by Alex Archer
She paged through a few new-age shops that sold gris-gris, voodoo spells and fancy incense burners and crystals. Aboveboard stuff, not genuine, nasty voodoo shops that she’d been in a time or two before. They gave her the chills. It was a dark and mysterious religion that Annja was forced to respect. She’d landed on the wrong end of a voodoo curse more than a few times.
Using a child’s organs to gain riches, beauty or extended life? It sounded horrible, but Annja knew there were desperate people who would pay for that kind of macabre fix. Again, her heart went out for those children. She couldn’t get it out of her mind that they may have been conscious when their organs or blood had been removed. Children had paid an unconscionable price.
The cursor blinked next to an entry for discreet vodou. Clicking on it brought up a black page with a single line of text in a red font that was difficult to read. It indicated, All your dreams answered if you can pay the price. A symbol, or veve, swirled two white serpents parallel to each other, fading on and off the page with a clever animated gif. No contact email, but there was an address. She tapped the keyboard. Probably a false lead, or another curio shop. But she typed the address into her cell phone. Just in case. She’d drive by when she reached London, and check the place out.
Meanwhile, she scrolled down to Garin’s phone number, and then tapped into the tracking program on her laptop. She’d set it up to track after her conversation with Roux. If Garin made a phone call, it should snap up the location and enter it into the GPS field.
And there it was, an address, which, checking the London map, placed him in Hyde Park right now. The man certainly wasn’t strolling around the gardens admiring the landscaping. Her best guess? A nightclub. If he was partying with women and the narcotics that tended to accompany his adventures she wouldn’t have a problem confronting him.
But if he were tracking Bracks, she would welcome the challenge of insinuating herself onto his trail.
The pilot announced their impending landing. She could make it to the address within an hour.
Chapter 19
Garin left the loud, grinding techno music in the London nightclub behind as he angled down a dark, narrow hallway. He passed by a few red doors, but didn’t want to know what was going on behind them. Really, he didn’t. It was either drugs, gambling, illicit sex or all of the above.
No one would ever catch him indulging in vices in a dive like this.
A stairway led him down a red shag-carpeted walkway with walls paneled in dark wood. Flashing back to the seventies—an era he had found innocuous and dull—he winced as the decor declined rapidly. Behind the next red door, he heard the clatter of pool balls on felt and knew he had found what he was looking for.
Bracks had a few hiding places. Some of which Garin was aware of. But this new one Slater had unearthed.
Garin grunted to himself and cracked his knuckles.
Adjusting his cuffs, and unbuttoning the top button of his starched Armani shirt, he opened the door with the upside-down number seven on it, and strode inside the pool hall. The two-story room was open to the balcony and again was furnished in early seventies wood paneling. There was even a cheesy stained-glass beer lamp hanging over each of the pool tables.
He wasn’t immediately noticed, and wouldn’t be remarkable, except for his impeccable clothing among the jeans and T-shirts. Eight or nine men were gathered around the half dozen pool tables in game, or tilting back glass mugs of beer and whiskey. A pair of bruisers stood by an old-fashioned jukebox that flashed bright neon lights, and chuckled over some ribald gossip. To top it off, a Bee Gees tune proclaimed he should be dancing.
Garin did not see the man he was looking for, but the stairway along the north wall, carpeted in more of the hideously matted red shag, led up to a door, behind which, he suspected, would be a good place for a business opportunist’s office. A man sat on the fourth step from the bottom, long legs stretched the length of the stair riser, crossed at the ankles. Steel-toed cowboy boots featured a white Día de los Muertos skull etched on the bottom of each sole. His eyes were fixed to Garin as he strolled the edges of the room.
Always wise to pinpoint the lookout, and vice versa.
Garin hadn’t entered carrying a gun because of the security check at the nightclub entrance. He didn’t need one. These men were lackeys. Well-built, a few of them, including the lookout, but he didn’t worry about the scrawny set bent over the table near the stairs, so that took three out of the equation. The odds were against him, but he’d never been an odds man.
