Fury's Goddess

by Alex Archer

  Annja nodded. “If you get there first, save a seat for me, would you?”

  And then she reached into the otherwhere and grasped the sword. She threw it straight at the cable holding the giant statue of Kali. And severed the creaking cable.

  “Get down!” Annja shouted.

  A scream went up from the crowd of workers as the cable snapped and whipped back down into their midst. The statue plummeted to the ground, bursting apart, sending fragments into the group of Tigers.

  Dust rained down on Annja and the others. But Annja was already on her feet, sword in hand.

  She charged the line of Tigers, cutting through one who had stumbled under a rain of rocks. And then she reached the first few shooters.

  A few barks of gunfire sounded, but Annja was in their midst cutting through bone, flesh and gun alike. In her peripheral vision, she saw Pradesh already in the melee, disarming one of the Tigers and reversing the gun, shooting him.

  And then Frank was in the thick of it, as well, wielding his giant hands like Thor’s hammer. He was almost by Annja’s side when one of the Tigers stabbed him in the shoulder.

  As Frank fell to his knees, Annja was flying through the air, trying her best to cut the distance down before the Tiger could execute Frank.

  But she was going to be too late. The Tiger reared back, ready to drive the knife into the base of Frank’s skull.

  Annja heard the shot and saw the Tiger spin away, dead.

  Pradesh nodded at her, and Annja barely had time to smile a quick thanks before she jerked to the ground as a volley of bullets cut the air where she’d been standing.

  Annja wheeled around and cut horizontally, but she only sliced air. The shooter was too far away.

  She allowed the momentum to carry the sword over her head, and then she threw it screaming through the air like a missile.

  It sank into the Tiger’s body, right through his heart.

  In an instant Annja had the sword back in her hands. She saw Kormi fighting two men, and for a moment it looked as though they were going to get the better of him. But even as they piled on top and he went down, Annja saw him surge back and toss both men as if they were weightless.

  Annja jumped in the air, narrowly avoiding a hacking slash by one of the Tigers who had abandoned his gun in favor of a more close-quarters weapon: his huge knife.

  Annja backhanded him across the face and he stumbled back, but instead of recoiling, he smiled. Annja could see his hatred and he came at her, slashing and stabbing in a series of fluid movements that forced Annja to backpedal to gain some distance.

  She waited for the pause in the rhythm of his attack and then drove straight in, forcing her attacker on the defensive. Annja kept up the pressure, cutting down and back and forward.

  As Annja launched her final series of attacks, she knew she had him. He tried to block one of her strikes but she snapped his blade and sent it skittering away. Then she drove her sword into his sternum, before jerking it out again. The man slid to the ground already dead.

  Annja took stock. Dunraj and the leader of the Tigers were both nowhere to be seen.

  Pradesh had just dispatched another Tiger. “Where is Dunraj?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “I lost sight of him during the fighting.”

  Frank was on his feet, clutching his wounded shoulder. “I didn’t notice where he went.”

  “Kormi?”

  But Kormi only shrugged as he broke another Tiger’s neck. He held up his hands. “I do not know, either.”

  Those two could already be halfway back to Hyderabad.

  Annja wiped the blade of her sword on the clothes of one of the Tigers. “We’ve still got a problem. Dunraj and the Tiger leader are missing.”

  Pradesh looked at her. “So, now what?”

  “We go find them.”

  Chapter 33

  Annja took a moment to examine Frank’s shoulder injury. The knife hadn’t gone all that deep, and she cut some cloth from the fallen Tigers to make a bandage for him. Wrapping it, she nudged him.

  “You did good back there.”

  Frank rolled his eyes. “I’ve been in fights before, Annja.”

  “For your life?”

  “Well, no. Not until this time.”

  Annja nodded. “It’s different when you fight for survival. No rules.”

  “I guess rules pretty much went out the window here, didn’t they?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Not to mention you’ve got a great big sword.”

