by Alex Archer
“I’ll stick with bacon and eggs, and orange juice.”
“Whatever makes you happy.”
“You don’t really care about my happiness, Garin. You’re only nice to me because you want to get your hands on my sword.”
“I would never deny that.”
Always truthful with her, though sometimes his omissions felt like lies, she knew better than that. “Good night, Garin.”
“Sweet dreams of extreme like and fire, Annja Creed.”
She startled at his mention of fire, but didn’t allow him to see he’d touched a nerve. Annja smoothly opened the door and closed it behind her.
“Fire?” She shook her head and closed her eyes. “The man’s cruelties are razor sharp.”
* * *
ANNJA was sitting on a wooden chair, hands tied behind her and ankles secured together with a leather band—perhaps a belt—but not tied to the chair.
So Garin had been right. The cat had followed the mice.
Weston Bracks was seated at a desk across the room from her, his feet up on a desk drawer and his fingers rapping the mahogany desk. Hair slicked back from his face, he was neatly shaven, and she could smell his aftershave from the ten-foot distance between them.
As it was, she wore a white T-shirt and her cargo pants. Good thing she’d slipped out for the newspaper during her usual four o’clock lying awake in bed and staring at the ceiling anticipating the day and had fallen asleep reading it or she’d be in a state of undress right now.
“Do you know how amazing you are?” Bracks asked as he dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward on his elbows. “Tracking me all the way to London? Or is it that you simply wanted to meet up with Braden?”
“Santos told me I’d find you here.”
“Here? In this office? Or the city? I don’t believe the Gypsy had my exact location.”
“The city. And it must have been Canov who provided those details to his underlings. Santos is bad off, by the way. If he’s not dead.”
“At your hand, I suspect.”
“What makes you think I’m capable?”
“I’ve heard reports from my men. You’ve left a path of injured in your wake, pretty lady. You’re much more than meets the eye, I must say. Extremely interesting to me. I’ve read your profile online. You’ve quite the arsenal of talents—and to learn that you’ve got martial arts skills and beauty...?”
“You forgot the part about where I can part large bodies of water with a single wave of my hand.”
“And funny, too! Oh, Annja, you and I are going to get along famously. That is, if your lover doesn’t mind.”
“My lov—” Apparently his research had led him to guess at the sensational. “Garin Braden and I are not lovers.”
“Huh. That explains why he’s not here right now. The man is slacking. I expected him an hour ago, not long after you were brought here. Guess you’re not as important to him as I had hoped.”
“Guess not.”
“Well. We’ll wait, all the same. He did put you in the same hotel—and right next door—so he wanted to keep you close. And he’s after me, so he’ll come after one or the other of us soon enough. In the interim, what shall we talk about?”
“How about this is the part where the evil villain details the reason behind his horrible crime?”
“No, that’s boring. Besides, there are too many crimes. I wouldn’t know where to start. You, on the other hand, fascinate me. You host a television show about monsters, and you venture across the world in search of treasure and mystery.”
“It sounds more exciting than it is. Adventure is ninety percent toil, ten percent reward.”
“Still, I could use a woman like you on my payroll. I find many an opportunity falls onto my lap that requires someone who possesses your skill set and thirst for adventure combined with archaeological knowledge.”
“I think this is the part where I tell you to go do something nasty with your mother.”
“Sadly, she’s passed. As are your parents, eh?”
He knew too much about her. That was never good. But she didn’t suspect he was going to use it against her because what means did he have? He was an enigma, and she wanted to hear him confess. Yet what good was confession if the authorities were not here to record it? It would be her word against his, and it wasn’t like she had the superstitious Romani backing her up, either.
Worrying at the rope about her wrist, Annja could easily call the sword and cut through the thick hemp. Screw the questions Bracks would have about the sudden appearance of a battle sword into her hands. She owed him nothing.
He stood, and walked around the side of the desk. The man reminded her of Garin. Finely tailored suit, well groomed, handsome in a bad-boy criminal sort of manner. Entitled. Probably too smart for his own good. That’s usually the way it went with the ones who used their brains to commit evil. And those psychopathic brains could always justify their atrocities.
“You’ve murdered children,” she said, peering into his pale gray eyes and not finding the compassion or glint of humanity she hoped to see. “How can you sleep at night?”
“On a king-size air mattress. You know the kind that adjusts with a remote? Amazing and so comfortable.”
“You’re the real monster,” she hissed. “Those Gypsies believed in something that rises from the grave to exact revenge upon them, and you used those beliefs to serve them a much worse punishment.”
“As I’ve said—” He crossed his legs at the ankle, and proudly announced, “Business opportunist. Don’t look so angry, Annja, it puts a crease in your brow. And I have murdered no one. I tend to keep my hands two to three degrees away from the dirty work. The fact this one came back to me has made me rethink some of my safeguards. I’ve sacked the Chrastava operation, you’ll be glad to know.”
“The only thing I can be glad for is that I’m here now, and I will make you pay.”
