by Alex Archer
She fisted a ball of dough, sending a plume of flour into the air, and began to roll and knead.
“I wanted to give you this.” Luke pulled out the small plastic bag in which he’d placed the slip of paper with the blessing. “I think it only right I return it to you. And perhaps, with this blessing, you can take back your power.”
“Return it? What makes you believe it was once mine?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t know the origin of this blessing, but like I said, you seem wise and will probably know what to do about it.”
The woman stopped punching the dough—Luke noticed her taut biceps and decided she was not a woman to mess with—and held out her hand for the item.
He left it in the bag, since her hands were covered with flour, and handed it to her.
“What is it?” She looked over it carefully, pressing the plastic to read the paper inside.
“It was tucked in the brick that was in the skull we unearthed.”
The woman hissed and almost dropped the bag. She narrowed her eyebrows and studied it closely before glancing toward the darkened living room.
Judging from the chill at the back of his neck, Luke suspected Santos was inside the room. So he was alive, then.
“Whoever put that in the brick wanted to lure the deceased into the sun. Or so that is what I and my colleagues guess. Sort of a sneaky blessing, if you will. As if to say, ‘I wish you brightness and light—and I also know that will be your death.’”
“And you’re going to take the skull back to London? What do you think it will tell you about us?”
“I, er...I’m not sure. Have you got something to hide?”
She kneaded faster, making no reply.
“I’m not investigating the mystery of the missing children. I am an archaeologist and I simply want to learn about the origin of the bones. Such information can tell me about who it was, and perhaps give some clue as to why someone believed it would rise again. The decedent may have had purperia or some sort of mental condition that indicated madness. It’s my job to answer questions like that. Otherwise, I’d have no reason to do what I do.”
“It’s time for you to leave,” the woman said, and gestured to the door.
“I, uh...” Luke stood from the chair, unable to come up with a good reason to stay and argue when the woman was obviously in pain and—hell, she was making food leftover following a funeral.
He nodded, and walked to the door. “I thought if you told your neighbors about the blessing, they may be reassured. Can you use it to convince the others in your camp that it’s all right? Nothing is going to harm them. Nothing mythical, anyway.”
“I said, go!”
Luke pushed open the screen door and stepped out into the sweltering noonday sun. Barging through a cloud of gnats, he spat them out of his mouth.
Now that had been odd. The woman’s entire body had tensed, and she’d gotten that look of recognition Luke sometimes saw when he taught students out in the field. A knowing look before they were sure what it was they had uncovered.
Had she recognized the blessing?
Landing at the edge of the property, he eyed the long dirt road that led toward town. Should have packed a hat and sunglasses. But he did have a cell phone. Annja was on her way to Liberec to catch the train, so he wouldn’t think to bother her. He didn’t have the number for a cab company in town, but he did have Siri.
* * *
MAMMA STALKED INTO the darkened room and flicked on the light near the green plaid sofa where her son lay. His eyes were open and he nursed a clove cigarette.
“What did he give you, Dai?” Santos asked in that drowsy tone she associated with him checking out on life. And drugs.
Ever since Mica’s and Laura’s deaths, he hadn’t been the same. And she didn’t know how to reach through his grief to pull him back to the surface. And earlier he’d come home limping, and bleeding through a bandage on his leg. She hated herself for allowing him to fall so far.
She bent and gripped him by the shirt. He protested with a shout that he was injured. She didn’t care anymore if she did hurt him. She’d had her suspicions when he hadn’t attended the funeral, and had set out the box of toys and clothing this morning. Toys that had belonged to Tomas, the boy who’d been buried. She had babysat for Tomas on occasion, and he’d slept in Santos’s room when he’d had to stay overnight because his mother worked a night shift in town at the steel factory and the father was often out boozing it up with other women.
“What curse have you brought on our family, my son?”
* * *
AFTER TWENTY MINUTES of walking in the sweltering noon sun, Luke decided it had been a while since he’d made a trip to the local gym, or even lifted a weight that wasn’t a hunk of dirt with an artifact stuck in it. Curls of smoke from the factory at the edge of town that made pressed components for cars disappeared into the white sky. He estimated that he had another half hour to forty-five minutes of walking, unless he got lucky and someone drove by.
Wiping the sweat from his forehead with the stretched hem of his shirt, he paused, hand to his hip, and bowed his head from the hot sun. Had his thoughts been anywhere but drifting back to the night he’d spent with Annja, he might have heard the slow approach of the vehicle behind him in the distance.
He never even noticed when the truck pulled over, and a man got out and jumped on Luke’s back with an animal yell and fit his hands about his neck.
Chapter 18
Stumbling forward, Luke fell to his knees at the weedy roadside. Body swaying, he rolled to the side and back, managed to loosen the attacker’s hands from his neck. Instincts taking over, he rolled up into a crouch and lunged upward to stand face-to-face with Santos, who didn’t look much better than Luke felt. The man’s face dripped with sweat, and the dark shirt he wore was wet with perspiration.
