by Alex Archer
“Yeah, just coming.” She picked up Annja Creed’s card from the desk and pocketed it. Maybe they would have to talk, after all.
Geraint stood outside the study. He had a piece of paper in his hand but seemed reluctant to hand it over when she held her hand out for it.
“You found her?”
“It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be actually. I’ve not been able to access the recording of the call itself. But I’ve got the number.”
“You are sure this is it?”
He nodded. “Certain. It’s the only emergency services call that went through the cell tower all day.”
“My brilliant brother.” Awena kissed him on the cheek and took hold of the piece of paper, but Geraint didn’t let go.
“I want you to promise me you’re not going to do anything stupid.”
“Promise. I just want to talk to her. Whoever she is.” Awena took the scrap of paper from him and checked the number. Then she tucked the paper into her purse behind the card that Annja had given her.
It took her a moment to realize that the number was the same.
Chapter 28
“Annja?”
Annja did not recognize the number on the caller ID. The voice didn’t help, either.
“Yep.”
“It’s Awena. Awena Llewellyn. You came by the house before?”
“Ah, right. What can I do for you, Awena?”
“Sorry if I was rude. It was a hell of a day. I really wasn’t myself.”
“No need to apologize. Honestly. And you weren’t being rude, all things considered. I’m only sorry I added to your troubles.”
“You didn’t. I was more annoyed with my idiot brother than anything else. You were just in the firing line.”
“Let’s forget it, shall we? Chalk it up to bad timing.”
It couldn’t have been easy for Awena to make the call. Harder still for her to ask what she was obviously about to ask. “I know that this is short notice, but Geraint’s out this morning and I’m at a bit of a loose end. I’ve been thinking about Dad a lot, obviously, and, well, if you want to come around I’ll be happy to talk to you about my father’s work. It would be good to talk to someone who understands what drove him on.”
It saved Annja having to find an excuse in order to contact her, though good fortune like this tended to set alarm bells ringing. It was mighty convenient that the woman felt guilty and wanted to chat, but her father had just died, after all, and Annja was offering a tantalizing way of keeping him alive a little longer, with a window for the world to watch and appreciate his grail quest. “Absolutely,” she replied. “I’d love to, but you really don’t have to.”
“Oh, I know, but I want to.”
“Okay, then, I’ll be over in an hour or so.”
“Look forward to it.” There was something about how she said those last words that made Annja’s skin crawl.
Still, needs must. She had to find the sword and the whetstone. There was a good chance they were in that place, or that clues to their whereabouts were. That meant she had to get into that house, and if a few hours in the company of a creepy young woman was the cost of doing that, then spend a few hours in the company of a creepy young woman she would.
An hour later she drove the Porsche up the long slow incline of the drive once more, still unsure how this was likely to play out.
Awena was on the balcony, waiting for her just as her brother had been on her last visit. She’d almost certainly been keeping watch for her visitor, rather than enjoying the late-summer sun. She waved, then disappeared back inside, reappearing at the door a minute later.
“I’m so glad you came,” Awena said, leading Annja inside the house. “I didn’t fancy the idea of being alone this morning, you know? Besides, I rarely get to talk about my father’s work. Geraint has no interest in it at all. If anything, he blames it for ruining his life and taking Dad away from us.”
“He blames it for his death?”
She shook her head. “We lost him a long time before he died. He’d leave us with a nanny and disappear for weeks on end before coming back empty-handed and down. Gradually the trips away became longer and longer. I’d lost track of how long he was away this last time. Maybe a year. Then he just came back out of the blue. He hadn’t even phoned for months. He looked a mess. Like he’d been living rough. He hadn’t had a shave or a haircut in God knows how long. I didn’t even recognize him at first.”
“It can’t have been easy for you.”
“It wasn’t easy for either of us, but we just got on with it. Anyway, you haven’t come here to talk about my broken home and lonely childhood. Why don’t I make us drinks and we can go up to his study while you tell me all about this program you want to make about Dad’s work?”
“Sounds great, but I should warn you—it’s only a vague idea at the moment, and just a segment, not an entire program.”
Awena rattled around the kitchen, setting the kettle to boil and dropping a couple of honeydew tea bags into oversize cups.
“Right, so...I have to admit I’ve not seen the show...Chasing History’s Monsters? It doesn’t sound like Dad.”
“Well, the show’s about more than that, obviously. That’s only meant to get people’s attention. I understand that your father’s research was into the Matter of Britain, and Gerald of Wales in particular.”
“I would ask how you could possibly know that, but I guess you’ve got teams of researchers looking for good stories.”
Annja smiled. “Something like that, but I do my own research.”
“Ah. I should have known that you would.... So where does Dad fit into this?”
Annja decided that there was no point in beating about the bush. She needed to lead Awena in the direction she wanted her to take, and treat this pretty much as she’d treat any other prospective story.
All business, she said, “I heard a rumor he might have discovered the final resting place of Gerald?”
“How could you possibly know that?” Awena asked. Her response came a little too quickly, and a little too sharply, for Annja’s liking.
