by Alex Archer
A bit of hope and excitement dawned in Melanie, curbing some of the monster that was struggling to get free inside her. De Cerceau was so good at providing for her. She was lucky she’d met him and he loved her so much. “That sounds awesome.”
“Where can I find Krauzer?”
“He’s probably with that woman. Annja.” Melanie struggled to think, but it was hard to do while she was sitting there sweating and freezing. “She’s a consultant Krauzer brought in. But she’s tricky, too. She knocked out Barney and made it look easy.”
De Cerceau smiled at her. “I’m not Barney.”
“I know.” Melanie smiled at him. “I just want you to be prepared.”
“Do you know what hotel she’s staying at?”
Melanie shook her head, but the motion only made her head ache. “No.” She thought some more because de Cerceau looked disappointed in her. “Wait. I know where she might be. She made Krauzer promise to let her examine the scrying crystal.”
“Why did she want to do that?”
“I overheard her talking about the crystal to some professor at SoCal.” Melanie dug for the name. It had sounded like some kind of whale... “Orta. He’s a professor of history or something. While we were waiting for the police to get there, she talked to him and asked if they could swing by tonight.”
“They’re going to the university?”
“Yeah.”
A frown crinkled de Cerceau’s eyes.
“Is something wrong?” Melanie asked.
The frown went away and he shook his head. “Nothing, baby. You don’t worry about anything. I have to be going, but I’ll see you in the morning. Just remember, don’t say anything to anyone until you hear from me.” He hung up the phone and blew her a kiss.
She mimed catching the kiss and smiled at him.
When he was gone, she felt completely empty.
She got up and followed the guard back to her cell.
* * *
OUTSIDE THE JAIL, Ligier de Cerceau walked toward the waiting dark blue Mercedes-Benz sedan. The driver got out, opened the back door and allowed de Cerceau inside.
“Thank you, Gerard.”
“Of course, Colonel.” Stocky and well dressed, Gerard Malouel was, like his employer, former Brigade des Forces Spéciales Terre.
As such, they’d served in the French army’s special forces unit. Both had undertaken missions in Operation Heracles in Afghanistan. That was where de Cerceau had discovered how much money could be made finding and selling relics. He and the core of his team—then and now, after they’d gone into business for themselves—had stumbled across a group of relic hunters, killed them and found out what the items they were smuggling out of the country were worth.
That discovery had been life changing. These days de Cerceau still did mercenary work, but he made a lot of money dealing in artifacts, as well. He didn’t care anything for antiquities, but he liked the money collectors of those things would pay for pieces they coveted.
Gerard slid behind the steering wheel. “Where to, Colonel?”
“The University of Southern California.”
Gerard pressed buttons on the GPS as he pulled out of the parking area and onto North Los Angeles Street. “Did everything go well with the woman?”
“She’s going to keep her mouth shut for a while, but she’s suffering from drug withdrawal.”
Gerard considered that for a moment. Then he shifted in his seat. “That doesn’t make her sound very trustworthy.”
“She’s not.” De Cerceau checked his email on his phone and discovered a new text from SEEKER4318. He didn’t know who was behind the name, but the man paid well and on time. He was new to de Cerceau, but he’d been vouched for by a past buyer.
SEEKER4318: Retrieve the object and I will happily pay you the amount we discussed.
De Cerceau responded, I will have it in my hands soon.
“Do you know anyone who can arrange something for Melanie?” de Cerceau asked.
“The women’s section of the jail can be a little harder to set up than the men’s, but I’m sure I can find someone. There are plenty of violent women in jail, and some of them are more cold-blooded than their male counterparts.”
De Cerceau agreed. In his business, he’d dealt with many dangerous women. “Get it done as soon as you can. I don’t want her talking to anyone and complicating this.”
Gerard nodded and pulled out his smartphone.
De Cerceau occupied himself with organizing a team for the USC part of the operation. He also wondered who Seeker was. The man had responded immediately when Melanie had posted pictures of the scrying crystal on the internet.
Glancing outside the tinted window, de Cerceau watched downtown LA speed by him, waiting for the call to be picked up at the other end.
* * *
WITH THE HARD-DRIVING sound of the Sex Pistols reverberating off the walls in the next room, SEEKER4318 stared at the young woman lying bound and gagged on the motel bed. Excitement thrilled through him as it always did when he had a woman helpless before him.
This one was in her mid-to late twenties and was trim and athletic, strong enough and quick enough to make kidnapping her in the parking lot of her apartment building difficult. But he’d watched her for weeks, and he’d known her schedule. All he’d had to do was lie in wait with a stun gun and grab her when she fell. He hunted regularly, but after finding out about the glass ball made by Julio Gris, he’d accelerated his schedule.
He needed a kill to calm himself.
The panicked woman struggled on the king-size bed. Usually a victim’s attempts to escape would have excited him even more.
But his anticipation was blunted. The news from de Cerceau gave reason to be hopeful that Julio Gris’s Key of Shadows would soon be in his hands. Everything else paled by comparison.
