by Alex Archer
A dark goddess. An ancient cult. And a dangerous zealot...
On the outskirts of the recently developed and prosperous city of Hyderabad, India, a new and luxurious housing complex has arisen. But several residents have been found brutally murdered. Some believe the killer is a rogue tiger. Others whisper that it is the work of the servants of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death.
Her feet are barely on Indian soil when archaeologist Annja Creed finds herself swept up in Hyderabad’s modern prosperity. But something about the recent spate of killings seems unusual and Annja begins to dig deep for answers. Instead, she finds herself taken prisoner and held in a maze of ancient caves. She’s being held captive by a cult of thieves who are under the thrall of a charismatic leader.
In only a few short hours, Annja is to be sacrificed—unless she can channel the vengeance of the goddess Kali herself....
There was a sudden explosion of light
The first thing Annja saw after her eyes adjusted was a blue figure emblazoned in front of her. A statue. Annja caught herself as she recognized who it was.
Kali.
The goddess of death.
The statue had four arms, each wielding a different weapon. And the red eyes were supposed to suggest a certain level of intoxication, a bloodlust resulting from one of Kali’s many battles.
Kali was a ferocious deity.
What the hell had Annja stumbled onto here?
The torches that had sprung to life glowed hot, casting long shadows across the chamber, but also giving enough illumination for Annja to finally see the men who held them captive. Her first impression was that there weren’t nearly as many of them as she’d thought there’d been in the darkness. Only a dozen or so. All chanting.
And they looked as ferocious as their goddess Kali. Slowly, each man reached up and undid the length of black cloth that covered their faces. These scarves, knotted at each end, were handled with a degree of reverence Annja found amazing. The captors tucked them into their belts, the two knotted ends dangling over, as if ready to be drawn quickly. Perhaps they were weapons.
Thuggee. The thought struck her hard. Except…
Except that cult was supposed to have been wiped out ages ago.
Titles in this series:
Tear of the Gods
The Oracle’s Message
Cradle of Solitude
Labyrinth
Fury’s Goddess
Destiny
Solomon’s Jar
The Spider Stone
The Chosen
Forbidden City
The Lost Scrolls
God of Thunder
Secret of the Slaves
Warrior Spirit
Serpent’s Kiss
Provenance
The Soul Stealer
Gabriel’s Horn
The Golden Elephant
Swordsman’s Legacy
Polar Quest
Eternal Journey
Sacrifice
Seeker’s Curse
Footprints
Paradox
The Spirit Banner
Sacred Ground
The Bone Conjurer
Tribal Ways
The Dragon’s Mark
Phantom Prospect
Restless Soul
False Horizon
The Other Crowd
Alex Archer
Fury’s Goddess
The Legend
...The English commander took Joan’s sword and raised it high.
The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade. The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd.
Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.
Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn....
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jon Merz for his contribution to this work.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 1
“Maybe it’s a tiger,” Annja Creed said as she perused the latest police reports on her iPad. The translated reports had been emailed over to her as she flew from New York City to India. And she was now looking at grisly pictures of mutilated bodies that had been recovered, some of them partially eaten. The remains of Annja’s in-flight meal were on the tray in front of her. But somehow, the limp turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich on stale wheat bread no longer seemed very appetizing.
If it ever had, Annja thought.
“Don’t tigers tend to eat everything?” Frank asked. “Some of those bodies just look, well, sort of…picked at.”
Annja looked at the big man seated next to her. His innocence seemed to be waning fast. Frank Desalvo was fresh off his stint as an intern at another cable channel and had landed the job of cameraman on this assignment. The program Annja worked on, Chasing History’s Monsters, had snapped Frank up for his keen eye, the producers had said. Annja suspected it was because he wasn’t established enough to command a higher salary.
He was likable enough, even if he still had the arrogance of a young twentysomething. With a mop of black hair and wide brown eyes, his splotchy beard made him look a few years older than he was. Annja figured he wore a beard for that reason.
“Not necessarily, although I’m not exactly an expert on man-eating tigers,” she said. “They may not have been hungry enough to devour the entire body. Or perhaps they were simply defending their territory.”
She continued to scan through the reports. “Whatever the case, the locals are terrified and the police haven’t been able to track or trap the offender.”
“Which makes for great television.”
Annja frowned. “It means more people might lose their lives.”
“Well, sure. But at least it’s nobody we know, right? That makes it easier.”
Annja came across one very gory picture and thrust the iPad in front of Frank. “You think this is any easier for the family of this person?”
