“Oh, you know, just another day at the office. And yours?”
“Ditto,” she answered with a smile, as Bunny dabbed the cut on Rebecca’s forehead.
# # #
SHIVA
Prologue
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Montserrat, Spain
694 AD
Vasco Borgona’s soul would be damned until the End of Days and beyond if he did not finish his glorious task. Vasco squinted at his carving as the candlelight flickered, the wick nearly drowned in melted wax. How long had he been gone from his bed?
His joints ached from the cold, but still, he could not force himself away from the eyes that stared back at him. Dark. Haunting. Instead, Vasco drew the rough-spun blanket tighter around his shoulders.
Sleep could wait. A roaring fire could wait. The wooden sculpture could not. Vasco hadn’t traveled from village to village, never staying longer than a fortnight before leaving his humble abode to melt into the wilderness, carrying only the statue and the tools necessary to create it, to wait upon sleep Those who sought to destroy his work had the coin and determination to follow him to hell and back.
In truth, it was not just his enemies who kept Vasco from a sound slumber. Those who had commissioned the sculpture were as fierce and possibly even more deadly than those sworn to destroy him and his work. A chill, not of the northerly wind that whistled through the thatched roof, coursed down Vasco’s back.
Still, he could not turn away from the carving. Each time he looked into the woman’s eyes, he found himself warmed. It had taken him nearly a year to achieve the exact curve of her cheek. He placed his hand against the wood. Was it his imagination, or did his palm tingle each time he touched her beauty?
It was said the model for his sculpture had been Tzipora, Moses’s wife. Vasco did not know the veracity of such things. He had only received a sketch on an ancient piece of parchment, along with a deerskin full of coin. He had been a simple artist, his belly aching from hunger, so happy for the gold he did not question as to why his benefactors had wanted such a carving or how endangered his life would become if he dared lay chisel to wood.
Vasco let his hand drop away from the sculpture. How many times had he cursed his luck? How many times had he wished to go back and spit upon that deerskin?
Yet, knowing all that he did, Vasco would still have taken the commission. How could he not? How could he have gone on living without bringing this creation to life from the wood of five different trees?
Now all that was to be done was the final painting of her dress. Then she would be ready to be introduced to the world.
Vasco dabbed his paintbrush in the pool of gold flakes mixed with his own spittle. Long after his name died upon people’s tongues, a part of him would still be with the wooden woman he had come to love better than any lady made of flesh and blood.
He did not get the opportunity to lay down a single stroke, as the thin slat door burst open, bringing with it a slap of mountain air. Vasco turned, raising an arm to shield his eyes from the burning torches. His sword lay not a few feet away, yet Vasco did not bother to lunge for it. Not with the hatred in the intruder’s eyes. Not with the silver cross that glistened on the man’s chest. Despite the symbol of eternal life, Vasco would find no mercy here.
The man’s blade slid into Vasco’s flesh so easily he almost could not believe it to be a mortal blow. But as the sword came out of his belly with a wet slosh, Vasco knew his end was near. Others rushed in behind the attacker, knocking cups from the shelf, setting his straw bed alight.
Clutching his belly, Vasco slumped to his knees, splashing blood onto his nightshirt as the attacker stood before him, unmoved, unmoving. Flames crackled all around. His small abode consumed in fire. The attacker turned from Vasco and raised his sword over the carving.
Vasco tried to reach out to protect the statue, but all he succeeded in doing was falling onto his side. Helpless to stop the man, the blade came down upon the wood, splitting the babe in the lady’s arms from her embrace. Not satisfied to part a child from his mother, the man swung the sword again, cleaving the woman’s head from her body. The wooden head bounced off the table, landing near Vasco.
Such hatred in a man supposedly walking the righteous path of God.
Then with the same swiftness they had entered his world, shattering it, they left. Only the roar of the fire and the burning in his belly marked their passing. Vasco could hear shouts and cries from the street. Not for him or his creation, but for the flames. A fire as this could spread throughout the homes, ravaging the entire village.
