hand and inserted the candle into the eye socket of a dome-gazing skull. The swelling light revealed an elaborate bone pattern over the floor, one I recognized. The grotto had been made into a demonic casting circle, the