Serpent's Kiss

by Alex Archer

Annja shone the light on the mass that had wrapped around a rock in the shallows. Cold mud squished between her toes.

  It’s not an octopus, she told herself. It’s not a manta ray. It’s not anything predatory.

  The folds moved on the tide and the skull rolled loosely. The complete revolution reminded Annja of the movie The Exorcist. Don’t go there, she told herself. When was the last time you saw a possessed person? That doesn’t happen.

  The skull disappeared into the dark water.

  Tense and ready to flee, Annja moved closer. She saw that it was some kind of mud-smeared fabric. She took hold of it gingerly and pulled while she tracked it with the flashlight.

  The skull rolled out and fell into the water. Two arms, a handful of ribs, a pelvic girdle and a leg dropped out, as well.

  Great, Annja thought.

  “What is it?” Lochata called out.

  “Some sort of cloth,” Annja replied. “And most of a body.”

  “A body?”

  “Yeah.” Annja turned the flashlight so it struck the water surface at an angle. She used her peripheral vision to search for the ivory-colored bones beneath the gentle waves.

  The first thing she found was a small gold box. A picture of a female naga was embossed on its side.

  AFTER JASON DISCOVERED the body was nothing more than a collection of bones, he ventured out into the shallows to help Annja with her search. Between the two of them, they found the skeletal remains quickly. After weighting the fabric down with rocks, they piled the bones onto the cloth.

  When they were sure they had all they were going to find, they pulled on the fabric and discovered it was rotted. Jason returned to shore for one of the coolers they’d found filled with bottled water and they put the bones in it.

  SEATED BY THE FIRE, Annja examined the gold box she’d discovered.

  “What is that?” the leader of the would-be robbers asked. “Is that gold?”

  Too late, Annja realized that revealing what she’d found to the men could be a mistake. A glance at them showed they were all awake.

  Annja ignored them and took her digital camera from her backpack. She took pictures using the flash and the light from the bonfire.

  “Did you find a treasure out there?” the man asked again.

  Without a word, Annja got up and walked to the pile of driftwood the dig crew had gathered. She took out a three-foot piece that wasn’t quite as big around as her wrist.

  She walked behind the leader and twisted his arm to get him to stand. When he was on his feet, she ran the stick between his elbows to pull his arms backward. Before he knew what was happening, Annja tripped him and sent him face-first onto the ground so that he was turned away from her working area.

  She glared at the other prisoners. “Anybody else want to spend the night on his stomach?”

  The three men looked away from her.

  Annja felt bad about the rough way she’d treated the man. But they were out in the jungle away from the civilized world, and the man had found a way to terrorize the dig team even while restrained. She didn’t owe him any kindness.

  She quashed her guilt and returned to work.

  A quick search through the artist’s kit Annja kept for drawing sketches turned up a graphite stick. She turned to a blank page in her journal and did rubbings of all six sides of the cube. As she worked, water continued to drip from the object.

  Several of the university students sat around her in a semicircle to watch her work. Their attention made her feel a little self-conscious. Jason had his own small group in eager attendance as he attempted to put the skeleton back together.

  “Why is she doing rubbings if she’s already taken pictures and drawn the cube?” one of the young men asked.

  “Anybody want to answer that?” Lochata asked in her professor’s voice.

  No one did.

  “Annja is employing a very old-school technique,” Lochata said.

  Thank you very much for the old part, Annja thought glumly. She was only four or five years older than most of the students and suddenly she felt ancient by comparison.

  “Both the digital images and the drawings can be inexact to replicate the cube if Professor Creed so chooses,” Lochata announced. “Neither of those methods offers a true measurement of the object. The rubbings allow her to be more exact.”

  “Why would she want to replicate it?” someone else asked.

  “In case the original is lost,” someone said.

  “Or if she has to surrender it to the custody of the ASI after we’re rescued,” Lochata said.

  That was exactly what Annja figured would happen. Lochata was required to report anything of material value to the Archaeological Survey of India when she found it. Especially since it had been found in boundary waters.

  “It’s leaking,” one student observed.

  “What does that mean?” Lochata asked.

  That there’s void somewhere inside the cube, Annja thought. She’d already been searching for a means of opening the cube to reveal its secrets.

  Someone guessed correctly but Annja didn’t know who it was.

  As she turned the cube, she noticed that the naga’s eyes were mismatched. The snake woman looked almost cross-eyed.

  She opened her Leatherman multi-tool and flipped open the smallest blade. Carefully, she turned the cube toward the best possible light and eased the blade’s point against the left eye. Gold was a soft metal. She knew she could easily score it by mistake.

  When she pressed on the left eye, nothing happened.

  She switched to the other and pressed. The click of the mechanism releasing inside the cube was so slight she thought at first she’d imagined it. Then a line appeared at the top of the cube.

  Silence filled the impromptu classroom.

  After she returned the knife to her backpack, Annja twisted the top of the cube and found it turned easily. Two quarter turns freed the top. She turned the cube upside down and dumped the contents and the rest of the seawater into her palm.

