by J. F. Penn
His own mixed heritage made the cultural guessing game a regular pastime for Blake. His blue eyes were from his Swedish father, and his darker skin tone from his Nigerian mother. He would have an Afro if he let his hair grow any longer, but he preferred the razor buzz cut. London was the perfect place to people watch and guess where they had traveled from, or perhaps where their great grandparents had originated. This was a true multicultural city, and one that embraced the stranger, since all were outsiders in some form. This was the Britain he loved and belonged to, the endless meshing of culture in the river of city life.
“Do you have any more information on the grave it came from?” Morgan asked, standing up straight. “Or if other grave objects were found with it?”
Blake shook his head. “The curator said that little is known about the staff, which is why he was happy for me to show it to you. Believe me, if he had known anymore, he would have scheduled several hours to talk to you himself.”
A flicker of dangerous thought surfaced in Blake’s mind as he spoke. He usually preferred to keep quiet about it, but he had an unusual gift that could perhaps help Morgan in her quest for knowledge. Some called it clairvoyance, others psychometry. In his darkest moments, Blake knew it for the curse that it was. Whatever its name, Blake could read objects through their emotional resonance. The gloves he wore protected him from accidental contact, but they also covered a patchwork of ivory scars, where his religious father had tried to beat the visions from him.
A babble of voices came from the main exhibition room, breaking their quiet study. Blake could hear the curator speaking loudly, his excitement at sharing his work causing his words to run into one another.
“The ship was built after 1025 AD and from stem to stern it’s thirty-six meters, which makes it the longest Viking ship ever discovered. We have calculated that there would have been thirty-nine pairs of oars, with seventy-eight rowers to serve them.”
Blake couldn’t help smiling at how bored the group must be with all the facts and figures, but it wasn’t often that the curator got to hold forth to so many. Most people just wanted to see the longswords, and the bones of the decapitated Vikings held in the central exhibit, clearly the result of a massacre. British pride perhaps, fighting back against the widely held belief that Vikings raped and plundered with no defiance from the local population.
Morgan was still examining the iron staff, so Blake pulled open the side door a crack, trying to catch a glimpse of the Neo-Viking group that the curator was escorting. There were several groups of other tourists in the exhibition hall, but the Neo-Vikings weren’t hard to spot. There were five men wearing rough-spun tunics over long trousers, wrapped round the middle with leather belts. They had fur skins over their shoulders, real ones by the look of them. Their faces were expressionless, even as they were shown the case of the Norse helmet and jawbone. One of the men wore a close-fitting tunic that revealed muscular arms, his left bicep tattooed with a raven in flight, its feathers entwined with rune letters. The man’s eyes darted around the room, taking in everyone’s position. He seemed strangely dissociated with what they were supposedly here to view.
The group shifted as they moved to the next case, revealing a woman in their midst. She could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, her features wrinkled but her skin glowing with an inner radiance. Her dark eyes were sharply focused on the curator, as if sucking his words into a bottomless pool. Her long gray hair was wound into a plait that hung down her back, with one blue streak that ran through it like the lapis lazuli jewelry held in the Egyptian rooms next door.
“The Neo-Vikings are here,” Blake said, turning back to Morgan with a smile. “They look pretty convincing, actually.”
She looked up at him just as an explosion shook the building and the high-pitched shriek of the emergency alarms filled the air.
Chapter 3
THE EXPLOSION WAS COMPLETELY unexpected in this hall of ancient knowledge, but Morgan’s military training kicked in and she pulled Blake to the floor, under the protection of the broad table while the alarm shrieked around them. In these old buildings, the threat of falling plaster and stone could be worse than any initial damage. Part of her expected more explosions.
“I’ve got to go and help with the evacuation,” Blake shouted above the wail of the alarm and the screaming voices from the exhibition hall. “We’ve got to get everyone out of here.”
He tried to get up, but Morgan pulled him back down.
“Wait,” she said. “In Israel, this kind of thing is part of our daily drill. You don’t run yet, because you could be running into something worse.”
Her mind flashed to her days in the IDF: the bomb attacks she had experienced, the soldiers she had treated for PTSD … her father’s body blown apart by a suicide bomber, a sack of oranges spilled on the road amongst severed limbs.
There was something very wrong here. She checked her phone – no reception. Then she heard it. In between the rhythmic siren noise, it was quiet. The screams had been silenced.
“Listen,” she whispered. “Next door.”
Blake cocked his head sideways. “Maybe the people have been evacuated?”
“Stay there. I’m going to have a look.”
Morgan scooted out from under the table and went to the door, pulling it open a tiny crack as Blake had done minutes before.
People lay on the floor, hands on their heads, while around the room, the Neo-Vikings stood with handguns drawn. The alarm suddenly stopped and the sound of smashing glass filled the room. There was a gasp from the floor.
“You can’t!”
A cry of pain followed as one of the men kicked the curator into silence.
