Destiny

by Alex Archer

  She abandoned the car and caught a ride with a driver making a delivery to the airport, wanting to conserve her cash in case she had to run again.

  As Europe’s second-busiest airport, Charles de Gaulle International was busy even at one o’clock in the morning. The driver was kind enough to drop her at Terminal 1, where most of the international flights booked.

  Annja cringed a little when she paid full price for the ticket, but went ahead and splurged for a first-class seat. After the events of the past two days, she didn’t want people piled on top of her.

  Especially not when the persons around her could be black-garbed monks in disguise.

  You’re being paranoid, she chided herself. But, after a moment’s reflection, she decided she was all right with that. A temporary case of paranoia beat a permanent case of dead.

  ANNJA DOZED fitfully on the plane. No matter what she did to relax, true sleep avoided her. Finally, she gave up and spent time with her journals and notebook computer. Thankfully she’d left them in Garin’s car when they got to the mansion. She didn’t know if she’d ever again see the materials she’d left at the bed-and-breakfast.

  She opened the computer and pulled up the jpegs she’d made of the sketches she’d done of the charm. She moved the images side by side and examined them.

  “Would you like something to drink, miss?”

  Startled, Annja looked up at the flight attendant. The question the man had asked slowly penetrated her fatigue and concentration.

  “Yes, please,” Annja replied. “Do you have any herbal tea?”

  “I do. I’ll get it for you.”

  The flight attendant returned a moment later with a cup filled with hot water and a single-serving packet of mint tea.

  “Are you an artist?” the flight attendant asked.

  “No,” Annja answered, plopping the tea bag into the cup. “I’m an archaeologist.”

  “Oh. I thought maybe you were working on a video game.”

  “Why?”

  The flight attendant shrugged. He was in his late thirties, calm and professional in appearance. “Because of the coin, I suppose. Seems like a lot of games kids today play have to do with coins. At least, that’s the way it is with my kids. I’ve got three of them.” He smiled. “I guess maybe I’m just used to looking for hidden clues in the coins.”

  “Hidden clues?”

  “Sure. You know. Maybe it’s a coin, but there are clues hidden in it. Secret messages, that sort of thing.”

  Annja’s mind started working. She stared at the side of the charm that held the wolf and the mountain. Is there a clue embedded in here? Or is this just a charm? Why would that warrior wear it when he fought La Bête? Another thought suddenly struck her. Why was the warrior alone?

  “I’ll leave you alone with your work,” the flight attendant said. “Have a good flight.”

  “Thank you,” Annja said, but her mind was already hard at work, separating the image of the wolf and the mountain into their parts.

  The obverse was the stylized sign of the Brotherhood of the Silent Rain. But she didn’t know how stylized it was. Perhaps something had been added there, as well. She peered more closely, pumping up the magnification.

  A moment later, she saw it. Behind three of the straight lines in the die mark of the Brotherhood of the Silent Rain, she saw a shadowy figure she hadn’t seen before.

  WHEN SHE REACHED New York City, the first thing Annja did was look to find out if she was going to be picked up by the police. Since the NYPD SWAT team wasn’t waiting to cuff her when she stepped off the plane, she hoped that was a good sign.

  Still, she didn’t want to go home without knowing what to expect.

  She hailed a cab in front of LaGuardia International and took it to Manhattan to an all-night cyber café. Since she lived in Brooklyn, she felt reasonably certain Manhattan would be safe.

  Settled into a booth, her laptop plugged into the hard-line connection rather than the wireless so there would be no disruption of service—or less of it at any rate—she opened her e-mail. A brief glance showed she’d acquired a tremendous amount of spam, as usual, and had a few messages from friends and acquaintances, but nothing that couldn’t keep.

  There was a note from NYPD Detective Sergeant Bart McGilley that just read, Call me about those prints.

  Annja didn’t know if he was going to protest being asked to look them up or if he’d gotten a hit. Or maybe he was just the bait to bring her in. That gave her pause for a moment.

  She decided to put off the call for a few minutes. At least until she had time to eat the food she’d ordered with the computer time.

  She was surprised to find that once her mind started working she didn’t feel the need for sleep. She didn’t know where she was getting the extra energy from, but she was grateful.

  She opened the alt.archaeology site and found a few comments expressing interest in the images she’d posted, but nothing helpful.

  The alt.archaeology.esoterica board netted three replies to her question regarding the images.

  The first was from kimer@thetreasuresinthepast.com.

  Saw your pictures. Loved them. What you’re looking at is some kind of coin minted for the Brotherhood of the Silent Rain. Wasn’t used for money, but it’s made of silver, Right?

  If it is, then it’s legitimate. There were also copper ones, and there are rumors of gold ones, too, though I’ve never talked to anyone who’s seen one.

  I’ve been researching European Monastic cults for my thesis. The brotherhood was disbanded three or four hundred years ago for some kind of sacrificial practice.

  Sorry. Don’t know any more than that. If you find out anything, I’d love to know more. Always curious.