He sat beside the woman on the bed but didn’t try to touch her. Even still, she managed to push herself away a few inches.
“Don’t worry,” he told her and smiled. “I’m not going to defile you. I’m not interested in that. Do you know what heruspicy is?” he asked.
She didn’t say anything, due to the gag, but he liked the sound of his own voice.
“Do you believe in fortune-telling? Ever read your horoscope and tried to see if the day was going to go as it predicted? Surely you’ve done that.”
Cautiously, the woman nodded. Tears tracked down her face, and he knew she was trying to please him. He didn’t like when they did that. He wanted hopeful fighters, women who denied their own mortality even when it stared them in the face.
“Ah, you have read your horoscope?”
She nodded but didn’t try to talk through the gag.
“Sometimes they come true, you know.”
Shaking, she nodded again.
“Well, heruspicy is a lot like that. It’s a way to foretell the future. The Romans practiced it. But you still don’t know what it is, do you?”
She shook her head.
“It’s the practice of slitting open a sacrificial creature and reading its entrails. You do know what entrails are, right?”
The woman knew.
Frantic, she struggled against her bonds again but only ended up exhausted. SEEKER4318 allowed her to fight because she would tire herself out and that would make her easier to deal with in the end.
Finally, drained, panting for breath, the woman lay in a quivering mass on the bed. Nobody had heard the noise she’d made while struggling over the blaring punk music in the next unit.
Anxious to see what the future held, SEEKER4318 plunged his dagger into the woman’s stomach and ripped up through her breastbone. Blood poured onto the bed in a pulsing waterfall. Placing the knife to one side, SEEKER4318 pulled apart the wound he’d created and took ou
t two handfuls of the woman’s insides for inspection.
He felt even more optimistic.
The Key of Shadows and the treasure of the Merovingian kings would be his soon enough.
All the signs pointed to a good resolution of his present problem.
5
“What are you doing now?” Krauzer clicked off his smartphone and walked over to Annja, who’d placed the scrying crystal on a camera tripod a short distance from the wall where pages of Julio Gris’s manuscript hung.
“Checking for a hidden message.” Annja took the high-powered miniflashlight from her backpack and shone it through the crystal, concentrating on one of the flat spots.
“Inside the scrying crystal?” Krauzer scoffed.
“The manuscript Julio Gris left indicates that the message is concealed somewhere inside.” Annja moved the flashlight and the crystal at the same time.
The diffused beam of light shone through the crystal and onto the first manuscript page.
“You need to be careful with that,” Krauzer warned. “That’s one of a kind. I can’t replace that crystal in the movie. I’ve shot too many core scenes with it.”
“If you got a 3-D modeler, you could make one of these on a 3-D printer,” Orta told him.
“Movie audiences can tell when something’s real these days. They like real stuff in their movies.”
Annja looked at him. “This is supposed to belong to an elf witch.”
“Hey, viewers want to believe in elf witches and hobbits and dragons. I’m not going to argue with them. I’m going to give them what they want. In fact, I’ll give them bigger dragons than they’ve ever seen before.”
Ignoring the director, Annja continued to shine the light across the pages. She wasn’t frustrated yet, but her options were limited. And she was constantly aware of Krauzer growing more and more impatient.
“Did Julio Gris tell you to shine a flashlight through the crystal?” Krauzer asked smugly. “Because that right there would tell you that manuscript is a fake. They didn’t have flashlights back when Juan Cabrillo sailed to California, right?”
Annja ignored the question.
“Right?”
Knowing Krauzer wasn’t going to let up until he was answered, Annja said, “Right.”
“So we’re all done here? I’ve saved you from wasting more time. I can take my scrying crystal and get back to the studio, and you and the professor can look at old crap to your hearts’ delight.”
“Gris suggested using natural light or a candle flame to reveal the message,” Orta said. “We’re using a flashlight because it’s more accurate and it’s not daylight outside.”
Krauzer folded his arms. “Shining a light through a crystal sounds really stupid, if you ask me.”
“Have you ever heard of a magic lantern?” The frustration in Orta’s voice turned his words ragged.
“Of course I have. ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.’ Aladdin’s lamp. Even Uncle Scrooge McDuck went looking for a magic lamp. That stuff’s all old.”
“A magic lantern,” Orta said in a louder voice, “was an early precursor to filmmaking.”
“So were hand puppets.”
Orta sighed. “I’m just saying that there was a basis for this use of the scrying ball.”
“Okay, but I’ve got to take that crystal and scoot. We’ve got an early shoot planned tomorrow. Morning sunlight doesn’t last forever.” Krauzer tapped his watch, then answered his ringing phone again.
Annja was thankful. The man was too accustomed to being in control. She rotated the crystal and shone the light through the other flat spots onto the pages.
Her back ached from the combination of constant bending and anticipation. Something had to be here. Unless the scrying crystal was not the one mentioned in the manuscript.
Or if the manuscript was a hoax.
