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The Bone Conjurer
Alex Archer


In the time of the Crusades, the Knights Templars were holy warriors who seemed to be blessed by God himself. But over the years, the order dissolved into mysteries both sacred and profane–creating an object whose power bends to the true nature of its owner….But until she held it in her hands, archaeologist Annja Creed hadn't heard of the Skull of Sidon nor the twisted tale of its origins. Even now, she's still not convinced. Yet someone wants it badly enough to hire a man who wields power beyond her imagining. Power enough to prevent Annja from protecting the mysterious skull. And power enough to kill.









“I’ll give you twenty-four hours to bring the skull to me.


“If you do not comply, at precisely five minutes beyond the twenty-four-hour mark, I will kill you. Got it?”

Annja nodded. “How am I supposed to find you?”

Serge leaned close and hissed in her ear. “The Linden Hill cemetery off Starr Street. Tomorrow morning, this time.”

“A graveyard? Swell,” she mumbled.

Something sharp pricked her wrist. Annja let out a yelp as what felt like a knife entered her flesh and, with a forceful shove, traveled through to bone.

Serge gave the instrument a twist. Annja screamed. Agony felled her to her knees. Serge tugged it out and stepped back.

Struggling to maintain consciousness, and looking up to see the weird tubelike blade he tucked inside his coat, Annja reached out—for what, she didn’t know. It seemed as though something should come to her hand. Something that could protect her.

Instead, she fell forward and blacked out….




Titles in this series:


Destiny

Solomon’s Jar

The Spider Stone

The Chosen

Forbidden City

The Lost Scrolls

God of Thunder

Secret of the Slaves

Warrior Spirit

Serpent’s Kiss

Provenance

The Soul Stealer

Gabriel’s Horn

The Golden Elephant

Swordsman’s Legacy

Polar Quest

Eternal Journey

Sacrifice

Seeker’s Curse

Footprints

Paradox

The Spirit Banner

Sacred Ground

The Bone Conjurer



Rogue Angel







The Bone Conjurer

Alex Archer





www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)




THE LEGEND


…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.

The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade. The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd.

Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.

Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn….




CONTENTS


PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39




PROLOGUE


Granada, Spain, 1430

Cool palace walls offered welcome respite from the thick August heat. Dusty air clogged at the back of Garin Braden’s throat. While journeying from the Christian lands of Castile to the great Muslim palace of Alhambra the two men had stopped frequently and rested much.

His master’s horse was a fourteen-hand destrier of Arabian blood, but bred more for battle than long-distance travel.

Garin’s own mount was a pale rouncey dusted with red clay from the roads, on its last legs, surely. Their greater destination of Rouen, France—his master had been called to protect the Maid of Orléans—would not be achieved with this horse.

Tugging the hood from his head, the young man wandered down a tiled aisle that stretched along a vast pool of indigo water. He could feel the coolness rise from the surface. The water did not stink, which he would expect from so large a pool.

Resisting a dive into the water would be a trial, but he’d been warned to exercise his best behavior in the palace. The sultan did not take kindly to interlopers.

They’d been given a brief tour, and left to linger in this, the serrallo, which his master, the Frenchman, had mentioned was built less than a hundred years earlier. Elaborately detailed carvings on the walls arabesqued in precise wooden curves. Hand-painted colors were vivid jewels set into the design. The courtyard was open to the sky and bright morning light illuminated everything as if under a thousand candles. It was blinding.

Garin had never before seen such a blatant display of riches. He did appreciate what coin and barter could bring a man. Someday he would have riches of his own.

They’d come to visit an alchemist his master had met a decade earlier during a previous visit to Spain. His master had taken Garin under his wing as an apprentice. The elder man’s methods of teaching were brusque and not always pain free.

Garin missed his father, a German knight. But the man had never so much time for him as Roux offered. Roux, he followed everywhere. Roux was master, teacher, reluctant friend and—rarely—father. Garin learned much during their travels. He thought he would never cease to marvel at all the world, and its riches, could offer.

Yet he looked forward to a future with no master.

“Ahead,” Roux said in his curt manner.

Inside, a long hallway edged the courtyard. The men’s boot heels clicked dully. Here in the shade it was much cooler. A man could seek the liquid shadows and garner relief.

Garin looked at the walls, his eyes traveling high to marvel over the intricate arabesque work carved into fine, varnished woods. It was a style he’d not seen before traveling to Spain. It was decadent and pleased him to look upon it.

He favored this land of dark-skinned Moors. They were tall, brave men who decorated their clothing with opulent metals and their blades more grandly with jewels and religious carvings. They prayed all hours of the day and bore a regal mien as if a birthright.

“Ah!” Roux hastened his steps, but Garin meandered behind him at his own pace. “Alphonso!”

The two men exchanged kisses to the cheeks while Garin hung back. Even when Roux walked in through the long strands of beaded wood to the alchemist’s lab, he did not gesture for him to follow. He merely expected Garin would.

And the young man did, because he knew it was expected.

“Someday,” he muttered under his breath. “Someday I will not follow you, old man.”

Introductions were made. Alphonso de CastaГ±a impressed Garin little. He hardly believed in men who claimed to change lead into gold, and cure all disease with an elixir of life.

The alchemist gestured for Garin to have a seat on a wicker chaise padded with damask fabric, or even look about if he desired. He and Roux had matters to discuss.

That suited Garin well and fine, though he did wish for something to drink. He was parched. A glance about convinced him the discolored liquids in the assorted vials, alembics and glass pitchers were likely not consumable. He didn’t want to look too closely at the one—was that a skinned creature inside? It had…fingers?

Garin averted his eyes from the shelves.

The room was compact, yet the ceiling high and vaulted, so it gave the illusion of a grand yet intimate area. It was packed to every wall with items of interest. More than four walls—Garin counted six. Interesting.

Dusty vases, stacks of leathered books and globes of thin glass covered every available space. Intricate metal devices must calibrate and measure, he decided. Wooden bowls and animal skins hobbled and propped here and there. Books open everywhere, some marked with a shard of bone, others tilting nearly off a table.

Garin glanced across the room where the two men spoke in low tones. His master studied a kris blade with a bejeweled ivory handle. A glint of ruby caught sunlight beaming through a grilled window. Roux did like unique weapons.

Garin stroked his fingers over a folded cloth run through with silver threading. Curious things. Unnecessary to him, but still, they were something to behold.

Only last night he’d run his fingers along the shabby torn cloth of a serving wench’s skirts upstairs in the tavern where they’d stopped to eat. She, too, had been something to behold.

But his master had been eager to find a more suitable resting spot, so Garin had left the wench with but a kiss and a remorseful sigh.

He could appreciate all his master had done for him, shown him the way and taught him skills for defense and survival. But he did not fool himself that someday he would break free and be on his own. He deserved freedom. He was no man to answer to another.

A small brass key tied through with a shimmery pink ribbon went untouched, for something marvelous caught Garin’s attention. He reached carefully behind a stack of leather-bound books and palmed the curved shape of a skull.

It was not a man’s skull, for it fit upon his palm. A child’s?

It looked like the many other skulls he had seen as he and Roux ambled over the highroads for days without end. Skulls attached to skeletons and hanging from a gallows or tree; lying roadside, detached from the neck as if fallen from a bone collector’s pack; or sitting upon a desk or windowsill in declaration of the dark arts.

The bone was creamy pale and smooth. The scalp was delineated into sections and the pieces were held together by some kind of dirty plaster. The eye sockets were large in comparison to the skull, and the jaw quite small. It was missing the lower jawbone.

It surely belonged to an infant.

Did the alchemist practice the dark arts?

Garin glanced again at the two men. De CastaГ±a wore a white turban and his skin was brown, yet paler than most Moors. His voice was kind. He gestured gracefully with long fingers as he spoke.

Roux had mentioned something about de CastaГ±a having angels and demons at his beckon. What foul deeds men got their hands to, Garin thought.

He turned the skull on his palm, smoothing his fingers over the slick bone. Poking two fingers into the eye sockets, he did it only because of curiosity. Hooked upon his fingers, he turned the skull and found the tiny hole at the base where it must attach to the spine.

Compelled for no reason other than it was what his hands next decided to do, he lifted the upturned skull to his ear. Slithery, silver tones clattered within. A voice without words.

“What have you there, boy?” His master fit the kris blade into the leather belt at his waist and glanced at his charge.

“Ah! No!” The alchemist clapped his hands twice over his head. “Put that down, boy. Its secrets are not for you to know.”

Roux cast him the fierce eye. Not a look Garin ever wished to challenge. He set the skull on the books, yet his fingers lingered. As did Roux’s gaze upon the skull.

“It whispers to me,” Garin said with all due fascination.

“Ah, ah.” The alchemist leaned in and snatched the skull from its perch and gave it a smart toss, catching it on his palm. “Not yet, boy, not yet.”

“But—”

There was nothing more to say. His master shuffled him toward the stringed wooden beads marking the entrance. “Take yourself out to the serrallo, apprentice. I’ll follow directly.”

Casting the skull a desirous glance, Garin licked his lips. He met the alchemist’s eyes and thought sure he’d seen a star blink in the center of each dark orb.

“Someday, perhaps?” the alchemist said with a slippery grin. “Someday, all good things.”

Garin rushed outside. The open-air serrallo beamed brilliant white sun upon his face, altering his mood for the better. Moments later he was joined by his master. Roux laid out plans to ride to the city and find a meal. Fine and well. Yet all the day, Garin’s thoughts tried to form sense of the mysterious whispers from the skull.

All good things, he finally decided. Someday.




1


Desperation had prompted him to contact a stranger. Annja didn’t know him. Had never met him, save through a couple e-mails.

So why agree to meet him?

Others had helped her out of desperate situations. And this is what she did. She didn’t sit at home lazing before the television. She seized what the day offered.

And today’s offering was too good to resist.

The season’s first snow smacked Annja’s cheek with a sharp bite. It melted on her warm skin. Glad she’d the fore-thought to tug on a ski cap and warm jacket, she stalked onto the Carroll Street Bridge. One of the oldest retractile bridges in the country, this sweet little bridge was about one hundred and twenty years old.

The traffic was sparse. Few cars crossed the Gowanus Canal at this bridge. Annja glanced up and read the antique sign hanging overhead on the steel girders.

Ordinance of the City: Any Person Driving Over this Bridge Faster than a Walk Will Be Subject to a Penalty of Five Dollars per Offense.

You gotta love New York, she thought.

Peering over the bridge railing, recently painted a fresh coat of bold green, she decided the water in the Gowanus Canal wasn’t so lavender as rumors claimed. The city had gone to remarkable efforts to clean the grungy, putrid stretch of water. A flushing tunnel was also supposed to clean out the raw sewage more often.

The effect of snow falling around her as she looked over the water produced an eerie hyperspace vibe.

“It ain’t like dustin’ crops, boy,” she said in her best Han Solo imitation.

So she could geek out with the best of them.

“Not interested in a swim tonight,” she muttered. “Not without my hazmat bikini.”