As flames licked his feet, Vasco kept his eyes forward, looking into the lady’s face that he had so very carefully carved. From the corner of her perfect eyes, bright red streamed down her face, making it look as if she cried blood. The burgundy a stark contrast to her ebony skin. So like the color of Moses’s Ethiopian wife.
Vasco should have known they would never allow his dark Mother to survive.
His sole comfort was in the fact that this was not his first Black Madonna. Nay. This was a second statue. The first long in the hands of his benefactors.
Despite the raging fire, cold took hold of Vasco, numbing his body, stilling his heart.
His last sight, that of this dark Virgin.
Mankind’s last hope at salvation.
CHAPTER 1
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Cathedral Parish, South Carolina
August 26, 2:38 p.m. (EST)
Dr. Rebecca Monroe tried to ignore the bustling around her. Instead, she stared at the reflection in the mirror. It was so strange to see her blonde hair swept away from her face. And not in a loose, messy ponytail, either. The hairdresser had used enough hair spray and bobby pins to keep her notoriously difficult-to-manage curls under control. Her eyes seemed to float in the reflection, with enough black eyeliner to make an ancient Egyptian queen happy.
Was this really her? Was this really happening? Then she looked down at her long white wedding dress. Okay, not exactly pure white. She was in her thirties, and Brandt had just received an annulment from a woman who claimed to be carrying his baby. So pure white seemed a stretch. Bone white seemed a far more appropriate color. For many, many reasons.
“Don’t you dare start crying,” Bunny said, nudging Rebecca away from the mirror. “You’ve just got to make it twenty-one more minutes.”
Dear God, she was getting married in less than a half hour? Tears threatened. She struggled against them, but it was futile. After everything Brandt and she had been through? Chased across continents. Hunted by religious zealots. Hounded by ruthless mercenaries.
In the mirror’s reflection, Bunny smiled, helping to tuck one loose blonde strand back into its proper place. The younger woman’s bright-red hair also had that sheen only a can of hair spray could produce. Despite trying to keep an upbeat attitude about the day, Rebecca couldn’t help but notice Bunny’s lean frame and young, “I don’t need a support garment” bustline.
Despite the fact her maid of honor was clothed in a rather uncomplimentary peach-colored bridesmaid dress, Bunny radiated beauty. And if anything, the other two bridesmaids, Brandt’s younger sisters, were even prettier. Not beauty pageant pretty. But “I swept all the categories in the pageant” kind of pretty.
Both were slim with rich dark hair. Rebecca wasn’t the prettiest one in the room. Hell, she wasn’t even in the top five.
What did Brandt see in her? He had grown up around Southern sophistication. He was used to women who were actual ladies. Rebecca’s skin chaffed at the lace edging her dress, and seriously, who wore panty hose in Charleston in August? With a full-length skirt and four-foot train, who the hell was going to see her legs?
But Brandt’s mother had been quite insistent. Actually, she had been quite insistent on everything. From the peach bridesmaids gowns to the nylons to the flowers in Rebecca’s bouquet. Nothing about this wedding ha
d been decided by Rebecca, and you know what? Rebecca was more than happy about it. She would have just eloped, but Brandt had family, and by God, his family wanted a Southern wedding.
“Oops,” Bunny said, pointing out a red scrape along Rebecca’s temple. A wound courtesy of a little “outing” Bunny and she had taken earlier in the week. It had begun as a simple research trip to Iceland. The theory had been to do some research into a strange Viking connection with the Disciples of Moshe, the religious fanatics who had plagued them across Europe. Of course, nothing had gone routine about the trip.
But maybe that was what Brandt saw in her. An ability to take a head blow and not faint—or at least not for long.
Bunny turned to one of Brandt’s stunning sisters. Rebecca was still trying to figure out which was which. “Hand me a little cover up, would you?”
As Bunny applied the extra makeup, an itch sprang up in Rebecca’s foot and traveled up her calf, settling in her knee. She knew the rules about breathing, let alone moving in her elaborate wedding dress, but she couldn’t help it. Rebecca reached her hand down, but before a single finger could touch the fabric, a whip-slender woman rushed across the room.