Krauzer punched his phone off and returned to observe. “Well, that was good news.”
Neither Annja nor Orta bothered to ask what the good news was.
“That was Rita, my personal assistant. She had to wait until the cops left, but she got my gun back.”
Annja straightened and reconsidered the problem.
“So, you’re satisfied there aren’t any secret messages in the crystal?” Krauzer asked. “I can get back to the studio?”
The director’s words turned the possibilities around in Annja’s mind. She glanced at Orta. “I think we’ve been going at this wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Orta asked.
“Maybe the message is inside the crystal.” Annja pressed the flashlight onto one of the object’s flat areas. The light caused the crystal to glow softly as the illumination diffused through the twists and turns of the sparkling latticework contained within the thing.
“There’s nothing inside that crystal.” Krauzer shook his head and looked grumpy. “You’re wasting my time.”
Annja continued her search, but she became quickly discouraged when nothing turned up. The light caught various facets and reflected through the glass ovoid, squirming through to another side in some places and stopping in others. Occasionally, the light snaked back on itself and became looped.
Nothing made sense.
Pausing again, Annja glanced at the manuscript pages. They have to be part of this, she reasoned.
Krauzer sifted through the food cartons and muttered in displeasure. At least he was being somewhat quiet about his irritation.
A new thought struck Annja and she glanced up at Orta. “Let’s get the pages over here.”
Orta picked up the first page. “Shine the light through the pages?”
“That’s the only thing we haven’t tried.”
“The plastic protectors might interfere.” In spite of his misgivings, Orta held the first page against one of the flat spots on the crystal.
Annja placed the flashlight lens against the laminated paper and slowly guided the manuscript page along so that every square inch was covered. After covering nearly the whole page, her hopes steadily sinking while Krauzer continued to stew, Annja blinked to clear her vision when she spotted writing in the lower right corner.
She lowered the flashlight and raised the page to examine the surface with her naked eye. Even holding the manuscript up to the overhead lights didn’t show anything. The striations within the crystal somehow translated the image, probably through various degrees of refraction.
“Did you find something?” Orta stood at her side, his chest resting slightly against her shoulder.
“Yes,” Annja answered. Her voice sounded quiet in her own ears, but her excitement thrummed like a live thing inside her.
“You’re imagining things,” Krauzer insisted. “You’re tired and you want something to be there.” Still, he came to stand on her other side and peered at the crystal. “See? Nothing’s there.”
“Look inside it.” Annja replaced the page over the flat spot and shone the flashlight against the page so the beam shone into the crystal.
Inside the crystal, the neat handwriting stood revealed, almost too small to read. The penmanship was delicate, ornate and so small. Each space between words was carefully designed.
“I don’t see anything,” Krauzer challenged.
Annja nodded to Orta. “Hold these.”
Silently, enraptured by what he was seeing, Orta held the flashlight and the page. He experimented by pulling the flashlight lens back from the paper. “I can get the writing a little larger, but pulling the light source reflects back too much and throws off the focus, causing it to disappear.”
Annja opened her backpack and took out her tablet PC and a small digital camera. She slipped on an equally small macro lens. “If someone had read the manuscript pages in that crystal all those years ago, they couldn’t hav
e put a candle flame up against the paper.”
“Someone built this crystal to hide the message inside the manuscript pages.” Orta shook his head. “But the crystal looks so real.”
“The crystal is real. This is old, probably grown over time. I’d like to find out who created it, as well.” Annja left the tablet PC on one of the tables and brought the camera to the crystal. She experimented with angles and found the one that best revealed the message within the depths of the crystalline latticework. She snapped images.
“I see it.” Krauzer bent so low and so close that his breath temporarily fogged the crystal. Looking embarrassed, he leaned back. “You know, that’s pretty cool. I could use something like this in A Diversion of Dragons.”
Orta blew out an impatient breath. “Seriously? You see this—a secret message in a crystal that has to be at least hundreds of years old, the crystal itself even older than that—and the first thing you think of is using it in a movie? You don’t even wonder what the message is?”
“Don’t go all professor on me, Doc.” Krauzer held up his hands defensively. “I’m a movie guy. I’m one of the movie guys in this town. People talk about me the same way they talk about Spielberg and Coppola.”
“You’re an imbecile!”
Krauzer held out a warning finger. “It wouldn’t be smart to make this personal.”
“Smart? You’re not intelligent enough to know when you’re not invited to something.”
“Are you talking about the food?” Krauzer hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the takeout cartons sitting on the table. “I can pay for that. In fact, I’ll pay for it all.” He pulled out a black American Express card. “You take plastic?”
Frozen by the sudden outbreak of tempers, Annja couldn’t believe what was taking place. Male testosterone was so easily misplaced. “Guys? Maybe we could focus.”
Orta blushed a deep red. “I cannot believe the crystal ended up in your hands.”
Krauzer glared at his rival. “Yeah, well, it’s mine. Whatever secret message is in there is mine, too, so if there’s treasure, it’s mine.”