Luke’s eyes fell to the dark stain on the man’s thigh. Santos had been wounded when fighting with Annja yesterday, and was still bleeding. If he had been bleeding since the fight, how in the hell had he been able to follow and jump him? Despite his own injury, Luke guessed he had the advantage in this duel.
Until Santos stretched an arm behind his back and drew out the katana.
At that moment, another vehicle drove up and skidded to a stop, stirring up a plume of dust around the men. Luke turned quickly, but his ankle twisted and he lost his balance. Before he could answer gravity’s call, his body was wrenched backward, and the cool edge of a steel blade cut up under his chin.
Annja Creed jumped out of the new rental Jeep, wielding the remarkable and mysterious battle sword. Where she’d gotten it, Luke didn’t care. He just hoped she had the sense to talk this crazy man out of killing him.
“Hold steady, Santos,” Annja said calmly. She remained near the hood of the Jeep. Santos’s blade didn’t move from where it was against Luke’s neck. “He’s done nothing to warrant such treatment.”
“He upset my mother in her home!” Santos hissed, his spittle wetting Luke’s neck. “Telling her lies!”
“The lie that you’re involved in trafficking children for voodoo rituals?”
Voodoo? Much as he should be worried about the blade, Luke couldn’t help but feel a twist in his gut to imagine the horrors the missing children must have experienced. What monsters would do such things? And how had he become involved in this? By merely unearthing a skull? It was too incredible.
No matter what fate offered him in the next minutes, Luke knew Annja would find the men responsible and stop them.
“I know nothing!” The blade tugged sharply at his skin and Luke felt his own warm blood seep down his neck.
“Let him go, Santos! And if you tell me where to find Bracks, Mr. Spencer and I will walk away and leave you and your family alone.”
&n
bsp; “You are lying!”
The tall man stumbled, wobbling forward. The abrupt move almost causing Luke to go down, which would have led to his decapitation—but Santos caught himself, jerking Luke back with the blade, which cut deeper.
“Bracks is in London, right?” Annja pleaded. She’d taken two steps forward, and held out her sword to the side, nonthreatening. Her eyes tracked to Luke and held his gaze briefly, yet betrayed neither worry nor confidence. “Where in London can I find him? We need to protect the children.”
“I don’t care about the children.”
“Because you lost your own?” Luke guessed. The toys in the kitchen could have belonged to the dead boy, or perhaps to a man who had once played with his own child.
The blade cut even deeper, and Luke swallowed.
“Is that true?” Annja asked cautiously. “Did you lose a child, Santos?”
“None of your damn business.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, but that doesn’t mean you have the right—”
“Annja!” Luke managed to say. Now was no time to lure the man with the sword into recalling devastating memories.
“I don’t know where Bracks is,” Santos insisted. “Do you think he would tell me? He’s smarter than that. Everything I did was approved by Canov.”
If Luke swallowed, he guessed the blade would cut so deep blood would run down his esophagus.
“But he must call you, this Canov,” Annja insisted. Luke could feel the urgency in her voice waver through his system and he felt light-headed. Ready to face fate. “Your cell phone,” Annja urged. “It might have his phone number and we can track him that way. Santos, please!”
Annja’s shout was the last thing Luke processed as his knees bent and he fell. He didn’t gauge the impact of his body hitting gravel as his oxygen had been depleted and he blacked out. The release was quick and sweet.
* * *
SANTOS EXECUTED Luke Spencer right before Annja’s eyes. Her breaths choked. Heartbeats stopped—then stuttered back to a thunderous race.
As Luke’s body fell slack onto the grassy roadside, she charged the Gypsy. A warrior cry erupted from her lungs. She leaped over Luke’s fallen body, swung her sword through the air and brought it down across Santos’s chest as he stumbled away from his violent deed. Her blade cut across his leather jacket and she smelled blood, but couldn’t know if it was his or Luke’s.
Drawing back the sword, she readied for another punishing blow as she couldn’t drown out the awful choking gasps she’d heard Luke make before going down.
A split second of wisdom stopped her from slashing her blade across Santos’s neck.
He killed an innocent man!
Her fingers tightened around the sword hilt. While he may have murdered Luke, Annja did not relish answering to the authorities her reasons for killing Santos. Vengeance was justified only in the eyes of the weak and criminal.
“May your most feared curse accompany you to hell,” she spat out. “If I guess correctly, that will involve the vengeful undead.”
Shoving Santos to the ground, she landed on his chest with a knee and stabbed the sword into the loose gravel beside his head. Grabbing him by the scruff she lifted his head.
“Where is Bracks?”
“London,” the man blubbered. “Canov mentioned it. That’s all I know. He doesn’t give his location to field scouts.”
Field scouts who located children for the man’s evil endeavors.
“Give me your phone!”
“It’s in my back pocket!”
Annja fisted the man in the jaw, knocking him out cold. Turning him over, she took the phone from his back pocket and shoved it into one of the cargo pockets on her thigh. Standing, she found she couldn’t walk away without first kicking his jaw. Swinging the sword out angrily to cut the air, she almost slashed it down and across the bastard’s neck. But some force greater stopped her.
