by Alex Archer
Her fingers curled as she slid down, then caught the lip of the roof. She pushed her hiking boots against the stone wall and found purchase. When she climbed up, she started to run again.
The men she pursued remained a building ahead of her. Concentrating, she found her rhythm. She leaped the next alley, landed and didn’t miss a stride. The distance between her and the three men was shrinking.
Ahead of her, the three men turned and looked back. The man with the pistol stopped suddenly and whirled around with the weapon before him. A green tattoo of a curved sword covered the hollow of his throat.
A quick step to the side put Annja out of range of the first bullet. The second chopped into the roof where she’d been. By that time she had taken cover behind a chimney. She felt the vibrations of bullets squarely striking it.
Were the men going to continue to flee? Or were they going to come back to finish the job? Especially since she’d cut herself off from possible help.
You really need to stop and think some of these things through before you do them, she chided herself. The problem with that was there generally wasn’t much time for thinking when something like this happened.
And information—any information—was better than no information. She wanted to know who the men were and why they’d tried to kill her.
She was sure they’d been there to kill her, not anyone connected with the movie.
Squatting down, her breath still coming smoothly in spite of her exertion, Annja reached for her sword. She felt it with her hand and drew it forth from the otherwhere.
The sword was a part of her life she was still struggling to understand. She set herself, arms bent at the elbow, balancing the sword straight up in front of her.
Her hearing was still muffled so Annja watched for moving shadows to either side of her. It was late enough in the afternoon that the shadows would be long, but they wouldn’t be bent toward her since the men were south of her position. She also paid attention to the vibrations throbbing through the rooftop.
Three more rounds slammed into the chimney. Stone chips sprayed the rooftop. After a moment, Annja glanced around the chimney and saw the men fleeing. She sped after them with the sword in her hand.
After leaping to the next building, she made it to the fire escape before they could reach the ground. The man with the pistol leaned out from the second-floor landing and fired several shots.
Annja dodged back just in time for the shots to miss her. The bullets ripped along the low brick wall in front of her and tore through the air. She reversed her grip on the sword, stepped along the wall four paces and leaned out again.
The man stood farther down the stairs, almost to the ground.
As the man turned toward her and froze in his position, Annja whipped the sword at him. The keen blade caught the man high in the chest and knocked him over the railing. He dropped in a loose heap to the ground and writhed in pain.
He wasn’t dead. She hadn’t intended to kill him. Although she had killed while saving her life or the lives of others, the idea of doing that didn’t sit well with her.
Annja started to climb down, but the other two men pulled out pistols. She ducked back again. Great, she thought. Everyone has a gun but me.
Bullets smacked against the building. She felt the vibrations more than she heard the harsh cracks of the gunshots.
She concentrated for just a moment, felt for the sword and pulled it through otherwhere again. On the ground, the man screamed in agony. The blade appeared in her hands blood free. Annja still didn’t know how the sword did what it did, but she’d come to trust it and use it when necessary.
She shifted and moved to a new position. Then she looked over the roof’s edge again. Below, the two healthy men had the third man between them in a fireman’s carry. They ran toward the street. One of the men talked on a phone.
Annja started down the fire escape with the sword in her hand. She took the steps two and three at a time, boots thudding against the steps, almost spilling over the landings in her haste. At the second-floor landing she let her momentum get the best of her and vaulted over the side. She flipped and landed on her feet, her sword swept back and ready.
A dark sedan screeched to a stop near the three fleeing men. The rear door swung open. The two men carrying the third stared in awe at Annja. They passed their wounded comrade inside and climbed in after him.
Annja ran after them, thinking that she might be able to keep pace. She willed the sword away and reached for her phone. For a moment she kept up with the retreating vehicle and strained to make out the license plate.
The rear window sank down smoothly. The wicked mouth of a submachine pistol jutted out just as Annja closed in on an outdoor café packed with diners.
Annja couldn’t risk innocent bystanders. The people at the café would never see the threat in time, much less be able to take evasive action. Frustrated, she stopped, then dived for cover as the submachine gun chattered to life. Bullets passed over her head and shattered the windows of the clothing store behind her.
Glass shards rattled down all around her. She kept her hands and arms wrapped around her head to protect her face. The deadly rain had stopped, and she made sure she wasn’t bleeding from anything serious. When she looked up, the dark sedan was gone.
She punched the car’s license plate number into her phone’s memory and hoped the police would arrive soon.
3
Annja watched the Prague police detective and tried to read his lips. The man’s mouth hardly moved, and the bushy mustache further disguised what he was saying.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re going to have to speak up.” Her own words barely penetrated the thick cotton in her ears. “I can’t hear very well since the explosions.”
The detective, whose name was Skromach, calmly started over. He looked like a patient man. Slight of stature, he exuded an air of competence. His salt-and-pepper hair needed the attention of a barber, but his suit was impeccable.
“You ran after the men, Miss Creed?” Skromach asked.