He leaned forward, hands behind his back, bringing his face a foot away from hers. “I do admire a boastful woman. Puts a delightful shiver up and down my spine. What are you going to do to me?”
Annja could feel the sword hilt in her hand, the warmth of it. A knock on the door stopped her from calling it.
It wasn’t exactly a knock. More like a heel kicking in the wood door. Garin Braden.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Bracks said, pulling a pistol from his suit pocket and positioning himself beside Annja. He jammed the barrel against her temple. “Took your own sweet time. She not worth it to you?”
Garin heaved out a heavy breath, and produced the Heckler & Koch, but instead of aiming it at Bracks, he held it to his chest, arms crossed, and barrel flat against his shoulder.
If he wasn’t going to do anything, Annja wasn’t about to sit here any longer and remain a helpless victim. The sword slid silently into her grip. She noted Garin’s attention diverted above her head, where he must have seen the blade tip of the battle sword.
“No, Annja,” he said, then to Bracks, “This ends right now.”
Bracks, who still hadn’t realized Annja was armed, maintained the barrel against her temple. “Really? You’d end it with a single bullet after all we’ve been through over the years? Come on. You know you enjoy the game as much as I do. So you lose a few guns or a valuable piece of art now and then. I still visit my brother’s grave every winter. He killed my brother,” he said to Annja.
“You killed Louisa,” Garin countered.
Louisa? Must have been the lover, Annja decided. This was fast becoming a maudlin duel of one cuckolded man against another. And Garin had almost convinced her it wasn’t about a woman. Well played, old man, well played.
“I’m finished with the game,” Garin said. “For good. Put it away, Annja!”
Before Bracks turned to look at her, Ann
ja sent the sword back into the otherwhere. She smirked up at the man, shrugging as if she hadn’t a clue what Garin was talking about.
“Let her go,” Garin said firmly. “This is between the two of us.”
“Up for a bit of a tussle, then?” Bracks asked, lowering the gun and tucking it at the back of his pants.
“If that’s the way you want to end it...” Garin tucked away his gun and removed his suit coat, tossing it over the desk, and following by unbuttoning his sleeve cuffs. “Then let’s do this.”
Annja heard the sound of a switchblade opening behind her. Her wrists dropped free, and she wiggled her fingers.
“Back by the wall, Annja,” Garin directed.
And, inclined to let this play out between the two men, she did as she was told.
Bracks tugged his tie free and zipped it out from his shirt collar, tossing it aside. “This will be a treat for you, Miss Creed,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt and tugging it off. “Braden and I are matched equally. I’ll count on you to call the draw when you’ve become uncomfortable with the bloodshed.”
Annja quirked a brow at Garin.
“It’s not going to end in a draw,” he announced, then swung a fist toward Bracks.
Annja pressed up against the wall, content to let the testosterone patrol go at it. Each man managed to land a punch square to the other’s jaw, ribs, kidney, and then it got interesting. The kicks were high and delivered with deadly precision. It was difficult not to wince when either man took a hard rubber heel to the chin or the solar plexus.
Dragging the chair out of the way, Annja moved along the wall until she reached the doorway and closed the door, leaving the men alone in the room. She had no idea if others were in the building, but the fight had not brought out any armed guards. They could be alone.
She still had no evidence on Bracks’s involvement beyond the confession to go to the police with. And to do so would get Garin arrested, as well.
The door rattled against her shoulders. Felt like two hard, brute bodies had collided with it. She heard very little grunting and only the occasional oath. They were two extremely fit and trained men going after the thing that had pushed them to an edge.
They’d been going at each other for years? Sounded like something Garin would engage in. And now he’d grown tired of the game. Again, sounded like him. He enjoyed the challenge, but when that challenge started to bite, he’d as soon shoot it than endure another wound.
And that’s when Annja heard the pistol shot.
Summoning the sword into her grip, she turned and grabbed the doorknob. She listened for movement, anything that would clue her where the two parties in the room stood so she wouldn’t be charging in with a target marked on her forehead.
“It’s over,” Garin called.
She opened the door and saw Bracks standing in the center of the room, a gun very slowly falling from his hand. A bullet had pierced his skull at the temple, boring through a small crimson hole. It exited in a spray out the other temple, and hit the wall next to a previous bullet hole, with a splash of blood to the papered wall.
Annja swung the sword toward Garin, and tipped it up under his chin. “Why? We should have called the police.”
“It wasn’t going to end any other way. And I’m getting too old for rock-’em-sock-’em.” He held up his gun hand, fingers slipping from the trigger, in surrender. “One of us was going to die in this room, Annja.”
“You’ve murdered the one man who could answer to the Romani for their lost children.”
Garin lifted his head and looked down his nose at her. He then bowed his head and the tiniest shrug lifted his shoulders. An unspoken apology for what he had just done. Perhaps, for many other things he had done.
“I ended a long and tiresome feud, and I don’t regret it. Now put away your pretty little sword before I get angry enough to take it away from you.”
“Try me,” she challenged, aware now that Bracks’s body had finally dropped over the chair she’d been tied in. His lifeless hand landed on top of her boot. “Take it if you dare, Garin. But I warn you, I won’t make it easy.”
