by Alex Archer
Annja turned her attention next to the carvings of the eagles that adorned the clasps on the torc. She knew that in many cultures the eagle represented the sun and, by extension, the ruler or monarch of the age. The eagle was also the symbol of the Roman Empire, a rather ironic fact given that the man who’d been wearing the torc had been buried with the remains of four sacrificed Roman prisoners. A bit more research told her that for the Celts, the eagle was traditionally seen as one of the oldest of creatures, ancient and wise. They were considered harbingers of good luck and success.
A couple of hours of research and that was all she could come up with.
There has to be a better way of doing this, she thought.
In the hope of getting even the smallest of leads, Annja posted messages to two of her favorite newsgroups, alt.archaeology and alt.archaeology.esoterica.
I’m looking for information regarding a black torc and any ties it might have to Celtic culture or mythology. Just about anything would be helpful at this point.
Signing it Curious Celt, she fired it off with a touch of the enter key.
She knew that doing so brought with it a little bit of risk. Data mining tools such as Google Alerts made it easy for anyone to track conversations going on around the web and if anyone was watching for mention of a black torc her message would act like a big red flag, letting them know that someone else was interested in the same thing. But right now she didn’t have much choice. So far, she’d gotten exactly nowhere with her research and the trail got colder with every hour that passed.
Her back was stiff from sitting hunched over the laptop for hours, so she got up and paced around the room, trying to work out the kinks in her muscles. As she passed the television, she turned it on, wanting the sound of something other than silence in the quiet of her hotel room.
To her surprise, a familiar voice came from the speakers.
“I repeat, Annja Creed is alive and well. I spoke to her a few hours ago from her safe house in London.”
Annja stared in horror at the screen where Doug Morrell was holding a press conference in front of the cable station’s studios in New York. He stood in front of the big glass doors to the studio, with a gaggle of reporters gathered in front of him.
“Did Ms. Creed tell you who was responsible for the brutal attack?” one shouted, while another wanted to know how she’d been able to survive when everyone else had been killed.
Doug handled the questions with the skill of a veteran politician. Yes, Annja Creed had told him who was responsible for the attack. No, he wasn’t going to share that information with them at this time, for it was still very much a police matter.
“But rest assured,” he told them with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. “Chasing History’s Monsters will be airing an exclusive two-part special on its cohost’s harrowing ordeal just as soon as we’re able. We’ll tell you everything, including exactly what role the bog mummies played in the deadly attack!”
Annja clicked to the next channel.
“…what role the bog mummies played in the deadly attack.” Another click.
“…airing an exclusive two-part special…”
The press conference was being carried live or nearly so, on more than a dozen different stations. Annja stared at Doug’s smiling face and wanted nothing more than to reach through the television set and strangle him where he stood.
Things were bad enough already. Did he really have to go and kick the hornet’s nest like that? If the killers saw the broadcast—and chances were that they would, given how widely it was being carried on the various networks—they were going to think that Annja had either recognized them or had uncovered their identities in the time since the attack. Either way, they’d be worried she’d turn that information over to the police and the need to silence the witness would suddenly become a much bigger priority.
Doug had just painted a big red bull’s-eye on her back.
In fact, he’d practically told them where to find her as well. Safe house in London? Why not just give out the address while you were at it, Doug? Maybe even roll out the red carpet?
“I’m going to kill him,” she said to the empty room around her.
But not until he told her what she needed to know.
She had to have that information if she was going to stay out of jail long enough so she could kill him.
Annja gave herself fifteen minutes to calm down, which wasn’t anywhere near long enough, and then used her cell phone to call him again.
“Doug Morrell.”
“It’s me again.”
“Annja! I was just—”
She couldn’t hold back.
“Are you out of your freaking mind?” she hollered into the phone.
There was a moment of silence, and then Doug said, “You sound upset, Annja. Has something happened?”
“Has something happ…” She sputtered, unable to even complete the sentence. Didn’t he have any idea what he’d done?
Apparently not, as his next few words confirmed. Taking her silence for permission to continue, he said, “Now that the killers know that you are on to them, they’ll have to leave you alone. Taking a shot at you would only land them in more hot water. I pretty much single-handedly saved your life.” He sounded positively proud of himself.
“The only thing you’ve done,” she shouted at him, “is to convince them that killing me is the only choice they have left. I can’t believe that you are this naive! If I’m dead, then there isn’t a witness to testify. No witness, no case. No case, no conviction and life sentence.”
It took him a moment to realize the magnitude of his error. When he did, he gushed with apologies.
“Oh, jeez, Annja! I’m sorry! God, how could I have been so stupid? I just didn’t stop to think!”
Unfortunately, that was a problem he had all too often. Still, his intentions had been good, she knew.
She pointedly ignored the voice in the back of her mind that was saying something about good intentions and the road to hell. She just didn’t need to hear it right now.