Turning her hips against the bridge railing, and shoving her hands in her pockets, she switched her gaze skyward. There weren’t a lot of stars to be seen with the ambient light from buildings and street lamps blasting the heavens. At least there was a sky to see. One of many advantages of living in Brooklyn was the lack of skyscrapers. The Cuban cuisine wasn’t too shabby, either.

Somewhere, she gauged maybe half a mile off, a siren shrilled. Horns honked, announcing the bar crowd as they scattered to various haunts. The snow was heavy, but not enough to make the road slippery.

Annja had walked from her loft. Passing cars had lodged muddy spittle onto her hiking boots. A quick walk in brisk weather always lifted her spirits. Until the chill set in. And it was nippy tonight.

Staying home with a cup of hot chocolate in hand, and watching her latest favorite TV show on DVD, sounded a much warmer plan. But she was not one to resist a mystery when it involved an artifact.

Only that afternoon Annja had received a desperate e-mail from Sneak. She didn’t know the person, just suspected he was a he. He’d followed her conversations at alt.archaeology.esoterica, and felt she could give him some answers about something he’d found—a skull.

Skulls were more common than gold coins in the archaeological world. There was a skull in every myth, every legend, every thrilling adventure tale told. Skulls granting wishes, skulls promising fortune, skulls bringing about the end of the world.

Plain old skull skulls that could be anything from some peasant who’d died of a heart attack working the fields to some deranged serial killer’s leftovers.

What was so special about this one?

Sneak hadn’t sent a picture, claiming his digital camera had been broken in a recent fall. But his mention of a dig in Spain grabbed Annja’s attention. He claimed to have apprenticed during the summers, though he’d abandoned his desire to dig for bones two years earlier.

Annja related to a fellow archaeologist, even if he wasn’t official.

He thought he held an important artifact, yet also feared people wanted to take it from him. Why? Had he stolen it from a dig? He couldn’t possibly know its value enough to cause worry.

Annja held no favor for those who raided archeological digs. She’d had run-ins with more than her share of pothunters. They were unscrupulous and weren’t beyond putting a bullet in the back of someone’s head to clear their escape with a valuable artifact.

Sneak claimed he was a fan of Chasing History’s Monsters, and quoted a lot of Annja’s schtick from the show in his e-mail.

Proved nothing. He could have watched the DVDs, researching her. If she’d learned anything over the past few years it was to trust no one. Everyone played the game; the goal was to win.

But she had a gut feeling about this guy. He wasn’t trying to pull something on her. She sensed no malice. And she was really curious about the artifact, which he’d only said was rumored to be twelfth century and mystical.

A nine-hundred-year-old skull? Cool. No way was Annja going to let this one slip out of her hands.

“Miss Creed?”

Taken off guard, Annja twisted at the waist. She hated being caught out unawares.

A tall, slender man strode down the plank sidewalk hugging the bridge, which served only eastbound traffic. Dressed in close-fitted black, the straps and buckles about his upper thighs and ankles gave his attire a militant look. She didn’t see any weapons.

Just because she couldn’t see any didn’t mean he wasn’t carrying.

Hands loose at her sides—but ready to call her sword to hand—Annja waited for him to approach her. They’d agreed to meet here, a quiet spot easily accessed by both parties.

“Thank you for meeting me.” His voice was whispery low, yet he gasped as if he’d been running. “We must be quick.”

She put up a hand as he approached. Stay out of my personal zone. You wouldn’t like the result if you put me to guard, she thought.

“You think someone followed you?” she asked. “Why?”

“I can’t be sure, but better safe than not.” He wore a black ski cap tugged down to his dark eyebrows. A black turtleneck peeked from his jacket and climbed up under his narrow jaw. “I’m glad you came, Annja. I wasn’t sure you would. I didn’t want to give any information over the Internet.”

“Except that you found a skull?”

She glanced around as a silver Honda crept slowly past—obviously not wanting to risk the hardship of the five-dollar fine—but still marking her to the ankle with muddy water.

“You’re not going to pull it out right here?” she cautioned. “There’s a café a couple of blocks from the west end of the bridge.”

His eyes scanned their periphery. Sneak’s fingers clutched at his backpack straps nervously.

Annja didn’t like the vibes he was giving off. At once she sensed a strange tingle to the air. More so than the toxic fumes rising from the canal. It was the man’s weird anxiety, she told herself. It was bleeding off him and onto her.

Just be cool. Who could be watching?

Unless he was a thief, as suspected, and really had stolen this from a dig.

“Tell me how you obtained the thing,” she prompted. Putting her back to the street, she paralleled him, and looked out over the water.

“That’s not important. But I can tell you this.”

He leaned forward. Annja stepped closer because she couldn’t hear well with the water slapping against the canal walls. They stood shoulder to shoulder. His cologne was strong but not offensive.

“I was hired to pass this along to a specific individual. It is what I do.”

Thieves passed things along to others. Annja coiled her fingers, imagining the sword in her grip, but did not call it forth.

“But I have a terrible feeling about this job,” the man said. “Something isn’t right. That’s why I wanted your opinion. Maybe you can identify—”

His head shot up from their close stance. Annja followed his gaze as it soared through the iron bridge girders and traced the line of buildings edging the river.

She didn’t see anything to cause alarm. Darkness softened the edges of buildings and parking lots. Moonlight glinted on a few windows high along the perimeter. All seemed calm. Strange, but not for this part of Brooklyn. It was a quiet, old neighborhood.

The man’s sudden exhalation startled her. He grunted, as if punched. His shoulder jerked against hers. He gripped blindly, his fingers slapping across her shoulder.

He stumbled backward. Annja spied the hole in his forehead. Blood trickled from the small circle. Sniper shot. It could be nothing else.

Instincts igniting, she knew when there was one shot, there could be another. Grabbing him by the shoulder, she directed his staggering movement to swing around her body and stand before her as a defensive wall.

Ice burned along Annja’s neck. She knew the distinct slice of metal to flesh well enough. She’d been hit. But it didn’t slow her down.

Leaning backward over the railing, she slapped both arms about the man’s shoulders. Eyes closed, his head lolled. The dead weight of him toppled her. For a moment, she felt the sensation of air at her back, with no support to catch her, dizzied.

And then she pushed from the sidewalk with her feet.




2


Annja’s belt loops dragged over the bridge railing, but didn’t catch. The man was heavier than she’d expected from such a slender frame.

Bracing air tugged off her ski cap and bruised over her scalp. It hissed through her too-thin-for-winter jacket as she fell, headfirst and backward, toward the water.

With less than twenty feet from railing to water, she worked quickly.

Twisting in midair, still maintaining a death grip on the man, she managed to kick and aim his legs downward. Now she fell over him, positioned as if she’d stepped up to put her arms around his shoulders for a hug.

Impact loosened her fingers from his body, but she scrambled to grip the slippery coat fabric. His horizontal body broke the surface of water and slowed his descent, while Annja’s body crashed hard against his. It felt as if she’d landed on the ground, belly first, after a daring leap from a backyard trampoline.

At least she was making comparisons and not pushing up daisies, she realized.

The water was only slighter warmer than frozen. Some summer heat must yet be trapped in the depths. Or a toxic boil.

Their bodies submerged and Annja immediately struggled with the backpack straps. The first one proved difficult. She couldn’t get the tight strap over the man’s shoulder.

Breath spilling from her faster than she wished, she stopped herself before a frustrating cry would see her swallowing water. As it was, she’d snorted a healthy dose upon submersion and it wasn’t the finest vintage she’d tasted. If she did survive drowning, the toxic cocktail she sucked down her throat would surely kill her, if not at least make her glow electric green in the dark.

With thoughts of hypothermia storming her thinning brain waves, Annja jerked on the backpack strap and tugged it from the man’s arm. His body felt twice as heavy now. He was sinking fast, taking her with him. The canal wasn’t deep—perhaps fifteen to twenty feet—but a person could drown in less than a foot of water.

Utilizing a death grip on the backpack strap, she struggled to release his other lifeless arm.

A wince let out her last ounce of breath. Thanks to some trapped air, the backpack floated and Annja hooked it over an arm and bent her elbow. Kicking, she headed toward the surface, but quickly decided to change course for the murky shadows to her right.

Surfacing under the bridge, she gasped. The icy air pierced like needles at the back of her throat. Spitting out water, she sucked in just as much. Sputtering, she bit on a nasty piece of something she didn’t care to identify.

A kick of her legs slammed her against the slimy log bulkhead hugging the bridge girder.

Shivering, she pushed the hair from her eyes. She wanted to climb out, but didn’t know if the sniper would still be watching. Of course he would. Whoever he was. Was he allied with Sneak? If so, then someone wasn’t playing nice.

She couldn’t risk the chance of emerging in plain sight. She’d have to swim downstream as far as possible.

“Should have stayed home and popped in an episode of Supernatural,” she grumbled.

A cup of hot chocolate sounded too good to be true right now.

Her words stuttered from the cold. But the sound of her voice reassured in a strange way. The sting on her neck had subsided. The bullet must have only skimmed flesh. She was alive, which is what mattered.

Submerging was a difficult choice, but she took a deep breath and let her body drop into the dark, muffling depths.

The murky water and her position under the bridge made it impossible to see. But she didn’t need to see. It wasn’t as though she’d run into a boat or shark down here. Though a whale had been trapped in the canal a few years back. It wasn’t so much taking a bite from a fish that Annja worried about, as the raw sewage in the water.

A slight lightening in the waters signaled she’d cleared the bridge. Keeping close to what she felt was the shore, though her shoes didn’t touch bottom, she kicked swiftly and stroked with her free right arm, while maintaining a secure clutch on the backpack with her left.

A muffled horn honked as a car passed over the bridge. Annja was surprised to hear sound at all. The reminder the real world was so close again bolstered her confidence and made kicking in the cold waters easier.

A branch snagged her ankle. She kicked frantically, briefly panicking. Bubbles of air escaped, and she had to surface to gasp in air. She didn’t bring up her shoulders, only the top of her face. Sucking in the cold November air, she then inhaled deeply and went under.

While she hadn’t planned for an adventure swimming the depths this evening, Annja could only fault herself for not expecting it. When did the world just leave her alone and allow her a normal day?

Finding a surprise smile, she soared forward, turning in the water, to tilt her face to the surface. The world could mess with her all it liked. She was up for the challenge.

Paddling her hands near her thighs to keep her body under as much as possible, she managed to break the surface with only her face. A scan above the lumber edging the shore spied rooftops where she guessed the sniper had shot from.

A gulp of air, and she again submerged. She was on the wrong side of the river. But she wasn’t about to cross it. The current would carry her the way she’d come. Which meant she’d have to go another hundred yards at least, to put her out of sight of the buildings.

What seemed like an hour in the water was probably more like fifteen minutes. It was fourteen minutes too long.

Emerging, she dragged herself up along a mooring of old timbers lashed together with slimy rope. Slipping around behind the mooring put her next to a dock. The backpack no longer floated. It snagged on a branch—no, it was a hook of iron rebar.

