Blood Cursed (Rogue Angel) (7 page)

“What about the fortune tellers?”

“Really, Annja? That’s a little judgmental.”

“Sorry, but—”

“All right, I’ll give you that. They can spot naivety a mile off, that’s for sure. I had my fortune told to me when I visited previously.”

“And? You going to fall in love, get married and have kids?”

“Actually, the fortune teller was upset that she couldn’t see a future for me.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Sure, but if I would have forked over another hundred
korunas
she would have cleared the block.”

“Clever. Here we are,” Annja said as she navigated beside the parked rental Addison and Mueller shared. “I see our welcoming committee has made themselves at home.”

What appeared to be a family of Gypsies—a baby, three children, parents and grandparents―lifted their heads to look them over as Annja and Luke unpacked a few supplies from the back of the Jeep and headed to work. But there were many more Romani than just this one family already gathered.

“Is it like this every day?” she asked. “The audience?”

“Yes. But today is different. Annja, those men aren’t the usual locals. And they have guns.”

Now she noticed the four men—dark-haired and olive-complexioned—who walked around from behind the family and toward them, their boots crunching over the loose gravel. One had a rifle slung over his shoulder on a leather strap. The other two brandished pistols that looked as if the weapons had seen better days or needed a good cleaning. And yet another, the one standing in front of them, had what looked like a katana slung across his back.

A sword? Ninja Gypsies?

Anything was possible, and she was usually front and center to learn that hard fact firsthand.

“You stay here,” Luke said, crossing around in front of the Jeep.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” she muttered.

Leaving the supplies beside the vehicle’s front tire, Annja followed Luke toward the men. Instinct made her want to summon the sword, but she didn’t. Not yet.

Her colleague cast a glance over his shoulder, and winced when he saw she hadn’t followed his order to stay put.

“I’m a big girl,” she offered, shrugging.

It was always romantic when a man offered to protect a woman. And this man was physically fit and muscled, but rather lean and rangy. Luke could go a few rounds, she felt sure, but he wasn’t armed.

On the other hand, the men wielding the weapons didn’t appear as though they lifted weights, so perhaps Luke would fare well enough in a knockout. Digging in the dirt did exert a lot of muscle power and endurance levels were challenged after days and weeks under a hot sun. Whoever thought archaeologists were pansies was dead wrong.

Acknowledging the apparent lack of real firepower among the Gypsies, Annja took in the rest of the scene. About a dozen men and women were gathered around the tarp-covered dig pit; they seemed to be the usuals from yesterday. She hoped no one had contaminated the dig, but she didn’t see the overnight guard Luke had hired. No baseball bats to be seen, but she could feel the angry vibe rising from the people like a tsunami hitting the mainland.

“You’re trespassing on property the University of London has been granted permission to dig on,” Luke stated calmly, raising his hands to indicate he meant no harm. The Welshman’s normally soft, melodious voice was now surprisingly strong and steady. “We’re here to do a job. We’re not hurting the land and will return it to its original state when we leave. Now if you’ll give us some room?”

One of the men holding a pistol said, “You have disturbed the
mullo!
It must be reburied!”

“It’s not a
mullo,
” Luke said quietly. “We plan to lift the skeleton from the ground for further study. It’s long dead. It won’t bring harm to you or your families.”

One of the men spat on the ground. “Another sign we have angered the undead.”

“It’s definitely dead, not undead,” Annja said, then asked, “Another sign? What was the first sign?”

“One of our children has gone missing!” someone called.

“What has that got to do with this skeleton?” Annja replied. “It couldn’t have hurt anyone. Surely the authorities are exploring the kidnapping of your child....”

The man with the sword, still sheathed at his back, stepped forward. He was tallest and broader, making Annja suspicious he could hold his own even without the weapon. “They are frightened and unsure. And now you are uncovering the dead to rise again because their sacrifices have been too few.”

“Wait a minute.” Annja stared the man down. “What sacrifice? Sacrificing what? You don’t mean your chil—”

“Kill them!”

The man with the sword fisted an angry gesture toward the woman who had shouted. His wife? She looked to be in her mid-thirties, around the same age as the man with the sword, but a hard life tended to age people much quicker, so she could be still in her twenties.

“We do not sacrifice our children,” the man with the katana said in disgust at Annja’s implication. “They disappear. Sometimes they return, sometimes they do not. It is the work of the
mullo!
” he said, raising his voice, apparently wanting everyone to hear him. He spat, then looked at Annja with a glint in his dark eyes. “You are responsible for bringing this nightmare to my people.”

Luke’s raised eyebrow indicated his skepticism matched Annja’s own. If someone or something was taking children from the Roma camp, it wasn’t a vampire. Especially not a “vampire” that had been reduced to bones in the pit yonder.

“The
mullo
is legend,” Luke tried to explain. “There is no such monster. Monsters do not exist.”

“Luke,” Annja cautioned, but the man with the rifle lunged forward and peeled aside his jacket to reveal an emaciated shoulder criss-crossed with thick, silvery scars. Annja would need a closer look, but she’d guess a brown bear, which she knew lived in the area.

“A bear,” Luke also guessed. “I’m sorry for your pain, but—”

“It was a monster!” the man protested, beating his shoulder for emphasis.

“I thought the
mullo
appeared as a wolf?” Annja posited.

The man shook a fist in the air. “Wolf-monster! It lives in the forest!”

“What could you possibly have done to anger a skeleton that could be centuries old?” Annja defied the man. “And even if the legend were true, the
mullo
only goes after those who have provoked its vengeance.”

“The
mullo
is after our children,” the woman who had spoken earlier broke in. “The bones must be burned. It is the only way to ensure the safety of our children and families.”

