Hunt at World's End (16 page)

The cruise ship
African Princess
stretched six hundred feet from bow to stern, with three balconied levels rising above the main deck, all filled with restaurants, ballrooms, shops, two casinos, and luxury staterooms for nearly one thousand passengers. These luxury staterooms had all been booked months in advance; what Michael had managed to reserve was a pair of small cabins belowdecks where the white-noise hum of the engines was ever-present.

“Before this, I would’ve guessed you traveled everywhere first class,” Joyce said.

“Actually, I prefer not to,” Gabriel said. “Especially when I’m trying to stay out of sight.” He leaned against the closed connecting door between the cabin he and Joyce were sharing and the one they’d put Daniel in; Gabriel had told him he was confined to quarters for the duration, and he’d accepted this without complaint. He’d seemed to be glad for a way to do penance.

Gabriel watched through the porthole as they made slow progress through the rolling whitecaps. The sun dipped low in the sky, silhouetting the African coastline in the distance. They’d been sailing for two days. Madagascar wouldn’t be far now, he thought. And from there, Botswana.

Behind him, Joyce gathered the rumpled sheets
around her on the bunk and propped herself up on one elbow. “You look a thousand miles away.”

“Just thinking about what we’re going to find when we get to the desert,” Gabriel said. “We’ve been chasing after the gemstones so much we haven’t even thought about the Spearhead itself. What it is, what it looks like. How we’ll recognize it. We don’t even know
where
it is.”

“I doubt Grissom knows either,” Joyce said. “That’s something, at least.”

“It is,” Gabriel said, “but it’s not enough.”

“He also doesn’t know the third Eye is at World’s End.”

“We hope,” Gabriel said. “He found ways to follow us the first two times.”

“Well, even if he has again—hell, even if he’s somehow figured it out for himself and gotten there first—we still have one of the Eyes ourselves. He can’t do anything without it, right?”

Gabriel turned to look out the window again. Could the Spearhead be activated or used with only two of the three Eyes? It seemed unlikely. But if Grissom did find his way to the last Eye before them, all he’d have to do would be wait for them to show up carrying the one they had. They could be walking into an ambush.

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it from aboard this ship,” Joyce said. “We may as well enjoy ourselves while we’re here.”

“Low profile, remember?”

“I’m not talking about dancing naked on deck,” Joyce said, “I’m thinking we could have a nice dinner. The three of us.”

“Daniel’s under house arrest,” Gabriel said. “No leaving his cabin.” They’d been bringing him three meals a
day and paperbacks from the ship’s convenience store to keep him occupied. He’d asked for nothing more.

“We can let him out for just one night, can’t we?” Joyce asked. “Hasn’t he been punished enough?”

“This isn’t about punishment,” Gabriel said. “This is about keeping us safe. He almost got us killed, for heaven’s sake.”

She nodded. “I know, but he hasn’t tried to contact Grissom again, right?”

“He hasn’t had the opportunity.”

“That’s not true, he could have done it anytime at Veda’s house. She had a phone in every room, and a computer too, but he didn’t.”

“Because one of us was with him at all times,” Gabriel said.

“Maybe that’s why,” Joyce said, “but I think he wouldn’t have anyway.” Gabriel looked unconvinced. “Besides, we won’t be able to keep him locked up when we get to wherever we’re going. We’re going to have to take a chance on him again at some point. We may as well start now.”

Gabriel sighed. “If anything happens, if he tries to get away…”

“We’re on a boat. Where’s he going to go?” She climbed off the bed and started picking through the pile of clothing on the floor, no doubt looking for something appropriate to wear among all her field gear. Good luck finding a cocktail dress in there, Gabriel thought. But it was just as well, since he only had the one outfit himself—and, just to be safe, he’d be accessorizing it his usual way, with a leather jacket just long enough to conceal his hip holster.

Under cover of night, the thirty-foot ketch cut smoothly and quietly through the waters of the Indian Ocean.
They’d taken down the sails so they wouldn’t be seen by the
African Princess
, instead propelling themselves forward with a small, muffled motor attached to the stern. At Vassily’s command, the engine was cut, and they floated up silently, small as an insect next to the hulking cruise ship. An emergency hatch in the
African Princess
’s hull stood just above sea level. They tied mooring ropes to the thick bolt beside the hatch, securing the ketch in place in the shadow of the ship.

The brethren of the Cult of Ulikummis—more than a dozen men in all—stood at the ready, awaiting Vassily’s orders. Arkady stood with the others in their robes and skull masks, in some cases with bows slung over one shoulder, quivers over the other, in all cases with swords through their belts. Tonight Vassily would let them spill all the blood they wanted.