“Fine, Doug, fine. I’ll deal with it,” she said into the phone in a clipped voice, cutting off any further discussion on the topic. “Just get me that information I need.”
Far more subdued than when the conversation started, Doug agreed that he would and told her to call him in the morning her time. He should have something by then, he said.
Still irritated, Annja hung up the phone and tried to figure out just how much of a problem Doug’s impromptu press conference was going to cause for her. The police were certainly going to want to talk to her now that Doug had made it clear that she’d been at the site during the attack. Of course they’d have to find her first and that wasn’t going to be easy. London was a big place and the hotel she was staying in was so far off the grid for even a quasi-celebrity like herself that no one would ever think to look there. If she kept her head low, and didn’t do anything outrageous that might call attention to herself, she should be good to go.
Doug, on the other hand, was probably fending off phone calls from Scotland Yard that very moment.
Serves him right, she thought.
At the same time, whoever was hunting her was going to have to face the same problems that the police were and with less resources on their side. If she could avoid the police, she could probably avoid her hunters, as well, giving her the time she needed to figure this whole mess out and put the responsible parties behind bars.
Okay, maybe so things weren’t as bad as she’d initially thought.
Or rather, no worse than they were last night, she told herself.
Feeling a little bit better now that she knew Doug’s machinations weren’t immediately going to cause a whole new set of problems for her, Annja was able to focus her attention back on her research. A check of her email showed that she’d already received three messages in response to her newsgroup posting.
The first was from [email protected].
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br /> Sounds like a cool quest. I’m a forty-seventh level fighter with bracers of glory. I’ll offer you my services for fifteen percent of the treasure. What do you say?
I say get a life, Annja thought, and then immediately felt bad about doing so. After all, she spent her days chasing legends and digging up ancient artifacts. Who was she to judge?
The next one, from [email protected], was more to the point but wasn’t very helpful, either.
Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you. I’m not an expert in Celtic culture or mythology, by any means, but I’ve never heard of a black torc before. Most of the ones I’ve seen were made from gold or at least gold plate. You might check the legends associated with either Cúchulain or Finn McCool—they’re both Irish heroes who got around a lot and there might be mention of your black torc in one of their adventures. Best of luck!
The third message showed some promise, however. It was from [email protected], which she took to be a good sign.
Several years ago I heard a presentation given by an American professor working in Paris on mystical artifacts that appeared in various Celtic legends. I think the speaker’s name was de Chance. The talk focused mainly on weapons, like the Gáe Bolg, Cúchulainn’s spear, and the Claiomh Solais, the sword of Nuada, leader of the Tuatha De Danann, but he did mention a few other objects. If I remember correctly, one of them was a black necklace. I don’t know if that’s the necklace you are seeking, but it might be worth looking into. Last I’d heard de Chance was still working in Paris.
Now that sounds more like what I’m looking for, Annja thought. She did a quick Google search for a Professor de Chance and came up empty, but there was a Dr. Harry de Chance listed on the staff at the Natural History Museum in Paris. In the Staff pages of the museum’s website, she found a telephone number for him.
She called, got an answering machine and decided it was worth the risk to leave a message.
“Hello Dr. de Chance, my name is Annja Creed and I’d like to speak to you privately about a black torc that was recently unearthed in England. If you could call me at your convenience, that would be great.” She rattled off her phone number, then disconnected.
Thinking of Paris made her think of her sometime mentor Roux. She’d resisted calling him to this point, thinking she could puzzle it out on her own, but given the circles he moved in he might just know Dr. de Chance and that was too good an opportunity for her to pass up.
Besides, she had to admit she kind of missed him. She’d never say that to his face outright, but it was true nonetheless.
She’d first met him in the mountains of Cévennes, France. She’d been hunting the Beast of Gévaudan, a legendary creature—some said a werewolf—that had supposedly terrorized the region in the late 1700s. Roux had been looking for the final pieces of a sword that had shattered almost six hundred years before, a sword once borne by Joan of Arc herself. It was only much later, when the sword was reborn in her hand, that Annja learned that Roux had been there on that fateful day when the sword had been shattered and a young woman martyred for her faith.
The breaking of the sword and the death of its bearer had caused Roux, and his young charge, Garin Braden, to be pushed outside the boundaries of time. They had lived through the ages, untouched by the passage of the years, amassing huge fortunes and watching history play out around them, spectators to a world that changed faster than they ever thought possible. For years Roux had sought the pieces of the sword, believing that he would be released from his fate once the sword had been forged anew. His one-time protégé, Garin, on the other hand, opposed his efforts, not wanting his long life to be cut short by the machinations of the remorseful old fool he’d once treated as his father.