Too far, too quick. She backed down a little. There was no point lying.
“Like I said, it was a rumor. I don’t tend to believe stuff like that, hence hoping to talk to him. I mean, finding that grave would be a major archaeological discovery, worthy of a show in and of itself, you know?”
“Ah,” Awena replied with a shrug, as though she did indeed know. “Sorry to disappoint, but no, Dad hadn’t found any lost graves or anything quite so glamorous.” The kettle whistled and she poured boiling water into the huge cups, offering one to Annja. “He did, however, bring something home with him. Shall we go up?”
“Lead the way,” Annja said.
She followed the young woman up the stairs, getting a good look at the house for the first time. There were paintings on the wall going upstairs chronicling the history of the place. At the top of the stairs, Awena turned to look down at her, then crossed the landing quickly to open the study door.
Annja saw the whetstone lying in pride of place on the desk in the book-lined room. The room was stuffed to overflowing with papers, maps and promises, but none of them interested her.
“This was his room. He called it the heart of the house. He used to spend hours in here when he was home,” Awena said wistfully. She picked up a notebook from the desk and riffled through the pages. “He wrote everything down. Every thought he had about the treasures. Sometimes, when I was younger, he would let me sit with him while he worked. He would show me some of the wonderful old drawings he’d found. He even tried to teach me bits of Latin, hoping I’d follow in his footsteps.”
“It sounds like he was quite a scholar.”
“He was. The newspapers ran articles on him a long ti
me ago, making out that he was a crackpot, but he wasn’t. He took it all seriously. He was dedicated to the search. It was important to him because it was our heritage. It used to upset him that other people just didn’t seem to care anymore. But not Dad, he cared. He was Welsh and damned proud to be Welsh. And I wanted to be just like him.” Awena smiled, and for the first time Annja could see the truth that she really was her father’s daughter. She had that same slightly manic-obsessive gleam to her eye.
“Is that what he found?” Annja asked, inclining her head toward the whetstone. She couldn’t resist turning the conversation around to treasure, but Awena put herself between Annja and the desk, obscuring it from her view for a moment.
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but first, I need to ask you a question.”
“Sure. What do you want to know?” Annja asked, thinking it would be something about how the show worked, maybe if they’d be paid for her father’s research, something like that.
“Why did you watch my father die?”
It was a simple question.
She didn’t have the answer.
Annja felt her heartbeat quicken, convinced that it must have been loud enough for the woman to hear it.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s a simple enough question, and I don’t think you are stupid. Why did you watch my father die? Don’t lie to me, Annja. I know you called for the ambulance. And I know you didn’t try to help him. So why did you watch him die? Why didn’t you at least attempt to save him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She started to deny it all, stumbling to find the words to satisfy Llewellyn’s grieving daughter.
“Yes, you do. I know it was you.”
Annja was torn between lying through her teeth and telling the truth about what had happened.
“It was an accident,” she lied, willing the woman to believe her. “He was going too fast. He didn’t see me coming in the other direction. He tried to react, but the road wasn’t wide enough. It was bad out there. You have to understand that—it was in the worst of the storm. He lost control and went over the edge. There was nothing I could do. Nothing anyone could have done.”
“Really? Nothing?” Awena seemed to think about this for a moment. Tears weren’t far away. “What kind of car were you driving? Not that flashy sports car you’re in now. Geraint told me he saw you crossing the Severn Bridge. You were in a different car.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters!” she screamed. The tears she’d been trying so hard to keep in check were of anger and rage, not sadness and sorrow. “You could have saved him. You let him die. So yes, it matters. You drove away. You didn’t wait. You didn’t go down and help him. Your car was damaged, wasn’t it? That’s why you drove away. You didn’t want the police asking questions. What did you do with the car? Burn it?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Annja said, wanting to explain. “Really, it wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t it? What was it like, then? Tell me. I want to hear all about it. Make me feel like I was there.”
“I don’t—”
“No, I don’t suppose you do. So tell me, Mizz Creed, what were you doing on that road, anyway? Don’t pretend that you were lost. I don’t believe that for a second. So how about you do us both a favor and stick to the truth?”
There was a freakish intensity to her now, her words coming with the rhythm of a beat poet, anger making her grow until she seemed to metaphorically dwarf Annja. There wouldn’t be any reasoning with her. She was laying all of the blame at Annja’s feet.
What she couldn’t do was lie her way out of this.
“He was trying to kill me,” she confessed. The truth. The whole truth.
“You dirty liar!”
Annja shook her head. “He tried to run me off the road,” she said. “It was an accident.”
“Don’t make me laugh. Dad didn’t have a bad bone in his body.”
“Really? Is that what you think? Is that what you really think? Because if it is, then you didn’t know the man he became. A few days ago he murdered someone to get his hands on a sword.”
Awena turned to look at the stone on the desk. It wasn’t a conscious move; it had happened when Annja mentioned the sword. There was no sign of the blade, but it had to be in here somewhere, she realized. Any sign of hesitation could prove lethal, but tipping her hand and becoming the aggressor would push what she’d hoped would be a reconnaissance mission into a full-on combat situation. And that wasn’t why she was here.