Across the room, Morgan saw an older woman reach into a glass case. She lifted out one of the iron staffs and examined the surface before flinging it to the floor. The crash brought another collective gasp from the hostages. The woman took out the second staff, examining it with jerky movements, like an addict desperate for a fix.
“Where is it?” she said, quietly at first, her voice a Scottish lilt. “Where is the real staff?”
The woman spun around and Morgan saw burning fury in her eyes, her hands clenched into claws.
“Bring the curator here.”
As two of the big men dragged the curator from the floor, Morgan knew she only had seconds to make a decision. The woman wanted the staff of Skara Brae, but once she had it, what would she be able to do with it? Not so long ago, Morgan would have given up the lump of iron with no question. She would save these people from harm and the witch would leave with her staff. But Morgan’s perception of the world had changed after what she had seen with ARKANE. Sometimes darker things were at stake.
The men pushed the curator to his knees before the woman.
“The staff of power isn’t here,” she whispered. “Where is it?”
“How dare you come in here and threaten these people!” the curator blustered, straightening his spine, words infused with the pride of the British Empire. “This is the British Museum, a place for everybody to see these wonders, not your private shopping center.”
Morgan’s heart thumped in her chest at his foolhardy words. Couldn’t he see the intent in the old woman’s eyes? Could he only see a group he had laughed at with his colleagues this morning? With her military training, Morgan could probably stop some initial harm coming to the man, but there were too many of the Neo-Vikings and no backup. She was powerless to stop whatever might happen. She felt movement behind her and breath on her neck. Blake was at her side, watching through the gap over her shoulder. Adrenalin surging and senses heightened, Morgan felt the heat of him standing close to her, and smelled a hint of clean soap on his skin.
The old woman laughed and then began to chant, her voice morphing into that of the völva, the shamanic priestess. Her fingers wove in the air, spinning and dancing, as she spoke words of power that had long lay dormant. The Neo-Viking men looked at the floor as if scared to watch, but
the others in the room were captivated, staring at the woman. She looked mad, unhinged. Then, the rattle of bones filled the air and a gasp of horror rippled around the room.
From the pit of the slaughtered Vikings, the bones rose into the air, disjointed skeletons spinning above the hollow Viking ship, beginning to knit back together before their eyes. Morgan heard Blake’s sharp intake of breath next to her ear.
“I am the Valkyrie,” the woman said. “I am the Corpse Goddess who decides who lives and who dies, who comes to feast in Valhalla until Ragnarok.”
Some of the skeletons were missing heads, but they began to move in the air regardless, flexing bony joints, as if just waking up. Morgan blinked and rubbed her eyes. Part of her understood that the priestesses were fabled experts of illusion, but she could smell the decay; she could see the hacked ends of the men’s fingers, where they had tried to defend themselves against the slaughter so long ago.
“Your security has been overpowered,” the Valkyrie said. “All visitors and employees have been evacuated except for you, and my men will be spreading out through the museum. You’re all my hostages until I get that staff. Give it to me now, old man, and perhaps I won’t release the einherjar amongst you all.”
The curator’s eyes widened at this, and Morgan remembered from her research that the einherjar were a band of warriors who had died in battle and awaited the day of Ragnarok to herald the final war cry. Were these skeletal figures truly the vanguard of the woman’s ghostly army, or was it all just illusion?
Morgan pushed the door shut. There was no time to wait any longer. The curator would give them up any second.
“We have to go now,” she whispered, grabbing the staff from the table. “They want this and I’m afraid if we give it to them, things will get a whole lot worse.”
Blake’s face was a mask of confusion and wonder. Morgan saw the flicker of indecision in his eyes before he seemed to settle on trusting her.
“The emergency exit leads out to the back of the building onto Montague Place,” he said, pushing the exit door. “This way.”
They walked quickly away from the room to another door that led out to a main exit. Morgan pushed the door slightly and peeked through the gap. One of the Neo-Vikings stood guard there, one hand on the pommel of a broadsword and the other holding a gun.
Morgan pushed the door closed again. “We can’t get out this way.”
“Then we have to go up and over, across to the exits on the other side of the building,” Blake whispered.
The crash of a slamming door echoed through the corridor, followed by a roar of disappointment.
“Find them!” The Valkyrie’s words were followed by several sets of footsteps heading in their direction.
“This way,” Blake said, running up a staircase on light feet. Morgan ran after him, past mosaics from Halicarnassus and Carthage, the once-bright colors now dull with age. There were spiraling vines, dolphins leaping through the waves and Roman nobles feasting, crowned with laurel wreaths. Celebrate, Morgan thought, for tomorrow we die.
At the top of the stairs they turned into the upper galleries, where Egyptian death and afterlife were displayed and explained. The dead were bound in linen and laid in wooden cases, the inner caskets painted with the gods and symbols of prosperity in the everlasting. Their skin was burnished leather, features shrunken but still visible, even down to perfectly preserved eyelashes. Morgan shuddered. Skeletons were one thing, but she didn’t want these bodies coming to a semblance of life again.
