by David Wood
“You will need your strength,” the man said. “Eat.”
“You going to feed me like a baby, or do I get a hand free to hold my own fork?”
He smiled and slit one binding with a shiny silver pocket knife, then handed her a plastic fork. He set the plate on her lap and stepped away.
Rose set the metal covering aside and saw a large pile of stew, chunks of lean-looking red meat, carrots, potatoes, peas. It smelled amazing and, despite her reservations, she dug in. The first few mouthfuls she barely chewed, and as they hit her stomach she slowed down, took a few breaths and began to eat more normally. She needed to make a break for it, but she would eat first. She needed the strength.
“My name is Karl,” the blond man said while she silently shoveled the food in. “Once you have finished your meal, you will be untied and taken outside. A vehicle is waiting there, and you are to be transported somewhere else. If you comply, it will all go more easily for you.”
Rose’s stomach turned, a wave of nausea threatening to send the meal straight back up again. “Easier for me? Seriously? This is my last meal and you want me to be a meek little lamb?”
Karl frowned. “Not your last meal.”
“You said there’s something inside me and you have to take it out. I can’t see that going particularly well for me, can you?”
Karl shrugged, looked away. “It’s not like that. The process will be... unpleasant, perhaps. That’s all.”
Rose swore at him and went back to cramming food into herself, desperate only for the energy it would give her. Once she scraped her plate clean, the man rose and moved toward her. He took the plate and held out his other hand. Rose stared at him.
Karl sighed. “The fork, please?”
Rose sneered and handed it over. “A plastic fork?”
“You kept it, didn’t you? Thought maybe you could do something with it? Honestly, I respect you for trying, but I have a job to do. Now, I’m going to untie you. Please don’t do anything stupid.”
“You’re confident, here on your own with little old me,” Rose said, giving Karl a sarcastic smile.
He stopped, stood up again and looked down at her. “There are others outside. Should I call them in?”
Rose deflated in the chair. “No. Fine.” At least now she knew for sure that he wasn’t alone, but she didn’t know how quickly the people outside might respond. Or if she could get by them. But forewarned was forearmed.
She didn’t move, but watched him closely as he used his small, shiny knife again, first to cut her other arm free, then he crouched for her feet. The moment her second leg was free, she launched herself forward and used every ounce of strength she could muster to deliver a crashing right hook to Karl’s jaw. He was a big man, but Rose was a strong fighter, and he reeled back with a grunt of surprise and pain. Her fist flared in pain, maybe broken from the impact with his big, dumb head, but she didn’t stop to think about that. Not waiting to see the effect, Rose stood from the chair, ignoring the whine of pain in her legs and the surge of pins and needles, and drove a kick up under Karl’s chin. His teeth snapped together and he sat back hard, then collapsed like a scarecrow with the pole removed.
Rose grabbed the knife from where it had fallen and paused. She looked down at him, half of her desperate to remove any threat, imagining herself dragging the knife across his throat where he lay. Is that what Crowley would do? She shook her head. She couldn’t do it, not kill in cold blood.
She turned and ran around the chair, heading for the door out of the strange, small warehouse. It was where Karl had come in from, so surely the others would be waiting out there. Or was that a ruse and he was on his own after all? Behind her, Karl groaned and moved weakly, regaining consciousness. No time. Her feet and legs were rubbery from inaction.
She looked frantically around, but there were no other exits except a huge roller door at one end. No way would she be able to get that open easily or quietly. She went to the first door and opened it an inch or so. Outside was a strange twilight sky, mostly cloudy. A cool breeze tickled across the bare skin of her arms as she leaned out to look further. She saw a lot of white houses with red tile roofs spreading away from her up a shallow hill. Water glittered off to her right, dark under the gloaming evening. A few masts rattled and rang with sail lines in the tiny harbor there.