Annja tugged, but the rebar held her prize securely. It was close to the surface. Deciding to get out from the water, and struggle with the backpack then, she heaved herself up. Using the rope wrapped about the moorings, she managed to slap a hand onto the dock.

The sting of a warm leather-gloved hand gripped her wrist, and reeled her in as if a giant fish. She was able to stand—for two seconds.

A fist to her gut forced up a hacking cough of water. Annja stumbled backward. Her soggy boots slipped on the wet plank dock. She went down. The landing might have hurt worse if she had feeling in her body. The cold did a number on that.

Kicking at the man who leaned over her, she managed a boot to the side of his face. He yowled. The hood of his jacket fell away to reveal a bald head.

She hadn’t the mental dexterity, or warm enough muscles, to exercise a judo kick or to pull out her Krav Maga moves.

Annja turned and pushed to her knees. Swinging out her right hand, she willed the sword into her grip. It arrived from the otherwhere, solid and weighted perfectly to her hold.

Not completely focused, her brain felt half-frozen. She blindly swung backward. Contact. The hilt struck his temple.

The attacker went down in silence. Must not have expected the fish to bite back.

Annja whipped the sword into the otherwhere. Moving as quickly as her numb limbs would allow, she crawled to the water’s edge and dipped a hand into the canal glimmering with oily residue. Her fingers hooked the backpack strap. It came free of the rebar with a tug.

Her cheek settled on a thin layer of snowflakes. Lying sprawled, her hand gripping the heavy backpack, she closed her eyes.

Did other women spend their Saturday nights like this? She must be doing something wrong. What did a girl have to do to meet a nice guy who wasn’t either set on killing her or being hunted himself?

Standing, her body shivering and her steps moving her in zigzags across the ground, Annja didn’t look back.

If the man lying on the ground was the sniper, she wanted to get out of his range before he came to.

Her lungs thudded like heavy chunks of ice against her ribs, and the muscles in her legs felt as if they’d been stretched like taffy. She wasn’t far from home.

Forcing herself to wander through the debris-littered back lot of a warehouse, she found the street and trudged onward.

When a cab pulled alongside her, Annja hugged the icy yellow vehicle before crawling into the backseat.



“GOOD GIRL, ANNJA. You got the prize.”

Dropping the sniper scope, the tall dark-haired man quickly crossed the cement floor and descended the iron stairs. Each footstep clanked loudly. He wasn’t concerned with stealth.

He’d almost been too late. Hadn’t been able to stop the first shot. But the second he’d altered the course. Not much, but enough to save the girl.

Now, to see what she did with the prize.



HARRIS LET THE PHONE ring six times before hanging up. The sniper had agreed to contact him with details of the skull’s whereabouts, and keep him posted about each move Cooke made.

He wasn’t supposed to fire a shot unless the man holding the skull looked as though he would hand it over to someone else. Cooke hadn’t even gotten the thing out of his backpack. Harris, from his vantage point on a building half a mile down the canal, bit back a growl as the pair went over the railing, taking the skull with them.

“Idiot,” he muttered. “Ravenscroft must have hired the sniper. That man knows so little about fieldwork!”

Tucking the cell phone inside his jacket, Harris eyed the brick-fronted warehouse where he knew the sniper had been positioned. The shooter should be long gone.

Five minutes later, Harris topped the fourth-floor stairs in the abandoned warehouse. His shoes crunched across debris of broken glass and Sheetrock. An icy breeze whipped up his collar and froze his face. At the far end of the warehouse he saw the M-16 rifle, still set upon a tripod.

He rushed through the darkness and stopped before he tripped over a man’s body.

“What the hell?”

Inspection found no ID on the body. He wore black leather gloves and shooting glasses. The sniper. He was dead. No blood evidence. Looked as if someone had broken his neck.

Harris stretched his gaze through the hazy darkness in a circle around him. Whoever had taken out the sniper could still be lurking.

Why had this happened? Had Ravenscroft sent his own backup?

It made no sense at all. This was merely a surveillance job. Keep an eye on Cooke, and make sure he doesn’t do anything rash between the time he landed in New York and met Ravenscroft for the handoff.

Harris scrubbed a hand over his scalp. Anything and everything had gone wrong.

“Ravenscroft is not going to like this one bit.”




3


The cabbie had argued fiercely for a generous tip after he’d seen Annja was dripping wet and smelled like something he’d dumped out of his rain gutter last week. Good thing the twenty she’d stuffed in her back pocket had survived the swim.

Much as Annja wanted to unzip the backpack and discover what she’d almost drowned for, the call of a hot shower denied that curious need.

Dropping the backpack inside the door of her loft, Annja made a beeline through the living room for the bathroom. Twisting the spigot, she would let the shower run for a few minutes to warm up.

Stripping away her wet clothes, she caught a glance of herself in the vanity mirror. Her lips were blue, as was the fine skin under her eyes. Tilting her head up she stroked the bruised skin on her neck. An abrasion tormented the base of her earlobe. The bullet had skimmed her flesh, but hadn’t drawn blood.

“Lucky girl.”

To touch it hurt worse than actually getting the wound.

She pressed a palm over her gut. She could still feel the bald guy’s knuckles there. He’d packed a force. But she’d gotten lucky when the hilt had clocked him on the temple. A blow to that sweet spot joggled a man’s brain inside his skull and instantly knocked him out.

“Should have searched him for ID,” she said to her sodden reflection. “You weren’t thinking straight, Creed.” Due to her frozen brain. “Who was watching us that would rather kill the one who holds the artifact than see it retrieved?”

Because the shooter had to have known if he did kill one or the both of them, the backpack would be irretrievable.

Had Sneak expected a tail? He’d been nervous. Probably a thief. Might explain why someone was following him.

Twisting the water faucet adjusted the temperature and she climbed into the shower, but was too weak to stand any longer. Settling into the tub in a self-hug, she let the warmth spill over her aching half-frozen muscles.

Annja had learned long ago comfort was never freely given. If she needed a hug or a reassuring word, it had to come from herself. She was fine with that. If you couldn’t pick yourself up after a trying challenge, then you’d better get out of the game because life wasn’t designed for sissies or wimps. Mostly.

She laughed into her elbow. “You must still have brain freeze. The game? Whatever.”

A half hour later, with a mug of hot chocolate in hand and some warm flannel pajama bottoms and her Dodgers sweatshirt on, the final shivers tickled her spine.

Annja squatted on the floor before the waterlogged backpack. It reeked of things she’d rather not consider. Things she had washed down the shower drain. Toxins in the Gowanus Canal? Big-time.

This is a complete loss, she said to herself. Good thing it wasn’t hers.

Setting the mug on the hardwood floor, she then unzipped the pack. Water dripped out from the inside, but not a lot. Inspecting the tag on the outer rim of the zipper teeth she read it was designed for hiking and was waterproof.

“Good deal.”

Tools and a metal-edged leather box were tucked inside. The tools she took out and examined, placing them on the floor in a line. Not like carpenter’s tools. A small screwdriver slightly larger than something a person would use to fix eyeglasses was the only one she thought fit for a house builder.

The assortment included a handheld drill with a battery pack dripping water. A glass cutter. A few flash drives. A wide-blade utility knife. Soft cotton gloves, only slightly wet. A stethoscope. And a small set of lock picks in a folding black leather case.

She blew on the flash drives, wondering if they would dry out enough to attempt to read. She wasn’t sure she wanted to risk an electrical failure by inserting the memory sticks into her laptop.

“Who would use stuff like this?”

She looked over the array on the floor. An interesting mix. An archaeologist might use the gloves, but she preferred latex gloves herself. Never left home without a pair.

Instinct said thief. But why would a thief steal something like an ancient skull if they had little idea of its value?

Though Sneak had said he’d been hired to bring this to someone. And he feared that someone.

Too tired to push her reasoning beyond simple deductions, Annja decided to sleep on it. But not until she’d opened the box. She’d sucked in half the Gowanus Canal to get the thing and had taken a bullet. Kind of. It sounded more dramatic than it was, she admitted to herself.

Secured with a small padlock, the box was made of a hardwood edged in thin metal. The wood was covered with pounded black leather, impressed with a houndstooth design. It didn’t look old, only expensive. It resembled a reliquary, though on the plain side.

Annja eyed the lock picks tucked inside the leather pouch. She’d never used anything like them before, but had read a few Internet articles on how to manipulate the pins inside a lock with a pick. A girl could use a set like this. Definitely something to hang on to.

The padlock was simple enough, though it was heavy, made of stacked steel plates. She might fiddle around with the picks, but would get nowhere.

The wood box was hard, like ironwood, and she was glad for that. Hopefully it had kept the water from seeping inside.

Foregoing any burgeoning lock-picking skills, she picked up the knife and rocked the tip of it around the metal edging. Small finishing nails secured each end of the metal strips. She managed to pry off two sides, and another, until the entire top square of wood could be removed.

“So much for the security of a padlock.”

A fluff of sheep’s wool poufed out of the open box.

“Good,” she muttered. “Still dry.”

Carefully plucking out the packing revealed the top of a skull. Annja drew it out and held it upon both palms. The eye sockets observed her curiosity without judgment.

Immediately aware of what she held, Annja gasped. “An infant’s skull.”

It wasn’t uncommon to unearth infants’ and children’s skulls on a dig. She did it all the time. But it didn’t make holding something so small, and so precious—obviously dead before it had a chance to live—less agonizing.

Switching to the analytical and less emotional side of her brain, Annja inspected the prize. The bone had a nice polish to it. The cranium was overlarge compared to the facial bones, as infant skulls were. Large eye sockets mastered the face. The lower jaw bone, the mandible, was not intact.

The parietal and frontal bones, normally fused with various sutures, were instead joined by thin strips of gold placed between them, much like glue, to hold it together. The anterior and posterior fontanels were also joined with those sutures. Each fontanel, normally the soft spot on an infant’s skull, was smooth and shiny gold.

“Fancy. I wonder whose living room shelf this has gone missing from?”

Turning it over and taking her time, Annja smoothed her fingers over the surface, feeling for abrasions or gouges. There were no markings on the exterior bone that she could find. Sometimes knife marks remained after a ceremonial removing of the scalp. The gold lining the plates was fascinating enough.

No dirt. It didn’t smell as if it had been freshly unearthed. It was musty but clean.

It looked an average skull, stained with age enough she’d place it a few centuries old, at the least. There were no teeth in the upper maxilla, nor did it look as though there ever had been teeth. Could it be newborn?

“So sad,” she muttered.

And yet, the elaborate gold decoration might prove it was an important person. Perhaps a child born to a royal or great warrior.

Retrieving a digital camera from the catastrophe she called a desktop, Annja then placed the skull on top of a stack of hardcover research books. She snapped shots of the skull from all angles. When the flash caught the small gold triangular posterior fontanel section, she noticed the anomaly in the smooth metal.

“So there is a mark.”

Sneak had mentioned a curious marking in his e-mail. Holding the skull close to the desk light, she squinted to view the small impression in the shiny gold.

“A cross? Looks familiar.”

