Blood Cursed (Rogue Angel) (3 page)

Chapter 2

Annja Creed had never been to Garin Braden’s estate in Berlin. Last time she’d met up with him in Germany, it had been at his apartment. The man was a world traveler, so she’d never expected him to settle into something this...permanent. She judged the three-story mansion to be from the Tudor era because of the row of redbrick chimneys jutting from above the prominent cross gables. Not to mention the main door was centered beneath what was known as the Tudor arch. The setup was ritzy and the grounds were groomed, from what she could determine in the midnight gloom—she’d expected this of Roux, Garin’s former mentor, but not of Garin Braden. She shook her head in disbelief that he was finally putting down roots. It had taken him quite a number of years to reach this adult life stage. She smiled at the thought of just exactly how many years.

A yard light flashed across the trimmed emerald grass as Annja parked the rental car before the mansion’s steps and got out.

Drawing in a breath of fresh, jasmine-scented air, she stretched her neck. She needed a shower and sleep, but was running on the fumes of two candy bars and a Diet Coke she’d consumed at the airport. Not the healthiest meal, but it had been convenient and fast. As soon as the flight from New York had landed, she’d hopped in the rental and headed straight here. She had an appointment tomorrow morning, six sharp, so this might have been her only chance to pop in and visit her friend. A friend who wasn’t always a friend.

Frenemies? Yeah, she could get behind that better. Every girl needed a man they liked to hate and hated to like, right?

A year or so ago, when they’d met up while either adventuring or dodging bullets—or both—Garin had mentioned he had an artifact he wanted her to look at if she was ever in his neck of the woods. A mysterious artifact owned by a five-hundred-plus-year-old man? Annja hadn’t let that enticing invitation slip her mind. Now that she was here in his jasmine-scented woods, best to grab opportunity by the throat.

Annja jogged up the curving limestone steps in front of the house two at a time, finding the more she moved the less the jet lag pulled at her exhausted muscles. She knocked on the front door, foregoing the brass lion’s head knocker because...did anyone really use those things?

After several long moments, a butler greeted her with a yawn. As his mouth closed, his eyes opened wider in recognition and he invited her in. Interesting. She guessed Garin must have mentioned her....

“We were not aware you had arranged a visit,” he said in a clipped tone.

She almost laughed out loud and had to bite her tongue to hold it in. A British butler? Garin Braden had a British butler and a mansion. Just like his former mentor’s setup in France. Except Garin couldn’t stand Roux’s lifestyle—the two were at each other’s throats more often than not. So when had Garin patterned himself after his sometime enemy?

“In the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by,” she offered, barely suppressing her enjoyment of this insight into the man she thought she’d known pretty well.

The butler glanced up at the full moon as he closed the door behind her. “Wait here,” he instructed. “I’ll see if Mr. Braden is available.”

Why was it all the butlers Annja had happened to meet were stuffy and British? Did no one but the English aspire to butlerdom?

Annja strained to see along the foyer’s dark paneled walls, hung with ancient paintings, each one worth more than a decade’s rent on her apartment in Brooklyn, she felt sure.

“Tell him it’s Annja Creed,” she thought to call out, just in case.

“I know,” the butler called back.

She’d never been here before, or met the butler, but she assumed Garin had availed the help with the necessary details regarding all the people that may “stop by.” Though, apparently, stopping by simply wasn’t done this late at night.

Annja leaned forward to inspect the signature on what looked like a Renoir, and found it was indeed by the nineteenth-century impressionist. She wasn’t familiar with this painting of a woman with a red bow in her blond hair, and that gave her a thrill. Could Garin possess art the modern world wasn’t aware existed? If indeed he’d been alive since before Joan of Arc’s death in 1431, he may very well have received it directly from the artist.

A man who had lived five centuries offered enough hands-on history to interest Annja endlessly.

“Some day,” she muttered, “I will pick the man’s brain.”

She strolled to the next painting and tried to guess its artist before checking the signature. Small dots made up the entire canvas, pointillism, and she had to step back to take in the full picture. Georges Seurat was the only name she associated with the style. Art history wasn’t her strong point. She preferred medieval studies, and old bones and pottery to canvas and paint.

Checking the signature, she read a German surname she wasn’t familiar with. Well, wasn’t like only one artist had cornered the market on the style.

Long minutes had passed when suddenly she heard an angry growl and a door slam somewhere in the vicinity of the second floor and around a corner. Garin’s voice carried down to the foyer. “Tell her I am in no mood! I’ll see her in the morning.”

“Is that so?” She could have taken the train straight to the Czech Republic, her destination. She was sacrificing valuable sleep time to make this visit. And it wasn’t as if she owed the man anything.

When the butler reappeared, she put up a hand. “I heard. I know when I’m not welcome.”

“He’s had a trying day,” the butler offered.

“Right. Poor guy. Trying must test his every nerve. Give him my regards. Tell him next time I’m in town, I’ll call first. Apparently I’m not on his list.”

“If you could return in the morning?”

“I’m headed to Chrastava. Archaeology always trumps a date with Mr. Charming. I’d tell you to give him my regards, but...save that.”

She strode out, and instead of driving for more exhausting hours, decided to hop the train south to Liberec, so she could catch some valuable sleep before jumping into a new and exciting adventure. Or at the very least, an intriguing archaeological dig.

* * *

A
NNJA
MANAGED
THREE
hours of sleep on the train and did half an hour of yoga stretches and sun salutations from her seat before arriving in Liberec, once the unofficial capital of Germany within Czechoslovakia. The yoga woke her up and stretched her travel-weary muscles, and gave her an appetite. She managed to find scrambled eggs and sausage at a mom-and-pop restaurant near the train station—which was more a bar than an actual sit-down diner—then procured a rental Jeep and headed for the dig outside Chrastava. It should only be another dozen miles northwest.

