by Alex Archer
“I saw they’re already selling garlic and stakes in town.”
“Bloody hell.” Luke sighed. “There’s a Romani encampment about a mile west of here, on the other side of the forest. I suspect the entire camp will be on us by nightfall, torches and pitchforks in hand. If not guns.”
“They can’t actually believe you’ve uncovered one of the chewing dead.”
“Vampire.”
“Right, a pissed-off dead thing that seeks to rise and suck the blood from its family and friends. And even if such things did exist, it’s long dead. Can’t hurt anyone now.”
“Annja, I expect you would understand that superstition and ritual still breeds deep in the DNA of these people. Don’t get me started on their elaborate burial rights. But suffice it to say, death is not a natural thing to the Romani, and with it brings great fear and anger.”
“Superstition is a powerful force. All right, so prepare for pitchforks?”
The man’s smile was genuinely warm and inviting. And those irresistible eyes.
Annja pulled a trowel out from her waist pack. “Mind if I do some digging?”
“Please.” Luke leaned back against the dirt wall. “You can take over here for me. There is an entire skeleton attached to this skull. I’ve uncovered the femur down there, and a few phalanges there.” He pointed to the finger bones sticking up from the dirt as if clutching at air. “I’m in mind to take some pictures and have some breakfast while I make a few notes. You hungry? I’ve got hard-boiled eggs and herring.”
Not the most appetizing offer. “I ate before I got here, but thanks.”
“Fine, then I’ll do the most ungentlemanly thing and eat in front of a woman. While the head and brick are the most interesting, we’ll need to dig out the entire skeleton. If you want to work your way down, you’re more than welcome.”
“I will. You go eat. And keep an eye on the angry locals. I don’t want to take a stake to the back.”
With a chuckle, Luke hopped out of the pit, and offered Addison and Mueller the same repast. Both men accepted, but Annja suspected only as a means to take a break and not for the culinary treat.
As Luke passed their curious bystanders, he bowed and then gave a high five to the child who eagerly played along. The kid had dark hair and eyes, and a cute round face. Annja decided that if he hadn’t been taught otherwise, he would grow up believing the same lies his parents had learned from their parents.
Sometimes history could be a nuisance.
Chapter 3
“She said she was headed where?” Garin asked his butler.
“Chrastava. Isn’t that where you’ve just come from, Master Braden?”
Garin muttered an affirmative, and scrolled through the contacts on his cell phone. Why was Creed getting into his business? Chrastava was close to where Canov had set up shop.
“Why is Annja in the one place I least want her to be? Did Miss Creed say what she was doing in Chrastava?”
“No, sir. Well, perhaps she mentioned something about an archaeological dig. Or did I assume that?” The butler left with the breakfast dishes on a silver tray.
Garin scrolled to Annja’s phone number, but didn’t call her. It was purely coincidence that she was here. He had invited her to stop in if she was ever in the area. She must be doing some research for that television show she hosted.
Would going to Chrastava to investigate look like he was trying to make amends? He didn’t do amends. Amends were not required in this situation. But he was curious, and she was only an hour away by private plane.
Besides, he had left unfinished business in the warehouse. Likely Canov had cleared out by now, but he’d give it one last look.
* * *
THE PALE AND distant sun began to set. Luke had suggested they cover the site with a tarp for the night. He had arranged for the security guard to come every night at sunset, but the man hadn’t arrived yet.
The insects had doubled in number and Annja vowed to find some DEET in town when she returned. Addison had brought over a tarp to help her cover the pit and they were discussing how to cover the wall where he and Mueller had unearthed two other brickless skulls. Those discoveries indicated this may have been a burial site, or even a family grave.
Rising voices from the growing peanut gallery prompted Annja to climb out of the pit and investigate.
Over the course of the day, she’d been cast the evil eye several times, had almost been spat on except she’d managed to step to the side while passing the crowd and had had to take a bat away from a small boy who was swinging wildly at the insects out of his mother’s sight.
For what it was worth, they didn’t appear angry with Annja and Luke for digging up the remains of what she’d deduced they believed to be evil. But they certainly weren’t pleased the thing existed.
And now the crowd gathered around something, or someone, and the shouting was only stopped by a pistol shot.
“What the bloody hell?” Luke joined Annja, and they approached the crowd, which was backing away from a tall man holding a gun. “Who are you?” Luke demanded. “This is an archaeological dig. There are no weapons allowed here.”
Above the crowd’s heads, Annja could see the man tuck a Glock inside his dark, tailored suit jacket. To her left an old man muttered, “Mullo.”
Annja couldn’t help grinning. If this man was the image these people formed of a monster risen from the grave, she had to hand it to their imagination.
“I’ll handle this,” she said to Luke. “He’s an...acquaintance.”
Shoving through the crowd, she reached Garin Braden, who had arrived in the black Mercedes SUV parked up the road behind the other vehicles. Hands on her hips, Annja looked him in the eye. It was only to her advantage to show the locals she wasn’t afraid of the man.
“Why are they calling me mullo?” he asked.
“Good evening,” Annja said, eyeing an elderly Gypsy who was getting too close with the bat she had earlier confiscated. “I have no idea. You suck on anyone’s neck lately? And that doesn’t include your dates.”