  The object inside the cube was a heavy gold ring. The ring was formed from the body of a female naga wrapping around herself to grab her tail in both hands above her head. Her breasts were turned outward and stood proudly. Sapphire chips glinted in her eye sockets.

  “Okay,” a guy with an American accent said, “somebody was into porn.”

  That got a laugh. One of the first things archaeology students learned in their course work was that sex wasn’t a new invention. Nor was the incessant interest in it.

  Annja reached for her camera.

  “THE FIRST THING you gotta know is that you’re not dealing with one body here. You’re looking at two.” Jason hunkered down on his haunches and smoothed his hair back with one hand. Two days in the wild without hair products had left him looking shaggy.

  “How do you know that?” someone asked.

  Annja surveyed the two collections of bones laid out on the sand. She already knew the reasons from the cursory examinations she’d given them.

  “First off,” Jason said, “these bones belong to a man and a woman.” He took pride in his work, and Annja was glad to see he had a real, defined interest. He pointed to the pelvic girdle. “That belonged to a woman. Wider hips are always a giveaway. The skull belonged to a man.” He picked up the skull and looked at Annja. “Can I keep this one?”

  “No,” Annja said.

  “Spoilsport.”

  Annja gave him a half smile.

  “How do you know that’s a man’s skull?” one of the women asked.

  “Because the bones Jason’s laid out with the skull are longer and thicker,” Annja said to take away some of his thunder. After the question about the skull, he deserved to be taken down a peg or two. She touched the bump at the back of the skull. “Because the occipital protuberance is pronounced. And because the brow ridges are heavy.”

  Jason frowned at her. “You missed the teeth. Big teeth.” He opened the skull’s mouth to display the teeth. “
Guys tend to have big teeth.”

  Annja nodded. “Big teeth.”

  A few of the men self-consciously touched their teeth.

  “Who tore them apart?” the young woman asked.

  “They weren’t torn apart. The bones simply became disarticulated,” Jason said.

  “What’s that mean?” one of the male students asked.

  “It means that these skeletons were down there long enough for the flesh, cartilage and sinew to dissolve,” Annja said.

  She took pictures of the skeletons. How long were you down there? she wondered.

  “What killed them?” someone asked.

  Jason shook his head and cleaned his glasses on his shirt. “I don’t know. I couldn’t find any marks on them to indicate a violent death. At least, not on the pieces I have here.” He grinned and rubbed his hands together. “Find me the rest of the bodies and maybe I can tell you.”

  “I’ll pass on that.”

  “Who knows? By morning the sea might just wash the rest of the bodies in.”

  “Or maybe they’ll just rise up out of the sea like those zombie pirates in that Johnny Depp movie,” Jason suggested. He was immediately pelted with handfuls of sand that sent him into a hasty retreat.

  “Great,” one of the young women said. “Thanks for that, freak. I won’t get any sleep tonight.”

  “Like you were gonna sleep anyway with murderers tied up only inches away from you,” Jason said with a smirk.

  9

  Most of the dig crew slept eventually. There’d been nothing else to do. Lacking television and video games, and having only conversation for diversion after no sleep the previous night, they’d gradually passed out in the lean-tos they’d made from palm branches.

  Annja and Lochata had shown them how to build the shelters toward evening when they’d given up on the coast guard arriving before night fell. Thankfully they’d found a few blankets tangled in the trees that had dried out during the day.

  Lochata woke and looked around. When she saw Annja standing in the moonlight near the water, she got up, wrapped a blanket around herself to ward off the chill and joined her.

  “Can’t you sleep?” Lochata asked.

  “Not yet,” Annja admitted.

  “Are you worried about those men?” Lochata nodded at the four bound men.

  They lay by the fire close enough to be warm. All of them slept as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

  “Not really,” Annja said.

  “I could keep watch over them for a few hours while you slept,” Lochata offered. “I don’t know how to use the gun, but I could wake you.”

  “That’s all right. I’m fine. Really. I’m used to staying awake a lot while I’m on a dig.” Annja looked at the diminutive woman. “I guess your excavation didn’t turn out as well as you’d hoped.”

  Lochata smiled. “At least now I know that all the research I’d done reaped a reward. The site was where I said it would be. It’ll still be here if we come back next week or a year from now.” She shrugged. “I can write the book with what I have now. This dig would just have provided more pictures to include. Today’s readers like lots of pictures.”

  “I know.” That was one of the reasons Annja took as many pictures as she did. She nodded at the bones lying on the sand. “I don’t think those two are the only ones out there.”

  “Of course not. Ships have been lost out there for centuries.”

  Annja paused. She’d been thinking about whether or not she was going to tell Lochata what she’d suspected for hours. She didn’t want to drag the professor away from her own work.

  But in the end, what she thought had taken place out on the ocean was too exciting to keep to herself. More than that, she needed the professor’s contacts. She’d have to get permission from the ASI if the ship lay in boundary waters.

  “I think a ship is out there,” Annja said softly. “I think the tsunami ripped something up from the bottom that’s been buried a long time. That’s why the fabric the skeletons were tangled up in was so well preserved. And there was something else.” She quickly relayed her discovery of the gold coins before the speedboat had arrived with the four men.