Walking to the center of the room, he stood there a moment, taking in the energy, the foul cigarette smoke imbued in the ancient rug and the molding ceiling tiles. With a crack of his neck to one side, he then gave his arms a shake and clapped his hands together.
“Gentlemen!” Garin called. “I’m looking for Weston Bracks.” The room fell silent, except for the annoying falsetto still pleading him to dance. “Anyone have an address book or speed dial? Facebook friend?”
He smirked, gauging how long it would take before he’d be in hand-to-hand combat. Five seconds?
“Who wants to know?”
The idiotic, but necessary, question. He flicked a glance to the man on the stairs, who now stood, fists coiled and arms arching at his sides as if preparing to quick draw.
“None of your damn business.” Garin twisted at the waist and thrust up his right arm to block the punch from behind. His attacker strained against his arm to push him off balance, but with a shove, Garin sent him tumbling to the floor at the base of a pool table.
Ten seconds. He was losing his ability to rouse a good fight. On the other hand, these men did not plan to disappoint. Turning, he gut-punched another bold attacker, sending him sprawling across an empty pool table.
He heard the swing of a pool cue through the air behind him. It missed his head by three inches. Garin growled, and grabbed a cue from a table, which happened to be decorated with skulls. He broke the white-maple stick in half, and outfitted himself with a worthy yantok, or short stick used for eskrima-style fighting. Spinning it and ending in a redondo, he challenged anyone to come forward with a lift of his chin. Two men charged. He swung the stick out in a forward strike, connecting with a shoulder, but it only slowed the one man. The other slammed him against a table.
Garin used the momentum, his body falling backward, and lifted his attacker with his legs, sending him over his head and sprawling across the table. Jumping high and landing on his feet, his palms on the table, he defied the man who spidered up to a crouch on the green felt. He swung at Garin’s face, missing. Garin grabbed his wrist and crushed it against the table, slamming the butt of the stick down on the back of his hand. Something snapped, either wrist bones or tendons. A painful yelp signaled surrender.
Garin pushed away, stick spinning in his fingers, and turned to face the next challenge.
Thankfully, no shots had been fired, which gave him hope he was fighting unarmed men. Didn’t make things easier, but taking bullets out of the equation did make for an equal fight and an easier grip, since blood tended to make the skin slippery.
Slapping a hand against one man’s face, he used the force of the blow to slam his head into the swinging fist of another one’s attack. The puncher cursed the fact he’d hit his friend, and twisted back on the defense, fists up, bouncing on his toes before Garin. The one he’d punched landed with his arms across the table, his jaw slamming the edge as he went down hard.
Donna Summer now crooned about love, and the music grew louder as fists met flesh, and bones took the impact and tendons crunched.
Garin ran up the stairs, turned and clocked his pursuer—one of the scrawny ones—up the side of the head with a fan flick of the stick. Blood spattered from the man’s mouth, and possibly a tooth, but tenaciously he clung to the stair rail, and grinning a crimson sneer, he gripped Garin’s ankle and brought him down hard on his ass. Some landings were more vicious than others, and that one crushed his tailbone up into
his spine and made him groan. And in the process, he’d dropped the stick.
But he wasn’t out. The attacker dragged him down the stairs, and Garin padded each bumpy step with his forearms, cursing his judgment when his aggressor packed powerful strength in those lean muscles. When he reached the bottom, Garin grabbed the railing and kicked high, landing the man under the jaw. Bones cracked, and his assailant went down, his unconscious body tumbling into the next who would try to take Garin out.
Righting himself, and assessing that five were still standing―three groaning and one out cold―Garin wished he had a magical weapon like Annja possessed. Would be great if he could call a Glock out of the otherwhere and send a few rounds through bodies right now.
But the old-fashioned way with fists it would be. Besides, he was just getting started. The adrenaline was racing and his breaths were even and strong.