“You’re not that funny, Annja.”
The crowd moved in closer, muttering among themselves, and Annja ordered them back. She nodded for Garin to follow her to the pit.
“Luke Spencer,” she said in passing, “this is Garin Braden. Garin, Luke. Give me a minute, Luke. And watch the crowd. If there’s going to be a brouhaha, this guy’s the obvious one to start it.”
Luke assessed the tall German with a keen eye, then nodded to Addison and Mueller, and as a trio, they went to see what they could do about convincing the audience to leave.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” Annja ignored the constant insects buzzing around her head. “Does this have anything to do with your bad mood last night?”
“It wasn’t a bad mood.”
“Thanks for the hospitality, by the way. After a six-hour flight, such graciousness was mightily appreciated.”
“I haven’t come to offer apologies. If I had known you’d planned to stop by—hell. You have your moments of hostility, too, Annja, so get over it.”
Obviously he was still in that hostile mood. Whatever artifact he’d wanted her to look at was now off her list of must-sees. And the history he’d witnessed? He could keep those secrets. Indefinitely.
She swatted at the cloud of flies. “So what brings you here? And with bullets flying?”
“That couldn’t be helped. They were swarming me like crazy people.”
“Yeah, but no pitchforks. Yet.”
Garin glanced back at them, then eased his big, broad shoulder forward and brushed a palm over the holster strap.
“What is it with you and people assuming you’re a creature risen from the dead?” she asked.
“A man lives over five centuries, people start to wonder,” he said with no humor at all. “I had a meeting with a few colleagues just outside of Liberec last night—”
“Last night?” she interrupted, confu
sed.
“—before you and I crossed paths in Berlin. Blood was—never mind. Let’s just say my colleagues and I experienced a difference of opinion.”
He’d been here just before she’d arrived. What were the odds, she thought suspiciously. “Not hard to do with you,” she said aloud. “I can say that from experience.”
“Yeah, well, tensions were high. Word could have gotten around.”
She stared at him. What exactly might the townspeople have heard about his “difference of opinion” the night before that caused them to swarm him now? Had he been caught drinking somebody’s blood? Yeah, right. Except that’s the only correlation she could see that might have made him a target here.
She pulled the small mag flashlight out of her back pocket and aimed the light beam into the growing shadows of the pit. She lit the skull she and Addison had yet to cover. “I’ve got my own vampire troubles.”
Garin leaned over to look. “I don’t understand.”
She knelt beside him. “See that chunk of clay in its mouth? Just call that fellow one of the chewing dead. In medieval times—” She stopped and studied Garin. “Well, surely I don’t have to tell you that people used to place stones or bricks in the mouths of those they believed would rise to kill their families and drink their blood. You having been alive in the end of the Middle Ages and all.”
“Hell.” Garin palmed the pistol at his hip. “I do not like vampire references.”
“Yeah? Keep it holstered, buddy. These people have cherished their beliefs and traditions for centuries.”
“I have a scar on my chest from centuries-old superstitions.”
“Right. Wasn’t that in Los Angeles where you were almost staked?”
Garin exhaled heavily and stood. His dark eyes took in the horizon where the sun scoured a thin red line across the black treetops demarcating sky and land. “I knocked over an IV filled with blood last night. It was attached to...I don’t know. Shouldn’t have told you that.”
“What? You were fighting in a hospital?”
“Far from it. It’s not something I want you to get involved in, Annja. I have the situation under control. My butler had mentioned this was your destination. Just wanted to stop by the site and make amends for my abrupt behavior last night.”
“You said you weren’t going to apologize.”
“Have you heard me apologize?”
Could he make a bigger issue out of muttering a few simple words of regret? Probably.
“I wanted to invite you back to my place for a meal,” he said.
Only if he told her more about the person he’d seen hooked up to the IV. He’d been fighting around a sick person and it hadn’t been in a hospital?
Annja curbed her voracious curiosity. She had work here that fascinated her, and she had no intention of getting involved in whatever nefarious dealings Garin Braden had his hands in—very likely illegal.
“Sorry, already have a date for tonight. Luke and I are grabbing something in town,” she said. “It’s been a long, backbreaking day hunched over bones. I need some beer and carbs in a place no one will look twice at my dirty face and clothes.”
“I’ll have my butler ensure there are clean clothes waiting for your arrival,” Garin suggested. “Would you pass over pheasant and centuries-old burgundy for potatoes and kraut?”
“You have my cell number. Call me if you suddenly find yourself on the run from people wielding stakes.”
“Why? You want to grab a stake and join them?”
She forced away a smile. “’Course not. You know I do my best work with a sword.”
“That I do.”
Releasing the smile, Annja strode past Garin to her Jeep and pulled out the steel water canteen. Garin passed her, taking a moment to growl at the locals who followed him to his vehicle. She was worried his driver would back too close to the children at one point, but some sharp-eyed mothers grabbed them up before the angry, growling German and his entourage could do any damage.
“A good friend of yours?” Luke asked, leaning against the hood of her rental.
“More like occasional colleague and sometimes nemesis. For the most part, he’s harmless.”