Frank blanched visibly. “I guess not.”
“Try to remember that the stories we cover are about people, just the same as you and me. They’re not objects. We can’t disconnect from them. There’s too much of that going on in the world as it is, all right?”
“You’re the boss.”
Annja nodded. “Yes, I am.”
She took a breath and went back to reading. There had been three deaths so far. Two men and a woman. All residents of a new luxury complex on the outskirts of Hyderabad, India
’s sixth most populous city.
Annja started surfing the net to find out more about the city she and Frank would be heading into. After several minutes, she started forming a picture of the place in her mind and found herself getting more excited all the time.
Hyderabad was only about five hundred years old, although recent archaeological excavations had uncovered settlements dating back to the Iron Age, around 500 BC.
I would have enjoyed being on those digs, she thought.
Hyderabad enjoyed a hot summer, a very moist monsoon season and a delightful winter between late October and early February. Annja was relieved they were going to be in the city during the winter. She’d had enough of monsoon seasons of late, and a hot summer didn’t appeal much to her, either.
With 3.6 million living in the city or its outskirts, Hyderabad certainly had plenty of potential victims for a rogue tiger to choose from. Except locals had reported hearing something that didn’t sound like a tiger at all, but a mysterious creature that sounded as if it was part cat and part wolf.
The combination had aroused the intense curiosity of Chasing History’s Monsters, and naturally, Annja was dispatched to find out the truth.
But in a city as cosmopolitan as Hyderabad, was there any place a mysterious rampaging creature could hide? Or was it a case of mistaken identity or some psychopath covering his tracks by making his victims appear to have been attacked by a wild animal?
Annja went back to reading while Frank flirted with the flight attendant. Hyderabad’s primary industries were split among real estate, pharmaceuticals, information technology, tourism and filmmaking. She found that last part intriguing. She’d heard of Bollywood before, but Hyderabad apparently had Tollywood, after the major film production complex located at Telugu Cinema. Annja paused. What if someone at Tollywood was getting especially imaginative with the props department?
“Annja.”
She glanced up. Frank wore a grin a mile long. “What?”
“I think I’m in love.”
“Again?” Frank had been working hard to seduce anyone with breasts the entire flight, having declared at the start of their journey his intention to join the Mile-High Club the first chance he got.
So far, his membership application had been soundly denied.
“Yeah, but this is the one.” Frank nodded. “I’m telling you.” He unbuckled his seat belt and stood. Pausing, he leaned over Annja. “Don’t wait up, okay?”
“Sure thing, Casanova.” She watched him amble off down the main aisle toward the lavatories.
There’s somebody for everyone, she thought with a grin. Frank wasn’t ugly, per se, but there wasn’t much to write home about.
Delving back into her iPad, she learned that Hyderabad’s film community had the largest IMAX theater in Asia and a host of cutting-edge technology. She frowned. The sort of technology that could distort images and make people think they were seeing something when, in fact, they were not.
Interesting.
She went back to the police reports. According to the cops, the first case had come in sometime around ten o’clock only a few weeks prior to Annja’s trip. Sanjeet Gupta had been taking a walk around the residential complex and had not come home. A phone call from a distraught wife brought the police running even though only a few hours had passed since the husband was last seen. They conducted a search and came across Gupta’s body lying facedown near a culvert. His arm and part of his upper torso had been torn away, resulting in massive blood loss. Part of his face had been gnawed off, according to the medical examiner.
She glanced back at her quick facts on the residential complex. It catered to the extremely wealthy. The top niche of Hyderabad’s social elite seemed to live in the complex. No wonder the police responded so quickly, she thought. The rich always get preferential treatment.
There was a click overhead and the public address system came on. The flight attendant started talking in what Annja thought was Hindi, but then went on to repeat her announcement in several other dialects. Annja was reminded of the fact that while Urdu and Hindi might be the popular languages of India, regional dialects ranged extensively.
At last, the attendant switched to British-accented English. “Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has advised that we are starting our descent into Hyderabad. At this time, we would like to ask you to shut off all electronic devices, put your trays into their upright position and make sure to remain in your seats with the seat belts on at all times.”
She clicked the PA system off; almost on cue, the plane started to bank. Annja gripped the armrests at the suddenness of the movement.
And then they dipped lower. Annja heard the flaps coming down.
Where was Frank?
She found out a moment later when the door to the bathroom opened and he stumbled out, a wet stain across the front of his pants. Lovely.