For years the two men had alternately worked together and tried to kill each other with equal vigor. Annja’s selection as the next bearer, something neither man ever expected, had thrown them into a kind of uneasy truce as they sought to discover what this new dynamic would mean for the sword and for them.
Annja was attracted to the dangerous sensuality that Garin exuded, which was probably why Roux had become her sometime partner, sometime benefactor in her search to protect and preserve the world’s priceless artifacts rather than Garin. At the same time, Roux helped her identify and deal with her destiny as bearer of the sword, something she believed he’d done for his original charge, Joan of Arc, as well.
He was an irascible, ill-tempered, egotistical pompous ass who tried to tell her what to do all the time, but to Annja, who’d grown up in an orphanage, he was the closest thing she’d ever had to a family.
And when you needed help, that’s who you turned to.
Family.
The phone rang several times before Roux’s voice mail clicked in. She left a quick message, telling him she was all right in case he’d seen the earlier newscast and asking him to call her when he could.
With her thoughts still wrapped up in the stupid press conference Doug had held, she didn’t realize that she’d forgotten to give Roux her new number.
With Roux unavailable, Annja considered calling Garin but finally dismissed the idea. Garin had a way of confronting situations head-on, which was all well and good when you wanted to make a statement but this situation called for a bit more finesse for the time being. She’d hold off for now; she could always give him a call if things began to spin out of control.
20
In another part of London, miles away from where Annja was hiding out, the head of the Red Hand Defenders and his senior captain were watching Doug Morrell’s press conference.
“I thought you said you’d taken care of her,” David said, his voice dangerously soft, while on the screen Morrell insisted that his beautiful star was alive and well.
“I did. Apparently I was mistaken.”
Trevor Jackson waited for his employer to explode in anger but the other man somehow managed to retain control of himself. In Jackson’s opinion, this was clearly a first, and it made him nervous.
“Could she be responsible for the deaths of our two operatives?” Shaw asked.
His subordinate gave it some thought. The two men in question had been found dead at the side of the road some distance from the dig site, but that didn’t rule out the possibility. After all, if this Creed woman had survived being shot and then managed to cut cross-country after escaping from the bog, she could easily have crossed the motorway in that area. O’Donnell had been an independent sort of cuss; if he’d seen the earliest reports that had suggested the Creed woman was among the dead and then saw her by the side of the road, he might have tried to bring her in on his own. He’d been spoiling for Jackson’s job for some time; embarrassing him in front of Shaw after he’d claimed the woman was dead would have been right up O’Donnell’s alley. Apparently he’d bitten off more than he could chew this time around, though. Who’d have ever imagined that some television personality could be so ruthless?
He kept his thoughts to himself, however, saying instead, “Yes, it’s possible. We’re still working to locate their missing car, but if Morrell is telling the truth, and she is indeed here in London, it’s quite possible she simply stole the vehicle after killing our men and then used it to make the journey here.”
“She must have the torc,” Shaw said.
“It’s certainly possible, yes.”
As much as he hated to admit it, Jackson thought his employer could be right. She must have hidden the torc before attacking his people that night and then retrieved it when she escaped from the bog. The thought got his anger up. How she’d managed to survive that gunshot to the skull, never mind the cloying grip of the bog afterward, was something he intended to ask her, right after he beat her mercilessly for putting him in this position in the first place.
On the screen, Morrell was still babbling on about bog mummies or some other equally stupid subject for his television show. Shaw watched him for a moment and then tapped the glass, like a young kid knocking on th
e outer side of the pens in the pet store, expecting the canine, or in this case, the walking dead man, to notice him.
As the press conference began to wind down, Shaw said over his shoulder, “We still have people in New York, yes?”
Jackson nodded. “Of course.”
“Put them on Morrell. I want his phone tapped, his house and office watched. If he’s telling the truth, this Creed woman has been in touch and will likely reach out to him again. When she does, I want to know about it.”
“I’m on it.”
Shaw turned to face him. “The auction ends in thirty-six hours,” he said. “You have that long to get me that torc. No excuses and no more screwups!”
Jackson told him he’d handle it and then took his leave before things could get ugly.
He was out of chances, he knew. If he didn’t find the torc in time, there wasn’t any place that he could hide. Shaw would hunt him to the ends of the earth.
Failure was not an option.
21
At just after four that afternoon, a man got off the elevator outside the offices of the Chasing History’s Monsters production office in New York City. He was dressed in dark pants and a white shirt, with a tie that was intentionally tied an inch shorter than it should be. His hair, a little longer than the average corporate wage slave’s, was slicked back without much regard for style or flair. He wore an unattractive pair of glasses and an ID badge—showing his picture and the name Newman in large letters—was hanging from a lanyard around his neck. In his left hand he carried a scuffed leather computer bag that sprouted a few inches of Ethernet cable and the end of a flowmeter out of its partially opened mouth.