It was the other part—the part that did not blink an eye to take down those who threatened him—that Annja wouldn’t mention to Luke.
“I’ll meet you in town,” she said, and hopped in the Jeep. She hoped the security guard arrived soon. “I’m starving, and I want to hear how you landed this dig.”
* * *
THE TIN-SIDED WAREHOUSE had been emptied of any supplies, weapons and the gruesome bags of blood Garin had seen the previous night. He strolled through the building, bodyguards posted at the doors with assault rifles against any stray, unwanted visitors. The superstitious locals couldn’t have followed him from Annja’s dig site, but he wasn’t going to take chances. How was it possible that the crowd at the dig had associated him with the blood he’d stumbled across in the warehouse? And how could IV bags of blood lead any sane individual to draw the conclusion of vampirism? Events had transpired from annoying to plain weird.
He’d expected this mutiny after his argument with Canov, and he should mark it off as a business loss. Except the man owed him for the last two shipments, and the fact he’d been operating a side scheme under Garin’s nose didn’t sit well with him. He wasn’t sure what Canov was up to, but sensed it wasn’t something he wanted traced back to him. If it hadn’t already been traced back to him. Loose ends needed to be singed to a crisp.
He had put out feelers in Liberec. If Canov had set up elsewhere, Garin would know by nightfall. The man wouldn’t be so foolish to press his luck, but he was known to circulate in the area, close to family and friends, a support network of vicious thieves who wouldn’t blink at slashing a man’s throat.
Or a child’s?
Garin eyed the dried brown blood on the floor, littered with rubble from the hasty move. He thought he’d seen a child in this room, but it could have been a small man. Emaciated from blood loss?
Good thing he hadn’t mentioned as much to Annja. The woman would be all over it right now if she suspected a child had been hurt. He had no proof. Hell, he could have imagined seeing anyone on the pallet. He’d had blood in his eyes from the fight, and hadn’t been thinking beyond his anger.
The stink of foul bodily secretions hung in the air. Someone had been in this room, and whatever had been done to them had not been a cakewalk.
He turned abruptly and marched to the door where one of his men stood guard.
“Dresden, you stay here, and keep your cell on. Give it forty-eight hours. Let me know if anyone returns.”
“If so, do you want me to detain them?”
“Yes.”
“Dead or alive?”
Garin pondered the ease of the second option, then shrugged. “He’ll have more to say alive.”
* * *
BY THE TIME she’d returned to town the few cafés were closed and Annja had opted for a prepackaged turkey and mayonnaise sandwich from a gas station and a carton of chocolate milk. Luke was staying in a hotel across town from her, and promised her a homemade breakfast tomorrow.
Over milk and questionable turkey, alone in her hotel room, she detailed the day’s events on her laptop, but left out Garin’s appearance. The vampire superstition was more salacious than intriguing, though she was curious about people who could believe the creature existed. That a buried body could actually rise from six feet under and come after them? But those bones hadn’t been six feet under. Maybe that’s why they had needed the brick.
Online, she navigated to her favorite archaeology site and searched for info on the Venetian and Bulgarian vampire finds. She had to remind herself, “It’s not a vampire, Annja, not even close.”
Vampires did not exist. Only superstition and tradition kept them alive in the beliefs of some. And Luke calling it a vampire would only feed their superstitions.
From the few articles posted, there wasn
’t much more on the skull than she already knew.
The Venetian skull had been buried with the brick.
The corpse in Bulgaria had been found with an iron stake in its chest. As had a hundred other skeletons unearthed over the years, most traceable to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
One skeleton was on display at the National History Museum in Sozopol, which—Annja found humorous—also displayed six bones believed to have been John the Baptist’s.
You’ve got to love history and its juxtaposition of ideology in museums.
Calling it a night, she went to bed by eleven, congratulating herself on getting some much-needed sleep. Tomorrow promised breakfast and a day spent at the dig.
Chapter 4
Luke held good to his word, and met her at a cozy little restaurant next to a beauty salon that advertised “Hollywood-style manicures” with a few photos of Angelina Jolie pasted in the window. She chose scrambled eggs and sausage stuffed with savory fennel and garlic.
“No pink slime in this stuff,” Annja said gratefully as she bit into a spicy sausage.
“Pink slime?”
“It’s a U.S. thing,” she said. “Consumer panic. Put a few companies out of business a few years ago. Do we ever really know what we are eating? So many chemicals in our foods nowadays. Although Britain is way ahead of us on GMO labeling. Anyway, you were going to tell me how you managed to land this dig?”
“Right.” He sipped his coffee, murdered with cream to a deathly beige, then prodded his overeasy eggs with a fork while he spoke in that quiet Welsh accent that would have put a smile on Annja’s face even without the fulfilling repast. “You know I’ve got Romani blood in me?”
“No. Welsh Romani?”
“Yes. My great-grandfather’s side. My mother made sure we grew up with little knowledge of that, though. Only learned about it a few years ago, and that sparked my interest in the Gypsy culture. Last year I spent time in Chrastava studying the Romanis and their beliefs. There’s a housing development east of the city that welcomed me and my questions, for the most part.”