“Bring it,” he muttered.
Catching the swing of a pool cue across the back of his neck, Garin cursed himself for not being more aware as he stumbled forward, avoiding tripping over the fallen man. He collided into another who charged him, grabbed him by the face and slammed his cheek into the wall. Blood spattered Garin’s face. He let the man drop.
Turning, he swung, but a forceful block stopped his punch with an echoing smack.
The man who caught his punch cracked a tobacco-stained grin. And from behind, Garin’s left arm was wrangled. The two men worked in tandem, twisting his arms around behind him painfully. And when the bruiser from the stairs approached with a length of thick chain in hand Garin began to rethink the game plan.
* * *
PALM PRESSED FLAT to the red door with the upside-down number seven on it, Annja listened to the noise on the other side. She’d thought it was supposed to be an underground pool hall—one of those places you had to know someone to be invited into the fold, or better, work for a criminal underlord. What she heard now sounded more like a gym or boxing ring.
She smiled. If Garin was inside, that offered perfect explanation for the fisticuffs. And he would probably be alone, fending off more than a few.
For long seconds she vacillated about turning the doorknob. Garin would likely curse her out and wouldn’t thank her in any way. He’d insist he had the situation under control. And he’d find some way to make it look like it had been her fault if he received so much as a bruise.
How could a girl possibly walk away from all that praise and appreciation?
With an inhale, Annja opened the door and strolled inside, quickly assessing the situation. The ridiculous song “Disco Duck” quacked out over the speakers. A stained-glass beer lamp swung dangerously back and forth over the table, half of the glass dangling by the lead inserts. Lights from a jukebox flashed over a pair of men brawling, their faces blinking from pink to violet and revealing bloodied scowls.
She didn’t have time to count how many were, indeed, against the burly German. Instead, she walked right up to Garin’s bleeding and bent-forward face. Two men held his arms, and another stood ready to kick him from the side.
“Now that’s going to hurt,” Annja said.
“It’s your damn fault,” Garin spat.
“Naturally.”
Adjusting her weight to her back leg, Annja tilted her torso, swinging a high kick to land on the hip of the one who delivered the kick to Garin. The man’s boot didn’t connect with Garin’s jaw. And Annja’s blow sent him stumbling backward to land against the ugly paneled wall in a surprised sprawl.
“You’re welcome,” she said, and left Garin to get out of the hold with a couple well-placed shoulder shifts.
She bent over the man she had laid flat and punched him squarely in the nose. Cartilage crunched under her knuckles, and she winced. But damn that had felt good. She wanted to kick some ass. Adrenaline rushing through her veins, she swung up and met the next man who wanted a piece of her.
“Your trollop come to save your ass?” he shouted, and laughed, revealing a bloody grin. He swung for Annja’s shoulder, but she delivered a high kick that caught him across the throat, her hiking boot leaving a waffle impression on his skin as he stumbled, clutching and gagging for breath.
“She’s not my trollop,” Garin called, more as a denial than in defense of her virtue. He held a man’s head in the vise of his bent arm. Gripping the guy’s hair, he swung him out and released him, sending him straight toward Annja.
She caught him across the throat with her arm, clotheslining him efficiently. Garin winked at her. About the only thanks she expected to get.
“Good thing I decided to stop in,” she called.
“I had it under control!” Garin shouted. He elbowed another man in the temple, and the guy went down without a sound. Garin was no slacker. “Who invited you?”
Annja leaped to avoid the grabbing hand of a man on the floor. She landed on the edge of a pool table on one thigh, rolled backward and across the table, and scissored her legs high to connect with the man who waited on the other side. Pushing off the table and leaping over that fallen goon, she landed solidly on the floor and straightened.
“It upsets me you didn’t put my name on the guest list,” she called to Garin. “You here in London, making new friends and having all this fun. I’m affronted.”