  The sandwich arrived, piled high with veggies and meat, with a bag of chips and a dill pickle spear on the side. A bottle of raspberry iced tea completed the meal.

  As she ate one-handed, Annja worked through the other entries.

  You’ve probably already found out that the stylized rain on the back of the coin represents the Brotherhood of the Silent Rain. They were one of the longest-lived monasteries in the Lozère/Mende area. Back when it was more commonly called Gévaudan.

  That made the tie to La Bête more accessible, Annja thought. Since she didn’t truly believe in coincidences, she looked for the connection.

  Anyway, what you might not know is that it’s still around. That coin you found was only minted for a few years. Maybe a dozen or twenty. Like everything else the monks did, they smithed the coins themselves. Had a forge and everything. What you’ve got there is a real find. I’ve got one of them myself. I’ve included pics.

  Why would a basically self-supporting monastery mint its own coins? Annja asked herself.

  Not only that, but the charm hadn’t been minted of silver. Whoever forged it made it from the metal of the sword.

  From Joan of Arc’s sword. Annja still couldn’t get around the thought of that.

  Setting her sandwich to the side for a moment, Annja opened the attachments. The poster had done a great job with the pictures. They were clear and clean.

  Judging from the pictures, the coin the poster owned was very similar to the one Annja had found in the cave. But that one looked like silver, even carried a dark patina that had never touched the one that Annja had found.

  However, the coin in the pictures only had the image of the mountain, not the wolf. And there was no shadowy figure trapped behind three lines in the die mark.

  She sighed and returned her attention to her sandwich. The mystery had deepened again. She loved archaeology for its challenges, stories and puzzles. But she hated the frustration that sometimes came with all of those.

  The third message was from Zoodio, the original responder to her posting.

  Hey. Hope you’ve had some luck with your enigma. I’ve had a bit, but it appears contradictory and confusing.

  Welcome to archaeology, Annja thought wryly.

  The coin you’
ve got is different than the ones minted at the monastery. And minting for a monastery is weird anyway. I understand they took gold for the Vatican and all that. Had to fund the additional churches somehow. But they marked ingots with the papal seal. Most of the time, though, the church never bothered to melt down and recast anything that came through the offerings.

  I noticed differences on your coin, though. I mean, the images I pulled up and got from friends are different. But I didn’t find any that looked like the one you’ve got.

  Taking a moment, Annja opened the images Zoodio had embedded in the message. Sifting through them, she found they were similar to the ones she’d gotten from the previous poster.

  To start with, the coin you found doesn’t appear to be made out of silver. Some other material?

  Also, yours has differences. Did you notice the shadowy figure behind the stylized rain? I didn’t at first. Had to look at it again, but I think it’s there.

  Excitement thrummed through Annja. She clicked on the embedded picture and it opened in a new window.

  The image was one of those she had posted, but Zoodio had used a red marker to circle the shadowy figure, then colored it in yellow highlighter to make it stand out more.

  This really caught my eye. I love stuff that doesn’t make sense. I mean, eventually it will, but not at that precise moment, you know?

  So I started looking. Turns out that the original Silent Rain monastery was attacked and burned down in 1767.

  Shifting in her seat, noticing that it had started to rain outside, Annja felt another thrill of excitement. Zoodio hadn’t been looking for a connection between the Brotherhood of the Silent Rain and La Bête, but she had suspected it was there because of Lesauvage’s interests.

  Of course, the monks showing up hadn’t daunted that conclusion.

  La Bête had claimed its final victim, at least according to most of the records, in 1767, over three hundred years ago. And the monastery burned down that same year. Annja smiled at her rain-dappled image in the window. That can’t be a coincidence, she thought. She was feeling energized. I do love secrets that have been hidden for hundreds of years.

  She pondered the sword and how it had vanished. That was a whole other kind of secret.

  During the flight back to the United States, she had come to the conclusion that Garin and Roux had somehow tricked her. She didn’t know how, and she didn’t know why, but there was no other explanation for the sword’s disappearance that made any sense at all.

  She shivered slightly and returned her focus to the computer.

  Turns out that the monastery was self-contained. They didn’t take just anyone who wanted in.

  Not only that, these guys are supposed to be like the Jesuits. Warlike, you know? Trained in the sword and the pistol. Supposed to be masters of the blade and crack shots and all that rot.

  Well…Annja thought, maybe they weren’t as good as their reputation. Or maybe the latest generation has gotten rusty.

  Then again, Roux, Garin and Henshaw weren’t your average man on the street. The monks had walked into a hornet’s nest.

  The brotherhood wasn’t well liked by the rest of the church. Too independent, too self-involved. Instead of reaching out to the community, the brotherhood sort of withdrew from it.

  From the accounts I read, they didn’t want to be contaminated by outsiders.

  Then where did they get recruits? Annja wondered. She opened her journal and started making notes. As questions arose, she entered those, as well.

  Later, she’d timeline it and start combing through the facts and suppositions she had and try to find the answers she needed. She’d learned to work through an outline, make certain the bones were there regarding an event she was researching, then flesh it out once she knew what she was looking for.