She had seen it many times researching renaissance and medieval battles, religions and even jewelry.

A cross pattГ©e was impressed in the gold. It was a square cross capped with triangular ends. An oft-used symbol in medieval times. It did not always signify a religious connection, and some even associated it with fairies or pirates. The Knights Templar had worn a similar cross on their tabards.

The cross pattée was more a Teutonic symbol than Templar, she knew that. The Templar’s red cross on white background tended to vary in design. That set her original guess of a few centuries back, perhaps to the thirteenth or fourteenth century.

Sneak had thought it twelfth century. It was possible, she acknowledged.

Hell, the skull could be contemporary. She wouldn’t know until she could get it properly dated. And Annja knew the professor who could help. But first, she’d send out feelers to her own network. If the skull had been stolen from a dig, someone would be looking for it.

Powering up her laptop, she inserted the digital card from the camera into the card reader to load the photos she’d taken.

As she waited for the program to open, Annja wondered again about the man on the bridge. Dead now. Yet, a part of his life sat scattered beside a puddle on her floor. A foul-smelling puddle. That canal water was something else.

At the time, she’d suspected he’d been frightened. But now she altered that assessment to worried. Fear would have kept him from approaching her. Worry had kept his eyes shifting about, wondering what, if anything, could go wrong.

Had he been aware he was being watched? By a sniper? Perhaps by the buyer who didn’t trust the thief would bring the prize right to him?

What about the bald man who must have followed her swim through the waters and waited for her to surface? Same guy as the sniper? Or an ally tracking the target by foot? Was he allied with the sniper or Sneak?

Something Sneak said now niggled at her. He’d been hired to hand this over to—how had he put it?—a specific individual, and had a bad feeling about it.

So who was Sneak? An archaeologist? He’d only claimed to work on digs over summers, and that was part-time. Could have just been a lark, joining friends to see if he liked the job. He hadn’t struck her as someone in the know. If he had rudimentary knowledge on skulls, such as she, he could have puzzled its origins out.

Maybe. She hadn’t figured the thing out yet, so what made her believe anyone else could?

Online, Sneak had sounded like a layman who stumbled across an artifact while hiking with friends near a defunct dig site in Spain. And yet, that explanation didn’t feel right to Annja.

Add to the leery feeling the fact a lock-pick kit, drill and glass cutter had been on his person…

Annja knew when people hired others to handle artifacts and hand them over it was never on the up-and-up. Whoever had hired the sneaky guy may have also killed him.

But why? If the sniper had known the man carried the artifact on him, why then kill him and risk losing the skull in the river?

Annja envisioned a body found floating in the Gowanus Canal come morning. It wasn’t as though it never happened. Heck, the canal was rumored to have once been the Mafia’s favorite dumping grounds. But it had been cleaned up quite a bit since the Mafia’s heydays.

Annja considered her options.

Bart McGilly was a friend who served on the NYPD as a detective. He knew trouble followed Annja far more closely than she desired, and was accustomed to calls from her at odd hours of the night.

He didn’t know everything about her. Like at certain times she could be found defending herself with a kick-ass medieval sword. And after successfully dispatching the threat, the sword would then simply disappear into a strange otherwhere Annja still couldn’t describe or place.

What was it about the sword? Since she’d taken claim to it, weird stuff happened to knock on her door weekly. It was as if the sword attracted things to her. Things she needed to change. Things that required investigation. Things that could not always be determined good or evil, but, Annja knew innately, mustn’t be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.

It was as if she’d become the crusader for lost artifacts and weird occurrences. World-changing occurrences. And that put a heavy weight on her shoulders.

Bart was also unaware she really could use a good hug every once in a while. With the sword came challenge and hard work and, oftentimes, danger. Survival and strength could only be maintained with good old-fashioned friendship. Of which, she had a few, but not a single person she could call a BFF.

Did she need a BFF? Probably not. Then again, probably.

With a sigh, Annja retrieved her mug from the floor and took a sip. Cold. But still, it was chocolate. Propping a hand at her flannel-covered hip, she leaned over the laptop.

The photo program allowed her to choose a few good shots of the anterior and lateral views, and close-ups of the gold on the fontanels. She cropped them to remove the background. Didn’t need anyone knowing her curtains were badly in need of dusting or that her desk was a disaster.

Signing on to her favorite archaeology site, Annja posted the pictures along with a note about a friend showing her the skull. She wouldn’t make up a story about finding it on a dig, because that could get her in trouble. She had no idea where this had come from, and if she guessed a wrong location, well, then.

She’d check back in the morning.

Before signing off, she searched the Carroll Street Bridge to see if it had security cameras. It didn’t. Which wouldn’t help her sleuth out who she’d spoken to, but proved excellent should the sniper want to track her.

On the other hand, if the sniper and the bald guy were indeed two different people, the sniper may have tracked her home.

Flicking aside the curtain, Annja scanned the street below. Car headlights blurred in the snow that had turned to sleet and rain. No mysterious figures lurking.

She picked up the phone to call Bart. It was past midnight, but she dialed, anyway. Bart’s answering machine took her cryptic message about swimming the canal with a stranger. He’d call her in the morning, for sure.

With one last inspection over the skull, she decided to forego doing an Internet search on random skulls. That would bring up more hits than her sleepy eyelids could manage.

Instead, she flicked off the desk light and wandered into her bedroom. It hadn’t felt so good to crawl between warm blankets in a long time. Annja dropped instantly to Nod.




4


In the meeting room attached to a fiftieth-floor corner office overlooking Central Park, a crew of three cameramen noisily went about setting up for a photo shoot. A top business magazine had declared Benjamin Ravenscroft CEO of the year. They wanted to flash his mug across their pages, and he was obliged to agree.

He’d gotten an e-mail that morning regarding the Fortune 500 list. Another photo shoot was imminent.

The entrepreneur’s company, Ravens Tech, had risen from the detritus of struggling dot coms over the past year. CNN had crowned him Master of the Intangible Assets. Ravens-Tech now held weekly cyber auctions for intellectual property rights, such as patents, trademarks and copyrights. They’d netted six hundred million dollars last year, and this year looked to double that figure.

Just goes to show what a little roll-up-your-sleeves ingenuity can do for a man. And the proper connections, he thought as he waited to be photographed.

“Ten minutes and we’ll be ready for you, Mr. Ravenscroft,” the photographer said.

Ravenscroft waved a slim black clove cigarette at the photographer, who then disappeared inside the meeting room.

Leaning against the edge of his granite-topped desk, ankles crossed and whistling the first few bars of Eine Kleine Nachtmusic, the businessman tucked the grit between his lips and inhaled. It made a faint popping sound.

He had the cigarettes imported from Indonesia. He preferred them over regular cigarettes for their intense scent. He’d become addicted to them during his college days when he’d sit through the night, eyes glued to the computer monitor as he shopped his way through available domain names.

He’d made millions nabbing domains. Another intangible. He loved buying and selling things a person could not physically hold, touch or see.

He tapped the calendar on his iPhone. He verified two meetings that afternoon: Accountant and Marketing. Both would be a breeze.

Another tap. The plans for the Berlin office were due to arrive before noon by courier. Where the hell were they?

He eyed his secretary’s desk through the glass wall that separated their offices. With a touch of a button on his desk the electrochromic glass would turn white, granting privacy. A necessary amenity.

Rebecca was on the phone; her red hair spilled over one satin-clad shoulder. She would notify him as soon as the Berlin plans arrived. Lunch with her in the meeting room—her legs hooked over his shoulders—was scheduled for twelve-fifteen.

He hadn’t scheduled Harris in, but he expected him before noon, as well. Not the best time to arrive, with the photographer in the next room, but Ben was anxious to get his hands on what Harris had retrieved.

He twisted and eyed the blurry photograph on the desktop. The skull had been removed from a glass display case, and a glare from the glass blurred part of the photo.

“Good things,” he muttered. “Soon.”

But the day would give him a migraine if he didn’t dose on Imitrex before facing the camera’s bright lights.

And tonight he had to leave the office early to arrive home in time to tuck his daughter in for bed. He and his wife had agreed he’d make a concerted effort to be home at least twice a week to do so.

He hadn’t tucked Rachel in for more than a month.

He sent a text message to his secretary. Send flowers to wife. White roses, two dozen. As he hit Send, Rebecca buzzed on the intercom. Her voice made him want to dash the damned schedule and today’s commitments and lift the frilled red skirt above her hips and take her right now.

“Mr. Harris is here for you, Ben—er, sir.”

“Thank you, Rebecca, send him in.”

Stepping over to assure the photographer he’d be right in, Ben closed the meeting room door and strolled to his desk. He snubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray, inhaling the clove fumes deeply.

He settled into the leather chair that had put him out a mere ten grand. It heated the lumbar area and massaged overall. It also included a heart monitor and blood pressure cuff. It had been worth every penny. A man could forget his whole family sitting in this thing.

But never Rebecca. That’s where the ultravibrating function came in handy.

Lifting his feet, he propped them on the ottoman he kept to the left side of his desk. The slight elevation kept his legs from clotting. He’d spent his early twenties running marathons, pushing his body to the limit. His desk job reminded him daily how quickly the body degenerates without exercise. Hell, he was only forty-two.

He made a mental note to have Rebecca check into treadmills. Then he ditched the idea. He had no time for extracurricular activity. Lunch dates with Rebecca would have to serve as his exercise.

Time was more precious than gold to Ben. But he’d learned to control it. He controlled all aspects of his life. Save the one. Rachel. And that frustrated him no end.

Harris entered the massive office and offered a respectful bow, hands pressed together before his mouth like some kind of besuited samurai. The heavy oak door closed slowly on hydraulics behind him. The white-haired behemoth looked completely out of his element in the ill-fitted navy-blue suit and red tie.

He did not carry a briefcase or box.

Ben leaned forward, waving a hand frantically. “Where is it?”

“Sir.”

Harris bowed again. He fingered the gaudy red tie strangling his thick neck. His glance around the room, as if checking for trespassers hidden behind the potted cactus or narrowed behind the blinds, revealed his anxiety.

“There was an altercation,” he said cautiously.

“I don’t like the sound of that, Harris. Either Cooke was apprehended or he was not. I don’t see anything on your person which would indicate you retrieved the artifact, so I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you failed me.”

“Sir, there was a woman.”

Ben raised his eyebrows. An exhale settled him in the comfortable chair. Relaxation was far from his mind.

“Before or after you began to trail Cooke?” he asked. “I don’t need to hear about your amorous liaisons, Harris. And I certainly hope you were not entertaining the flavor of the week on my time.”

“I would never, Mr. Ravenscroft. Cooke didn’t go immediately home from the airport. He met a woman on the old Carroll Street Bridge. He must have arranged for them to meet before arriving in the States.”

Cooke going behind his back with the goods? The bastard had come highly recommended after Serge had worked his magic. Ben did not tolerate those who tried to screw with him.

“The sniper followed the backup plan, as discussed,” Harris said.

“Good.” The backup plan did not allow for Cooke to live.