A white panel van was parked just to one side and two men stood beside it, talking quietly. One smoked a cigarette. She could smell the acrid smoke on the otherwise cool, clean air. She slipped from the door as Karl began to moan more loudly behind her. As she ducked past the end of the van, trying to put it between herself and the other two men, Karl hollered something in Swedish. His voice boomed from the still open door and the two men swung around, faces shocked. They saw her.
“Hey!” one yelled and she bolted.
But her legs were still like jelly from who knew how many hours tied to the chair. She stumbled as she ran, her feet sparking painfully with pins and needles. A cavalcade of footsteps rattled up rapidly behind her and she spun around, slashing out with the knife. The two men yelped and leapt back, one slapping a hand to his left forearm, face twisted in pain.
“Bitch!”
Blood leaked out from between his fingers. Rose snarled at them like a caged animal, sweeping the knife left and right as they watched her warily. Then too late she realized they were waiting, not advancing. Karl had come the long way around the van and he grabbed her from behind, clamping her arms to her side. One of the others stepped forward and slapped her hard. Her face sang with the sharp pain of it and her vision crossed. The knife dropped from her fingers though she desperately tried to hold onto it.
The three men were snapping at each other angrily in Swedish, short, sharp sentences. Karl lifted her, feet kicking a foot above the ground, and threw her into the back of the van. He climbed in behind her and slammed the sliding door. By the orange glow of the interior light he stood over her, one fist raised.
“I will beat you unconscious if you don’t stop fighting!”
“Like I just beat you unconscious?” Rose spat.
Karl laughed weakly, shook his head. “Yes, exactly like that.”
His eyes were winced half-closed, as he clearly struggled with the pain in his head, no doubt the nausea of a concussion. He was tough, but she took some pleasure in his obvious discomfort. Just moving fast and taking her back under control was hurting him. But she knew when she was cornered. Better to wait it out now and have another chance to run than give him the excuse he needed to beat her into submission. He was a professional to not beat her anyway out of spite, for revenge. She slumped back against some sacking in the open back of the van and stared daggers at him.
Karl relaxed, visibly relieved. “Good.” He turned to the front where the other two had taken their seats and said something. The van roared to life and pulled away.
They only drove for a couple of minutes before the van stopped and Karl grabbed Rose roughly by her upper arm. He slid open the door and dragged her out into the cool air. She was taken across a grassy area, a variety of trees here and there casting deep shadows as the twilight began to turn into night. Up ahead a large, rounded hill of rock rose up. Atop it she saw a square metal fence around a tall monument, what Rose thought of as a Celtic cross. But she was beginning to suspect that she wasn’t anywhere Celtic. The dusk had the feel of late night, which meant far northern latitudes. And the Scandinavian accents and language. Was she in Viking country? She was fairly sure the men driving her around were speaking Swedish, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were in Sweden. The scientist in her kept gathering information, while refusing to jump to conclusions.
Another group of men were gathered in some of the deepest shadows under trees at the base of the stony hill. They wore long robes with hoods pulled up, concealing their faces in darkness. Rose swallowed hard. Karl pushed her forward and one of the men stepped away from the others. He was very tall. She began to remember horror movies from h
er youth—Satanic rituals and maidens slaughtered on stone tables. Her heart raced and her already weak legs wobbled. Violent trembling set in and she could do nothing to still her vibrating limbs.
The man who had stepped forward from the group, well over six feet, stood close enough to tower over her. He threw back his hood to reveal a slim, handsome face topped with short ash blond hair. He smiled, his grin wolfish in a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard. “Please, try to relax.”
“What’s happening here?” Rose asked, hating the quaver of fear in her voice. “I don’t know anything!”
“Ah, but I think you do.”
“Who are you people?”
The man looked around the small gathering, the three thugs arrayed behind her, the six others in robes behind him. “We are just a small contingent of the Sons of Ragnar. The people you see behind me are the most powerful of us, the most important. And I, for my sins, am in charge. My name is Halvdan Landvik, and please, if you show me some respect and treat me well, I will do the same for you.”