  Annja smiled. “Well, yeah, but that’s not the important difference.”

  “Are you sure? It seemed pretty important when you were able to cut that steel cable.”

  “I think it was only a matter of time before that cable snapped, anyway. I just helped it along.”

  “Well, it’s a damned good thing you have it.” Frank winced as she applied more pressure on his wound. “And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about it. I just want to get out of here and go home.”

  “We will,” she said. “But we have to make sure we finish this.”

  “We can’t just leave?”

  “No.”

  “Is this even our fight?” Frank frowned. “Couldn’t we just take off and leave Pradesh to handle it?”

  Annja shook her head. “Yeah, we could do that. But that’s now how I operate. The sword comes with a degree of responsibility. If I was to walk out and leave Dunraj free to keep killing, then I wouldn’t be living up to that ideal. I’d be ignoring the problem instead of solving it.”

  “Is that what you do now, solve problems?”

  Annja sighed. “Sometimes it feels like that.” She finished wrapping his shoulder and patted it. “You’re all set. Can you move it?”

  Frank straightened his arm and Annja nodded. “All right, grab one of the guns from the Tigers, make sure you’ve got a full clip and let’s get going.”

  “Full clip?”

  Annja eyed him. “Never shot a gun before?”

  “Uh, not unless you count on my Xbox.”

  “I don’t.” Annja picked up one of the guns left behind. It was a Heckler & Koch MP-5. She popped the clip, saw that it was almost full and slapped it back home, hit the charging handle and made sure the safety was on.

  She flipped it over and handed it to Frank. “This is the selector switch. It’s on safe right now—that means it won’t fire.”

  “I know what the safety is, Annja.”

  “Just checking.” She pointed at it. “The first option down is semiautomatic. One bullet per squeeze of the trigger. The next option down is full-auto spray-and-pray, as I like to call it. Try not to use full-auto unless absolutely necessary. You’ll go through your magazine too fast, and I don’t know how long we’ll have to chase Dunraj.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Annja indicated the fallen Tigers. “Get another magazine of bullets and stick it in your pants. We’re wasting time here.”

  Pradesh helped Frank find another magazine, and Kormi wandered over. “You sure about the boy?”

  “He’s not actually a boy, Kormi.”

  “He’s not a man yet, either.”

  “True, but he acquitted himself pretty well here.”

  “What is the expression? Beginner’s luck,” Kormi said. “I don’t wish the boy to have to face much more of this and risk his life. He is not born to be a warrior. You are. Pradesh, too. And me. We should go on alone.”

  Annja tensed. “I don’t disagree with you, Kormi. There’s nothing I’d like better than to keep Frank safe. But I don’t want to send him back to the hotel when Dunraj and his man are out there on the loose somewhere. Besides, he’s doing some serious growing up on the trip.”

  Kormi shook his head. “What is the value of growing up only to die so soon? When it could have been avoided.”

  Annja looked at him for a moment. Then she cleared her throat. “Frank. Come over here for a moment, would you?”

  Frank walked over. “Wh
at’s up?”

  Annja smiled. “It occurs to me that I never asked if you’d be willing to come along. My fight shouldn’t automatically become your fight. You’ve got a choice here. You can come with us to stop Dunraj or grab a car and head back to Hyderabad and bring help. That’s if Dunraj hasn’t made it out of here and back to Hyderabad first.”

  Pradesh spoke up. “I can tell you who to contact in my department. They will listen to you if I tell you what to say.”

  “You saying you don’t want me to come along?”

  “I’m not saying that at all. But you’re not well versed in combat. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

  Frank nodded. “But I think I’m too deep in it to back out now. I need to see this through to the end. One way or the other.”

  “Stay behind me when the fighting starts,” Kormi said. He looked at Annja. “I do not agree with this, but you gave the boy a choice.”

  “And he’s chosen,” she said. “Dunraj and the Tiger leader must have taken one of the paths out of here, but which way would they have gone?”