“The artifact, unfortunately, was sacrificed in the process.”

“Damn!” Ben slammed a fist onto the desktop.

Harris flinched, tugged at his tie.

Ben tried not to get his hands dirty. He remained invisible in any business transaction. A liaison had been necessary to meet Cooke. He’d sent out an idiot when he should have taken care of this himself.

“The sniper got this.” Harris approached the desk and reached inside his suit coat. He placed a black-and-white photograph on Ben’s desk. “He sent it to me on my cell phone. Then I, er, lost contact with him.”

Not picking it up, but instead drawing the slightly curved photo toward him with the edge of his thumb, Ben leaned over the image. It was blurred, but some details showed on the two faces. He recognized Cooke from the one meeting he’d arranged during an art exhibit at a gallery in the Village.

There was enough clarity to ascertain the figure talking to Cooke was indeed a woman. A dark ski cap hugged her head. Prominent cheekbones suggested beauty. Mouth open, as if talking, she couldn’t have known her conversation was being observed.

Tilting his head to reduce the glare on the photo, Ben sought more in the grainy depths of her eyes. Something about her was familiar. But he couldn’t recall seeing her in person. He attended so many damned parties he felt sure he’d slapped palms with half of New York over the past year alone. If he ever wanted to pursue politics, he’d certainly gotten flesh-pressing down pat.

The door to his right opened. The photographer shoved his head through. “Ready, Mr. Ravenscroft.”

“Five minutes,” he said. When the door closed, the clicking sound of the mechanics bit at the base of Ben’s skull, threatening the imminent migraine. “What happened?”

Watching the door with wary suspicion, Harris finally decided the coast was clear.

“After the sniper shots they went over the bridge railing.”

“He got them both?”

“We’re still waiting to verify bodies, sir.”

Ben rolled his eyes and pushed back in the chair. Again, he propped his feet up and clasped his hands on his lap. He didn’t look at Harris. To give him any regard was more than the man deserved right now.

Bodies. He didn’t do bodies. What a fiasco.

“And the sniper is gone?” he asked.

“No, uh…”

“What the hell is it, man?”

“I went looking for him.”

Ben picked up on the man’s increasing anxiety. More so than when he’d initially entered the office. The rancid sweat from Harris’s armpits blasted over any lingering waves of clove.

“Why would you go looking for him? Didn’t you maintain radio contact?”

“He didn’t contact me as arranged. I found him…dead.”

“How?”

“Broken neck. His weapon was still in place. Nothing was removed from the body. I have no idea who did it. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Sorry?” Ben shook his head and glanced out the window. He saw nothing. Not the clear winter-white sky, nor the acres of steel skyscrapers.

The sniper was dead. That was good. One less witness. And yet, an unknown had gone after his sniper? That was not good. Add one unidentified witness to the list.

Had Cooke placed his own man on the scene? He couldn’t have, or else why would he kill him?

Ben calmed his racing thoughts.

“You disappoint me, Harris. The operation was thoroughly botched. And not even an artifact in hand.”

“I’m unsure if the exchange was made.”

“You say exchange.” Ben studied the bead of sweat running down Harris’s forehead. “Was there an exchange?”

“I feel it was intended, but the sniper reported nothing was exchanged before they went over the bridge railing.”

“What about after, do you suppose?”

“After?” Harris sputtered. “Difficult to imagine either survived. Two shots were fired. Both found their mark. If the bullet didn’t do it, the toxic sludge would have smothered them, surely.”

“The canal is a hell of a lot cleaner than most believe. Men have fallen in before, and emerged with nothing more than a case of hepatitis A.”

Ben took the photo and tapped the edge sharply on the stone desktop. So it all ended right here?

No. There was too much at stake. And now with the unknown who’d taken out the sniper, the risk in not following through could prove deadly. Someone had too much information.

He needed that skull. A life depended on it. He wasn’t about to let it be swept under the carpet until he’d heard confirmation of two bodies. And when the bodies were found, would the skull also be found?

“Do we have a man on the inside?”

“The inside, sir?”

“The police. We need someone on location at the NYPD when the bodies are found. The artifact mustn’t wind up shelved in the municipal evidence closet, never to be claimed or seen again.”

“I’ll ensure it happens.”

“Do so. Did you remove the sniper’s weapon?”

“I did.”

“No clue whatsoever to our mystery killer?”

“No, sir, but I’m looking into it.”

“I want a lead within eight hours. That will be all.”

Harris bowed and turned sharply to leave the office.

Ben tucked the photo inside his suit coat. He drew out his phone and tapped Serge’s number.

“No.” He set the phone on the desk. “Not yet.”

He didn’t want the man involved until the right moment.

Ben gazed at the phone. Could Serge be the mystery man who took out the sniper? What reason would he have to do so? If he guessed Ben was tracking the skull, he would have gone directly after it. To imagine Serge killing a sniper was difficult. It just didn’t fit. He had no knowledge of weapons, as far as Ben knew. He was a big man, but one of those wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly sorts.

The meeting room door opened again.

“On my way,” Ben called.

He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a syringe. Tugging his shirt out from his trousers, he grabbed a wodge of middle-age bulge. The autoinjector pierced the flesh. His skin warmed and tingled.

What a way to start the day.




5


Annja took the subway stairs two at a time to emerge a few blocks away from Columbia University. She spied the Olive Tree Deli and made a note not to forget to eat today. She’d forgone breakfast in lieu of excitement over her current find. The skull, tucked in the reassembled box and nestled in its lamb’s wool, joggled in the pack on her back.

Her cell phone rang and Bart McGilly’s name flashed on the screen.

He started right in. “Annja, one of these days your messages are not going to be funny anymore. You were joking about swimming in the Gowanus Canal. What kind of monsters do your producers think you’ll find in that filthy water?”

“Sorry, Bart. I wasn’t kidding. I’ve still the lingering scum in my bathtub to prove it. I don’t know what’s in that water—and please, if you know, don’t tell me—but it certainly wasn’t a day at the beach. And it had nothing to do with Chasing History’s Monsters.”

“Seriously? Annja, don’t do this to me. So there’s a body? For real?”

“Young. Probably late twenties would be my guess. Male. Dark hair and slender.”

“How’d he end up in the canal?”

“Sniper shot to the brain.”

His silence could be interpreted as surprise, but Annja pictured Bart grasping his throat and shaking his head. There she goes again, his silent thoughts broadcast loudly over the greater consciousness.

“It’s not like I seek out these sorts of situations, Bart.”

“Oh, really? Because with your record a guy would be inclined to believe that is exactly what you do. What, do you listen to the police scanner? Track nefarious transactions online?”

“Is that possible?” she wondered curiously as she stepped onto the university grounds and followed the sidewalk south.

“Annja.” Bart sighed.

“I got an e-mail from a guy with an artifact he wanted me to look at.”

“So anytime a stranger pings wanting to show you something, you just make a date? Wait. Don’t answer that one. I don’t want to know. I’ll send a team out to check the canal. Do you know who the victim is? Who was shooting at—hell, the both of you? Are you okay?”

“It’s just an abrasion, but I almost got a pierced ear out of the deal.” She spoke quickly to alleviate his gasping protest. “After the first bullet, I thought it wisest to get the hell out of there. Down was the only way I could come up with at the time. As for the dead man, his Internet ID was Sneak. At least in the archaeology forum where he found me it is. I don’t know who he is. Didn’t have any ID in his backpack.”

“In his—you removed evidence from the body?”

Bart groaned. Annja imagined him clenching his fists in frustration.

“Had to, Bart. I’m not going to let a valuable artifact get flushed through the canal like a hunk of sewage. Speaking of which—no, I don’t even want to know. A skull was in his backpack, along with a bunch of funky tools. I’m thinking he was a thief because there was a stethoscope and some kind of hand drill. Oh, and lock-pick tools.”

“I need to take a look at the tools, Annja. All of them are evidence. Have you touched them? Of course you have.”

“Sorry.”

“How did you meet this guy?”

“Online.”

“Right. At the Dangerous Dating Depot?”

“Oh, Bart, you made a funny.”

“No, I’m trying to fit myself into the strange world you seem to navigate with startling ease. You said there was a skull?”

“It’s why I agreed to meet the guy in the first place.” Annja turned down a tree-lined sidewalk toward Schermerhorn Hall.

“So you have the skull. What are you doing with it now? Or do I want to know?”

“I’m an archaeologist, Bart. Skulls are our thing. Don’t you know we bone botherers like to tote around various bits and bones to keep us company?”

Another groan. She was having far too much fun teasing him when she knew the situation was serious. A dead thief could account for that.

“I’m taking it to a professor at Columbia right now. Going to have him date it and see if I can begin to place it on a historical time line. If I can do that I might be able to track it to a point of origin. And then we’ll have an M.O. on the thief. Maybe.”

“What makes you think your alleged thief isn’t just a wacko? A killer? What if it’s a random skull? Annja, what if it’s from one of his kills?”

“You surprise me, Bart. I didn’t think you jumped to conclusions so easily. And why would someone kill for a random skull?”

“Why would someone kill and not go after said random skull?”

Annja glanced over her shoulder. She was sure she hadn’t been followed because she kept a keen eye to her periphery. No snow today; in fact, it was warmer by fifteen degrees, so it felt almost tropical. In a thirty-degree kind of way.

“It’s pretty hard to go after something sitting at the bottom of the canal. Besides, it’s an infant skull.”

“A baby? Christ, Annja, it doesn’t add up.”

“It does from my end of the stick. It’s an artifact, Bart, not a victim. At least, not from this century.”

“I hate working on crimes against children. It’s so sad. Fine. I’m heading out to the canal. You keep an eye over your shoulder. And please, promise me, you won’t meet any more strangers without having them vetted by me first?”

“I can’t promise…”

“Woman, you are going to give me a heart attack.”

“Hey, that reminds me, we haven’t had a decent meal out lately.”

“Because you’re always trekking across the world, posing for TV cameras and sticking your nose in danger.”

“You love me for it, admit it.”

Bart’s sigh made her smile. She’d successfully redirected him from her dangerous dabbling with the criminal mien.

“Give me a call after you’ve talked to the professor, will you? I’ve got some time tomorrow night. We can meet and you can bring along the evidence you’ve contaminated. How about Tito’s?”

“Sounds like a plan. Me and my contaminants can make it.”

Tito’s was one of their favorite places to meet over a plate of Cuban pulled pork with sweet plantains.

Bart was one of few friends Annja had in the city, and she valued that friendship tremendously. Though she couldn’t deny he was also a handsome single man who, on more than a few occasions, sat closer to her than a friend should, stared into her eyes longer than a friend should and made her think of him much more than the average friend should.

The redbrick front of Schermerhorn Hall popped into view through a line of lindens. “I’ll talk to you later. Thanks, Bart.”




6


Schermerhorn Hall, a four-story colonial redbrick building, sat just off Amsterdam Avenue. Annja liked the street name. How cool would it have been to live in the seventeenth century when New York was New Amsterdam?

“Not as cool as you wish,” she admonished.