Awena left the desk and walked over to the window. She stared out through the glass. Annja watched the steady rise and fall of the woman’s chest, waiting for her to say something. To react.
She didn’t.
Not for the longest time.
“I don’t believe you,” she said finally, without turning around. “You are a liar. You want the sword, don’t you? That’s why you killed him. You want to take it. Well, I won’t let you.”
Annja hadn’t seen her hand move behind the thick velvet curtain, but when she turned, the young woman clutched the hilt of Giraldus Cambrensis’s sword, and she looked ready to kill.
“You don’t have to do this,” Annja said calmly.
“Don’t I?” Awena said oh-so-sweetly.
The blade changed as she raised it.
A trail of blue flames licked along the cutting edge until the entire length of the ancient blade was enveloped in fire.
Why does this always happen to me? Annja thought, pushing herself up out of the comfortable leather armchair to face the woman. Just once it’d be a change to have a nice quiet vacation somewhere. That’s not too much to ask, surely?
The woman trembled, every corded muscle in her arm struggling with the weight of the sword and the implications of what taking the first swing meant.
“You’re not a killer,” Annja said. “I’ve met killers. Believe me, you aren’t one and you don’t want to be one. It does something to your soul.”
“You’d know, wouldn’t you?” Awena rasped. “You killed my father, after all.”
The flame surged, the sheer blue of it intensifying, casting a ghostly glow across everything in the room.
“Don’t. You don’t have to do this,” Annja said, taking a step back, trying to put the armchair between them.
“Do you believe in the nature of balance, Annja?” Awena asked. She sounded calm, but it was a dangerous sort of calm. The calm of a woman on the edge.
Annja still hoped she could talk her down. She didn’t want to fight a grief-stricken woman simply because she didn’t believe her father had killed Roux’s friend and tried to kill Annja.
“Counterparts? Like salt and pepper. Yin and yang. Day and night. Black and white. These things go together. They are natural. One cannot exist without the other, like good and evil, life and death. The world needs balance.”
“I can see that,” Annja agreed, wanting to sound reasonable.
“I’m glad you understand. You see, there must be balance in all things. Where there is crime there must be punishment. You took his life. That is a crime. You have to face the consequences of your actions to keep the world in balance. You must be punished. An eye for an eye, if you prefer.”
Awena planned to kill her. She’d planned to kill her even as she’d made the call to invite her over to the remote hillside house. For a second Annja regretted her own small gesture of humanity; if she hadn’t called the ambulance there would have been nothing to trace back to her. However the woman had managed it, that didn’t matter: she had and she’d never intended for Annja to leave this meeting alive. It was some sort of righteous showdown in her head. Good versus Evil. Capital G capital E.
Awena shrieked and launched herself across the room, lashing out wildly with th
e ancient sword. Annja barely evaded the blow, stumbling in the process as she scrambled backward.
She needed to defend herself.
She didn’t want to kill the woman, just subdue her. Disarm her. If her anger evaporated, surely she could be made to understand it was just an accident.
Awena lashed out again, driving her back. Annja’s foot came down on an old leather journal that had been discarded, and the pages shifted beneath her weight, sliding out from beneath her. Annja went sprawling across the floor with Awena looming over her every bit as wild-eyed as her dead father had ever been.
As she hit the ground all of the air left her and she gasped for breath.
It’s some kind of madness, she thought, feeling the heat of Awena Llewellyn’s blade on her arm as she reached out into the otherwhere, willing Joan’s sword into her hand. She’s caught it, just like her old man.
She heard a scream, but didn’t realize it came from her own twisted lips.
The pain only lasted a moment as the blue flame scorched her skin.
It was more than long enough for Awena Llewellyn to drop onto Annja’s chest, pinning her arms, as she brought the firebrand sword up to rest its burning heat against her cheek. The madness in her eyes was every bit as real as the fire’s heat.
There’s no reasoning with madness.
And then a second thought: this isn’t going to end well.
“It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye, Annja,” Awena said, pushing the edge of the blade up toward Annja’s eyes. The writhing blue flame crept up across her line of sight, filling her vision.
The pain was incredible.
It was beyond bearing.
Annja shrieked and arced her back, trying desperately to dislodge the woman from on top of her. She bucked and writhed, lashing out like a bronco, but the woman clung on, pushing more and more weight behind the blade resting on Annja’s face, burning, burning, burning....
“An eye for an eye,” she said, and there was nothing sane in her voice now. “I’m a literal kind of girl, Mizz Creed.”
Annja felt the pressure ease and the pain diminish from searing to simply agonizing. Then she realized that Awena had lifted the sword intending to pluck out her eye with it or else drive the blade though it into the back of her skull. She didn’t have a chance to think; she had to react. The bucking had freed her right hand from beneath Awena’s weight, and Annja felt Joan’s sword in her hand even as she saw the slashing blade come down. She barely stopped the killing blow inches from her face, metal sparking on metal as the two swords came together.