by Alex Archer
“Help! Help me!” he yelled.
Annja rose to her feet, intent on rushing to his aid, when another blast from the staff roared at her. She had just enough time to throw herself out of the way before the statue she’d been standing near blew into fragments.
Grimes laughed and the sound chilled her to the bone.
She glanced toward Douglas and was just in time to watch him get dragged over the edge and disappear.
Douglas’s and Connolly’s screams rose above Grimes’s laughter.
We’re in trouble.
Ephraim had been afraid of what would happen if the staff fell into the hands of a man like Grimes and now they were seeing firsthand. The black light in Grimes’s eyes and the dark essence of the power he was wielding made Annja suspect that the staff was feeding off the bearer, that the dark nature of Grimes’s heart was responsible for the blackness of the staff’s energy. The staff was just a staff—a power source, for lack of a better term. It was the bearer who turned it into an instrument of light or one of darkness.
Grimes’s soul was as black as pitch, apparently.
They had to get that staff away from him.
The only way to do that was to get close enough to take it away.
The chatter of a semiautomatic rifle filled the room. Roux was in a crouch, the gun he’d snatched from the floor in hand, sending a blistering wave of fire directly at Grimes.
To keep from being gunned down, Grimes ducked behind the throne for cover.
“Now, Annja!” Roux roared over the din, having apparently come to the same conclusion Annja had.
Annja knew instinctively that they were only going to get one chance at this and so she didn’t hesitate. She called her sword and ran for the dais.
A second gun added its chatter to Roux’s. From its short, controlled bursts, Annja assumed it was Hamilton. She didn’t think Ephraim had that kind of discipline with a gun.
The gunfire was forcing Grimes to keep his head down, so Annja managed to get most of the way to the dais before instinct told her it was time to get under cover.
She dove behind the nearest statue just as Grimes decided to fight back.
He came out from behind the throne with the staff already extended. The amount of time a person possessed the staff must be a factor in its use—he already seemed to be able to use it more evenly. This time Grimes sent multiple bursts of black fire across the floor at Roux and Hamilton simultaneously. Annja heard one of them scream.
She rushed along the narrow space between the columns and the wall until she was parallel with the dais. A quick glance around the statue she was huddled behind showed her that Grimes was standing on the top step of the dais, staff in hand, flinging more energy blasts at Annja’s companions as he laughed at their attempts to strike him.
Annja gauged the distance in her head and figured she had to cross fifteen feet to reach Grimes. All without getting blasted to pieces.
Roux and Hamilton weren’t going to be able to hold out much longer with such limited cover. Eventually Grimes was going to hit them dead-on.
Taking a deep breath, Annja spun out from behind the statue and charged straight at Grimes.
She knew she was in trouble right away. Grimes turned toward her, smiling, and she realized that he’d known where she was—had waited her out until she was so close he couldn’t miss.
Annja’s feet pounded the floor as she raced for the dais.
Grimes brought the staff up and pointed it at her head. It pulsed with energy.
A wave of energy burst from the tip and rushed toward her, moving so quickly that all she had time to do was thrust out her sword.
To both their astonishments, the energy blast hit the sword and peeled apart like a balloon suddenly popped.
A gunshot rang out and Grimes jerked as the bullet passed though the fleshy part of his shoulder. As Annja drew closer he changed his grip on the staff and swung at her head.
As the staff came whistling toward her, she stepped up and blocked it with the blade of her sword. For a second, the two weapons were locked together and Annja seized the moment. She snatched the knife from her belt with her free hand and slashed at Grimes’s exposed arm.
The blade barely made a scratch.
But in this case, a scratch was more than enough. She hadn’t had time to clean the blade after her encounter with the frogs back in the second-plague room and it was still coated with the toxins from their flesh and blood. All it took to transfer those toxins to the bloodstream was the smallest scratch.
Like the one she’d just given Grimes.
This close, Annja saw Grimes’s eyes widen as he felt the poison enter his bloodstream. His face broke out in a sweat and a moment later his body jerked as the neurotoxins went to work on the nerve junctures within his system.
Grimes’s hands spasmed with surprising force and the staff fell to the floor of the dais.
His body was no longer acting under his control, it seemed. Neurons were firing everywhere, sending him into a series of fits and starts that would have made a medieval torturer proud. He jerked and twisted and convulsed, until finally he collapsed into unconsciousness.
Annja prodded him with her sword, but he didn’t react. His breathing was very shallow and she didn’t think he’d live out the hour.
The others were suddenly there with her on the dais, telling her that she’d not only stopped Grimes but found the Staff of Judea, too.
The staff.
She turned and walked over to it.
This close, Annja could feel the power coming off it. The air around it seemed to react, as well; there was a slight shimmer around the entire length of the staff, making it difficult to see clearly, reminding her of the visual distortion on a hot day in the desert.
She bent and reached out for it, when a voice rang out from the balcony above.