“Are you crazy?” Rose knew she should do nothing to antagonize this man, he was clearly some kind of psychopath, but she simply couldn’t help herself. “You chase me all over Europe, you drug me, abduct me! And then tell me you’ll treat me with respect? Screw you, buddy!”
Landvik reached out one long, slim palm and gently stroked her hair. “You have no idea of your importance.”
Rose cringed away from his touch. “Why don’t you just ask me?”
“If only it were that simple.” Landvik looked up, addressed the three who had driven her here. “Head back to the base. If I need you again, I’ll call. We have our vehicles here.”
Rose heard the men walk back across the grass, but didn’t dare take her eyes of Landvik. He watched them go for a moment, then returned his attention to her. “Please, sit.” He pressed hard on one shoulder, giving her no choice but to sink to the cold grass. She knelt, staring at him in fear and just a little bit of wonder.
“What do you know about past lives?” Landvik asked suddenly.
Rose frowned. “It’s a bunch of crap.”
Landvik smiled. “Why?”
Rose laughed, shook her head. “You’re serious? It’s simple mathematics. The human race has grown exponentially. There aren’t enough people in human history for everyone today to have been someone else in the past. It’s just the kind of nonsense that people who think the stars have some relevance to their lives like to believe in to make themselves feel better. To feel less small and insignificant.”
Landvik smiled again, but it was cool, condescending. “You’re correct, of course. Not everyone has a past life. As you say, how could they? But some very special people are reborn. Again and again. And you, Rose Black, whether you believe it or not, were once someone incredibly special.”
Despite her fear, Rose rolled her eyes and made a noise of disdain. “Really? And who am I supposed to be? And don’t say Tokyo Rose. I’m Chinese, not Japanese.” She narrowed her eyes at him, challenging.
Landvik chuckled. “I don’t believe Tokyo Rose was a single person.”
Rose shrugged. “You’re smarter than you look.”
Landvik inclined his head slightly, like he was accepting the compliment instead of seeing the sarcastic barbs Rose tried to throw. The man was infuriatingly calm and superior in his attitude. He was clearly someone used to getting everything he ever wanted and always having his butt kissed.
“You asked who you once were,” Landvik said. “Perhaps you have heard of my ancestor, Ragnar Lodbrok?”
Rose surprised herself with a genuine laugh. “Great. You think I’m the guy from the television show?”
“No. I said Ragnar Lodbrok was my ancestor. You were once King Aella, the man who tortured and killed Ragnar Lodbrok.” Landvik’s calm demeanor hardened, anger flitting around the edges of his eyes. This was history that he seemed to take rather personally.
Rose was baffled. “And how do you know this?”
“When the person we once were suffers a grievous injury, or dies a particularly painful death, we are often born bearing marks which reflect that pain.”
“Marks?” Rose’s thoughts immediately returned to her birthmark, the trigger for all of this. It seemed suddenly powerfully relevant that she herself regularly thought of it as a blood eagle, ever since she’d learned of that hideous torture. “And what do my marks tell you?” she asked, nervous once more.
“The sons of Ragnar Lodbrok put King Aella to the blood eagle torture, partly for revenge, and partly to extract information from him. But they failed.”
It all came crashing together in Rose’s mind. She remembered her excitement in the hotel in Rome, not long before those men had attacked her and dragged her away while Crowley showered. She had researched the strange text beneath the newly discovered sketch of the squatting devil, in the back of the real copy of the Codex Gigas they had discovered. She recalled animatedly telling Crowley about the ancient Akkadian language, and what the ritual seemed to be. She heard her own words echo in her mind.
According to this, if I’m right, it not only extracts memories, but causes a person to actually revisit past lives.
A ritual for extracting past life memories. For revisiting past lives. And this Landvik lunatic thought that she used to be some King Aella, who had killed Ragnar Lodbrok?