  In a way they became the perfect prison.

  Shortly before the monastery was destroyed, the pope or one of the high church members ordered a prisoner moved there. The Silent Rain monks were supposed to keep the prisoner until they were told to set him or her free. Rumor exists that the prisoner was a woman.

  Annja found the possibility intriguing. Why would a woman be locked up in a monastery? Normally a woman would have been sent to an abbey. Or simply imprisoned.

  But the story of Joan of Arc, how she’d been imprisoned and later killed at the hands of brutal men, echoed in Annja’s head. Written history had a way of being more kind and gentle than what an archaeologist actually found broken and bashed at the bottom of a sacrificial well or buried in an unmarked shallow grave.

  While working on dig sites throughout Europe, and even in the American Southwest, Annja had seen several murder victims. Those people had never been important enough in history’s selective vision to rate even a footnote most of the time. People were lost throughout history. It was a sad truth, but it was a truth.

  Whoever it was, the story goes that an armed force descended on the monastery to free the prisoner. During the battle, the monastery burned to the ground. The fields were sown with salt so nothing would grow there for years.

  And, supposedly, everyone at the monastery was killed. No one knows what happened to the prisoner.

  But there’s also a story that a few local knights, unhappy with how the church was speaking out against their hunting parties, decided they’d had enough and razed the monastery for that reason.

  Don’t know.

  But I found the shadowy image (if it’s there and not just a figment of my imagination!) really interesting.

  I hope you’ll let me know what you find out.

  Annja closed down the notebook computer and gazed out the window. There were so many unanswered questions.

  A few minutes later, she flagged down a taxi and gave her address in Brooklyn. The sound of the tires splashing through the rain-filled streets lulled her. Her eyelids dropped. She laid her head back on the seat and let her mind roam. So many images were at war for her attention. The find at the cave. La Bête. Lesauvage, so smooth and so dangerous. Avery Moreau, whose father had been killed by Inspector Richelieu. The Brotherhood of the Silent Rain. Roux. Garin.

  And the sword.

  In her mind’s eye, she pictured the sword as it had been, broken into fragments. She could clearly see the piece that had been stamped by the Silent Rain monastery.

  In her memory, she reached for it again. Incredibly, the pieces all fit together and the sword was once more whole. She reached for the sword, felt the rough leather wrapped around the hilt and the cold metal against her flesh.

  When she closed her hand around the sword, she felt as if she was connected to it, as if it was part of her, as if she could pull it out of the case again.

  She played the memory slowly, feeling the solid weight of the sword. Slowly, unable to stop herself from attempting the task even though she knew it was going to disrupt the memory, she withdrew the sword from the case.

  It came, perfectly balanced for her grip.

  “What the hell are you doing, lady?”

  Annja’s eyes snapped open. In disbelief, she saw the sword in her hand, stretched across the back of the taxi. It obstructed the driver’s view through the back window. He looked terrified.

  She was holding the sword!

  19

  Cursing loudly, the taxi driver cut across two lanes on Broadway. Thankfully traffic was light at the early-morning hour, but horns still blared in protest. His tires hit the curb in front of a closed electronics store.

  Still under full steam, the driver leaped out of the taxi. He reached under the seat for an L-shaped tire tool that looked as if it could have been used on the kill floor in a slaughterhouse.

  He jerked Annja’s door open. “You!” he snarled, gesturing with the tire tool. “You get outta my cab!”

  He was thin and anemic looking, with wild red hair tied back in a bun, wearing an ill-fitting green bowling shirt and khaki pants. He waved the tire tool menacingly.

  For the moment, though, Annja ignor
ed him. Somewhere during the confusion, the sword had disappeared. But it was here, she thought. I saw it. I felt it. It was here.

  “C’mon!” the driver yelled. “Get outta there! What the hell do you think you were doin’ waving that sword around like that? Like I wasn’t gonna notice a sword!”

  Dazed, Annja got out of the taxi. “You saw the sword?”

  “Sure, I did!” the driver shouted. “Six feet long if it was an inch! And it—” He stopped suddenly. In disbelief, he stared at Annja, who stood there with her backpack slung over her shoulder. Then he motioned her away from the taxi. “Back up. Get outta there already.”

  Annja complied.

  The driver’s antics had drawn a small crowd.

  The cabbie looked all over the back seat of the taxi. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and peered under the car. He even dragged his hands through the shadows as if doubting what his eyes revealed.

  He clambered back to his feet. “All right,” he demanded, “what did you do with it?”

  “Nothing,” Annja replied.

  “You had a sword back there, lady. Biggest pig sticker I ever seen outside of Braveheart.” The taxi driver glared at her.

  “I don’t have a sword,” Annja said.

  “I saw what I saw, lady.”

  Realizing the futility of the argument, Annja dropped twenty dollars on the seat, then turned and left, walking out into the street and hailing another cab immediately. She rode home quietly, trying not to think of anything, but wondering about everything.

  TO THE CASUAL OBSERVER, Annja’s neighborhood was rundown. She liked to think of it as lived-in, a piece of Brooklyn history.