“Stop!”
Chapter 43
They all—herself, Roux, Ephraim, even Hamilton—spun to face the direction the voice was coming from.
Men, dressed in the black desert robes Annja had last seen on the horsemen who had rescued her from Grimes, lined the balcony. Annja quickly counted at least twenty-five of them and she had no doubt there were more on the balcony directly above her. Several carried curved blades similar to those Roux had given to his hired hands, but Annja’s trained eye picked out subtle differences between the two sets of blades almost immediately. Annja had no doubt that the swords she was looking at were the originals the others had been modeled after. In addition to the blades, a few also carried modern firearms. She recognized what looked to be a Soviet-issue AK-47, an Israeli Uzi, even an American M4 carbine remarkably similar to the one in Hamilton’s hands.
The muzzles of the guns were pointed at her party.
Annja glanced at Roux. Were the newcomers what was left of the mercenaries he had hired? He shook his head ever so slightly, indicating that was not the case.
Annja opened her arms, holding them out at the sides of her body to show she wasn’t a threat in any way. “My name is Annja Creed. Who are you and what do you want with us?”
He said something in return.
Annja stared up at the speaker. She didn’t recognize the language he was speaking, never mind understand what he was saying. She frowned; it sounded like Hebrew, but the accents and emphasis seemed to be in the wrong places.
Ephraim, however, practically began jumping up and down the moment he heard it. He grabbed Annja’s sleeve and, pulling her close, whispered, “If I’m right that’s a local dialect that hasn’t been spoken commonly since the fall of the temple. Let me try to talk to him, see if we can find a way to understand each other.”
Annja nodded. It wasn’t as if she had a better idea.
Ephraim cleared his throat and then said
something in a language that sounded close to the one the other man had used.
Close but not quite.
The visitor said something sharp in reply, then repeated it, as if teaching Ephraim the proper way to say it.
Ephraim smiled sheepishly, nodded and then tried again. The two men traded several remarks back and forth, with Ephraim growing more and more excited.
At last he turned to Annja and said, “I was right. It is a dialect not used very often, so it took me a little while to work it out.”
“So you think the two of you can communicate now?”
Ephraim nodded. “Oh, yes. I might get an occasional word wrong but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”
Unless that one word completely changes the nature of the statement. There’s a world of difference between “I love you” and “I hate you,” that was for sure.
She glanced at the armed men on the balcony. “All right,” she told Ephraim. “Give it a go.”
Eagerly Ephraim spoke, pointing to himself in the process. Annja heard him say his name a couple of times, and then he was clearly introducing all of them.
When the newcomer replied, Ephraim’s eyes grew wide and he translated what he was hearing.
“He says his name is Jephthah, leader of the Giborrim, the men of valor whom the Lord entrusted to guard the instrument of His righteousness. This is amazing, Annja!”
It didn’t take an archaeologist to understand that when Jephthah mentioned the “instrument of righteousness” he was referring to the staff. Unlike Ephraim, Annja wasn’t thrilled with this latest development. She hadn’t missed that none of the Giborrim, if that was indeed who they really were, had lowered their weapons.
Jephthah waited until Ephraim had finished translating before he continued. This time when he spoke, he went on longer. Whatever he was saying must not have been very good, for Ephraim’s excitement had abated by the time Jephthah was finished.
Ephraim turned to her and the others and said, “Because we are outside the faith, the Giborrim believe we have spoiled this holy sanctuary by our presence here. That each and every breath we take here further contaminates it, like meat left to rot in the summer sun.”
It was hard to see the Giborrim leader’s expression from this distance, but the crossed arms and hard stance told her that he wasn’t the type who was interested in forgiveness.
“Tell him—”
Ephraim cut her off. “He went on to say that because we have violated the holy space, our lives would be forfeit—”
“Forfeit my ass,” Hamilton said, surging to his feet.
This, in turn, caused Jephthah’s men to surge forward. Those with projectile weapons, traditional or modern, aimed them at the former Marine.
“Wait, wait!” Ephraim yelled, holding up his hands and putting himself in front of Hamilton, trying to shield the larger man. He shouted something presumably in ancient Hebrew to the men on the balcony.
At a gesture from their leader, the Giborrim backed down.
Hamilton did the same.
Ephraim wiped at the sweat on his forehead. “But he, Jephthah,” he told his companions in English, “is willing to let us live, provided we turn something over to him.”
“What do we have that he wants?” Hamilton asked.
The sinking feeling in Annja’s gut told her she already knew the answer.
“He wants Annja’s sword.”
Chapter 44
Her sword.
Annja stared at Ephraim, so shocked by Jephthah’s demand that for a moment she couldn’t find her voice.
Everyone in the room had seen her pull that sword out of midair and use it to defend herself against Grimes. The Giborrim must have been watching, as well. If she hadn’t called her sword, she and everyone else in the room with the exception of Grimes would have died.
