The Mortality Principle

by Alex Archer

  The doctor left her on her own, with Annja thinking that there were no guarantees in life, anyway. She was already starting to feel better, most likely because of the heightened metabolic rate and increased healing properties of her own flesh and blood ever since she’d bonded with Saint Joan’s sword. She wasn’t like other women. What would break them barely served to bend her, and where her spine should have been shattered, all she had to show for it was a blue-black stain at the base of her back. Gritting her teeth, Annja pushed against the blankets, and swung her legs around, knowing that if she couldn’t get out of bed she wasn’t getting out of this place.

  There was no way she was staying in here a minute longer than she needed to.

  Annja called to Garin, pitching her voice just loud enough for it to bring him back to the door. He poked his head inside. “You up for busting me out of here, big guy?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” he said. “And you realize by doing so I’m blowing any chance of getting together with the lovely Sam.”

  “Sam?”

  “Dr. Sammica.” He nodded down the corridor.

  “I guess it’s not love, then.”

  “It very rarely is, Annja. It very rarely is.”

  She planted both feet on the floor and tried to stand.

  It didn’t go well.

  Garin caught her, and eased her back down onto the mattress. “Maybe we’ll try the great escape in a few minutes, eh?”

  “Maybe five,” she agreed.

  12

  But five turned into ten, then turned into twenty.

  By the time she finally made it out of the bed and onto two very unsteady feet, her cell phone was ringing. The noise earned her a withering look of disapproval from one of the nurses who happened to be passing her door, followed by a muttered instruction she could not understand.

  Sometimes there were advantages in being a stranger in a strange land.

  It was Roux.

  “Where are you?” he asked without preamble.

  “The hospital,” she said.

  That didn’t faze him. He didn’t ask what was wrong or what had happened. He simply asked, “Which one?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Never mind. I’ll find it,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere until I get there. This time I’m serious. Wait there.”

  She was about to reassure him that she wouldn’t leave when the doctor returned trailing a gaggle of students like a line of ducklings. She read the notes that hung from the metal frame at the bottom of Annja’s bed.

  “Got to go,” she said before she realized that Roux had already hung up.

  She waited while the doctor talked rapidly, not in English this time, offering her students the opportunity to take a look at the notes. Annja saw the look of surprise cross a couple of faces as they discovered the cause of her injuries—or lack of injuries—and the double take as they checked her notes again trying to understand how it could possibly be the case.

  The doctor smiled her way. “So, how you are feeling now?”

  “Stiff and sore, and a headache that feels like a hangover without all the fun of the night before, but other than that, still in one piece,” Annja said, earning another of those lopsided smiles from the doctor. Her examination was cursory at best. Annja was banking on the fact they’d want to discharge her to free up the bed for someone else.

  “I’d really like to run another scan to make sure there’s no internal bleeding, but if that’s clear I can’t see any reason to keep you in here any longer than necessary.”

  “Wind me up and point me in the right direction,” Annja said.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll have a nurse come by to bring you down to radiology in an hour, then if it looks fine, you’re good to go.”

  * * *

  ANNJA WAS ALREADY dressed and waiting for her prescription painkillers by the time Roux arrived. He looked harried.

  She didn’t expect to need the pills once she wrapped her hand around the sword’s hilt again and got the blood flowing through her muscles.

  “I thought I told you to stay in your hotel,” he said.

  “And you knew I wouldn’t,” she replied, not moving from the chair.

  “Touché.” The old man shook his head. “Hoisted on my own petard.”

  “Which sounds incredibly painful,” Garin said from the doorway.

  Roux looked Annja up and down, taking in the bruising. “But, like it or not, if you had done what I said, you wouldn’t be in here now, would you?”

  “You’re not my father,” she said.

  “Or even her grandfather,” Garin offered helpfully.

  Yes, he had been her teacher, her trainer, her mentor, even her friend, who she could turn to when she was in trouble, as if they were family.

  That ended the objections. The hurt in his eyes was plain to see. Annja regretted the biting comment, but she didn’t apologize.

  “So what happened?”

  Annja filled them in on everything that had happened to her the night before, including Turek’s assertions about the first body she’d found being a witness to a previous murder, and how she’d stumbled across another body in the same alleyway. She described the witness reports kept out of the papers, and why Turek believed the golem was hunting. Finally she explained how she’d gone in pursuit of the killer across the rooftops, matching some if not all of the eyewitness reports with her own eyes, but how at last the roof had betrayed her and she’d lost her footing.

  “Thirty feet is a long way down,” Roux observed.

  “Hey, at least she found something nice and soft to break her fall,” Garin said.

  “If I’d have had a choice, I wouldn’t have fallen at all,” Annja said. She spotted the doctor coming up behind Garin. She had a clear plastic bag in her hand. “Your meds,” the doctor said as Garin moved aside. And to Garin, “My number.” She handed him her card. Garin pocketed it with a grin.

  “I’ll make sure I give you a call.”

  “Can we get out of here now?” Roux asked.

  “She’s free to go.”

  “Excellent. Up you get, then.”