The heavy footsteps were almost behind them now. There was no way they would get out without being caught.
“Down,” Morgan said, pushing Blake behind one of the display cases so he wouldn’t be seen. She spun around to stand just inside the door to the next room, next to an exhibit of shabti figures – servants for the afterlife in blue-glazed faience and serpentine. She held the iron staff high like a baseball bat ready to strike. If the old witch wanted it for death, maybe they should start with some of her own men.
The adrenalin pumped now and Morgan’s heart pounded. Once upon a time she had called it fear, but her years in the IDF had trained that out of her. Now, she called it anticipation. She itched to hit something, craving the rush that only violence could soothe. Life was simple when it came down to survival; movement into battle felt like a meditation. In a flash, she understood why the Vikings had roamed the world, raiding and exploring new places, and why perhaps these men craved the same existence.
A footstep came from just outside the doorway. As the first man walked through, Morgan swung the iron staff at his face, aiming behind his head. He leaned back in reaction, but the metal bar slammed into his nose anyway, the crunch of bone resounding in the empty hall. The man reeled, clutching his face, blood streaming through his fingers as he fell to his knees groaning.
A second Neo-Viking stood behind him, over six foot, a meaty man with piggy eyes who squinted at the staff as if he could barely see it.
“You defile the sacred,” he rasped. “Give it to me, bitch, and I may let you live.”
Morgan stood to face him, slamming the iron staff into her opposite palm. She smiled, her eyes cold.
“Come and get it.”
Chapter 4
AS THE MAN LUNGED for her, Morgan stepped back and used the staff to smash the exhibition case next to her, sending shards of glass flying. Momentarily blinded, he raised his hands to his face. Morgan used the rounded end of the staff to thrust at his throat with a lightning-fast movement. She forced herself to hold back at the last moment, with the realization that she didn’t want to kill the man, only leave him incapacitated.
The man’s face was a mix of surprise and terror, his eyes wide. He gasped for breath, one hand clutching at the broken edges of the display case, blood staining the ancient artifacts. His throat was already visibly swelling and bruising. Morgan waited with the staff raised, ready to knock him down, but he slumped to the floor, chest heaving as he tried to draw breath. The other man still clutched his broken nose, moaning against the wall in the other room. The edges of her rage bubbled, the righteous anger that emerged when she or those she loved were threatened. But she was learning to hold it back, and these men weren’t the true enemy.
Blake stepped out warily from behind the display case.
“You’re no academic, Dr. Sierra.” His voice had an edge of respect and a whole lot of curiosity in it.
“And these are no Viking warriors,” Morgan said, considering the men on the ground. “This should have been harder. But we should move, in case they send backup. These guys will be up and about, wanting some retribution soon enough.”
“This way.” Blake hurried off down the gallery, turning several times, past bearded warriors in sculptures from Mesopotamia and artifacts from the walls of Babylon. Morgan couldn’t help but look into the cases as they passed, glimpses of cuneiform engraved on tablets documenting the lives of those thousands of years ago. The academic in her wanted to look closer, but she would have to linger another time. Blake pulled out a bunch of keys as they approached a gallery that was closed for maintenance.
“We can go through here, and I’ll lock it behind us. Might hold them off for a while when the next lot come looking. There’s an archive storeroom that we can at least stop to think in.”
On the other side of the door, Morgan followed Blake through another gallery and up a little staircase to a door with multiple locks. She raised an eyebrow at the additional security while Blake fiddled with his keys, looking for the right ones.
“I got the keys a few months ago from one of the curators. It’s a great place to come and think when I need some space.”
Blake pushed open the door to the musty room, an archive of some of the less popular exhibits. Or those that they don’t want people to know about, Blake thought. He came here for silence and solitude, but also to read in private. Not books, but the objects themselves, losing himself in a world of past lives as a way to bring his own re
search alive. There were some who commented that his research papers were too fanciful, too full of character and possible scenarios for the objects he studied, but the grant money kept coming, so no one questioned his methods. So far, he had managed to keep his gift almost secret.
“They’ll struggle to find us here,” Blake said. “This room isn’t even on the plans.”
“It will be good to stop for a minute.” Morgan looked down at her phone, frowning in frustration. “Damn. There’s still no reception. They must have a signal jammer for the whole building.”
“The evacuation and alarms would have tipped off the police, so I’m sure there’s a host of emergency services and reporters outside.” He paused. “But you want ARKANE, right? Can they do something more than the police?”
Morgan sighed. “There’s more to ARKANE than just academics and conferences.”
“I got that from your ability to wield a metal club back there,” Blake grinned. “Most impressive. And to be honest, I’m far more interested in what ARKANE does now. Can you tell me anything about it?”
Morgan went silent for a moment, her eyes focusing on a faraway point. She shook her head.
“Not much, sorry. Only that we investigate supernatural mysteries, many of them around religious or cult objects like this one.” She held up the staff. “Most of what I’m involved in, you would struggle to believe.”