Arkady reached out and pressed a square of explosives firmly against the seam of the hatch, then inserted a fuse. It took three attempts in the damp night air to get a match lit, but once he had, it took no time at all to set the fuse burning. Hastily, all the men dropped to the bottom of the ketch. The explosion, when it came, was quiet, as explosions went. Looking up, they saw that the blast had knocked the hatch off its hinges and onto the floor inside. One by one they climbed in through the opening, Vassily going last.

They found themselves in a hot, dimly lit, graywalled hallway that ran past the engine room. A loud mechanical hum filled the corridor. At the far end, a staircase led up to the passenger decks. As they moved forward, the door of the engine room opened and two men rushed out, summoned by the noise of the explosion—it hadn’t been quiet enough for no one to notice—or else the hull breach had set off some automatic monitor. Upon seeing the heavily armed cult
members, the men skidded to a halt, their eyes wide with surprise.

“What the hell—” the first one sputtered. Before he’d even finished his sentence, one of the cult members had pulled the sword from his belt and slashed it mercilessly across his throat.

Vassily spun his staff and thrust its bronze blade into the second man’s neck, pinning him to the wall. He made wet choking sounds as blood flowed down his shirt, and he clawed at his throat. When his grasping hands slackened and dropped to his sides, Vassily pulled the blade out. The second man’s corpse fell on top of the first.

They continued silently toward the stairs.

“I appreciate this, Gabriel,” Daniel Wingard said. The plate before him was empty except for a few decapitated asparagus stalks. “I hope this means we’ve come to some kind of détente.”

“That depends entirely on you,” Gabriel replied.

They were dining on the upper deck of the ship, the cloudless sky above them filled with bright stars and a waning gibbous moon. The open-air restaurant was called the Safari Club. It was separated from the rest of the deck by latticed wooden walls, each decorated with spears, leopard-skin shields and large mural paintings of the African savannah and its wildlife. The waiter cleared their dishes and disappeared inside the serving station housed in a small square “hut” with a straw-thatched roof. The cruise line had spared no expense on the décor, but Gabriel couldn’t help the disdain he felt for this sort of tourist’s-eye rendition of Africa. Whoever designed it had obviously never set foot in the real savannah, he’d just watched old Tarzan pictures or ridden the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland.

“That’s certainly fair,” Daniel said, sipping at his water. “So why don’t I do something to make myself useful? I’ve had a lot of time to think, cooped up in that cabin, and something dawned on me that I don’t recall any of us bringing up before.”

“What’s that?” Gabriel said.

“I’ve seen dozens of images of Teshub over the years, drawings and paintings and sculptures, I’ve probably read hundreds of descriptions, and every one of them is pretty much the same—oh, details vary from one to the next, but he’s always portrayed as looking like a man, with ordinary human features. Nowhere is there any suggestion that Teshub has three eyes, like Shiva or Mahadeva. Teshub is always shown as having the ordinary number of eyes.”

Daniel looked up from his plate and met Gabriel’s gaze across the table.

“You see what I’m getting at?” Daniel continued. “We’re looking for the
three
Eyes of Teshub. The number three keeps showing up in the legend—three elements, the three armies that will determine the Spearhead’s fate, even the three blades on the Death’s Head Key. But why three eyes when he’s always shown as only having two?”

“Could it be another mistranslation?” Gabriel asked. “Maybe the word that’s been translated as ‘eye’ also means something else…?”

Daniel shook his head. “Unlikely. The Nesili symbol for ‘eye’ isn’t one that has multiple meanings, and the one meaning it does have is amply documented.”

Gabriel took one last sip of wine, emptying his glass. More riddles. That was how Daniel chose to make himself useful? If he wanted to be useful, he’d supply some answers, not more questions.

He watched a waiter walk out of the restaurant and
onto the deck with a tray of drinks, disappearing past the serving station. When he came back, maybe Gabriel would ask him for a refill…

The sudden noise of shattering glass made Gabriel spring to his feet.

He saw the crowd of white-robed cultists flooding onto the deck. “Get down!”

Joyce and Daniel threw themselves to the floor. Gabriel pulled his Colt from its holster. The other passengers in the restaurant screamed and backed away from their tables.

Three cult members nocked arrows into their bows on the run.

Gabriel kicked the table onto its side, sending their wineglasses, the empty bottle and the floral centerpiece smashing to the floor, then ducked behind it with Joyce and Daniel. The hiss of multiple arrows cut the air, and the table jolted and thumped as they struck it.