While it was interesting to conjecture a life lived in a previous century, the appeal of it only lasted until Annja reminded herself of lacking plumbing, sanitation, medicine and the Internet.

The building was quiet as she entered. Classes must be in session, she thought. As she passed various classrooms the doors were open to reveal dark quiet rooms. No one about. Odd.

Professor Danzinger was the rock star of the Sociology and Anthropology department. At least in the minds of the attending females. Pushing sixty, the man was still in fine form. Tall, slender and with a head full of curly salt-and-pepper hair, a quick glance would place him onstage, guitar in hand. Closer observation—perhaps a genial handshake, as well—would discover he would have to play backup for Mick Jagger, for the lines creasing his face.

Annja recalled he actually did play guitar—sometimes during class—which only made the girls swoon all the more.

An excellent teacher, most students claimed to learn more from one semester of Practical Archaeology than they did all year during some of the more advanced classes. Danzinger frequently guest taught at universities across the country, and Annja had been lucky to have him for a semester herself in her undergrad days.

She remembered him fondly, and she’d had the requisite crush on him, too. But she’d never dated him, as some of her classmates had.

She peeked inside the open doorway to the anthropology lab and found him bent over a high-powered microscope. Curly hair spiraled down the side of his face. A tatter-sleeved T-shirt revealed thin yet muscular arms. He was wearing brown leather pants so worn they looked like the cow wouldn’t take them back. And bare feet.

“Annja, don’t stare, it isn’t polite.”

She entered the lab, swinging the box containing the skull like a bright-eyed schoolgirl dangling her purse as she watched the football star walk by.

Plopping the box on the lab table with a clunk helped to chase away the silliness in her. So she had her goofball moments. Sue her.

“Fancy little box.” Professor Danzinger pushed from the counter and gave her a wink. He moved in an erratic, over-caffeinated, no-time-to-sit-still motion that made her wonder if he didn’t moonlight in a band on weekends. “Is that the newest fashion in purses for hip, young archaeologists?”

“No, I prefer my backpack. And it’s not mine. It belongs to the thief who gave it to me.”

“Ah, a thief.”

“Alleged thief.”

The professor leaned a hip against the counter, propping an elbow and crossing his legs at the ankle. He signaled beyond her. “Where is he?”

“Dead. His body is floating somewhere in the Gowanus Canal.”

“Too bad. Drowned?”

“No, bullet.”

That got a lift of brow from him. She respected him too much to make up a story, and he was one of those who could take anything a person said as if it were merely a weather report. “Truth earned respect” was one of his favorite mantras.

“Annja, you do have an interesting assortment of acquaintances. I seem to recall a nervous junior movie producer tagging along with you last time we met. Doogie something or other?”

“Doug Morrell. Television producer, and jumpy hyperactive is his normal state. I’d hate to see him on caffeine.”

“He produces your show?”

“It’s not my show, but yes, he does.”

“I saw the show a few months ago. Who’s the bimbo?”

“Why? You interested?”

Flash of white teeth. “Always.”

“Good ol’ Professor Danzinger. Always on the make.”

“Sleeping with the professor won’t get you an A, but it does promise a night to remember.”

She felt a blush rise in her cheeks. Annja glanced about the room, unconcerned for the stacked femurs or plaster casts of hands and faces. Just don’t let him see my red face, she thought.

Danzinger, blessedly nonchalant, nodded toward the box. “So let’s take a look, because I know my flirtations will get me nowhere with you.”

“Oh, they might,” she said, trying to sound blasé.

“Really?” He tugged the box toward him and leaned over the counter, bringing him closer to her. So close she could smell the spicy cologne and wonder why she never did invest in the extracurricular extra credit the professor had offered.

“Probably not,” she decided with a sigh. “I’m much too busy most of the time. And running about like a mad woman the rest of the time.”

“No time for a love life? Annja.” He shook his head. “What did I teach you about taking time for yourself?”

“The enslaved soul dies. Or something like that.”

“Close enough. You need to take care of yourself, is what it boils down to. All work and no play, well, you know how that one goes.”

She did. But somehow, even when Annja finagled a little vacation time, it managed to become work. Or adventure. Or both—with bullets.

She had to laugh at her life sometimes. It was either that or scream.

The professor pried off the box top and let out a whistle. “Standard skull enhanced with decorative gold. You seen one, you’ve seen a million. Small though. Newborn. What’s so special about this one, Annja?”

“I’m not sure.”

She was surprised at his dismissive assessment of the skull. Though his focus was on sociology as opposed to anthropology, which went a little way in explaining his lacking interest.

“As I’ve said, someone has already been killed for it. The guy I got this from was able to tell me he was afraid someone wanted to take it away from him before he was shot.”

“Such a life you live. Puts my world-crossing shenanigans to shame.”

She doubted that one. Annja did dodge a bullet or two more often than most. But she had nowhere near as many notches on her bedpost as this man.

The professor fished out a magnifying glass from a drawer by his hip and studied the gold creeping along the sutures. “Cross pattée. Teutonic? The gold was added much later than this baby died.”

“You think? What’s your guess on age?”

“Haven’t a clue. Though Teutonic is thirteenth century—formed at the end of the twelfth. That means little. We don’t have the supplies in the lab to properly date it. We don’t have a department dedicated to archaeology, as you know. Though perhaps Lamont might have the carbon-14 equipment. They do dendrochronology—dating tree rings—so they could probably take a look at this skull.”

Annja knew all the earth and environmental science people were located at Lamont.

Danzinger turned the skull upside down to peek inside the hole on the occipital bone at the skull base where the spinal cord normally ran through.

“There’s something inside. Carvings?” he asked.

“What?” Annja was caught off guard.

“You didn’t notice the interior designs? Looks like carvings. I’ll need a scope.”

He tucked the skull against his rib cage and wandered to a cabinet on the wall. Rooting around like a mechanic who sorts through a toolbox, he produced an articulated snake light from a scatter of tools and returned to the lab table with it.

The end of the snake light had a USB connection. He plugged it into his computer. It opened a program that, Annja realized, streamed video from the light.

“It’s a little camera on the end?” she asked.

“Cool, huh? Isn’t technology a marvel?”

He poked the device inside the skull. Carved designs appeared on the computer monitor.

“Wow.” Annja inspected the image. His movements were jerky and she could only make out lines here and there. “Stop. Let me look at this. You think those were carved? But how? That would take a pretty precise instrument to work through such a small hole, and these are very elaborate carvings.”

“Unless the skull sections were pried away for the carvings and then the sutures were resealed with the gold.”

“No, it hasn’t been separated like that. The skull is intact.”

“Annja, you think it came this way? Or rather, it was born this way?”

It was a silly conjecture, she realized. “Let me see.”

He handed her the skull and camera, but she only took the skull.

Poking a finger inside the hole, she traced it along a carved line and dug in her fingernail to test the depth. It was shallow and the edges were smooth. It felt natural, as if the lines had existed since the skull had, well, been born.

It was utterly ridiculous. Human skulls were not embedded with a worm’s nest of interconnecting carvings. The designs had to be manmade, and the gold supported that guess.

Still, she smoothed the pad of her finger over the designs. It was remarkable no sharp edges appeared that would give a clue the lines had been carved. Of course time would soften all knife edges and chisel marks. But even on the inside?

“Can you leave this here with me overnight?” Danzinger asked. “With patience I might be able to map the interior with the camera.”

“So you’re interested now? It’s no longer just another skull?”

“Hey, with the holiday this weekend the building is serene. It’s difficult to leave when there’s not a soul to bother me. I’ve got a few hours to spare tonight. Joleen broke our date.”

“I don’t even want to know.” She caught his sly wink. “What holiday?”

“Seriously? Annja, it’s Thanksgiving in two days.”

“Oh, right. I don’t pay much attention to the calendar.” She tapped the skull. “I’ll leave it. I’d love to see what’s going on inside this thing.”

He took the skull and nestled it carefully in the lamb’s wool. “Cool. I will call you as soon as I have something.”

She scribbled her cell phone number on a piece of paper and he tucked it in his pants pocket.

“So, Annja, if you ever need an expert on classic electric guitars for the show, you know where to find me.”

“You’ll be the first I ask. What a pair you and Kristie would make on the screen. They’d have to do up posters and send you to fan conventions to sign them.”

“You think?”

She smirked, and shook his hand. “Thanks, Professor. Call me as soon as you have something.”



ANNJA STOPPED in the lobby below her loft and chatted with Wally, the building’s superintendent, while she sipped coffee. The building’s residents were all on friendly terms. She liked the small community and felt safer for it.

The connection to people who didn’t necessarily know her well, but well enough to smile at sight of her and offer a few friendly words, was something she cherished. A girl who had grown up in an orphanage will take all the camaraderie she can get.

Climbing the fourth-floor stairs, she was glad for the residents’ rule of no elevator after-hours because the thing was creaky and loud. Who needed an elevator when the exercise felt great?

Tugging the thief’s backpack from her shoulder, she swung its empty weight by her side as she took the stairs.

A strange touch of grief suddenly shivered inside her rib cage. She hadn’t known the guy at the bridge. They’d had a few online conversations, shared some common knowledge and a fascination for old skulls. Yet he’d died standing right next to her. She had used his body as a shield to break the water during their fall.

As much as she’d encountered death in her life—and it had increased tenfold over the past few years—Annja would never become so used to it that it didn’t at least make her wonder about the life lost. It was the archaeologist in her.

If some goon were intent on killing her, and she had to take his life to save her own, the regret was minimal. But innocents caught in the line of fire? That was tough to deal with.

Had Sneak been innocent? Bart suspected he might be a thief from the description she’d given him of the tools. Yet, if he were a thief, why bring the booty to her? Wouldn’t he have his own network of experts to authenticate an artifact?

Unless he was just forming that network, and he’d neglected to mention she had been chosen as his expert archaeologist.

What nest of vipers had she stepped into by meeting the man and claiming the skull?

Whoever had killed the thief had gotten a look at her, surely, through the rifle scope. She hadn’t looked her best last night with a ski cap pulled to her ears and bundled against the cold so, hopefully, whatever look the sniper had gotten hadn’t been enough to pick her out from a crowd. With her face flashed across the TV screen on occasional Thursday nights it wasn’t easy going incognito.

She pushed open the fourth-floor stairway door. The sudden awareness that something was not right made her pause before her loft door labeled with 4A. She held her palm over the knob, not touching it.

The door wasn’t open, but she sensed a weird vibe in the air. Intuition had always been good to her.

Had someone been here while she was gone?

“Paranoia does not suit you, Annja,” she muttered, and twisted the knob.

Apparently paranoia fit this time.

Her loft had been ransacked. The messy desktop was now clear save the laptop. Books, papers, manuscripts, pens and small artifacts were spread haphazardly across the floor. One sweep of an arm had cleared them from the desk.

Curtains were pulled from the rod and heaped on the floor. So much for dusting them. Couch cushions were tossed against the wall and the couch overturned. The filming setup in the corner of her living room was trashed. The green screen coiled on the floor, and the camera sprawled on top of that.