“Yes.” Annja sat on the steps of a nearby building. An ambulance attendant treated a thin cut below her left eye and another along her jawline. Neither was bad enough to scar, but they would show for a while. She hoped Garin wasn’t planning on taking her anywhere too elegant because she would look like a ragamuffin.
Skromach held his pen poised over his notepad. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“I didn’t want the men who did this to get away.”
The detective nodded. “You think they did this?”
Annja nodded at the burning pyre of cars the local fire department was dealing with. Water streamed from hoses. Gray steam clouds mixed with the black smoke.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said.
Skromach shrugged. “Perhaps it was an overzealous special-effects person.”
“No,” Annja said, feeling the need to defend Barney and his crew. “That blast was deliberately set.”
“For the movie, yes?”
“No.” Annja shook her head. The ambulance attendant, a no-nonsense woman, grabbed her chin and held her steady. “The special-effects crew is good. They wouldn’t make that kind of mistake.”
Skromach flipped back through his notes. Annja had seen him questioning movie people while she’d talked to Barney and Roy. Both of them were banged up but they were going to be fine.
“I see here that you’re not a special-effects person,” the police detective said.
“No,” Annja said, realizing her hearing was beginning to clear.
Skromach nodded. “You’re here as an archaeologist attached to the film?”
“Yes. But I’m only loosely attached. I’m taking care of the props.”
“I see. Tell me about the props.”
“They’re Egyptian. Statues of Bast and Anubis.”
“Were they pharaohs?”
“No. Gods. A god and goddess, to be exact. Bast is an ancient
goddess worshiped since the Second Dynasty. About five thousand years, give or take. Anubis was the god of the underworld. Usually he’s shown having the head of a jackal.”
That seemed to catch Skromach’s interest. “These statues are valuable?”
“Only to a collector. They aren’t actually thousands of years old, but they are a few hundred.”
“A few hundred years seems like a valuable thing. I collect stamps myself, and some of those are worth an incredible amount of money after only a short time.”
“That’s generally because they’re issued with flaws. This—” Annja tried to find the words she wanted but failed “—wouldn’t be like that.”
“I see.” Skromach didn’t sound convinced.
“Someone hosed the gag,” Annja said.
Skromach blinked. “Hosed the gag?”
“Sorry. The explosions were no accident,” Annja said confidently.
“You’re no authority,” the detective replied.
Annja sighed. The conversation seemed determined to go in circles. “Check with Barney Yellowtail. He’ll tell you the same thing.”
“I expect that he would. Especially in light of the fact that he was responsible for the gag, as you put it.”
Don’t get angry, Annja told herself. He’s just trying to do his job.
“If these statues are not so much valuable, why, then, are you shepherding them?” he asked.
“I’m shepherding all of the Egyptian artifacts in this movie,” Annja replied. “Those two props are the more important ones. The director wants everything realistic.”
Skromach scratched his long nose. “You were hired for your expertise?” he asked.
“Yes.”
The detective smiled. “Perhaps also because of your own notoriety. You have a certain…reputation.”
“I suppose.”
“Come, come, Miss Creed. Chasing History’s Monsters is very popular, they tell me. My wife is a fan.” Skromach looked utterly disarming.
Annja knew to be on her guard. It’s the quiet ones that always get you, she cautioned herself.
Skromach looked at his notes again. “Why did you chase the men?”
“Like I said, I didn’t want them to get away.”
“Such a thing is dangerous.”
“Today has been dangerous,” Annja countered.
“You could have been shot.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You said there were three of them?”
“Yes.”
“Men you had seen before?”
“I didn’t say that,” Annja told him. Finally finished with her chore, the ambulance attendant stepped away.
“Had you seen them before?” Skromach asked.
“No.”
“Would you recognize them if you saw them again?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps, when you’re able—say in a few minutes or so—you could come down to the police station and look at some photographs.”
Inwardly, Annja groaned. She wasn’t looking forward to her date with Garin and didn’t want to be stressed before she joined him.
“I’ve got plans for this evening,” Annja replied.
Skromach checked his watch. “We’re still hours from evening, Miss Creed. And I’d rather you came down voluntarily than me going to the trouble of making my invitation official.”
“Why me?”
Skromach smiled. “Because you were the only one who chased those men.”
“I gave you the license plate of the car they were in.”
“Unfortunately, that car was stolen this morning. The owner is very distressed.”
“Does the owner have any tattoos?” Annja asked.
Brows knitted, Skromach studied her. “Why do you ask?”
“One of the men had a sword tattooed on his neck.” Annja touched her own neck in the place where the man’s tattoo had been.
“Ah.” Skromach wrote in his notebook. “You didn’t mention this before.”
“I just remembered,” Annja said. “What about the car’s owner?”
Skromach thought for a moment, then flipped back through his notebook. “I see no tattoos, sword or otherwise, mentioned.” He looked up at her. “Perhaps I’ll go see him. Just in case. In the meantime, I’d like to offer you a ride down to the police station.”