“No.” Luke started toward the dig pit, ignoring the click of the pistol triggers behind him. “This is an important find.” He shoved aside the Gypsies standing in his way. “We’ve got to unearth the skeleton completely and bring it in to study. It is not animate or alive in any manner. It simply cannot return from bone to torment you. It cannot!”

Her colleague was unaware of the growing danger. Annja kept an eye on the man with the sword, which he’d quietly drawn out of the sheath at his back and held, blade down, near his thigh. The guy, she noticed, watched carefully as the one with the pistol rushed up behind Luke. The lackey raised his pistol hand, preparing to smash it across the back of Luke’s head, when Annja shouted, and drew all eyes to her—and her battle sword.

As Luke went down to his knees, having received an abbreviated blow to the back of his neck, she swung toward the two gunmen still facing her. They dodged the swing of her blade, and one fired haphazardly. The bullet shattered the Jeep’s left headlight. Annja swung wide. She didn’t want to cause damage, just scare the men more than the skeleton apparently already did. She succeeded in backing them toward the crowd, which now moved as one toward the nearby forest.

A wolf-monster? This was fast becoming a
Chasing History’s Monsters
episode.

With a throaty shout, she sent them all running toward the brushy edge of the forest. Only the man with the katana stood firm, blade held high and over his head, ready for her.

Someone called out encouragement to him to “send the
gorjas
running.”

“This isn’t necessary,” Annja said, holding the battle sword out to her right in a sign that she would not engage if he did not press her.

She hated revealing the sword to Luke, but hadn’t seen any other way to stop what had already turned violent. Besides, at the moment, Luke was discombobulated at best.

“You are making it necessary,” the swordsman said. “You know nothing about the ways of my people. The dead travel fast.”

Again, that line from
Dracula
. And that he used it to defend a ridiculous belief in the impossible didn’t impress her. Something about the man was off. He wore a pristine black shirt, the collar pointed with silver tips, as were the toes of his boots. At his ears, thick diamonds glinted. A bit flashy, if truth were told.

“If you are concerned about what we will do with the remains removed from the earth you can assign a man to watch over us,” she said. “We’ll keep you in the loop regarding where the bones are brought when the dig is finished. We’ve found three skeletons so far, so we’ll be here a few more days—”

The man swung his sword, cutting the air. Behind him, his people had gathered in a pack, eyes wide.

Out the corner of her eye, Annja took in Luke sitting at the edge of the pit, rubbing the back of his neck. Staying out of trouble. Good boy.

The man swung the tip of his sword out near her hip, and she heard it cut across the steel loop hanging from her belt loop where she often hooked a canteen. He stepped back, and by the look in his dark eyes, she realized he’d orchestrated that strike. Intimidation tactics, then. When bloodshed was what the angry Romani wanted.

The fact he’d found opportunity for such a move put Annja on guard. He was no man to take for granted.

“You’re seriously going to take on a girl?” she taunted. It worked sometimes.

“I will do what I must to protect my own,” he replied. “But if you put down your weapon first, I will follow. Perhaps we can talk about this?”

She liked the idea of an exchange between blades much better, but Annja consented with a nod. She wasn’t about to lay down her sword, though. Not until he put his away, which he did, sheathing it behind his back.

She walked over to the vehicle and made a show of putting the sword in the backseat. By the time she’d returned to stand before her aggressor she knew the sword had returned to the otherwhere, until Annja once again needed it and could call it forth with a thought.

“Let’s talk, then,” she said. “But not with your angry crew flanking you. Can Luke and I take a look over the site to make sure no one has caused it any damage, then we can meet in town? Over lunch?”

With a nod toward the others, he said, “They will leave, but I will stay to watch over you.”

“Fair enough.” For now.

That spoiled her plans to make a hasty lift of the skull from the ground. But she hadn’t mentioned how long it would take her and Luke to “look over” the site. If they played their cards right, they could finagle a few hours’ work and perhaps lift the skull without the Gypsy swordsman being the wiser.

Annja strode over to Luke while the man spoke to the others in the Romani dialect Annja couldn’t decipher.

“You okay?” she asked Luke, who slowly nodded. She inspected the back of his head and found an inch-long gash at the base of his scalp. “A little blood, but it looks like an abrasion. You’re tough.”

“Hurts like hell, but...where did you get that sword?”

Always difficult explaining the sudden appearance of a medieval battle sword in her hands. So she never tried.

“Just something I like to keep handy. Oh, hell.”

She noticed the tarp had been lifted and the dig pit had been covered over with loose dirt. The skull, which had once been visible, was now completely buried. The dirt wasn’t packed down, though, so they should be able to recover it. Enough to make her and Luke’s day a long one. And that was if they weren’t interrupted by more Romani. And if the man with the katana let them.

“I think there’s a first-aid kit in the car,” she said.

Luke nodded and she went back to the vehicle, the Welshman in her wake. She cast the Romani a glare, but he ignored her and made a show of slashing his sword once or twice in front of him. The Gypsies, and the three gunmen, began to drift into the forest. There must be a path through the forest to their encampment, Annja guessed.

Luke muttered something and she turned to see that he’d stumbled over to the Jeep after her and Katana Man. Luke was now gripping the Jeep door, leaning against it and not hiding the pain. She sensed the workday for him had already ended. “Sit down before you fall down. You could be concussed.”

“It’s not that bad. Just wasn’t expecting a headache so early in the day.”

She rummaged through the glove compartment and found a white plastic box filled with Band-Aids and alcohol. She had no idea where the Roma camp was, but it must be either in or on the opposite side of the forest. They could live in town, but she guessed most didn’t.