Authors: Alex Archer
She no longer lay on the ground, nor stood in front of him.
A heavy rubber heel to the base of his spine stung and prickled through his extremities. Serge swung back, growling. He managed to clothesline her across the back of her shoulders.
He lunged and gripped one of her ankles. A hard heel crushed the side of his face. She went down, but gripped the front of his coat. He rolled over her, clasping her in an embrace as he did. Her face landed in the snow and she snuffled. A fist to her gut, right up under the lung left her motionless.
Jumping to his feet, Serge palmed the bowie knife.
Annja groaned and rolled to her back.
She was tiring. But he hated to see her brought to her knees when he was sure she didn’t have the skull. She must have handed it off to someone, or hidden it. And he wouldn’t be able to follow a dead woman. So he’d end this, but not completely.
Annja pushed onto her hands and jumped to stand. A fist to her sternum, right above the center of her breasts, put her back. She wobbled, sucking for the air the punch had stolen from her.
Working swiftly, Serge landed punches to her throat, her shoulder and her jaw. She spun, arms out and groping the air.
Striking her across the back produced an agonizing moan from the woman. She lost balance and fell forward, into the grave.
Working quickly, Serge kicked the dirt over her inert body.
“Sweet dreams, Annja Creed.”
W
HILE HER MIND GREW
heavy and her lungs took on the dirt’s muffling weight, Annja struggled with the idiotic situation. She’d let the man get the better of her again. And now he would bury her alive!
Why hadn’t she drawn the sword? The thought to do so had tickled her brain. And then Serge had smashed it with his fist. It was as if the sword was being fickle.
Serge still needed the skull from her. So what was his deal?
She’d landed facedown. The hard dirt froze against her flesh. Dirt crumbled on her tongue. Her chest ached from the forceful punch. The earth was icy cold and numbness already thickened her fingers.
Thought about worms crept in. Worms were just wrong. They were about the only thing that could make her get up from a dig and, shuddering, wander off for a deep breath.
They would not be so high in the soil this time of year, she thought hopefully.
Fingers curling, she clawed into the cold earth. The numbness reduced her efforts to futile movements. Lifting an elbow backward to drag through the dirt was difficult. There was little give.
A heavy thud of something landed on her back and squeezed her lungs. He was seriously burying her!
Eyes closed, because her face was flush with the earth, her ears popped. Being buried felt much like drowning. Not that she’d ever drowned, but she had survived a tsunami and was an excellent diver.
The grave had not been deep. Buried three feet under? This should be a piece of cake.
Cake sounded good right now. And what the hell was she thinking? Now was no time for dessert.
An inhale sucked dirt up her nose. She snorted and choked.
Stop panicking, she coached inwardly.
If her breathing accelerated, she’d use all her air. She had recently read about a man buried in thick mud who’d survived two hours through meditation, and a small pocket of air trapped in his hard plastic safety helmet.
No helmet here. And what little air that might have been trapped in her jacket had been crushed out on impact.
To release her next breath slowly, and concentrate on the careful movement of her fingers as they worked through the earth, brought sudden calm. Almost Zen, she stretched out a finger and curled it.
Could she do this? Mediate her way out?
Sound was muffled, yet her heartbeat pounded in her ears. And it was that frantic pace that made her realize meditation was for monks.
Her next intake didn’t enter her burning lungs. Stretching an arm, she thought she felt the dirt loosen. And then she felt…nothing. She’d broken through. The sheer joy of feeling the cold air on her palm ratcheted her anxiety and Annja choked, gasping for air.
When a hand slapped into hers and formed a tight grip, she was too happy to be fearful. She’d hug the bastard and then give him a taste of three feet of battle steel.
Pulled from an early grave, the dirt sucked at her limbs, wanting to pull her back, but relenting. When she was able, Annja toed the grave’s edge and stepped up. The hand released her.
She wobbled and her muscles gave way. Dropping, she landed a graceless, but sitting, sprawl.
Slapping away the dirt from her clothing, she sensed she’d find dirt in strange places later when showering. Almost as an afterthought, she looked up at her rescuer. She cursed.
Garin Braden stood six-feet-wow, with broad shoulders and a long black leather duster coat. A fine trimmed moustache edged his mouth and connected to a dark goatee. The snow didn’t touch him, seeming to fear landing on a surface that may be harder and colder than it.
Looking like some kind of devil’s bounty hunter, he grinned slyly at her.
Slapping a hand on her dirt-dusted shoulder, Garin said in his deep, raspy voice, “Annja Creed, I do believe you are in over your head this time. Quite literally, it would appear.”
She shoved his hand from her shoulder. “Yeah?” She shook the dirt from her hair. “When have I
not
been in over my head? It’s what I do. Why should this time be any different?”
Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. It wasn’t what she did. She was an archaeologist with a TV show. She wasn’t an avenger, a heroine who saved the world.
And yet, she’d begun to buy into the superheroine thing. So maybe it
was
what she did. Why did the guy have a problem with that? It wasn’t as though he hadn’t joined her on a few of her adventures. Hell, the man had the most irritating way of showing up at all the wrong times, and even some of the right ones. Like now.
Reaching back, Annja shook out the dirt from her jacket hood. She winced and squirmed when dirt sifted down her back.
“You have no idea who you are involved with, Annja. Ben Ravenscroft doesn’t like to lose. Nor does the man who just buried you.”
“No kidding? That guy must have been a real treat in the sandbox when he was a kid.” A stomp of her leg sifted dirt tucked in the folds of her jacket to the snowy ground. “Ben Ravenscroft?”
“You don’t know about him?”
“Serge mentioned the name Benjamin. I have a feeling you know everything I want to know. Which always seems to be the case with you and me. Why is that?”
“Come with me,” Garin offered.
Annja followed his gesture across the cemetery. A black limo idled on the street outside the fence.
She glanced at him. Not a nice man, but fierce. A force one must reckon with. Devil’s bounty hunter was an appropriate summation. Give the man a flaming chain whip and he’d ace the role.
Garin Braden was her nemesis. A nemesis who infrequently appealed but mostly disgusted. She did not trust him, yet on occasion she relied upon him. Or rather, took the generous assistance he offered because it was either that or be abandoned on a remote island or left behind to flee machine-gun fire.
She’d kissed him once—no, that wasn’t right. He’d kissed her.
She was still kicking herself for that one.
And yet, the man did possess an irresistible charm. All she could figure was it was something about good girls and the bad boys they liked to change.
Not that Garin would ever change his ways. Rich, powerful and smart, he was involved in many alliances and business associations that would make Annja cringe. He played the world as if it were his to master.
He, like Roux—another five-hundred-year-old immortal who had appointed himself a sort of mentor to Annja—had insinuated himself into her life. Whether or not she liked them in it.
Both men were inscrutable. Yet the things Annja did know of them were like valued jewels she kept filed in the For Further Research section of her brain.
Of the two, she trusted Roux first, if barely.
If Annja stood in his way to getting something, Garin Braden would not stop at harming her. And she knew he desperately wanted Joan’s sword.
She’d met Garin and Roux after finding the final piece of Joan of Arc’s once-shattered sword, and fitting it to the other pieces to become whole again. Garin and Roux believed their immortality was tied to the sword that had remained in pieces, scattered throughout the world since Joan of Arc had been burned at the stake. Roux had spent centuries gathering the pieces together again.
Now, for reasons no one completely understood, Annja wielded the sword—in one piece. Garin believed the sword threatened him. Though there was no way to prove it. But a few years had passed since the sword had become whole. He hadn’t dissolved to ash or shown negligible signs of aging or loss of strength.
And he couldn’t simply take the sword from her. He’d tried, as had others. If Annja didn’t want someone to touch the sword, it would disappear. Yet, if she wanted to allow someone to look at it, she could hand it over, and it would remain solid, tangible. It all seemed to be tied to who she trusted and who she did not.
For Garin to ever hold the sword intact, Annja assumed she had to gift it to him.
And that would never happen.
So, in the meantime, when he was not making her life miserable, he was pulling the rug out from under her with surprising acts of kindness.
This is what made placing him solidly on the enemy list difficult. He was so damned charming, and he knew it. The man had an international harem. He was an alpha male, arrogant and dangerous. And yet, Annja couldn’t stop herself from staring at him as if he was a celebrity and she wanted his regard.
But she was not a fool. She wasn’t going anywhere with him.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll walk.” She strode across the snow-dusted grass, feeling her shaky legs protest. They needed a good rub down to get the blood flowing through them again. The heavy, cold dirt had zapped her strength.
“You can’t go home, Annja. Serge has already been there. It’s not safe.”
“Then I’ll go to a hotel. City’s full of them.”
He knew Serge had been to her loft? He must have followed her here. So why hadn’t he stepped in when Serge had been tucking her in for a dirt nap?
Because he had probably been amused by the whole thing.
“Let me put you up for a few days.” He came to her side.
Annja spat dirt from her mouth.
“I might be able to fill in some missing information,” he teased.
“At what price?”
“Annja, dearest.”
“Oh, please. You know damn well, that I know damn well, the only reason you’re ever nice to me is because you want something. You want the skull?”
She cringed. Oops. Had he known about the skull?