She was footing the bill for this trip herself, though this dig may have potential for an episode on
Chasing History’s Monsters,
the cable TV show she cohosted. She’d decide when she saw the site. And she certainly wasn’t going to call Doug Morrell, her producer, and fill him in until she knew more. Much as she didn’t mind her archaeological adventures being documented for possible show fodder, this one might push the limits of her patience. Her producer had eclectic interests. If Doug heard about Luke Spencer’s discovery, he’d put on a black cape and fangs and wield the TV camera himself.

Annja, who’d been in Venice wrapping up an assignment, had gotten a call from Luke Spencer, the dig foreman yesterday morning. He’d said there’d been an exciting discovery that could date back to medieval times. She’d eagerly agreed to meet him today to join his crew.

The dig interested her. But what held even greater fascination for her? Luke Spencer.

She’d met the man a few years ago at a Natural History symposium at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London’s University College. He was a man of few words, smart. Not terrible to look at, either. They’d shared drinks after at the Volupte bar on Tavistock Street, and she couldn’t forget his soft Welsh accent.

Driving into the small, industrial town, Annja took in the half-timber housing that likely hailed from early last century. In a quick online check about the city she’d learned Chrastava boasted many baroque-style buildings that hailed from the sixteenth century. There was also a firefighting museum she would love to check out if time allowed.

Word of Luke’s find had traveled fast to judge from the hawker’s cart at the edge of the city square she drove slowly past, her window open. The young, bearded blond man sporting a colorful Hawaiian shirt looked American, and had a decidedly New Jersey accent, yet his wares were purely superstitious hokum. Garlic wreathes for the doorway and around the neck. Wooden stakes were lined militantly along the red felt tablecloth, and tiny beribboned vials of holy water labeled with a black cross.

Annja couldn’t determine if the handful of people looking over the hawker’s table were serious buyers or after a silly tourist tchotchke. In this area of the Czech Republic, the modern blended with the classic, and there were many who still followed old traditions and beliefs.

“Tchotchke,” she muttered, and smiled. Slavic in origin, a word for toys, actually. “Love that word.”

But she certainly didn’t want to imagine children chasing one another with wooden stakes. Surely Edward and Bella had blown up all the old vampire myths in an explosion of ridiculous Hollywood
Twilight
sparkle.

The Jeep was equipped with a detachable GPS device that spoke Czech, for which Annja only knew a few words, so she had to split her focus between the navigational screen and the gravel road. Oaks that looked centuries old lined one side of the road. In the distance red-dirt mountains once mined for copper, zinc and iron stood out against the pale blue sky. Hills and mountains surrounded the city, the northern border of which butted up against Poland.

Riding with the top down in the fresh summer air, Annja was glad she’d applied sunscreen before setting out this morning. The sun wasn’t bright but it was going to get hot and she knew she’d burn even if it clouded over.

According to her research, this area that curved the edge of Chrastava used to be a mining center in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After the mines were abandoned toward the eighteenth century, they began manufacturing textiles. Principally Germanic from then on, after the world wars, the area was then inhabited by the Czech and other Slavic nationalities.

Luke was familiar with the local dialects, fortunately, because Annja only knew a few words in Romanian.

The sky was quickly growing overcast. Odd. Annja had checked the forecast from the car rental site and there had been no rain expected for the entire week.

She imagined the inhabitants of this area weren’t too pleased with heavy rains. Flooding earlier in the spring had unearthed the area where Luke was digging. He’d been contacted by the local authorities after hikers had found bones sticking out of the thick, compacted mud and had thought they’d stumbled on a murder site. The authorities had figured out that it was instead an unmarked burial site, and attributed it to the Gypsies that had been traveling and setting up camp in the area for centuries. After giving the site a good three months to dry out and acquiring a small stipend and permission from the London University, Luke’s team had started to dig.

Annja hadn’t noticed much of the scenery last night during the train ride from Berlin, so she drove slowly now, taking it all in. She’d been too tired and annoyed that her surprise visit to Garin Braden hadn’t been greeted with the pleased and practiced charm she had expected. Ah, well. She and Garin tended to rub each other the wrong way more often than not, although they worked alongside each other well enough when bullets were flying and quick, defensive reaction was required.

Admittedly, her favorite situation.

Life was meant to be experienced, and if that served up an extra helping of peril, then sign Annja Creed up for the full package. Nothing felt better than surfing the crest of life, fists up and teeth bared.

So she was an adrenaline junkie. There were worse addictions. And since taking possession of Joan of Arc’s sword, she’d met more challenges than most would in a single lifetime.

She still didn’t understand why she had somehow been chosen as the one to make the long-dead saint’s sword whole. All Annja knew was that as soon as she touched the shattered pieces Roux had painstakingly collected over the centuries, the sword was in her hand, as sharp a weapon as it had ever been for Joan.

And when she let go of the hilt, the sword—now very clearly
her
sword—seemingly disappeared into thin air. But she knew it returned to where it waited until she drew it again. The otherwhere, she called the holding place, for lack of a better name.

Ever since she’d first held the sword aloft, Annja hadn’t needed to search out adventure...it had come to her. And as keeper of Joan of Arc’s sword, she had no choice but to wield the weapon in defense of the innocent and the wronged.

Pulling onto a winding rutted gravel road, she navigated through a grove of giant beech trees frosted with graying bark before emerging into a clearing that looked out across a vast field of blue lavender. The dig site hugged the edge of a forest, and the land dropped abruptly to the lavender field where flooding had appeared to sheer off the hillside.