Joan of Arc’s spirit?
Annja opened her fingers and released the hilt, sending the battle sword off into the otherwhere. No spirit, just her own conscience.
She could have killed with it. She should have. But she would not have this bastard’s death on her hands.
Rushing to Luke, she knew he was dead before lifting his hand from the ground. The cut had gone deep, exposing the spinal column and surrounding muscles. He had likely choked on his blood.
Swearing, and with a glance to Santos, she gave one last thought to committing murder. It won’t change things, except to lower you to his level of unscrupulous morals.
With a shake of her head, she stood and dialed the police number she’d entered in her phone at the hospital and reported the site she’d found on the road out of Chrastava. A colleague of hers had been walking, and she’d found him dead. She suspected his assailant was the one lying nearby.
Slapping her cell phone shut, she knelt over Luke and pressed her arms over his warm torso and bowed her head. She should have never left him here by himself. She’d thought he’d be safe talking to Mamma, and hadn’t considered Santos could have survived their earlier battle and would be lying in wait for Luke.
Only, she had been compelled to return while waiting outside the train station. Call it intuition.
Call it the sword beckoning her.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
Had Luke not called her about the archaeological find, he may have still encountered the angry Romani, urged on by Santos and whoever this Canov was, and yet would have never learned the truth behind the mistaken beliefs.
Was it good that she’d traveled here and had learned what she had about the evils taking place, when wherever she went people died? People she grew to care about?
She had to find Bracks and make him pay for the dead children, and for Luke.
She waited for the ambulance and police to arrive and spent half an hour answering questions and explaining repeatedly that she had found the men exactly as they were, sprawled on the road. Santos was still unconscious and couldn’t deny her story. Yes, it appeared as if both had been wounded by swords, and no, she hadn’t noticed another weapon in the vicinity. Luke was a colleague and they had been working on the dig near the Roma camp. She had reported Santos chasing them out of town last night. Mention of her duel with Santos was unnecessary. The emergency techs reported the cut on his chest was superficial, but he would probably not survive the blood loss from a previous injury on his leg.
“Justice served,” Annja muttered as she walked toward the Jeep after being told she was free to go.
She left her new cell phone number with the authorities and gave them Luke’s home number to contact family in London. She vacillated between remaining in town or leaving while the coroner’s office processed Luke’s body, so she could then accompany the body back to England.
Death had taken people she cared about before. It never got easier.
And was she to blame, or was it that fate colluded to ensure she remained alone, a woman unattached and always available to answer a quest? If so, she’d give back the sword in a heartbeat to have her loved ones all back. Yet she knew that was impossible. She had taken ownership of the sword and all that came with it, good, bad or horrible.
The best thing she could do right now was to find Bracks and stop his reign of terror.
* * *
“WE MEET AGAIN,” Garin said to his freelance help, Slater.
The man nodded, hands folded before him as he awaited instructions. He stood beside a man tied to a chair. Wayne Pearce, who Garin had once seen at Bracks’s side. An assistant of sorts. He’d been found in a nightclub popular with celebrities, hanging on a leggy young thing, dosing on Ecstasy like it was going out of style. He was high now, and though his hands were bound behind the chair he sat on, and his ankles were secure, as well, he g
rinned a stupid smile.
“Break time?” Garin asked.
“Less than three minutes,” Slater reported with a slam of his fist into his opposite palm.
“I’ll give you two.”
Slater worked his head upon his neck, side to side, stretching and bouncing on his feet like a boxer. “I do like a challenge.”
The echo of fist meeting jawbone was followed with a pitiful whining yelp. Pearce’s front teeth dropped onto his lap and he begged for mercy after the second punch.
* * *
WAITING AN HOUR for her flight to take off in the Berlin Brandenburg Airport gave Annja time to call the London coroner’s office. It wasn’t to notify them of Luke’s incoming body; the authorities would take care of that. Annja had a contact there. Not a friend so much as a spy. Years ago, Daniel Newton had contacted her online to tell her how much of a fan he was of Chasing History’s Monsters, and to let her know if she ever needed his help for a future show he was ready and willing. He was also an amateur archaeologist—a hunter of coins in his neighbors’ backyards.
Never overlook the value of having an inside man in a coroner’s office. It was where she had hoped the organ in the cooler had been taken, and if not, then she was at a dead end.
She’d never spoken to him personally, beyond the online contact, so when Daniel answered, and realized it was her, he gasped and stuttered enthusiastically before Annja was finally able to ask him for a favor.
“Anything!”
She winced and turned down the volume on her cell phone. Wandering to a corner in the airport terminal, she squatted against the concrete wall, feeling the strain in her calves and thighs.
“A few days ago you may have received a white cooler with bags of blood or possibly human organs. I suspect it was a police confiscation. I assume it made it to your office, or hope it did.”
“Sounds intriguing. Wait! Yes, it did. It was retrieved from a fire, though the firefighters were able to put it out fast enough and the cooler was intact. Benedict, the head guy here in the shop, has been working on it exclusively. Very hush-hush stuff. What’s this about, Annja? Have you got information on the case?”