He slashed his pistol across the blade, sliding the barrel along the steel. Twisting, he reached with his other hand, and clocked her aside the jaw, in the same place he’d hit her previously.
Annja released the sword to the otherwhere, rather than risk him actually getting his hands on it. When she straightened from the blow and showed him her empty hands, the man grunted. She would call it a growl.
“Get the hell out of here,” he said, tugging down his shirtsleeves. “I’ll clean up the mess. If I see you again, Annja, it’ll be too soon.”
“You know we’ll see each other again, and again. The sword ties us together, like it or not.”
“Today I don’t like it.”
“I can get behind that sentiment.”
The two held stares for long seconds. Annja was certain she saw regret in Garin’s dark gaze, but pride would never allow him to voice it. He was old and set in his ways. She should be thankful a dangerous man was now dead, unable to harm another child.
“If you’re going to clean up,” she said, “then make sure Bracks’s underlings are dealt with, as well. Canov is a name I have.”
“Canov has already been dealt with,” he said.
That’s right. He’d admitted that Canov had been on his payroll. “What about the other men who work for Bracks?”
“Don’t ask for the world. All I can give you is this small piece, right here, right now.”
She paused in the doorway and tilted her head down, fighting the urge to look at the man she would indeed see again, and knowing it would be too soon, as he’d said.
He and Bracks could not have ended this encounter any other way, she instinctually knew that. And while she had no clue as to what strange alliance had forged the criminal games between the two, she also didn’t want to know.
She wasn’t sure whether or not to mark this one as a win or lose, but it felt less than triumphant.
Walking away, without looking back, she made plans to stop into the university and talk to Chester Rumshaven, Luke’s colleague.
* * *
THE STUDIO WORK for Chasing History’s Monsters was always tedious for Annja. But the fact it gave her a moment to sit down and blow out a breath after filming could not be denied as a good thing. She read over Doug’s script for the segment they planned on the chewing dead. It was very good and included the history of so-called vampires across the Slavic nations. It also detailed the burial rites that had seen stakes, iron rods and even bricks put into bodies to keep them down and dead.
As she scanned through the edited segments, she was impressed as well by Doug’s renditions of corpses rising from the grave after having chewed through their funeral shrouds. Cheap actors with even cheaper makeup, but it worked.
It was sad to see the interview segments featuring Luke. Doug had asked her if he should cut them out, and she said she’d let him know after viewing them. Luke had been genuinely concerned for the Romani and had hoped to help them move forward from a history of beliefs that even he knew could never happen.
She couldn’t decide whether or not to leave the segments in. A few days to let it sink in and perhaps she’d have a clearer head to make the right choice.
She finished narrating the segment with a few cautious words of her own, advising viewers to stick to horror-movie monsters, and to leave the legends buried.
Before leaving the studio she called the Chrastava police and mentioned Luke’s name in order to speak to the deputy he had befriended a year earlier. He had been the first one to report to the scene after she’d called in Luke’s death and Santos’s wounds. Annja expressed an interest in the Romani encampment, and how they were holding up in the wake of the children’s disappeara
nces. All the deputy could offer was that the Romani camp had moved on. The homes were empty and vehicles gone. Surprising, considering those who owned property generally remained where they were.
It turned out Santos had died in the end. After his funeral, which the deputy had attended out of respect for the family after investigating the whole child-abduction case, he’d been offered the chance to buy a nice weapon. A katana sword, which he had purchased, and then, when he’d gotten home with it, the niggling worry that it was probably evidence tore at him, and he’d sent it to forensics.
Forensics had detected blood, and they were typing it out right now, and hoping to do a DNA match to the database.
“Interesting,” Annja had said, then had thanked the deputy and hung up.
“Blood on Santos’s sword?”
Annja knew it was Luke’s, and yet, it could also be hers. The deputy had taken surprising initiative in having the sword tested. She hoped the DNA didn’t lead them back to her. This particular case was closed in her mind. She didn’t want to see another skull with a brick, or even a stake run through a corpse’s heart, for a very long time.
* * *
LATER THAT WEEK, in her Brooklyn apartment, Annja reread the last few paragraphs of the article she was completing about the Romani burial rituals and beliefs. She wasn’t going as in depth as Luke had intended, incorporating their superstitions and beliefs, but she was doing the best she could with the firsthand information she had witnessed. She’d downloaded Luke’s notes from the cloud server, and thanks to his details and meticulous notes, she had mostly filled in the blanks. Luke would have wanted her to finish this for him. She would publish it under her name, with a postmortem attribution to Luke Spencer.
The idea to do an article on the chewing dead was fleeting. She’d leave the sensational vampire stuff to Doug Morrell.
She leaned back in her office chair and eyed the cardboard box that sat open, packing material still tight about the contents. The skull she’d had mailed from Liberec had arrived a few days ago. She intended to turn it over to Chester Rumshaven, who had offices in New York and London. He’d know what to do with it. All of Luke’s projects would be cataloged and his personal belongings forwarded on to family.