She had been wondering what she was going to do about Hamilton, Gardner and Ephraim knowing her secret when she got out of here, but now it seemed that problem was going to take a backseat.
If she gave away the sword, would it still be hers?
She didn’t know. She had tried to give it away previously. But the thing hadn’t exactly come with an instruction manual. The sword had pretty much claimed her the night it had been reassembled and she’d felt, well, bonded to it ever since.
She’d always felt that it was more than just inanimate worked steel, but just how much more, she didn’t know. Certainly there’d been times while wielding it that she’d felt its presence in the back of her mind, urging her on, lifting her to newer and better heights.
Thinking quickly she said to Ephraim, “Ask him to come down to speak with me.”
Annja watched with bated breath as Jephthah thought it over for a moment before nodding and issuing instructions to the men around him. They drew back away from the edge of the balcony, out of sight. No doubt on their way down to where Annja and the others waited.
Think quickly!
“Annja, you can’t seriously be—”
She held up a hand, palm out, shushing Roux. She needed to concentrate.
She knew from experience that she could hand over the sword and not have it immediately disappear, provided she was still in the same room. That complicated any move to try to trick the Giborrim leader. The minute she and the others left the room, the sword would vanish back into the otherwhere. With the Giborrim far more knowledgeable about the fortress’s layout, they’d be able to run them to ground.
They wouldn’t get another chance if that happened.
Better make it good, then.
The Giborrim entered the room through two hidden doorways on either side of the room. Annja hadn’t even known they were there. The group flowed together to form a cordon around their leader and came forward as a unit. When they were about ten feet from the foot of the dais, the group stopped, the cordon splitting open to allow the leader to go on alone.
He met Annja near the base of the dais.
“Hello, Jephthah,” she said in English.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Annja Creed.”
He lagged a little on the pronunciation of Annja, carrying the n’s too long, but his English was quite good all the same.
Annja had suspected as much. Jephthah seemed like a capable leader and what leader worth their salt doesn’t take the time to study and know their enemies?
“We would like to resolve this peacefully,” she said.
He nodded. “I, too, would like that, Annja Creed. However, you and our companions have broken our sacred law and righteousness must be satisfied. Were we to let you go, we would have no way of assuring ourselves that you would not return, perhaps with greater numbers or more force, to take that which is not yours.”
The Staff.
He watched her for a moment, then said, “Your sword. It is a holy weapon, yes?”
Annja answered without thinking. “Yes.”
Almost immediately she questioned her answer. Joan of Arc had believed herself to be called by God. And the sword prompted Annja to act as a force of good, protecting the defenseless and the innocent.
But something could be good without being holy, couldn’t it?
So was the sword a holy artifact?
She didn’t know.
And upon reflection, she decided she was perfectly okay with that.
Jephthah nodded and asked, “May I see it, please?”
Annja called the sword.
It sprang into her hands, the blade upright between her and Jephthah. With just a flick of her wrist, his life would be forfeit.
From the mischievous look in his eyes, he recognized it, as well. It was a test.
Okay, I can play that game, too.
She reversed the blade, then extended the hilt
toward the Giborrim leader.
“Please,” she said. “Take it. Decide for yourself if it’s holy or not.
He reached out and took the sword from her.
* * *
FROM WHERE HE LAY on the floor near the dais, Grimes watched Annja hand that sword of hers to the Israeli standing in front of her. His hatred for her filled his heart.
She had bested him, not once, not twice, but three times now. She had escaped from him in the desert, had derailed his original attempt to kill that idiot Connolly and had then poisoned him when he’d tried to claim the staff for his own. He let his hatred pour fire into his blood, let it provide the strength he needed to do what had to be done.
Annja Creed must die.
He was surprised he was still alive. He’d recognized the toxin from the way his body had reacted to it and he knew very few people survived dart frog poison. Perhaps the staff had protected him from its worst effects.
Everyone’s attention was on Annja, and Grimes made use of the opportunity afforded him, turning his head slightly to take in the positions of those around him. He could see that traitor, Hamilton, Gardner and the old fool, Roux, standing next to each other off to the side. The professor was closer, near where the staff had fallen when Annja had struck him down, but Grimes didn’t care. He would deal with the professor after he killed the others. Then he would take up the staff.
But first, he was going to kill Annja Creed.
He turned his head a little more and saw the instrument of his salvation.
* * *
ANNJA SAW JEPHTHAH’S eyes light up as he took the sword and she wondered what it was he was seeing as he accepted it from her hand.
That’s when the first shot rang out.
Annja spun around.
Grimes was sitting up on the dais, the pistol he’d dropped earlier back in his hand and pointing to where Roux had been standing next to Hamilton. Even as Annja registered the sight of Hamilton’s body being thrown back against the wall from the impact of the first shot’s bullet, Grimes pulled the trigger a second time and red blossomed across Roux’s shirt before he, too, was thrown backward.