“No, no, no, dear,” Mrs. Brandt chided with a Southern drawl. How come if people said things with that drawl you couldn’t take offense to it? “You must pick up the dress at the sides so that you don’t crease the chiffon.”
Little did her mother-in-law-to-be know that Rebecca had almost dared to scratch the fabric. Rebecca decided to keep that little gem of a plan to herself. Because Mrs. Brandt turned out to terrify Rebecca more than any of the aforementioned threats combined.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Rebecca mumbled.
“Do not ma’am me, young lady,” Mrs. Brandt corrected in that silky-smooth tone, scolded as only a Southerner could. “Call me Mama.”
Yeah, that was never going to happen.
“Oh no,” one of the sisters exclaimed. “There’s a piece of lint!”
Apparently, in wedding day mode, that constituted a five-alarm emergency. Brandt’s other sister—Kaydria, Rebecca thought—dove for the lint brush as Mrs. Brandt took a magnifying glass, an actual magnifying glass, to the wedding dress.
Okay, this was shaping up to be the longest twenty-one minutes of her life. It seemed the entire family was trying to wipe away the memory of Brandt’s first awkward overseas marriage by putting on the largest, most glamorous wedding Charleston had ever seen.
Which wasn’t easy to do, given it was Charleston and this was the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, the largest church on the southern seaboard. This dressing room alone had enough gilded crosses to give the Vatican a run for its money, and Rebecca would know.
“Don’t worry,” Bunny whispered. “None of it dates before the eighteenth century.” The younger woman gave a wink. “I checked.”
And Bunny would know as well. The redhead was nearly as well versed in proto-Christianity as Rebecca. Which had come in handy several times in the past few months.
Still, Rebecca felt compelled to study the religious icons to assess if there wasn’t some deeper, hidden code buried in them rather than preparing to get married.
Get married.
Okay, those two words were really starting to freak her out.
Bunny must have sensed Rebecca’s rising anxiety, as she tried to herd the Brandt women to the door. “I think the bride might need a little air.”
It looked like Rebecca might get a reprieve from all of the clucking when Holly, Brandt’s youngest sister, burst into the room. “They’re still not here!”
The other women dropped Rebecca’s dress and rushed over to the teen.
“What do you mean?” Mrs. Brandt demanded. “Vincent said they were stuck in traffic and going to be a tad late”—she looked to her silver watch—”but the groomsmen should be in position by now.”
“Yes,” Bunny encouraged, “why don’t you go see about that?”
In a rustle of satin, the mother of the groom and three of Rebecca’s bridesmaids rushed from the room as Bunny closed the door behind them.
“They’ll be here on time,” Bunny reassured her.
Of that, Rebecca wasn’t so sure. This was Brandt, after all. If any man on the planet could find a way to get in some kind of international trouble on his wedding day, it was her fiancé.
The only thing Rebecca was certain of was that the men weren’t stuck in a traffic jam.
With Lopez driving, that was an absolute impossibility.
* * *
Sergeant Vincent Brandt clutched the machine gun to his chest as his other hand grabbed hold of the train car’s panel to keep himself from being hurled out the window. Yes, he was clutching a machine gun on his wedding day. That didn’t stop the train from nearly derailing as it took a sixty-degree turn at sixty miles an hour. Physics was not their friend today.
“Slow it down!” Brandt yelled to Lopez but knew that it was futile. Especially as the corporal lashed out a hand to catch the video camera before it slid off the console.
“Gotcha!” Lopez announced, not to Brandt, but to the camera as he set it up again.
Another one of Operation’s bright ideas. Filming their missions. Even though the brand-spanking-new Ricoh military spec camera was solid state, eyes-only encrypted, with a self-destruct module, Brandt thought it was possibly the worst idea to come along since, well, since ever. And it didn’t help that Lopez was already a little too Evil Kinievel for Brandt’s tastes, but now? Now that he was being filmed for posterity? Forget about it.