He clambered down the aisle and slumped back into his seat. “So,” Annja said, not really wanting to know, “was it everything you hoped it would be?”
Frank frowned. “They don’t make airplane bathrooms all that large, do they?”
“No, they do not.”
He sighed. “Stupid cable channels always make it look better than it is in real life.”
“They’re in the business of selling fantasy.”
“She never showed, anyway.”
“But your clothes—”
Frank held up his hand. “The damn plane banked and I nearly felt into the vacuum toilet. I got blue stuff all over me. So I had to wash it out of my pants.” He sighed. “I’m not exactly a professional when it comes to dry cleaning.”
“Looks more like you did wet cleaning.”
“Funny.” Frank grabbed a copy of the in-flight magazine and started fanning himself. “So, you really think this thing isn’t a tiger?”
“I don’t know. That’s what we’re here to find out.”
“Where to first?”
“The hotel,” she said. “I want a shower after flying for so many hours. After a change of clothes and a quick meal, we’ll head downtown and talk to the police.”
Below them sprawled the city of Hyderabad—gleaming office buildings and brilliantly painted temples. Annja leaned back away from the window and nodded thoughtfully.
“If the police haven’t gotten anywhere with the case, then we’ll try to find this creature ourselves. And that means going into harm’s way.”
Chapter 2
“Customs line is over this way,” Annja said as they made their way down the concourse.
She presented her passport and visa to the customs official, a stern-looking older man with a bushy beard. His eyes seemed as sharp as a hawk’s and he scanned Annja quickly before eyeballing Frank.
Annja saw the contempt in his face. He quickly cleared Annja and then frowned as he looked at Frank. “Your papers, please.”
Frank handed them over and the customs official scanned them. But unlike with Annja, he didn’t hand them back. “What brings you to India?”
“Huh?” Frank was still fanning his crotch. Annja groaned inwardly. The customs official glanced over his counter and saw the stain on Frank’s pants. When his eyes came back up, Annja saw irritation in them.
Uh-oh.
“We hit some turbulence on the plane and I…unfortunately…got a bit wet,” Frank stammered.
“So it would appear.” But there was nothing friendly in the way he said it. Annja dearly wished for a hole to curl up in until this was over.
“He’s with me, actually,” she said. She smiled to show how harmless she was. But the official’s frown told her he wasn’t in the mood to be nice.
“And why are you coming to India?”
“We’re members of an American television show. We’re here to do some research on a spate of recent crimes in Hyderabad.”
His eyes narrowed. “Which crimes are you referring to?”
“The attacks on residents in the new development on the outskirts of the city.�
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“Is that so?” He stared at Frank for what seemed like a very long time. Frank shifted back and forth uncomfortably. Annja willed him to stand still.
The customs official looked back at her. “And what does this…man do for your television show? Urinate in his pants?”
“I didn’t urinate on myself,” Frank snapped. Annja winced.
“I think,” the customs official said, “that perhaps we should talk in another area of the airport.”
Annja groaned. An interrogation. Great. In the country for all of twenty minutes and we’re already suspected criminals.
Swell. God knew how long they were going to be treated like would-be terrorists, but Annja guessed it would be some time before they were able to get to their hotel and unwind.
“That will not be necessary,” said a man with a voice that was deep and rich, like dark chocolate poured over velvet.
Annja turned and found herself staring into the dark brown eyes of man in a well-tailored three-piece suit. He smiled at her and then his eyes flashed back to the customs officer.
The effect was immediate. “Of course, sir. I just need to see your paperwork.”
Without giving the customs officer much in the way of eye contact, the newly arrived man held a sheaf of papers out to him and left them on his counter. “I will take responsibility for these travelers.”
“Yes, of course, sir.”
He waved Annja and Frank toward him. “Please follow me.”
They walked out of the bustling airport and followed him to an idling Mercedes at the curbside.
Annja stopped him as they approached the car. “What about our bags?”
He pointed at the trunk. “We took the liberty of collecting them. They’re in the boot.” He indicated the car. “Please, if you would—”
“Who are you?” Annja crossed her arms. “No offense intended, but I don’t usually get into cars with people I don’t know. Especially in foreign countries.”
“My name is Inspector Ajay Pradesh.” He flashed a badge. “I am with the Hyderabad City Police Special Investigations Unit.”
Frank walked past Annja. “Good enough for me.”
Annja stopped Frank with a hand on his arm. “Let’s try not to get into too much trouble before we know what’s going on here, all right?”