  Roux turned to Garin. “Any chance you could make yourself scarce? I was hoping to have a little time with Annja alone.”

  “I can take a hint,” Garin said, showing no sign of taking offence at the old man’s directness. He turned to the doctor. “So, what time are you due to take a break? A girl’s gotta eat, after all.”

  Dr. Sammica inclined her head slightly, a gesture that was deliberately flirtatious as she bit down on her lower lip. “My shift doesn’t finish for another three hours.”

  “Bend a few rules,” Garin said, linking his arm with hers and steering her toward the door.

  “Thanks, Garin,” Annja said, raising the coffee cup in salute. “We’ll catch up with you later.”

  “Sure,” he said, giving her a wink, and then he was gone.

  “That was a little rude, don’t you think?” Annja asked once he was out of earshot.

  “Not here,” Roux said, then as an afterthought, “Hospital food is generally foul. I take it you haven’t eaten?”

  From somewhere down the corridor she heard the unmistakable sound of a cart heading in their direction, and pointed toward the door. “Sounds like room service.”

  “Then for heaven’s sake, let’s get out of here before they force you to eat it. Back to the hotel, I think. I’m going to need you to tell me everything. Don’t leave a thing out, even stuff you think is inconsequential.”

  She nodded.

  “And then I’m going to need you to tell me everything you’ve told Garin.”

  “I haven’t told him anything, but I don’t get it. Why are you trying so hard to keep him at arm’s length?”

  He picked up her jacket. “Like I said, not here.”

  13

  Moving, even gingerly, helped Annja’s aches and pains. Waking up in the hospital bed had shaken her up, but it was a thing of the past now. She wa
sn’t about to lounge around and moan about the aches and pains even if she didn’t exactly feel like slipping on her running shoes and hitting the streets. She was very much fit for the fight.

  They walked through the restaurant. The breakfast service had been cleared away, and dinner was still hours away from being ready, but they managed to get someone to put together a tray for them in Annja’s room when Roux explained, in fluent Czech, that she’d been in the hospital and needed a little TLC.

  Room service arrived five minutes later, along with a bowl of fruit and a bouquet of flowers wishing Miss Creed a speedy recovery.

  “How about now? Just us and these four walls. Is that secret enough for you to tell me what it is that’s gotten under your skin?” Annja said. “Seriously, what is it with you and Garin and this place?”

  Roux scratched at his beard, his hand covering his mouth. Always a sign of a liar, Annja thought, wondering what half-truth her friend was concocting for her benefit this time. “I… It’s difficult to know where to begin exactly. Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on, then it’ll be my turn.”

  “All right.” In quick fashion, she relayed the various important facts that she’d managed to collect so far. “Now, what’s your story? And start at the beginning.”

  “No story ever truly begins, Annja. There are dozens of points in the unwinding of history where we could look at something and say, ‘Here, at this point in time, this is where it all started,’ but even then there are links that we’re not party to, things that influenced us getting to that point.”

  “Very poetic, Roux, but you know what I mean, just spit it out.”

  The old man drew a deep breath, then shrugged as though defeated. “Let me ask you a question. Do you trust Garin?”

  “What?”

  “After everything we’ve been through, after all the times we’ve seen him act out of self-interest, every betrayal of trust, do you trust Garin? It’s a simple enough question, Annja. Yes or no?”

  Annja paused. Not so long ago the answer would have been a straight no, no need to even think about it. Before that it would have been a resounding yes, again with no need to contemplate any other response. But now? Now things were not so clear-cut. “I trust Garin to always do what is in his best interests. But I also know that he has come through when I needed his help.” Which was absolutely true. And more often than not their interests intersected. “How does that sound?”

  “It sounds like a starting point.”

  “Okay, then, story time,” Annja said, pouring them both a cup of coffee so thick she thought she might be able to stand the spoon in it. She put the French press on the tray. The dregs of coffee grounds swam around the bottom.

  Roux nodded. “The most obvious admission is that this is not the first time this killer has struck. Far from it. It has been hidden for a long time, yes, dormant like a virus, but there inside the body of the city, festering away. I thought that it had been defeated, trapped where it could never again harm people. I was wrong.”

  “You need to be very precise, Roux. Are you telling me you know who the killer is?” So many questions were tumbling through her mind. She fixed on the most obvious one. “You think Garin is involved, don’t you?”

  “Honestly, I am not sure what I think. But if I am right about the killer, your close encounter last night was not with a man. Or at least not a normal one. It is so much more than a man, but so much less than one, too. It will not fall victim to old age or illness. I don’t believe it will ever naturally die, not in the way that we understand death. It does not need food or drink to sustain it, neither does it crave the company of others. It has been incarcerated for many, many years. Only two people knew the location of its prison. I am one of them.”

  “And Garin is the other,” Annja finished for him, understanding, even if what he was saying was instinctively impossible, the man himself was an impossibility. If Roux said that the killer was inhuman, then who was she to argue, especially given what she had witnessed on the rooftop?

  “He was with me, yes.”

  “Is it possible someone could have stumbled over this thing by accident, setting it free without knowing what they were doing?”