“I thought we’d seen the last of them,” Joyce said.

“They must have followed us from Borneo.”

“Is this the Cult of Ulikummis?” Daniel asked. His eyebrows lifted and he peeked around the side of the table. “Fascinating! Look at those masks! Twelfth century B.C. design, I’d say.”

“Very helpful, Professor,” Gabriel said, pulling him back behind the table. More arrows flew past, embedding in the polished wooden floor around them. “But you’re not watching a slide show in a lecture hall. Stay down.”

He didn’t take his own advice. He leapt up instead, firing the Colt. His first shot struck one of the archers and sent him spinning over the deck railing. His second and third, carefully placed, took down the other two. The remaining cult members rushed forward with their swords drawn.

“Get him out of here,” Gabriel shouted to Joyce. “I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”

“We can’t leave,” Joyce shouted back.

“Don’t be a hero, Joyce, just go,” Gabriel said, but glancing back he saw she wasn’t being a hero, she was just describing the situation. The rear wall of the restaurant blocked their escape. They were penned in.

Gabriel got to his feet fast and, ducking under the swinging sword of the cult member closest to him, rushed to a side wall of the restaurant where one of the pairs of spears was held crossed in a metal bracket. He wrenched them out of their mounting and threw one to Joyce. She caught it in both hands and swung it like a staff to parry another swordsman’s attack. Daniel, meanwhile, had grabbed one of the leopard-skin shields off the wall and was hiding behind it while another cultist battered it with his blade.

Gabriel’s attention was swiftly brought back to his own situation when the attacker whose last blow he’d ducked came back for a second try. Gabriel made as if to duck it again, but then stepped back and plunged the spear downward, like a primitive fisherman spearing a catch in a stream. The catch in this case being the cult member’s foot. The man howled in pain as the blade plunged through his boot, pinning him to the deck, and Gabriel breathed a silent thanks to the decorator whose taste he’d been mentally condemning earlier. It was still poor taste—but at least the man had gone as far as investing in real spears, not plastic or cast-resin fakes.

The swordsman sank to one knee, both hands going to the shaft of the spear in order to pull it out, and
Gabriel snatched up the man’s sword as it fell to the deck. Spinning when he heard racing footsteps behind him, Gabriel swept it upward to meet the descending blade of one of the speared man’s compatriots. The blades struck in midair with a clang of metal against metal. Gabriel brought his down and under for a riposte that caught the other man across his unprotected wrist. A spray of blood jetted out.

But more of them kept coming. Good god, how many were there?

Gabriel fired his Colt twice more and he saw two more men fall. But he’d be out of bullets before they’d be out of men. He looked around desperately. Where could he get away from them…?

The hut. There had to be an exit there, leading to a belowdecks galley if nothing else. He ran for it, hooking a chair with one foot as he sprinted and kicking it backward into the knees of the man closest behind him. The man went over in a tangle of robes.

Gabriel plunged into the hut—and found his way blocked by a figure he had hoped never to see again. The high priest of the Cult of Ulikummis, wearing his red and gold tunic and tall, rectangular headdress, whirled the bronze-bladed staff in his hands. Gabriel fell back as the blade sliced past his face. He blocked the next blow with his sword, though just barely—the man was attacking fiercely and with more strength than Gabriel found himself able to muster. And probably without a glass of Montepulciano in him, either.

Gabriel raised his gun and fired—only to hear the hammer land on an empty chamber. He saw a vicious smile blossom on the high priest’s face at the sound.

Holstering his gun, Gabriel swung the sword in his other hand in a huge arc, not expecting to hit the high
priest, just buying himself room to back out of the hut. The high priest shrank back, then came after him as he retreated.

Out in the open again, Gabriel shot a glance over at Joyce. She and Daniel were surrounded by the remaining cultists. Joyce had pulled a second shield off the wall and together with Daniel had formed an approximation of a phalanx, shield to shield, as a barrier against the swords crashing down on them.

The high priest advanced on Gabriel once more.

A loud crack followed by a clatter of wooden boards drew both men’s attention. Joyce, apparently having decided they were hopelessly outnumbered, had kicked a hole in the latticed wooden wall at the back of the restaurant and she and Daniel were backing out through it, still blocking incoming blows with their shields. The shields were too large to fit through the hole, but they were perfect for covering it, and Joyce wedged them into place in front of the hole as they made their escape along the deck behind it.