  “What ship?”

  Annja shook her head. “I don’t know. That’s one of the things I want to find out. I’ve read your books. I know you’ve done shipwreck archaeology.”

  “Yes. Several times. This country is thousands of years old. Trade has gone on here nearly since the dawn of civilization. There are untold treasures—and I mean those of historic significance, not just monetary value—lying out there in those waters.”

  “I haven’t done much marine archaeology, and I’ve never worked a shipwreck site before,” Annja said.

  Lochata looked at her. “You want to hunt for this ship.”

  Guilt stung Annja as she nodded. “It’s just—I know it’s out there.”

  “Of course you might follow your heart.” Lochata smiled gently and patted her arm. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for these students. If not for you, some of them would have been lost to the tsunami. Others would have been lost today. I would be remiss to try to hold you.”

  “It’s not just me,” Annja said. “I want you to help me look for that ship.”

  Lochata hesitated. “We don’t have the equipment to conduct such a search. We’d need a boat specially equipped with blowers to excavate a site.”

  “We might not need to excavate the site,” Annja said. “If the tsunami ripped a shipwreck up from the sea floor, it might just be lying there.”

  “The boat would still be necessary to operate from.”

  “I know.” Annja took a deep breath of the cool night air and let it out. “I might be able to call in a favor.”

  “A favor? That would be an awfully big favor,” the professor said.

  Annja silently agreed. She was thinking of Roux, the mysterious old man who had known about Joan of Arc’s shattered sword and who claimed to have been alive for at least the past five hundred years.

  “There’s a man I’ve done some independent consultations for,” Annja said.

  “He must be a very rich man,” Lochata said.

  “He is.” Annja had no way of knowing how much Roux was worth, but she suspected the old man had millions or billions put away. She knew that Garin did, too, and he pursued more money constantly.

  “Then,” Lochata said, “if you can make this happen, I would be happy to be part of your endeavor.” She grinned widely. “You’re not the only one who’s been made curious by that naga statue.”

  HELICOPTER ROTOR BLADES woke Annja early the next morning. The sun was barely up and shadows of the night remained within the jungle.

  She’d slept sitting up, her legs straight out before her, ankles crossed. That had been a mistake as it turned out. Her legs had gone numb and she had trouble getting to her feet. When she could move she ran out onto the beach and waved her arms over her head.

  By that time other people in the camp had risen and joined her. They stood and shouted at the blue-and-white-striped helicopter as it rolled out over the sea even though Annja knew their shouts couldn’t be heard.

  “They didn’t see us,” someone yelled.

  Annja returned to her backpack and grabbed the flare gun she’d taken from the speedboat yesterday. She berated herself for forgetting, but she knew she’d been so tired that she couldn’t be expected to remember everything.

  A press of a button released the flare gun’s barrel. She took out the night-use flare and shoved in one marked for day use. Without taking aim, she pointed in the helicopter’s general direction and fired.

  The flare gun bucked against her palm as the charge leaped from the oversize barrel and took flight. The flare screamed through the air and detonated. Red smoke spewed out across the sky.

  Surely they saw that, Annja thought. They had to see that.

  A moment later, the Indian coast guard helicopter turned around smartly and headed back. This time w
hen they all waved, the helicopter pilot juked his craft from left to right to wave back.

  “Get back,” Lochata directed. She waved her arms to chase her students back into the jungle, away from the descending helicopter.

  Annja stood in the tree line with her arm covering her mouth and nose as much as possible so she wouldn’t breathe in the dust and sand the rotorwash kicked up from the shoreline. Her sunglasses protected her eyes, but she felt the sand peppering her exposed flesh.

  Once the helicopter was on the ground, three men in blue jumpsuits, light-gray helmets and life vests got out. They wore pistols in shoulder holsters.

  “Professor Rai,” one of the men called. He was young and intense looking.

  “Here.” Lochata stepped from the jungle. She joined the man and they started talking rapidly.

  Another man stared at Annja and approached her. He gave her a quiet, friendly smile and moved slowly to take the flare gun from her.

  “Just so no one will get hurt,” the man said politely.

  “I’ve got another gun.” Annja pointed at the pistol by her backpack.

  The man’s face looked a little grimmer. “Is that the last one?”

  “Yes.”

  With economy and grace, the man walked to the backpack and took the pistol. “This isn’t something you’d ordinarily see an archaeologist carrying,” he said.

  “You haven’t seen the Indiana Jones movies, have you?” Annja teased.

  The man laughed. He had a nice smile and nice eyes. “Actually, I own all those movies on DVD.”

  “So do I,” Annja said.

  “I’ve also got a few of your DVD collections. Chasing History’s Monsters is one of my favorite shows. I never miss it.”

  Terrific, Annja thought.

  “I am Padhi, Miss Creed. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He offered his hand.

  Annja took his hand and shook it briefly.

  “Now, would you like to tell me why those men are tied up?”

  IT TOOK A LITTLE WHILE to get all the stories told, but the coast guard had brought supplies and passed those out while Lochata and Annja explained everything that had happened. In minutes breakfast—mostly protein bars and fresh fruit—was served.