  Roux shook his head. “It has been imprisoned on and off since the eighteen hundreds, finally captured and kept as such from the last days of the Second World War.”

  “Could it have escaped on its own again?” She was thinking on her feet. Just because something had been safe and secure seventy years ago didn’t mean that it would still be today.

  “Even if Garin knows where it is, that doesn’t mean he was the one who has released it. That’s purely circumstantial. And worst case, even if he did, what’s to say he did it on purpose?”

  Roux fell silent, mulling over the possibilities. The benefit of the doubt lasted no more than three seconds, then he was shaking his head. “There’s only one way to be sure we are facing what I think we are, and that’s to go to its prison and see for myself.”

  “You’re not going without me,” Annja said.

  “You need to rest.”

  “No, I don’t. I need to find whatever I was chasing last night. Now, you know me, old man. You know that if you try to go without me all that will happen is that I’ll follow you.”

  It was true, she would, and he knew it.

  “Then rest. We can leave when you are stronger.”

  “So you can sneak off on your own while I’m asleep?”

  “So, you don’t trust me, either?”

  “It’s not about trust.”

  “No?”

  “Let’s just say that sometimes you think you know what’s better for me than I do.”

  “Well, I have lived a lot longer,” the old man observed.

  “Age doesn’t bring wisdom with it.” Annja smiled. “Look at Garin.”

  “Humor me. At least sit long enough for me to tell you the story of our killer and how our paths first crossed. It is a long story. And, I think, one that will appeal to you.”

  “You still haven’t told me what it is we’re up against.”

  “All in good time. I can tell you that, if I am right, no one’s life is in danger for the moment. It will be resting, recharging itself before it ventures forth again. It may not even be out on the streets of the city again tonight, or tomorrow, maybe not for a week.”

  “So we have time?”

  “We do, but it will kill again. That is why I must stop it.”

  “We,” Annja corrected him.

  “Hmm,” Roux said noncommittedly. “I am not sure you will be fit for a fight before night falls. When I go up against this thing, I will not be able to protect you at the same time. It is all or nothing.”

  “You won’t have to protect me,” Annja said.

  There was no way that she was going to let the old man sideline her. An immortal killer? This was why Saint Joan had granted Annja her incredible inheritance. Hers was not to walk away. Never. She could feel the pull of the blade from the otherwhere. Its siren call sang through her blood, stronger than she could remember feeling it in years. Perhaps it was her weakness that gave it such strength, her need? Even though they weren’t connected, Annja could feel it pulsing through her veins, and felt the irresistible urge to draw it, to grasp the hilt and stretch and swing over and over until her muscles remembered what they needed to do to truly live and the pain faded.

  “Are you all right?” Roux asked, leaning forward intently. “You look…different.”

  “Just a twinge,” she lied. “Tell me a story, Grandpa.” Annja grinned, trying to shake off the siren song of the sword, but it just wouldn’t be silenced. It rang out like the tolling of a bell inside her mind.

  “It was a dark and stormy night…”

  “No, seriously.”

  “It was.”

  14

  That summer had been unseasonably cold.

  June was full of storms. The houses in the village of Cologny seemed to huddle together for war
mth, fighting the elements. One great house stood apart from the homes of the people who lived there all year-round, scraping a living however they could. Although much of the house felt cold and damp, the insidious chill having crept into the very fabric of the walls, the Villa Belle Rive had great logs snapping and crackling in the grates of the open fire as they burned, warming the group of people gathered in the room.

  The party was garnering attention from the locals. Several ventured forth from the elegant houses around Lake Geneva in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the infamous Lord Byron. Scandal followed him wherever he went, and with good reason. He truly was a fellow who had learned to suck the marrow out of life, draining every ounce of pleasure from the world as he walked through it. Now that he was separated from his wife amid rumors of an affair with his half sister, life in England had become intolerable. How much truth there was in the rumors Roux had no idea, but the appeal of acting as a servant to the household had proved too fascinating an opportunity to refuse. There were people who lived so large even someone like Roux was drawn like a moth to their bright flame. Byron was one of those compelling souls. Garin had been keen to move on, but a woman stole his heart as was ever the case with the feckless boy. In this instance it was the cook Byron had employed.

  Roux and Garin had found themselves in Russia when Napoleon had marched on Moscow in 1812. Roux had watched the flames rise from the great city threatening to purge it from the face of the Earth as the retreating Russians set fire to every building, rather than let it fall into the hands of the ruthless French. It had taken them three years to make their way across Europe until they finally reached the first peaks of Switzerland. By then all Roux wanted to do was to find somewhere to settle for a while, to be done with wandering.

  The house had presented itself.

  At first the party had consisted of just two men: Byron and his physician, John Polidori. Roux had found them both to be odious little men of little worth. They were joined partway through the summer by the poet Shelley and his young bride-to-be, Mary. They had brought with her Mary’s stepsister, Claire, who pursued Byron with as much fervor as the doctor, though for very different reasons. Or perhaps not so different, after all… There was a history between them, and Roux enjoyed watching the machinations as they fought for the poet’s affection like it was worth winning.