But the shields didn’t hold the swordsmen for long. One of them kicked them out of the way and plunged through the hole in pursuit while two others retrieved the bows and half-full quivers from their fallen comrades and let fly with new shots that carried over the lattice wall in deadly arcs.

Gabriel and the high priest watched all this in the handful of instants it took and then looked back at each other. “It’s just you and me now,” Gabriel said. The high priest howled in rage and swung his staff at Gabriel’s head.

Gabriel watched the point race toward him through the air. Timing his movement carefully—carefully!—he grabbed at the shaft as it neared, managing to get a grip just below the blade. He pivoted swiftly, drawing
the high priest along with the staff. But the man was too savvy to be caught by the same trick twice. He let go of the staff before Gabriel could use it to drag him to the edge of the deck and over the railing. Gabriel had expected this. He punched backward with the butt end of the staff, knocking the man’s wind out of him with a firm blow to the belly. The high priest dropped to his knees gasping.

It was tempting to finish him off. But some distance away Gabriel heard Joyce shouting as she continued fighting off the attackers. She needed help—that had to come first. Gabriel ran toward the hole in the lattice wall, crawled through, and then took stock of the scene before him. Some fifty feet away, Joyce and Daniel were huddled behind a couple of upended lounge chairs and the bowmen, who had somehow gotten to the other side of them, were letting fly with arrows. Gabriel lifted the high priest’s staff like a javelin and heaved it in the direction of the larger of the two bowmen. The man didn’t spot it sailing toward him until the instant before it buried itself in his chest. But as soon as he fell, one of the remaining swordsmen ran to take up his bow.

At that moment, the aft stairwell door burst open, and three of the ship’s security guards ran out onto the deck, their guns drawn, shouting for everyone to freeze. The new bowman turned and reached for an arrow. The guards yelled at the cult members to drop their weapons. A pair of arrows shrieked through the air, piercing the torso of one guard and the neck of another. The third dropped to one knee and opened fire. Two white-robed men fell, and the others—few in number at last—pulled back. But one aimed and fired an arrow, and it found its mark. The third guard joined the first two in death.

In the distance, Gabriel saw Joyce and Daniel duck down behind the lounge chairs again. Gabriel sprinted across the deck toward them, the Death’s Head Key bouncing heavily against his chest under his shirt. An arrow zipped past him, striking the wall behind the sundeck. He darted over, dodging with one arm up to protect his head, and dropped to the ground beside Joyce. He glanced over the top of the lounge chair. The high priest was on his feet again and striding toward the three remaining cult members, two of whom were loading their bows with fresh arrows. He had his staff in hand once more, its blade red with the blood of the man from whose chest he’d drawn it.

“Something you need to know,” Gabriel said. “I’m out of bullets.”

“I figured,” Joyce said, “from how little shooting you were doing.”

The door leading to the stairwell was only forty feet behind them. Gabriel nodded toward it. “Think you can make it?” he whispered.

“I think I can,” Joyce said. “I’m just not sure about Daniel.”

“I’ll try,” Daniel said.

They spun and ran for the door. Gabriel heard the twang of bowstrings, arrows cutting the air toward them. Gabriel pushed himself hard. They were almost there. Another bowstring twanged.

“Gabriel, look out!” Daniel yelled. He rammed into Gabriel from behind, knocking him to one side. The arrow that had been headed squarely at Gabriel’s back stabbed into Daniel’s shoulder instead. His face instantly went pale. “I’m hit,” he said softly and fell to the deck.

Joyce, almost at the door, skidded to a halt. She ran back.

Gabriel looked around for some way to draw the cult members’ attention away from them. His gaze fell on the bodies of the security guards slumped by the wall. Their guns lay on the floor beside them. Gabriel ran for them. As he’d hoped, the bowmen turned to follow him, taking their aim off Joyce and Daniel. Arrows pursued him across the deck. One slashed his back, slicing his shirt and drawing a hot line of pain across his shoulder blades, but he kept moving. He dropped to the deck and slid across it like he was sliding into home plate. As he fetched up against the dead guards’ bodies, he grabbed one of their guns in each hand. Turning back, he squeezed the triggers repeatedly, blasting bullet after bullet at the cultists. White robes burst into red, skull masks cracked and shattered, bows dropped from their hands. When the smoke cleared, only the high priest was left standing—and he broke and made a run for it.

Gabriel fired at him but the man was already too far and the shot went wide. Gabriel considered giving chase—but Daniel needed help. He ran over to Joyce instead.

“Don’t worry about us,” she shouted. “Get that bastard!”