Skromach was very good with surprises. He waited until he had Annja seated beside him in the back of the police car before he sprung his.
“So tell me, Miss Creed,” he said. “What did you do with the sword?”
The car got under way. Annja fumbled for the seat belt to cover her reaction. Her heart beat fast and her hands suddenly felt clammy. She tried to relax. No one could find the sword. Only she could call it forth, she reminded herself. When she had the seat belt fastened, she asked, “What sword?”
“Policemen working this case canvassed the street where you chased the men,” the detective replied. “Witnesses said you threw a sword at one of the men and pierced him.”
Annja held up her hands. “No sword.”
Skromach scratched his jaw with a thumbnail. “They seemed most adamant, these witnesses. And there was a lot of blood at the scene.”
“One of the men fell.”
“The one with the sword tattoo?” Skromach touched his neck.
“I think so,” Annja said.
“I see.”
“Maybe the fall hurt the man and caused an injury.”
“The witnesses said the man had to be carried off.”
Annja waited. She wasn’t very good at lying, but lying was better than trying to explain a supernatural sword.
“If you or your men can find a sword up there, then I must have had one,” she replied. “Things got confusing very quickly.”
“They usually do.” Skromach shrugged. “We also had reports citing the number of men from two to eleven. Although how all those men fit into one car is beyond me. Eyewitnesses, as every policeman knows, are unreliable at best.” He leaned back against the seat. “Besides, even if you did have a sword, you would only be guilty of self-defense.”
“Yes.”
“If those men were the ones who hosed the gag, as I believe you said.”
“That’s right,” Annja replied. “That’s what I said.”
“Hopefully, we can find them.”
Annja hoped so, too. Because if they didn’t, she had the distinct impression the men might come looking for her again.
4
“Annja, you’ve got to listen to me. You’re in Prague. That’s almost Romania. They’ve got vampires in Romania. Therefore there are vampires in Prague.”
Seated at the small metal desk she’d been shown to in the police station, Annja stared glumly at the page of photographs of known criminals operating in Prague. Actually she’d looked at so many pictures of criminals now that she believed Skromach had borrowed books from other countries.
After a while they all started to look the same. There were some who were old and some who were younger, but they all had earmarks of desperation or deviance. She wondered if her best friend, Bart McGilley, the NYPD detective, ever noticed how similar the criminals he chased looked.
She glanced at her watch. It was after five. Dinner was at eight.
Now I’m going to have to rush, she thought as she listened to Doug Morrell continue his tirade about vampires. She hadn’t wanted to rush. This was a date. More than that, it was a date with Garin Braden, a man she knew she couldn’t trust.
And how did you dress for something like that? It was a question that had been plaguing her for weeks. Ever since he’d told her that it was time for her to pay off on her promise to have dinner with him after he’d helped her out of a dangerous situation in India ages ago.
“I must have been brain-dead when I made that deal,” she said to herself. At the time it hadn’t seemed like a big deal. Now it felt as if she’d made a deal with the devil.
That was one thing she was certain of�
��Garin Braden didn’t walk on the side of angels.
But what kind of conversation did she expect to have with someone who was seemingly immortal? It was intimidating and that was a feeling she rarely experienced.
“Doug,” Annja interrupted. Her head throbbed from studying photographs and trying to deal with Skromach’s suspicions about the sword.
The police detective had checked in a few times, usually to bring her something to drink and once to see if she wanted anything to eat. Despite the fact that he’d consigned her to this room and these photographs, he wasn’t a bad guy.
Doug hadn’t been thrown off his game. “Don’t you see that this is important?”
Be patient, Annja reminded herself. She took a breath. Then she spoke slowly.
“There…are…no…vampires…in…Prague.”
“There have to be.”
“Doug,” Annja sighed, “vampires don’t exist.”
“They hide,” Doug said. “No one’s as good at hiding as a vampire.”
“Really?” Annja leaned back in the straight-backed chair and tried to get comfortable. She couldn’t.
“I’m telling you there’s a story about vampires in Prague,” Doug whined.
“I’d rather do the one on King Wenceslas that I suggested.”
Paper turned at Doug’s end of the connection. “This is that sleeping-king thing, right?”
Annja felt encouraged that Doug had read her proposal. “The king in the mountain. Yes.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Doug said. “Sleeping king. King of the mountain. Same diff. Supposed to be called forth from the earth in times of great danger to the world. Did I leave anything out?”
“The legend of King Wenceslas coming back to fight evil is an important part of why I want to do the story. It’s been woven into the King Arthur myth.”
“He comes back from the dead?” Doug sounded excited.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
Annja took a breath. “I did. I sent research notes.”
“You know I don’t look at that stuff. This is television. All you need is a good beat line to make anything fly. I like the idea of him coming back from the dead,” Doug said. “Kind of spooky, actually.”