  “If I was Dunraj,” Pradesh said, “I’d want to get out of here quickly. The more distance he can put between himself and this place, the better.”

  “You’re thinking he took the highway?”

  Pradesh nodded. “It’s what I would have done.”

  Annja led them down the slope toward the truck- processing area. There were wounded workers all over trying to patch one another up. They stared at Annja and the others, but the weapons they held kept any of them from trying to start a fight.

  Annja pointed to where the statue lay in a million pieces. “Some of it took out the workers.”

  “It’s dusty as hell in here,” Pradesh said.

  They walked among the dump trucks. Annja searched each of them, looking for any signs that Dunraj had been here. Most of them had no keys. And there was no evidence that any trucks had left since Dunraj called a halt to the work for his grand speech.

  “He must still be around here.”

  “And he’s still a threat,” Pradesh said.

  The truck yard suddenly seemed a lot more threatening than it had when they thought Dunraj might have already left.

  “Was he armed?”

  “I think we have to assume he was,” Kormi said. “Plus the leader of the armed men also had a weapon.”

  “Wonderful,” Annja muttered under her breath. “All right, we’re going to have to split up.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “It’s the only way to check everything and make sure they’re not moving around on us, possibly flanking for a better angle to open up, you know?”

  Pradesh nodded. “I will take the left side.”

  “And I will take the right. With the boy.” Kormi pulled Frank to his side. “Come with me, young warrior. And be careful with that weapon of yours.”

  Annja watched them head off on either side of her. That leaves the middle for me, she thought.

  She crept among the giant wheels of the first dump truck. Even though there were ambient noises elsewhere in the work site, things seemed quieter in the immediate area.

  She heard footsteps, of course, from both Pradesh and Kormi as they made their way down their respective search avenues. And she assumed that Frank would be behind Kormi, with his heart no doubt thundering in his chest.

  Her own pulse was pounding, and Annja gripped the sword in front of her in a two-handed stance that she favored when she didn’t know what was going to materialize in front of her.

  Dunraj had wrought a lot of havoc here. And while he may not have done all the killing, he’d certainly enabled the horrific events to unfold by giving his brother free rein. As far as Annja was concerned, that made him just as guilty.

  And the fact that he’d brought in the Tamil Tigers hired mercenaries only meant that Dunraj had no care for anything but his own lousy agenda.

  She crept closer to the second dump truck. Its wheels were caked with mud and dirt, and it was in bad need of a wash.

  Something moved.

  Annja froze.

  Dunraj?

  Or the Tiger leader?

  Either one would be deadly.

  A noise nearby caused her to spin.

  But there was nothing in her line of sight.

  Annja forced herself to relax. Expanded her awareness outward.

  Searching.

  Feeling.

  And when she rounded the side of the next dump truck, she wasn’t surprised to see Dunraj leaning against it, a strange expression on his face.

  “Hello again, Annja.”

  “Waiting for me?”

  Dunraj shrugged. “I wasn’t going anywhere, apparently.”

  Annja frowned. And then saw the leader of the Tigers move out from behind Dunraj. He had a gun aimed at Dunraj’s head. “Put your sword away, little woman. Or else I kill him.”

  Chapter 34

  Annja had to keep from laughing. “You want to beat me to the punch?”

  Dunraj sighed. “I tried to explain that to him. Really, I did. But this chap doesn’t seem to understand how things work.”

  Annja nodded at the Tiger leader. “Go head. Put the bullet in his head. See if I care.”

  Dunraj raised his hand. “Although, if he does do that, then I’m afraid you will all be in a bit of a pickle.”

  “Yeah?”

  “A rather explosive jar of pickles, actually.” Dunraj smiled. “You didn’t think that I’ve gotten as far as I have in life without being extremely careful, did you?”

  “Could have fooled me,” she said. “You’re the one with the gun aimed at your head right now. So how come the honeymoon’s over? I thought you guys were fast friends.”