At the far end of the deck, Gabriel saw the high priest spiraling down a metal staircase between decks. Gabriel grabbed the railing at the edge of the top deck and jumped over it, dropping twenty feet to the deck below. He landed on his feet, rolled off the impact, then sprang up and sprinted for the stairwell. The high priest was already on the next level down. Gabriel chased him down two more flights before the high priest burst through the door to the main deck. Gabriel followed a moment later, only to find the deck empty. He looked both ways, saw the door to the ballroom
swinging shut, and ran for it. He grabbed it just before it closed and slipped inside.

The enormous room was dark except for flickering pinpoints of light thrown along the walls by the mirrored ball rotating on the ceiling. The stage, the dance floor and the small tables surrounding it were all empty. Everyone must have been sent back to their rooms after word spread of the attack. He looked around, but there was no sign of the high priest. Gabriel stepped deeper into the ballroom, chilled equally by the strong air-conditioning and the utter silence. The high priest could be anywhere. He could be directly behind Gabriel, getting ready to launch an attack…

Movement caught his eye, the flutter of a dark curtain draped over the wall. Gabriel ran toward it, threw back the curtain. No one was there, only an emergency exit. He hit the panic bar and shoved the door open. Beyond it was a long hallway that extended to either side. He ran down both directions to the end before finally admitting to himself that he’d lost the man. The high priest was probably off the ship by now.

He returned to the stairwell and encountered Joyce helping Daniel down the stairs.

“What happened?” Joyce asked.

Gabriel shook his head. “He got away.” Daniel was still pale and had a gloss of sweat on his forehead, but the arrow was gone from his shoulder, replaced with a wide circle of blood on his shirt. “How’s he doing?”

“I’m okay,” Daniel said, though his unsteady voice suggested otherwise. “The arrow didn’t go in very deep…Joyce was able to pull it out.”

“Arrows like this hurt like hell coming out,” Gabriel said. “I know from experience.”

“Yes, hell’s a fair approximation,” Daniel said, winc
ing, “of what it feels like to have a…a sharp piece of metal torn out of your flesh.”

Gabriel took the bulk of Daniel’s weight off Joyce’s shoulder and helped him down the rest of the stairs and out into the hallway that led to their cabins. “It was a foolish thing to do, jumping in front of an arrow like that.”

“Trust me, I have no intention of ever doing it again,” Daniel said.

“But it probably did save my life,” Gabriel said. “I owe you one.”

“How about you pay me back by declaring house arrest over?” Daniel said.

Gabriel exchanged a glance with Joyce.

“Done,” Gabriel said. “But let’s make one more stop in your cabin. There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom. I know a thing or two about treating arrow wounds.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Daniel shook his head. “I can’t believe I actually got shot with an
arrow.
By a millennia-old death cult!”

“That’ll pack them in at your next lecture,” Joyce said.

Daniel looked up at Gabriel. “Is it always like this for you?”

“No,” he said. “Sometimes the death cults are only centuries-old.”

They turned the corner and Gabriel froze as they saw the cabin doors. The door to Daniel’s cabin was shut tight, but the door to his and Joyce’s was slightly ajar, its edge chipped and bent near the lock. He handed Daniel back off to Joyce and whispered, “Stay here.”

He pushed the door open slowly, switched on the light. The room had been tossed: the closet door was open, the drawers pulled out of the dresser, the sheets
stripped from the bed. He saw Joyce’s backpack lying open on the floor. He picked it up and looked inside.

“Damn it!”

“What’s wrong?” Joyce asked, from the doorway.

“They’re gone,” Gabriel said, waving the empty backpack at her. “The Star, the map, the Eye, all of it.” He’d been a fool. The attack had been a diversion. The cult’s true objectives had been sitting unguarded in his cabin all along.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Daniel said. “That’s not good at all.”

Vassily watched as Arkady undid the ropes mooring their boat to the
African Princess.
The young man had done well, locating the interlopers’ room and then stealing the sacred relics. But the two of them were the only ones who remained out of an attack force of more than a dozen. And if Arkady had been with them on deck, he would surely be as dead as the others. The interlopers, this Gabriel Hunt and the other two (
Who was that fat old man?
Vassily wondered), had fought more bravely—and more effectively—than Vassily had anticipated. He’d expected to return not only with the Star and one of the Eyes of Teshub, but also with their heads for proud display and subsequent flensing and use in worship. That they were still alive vexed him. Ulikummis would not be happy with him for letting them live.

Arkady started the engine, moving the ketch forward along the length of the cruise ship.

“When we reach shore, you must contact the African sect, Arkady,” Vassily ordered. “Tell them we need more warriors.”