“The information these sons of Lodbrok were trying to extract from this King Aella. You think I can give it to you?”
“You actually helped us enormously,” Landvik said. “I’ve been reconstructing the ritual for years, finding whatever information I could. Then you run off and, while I’m getting angry with you for being so elusive, you’re finding the original Codex Gigas. And you find the original text of the ritual, take photographs of it and bring those photographs to us when we finally catch up to you.”
The weight of it sank onto Rose. “Well, isn’t that just the most ironic course of events?”
“You’ve made it easier on yourself, in fact. I might have got the ritual wrong otherwise. Now I know it’s right.”
“And you think I’ll be able to tell you what this King Aella knew?”
Landvik nodded, smiling once more. “We will soon find out.”
Chapter 38
The island of Björkö, Sweden
Crowley crept along darkened streets, fueled by anger and a desperate desire to see Rose unharmed. Part of him balked at being her knight in shining armor, coming to save her. If she had proven anything, it was that she was pretty capable of taking care of herself. But against these odds, neither of them had done well alone. If not for her, he’d still be in an oubliette in Prague. So now it was his turn.
Cameron’s intel had narrowed it down to several buildings on the tiny island. The town was more like a village anyway, but even a few dozen buildings could take hours to check and Crowley was under no illusion that time was not on his side. Time, in fact, was like a tightening noose, slowly closing.
But he was glad to have Cameron along. The man had met him at the airport, a wide smile in his olive-skinned face, jet black hair a little longer than Crowley remembered, tousled. They were of a height, around six feet, but Cameron was broader, solid in a way that a person could never build in a gym, but only gain from genetics. He had waved as Crowley emerged into the arrivals hall and had got straight to business, detailing the area they needed to cover, the variety of places they would have to check, which buildings Landvik owned, and he had reiterated the strength of the Sons of Ragnar operation.
“These are some bad guys, Jake. And they’re connected in all kinds of high places. You get caught here and you could be disappeared very easily.”
“As could you,” Crowley said. “You’re taking a risk coming along on this ride for fun.”
Cameron smiled crookedly. “It’s not only for the skit, my friend. When you said Rose had been abducted, I got worried. You two had been doing well so far, it seemed. I had no idea what kind of muppet
s you were up against and figured you were coping. Then when you had me look into these SOR guys, and you said they’d got Rose, well...”
“The balance has kinda shifted, huh?”
“That’s what I thought. And I figured you could use my help.”
“You were right.” Crowley grasped Cameron’s forearm, and Cam returned the gesture, his wide, strong hand closing over Crowley’s arm. “It’s good to see you again, man.”
Cameron grinned. “You too. Like the old days, eh? Come on, I have transport already arranged.”
But once they reached Björkö they had to split up. They could cover all the places they needed to check in half the time if they did it alone. A text lit up Crowley’s phone.
I’m at the offices. People here, but going to sneak by and look around.
Crowley nodded, sent back a reply.
Be careful. I’m just approaching the storage complex now.
He knew Cameron was more than capable of breaking stealthily into the offices Halvdan Landvik used on the island. He might have been at an intel desk for a lot of years now, but Cameron had a solid history of field work and was a professional in every way.
Crowley concentrated on his own situation. A storage facility which consisted of one large metal warehouse and two smaller buildings, white with red tile roofs like most of the surrounding town. The town was incredible, postcard beautiful, and would have been a great place to come as a tourist. But that applied to pretty much everywhere Crowley had been thus far, and none of it had felt like a holiday.
A white panel van was parked against the side of the large warehouse, right next to a small wooden door. A big roller door filled the front of the building, currently closed. The two smaller buildings were also closed up, and the windows all blank, black squares in the quickly darkening night. It was late, already nearing midnight, but the dusk had only just passed into darkness. This far north, this time of year, the days were long and the hours of shadows very short. But in the gloom, Crowley saw a bead of light beneath the side door of the warehouse.