Everything had been touched. She didn’t want to venture into the kitchen. She got a glimpse of a cracked peanut-butter jar from the doorway.

The reason Annja didn’t rush into the kitchen sat on the desk chair before her. As if waiting for her return.

Annja lowered her body into a ready crouch, but she did not summon her sword to her grip. She didn’t know who he was, but she wasn’t so quick to reveal her secrets before she learned the secrets of others.

Besides, he didn’t jump her, nor did he have a pistol aimed on any important body parts.

The man was bald, seeming tall from his seated position and his broad shoulders and dressed in a dark suit with a black tie. He looked up from his canted bow through his lashes, which made him seem more sinister than the business suit could ever manage.

Could he be the man who’d pulled her from the canal? That man had been bald.

“Annja Creed,” he said calmly. “I’ve been waiting for you.”




7


He sounded Russian. The voice was deep but the tones were even and he didn’t sound threatening.

What was she thinking? The man had destroyed her home. And she had a pretty good idea what he must have been looking for.

“You know my name. It’s only polite I learn yours.” Still in defensive mode, Annja kept the open door behind her in case a quick escape was needed.

“Serge,” he said, putting a Slavic lilt on the second syllable. “You know what I am here for, Miss Creed.”

“I have no idea. How about you tell me? That is, after you apologize for tearing my place apart. You’ve tossed valuable artifacts about as if toys.”

“Unfortunately, not the valuable artifact I seek. You slipped through my fingers last night.”

So he was the guy at the canal. That explained the bruise at the corner of his left eye. Points for the half-frozen chick.

“I know you have it. I saw the pictures you posted online.”

Crap. For as many times as she’d posted photos—and said postings had resulted in cluing the bad guys to finding her—she would never learn. And yet…

“How did you find me? I cover my tracks well online. My Internet profile is secure. You couldn’t have traced me.”

“I have my ways.”

She chuffed, then thought better of angering the guy who had turned over her heavy leather couch. His ways may simply include following her cab home last night. She only took it eight blocks. And she had been out of her head, not thinking clearly.

On the other hand, she’d left him flat on his back. He couldn’t possibly have followed her.

“So you knew the man I spoke to last night before you shot him?”

“I fired no weapons last evening.”

That supported her theory on the existence of both the sniper and her attacker.

“So, you and the sniper work together?”

The man looked aside, breaking eye contact, but he didn’t drop his dead calm. He reconnected with her gaze immediately. “No,” he said quietly.

Interesting. So if this one had been tracking the thief for the skull, then what stake had the sniper in the whole thing? How many parties were involved? She counted three so far—the thief, the sniper and this lunk.

“I’ve spent an hour going through your things,” he said. “It’s not here.”

“I could have told you that, if you’d been polite enough to simply ask.”

Her things? That implied something so personal. Things that were meant for her eyes only. The idea of this creepy bald guy shuffling through her underwear sent a shiver up Annja’s spine. He didn’t look the sort who would linger over silky things.

Then again, crazy never did look crazy until it was too late.

“News of the skull’s emergence pleased me.” The slow calm of his speech made her wonder if he thought out his words before releasing them into the ether. “It is quite the prize. I thought to have it in hand last night. But then the contact you know as Sneak switched things. I was unaware of your clandestine meeting on the bridge.”

That meant Serge had been tracking the thief. Or the sniper, Annja thought.

Emergence? That might rule out the possibility of it being taken from a dig sight.

“I still cannot understand why he would give it to you,” Serge said.

Well, he didn’t have to make it sound as if she were a distasteful tangle of octopus sitting on a plate of greens, she thought. She said nothing in response.

“I have studied you, Annja. On your own computer.”

That explained the laptop on the desk, powered up and open to Google. Nice of him to spare that expensive piece of equipment. The green screen and camera, on the other hand, were definitely a loss.

“You’re a television personality.” His grimace was accompanied by strange wonder. “As well, an archaeologist. But you’re no one special, Miss Creed. You are common. Your schooling is common. Your expertise not equal to the world’s foremost in your field. Why would he give the skull to you?”

She shrugged. “I’m cuter than you are?”

The man tilted a malevolent frown at her.

What did he expect after that berating put-down? Common? She’d show him common. And he wouldn’t see it coming.

He stood in one smooth motion. The dark navy suit was tailored to his body. It revealed thick biceps and a broad chest. She couldn’t detect any sign of a shoulder holster for a gun bulging under the arm.

He didn’t approach her. Annja maintained her ready position by the door. Knees slightly bent, hips aligned with her shoulders. Fluttering her fingers, she thought of the sword. It was right at her grasp with a beckon—but she didn’t call it.

If he was willing to talk, she’d get what information from him she was able. Then she’d show him how very uncommon she could be.

“It’s not here,” she offered.

She wasn’t about to give directions to Danzinger or Columbia, because she could guess how that would end. One body last night was enough for her.

“I believe you,” Serge said. “You don’t have it on your person, either, because you entered with nothing but that empty backpack.”

She’d dropped it inside the doorway.

“Do you work for Benjamin?” he asked.

“Benjamin?” Annja cursed silently. If she’d played that one right, she could have danced around, tried to finagle exactly who Benjamin was. The name meant nothing to her.

Serge nodded, picking up on her lacking knowledge.

He toed a thin steel lock pick that had scattered during his melee. “You don’t know what you’ve been given, do you, Miss Creed?”

Held by his pale gray gaze, she stared at him as if to dig the answer out from his expression. Phrenology was the science of determining character and personality from skull shape. She wondered what a big, rugged cranium meant.

The longer she looked into his eyes, the more she felt creepy crawlies skitter up her spine.

“No, I have no idea what it is.” She looked aside at the mess, then caught movement in her peripheral vision.

Serge reached inside his suit coat and drew out a blade.

Any previous reluctance to calling out her sword fled.

With a lunge to her right, Annja dipped low. She summoned the battle sword. It emerged from the otherwhere in an instant. It fit into her palm with a sure grip. She hoped she’d made it seem as though she were plucking the sword from the floor behind the couch. With a bend of her knee she thrust toward Serge.

With minimum movement, he flicked his wrist, blocking her stab with the edge of his bowie knife. A nod acknowledged her challenge. His dark eyes narrowed.

Annja swung low, seeing if she could get a rise out of the guy. He had only to step back, then forward, as the sword swept past his thigh.

He retaliated with swift grace. The knife passed near her cheek, but didn’t cut flesh. His reach was long and surprisingly agile for one so large and bulky.

“I don’t know how you think fighting me is going to help you find the skull,” she said. A twist of shoulder and a double step backward put her out of reach from his next swipe. Annja slashed her sword across Serge’s shoulder, opening the seam of his suit coat. “I don’t have it,” she said.

“But you had it. Which means, you know where it is now.”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. A knife to the thigh sliced out a painful chirp from her. It cut through her jeans and a couple of layers of skin. Score one for the bald guy.

Annja countered by spinning and putting her shoulder to his. She twisted and gripped his knife wrist. Releasing the sword she grabbed his sleeve. A twist moved Serge into a spin and he wobbled and fell. The force of landing popped the bowie from his grip. The knife flipped in the air and hit the wall with a clank, dropping onto a stray couch cushion.

He slapped a hand over her throat and shoved her off him. Annja’s hips connected with the desk. Turning and rolling across the desk she came to her feet with sword again in hand.

Serge stood, hands near his shoulders. He was not surrendering by any means, just making nice. “Proficient sword work. I didn’t notice the weapon earlier.”

“Because you were so busy throwing things about.”

He blocked her thrust with a jerk of his elbow, the flat of Annja’s blade sliding along the suit fabric. Serge gripped her left wrist, twisting it. Annja had to duck forward, bringing her sword arm down and away from attack. Moving with the twist, she spun under his arm, but came up to meet his fist. A backhand slap put her on the floor, arms spread and legs landing on a sofa cushion.

Serge leaned over her. Annja twisted her head to the side. Knuckles cracked the hardwood floor.

In no position to deliver a masterful riposte of sword, Annja thrust blindly. The sword slashed across his back. He didn’t cry out. Hell, she had only cut through his suit again. Must be some kind of Kevlar-reinforced stuff.

Before she could lever herself to stand, Serge gripped her hair and tugged her upright. She met the wall with her palms, dropping her sword. It slipped into the otherwhere, the sound of steel hitting floor lacking.

Knuckles bruised into the base of her spine. No knife? So he didn’t want her dead. Or maybe he liked to play before he did real damage.

“You like doing things the hard way?” she grunted.

He didn’t wait for her answer. A slam from his knuckles at the back of her head crushed her cheek into the brick wall. Blood spilled into Annja’s mouth.

“I have been doing it the hard way for longer than you can imagine. It’s my game, baby. And I can play it all night.”

Baby? Oy.

She coughed on the blood trickling down her throat. Blood from her nose. The sword’s image formed in her mind, but then streams of blood spilled over that image and Annja quickly lost the idea of summoning it.

Her body slung about, shoulders impacted against the brick wall. Serge grabbed her left wrist and smashed the back of her hand high on the wall over her head.

Seconds stretched as he peered into her eyes. His gray irises were wide, the pupil too small in the centers. Demonic, Annja thought. But she didn’t believe in demons. There were logical explanations to all things supernatural. And Serge was just a man.

“I’ll give you twenty-four hours to bring the skull to me. If you do not comply, at precisely five minutes beyond the twenty-four hour mark, I will kill you. Got it?”

She nodded. To argue might earn a broken nose. “How am I supposed to find you?”

He reached inside his coat. Would he pluck out a business card? Why did the hard edges of his jaw go all fuzzy? Damn, she was losing consciousness.

The flash of bright steel summoned her to a semiconscious state. He held some kind of weapon. He hadn’t been in position to retrieve the bowie.

Serge leaned close and hissed in her ear. “The Linden Hill Cemetery off Starr Street. Tomorrow morning, this time.”

“A graveyard? Swell,” she mumbled.

Something sharp pricked her wrist. And the pain only increased. The stab became a searing poker. Annja let out a yelp as what felt like a knife entered her flesh and, with a forceful shove, traveled through to bone.

Serge gave the instrument a twist. Annja screamed. He tugged it out with a gruff exhale.

Agony felled Annja to her knees. Serge stepped back.

Struggling to maintain consciousness, and looking up to see the weird tubelike blade he tucked inside his coat, Annja reached out—for what, she didn’t know. It seemed as though…something should come to her hand. Something that could protect her.

Instead, she fell forward and blacked out.




8


So far as apartments went, it was unassuming and quiet. Tucked in a dark corner of Lower Manhattan, in winter it got about an hour’s worth of sunlight around two in the afternoon, but grew dark before four due to the surrounding tall buildings.

The most crime the neighborhood saw was old lady Simpson going after the postman with her cane, or the occasional burglary. A diminutive Russian market stood three blocks west and sold dozens of varieties of caviar, and a homemade borscht that tasted excellent served with heaps of sour cream.