But the upper brass’s new thing was accountability. They wanted proof of a mission’s objectives. Brandt thought if they wanted that kind of deal, they might want to come out in the field with his team for a week. Strangely, no one took him up on his offer.
The crack of a shot came from the right as Davidson cursed under his breath. Clearly, the private hadn’t hit his driver of the train car in front of them. How could he? The kid was good—damned good. However, the train they chased was just a speck on the horizon. And strong winds coming in from the east were making any long-distance shot reliant on prayer.
Davidson pulled himself back into the car and stretched out his scarred fingers, shaking off the pain. How the kid could shoot at all after all those burns was amazing. The fact he could outshoot most snipers with ten years his training? That was about as near a miracle as you could get. Brandt’s lips turned down as he studied the melted ruin of Davidson’s left cheek.
Had that fire truly transformed the sniper? There were times Brandt felt the old trust building, then Davidson would take a single step out of place, and it would be shattered. Brandt wished he could wipe that memory of Davidson pointing a gun at Rebecca away, burn it to ashes, but it refused to be uprooted. Was the sniper reformed or just a scorpion biding his time?
“Throw on more wood!” Lopez yelled over the clacking of the train, snapping Brandt back to the present.
Picking a steam-powered antique train as their chase vehicle hadn’t been the most efficient choice, but it was what they had, so they had to make it work. Ahead of them, a stolen train car filled with live munitions was booking it.
“Levont!” Brandt ordered. “You heard the man!”
The team’s new point man bent over, grabbed a large log, and tossed it into the old-fashioned furnace. The burly guy made it look easy. The train picked up speed, hurling down the tracks of an abandoned railway on the north side of the Charleston Naval Weapons Station.
“Nineteen minutes!” Talli shouted.
Damn it. The naval base had over three thousand active-duty personal, yet here Brandt and his team were, chasing down the bad guys. The upper brass was worried that this string of ammunitions thefts were inside jobs, hence why they had no military back up. And now, with less than twenty minutes to go before his wedding? Typical.
There was absolutely nothing Brandt could do to speed up the chase as the Charleston countryside rolled past. Thick grass blanketed the meadows h
emmed in only by the weeping willows. It smelled green. Not that muted, dusty green of the rest of the world, but that bright, shiny green he’d only found in South Carolina. It smelled like home.
“Watch it!” Davidson snapped at Talli. “If you can’t get a shot through the window, don’t take it.”
The team’s “official” sniper bristled at the rebuke. However, Brandt backed their “unofficial” yet infinitely more talented sniper. Ever since Davidson had rejoined the team, Talli had been trying too hard. Which was not helping the man’s accuracy one damned bit.
Honestly, Brandt doubted Talli had been targeting the train car itself. In truth, Brandt was pretty sure Talli had meant to hit the window. The man kept trying to take shots outside his range to keep up with Davidson. Which just wasn’t going to happen.
Normally, Brandt would let it slide. He would let Talli find his footing. The problem was, right now, Talli’s quest to prove himself could get them all blown up.
“Look, we’ve got no idea where they’ve stored the stolen ordnance,” Brandt said, trying to use his sensitivity training. The upper brass was now also all for caring about feelings. Brandt was supposed to be careful not to deflate Talli’s ego. He failed miserably. “It’s the engineering window or nothing.”
Talli’s jaw clenched as he lowered his eye back to his scope. Brandt noticed, though, that Talli didn’t fire. Good man.
Davidson took several more shots, all equally unsuccessful. Brandt squinted. Were they catching up? Had the other train car slowed? Or had they sped up?
Then Davidson’s rifle snapped up. “Crap.”
“What?”
“They’re stopping,” the private reported.
“Great!” Lopez whooped.
“No,” Davidson said, shaking his head. “They’re stopping because the tracks end up ahead.”
Not even Lopez could find the silver lining in that. Not with their brakes shot. Gone. Done. Nonexistent.
Brandt turned to Levont. “Any luck?”
The tall black man shoved another log into the furnace as he indicated with his head to the antique control panel. “Maybe if we had Henry Ford to help…”
The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection Page 91