“You don’t have it, so that’s not going to help me much.”
“Have you been following me?”
“I never reveal my methods.”
“Yeah? Well, thanks for the rescue, but I’ll see you later.”
He
had
been following her. He did it often. The man had ways of tracking a person even she couldn’t comprehend.
Annja stepped off the curb behind the limo and her ankle twisted. Slapping the trunk as she went down, her palms didn’t meet the rough wet tarmac.
Garin lifted her with one arm around her gut and swung her to stand against the trunk.
“You’ll never make it home on foot. And I know for a fact Ravenscroft has a man watching your loft.”
“I don’t even know this Ravenscroft guy. Is he the sniper?” Annja asked.
“Sniper? No. Stop being so stubborn, Annja. You don’t trust me? I’ll give you that. My apartment in Manhattan is large. The guest room is at one end. You don’t even have to see me, if you don’t want to.”
Propping her palms on the trunk, she shook her head. “This is just wrong.”
Yet all that man looming over her did a number on her racing heartbeat. There was something appealing about being rescued by a man who had once been a real knight.
“You can call your protector Roux,” he added snidely.
“I don’t need Roux’s help, and I don’t need yours.”
“But you do need a shower. What’s this?”
He plucked something from her hair and Annja closed her eyes, cringing. “Not a worm, not a worm, please, not a worm.”
He tossed the find over his shoulder.
“Was it a worm?”
His smile came across as warm, inviting. “I’ll never tell. Come.” His offered a broad hand, palm up. “Take a ride with the devil, if you dare.”
He called it as she saw it.
But if he was right, and a man was watching her loft, she couldn’t risk returning. Who was Benjamin Ravenscroft? If he wasn’t the sniper, that added yet another player to the game, and she’d lost count.
Maybe a call to Roux was necessary. Not to ask him to come rescue her, but to feel him out, see if he knew what Garin was up to. Because the man never appeared in her life by accident.
“You know about the skull?” she asked.
“I may.” He opened the back door and waited. “We’ll talk after I’ve made you comfortable, yes?”
Playboy that he was, he embodied old-world manners.
And she could use a shower. Neediness reared its ugly head.
Blowing out a surrendering breath, Annja crawled into the backseat and slid across to the far door. Garin reached in to brush away the dirt left in her wake before joining her.
“Block my calls for the next hour, Rebecca.”
Ben swiveled on his chair and pressed the button on his desk that brought up the computer screen and pushed out the slim keyboard drawer to a perfect height for typing.
After years spent working around the clock buying up domain names while in college, he’d learned a desk and chair designed to his exact measurements provided comfort and prevented nuisances like carpal tunnel syndrome.
On his desk was the sniper’s photo of Annja Creed and the notes Ben had taken from the television show the previous night. He had the phone number for the television studio, but he decided to surf the Internet before calling and thus having to make up a story about wanting info on Creed.
At the Web site for
Chasing History’s Monsters
he found a short bio on Annja Creed that emphasized the episodes she’d hosted regarding mythical creatures and legends. The bio downplayed her archaeological background.
“Idiots,” he muttered of the show’s producers.
It was obvious they felt the buxom Kristie Chatham was the real cash cow and they thought they’d add a little scholarly realism once in a while with that other chick.
Ben tapped the tracking pad. There was no eulogy, no memorial. That meant she was still alive. Most television shows would certainly capitalize on the death of one of their stars, or at the very least issue a statement regarding their sympathies to her family.
He scanned the show’s masthead. Doug Morrell was listed as the producer. It boasted a skeleton crew for a show that looked pretty slick. They didn’t post a phone number, but Ben highlighted and copied the e-mail contact information.
He knew they wouldn’t give out Miss Creed’s address to an anonymous caller. But if the caller was an elite businessman who had a proposal for a show idea featuring her?
Ben pondered what he could push as an idea, but his mind didn’t function beyond stock market figures and the patent craze in Dubai and the current need to find that damned skull.
History’s monsters? He wouldn’t know where to begin.
Opening a new window, he searched Creed’s name and it produced page after page of snippets from online chat room discussions. A quick glance determined all were archaeology sites.
Then he spotted something unusual. A site called “Celebrity Skin” was advertising exclusive nude pictures of Creed. He’d check that one later.
Clicking through the archaeology forums proved tedious. He realized it was possible Marcus Cooke had contacted her through a chat room. It was stupid—nothing online was secure—but still possible.
He scanned pages of chatter about pottery shards and gold coins. There were kudos to Miss Creed for surviving a tsunami during a dig in southern India and a few others wished to convince her that her excursion to Transylvania had damaged her credo.
Creed hadn’t replied to those.