Serge closed the door, sliding the chain lock deftly behind his back. The room was dark. Peaceful. He breathed in and exhaled. Palming the smooth hematite globe sitting on the key table near the door, he released anxiety, ego and any anger the outside world had put upon him.

He tapped the globe once.

Moving around behind the black leather sofa with the low back, he scanned the living room’s cool shadows. There was but the sofa and a coffee table sitting before the slate-tiled hearth he used every night in winter. No nooks for anyone to hide.

Assured he was alone, he paused before the entry to the spartan kitchen and placed his palm upon the second hematite globe he kept on a hip-high iron stand. The cool stone took him farther from the world—into sanctity.

A glance assured the kitchen was empty. The short narrow aisle down the center was bare. Doorless cupboards revealed glassware and plates. A grocery list stuck to the refrigerator awaited Serge’s precise scribbles for the next trip to market.

Two taps to the hematite globe.

He crossed before the window looking over a chain-link fenced-in yard behind a textile factory but did not look outside. His sleeve brushed the cheap shades that had been in the apartment when he’d assumed rent. He liked the sound the thin tin strips made when agitated.

As with the kitchen, there was no bedroom door. It was a small, efficient room he used only for sleeping. He did not bring women home; sanctuary would be lost. Though certainly, he did go home with a woman when opportunity arose. His shoes creaked the fifth board on the floor, reminding Serge he had yet to pick up finishing nails to fix the squeak.

A queen-size bed was covered by a taut black bedspread and two pillows encased in matching black cotton covers. Beside the bed on the nightstand, the white lilies he’d purchased two days earlier from the Russian market were beginning to wilt.

Serge touched a bedpost. A smooth hematite globe. He tapped it three times. The next post received four taps.

Shrugging off his suit coat, he tossed it on the bed. He wasn’t a neatnik, but his home did remain pristine. He didn’t spend much time here. Since setting foot on American soil a year earlier he’d been kept busy. He liked to be busy.

But a busy mind was not always favorable. Distilling, releasing the outside world upon arrival home, was always important.

A shower felt necessary after picking through the Creed woman’s home. How one person could collect so much material stuff and jam it all into the small loft was beyond him. Though it had been an interesting collection of things. The artifacts and books had clashed oddly with the baseball team pendants and pink ruffled pillows.

Inspecting the shine on his loafers he inadvertently noticed a streak of peanut butter on one of his shirt cuffs. He rubbed at it but it smeared. He should tend it with an ice cube and some spot cleaner. The dry cleaner never pressed his shirts the way he preferred, with the collars creased.

Unhooking his cuff links, he then unbuttoned the crisp white shirt and discarded it on the suit coat. Unbuttoning his pants, he let them hang loosely at his hips. Starting for the shower, he remembered, and swung around to probe the inner pocket of his coat.

He drew out the biopsy tool and inspected the bloodied tip. The stainless-steel blade was curved, curled the length much like the large cheese corer he’d used as a child. A bone extractor. A tool of his trade.

The contents—skin, blood and bone—were still intact.

Foregoing a shower, he pushed open the closet door—the only door in his small apartment beyond the front entrance—and padded inside. Groping through the darkness, his fingers snagged a hanging chain and tugged. A fluorescent light beamed across the interior. The closet was as large as the bedroom. Two suits hung from the bar just inside to the right.

The walls were paneled in bamboo. A sisal mat stretched before a small dark wood shrine, bare right now.

At the far side of the room a stainless-steel counter stretched three feet along the wall. Above it a glass shelf held many vials, syringes and jars. His work area.

On the topmost shelf he kept a small library of grimoires and herbal references. It had cost a pretty penny to have these precious items shipped overseas. Yet shipping expenses had been covered. Not exactly a perk of his job, more like a necessary evil.

Touching a flat switch set above the counter focused a spotlight on the table. Thumbing a box of small waxed papers, he drew one out. The snick of paper leaving cardboard pleased him.

Serge tapped the blade handle against the steel counter. The tiny bit of Annja Creed dislodged and landed on the small rectangle of waxed paper.

Using surgical tweezers and looking through a magnifying lens, Serge separated flesh and muscle from bone. He used his forefinger to swipe away the blood and marrow from the bone. It was a good sample. It didn’t crumble as some did. Sickness, age and addiction tended to weaken human bone, which was made of minerals, collagen and water.

“Strong bone structure.”

He was impressed. In his experience, women generally had honeycomblike bones, especially those living in the United States. The American female’s diet was atrocious. Copious sugar and caffeine, and never enough calcium. Of course, this woman was still young and, judging from her physical skills—and ignoring her kitchen inventory—took good care of her body.

He tapped a few drops of alcohol onto the pencil-eraser-size sample to clean it. It wasn’t necessary to sanitize it. He just needed the bone clean. A small wet tissue cleared away the remaining flesh and blood. He would deposit the bone in a mortar and crush it—

The cell phone vibrating in his pants pocket disturbed his concentration. Serge reached for a glass vial and coaxed the bone into it. A rubber stopper closed it securely.

He answered on the fourth ring. He did not say his name. Only one person in the city—the entire country—had this number.

“Serge, I’ll need you in the office by three. I’ve got a necessary task. You’re not busy?”

For a moment Serge stared at the phone. That was an odd question. Busy? When had the caller ever been concerned with his private life? For that matter, the caller was his only employer; he should know if he were busy.

Did he suspect?

“Serge?”

“I’ll be there.”

He hung up. Something wasn’t right.




9


Annja woke on her living room floor. Something smelled off. Her wrist pulsed with pain. Rolling to her side, she was startled to see the drops of blood beneath her left hand. For a puncture wound, she’d lost a lot of blood.

She examined the wound. It no longer bled. Skin tissue had puckered around the tiny entry circle on the underside of her wrist. She didn’t want to probe it. It hadn’t gone through and out the other side, though it had damn well felt as if it had.

Serge, her less than welcome guest, had shoved something deep into the bone. And he’d twisted.

“Like taking a freaking core sample or something,” she said, testing her voice.

She sat up, cradling her wrist, and blinked away the wooziness still toying with clear thinking. The light in the room was dull, which told her she’d passed out for some time. It must be late afternoon. It started getting dark early this time of year.

“Not smart, Annja. Why didn’t you pull the sword on him?”

Because when he’d slammed her against the wall, impact had stolen the senses from her. She hadn’t been thinking clearly.

Looking around she saw her door was still open. “Oh, man.”

Dragging herself to a half-conscious stagger, she closed the door. Her neighbor across the hall hadn’t noticed? The guy was a night owl. He was probably still sleeping. It was very likely he hadn’t heard a thing when Serge had been tossing bits of her life around.

With a glance at the carnage of said life, Annja shook her head. Earlier she’d only been worried about dusting. Now she was going to need a bobcat with a loader on the front.

She wandered into the bathroom to clean her wound. Shampoo bottles, face cream and tubes of toothpaste and athletic rub were splayed across the floor. The towels she kept tucked beneath the sink cupboard were strewn, half of them landing in the tub. There wasn’t much in here she worried about getting broken or damaged.

She didn’t want to look at the green screen setup. That had cost her a few grand. Though she received money from royalties on her books, and Chasing History’s Monsters paid her a nice fee, Annja was a penny pincher. And it was never a day at the park explaining things like this to the insurance company. She’d have to report a break-in again. But she couldn’t tell anyone about Serge if she wanted the insurance check.

If the guy had been looking for a skull why would he open her toothpaste and squeeze that out? This vandalism was just plain malicious.

Clearing out the sink, she turned on the hot water, then some cold. The phone rang while the water was running. Watching the pink blood trickle over her wrist, Annja vacillated whether or not to answer.

Remembering her call to Bart last night she dashed for it, spraying water across the bathroom floor.

She picked up on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

“Annja, we got an ID on the body lifted from the canal this morning,” Bart said.

“That was quick.” She stepped across a scatter of books, noting the volume on Scythian metalwork was cracked down the spine. Stupid Serge. Even if insurance did cover it, she’d never find another; it was irreplaceable.

“Who and, more important, what was he?”

“Marcus Cooke,” Bart said. “He also goes by the alias Travis Traine, and a few others. He’s a thief, Annja, and a damn good one. He’s hit museums in the States, Europe and a few royal caches in Germany and Poland. The guy likes colored stuff, rubies and emeralds. Interpol has been after him for years.”

“Big-time thief. So why was he interested in a crusty old skull?”

“Exactly. Jewel thieves don’t usually go in for anything they can’t immediately fence.”

Annja leaned against the desk. “There is gold on the skull, but I doubt that would amount to any more than a few hundred bucks in value.”

“You didn’t mention gold before. An infant’s skull with gold on it? I’d have to stretch the definition of colored stuff to think it would interest a thief who has only stolen jewels.”

“Maybe he was hard up? When was his last big job?”

“That we know of? In 2003. It’s been years, which means little. The man could have changed his M.O. So if we allow he’s changed his habits, or had just added artifacts to his repertoire, there’s still one question. Why do you think Marcus Cooke chose to contact you, Annja? Have you ever heard of this guy or come in contact with him before last night?”

She remembered Serge expressing his surprise the thief had come to her. You’re just an archaeologist.

Just. As in no better than any other.

It was true. Just because she hosted a TV show didn’t make her better than half the archaeologists who devoted all their time to their passion. But the way Serge had muttered it had offended her. And she didn’t upset easily.

“He saw me on TV and probably thought I looked trustworthy.”

“Professional thieves do not fence stolen goods with television personalities, Annja.”

“Oh, so now I’m a fence?” She toed a plastic file of recipe cards detailing notes from a dig in Wales that had toppled on the floor. “Bart, please. Like I told you, I exchanged a few e-mails with the guy, then bam.”

“You always arrange to meet strangers?”

“Not always. Sometimes they arrange to meet me.” Or she found them waiting in her living room with nasty tools and a taste for bone. “You know I can’t resist a mysterious artifact, Bart. A skull to me is like a cache of stolen credit cards to you. Yes?”

“I hate credit-card scams. So much paperwork involved. All right, so we’ll agree the answer to why the thief chose you will never be solved. And he probably didn’t intend to make you a fence, just wanted your opinion on its value.”

“Agreed.”

“You get a clue on the skull yet? Someone killed for it. Is it made completely of gold?”

“There is some decorative gold between the cranial sutures. Total? Probably less than a few ounces. I left it with Professor Danzinger at Columbia this morning. He’s unable to date the thing because they don’t have the proper equipment at the university, but he did find some interesting markings on the skull interior.”

“Inside it? How does a person get anything inside a skull?”

“Very carefully.”

Should she tell him about Serge’s visit?

Annja was always cautious about telling Bart too much about the fiascos she found herself involved in. But she wasn’t stupid. If having a detective back her up would advance the case, and she read Bart’s mood as helpful, she’d ask.

She wasn’t sure if police involvement was wise at this point in the game. It may hinder her by requiring she turn over the skull as evidence.

On the other hand, Serge had hurt her. The stab wound still pulsed with a dull ache. But what had he been trying to accomplish with the weird instrument?




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