  Dunraj looked pained. “I really wish you hadn’t brought that up, Annja.”

  The Tiger leader nudged Dunraj with the gun. “Tell her. Tell her what you did to us.”

  Annja clucked. “Uh-oh, Dunraj. Sounds like you weren’t playing fair and square with the Tigers. What’s the matter? Did he find out that statue you promised them wasn’t made entirely of gold?”

  Dunraj gritted his teeth. “Severing the cable proved that, didn’t it?”

  “Solid-gold statues don’t usually shatter into a million pieces, do they?”

  “No,” Dunraj said drily. “They do not.”

  “You double-crossed us,” the Tiger leader accused him. “And now my men are dead and I have nothing to show for it.”

  Dunraj shrugged. “Yes, but I didn’t kill your men. She did.”

  The Tiger leader looked at Annja. “Don’t think you’re going anywhere, either. You and I have unfinished business.”

  “Aren’t you going to kill him first?” Annja asked. “Because, really, don’t let me hold you up.”

  “Do that,” Dunraj said, “and this whole cavern will explode into a fireball the likes of which no one will be able to survive. One of my subordinates will make sure of it. There’s enough high explosive packed into these walls to melt steel. And in case you hadn’t noticed, human flesh melts at a much lower temperature than steel.”

  Annja sighed. “And why should we believe you? After all, you’ve been lying in one way or another since we met.”

  “Don’t believe me, then.” Dunraj turned to the Tiger leader. “Shoot me in the head and get it over with. But if you do, then you’ll never get out of here with the actual statue. And you’ll die, as well.”

  Annja could see the Tiger leader’s hesitation. He might have been a terrorist, but he wanted his money. God knew how many more terror operations it would finance in the south. And how many more people would lose their lives because of it.

  She frowned. Was this the reason she’d been brought here? What had started out as a quest to find the creature responsible for killing people had led her to a twisted story of familial obligations and sociopaths, only to be involved with a known terrorist organization responsible for the slaughter of thousands.

  An
d who was the man standing in front of her? Was he a high-ranking leader within the group? Or someone far lower in the chain of command?

  The Tiger leader seemed to be mulling what Dunraj had said. After a moment he looked at Annja. “Do you believe him?”

  Annja shrugged. “I don’t even know your name. Why would you care what I think?”

  “My name is Anup.”

  “You run the Tigers?”

  Anup chuckled. “Not even close. I am a cell commander. When Dunraj hired us, I was ordered to come here and help him.”

  “How long have you been on his payroll?”

  “Several months,” Anup said. “And he promised us a gold statue that we could melt down and use to finance our struggle for independence.”

  “Several months?” Annja shook her head. “That’s considerably longer than the time we’ve been in town.” She eyed Dunraj. “What have you been up to around these parts that you need assistance from a group like the Tigers?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I could just ask Anup here. He doesn’t seem all that friendly with you since you’ve betrayed his trust.”

  Anup seemed to agree. “Dunraj has had us engaged in a series of assassinations.”

  “Really? And who were your targets?”

  “Developers in the area, mostly. One or two government officials. But their deaths were designed to look like accidents.”

  Annja studied Dunraj. “Taking care of the competition, were you? What’s the matter, things getting a bit cutthroat in Hyderabad?”

  “I had some outside competition that needed handling,” he replied. “Nothing too terrible. And since they were done correctly, the papers never even noticed a trend. It just seemed like a rather fortuitous streak for me.”

  “Well, that’s the problem with streaks,” she said. “They always seem to come to an end.” She looked back at Anup. “And how were you getting the statue out of here? On a truck?”

  “Of course. How else could we manage it?”

  “I’ll bet the real one is still kicking around here someplace,” she said. “Knowing Dunraj, he probably hid it under a pile of dirt in one of these trucks. And once he had you take the junk one away, he’d be free to melt the other one down.”