The Amazon rain forest, the jungles of Southeast Asia, Siberia, Paris, Texas, China. The woman did have adventures. How the hell had she gotten tangled up with the Skull of Sidon? The owner had kept its whereabouts quiet for decades. Hell, a few centuries, he thought.
For that matter, Ben couldn’t fathom how Serge had discovered he had arranged to steal the thing. Someone was putting information out into the public arena. But who?
His thoughts averted by the disturbing idea, Ben typed in the name Maxfield Wisdom. It produced two hits. One for a used car salesman in Toledo, Ohio, the other was a small
Who’s Who
bio on the man he knew.
They named Wisdom as an avid collector of eclectic ephemera from around the world, an enthusiastic philanthropist, never married, but always looking. He once garnered an entry in the record books for the most gum balls chewed at one time.
Ben didn’t recall Wisdom as being so eccentric, just passionate about the oddities he’d secured for his collection. He bought everything online, of course; the man was not a world traveler due to an extreme dislike for air travel.
The bio did not mention the skull. But of course it should not.
Sitting back and huffing out a sigh, Ben twisted the chair to gaze out the window. Snow fell heavily.
How had Serge learned about the skull?
“Serge knows things normal people cannot dream to know. He’s mystical. He has connections to a world we cannot imagine,” he said aloud.
It was the very reason Ben had hired the man. After a trip to finalize the Berlin headquarters for Ravens Tech, he’d detoured east. He’d been interested in the Ukrainian farming crisis. Their assets were being mishandled. The government was all about keeping information under lock and key as opposed to actually helping their citizens thrive.
A visit to an Odessa deli had resulted in the most interesting experience.
There were only six tables in the deli, each crammed chair to chair, and topped with faded red-checked tablecloths. A smiling elderly woman had seemed to be waitress, cook and hostess. Ben had marveled over the borscht. He’d never tried it before, and though reluctant at first to taste the brilliant pink cold soup, he eventually ordered a second bowl.
On about the last spoonful of soup, Ben was startled to hear a low humming sound coming from behind the long brown wool blanket that served as a curtain between the dining room and the kitchen. It was a man’s voice.
He questioned the old woman to see if someone was in pain. She clasped Ben’s face with warm, pudgy palms and shook her head sweetly. “Summoning the spirits,” she said. “Reading the future.”
Ten minutes later, a pregnant woman emerged from behind the wool blanket, smiling and rubbing her belly. She’d obviously heard what she wanted from the fortune teller.
“You next?” the old woman asked Ben. “You want to know your future?”
Ben shook his head, trying to dismiss the request, but at the sight of the tall bald man standing behind the curtain, just a glimpse of his side view, curiosity changed Ben’s negative nod to a positive.
There wasn’t much difference between selling futures and telling the future, was there? he thought.
Remarkably, Serge had pinpointed Ben’s need to obtain nothing. The man didn’t know what that meant, only that it was what the spirits offered to him. With that, Ben knew the man was for real.
Ben had taken Serge to dinner that evening to an expensive restaurant in Odessa. The fortune teller had marveled over the waitstaff’s manners and was fascinated with the linens and devoured the steak. He’d never had such a fine meal. The price of the wine alone would surely feed his family for a week.
Serge traveled to Odessa to find jobs to help his family, but unsure of navigating the city proper, always kept to the impoverished outer suburbs. He found work mostly in the back rooms of family diners or feed shops. His skills were unusual, but not questioned. The old folk believed, and those who would scoff at him didn’t need his help, anyway.
He had to keep a low profile. If the Odessa police got wind of a man who conjured spirits, they would have him arrested and he’d never see his family again.
Ben had seen opportunity. He was the man who believed in things one could not see or touch. He’d made a good living buying and selling just such things. Embracing Serge’s talents had come easily.
And he’d been rewarded for his beliefs.
It was possible to learn the future through spiritual contact. Ben had no idea how it worked—only that it did.
But at the moment, Serge landed second on Ben’s list of persons of interest. His mole in the NYPD had reported there was nothing more than clothing and a roll of sodden twenties on Marcus Cooke when his body had been dredged from the canal. No skull.
Ben decided Annja Creed must have the skull.
What would an intrepid young archaeologist do with a skull like that? Obviously bones and stuff were her thing. Could she know what she held? Marcus hadn’t been told what it was, so he could not have clued her in.
So then, Ben thought, she must be curious about it. She’d probably search online for information about it. Likely try to date it, as he suspected archaeologists would do. She couldn’t have any fancy equipment herself, so how would she do it?
“A university?” he wondered.
Turning back to his computer, he reread the bio on the television show Web site. He scanned her academic credentials. She’d spent a summer at Columbia.
“Bingo.”