Two opponents remained standing—plus Annja and Garin. Annja charged the one aimed for her, caught his upper arm and swung him around. Garin performed the same move with his attacker, and they swung them about to meet with grunts and an exhausted and painful hug. Garin kicked the one in the jaw, laying him out, and the other, a man with white leather skulls on his boots, simply wilted, either from fear or exhaustion.
Garin stepped over to Annja and wiped what she noticed was a smear of blood from her forearm. “You think I needed your help?”
“No.”
“Of course I didn’t—no?” He thrust back his shoulders. Adjusted his shirtsleeves, which were spattered with blood. He’d lost a cuff link, and poked a finger through the buttonhole. “Right, then. I want to take a look upstairs in the office before leaving.”
“I’ll hold down the fort.”
Annja let her eyes wander across the fallen. A few were conscious, but she didn’t expect they’d give her much trouble. But to be safe, she picked up a broken pool cue stamped with skulls. The blood on it added the perfect touch.
“Take your time!” she called after Garin as he climbed the red-carpeted stairs to the balcony. “Might get in a game while you’re snooping.”
She heard his grunting scoff and smiled. Any day she got to tweak Garin Braden was a good day. But who was she kidding? He could have handled this on his own. Maybe. It had felt damn good to let out her aggressions on this tattered bunch, though.
But it would never make up for her churning anger over Luke’s death.
Don’t think about it. Not until you’ve put this case behind you. Find Bracks. You can mourn Luke later.
Aiming the cue toward the black eight ball, a silver glint beside it caught her eye. A cuff link. Who knows? It might be Garin’s. Not many of the men scattered around the floor were wearing good shirts. Sliding the broken stick over her finger, she hit the cue ball. It rolled toward the eight, which knocked the cuff link into the side pocket, before rolling into the corner pocket.
* * *
GARIN HADN’T FOUND the man he was looking for in any of the balcony rooms set around the upper perimeter of the pool hall.
Annja had returned his silver cuff link, which didn’t seem to do much to lift his mood.
Now they stood a few blocks down from the nightclub in the opening of an alleyway strewn with the daily newspaper, watching as young kids in sexy clothing—focused on their cell phones more than their dates—headed toward the action.
At least the music wasn’t disco, Annja thought, glad she’d missed that era. Eighties music was some of her favorite, but she’d been too young to go to the clubs then. She’d never been a club girl. Couldn’t see the point, really. It was much
more fulfilling to have a conversation over a centuries-old stack of bones or ancient pottery.
“How’d you find me?” Garin asked. He leaned against the brick wall of the building, while Annja stood with her hands in her pockets, facing the sidewalk and observing the passersby.
“Nowadays they have an app for everything, don’t you know? I tracked your phone through a GPS app.”
“Remind me to beef up my personal security.”
“Yes, well, Roux was worried about you, as well.”
“That old bastard.”
“Coming from another old bastard, that slur hardly holds water.”
“Annja, I’m in no mood.”
“Fine. Let’s cut through the small talk and get to the point. We both want Bracks, so let’s overlook the fact you laid me flat in the field out of Liberec, and share our knowledge of the man.”
“Why do you want him? I thought you were digging up bones in the Czech Republic. How does a vampire skull relate to an international smuggler of weapons, art and data?”
“Is that Bracks’s official title? Bigger mouthful than ‘business opportunist.’ But I like it. Tells a person exactly what to expect.”
“Annja.”
“Garin.”
She sighed and turned to face him. Though the night shadowed his face, the streetlight cast a sharp angle to his already square jaw. “Sometimes the things I dig up lead me to real, contemporary problems that need solving. You know how it is with the sword. And I have reason to believe Bracks is kidnapping children.”
Garin didn’t say anything for a moment. “You have proof of that? He’s never been into the flesh trade, that I know of.”
“You seem to know a lot about the man.”
“I have many enemies. Kind of expected, don’t you think, for all the centuries I’ve lived?”
“I suppose. And Bracks has never dealt in trafficking?”
